Bone Lord 4, стр. 58

Rami-Xayon’s face was contorted into an expression verging on agony, and it didn’t look like she was succeeding at all. She gritted her teeth, intensifying the blast of her twin tornadoes, sweat beaded on her forehead, her limbs started to tremble. Then, just as it seemed as if she’d banished the gale, it came back in brutal force, bowling her over and blowing her twin tornados away completely. The howling hurricane knocked everyone except me off their feet, but even I had to struggle to keep my footing against its power.

“His powers are too great!” Rami-Xayon cried. “The warlock is too strong!”

“Come on, we need to find shelter!” I yelled. “Preferably in a thick stone building. We don’t want to be out here when the lightning strikes again.”

There was a sturdy-looking inn, named the Plump Herons, around fifty yards from us. Although the distance was short, it took us a good ten or fifteen minutes to fight our way there. Once we reached the doors, it took a good five minutes of hammering on them and yelling before anyone heard us over the storm and opened up.

The innkeeper seemed happily surprised to see anyone, and gladly took our coin and showed us to our rooms. While the others went to sleep, I needed to head to a different place, a different plane altogether. The battle against the Transcendent Sails had given me plenty of souls, and I suspected there would be a new skill waiting for me on the Gray Sentinel. Considering how powerful the Warlock was, I couldn’t get this skill soon enough.

As soon as I was alone in my room, I traveled to the Black Plane, and in one gigantic leap I reached the Gray Sentinel. Sure enough, a brand-new skill was glowing in the upper branches, heavy and ripe for the plucking. I jumped vertically upward, soaring like a loosed arrow into the black sky. I landed with acrobatic grace on the branch below the new skill, and when I saw what it was, a broad grin broke across my face.

The three-dimensional image was that of a titan, a monstrous being who made Frost Giants look like shrimps. But this was no ordinary titan; his entire body was made up of hundreds of corpses and bones, human and animal, all stuck together like grotesque building blocks with the power of Death energy.

“A Death Titan,” I murmured. “Nice, very nice.”

Then I grabbed the skill, felt the jolt of the new magic fuse with my soul, then backflipped off the branch and zipped back into the physical present before I hit the ground.

I was sure that the Warlock was looking for me, and that the storm raging outside was directed at me. It was only a matter of time before he discovered where I was and began directing his lightning strikes at this building. In the same manner I had used to strengthen the tower shield with Death energy, I began to fortify the inn’s walls and rooftop.

Gongxiong was an ancient harbor. People had been living here for thousands of years. And where there were people, there was Death, and plenty of it. So when I plunged my spirit through the foundations of the inn and into the dirt beneath the town, I didn’t have to look too far to find Death energy. There were hundreds of thousands of skeletons buried in the numerous layers of soil beneath the town. I pulled the icy substance of lingering death from their rotting bones and channeled it up, fusing it with the solidity of the stone walls and the stout oaken roof of the inn, until both substances had reached the point of saturation, and could hold no more Death energy.

I wasn’t sure how effective it would be against a lightning strike, but we couldn’t exactly go outside either, so it was best to stay within the inn.

I touched the walls, and they were so cold it almost burned. The room was also filled with a slight odor of putrefaction and rot. My party members wouldn’t be able to detect it, well maybe Friya would with her wolf-like sense of smell. The stench would be undetected by the others, though. Its presence was good; the magic was strong.

Once we were out in the open country again, though, things could well get a lot more dangerous.

Taverns in port towns were always good places to pick up the latest news and rumors, but considering how depopulated this town was, I wondered if there’d be anyone out drinking at all. I figured going out and exploring a little would be worth a shot, at least. If anyone saw me, then it might prevent the Warlock from throwing a lightning strike at the inn where my party members were sleeping.

I changed out of my assassin’s armor, and went to ask Zhenwan if I could borrow some of his Yengish clothes and a hood.

But Zhenwan had a better idea.

“I think the innkeeper’s relative must be a blind monk,” he said. “I saw monk’s robes hanging on a line in one of the back rooms. I’ll accompany you, pretending to be showing you around, and that way I can pick up on Yengish conversations you might have missed.”

“Blind monk, huh?”

“Yes. They are an ancient but highly secretive order. Here in Yeng, the order’s most devoted monks voluntarily have their eyes burned out; only when one loses one’s sight can one truly learn to see, they say.”

“Sounds fucking nuts to me. Imagine never being able to see a pair of perfect tits again! I’ll take titties over enlightenment any day, thank you very much.”

“Come, Lord Chauzec, let’s get you into the robes,” Zhenwan said as our laughter subsided.

I went downstairs and crept around. With my assassin’s training, stealing the robe from the back room was child’s play. It was a long yellow robe, one that would completely cover my face, so it was perfect. When I took it up to my room