by Dante King
“I don’t see any problem with that,” Layna said. “The Church of Light holds no sway here in Aith, and nobody will oppose the establishment of a Death church here. After what you’ve done for us Arachne, we will be eager to worship at your altar.” Her suddenly hungry eyes drifted down to my crotch. “Of course,” she continued, “some of us may wish to worship you in different ways. I hope that such things will be possible in the very near future.”
I could almost feel Isu’s jealous anger crackling behind me, but, to her credit, she managed to suppress it as quickly as it had arisen. She understood that if she wanted me, she had to share me with every other woman who adored me.
“I’m sure you could,” I said with a suggestive smile. “But we’ll talk about that later. Tell the Arachne about the Temple of Necrosis.”
Layna relayed everything I’d just told her to the crowd. Once I’d been given a few more vociferous cheers and rounds of applause, the crowd finally dispersed, but not to go home; they went to the usually empty taverns. The Arachne weren’t typically disposed toward carousing and drinking, but tonight, the taverns would be overflowing tonight with celebrating people.
“Should we go out and celebrate with my people?” Layna asked.
“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” I answered. “We can’t afford to waste time, not with our many enemies growing stronger every minute. We need to move on at first light, and I need to plan. Did you find what you were looking for in the library?”
“I’ve skimmed through the most important works,” Layna answered. “I’ve also informed Friya of a few things she didn’t know about dragons and the Dragon Goddess.”
“Good. So you’ll be ready to leave at first light then?”
Layna nodded. “I hope you don’t mind me traveling with a hangover though, just for tomorrow. As Webmaven, it is my duty to celebrate with my citizens on such a momentous occasion as this.”
I chuckled. “Just make sure you’re packed and ready to go at dawn. And Isu, come with me. We’ve got some plans to make.”
Isu and I left the palace and returned to our chambers, where we looked over a few maps and worked out the quickest route to Lough Harbor, the closest ocean port, where we would find someone to sail us to Yeng. The main difficulty would be transporting a thousands-strong undead army. I’d figure something out, though. For the moment, what counted was making good time. As my powers had increased, especially after this most recent harvest of souls in the battle against the Crusader Army, I’d started to feel the presence and strength of other gods. It was easy enough with Rami-Xayon and Anna-Lucielle, since they were in such close proximity to me. I could feel their respective energies and powers very distinctly.
But somewhere in the undefined distance, like the barely perceptible flicker of lightning just over the edge of the horizon, I could feel the presence and strength of another deity. This one was dark, malevolent, and potent. Even though I had crushed Rodrick and reduced the Temple of Blood to ruins, the Blood God was by no means defeated, and I could sense his strength growing.
When Isu went to sleep, I stayed up in my chamber. It was time to pay a visit to the Gray Sentinel on the Black Plane.
I closed my eyes and sent my soul there. As soon as I arrived in that cool, soundless realm, I strolled at a leisurely pace across the glassy black surface. It expanded outward in all directions, melting into the blackness of the starless sky at the end of every undefined horizon. At the center of this world was my Gray Sentinel, and gleaming in its upper branches was the bright, colorful promise of a new skill.
Before I started my climb into the tree, I took a look at the little gray sapling nearby—Cranton’s tree. He didn’t seem to have gained any new skills, but that was fine. As long as he kept preaching in my name and establishing Death shrines and temples all over Prand, I didn’t care if he didn’t ever acquire more necromantic abilities. He was doing excellent work for me in his own limited way.
I clambered into the tree and swung agilely from branch to branch before I scurried up the trunk. I paused in my ascent to chuckle at the memory of when I’d first come to this place, when I’d first seen this tree. All its branches had been shrouded in a dense fog, hiding all of my potential skills from me. Now, only the upper branches were obscured by the fog. Only a few skills left to pluck, like ripe, juicy fruit. Then what? What would happen when I’d gained every skill this tree could offer? Would another tree sprout from the shiny black ground? Or would I become something else, something beyond a god?
Only time would tell.
When I was halfway up, I began to see what this new skill was. Weirdly enough, it looked as if it involved the power of Wind too. I guess this was some sort of bonus that came from wielding my kusarigama, a weapon enchanted with the dual powers of Wind and Death. As I neared it, I saw that the glowing image hanging from the branch was that of a raging storm, complete with flashes of lightning and torrents of rain. The black storm clouds were rimmed with a pestilent yellowish glow.
The rain was also sickly yellow, but the lightning strikes were a luminous green. On the ground, the bloated bodies of the victims of this storm of sickness lay scattered, their skin turned green, covered in oozing boils, their eyes yellow, and their tongues black.
“Plague Storm,” the name entered my mind unbidden. It seemed a fitting name for this spell.
I took in the awesome but horrific sight of the skill in front of me. “This one’s going to be pretty damn useful.”
Grinning, I snatched the skill off the branch and felt the familiar jolt of energy and swelling of power within me that indicated that this new skill was now part of me.
“Fuck yeah,” I growled as I relisheed the new power as it coursed through my veins. “I can’t wait to unleash a Plague Storm or two on some deserving motherfuckers.”
I swan-dived off the branch, laughing as the glossy black ground hurtled toward my face... and then, a millisecond before impact, I blinked and found myself back in my physical body, in my chamber in Aith. Here too I could feel my powers growing. The people were celebrating and getting drunk in my name, which in itself was a form of worship. It didn’t give me nearly as much power as taking a soul with Grave Oath would, but it was a useful—and for them, pleasant—way of building up energy.
The next morning, everyone was up and ready to depart before the sun rose. We marched out of Aith in a procession watched over by the entire city, but with different looks than when we’d first arrived outside its huge walls. Hostility had given way to admiration. I led the procession myself, dressed in my gleaming black plate armor and mounted on Fang, a lone figure ahead of the rest.
Even though I’d always been a lone wolf, I now had multiple women and friends I could count on. I knew that, at the end of the day, I wasn’t alone. They trailed behind me, also dressed in their armor and battle garb, refreshed after our stop in Aith. Following behind them, marching in perfect order and divided up into their own sections, came my army. My mind was linked, like the strands of spider silk that connected every building in Aith, to each one of my undead troops. I could see the world through their eyes, taking in everything at once, and control them all as one unified force, or separate this control into individual actions if necessary. Sometimes, it felt almost overwhelming, having this degree of control over thousands of beings who were essentially extensions of myself. They weren’t mere resurrected hunks of bone and flesh; they were a part of me, a part of living death.
I rode Fang out of the enormous city gates of Aith, the same location where I’d dueled the huge war-spider controlled by Layna. With a gentle mental command, I ordered my zombie lizard to turn around so I could watch my army stream out of the city. Pride surged through my chest. These rotting things of decaying flesh and sun-bleached bones were seen as unholy abominations by most regular people, but to me, they were the perfect soldiers. They never questioned an order, never disobeyed me, could feel neither pain nor fear, and would go on fighting until they literally could no long
er do so. They didn’t need sleep, didn’t need food, and didn’t need water or grog. What was more, they did not pillage, they did not rape, they did not go off and sack villages for fun. They dispensed only the justice that I ordered them to, and they fought only the enemies who stood in my way.
This was an army I could be truly proud of. In a twisted way, this was the perfect army of justice. And a sense of justice, however fucked up it might have seemed to others, had always been what had driven me. Always.
There were the skeletons, my first division, led by Sarge, who still wielded his golden paladin’s greatsword. Then there were the zombie Crusaders with their tower shields, led by Captain Jandor, whose face had long since rotted off his skull but who still managed to cut an imposing figure in his Crusader armor.
There were my skeletal cavalrymen, mounted on skeletal horses, and my zombie barbarians mounted on zombie direwolves. My undead Frost Giants, those huge-ass motherfuckers who could trample entire platoons. My zombie war-spiders, who would make even the bravest knights shit their chainmail from the very sight of them. Zombie archers and crossbowmen capable of firing shot after shot with near perfect accuracy, whose arms never tired and whose fingers never ached. Then more skeletons and zombies, resurrected from the scum who’d formed Rodrick’s army, their swords, axes, maces, and spears now put to a far more noble cause than the glory of the vile Blood God. And finally, the resurrected Crusader troops from our most recent battle, led by the zombie Resplendent Knight in his shining full plate armor. Flying above all of them, my eye in the sky, was Talon, my undead harpy.
“It is quite a sight, is it not, my lord?” Rollar commented as he rode over to me on the back of his direbear. “Never did I imagine that I would one day be serving with an undead army under the God of Death... but never have I been a prouder member of a fighting force.”
I smiled at him. “I’m glad you feel that way, my friend. I’m damned proud of this army too.”
The last of my troops marched out of Aith, and the enormous city gates closed behind them. Our time in the city of the Arachne was officially over.
As soon as we set out from Aith, I sent out scouts—skeletal cavalrymen who could ride far and fast on their skeletal horses—in all directions as we traveled onwards, and I flew Talon great distances on a daily basis, but nowhere did I see any signs of a Crusader Army. I could only imagine that the small Crusader Army Elandriel sent against us near the Temple of Blood had been some sort of test to gauge my strength. What I knew of Elandriel was that he was a cautious man, not prone to taking risks or making a move before he was sure that the outcome of a particular action would work out in his favor. In a game of mental chess, regardless of the intellectual prowess of his opponent, Elandriel was likely to be the one saying “checkmate” at the end. His keen intelligence, guile, and propensity for backstabbing had gotten him to the peak of the Church of Light’s hierarchy. As Seraphim, he was only one step away from the Lord of Light himself, the Lord’s official mouthpiece in Prand. He had as much power as any king or emperor, and he had a bigger army than any kingdom in the world. It wouldn’t be preposterous to call him the most powerful person on the planet. Not someone you’d take on as an enemy if it could be avoided. Unfortunately, my very existence was an affront to the Church of Light, so there wasn’t much I could do to stop Elandriel coming after me. Well, there was one way to end this Crusade: Elandriel’s head on a stick, and his soul sucked into Grave Oath.
That was one enemy. Coming at me from another angle with just as much force was the Blood God and his lackey, the Hooded Man. All along, I’d thought that my uncle had been the Blood God’s main man in Prand, but it turned out he had only been second-in-command in this twisted cult that hunted down virgin maidens.
As we moved toward Lough Harbor, we stopped in villages and towns but found no reports of missing girls or anyone that sounded like the Hooded Man. Perhaps he’d crossed the ocean to summon Blood Demons and Demogorgons and do whatever other foul things he wanted to without worrying about me interfering with his nefarious plans.
Yeah, that would have been a fortune too great even for a god like me.
Most of the country we passed through was open plains but with some hilly terrain here and there and a few scattered forests.
The night before we would reach Lough Harbor, I broached the subject with Rollar.
“It is strange indeed, my lord,” Rollar said as he and I drank some ale around a campfire. “But, hmm... Come to think of it, Lord Vance, maybe we’re not at our most vulnerable out here in the open country. He’s already gauged our fighting strength, with the ambush in the mountains. He’s going to be hesitant to attack us, even if he has a force that greatly outnumbers ours.”
“But he’s not going to just let us prance around like this, is he? He’s going to attack us sometime; he wouldn’t be able to stand the loss of face that would come with his calling off his crusade.”
“That’s true. But he is going to make sure we are at our absolute weakest and most vulnerable before he attacks. And I think I know where that will be.”
“Where is that?”
Rollar shrugged. “Perhaps when we return from Yeng. He may have an army waiting in Lough Harbor. Perhaps cannons stationed at the docks, waiting to fire out us before we can make the port.”
“What are you two talking about?” Rami-Xayon asked as she walked up to the campfire, dressed in her figure-hugging black enjarta suit..
I brought her up to speed.
“We can deal with that problem when we return,” Rami-Xayon said. “For now, we have to worry about being able to reach Yeng in the first place. We need a ship. My powers can provide assistance with sailing, so we should make good time on the journey across the Sea of Storms. You have also developed some Wind powers of your own, have you not? Perhaps we can reach Yeng and return before Elandriel is able to muster his forces.”
“Let us pray that is the case,” Rollar said.
“I will do my share of praying tonight,” Rami said as her eyes locked onto me, and she elevated her eyebrows with erotic intent.
“Then I’ll take my leave, if you don’t mind, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked, clearly uncomfortable.
“Not a problem,” I said as Rami sauntered toward me, a hungry smile on her lips.
Chapter Five
The next morning, we were up and off early. Lough Harbor was positioned beyond some small mountains, and I left Fang and my undead army there. We wanted to keep things low-key at first. It was a big town, so if we could depart before anyone caught wind of our presence, that would give us an advantage—because, of course, anyone catching wind was synonymous with Elandriel catching wind. The Church of Light had eyes and ears everywhere.
Once we’d all dressed in civilian attire, in order to pass as merchants, I led my party down the mountain road. It had been a very long time since I’d seen the sea, and the salty whiff of the ocean carried on the gentle coastal breeze put a spring in my step. I’d been on ships a few times before but never on as long a journey as the one to Yeng would take. It was a good thing that I’d always found my sea legs quickly, and had never suffered from seasickness.
While the view of the ocean beyond Lough Harbor was a pleasant one, the view of the town was not. It had been nothing more than a tiny fishing hamlet up until a hundred years ago, but a boom in ocean trade had caused it to expand rapidly. Ramshackle buildings were crammed together with no prior planning or considerations of efficiency or livability, and houses were heaped up on top of each other, many having been constructed with the architectural skill of a child.
Gloomy alleys and crooked streets wound confusing, maze-like passages between the buildings. Scruffy beggars, shifty-eyed rogues, nervous pickpockets, and weathered hookers congregated in the shadows, staring at us with predatory looks. The first robber who tried to cut my purse, though, would get a very nasty surprise. Drunken seamen spilled out of the doorways of every tavern, puking and pissing on the street and roaring
with boisterous, inebriated laughter as they sang their shanty songs and felt up the ugly whores’ saggy tits and flabby asses. Plagues of seagulls squawked noisily and wheeled around the skies in huge flocks, shitting on everything and swooping down to steal greasy food from hapless drunkards’ hands.
Despite the proliferation of unsavory characters, my party and I radiated a distinct aura of “do not fuck with us or you’ll end up with your head separated from your shoulders,” so none of the muggers tried anything. We managed to navigate our way through the confusing mess of alleys and cobbled streets, and eventually found our way to the seafront.
The harbor was one of the biggest in Prand. There were close to a thousand seagoing vessels moored here, from the smallest fishing boats to huge merchant ships, wallowing like giant hippopotamuses in the water. The sight of so many boats and ships gave me hope. We had plenty of gold with us, and if there was one thing seamen liked more than rum and cheap whores, it was gold.
“What do you think, Rollar?” I asked my second-in-command as we strolled along the harbor, inspecting the vessels.
“It looks promising, Lord Vance. Many of these merchant ships are bigger than I imagined.”
Rami and Elyse approached, the latter inspecting the vessels with some interest while the former was wide-eyed and gaped at every one of them.
“You should consider a warship,” Rami said. “There are pirates in the Sea of Storms. The ship I traveled to this continent on was attacked by them two times on the journey here. If not for the Illustrious Sails, I would never have made it.”
“The Illustrious Sails is the greatest navy in the known world,” Elyse said. “Perhaps I could use my status as bishop to commandeer a suitable ship. They are the Church of Light’s own navy, after all.”
“Thanks all the same, but that sounds like a bad idea,” I said. “Elandriel would own those men, and they’d be as likely to kill us while we’re sleeping in the cabins as to sail us all the way to Yeng. Besides, we have enough gold to buy any vessel in this harbor. It’s just a matter of picking the right ones for our needs.”