Bone Lord 4, стр. 31

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 fiercer 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