Bone Lord 4, стр. 30
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