“So, that’s what it’s like when a goddess comes,” I whispered into her ear. “I like it. But we’re only just getting started, you know.”
“I’m sorry, Vance,” she whispered, “but this is where our time together ends tonight.”
“What?” I asked. “We barely started.”
“I need more souls. Give me more souls, and you’ll not only get more powers, you’ll get more of me.”
“I didn’t even—”
“More souls, Vance. This is all I can do… for now.”
The weight of her body against mine suddenly vanished, and I staggered forward, stumbling through the air where her body had been a mere split-second earlier. I looked around, but there was no sign of her. A gentle breeze rustled the dry leaves underfoot as it swept along the forest floor, but then everything was still and quiet again. It felt almost like what had just happened had been a hallucination, or perhaps a dream. But I could still smell her delectable scent on me, as real as the smell of damp leaves or the feel of the breeze on my skin. Then, looking down, I saw a single hair, long and black, draped over my shoulder. I picked it up and examined it in the moonlight. It was real enough.
I looked across at the skeleton still standing there. The rest of them were at their assigned posts at various points around the perimeter of the campsite.
“Well, you got to see a bit of a show, right, buddy? It’s not every day you get to see a goddess being fingered, is it?”
The skeleton cocked his head and his jaw chattered bizarrely. Was he laughing? After that, he strode off, resuming his patrolling of the shadows with his skeletal companions. Feeling both excited and disappointed by what had just happened, I strolled back into the campsite to check on Elyse. She was still snoring softly and didn’t seem to have been awoken by Isu’s moans and screams of pleasure. There was no indication that she had any idea what had just happened a couple of yards away from her. The wine must have done a pretty thorough job of knocking her out.
I settled down and resumed eating the roast hares in silence, and then enjoyed some of the soldiers’ brandy to wash the meat down. It was crude, harsh-tasting stuff, but I couldn’t deny that I had a bit of an unhealthy affinity for cheap, nasty liquor. As I lay down later to sleep, I reflected on what had been a very interesting, and very weird, day. What had started off as a simple exploration of a crypt had ended up with me obtaining necromancer’s powers, gaining a deposed—and smoking hot—bishop as an ally, taking on a quest to kill another bishop, killing a giant man-eating lizard, and finally with me pleasuring the Goddess of Death herself.
“What a day,” I murmured with a smile as I curled up inside my cloak on the ground and closed my eyes. “What a fucking day.”
Chapter Seven
When I woke, the sky was still dark and peppered with stars, but the eastern horizon glowed with the promise of the coming dawn. I pushed my cloak off and sprang to my feet. I felt a bit stiff after all the fighting I’d done the previous day, but the night’s sleep had done a good job at refreshing me.
A few feet away, Elyse was still snoring softly and showed no signs that she’d be waking up any time soon. The fire had burned out, leaving a pit of gently glowing coals. I smiled when I saw my skeletons still patrolling the perimeter of the camp. These guys really were perfect sentries.
After drinking my fill of water and doing a few stretches, I walked out of the camp, while giving the skeletons a mental command to protect Elyse. I instructed my main skeleton, the one with the paladin’s greatsword, whom I’d nicknamed “Sarge,” to come fetch me right away if there was even a whiff of trouble. He seemed to understand, so I set off for the soldiers’ camp.
As I’d predicted, it was mostly undisturbed, and the corpse of the giant lizard was still there, right where it had fallen. Some of the dead soldiers had some flesh chewed off them, so some sort of carrion eater must have enjoyed a meal here. The lizard, though, was undamaged; its armor-like scales were surely far too tough for any scavenger to bite through.
“All right,” I said, rubbing my hands together eagerly, “let’s see what these new powers of mine have to offer.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to activate the power-up, but I figured that, as had been the case for raising skeletons, it would be quite intuitive. I stared at the massive lizard and focused on its body with full intensity.
Nothing happened.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered. “Isu said I’d be able to do this—unless she was just fucking with me.”
I wouldn’t put something like that past the Goddess of Death—the old legends said she could be something of a capricious trickster—but I felt that her gift had been genuine. Maybe I just wasn’t doing it quite right.
“All right, let’s try this again.”
This time, instead of focusing my gaze on the dead beast, I closed my eyes and tried to shut out everything around me, focusing instead on the presence of the creature, the weight of its body, the space it occupied. I wasn’t quite sure how it got there, but my mind began to produce an intense hallucination. The image seemed completely foreign at first, and then, I realized I was visualizing the insides of the massive lizard. I was like a tiny creature, invisible to the naked eye, traveling through the thick, congealed blood in its veins with ease. Like a magnet, its cold, still heart was pulling me onward, drawing me into its center.
I surged forward at a furiously accelerating pace until everything became a blur of color and light.
Then, suddenly, I was there. A huge heart floated before
