Tom was learning the language the way most people do: Listening to fairy tales. His hands were occupied with printing Mr. Fluffybottom’s magical phone number onto the spell circle while he was listening to the closest thing to an audiobook the desert people had.

“A long, long time ago,” Nema said, spreading her fingers apart dramatically for gravitas. “There was a council of sixteen gods, who shared power equally amongst each other. These beings were so often opposed to each other that they rarely came to an agreement on anything.

“And lucky for us that they didn’t,” Nema continued in a hushed voice. “Because any one of them fully unleashing their power could bring floods, earthquakes and famine that we simply could not survive. Humanity bloomed in the peace of their deadlock with each other. The absence of disasters allowed them to build up a great civilization, with pyramids that gave the mountains themselves pause.

“These structures were so tall they created their own weather, sloughing life-giving water off their peaks and into the hands of the people, creating an oasis of plenty around it.

“Well, the gods took offence to the assertion that humans could create mountains and control the weather. This was the domain of the gods, after all.

Nema’s voice grew hushed. “So the gods finally agreed on something: Putting the humans in their place. All sixteen gods gathered, and they smote the man-made mountain with fire from the sky, and they drowned the green places that had begun to spring up around it, as if to show humans enormous cruelty through giving them exactly what they had wanted.”

Nema took a breath.

“In those days, the shamans held great power, and none more than the Alia Kon’tel, the engineer of the pyramid. With the help of the few remaining humans, Kon’tel weaved a curse that could effect the gods themselves.”

“Furious at the careless apathy with which they had destroyed his people, he spent his entire well and all the life beyond to strip the apathy away from these supreme beings, leaving them both more, and less than they had been before.”

“Without their apathy, the gods began to get involved with humans, and each other.”

“Many of the gods dallied with mortals and created many demigods, great heros and villains who roamed the lands, but were ultimately of little consequence when compared to the elopement of Gabras and Entara.”

“The gods had never before formed factions, but these two gods, through a union of mind and body, had begun to dominate the formerly split council, imposing their will on the other gods with regularity.

“Gabras’s rival, En’tul, the god of volcanoes, earthquakes, and righteous anger, grew angry and vengeful of Gabras’s success, and his woman. None of the other goddesses would lay with En’tul, for he was a huge dick.”

Tom nearly did a spit-take when Nema inserted some English in the middle of the epic myth.

“En’tul was the god of anger, but he was also clever, in a vengeful way. He begged Senna, the goddess of sex to grant Gabras and Entara a child, to bring the joy of a child into their lives.”

“The goddess of sex, being a dumbass hoe, agreed.”

“Stop, you’re gonna make me screw up this summoning circle!” Tom said, between laughter, pulling his shaking hand away from the flat stone surface while he giggled.

“When Entara became pregnant, En’tul accused Senna, Gabras, and Entara of plotting to create another god, thereby breaking the deadlock and taking control of the council forever.”

“In the ensuing war, En’tul struck down Gabras and Entara, casting the two lover’s bodies down into the ocean. Their son was thrown down from the heavens with them, but the two joined hands to give their baby a safe place to land, cradled between them.”

“When they hit the ocean, their great bodies rotted and became soil, their bones mountains, and the hands they stretched out to each other as they fell…that became the Dinamor Stretch. Their son, that they protected with their last breath. That son was Vith, and from him, came all of our people.”

“So…let me get this straight.” Tom said. “Where was the land the original humans built their pyramids on?”

“Buried beneath the ocean.” She said.

“What about Senna?”

“She retreated into the last place En’tul would look for her: Men’s testes.”

“Their what?” Tom asked. “I don’t know that word.”

Nema pantomimed for a moment. It didn’t take long until a lightbulb went off in Tom’s head.

“I see, so there’s a goddess hiding in men’s balls that makes them horny and stupid?”

“Yes. There’s only one way to get her out, but she always finds her way back after half an hour or so.” Nema said, nodding sagely.

She was so goddamn confident about it that Tom just let that statement lie. It did him literally no good to debate the theology of the male libido, and it wasn’t like he knew what the actual process was. Instead, Tom changed the subject.

“I see. What about En’tul?” Tom returned to his work double and triple checking he’d gotten the spellwork as accurate as physically possible.

This time he’d drawn the circle around the pile of bones he was planning on using, so he didn’t have to risk getting a contaminant into the ink around the spell.

Live and learn, I guess.

People like these used every part of the animal. Hell, his new shoes had been made from bone glue. There were no full skeletons of large animals laying around that Tom could use…Well, almost none. Tom’s mouth quirked upward as the delicious irony washed over him.

The only intact animal corpses in the entire village were from Vol’s torture dungeon.

Tom’s bodyguard was going to be composed of Vol’s sins. It was both poetic and a huge middle finger to the crazy shaman.

Now, Tom didn’t have nearly as much in the way of Soul pulses as he did last time, only…

He tapped the gauge to the crypt sizzling with energy in his hand.

49.3

That much.

That was approximately two more soul pulses than the bare minimum to animate a corpse and pay Mr. Fluffybottom for his time.

Tom winced and glanced at the bones. They weren’t properly cleaned, and a fair amount of hide was still attached, along with withered meat and brown stains of blood.

The animated creature would be none too pleasant to look at, but Tom really needed an extra pair of eyes watching his back and Nema’s, too.

“En’tul went on to become the king of the gods. His plan to create an odd number of gods and rule over them was a success.” Nema said, replying to his earlier question.

“So, the biggest dick of the gods wound up as their leader.” Tom said in a mash of Vith and English.

“Pretty much.”

“Now that part is believable.” Tom said in English, stepping away from the summoning circle.

“It’s all bee-leave-able.” Nema said in English.

Tom took a deep breath, then yanked all the soul pulses out of the healing crypt and into himself.

When he’d summoned Mr. Fluffybottom the first time, he’d moved two hundred soul pulses through his body, and he’d felt like he was going to pop. Now, his soul was more Inured, and this time, it felt like a light stinging sensation in his chest, almost pleasant, like he’d eaten some spicy food.

Tom shifted and put his hand on the pattern, siphoning the sensation back out his hand and into the ring.

The spellwork around the pile of bones lit up, and a black smoke slipped out of a hole in fabric of reality, slowly circling around the dead animal.

The pile of tortured bones began to rise, but not nearly as smoothly as the cougar’s had. The mummified flesh and hide cracked and flaked off as the bones wrenched themselves into place, creating a horrific skeletal creature.

The creature Tom had chosen for Mr. Fluffybottom was a giant beast with a long skull and a squat body, about the size of a bison, with a whiplike tail. The dried hide on the outside made the tail stiff and nearly immobile, jutting out behind the heavyset skeleton like a stiff twig.

The dead creature, a makset, slowly rose to its feet, a flickering blue light taking up residence inside it’s hollow eye sockets.

It looked at him.

“Hi, welcome back.”

Mr. Fluffybottom wasn’t fluffy anymore. He inspected his cadaver for a moment before giving Tom a flat stare. Tom hadn’t injected nearly enough soul pulses to manifest a facsimile body, so he was, at the moment, reduced to a simple skeleton without the extra flesh providing extra strength, support, and shielding.

“I know it’s not as good as your old one, but circumstances didn’t allow me to repeat that particular situation.”

Mr. Fluffybottom gave a shrug, bits of dead flesh cracking off his bones as he moved. Tom got the impression that he wasn’t too terribly disappointed, but a fully manifested body was always more fun than a skeleton.

And a skeleton was more fun than a dessicated corpse without the flesh fully removed.

Cheapskate. Suzie chimed in from where she was watching the summoning.

Tom gave Suzie ‘The Look’, then turned his attention back to Mr. Fluffybottom, filling him in mentally.

I made an enemy here in the land where everyone over the age of ten can snap my neck one-handed. I need someone to watch my back, and to a lesser extent, Nema’s. Your assignment is such: Pretend to be a mindless automaton who only responds to direct verbal commands from any of the villagers, and try to keep an eye on either me or Vol, the guy plotting against me, at all times. If either I or Nema are in mortal danger, act on your own discretion. Your secondary task is to gather any information or hearsay that might be relevant, and send anything I might benefit from knowing.

Mr. Fluffybottom gave a miniscule nod.

Understood.

Tom turned to Nema, who was staring dumbstruck at the boney creature dominating the center of the gazebo. As were many of the other villagers.

“Nema, this is Mr. Fluffybottom. Mr. Fluffybottom, Nema.”

“Hello,” Nema said, waving. Mr. Fluffybottom didn’t react.

“Mr. Fluffybottom only do umm… what you say to Mr. Fluffybottom,” Tom said, trying to stay inside the limits of the Vith he knew. It was a lie of course, but they had an audience, and while Nema was a very nice person, she was also quite the talkative extrovert. She couldn’t spill secrets she didn’t know.

“Pick up that basket.” Nema said, eager to test out Tom’s claim. She pointed at a neighboring woman’s basket of clothes as she spoke, her eyes glittering with mirth. Mr. Fluffybottom plodded out of the circle, every ounce a dumb beast as he reached down and picked up the woman’s basket.

The woman shrieked, “drop it!” While Nema laughed.

Mr. Fluffybottom dropped the basket, remaining motionless.

Eventually it became something of a game, the villagers telling Mr. Fluffybottom to spin in circles, roll over, eat someone’s toys, whip Ricor’s mom.

Mr Fluffybottom simply ignored any commands that were obviously harmful, forcing Tom to come up with some bullshit. He haltingly paraphrased the three laws of robotics in a foreign language in order to explain why Mr. Fluffybottom chose not to listen to some instructions.

Tom thought he got the message across, because the villagers were looking rather thoughtful as they inspected the tireless beast of burden, and less nervous letting their children toss off instructions.

By the end of the day, most of the villager’s wariness towards Mr. Fluffybottom had waned, as the withered sack of bones simply did not move without an order.

Good job. Tom thought, giving the creature a mental thumbs-up.

Tom parked Mr. Fluffybottom directly outside his hut before bed, then he and Nema went to bed. Suzie had gotten in the habit of climbing between the two of them before bed, Nema had responded by using the giant squishy demon-frog as a hugging pillow.

Tom didn’t know if Suzie was jealous or seeking attention, but he saw the plaintive looks she sent Tom as Nema started nibbling on Suzie’s horns in her sleep.

Don’t look at me, you dug your own grave, Tom thought, rolling over and shutting his eyes.

Tom’s body was finally starting to relax and drift off to sleep when a shout pried his eyes wide open and kicked his heart in the ass, sending it rattling up behind his eyeballs.

“Help!”