“Do you... do you really mean that, Lord Vance?” he gasped.
“Damn right I do.”
“This is the best news I could have ever hoped to hear.”
“All right, all right, calm down, my friend,” I said with a chuckle. “No need to act like a maiden who’s just spotted Prince Charming in the distance. Go gather the party, and we’ll do this right, with a proper ceremony. Meanwhile, I just have to zip off to another plane, one that you’ll soon be able to visit yourself.”
“Right away, Lord Vance,” Rollar said, practically jumping up and down on the spot. “Should I, uh, should I wear my battle armor?”
“Sure, put your battle armor on, and bring the bear too.”
As soon as Rollar had hurried off, I closed my eyes and transported myself to the Black Plane. I looked up at the upper branches of the Gray Sentinel, but there were no new skills waiting for me; Argryl’s measly soul hadn’t been worth much. Still, a new skill was at least forming up there. My power was growing from the various warriors across Prand who made kills with Death coins in their pockets. Not to mention all the people praying at my temples and shrines. Together, they were creating a steady stream of power, feeding the fruit on the tree like a deluge of summer rain.
Cranton’s little sapling was the same as it had been last time I’d checked it. He was probably still too busy preaching to develop new skills.
Now, I needed to plant another young tree. In the blink of an eye, Grave Oath materialized in my hand, and I sliced a shoot off the lowest branch of the Gray Sentinel. Then I stuck it in the glassy black ground about 30 feet away from my tree; I wanted to give it plenty of space to grow, just in case it grew into something of substantial girth and height one day.
The shoot sank as smoothly and easily into the ground as if it had been a steel rod shoved into wet mud. It grew in a few seconds into a little sapling, rapidly sprouting its own branches and leaves. I made a cut in the trunk of the Gray Sentinel, light that oozed like sap oozed from the incision. I scooped it up with Grave Oath, took the blob of blazing light over to the new sapling, made a little incision in its trunk, and shoved the light in.
Picturing Rollar in my mind, I placed Grave Oath in my palm. Slowly, it started to turn, until it began to spin like a maddened compass needle until it found his soul. I created a link between the soul and this new sapling, drawing on some of the power of the souls and prayers flowing into the Gray Sentinel through the light sap.
A fruit appeared on one of the sapling’s branches, glowing and colorful. It was a fruit I recognized at once, for it was one of the very first skills I had gained: the ability to resurrect beasts. Of course, back then, I hadn’t known about the skill tree, and Isu had been the one who had come here and plucked the skill from this tree. She had then bestowed it upon me, a mere necromancer at the time. Now, here I was, doing the same for one of my mortal underlings.
Before I launched myself back into the reality of the physical present, I had to wonder about something: where was Isu’s skill tree? She must have had a massive Gray Sentinel like mine when she’d been a goddess. And why didn’t she have a little sapling here like Cranton’s and Rollar’s? After all, she was still using Death magic, even though she’d been demoted from a goddess to a mortal necromancer.
I scanned the area around me, squeezing my eyes almost shut so I could see as far as possible. Then I spotted it, so far in the distance that it was almost invisible: a withered Gray Sentinel, almost as big as mine. This would be worth checking out before I headed back to the real world.
The tree looked like it was many miles away, and walking there would have taken hours. Even though this time would only add up to a few seconds in the real world, I didn’t want to spend hours walking across this glossy black desert. Many of the rules of the real world didn’t apply in here, so, I suddenly thought, why would I even need to walk there? If I could jump off the upper branches of the tree, dozens of yards above the ground, and land like I was falling onto nothing but a soft feather pillow, then surely I could bend other physical laws in this realm.
I drew in a deep breath, tensed my muscles, and lowered myself into a crouch. I launched myself into a sprint, and when I hit full speed, I jumped, willing myself to fly like a flea through the air. And just as those tiny little bloodsuckers can jump hundreds or thousands of times their own body length, I hurtled through the air, covering miles in a single leap. The dead Gray Sentinel came rushing toward me as I began my descent. I hit the ground running and skidded to a halt mere feet from its trunk.
It wasn’t as tall or broad a tree as mine, but it was big and sprawling nonetheless. I imagined that in the past, many skill fruits had hung from these branches. Now,
