To the credit of my party members, after a night of sea sickness, they were moving around quite comfortably on deck. In the meantime, I’d met all the pirates for at least a short chat, and they all seemed to be good, dependable men—for pirates and outlaws anyway. They’d all seen what I could do in a fight, and that was without using any of my magic, so none of them even vaguely considered the idea of messing with me. They were earning twice what they had been under Captain Argryl’s command, they were doing what they loved—sailing the High Seas—and while they weren’t too happy about the ban on robbing and killing innocents, it was a sacrifice they were happy to make in return for the benefits that came with serving under my command.
The pirates were curious about what I could do with my Death powers, and the opportunity to demonstrate it came along on the second day at sea. We came across a whale carcass floating belly-up. I sensed the presence of the gigantic dead creature long before we actually saw it: a death like that sent out a signal to me like a glowing beacon in the dark.
When we neared the dead whale, we saw that a few huge chunks had been ripped out of the creature’s body. The flesh looked like it was torn off by some sort of enormous mouth, and strange sucker marks covered the whale’s skin. Some big sharks were feeding on the whale carcass in a frenzy, tearing off chunks of flesh and blubber. Each of the sharks was a good 10-12 feet long and could easily have chomped a man in the water in half.
But I doubted they had been responsible for this kill. The sharks were merely taking advantage of a carcass left over from an even larger predator.
“Rami-Xayon,” I said, “call off your wind for a second. I want to have a closer look at this.”
“Looks like the work of a kraken,” Percy remarked gravely, squinting at the carcass. “Aye, Captain Chauzec, see those big sucker marks? Those are from the kraken’s huge tentacles.”
“Why didn’t it eat the whale?” Elyse asked as she peered over my shoulder.
“Krakens like to play with their prey. Sometimes, they kill just for the fun of it. Right bastards, they are. A big one can break a warship in half and pull it under the waves.”
“Can it now?” I stared at the sharks as they fed with bloodthirsty eagerness on the dead whale. I really wasn’t thinking much else right then; there was something hypnotizing about seeing those massive sharks looking much like ants picking at a slice of fruit pie left lying in the grass after a picnic.
“Terrible bloody creatures, those damn sharks,” Percy remarked. “Vultures of the sea, they are. They follow us around sometimes when we’re raiding. They seem to have a sense for when battle is near, and then they have a good ol’ feast, with all the bodies falling into the water. Any man who goes overboard don’t last too long in these shark-infested waters, whether he’s hit and dead or not.”
“Get me a crossbow,” I said. “And bring the crew over here. I want to show them something.”
“All right, Captain,” Percy said before bellowing out, “All hands, over here, ya scurvy dogs! And bring the captain a crossbow!”
The pirates scurried over, and one of them brought a crossbow, which he handed to me with a mischievous grin.
“Going to practice your sharpshootin’ on them sharks, Captain?” he asked.
“I’m going to do more than just shoot a few sharks,” I answered with a grin.
Chapter Eight
“Top of its head, Captain; that’ll do it, if you can hit it from this distance,” First Mate Percy said as a pirate handed me a large crossbow.
“Don’t you worry about that.” With the bolt on the rail, I cranked the lever until the crossbow was full of tension, then raised it to my shoulder.
The shark closest to the ship was munching on the dead whale’s tail. I lined up the crossbow as I aimed for this creature, then squeezed the trigger and watched the bolt streak through the air. It slammed with a dull thud into the top of the shark’s head. The shark thrashed about for a second or two, but the shot was lethal, and it soon stopped moving and rolled over in the water, belly-up and as dead as the carcass it had been feeding on.
“Excellent shot, Captain Chauzec!” Percy exclaimed.
“I’m not done yet.” I handed him the crossbow. “Not by a long shot. Watch this.”
Resurrecting dead beasts was now as easy for me as snapping my fingers. I sent my Death tendrils out from my hands; like silky black threads, they poured from my fingertips and enclosed around the shark’s still heart. After a quick jolt of my divine energy, the dead shark’s glazed-over eyes suddenly glowed with the familiar yellow-green light. It rolled back over in the water, sort of alive again. This alone elicited a chorus of oohs and aahs from the crew of pirates, but I was barely getting started.
This was the first aquatic beast I’d ever resurrected, and I wanted to have some fun with it. As I had done with Talon, I closed my eyes and sent myself into the zombie shark, experiencing the world through its senses and controlling its body as if it were my own.
In an instant, I could feel the chill of the ocean, my weightlessness in the water, and the pull of the current. I could also taste the blood and blubber of the whale in my mouth and found that I could sense things in a very different way. The vibrations of all sorts of other creatures swimming under the surface came to me like signals of light,
