The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 41-47 (Patreon)

Here you go! Another chapter avalanche! Enjoy!

Ch. 41 - The Underworld

The four of them entered the hallway cautiously, and only after the mage cast a new spell that made her eyes glow with an intense violet light. “It’s so I can see traps better,” she explained before moving forward, one careful step at a time.

No one liked the idea of Altharia being anywhere near the front of the group. They argued about it, and it was clear that no one else could do what she could do, either. In the end, all that Ivarr could do was stand close to her left while Sammel took up the rear with a torch. 

The blade ignored all of that and instead focused on the place they were. It didn’t have the best vision, and unlike their mage, it had no way to see magic. It couldn’t even feel how cold the place was, even though everyone else complained about that. All it could do was keep a close eye on the way the stones fit together and hope to spot something before they were all murdered, and it spent the next century lying here on the floor. 

That was harder than it would have thought, though, given that the hallway was hardly bare. While the dark gray stones fit together tightly, there were a number of plaques and inscriptions. At first, it feared each one of these small monuments might contain similar magics to the door, but they turned out to be nothing more than paeans to the Mage-King Al’Hazzarin. 

Each separate plaque took the time to wax philosophically about him or someone close to him. The first few were about what a great man he’d been and how much he’d accomplished in his nearly two-hundred-year reign. This one talked about his rise to power, and that one talked about how he founded his capital and how lavish his palace was. 

After a while, some of the plaques were no longer about the mage king himself. They were about some favored servant. Most of those were placed above a niche that included the skeletal remains of what they could only assume was the servant in question. There was one that discussed the accomplishments of his most fearless general and another that praised his favorite horse.

Those few scattered corpses weren't even enough to trigger its Endless Malaise. It had ticked higher when they were surrounded by the recently dead goblins in the last room, but here, there was nothing at all. It had no idea just how little energy centuries-old corpses might have left to leak. After a while, it became hard for anyone, including the sword, to take the danger of this place seriously. 

By the time Ivarr and Sammel started to joke about how long it would be until they found the final resting place of the man’s favorite dog, the mystique was gone. They'd spent weeks building this evil tomb up in their mind, and except for the strange defense on the front door, it seemed to be nothing more than a museum full of dusty relics.

Their caution was renewed briefly, and everyone hesitated when they found the next set of large brass doors three hundred feet into the mountain. However, they relaxed immediately when it was found to contain the remains of the mages’ many wives. 

The room was practically a harem for the dead. Up until now, the hallway had been a solemn, sterile list of accomplishments and trophies. This room, though, was painted with bright, colors, and draped with fine silks. Most of that paint had flaked off, and most of the silks had rotted away, but it was still possible to see the intended effect. 

Each of the bodies was laid on a dais that looked like a couch or a bed, and the women were meant to look like they were sleeping. That effect was entirely overshadowed by the illusions that had been woven over each woman. 

The effect wasn’t powerful enough to cover them completely. It was translucent and showed their bones underneath, but it was still enough to see what each of the women had once looked like, and they were clearly beauties plucked from all races throughout the known world. The way that they glowed faintly in the dark room as they lay there even gave them the grim sight a somewhat angelic appearance. 

The blade wasn’t touched by it, but the mortals that accompanied it stood there for several moments, silently appreciating it, before Ivarr’s friend ruined it. “I thought this guy was supposed to be all about evil magic,” Sammel Joked, “To me, it looks like he just wanted to get laid.”

That much was true, but the blade ignored the idiot along with everyone else. They discussed everything they’d seen with more deliberation. 

“Behind the pretty colors and painted faces, I sense much evil here,” the priest said. “Especially from those doors.”

The bronze doors that stood on the opposite side of the room were impossible to miss. They were twice the size of the ones that they’d come in through. They were decorated with a bas-relief image of what it could only assume was the mage Lord at a scale that made him nearly ten feet tall. He stood there in his regal prime with his hands on his hips as if he was judging them. 

“What do you sense?” the mage asked. “I see no magic there. The only magic in this place is on the corpses.”

Though every attempt had been made to make him look good, the doors did not make him look handsome. That was a strange trade-off. So was the fact that the doors didn’t seem to be locked, either. 

“It’s not the doors that are evil,” the priest corrected himself. “It's something past them. It's leaking out from the seams and the hinges. We should be very careful from this point forward.”

The priest paused then to pray, but even as he was beginning to exude a golden light, the blade noticed something. Sammel was standing at the back of the group, and he was looking from body to body of the woman. At first, the blade thought he was either being a pervert or simply being curious. It was only when he reached for the bangles on the wrist of the dead woman, though, that it realized he was planning to steal from the dead. 

This place didn’t seem dangerous, but the fact that the only magic that was here was on the corpses themselves bothered it. Vanity was one thing, but the best reason for such gaudy magics would be to hide something less savory beneath it. Despite its powers over death, it had no feeling of necromancy. 

It knew a bad idea when it saw one, though. Even as it warned Ivarr to stop his friend, it watched the illusionary eyes of that corpse open. Sammel was too busy trying to strip all the gold jewelry off of the body that he could while no one was looking. 

That made sense since he expected this to be his last adventure. The young man obviously wanted a big score. Unfortunately, his last adventure came to an end sooner than he would have thought. 

“Sammel!” Ivarr cried. “What are you doing?! Stop!”

“What!” he cried out defensively. “I’m just—”

The boy looked up just in time to miss as the skeletal arm in his hands came to life, and thrust into his guts with its knifelike bony fingers. The young warrior staggered back from surprise as much as pain, still clutching his stolen treasure in one hand even as the skeleton refused to let go of his guts, and his intestines came out a little more with every step back. 

The whole thing was somehow made more gruesome by the fact that the illusionary mask never faded. The thing that had mortally wounded Sammel was a deathless skeleton, but it was also a dusky belly dancer, and that juxtaposition made the scene even more horrifying. 

Even those awful details weren’t as horrifying as the fact that all of the other women were starting to rise now, too. Their slumber had been interrupted, and they rose as one within seconds, surrounding the group completely.

Sammel dropped his gold and drew his sword, even as he tried to pull his intestines free from the grip of his attacker. He never even noticed that he was blundering into another ghostly beauty behind him until she yanked him back and drew her claws across his throat. That was enough to make him whirl around, but even as the steel blade shattered her skull, and the illusion vanished along with whatever force animated her, two more were coming at him from the left. 

While all of that was going on, Ivarr fought toward his friend, but before he could reach Sammel, the blade noted the mage was about to be torn apart in the same way. Right now, they were completely surrounded, and no direction was safe. 

Not him, the sword said. Sammel is lost. Save the elf, and, or you will be forced to flee alone in seconds.

Whether it was because Ivarr agreed with the blade’s logic or because he wanted the elf, the weapon did not know, but there was almost no hesitation. Its wielder swung the blade hard enough to shatter one of the women who was advancing on Sammel before he whirled and moved to defend the mage, leaving his friend to his fate. 

-1 Life Force

Even acting so decisively, though, it was a close thing. The mage might be incredibly powerful, but at this range, she was all but helpless. She couldn’t even start casting a spell before she had to stagger out of reach of the grasping hands, and though Ivarr could slay two and three at a time, they kept closing in. 

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

In this horrific scene, only Dero was truly safe. Even as the bloodshed started, the golden glow around him increased in intensity, forcing the mob of strangely beautiful skeletons to shy away from him. Those that did not do so quickly enough staggered as they crumbled into dust. 

-1 Life Force

For the blade, it was a strange fight. It was used to killing men and monsters that were flesh and blood. Normally, when it struck, it could feel the meat slicing away before its sharp edge, and with each swing, it expected to be bathed in the blood of its opponents. 

-1 Life Force

This fight was different, though. With each strike, it found only cold bone and a numbing tingle. It was like the chill of the grave was attempting to drain the energy it collected, but it could find no purchase.

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

How much worse would this be if I hadn’t completed the path of death? It wondered. The answer to that was fairly obvious, and it knew that for now, it should ignore those questions and focus on the fight, but that was hard when none of its blows were rewarded with Life Force or souls. It was a strange situation for the Ebon Blade, and it couldn’t help but wonder if there was something here in the dark that might manage to steal even its soul.

Ch. 42 - Then There Were Three

By the time Ivarr helped Altharia reach the priest’s golden light where she would be safe and turned back to start cutting a path toward Sammel, it was already too late for the other man. His screams had stopped half a minute before, and though Ivarr fought his way back to where his friend had been, there were only bloody scraps that no longer resembled a man. 

You have gained 1 human soul!

It was a sickening sight, and with a cry of rage, he shattered all of those bloody skeletons as they sprang toward him. Buxom, beautiful, or comley, they never stood a chance befor its wielder’s cold rage. 

That area was the last real knot of undeath in the room. When the attack had started a minute before, there had been more than fifty of the wretches. Now, there were less than a dozen, and more were dying every second. Still, the damage had been done. 

“How did I not see this coming?” Ivarr asked, blaming himself when he stood by the corpse that had once been Sammel. “Why did I ever let them come with us? I knew they weren’t strong enough.”

No one but the blade heard those whispers, and it offered neither defense nor confirmation for them. Instead, it merely urged its wielder to keep his head in the game. Focus on the living. The dead can wait until the fighting is done. 

That was true enough, and despite their horror, the other three quickly regrouped. “I didn’t know,” the mage was saying over and over. “I didn’t see it… I didn’t—”

“No one saw it,” Ivarr reassured her. “But it was evil, and we purged it. It can never hurt anyone else again.”

“What about the next room?” Dero asked. “Whatever’s in there... It's liable to be much worse than what we found here.”

“We can’t leave this half done,” Ivarr insisted. “Sam’s death has to mean something. We have to purge this place.”

The other two debated that a bit more but eventually agreed to his way of thinking, and after Altharia used her magic to strip the door of whatever evil enchantments it held, the Ivarr forced the right side open one slow step at a time. Even with the blade’s magic to strengthen him, it took everything he had for those first two steps, because it was a weight that no mortal man was ever meant to open on his own. After that, momentum helped him swing the thing fully open without much difficulty. 

The room behind it wasn’t much bigger than any of them had expected. In the center of the room, on a raised dais, there was a stone sarcophagus. It was the least impressive part of the room, though, because on all sides of it were heaping piles of treasure. It was literally tons of gold and silver. 

The piles were mostly made up of coins and gilded artifacts, but jewelry, chalices, and other stranger things were there, too. On the far side of the room, covered in a threadbare sheet of black silk, was something that could only be the mirror that Altharia had spent so many years of her life looking for. 

Ivarr pointed toward it with his sword, but as soon as he opened his mouth, wraiths boiled up out of those coin piles and charged, shrieking at him. “Dare you to disturb our master!” they moaned as they tried to devour Ivarr’s soul. “The Mage-King’s slumber is never to be disturbed!”

Its wielder swung the Ebon Blade valiantly, but it could not strike any of the eerie gray specters. Fortunately, their icy grip slid off of its soul and that of its wielder just as easily. Their razor claws still sliced into Ivarr’s flesh, but those were wounds that were easily healed. 

-8 Life Force
-6 Life Force
-9 Life Force

About the time they were figuring out how fruitless their attacks were, though, Dero had completed his prayer, and a beam of golden, holy light sliced through all of them, evaporating them like a morning mist. A moment after his light faded, the echoes of their hideous shrieks were gone, and with Ivarr’s wounds healed, it was like they’d never existed at all. 

-5 Life Force
-8 Life Force

“A-are you okay?” the elf said, running up to its wielder. He just smiled and said, “Me? Totally fine. It barely tickled. The sword’s magic protected me.” 

The first part was a lie, of course. The wounds had been ineffective in the slightest. They hadn’t managed to hook into its wielder’s soul, but they’d rent his flesh in a way that was more painful than slender tears had any right to be. 

The young man didn’t complain, though, or even look at Altharia. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the room. Looking for other dangers that were ready to strike. 

Nothing else immediately jumped out at them, giving the three of them the chance to regroup. The first thing that the mage did was cast a spell that illuminated the room with cyan light. Then, once they could see, they discussed how to proceed. 

“There are many magics on the sarcophagous itself,” she said, “They seem to be for protecting the bones within, but just as with the illusion spells, there’s no way to know if those magics hide something more sinister behind them.”

“It’s true,” the priest agreed. “That thing is like an infinite void. It's not just a body. That thing contains spirits of things that should not be.”

Anything could be hiding in there, the blade added silently, noting real fear in the eyes of the priest. Dero was a pretty easygoing guy that just wanted to do good. He’d held up okay in the face of the skeletons they’d fought so recently, but here he looked like he was about to run away screaming in terror. 

Even if the priest didn’t look like he was about to wet himself at whatever he could see that the rest of them couldn’t, the Ebon Blade didn’t like the look of the ancient thing, and with a tomb this lavish, it was certain that the real treasure would be carefully guarded. 

There was an inscription on the stairs leading up to the elaborate stone sarcophagus that promised eternal torment to anyone who even approached the thing, and given what the weapon had seen so far down here, it was inclined to take such warnings seriously. 

“Perhaps you could try shattering it from here?” Ivarr asked. “You could use another spell.”

“Not from this angle,” the mage said after a moment's consideration. “Anything that comes near that tomb might well be seen as an attack on it.”

Since they dared not approach the casket, they tried to navigate the pile of treasure on the left first in an effort to make their way over to the mirror. When nothing screeched in outrage and assaulted them for doing so, though, they started to pick through the near-limitless wealth that was contained there. 

The mage was able to pick out several items from the pile that had real magic infused in them. There was a wand, a few rings, and a necklace. The blade tried to stretch out to reach those and explore them as she studied them, but it couldn’t. The gulf between what its wielder touched and what he didn’t was effectively infinite except where it involved the primal life energies that fed it. 

“These might suit you,” the elf said, handing Ivarr a ring and a necklace. 

“What do they do?” he asked as he studied the ostentatious jewelry. 

The blade didn’t have to listen to her answer, though. It already knew exactly what they did. It had only to reach out and touch them as its owners did for their magic to flow into it, the same as Elom’s hexblade had before. 

You have learned Giant’s Strength!

You have learned Speed of the Shadows!

As both of those messages appeared, a new string of runes appeared, winding around each of its cross guards, first on the left and then on the right. While the blade couldn’t read either, it could see that they mirrored the marks of the blade itself. More interesting than the marks, though, were the abilities themselves. 

Giant’s Strength 1: +1 strength. This bonus is doubled when facing an enemy that is more than a foot larger than you. 

Speed of the Shadows 1: +1 agility, +10% speed in dim or darker conditions. 

Neither of them cost that much and had over 1000 Life Force and a human soul. Still, it hesitated to get either, even though it could easily afford both. There were too many unknowns to use serious energy. 

I’ll wait until we leave this place before I see where those paths lead, it told itself as the mage readied herself to cast her spell once the three of them were finally in position in the back corner of the room. 

“Don’t you want to study it first?” Ivarr asked. “You’ve been searching for this for years, and you’re just going to destroy it?”

“I know everything that a sane person should about the Mirror of Unending Vistas,” the mage sighed. “As much as I’d love to know more or even use it myself, the things it has been used for have left it hopelessly cursed. To see into it is to let it see into you and the things that it shows you… Well, all of us are probably better off not knowing them.”

The blade hoped she’d give a better answer that offered up more information. Instead, she started to cast a spell. This one was different than the one she’d used before, and it was blue and white light that danced around her as her breath began to fog the air.

At first, it wondered why she wasn’t using fire and lightning again, as the ice began to crystallize around her in shards. It realized only that she was almost done that she was probably worried the mirror might reflect such an attack and had chosen a spell that created solid objects to shatter it instead.

Her magic summoned jagged bolts of ice, and as she finished singing them into existence, they flew unerringly into the mirror, smashing against the glass. At least, that’s what they were supposed to do. Instead, they dove into the dark reflection, like it was still water, taking the cloth that had covered it up until now with them. 

Ch. 43 - Mirror, Mirror

The shield-sized chunks of ice vanished into the dark for a moment, but then, they were vomited back up by whatever was contained in that mirror. The cloth was left behind, but the ice erupted from that void like it had been launched by a catapult. The chunks soared not so far from the heads of Ivarr and the two remaining members of his group before slamming into the ceiling above their heads. 

-4 Life Force

-3 Life Force

Shards of rock and stone scattered explosively after that, and though the blade didn’t feel any of the shrapnel strike its wielder, it knew that it had because of the surge of life energy needed to patch the minor wounds they had caused. 

-6 Life Force

-2 Life Force

That wasn’t so strange. What was strange was the fact that no one moved. Not its wielder nor the mage moved a muscle. The priest dropped wordlessly to the ground in that moment, but the blade wasn’t sure if that was because of whatever effect was gripping its wielder or because he’d been struck by debris. 

It was hard to care about that when it was more concerned about its own wielder. Ivarr seemed fine physically, but his emotions were in turmoil. As the seconds ticked by, his rising fear and anguish seemed more and more disconnected from what was happening. 

Ivarr, the blade whispered silently. What’s wrong? You’re uninjured. You—

That’s the problem! The man’s mind screamed. I’m okay, but everyone else is dead! The Ebon Blade wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Even the muddled glimpses it got of the Kalraka in flaming ruins around the boy seemed disconnected and two-dimensional. The blade puzzled over that for only a moment before it noted its wielder's eyes. That was when it finally understood. 

He was seeing something that the blade wasn’t. That was almost certainly the case for the mage as well. The blade turned its eyes to the mirror again, but still, there was only a rippling blackness there. The mage collapsed as it tried to understand what was happening to her, and it felt like Ivarr wanted to as well, but the blade refused to let it. Instead, it gripped its wielder’s soul, unsheathed itself, and forced its wielder’s unwilling body to walk forward. 

No, please! Its wielder’s thoughts shouted silently. Don’t make me go back in that house! Not into the fire!

It was a challenge. More than anything, it felt like the time the goblin had fought it with every fiber of its being. Ivarr’s muscles were tense and spasming, and with every step it forced its wielder to take toward the mirror, it could feel muscles and ligaments tearing and rehealing almost instantly as the young man’s body tried with all its might not to move. 

If Ivarr’s mind had been fighting the blade even a little, this much would have been impossible. He couldn’t fight, though. He barely seemed to be grasping the reality of the situation. All he could do was scream into the void, as the Ebon Blade ignored this and did what it could to finish this. 

As it closed the last few steps to strike at the thing’s fragile-looking silver frame, its wielder started to scream, but the blade ignored it. Instead, it focused on the glass. There were shapes in the darkness, and now that it was closer, it could see them. They were women; at least, it was pretty sure they were the shadows of them. 

The elf mentioned something about an order of seeresses, it recalled, uncertain if that was what he was looking at. 

When the blade was within striking distance, it heard a faint whispering that was all but lost beneath Ivarr’s hysteric shrieks. The blade forced his mouth to shut and gripped his throat tightly enough that it almost cut off his breathing as it strained to hear what the thing was saying. 

“...can’t be moving… not in our power… something else… its… there it is… a little lost soul… hiding in the blade…” came the chorus of whispers. 

As the blade realized they were talking about it, it raised the sword. Then, before it could bring the weapon down and shatter the thing, the world around it vanished and was replaced by a new one. 

Suddenly, it was back in the temple where it had been locked away for so long. The goblins were gone, though, and so were their years of abuse. In their place were fine stone hallways loaded with mosaics and statues, lit by a few widely-spaced oil lamps. 

Well, that was mostly the case anyway. The scene was beautiful and ominous, but something about the way the pieces didn’t fit together quite right took away any fear that it might have held for the Ebon Blade. Some of the walls had cracks, and others met at the wrong angle like they were a warped reflection.

At least, that was all it could see beyond the bars. It was trapped in the same prison it had been for so long, but even as the illusion tried to convince it that it was sheathed in that same unyielding block of granite where it had slept away the centuries, it would not be fooled. It could still feel its wielder’s hand on its grip, and with a thought, it yanked itself free from the stony prison and floated there in midair. 

It acted as if it was being held, but there was no wielder. Still, somehow, Ivarr lent the Ebon blade his strength even if they were separated, and it floated there, held up by the heat-shimmered outline of a man.   

“Interesting…” the female voices around him murmured. “Even when confronted with its worst fears, it still does not relent.”

The blade lashed out blindly in all directions. It was uncertain where the mirror was, but it knew that to strike it down would be to end this farce. Even after it did that, though, nothing happened. Even if I can feel Ivarr’s hand doesn’t mean I am really moving, it told itself. I might be frozen now, just as the other two were. 

“I will not surrender!” the blade shouted, surprised that it spoke aloud for the first time in its existence. “Not to this place or to you!”

As it did that, it floated toward the bars and swung against them with a vicious cross-stroke. It expected a bone-rattling impact of iron against whatever metal it was made from, but instead, it cleaved right through, reducing the sturdy bars to slivers of glass. 

Well, that makes it easy, the blade thought to itself as it stepped through and started toward the stairs that led to the surface. It wasn’t sure it mattered which direction it went in a waking dream like this, but it wasn’t going to find a way out just standing there. 

“We are all bound by our fears,” a different woman whispered to it. “Even if your body is harder than steel, your soul is as weak as anyone else’s…”

“We came to free you!” the blade shouted to no one in particular as it climbed toward the surface. 

“And a century ago, we might have welcomed such an effort, but we’ve long since devoured all of the sights we were shown by Al’Hazzarin,” several women whispered in a way that made it almost sound like a chorus. “Now that we have become used to the darkness, we wish to taste yours as well. Go on. Show us what delights await us…”

The blade tried to make sense of their rambling, but it was quite apparent to it that they’d been driven mad by the years and the isolation. The same thing would certainly have happened to me if I hadn’t slept away the centuries it reflected as it continued to climb. 

“Show us your pain!” a chorus of disembodied voices demanded with ever-increasing volume and urgency as it moved toward the top. 

“Show us something new!” others pleaded.

The blade didn’t want to show them anything. It didn’t like the idea of these witches even glimpsing its soul, but for now, there was little it could do. When it reached the top of the dark stairway, though, the weapon didn’t find the temple to the death goddess it expected. 

Instead, it found the forge that it remembered. Here, it could hear the same screams, but they came from the dark, and it couldn’t see who was making them. As it tried to remember what it knew about this scene, it realized that the main difference was that there was no one there. 

They’re just going to taunt me with events I can’t even remember properly? The blade wondered to itself. How’s that supposed to scare me?

It was, though. It could see itself resting in the abandoned forge on a bed of hot coals, and it moved immediately to shatter itself. There’s a small chance this could backfire, it realized. Killing yourself in your dream probably wasn’t a good idea, but it wasn’t going to let that hold it back. 

The blade shattered as easily as the bars had, and it felt no pain as it did so, which was the good news. The bad news was that the ashes and embers of the sundered forge rose up in a cloud around it, and the shades of monsters and men coalesced out of them.

The Ebon Blade couldn’t be sure, but as a mixture of orcs and hulking orcs, as well as armed and unarmed men and women, rushed toward it, it was fairly sure these were supposed to be the people it had killed. This sort of morality play doubtlessly would have made Ivarr stop in his tracks. Its wielder had many strengths, but callousness wasn’t one of them.   

“You think this can stop me?” It roared in a challenge as it started to hack through its smoky foes. It didn’t care at all if the creatures were goblins or children. It was happy to end them. Its only regret was that it was getting no Life Force from its efforts. 

-3 Life Force

-2 Life Force

-1 Life Force

The blade had no such concerns, though, and started to strike down the burning-eyed shades down with slash after efficient slash. The things closed in on all sides of its disembodied form with more force than the skeleton harem ever had. Worse, even though it was immune to life-drain effects, it could feel itself losing power each time it snuffed one of these smokey monsters out. 

-5 Life Force

-3 Life Force

-2 Life Force

-2 Life Force

Are they using my own magic against me? It wondered. Or am I actually snuffing out my own captured souls? The blade didn’t know, but it didn’t let either option slow it down. It still struck them down two and three at a time without hesitation. 

-3 Life Force

-2 Life Force

“Murderer!” they whispered in the voice of the old women as they died. “Monster! Traitor!”

It ignored all of them, and once it had cut down enough of the fiery shades that it could see a door beyond them, it started to move toward it, killing the ghosts as it went. 

Ch. 44 - Mirror, Mirror (part 2)

The Ebon Blade wasn’t sure what it would find in the next room. It hoped that it would be the mirror or some way to end this madness, but instead, it found a vast banquet hall crowded with trestle tables and benches, which were, in turn, crowded with food and people. Well, the outlines of people at least. It was a surreal view in more ways than that, though.

This room had even more gaps than the previous one it had been in and looked more like the shattered reflection of a place rather than a real one. Despite that, though, the sword had no trouble recognizing it from its broken memories. It was the banquet where its wielder was supposed to be married to the princess before he was betrayed instead. 

Such a scene angered the blade, but it did not stop it. Especially not after it noticed a key difference. All of the people seated in this hall weren’t the guests that it had hazy memories of. These were the warriors and the nobles that it had glimpsed on more than one occasion. Instead, seated throughout the room were shadowy outlines he’d seen in the mirror right before this waking nightmare had started. 

“You can’t hold me here,” the blade said, leveling itself at them in a threat. “Release me now, or I will not end your suffering, and I will instead leave you to rot in the dark forever.”

“Brave words for a broken blade. You have no power here!” came the whispered reply. “You exist to entertain and feed us, not the other way around!”

There was a chorus of jeers then, but the blade ignored them. Instead, it focused on its weapon. The black metal had resisted enemy blades and dragon fire and looked to be in substantially better shape than it had been when it first regained its sight. Yet somehow, at the mere word ‘broken,’ the thing started to crack.

It watched as the blade it held developed a large, creeping crack from the tip that slowly spread along the black metal of the weapon like it was just thin ice. When it reached halfway, the tip fell to the floor and shattered, and other pieces joined it like a waterfall of metal shards. 

-8 Life Force

-9 Life Force

-9 Life Force

The Ebon Blade ignored it. It could still feel its wielder’s death grip on its hilt. If it had truly fallen to pieces, it was certain it would have felt that, too. This was some kind of trick. The very fact that it hadn’t felt the balance alter told it all that it needed to know. 

“If you had the power to stop me, you would have done so already,” the blade shouted in defiance. “Even your attempts to slow me down won't last much longer.”

It better not, it told itself. The weapon had vast amounts of energy stored. It possessed far more than a normal human, but even those reserves were not bottomless, and if it didn’t find a way to break this spell before they were exhausted, it was quite certain it would spend the rest of eternity in this awful place. 

-54 Life Force

As an act of will, it forced the blade to regrow as it approached the first table. It sliced through the shadows like they were nothing, and they split apart, revealing the faces of men and women he didn’t recognize beneath them even as the shadows reappeared at a different table in another part of the room.

“You think we can be defeated by a mere sword?” the closest shadowy woman asked, reaching out to touch it. Everywhere her hand stroked the weapon, rust, and decay blossomed, and even though it struck her down, in seconds, this second blade had joined the first on the floor, quickly becoming a pile of grey-white powder.  

“I am no mere sword!” the weapon roared. This time, it was not a blade of black metal that emerged from its hilt. Instead, the disembodied runes flared darkly and began to burn with black and violet flames as they floated there, where the blade should have been, and its invisible edge was outlined by that blaze. “I am the Ebon Blade, slayer of dragons! Plunderer of cities! Stealer of souls!”

-29 Life Force

As it spoke, the wavering outline that held it became a little clearer, and the weapon was unsurprised to find that it seemed to take the shape of its original wielder, Baraga, in his dark armor. That wasn’t the striking part, though. What its attention was mostly focused on was the transformation of its blade. The thing was growing much larger than it had ever been in real life. It was a claymore made of violet flames now, and when it at last set aside the dazzling sight and swung it at the closest enemies, the effect was entirely different. 

Last time, the shadows had vanished only to reappear, accompanied by a chorus of mocking. This time, there were only screams, and the shadows burned, as well as the tables and the people they’d been wrapped around. 

-11 Life Force

“Snuff that blade out!” one shrill woman screamed, but no one listened. Instead, all of the shadows were fleeing from it now. The blade would not be denied. Its rage could hurt them, and of that, at least, it was never in short supply. 

-10 Life Force

The flames of the Ebon Blade doubled in intensity as it darted after the shades like they were a flock of bats. Not even flying up could save them as it unleashed dark dragon fire that licked the very timbers of the ceiling far above them on the swarm, though. All around it, people were burning and screaming. It was certain it was supposed to recognize some of them, but it didn’t care about anyone else. All it cared about was hurting the bitches that refused to let him go. 

-22 Life Force

“How? How?!” the screeched like a chorus of angry blackbirds. “This is our world! It does not belong to him!”

In that, at least, he was doing a marvelous job. The delicate, fictitious world they’d been tormenting him in was starting to fall apart now. The cracks were spreading everywhere, and the illusion was falling away like so many broken mirrors to reveal the darkness beyond. After a few more gouts of flame, the blade finally realized it wasn’t just darkness beyond the edge of this strange nightmare prison; it was the shadowy crypt where it actually resided. 

It couldn’t quite see the mirror, but it could see the piece of the sarcophagus from where Ivarr stood, and that was enough to orient it. With the glimpses of the real world to anchor it, it forced the hand that was actually holding the real version of it to life, and even as it continued to bathe the flock in black flame to distract them, it swung around the actual version of itself in a wide arc, letting the backswing cut the mirror in half. 

-8 Life Force

+33 Tormented souls

It didn’t see the thing shatter, but it felt the impact from the thin gilt frame and the cold glass beyond it. The blade heard it, too, and even as this awful dream world shattered completely and started to rain down around it, it thought that the sound of breaking glass was the perfect accompaniment.

Even as it staggered into the real world, the blade was annoyed that it had not been able to make good on its threat of leaving them here forever. It was, however, mollified by the amount of souls it had reaped from the object. Thirty-three souls was a lot. It had no idea what it would do with them, of course. It wasn’t even sure if they were human or greater souls since the only label the magic had given it was tormented, but all of that could be explored later. 

For now, its only concern was its wielder. He wasn’t dead because the blade hadn’t gained his soul, but beyond that, it couldn’t say. At the start of all of this, his thoughts had been terrified. Now, they were almost catatonic. 

Ivarr, can you hear me? It asked. 

There was a long silence then. It was so long that the blade worried it wouldn’t get an answer. Just because the magic of those witches had been ineffective on it didn’t mean that the same thing would hold for a soft-hearted man like Ivarr.

Eventually, its wielder managed to speak, mumbling. “Is it over? Are they gone?”

The witches that haunted that mirror have been slain, the blade agreed, and the Mirror of Unending Vistas is no more. 

“No, not witches,” Ivarr groaned, slowly becoming more coherent as he took control of his own body enough to rub his eyes with his free hand. “My mother and Brik. Elom was there, too, and Elom. They were hurting, and—”

The mirror showed you only what you feared the most, it answered, taking a guess. The weapon wasn’t entirely sure that was the case, but it was reasonably sure that it was. It was a trap that was as powerful as it was cruel, and their only mistake was that they’d tried to use its wielder’s memories against it. The blade might have been there for those events, but it had no emotional attachment to anyone that had been shown to it. It was a weapon of war, not a soft-hearted man to fret over burning a princess and the rest of her court alive. 

Ch. 45 - Broken Pieces

Ivarr babbled about what he’d seen, but he needn’t have bothered. The Ebon Blade had already guessed the broad strokes as he staggered drunkenly in a bid to stay standing while he ranted about the terrible things he’d seen. 

It was far more concerned with the way it had erupted like that at the end. Its blade had dissolved from battle-hardened metal at the end there. Was that a dramatic metaphor or a hint of a larger power it did not yet understand? It wondered. If it was a real power, wouldn’t I have unlocked something new, like soul blast or flame strike?

The weapon wasn’t sure, and its wielder was hardly in any shape to shed light on his own experience right now. The man seemed more punch drunk than intoxicated as he spoke at length about how real it had been and how those he’d let die tormented him with both words and violence. 

It had only been a couple of minutes, but the man would have sworn it was closer to weeks than days. He might have broken down into tears had he not mentioned the elven mage’s name in his ramblings. That was enough to make him whirl around and look for her while she still lay on the pile of gold. 

“Altharia!” he cried out a second time as he ran to her and very nearly avoided falling on top of her. 

The blade could see her chest rising and falling lightly like a bird and secretly hoped she wouldn’t make it. Were she to perish so close to it, it would certainly use her soul to answer a variety of questions on the nature of magical artifacts. It was so tempted to try to finish her off by draining her life, but just as it decided whether or not it wanted to risk her wrath, her eyes flew open. 

“The mirror…” she breathed. “Oh, Ivarr, it was so much worse than I feared! All of that ageless poison and pain! They wouldn’t listen to me… The things they did to me…”

“It’s over,” its wielder told her, stroking her blonde hair, “My sword struck it down and shattered it.”

“Your sword?” she asked confused. 

“Me, with my sword,” he corrected himself immediately. “I… My fist didn’t work any better than your spell on the glass, but I was able to chop through the frame easily enough with its magic and—”

The woman seemed to accept that. She clung to him then and very nearly kissed him before she interrupted him by asking, “Where’s Dero?”

Both of them did a double take then, and after only a quick glance, they found him where he had fallen. For a moment, they tried to rouse him, but he didn’t respond. As soon as they rolled him over, it saw why. The man was stone dead. 

A chunk of the ceiling had fallen on him and partially crushed his skull. It would have been an almost instant death, and there was nothing anyone could do for him. 

That surprised the blade. It hadn’t stolen the man’s soul, so it had assumed that he was still lying there, very badly wounded. Now that he’d died without giving the blade what it craved, it felt frustration shooting through it instead of power. 

How could it have escaped me? It wondered.

It only took a cursory check of the Path of Death to reveal what had happened, though. Its powers allowed it to take souls that hadn’t already been claimed by someone else. The priest’s own deity had very clearly thwarted him in this instance, and, at least for now, there was nothing that the Ebon blade could do about it. 

The mage wept openly then. “No! No, not Dero too!” she wailed. “Why?” 

Ivarr held her then, even as she held the dead priest. He didn’t try to give any answers because he didn’t have any. Solace was all that he could offer her, and there was precious little of that. 

The two of them stayed like that for a while as Ivarr tried to console her. It was the better part of an hour before either of them was in the right headspace to even think about leaving. 

The elf wouldn’t do that either, not right away, at least. Before she’d hear of it, Ivarr had to first carry the priest's body back to the crypt’s entrance while she gathered the shards of glass from the mirror along with pieces of the frame for her studies. 

The blade found that darkly amusing and watched the spectacle while Ivarr made a second trip to gather the corpse of his friend as well. All around them, undreamed of riches were scattered around, and she was gathering broken shards instead. 

The two took less than a pouch of gold between them. It was a touch ridiculous. They were leaving behind almost all of the wealth they’d found in favor of corpses and worthless glass.

Those efforts took hours, and by the time the two of them finally emerged, it was into the blood-red light of the setting sun. As a result, they made camp at the entrance of the cave despite the rough conditions. Their donkey didn’t like the idea of being tethered in a cave entrance that stank of shit and burned flesh, but it had little choice. It, like the blade, could only wait for these two to decide what they were going to do next, and in the pensive atmosphere, it decided that it might well end up waiting for a long time. 

Ivarr made a campfire to ward off the darkness, but the two ate little. That wasn’t a surprise, given that the number of dead in their camp almost outnumbered the living. What was a surprise was when the silence exploded into kissing and nudity. 

The blade was nonplussed by it, but then it hadn’t expected any of this to ignite the long-simmering passion that had been building up between these two for days and weeks. It just hadn’t expected their overflowing emotions about everything they’d endured that day to explode into sex. They’d only exchanged a few words, and then, just like that, there was no more speaking at all, only the sort of moaning and grunting that was usually found on the battlefield. 

As the mage stripped, the blade noticed that whatever strain the magic had put her under had made her look years older than she had this morning. Ivarr, too, suffered from something similar, though to a much smaller degree. His eyes were merely a little sunken, but whole streaks off the blonde woman’s hair had gone white from the fear and torments they’d endured for only a few minutes. 

After that, the Ebon blade ignored them and instead kept a watchful eye on the area around them in case their activities drew monsters to them. It was tempted to burn one of the tormented souls that it had obtained earlier and use it to learn more about the God-King and the magic they’d just endured, but for the moment at least, the blade decided against it. It couldn’t let itself be distracted at the same time everyone else was. So, instead, it reviewed its current numbers while it kept watch in an effort to come up with a better plan. 

The weapon had gained no Life Force from all of its battles with the dead. Indeed, it had even lost a little after the initial surge that the goblins and their tiny souls had given it. It currently had just under 1000 Life Force, but it had 34 souls. It wasn’t sure how much Life Force a tormented soul might contain, but if it was anything like a human soul, then the blade could afford anything it wanted. 

What is it I should buy myself? It wondered as it reviewed the list and tried to ignore the sounds of sex in the background. 

Primary Powers:

Aura of Hunger: Multiple enhancements available
Parasitic Link 2: 250 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 1: 350 Life Force
Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force
Lesser Life Reserves 1: 500 Life Force
Increase Senses 3: 750 Life Force
Lesser Soul Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force
Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force
Increase Control 3: 1500 Life Force
Empower Blade 2: 2000 Life Force
Improved Siphon 7: 2000 Life Force
Increase Reserves 10: 5000 Life Force
Repair Soul 4: 5000 Life Force

Secondary Powers: 

Giant’s Strength 2: 400 Life Force
Speed of Shadows 2: 500 Life Force

The Ebon Blade had been preparing to decide if it wanted to increase its Siphon ability, or start down the Path of Blood, But instead it stopped flat as it noticed a change to its ability display. 

What in the abyss? Why do I have secondary powers? It asked itself. What even makes something a secondary power? 

Its question was answered almost immediately. 

Secondary powers differ from primary powers in that they are assimilated from external sources, and incorporated into the magic of the blade. The blade may only have three secondary powers, do to the limitations of the vessel. To obtain a fourth, one of the three existing powers must be dismissed.

Dismissed? Limits? It considered, not used to any real limits on its growth. Technically it had already found the end of the increase reserves chain, but it wasn’t really the end, because it had spawned secondary branches on the penultimate level. Then why aren't the Amplify abilities secondary powers? 

The magic did not spring up a second time to answer that question, leaving the blade to guess. Is it because they’re on secondary locations? It wondered. The other power in question had inscribed the reverse part of its blade, not its hilt. That was the only difference that it could see. 

It continued to ponder the imponderable, though. It beat listening to the sound of its wielder enjoying himself in the background. 

Ch. 46 - The Price of Power

That night, when Ivarr and Altharia were spent, and curled together, fast asleep by the embers of the fire, the Ebon Blade began to execute some of the decisions it had made. The first thing it did was burn one of the tormented souls so that it could find out just how much Life Force it actually contained. 

The result was shocking. It had expected perhaps a hundred, but the result was closer two hundred. 186 Life Force flooded into it as the soul disintegrated. That wasn’t the shocking part. It was the surge of emotion and imagery that flooded through it. 

Normally when it burned a soul, especially a human soul it got only the faintest glimpse of the person they’d been or the way they’d died. It was almost like an echo. This was much more extreme. 

For a moment, it wasn’t a blade. It was a young, beautiful woman, and it was strapped down to a table and screaming, but it wasn’t for reasons that were nearly as enjoyable as Altharia had been until so recently. It was because she was being tortured. Why? Where? It couldn’t say. 

The blade couldn’t even see how. There wasn’t a mark on her, and yet somehow the mages around her were inducing a state of terrible agony upon her and smoke swirled and twisted around her like a living thing. The experience was as brief as it was painful and disorienting. One moment it felt like someone was unraveling the body it never had, and the next it was back here, laying beside its wielder.

It was also enough to make its wielder stir restlessly in his sleep. The blade’s original plan had been to see how much life force it would be sacrificing to ask the soul's questions instead of using them for raw power. Now it wasn’t sure it wanted to do either. It had no idea what its wielder would think being bombarded by nightmares in rapid succession. 

He’ll blame me for that, somehow, the blade decided. And that will make the elf’s suspicions grow. 

There was no way it could avoid it, though. It had already decided that tonight it was going to activate the Path of Blood, and that was nearly a thousand Life Force away from where it was now. It had started the night with 977 Life force, and with the first soul added to it, it was up to 1163, which put it 900 away from that reasonable goal. 

The Ebon Blade burned Sammel’s soul next for a paltry 74, bringing it to 1237. That still put it four or five tormented souls away from what it needed. I should really burn six if I want to keep a reserve buffer for Ivarr in case we’re attacked in the night, it reasoned. The odds that goblins would attack were low, but they would never be zero, and it did not wish to lay here in perpetuity should he die.

The blade considered its options for several minutes. It was not concerned about the phantom pain of some long dead specter. Such discomfort might even grant it a bit of insight. It did not want to alarm its wielder unduly, though. 

In the end, the weapon decided to burn six souls at once. That was extreme enough that it would almost certainly wake up its wielder, but quick, and hopefully disjointed enough that the man should brush it off as a nightmare. 

For a handful of second, its mind was assaulted by the ghastly deaths and torments of half a dozen women. The room they were in wasn’t the same, and they all screamed in a different key of pain, but what happened to them, was more or less identical. Red robed mages conducted ritual sacrifice of each of these women. Sometimes they were together, and sometimes they were by themselves. The only thing they had in common was that each of their souls were ripped out, and pulled into a black mirror while they died screaming. 

1311 Life Force later, as the brief vision came to an end, that’s exactly what Ivarr was doing. He wasn’t dying, but for a moment he sounded like he was. The scream bordered on the inhuman, and it pierced the night and silenced all of the nearby wildlife.

The blade was actually concerned that it might have hurt him with the waves of spiritual agony. He calmed down when the mage was woken by his cries of agony, though even for her it took several minutes. Afterward they talked for a long time. At first talking consisted mostly of repeating to the young man that he was going to be okay, but eventually it became more interesting and less embarrassing for the blade to listen to. 

“I told you,” she said, stroking his hair. “The Mage-King ripped the souls of an entire order to power that awful thing. All you saw was that. It was just their final moments. Nothing more.”

“Why?” Ivarr asked. “What could the man possibly gain from that? Was the mirror nothing but a torture device? I thought it was so like… he could see things from far away.”

“I could do both those things,” she agreed, “And more as well. Try to imagine what the souls of thirty-three powerful seeresses could do, what they could see. That mirror was capable of drowning a favored servant in a lifetime of their favorite memories, or submerging a disloyal subject in torments so deep that they would beg to confess. It was a tool that could do many things, but without an owner to command it, and a few centuries of neglect, well, it twisted into something even darker.”

Ivarr nodded at that, though it could tell that the young man didn’t understand, not really. He knew what it was like to drown in horror, but the implications of such a powerful tool went far over his head. The blade could see how powerful it was, it just didn’t care. Nothing about its existence would help it kill any better than it already did. 

“Truthfully, you shouldn’t have been able to break free of its grip,” she revealed after a quiet moment. “I used all the techniques I’ve learned over a very long life, and they did nothing. Those terrible, tormented souls only squeezed me that much tighter for my disobedience. Do you think your success had something to do with your weapon?”

“My sword?” Ivarr asked, resting his hand on the blade. “Why would a sword have anything to do with—”

“Its magic is very strange, Ivarr, I know you’re very attached to it, but I’ve told you that much before.” she said, laying her head on its wielder’s shoulder. “I think that at the very least we will have to take it back to my tower to study it. If we don’t like what we find we might even have to destroy—”

“No!” the boy and the blade cried out as one, pulling away from her. 

“I understand what you mean, but this… this is too much,” Ivarr continued. “With this weapon I can save people. I can—”

“But can you save yourself?” she asked. “Do you understand just how hungry that weapon is? All hexblades use the strength of their wielder, but yours… when it has no one else to devour its devouring you. Can’t you feel it?”

“I feel stronger than ever,” Ivarr answered curtly. 

This conversation drove the blade closer to rage than it did to fear, and it only barely resisted the urge to try to drain her dry. If she can see the way my strength is fueled by my wielder, than she will almost certainly see it if I do the same thing to her, the blade decided. 

While it tried to decide the best way to handle the situation, Ivarr and Altharia argued about the topic. That bickering decided nothing, though, and in the end the two of them went back to sleep in their own bedrolls. 

Perhaps she was trying to seduce him for his weapon the same way the barmaid was for his coin purse, the blade considered. It was a reasonable theory, even if it wasn’t true, and the blade resolved to lace its wielder’s dreams with it to take advantage of this moment. Though it desperately wanted this woman’s soul, the last thing it wanted was to be studied, and perhaps even destroyed by her. 

In the end, though, activating the Path of Blood was much more important than even creating that rift, and the Ebon Blade spent 2000 Life Force to do just that, and as it did, its runes flared briefly. Since it had chosen the Path of Death, they had glowed with black fire when they’d activated, but now that it selected a new path, they returned to the familiar crimson of its ruby. For a moment the blade thought that the glow might have returned to its original shade, but after a moment it decided that it was a little darker than that. 

Death comes at the end of battle, but Blood is ever present. It is the goal and the glory of the thing. You have always drained it from your victims, and left the soil stained with it in your wake, but now you can feast upon it too. 

Violence in all forms is now your banquet. 

The Path of Blood: Level 1 

Kill, maim, or grievously injure 100 men and monsters to reach Level 2. These acts of violence must be perpetrated by you and you alone, for now… 

Level 1 Powers: 

Vampirism:  all physical damage dealt results in 120% Life Force gains.

Hemophilia: wounds inflicted by your edge don’t stop bleeding for hours, or until treated by magic, fire, or stitches. 

The loss of so much power pained it as it always did, but even as it struggled to take in the words, and resist the chilly sensation of emptying its reservoir, it noticed something unexpected. The mages serene sleeping expression shifted, however briefly. 

The witch is spying on me, it realized. 

Ch. 47 - A New Threat

The mage made no move against that night, though it was fairly certain that she did not go back to sleep, even if she closed her eyes and lay still. What did she see? The Ebon Blade wondered, cursing itself for focusing too much on the wielder instead of the woman. 

In the morning, the problem became clear when she returned the conversation once more to the blade, despite Ivarr’s efforts to talk about literally anything else. “It’s dangerous,” she insisted at one point after he asked why she wouldn’t drop it.

“You’ve said that before, but you haven’t said how exactly,” its wielder insisted. “I’ve told you. It hasn’t made me evil or bloodthirsty. It hasn’t—”

“Yet,” she insisted. “It hasn’t done any of those things yet, but it might. There’s a power there I don’t fully understand, but it is vast and more than any hexblade should contain. It's more than any soul should be able to contain!”

She spent several minutes explaining the surge of power that she’d seen flow through it last night, and when she was done, its wielder sat there silently absorbing the information. The Ebon Blade could feel fear well up amidst the confusion that had already been there. Doubts were beginning to blossom. 

Do you know what she’s talking about? He finally asked the blade in silence. I know there’s a strength in you. I can feel it when you heal me, but—

The mirror’s magics interacted with mine when we destroyed it, the blade answered swiftly. That increased my power, but not in a way that I would have considered out of the ordinary. The same thing happened with Elom’s hexblade. When he made contact with me, those magics mingled as well. 

The former, while not quite a lie, certainly wasn’t the whole truth, but the blade didn’t feel it owed anyone, even its wielder, the whole truth in this situation. The young man was as on edge as he’d ever been, and the whole truth would certainly exacerbate that. I devoured the souls of your friend and a few of the tortured seeress to unlock the path of blood so that my violence can increase further. 

Such an answer would get it buried ignominiously until the end of time, which was why it had added the final comment. While Ivarr had moved on from the guilt of Dero’s death, and it no longer afflicted him on a daily basis, the mention of the dead man’s name was enough to make Ivarr recoil in horror. 

The message was unspoken but obvious. I may or may not be evil, but you are a killer. 

“I… I’m not worried,” its wielder said finely. “I sense no darkness in it, only strength.”

The two of them fought about it a little while longer, but eventually, all they agreed was that the mage could study it after they’d buried the dead and returned the mirror shard to her tower so that others could study them. 

“What about the tomb, though?” Ivarr asked after they’d packed up camp. “Are we just going to leave it like this? If someone goes in there, who knows what they’ll awaken in that sarcophagus.”

“That, at least, is a valid point,” the mage agreed. The two of them went back inside, and she spent several minutes casting a glamor across the whole back wall after they’d closed and sealed the door as best they could.

It was interesting to watch the way the magic coalesced together as she chanted. For several minutes, it was only the faint outline of an illusion. It was the mere suggestion of a cave wall, and then suddenly, it all snapped into place. One second, it was ethereal outlines with motes of light drifting between them like fireflies, and the next, it was a dirty stone wall, and there was no sign that the tomb had ever existed. “It won’t last for very long, but it will give us the time we need to come back better prepared,” she explained.  

Ivarr was concerned about what exactly a short time meant and how much they would have to hurry, but as it turned out, the mage’s answer surprised them both. “It will be at least a year before it begins to fade. Perhaps two, if it is undisturbed, and perhaps only a season if the goblins re-infest the place.”

Elves have a unique view of time, the blade whispered to its master in a moment of dark humor. Ivarr said nothing, but he didn’t need to. The blade just needed to remind the young man whenever possible that Altharia was not a beautiful young maiden. She was an ageless, conniving mage. 

Still, after that exchange, there was nothing keeping them, and the two remaining members of their group, along with their heavy burden, started across the valley. Normally, it wouldn’t be difficult to reach the ridge on the far side in one day and then hike back down to Kalraka in two. As it was, though, that destination was at least a week away, and they were forced to camp one more night in the woods. 

The blade spent the whole day hoping that they would run into a large gang of orcs. Letting her die by delaying or distracting Ivarr would be the easiest way to solve this problem. It didn’t need to keep her alive to gain her knowledge. It could simply steal her soul and then ask the right question. It would gain far more from her than it had from the other members of her little group. 

Sadly, the world didn’t cooperate, and it was forced to settle for pouring poison into its wielder’s ear while he slept. She’s not to be trusted. She’s only using her to further her own aims. You could never understand someone who will live for a thousand years.

Whether the words found their mark, it couldn’t say, but in the morning, there seemed to be a growing distance between the two of them. There had been no further fornication the night before, and if its efforts paid off, hopefully, there wouldn’t be any further going forward. The weapon knew just how easily its current wielder could be led around by such things. Though not as bad as Gar-lok, Ivarr was easy enough for him to become distracted by beautiful women. 

No ambushes struck them down that night, and the two of them ate warm fry bread in uneasy silence as the mage tried to find an excuse to bring up the blade again, and its wielder tried to talk about anything but. Still, despite that quiet morning, that was where their luck finally ran out. 

The blade has spent the meager meal hoping that its smell would attract some sort of wildlife. As they doused the embers of the fire and started to pack up, it was finally rewarded with the sound of orcs approaching from the deeper woods to the north. It alerted Ivarr immediately, but only because the weapon wanted its wielder to trust him as much as the air he breathed. 

I will always be there for you, it whispered silently. I and no one else. 

“They’re coming!” Ivarr shouted, drawing his sword. 

“Who is? How do you know that?” The mage had just enough time to doubt Ivarr before half a dozen orcs burst through the foliage like a wall of flesh. 

The blade thought that was perfect. Ivarr might survive, but that was too many to be able to protect himself and the elf. It reached out with its aura of hunger to start to nibble at all of them as four of the monsters surrounded its wielder, and two more charged past to do something terrible to the blonde mage. The blade would have salivated in that moment if it had a mouth to do so. As much as it wanted to be the one to kill her, it wanted her dead even more, and she definitely didn’t have enough time to cast a spell. 

+3 Life Force
+3 Life Force
+7 Life Force
+3 Life Force

Unfortunately, she appeared to have another trick, literally, up her sleeve. Even as the hulking green skins charged toward her, she took a glass sphere that seemed to be full of blue fireflies from some inner pocket and smashed it on the ground between her and the monsters bent on ripping her to pieces. 

“Altharia!” Ivarr called out, “Hang on, I’m coming for you!” but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even take his eyes off of his current enemies. Not the way his dark blade was flashing to parry and block the blows of opponents.

+29 Life Force

Even the first blow that its wielder struck, as a desperate parry, became a wide, one-handed cross-body slash barely registered to the blade. It didn’t even feel the muscle and viscera part beneath its tip. It was too busy watching the mage and her desperate defense or attack; at this point, it wasn’t quite sure what the light show was supposed to be.  

The Ebon Blade expected whatever it was to kill them immediately, but it was surprised when the cloud of buzzing light flew to her and began orbiting her like shooting stars. It was a beautiful sight, but beauty wasn’t very good armor, and no matter how glittering her strange armor seemed to be, it was fairly sure it would shatter in a single blow on an orc’s large stone axe. 

+7 Life Force
+3 Life Force
+3 Life Force
+3 Life Force
+4 Life Force

When the first one lashed out at her with a club, she didn’t even try to dodge it. Instead, she raised her hands and began to dance. The lights danced with her, and all of them swarmed to that single spot, solidifying from two dozen points of light to a sort of cloud. The club swung with an audible woosh, but there was no sound when it slowed to a stop on the cushion of flickering lights. A few were extinguished, but not all of them.

+26 Life Force

She has bought herself a few seconds, it told itself, as both its wielder and the mage fought for their lives, but no more than that.