“So, this is what happened to your skill tree when I killed you and took your divinity,” I murmured.
I was staring up at the rotting branches when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Peeking out from behind the trunk was a small branch of a living tree. I took a few steps to my right and found a new sapling had sprouted behind the huge dead tree. This was Isu’s new tree. It was bigger than Cranton’s and Rollar’s and had more branches than either of those two, but it was still small, not taller than six or seven feet.
I chuckled. “Coming back up in the world, Isu...”
Then, looking past the sapling, I saw another large dead tree in the far distance. This was intriguing. Had there been another God or Goddess of Death before Isu? She had never mentioned anything like that, but I figured there had to have been. Death is, after all, as old as life, and Death deities had to have been some of the earliest gods worshiped by men. I took another running jump, covering miles in one leap. The tree I found myself in front of had no fresh sapling next to it. But on the horizon was yet another massive dead tree, with, I imagined, another on the horizon beyond that, and probably yet another beyond that, going all the way back to the beginning of time and the world.
“I’m just one in a line of many Death gods,” I said as I curled my hand into a fist, “but I will be the greatest of all of them.”
Then, in a blur of speed and warped time, I was back in my body in the physical present.
Rollar was waiting, an expectant look in his eyes. He was dressed in his battle armor, consisting of various pieces of iron, leather, and bearskin armor, and his direbear was by his side. The other members of my party were also here, gathered in a semicircle behind Rollar and his pet.
“Am I Fated yet, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked eagerly.
“Not yet, my friend,” I said. “I have to do a few more things. You can help me though; go get me a bucket of water.”
“Water, Lord Vance? Are you thirsty?”
“Don’t ask questions, Rollar.”
He tilted his head in a quizzical expression but soon scurried off, returning a few moments later with a wooden pail of water that he set down at my feet. I squatted and passed my hand over the water, feeling a quick surge of magical power as I did this. Just to make sure I’d done it correctly, I pried a rusty nail from the deck and dropped it into the clear liquid in the pail. There was a furious hissing and sizzling, and within a few seconds, the nail had dissolved completely.
“I wouldn’t drink this if I were you,” I said.
“You turned it to acid, Lord Vance!”
“I need acid for what I’m about to do,” I said. “Come a little closer, Rollar.”
I felt the flesh of my right-hand fingers turn as hard as steel in anticipation.
“This might sting a little,” I said to Rollar as he took a step toward me. “But don’t fight it. Relax, even if it looks terrifying.”
“Of course, Lord Vance.”
Without further ado, I slammed my right hand through his iron breastplate and past his flesh and muscles. I curled my fingers around his beating heart and ripped it out of his chest. His eyes bulged and he gasped, stumbling back.
I dropped his beating heart into the acid, the pail broiling and frothing. I pulled it out a second later, and, as it had been long ago when Isu had done this exact thing to me and I had done the same to Cranton, his heart had turned black. I lunged forward and slammed his new black heart into the cavity in his chest. The gaping, bloody wound closed up in mere seconds, leaving no trace that it had been there, as did the hole in his breastplate.
Rollar’s eyes were still on the verge of popping, it seemed, and his nostrils were flared with fright, but when his heart was back in his chest, a calmer expression came across his face.
“I... I... I feel amazing!” he roared, raising his fists to the sky. “Praise you, Lord Vance, you’ve done it!”
“We’re not quite done yet,” I said. His glee was infectious, and I knew I’d done the right thing by making him Fated. “I made Cranton a Death priest, but you’re no clergyman; you’re a warrior.”
What would I make Rollar? I had a name on my lips, and it made me smile even to think of it.
Chapter Nine
“I will make you a Death Knight,” I said to Rollar. “I command you to kneel.”
Rollar obeyed without a word.
I drew Grave Oath, the Death power sizzling in the steel.
I wasn’t sure how I would make Rollar into a Death Knight, but my hands started to move, as though carried by an unseen force. First, I drew the edge of the blade across Rollar’s right shoulder pauldron. The leather hissed and crackled as it warped into armor made of bone, in the shape of a giant skeletal hand resting on Rollar’s shoulder. I did the same to his left shoulder pauldron, then drew the edge of Grave Oath’s blade across his breastplate. The iron turned red and bubbled, as if it was being melted in a blacksmith’s forge, then it too transformed, becoming a strong, thick ribcage of bone protecting Rollar’s torso. I did the same to the armor on his forearms, thighs, and calves, and all of them turned to bone.
“There’s one more thing to do before you’re a fully fledged Death Knight,” I
