by Dante King
“Turn the monster into a fucking pincushion!” I roared. “Let those Death spears fly!”
As part of the body of the beast came into view, we all discharged our ballistae. The huge spears, gleaming black with their Death power enchantments, zipped through the air and slammed into the titanic body of the kraken. The projectiles blew wagon-sized holes into the creature, and bright blue blood spurted in torrents.
The kraken let out a scream that was both fury and pain, and the sound and force of it was almost enough to knock us all off our feet. I didn’t think it was possible for anything to make a sound that loud, and when the horrific scream ceased, all I could hear was a high-pitched whine ringing in my ears.
“Reload!” I yelled, not knowing whether anyone could hear me after almost having our eardrums blown out.
The zombies didn’t need to hear me, though. They received my signal and groaned with effort as they worked the ballistae’s enormous cranks. Other zombies picked up more black ballista spears and slotted them into the rails of the weapons when the strings were locked.
“The kraken is fighting against my command, Vance!” Anna-Lucielle cried. “It’s slipping out of my control; its anger is too powerful!”
“Don’t worry; we’ve got the motherfucker.” I took aim at the creature’s writhing body.
The kraken let out another ear-destroying shriek. With a swift contraction of its tentacles, it shattered the dummy ship into splinters. It was an awesome sight to behold: one second, the object was a fully intact ship; the next it was nothing but an exploding cloud of splinters, seaweed, and barnacles. The kraken was pissed, and its eyes turned to focus on me. Somehow, the monster knew that I was the one in charge here, and as such, it was determined to end me.
“Bring it on, bitch,” I snarled as the kraken’s tower of lashing tentacles turned in my direction.
They raced toward me like a wall of humongous serpents, but I kept my cool and took careful aim at the creature’s most vulnerable target: not its eyes, which I wanted to keep intact, but its mouth.
My other party members started shooting spears into the kraken’s tentacles and body, ripping up huge holes in explosions of blue gore. The monster’s fury was implacable, and its determination to kill me would not be stopped by anything except death, something I was only too happy to provide.
The first of the tentacles crashed onto my ship, clamping around the mast and rigging and hammering the sides and the deck. The vessel rocked as if we were caught in the heaving waters of a super-hurricane. Pirates were yelling to the sea gods while they were hurled overboard from the violent rocking. I stood firm, moving the sights of the ballista to try to get my aim perfect. I only had time for one shot to kill the beast, without causing excessive damage to its body.
The whole ship lurched beneath me with a jolt that almost hurled me off my feet as the kraken started pulling the vessel toward it. Its head emerged fully from the water, and its hideous face, bigger than an entire ship, was visible in all its ugly glory. It could have blown my ship to splinters, as it had done with the dummy ship, but it didn’t. As the cause of its trouble, it wanted to eat me, and it wanted me to suffer. It started pulling my ship toward its wide-open beak, and the pirates still left on deck started howling with terror, but still I stood firm.
“Open your inner jaws, asshole, open them up nice and wide to suck me in like a little fish.” My hand was steady, resting against the trigger as I lined up the sights of the ballista.
The kraken’s beak, maybe a dozen yards from me now, parted wider, and finally, it did what I wanted; it opened its set of inner jaws. Vile, rotten-fish-smelling breath billowed out of the creature’s gaping mouth, the force and stink of it knocking me back. A tentacle slapped its sucker onto my back and curled its tip around my torso, crushing me with the force of an ogre’s closing fist. Against the pain and imminent doom, I held fast, waiting for the perfect shot. Before the kraken could rank me into the air, I caught sight of the roof of the kraken’s mouth inside its inner jaws, and I squeezed the trigger.
The ballista hurled its spear through the roof of the kraken’s mouth. With its Death-enhanced power, the projectile pierced the monster’s palate and obliterated its brain. The kraken’s entire body stiffened for a second, and the force of the tentacle tip around my torso grew so intense that my ribs protested. Any longer, and at least one would break.
But then the tentacle slackened.
The kraken’s eyes lost their bright glow and grew abruptly dull before the tentacle slipped limply off me. The monster’s other deadly appendages released the ship, and the whole gigantic carcass slid below the waves and vanished.
A great cheer erupted from my party, but we were not quite done yet.
“Get those guys out of the water!” I pointed at the floundering pirates who had been thrown overboard.
I closed my eyes and was overwhelmed by the presence of the sinking kraken corpse, so there wasn’t much “detection” needed. Sending out my spirit and drawing upon the souls within Grave Oath as well as my own life force, I traveled through the kraken’s veins. I passed the monster’s strange blue blood, now still. I’d resurrected plenty of beasts by now, but none this massive.
I located the chamber where the kraken’s heart was located, a space large enough to fit a house. The massive organ was still within the chamber, but as soon as I reached out and touched it, the energy within me fled. Immediately, the monster’s blood turned from blue to an almost fluorescent yellow-green, and the heart started to beat once more. It stopped sinking, and new power surged through its monstrous form.
It was mine now. I possessed a weapon the Transcendent Sails couldn’t hope to match. Not only was the undead kraken stronger than a living one, it was also much harder to kill.
I now experienced the world of the deep ocean through its senses. While similar to that of the whale’s, there were some distinct differences.
I felt like the king of the undersea world in the body of this monster. I could sense the presence of every other sea creature around me for miles. And, even more usefully, I could detect the presence of all the ships. Now the hunted could become the hunter. The Transcendent Sails would be sailing into battle on my terms, not theirs.
I returned to my own body and grinned as I watched the members of my party swinging from their ships to mine on their grappling hooks and ropes. Everyone was beaming.
Elyse threw her arms around me. “You did it, Vance.”
“Well done, Lord Vance, well done.” Rollar clapped his hand on my back.
“I never thought I’d see the day when a man killed a kraken.” Percy grinned. “Truly, Captain, you’ve done no what no other man could.”
“Let’s not get too crazy with the celebrations just yet,” I said. “We still have the Transcendent Sails to crush. After we’ve reduced their warships to driftwood, we can crack open the casks of rum.”
“I can’t believe you let the kraken get a hold of you before you killed it.” Anna-Lucille gazed at me in awe. “Such courage…”
“I was just doing what I had to do,” I said with a shrug. “And now that’s over, let’s make plans for the upcoming battle.”
Chapter Fifteen
After a celebratory dinner, everyone retired to their cabins. Now that the ships were quiet, I wanted to go and have another chat with Zhenwan. I brought him something to drink and eat and pulled up a chair next to his bunk. He roused, looked straight up at me with immediately alert eyes, then relaxed.
“No need to get up,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot. How are you faring? Do you feel rested?”
“I was dreaming, a strange dream,” he said. “I dreamed of the kraken. But you were riding it in triumph, and I was no longer afraid of it.”
“Not the craziest dream you’ve had, I’m sure,” I said, but I stopped there. I wasn’t about to tell him the whole tale of my victory over the kraken, not just yet.
“As long as we are safe from the kraken,” he mu
rmured nervously.
“Here, have a bite, a drink,” I said. “You’ll feel better. After that, I’d like to ask you a few more questions about Yeng.”
He thanked me and ate and drank—bread, water, and wine, our usual seafare—and, with a strange air of dutiful activity, he sat up straight on his bunk and looked up.
“I’m ready,” he said, “if you have any questions. I’ll tell you absolutely everything I know.”
“You said you and many other refugees were fleeing Yeng. Could you tell me more about why you felt compelled to cross this dangerous, wide ocean to escape your homeland?”
Zhenwan swallowed a mouthful of wine and then let out a long sigh. “It is a tale of tragedy, Lord Chauzec, of a land gone mad, of men in high positions selling their souls for greed and power. To simply think of it all rips my heart to shreds… but I will tell it to you. The troubles in Yeng began last year, with the arrival of a new religion.”
“A new god, you mean?”
“No, although there has been much talk of those. The new religion is one without gods.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“I know that it sounds strange to have a religion without a god, or gods,” Zhenwan said, “and we Yengish thought this too. But the High Priest and the Great Prophet both called for the followers of this religion to denounce all the gods.”
“The old gods, like Xayon, or the new god, the Lord of Light?” I asked.
“All of them, old and new,” he answered.
“What are they worshipping then?”
“The Spirit of Prosperity is their ‘deity,’ if you want to call it that. This so-called Spirit, though, is no god, not in the traditional sense of the word. The Spirit requires no prayers, no sacrifices, and there are no scriptures, and only a very simple doctrine. It sounds quite innocuous, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t sound like much of a threat from where I’m sitting,” I said.
“No it doesn’t, and that’s what made it so dangerous, so insidious. The Glorious Emperor of Yeng ignored this little cult, as he has ignored the many other cults which have, in the fertile spiritual soil of Yeng, sprung up fast like weeds but then withered away just as quickly. A few have persisted, like the Cult of the Dragon Goddess, but those select few never became mainstream, never attracted much attention.”
“The Cult of the Dragon Goddess... “
“Yes,” Zhenwan answered. “It’s a cult that’s centuries old, and despite much persecution and bans from the Glorious Emperor, it’s one that stubbornly refuses to die. The Dragon Goddess cultists, though, are harmless, even if they are a little crazy.”
“Can you tell me more about this Dragon Goddess?” I asked.
“I know a lot about the historical figure who later became known as the Dragon Goddess, but as to whether she ever was a real goddess, one can only speculate. The official position of the Glorious Emperor, and therefore by law all of Yeng, is that she is a myth, and the cultists dangerous insurrectionists who deserve nothing but scorn and persecution. However, once you reach Yeng and speak to a few people, you might find there is a lot more to the Cult of the Dragon Goddess than the Lotus Court wishes the people to believe.”
I was very interested in finding out more about this Cult of the Dragon Goddess. If anyone could lead me to the lost Dragon Gauntlet, it had to be them.
“Let us return to the topic of the Spirit of Prosperity,” Zhenwan said, “for this is what has truly sown the seeds of chaos, turmoil, and destruction all across Yeng. As I said, they were not thought to be a threat at all, not when they started out. A humble street magician started the whole thing, some say when he discovered an ancient artifact of great power.”
I couldn’t help sitting up a little straighter. “An artifact? Was it a gauntlet?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that he claimed the object gave him access to a different plane of existence, one in which he could perceive the fabric of our world as a vast mathematical design, written out in a set of complex equations. These equations, he said, allowed him to read all of history going back to the beginning of time but also allowed him to see all the way into the future to the end of time. In addition, he claimed that this object allowed him to perceive the spiritual forces which were at work behind the scenes of our world and that there were simply two of them; there were no gods, no deities, just these formless spirits.”
“Let me guess: Good and Evil?”
Zhenwan shook his head. “No, Prosperity and Decay. Hence the name of the cult he started: the Spirit of Prosperity. Civilization, he said, was always either in a period of prosperity or decay, and by strengthening the Spirit of Prosperity, we could allow our society to flourish. Also, with the mysterious object, he could track a person’s individual destiny by interpreting the equations that supposedly plotted out the past and future of the whole world.”
“And how are people supposed to ‘strengthen the Spirit of Prosperity’ if there are no gods to worship, no prayers to utter, and no sacrifices to be made?”
“Ah, now this is where things get interesting,” Zhenwan said with a strange smile. “He asked for donations of gold to build himself a tower. He also said that anyone who made these donations had to completely reject any other god or cult or religion they followed and believe only in the Spirit of Prosperity. If they did this, he said, they would become one of the Chosen, whose lives would change in magnificent ways for the better and whose donations in gold would be returned to them a hundredfold, after the tower was completed.”
“Sounds like just another conman to me,” I remarked. It was strange that Rami had told me none of this, but I figured this magician and his cult must have formed almost immediately after she left Yeng.
“Yes, and that’s what almost everyone thought when he first made these outrageous promises. Nobody should believe such ridiculous things, but as I’m sure is the case in Prand, there are always a few fools who fall for the empty promises of charlatans.”
“Believe me, Zhenwan, there are plenty of fools in Prand,” I muttered darkly, thinking of Elandriel and of all of his lackeys, who swallowed every one of his lies without question.
“Well, a few idiots gave gold to this lowly street magician, who by this stage had started to call himself the Great Prophet of the Spirit of Prosperity. Everyone laughed at these idiots, who were so easily parted from their gold. Nobody expected them to ever see that money again; they thought the Great Prophet would disappear with what he’d clearly stolen and never be heard from again. They were all wrong.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
“The ‘fools’ were quick to rub their success in everyone’s faces when they got their gold back, as promised, in quantities a hundredfold of what they’d given.”
“And these people kept their promise to reject their former religions and gods?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you, if such a wondrous fortune brightened your life?”
“I guess if I was enough of a fool to believe a promise like that in the first place, and then the gold actually came through, I would,” I answered. “So, this guy built his tower, somehow generated a hundred times the gold he was donated, and gave it all back to his donors. Then what? What did he do with this tower?”
“Nobody knows,” Zhenwan answered. “But he built it on a mountain in a remote part of Yeng, and strange storms and a lot of lightning have occurred on a daily basis since then. People in that area soon began to speak of a powerful warlock wielding terrifying magic in the mountains.”
“The lowly street magician finds a mysterious object, starts a cult, and becomes a powerful warlock. Hmm, so where does the whole reign of terror thing start, and what’s making people like you flee your homeland?”
“Of course, when others saw that the apparent ‘victims’ of the conman’s scheme were not victims at all, but instead receivers of great quantities of gold, people started falling over themselves to renounce their gods and donate their life savings to
the Spirit of Prosperity. It was a gold rush of the worst kind. But instead of bringing prosperity to our land, as the Great Prophet had promised, this gold rush brought chaos. People left their jobs, abandoned their fields, sold their houses and possessions. The second wave who donated their gold also got their hundredfold return, as the first lot did, but for the tens of thousands who did this afterward and sold their homes and everything they owned—nothing.”
“The Warlock was working a long con,” I said. “So, now he’s got his gold, he’s got his tower, he’s got what sounds like a great deal of magical power, but how does he benefit from chaos, from starvation and famine and death across the land?”
Was he another Death God? Did I have a rival in Yeng? Or was he something else altogether?
Zhenwan shrugged and shook his head. “I do not know, Lord Chauzec. I cannot understand why he would do this to Yeng.”
“There has to be some reason he’d want this collapse,” I said. “It must be serving some greater, more nefarious purpose. Is all of this connected to the Hooded Man?”
“You know of the Hooded Man?”
“We’ve met.”
“Then you must be glad you weren’t a young woman. He steals such maidens in the dead of night, and their bodies are later found drained of blood. It has nothing to do with gold or magic or rejection of gods.”
“You don’t think there might be some sort of connection?” I asked.
“If there is, I don’t know what it could be. The Hooded Man appeared in Yeng only recently, but he has quickly spread his terror and bloodshed far and wide, appearing on opposite sides of the continent in the same day, by some magic.”