I nodded. “I’ve felt the power of his lightning strikes; my Death magic was barely enough to shield me from just one of them. Even so, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. In fact, my newest power, Death Titan, might just be the perfect weapon to use against him. The only thing is, I need a lot of corpses to truly utilize it to its full effect.”
“In this part of the world, after what these lizards have been doing, there are plenty of corpses,” Rami-Xayon said sadly.
“What about your army, Vance?” Elyse asked. “What happened with the Emperor of Yeng? Did you get permission for your army to disembark the ships?”
“To cut a long story short, yes, we did. I also got the Dragon Gauntlet.” I lifted up both my hands, and Elyse gasped.
“That’s most wonderful news!” she said. “Now that you have them both, you can resurrect a dragon.”
“I’ll need an embalmed dragon heart before I can do that, but this lost gauntlet was the next thing on the list. For now, we have to kill a Warlock and free Yeng from the Cult of Prosperity.”
“The Warlock will surely send an army to meet you,” Isu said. “Far easier to send an army to deal with you than risk his own neck.”
“Sounds likely,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of him, he’s a coward at heart.”
“God of Death,” Ji-Ko said, “getting to the Warlock will not be easy. We know the way to the ruins of the Dragon Temple, where he built his tower, and the terrain is treacherous. However, the tower itself, is situated on a flat, grassy plateau up in the mountains. If he positions his army on the plateau, it will make it all but impossible to get your army up there. Only a few passes lead up to the plateau, and he can hold these with his best troops and his magic. The Warlock is also near invincible while he remains in his tower. You must capture him and bring him out of the tower to kill him, or find a way to make him leave it.”
“We have to draw him out of his tower, into battle on open ground, where he thinks he has the advantage,” I said.
“But he will have the advantage on open ground,” Yumo said. “If you’re talking about a wide open plain, he can gather his storm clouds and hammer us with precisely aimed lightning strikes. Then there’s his army on top of that, which by all accounts outnumbers yours. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but that’s crazy, it’s almost suicidal!”
“And that’s exactly why he’ll fall for my trap,” I said with a cold smile.
“Trap? How is it a trap when you’re the one who’s going to get killed, and your army wiped out?” Yumo asked.
“I just need to get every fresh corpse—or not-so-fresh corpse, as long as it’s intact—to the field where the battle will take place.”
“I think I understand where you’re going with this, but how will you know where it’s going to happen?” Isu asked.
“Easy. I’ll let the Warlock decide.”
Yumo’s jaw dropped.“Vance, did one of these monster lizards manage to smack you in the head during that fight? If you ask the Warlock to pick a place, he’ll choose a spot that’s perfect for him, one where his strengths are maximized, and your advantages destroyed!”
“I need to fight him in the open for my plan to work. If that means he chooses the spot, then so be it. I just have to get him out into the open, and know beforehand where it will be.”
“I believe you, Vance,” Elyse said. Ah, Elyse—her faith in me never faltered. “Your strategic maneuvers have been uniformly brilliant for as long as I’ve known you, and I have no doubt in my mind that it’ll work.”
Well, it sounded like Elyse had more faith in me than I had in myself. I wasn’t completely certain my plan would work, but anything less than total confidence in my plan would cause the others to falter, and I couldn’t have that.
“I have faith in your plan too, Vance,” Isu said with a decisive nod. “Tell me what to do and I shall do it.”
“Everyone here can start by gathering all the corpses you can. Yumo and Rami-Xayon, ask your parents where recent victims of these lizard monsters have been buried. If there are any mass graves, even better. I’ll order my panthers to dig; cats dig holes to shit in, and I’m sure they’ll be just as good at digging up freshly buried corpses. Ji-Ko, divide your monks up, go to all the villages in this region, where the lizards have been killing people, and do the same thing I’ve just told everyone else to do. I need corpses, and lots of them.”
“Of course, God of Death,” Ji-Ko said with a bow. “My monks and I will work tirelessly for you. But what will you do while we are gathering the dead?”
“I’m going straight to the Warlock’s tower, alone, to slap my proverbial gauntlet across his ugly fucking face. I’m gonna challenge him to a pitched battle, anywhere he wants, and I’m going to make absolutely certain that he takes me up on my offer.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Talon flew straight to me, and I carefully observed the varied terrain of Yeng through her eyes in the two hours it took her to reach me. Rollar and Drok were leading my army across the land, with Rollar mounted on his undead direbear and Drok riding Fang, for now. I made a mental note to get someone to thoroughly scrub down Fang’s saddle before I sat in it again.
Everyone else had gone off to unearth corpses. The Warlock’s thousands of victims would soon take their revenge on him from beyond the grave.
Talon was carrying my full plate armor; I was going to need it for this meeting with the Warlock, just in case he decided to hurl a lightning bolt
