“Damn it,” I muttered. “I was hoping for something a little more spectacular than that.”
Next, I aimed at a steel helm. The bolt zipped through the air and stuck in the helm, and this time, the magic took effect. From the point where the bolt had punctured the steel, a brownness started to spread across the helm.
“What’s happening?” Rami asked.
“It looks,” I said as I walked over to it to inspect it, “like the steel is being turned to wood.” I picked up the helm and felt that it was becoming lighter. I knocked on one of the brown sections and heard right away that I was correct. The steel was turning into wood. In less than a minute, the entire helm had turned from steel to wood.
I shot a piece of leather armor, and the same thing happened. Then, I fired off a bolt at a large rock, and it too turned to wood. Next, I decided to shoot one of my skeletons; I wanted to see if this magic worked on a living thing. Well, “living” wasn’t quite the right term to describe my skeletons, but it was close enough since it had once been an organic creature.
I blasted a little bolt through the skeleton’s skull and grinned with delight as the wood magic began to spread across the skeleton’s bones. Eventually, the entire undead soldier had become wood and could no longer move, let alone fight.
“Hold out your hand, Rollar,” I said. “Let’s see what it does to a human.”
“Uh, Vance, I do want to serve you as best I can, but—”
“Relax, relax, I’m joking.” I grinned.
His look of alarm quickly melted into a smile of relief, and he chuckled.
“I’m quite sure this magic will work on a man,” he said. “At least, one who is not Fated.”
I suspected the same thing; it would probably work the same way as my throwing stars—with their necrotic enchantment—did on non-Fated men.
“All right,” I said to everyone. “So, we’ve discovered what happened to the unfortunate people of Kroth, learned that the Blood God either controls some sort of monster or is able to walk the earth in the form of such. I also acquired a new ally in Rollar and a load of human troops on top of that. And I have this!” I brandished the crossbow. “A magic crossbow that can turn shit into wood. All in all, I’d say it’s been a pretty productive day. You should all get some rest. We’re heading straight to Brakith tomorrow. This time, nothing is going to stop us or delay us. It’s time for me to take back what my uncle stole from me and make that piece of goblin shit pay for his crimes.”
Everyone bid me good night and retired to their tents. As for me, I didn’t need any rest; my need to sleep had grown even weaker since I’d taken more souls this evening. I sat by the fire, alone, waiting for everyone to fall asleep. Then, I was going to go out to the woods to find Isu and discover exactly what she was doing on her own. She could sense my undead troops, but could she sense me? There was only one way to find out.
After an hour or two, the voices in the camp died down, and the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the eerie whistle and hiss of the wind through the trees. When I was sure everyone was asleep, I quietly got up and left the camp and crept into the woods.
“All right, Isu,” I whispered to the darkness. “Tonight, I find out your little secret.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I crept through the shadows, my senses on full alert. I needed to find Isu without alerting her to my presence. I was determined to catch her in the act of… well, whatever the hell it was she was doing on these late night solo disappearances.
As an assassin, moving around undetected was easy enough for me, but Isu wasn’t some drunk schlub of a duke or some fat, corrupt Church of Light bishop. While she was no longer a goddess, she had retained some elements of her former divinity. She was able to move like a ghost, had reflexes faster than any cat, and seemed to have a very powerful sixth sense. I had to be very careful here if I was going to have any chance of catching her unawares.
Was she busy working on a dark spell? Was she trying to somehow imbue her dagger with the ability to capture souls like Grave Oath? I mean, she had forged Grave Oath with her own hands thousands of years ago, so what was to stop her from making another soul-stealing dagger? Would she then engage me in a race for souls, trying to gain more souls than me in an effort to get her divinity back? Or was the truth much darker than that? Perhaps she had turned to blood sacrifices in desperation.
I slipped silently between two tall fir trees and paused as a light breeze blew through them, listening intently to see if any telltale sounds were being carried on the wind. After a moment or two, I heard Isu’s voice. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it was her all right.
“Okay, Isu,” I murmured. “The game is up. Tonight, I find out exactly what the fuck it is you’ve been doing in the dark.”
I darted from tree to tree, keeping my footfalls as light as a bird’s and ensuring that not a single sliver of moonlight caught any part of me. Since I had become a god, extreme stealth had come even more easily to me than it had
