“Well done, Vance,” she purred, gliding across the floor toward me, leaving a trail of bloody footsteps behind her. “Your command of the powers of Death was excellent. What do you think of your new servants?”
I managed to take my eyes off her sensual form just long enough to shoot glances at the skeletons standing on either side of me. Light glistened off her twin horns, their points deadly sharp.
I shrugged.“They’re all right, I guess. But kind of… primal, you know? The whole bare hands thing. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think they’d make much better warriors if they were able to grip a sword or swing an ax.”
Isu’s full lips curled into a strange smile that could have been either mocking, seductive, or offended—or all three at once.
“Indeed they would.” She slid up to me, her blood-liquid breasts and hips gleaming in the light. “And they will—when I am stronger. I need more souls, Vance. More souls, more power. Give me what I desire, and I will make you the most potent necromancer in the world.”
It didn’t sound like too bad of a deal to me. I enjoyed wielding Grave Oath and meting out my own personal brand of fucked-up justice to pieces of shit like Rollar’s troops and the scumbags who had stolen my birthright from me. And if killing assholes like them strengthened Isu’s powers, which in turn enhanced my budding powers, well, I was quite happy to keep doing it. I definitely wanted to see what else I could do with these newfound abilities and find out just how far I could take this whole necromancer thing.
“I can do that, Isu,” I said, looking her slowly and openly up and down. “Say, are you ever going to be able to take human form?”
She smiled slyly. “Feed me more souls, and you’ll find out. For now, I have another gift for you. Give me your throwing stars.”
Curious about what she was going to do with them, I held them out for her to take. Blood dripped onto my outstretched hands when she took them; it seemed that she was already losing grip on her physical form.
She stepped back and held the throwing stars up in her palms. Within moments, they had been absorbed, sinking into the dark blood with a hiss as if they had been dipped into cold water fresh from the forge. The chamber suddenly resounded with an ominous whispering, as if 10,000 phantoms had all been summoned—but as quickly as this sound appeared, it was gone, leaving only a charged silence in its wake.
My throwing stars re-emerged from Isu’s blood-hands, and she stepped over and held them out for me again. I took them, and immediately noticed that they had turned black like obsidian. As I tucked them back into their slots on my belt, I saw that my palms were all bloody, but the blood sizzled and evaporated in puffs of dark, curling smoke, leaving my hands clean.
“I have enchanted your throwing stars with necrotic magic. You will find them to be quite effective against your average soldier, but perhaps not so potent against those whose lives are charmed with Fate Threads. Give me more souls, though, and I will imbue your weapons with increasingly potent magic…”
“Thank you, Isu. I—”
“More souls, Vance,” she whispered as the blood sloughed off her, leaving no trace of her exquisite form. “Give me more souls, and you will have everything your heart desires.”
Her voice faded to a whisper, and the last remnants of her shape splashed to the floor in bloody puddles, while a swirl of black smoke in the vague form of a woman rose from where she had been standing and dissipated into the air. I’d wanted to ask her a lot more questions, but I figured they’d have to wait.
“All right, you two,” I said to the skeletons. “Time to get rolling. We’ve got souls to trap and a lordship to take back. I’m not sure how useful you two are gonna be in that, but you can tag along for now. Let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t know if the skeletons understood my language. Right now, I wasn’t feeling any of the electrical tingling that indicated that my powers were accessible; it seemed to appear of its own accord, when I really needed it.
I remembered hearing something about mages learning to wield magical powers, though, that reminded me of this situation. They too struggled to call up their magic at will in the beginning. It seemed to be one of those things that got easier the more you practiced. So, pretty much like most things in life.
I didn’t feel like hanging around the crypt any longer, and since the skeletons weren’t giving me any indication that they had heard or could understand anything I had said, I figured I should just get going and see if they followed me. If not, well, I could probably create more of them anyway.
Without looking at them again, I turned and headed out. I grinned when I heard their skeletal feet clacking on the stone floor behind me. Excellent; I now had two undead bodyguards, and with them being skeletons and all, they wouldn’t be needing food, water, shelter, or pay. Deals didn’t come a lot better than that.
We were heading up the final set of stairs that led out of the crypt when a sudden bright light blazed brighter than sunlight from down in the crypt. The skeletons exploded in twin showers of bone fragments, pulverized by an unseen force.
“What the fuck?” I roared, half surprised, half enraged.
As the bone dust cleared around me, I looked down, shielding my eyes. Against the near-blinding shimmering light, I saw a heavily armored warrior; only his flowing locks of blond hair and gleaming armor of gold showed as more than a mere black against the white backdrop.
“Vile servant of Death!” he said
