Bone Lord 4, стр. 49
“I think it’s time to shoot ballistae!” I roared.
While we were still just outside the effective range of the Church weapons, their ships were very much in range of ours. The instant I yelled out this command every one of my ballistae, each aimed at a different ship’s hull, fired their Death spears. The projectiles streaked through the air and punched barrel-sized holes in the hulls of the enemy ships, which seemed more than eager to let seawater come gushing in.
The battle was on.
“Yes Captain Chauzec, yes!” Percy roared, his nervousness banished at the sight of suddenly floundering enemy ships.
“Reload!” I yelled before I turned to Rami-Xayon. “You ready for this?”
“Your Plague Storm combined with my Hurricane powers will hit them like nothing they could ever have imagined,” Rami-Xayon said with a grin.
“These sons of bitches are about to get smashed with a Plague Hurricane.”
We both closed our eyes and focused on our respective powers. Rami-Xayon called up a hurricane, while I infused it with the Putrefaction energy from my zombies and the whale. A huge black cloud glowing with streaks of yellow and green began to materialize in a whirling vortex above the bulk of the Church fleet. Seconds later, the storm broke, and for the Transcendent Sails soldiers who were caught in it, it was a storm straight from the bowels of hell.
Not only were ships tossed around in the raging winds and battering waves, but a foul squall of rain was wreaking havoc among them, splattering slimy globs all over dozens of ships.
While this storm raged in the center of the Church fleet, my fast and agile pirate ships on the flanks started raining fire on the outermost warships. With the sticky, highly flammable tar mixture of their fire arrows hitting the sails and decks of these warships, it wasn’t long before they began to go up in flames. And now that the outermost ships were being set alight, it was time for the next phase of our plan.
“Call off your hurricane, Rami-Xayon,” I said. “It’s time to send this fireship into their midst.”
Rami-Xayon ceased her hurricane, but I continued to let my Plague Storm rage.
“Percy, hand me my bow,” I said.
He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for this, Captain Chauzec.” He lit up a fire arrow before handing me my longbow and the burning projectile.
I notched the fire arrow, took aim at the deck of the fireship, and loosed. The arrow ripped through the air and slammed into the tar-covered deck. Within seconds the entire ship was on fire, burning with a hellish fury.
Rami-Xayon sent a powerful gust of wind into the fireship’s sails (which had been soaked with seawater so they wouldn’t burn right away), and the flaming vessel raced across the ocean, making straight for the close-packed core of the Church fleet. The warships spotted the massive fiery deathtrap rushing toward them and tried to maneuver around, but all they succeeded in doing was crashing into each other
“Is it time, Captain Chauzec?” Percy asked eagerly, all traces of his earlier nerves gone. “Is it time to unleash the kraken?!”
“Almost, Percy, almost. Let’s just light a few of these suckers up, shall we?”
I pulled out my kusarigama and started summoning man-sized tornados with a crack of its chain. On their own, these little wind rascals would have been pretty useless against a ship, but in the way I was using them, they were gloriously destructive.
I used my tornados to scoop up burning tar goo from the deck of the fireship, and they became tornados of howling fire. Then I hurled these spinning devils of tar and flame onto the decks of enemy warships, setting them alight and burning screaming enemy soldiers to ashes.
The fireship was now in the midst of the Church Navy, setting ships alight all around it. The roaring flames jumped from ship to ship via my fire tornadoes. Soldiers and sailors all across the enemy fleet were writhing in agony on their decks, which were choked with the thick, yellow-green fog of my Plague magic.
“Let’s rain some acid on them!” I yelled when I’d had my fun with that, and had put on quite the show for my apparently bloodthirsty new pal Percy.
My enemies were dying in droves, but their suffering had only just begun. Rami-Xayon called up another hurricane to batter the fleet, but this time Isu infused the clouds with acid, and the rain that lashed the ships from this storm melted both steel and flesh.
The Transcendent Sails Fleet was floundering in disarray, and now it was time to hit them with my most devastating weapon.
“What do you think, Percy?” I said. “Time to unleash our pet?”
“Get ‘em, Captain Chauzec, get ‘em!”
I decided to start with the ships behind us, who were closing in. I launched myself into the undead kraken. The moment my spirit fused with its body, I felt a potent hunger: a hunger for ships. I swam up to the closest ship and shot my many arms up out of the water, grabbing the ship’s mast and deck and sides. The suckers of my tentacles stuck like glue to the vessel, which felt as flimsy as a balsawood model. I laughed, observing the scene through my own eyes and the kraken’s simultaneously, then I tore the ship to splinters. As the ship disintegrated, screaming soldiers and sailors tumbled into the ocean, where my zombie sharks were waiting to tear them to bloody pieces.
I moved to the next ship, meanwhile sending my whale to ram a massive hole in the hull of the ship behind it. Panicking sailors and soldiers jumped off the whale-rammed ship as it sank, and either drowned, pulled under by the weight of their armor, or died in the jaws of my sharks.
My kraken’s hunger for