“We’ll keep fighting until we breathe our very last, Lord Vance!” Rollar roared, raising his war hammer to the sky. Everyone cheered their agreement.
“Speaking of fate,” I said. “There are some of you who will become Fated tonight.” I reached for Grave Oath and unsheathed it. “Drok?”
A look of awe and disbelief came across the massive barbarian’s face. For this potent but simple warrior, becoming Fated was something I suspected he’d never imagined for himself, not in his wildest dreams.
“Lord Vance asked you a question, my Northern brother,” Rollar said to him, grinning. “What say you?!”
“Me … Fated?!” Drok murmured, staring at me as if I’d just shifted into the form of a one-eyed goblin, or whatever passed for a beautiful woman in his twisted mind … or both.
“Yes, you big dumb cave troll, Fated!” I said. “Last chance Drok, do you want to become Fated or not?”
“Y-, yes, yes, yes!” he blurted out, jumping up and down and laughing with childlike glee. “Me become Fated, me become Fated!”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I said.
I needed a receptacle for acid, so I fetched my helm from my suit of plate armor. The Death-enchanted steel wouldn’t be eaten away by the corrosive substance.
I scooped some water from the lake into the helm, then passed my hand over it, feeling a surge of power race through me. The water hissed and steamed, and soon tendrils of caustic mist were rising from the clear liquid, which had turned into powerful acid.
The whiff of Drok’s stench almost knocked me to my feet when I stepped up to him, standing far closer than I usually did to the towering barbarian. I figured I needed to hold my breath for the rest of the ceremony.
“You understand that with this gift comes great responsibility, right?” I said, trying not to gag from the stink. “I do not hand out such gifts half-heartedly. From the moment you become Fated, Drok, you will be bound to me. Not as a slave, of course; you will always have your own free will, and you will always be able to make your own decisions. However, I expect you to serve me with loyalty and honor, and to bring your axe to battle and war whenever it is needed. Do you swear to serve me faithfully, with honor and courage, from now until the end of your days?”
“My axe and blood yours, until I die,” Drok said solemnly, holding his axe in front of me with both palms raised to the sky, in the tradition of his people when swearing fealty to a chief.
He didn’t need to say anything else; his sincerity was written plainly across his face.
“That is all I ask.” I tightened my grip on Grave Oath’s hilt and felt its Death magic coursing through me, turning my hands and fingers as hard as steel, and imbuing them with my dagger’s deadly sharpness. “Then, by the power of Death, I make you … Fated.”
Before Drok could say anything else or even react in any way, I slammed my hand, which was flat and sharp, like a spear blade, through his huge chest and gripped his heart. His tiny, pig-like eyes bulged with shock and agony as I ripped his beating out of his chest. The bloody organ pumped between my fingers before I dropped it into the acid-filled helm. He gasped and staggered backward, stranded temporarily in the shadow realm between life and death, watching with terrified disbelief as the acid hissed and seethed around his beating heart.
As soon as the heart had turned black, I pulled it out of the acid and shoved it back into the gaping, bloody cavity in Drok’s chest. He roared out an ear-shattering howl, but it was not simply a cry of pain or fear.
It was a roar of new power.
The wound in his chest started to close up, but it didn’t take long. The Death magic tearing through him healed the gash completely in a matter of seconds. The only trace of the damage my spear-like hand had done was a few blood splatters on his grubby skin.
“Drok feel … stronger!” he roared, his eyes glowing with fresh vitality and potency.
I chuckled and nodded. “Oh yes, my barbarian friend, you’re gonna feel stronger than you ever have in your life. And you’re not only stronger; now you have the ability to raise skeletons and zombies of your own. Not to mention every enemy you kill will make you stronger. And, what’s even better is that your kills will add to my power too.”
“Drok get skeletons, Drok get zombies, Drok get skeletons, Drok get zombies!” Drok yelled gleefully, hopping up and down and waving his massive arms around with excitement.
In the background, Isu was observing all of this with a tightly drawn face and a strange gleam in her eye. She had once been in my position. Long ago, she had plunged her hand into my chest, ripping out my heart and turning it black.
The expression on Isu’s face presently was unreadable. Was she regretting that moment, which had steered her down a path, the end of which had lain the loss of her divinity? Or was she simply feeling some sort of bittersweet nostalgia for her days as Goddess of Death?
There was, of course, another possibility.
She was watching me with pride. After all, I had come further and grown more powerful than
