“When you reach the cosmic sea,” I hissed into his ear as his body shriveled, “tell the others that Rollar will be joining you all soon.”
I yanked Grave Oath out of his body and flung his shrunken corpse to the ground, then grabbed the horse’s reins and took control of it. I sheathed my dagger before raising my kusarigama again as I charged at the floundering infantrymen. The human soldiers were desperately trying to fight off my skeletons.
Leaning out of my saddle to the left, then right, then left again, I lopped off head after head with the kusarigama’s bladed end. It was just like the days of knight training I’d had as a teenager, except these weren’t watermelons on poles I was hacking off.
With each body I decapitated, I took another soul, and my power grew.
In a few moments, it was all over. Not one of the enemy soldiers was left alive.
I reined in the horse and surveyed the battle scene. Dozens of dead soldiers and horses, decapitated heads, and disembodied limbs lay scattered across the road. A few of my weaker skeletons had been killed, but my troops had barely suffered any losses.
Fang was chewing contentedly on a dead soldier, with only the man’s legs sticking out of his jaws. Elyse had dispelled her golden plate armor and now wore only her skimpy white dress, while Rami had dismounted and was cleaning the blood off her sais. Isu knelt beside a dead soldier, tugged off his breastplate, and then proceeded to carve his heart out of his chest.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“A favor,” she answered.
“Favor?”
“Have a look over there.” She pointed through the trees.
I followed the line of her finger and saw a cairn of stones located a few yards off the road. On top of the cairn stood a crude figure a few inches tall, made of a few twigs and strips of tree bark tied together.
“You’re paying homage to a god?” I asked.
“Yes. But not the one the cairn was built for. That god doesn’t exist. It is merely a figment of the imagination of the primitive minds who live deep within these woods.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I understood her intentions. “You’re making an offering to me, aren’t you?”
“Well done, Vance Chauzec.” She stood from the corpse, clutching the bloody heart in her right hand. “We’re going to take over this cairn and make it a shrine dedicated to the new God of Death.”
Chapter Three
“You’re going to use a human heart as a sacrifice?” I asked Isu as we wandered over to the cairn while the others rifled through the corpses for useful equipment. “That sounds suspiciously like something a follower of the Blood God would do.”
“This isn’t a sacrifice,” she answered. “He’s an enemy you killed, not a sacrificial victim. By anointing the cairn with the blood of an enemy, you can claim it as your own.”
“These Sturnian woodsfolk pray to these things, but what’s the actual point? Do prayers really do anything? What concrete benefits would I get from all this?”
Isu frowned at me. “Nabu got his powers from blood sacrifices, correct? And in turn, he dedicated the sacrifices he made and the blood he shed to the Blood God, who became more powerful with every virgin who was sacrificed in his name. And some of that power—but only a sliver, because the Blood God is a jealous god—was passed on to the mortal who made the sacrifice.”
“Surely that’s not the only way for a god to get power?”
“That’s what I’m attempting to elucidate. Most gods don’t require human sacrifices, or blood sacrifices of any kind. None of us ‘new’ gods want or need those things. Those were reserved for the primeval gods, like the Blood God, a cruel and primitive deity who flourished during the days of the First Men.”
“Primeval gods? Are they anything for me to worry about?” It was worth knowing whether I’d have competitors or allies. As far as I knew, the Lord of Light had slain all the gods, but it seemed that those stories had been mostly lies.
“Civilization brought about the end of the primeval gods,” Isu explained. “Without blood sacrifices, their power waned until they were no more. The new gods, like myself, obtained our powers through other means.”
“Uh. . .” I smiled at Isu and tilted my head. “You’re not a god anymore. So, I figure you’re an old-new god.”
She bore her teeth, but she wasn’t smiling.
I laughed. “Don’t just stand there glaring. Tell me how new gods—like myself—grow in power from these things.” I gestured at the cairn.
“What is a prayer?” Isu asked.
“A string of words that falls upon deaf ears,” I answered. “Wait—can I hear prayers?” I cocked my head and pretended to listen. “Nothing. Is there some trick involved?”
“Even if you could hear prayers, there’s no one praying to you. Not yet.”
“So, I’ll be able to hear prayers in the future?”
Isu shook her head. “That’s not the purpose of them. They are a request from a mortal to a god, and the means through which a mortal can praise a god. It is a sacrifice of sorts. A small one, yes, but one all the same.”
“A sacrifice of time,” I said, finally understanding. “And the souls I kill with Grave Oath, or those gathered by people who hold my coins, they are sacrifices too?”
Isu’s lips curled into a dark smile, and a strange look flashed across her pupil-less eyes. “Grave Oath doesn’t discriminate. Whoever you kill, their souls will be given as a sacrifice. Whether an innocent child or a vile rapist. Power is a dangerous weapon to wield. It can destroy you as completely as it can destroy those you wield it against. You could very well become more powerful by taking the
