by Dante King
The pirates were curious about what I could do with my Death powers, and the opportunity to demonstrate it came along on the second day at sea. We came across a whale carcass floating belly-up. I sensed the presence of the gigantic dead creature long before we actually saw it: a death like that sent out a signal to me like a glowing beacon in the dark.
When we neared the dead whale, we saw that a few huge chunks had been ripped out of the creature’s body. The flesh looked like it was torn off by some sort of enormous mouth, and strange sucker marks covered the whale’s skin. Some big sharks were feeding on the whale carcass in a frenzy, tearing off chunks of flesh and blubber. Each of the sharks was a good 10-12 feet long and could easily have chomped a man in the water in half.
But I doubted they had been responsible for this kill. The sharks were merely taking advantage of a carcass left over from an even larger predator.
“Rami-Xayon,” I said, “call off your wind for a second. I want to have a closer look at this.”
“Looks like the work of a kraken,” Percy remarked gravely, squinting at the carcass. “Aye, Captain Chauzec, see those big sucker marks? Those are from the kraken’s huge tentacles.”
“Why didn’t it eat the whale?” Elyse asked as she peered over my shoulder.
“Krakens like to play with their prey. Sometimes, they kill just for the fun of it. Right bastards, they are. A big one can break a warship in half and pull it under the waves.”
“Can it now?” I stared at the sharks as they fed with bloodthirsty eagerness on the dead whale. I really wasn’t thinking much else right then; there was something hypnotizing about seeing those massive sharks looking much like ants picking at a slice of fruit pie left lying in the grass after a picnic.
“Terrible bloody creatures, those damn sharks,” Percy remarked. “Vultures of the sea, they are. They follow us around sometimes when we’re raiding. They seem to have a sense for when battle is near, and then they have a good ol’ feast, with all the bodies falling into the water. Any man who goes overboard don’t last too long in these shark-infested waters, whether he’s hit and dead or not.”
“Get me a crossbow,” I said. “And bring the crew over here. I want to show them something.”
“All right, Captain,” Percy said before bellowing out, “All hands, over here, ya scurvy dogs! And bring the captain a crossbow!”
The pirates scurried over, and one of them brought a crossbow, which he handed to me with a mischievous grin.
“Going to practice your sharpshootin’ on them sharks, Captain?” he asked.
“I’m going to do more than just shoot a few sharks,” I answered with a grin.
Chapter Eight
“Top of its head, Captain; that’ll do it, if you can hit it from this distance,” First Mate Percy said as a pirate handed me a large crossbow.
“Don’t you worry about that.” With the bolt on the rail, I cranked the lever until the crossbow was full of tension, then raised it to my shoulder.
The shark closest to the ship was munching on the dead whale’s tail. I lined up the crossbow as I aimed for this creature, then squeezed the trigger and watched the bolt streak through the air. It slammed with a dull thud into the top of the shark’s head. The shark thrashed about for a second or two, but the shot was lethal, and it soon stopped moving and rolled over in the water, belly-up and as dead as the carcass it had been feeding on.
“Excellent shot, Captain Chauzec!” Percy exclaimed.
“I’m not done yet.” I handed him the crossbow. “Not by a long shot. Watch this.”
Resurrecting dead beasts was now as easy for me as snapping my fingers. I sent my Death tendrils out from my hands; like silky black threads, they poured from my fingertips and enclosed around the shark’s still heart. After a quick jolt of my divine energy, the dead shark’s glazed-over eyes suddenly glowed with the familiar yellow-green light. It rolled back over in the water, sort of alive again. This alone elicited a chorus of oohs and aahs from the crew of pirates, but I was barely getting started.
This was the first aquatic beast I’d ever resurrected, and I wanted to have some fun with it. As I had done with Talon, I closed my eyes and sent myself into the zombie shark, experiencing the world through its senses and controlling its body as if it were my own.
In an instant, I could feel the chill of the ocean, my weightlessness in the water, and the pull of the current. I could also taste the blood and blubber of the whale in my mouth and found that I could sense things in a very different way. The vibrations of all sorts of other creatures swimming under the surface came to me like signals of light, like different-sized fires burning on black hills on a dark and moonless night. And like an observer on land could tell which of those night fires was close and which was far, I could tell, from the minute vibrations in the water, where the various creatures were. I could also tell how fast they were moving and whether they were injured. Something was bleeding two miles away; I wasn’t sure how I knew this; I just did.
I wanted to see what this shark could do in the water. I started swimming and discovered that I could move with effortless speed and agility. I dived down, feeling the pressure of the water grow more intense with my descent. Then, when the water was inky black all around me and it started to feel as if it was beginning to crush the shark’s body, I turned around and blasted up toward the surface at full speed, breaking the surface in a spectacular flying leap that took the zombie shark a good few yards up out of the water.
I asked pulled my spirit out of the undead shark even as it soared through the air. The creature caused a great splash as it hit the water’s surface
“Blimey!” one of the pirates yelled. “Would ya look at that!”
“You want to see something even better?” I asked, my spirit now firmly inside my own body.
“Aye, Captain!” they all shouted excitedly.
This time, I turned my focus to the dead whale. I injected its enormous heart with undead life force, and its half-eaten corpse twitched and jerked before it rolled over, much to the surprise of the sharks feeding on it. The sharks started attacking with a renewed frenzy, but their jaws and teeth, strong and razor-sharp as they were, did not slow my whale down. Controlling the aquatic mammal like a gargantuan puppet, I swatted at the raging sharks with the massive tail, as if they were nothing more than annoying mosquitoes. There was immense power in the whale’s boat-sized tail, and each blow that struck a shark killed it as quickly as a man’s hand would a fly.
I grabbed one shark in the whale’s gigantic jaws and crushed the thrashing creature as if it were nothing but a little minnow, and the pirates let out a cheer. Once I’d killed a few sharks, the survivors got the message and fled, and I resurrected the dead ones that were floating belly-up around my zombie whale.
“Look at that,” Percy exclaimed. “I never imagined I’d ever see a bloody zombie shark, let alone a bloody zombie whale! Three cheers for the God o’ Death, ya yellow-bellied thieves!”
The pirates all cheered vociferously and started pestering me with requests to kill and resurrect all sorts of other things.
“Sorry, boys, the show’s over for now,” I said. “Rami-Xayon, let’s get that breeze blowing again.”
The pirates dispersed, disappointed but still grinning and talking excitedly among themselves. Rami-Xayon called up her wind to propel our ships forward again. My new shoal of undead sea creatures tagged along in our wake. I figured they might come in handy sometime, especially if we ran into the Transcendent Sails or some other group of pirates. The whale could put holes in a few ships’ prows, I imagined, and my sharks would quickly pick off any marine troops who were unlucky enough to fall into the water.
As we sailed onward, I thought about what Percy had said about the kraken. A beast that could split warships in half and drag them under the waves would be a powerful weapon if we could somehow find one and kill it for me to resurrect. I figured most ship captains prayed that they would never run into a kraken
at sea. I, however, desperately hoped to encounter one. Having an undead kraken at my disposal would make this ocean voyage a lot more interesting.
Of course, the kraken was a famously rare and elusive creature. Tremendously destructive and powerful when they rose from the depths, yes, but nobody could predict where or when that would be. While considering this, a notion struck me: if the sharks could detect the positions of other creatures in the upper part of the ocean, then surely the whale, which could dive far deeper than any shark, would be able to sense the presence of the kraken down in the depths...
I made a mental note to keep part of myself tethered to the zombie whale at all times, letting its senses feed into mine like the steady dripping of a leaky wine barrel. Any detection of the kraken’s presence would send a jolt into my consciousness, so if it ventured up from the depths anywhere near enough for my zombie to detect, I’d be ready.
While I was considering these possibilities, Rollar approached me with a smile.
“I’ve seen it quite a few times by now, Lord Vance, but whenever you raise something from the dead, it always astounds me. The way you controlled the zombie shark was quite impressive, as was the manner in which you raised the whale.”
I raised an eyebrow and kept my smile hidden. “Are you trying to butter me up, Rollar?”
“I’ve, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while now, Lord Vance,” he said as he avoided eye contact and looked uncharacteristically uneasy.
“You want to become Fated, right?”
He looked up, and an eager grin broke across his face. “It would mean the world to me, Lord Vance. I’ll remain loyal to you until my final breath leaves my body whether you grant me this request or not, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?”
“Rollar,” I said as I placed my hands on the big barbarian’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “You’ve been an extremely loyal soldier and the most reliable second-in-command any leader could ask for. To be honest, if you’d made this request three days ago, when it seemed that the Fates were doing everything she could to fuck me over and keep me stuck in Prand, I’d probably have told you to shove your war-hammer so far up your ass that it knocked out your rearmost teeth. But I’m feeling pretty damn fine, I’ve got to admit; I killed a cocksucker captain and got his ships and crew, we’re making headway on our forbidden journey to Yeng... so, in the words of a great and nobel poet whose name eludes me right now: fuck it, why not! Come over here, you big ol’ bear, and I’ll make you Fated!”
“Do you... do you really mean that, Lord Vance?” he gasped.
“Damn right I do.”
“This is the best news I could have ever hoped to hear.”
“All right, all right, calm down, my friend,” I said with a chuckle. “No need to act like a maiden who’s just spotted Prince Charming in the distance. Go gather the party, and we’ll do this right, with a proper ceremony. Meanwhile, I just have to zip off to another plane, one that you’ll soon be able to visit yourself.”
“Right away, Lord Vance,” Rollar said, practically jumping up and down on the spot. “Should I, uh, should I wear my battle armor?”
“Sure, put your battle armor on, and bring the bear too.”
As soon as Rollar had hurried off, I closed my eyes and transported myself to the Black Plane. I looked up at the upper branches of the Gray Sentinel, but there were no new skills waiting for me; Argryl’s measly soul hadn’t been worth much. Still, a new skill was at least forming up there. My power was growing from the various warriors across Prand who made kills with Death coins in their pockets. Not to mention all the people praying at my temples and shrines. Together, they were creating a steady stream of power, feeding the fruit on the tree like a deluge of summer rain.
Cranton’s little sapling was the same as it had been last time I’d checked it. He was probably still too busy preaching to develop new skills.
Now, I needed to plant another young tree. In the blink of an eye, Grave Oath materialized in my hand, and I sliced a shoot off the lowest branch of the Gray Sentinel. Then I stuck it in the glassy black ground about 30 feet away from my tree; I wanted to give it plenty of space to grow, just in case it grew into something of substantial girth and height one day.
The shoot sank as smoothly and easily into the ground as if it had been a steel rod shoved into wet mud. It grew in a few seconds into a little sapling, rapidly sprouting its own branches and leaves. I made a cut in the trunk of the Gray Sentinel, light that oozed like sap oozed from the incision. I scooped it up with Grave Oath, took the blob of blazing light over to the new sapling, made a little incision in its trunk, and shoved the light in.
Picturing Rollar in my mind, I placed Grave Oath in my palm. Slowly, it started to turn, until it began to spin like a maddened compass needle until it found his soul. I created a link between the soul and this new sapling, drawing on some of the power of the souls and prayers flowing into the Gray Sentinel through the light sap.
A fruit appeared on one of the sapling’s branches, glowing and colorful. It was a fruit I recognized at once, for it was one of the very first skills I had gained: the ability to resurrect beasts. Of course, back then, I hadn’t known about the skill tree, and Isu had been the one who had come here and plucked the skill from this tree. She had then bestowed it upon me, a mere necromancer at the time. Now, here I was, doing the same for one of my mortal underlings.
Before I launched myself back into the reality of the physical present, I had to wonder about something: where was Isu’s skill tree? She must have had a massive Gray Sentinel like mine when she’d been a goddess. And why didn’t she have a little sapling here like Cranton’s and Rollar’s? After all, she was still using Death magic, even though she’d been demoted from a goddess to a mortal necromancer.
I scanned the area around me, squeezing my eyes almost shut so I could see as far as possible. Then I spotted it, so far in the distance that it was almost invisible: a withered Gray Sentinel, almost as big as mine. This would be worth checking out before I headed back to the real world.
The tree looked like it was many miles away, and walking there would have taken hours. Even though this time would only add up to a few seconds in the real world, I didn’t want to spend hours walking across this glossy black desert. Many of the rules of the real world didn’t apply in here, so, I suddenly thought, why would I even need to walk there? If I could jump off the upper branches of the tree, dozens of yards above the ground, and land like I was falling onto nothing but a soft feather pillow, then surely I could bend other physical laws in this realm.
I drew in a deep breath, tensed my muscles, and lowered myself into a crouch. I launched myself into a sprint, and when I hit full speed, I jumped, willing myself to fly like a flea through the air. And just as those tiny little bloodsuckers can jump hundreds or thousands of times their own body length, I hurtled through the air, covering miles in a single leap. The dead Gray Sentinel came rushing toward me as I began my descent. I hit the ground running and skidded to a halt mere feet from its trunk.
It wasn’t as tall or broad a tree as mine, but it was big and sprawling nonetheless. I imagined that in the past, many skill fruits had hung from these branches. Now, though, the tree was dead. I grabbed a large branch, thick as a Jotunn’s arm, and pulled on it. It came off the tree with a dull crack. It was light and brittle and dry, and I had no trouble crushing it to powder in my hands.
“So, this is what happened to your skill tree when I killed you and took your divinity,” I murmured.
I was staring up at the rotting branches when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Peeking out from behind the trunk was a small branch of a living tree. I took a few steps to my right and found a new sapling had sprouted behind the huge dead tree. This was Isu’s new tree. It was bigger than Cranton’s and Rollar’s and had more branches than either of those two, but it was still small, not taller than six or seven feet.
I chuckled. “Coming back up in the w
orld, Isu...”
Then, looking past the sapling, I saw another large dead tree in the far distance. This was intriguing. Had there been another God or Goddess of Death before Isu? She had never mentioned anything like that, but I figured there had to have been. Death is, after all, as old as life, and Death deities had to have been some of the earliest gods worshiped by men. I took another running jump, covering miles in one leap. The tree I found myself in front of had no fresh sapling next to it. But on the horizon was yet another massive dead tree, with, I imagined, another on the horizon beyond that, and probably yet another beyond that, going all the way back to the beginning of time and the world.
“I’m just one in a line of many Death gods,” I said as I curled my hand into a fist, “but I will be the greatest of all of them.”
Then, in a blur of speed and warped time, I was back in my body in the physical present.
Rollar was waiting, an expectant look in his eyes. He was dressed in his battle armor, consisting of various pieces of iron, leather, and bearskin armor, and his direbear was by his side. The other members of my party were also here, gathered in a semicircle behind Rollar and his pet.
“Am I Fated yet, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked eagerly.
“Not yet, my friend,” I said. “I have to do a few more things. You can help me though; go get me a bucket of water.”
“Water, Lord Vance? Are you thirsty?”
“Don’t ask questions, Rollar.”
