Abby Thorson

  Species: Demonic Futanari / Human

  Css: Neancer / Seductress

  Level: 2

  Strength: 10

  Dexterity: 8

  Intelligence:8

  Wisdom: 7

  Charisma 11

  Health: 22/22

  Mana: 71/121

  Endurance: 29/30

  Experience for Level: 1997

  Innate Demonic Ability: Dimension Step

  Innate Seductress Abilities: Back Stab (Seductress version), Special Attra, Sexual Satisfa

  Spells: Life Drai Magiimate Lesser Undead, Find Dead, Mend Corpse, Charm Person, Imbue Fetish

  Find Dead: When cast, the neancer bees aware of the dire of any specific body within thirty kilometers, or if no body is specified, the closest dead body capable of being animated.

  Useful. Not. Maybe there was an edge case.

  Mend Corpse: Energy flows from the caster to patch together a dead body that has been mangled, cut, or bisected. Requires that that the neaouch the body, or touch it with their wand.

  A little better, I suppose. It meant that I could keep the zombies going, and maybe make them look a little better, and possibly animate more different bodies. I kind of hoped, though, that fewer people would be dying, making it a non-issue.

  Imbue Fetish: You may create in a person a tra or fixation, which will steadily increase over the course of a month. Depending oarget’s inations, the fetish may bee an obsession. May fade after the month is over, or bee perma, depending on the subject. Requires that the Seductress touch the user.

  Great, another evil ability to mind trol people.

  Sexual Satisfa: Sex with the seductress is 10% better per level of the seductress.

  Well, that was all good. What did it mean for sex to be 20% better? How the hell could you quantify that? “I don’t know why you were so excited by Find Dead and Mend Corpse,” I said.

  “Hmm?” asked Xy.

  “Talking to Enash, I’m sorry, bad habit.”

  It’s a great habit. Ag deranged always strikes fear into your enemies. And friends. Mostly enemies. And Find Dead is great for helping you raise a zombie army. In any case, your existing spells have me, and that’s useful. Look at these.

  Life Drain: Allows the caster to draw life slowly from a living being within thirty meters, healing injuries if any, and otherwise rest health in proportion to life drained. If health is full, restores mana. If mana is full, restores endurance. Ranged use requires a wand.

  Animate Lesser Undead: Allows the caster to turn any dead creature within thirty meters into a zombie. Ranged use requires a wand. es mana.

  Yeah. Ranged animate dead. All over the battlefield, the dead rise up, while you just keep pointing your wand. Every time an enemy falls, he gets right back up and fights on our side, the side of evil!

  Our side wouldn’t be the side of evil if I had anything to say about it, but I could see how having range on that spell made it a lot better. I checked the other spells, but they didn’t ge. The gain in my mana pool was signifit, though.

  I walked around the forest with Xy, putting the zombies to work. That aplished, I told her I was going to go bae for bit. I wao help Xy, but in the long run, I thought I could dood by aplishing a few things oh.

  She pouted. “I’ll miss you.”

  I smiled. “I’ll miss you, too. Please don’t overdo, Xy. You ime to heal.”

  “You could watch me and make sure,” she said.

  I kional bckmail when I saw it, and shook my head. “No, I trust you,” I told her. I kissed her lightly a back to the tomb.

  My mom used to do that to me. “I trust you.” She’d say those words when she was worried I’d misbehave, knowing that I wouldn’t want to disappoint her. It worked on me, and maybe it would work on Xy. It was maniputive, but I wanted her to be safe.

  Before I climbed the dder, I took out one of the gold bracers I’d taken off of Varek. It didn’t look like mue, but it was heavy, and it was golden. The stones had a transluce to them that was kind of attractive, even uncut, but they’d been put in the bracer without any great regard for spag – the sort of thing that would occur if someone eyeballed it, without measuring. They were pretty big, though, some of them as wide around as a dime.

  I popped the gems out with a small screwdriver. Then I rigged up a lever to use as a scale, and put the bracer on one side, and about the same density of nails oher.

  The bracer was heavier; brass would have been signifitly lighter. Uhe bracer was made of some metal not known oh, it robably mostly pure gold. Even a 50-50 mix of silver would have been lighter than iron.

  I drove to a jeweler. It was a good time of day for it, mid-afternoon when most people were at work, and there was a balding guy sitting iore, his pants held up by old-fashioned suspenders.

  “Hey,” I said, surprised by my normal, mase voice. That’s right, I was just a guy in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, with no spells or anything. It seemed weird, almost like I was naked. “Do you have time to look at a few uncut stones for me?”

  He looked at me, and shrugged. “Sure. Uncut?” He looked uhused, but he pulled out his loupe and fixed it in pce. “Where’d you find them?”

  I didn’t answer. I pulled one green, one blue, and oone from my pocket, and put them on the ter.

  He didn’t look impressed, but he took a look. And then a closer look. He stared at the red stone for a few minutes, and then did the same for the green one and the blue. “I thought you were just going to show me a few rocks you picked up on a hike, or something,” he said at st.

  I shrugged. “What are they?”

  “This one is a ruby,” he said, pointing to the red one. “And these two are sapphires. They are all of extremely high quality, which I presume you knew.”

  I had assumed the red stones were gars, and that they were all semi-precious at best, but I had wao know. “I thought sapphires were blue?”

  “Teically, a sapphire is any gem made of the mineral dum that isn’t red enough to be a ruby. Rubies are essentially red sapphires. We used to call the green ones Oriental Emeralds, nowadays we call them green sapphires. And the word sapphire es from a Latin word used to describe Lapis Lazuli, a different stoirely. Don’t bme me, I didn’t make the rules. Where did you get them?”

  I shrugged. “They’re family heirlooms. I have more.”

  “You have more,” he repeated.

  I nodded. “I’m looking to sell them, if you’re ied.”

  “I’m ied,” he said. “But I don’t want to be a ‘receiver of stolen goods.’ Oher hand, these stones would be worth more cut than as they are, and I ’t believe they’d stay raw like this for long.” He tilted his head. “So I guess you smuggled them, somehow, rather than stole them.”

  I should have thought that through, but I’d not expected the gems to be anything special. The very st thing I needed was for the police to raid my house. Not that they could prove anything about the stones, but they’d find the gate. I held up my hands. “I’m ,” I said. “If you’re not ied, I’ll go elsewhere. If you are, there’s more where those came from.” I picked up the stones, and his eyes followed them. Or tried to. He was surprised when I opened my hand and it was empty. My timing robably bad, but I couldn’t resist.

  “I couldn’t pay full price,” he said. “There’s too much risk.”

  “How much?”

  He took a deep breath. “Let’s call it an even grand a carat.”

  “And how many carats are they?”

  He held out his hand. I slipped the gemstones out of my sleeve and gave them to him. He looked them over with his loupe again before he put them ea a scale. “Teically,” he said. “The green one is probably worth more. But it evens out. Thirty-five thousand, two hundred dolrs for all three. I don’t suppose you’d take a check?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I have nothing to hide, and I’m going to ght to the bank to cash it.”

  He stared at me for a long time. “Who do I make it out to?”

  “Abel Thorson,” I told him.

  He pulled out a checkbook from the cash register and started to write. “This is the strahing that has happeo me in a long time. I ’t tell if you’re making a fool of me, or I’m ripping you off. But I ’t wait to work with them.” I noticed as he wrote out the check that his name was Mal Gardner.

  I smiled. “Maybe we’re just both getting a good deal, Mal,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, Abel. If that’s your real name. Well, if you get more, e back. But not too soon. It’ll take me a while to get these cut, set, and sold. I ’t make a purchase like this every day.”

  I nodded. “How soon do you wao e back?”

  “A few weeks, maybe?” he said. “A month?”

  I grinned. “That works.” It’d be more than enough to keep me out of the poor house, and selling even those three gems covered my expenses buying swords, bows, security equipment, and what not.

  My bank was two blocks away, and I deposited the check. I decided not to sell the heavy bracelet, because I didn’t he money now, and it looked like it was some kind of archaeological artifact. It was more important to avoid arousing suspi than to have a little more cash on hand. But I did buy a scale and more liquor on the way home, as well as a few short boards of lumber. I got a variety. I also bought a bunch of chocote bars and a bag of unsalted mixed nuts.

  Kathy watched me unload from her porch. I wonder what she thought. Well, I could always say I was stog a bar.

  When I weighed the bracelet, it was two pounds. The price of gold was over twenty-five hundred an ounce – so that meant it was worth anhty thousand dive or take. That kind of money could do more than stop me from starving. It could also buy a hell of a lot of whiskey and lumber, both of which the trolls needed. I wasn’t sure how I could help Xy directly with it, but keeping the trolls happy would help her ily.

  It was te in the evening, so I fixed myself some fettue Alfredo. I wao go to Amaranth, and che Xy, but I also had plenty of things to do at home to make my pce more livable. It was weird thinking about how to make a home for me, rather than for someone else who would buy it in a year or less, but every time I looked around at the pce I felt a little ky. I still o repce the refrigerator. There were floors that needed refinishing. The kit tile needed redoing, and so did the tertops and the ets. And I had a medie et to repce.

  This time, maybe I’d do it all in colors I liked.

  Someone was knog at the door, so I got up and answered it.

  “Hi Kathy,” I said.

  “Hi Abel.” She was wearing some very short shorts, and a polo type top she’d unbuttoo show a little cleavage. The smile she gave me was either alluring or predatory, I wasn’t sure which. “I noticed yht some liquor home and I wondered if it would be too forward to invite myself over for a drink.”