Bone Lord 4, стр. 39
“Yes,” I murmured, “a number of these, enchanted with my Death magic, will do the trick.”
Again, I closed my eyes and touched the weapon. I wouldn’t enchant the ballistae with necrotic magic. That would be useful against a living opponent, like the kraken, but wouldn’t do anything against warships. I needed something that would damage both types of opponents.
I hadn’t smacked anyone with my Plague Fists for a while, but I did remember just how much explosive Death power was contained in one of those fists. When I swung my Plague Fists at an opponent, the concentrated, channeled Death magic in my knuckles packed as much power as a man-sized war hammer swung by a Frost Giant. That sort of explosive impact was the kind of power that would allow the ballistae’s huge spears to punch through a ship’s hull. Hell, it might even provide enough power to burst through one ship, smash straight out the other side of it, and bust a hole through the hull of the next ship, and the one behind that one.
For this, I needed to access the ancient Death energy buried deep beneath the ocean floor. I sent my spirit plunging downward through the depths of the icy waters beneath me. Wherever things lived, they died, and there was plenty of life and death in the oceans.
I found it, a ton of it, on the ocean floor and below, where skeletons of fish, sharks, whales, and other things were buried below the silt. There were wrecked ships too, some a hundred years old, others a thousand or far older, and the skeletons of the sailors on them who had drowned. Plunging down deeper, there were the fossilized remains of other, stranger creatures, none of which I recognized.
I pulled all of this Death energy up, channeling it through myself, and started to pour some of it into the ballista. It was as if I had a giant cauldron full of rotting corpses, and I was pouring out the black sludge of putrefaction into the weapon. As with Drok’s axes, I felt an intense cold blast through the ballista and knew the enchantment was complete.
When I opened my eyes, the entire ballista, made of steel and wood, had now turned a glossy black; one down, something like two dozen more to go. It took me another hour or two, and we were ready to hunt some kraken.
By now, the pirate ships had caught up with us, and all of the vessels were sailing together as one fleet. I called everyone together, the pirate crew too, for a meeting on the main warship, which I’d made the flagship of my fleet.
“All right people, listen up!” I said. “It turns out the Transcendent Sails is patrolling the sea around the coast of Yeng. Do we look like a bunch of weasels to you? No! Let’s give them exactly what they’re looking for; let’s give them a fucking fight! What do you say, who wants to hang some self-righteous assholes from the masts by their entrails?”
Everyone cheered enthusiastically.
“So, we have one more mission to take care of before we’re ready to take them on.”
“But Vance, time is running short,” Friya said. “The Blood God grows stronger with every passing minute. We must find the Dragon Gauntlet.”
“Everything we plan to do is necessary to get us to Yeng in the first place, and once we get there, we’ll be more than ready to face any challenge. What we need is a kraken.” I paused to chuckle and look around the circle of gasping faces. “Preferably two; three would be even better. Then I’ll resurrect it, and well, you know the drill. We’ll crush those Transcendent Sails ships like matchsticks.”
“Captain Chauzec,” Percy said warily, “I mean no offense, o’ course, but you don’t just go killing a kraken like ya would a shark or a whale. Even the strongest damned warship in all the Dozen Sears couldn’t stand a chance against a kraken. Sure, you’re a, well, a god, but you’re looking to send us all to a watery grave.” He paused to swallow a lump in his throat. “No offense,” he coughed.
“That’s why I’ve enchanted every ballista on my warships with Death magic. Each one can now fire a projectile enhanced with Death power. I haven’t tested them, but I figure they’re strong enough to blow a wagon-wheel-sized hole through a whale. And if there was another whale behind it, the spear would tear a hole through that one too.”
Everyone glanced at the newly enchanted ballistae, and awed murmurs broke out across my crew.
“I’m guessing krakens only attack at night because they can’t stand daylight,” I said. “They’re supposed to live down in the ocean depths, so their eyes can’t stand daylight. If we can get the kraken to fight in daylight, it’ll essentially be fighting blind, which would give us one hell of an advantage.”
“But, Lord Vance,” Rollar said, “if these creatures lurk far below the surface and only emerge at night, how do we get one to come up from the depths and fight in the daytime?”
“We need two things,” I answered. “First, bait. Second, a decoy. The bait will be my whale. As for the decoy…” I turned to Rami-Xayon.
“I… I don’t see any other ships around here,” Rami-Xayon commented, trying to determine why I was singling her out.
“No,” I said, “but you’re thinking in the right direction. You’re going to use your Wind powers to get me one. And you, Anna-Lucielle,” I added, turning to her, “are going to use your Charm powers to make sure the creature attacks the right ship.”
“I could do that, using Rollar’s Beast Helm,” Anna-Lucielle said, “if I could get close enough to the kraken to tune in to its mind.”
“Don’t worry about that,”