Bone Lord 4

by Dante King

  “There is a kind of fish some old folks like to pickle back in our village,” Friya remarked, also holding her hand over her nose and looking as if she was on the verge of blowing chunks. “They leave it to ferment in clay jars for six months. I always thought six-month-old rotting fish would be the worst thing I’d ever smell. Then, I stepped into this cursed place.”

  “All right, you whiners, get down into the lungs,” I said.

  “Ugh, I can’t wait to get out of this revolting place,” Layna muttered as she walked off down the whale’s throat.

  “Elyse,” I said, “I hope your light is ready, because I’m about to close the beast’s jaws and dive.”

  With one hand still clamped over her face, she nodded and held up her mace. The flanged head started glowing with enough light to illuminate the entirety of the whale’s mouth and the throat beyond it.

  The shadows in the cavity of this place became thicker and darker as I closed the whale’s jaws, and the already rancid stench became a whole lot more potent. Even Drok started to notice it now.

  “Someone step in shit?” he asked, checking the undersides of his boots with a puzzled look on his face.

  “Go to the lungs with everyone else, Drok,” I said. “Follow the light. I don’t need light for what I’m about to do, but I do need some peace and quiet.”

  Drok followed the others out of the whale’s mouth down its throat, and as Elyse led them toward the lungs, the light faded in the mouth, quickly dissolving into an inky blackness.

  “All right, whale,” I said, controlling the creature’s will, but only with a fraction of my concentration and mental powers. “Time to dive. Let’s go!”

  Through the portion of myself connected to the whale’s senses, I felt the beast’s enormous body plunging rapidly down into the depths. The increasing weight of the water pressed inexorably more powerfully from all sides on the whale’s body. Once we were down to a suitable depth, I leveled the creature’s body out and began cruising in a straight line toward the Transcendent Sails fleet. From here, it could handle the journey on its own, so I left the whale to its swimming and focused on conjuring up a Plague Storm.

  This was my first skill that combined Wind and Death powers, so I gripped my kusarigama in both hands before I closed my eyes. All I needed now was a pair of eyes in the world up there. While still focusing on the Plague Storm, I sent my vision out into Talon’s eyes and flew her up into the sky a few hundred yards from the enemy ships to observe what was happening.

  Our hurricane was already churning up the waters around the five warships, howling and causing the vessels to lurch and roll in the huge swells. Now it was time to add my own storm to this deadly mix of Rami-Xayon’s and Isu’s powers.

  Gripping the kusarigama, I felt the power of Wind magic surging through me. This was an altogether different sensation than Death. Instead of diving through the depths of the ground and pulling Death energy from the rotting corpses and decaying skeletons in the layers of dirt, I was now pulling energy from the air. The Wind energy available stood out so crisply that I was surprised I’d never noticed it before. There were two major sources of Wind energy; the first was the currents in the air, from the tiniest breezes to the strong trade winds traveling relentlessly across the oceans and the powerful raging gales of distant storms. Although I’d always thought of these things as being invisible, now that I was able to connect with the power of the wind, they appeared as glowing patterns of light all around me. I found that by reaching out with my spirit hands, I could grab them, as if they were threads of different-colored wool, all of different thicknesses, from the finest strands to the thickest ropes. I then weaved them together, combining their separate energies into one intensely powerful entity: a storm.

  Then there was the second major source of Wind energy in the air: moisture. Just as the different types of air currents showed up as different color threads, the differing pockets of dryness and humidity in the air above the sea showed up as patches of cloud. More humid patches looked like the clouds you’d see in the sky, while drier patches looked a lot more transparent, like fine mist. They also glowed in color, on a scale of hues between red and blue, with blue being cold air and red being hot. I grabbed chunks of hot, humid air with my spirit hands and pulled them into the union of air current threads I was making.

  It was like one big, messy ball of different-colored yarn threads, but it was coming together in the form of one motherfucker of a storm. Sculpted by my spirit hands, dense black clouds started whirling around the hurricane that was already battering the enemy fleet.

  Now, I just needed to add the final touch to make this brewing storm a Plague Storm: the power of Death.

  It wasn’t just any Death magic that I needed though. It was a very specific type: putrefaction. To really seed the black storm clouds with a potent dose of it, I needed a concentrated source. I grinned when I realized where I was; my source for this foul rot was all around, in this gigantic putrefying creature. I was inside the biggest source of Death rot for miles.

  “I hope you’re ready, assholes,” I said as I prepared to extract the Death rot from the zombie whale and to seed my storm clouds with it. “Because you’re about to get Plague Stormed.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Locating and channeling Death energy came as naturally to me as breathing, so I found the energy of rot right away. While my Death magic had halted the state of decay of the whale carcass, it couldn’t reverse it, nor could it eradicate the rot that had already set in. This rot was, judging by the sense it gave me, the equivalent of at least fifty human corpses. It would be perfect for stirring up one hell of a Plague Storm.

  I pulled out the putrefaction energy from the whale carcass and hurled it into the Plague Storm clouds. As I observed the scene through the eyes of Talon, I saw the black storm clouds turning a sickly yellow-green, splotched all over with gray. The Plague Storm was ready, but I held back on releasing it. I wanted to see what Isu’s acid rain would do to the enemy first. She was about to unleash it.

  Droplets of the acid rain burned holes through any metal, dissolved leather armor, and ate living flesh with a terrifyingly voracious appetite. The soldiers screamed and ran around in unbridled panic. They started fighting—with nothing held back, swords out and teeth bared—in a desperate attempt to clear the clogged doorways and escape below deck.

  “I did warn them,” I whispered in the darkness of the whale’s mouth. “They should have surrendered. Now, their nightmare’s only just begun.”

  Isu’s acid shower petered out after a few minutes, but those few minutes had done plenty of damage. All over the decks of the warships, men lay writhing and screaming in agony, with their skin and flesh literally melting off their bones. Others lay dead or dismembered at the hands of their own comrades, having been bested in the winner-take-all struggle to escape the weather.

  But the living on those other ships would be hard pressed to survive my coming onslaught.

  With a snap of my fingers, I unleashed the wrath of my storm. This bout of rain could not be hidden from, and nobody anywhere on those warships would be safe, whether on deck or deep in the holds of the ships.

  Yellow-green rain fell in sheets, hammering the warships and the ocean around them. These thick gooey drops didn’t splash, like water or acid might. Instead, they landed with a splat and stuck, like slime. Then, from these foul-smelling blobs, a yellow-green fog began to rise, thick and choking and heavy. Any man the fog covered started coughing and retching and gripping his throat. After a few seconds of this, he would fall to the floor, convulsing and flailing about. Then, black blisters and boils appeared across his skin, swelling and bursting in revolting little eruptions of blackened blood. The unfortunate victim would start puking up the same black blood in bucketfuls as his insides putrefied like those of a corpse. Was this the end, finally? No. Next, his body, filled with the gases of his inner putrefaction, would start to bloat and swell, causing the wretch to howl with an ever f
iercer agony. And then, finally, the Plague Storm victim would explode in a gruesome splatter of black blood, viscera, and shattered bones.

  “Fuck me,” I murmured as I watched my Plague Fog do its deadly work on the ships.

  At least 80% of the ships’ crews were now dead or dying, and I had to keep at least a couple of them alive, just to temporarily keep what would soon be my ships under control.

  I pulled back my Plague Storm before I sucked the remaining Plague Fog back up into the Plague Storm clouds, which I now allowed to evaporate. Now it was time to mop up the last survivors and take these warships for myself.

  I threw my senses back into the eyes of the zombie whale and saw that we were almost directly under the fleet. It was time to surface.

  “It’s time!” I called down the whale’s throat.

  “Time to fight! Time to fight!” Drok yelled, racing along ahead of the others.

  He skidded to a halt next to me, his grappling hook crossbow slung over his shoulder in a strap, and his twin battle-axes gripped in his hands. I observed that this was the first time I’d ever stood so close to the huge barbarian without being able to smell his stench; the stink of the inside of the whale was that overpowering.

  The others, who had all tied torn bits of their clothing around their faces to ward off the smell, came running along behind him, weapons at the ready. Elyse’s glowing mace illuminated the inside of the creature’s mouth.

  The whale surfaced, and I immediately opened the beast’s jaws. The icy sea came rushing in, as did a whoosh of much-needed fresh air.

  The few soldiers left saw us and dropped their jaws on the gory decks; after everything they’d just witnessed, seeing a bunch of enemy troops pouring out of the jaws of a rotting whale was the last straw. A few of them just gave up at this point and leaped off the ships into the ocean, where my undead sharks were eagerly waiting. The men died screaming in a mess of frothing water and snapping shark jaws.

  My party scrambled out and plunged into the water.

  “Board the ship!” I roared as I swam through the waves, which had calmed down now that Rami-Xayon had called off her tempest.

  I took aim with my regular crossbow and launched a grappling hook up onto the ship’s deck. My companions did the same, and soon, we were shimmying up the ropes. Any enemy foolish enough to peek over the edge with their crossbow or longbow met an unfortunate fate. I slammed them with bolts from my wrist crossbow, and they suffered the agonizing transformation from human to tree. Those I couldn’t fire at were eliminated by a blast of intense heat and light from Elyse’s mace, their heads seared from their necks.

  Once on deck, enemy survivors came out swinging. They seemed emboldened now that the terrifying rain and fog were nowhere to be seen. A false sense of security, but you can forgive anyone such a mistake in judgment in the heat of the moment.

  Grave Oath in my right hand and my kusarigama in my left hand, I waded into the fight with brutal keenness. I couldn’t help but revel in the last breaths of my enemies with every slash of my kusarigama blade, every whip of its chain, and every stab of my enchanted dagger. I whirled and spun, dual-wielding my weapons and engaging multiple opponents.

  I plunged Grave Oath into the eyeball of one soldier while lopping the head off another. A soldier slashed at me with a longsword, but I spun around with a rear leg sweep that took him off his feet. Before he could recover, I plucked Grave Oath from the dead man’s eyeball and slammed it into my tripped-up opponent’s heart. I rolled to avoid a downward hack with an ax, then lashed the chain end of the kusarigama around the ax-wielder’s waist. The iron links constricted around his torso, and I jumped to my feet before I swung him overboard, the chain unraveling and launching him off the deck into the ocean, where my sharks tore him to pieces.

  I finally got to witness Layna in combat, and see Friya’s fighting ability in her werewolf form.

  Layna was shooting webs from her spider legs, thick, sticky webs that immediately trapped and immobilized whoever they hit. She would then dispatch the trapped man with a long, thin-bladed dagger that emitted a green glow. Whoever she stabbed with it quickly turned as green as a lime in season and started convulsing while puking up blood.

  Friya’s fighting involved a lot less finesse. As terrifying as she already looked in her werewolf form, she looked even scarier in combat. Her yellow eyes shone brightly, and she moved with blinding speed and savage fury. She charged through the soldiers and tore limbs and heads off, carving torsos open with powerful slashes of her clawed hands and slashing throats in showers of blood with her jaws.

  Elyse blasted her torrents of superheated light through the ranks of the soldiers with deadly focus, turning living men into smoking piles of ashes in seconds.

  It didn’t take us long to take over the first ship.

  I locked the rudder wheel to keep it moving in a straight line before we all reloaded our grappling hook crossbows. Amid a shower of arrows and crossbow bolts launched from other ships, we shot our grappling hooks across and tangled them high up in the other ships’ rigging to give us good angles and enough height to swing across the gaps between ships without hitting the water below.

  Drok, Layna, and I attacked the ship to our left, while Elyse, Rollar, and Friya assaulted the one to our right. Both ships had taken heavy casualty tolls from the acid rain and Plague Storm, and mopping up the little resistance that remained was a simple task. This was the same for the final two ships, and after two more short and bloody skirmishes, all five were in my possession. Two had suffered some damage from Isu’s toxic rain, but Percy seemed to think they could be repaired without much effort.

  “All right,” I finally said, looking proudly upon my new fleet of warships from the prow of the rearmost ship. “The Temple of Necrosis now has a navy.”

  “A naval fleet needs sailors, Lord Vance,” Rollar said. “And the six of us are fierce fighters, of course, but we’re no experts when it comes to such matters as sailing and steering warships.”

  “No, we’re not,” I said, “but these men were.” I pointed to the corpses of the dead Church of Light sailors and soldiers littering the deck of the warship.

  “Aye, Lord Vance,” Rollar said, “but will they still know how to steer a warship when you resurrect them?”

  “The undead retain some basic memories, especially of the things they were good at in their days of blood and breath,” I said. “They’re basically residual traces of automatic actions. You’re a fighter, so what would you do if I did... this?”

  I lunged for Rollar’s face with Grave Oath. He reacted immediately, whipping his hammer up to deflect the attack.

  “Did you have to think about blocking that attack?” I asked.

  “No, Lord Vance,” Rollar answered. “It was instinct.”

  “Right. And these guys are just as used to sailing. They won’t be able to think after they’re resurrected, but they’ll be able to act on instinct. So...”

  It took a bit of power to resurrect so many of them at once, like the exertion one felt after a short sprint.

  I surveyed my new undead crews with pride. “Now, my warships have crews. I’ll get my zombie captains to steer us toward a rendezvous with the pirate ships, so you all can relax on deck for a while. Unless you feel like hitching a ride inside the whale again?”

  The immediate chorus of “no way!” and “hell no!” and “never again!” that came my way in response was very emphatic.

  “I go inside whale,” Drok remarked with a shrug.

  I chuckled. “How about some wine? These Church of Light fellas always have ‘holy’ wine with them, and I’m guessing you guys are as tired as me of that fiery pirate grog?”

  Everyone was eager to wet their whistles after the battle, so we headed down into the hold. Sure enough, there were plenty of barrels of good-quality wine down there. A few were from Erst, and when Elyse saw them, a look of sadness crossed her face.

  “You’ll return to your bishopric, Elyse,” I sai
d to her. “Once we’ve defeated the Blood God and crushed Elandriel and whichever other assholes in the Church supported this Crusade against me.”

  “The more time I spend with you,” she replied, “the more I question whether I should, or could, return to my previous position. I keep thinking about your youth, when your greatest desire was to become a Consecrated Knight. Elandriel’s scorn and rejection of your wishes completely turned your view of the Church around and set you off on an entirely different path. You once were fiercely devoted to serving the Church and the Lord of Light. But you changed. I think. . . I think I might be changing, too. Maybe it’s time for me to find my own path, as you did.”

  “Whatever you want to do,” I said, “there will always be a place for you by my side in the Temple of Necrosis.”

  “Thank you, Vance,” she said as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

  I felt like now might be a good time to celebrate my battle victory, alone with Elyse, behind the locked door of this captain’s cabin. From the unmistakable gleam in her eyes, I could tell she felt the same way. But before I could lean in and plant my lips on hers, something tickled my attention.

  I could sense the presence of death, human death, out on the ocean. But it wasn’t the corpses of Transcendent Sails sailors floating in the water around the warships. The human dead I could sense were much farther away than that, a few miles at least. We were far from any landmass too.

  “As much as I’d like some alone time with you right now, Elyse,” I said to her, “there’s something I need to investigate quickly.”

  “It’s no problem. You are now captain of a fleet, after all,” she said, the disappointment plain in her tone.

  I closed my eyes and sent my mind into Talon. I flew out over the open sea, scanning the waves below me. After three or four miles, I saw where the death signal was coming from: a small dinghy, adrift on the ocean. I flew Talon down lower to get a closer look at the vessel. It was full of dead bodies—all Yengishmen, it seemed. They were far out of the way of the course my ships were on, so it wouldn’t have made much sense to raise them as skeletons or zombies. I could have ordered Talon to bring a corpse back to me so that I could touch it and learn what happened at their time of death, but I doubted it would tell me much. These folks had obviously died from hunger and thirst, and possibly exposure. I wouldn’t learn anything from them by using my magic in this way.