The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 141-143

Ch. 141 - Center of the Universe

The blade’s wielder tightened its grip on its hilt at that word. Serve. It was an insult nearly as bad as coward or traitor. Still, it didn’t know exactly what had happened. It couldn’t miss; such a result defied credulity. 

Still, it had, and as it regarded the man, other guards started to make themselves known, pushing through the crowd of dancers while Prince Cerirvall stood there smugly. The fact that he made no move to defend himself bothered the blade more than anything, so it attacked again. This time, with a fire-free lunge, so that it could see what was happening.

While its second attack was no more effective than its first, the blade saw what happened. The man didn’t move, and it didn’t miss, but the space between them distorted so that the blade seemed to bend. I did not bend! The blade shouted silently. I cannot be broken or bent!

The strange magic outraged it, but it stayed calm, and instead of attacking a third time, or attempting to overpower it with a flurry of blows, the weapon turned to the soul of the chamberlain it had stolen at their first meeting and demanded, What is this power? How does he dodge my blows without moving?

The spirit tried to resist the question, but that was impossible, and moments later, it gave up all of its secrets. Prince Cerirvall controls everything that happens inside the Moving Panoply. It whispered. That, of course, obviously wasn’t so. It didn’t control the blade, nor had it been able to stop the weapon from killing two of its minions to date. There were clearly limits to its control, but it did not argue. 

There wasn’t time for that. Instead, it listened to the burst information, absorbing all that it could from it as it learned the truth: the demon prince was the absolute master of everything within the palace. 

It wasn’t just a matter of protocol or decor either. The man could literally bend space to his whim. According to the soul of the Chamberlin, straight lines didn’t always have to be straight, and even the smallest closet could become as big as the largest ballroom with some effort. The blade found that difficult to believe, but it was impossible to deny what it had seen with its own eyes just now. 

Still, it could compensate. Even as the prince stood there, quite certain he was invincible, the blade struck again, this time using shifting blade to bend its blade, transforming from a claymore into an unwieldy saber. This succeeded in drawing blood, but only barely. Still, that drop cut was enough for the blade to feel the demon prince’s life force flow into it. 

-10 Life Force.

+38 Life Force. 

More importantly, it was enough to wipe that man’s smug expression. He stepped back, nonplussed, but the blade could sense his fear. “This shirt is completely ruined now,” he complained. “And for what, you won’t be leaving here until I get what I want.”

“I serve no one,” the blade growled. Lashing out again, this time becoming a spear to stretch even farther. 

-10 Life Force.

That didn’t work, unfortunately. Now that Prince Cerirvall was on guard, he distorted the space between them harder than ever, and its tip didn’t even get close. The rest of his demon guard reached the blade then, but it ignored them, focusing on the prince himself. 

It blurred forward with a bolt attack, but even that was ineffective. The lightning bolt it launched was more than a hundred feet long, but even though the demon prince stood only a dozen feet in front of him, it never even got close.

-50 Life Force.

“Well, aren’t you full of tricks,” Prince Cerirvall murmured appreciatively. “I’m beginning to see how it is you took down the princess of mud in the first place.”

The Ebon Blade didn’t answer. It just lashed out with a flurry of attacks, both at the man and his guards. Maybe I should have used that trump card to escape to the pool and the fifth circle beyond it, the weapon considered as it did so, but it was too angry to retreat just now. It would find a way to make this insufferable princeling suffer first. 

Razor slashes and gouts of hellfire filled the air, but not even all of these found their marks. Everyone within arm's reach should have been dead. Instead, half the ugly demons were still standing to attack with their halbards, and dodging was tricky when space was being used against you.

-20 Life Force. 

+114 Life Force. 

+3 Lesser Demon Souls

The blade’s wielder took several hits that were hard enough to breach its armor, but none of them were deep enough to damage the internals, so it ignored them. Unless a wound was crippling, it was far less concerned about it than it was about killing the one who had inflicted it. 

-37 Life Force.

For the first time since the battle at the gates of the Iron City weeks ago, steel rang out against steel as it faced a real challenge. None of its opponents were worthy, of course, not the cowardly prince or the pathetically weak demons that served him. Together, though, they were a unique challenge that it hadn’t faced before, forcing it to adapt. 

The Ebon Blade relished that almost as much as it hated the fact that Prince Cerirvall lingered beyond its reach. Crippled by the strange magic that it had trouble seeing even with its enhanced senses, the blade moved from an aggressive style to a defensive one, and every time it parried a demonic weapon, it used the lesser version of bolt to transmit a brutal bolt of power through it. If it could not strike these monstrosities with its blade, it would do so in other ways. 

-49 Life Force. 

+234 Life Force. 

+5 Lesser Demon Souls

Even as it fought off the guards, the blade tried to move, using bolt repeatedly to move to a better position. In this case, though, better didn’t mean closer to the demon prince. It meant nearer to potential victims. Even as they fought, the mockery of a ball continued throughout most of the room, and the blade moved toward them, seeking to cut a bloody swath through the party guests. 

-250 Life Force.

Each time it teleported to a new location, it had an instant where its jailor had to refocus. That meant it could attack once, or perhaps twice, before it was once again isolated on an island of distortion amid whirling crowds that otherwise ignored it.

It was a strange, surreal experience, and the best way to fuel itself was simply to tug at the souls of the damned, devouring all of them that were within range. That too only worked for a short time before the prince had all of them leave the room, but the blade didn’t try to escape. It was studying the strange power that was being used on it, and examining the very weave of the world in order to better know where the edges of its amorphous prison were. 

+34 Damned Souls.

This was difficult because of how chaotic the power seemed to be, but weapons edged managed to find their way through the gaps a few times to strike at those beyond it and feed its hunger. It wasn’t until the ball ended and the room emptied that the prince approached it again.

By that time, it was walking steadily toward the door, but then it had been doing so for more than ten minutes and had scarcely gotten any closer. The Ebon was trying to stay calm and in control in the face of such a power, but it was maddening. It was worse than the mud outside had ever been. That at least it had been able to move past with enough force, but this was like being caught in a cage of air, and there was nothing to push against. 

“Well, are you impressed enough by my powers to reconsider my offer?” Prince Cerirvall asked, casually standing just beyond the blade’s reach like he wasn’t in mortal danger. “I think you’ll find we can accomplish far more together than we can alone.”

If you wish to work with me, then you must first beat my current wielder, the blade thought, but it didn’t say it. Not only did it have no desire to be wielded by a demon, but the man still spoke to the mindless metal knight that wielded it, and it had no intention of giving him any information he could use against it. 

“Just remember you had the choice to let me be on my way,” the blade reminded him with its borrowed metallic voice. “You could have survived this. Your palace could have been unscathed.”

The prince’s only response to that was to laugh. “Well, I won’t try to convince you, not yet anyway. I’ve got an orgy to attend. We can discuss this again in a week or two.”

The man left, leaving the blade alone, but his powers stayed there the whole time. Their intensity never waned, and it took hours more for the blade to reach the door. Once it was in the hallway, it proceeded to systematically trash the place. 

It might take a hundred steps to match one normal one, but the man couldn’t protect every wall and tapestry. Not when he was doing other things. So the blade ruined all that it could as it tried to make its way out of the palace. 

It gouged deep rents into the wood and plaster and destroyed any item of beauty or value that was within arm's reach. Still, as the hours crept by and it made progress down the corridor, it noted that all of it was healing in its wake. 

How could a wall heal? It had no idea, but it was the only damage the blade could do, so it inflicted as much as possible. It torched whole rooms with hellfire, but even as they burned, it knew they would come back. All it could hope was that the cost of using so much magic was high enough that eventually it would get tired of toying with the weapon and let it go. It might not be able to kill him, but it could make it very expensive to restrain him for too long.

-45 Life Force.

It was a fine plan, but no matter how many rooms the blade trashed or torched, the man didn’t seem to care. In fact, palace life seemed to go on as before, except in its immediate vicinity. It wallowed in an invisible tar pit of warped space, while his servants and demonic courtiers stayed well out of reach.

-118 Life Force.

The only thing that changed was that sometimes Prince Cerirvall visited to taunt it while it searched for the source or the limits of the demon’s powers. Each visit would culminate in the same question, and every time the blade would refuse him.  

“You will fail at this,” the blade said finally. “Your little game will end in tragedy.”

“Tragedy? For you, maybe,” the prince laughed. “How many times must I tell you that my rule over my little kingdom is absolute?”

“One man, no matter how powerful, will ever stop me,” the blade insisted, not bothering to stop its slow march down the hallway as it spoke.

“Ah, but I am not just the man before you,” the demon prince boasted. “I am the palace itself! I am everything!”

“Then I will destroy everything, if I must,” the blade growled, hacking through another wall and destroying the furniture on the far side. The damage did not heal immediately, but it started to. As it had done before, 

“You could shatter a thousand rooms and a hundred thousand vases and you’d be no closer to the heart of the matter,” the demon prince boasted. 

Those words were one step of arrogance too far. While the man enjoyed talking down to him, he’d all but admitted the true nature of the situation, and the weapon now knew what it must do. 

The blade turned from him then, ignoring the demon prince’s jeers as it sought a way deeper into the belly of this beast. It was more than aware that the demon controlled everything in this place, but it seemed to have limits to the amount it could twist space, and the blade sought to use that gap to its advantage. 

Prince Cerirvall could make every hallway and stairwell feel endless, but whether he made them ten times longer than they should have been, or a hundred times, he couldn’t stop the blade from proceeding, and after the blade walked for a long time without destroying anything, the demon prince seemingly lost interest, and the passages shrank to their normal size.

-264 Life Force.

This was a fatal error on his part. Hour by hour, and day by day, the blade descended into the belly of the beast. It found floors that were so low that they were empty and filled with nothing but dust and refuse. The further that the blade got away from the edge of the demon’s domain, or the things that mattered to it, the less interest he paid the blade. While that made sense, given the man’s proclivities for feasts and balls, it would cost him.

Ch. 142 - Center of the Universe (part 2)

After nearly a week of walking, the blade reached a floor where the stairs would go no lower. It was the basement’s basement, and aside from storing long, empty kegs, it served no purpose. 

-787 Life Force.

The blade then knelt on the floor with its wielder, holding itself at the ready as it stood there statue-still. This was for two reasons: the first was to ensure that its jailer was well and truly bored. The second was to allow it to peer deep into the threads that made up this room and the surrounding shell. 

For days, the blade had been silently walking and mapping energy flows. Now that it was still, it could see to the heart of the giant beast, so far below it. Despite the fact that its shell had been repurposed, the great demon was alive and somewhere, nearly a hundred feet below it, its heart beat a beat that was just as slow and steady as its plodding footfalls. 

The blade tuned its entire existence to the steady rhythms of this strange place. It listened not just to the beast below it, but the sprawling half-infinite palace above it. Then, it waited until dinner time, and during the dancing that followed, it moved to the spot in the floor that was thinnest, and with the most powerful blow the blade could muster, it slashed twice, cutting through feet of shell with its vorpal strikes in a giant X before shattering the floor with its metal boot.

-200 Life Force.

The cuts started to heal immediately, but the blade had been ready for that, and even before they’d had the chance to do more than start, it shattered the floor, and then it was falling into the darkness below. It had plunged into an abyss, and as soon as it did, it saw the strands of the world around it go taut. 

Prince Cerirvall is trying to delay me, it whispered to itself, but he is much too late for that. He can only slow me. He cannot stop me. 

It should have taken only a few seconds to fall from the shell to the behemoth that wore it. The demon prince stretched that out for minutes, then hours, but even so, the blade could see the endless expanse of reptile flesh slowly rising from the distance. It was not as close to the heart as it would have liked to be, but it was close enough to the spine, and that would do for now. 

-58 Life Force.

Sometime, nearly twelve hours later by the blade’s count, it reached the bottom and slammed into the fleshy ground beneath it hard enough to dent it. There was a distant groan, then, but that was not enough for the blade. It stabbed deep into the flesh, to see if it would heal as fast as the walls and floor had, and when it did nothing but ooze black blood, the blade smiled to itself. 

The prince controls everything in the palace, but here? Well, it seems I have found his weakness, the weapon thought triumphantly. Had the dolt not bragged about his strength, the Ebon Blade might still be upstairs trying to trash the place, but here it could get all the way to the heart of the problem. 

That was literal, not metaphorical. First, the blade attacked the spine, just to see what sorts of defenses it might trigger. Rather than using Vorpal Strike again, it hacked through the bone vertebrae like it was a felled tree. This was both to replenish its flagging reserves and to see what the reaction was. It wanted the prince to have all the time in the world to see what it was doing now and try to counter it. 

+492 Life Force.

The blade expected some kind of demonic attack, but even when the turtle bellowed distantly, or when its back legs failed and the entire world turned at an angle, no one came. It seemed too good to be true, but no one sought to stop it. It was messy work, and when it was done, the beast could no longer work; the weapon stopped, and observed the crater of flesh it had made, looking for signs of miraculous healing. There was some, but it was very slow. It was nothing like the powers of the Hag it had battled through. 

Perhaps that’s why it wanted her soul, it thought as it started scaling the slick, sloping body toward the heart. 

The idea that one demon could steal, or at least mimic the powers of another, was interesting, and not something that the blade had considered before. It wondered how that might work, but decided the only way it was going to find out was going to be to rip the knowledge from the soul of Prince Cerirvall. It had not wanted to taint itself by touching such powerful demonic souls, but this interested the blade too much. 

All those thoughts vanished, though, when it reached the heart, and the weapon noted that fear had quickened it. The prince had been so proud and haughty up until now, but now it was afraid, and the weapon took a moment to appreciate that before it started hacking into the gap between two bridge-sized ribs. 

+211 Life Force.

In all of the Ebon Blade’s existence, it had never thought that it was too small of a weapon for any task. Over time, it had grown to be a gigantic claymore that dwarfed nearly any human wielder. Today, though, it felt like a scalpel, and as it cut through layers of muscle, gristle, and fat, it tried not to think of the next step too much. 

It was one thing to taste the poison flesh of the monster and drink in its tainted Life Force, but for the next step, it would have to actually go inside of it; striking a blow deep enough to be mortal was impossible from out here.

For just a moment, the blade worried that all of this was part of some elaborate trap, and that as soon as it dove into the body of the titan to probe for its heart, the wound would seal up behind it. That was largely paranoia, though. It shouldn’t even be possible with my Path of Blood powers, it reminded itself.

+197 Life Force.

There was nothing here to indicate any kind of problem. Still, just to be sure, the blade blasted the wound with hellfire, cauterizing before it dove into the ooze and began to crawl toward the most important organ of all: the heart. 

+286 Life Force.

-60 Life Force.

The blade could see it now, at least the outline of it, hammering and trembling before it. It was larger than the blade’s wielder by a fair margin. It was probably larger than a cottage. The blood burned at the soulsteel that made up the most important parts of its wielder. The weapon could feel the prince trying and failing to fumble for control. Unlike Prince Voltrim, he had not built it and had no way of knowing how the strange contraption operated. So, none of those efforts were ineffective. 

All that the demon prince could do was grip as tightly as possible, but he could not stop it. The blade might hate the taste of black blood that frothed and flowed around it, but it was also nourished by it, and the longer it was forced to squirm through it, the faster its reserves refilled. 

+661 Life Force.

If Prince Cerirvall’s power worked here, he would have made the blade crawl for hours. Fortunately, it didn’t take that long, by the time it reached the huge, pulsing organ, the blade’s reserves had been nearly filled. None of that saved the demon, or the turtle, or whatever it was. Truthfully, the blade didn’t know for sure that this would kill the prince, but it knew it would drastically curtail his powers. 

That was fine. If needed, it could go back upstairs when this was done and kill him a second time. All that mattered was that after perhaps five hours of crawling through an ichor-filled nightmare, the blade reached striking distance and sliced through the pericardium with one long slash. That was enough to set itself free from the grip of the prince’s magics. 

The Ebon Blade could see how thoroughly the man, or at least his beast, was lost to terror then as the heart practically doubled in speed. Still, it wasn’t over until the weapon sank six feet of steel in the giant muscle and began the long, laborious process of cleaving the impossibly sized organ in two. 

+584 Life Force. 

The blood flowed out of it under pressure then. It spurted like a geyser and would have knocked the blade’s wielder off its feet had it not already been pinned to another organ. 

Somewhere distantly, it heard the sounds of pain intensify. The thing wasn’t dead yet, but it was dying, and the weapon was happy to help it along. It continued to hack away at the heart until it was split in two halves. Several times, it added hellfire to the mix, but only to stop the nascent regrowth it had noticed. 

+874 Life Force.

-84 Life Force. 

It didn't stop until the thing stopped moving. Even then, though, it didn’t get the soul expected. Instead, it received something stranger. 

+1 Demonic Dragon Soul. 

The blade hadn’t even realized that something like that existed. It was far stronger and more powerful than a greater demon soul, and only a little weaker than a demon prince soul. The blade studied it for a moment, but then, it set about crawling free of the slimy, claustrophobic nightmare it was embedded in and made its way toward the wound that would be its exit. 

That exit took minutes, and leaving the shell through the whole at the neck took another twenty minutes, but it wasn’t difficult either. No one stopped it, or even tried to. From there, the blade made its way onto the shell and back up it. That took a long time, but only because of the height, the sheer surface, and the fact that it was still dripping with oily blood, which slowed everything down and made its already deliberate movements that much slower and careful. 

When it reached the first balcony this time, the weapon entered it without hesitation. It knew the prince’s tricks now, and it was quite certain that the man was dead or dying. It was obvious from the first glance. 

Up until now, the vast shell palace had been a work of art, and only the lowest, emptiest floors were in disrepair. Even if the blade rampaged through an area utterly trashing it, a few hours later, it would be as if it never happened, but now the place was falling apart. 

Shelves were rotting, linens were decaying, and paint was peeling off every wall it passed. As it made its way toward the throne room, it sometimes felt the world around it stretch in an attempt to hold back its implacable strides, but these efforts lasted only seconds before the puppet master’s grip slackened again and its strides once more carried it the proper distance. 

As a delay, they were less effective than the strange sights that the blade saw along the way. While the finery of the palace was collapsing, the decorum had failed completely. Demons, still dressed in the ragged shreds of their finery, had reverted to their true nature and were brawling with each other and hunting down the remaining souls of the damned wherever they could find them. 

The blade did nothing to intercede, and merely devoured those souls itself where it could. It slew those demons that barred its way as well, but its reserves were brimming with power, so there was no need for the weapon to go out of its way as it made its way toward its destination with a pace that was implacable. 

+79 Damned Souls. 

+19 Lesser Demon Souls. 

+22 Demon Souls. 

If he’s smart, he’ll have fled to the next level and sought refuge with the ruler of the sixth circle, the weapon told itself, trying not to get its hopes up as it approached the throne room. While it was sure that those relations weren’t exactly cordial, the odds of survival were dramatically higher than what it would give the man.

However, it turned out that he hadn’t run off after all. The blade found him sitting on the throne, and he’d entirely changed since the two had last set eyes on each other weeks before. Before, he’d been such a pretty man that he’d looked like a woman, but that long blonde hair was gone now. His hair had gone gray, and he was half bald now. His flesh had shriveled too, leaving him old and feeble. 

Whatever magics he’d used to control the beast that was his realm had left him wasted and useless, taking away most of his strength and all of his beauty. The blade took some small satisfaction in that, but did not pause to gloat or appreciate the moment. It just marched up the stairs, ready to execute him and be done with this. 

“Make a pact with me and-and I’ll—” the frail demon prince gasped. 

“Pass,” the Ebon Blade interrupted. It was done trying to be reasonable with this man. It already knew the way forward, and it had already detained it long enough. So, there was no reason not to take his soul and leave. 

Still, it hesitated, and instead of killing the prince, it set its blade on his shoulder, just touching his neck, and said, “Tell me of demon souls and I will grant you a quick death,” the weapon told him. “Otherwise, I will make you suffer for as long as you left me to wander your foul palace.”

The prince smiled weakly and said, “I don’t expect you’ll get much mileage from torture in my current state. Without my pet, I’m so weak that one of my servants might smother me in my sleep.”

“A hot blade does not cause blood loss,” the weapon continued. “We can go joint by joint, digit by digit, and limb by limb.” It was a bluff, of course. The smallest cuts would make the man bleed out, and it would drain his Life Force completely in seconds as his organs desiccated and his flesh shriveled. 

The man sat on the throne considering the offer, and while he weighed his own mortality, the blade’s wielder stood like a metal statue, waiting to see what would happen next. 

When Prince Cerirvall finally spoke, it was with a rueful shake of his head. “I can’t believe that you’ve come all this way… that you’re nearly halfway through the nine circles of hell and you don’t know how demon souls work.”

The blade did not respond to the taunt. It was certain the demon prince was attempting to bait it into killing him swiftly without getting anything from it, but it was not so easily moved. 

Eventually, the prince continued. “I told you that there was always a bigger fish in the Ocean of Despair. That was true, but it’s true everywhere else, too. Lesser demons devour the souls of the damned and grow stronger. Slightly stronger demon souls devour them in turn. It's a very harsh environment, but we all grow stronger for it.”

“So you wanted the Hag’s soul so you could take her powers for your own,” the blade answered.

“I would never taint my soul with her filth,” the demon prince clarified. “I would have fed her to Qyxandrian, the beast who carries the world. You slew him, but with her powers of regeneration, he would have lived forever.”

The blade was glad to see that its earlier guess had been confirmed. It agreed completely. The demon prince might well have become impossible to defeat if his vessel were as strong on the outside as it was on the inside. Still, it let the man brag. While he was loath to answer the blade’s questions, he was quite happy to brag and went on at length about the process by which one could consume a powerful soul while refining only a signal attribute from it. 

“Such choices are normally instinctual, though lines of demons can be bred with great effort,” he explained. “A hog-demon, or a fire soul, does not choose which part of their prey to keep; they just devour the entire thing, and add strength to strength, but with something as large as the soul of a prince, well… I would not like to see my sister born into the body of my domain.” 

The blade listened for some time, until it became clear the man was simply stalling for time as it considered the implications of what it had learned. Then, the blade raised itself high before bringing its edge down in a powerful two-handed chop. The blow split not only the prince, but the throne he was sitting on in two. The blade studied the corpse for a moment to ensure there was no trickery, but when it received the man’s soul, it started down the stairs. 

+39 Life Force.

+1 Demon Prince Soul. 

Ch. 143 - The Deeps

The Palace continued to crumble around the blade as it made its way down the stairs. The prince’s death had certainly accelerated things. What had been a place of strange grandeur was quickly becoming a tomb, and even as it walked toward the pool that was the exit to the next circle, the room fell to pieces around it. 

Larger and larger chunks of plaster and shell rained down around it, even striking its metal wielder, but there was no force in the blows, and it ignored them. The Ebon Blade was only interested in the way forward now. The carcass of the giant turtle or demon dragon or whatever it was could rot for eternity for all it cared. It would have been simpler if it did, but it knew full well that the evil that it was leaving behind would reconstitute; it was timeless. 

By the time I reach the center of this place, half the circles will probably have new rulers, the blade thought, as it eyed the approaching pool. 

The fountains had failed with Prince Cerirvall’s death, and the waters were now dark and still. The blade had no idea what to expect, but it could see that it was the way forward, so with only the briefest of inspections, it stepped into the waters. 

Its metal wielder sank like a stone then. The blade didn’t even try to fight it. It had been expected that, thanks to the demon prince’s off-handed comment a few weeks before. Instead, as it fell into the darkness, confident that it would eventually reach the bottom, it looked around. Far above it, it could see the retreating light of the surface, which oriented it. 

That light barely penetrated this deep, but even without it, the weapon would have been able to see the aquatic shapes that loomed here and there in the murk. Some of them seemed drawn to its trail, though that was because of the ichor that washed off of it in a cloud as it sank, it expected; the inhuman creatures swam to the place that it had been, not the place where it was. 

As it fell, the world became darker and darker, but the blade didn’t much care about that; instead, it kept a sharp eye for inhabitants of this realm. It had learned about more than the existence of a bottom, here. It had also learned that there was always a bigger fish, and given its recent experiences hacking through the organs of a giant turtle, it was not eager to repeat the experience. While it enjoyed blood and power, butchery was far from combat, and it had experienced enough delays already. 

Four circles down, and five to go, the sword sighed to itself. This is going to take forever.

Falling took forever, too, and while none of the demonic inhabitants of the watery abyss got close enough for it to strike, souls of the damned drifted by it from time to time. They were the only source of light in the ocean depths, and they glowed a pale cyan. It reached out and stole whenever it was able, at least at first. After a while, though, it didn’t even bother; they were both tasteless and useless.

Devouring them only netted it a handful of lifeforce, and they tasted strongly of salt. While that wasn’t quite as bad as the poisonous demons, they were nowhere near as delicious as the spirits that the hag had left to dangle, or the ghosts that had served Prince Cerirvall, and if it wasn’t consuming them for the joy of it, then there was no point. 

The minds of these pathetic creatures were every bit as damaged as the souls it had once tried to question from the evil mirror. No matter what it asked them, whether they were questions about the hell they were trapped in, or the lives they had lived before this point, all it got was sobbing, blubbering apologies before they vanished into the ether. They’d been here for so long that they might as well have been seaweed. 

It was hours before the blade finally touched down on the ocean floor, which was nothing but a desert made of silt that went on forever in all directions. In all the previous circles, it had been able to see a slight slope upward toward the next circle, but here, there was nothing but featureless gray slime as far as its enhanced senses could see in any direction. 

The Ebon Blade did not despair. Now that it had stopped moving, it simply stood there, feeling the flow of the water around it, and when it was certain which way the sluggish current was pulling, it started walking that way. The mud was deep, and it scattered with every step as the blade’s metal wielder trudged forward, but neither bothered the weapon. It could see through the haze as if it didn’t exist, but even if it couldn’t, there wasn’t much to see. 

Instead of paying too much attention to that, it walked forward, one step at a time, while it focused on its inner world. It was halfway toward its goal of escaping hell, and the challenges had not grown much harder. Prince Cerirvall might have managed to imprison it for much longer if he’d been clever, but even so, the blade had surmounted him. It had also learned something interesting and now knew about the nature of the greatest souls in its collection, which was what it focused on now. 

Up until now, the blade hadn’t touched any of the demon prince souls, because it feared what effect they might have on it, but now it studied them more closely. Each of them was different, of course, and all of them were smaller than the hellish dragon soul it had inadvertently collected, but they were a deeper black. 

No, they were darker than black. They were pure void, and while the blade feared that darkness, given how powerless it had been when it had first come to hell, it coveted their powers. The question was, did it covet those powers enough to try to devour one of them, and if so, which one?

The weapon thought about that, first for hours, and then for days, as it crossed the sea floor a step at a time. Only once were those contemplations interrupted, when a beast glided through the water above it. The monstrosity was far enough away that the blade could only sense the edge of its slick, sinuous body from perhaps half a mile away, but it couldn’t see the whole thing at once. It never even saw the head. The creature was too massive for that. It took several minutes for its tail to come into view, as the blade awaited an attack that never came. 

Always a bigger fish indeed, the blade said to itself as it continued. Occasionally, the weapon would come across the partial remains of those terrible beasts. It would never be more than a rib here, or a claw there, but there were teeth that were bigger than its current wielder, which made it wonder if the monstrosities might be able to destroy the strange mechanical man if one of them attacked. 

On the third day, the Ebon Blade made its decision and decided to experiment with one of the demon souls. This wasn’t because it was getting impatient, or even desperate, but because it decided that the demon’s powers would help it a great deal. 

It didn’t dare attempt to wrestle with Prince Voltrim’s soul yet, since he’d made the machine that wielded it. And while it had some interest in Prince Angarazon’s powers of war and battle, it had none in Princess Rizzeldah’s; when it once again had a mortal wielder, her powers of regeneration might matter, but for now, the only power it truly coveted was Prince Cerirvall’s. 

While such a power would deprive it of the joy of fighting if used in combat, the blade remembered too well walking in place for days down endless hallways. It was sure the demon’s magic would help it reach wherever it was going that much faster.

So, pausing for a moment on the featureless plain, to give what happened next its full attention, the weapon seized the soul and studied it. The demon squirmed like a slippery eel in its grip, but it could not escape the blade’s focus. The blade hadn’t even issued it a command, and it was already fighting for its life harder than the elven prince had so long ago. That had been the soul that had given it the most trouble up until now, but this one was proving to be much stronger. 

So, the blade paused a moment as it considered its action as the prince’s foul soul hissed and snarled unintelligibly in its grasp. It refocused and decided that souls were its domain, and it had nothing to fear. Better, it had a grudge against this soul in particular, which made holding it that much easier. That was the vector that it attacked the dead man from. 

Give me your powers you used to confound me! The weapon commanded it. Give me the powers to bend space to my whim. 

It merely had to command the thing for it to obey, and the blade was suspicious of how easy it was. It was right to be. One second, the dark soul melted away inside the weapon, but the very moment that the pop-up explaining the demon prince’s powers appeared, it began to wrestle with the blade’s very soul. 

A Position of Privilege: This power does not increase the speed of the caster or affect anyone else. Instead for 100 Life Force a minute, it allows the caster to halve or double the distances involved as they desire, warping space to their whim. This power extends to the limits of your Aura of Hunger, and may be cast multiple times. While you can make the distance of your reach subjectively feel like it has doubled, halved, or quartered, doing so will not actually increase the reach of your aura. 

This wasn’t the same as the fight that had happened between them a moment ago. Then, the blade held it in its grip, but now it had invited the thing, or at least a portion of it, into its very soul, and twisted and slithered trying to find a place to remain, like a parasite. A hundred unheeded thoughts and a thousand alien memories bombarded it as the blade struggled to retain control. 

It remembered dining on the remains of its enemies and debaucherous sights it had never dreamed of. Dozens of people whom it had never known flashed before its eyes, but always, always there was the prince’s voice. Make a pact with me. Surrender your body. Work with me. The Queen of the damned… the prime evil… she can yet be brought down… You can be free of your cage…

On and on the man whispered and clawed, trying to find some fingerhold on the blade's soul, to stay there permanently, but the blade rejected it, over and over again. For a time, it wasn’t sure that was sufficient, but eventually the volume of its cries fell, and the tone of its wheedling became more desperate. Attempts to ingratiate changed to threats and bluster, but by then the blade already knew it had won. 

Without me, you won’t stand a chance against her! The prince shouted, but the blade was unmoved. 

I already have the only part of you worth having, it countered. Without your powers, you are nothing but a vain fool. 

When the voice was finally still, and the blade knew that it was once again alone, it started walking by then. How long it had been there, it couldn’t say, but it was long enough for the tracks behind it to vanish into the mud. The weapon checked its reserves and saw that it had spent over a hundred Life Force, which meant that at least a day had passed. Quickly, it hurried on, eager to try its new power.