The Accidental Necromancer
Queen of Abbyland

I walked away and looked at my character sheet first thing, of course.

Uberabberubeyabby “Abby” Thorson.

Species: Demonic Futanari / Human

Class: Necromancer / Seductress

Titles: Uber Archfiend of Tartarus. Queen of Abbyland.

Level: 5

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 8

Intelligence:8

Wisdom: 7

Charisma 11

Health: 27/27

Mana: 510/510

Endurance: 19/35

Experience for Next Level: 4395

Innate Demonic Ability: Dimension Step

Innate Seductress Abilities: Back Stab (Seductress version), Special Attraction, Sexual Satisfaction, Stealth, Exposure, Subtlety

Spells: Life Drain, Detect Magic, Animate Lesser Undead, Find Dead, Mend Corpse, Charm Person, Imbue Fetish, Endurance, Speak with Dead, Fear, Polymorph, Sexual Empathy, Animate Undead, Death Touch, Raise Dead

There was a lot to look at, and some of those new spells I almost didn’t want to know about. Uber Archfiend, huh? Hopefully that meant the Archfiend didn’t die from too much Viagra. Queen of Abbyland, indeed – didn’t Gren just make that up?

I settled myself by looking at something familiar.

Sexual Satisfaction: Sex with the seductress is 10% better per level of the seductress (currently 50%).

I still didn’t know what the heck that meant, but it sure sounded good.

Subtlety: Your lies and flirtations are more effective. Your charm spells cannot be detected or sensed for what they are. Magically or otherwise. Spells designed to detect lies do not work on you if your lie is about sex. Spells designed to detect evil intent do not work on you providing your intent has a sexual component.

That’s the best ability ever!

Valeria was going to love all that. Not. But I noted that being evil in general still was detectable, as were normal lies. The ability was all about covering up illicit sexual liaisons, I suppose. “No, madam, I did not sleep with your husband. The furthest thing from my mind, actually.”

Of course, that was antithetical to everything I believed about how to do polyamory. All of which raised an interesting question: was that partly because I was afraid of getting caught, or was it because I was ethical?

No, it didn’t change a thing. But, it was nice to know I could throw my charm spells around when I needed to. I didn’t love using them, but there were times when they helped avoid a lot of violence. They still might not work, but I could at least try with impunity.

Polymorph seemed like a real mismatch for all my classes, so I looked at that next.

Polymorph:You have the ability to change your appearance to match the target’s sexual ideal. The way you feel in your body will not change, but everyone looking will sense your changed form with all their senses, including touch. This spell can have unpredictable effects. The target must be able to see you clearly, and you must be able to see them. Costs significant amounts of mana.

That was just weird. So, if I walked into a crowded room of frat boys, and picked one, I’d suddenly look like Kate Upton or something? And everyone would see that. But if the frat boy was gay, I might find myself looking like a Tom of Finland drawing or Brad Pitt, or whatever he was into. And would I have any way of knowing what I looked like? The good news, I suppose, was that I had the equipment regardless, providing I didn’t find anyone who was sexually attracted to toasters. I wondered what a camera would show.

Sexual Empathy: You can become aware of the sexual desires and thoughts of any subject. It will reveal both the surface thoughts, and any deeply held fetishes. Requires that you touch the subject. Costs trivial amounts of mana.

Huh. Kind of invasive. But potentially useful.

And when combined with Imbue Fetish, you can find out what the subject’s thing is, and then turn it up to 11!

“You’ve seen Spinal Tap?” I asked.

Of course. I did an extensive study of your culture. It’s a good thing your second class isn’t Drummer. Come on, look at Death Touch!

I still didn’t feel like looking at Death Touch, so I looked at Raise Dead instead.

Raise Dead: You can touch the recently dead and bring them back to life. Takes five minutes. Costs massive amounts of mana.

“Enash.” I really hated to ask him anything. “How recently is recently?”

I don’t know. I never used that spell. Why raise when you can animate? Either way the corpse walks and if you animate them there’s less drama.

“You never used it?”

Oh, I guess there was this once. There was a guy I was torturing, and I went a little too far because I was having a good time, so I brought him back so I could torture him some more. But he’d only been dead for a minute, tops. With your mana you can probably only bring a guy like that back once, but once I got the hang of it, I just kept doing it over and over. He talked, and then I turned him into a zombie.

I frowned. So, it might be very short indeed, and I’d need to be able to be ready to cast it at a moment’s notice.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you need to not spend any mana, just in case one of your fuck toys croaks and you need to bring her back. There are plenty of women in the sea, my friend!

“I think you just mixed your metaphor.”

Still, better to swap them out occasionally, anyway.

“Uh, no.”

Great. You get the most useless spell ever, and you’re going to let it gimp everything else you do.

I needed to find out just how much mana it took. Hopefully “massive” didn’t mean all. Anyway, I knew how to change the subject.

Death Touch:Kills any target under the caster’s level instantly. Requires that you touch the subject. Mana cost determined by level of the target.

Are you seeing the synergies I’m seeing?

“Probably not.”

You see someone across the room you don’t like. Instantly, you transform yourself into their fondest wish. Then you walk across the room, and offer a kiss. Blammo, they’re dead in their moment of triumph! And, better yet, everyone saw someone who is not you do it!

“Well, once they are dead they don’t have desire, anymore, I’d think, and so I’d probably transform back into myself right at the most awkward moment.”

Okay, okay, we can work on it. You can probably get them to go off privately with you, and your polymorphed self would still be the last person to see the victim. Then using your stealth skills, you slip away.

“Only one problem,” I said.

What? It’s perfect!

“I don’t want to go around killing people.”

How are you going to reach sixth level with an attitude like that, much less twelfth? Although I admit, mass killing would be better. Wait, though, if you fuck them first – oh, heck, you can already backstab them.

“Yep,” I said. “And that works on people who are higher level than me. Basically, it’s a useless spell.”

Nooooo! It’s what being a necromancer is all about!

“Sorry. Well, the Raise thing is nice, anyway.”

You missed one.

“One what?”

Spell.

I looked again, and it took me a moment to see what he was right. Animate Dead looked like the same old same old, but the spell I had before was Animate Lesser Undead.

Animate Dead: You may animate a humanoid corpse to become one of several undead creatures. First level humanoids become skeletons. Second level humanoids become ghouls. Third level humanoids become wights. Fourth level and higher humanoids become vampires. Additionally, you may animate non-humanoid creatures to become zombie or skeletal versions of the creature. Range 30 meters with a wand, or the caster must touch the corpse.

“Huh,” I said.

The best thing is that ghouls, wights, and vampires can give your zombies and skeletons orders. And all of them can obey more complex instructions. On the down side, wights and vampires are capable of independent thought.

“You mean they can rebel?”

Not exactly. But they can decide that they are going to execute a flanking maneuver in an important battle when you told them they were supposed to feint, because they think they have new information or some such crap, and then by the time you realize what’s going on your entire left wing has collapsed, and a bunch of poncey elves are chasing you through the forest, and you have to abandon your belongings in a cave with just a bunch of weak zombies to protect them, and then you get entombed in a crypt for a thousand years.

“That’s an oddly specific example.”

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Of course, I wasn’t thinking about armies. I was thinking about how much more I could get out of my zombie workforce with a few middle managers.

I know! You find someone who has a few levels, then use your abilities to look like their fondest desire. Then you get them in a room and kill them with Death Touch. Then you raise them, and send the corpse away. Back to the room for your next victim! You’ll be the death of the party!

Right. I thought a few higher level undead would be useful, but I wasn’t going to kill anyone to create them. If it happened, it happened. If no one ever died around me again, well, that, to my mind, was what winning looked like.

I walked back to the group, who had been keeping their distance, waiting expectantly. Kendala and Talos had joined them; Kathy had left for some reason.

“Where’s Kathy?”

“She went to get food from some McDonald’s.”

Ah. Through the gate. What if we had to close it all down, somehow? No more McDonald’s. No more hardware store runs.

No more Abel.

That last one didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. Abel contributed very little to my life here, other than shopping, most of which could be done online.

Oh, no more online shopping. No internet. The basis for the economy I built depended on the influx of goods from Earth.

“So,” Gren said. “What new powers did you get?”

I opened my mouth to tell her, when I noticed Lysandra, who looked just as interested as the rest of them, and I realized she had no context at all.

“Gren, I think first I better catch Lysandra up on what powers I already have. At least in a general way.”

“You tantalizing, teasing trollop!” Gren yelled.

“Please,” Lysandra said. “I’m a part of all this, I’d like to know.”

Gren glared at her.

“But keep it to the short version, so that my lovely blue sister-wife doesn’t have to wait. I don’t want her to hurt herself by clenching her tusks.”

It sounded kind, but I thought I detected a trace of sarcasm. Well, in this case Gren probably deserved it. But I realized I was in for something interesting with Lysandra. My wives were lovely, lovely people with their own quirks, but none of them was exactly subtle.

“Alright.” I sighed. “If you don’t want to have anything to do with me after this, I –”

“I’m kinda stuck with you,” Lysandra said. “I’m married to the Archfiend, and I assume he’d start a war or something if anyone but the Uber Archfiend slept with his wife. I have no intention of being celibate. So tell me, Queen Abby, what I need to know.”

“Okay.” I paused, but there was really no good way around it. Not if I wanted to be the person I wanted to be, and not the person my new Subtlety skill wanted me to be.

“So, I said, I come from another world, which is where I get those posters and the bicycles and bras and well, all sorts of things really.”

Lysandra nodded.

“And I was summoned here as part of an attempt by Enash – have you heard of Enash?”

“The evil necromancer who killed a million people a thousand years ago?”

A million. She exaggerates. Slightly.

“Yeah. That Enash.”

“Oh. Oh!”

“Anyway, he made this body of mine to live in – uh, might be worth noticing that on Earth I’m a dude. But somehow we collided or something in the middle, and now when I’m here, this is my body, and Enash is… well, a powerless passenger.”

Grrr.

“Good one, Abby,” Gren said.

“Enash is in – you?” Lysandra looked horrified.

“Yes. He can’t do anything except jabber at me, but he’s there.” Might as well get the worst of it out there. “And as a result, I’m a necromancer.”

“A non-evil necromancer,” Valeria said. “And a non-evil demon. Very rare.”

“With a paladin to vouch for you.”

Lysandra smiled. “Well, that’s a pretty good endorsement. And as a necromancer, it’s not like you can control what other people do or say, so I know I can take it at face value. It’s not like you’re a seductress or something.”