Chapter 131: Chapter 131

I finished the spell, Kathy opened her eyes, and immediately Valeria cast a healing spell on her. Talos kissed her and then gave her another heal.

“What happened?” Kathy asked. “I thought I was done for.”

“I killed you,” Aurea said. “Sorry about that, but you were trying to kill me.”

“So this is the afterlife? Who are you? Oh, you must be the gold dragon. Took you down as I went, huh?” Kathy asked.

“You wish,” Aurea said. “No, you died. Apparently Abby can raise the dead, in addition to filling dragons full of baby batter. She’s a font of life.”

An embarrassment to all necromancers, is what you are.

“Baby batter?” Kathy said.

I broke in. “Long story. Hey, let’s leave Kathy and Talos alone to reconnect, shall we?” I got up and took Aurea’s elbow. Valeria took my other hand.

“Wait, am I a vampire now?” Kathy asked.

Talos spoke for me. “No, you’re you.”

“Uh, thank you?” Kathy said.

“Don’t mention it,” I said, and moved the others away. Once we’d gotten some distance, I said to Valeria, “I thought Gren would use you for interrogating the orcs.”

“She took Hornung and Brownwyn. She wanted me around to watch you in case you needed me. But I decided that Talos needed me more. You know, there’s no way they can keep that spell going to question hundreds and hundreds of goblins.”

“Well, we have to try. And all we need is for one to talk. Maybe you should go help them?”

“Maybe I should. But Abby –”

“Thank you for bringing me back. I should just say thank you, but I think I really want your company tonight, for at least some of the night. It doesn’t have to be just you. In fact, the more the merrier, as long as I get to touch you.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what being dead was like, and if she needed aftercare from that, I wanted to give it to her.

“Also, if I spend my mana detecting goblin lies, I might need a recharge.” She winked. “If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Aurea said. “And wow.”

Valeria grinned. “I bet you want more.”

Valeria smiled, waved, and walked away toward where the goblins were being questioned. Aurea and I kept walking.

“She doesn’t hold a grudge,” Aurea said. “Amazing.”

“She’s one of the sweetest people I know. And yet, when I first met her, she tried to kill me.”

Aurea laughed. “Is that the local bonding ritual?”

“No. She figured I was an evil necromancer.”

“And are you? Not that I’m judging. I mean, grade A dick is grade A dick, you know?”

“Uh, thanks, and no. No to the evil part. Yes to the necromancer.”

“And yet you have a deal where you can get magic from sex? That doesn’t sound like a necromancer thing.”

“I have two classes,” I said. “It’s complicated. Just like everything else. But there was something I wanted to ask you.

She took my hand. “What’s that?”

I hoped she wasn’t expecting a proposal. “You said that dragons don’t like paladins. Why?”

“Same reason other people don’t like paladins. Because they are usually sanctimonious assholes who think they are better than everyone else.”

“Oh yeah, that. I was afraid that –” Maybe it was better not to say.

“Afraid you were saying they didn’t taste good, or something.” After all, this was a world without ketchup or mayonnaise.

Aurea laughed. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve been a vegetarian for decades. I eat a tree now and then.”

“Then you haven’t been eating goblins?”

She smiled at me. “Goblins are green, Abby.”

I blinked. “That doesn’t make the vegetables! Tomatoes are red, and they are vegetables.” Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮✦𝓷𝓮𝓽

“Tomatoes aren’t vegetables, they are fruit.”

“Botanically, sure, but –”

“Relax, I’m putting you on. I wouldn’t eat the food I’d poisoned, anyway, it tastes bad. Back when I ate meat I always killed it with my claws, not my breath. There’s another cave not far from mine, too small to be useful, and I tossed them in there to compost.”

I wondered if she was putting me on again, but somehow, I doubted it. It all seemed excessive, just to defend her property. But then again, how else could she do it? Dragons in stories usually were exceptionally possessive of their things, and she couldn’t report them to the cops. There weren’t any.

Without a social contract, Hobbes suggested, life was nasty, brutish, and short. A war of all against all. I don’t know if he was right. But it was true that the goblins and the dragons had no such agreement, and until Kathy defeated the orcs, neither did the orcs and the trolls. They lived with the fear and danger of violent death.

And I had become the Leviathan. Strange. I’d always liked Locke better.

“You’re thinking that compost shouldn’t have animal matter in it, aren’t you?” Aurea asked. “But it just takes longer to decay properly.”

“Um no, that wasn’t what I was thinking.”

Huh. “Well, then, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about the sex we just had. Usually, I’ve lured someone to my cave, but this time there were all these people watching, and that really turned me on. Super hot. I want that again, Abby.”

“The trolls have orgies every ten days or so. I’m sure you’d be welcome.”

“You mean, like everyone is having sex with everyone else?”

“But then not everyone would be watching me. I mean, it might be okay and all, but it’s no substitute. Besides, our deal means that you’ll fuck me at least once a week, so it might as well be in public, right?”

I didn’t think our deal really spelled that out. But neither did I feel like objecting, both because she was a terrifying dragon I didn’t want to piss off, and because she was super hot. “We’ll, um, work something out.” I was a little concerned about her ability to share, however. I suppose life as a dragon left one a little deficient in basic preschool skills. “I am not part of your hoard.”

“And I’m not part of yours.”

“Unless you get me pregnant.”

“I still won’t be part of your hoard,” I told her. “I can’t be, ever. I have, er, responsibilities.”

“To our child, you mean.”

“To all these people.” I gestured with my hand. They were all doing fine without me, at the moment.

She smiled. “Don’t worry, Abby. I won’t take you away from them. Otherwise, who would watch us?”

“Exactly,” I said. If she saw a self-interest there, I was going to go with it.

“Don’t forget to get back my things. When you do, the goblins can come back to the forest.” She shimmered for a moment, and then I was standing next to a giant, scaled beast that could crush me easily.

But she didn’t. She flapped her wings, buffeting me with a stiff breeze, and then rose into the sky. She flew in ever-rising circles over me for a bit.

Lysandra ran toward me, until she could yell, “Do we fire?”

I shook my head, and yelled, “No!”

She relayed the order to archers who had already raised their bows. Not until she was too high to be shot did Aurea start flying toward her home.

For defeating a gold dragon, you have earned 5000 experience points. You now need 24120 experience points to reach seventh level.

For seducing a gold dragon, you have earned 3000 experience points. You now need 21125 experience points to reach seventh level.

For conquering a large tribe of goblins, you have earned 1520 experience points. You now need 19605 experience points to reach seventh level.

For annexing a small tribe of beastkin, you have earned 1100 experience points. You now need 18395 experience points to reach seventh level.

Still a very long way to go, and I might never get there.

Now, if after fucking her, you’d stabbed her in the back, you’d have gotten a whole lot more points.

That’s right, Enash had gotten to twelfth level somehow. I didn’t want to think about what he must have done in order to get there.

“When are you going to let us go?” asked the Emperor when I went to visit the goblins. I had Lysandra with me.

“When we find the dragon’s stuff. You didn’t tell me that you’d stolen from her.”

“Um, it didn’t seem, well – it didn’t seem in our self-interest!”

“Right. What’s your name, anyway?”

“I am Gobgarrod, of the house of Gob!” he said proudly. “My father was Gobblazted, and his father was Gobdammed, and his father was –“

“I wouldn’t want to insult your ancestors by not remembering all of that, so you’re better off not telling me it all,” I told him.

He made a face at me.

I shrugged. “As it turns out, the dragon is willing to let you live in the forest in peace, once I find her stuff. And I’m willing to let you live in the forest in peace, in exchange for free passage for people I send to log it.”

I smiled. “I’m sure someone else can lead the goblins just fine.”

“But I am of the house of Gob!”

I shrugged. “There’s a convention in my world that in war and conflict, you let the foot soldiers fight it out and don’t go after the leaders.”

He smiled. “What a great convention.”

I grinned back. “I think it’s stupid, so instead I’m going to hold you personally responsible for controlling your people.”

I left the investigation in Gren’s hands so I could attend some funerals. The orcs and trolls all felt that their dead should be animated, and thus in some sense stay around, so my attendance was pretty much required. One of Hornung’s men had died, and he asked if I could raise him.

I shook my head. I had more of a sense for the spell, and too much time had elapsed. “Even if I’d started fucking Aurea again as soon as Kathy had opened her eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“You raise the dead using sex magic?” Hornung asked, scandalized. “But you raised Valeria – when did you, uh…”

“No, I don’t raise the dead using sex magic. I borrowed mana from Aurea to raise Kathy, that’s all.” Close enough. He didn’t need to know all the details. I suppose I had only brought up how I’d gotten the mana because I took a perverse pleasure in shocking the man, and I needed to watch that. He might be a prude, but he was a good man. “I’m sorry, Captain. Sorry for the loss of your man and sorry for talking about how I got the mana to raise Kathy.”

He looked at me oddly. “Neither queens nor necromancers are known for making apologies.”

“If people in power can’t afford to say they are sorry, how can people who are just getting by be expected to do it?” I asked.

“You’re a very strange woman,” Hornung said. He spoiled the effect a little by glancing at my crotch after he said it.

I suppose my genitalia was always going to live rent-free in a lot of people’s heads. I wasn’t going to offer to animate his man, because I was pretty sure I knew how he’d react. Honestly, for me at this point it was just a matter of being efficient.

The strange thing about that funeral is that Bapho showed up. None of his people had died, but they’d been pretty seriously injured. Apparently, they’d been healed by paladins. So Bapho stood, respectfully, while Bronwyn said the liturgy. The whole thing took an hour, and when it was over Bapho and Captain Hornung actually shook hands.

Sometimes, fighting makes allies of the least likely of people. Some good had come out of all of this, after all.