He had scouted out world after world from his fi until he had decided on the one most suitable. The world called Earth had ons beyond pare — trivahat flew through the sky, and dropped bombs; ships that fired projectiles wider than a skull; handheld ons that shot hard lead faster than the speed of sound. They even had ons that created an effeot unlike his signature Fog of Death spell. As the only neancer ever to reach the twelfth circle of knowledge, that spell was his and his alone, and it made him a little envious that dictators could gas their own people at a whim.
But the guns would be suffit. Enash envisioned an army of zombies, armed with such ons. Each time they fired, another enemy would die, to rise again and join the horde. The bullet holes would give them a particurly ghastly appearance. His army would sweep through the world of Amaranth, destroying puny mortal trolls, orcs, akin who sought to oppose him with clubs, swords and bows. Even the magics of elves and demons would not stand in his way. By the time he quered Amaranth, he would have a force that would be able to sweep through Earth as well. Zombies would be immuo the chemical ons, anyway, as they didn’t o breathe.
He yearo watch his army y waste to an unprepared world, to hear the wailing of women and watch the blood of his adversaries flow ireets. To see the horrified faces of those who faced the animated bones of their loved oo taste souls again.
He cackled with anticipation. A mortal was assembling the other side of the gate now, dooming his world. Soon, his tury-long impriso at the hands of the elves would be over.
He would need a body again. He had gathered the magic for it over turies, carefully transmuting his owh mana into something that could be used to create a corporeal form, preparing for this day. He reviewed the choices he had mulled over before.
A fearsome orc body, perhaps, muscled and rge-tusked, capable of striking terror?
Perhaps something skeletal, as befitting his talent as the foremost Neancer in the history of Amaranth? That, too, would cause his eo quake. But no, been there, dohat, and even the skeleton form had decayed in the box they had put him in.
A poncy elf? No, out of the question.
He had been born demonkind, although he had transded that heritage. Demons were soft, pared to him. It would be like returning to his childhood.
Trolls were strong and ferocious, but they had a reputation for stupidity, and he couldn’t stand people to think he was stupid. He, Enash the great!
No, nothing from Amaranth would do. Something, then, from his neted home. He’d been learning about their culture. He needed something more subtle, that would disarm his enemies while he built up power. Maybe a poncy elf would work, after all. Humans seemed to like elves.
He shook his head. He knew just the thing. Not only power, but the pleasures of the flesh would be his.
What did the humans call them? Futanari. He’d been abs human art, and had seen several animated films featuring the cute futa girls, and they seemed to be popur. He’d have to make sure his body had a particurly sturdy spine, because they teo be rather top heavy. Perhaps some horns? No, that would ruin the disarming effect. He allowed himself little horns, small enough to be hidden under manes of luxurious bck hair.
Bck like my soul, he told himself, and tittered.
And the horns would grow. By the time all of Amaranth serves me, his horns would be magnifit.
He resisted the desire to add cloven hoofs. They did give futanari shapely calves, but no. He was not oo simply stand and model, and they reminded him too much of his youth. The rge, soft but gravity-defying breasts he had in mind would be suffit to cause humans to salivate with lust. Elves and orcs too, he guessed. Perhaps they would beg to serve him, enraptured by his feminiy. Her feminiy? No. The body was just a vessel.
He didn’t want to get too carried away with the whole femininity thing. A woman’s body, yes, but with a huge penis, that was very important. Human men worried about the sizes of their penises and measured their manliness by them. And many human women, from what he could tell from some videos he’d scried, were size queens. When fully erect, his cock should cause feelings of inadequacy among humans, a be discreetly ceable when soft.
He ughed as he imagined fug a woman and filling her fertile body with his seed, while her dead husband milled around as his subservient zombie. Of course he wouldn’t feel anything — zombies didn’t have emotions or much of a sciousness — and artificial bodies such as the one he was creating couldn’t impregnate anyone, but it was the aesthetics of the thing. And of course the woman’s screams would be delightful. He’d eat her soul afterward, most likely.
He missed eating souls.
Whatever mortal assembled the gate would be first.
I looked around my new home. The hardwood floor ale with wear and had splintered in pces, its rough surfa dire need of sanding and several coats of varnish. The aper in the living room was a ghastly light green with velvet fleur-de-lis in a shade not quite olive, not quite forest green. The Linoleum i had been poorly id and had started to peel along an obvious seam in the middle, the tertops were a dated yellow Formica, and the fixtures old and oddly mismatched: a bck dishwasher, an avocado refrigerator, and a white oven.
I put the two bags of food I’d brought into the refrigerator and ets and then rubbed my hands with anticipation at all the things that had made the pdesirable to most buyers. The aper alone had probably ken thousand dolrs off the price. I wandered around, sulting the spreadsheet on my tablet and making sure I hadn’t missed anything during the pre-purchase iion. The part of the work I looked forward to least eeling off the aper, but at least destroying the ugliness would be satisfying if time-ing. I peeked into ea and poked into closets, noting a sticky door that would o be rehung, possibly pned, and probably repaihe leaky faucet in the downstairs bathroom I’d repair today. The day, after all, was young, with dawn’s early light just beginning to poke in the windows through the aluminum blinds I’d opened as soon as I’d entered.
The best thing about a house like mine was that so much could be doo make it better.
While I walked around the house, I rolled a through my fingers, hiding it between two fingers, palming it, slipping it up my sleeve and out again, pocketing it only when I needed both hands free.
I pulled dowic stairs and checked them carefully before climbing up. They were ier dition than most of the house, and I suspected the attic had been rarely used by the old folks who had been the previous owners. It was a shame, in a way, that their kids hadn’t wao fix the pce up and live in it, but it needed a lot of work and they’d probably have to hire tractors. Not everyone liked to do everything themselves.
The attic had an HVAC system that was i w order, and u appliances, no one cared what the HVAC looked like as long as it worked. I’d checked the HVAC during the iion, and it worked fine during the walk-through, but expl every nook and y of the house now that it was mi different somehow. In the far er of the attic I spotted a wooden box about two feet wide and six iall, apparently left behind. Most people leave something, usually because they get away with it and it’s easier than double-cheg and hauling stuff away. It wasn’t worth w about, and I was tempted to ig because I wao get on with the work, but curiosity got the better of me. I brought it down the dder and took it to the master bedroom where the light was better, and opehe lid. Inside was a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces were made out of wood, each piece se that even though the box was full it didn’t have enough pieces to challenge an adult. I hadn’t done a puzzle in a very long time, but I had fond memories. Something about taking something and making somethier from it had always appealed to me, which robably why I kept buying fixer-uppers. Flipping them had bee a full-time job, and I loved it.
I set it aside and walked bay van, and on my return trip I lugged in my box of plumbing tools in one hand, an air mattress and a pump iher. I’d start the air mattress infting and then take care of the leaky faucet. On my rip to the van I’d get a card table and my sed toolbox, and then pillows and my aper steamer. I enjoyed pig up something I o live in the house each time I got something that would help me fix it up. I’d get my real bed eventually, but for now the air mattress would do fiomorrow I’d grab more stuff from the ste locker, but there was no point in cluttering the pce up with furniture while I still had to refinish the floors.
In a year I’d sell the house to someone who would love all I’d doo it, and I’d pocket enough to live off of. It was my own version of turning dross into gold, and it made me happy.
By te afternoon I’d earned a beer. I still had weeks of work to do, but I roud of what I’d aplished. The leak was fixed, and half the aper was off. The locks on the doors were ged. I’d installed an indu stovetop with a ve oven to repce the aging regur electrie, and a new dishwasher, both in matg stainless steel. Nothing tasted better to my mind than a craft Mexi beer earned by toil and sweat. I took a few mio savor the ber liquid before taking the empty bottle out to the recyg bin.
Over the wooden picket fehat separated my new home from hers I spotted a neighbor watering her garden using hand nozzle, and I waved. She retty woman about my age, mid-thirties, with a svelte figure and medium blonde hair, wearing a tank top and shorts. She waved back, set down her hose, and walked over.
“Hey there,” she said. “You buy the pce?”
“Yep. I’m Abel Thorson. o meet you.” I rolled a quarter absently through my fingers.
“Kathy Knightley,” she said. “o meet you too.” She looked at my hand, and I realized what I’d been doing. “What’s that?” she asked.
“This?” I said, holding it up so she could see that it was an ordinary quarter, and then folding my hand around it. “Nothing at all,” I said, showing her my hand was empty. It’s an easy trick, but sometimes the easiest ones are the best.
She ughed. “Clever. Whatcha gonna do about that fence?”
“This one we’re talking over?”
“Yep.”
I grinned. “Repair it. It’s got some solid parts that I think are okay, but obviously a lot of it o be repced eventually. Might be a few weeks, though, because the inside needs a lot of work too. Uhe bad fence is causing you trouble?”
“Weeks? That’s not too bad, unless you don’t want my dogs getting into your yard. They like to run through that spot where there’s some loose boards. They’ll bark, but they won’t bite unless you’re mean to them.”
The two dogs were barking and pying roughly with each other not far from where she’d put down the hose, but I wasn’t worried about them. They weren’t very big, and looked like Boston Terrier mixed with something else. I could easily believe they were friendly. “They don’t have any trouble finding their way back again?”
“No, they usually only want to be outside for a couple of hours before they run ba,” Kathy said. “That one is Roxy, and that one is Rover.”
She’d have to tell me several times before I knew which was which, because they looked identical from this distahey probably came from the same litter.
“Then I don’t have a problem with it if you don’t. Seems a shame to cut the size of their py spa half, but I’m afraid I do o fix the feually.”
She gave me a funny look. “I was afraid you wouldn’t fix it at all. Sometimes I have a hard time getting them to e back when I want them, and I don’t want to chase them into your yard.”
“Well, if you need help corralling them, I’m pretty good with dogs. Just give me a holler. But I also give you permission to enter my backyard, if it’s to get the dogs, until I get the fence fixed.”
She smiled at me and gnced over to where she’d left the hose. She’d gotten what she’d wanted out of the versation, I imagined, and now she wao finish what she was doing and so did I. She was cute, and I felt some attra, but I doubted it would amount to anything. I was only a temporary neighbor. She didn’t have a wedding ring on, though, and if she wao make a lonely night less lonely, well, I wouldn’t say no. But there were plications to dating a neighbor. I’d never been what you would call a one-woman man, and when I discovered there were other people into polyamory I used that unity as my dating pool. Less drama that way. Right now I didn’t have anything serious going on, just a couple of friends with bes, one local, one back where I’d moved from in Boston, but I still didn’t need a jealous neighbor. “Well, I left the steamer heating,” I said. “I should probably get back to work.”
She gave me a fused look, but nodded a back to her hose. I realized she probably didn’t know what I meant by a steamer, but I wasn’t going to chase after her to expin.
I liked to work on the aper in bits, si was my least favorite job. Spend an hour doing that, then work on something else. It’d all e dowually, and then I’d paint the wall a nieutral color. I didn’t think I’d want off-white if I ever inteo stay in a pce food, but it made the realtors happy. No one loved it, including me, but hardly aed it either.
So I did a run to the ste locker to get another load of supplies. I had to move out of the old pce before I could close on the new one, so I’d shipped everything out from Boston. Last night, I stayed with my friend Sandra. It was o share a bed with her, but I was gd to have my own pce again.
I ate di my card table while sitting on a folding chair, and the another hour on the aper before deg I’d done enough for the day as the sun started to go down. My arms were the good kind of tired, and I wao get an early start on the day tomorrow, so I pnned on lying in bed reading until I fell asleep.
I realized I hadn’t brought my e-reader or a paper book, so unless I wao make another round trip to ste, or read on my phohat wasn’t happening. I debated w more, but that was foolish. I’d just be that much more tired tomorrow. If I made the trip tomorrow, I’d have the energy to load the new refrigerator, the belt sander, and some of the other things I needed into my van. My stage magic props were still in ste, too, so I couldn’t practice. But I wasn’t ready to fall asleep.
I remembered the puzzle. A puzzle sounded like a good way to rex. I couldn’t tell how big it would be when it was finished, but I doubted it would fit on my thirty-inch card table. I knew once I got started I’d want to finish it, if not today then at least before putting it away, and that meant that I didn’t want to do it on any of the wooden floors I inteo sand and varnish. Finally I decided to take it down to the half-finished basement, which I’d fix up before the year was out but was low on my list of priorities for now. As a single guy, I didn’t really need all the space this three bedroom house with a full basement had, and while I wouldn’t mind sharing space with a woman someday, they’d have to be someone who didn’t mind moving about and living in half-finished houses. And someone who en to poly. So far, I hadn’t met that special someone.
I sat cross-legged on the floor as I pulled thick wooden pieces out from the big box and sorted them into edge pieces and others. The pin box had no picture on it to indicate what the e would be, which added to the mystery. Each piece was as big as my hand, and the size of the pieces seemed to indicate a children’s puzzle, but the colors were mostly bcks and grays with occasional hints of blue, hinting at a sort of gloomihat appealed to a previous self. I’d gohrough a goth phase, and while it didn’t seem “me” right now, I still had fond memories of stomping to heavy music with dark lyrics. Each piece had the appearance of having been painted by hand, probably with oils, and then varnished. I appreciated fine craftsmanship, and the amount of work that must have involved made me even more eager to put it together.
Enash put the finishing touches on his spell, and the new body coalesced. Then futa Enash pushed at the coffin lid, crag it open before taking a breather. He cast fire spells to light the aorches set in sces on the walls. When he had reached the sixth circle, he gaihe ability to transform death magito other elements, and could cast the rudimentary spells of other spheres. The mausoleum began to glow with a dim light.
The soul of the mortal would unlock the wards that stopped him from leaving the mausoleum.
He waited, rubbing his hands with anticipation. It was o have hands again. He was tempted to explore his new curvy body, but it would be embarrassing to be jerking off the moment the mortal tried to e through the gate, only to discover that the spell Enash had wove that only one of them could tio exist. One body, two souls, one master: Enash!
Enash cackled again. Foolish mortal! Was that a cliche? Well, it sounded good, anyway. He said it again. Foolish mortal!
He didn’t bother with clothes. He would take them from the mortal. With such bouncy breasts, and such a rge penis, he had nothing to be ashamed of.
With a thought, he summohe system dispy.
Enash
Species: Demonic Futanari
Css: Neancer
Level: 12
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 8
Intelligence:22
Wisdom: 4
Charisma 10
Health: 20
Mana: 12,372
Endurance: 30
Experience for Level: N/A, requires breakthrough.
Innate Demonic Ability: Dimension Step.
Spells: Death Fog, Greater Curse, Create Vampire, Embrace Death, Animate Multiple Greater Undead,
He sidered reviewing his numerous spells, but his new sexy body was making him horny. He had almost fotten what it was like to have a cock, and other parts of his body he had never possessed. It leasant, but very distrag. Perhaps he had chosen badly.
Perhaps he had time to rub o before the mortal fihe gate after all. Just quickly.
But no, the puzzle he had sent into the world beyond, one piece at a time, was almost assembled. The time was nigh!
Enash allowed himself one more “Foolish mortal!” and a cackle.
He pushed the lid the rest of the way off the stone coffin. It broke into pieces as it cttered to the stone floor. His patience had paid off. Freedom was at hand, and tyranny would follow!