Of course, being a limb the Blood God, this Blood Demon was hundreds of times stronger and more resilient than any man. Even so, the damage of this one hit was far more significant than what I’d managed to do to the last Blood Demon with Elyse’s mace. A single blow of my Plague Fists was like 20 of those blows all concentrated into one crushing strike. As the Blood Demon landed from my necrotic punch, I slammed a vicious right cross into its jaw, nearly tearing the demon’s head off its shoulders.
Even in this state, the Blood Demon sneered at me, its red eyes dripping blood. With its head flopping grotesquely from the piece of meat that somehow kept it attached to the burly body, it came for me again.
“Haven’t had enough yet, asshole?” I yelled. “Well, come on, the God of Death has plenty more punishment for you!”
The Blood Demon lunged and swung a punch aimed at my stomach. Instead of dodging or blocking the creature’s arm, I allowed it to strike my breastplate—after all, I had another new toy to put to the test. As Friya had said, when the demon merely touched my breastplate, it fired a blast of Cold Magic into its hand. The hand instantly turned blue, before ice crystals formed around it, and then, as the fingers froze solid, three of them fell off with a sharp crack and shattered on the floor into shards of ice.
“Damn,” I muttered, ducking under a left hook the demon swung at my head. “This works even better than I’d hoped!”
“Get him, Vance!” Anna shouted from the sidelines. “Get that ugly thing!”
“Kill the Blood Demon!” Rami-Xayon yelled. “Destroy that foul creature, God of Death!”
“All right, you sack of goat spunk,” I said, “playtime is over. Now you die.”
I charged in, slamming blow after blow of my Plague Fists into the demon, bobbing and weaving and ducking under whatever punches it threw at me and smashing it with furious combos. Bits of the demon’s flesh, black and rotting, flew off with every crunching blow, until eventually, I planted a perfect uppercut onto its jaw, the force ripping its head right off and sending it sailing up into the treetops.
The demon’s torn-apart body crumpled at my feet, and the putrefaction magic that had spread quickly transformed what was left into a reeking black lump of festering goo that slowly melted into the earth.
I released the putrefaction magic from my body, and the black roots that had spread through the soil withdrew into my feet, and my hands returned to their natural color.
“Those were some powerful fists, Lord Vance,” Rollar said. “The might you put behind those blows makes even the biggest and strongest warrior look like a weakling.”
“And that putrefaction magic was pretty damn spectacular,” Anna said.
“Some new skills I picked up, thanks to the warriors of your tribe, Friya and Drok,” I said before turning to Elyse. “And thanks to the mission work of your friends Cranton and Grast.”
“You are ready to take on your uncle and his servants,” Isu said. “Your powers are approaching those of a major god now.”
I had to flash her a proud smile. Compliments from Isu were rare, and I wanted her to know that I appreciated it. For all the suspicion I had about her intentions, she remained the reason I’d become a necromancer and then the God of Death in the first place. Without her, I’d never have been anything more than an assassin and a crypt diver. Sure, I would have been a brilliant crypt diver and one of the greatest assassins in all of Prand, but neither of those things came even close to being the God of Death. I figured Isu and I needed some alone time, and a heart-to-heart talk. Her attitude had been changing in recent times, and I could tell that she wanted to get something off her chest. I needed to hear it from the horse’s mouth, without Rami-Xayon swaying me. I needed to judge for myself. Besides, guilt is a hell of a burden, and we were heading into ever more dangerous territory. I needed my allies as strong as they could be.
Before that, I still had some other business to take care of. I ordered my undead troops to spend the rest of the night digging a deep hole to bury the Blood dagger; we didn’t want another Blood Demon to find this weapon too easily. Then, I went to have a word with Friya. I found her easily enough, before she’d turned in for the night.
“Friya,” I said, “you said that when you removed the concealment spells from the gauntlet, it would start to attract candidates for wearing it.”
“Such as the Blood Demon you just fought, yes.”
“There’s something that’s been bugging me. If all the dragons are dead and extinct, and I’m the only one who can resurrect a dragon and use the gauntlets to control it, then why does anyone else want the gauntlets? I get that they’re potent magical items, of course, but their purpose is very specific.”
“The answer is twofold,” she said. “First, there are those who, like your uncle, and Rollar, to an extent, simply seek out all sorts of magical items for the powers they unleash, even if those powers are beyond their means to control. Also, in that subset of people are a small group who—again, like your uncle—possess powerful magic of their own. Some, perhaps not Rodrick, but others—wizards, warlocks, and other such beings—are able to break down magical items and repurpose their magic. So, they could take this gauntlet and change its powers from the control of dragons to something else.”
“I guess that changes things, yeah. And second?”
“The servants of the Blood God see the weapon—and rightly so—as a threat
