I gulped. The dagger’s weight felt like a millstone.
“Why were you so afraid of me using the dagger to channel Death magic?” I asked. “And what would have happened if Jort had cut me with it?”
“The results could have been catastrophic for all of us,” Isu continued. “That dagger contains an intense concentration of the Blood God’s power. Fusing your magic with it would be to invite him to take possession of both your body and soul. That way, he would be able to take physical form in this plane in the body of not just a man but a god. He would have taken over your body, heart, mind, and soul. All the work your uncle and the Blood God’s other followers are trying to bring about would have been achieved. You would have become the Blood God incarnate.”
“Damn,” I murmured, staring at the bundle of rags. “Good thing I didn’t try it, huh?”
“Yes,” she muttered. “Good thing indeed.”
“How did Jort end up becoming a Blood Demon? Did he die of natural causes, to then be ‘possessed’ by the Blood God, or did someone else make him into a Blood Demon?”
“Someone would have cut him with one of those daggers. And then he would have wandered the earth in search of another dagger like the one that made him. There are many, scattered across the world. Most have been buried or hidden in inaccessible places. That’s why the fellow looked so disheveled. His corpse probably had to wander for weeks before finding this dagger. That’s why you will need to bury it deep.”
“We need to find those daggers. Do you know where they are?”
“No one knows. Not even the Blood God. He must send his demons wandering across the earth like a pack of bloodhounds, sniffing out the weapons.”
“They won’t find this one.” I stared at the cursed dagger. “I’ll get my skeletons to dig all night until they’ve made a hole as deep as a fucking gold mine. I’ll bury the dagger in it and make sure whoever comes looking for it next will be here digging for a couple of years.”
“That would be a wise course of action.”
Still, the Blood Demon had found me. It made me think the Blood God had some means of tracking me.
“How did this Blood Demon find us?” I asked Isu.
“Now that one is easy to answer. He sniffed you out—your blood, that is. Everyone has their own unique ‘fingerprint’ when it comes to blood. Your uncle has sacrificed his own blood to the Blood God, so the Blood God knows its scent, its imprint, well. Yours will be similar. It is a simple task for him to ‘sniff’ you out wherever you go.”
“Fuck. My uncle has fucked me over again.”
“That’s right.”
“This thing isn’t going to be completely over until I’ve killed the Blood God, is it?”
“No. The only way this will end is with one of you dying.”
“Then,” I said resolutely, slamming my right fist into the palm of my left hand, “I’m gonna finish what my ancestor Uger started. I’m gonna kill the Blood God once and for all, and I’m gonna eat that fucker’s soul.”
Chapter Ten
The journey to the Wastes took another two weeks on the road. We didn’t run into much trouble, besides the odd pack of bandits. They either fled from us or foolishly tried to fight. My undead swiftly crushed them. Aside from such instances, the trip was uneventful. Hilly land, thick with forest, gave way to harsher terrain: barren, rock-strewn fields where nothing but long grasses and a few gnarly, crooked trees grew. Across these plains, an endless wind howled, and there was no life, human or otherwise, to be seen. As we journeyed farther north, the weather grew colder, and we soon began to see scattered drifts of snow lying on the desolate fields.
A few days later, the landscape changed yet again. Snowfalls became more frequent, and the terrain was often blanketed out entirely with white. Trees common to the colder climate of the North, like firs and pines, began to appear. They too were dusted with snow, as was everything else here.
As the snow grew ever thicker and the cold fiercer, creatures of the frozen Wastes also started to appear. Huge bears with white coats, white direwolves, white tigers, and even, from a distance, great lumbering beasts covered in shaggy fur with long trunks for noses and mighty tusks.
By the time we were within a few days’ ride of Drok’s settlement, my harpy finally made contact with Rami-Xayon. I used Talon’s claws to scratch the location of Drok’s settlement, a long and arduous task given my harpy’s poor intelligence. Rami-Xayon arranged to join my party there, in a village called Hothgrum. She was somewhere in the North, close enough to get to Hothgrum in a couple of days. She sounded dejected, though, and I suspected that she had failed in her quest. I would find out soon enough.
The closer we grew to Hothgrum, the more excited Drok became. He acted like a crazed puppy, a puppy that weighed close to four hundred pounds, stank of rancid troll diarrhea, and could single-handedly plow through a platoon of Splendorous Army troops in berserker mode. I had to wonder what his wife looked like and how she handled his reek when they were kissing—or, worse, getting it on. Perhaps, though, she smelt even worse than he did. You never knew with these northern barbarians.
I found myself wondering about the Wise Woman. I was very interested to learn what she could tell me about this supposed super weapon with which I could defeat the Blood God’s Demogorgon and possibly even the Blood God himself. I also wondered if she knew anything about the story of my ancestor Uger and Kemji. Most of these northern barbarians were illiterate, but because they passed their history down orally, they usually had
