Page 35 of Empire of Death
My heart should start to race a little quicker in my chest, but it was perfectly calm. I fought alongside allies I barely knew, only had Hawk as a true comrade, but a band of asshole pirates didn’t make me flinch. After the Barbarians and their cursed blades, everything else seemed far more trivial.
As the ships came into sight and their armada could be distinguished in the fading light, I saw the black sails and the flags that bore the symbol of their name—Liberators. It was an ironic choice, considering they did the opposite of liberating, unless that was intentional.
The men on our ships prepared the cannons and put on the flimsy armor they owned in preparation for battle. Hawk and I were covered in protection forged with dragon scales, far superior to anything they had because that kind of weight would slow the ship far too much. To be fair, if either of us ended up in the water, we’d drown in less than a minute. We were basically two anchors.
Once the ships were close, the battle began. The enemies made their turns to fire their cannons at us, and our fleet did the same. But some of their ships had a set of cannons directly at the front, so they fired off chained cannonballs that took out the sails of several of our ships.
I’d never seen anything like that before.
Wrath suddenly appeared beside me, an invisible king with his signature calmness. We watched the scene before us, seeing ships fire at ships and masts collapse and tilt the galleons sideways as they landed. “They’re better sailors with better ships. They will outmaneuver you and sink you into the deep.”
“Then do I call for Zehemoth?”
“You call for the army I’ve given you.”
Some of their ships drew close to ours, and soon, their crew boarded our galleons. Battle commenced, and steel clanged against steel. Cries of war and cries of defeat rang out along with the smell of gunfire and the cloudiness of smoke. I did not expect their victory to be swift and our defeat so pathetic.
The galleon where I stood had survived the cannons so far, but that wouldn’t last long. “There’s no graveyard or cemetery on the sea.”
“You command all things that are dead, not just men.”
I heard a scream as the ship directly next to us was knocked sideways from the enemy galleon that speared it with the long spire stretching from its front. “Wrath, I need you to be more specific.”
“I raised the kraken from deep within the bowels of the sea to defeat the Barbarians who held you captive. You need to do the same.”
At the battle of Riviana Star, I raised not only men, but also orcs. They mindlessly fought for me. I realized then that the call wasn’t specific to any race or creature—that nothing was immune.
“Raise the dead,” he said. “Let your crew see what happens to the enemies of the Death Queen.” His hand moved to my chest in the center of my breast plate, like he could feel my heartbeat. “Focus just as you did in Riviana Star. Close your mind to the living and concentrate on the dead. Cast your net wide and pull hard.”
With his hand supporting my stance, I closed my eyes and did as he instructed. It’d been so easy in Riviana Star because I could see those I wished to command. But this was like reaching into the shadows and grabbing an ally just by the touch of a hand.
But I felt the presence in the deep, one that overshadowed all the others, a size that felt akin to a ship…or maybe even two. My mind grew tentacles and wrapped around my prey, and I tugged him hard to the surface, and when I felt him wrestle in my grasp, I released him.
My eyes opened just as I felt planks shift beneath my feet, felt the force of the wave that knocked the ship sideways beforeit flattened once again, rocking everyone from one side to the other.
Wrath’s eyes shifted past me, and a proud smile moved over his lips.
I looked behind me and saw an enormous fin, as tall as the masts that held the sails of the ships.
The battle turned silent as everyone stopped when they spotted the fin cut through the water, creating a swell of waves that tilted every galleon sideways as it passed. Then the fin slowly dropped back into the sea, cutting through the water and leaving a large ripple behind it.
“What the fuck was that?” Hawk asked.
The sound of a crash made everyone whip in the other direction, catching sight of the galleon snatched in the jaws of an enormous shark that had most of its flesh missing…the bones underneath visible. His teeth crushed through the wood of the black ship, snapped it in two and then turned through the water before it struck the debris with its enormous fin, smashing it into further pieces and making it sink immediately.
I felt a pair of eyes stare hard into my face, and I flicked my eyes to meet them.
Jack stared directly at me with a slight look of admiration—but mostly fear.
The shark went after the next black ship and sank it to the deep with a single attack. At that point, everyone started to catch on—that undead shark was only interested in the black ships.
Cannon fire ceased as the enemy tried to navigate away from the battle, their union dismantling right before our very eyes andbecoming an every-man-for-himself scenario. They all tried to sail in different directions, like getting away from us was the key to staying alive, but the gigantic shark hunted each and every one.
One galleon turned with the wind and put distance between us, gaining ground while the sharp was occupied with the other ships that remained nearby. I watched it sail toward the horizon, wondering if it would get away.
Jack appeared at my side and turned to look at me, his eyes flicking from one feature to the next, as if trying to put me together like a puzzle.
I hadn’t needed to unsheathe my blade for this battle. Didn’t even leave the ship. All I did was use a power bestowed upon me by a god to do my bidding, and I took all the credit for it.
