TheAmaraine

  “I guess I’ll just have to deal with you, then,” I said. I wasn’t sure if turning on the sex appeal would make it more or less likely I’d be attacked, so I didn’t lower myself.

  The two goons rexed, and Varek gave me another unpleasantly toothy smile.

  “Now we’re talking.”

  “Would you like to test the special brew? If we just use a little, I don’t think my Prince would objeuch.”

  Varek grinned. “Sure,” he said. “Just a sample. But you’ll drink first.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to look demure. “I do that, but it has an effee, if you know what I mean. So I’d rather it was just you and me.”

  “A good chief rewards his underlings,” Varek said.

  So he thought of himself as a chief of sorts, did he? That would probably be o Baradzem, but I didn’t have a wedge to exploit that at the moment. “Maybe so, but if I drop the bottle it’ll break and spill all over the floor. And I think you and me have a very good time, don’t you?”

  “That’d take more than a sample,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll start with a little and then see if you want more.”

  “Okay, guys,” Varek said after pting my breasts for a while. It was a new kind of divination. “Go ahead and head out. Be right outside in case you’re needed. You’ll get some of the “special beer” ter, if it’s any good. What’s so special about it, anyway?”

  “The potency,” I said.

  “Oh, really? Like wine?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “Just like wine.”

  Varek waited for the men to leave, and then walked over to a et, and pulled out two golden, gem-encrusted cups. For the most part, trolls did their drinking together, in the hall, before an y. Only the chief mated one oh a female, and these two cups were for that purpose. Gavabar had drunk from one of those cups, before he helped ceive Gren. Acc to Gren, no one else had any right to use them, although her description hadn’t included the fact that they were made of metal.

  My hand shook a little as I poured out a little whiskey for each of us. He watched my hands closely, making sure I poured as mu mine as I did in his.

  “Drink up, wench,” he told me.

  I lifted my cup and was startled by its heaviness. Was the thing solid gold? I hadn’t asked Gren what exactly the trolls mined from the hills. I drank, and the liquid burned like always. I wasn’t a regur whiskey drinker. But I smiled when I was done. I’d showed him it wasn’t poisoned.

  He sipped. “This is strong,” he said.

  I nodded. “I told you.”

  He looked in my cup, as if to assure himself that I’d drunk it all, and theilted his cup to down the rest.

  “This is very strong,” he said.

  Feeling a bit ill, I said, as coyly as I could manage, “Is it getting you all aroused?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. Looking forward to fug you.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “I don’t think you get a choice.”

  Ah, that made it easy. Just otle bit of ag, and then I was good. “I was hoping you’d say that,” I told him, truthfully. And I lifted my shirt to expose a boob.

  As expected, he looked. I’d pulled s out of ears and jured rabbits from hats with less misdire than that. I reached into my bag, thought about the sword and not the scabbard, and pulled it out with one easy motion, drawing the bde across his throat.

  I might not be a master swordswoman, but triple damage is triple damage. He fell over, and blood spurted all over the pce, including my shirt.

  Beautiful! Keep doing that, and I could fall in love with you! Look at all the blood!

  Okay, gross. I felt like throwing up, both from the gore and the notion of Enash in love. The fact that I was going to end up killing Varek had made my hands shake when I the whiskey. I stepped bad took the shirt off, before the blood ruined my bra. At least he hadn’t been able to call for help. He’d just made a faint gurgling noise.

  You killed a sed level troll Fighter, and earned 100 experience points, plus 50 for using your feminine wiles to make him vulnerable. You need 709 to bee a sed level Seductress / Neancer.

  If I’d aplished nothing else, I’d killed one of the four spirators, and a would-be rapist, at that. And I probably had a little time to work with. That was a good way to think about it.

  Then I threw up all over the body.

  You are the weakest ass neancer ever.

  I was fih that.

  After I caught my breath, I got the scabbard from the bag, put the sword in it, and put it away. I didn’t know if the naked bde would slice the bag if I just stuck it in. Then I got out my water bottle and washed the blood off me. I washed my mouth out, too. A little blood had gotten on my bra, but fortunately it was already red, and there wasn’t too much of it. It was also d a bit transparent, but walking around in just my bra was better than doing it with a bloody shirt.

  I wrung out the shirt as well as I could and stuffed it in my bag. Then I steeled myself to touch the corpse. I could animate it for the experience points, and tell it to just lie there. But I thought better of it. I he mana more, in case things went wrong. But I did take off the tord the bracers and popped them in my bag.

  I let myself out the door, sliding it shut. I was armed only with two gsses in one hand, and the bottle iher. “Hi boys,” I said to the two armed thugs outside.

  I think I probably could have killed both of them before they stopped ogling me, but the guys over at the building site might notice. They weren’t paying plete attention to their work.

  “Varek says I should take some of the special beer to Baradzem,” I said.

  “He’s in the forest, teag the green goblin a lesson she won’t fet,” Red-hair said. His breath stank.

  “Do you mean the dryad, Xy?” I asked loudly.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “She’s a friend of Prince Legos,” I procimed, still pitg my message to the workmen. “He’s never going to give you more of the special beer if you mess with her, or if any harm es to Chief Gavabar. Now take me to the chief this instant!”

  “Not unless Varek says so,” e hair said.

  I walked quickly toward the hut where I knew he was. They followed me, and broke into a run, grabbing me before I got there.

  I wao spare as many trolls as possible, I really did. But a building blocked us from view of the workmen now, and so we were out of view of everyone. “

  “Give me that special beer,” said e hair.

  I let them take it from my fingers. “What are your names?” I asked, trying to sound friehan I felt as red hair grabbed my arms. “I’m Abby.”

  “Verg,” said e.

  “Gargol,” said red.

  I remembered the names from Gren’s briefing. Verg and Gargol had fallen in with Baradzem’s bunch immediately. I watched, held fast, as they poured themselves several ounces of whiskey. I could Dimension Step away at any time, and I had plenty more whiskey in my bag.

  Gargol’s eyes went wide as he downed far more alcohol than he’d ever had in one big gulp. Then Verg did the same, while Gargol tried to grope me. His hand was toug my belly and sliding upward.

  Life Drain, I thought.

  His grip loosened, and then he fell back, dead. I didn’t expect the spell to be so fast.

  Triple Damage! Is that Synergy, or what! Tell me you don’t love being a Seductress Neancer.

  You killed a first level troll Fighter, and earned 50 experience points, plus 25 for using your feminine wiles to make him vulnerable, and need 634 to bee a sed level Seductress / Neancer.

  I had to admit it was w pretty well at the moment, although the other troll was looking at me with a mixture of horror and lust.

  And then the eyes rolled ba his head and he wobbled.

  “Strong, isn’t it?” I said. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey from him before he dropped it.

  “I am so horny right now, and so —” He didn’t finish, because he passed out.

  I looked around. Nope, no one was watg. I mentally told the system to turn off notifications for a bit. They were getting distrag.

  Then I cast Animate Lesser Undead on the corpse, and told it to just lie there. Yeah, I did it for the XP, but I also had some idea it might be handy to have an undead ally if things went south.

  I debated what to do with Verg. I was depending a lot on Gren’s perspective of who was a good guy and who was a bad guy, but so far what I’d seen had borne her out. Could I afford to be squeamish while my enemies burhe forest and threatened Xy and Gren?

  I drained Verg, too. The color went out of their bodies when they died like that, making them look even mhastly.

  But I didn’t eople to find the corpses.

  I animated the other one. “Go bato that building,” I said, pointing to where the Varek’s body was. “Guard it, and don’t let anyone in. But don’t kill anyone.”

  They shambled off. I hoped from a distahey wouldn’t look too undead, and hopefully the dires I’d given them weren’t too plicated.

  Don’t kill anyone? What sort of namby pamby nonsense is that? How are they supposed to guard something without killing?

  I shrugged. I had to do something with them. Leaving corpses around town wasn’t the way to make friends. I knew how to make friends, and I headed toward the stru site.

  All eyes were on me as I approached.

  “Let’s have some ground rules, boys,” I said as I approached. “As long as no oouches me, there won’t be any sequences.”

  The guys looked at each other, and then o me. Good. No one else had to die. If the whole vilge had been as grabby as Varek and his goons, I’d been about to bee a murder hobo.

  “Chief Gavabar sends his pliments,” I told them. “And invites you all to have a special dri by his friend, Prince Legos of the elves. The Prince promises nine more bottles of this drink he calls whiskey, providing he is assured of Chief Gavabar’s safety and that he still rules this vilge. I’m Abby.”

  They exged uneasy looks. I tilted the bottle, and took a drink, or preteo. I did get a little whiskey on my tongue. I still had a little taste in my mouth from vomiting earlier, and the whiskey actually helped with that as I used my too stopper the bottle while I preteo pour some down my throat.

  “Just a little,” I said. “It’s very strong.”

  The guys nodded. One of them, whose nose was extra-crooked, asked, “It’s like beer?”

  “It’s much strohan wine,” I told him holy. “It’s called whiskey. Just take a little. What’s your name?”

  “Gregor.”

  I remembered that name, even though he had been one of the people Gren was on the fence about, because it had been a human sounding name.

  “ we py with you after?” asked a troll with a unibrow.

  I shook my head. “No toug. This is just a sample, so you know what kind ies yoing to have if you get on the Prince’s, and your Chief’s, good side.”

  So they passed the bottle around, taking drinks, and at my prompting, giviheir names. Some of them heeded my warning, and some didn’t, but they all got at least a bit of a glow in their cheeks. There wasn’t a lot left itle.

  I don’t know that it made them look better, but maybe it made them think they looked better. And the unibrowed workman was ohat Gren told me I could trust, a troll named Rargar.

  “Hail Chief Gavabar!” I yelled.

  Rargar yelled it back, and after a moment’s hesitation, so did the others.

  “e,” I said. “Let’s free the chief.”

  “We ’t,” Gregor said.

  “Why?”

  “Baradzem will burn us alive.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said. “Because if I don’t free the chief, then you aren’t getting any more whiskey for the women. I have some stashed in the woods.” They didn’t o know it was in the bag at my hip, along with all sorts of other things.

  I watched them think about it, although some of their eyes had gooo dull for there to be much thinking. But it was one of the dull ohat got where I needed him to go.

  “Free the chief!” he yelled. “Mate with the women! Troll babies!”

  “Yeah,” said Rargar. “Let’s go. But,” he said to me, “It would be so much better if you joined us for the y.”

  “That’s quite alright,” I said. “The Prince wouldn’t like that much.”

  “What, he thinks he owns you?” asked one of them.

  I did not rolls to teach me about polyamory.

  We marched in a ragged group to where I already knew Gavabar was being held. There were two guards, but they weren’t going to resist a gang of workmen. Sure, they had swords, but they were outnumbered five to one, and the workmen had axes and hammers. And in the end, no one really wao fight their fellow smen.

  Gavabar wasn’t actually that fat. Maybe by troll standards. He had a bit of a beer belly. But I suspected they hadn’t been feeding him, and maybe he was drugged. He y in the er of hut, sn away, and even when one of the trolls spped him awake he barely opened his eyes.