Bone Lord 4, стр. 38
I snatched the image from the branch like a greedy monkey plucking an overripe piece of fruit, and grinned as I felt the pleasing jolt of new energy rushing through my body. I backflipped off the branch and did a few backward somersaults on the way down, but the split-second before impact with the glossy black surface, I yanked myself back into the physical reality of the present.
I was immediately eager to test my new skill, so I looked around for something to experiment on. Now, up to this point, I’d been able to channel Death energy through normal weapons or magic weapons, but I had to be the one wielding them, as it was my body as well as the weapon that served as the conduit for the Death magic. What I had to do now was create Death weapons that other people could use.
My roving eyes fell on Drok, who was staring out over the water with a blissfully blank expression on his face, staring out over the water like a content cow chewing cud.
“Drok!” I yelled, snapping him out of this little trance. “Come over here, my friend!”
He swigged a mouthful of rum, tossed the bottle into the sea, and swaggered over to me.
“Yes, Vance?” he asked, eager to serve. “What you need? You say, Drok do!”
“Drok,” I said, “you love your battle-axes, don’t you?”
He reached over to his back and patted the blade of each one of his twin battle-axes.
“Beautiful weapons.” He smiled. “Drok love Drok’s axes.”
“They’re not enchanted, though, are they?” I asked. “They’re just regular steel axes. I mean, when you swing them, sure, they can take a man’s head off or split an enemy soldier in half, but there’s no magic involved, just brute strength.”
“Strong arm, sharp axe.” Drok flexed for effect. “Very good combination.”
“How would you like to make your axes even better? Maybe add some Death magic to those blades, huh?”
“Yes, yes!” he exclaimed, nodding his big round head enthusiastically. Then, however, a frown came across his face. “But Drok not know how to use magic.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “When I first started using Grave Oath, I didn’t know how to use any magic either. So, what I’m going to do for you, my faithful barbarian warrior, is give you a gift to thank you for all the fighting you’ve done for me. I’m going to enchant your axes with Death magic, and then you can wield this magic, without needing the knowledge.”
“Vance, can do that?” Drok asked, awed.
“Let’s give it a shot.” I gestured for him to hand them over.
Drok whipped the axes off his back and gave them to me. I held one in each hand, then closed my eyes. I knew all about channeling Death magic, but infusing a weapon permanently with it was something altogether new.
I focused on the steel of the axe blades and found myself thinking about it as if the metal was an open pit grave where I would dump a bunch of corpses. I wasn’t sure why this thought popped into my head, but it seemed to make perfect sense. Before, when channeling Death magic through myself, my fists, or some item, I had always thought of the object as a conduit. Now, however, I needed to think of it as a receptacle to pour the Death magic into and then store it. And, like a shallow pit grave full of rotting corpses, the Death magic would seep slowly like putrefaction from the grave, except that in the case of the weapon, some of it would be released with every swing, every impact.
Like the old throwing stars I’d used way back when I’d just started out as a necromancer, I figured the easiest Death magic to infuse the axes with would be a necrotic type of damage. It would spread putrefaction through the victim’s flesh and bones.
I reached out to the undead whale and channeled some of its Rot energy into the axes, visualizing the energy as gray, rotting corpses I was dumping into two mass graves. In my hands, the steel of the axe-heads became ice-cold, and the entire weapon thrummed with power.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that the gray steel of Drok’s axe heads had turned the same glossy hue of black as the blade of my kusarigama.
“Here you go, Drok,” I said, handing him the battle-axes. “You now have a pair of necrotic battle-axes. The magic will work against any opponent who isn’t Fated.”
“Ooh,” Drok said, delighted with his new weapons. “Death axes. Drok like new Death axes. Thank you, Vance!”
“I bet you can’t wait to go berserk with those babies,” I said with a proud grin.
“Yes, yes! With Death axes, Drok kill many, many enemies!”
Now that I’d successfully managed to enchant a pair of battle-axes, I glanced around for some other weapon to imbue with power. Something that might enable us to take down a kraken if my zombie whale discovered one.
My eyes were drawn to the ballistae mounted on the decks of the warship. Each of these fired a heavy 10-foot spear, capable of smashing through a ship’s hull. But for the kraken, these would be about as damaging as toothpicks.
But what if these toothpicks were infused with Death magic?
To take down the kraken, I needed Death ballistae on all five of my warships. These would also be pretty damn useful against the Transcendent Sails, so there was that too.
I walked over to the nearest ballista and put my hands on the bow section of the weapon, thinking that this was how an ankle-tall pixie must feel when looking at a human weapon. The bowstring was as