The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 147-149

Ch. 147 -  Aftermath

The sunken city that had been this demon prince’s seat of power for who knew how long had stood untouched in its timeless way, but now it was completely devastated. It took the blade some time to figure out what had happened, let alone why or how. First, though, it looked to the cyan wreaths of the damned souls that lingered above it. 

Before they had hung above the city as a churning, luminescent spiderweb. Now they had clumped up above the ruined temple, practically all within reach. The blade took advantage of that to reach out and devour hundreds, refilling its reserves. As it did so, it pondered that vital clue. 

Most of them were outside of my reach before; what changed? It asked itself. No matter how much it compressed or stretched space, it couldn’t reach out beyond that limit. 

It took several seconds, but eventually it figured out what had happened. When it had stretched out the space defined by its Aura of Hunger in a bid to escape the prince’s powers, it had made a great vacuum by stretching space a hundredfold. The waters of the deep had filled those phantom spaces, but in doing so, the onrushing torrents had wrecked everything in their path as they’d flowed into the phantom space. 

Now that its magic was fading as the blade no longer renewed the effect, those waters were flooding back out, but slower than they’d rushed in. The result was that they pushed away the clouds of silt, revealing more and more piles of rubble. If there had been anything of value here before, it was gone now. 

Still, the blade wandered the ocean floor for several hours in a lazy, expanding search. Those efforts were interrupted twice. The first time was by a crab larger than a wagon that took offence to the blade wandering through its territory, and the second was a strange sort of sea serpent that descended from the darkness above to strike at it. 

Neither beast succeeded in their efforts. 

The weapon had opted not to use any of its powers to do battle with the giant crustacion, if only to limber up after spending months as a statue. That had been enjoyable, given that its shell had provided the thing some measure of protection against its terrible blow. The crab’s giant claws even succeeded in denting its wielder’s steel armor; the eel didn’t even do that much. 

-27 Life Force.

+112 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.
+1 Demon Soul. 

The blade simply side-stepped its fearsome maw and left a quarter-mile-long wound as its giant serpentine body followed in its wake. It didn’t even get the chance to make a second attack. Instead, it bled out as it tried to turn around for a second, dry, filling the water with black ichor that fogged the water throughout most of the city. 

+8 Life Force. Energy Reservoir Full.
+1 Greater Demon Soul. 

That shroud of darkness didn’t stop its search, but it did keep any other leviathans from noticing it, giving it plenty of time to think. The weapon had slain another lord of the pit, but this one had been a close-won battle that it had been largely unprepared for.

Knowing the nature of your enemy is the most important thing in any fight, and this time I knew nothing. I didn’t even know for sure that it was here, the blade cursed itself. 

Was it even a fight, though? It reflected when it was finished, berating itself. The demon never raised a hand to me. It was simply a force of nature. 

That complicated things further. If one demon prince existed that had such strange powers, then there were no doubt others. It was also obvious that even if the circles themselves weren’t getting stronger, their rulers were. As far as the circles went, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the nature or the severity of the sins that sent the damned souls to them. It was almost random. 

It had asked Prince Cerirvall about that before they had become enemies, but the demon had brushed him off. “Mortals don’t understand the nature of true evil. They are mere participants in the act. Only demons will be able to see things in their proper context.”

That annoyed the blade, and despite the danger, it was tempted to ask one of the powerful souls it possessed more about that, and the hazards that lay ahead. Only the idea that there were more powers that it might strip from them stopped it. It could only use each soul once, and it seemed a shame to waste any of them on anything so straightforward as ‘What powers does my next opponent wield?’

Still, after being weighed down by unfamiliar and unearned disappear, just moving and thinking was good for the blade. For so long, it had feared oblivion more than anything, but it had finally found something worse. This strange experience made it less inclined than ever to try piecing together the remaining cracks in its soul, though, and as much as it pondered what it might face next in the jungles of the next circle, the weapon also contemplated the emotional suffering it had been assaulted by. 

The souls that lived and died to make it had felt every kind of pain there was to feel; so had the wielders who had died holding it. Gar-lok had burned alive for several minutes while his nerves continuously regenerated because he held the weapon. Var’gar had suffered an even grislier fate, and though neither of those agonies was inflicted directly on the blade, they were educational. 

It thought that it felt every kind of pain that there was to feel, but somehow, the prince of this realm had turned the guilt that it didn’t even have into a hell all its own, and the blade had been entirely defenseless to it. Even now, those tectonic emotions had left scars in the form of empathy that it did not care for. 

Monsters and warriors were one thing, but it wasn’t clear how it would feel about killing innocents and other collateral targets when the time came. Would it hesitate? It told itself that it would never hesitate to strike someone down and harvest their souls, but there was some doubt there now, too, and no matter how much it contemplated it, that complex tangle of emotions only grew more complicated, not less. 

The blade wandered the ruins in peace until its meandering search spiral eventually met up with the road that had brought it here. Here, at least, the devastation that the blade had unleashed had done some good. The strange currents its magic had caused had ripped away the foot of soft silt covering the road, revealing its worn white stones for miles. The blade had been able to see through the muck by studying the world weave, so this offered it no benefit. Still, it was a welcome change as it started back the way it had come. 

It still didn’t know the way out of this watery hell, but this was its best lead, and it was going to take it. The Ebon Blade had months of power again, and though it moved with caution, it had every confidence that it would find its way to the next circle eventually.

Eventually took longer than it would have imagined, though, unfortunately. The stone road stayed uncovered for a day. After that, the blade followed it for two more with methodical steps before it encountered a place where it had been blasted to ruin by some ancient avalanche. By then, though, the land had a slope to it, and it followed that slope upward, seeking the surface. 

-489 Life Force. 

If all oceans had bottoms, then they also had shores, and it was that shore that the blade sought. As it made its way up from the depths, the waters slowly filled with life, or at least the mockery of it. It couldn’t yet see the light of the sickly yellow sun, but there were more luminescent souls in these upper regions, and they revealed any number of hazards. 

Some of them were even brave enough to try to devour it, and the blade was forced to leave any number of dissolving carcasses in its wake. It didn’t matter whether the demons were sleek, twenty-foot-long shark-toothed predators, or stranger creatures with fanged tentacles a hundred feet long; none of them stood a chance against its edge. 

-217 Life Force. 

+712 Life Force. 

+9 Lesser Demon Souls. 

+2 Demon Souls. 

The only demon that even gave it some trouble were the strange barnacle creatures that fastened onto random parts of its steel wielder at irregular intervals. Harmless though they seemed to be, they drained small amounts of live force from it as they devoured small pieces of soulsteel from the metal man. They stiffened the joints too, slightly reducing its range of motion, and the blade was forced to use Poison Blade at irregular intervals to purge it. The clouds of poison did nothing to it, but they exterminated the least demons with great efficiency.

Two weeks after it left the dead city in the depths, the blade finally saw the sun again. This was enough to speed its steps, as it took the long circuitous route up the jagged landscape of the underwater slopes. That distant sun started as a dark blue, but step by step it became lighter, before becoming green, then the toxic yellow the blade was used to. 

-1689 Life Force. 

+46 Least Demon Souls. 

+13 Lesser Demon Souls. 

+1 Demon Soul. 

When the blade’s wielder finally broke the surface, it expected that it had found the next circle, but that was not the case. All it had found was a small island, barely larger than a sandbar, without a hint of vegetation. It cursed silently as it scanned the horizon, looking for where it should go next. 

There, distantly, it saw another island. That one was larger, but how much larger, it was impossible to say. The Ebon Blade paused and examined the weave of the world, looking for some clue. It looked in the currents of the Sea of Dispair, and in the gusts of the breeze, but in the end, it was unclear, and all it could say for sure was that the center of hell was probably somewhere in that direction. So, it walked back toward the surf to start again. 

Ch. 148 - Strange Shores

Each island led to another, and there was little the Ebon Blade could do besides travel in straight lines between them, so that it did not lose its way. Sometimes, when there was abundant prey around, it would burn through significant power just to speed up the interminable trek, but other times, when it descended into the lonely depths, it would proceed slowly and methodically should the worst befall it. 

Still, as weeks blurred into months, it grew to despair, at least a little, though it tried to resist those feelings since the weapon suspected they had more to do with the water it was submerged in than its own soul. It was hard not to, though, when each island merely led to another, further along in the chain. Most were so small that it could take in their contents in an instant. Others were large enough that it had to walk from one end to the other to decide which way to proceed.

Sometimes it worried it might never find the way out of this place. Why are some circles so small and others so large? The blade asked itself time and again. It might have asked one of the demon princes, but it was not yet desperate enough to waste those malignant souls. So, it continued on. 

Eventually, after weeks of travel, the islands started to get regularly larger, but even before that, it noted that the weave of the world was starting to glow with more power. It knew it was getting closer to its destination. Then, it finally saw it in the distance. It had seen many islands up until now, but none of them were wreathed in smoke or had mountains, and it knew that it was almost there. 

That final crossing was shallow and uneventful, and as it came up from the frothing surf one final time, standing like a breaker against the violent waves, the blade looked upon the jungle in front of it, and it was certain it had crossed the threshold to the next circle of hell. It was just as Prince Cerirvall had described it. There was an endless jungle, and then, beyond it, there was a volcano that reached above the clouds, illuminating them with its fiery fury. 

The Island of Pathos, ruled by the Bug Queen, it thought, remembering the Prince’s words. It doesn’t seem very large. 

Soon I shall be free of this place, it decided as it marched directly into the woods. It feared neither insects nor disease, and if another demon princess dared to show her face, it would slice her in two without hesitation. 

That wasn’t foolhardiness, of course. With any luck, it would find someone to question about her powers, but even so, this domain seemed a poor match for it. 

As it stood there contemplating all of this, a damned soul washed up from the surf and staggered ashore. It looked at the blade’s wielder, then recoiled in horror, and started running toward the treeline. 

The Ebon Blade thought about consuming it or even questioning it, but decided against it. The soul had obviously just come to this place, so it wasn’t likely to know more than it did. Instead, it watched, waiting to see how the new environment treated it.

In the badlands at the edge of hell the souls had wandered until they’d been devoured by demons; in the iron city they’d been put to work either as industrial slaves or as raw materials, and in the Sea of Despair they drifted until they were little more than the dregs of sadness, but it had no idea what would happen to them here.

So, it watched, and when the damned soul disappeared into the foliage, the blade followed. Not too closely, of course, but still near enough that it would see what cruel fate awaited the spirit. It didn’t have to wait long. 

The fearful, translucent soul was only fifty feet into the foliage when it lashed out and attacked him. It wasn’t a demon hiding amongst the trees, either; it was one of the trees itself. When the nameless man tried to press through a curtain of vines to escape the Ebon Blade’s steel-clad wielder, they coiled around him and lifted him off his feet into the air. 

The ghost screamed silently as that happened, but the Ebon Blade made no attempt to save him. Instead, it cast its gaze throughout the area, studying the weave of the attacking vines as well as the rest of the trees. Now that it knew what hazard it was looking for, it was easy to spot more danger, though it did not feel particularly threatened by any of it. 

Just as it was in the swamp, many, but not all of the trees were demonic entities in disguise. Other than that, though, there seemed to be only insects and victims. The Ebon Blade did not see any large animals. It expected that there would be some, but there were none. 

That’s not what interested it now, though. Instead of searching for them or even studying the demons, it focused on the damned souls and what the demons had done to them. That was the most interesting part of the jungle, because now that it was looking, those pitiful spirits had not been entirely devoured. Instead, they were embedded in tree trunks or hung in the canopy, half consumed, like the luminescent dregs it had seen swirling in the ocean currents. 

The Ebon Blade thought that those had been tormented souls, but these were in even worse shape. They’d been twisted and pierced with tendrils and roots, and many of them had become hives for insects, no matter what the damned had been repurposed into, though, all of them were putrified and disgusting. Though it did not disturb the blade’s jaded sensibilities, even it could see that anyone who became trapped here was destined to become an organic horror show filled with rot, boils, rashes, and any number of other horrors.

I think I’d prefer to lose myself in the Sea of Dispair, it decided as it started walking inland. 

As it moved forward, the blade faced no opposition. Clouds of biting flies assaulted it in vain, and some of the plants reached for it, seeking to do what they had with all the other spirits that came within arm's reach, but none of these attacks could do anything to the metal that both it and its wielder were crafted from. 

If I had a wielder of flesh and blood, this would be a truly miserable place, the blade noted. Though if I had a mortal wielder, they would have drowned long ago.

At first, the fact that no one opposed it made the blade more anxious than complacent. It kept waiting for something to spring out and ambush it, but that never happened. There were no sneak attacks or traps to speak of except for the ineffectual plants, which it grew tired of even slashing after a while. 

However, when the blade still hadn’t reached the volcano, a day later, it started to grow suspicious. It felled several trees to create a clearing large enough to see the mountain, and confirm it was traveling in the right direction, but such efforts didn’t seem to shorten its path; all they did was confirm that dark blood flowed through the demon plants instead of something more appropriate like sap. 

When it reached the shore once more, rather than the volcano, the blade was not entirely surprised. This place was no threat to it, so clearly it needed to misdirect it.

The Ebon Blade set out a second time, this time cleaving trees every few minutes as it went to check its positions. This slowed whatever process was leading it astray, but almost two days later, it still showed up on another strange beach rather than reaching its intended destination. Worse, its wielder was starting to rust. 

As bad as getting lost was in this place, though, the deleterious effects that it was having on its metal wielder were far worse. In the seventh circle, the mud and roots of that place had gummed up its joints to some degree, but this was much worse. Whole sections of the strange clockwork man were beginning to rust and fail, and there was no obvious solution.

This is no doubt because I spent months in that infernal ocean, it told itself. Water and steel are natural enemies. 

As much as it wanted to believe that, though, it was unsure. Especially when strange fluids started leaking from the places that were the worst affected. It looked almost like a rash, or a disease, and given the fact that the parts of its armor that most often touched the foliage were in the worst shape, rather than the core of the metal man where water would linger, it made the blade suspicious. 

Still, other than attempting to try again, the blade did nothing about it. It was far more concerned about leaving this place than the effects it was having on it. It wasn’t until it somehow got turned around and reached the beach for the third time that its frustration finally boiled over. 

I can see the damn volcano half the time. How could I possibly get lost? The weapon roared internally. Is the forest moving around me? Is the island itself?

Then, the blade let loose, waving itself in a wide arc as it let loose dangerous amounts of Hellfire, setting the jungle before it ablaze and filling it with a firestorm that spewed oily smoke and poisonous fumes. That didn’t help it figure out which way was the correct way forward, but it did buy it some breathing room. 

As it did so, it noticed the rusting sores and the weeping pustulent metal on the armor of its wielder burned away as well. Even the stiff joints that had started to slow during certain motions resolved themselves as the fiery aura that surrounded it burned away the defective metal, and it was healed anew. 

I’ll burn every tree between here and the volcano if that’s what it takes, the weapon silently promised. 

Fortunately, it had fire to spare. Though it didn’t like to use it on its own wielder, because it lost Life Force healing the damage, it was still an effective technique that would purify any problems the strange foliage managed to inflict on it. So, the further into the jungle the blade went, the more it used its fire to clear a wide swath. 

It was done playing around; it didn’t care about the queen or princess or whoever ruled this circle. It just wanted to get past it and to the fiery mountain that lay beyond. That was where the ruler of this foul pit awaited it, and it was where it would find the exit back to the light and life of the mortal realms above. 

Ch. 149 - Purifying Flames

The Ebon Blade had promised itself that it would burn down every tree between the shore and the volcano, and that was exactly what it did. Fire was not its favorite weapon, but from that moment, as the forest closed in and sought to confuse it and twist its plodding wielder’s path, it became the blade’s only weapon. 

Hellfire flared a dozen feet in a sickening halo of death. Then, as it marched forward, it hung there. It wasn’t a cheap exercise of its power. It burned away dozens of Life Force every minute, but it was effective. The world was filled with green-tinged flames, and they pushed back not just the mist and the shadows, but the entire foul jungle. 

-20 Life Force. 

The smaller plants puffed into ashes almost immediately; the larger ones had thicker, waxy leaves that took several seconds to ignite.

They burned with a black, oily smoke that looked quite toxic, but the blade’s current wielder needed to breathe any more than it needed eyes to see, and it gazed right through the dark clouds that it shrouded itself in. The trees ignited too, but the trunks had scarcely begun to burn by the time it had passed them and moved on. 

In its wake, the blade left a path of ashes in a perfectly straight line that traced its path from the beach. That line was flanked on either side by rows of trees that were burned like candles. The fire’s spread outside of its immediate radius, though, was limited. The lands were too moist and too foul for even magical fire to penetrate them very quickly. Still, they smoldered in its wake, and as it moved forward, the damage of its wake spread slowly outward. 

The blade didn’t need to burn the entire place down. While it would have happily done so, it was far more interested in getting past it than obliterating it, so it pressed on at a slow, methodical pace that burned a line deep into the dark soil of that hellish place. 

The insects faired almost as poorly as the miasma, and evaporated as soon as the plants had entirely burned away. Most fled its approach, but a few of the larger ones transformed into embers as they flew away, spreading its flames that much further. Spiders as large as a man, which were by far the largest creatures it saw in this place, shrieked in protest at the advancing flames. Those cries became even louder when their webs went up like pitch. 

-180 Life Force. 

Those brief but complicated flame structures glowed for only a single moment, like some sort of hellish rune before vanishing forever. Those became more common as it pressed further inland, and since it had only glimpsed a couple of the giant beasts on its previous journey, the blade immediately decided that their presence was progress. 

This is deeper than I got last time, it told itself, noting the way that the canopy continued to rise above it, and the shadows thickened as it watched the huge arachnids. 

Most of the giant beasts fled quickly enough to avoid even catching fire, but a few of them charged it in anger, throwing their lives away for one last attack. The blade could respect that; it would have done the same thing in their circumstance. 

It tried to honor those with an equally quick death, slicing the boar and even cow-sized monstrosities into pieces with one or two slices. That wasn’t so hard, but the way their poison blood sizzled as it did so, and the way it sizzled when it splashed across its metal wielder, gave it pause. While it wasn’t painful exactly, the rusting necrotic rot that embraced it for a moment before it was burned away made the weapon wary. 

-878 Life Force. 

+194 Life Force.

+4 Demon Souls. 

The demonic trees and the souls that were twisted through the foliage lasted only a little longer than these things. The blade made no move to end their suffering rapidly. Instead, it left them to burn. The demon trees wailed in agony at this, and the human souls expired with looks of silent gratitude. 

+18 Damned Souls. 

All that carnage and more was left in its wake as the weapon marched further into the smoky, shadowy darkness. It could no longer see the volcano now. Even if it leaped as high into the air as it was capable of and came down like a flaming meteor, the height of the trees blocked its view. The jungle was all-encompassing now, save for the single blackened scar that it left in its wake. 

-340 Life Force.

That perfectly straight line functioned as the inverse compass needle, pointing the way that it had been, which pointed the way that it needed to go, even if that path was now obscured. The Ebon Blade was not lost, and it would not be diverted again. 

However, given how much power it was using to burn down one small portion of the world, it did start to devour the infested human souls it found along the way. If the souls it had tasted on the seventh circle’s hanging tree were like overripe fruits, and the ones it had devoured on the walking palace of the sixth circle still tasted of creation in their tainted way, then the souls in this place tasted entirely of rot. 

+33 Damned Souls. 

Somehow, that was worse than the brine-filled wretches of the sea the blade had just emerged from, but it endured. Eventually, there would be danger in this place, and it would not do to find that danger half-depleted. 

So it pressed on, further and further into the darkness, until even the inferno that it surrounded itself with was all but consumed by the cavernous nature of the jungle. The upper layers of leaves stole almost all the light from smaller plants, making its flames somewhat less effective. It was no longer carving a burning path through a field, but burning a tunnel through a mountain of poisoned vegetation and shadowy creatures. 

As large as the spiders had been from almost the beginning, here their webs were gigantic. It burned away more webs than foliage in the place, and some of those were the size of castles, or event cathedrals. Large as they were, though, they were flimsy structures, and it took only a single spark to make them blaze like stained glass windows, then they were gone forever.

-280 Life Force. 

The webs would burn for a moment whenever it reached a new wall of them, but only the closest trunks would be left smouldering in the wake of those racing, chaotic flames. For a time, the blade sliced through some of these, just to make sure there was enough devastation in its wake to keep the forests hold at bay, but eventually, even that would do nothing. It could slice a whole section from the man, or even cottage think trees, and it would just hang there, presumably held in place by the tangled branches that linked to all the other nearby trees. 

This entire place is a web of sorts, the Ebon Blade whispered to itself, wondering if the ruler of this realm was a bug at all. Are spiders bugs, or are they something else? It didn’t know, and the question was hardly worth wasting one of its few remaining archmage souls on. 

For a time, the blade burned like a lantern in the darkness, to no effect at all. Trees came, and trees went, but it was hard to say it was making progress. Only the tiny gaps of light far above that acted like stars were enough to show that it even moved forward at all. 

Then the storm broke. The blade didn’t see it approach because of the thick canopy, or even hear the first few drops. That would have made too much sense. Instead, a peel of thunder announced its arrival, and a few seconds later, a wall of water fell in a great deluge, attempting to hammer the whole world into submission. 

-80 Life Force. 

Neither the Ebon Blade nor its wielder were bowed by and continued to march forward, carving their slow path of destruction. The fact that it had appeared so suddenly was strange, though, and so was the fact that it made some plants wither and brown while others perked up noticeably. However, odder still was the effect that it was having on the weapon’s Hellfire. 

For more than half a day, the blade had roared like a bonfire. The metal that made up its wielder glowed red at its fingertips, and sometimes even its helmet.

Now that the rain fell in great endless sheets, it was no surprise that the metal hissed in protest as it was cooled. What was a surprise, though, was that it fell strongly enough to put out its magical flames. That didn’t happen right away. It occurred over the course of twenty minutes of storming, but step by step, the power of the hellish halo faded, until the yellow-green nimbus of fire it had carried all this way was extinguished entirely. 

Even then, it tried to flare its power, but it did little good and only intensified the cloud of steam around it. The blade had expected something like this. No one in this cursed realm, it seemed, could simply let it continue on its way. 

-40 Life Force. 

The lack of fire meant it could not go forward without getting lost and waylaid once more, and standing in place to be drenched by the poisonous rain took a different toll on it, as the blade was forced to use more and more power to regenerate the delicate clockwork pieces that were being corroded by the storm.

Its fury abated almost as soon as its fire did, though, for which the blade was grateful. Whoever is using this power has no way of knowing it's affecting me, the blade reminded itself. Why would they waste power on something pointless now that the fires were gone? 

Without the fire, it had been plunged into a cavernous darkness. While there was a clear path of devastation behind it, the trees ahead of it and around it on all sides were taller than any mage tower. There were half a dozen undercanopies to the foliage fighting for light, and none of it made it to the nearly barren jungle floor. 

That didn’t affect the blade at all, though. It studied the weave of the world looking for its enemy, and for a time, it found nothing at all. Eventually, though, it noticed footprints. They were strange, disconnected things that might have come from an animal or a person. It would have been sure they’d been there for days if the seething rain hadn’t obliterated the traces of everything else.  

It studied the jungle void that surrounded it, and then, a shape moved out of the darkness. It wasn’t much, but it was something, even if the threads that made up the world seemed to cut and tear rather than show the blade what it was seeing.

In fact, no matter how hard it looked, it was impossible to say what the motion was, exactly, because it was little more than a shifting shape and darkness. It existed only by dint of the poison raindrops that trickled down from the foliage from high above and the ever-changing footsteps it left on the ground. Even the weave of the world did little to reveal the identity of the distortion, but the blade still knew who it was.

There would be only one person who could hide in plain sight, the lord of the circle. “Are you the Bug Queen?” the blade’s wielder asked in its hollow, booming voice. 

The only answer was the sound of skittering, as she side-stepped here and there throughout the clearing. A single pace might take her five feet or twenty-five feet, as she leapt effortlessly from ground to tree branch to ground again with all the grace of a jungle cat. 

The blade didn’t pivot to study her as she moved around it. It watched from the same phantom perspective that it always did while its wielder stood there waiting for the first strike to land.

She’s obviously trying to bait me into showing her what I’m capable of, the weapon whispered to itself. She would not be successful, though. 

While she’d had all the time in the world to study it up until this point, the blade wasn’t going to give her any more hints. Instead, it waited perfectly still, like a steel statue, as the toxic rain sizzled and sputtered, and it waited for her inevitable attack.