The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 144-146

Ch. 144 - The Abyssal Depths

One hundred Life Force was a lot of power. It was the value of the average human soul, or the vitality of a strong man. A hero could have double that, or even more, and orcs often had several times that amount for it to drain, but it was still a lot of energy, and the blade burned that in a single instant, feeling the dark thrill of that much power burning through it. 

-100 Life Force.

Then it did it again, and again, because in the grand scheme of things, a hundred life force meant little to it now. Then it did it again, and again. In the space of three seconds, it spent three human lifetimes' worth of energy, and the results were noticeable, though they felt very strange. 

-200 Life Force.

While it rarely used the ability for its intended purpose these days, Blade’s Aura of Hunger reached about 225 feet, and in an instant, the blade shrank that, reducing it to just over thirty feet. While that might be an interesting way to strike someone that was out of reach, for now, the blade used it to move faster. 

Its wielder’s normal stride was over four feet; now it was advancing thirty feet with every step forward. The Ebon Blade could look behind them and see just how far apart its large, muddy footprints were. It was impressive, but was it worth it? That was a different question altogether. 

The blade was following the current under the assumption that it was taking it where it wanted to go, but what if that was wrong? What if it were taking the blade in exactly the opposite direction, or if it didn’t matter at all? 

There’s no way of knowing that, it told itself. For now, I have to keep going until I learn more. 

If that was the plan, then it behoved it to go as fast as possible. That wasn’t a bad bet. Since the weapon had gotten Golden Storage, its Life Force capacity had increased to 15,600. Even now, after spending 300, it still had just over 15,000 remaining. That was almost half a year of power under normal conditions, but the last thing it wanted to do was spend six months down here in the dark, wandering in circles and hoping to reach land.

The blade increased its pace. Running on the ocean floor was hard, but not impossible. The crushing pressure did nothing to it as it began to speed up; its metal wielder would never be capable of the speed that it was on land, but it still began to move with terrifying quickness. When each stride was nearly fifty feet, a mile was merely a hundred steps, and a second later, when it used Position of Privilege again, it was only half of that. The blade was running faster than a mile a second now. On land, it would have been going two or three times that. 

-100 Life Force.

It was a thrilling experience, and the weapon already wanted to speed up again, but that seemed unwise. As it was, it had to warp space in more complicated ways to navigate around the very occasional obstacles without slowing down. That wasn’t very hard, though. The hard part was doing so in such a way that it kept going straight; wandering in circles would be a waste of energy and time. 

As the blade kept up its speed, it was forced to spend several hundred Life Force a minute. This was unsustainable in the long term, but in the short term, it devoured the worthless lesser demon souls it had, as well as any of the damned souls it happened to approach as it went. 

-1200 Life Force.

+37 Damned Souls. 

Though the level of souls it had in reserve went down steadily, it was able to keep its Life Force Levels high for more than ten minutes. That’s when it noticed that the water around it was starting to boil in those brief moments when it slowed down to ensure the current hadn’t changed. 

-2500 Life Force.

I suppose I’ve never pushed so hard for so long, the blade thought, remembering poor Evelyn. She was proof that there was too much of a good thing, and it was seeing hints of that now. 

What will happen when I get a mortal wielder again? It wondered. Will I be able to hold them together with regeneration, or will I have to resist using this foul power? 

While it might survive any abuse, there was an upper limit to the amount of abuse its wielder could endure. In this case, though, the metal man it puppeted offered no complaints. It simply did as it was bid. The blade might have gone on like that indefinitely, until it had eliminated all of the worthless demon souls from its system, but when he saw a strange landmark, it finally slowed to a stop and let the strange powers it had been wielding lapse as it approached it and stopped in front of it. 

-800 Life Force.

At first, it thought the landmark was a rib sticking straight up from the muck, but that did not seem to be the case. It was too smooth, symmetrical, and straight for that. No, it was a column, carved from stone, and though it could not see it visually, examining the weave of the world revealed several more further on that had collapsed and were mere piles of stone now. 

The blade studied the one that still stood at length, but found only markings far too eroded to read. That didn’t stop it from feeling the stones of a well-made road beneath its feet. The thing was hidden under a foot of cloudy silt, but it was there, and the blade contended itself with following it. It wasn’t precisely in the direction the current had been; it was even down slope a bit, which was the opposite of what it wanted, but this was too interesting to pass up. 

Is it some kind of sunken temple complex? It wondered. The waters seemed far too deep for such a thing, but then, it supposed that sense was not required in this place. 

What the blade found as it descended into the black abyssal valley on the ocean floor was hardly a temple complex. It was bigger than that, much bigger. It was an entire sunken city, done in white marble. They were so deep that there were scarcely any barnacles or other aquatic undergrowth on them. Someone had simply drowned a whole city at once, freezing it in time. 

That, however, was not the strange part. The strange part was the current of drowned souls flowing through the place and above it. It had seen them elsewhere at random. They were scattered through the ocean and drifted completely at the mercy of uncaring currents. 

While all of the spirits it had seen in this circle had glowed faintly, they hadn’t produced any light worth mentioning. That was no longer the case. There were thousands of them here, maybe even tens of thousands, and they swirled above the pale ruins in streamers of light that reassembled schools of listless fish. 

It made for a strange scene, and the more the blade studied it, the more it knew this place was important. It was dangerous, too. The Ebon Blade couldn’t say exactly what made it think that, but the further it walked into the quiet, ancient place, the more convinced it became that it should leave. It should turn around and follow the road up, to wherever it led, because if this was the end of the road, it certainly wanted to be at the beginning. 

Still, the blade did not like the idea of running, and certainly not for no reason at all. It was at a loss to figure out what was provoking a sense of dread. It wasn’t the leviathans that drifted fat above, illuminated by the eerie blue light, nor was it the empty city. It was the feeling that something terrible dwelt here. 

I need a clue as to where I’m going next, the blade told itself as it pressed on. I could wander around in the dark forever without more information. 

It was with that thought in mind that it approached the center of the city, eager to find anyone that it could steal that information from, or any signs that might point the way. There was nothing, though. Every scrap of paper or paint had been torn away by the water, and as it walked up the stairs of the largest building in the dead city, it worried that this might be a dead end. 

What if it was Prince Cerirvall that lied to me? It asked itself. What if there’s no way out of an endless ocean for a man who cannot swim?

When it entered the temple’s spartan main chamber, it realized that it had been worried for nothing. There was a spirit there, sobbing on the floor in the center of the blasted room. No, not a spirit, it corrected itself, A demon. Even as a demon, though, it was rather pathetic. It had almost no power flowing through it. 

It was just a weeping, blue-skinned devil that was all but wasted away. The blade felt its pain there. If it kept eating these pathetic spirits, it would end up that way before long, too, no doubt. It should have simply left it there and moved on, but it was the only lead that it had found in this realm to date, so it didn’t. 

If I kill the thing, it might at least know where it should go next, the blade reasoned. 

The blade couldn’t strike them down, though, because as soon as its metal wielder moved within arm's reach, the pathetic-looking man opened his eyes and fixed it with a stare. That was when the blade knew that it wasn’t any demon that it faced; it was the Prince of the Fifth Circle. The blade was utterly paralyzed as it was pinned with an emotion that it had rarely experienced in its existence: sadness. 

Ch. 145 - An Ocean of Tears

The Ebon blade twisted and fought against the sensations flooding through it, but somehow, it found itself defenseless against them. In all past situations, even when it had faced that awful mirror, it had been able to resist such things, but this was an order of magnitude worse than that had been. 

It had experienced regret, and it remembered sadness, but what it felt now was so much stronger. This was pure angst; it was weaponized despair, and no matter how hard the weapon fought against it, it fought even harder not to let its wielder sink to its knees and weep. 

The strange wind-up toy didn’t even have eyes. I had no mind or soul, and yet somehow, some way, it wanted to give in to these terrible corrosive emotions as bad as the blade did. Up until this point, it hadn’t regretted a single thing that it had done, but now it regretted everything.

It keenly felt every life that it had ended, and every regret the pieces of its patchwork soul held. A moment ago, it had been proud of the violence that it had inflicted on the wider world, but now not even this ocean would be enough to wash away the stains of what it had done. 

Rebelling against it, the weapon forced its wielder to take a step forward. All it wanted was to end the demon that was responsible for making it feel this way, but even that step was all but impossible, and its wielder staggered forward to one knee. It even dropped the Ebon Blade as it did so! Fortunately, the automaton’s metal fingers still rested upon the hilt as he crouched there on hands and knees, but even so, the weapon was inches from losing contact with its wielder, and it couldn’t make that hand close to take it up again. 

What is this! The blade screamed silently, fighting with everything it had to resist it. 

The weight of this one frail demon’s gaze was heavier than the rest of the ocean combined, and none of its strength or powers seemed to matter. It was immune to mind control, the draining magics that undead monsters wielded so effectively. It didn’t have any sympathies to play on, but somehow it was wracked with sorrow. 

Then, something inside of it cracked under the strain, and its conscious efforts to resist were washed away by the unending emotions. If the blade had possessed eyes, it would have cried then, preposterous though it was. More than anything, this felt like the jarring rearrangement that happened to its mind whenever it tried to fix its own soul, but that insight did very little for it. Instead, it was swept away by its memories. 

The blade was bombarded by the death throes of everyone it had ever killed, and everyone it had tasted, then rose up from its mind like a geyser of souls, and they dragged it down into the darkness with them. Normally, it would have shrugged off all of their attacks and accusations, but the armor that bound its soul had vanished. No, it had rusted away in the saltwater depths, and now it was defenseless.

In a sense, the blade was lucky. The Demon Prince’s gaze was locked on its wielder, not on it. So there were moments of lucidity amidst the tumult, but even being a foot or two from the epicenter of the demon’s power was no blessing. 

For hour after endless hour, it was forced to endure people begging for their lives, as well as feel their death throes. It shared the agony of every death that its razor edge had ever caused, but that was the least of its suffering. The blade was a weapon, and the people who made up its chimeric soul had all died grisly deaths. It was the sadness and the shame that it had no defense against.

The Ebon Blade was not built to grieve or apologize, but that was all it could do for an endless eternity as all of the violence it had wrought over its existence returned to it a hundredfold. That was the reason its wielder could not pick it up again. Because it was crushed down by the weight of its endless crimes. 

It had killed tens of thousands of people and nearly as many demons. It had maimed hundreds more and drunk enough blood to fill a small lake. Even the deaths of warriors that it had intentionally caused didn’t hurt it as badly as the deaths of those who’d simply been in the way. Wives, children, and old men had all been cut down, either by its edge or by its armies, and it had fed on all of their souls. 

Now, they tore at it like the vengeful shades they were, trying to shred it to pieces. The Ebon Blade prayed for such a fate. It would have gladly been consigned to oblivion in those awful, endless days. It would have been better than this, but such mercy was denied it. No matter how bad the emotional turmoil around it fluctuated and churned, there was more just waiting for its turn. 

The weapon had incurred lifetimes' worth of sins, and whoever this devil was, it seemed that he was here to make it pay forever.  As it did so, the blade’s Life Force ticked away to nothing. Hour by hour, and day by day, it drained away. Nothing was stealing it. Its wielder wasn’t even a very large burden. It was just the steady trickle of Life Energy that kept it moving and thinking, slowly fading away to nothing. 

The blade had entered the dead city with over fourteen thousand Life Energy, and as it drowned in memories of tragedy, it was rarely able to come up for air, but whenever it did, that number had fallen precipitously. 

Life Energy: 12,994

Life Energy: 11,318

Life Energy: 9,877

Each time it looked at the number, it had collapsed, and though math was all but lost to it in its present, pathetic state, it was fairly certain that it burned slightly more than a hundred a day, which meant that weeks were passing by in this horrible fugue state. 

That was just one more thing for the blade to despair at, though, unfortunately. Nothing it could do, or it could think, could break the endless cycle of doom that it was trapped in. 

-9,030 Life Force.

For the thousandth time, it tried to reach out and use Aura of Hunger on the demon that was lying there, helpless before it, but its mind recoiled from it. All the sustenance it ever needed was right in front of it, but it dared not harm another living soul, evil or otherwise. 

It could only watch that number sink lower and lower. For months, it dropped thousands at a time between its lucid moments, before it was carried under again. Then, one day, it was dangerously low: 847. That was more than a week of power; it knew that. Normally, the number would have been large enough that it wouldn’t have bothered the blade. It would have refrained from using certain powers and found someone to slaughter so it could replenish itself.

That stirred it to life, at least a little bit, but the idea that it might pluck the souls of the damned from where they floated above it in their cycles of never-ending torment was enough to reduce it to complete apathy again. Just the thought of snuffing out another life made it sick with sadness all over again, and the weapon once more lost itself to the tumultuous emotions that filled its soul. 

Some small part of its mind knew that it would never wake up again after that. It would just lie there helpless until its mind vanished into the void like it had several times before. The swirling voices of everyone it had killed and maimed over its long existence tried to force it to accept that. 

It’s better this way… they whispered. You’ll never hurt anyone else again if you stay here. 

This Demon Prince was trying to euthanize it. Without so much as a word exchanged between them, he was trying to end the blade without a fight, and so far, at least, he was winning.   

The blade’s runes no longer glowed black or even the dull blood red that they usually glowed. They were a cold blue now, and they were almost extinguished. It was no wonder why. For centuries, it had burned with the fires of vengeance, and now it was on the verge of being extinguished by pure despair. 

The blade could not struggle against its fate. The best it could manage to do was watch its dwindling Life Force as it ticked down. 

12, 10, 7…  

Despite all of the other torments plaguing the blade, it couldn’t turn away. It tried again to use Aura of Hunger, first on the demon prince lying helplessly before it, and then on any number of spirits floating through the waters above it. The weapon might have lain here for months, but those poor bastards were still there, ripe for the taking. 

It couldn’t have them, though. Each time it tried to grasp one, its powers failed as a new wave of torment consumed it. 

You wouldn’t kill anyone else, would you? The voices whispered. Not after you know how terrible it is…

5, 3, 1…

Every few minutes, another -1 Life Force message would appear. Each time that happened, a wave of dread surged through it, but that only seemed to make the spectral chains that bound it stronger. 

0 Life Force remaining. 

The voices surrounding the weapon and surging through it screamed for it to give in. It wanted to. Even though it was against everything that the weapon was, it wanted to give in. 

But it couldn’t. With a sudden desperation born of the fear of the oblivion that awaited it, the blade’s survival instinct kicked in. There was no thought or resistance, at least none that was effective. With no energy remaining, it reached into its flickering soul gem and grabbed the most powerful soul that remained to it, and consumed.

The guilt and recriminations tore through it then in a new wave. However, that pain wasn’t nearly as strong as the pain or the fire that started to burn through its veins and its runic pathways. It had devoured the soul of a demonic dragon the size of a city. That was not how the Ebon Blade had planned to use that soul; it was sure there would be a cost for that, but for now, as its Life Energy total surged upward, it had at least one more chance at life, or better, vengeance. 

Ch. 146 - Absolute Power

+8,956 Life Force.

The Ebon Blade was completely overwhelmed in that moment. Paralyzed by sorrow, it was flooded with power. Indeed, it was far more energy than it had ever expected from a single soul. 

The fiery blood of a demonic dragon roared through it in that moment, filling its reserves to overflowing in an instant, and then beyond. That heat was a painful contrast to what it had experienced previously. 

+10,479 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.

Life Force reserve limits exceeded!

In fact, only its brief experience with the Golden Throne was in any way similar. That had been millions of Life Force, which was enough to turn its wielder to ashes. The dragon soul was only tens of thousands by comparison, but even so, as it dissolved, its rage rebounded inside the weapon, looking for release. 

+6,331 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.

Soul Stone cracking! Runes overloading!

It tried the Warbringer first. Enough power flowed into it that its eyes glowed red, and its engine revved dangerously close to its limits. That still wasn’t enough to make it rise under the terrible burdens of its guilt, but it was enough to make it grip the blade’s hilt once more. 

+3,983 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.

Runes overloading!

The weapon wasn’t so lucky. Its blade began to burn red hot. Even chilled by the water around it, the liquid began to bubble and boil. Through all of that, though, the demon prince didn’t so much as blink. He just lay there, languid and sobbing as the weight of the world crushed his victims. 

+2,154 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.

Soul Rupturing. 

The blade could no longer abide by that stalemate, though. More power than it was capable of containing was radiating through it, and it was painfully hot. Hotter than dragon’s blood, the blade thought, remembering how little it had felt when it had been embedded in a dragon for weeks. 

+1,984 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.

Soul Stone failure imminent. 

That made sense with the hellish nature of the soul it had devoured, but even so, it couldn’t find a way to expel that power. Every time it tried to use an attack, the guilt of its deeds and the sorrow of the slain prevented it. 

Vorpal Strike only brought forth a wave of carnage-fueled memories. Bolt rebounded as well, filling it with pain instead of electricity, and all the time, the terrible pressure grew. For a moment, the blade was certain that its ruby was going to shatter under the immense pressure that filled it, then, at random, it triggered Position of Privilege. 

-100 Life Force. 

A mere hundred Life Force wasn’t enough to ease the pressure, but since it wasn’t an attack, the souls of the damned that assailed it made no move to stop it. So the blade responded by doing it over and over again. Ten times, then twenty, it activated the power. It tried Shifting blade as well, along with Amplify Wielder and anything else that it could spend its energy on. 

-2,085 Life Force. 

It used Position of Privilege more than anything else, though, and it could feel the world distorting around it as it tried to abide by the blade's twisted magic. And I haven’t even tried to use it, the weapon noted as the skein of the world twisted and fluctuated. 

On whim, not really believing it would work, the blade tried to expand the distance between it and the demon prince, subjectively. While only feet separated them. It should be able to push itself hundreds of feet away and get clear of the thing’s monstrous influence. For a moment, the voices in its soul screamed in protest, but grudgingly, the world shifted. 

For a few seconds, the Ebon blade and its wielder were hundreds of feet away from the thing. That was enough to flex its metal wielder's fingers and try to rise, but even so, they were both still overwhelmed by the sorrow of this place. 

-642 Life Force. 

While the Ebon Blade’s wielder tried and failed to stand, the demon prince did something unexpected and stood in his place. “Even now, you try to run from me?” it sobbed. “Even under the weight of so many grievous sins, you still have the strength to move?”

The man was obviously in disbelief, but still showed no fear. He stepped lightly toward the blade, and as he did so, the weight of his gaze increased.

“You are here for the same reasons as the rest of us,” he whispered. “And you will stay until your armor and your blade rust so that your soul can finally drift free.”

That was the last thing that the weapon wanted, but its invisible shackles seemed to be inescapable. In a moment of clarity, it took in that terrible, hopeless scene. It watched its steel giant on its knees as the fire in its eyes was already starting to extinguish again, and the frail young man advancing on it. He looked like a prince on his deathbed, and yet he was indomitable. The sea shifted with him, and his gaze held the weight of ages. 

-488 Life Force.

Running away isn’t the answer, it decided suddenly. Running away is never the answer. 

The blade couldn’t run, but for the moment, it had boundless energy and dangerous levels of control over the world around it. So, instead of trying to push the demon prince away as hard as it could, it pulled him as close as the magic would allow. It shrank the three feet between them from the hundreds of feet it had been for a moment to its natural amount, then it began to compress space. 

The demon prince’s power assaulted the weapon with renewed force, but even as its mind was swept away by a thousand screams of pain, it continued to squeeze. Squeezing was the easiest thing in the world. It was the death grip it exerted on its wielders in their final moments, not to release it. It was its final act of defiance, and as it did so, the world shifted again. 

-2,200 Life Force. 

Visibly, everything stayed in the same place. The temple still stood, and the souls still coursed overhead, but the feet that separated the blade from its enemy became inches, and then fractions of an inch. If it had been able to move, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the blade to lash out and lop off the man's head. 

While it couldn’t do that, though, it could draw him ever closer to where the heat of its efforts boiled the water around it and its wielder. For a moment, nothing happened, and the weapon thought that its gambit had failed.  There was every reason it should have, of course. Blue-skinned or not, it was a demon, so fire probably wasn’t something that it would be too afraid of. 

-4350 Life Force.

At least, that’s what the blade thought, until the frail demon prince began to scream. That ragged sound wasn’t completely discernible from his sobbing before now, but it shook his grip on his strange powers enough that for a moment the blade was free. 

It used that second wisely, and even before it took in the extent of its opponents' burns, it rose and struck. At least, it tried to. An instant before it reached the demon’s slender throat to slice his head from his shoulders, the pitiful man froze the world again, breaking the whole weight of the ocean down on the blade. Now that it had hope and a plan, though, not even that was enough to force it to the ground a second time. 

-6,530 Life Force.

The two were locked there, frozen in a contest of wills. The blade was burning through serious amounts of Life Force, and the souls of its victims pleaded with it to stop, but the demon prince was in far worse shape. 

“No one may touch me,” the man spat as the water around him boiled fiercely enough for the skin to blister and blotch before it started to slough off his bones entirely. 

The blade couldn’t keep this up forever, but it didn’t need to. It just kept amplifying Position of Privilege, bringing the two of them ever closer together.

-8,325 Life Force.

While it could never quite touch the man, it could decrease the distance between them so that it was smaller and smaller. It could make it so that less than a hair's breadth separated them. Then, it waited, boiling the demon alive while it tried to torment it to death with an infinite ocean of suffering. 

Even after all of that, neither of them had the advantage until the Demon Prince writhed in pain just a little more than usual and nicked himself against the blade’s edge. That was all it took. After that, the weapon pulled on the slender streamer of blood, unraveling him like a tapestry. This time it was the demon prince's turn to suffer and wail, but truthfully, it didn't sound much different from the whining he'd exhibited up until now.

-4,200 Life Force.

+43 Life Force. 

He was cooked from without and drained from within, and a minute later, he’d fallen to the ground as a desiccated husk of the already frail man that he’d been when this fight had started months before. The blade took no small amount of pleasure in that as it stole the demon’s soul, but it took more pleasure in the silence that was its mind. It had dealt with the screaming and suffering of others for a small eternity, and now that it was once again surrounded by true peace, it took a moment to bask in it. 

-1,875 Life Force. 

+221 Life Force.

+1 Demon Prince Soul.

In fact, it enjoyed that feeling so much that it took it several seconds longer than it should have to realize what its battle had done to the city around them. It was with some surprise that the blade looked around and saw what it had done, even as its magic started to fade.