The Accidental Necromancer
Not Everything Explodes

But I was too late. She’d grabbed it in the obvious way, and had managed to depress the thumb safety and squeeze the trigger. The unexpected kick of the powerful gun, combined with her only lightly holding onto the ladder with one hand, knocked her off balance. Instinctively, I reached out to catch her, but I was on the ladder too, and that meant that I was no longer hanging on.

We landed, with me on the bottom, on top of the bones.

I needed to put a cushion in that spot. I mentally added it to my list, along with burying the bones outside. The tomb was now part of my house, and I didn’t want a skeleton in it.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Just a little surprised. You make a great cushion. What was that? I thought you said there was no magic.”

“Yeah, it works differently.” There was probably a hole somewhere in my walls, now. Hopefully she hadn’t shot the boiler or anything important. “How about you not touching anything without asking, it will be much safer.” I was very aware of two things; a pain in my back, from landing, and her body pressing against mine in a very enclosed space. The smart thing to do was to ask her to get off me and make sure that I was okay.

Instead of getting off, she twisted so that her boobs were in my face. The leaves couldn’t take that, and one of them fell off. “Don’t touch anything, because things up there randomly explode. Got it.”

Would you get experience if she shot herself by accident?

“It wasn’t random, exactly. You pulled the trigger. Never mind.”

Rather than telling her to get off, I checked my system display.

Health 17/20

That didn’t sound like a critical injury. Drain a little life from some plants, and I’d be good to go, although I probably better not suggest that to Xyla. “Shall we try again? This time, carefully? Oh, and there’s something I should tell you before we go.”

“Like the fact that things explode?”

“No. My body is different up there. You won’t recognize it.”

She frowned. “But I like your body.”

I shrugged. She looked at my boobs, and sighed. “Okay. I don’t think I like your world much, but I can’t not know, you know?”

I understood completely. “And I should take my clothes off. Because of the body changing.”

“You don’t see me arguing,” she said with a wink.

Or me.

So I stripped, while she watched and smirked.

“Maybe this time you go up first, so I can enjoy the view,” she suggested.

“Alright,” I said. If I were her, I’d get suspicious if I refused.

I went up, with her following. The transformation didn’t happen until I was all the way through, so I was still in my futa body when I pushed the guns off to the side. The bullet had hit an external wall, with no apparent damage other than a hole that didn’t go all the way through. Then I pulled myself off the puzzle, and when Xyla’s hand appeared I offered her a hand and pulled her up.

It was a little weird being in my male body, naked, in the basement with her. Also weird having a practically naked woman with green skin in my house.

“You’re a man!” she cried. “Abby?”

“Yep. Up here I’m Abel.”

“But not an evil necromancer.”

“Not an evil anything,” I said. “But definitely no magic here.” She was distracting, and I was distracted.

She looked down, following my gaze, and said, “Oh, yes, I’m asymmetrical,” and plucked off the leaf covering the other nipple. Then she looked around. “It’s very square,” she said. “And white. But you have windows. And what’s – oh, right, don’t touch things because they explode. How do you live that way?”

“Because very little explodes.” I was hoping to avoid telling her that the gun was a weapon that I was bringing into her world. It made perfect sense, but it didn’t sound good to tell.

She pointed. “So what’s that? And that. And that?”

“That’s a machine for washing clothes, and the one next to it that looks kind of similar is for drying them after.” I walked over. “And this is a sink. If you twist the knob here, you get water.” I carefully skirted the edge of the puzzle to get to it. It was going to be very inconvenient having it there, and maybe I should put an iron grate over it. I turned on the cold water.

The hole was right over the sink, and I didn’t see any sign it had hit any plumbing or electrical or anything.

She put her hand in the water. “Wow. I thought you said they don’t have magic in your world?”

“We don’t. Water flows, right? And when the knob is like this,” I said, turning it off, “it stops the water from flowing. When I twist it back, the water comes. The device doesn’t make the water, really, it stops it.

“Oh. And what does the other knob do?”

“Hot water.”

“Which happens how?”

“There’s a small furnace in another room that heats the water, basically. And like the other knob, it’s being stopped until I turn the faucet on.”

“Show me?”

“There’s not much to see, but sure.” I took her to the utility room and showed her the hot water heater. It had probably a couple years left on it, but I intended to replace it and the old boiler with a combo tankless unit in a few months. At least, according to the original schedule. Some of that would probably slide.

“I don’t see the fire,” she objected.

“It’s all inside. It gets air through these ducts.”

“And where’s the wood?”

“It doesn’t run on wood, it runs on natural gas, which comes through these other ducts.”

“What’s that?”

“Like swamp gas?”

“Oh. Yuck. And how does that get here?”

I smiled at her. “We could be here all day, just explaining that. It’s pumped from the ground and gets here through a series of long pipes that run for miles. I pay monthly for however much I use.”

“You must be really rich.”

I smiled. “I suppose I am, in many ways.” I had a lot to be grateful for, and whether I was as wealthy as some people was beside the point. I had everything I needed, and viewing it all through Xyla’s eyes just made me appreciate it even more.

We left the utility room and she pointed to a window. “Could you lift me up so I can see out of that?” They were almost to the ceiling, and only two feet wide. “Sure. Or we could see out of the ones upstairs, they are nicer, and lower.”

“And then you wouldn’t have to pick me up,” she said, like it was a bad thing.

“You want me to carry you?”

“Yes, please.”

I picked her up, one arm under her knees and the other behind her back.

“I believe you now, Abel. You know why I didn’t run, back at the tomb?”

“Why?”

“Because I felt deep down you were a good person.”

I smiled. “I think I’m a good person.”

She grinned. “You know, I was sort of thinking if you carried me your hand would end up on my ass.”

I shifted her so that I was cupping her very bare tush. “You’re less weirded out my form changing than I am.”

“Well, I can change into a tree, you know. No, that part almost makes sense.” She snuggled up against me and pointed. “Upstairs!”

I laughed. “Upstairs.” I had to duck a little to get up the stairs, and Xyla mistook that for a move to kiss her, so she planted one on me, and I promptly bonked my head.

“Ouch!” she said, on my behalf.

“It just hurt a little.” By which I meant that I wasn’t going to lose consciousness, and I doubted that there was blood. I kept going until I came out near the kitchen, intending to give her a proper kiss.

But she squirmed out of my arms and rushed to the open window on the other side. “There’s another house right across the street! And a tree, and three bushes, and a lot of grass! And an overdressed woman. I think she’s your species! Does she have a cock, too?”

I pulled her away from the window, and she resisted. I didn’t want Kathy to see a topless green woman looking out my window. Or, for that matter, to see me wrestling a naked woman of any color.

“What?” Xyla asked.

“I don’t want you to be seen. No one in this world looks like you. The last thing I want is people investigating. In fact, the last thing you should want is people investigating, or all sorts of people could find the portal downstairs and start traipsing through your woods. People with chainsaws and line trimmers.”

“Chainsaws? Line Trimmers?”

“The loud devices that I was using to cut the brambles and vines around the crypt with.”

“Oh, yeah, good point. Although your neighbor looks a nice person,” Xyla said. “Have you two had sex?”

“Um, no. And I think she might be a good person, but I haven’t really gotten to know her well yet. We’ve just talked a little.”

“Do you even know what she looks like with her clothes off?”

“No, again.”

Xyla smirked. “I bet if you showed her your cock she’d be pretty interested. I mean your cock from the other world. Although this one looks like it might be decent, too.”

“I think she’d have me arrested. There’s some windows upstairs you can look out of and see more.”

“Is that another machine for washing clothes?” She pointed at the dishwasher.

“No, it’s for washing dishes.”

“Wow, machines do all the work for you, don’t they? How about that one?”

I opened the refrigerator, and she looked around. “Food, right?” She grabbed a can of cola. “This is cold.”

“Yes, that’s what this machine does. It keeps things cold. The top part keeps things even colder, enough to make ice.”

She opened the freezer, and looked inside, still holding the can. “And you’re trying to tell me this isn’t magic.”

“It’s technology. It’s hard to describe the difference, but there is one.”

“How does it work?”

“Too complicated to explain,” I said.

“So how are you sure it’s not magic?”

“Because there are people who understand it.”

“Wizards understand magic. Also Artificers, Sorcerers, Thaumaturges…”

“Right. But ordinary people don’t, right?”

“I guess. I can do some magic, of course.”

“Well, anyone can learn how a refrigerator works by reading a book. It doesn’t require being a wizard or a dryad or anything like that. It just requires wanting to know and reading.”

“But if everyone can know that easily, everyone would want to know, wouldn’t they?”

I shook my head again. “There are lots of things to know. And things to do. One has to pick and choose. Most people hire an expert even just to put a new fridge in.”

“So what is this?” she asked.

“It’s a drink.” I took the can from her and opened the lid.

“I don’t want to get tipsy,” she said.

“It won’t make you tipsy. Drink enough of it and it might make you a bit wired, but a sip shouldn’t do much.”

She sipped it. “It’s okay, I guess,” she said. “Feels weird on my tongue.” She put it down, and I reminded myself that she didn’t understand that opening the can meant that the carbonation was all going to leak out. I took the can and sipped from it, not wanting it to go to waste.

“What’s in these drawers?” she asked, pulling one open.

“That one has silverware.”

“Silver! You are rich!”

“Well, it’s actually stainless steel.”

“What’s that?”

I laughed. “Like silver, but stronger and it doesn’t tarnish.”

“So, even better.”

“Yes. And yet oddly, less valuable. There’s no end of possible questions, isn’t there? And I feel the same way in your world, full of questions. Just don’t cut yourself on a knife.”

So I spent the next few hours showing Xyla around the house. I let her spend some time looking out an upstairs window that looked out on the backyard, and another so she could look out the front. I explained cars, and why they had paved a place where plants could have grown. Everything was amazing to her, and I don’t know that I made any progress at convincing her there wasn’t magic in my world.

“So, where do you sleep and have sex and stuff?” she asked.

I laughed. “In the room upstairs”

 “Your world is interesting, but it really needs more trees.”

“There are forests here, too. This just isn’t one of them.”

“Let’s go!”

“We can’t. Remember?”

“I’ll let you carry me.” She jumped at me, just like before, and I caught her. “You can put your hands on my ass, and I can do this.”

I put my hands on her ass, and she did that, which turned out to be grinding against my groin.

“Not even for that,” I said, although I had to admit I enjoyed it.

She looked down. “Not quite as big in this world,” she said. “But still a lot bigger than an elf’s.”

She put her feet back on the floor. I didn’t move my hands, because she didn’t ask me to. The front leaf was practically shredded, and certainly wasn’t concealing anything anymore. I looked down at my jeans, and there was definitely a wet spot on the front of them. She was aroused.

She twisted away and walked into the bathroom. “Another sink!” she said and played with the faucet. “And what’s that?”

“It’s a chamber pot,” I said.

“Your pee is very clear,” she remarked. “You must be very well hydrated.”

“Well, I try, but that’s not why it’s clear in there.” So I explained flushing to her, and then showed her the shower.

To my surprise, she jumped inside the shower and turned the water on. “Oh, this is nice! A little cold, but invigorating.”

I reached in and turned the hot water on. “It gets warmer. Say when it’s too warm.”

She did a little spin, splattering water everywhere. “Mmmhmm. That’s about right, right there.”

It was a lot cooler than I would have liked a shower. I have to admit I didn’t mind watching her. I explained the soap and the shampoo, and she gave them a try, lathering suds all over her green body.

“Do you ever fuck in here?” she asked.

“Um, not so far.”

“Hmm.” She pulled away her one remaining leaf. “This one is sort of done for, isn’t it?”

“You can put it in the wastebasket there,” I said, pointing.

“No, I want to see your flushing chamber pot in action.”

So we flushed it down, and she was suitably amazed.

Watching her, when I wasn’t just admiring her lithe body, helped me appreciate just how amazing everything I had was. A hundred years ago much of what I had in the house would be impossible — most of the electronics, for instance. Two hundred years ago, and I wouldn’t have had a light bulb, or probably a flush toilet. I completely understood why she thought of everything as magical.

I showed her my laptop, and how it could be used to watch music videos, play games, or look up information. She couldn’t read the writing, but she could understand the spoken words fine, and she was amazed.

She sprang to her feet, and pressed her chest against me. “You should bring all this to my world! All of this, what do you call it, technology!”

“Some of it, maybe. But a lot of it’s impossible. My phone doesn’t get a signal in your world, for instance, and neither would the laptop, and most of what we’ve seen requires it to be connected to my world. Flush toilets, yes, there’s no problem there, if we built a septic tank. But some of the other things — well, on a small scale, having gas heat is really nice, although if I was doing everything from scratch I’d have electric, and solar panels to power it. But we need to be careful, because there’s a lot of stuff we don’t want. Like the thing that exploded. I think your world decided it didn’t want it, so it wouldn’t let me bring it through. Or maybe that was the system, protecting your world.”

“Protecting it from you,” she said.

“Not being evil doesn’t mean not being dangerous. Like you.”

“Oh, you think I’m dangerous?” she asked and fluttered her eyelashes.

“Yeah.”

She looked over at the bed. “Wanna –”

I did, but I had a dark thought. “You know the thing that stops you from getting pregnant, unless you bury yourself and all that?”

She nodded.

“Is that magic?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Magic doesn’t work here.”

“Oh. Oh. And that means I can’t talk to the trees, either, doesn’t it?”

“I assume. We can’t go out and check, because the neighbor would be very concerned by a naked green woman frolicking around my yard.”

“That’s silly. Everyone knows that dryads are good luck. Except people who want to cut down my trees, of course.” She frowned. “I think I want to go home now.”

So we went back. When we got to the bottom of the ladder, she pressed her naked body against mine. “Thank you, Abby, for trusting me with your secret.”

“Of course.”

“I like this body better. And I want you,” she said.

My cock stiffened.

“Now.”

A tomb isn’t my idea of a romantic spot, but when a beautiful woman like Xyla has needs, well, what is a futa to do?

I put her on the ledge of the coffin, and took her standing up, right over Enash’s bones. It was the sort of thing a necromancer should have gotten experience points for, in a perfect world.

It was not a perfect world.

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