The Accidental Necromancer
Death is my Whole Identity

We finished the extension at last. Many hands made light work, and while the zombies couldn’t do anything that required much skill, they could do all the lugging of planks and were pretty good at holding something in place while we worked on it. The orcs were hard workers, and so was Valeria. Now all that we needed to do was to paint the outside, and the drywall.

“Something is bothering you, Abby,” Valeria said.

“What? Nah.”

She grabbed my hand. “Let’s go talk.”

We walked aways, and then I told her. “According to Enash, I’m infertile. A body made from necromancy can’t create life.”

“So no condoms?” She grinned. Then her face fell. “Oh. Gren.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Maybe he’s wrong.”

“Maybe.”

She shrugged. “How can we possibly know? All people take it on faith that the father of a woman’s child is her husband, or they are consumed by jealousy refusing to believe any such thing.”

I nodded. “There’s a way to check, on Earth. But that doesn’t do me any good, because that would only let me check Abel.”

“How can anything on Earth check for something as magical as creating life?” Valeria asked. “Actually, I’m kind of mystified as to how you all have children at all, without magic. You must have magic and not know about it.”

So I explained about sperm and eggs and all of that.

“Too small to see?” she said.

I nodded.

“So you have to have faith that they are real?”

“Well, I guess you could, but we have devices that can see them.”

“So I guess until you invented those devices, it all seemed magical?”

I nodded. “More or less.  I mean, we could see how it worked with animals, and we’re kind of inclined to think of anything that works like it does with animals is ‘natural.’ And therefore not magic. But then –” I shrugged. Human belief was not a monolith.

“So how expensive are those devices?”

“Oh – I guess I could look into how it’s done.”

Valeria smiled. “You’re good at figuring out things, Abby.”

So the next morning, after giving directions for the painting and letting others do the work, which didn’t come naturally, I did some research. I ended up buying a microscope on Earth. I returned to Amaranath, and Valeria helped me collect a sample, which wasn’t the worst way to spend time. Then, back in the building, we put some of my jizz on a slide and looked under a microscope.

“So?” asked Valeria.

There were, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a ton of little wigglers on the little slide. Rather than answering, I showed her how to look for herself, and then told her what it all meant.

No! It can’t be. Death is my whole identity!

“Well,” said Gren behind us. We had gotten sort of absorbed, and Gren walks very quietly, but I hadn’t realized she was behind me. “We knew that. I’m pregnant, after all.”

“Yay!” Valeria said. “Better stock up on those rubber thingies, Abby.”

“But how?” I asked. “Unless Enash was just fibbing me.”

“You’re not an undead soul in a created body. You are a living soul in a created body. You have a soul, and each of these is a fragment of your soul,” Valeria said. “And regardless, it appears L’shan has willed it.”

L’shan is a fairy tale, used to frighten children into obeying their parents instead of slaying them and asserting their independence. And besides, he isn’t more powerful than the great Enash.

“I don’t understand why this is up for debate,” Gren said. “Ridiculous ruminations.”

So I explained to her what Enash had said about my body, and Gren had her own take. “The world of Amaranth stops some things from coming into our world, and the world of Earth stops some things from entering it. Each world has a great spirit. I think you are here for a reason, and perhaps your fertile phallus is part of that reason.”

The reason you are here is me!

I just nodded, thinking. I would have dismissed their mystical reasoning on Earth, but I couldn’t dismiss it on Amaranth. And maybe it wasn’t all wrong on Earth, either. It was also possible it wasn’t Earth blocking the magic from coming in, but Amaranth refusing to let it go.

I just realized! I’m going to be a daddy!

And I definitely wasn’t going to let him anywhere near the kids.

“So, can you see in that thing if your seed is a little potent, or a lot?” Valeria asked.

“Well, that’s more than the website said I’d see,” I told her. “So, a lot.”

“You should come to the next troll orgy,” Gren said.

“Gren!” Valeria said, shocked.

“What? Just because you don’t like a good orgy doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.”

Valeria frowned. She had come a long way, but that was a bit too far for her. Before she opened her mouth to retort, I quickly said, “It’s important to respect other people’s traditions.”

“May I go to the next troll orgy?” Lesseth asked, joining the conversation. “That sounds fun.”

“Why are you asking me? You’re your own person.”

Lesseth smiled. “Oh no. I’m yours by right of conquest.”

“Oh, stop already.”

She smirked. “It’s important to respect other people’s traditions,” she said.

Kendala and Gruush looked very interested in the conversation.

“Up to a point,” I said.

“And who decides what that point is?”

“For me? I do.”

“Of course,” she said. “You have won the right to decide by conquest. At least with me and them.” She beamed at Kendala and Gruush.

I didn’t think I was going to win, so I let it go. I might not be respecting the orcs’ tradition of slavery, but I’d heard them talk about how much money they were making, and how they wanted to put in more hours to make more, and certainly they’d become avid consumers. Gruush had bought some cheap suits, making him look like a green-skinned version of a 30s mobster. Kendala had invested in some smithing tools, made from tempered steel. Inka liked costume jewelry. They had all pitched in to buy a subscription to some porn site using Gren’s account, and I figured the less details I had about that the better. I hinted to them that if they bought a cheap laptop and their own monitor, I wouldn’t have to boot them off when they wanted to watch.

I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed that the site they subscribed to was mostly about transsexual porn. That had nothing to do with me. Or at least I wanted to pretend it didn’t.

“Well, you can go to the troll orgy if you want to. Just don’t get pregnant,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Slime Demons reproduce by division, after collecting a semen sample from one or more donors for genetic variation. But it’s wholly voluntary.”

Why had I gotten so possessive, anyway? That wasn’t who I wanted to be. But at the same time, I still was. “You aren’t planning to divide any time soon, are you?” One Lesseth was as much as I could take. I wondered if the clone would be mine by conquest, too. Was it a clone, if it wasn’t identical?

“No. And we don’t have to use semen, anyway.” She grinned. “Blood works. Or the acid dissolved flesh of our enemies.”

I gulped. “Got it. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“I don’t have a bad side,” Lesseth told me. She looked in the mirror I had set up, and admired herself. She was bright red at the moment, and she had quite a figure. It helped when you could make your body into almost any shape you wanted, although a roughly humanoid shape, or a puddle, seemed to be the forms that were easiest for her. Anything else wore her out eventually.

A cock sprouted from her belly, which got the orcs’ attention.

“Can I do anything with anyone, Abby?” she asked me.

“If they consent,” I said. “And no knocking anyone up.”

“Yes, Abby. You speak, and I obey.”

Uh-huh. I knew she meant the orcs, and I had issues with that, because they had come as slaves. On the other hand, to deny them the right to consent, just because Zargaza had given them to me, was to take away even more of their agency.

And maybe I didn’t need to be involved. I also wasn’t sure that Lesseth could get hard enough to give someone a really good fucking, although she could sort of ooze inside and then make herself at least somewhat solid. I had no complaints about what she’d done with my rear, the other day.

The next day we went to the troll village to work on the building there. Zombies, as it turns out, make pretty good bricklayers. It’s a simple, repetitive task, and their literal natures make them naturally precise. Of course we had to make sure the bricks around the doors and windows were laid by us, but the rest they could do just fine.

I bought the windows and doors from the hardware store. The interior walls were mostly drywall, but there was one section that was all brick, and windowless, that I called the vault. The door was metal reinforced, and it had a first-rate lock. It was nowhere near as secure as a bank vault, of course, but I thought it was good enough for storing planks, liquor, and seeds, as well as the leather goods, gems, and gold we were getting in return.

A lot of trolls had gathered around to watch the building, or trading post as I thought of it, being built.

“You’re making them jealous, Abby,” Gavbar told me. “Now they want me to trade you even more gold, so that they can have windows and doors like that.”

I grinned. “There’s certainly no reason that’s not possible.”

“Perhaps we can get bricks from the orcs.”

I smiled. If they didn’t need lumber, I would find something else to trade with them, and right now the challenge was disposing of the gems and gold they were trading to me without drawing too much attention. In the meantime, if the web of interdependence between me and mine, the orcs, and the trolls got tighter, that would only help foster peace. I wasn’t in it to get rich.

And, if they traded gold to the orcs for bricks, the orcs would have gold to trade to me, which was probably better than getting more leather clothes.

I wondered, idly, if I could trade the orcs porn. Not with an internet connection, of course, but old Playboys or something. I thought there were probably better ideas, and so I picked the brains of the orcs around me, and got several ideas.

Zargaza, Kendala thought, would probably like a vibrator.

Gruush thought they’d be impressed by the variety of clothes we had on Earth.

Inka felt that we could trade books, although she admitted that only a few orcs were literate. Still, those that were would pay.

Unlike the trolls, it seemed that the best way to trade with the orcs was individually, rather than as a group. They would all want different things, and that sounded like a lot of work for me. Once again, I faced the problem that so much needed my personal attention, and couldn’t be delegated.

But maybe, in the long run, this could be.

I didn’t have a way to get an internet connection to the trading post, so we went back to the mausoleum. There, I asked Kathy to sit down with Gruush, Kendala, and Inka, and brainstorm things that the other orcs might want. She looked them up on the internet and ordered samples. Talos and Valeria would take care of checking my front porch for packages, bringing them to Amaranth, and putting them in the bag if they would fit through the opening. Lesseth would catalog them.

“You’re going to have to meet with Zargaza again, aren’t you?” asked Valeria.

“It seems likely,” I agreed.

“She wants you,” Valeria said.

We had started to have a schedule, with Val, Xyla, Gren, and Lesseth taking shifts sleeping with me. Xyla usually made a deal with Gren or Lesseth, letting them join on her night in exchange for her getting to join on theirs. “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy,” I told her.

“Your employees want you, too.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. Who can blame them? You’re awfully cute.”

My body had been crafted for maximum sexual attractiveness by a powerful wizard. Then, I got a magical boost from being a Seductress. I shrugged. Having those kinds of advantages didn’t seem fair, somehow, and I had a moment’s thought about freewill. But no, being attractive didn’t mean that people couldn’t decide they preferred a different shape, or a different personality.

“No sleeping with my employees,” I said.

Gren wandered over. “Why not, lecherous lass?”

“Because it – because there’s a power imbalance.”

“Of course there’s a power imbalance. You’re a necromancer with access to advanced technology from another world. Power imbalances are what you do. If you insist on only having sex with people who you don’t have more power then, you’re going to be very lonely.”

I frowned, shook my head. “Who is sleeping with me tonight?”

“That would be Xyla,” Gren said.

“And no special guest star?”

“Not that I know of. Even Xyla sometimes wants you to herself.”

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