A rocky outcrop nearby jutted out in a ledge over the valley. I pulled all of the Death energy from the massacred village into my body and mind before I channeled it into the greatsword. The swathes of energy amplified the weapon’s power and made it feel as if it was growing lighter and nimbler in my hands. My main worry was getting blasted with fire from the mutant dragons, so I needed a shield. A shield of ice would be the best defense against fire, and I knew exactly how I could create one.
“Yumo, I need one of your Ice arrows!”
She pulled a blue arrow from her quiver and tossed it to me. I tucked it into my belt, then called up a small tornado using my access to Wind magic from my kusarigama. Gripping the greatsword, I focused on the three separate elements of magic currently at work: Death, Wind, and, with Yumo’s arrow, Cold.
With the Dragon Sword, I found I now possessed an ability I’d never before had access to. It was akin to a sort of alchemical ability. I saw before me, glowing and semi-transparent, in the same way I saw the fruits of the Gray Tree on the Black Plane, three swirling balls of different-colored energy: blue for Cold, black for Death, and white for Wind.
All I had to do to combine them was to think about what I wanted to achieve, and then reach out and grab the requisite quantities of energy needed from each ball. Immediately a three-dimensional, semi-transparent image of a whirling tornado popped up in front of me. I hastily pulled chunks from each of the different energy orbs into the tornado. The Wind power increased the speed at which it spun around me, the Death power fortified it with strength, and then, at the end, I invested it with a hefty chunk of Cold power to turn it into an ice tornado. With my improvised ice shield spinning around me, I gripped the Dragon Sword in both hands, took a sprint, then somersaulted off the ledge into the midst of the giant lizard mutants.
I delivered a powerful downward hacking stroke at the neck of the nearest lizard, which only barely had time to look up. In one stroke the enchanted blade sliced straight through the monster’s six-foot-thick neck. Its huge head rolled away as its dead body flopped to the ground, its open neck gushing out a torrent of blood.
The blade was sharper and stronger than I could ever have imagined. The other monsters, who had me surrounded on all sides, stared in anger and disbelief at their headless companion’s corpse for a second or two—then they all attacked at once.
Yumo’s blue Ice arrows came streaking in, slamming into the lizards closest to me. The arrows and their magic did little damage to the monsters, but provided enough of a distraction to take the heat off me. Layna’s spiderwebs worked in a similar manner as she smeared the lizards’ heads and faces with them from the safety of the ridge. It wouldn’t take the monsters longer than a few seconds to rip the webs off or break them apart, but I only need a few seconds.
I dived forward, launching myself at one of the lizards with my blade outstretched. My dive catapulted me toward the beast, and it opened its jaws to receive me—but I was no morsel to snack on. I landed in the lizard’s jaws and thrust the blade up through the roof of its mouth as it bit down. The force of its own bite drove the blade into its brain, killing it instantly. Both the sword and the force of my protective tornado prevented the jaws from closing fully and crushing me. I dropped, my back resting on the monster’s bloody tongue, and kicked up with both feet, forcing the dead beast’s jaws open and pulling the sword from the roof of its mouth at the same time.
I jumped out, but before the dead monster crashed to the ground behind me, I’d resurrected it as my own creature. As another of the mutant lizards lunged for me, the undead one grabbed its throat, and the two monsters started thrashing around in a violent struggle that sent shock waves rippling across the ground.
Two more converged on me, while Layna and Yumo kept the remaining two distracted. Both lizards who came for me streamed fire from their maws, but the spinning tornado of Ice and Death around me absorbed the flames and prevented me from being burned to a crisp.
I rolled swiftly to the left, and as I came up, I slammed the sword into the monster’s right eye. Ji-Ko hadn’t been exaggerating about the Dragon Sword’s cutting power; it traveled effortlessly through the creature’s skull, and the tip of the six-foot-long blade emerged just above the socket of the monster’s right eye.
A lunging bite from the other monster came within an inch of severing my torso from my legs. It let rip with another blast of fire, and while my Ice and Death tornado absorbed the flames, it was growing weaker and less effective as a shield every time it took a hit. I grabbed the hilt of the Dragon Sword and yanked it out of the dead monster’s skull. Before the other monster produce another fiery torrent, I swept the sword upward and cleaved the head off the lizard in a single sweep.
These two I resurrected as my creatures, and now, with only two living mutant monsters remaining, the odds of this fight shifted. The two remaining lizards backed away, blowing blasts of fire at me and my undead lizards as we advanced on them.
“It’s time to end this,” I said.
Chapter Thirty
With a flick of my hand, I directed my undead lizards to attack one of the living ones. As
