I eagerly clambered up the gray branches and snatched the glowing figure from the branch, grinning as a zap of energy sizzled inside my bones. My muscles swelled with new strength, and my soul felt as if a raging fire had been ignited in its core. I was advancing now beyond the limitations of being a minor deity. Now, with these new skills and an increase in my life force, energy, and general ability to wield magical power, I was becoming a respected deity. I wasn’t quite in the league of the major gods just yet, but that stratospheric advancement was nowhere near as distant as it had formerly been.
As for the fact that there was a second skill available for me to pluck, I figured that Cranton and Grast were being successful in their mission of spreading the word about the Temple of Necrosis and gathering worshipers of Death all across Prand. They were proving to be adept proselytizers. For every Death Coin they passed out to a disgruntled warrior, a neglected assassin, a disillusioned rogue, or an angry mercenary—all of whom had been let down by the Church of Light or whatever other god they had followed—I gained strength. Indeed, the fog was already starting to clear from the upper branches of the tree, more hints of half-visible powers tantalizingly revealed.
The other power I was able to rip like a fat fruit from the mid-level branches of the tree was a pair of gray fists, black smoke rising from them. An intriguing find. I gripped the glowing fists, ripped them off the branch, and felt another surge of fresh power. This was a different sort of power; it felt more connected to the forces of rot and decay, somehow—a gray, stinking power, slimy and laden with disease and putrefying flesh. As the gray stench of this new power filled me, like the vile gas of a bloated rotting body, I began to understand what I had acquired.
It was something I would call Plague Fists.
A vision entered my mind of myself, unarmed, surrounded by enemy warriors closing in. I raised my hands, taking a pugilist’s stance, and called on the power of the Plague Fists. The skin on my fists bubbled and blistered, turning a dark shade of gray, like the skin of a corpse dead for days. Then, as the first warrior got within range, I lashed out at him with a vicious right cross. The blow hit him with the force of a hundred zombies’ combined strength. Like the chain of my kusarigama, this power drew on the strength of the dead, but it was an entirely different method of drawing on power. My Plague Fists drew on the power of the rot that was eating away at the bodies of the dead—those fallen in battles, those freshly buried, those rotting in catacombs. Dark veins of blackness shot out through my feet into the soil, snaking out in all directions, seeking out dead, rotting bodies, and drinking in the putrefaction that was consuming them, converting it to power that would be transmitted through my fists.
In addition to the tremendous power of the blows I was able to strike, there was also an instant transferral of the putrefaction from my fist to whatever I hit. In that way, these Plague Fists were like the very first necrotic weapons I had ever used: my throwing stars. The rot that spread from one strike of my fists, though, was far more powerful than that produced by my throwing stars, which I barely used anyway, since they were not effective against Fated or magic-resistant opponents. These Plague Fists, however, would be effective even against adversaries like those.
I couldn’t wait to try them out.
With no skills left to pluck, I jumped out of the tree and bounced off the springy ground, which was soft and forgiving, despite looking as smooth as polished marble. Immediately after, with a harsh shudder, I was dropped back in my body, back into the darkness of the dense night forest.
A twig snapped near me, and I looked up, expecting to see Isu, perhaps, on one of her late-night walks. Maybe it was Rami-Xayon, coming to get from me what she’d been missing while she’d been away. I hoped it was because I’d missed that tight, eager body a lot. This last thought got a feeling of excitement stirring in my crotch.
However, the gait of the shadowy figure, after I began to perceive it more clearly through the gloom, quickly informed me that this was not one of my followers approaching. Then, I remembered something Friya had said about giving me the gauntlet: now that she had removed the concealment spells, the power of the gauntlet would draw seekers of it like moths to a flame, and some of those seekers would be servants of the Blood God. As the figure started to get closer, crashing determinedly through the undergrowth, I realized what it was that was coming through the trees.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “A fucking Blood Demon.”
The sight of a wavy dagger silhouetted against a huge yellow moon rising in the distance confirmed this suspicion. What I had on my side this time was speed. I now knew what to expect from a Blood Demon, and I possessed new weapons in my arsenal that I could use against this creature. But it might not be enough. I turned and sprinted back to camp for my breastplate. Friya had said that Cold magic was an especially effective form of magic to use against Blood Magic, and this Blood Demon would be the perfect equivalent of a wooden practice dummy.
I knew that my new Plague Fists were most effective against living opponents,
