The Accidental Necromancer
Don’t touch that!

Sandra fixed me up with a semi-automatic .30-06 rifle, and an old Colt .45 automatic pistol, both of which she said would stop a bear in its tracks. She warned me about the kick, showed me how to load it, and all that. I could go on about it, but it turned out none of it mattered.

She also made the comment, after we were cuddling in the warm afterglow of sex, that if I didn’t move around so much, she’d think I could be “the one” myself. It was flattering, but I wasn’t sure I liked it much. The settling down part I was considering. But being monogamous? Not so much. Nothing against it for those who are.

Maybe she meant that I’d be her “one” but I’d still be poly. That could work, but Sandra had a pretty healthy sexual appetite.  There were people who got off on the idea of being monogamous with a polyamorous lover, but there was usually an element of power exchange to those relationships that I didn’t have with Sandra.

So I kissed her goodbye like always. She said she had a date with Bill tomorrow, and I told her I hoped it went well. She told me to have fun with the new girl. And back home I went.

The next morning I walked down to the basement with the rifle strapped to my back, the pistol in a holster, and a bunch of chocolate bars for Xyla as well as some other stuff in my backpack, which I wore on one shoulder. I held one end of an extension cord in my hand, the other end being connected to a plug in the basement. I was naked, which was strange but it was better than wearing clothes that wouldn’t fit the moment I went through the gate. I went down the rope ladder and felt myself transform.

I really needed to stop being turned on just by having tits. Someday.

I got to the bottom, reached up to take the rifle off, and it wasn’t there. The pistol wasn’t in the holster, either. When I looked up I could see them through the transparent floor of the basement, just sitting there. The extension cord had come through just fine.

Where’s the guns? Oh.

Oh, was right. They didn’t pass through the supernatural equivalent of customs, apparently. No magic on Earth, no guns in Amaranth. I wondered what else wouldn’t work? Could I take down little bits of a gun through, and assemble them, sort of like the puzzle pieces made up the gate? Maybe, but that wasn’t a short term solution.

“So, against the zombies. Will Drain Life work?” I had a feeling I knew the answer.

They aren’t living, dumbass.

Right. I figured that.

After all the centuries, they are probably quite a bit weaker. But still, two elf children could probably take you down.

I thought that was unfair, but maybe elf kids were tough. “Just zombies?” I asked.

Basically. But powerful zombies. Or they were at one time. Now, I can’t be sure.

I picked up the chainsaw. “I’ve got this.”

That might work.

Might. That didn’t sound enticing to me. It might work, or I might be torn apart by zombies. The latter made going upstairs and finishing some floors pretty attractive.

“Maybe I could just make a wand?” I said. “What do we need to do, get the right kind of stick?”

Do you see an enchant wand spell on your system display? No? Then you can’t do it, idiot.

I took one of the chargers for the batteries I used for almost all my power tools out of my backpack, and plugged it into the extension cord. I put in an eighteen-volt battery. The little light went on. Firearms might not work, but power did, which meant I could probably wire internet down here, too. Of course an extension cord running down a rope ladder wasn’t exactly a best practice, but it was proof of concept, and for now, it would do.

I put on clothes, wondering if what I had bought on the internet was actually practical. I’d done a rush job, and probably hadn’t bought the highest quality because I was worried about money, but the models sure looked sexy in those clothes.

“Okay, well, tell me where this treasure of yours is. I need to know that, regardless.”

I made notes and tried to draw a map. According to Enash, it was only about five miles away, north by north-west, in a little cave I’d barely be able to squeeze into, a hundred yards west of a rock that looked like an orc’s head with a very long nose. Rock and cave were probably, by now, completely overgrown based on what happened to the mausoleum.

On the good side, it seemed unlikely anyone had found it recently, given that Enash’s tomb had been so completely covered and seemingly forgotten. If the cave had been plundered, it had probably happened a long time ago, and that was a risk I’d have to take, assuming I could even find it. Maybe Xyla could help with that.

Besides, I wanted to see her again.

I revved the chainsaw, and waited. I wondered if the forest would open up for me again, but instead Xyla slipped through the brush into the clearing in front of the tomb, wearing only a handful of leaves.

“Abby!” she said, running toward me. I put the chainsaw down before she almost knocked me down with a hug. “Hi!”

“Uh, happy to see you, too!”

She looked down at my crotch. “Not yet, it seems.” She looked back up, and winked. “Did you bring chocolate?”

I smiled. “I did.” I reached in my backpack and pulled out a bar. “Here you go. I could use your help with something.”

“Mmm. And this isn’t poisoned, either?”

“Why would I poison you?”

Xyla shrugged. It had a rather distracting effect on her chest. “You probably wouldn’t. Not after having sex with me. Because I’m amazing. But I don’t really know much about you. I need more information.”

“What a coincidence.”

“Well, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

I nodded, trying to figure out what I could say and what I couldn’t. “Okay.”

“So?”

What, did she want me to take my clothes off? She’d seen that. “What?”

“Aren’t you going to invite me inside? Technically, you’re in my forest, so it’s all part of my domain anyway. But I’ll let you have this bit, if you let me see it.”

I thought about the engravings on the walls. I should have studied them more carefully, but then, I should have done a lot of things that I hadn’t done because I was busy doing something else. It’s not as if I’d had time to read or play video games or anything. “Yes,” I said. “But it’s rather shocking, I’m afraid. There was someone else here before me, you see.”

“Show me!”

I opened the door to let her in, with misgivings. I didn’t like being secretive in a relationship, if that was what was growing between me and the pretty green dryad. After all, if someone would only love me if they didn’t know the real me, did they really love me? But some of the secrets I had seemed outside of who I am. Enash was not my fault.

Daylight helped the place, but with just the doors open, only so much of it was let in. The ceiling glowed a little because the light was on in the basement, but even light seemed to have trouble getting through if I wasn’t carrying it. The two magical torches were still aflame, although I thought they were a bit dimmer. There’d been enough light to see by, but it certainly would look nicer with some electric lights. Xyla took a few steps inside and looked around.

“It’s like a tomb,” Xyla said. “With a coffin and everything. It is a tomb.”

“Yes, it is.”

She whirled on me. And then ran by, back outside. Then she turned again. “You’re a necromancer, aren’t you?”

I thought I understood her actions. I was scary, and her control over the vines of the forest didn’t mean much inside the building. She didn’t like having me between her and her woods, either.

“Do I look like a necromancer?” I paused. That wasn’t right. “I’m not not a necromancer, but I don’t really identify as – “ no that sounded lame, too. “It’s really complicated. Can I explain?”

“Please do,” she said. She was cute with her hands on her hips like that but not at the cost of having her mad at me.

“So, if I wanted to do something horrible to you, I had my chance, didn’t I?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I was just too fast for you.”

“Okay. So, here’s the story. I’m from another world. Not just another continent, another world entirely. That’s why I don’t know the names of your continents, or other things.”

“A necromancer from another world,” she said.

Put like that, it didn’t sound better. But I kept going. “This,” I gestured behind me to the tomb, “is the tomb of a necromancer from your world, who was trying to get into mine. We don’t even have necromancers in my world. Or magic of any kind, as I told you before.”

Don’t tell her everything! She’ll use it against you!

“Yeah, you said that. But how could a world even work without magic?”

I shrugged. “It seems to work.”

“So there are others like you, in your world?” She made curves in the air, and then a rather obscene gesture.

“No. Or not exactly.” I didn’t want to get too far afield. “This body was the necromancer’s idea.”

Oh fine, blame it on me.  You love having those big bouncy breasts and that big --

“It’s her body.” She frowned. “And you took it over. You take over bodies.”

“Not as a general rule. He tried to take over mine. I think he messed up his spell, or didn’t understand the consequences of it, or something. He’s intelligent without actually being smart, if that makes sense.”

It doesn’t.

I ignored him. “Anyway, I ended up with the body he created, this body, while I’m in your world. And when I said I’m not not a necromancer, I also seemed to have ended up with some very simple spells he had. First circle spells, I think they are called.”

“Do you have another class?”

Okay, so the class thing wasn’t just on the system display. “No. We don’t have character classes on my world, either, except in games.”

“How does the system even work there, then?”

“We don’t have a system. I think the system itself is magic, so it doesn’t work in my world.”

“You know, if you were going to make up something, I’d think you’d make up something more believable.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I probably would.”

Heh. This is going to be good. She’s going to attack you, and you’ll have to kill her to defend yourself. Then you can animate her and use her against my zombies. Looking forward to this.

“You know, there’s one way to find out,” I said. “See that rope ladder there? It leads up into my world.” I had a sickening thought. Maybe she couldn’t go there, and she’d think I was lying. Or maybe, worse, she simply couldn’t survive without magic.

“A whole new world,” she said, and I recognized in her voice the same kind of curiosity I had. “Alright, Abby. I need to see this.”

She took a deep breath, and then walked in, straight for the ladder.

“I don’t know if it’s entirely safe,” I said.

“What is?” she asked.

She climbed up the ladder, and I followed her. Those leaves really didn’t do much to cover from the angle I had, but now was no time to get distracted. Nothing happened to her when she reached the top, but half in and half out, she looked around.

She picked up the nearest object, which was the M1911 Colt .45 automatic pistol.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Don’t touch –”