The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 120-122

Ch. 120 - The Songstress

Lucian fell from the sky like a bloody comet, and as he did, the blade absorbed souls all along the way, devouring the lesser ones as best it could. There would be no survivors in the meatgrinder that the building had become, and through the archmage and whoever else had occupied the eighth floor might have been forewarned and escaped via magical means, everyone else was being fed to it as they were shredded. 

-22 Life Force.
+49 Human Souls.

Its wielder wasn’t in the best shape either, though. Even if the wounds had mostly healed up as they’d been inflicted, some of the razor shards remained embedded in him, and as he fell, he bled. The last time he’d fallen from a great height, the blade had taken care to make him land on his feet, but this time, it did no such thing. The last thing it wanted was for any of its wielder’s largest bones to break on impact. A femur or a hip could take the better part of a minute to heal, and they certainly didn’t have that. 

-61 Life Force.
+11 Human Souls.

This time, Lucian hit the ground chest first, bouncing like a rag doll. The impact cracked half a dozen ribs and broke two. His head even bounced off the ground so hard that it gave him a concussion at the same time that the earth flattened Lucian’s nose. 

Still, because the blade kept him limp, his neck did not break, and neither did any of his limbs, and flattened against the earth was a good place to be for the next few seconds, because the shards that were the Lucent Shard reached the ground, they sprayed everywhere, like an explosion. The blade watched the devastation as they shredded out buildings, trees, animals, and anything else that dared to stand nearby, destroying them completely. 

-45 Life Force. 

The only exception was the woman. None of the waves of crystalline death, no matter how large or quick moving, reached her. Instead, they froze in midair, not so far from her, before coming to a halt and falling to the ground. The blade didn’t know if that was part of her terrible song or some other magical effect, but its vision didn’t show any other spells. There was only her glowing font of power, the wreckage of the world around her, and a single line of power that connected her to somewhere distant in the sky, like a frozen lightning bolt.

Lucian lay there in great pain. He might have lain there forever if the Ebon Blade allowed it. His mind was still reeling from what he’d endured, but the Ebon Blade forced him to his feet just the same. When he did so, the blade reached down to pull the largest shards out of its wielder's flesh to staunch the bleeding. 

-37 Life Force. 

None of that stopped the singing, though. It was louder than ever now, and as the blade started to walk toward the source, it felt like it was forcing Lucian to walk through a churning tide; progress became slower and slower as they closed to within fifty feet of her. 

The high-pitched singing damaged its wielder’s flesh almost as much as fire might have as well, making him heal almost as slowly as he moved. Then, all at once, it stopped, as she regarded him in the utterly eerie silence. The blade considered leaping toward her in that instant, but decided it would be best to play for time and get its wielder somewhat closer to whole. As it was now, the boy could barely stand under his own power.  

-31 Life Force.  

Say something, it whispered in his ear when he just stood there. Buy us time to heal before we strike her down.

The boy did as bid and said, “We… I don’t want any trouble, Miss...”

“As if you’d have a say in the matter,” she answered haughtily. Then, as she registered that he actually heard her, she did a double-take and asked, “Wait, how is it you can still hear me after listening to my song?”

“You’re a Goddess, aren’t you?” Lucian answered, ignoring the question. Its wielder didn’t know which one, and if she was a major or a minor one, but there was something powerful about her mere presence that made him afraid. The blade saw it too, in the power she contained, but it felt no fear at the realization; this was not a goddess, it was only a servant of one. 

“I serve the beneficent and illustrious Lady of Light, Lusitiverie,” she answered, making a small gesture of submission to the skies. 

“But that’s the Goddess of Love,” Lucian answered, confused. “Why not send the Lord of War against the blade instead of a woman?”

“That oaf has no desire to stop the blade, and my lady is capable of a great many things where hearts are too hard to love,” she spat. “Instead, he watches and enjoys the show, leaving the work to me, as if I were made for such things.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Lucian said next, trying and failing to back away as the blade tightened its grip on him. 

While that was true, it would have been much truer that he didn’t want to be hurt. His fragile, mortal body had just been through two deadly experiences, and he hadn’t even finished healing from either. The last thing he wanted was to face someone who glowed with power. Unfortunately, the blade wasn’t about to give him a choice in the matter. 

“Hurt me?” she laughed. It was a beautiful tinkling sound that even the blade found pleasing, and didn’t care at all about such things. “The throne beseeched me, and offered tributes and blandishments that I could hardly resist, so I decided to send an avatar to deal with you.” 

“I… I mean the blades’ quarrel is not with the gods, despite your efforts so far,” Lucian said at the Ebon Blade’s prompting. “Do not change that.”

“You think just because a few gods tried and failed to smite you, you can dictate terms to me?” she asked with a tone that was equal parts seduction and threat. “They might have done little more than destroy the world around you, but I could chain your mind with a few words or unmake you with a song. You are less than nothing to me.”

-27 Life Force. 

You can try, the blade whispered to itself as it regarded the woman as a normal man might regard a snake. While infinitely more dangerous than a mage, or even an arch mage, it was more the uncertainty about what she could do than her raw power that concerned it. The weapon could see threads of power bundled tightly as they climbed toward the sky and disappeared. The woman before them was not a Goddess; she was merely an avatar for one. She was a puppet on strings, but what strings those were. 

There was a long silence then as the two of them regarded each other. “Now come to me, young man,” she said in a voice that dripped with desire. “Come to me. Lay that blade at my feet, and I will give you the eternal reward that an ally deserves instead of the torments that await my enemies.”

-21 Life Force. 

While the Centered power it had received from the Path of Vengeance prevented whatever seductive magic she was using on Lucian from taking hold, it almost did anyway; it was that strong. She wasn’t just using magic to force him to obey; she was using it to make herself so beautiful and desirable that he wanted to obey her. He might have done exactly as she asked if the blade hadn’t held him tight and forced him not to, at least at first. 

When she tried the second time, beseeching him with even more compliments, he howled mentally at the blade. Let me go to her. She’ll help us! 

The weapon didn’t let him walk toward her because it believed that for a second. It did it because it wanted to get into striking range. Lucian was forced to drag his feet as he got within forty feet of her, then twenty. Then, she commanded him to stop. 

“That’s close enough,” she purred. “Show me your obedience… lay down your weapon, and I will give you your reward.”

-18 Life Force. 

Lucian bent to obey, but then, as the weapon touched the dark earth, he sprang forward like a coiled spring, launching himself at the Avatar, giving her only a second to react. Unfortunately, a second was enough, as she opened her mouth again, her deadly song poured out of it, halting the blade’s advance as sure as its wielder’s less than a foot from her face. 

The two of them poured everything they had into pressing forward. Lucian struck with every ounce of his being, using abilities like Amplify Blade in the process. The Ebon Blade even used Bolt, but it was for nothing. The magic of her melody shielded her from lightning strikes as surely as blades, and the sonic shield that surrounded her pushed the two of them back, an inch at a time. 

-50 Life Force. 

They struggled against it, but as they did so, it took a terrible toll on its wielder. Lucian’s skin began to abrade away as blood poured from his ears and nostrils. His left eye burst like a grape from the strain, and his liver ruptured. It was a wall of sound, and it was destroying him. 

-166 Life Force.

That was when the blade decided to use another one of its powers for the first time. Up until now, it had considered Eye for an Eye to be too dishonorable to consider. Wounds should be struck, not reflected, but there was no honor to be had in this fight, no matter how it was fought. Lusitiverie’s Avatar simply refused to get her hands dirty, and that would cost her. 

-135 Life Force. 

In an instant, she took half of the damage she was inflicting on its wielder. Compared to the powers she had, that was very little. It was almost a slap in the face, but the very fact that the weapon had managed to touch her and mar her perfect face was enough to interrupt her song for an instant, and that was all it took. In that single moment, as she looked scandalized and recoiled in pain, it pierced the wall, embedding four feet of steel in her generous bosom, and ruining her silken gown with gouts of blood. 

-92 Life Force.
+46 Life Force.

“M-monster…” she gasped as it drank greedily of her Life Force. “Y-you’ll pay for this…”

Lucian said nothing. He probably couldn’t even hear her; his brain was too damaged by the intensity of the sound waves to do much thinking right now. The blade, on the other hand, heard her but ignored her statement. Instead, it tried to devour her soul. 

Up until this point, every priest it had killed managed to escape its clutches. It didn’t know how exactly, but this represented a piece of the Goddess, and it engaged in a frantic tug of war with the heavens above. It was a bitter struggle that made the dying woman’s body tremble and seized as it pinned her pierced body to the earth and refused to let go. 

+41 Life Force.

In the end, when the blade felt itself losing its grip against the divine, it used Disrupt to break the Goddess’ grip for a moment. Doing so mangled the soul to the point of uselessness, but even as it did so, the blade devoured it. It had wanted to learn from the Avatar, but it would gladly destroy it if that was the only option. 

That was all it took. As soon as the blade snuffed out that divine-tinged soul, the braids of light that stretched to the heavens vanished. It was over. It had silenced the foul singer forever. 

Ch. 121 - The Journey North

For Lucian, the immediate aftermath of the fight was spent recovering from the brink of death and remembering who he was. For the Ebon Blade, it was far more interesting. It had expected something to be different about the soul that it just devoured, but even with that expectation, it had not been prepared for what came next, as a number of alerts scrolled across its vision. 

+1 Greater Soul(Divine)
You have devoured one greater soul.
You have gained 4,562 Life Force and one point of divinity.
You have unlocked Path of Divinity.

That last one got its attention more than everything else combined, and the Blade quickly pivoted its attention to its available upgrades. Very little had changed since it had last looked at them, of course, but now there was something it wanted. 

Primary Powers:

Poison Strike 2: 500 Life Force
Inferno 2: 1,200 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 4: 3,000 Life Force
Amplify Blade 4: 4,000 Life Force
Shifting Blade 5: 8,000 Life Force
Disrupt 5: 5,000 Life Force
Repair Soul 5: 5,000 Life Force
Empower Blade 4: 7500 Life Force
Vorpal Strike 4: 8000 Life Force
Bolt 5: 15,000 Life Force

Secondary Powers: 

Available
Giant’s Strength 5: 3,000 Life Force
Speed of the Shadows 4: 2,000 Life Force

It didn’t hesitate. Even though 7,500 Life Force for Empower Blade was most of the 9,844 Life Force it had in reserve at that moment, it still purchased it, and immediately selected Path of Divinity. It didn’t want to learn magic, so it had no real interest in Path of Undeath. Likewise, it didn’t really want to be a god, but in light of their recent interference with a vengeance it did desperately want, so learning more about them and their weaknesses would go a long way toward making them pay. 

The spark of divinity lays within everyone. Every man, woman, and child might some day rise high enough to reach such universal acclaim if they work hard enough to embody a specific element of the world. 

Now that possibility is open to you as well, The Path of Divinity is not a short one and there is no telling where it will take you, but if you follow it the secrets of the universe lie within your grasp. 

The Path of Divinity: Level 1 -> slay and consume 100 devout and/or priests of various gods to reach Level 2.

Level 1 Powers: 

Severing:  The Gods can no longer thwart you by stealing the souls of their favored when you strike them down. Not when you’re so much closer than they are.

Bottomless Well: DIvinity is all about souls, so, your soul storage is doubled to account for the next step in your transformation. 

While it was very specific, the weapon appreciated both of these upgrades. It could have used the extra soul storage at the Golden Tower, but it would still be useful. The weapon had a growing collection of souls it did not wish to waste. Not only did it have its collection of mages and arch mages it could query should something important arise, it also had its more personal collection. 

At this point, it had the souls of several of its previous wielders that it had no wish to destroy. It also had the King’s soul, and while it wanted nothing more than to destroy that one, it had not yet decided what question it wanted to ask him; it had considered the issue many nights while Lucian slept or fornicated, and it had never decided on the right answer. 

It didn’t worry about that now, though; instead, it studied the way the new path had altered the runes of its blade until its wielder eventually stirred and got to his feet several minutes later. 

“What happened?” he asked. When he finally spoke, it was with a slight slurring of his words that had nothing to do with drink. It was that his brain had been cooked by the Goddess’ song. The blade worried that might cripple his ability to do magic going forward, which would have been a real loss, but fortunately the effect proved short lived. As long as the Ebon Blade continued to heal him, he continued to recover. 

Even when his body was whole, though, his memory still had gaps. Lucian couldn’t remember much of the previous day at all. He described flashes of a beautiful woman, but for a time, he flat out refused to believe that the pile of glittering rubble nearby was the Lucent Shard, and as the weapon explained their battle, he just sat there most of the time in stunned disbelief. 

Finally, when the blade was finished explaining things and answering questions, Lucian said, “I’m not sure if I can keep doing this.”

You can, with practice, the blade assured him. 

“I didn’t sign up to fight gods and leap out of exploding towers,” he exclaimed. 

The blade felt the familiar anger of betrayal welling up inside it, but tried to be patient with the young man. He’d been through a lot today. Not only had their plan not gone well from the get-go, but it had ended in about the worst way possible. It was a miracle that he was still alive. 

Instead, it said nothing for a while as the young man vented. It wasn't so understanding that let him release its hilt until it was safely back in its scabbard, but it didn’t chastise him. Instead, when he was done trying to find ways to talk about how afraid he was without ever once mentioning that he was afraid, the blade merely added, We should get moving, before more of them come.

“What tower are we going to now?” Lucian sighed as he started walking, and the blade subtly started steering him to the north.  

We aren’t going to another tower. Not right now, those were a distraction, so they wouldn’t seek us out in the place I most wanted to go, the blade explained. 

Until now, it had kept its plans close to its chest for fear that they might spy on it through the boy. That obviously wasn’t happening, though. It could, of course. At any moment, the man on the throne could get up, and one of Lucian’s half-brothers or sisters could sit down and seek them out. That would require two things, though, it reflected, and while the first was unlikely, the second was impossible. 

They didn’t know who its wielder was. That was abundantly clear. Even if they did find out, though, the second problem was much harder. Whoever had the power now would have to relinquish it, and that wasn’t the way that power worked. No one new would be sitting on that throne until after the current occupant was dead, and if he was anything like King Paralon, that would be a very long time from now. 

Centuries, unless I go back and finish the job, the blade thought. 

Not now, not course. Learning more of its origins and taking down the Aetharchy one tower at a time were both a much higher priority at the moment, but when all that was done, it would consider trying to take out that throne again if its wielder was up to the task. If it could bleed its mana completely, then it could hack the cursed thing into small, shiny chunks to prevent any more future surprises. It liked that idea. There were only so many more times it could use its miracle ability, but so far, each one had proved devastating. 

Nothing else happened that day, good or bad. The blade didn’t even force its wielder to practice for the two days that followed because it was too concerned about his attitude. The only thing of note was Lucian’s glum silence. 

Even if it couldn’t read his mind, it was obvious that this experience had affected him much more deeply than his previous near-death experiences, and the blade did what it could to ameliorate that, which was mostly just whispered words of confidence and fearlessness while he slept. 

Some days the boy slept in ditches, and other days in villages. He was no longer dressed like an apprentice, though, nor did he boast of his own self-importance in an attempt to impress the women. He was too withdrawn for that.

He just walked into whatever inns he came across and demanded to be fed. Between his bloody, shredded clothes and his giant sword, the threat was obvious, which meant he almost never had to draw the Ebon Blade to make it explicit. 

The Ebon Blade could see how he’d made the boy bolder, but not quite in the way he’d intended. Lucian was slowly but surely becoming fearless, but not as a hero or even a villain. He was becoming a rabid dog that was no longer afraid of people or even consequences. 

On one occasion, he murdered every person in the common room because some would-be hero with a rage blade got involved. “If you order a meal, you have to pay for it. If you have no money, then take your fancy blade and earn some!”

“Now, now, it’s fine, Harlow, it’s fine,” the innkeeper insisted, trying to defuse the situation as Lucian gave the would-be hero a dead-eyed stare.

As advice, it was entirely reasonable, and just before the Ebon blade was drawn and used to slice both the man and his weapon in half, it decided that he probably would have made a better wielder than Lucian. He’d never get the chance, though, because he barely had a chance to understand what was happening before he was bleeding out on the floor with an expression of pure surprise on his face. 

After that, Lucian killed everyone else in the building before sitting back down to finish his meal with an almost bored expression on his face. He didn’t do this out of fear or rage, either. He wasn’t even trying to cover his tracks; he just thought it was what the blade wanted him to do. 

It did, of course. It welcomed slaughter, especially when one of the men who had been slain had been an itinerant monk. Devouring his soul had counted as the first steps on its new path. Still, the boy’s behavior concerned the blade. Perhaps I’ve pushed him too far, it thought as he ate and drank his fill before leaving town on the endless road to the north.  

+22 Human Souls.
+1 Devout Soul.
1/100 Divine Souls devoured.
+828 Life Force. 

They’d been through this land before on their waystone rampage, so other than its wielder's occasionally violent outbursts, there weren’t any surprises. Unfortunately, though, without a horse, progress was slow. 

That was fine. The mountains were rising to the north now, which meant that they were getting closer. Somewhere, amidst those jagged peaks, was a canyon that naturally funneled a great deal of mana to the cursed temple that was their Destination. Ul-Magora was not yet in sight, but it would be, and soon.

Ch. 122 - Ul-Magora

It took almost a week to reach the distant mountains, but even then, the hellforge was not in sight. That was fine; it could see not just the mountains that it hid in now, but the giant canyon that led to its location. So, the place would not evade them much longer. 

These had an entirely different character than the mountains where it had started its journey, as well. They were not the desolate, rocky slopes dominated by goat men it had traveled through so long ago, but soaring towers of stone blanketed in thick pine trees that all but obscured them. 

That was only natural, given the sheer amount of mana that flowed through them. As it understood things, any place like this should be teeming with life; however, it was not the sort of life that it had expected. They found that out the first night when its wielder tried to camp and light a fire.

Sleeping had proved impossible, though, because the smell of smoke had summoned three dozen monsters in waves that simply wouldn’t end. All Lucian wanted was sleep, but each death seemed to summon the next opponent, and eventually they were forced to keep moving just to stop the bloodshed.

+446 Life Force.

+24 Lesser Monster Souls. 

+1 Greater Monster Soul.

The inhuman opponents weren’t even that hard to fight, except for the one with lopsided ram horns. It must have had some troll blood, because the blade had to strike it down three times before it stopped getting up. 

As long as he kept moving, the blade steered him around the worst of the monsters that infested those dark woods, but if they stopped to build a fire for the purposes of sleeping or eating, the ghoulish creatures would be drawn to them like a swarm of gnats. 

Even if they tread lightly, the things would find them. They would emerge from the underbrush and howl or hoot before attacking in their clumsy, ugly way. Their lack of symmetry and almost random anatomy often complicated those attacks. 

+184 Life Force.

+11 Lesser Monster Souls. 

The weapon was practiced in fighting men, and man-shaped monsters, but what was it to do if the wolf beast had three legs or four arms? It changed the way they moved entirely, and even though it sliced through their foul meat and brittle bones, its wielder was often injured in the process. 

I hate it here, Lucian complained silently as he walked ever on and ever up.

For once, the blade did not chastise him for complaining. Though it had not minded fighting early on, each battle led to another, and another as the misshapen monsters in this part of the world rushed to join the fray. The blade would normally have enjoyed that, but in this case, two things made it cautious. 

The first was that there was no place for its wielder to rest and recover, which was dangerous. Even with its ability to heal every wound, it was clear that without food or sleep, the young man was growing gaunt and weary. 

If it pushed him too hard, he really might starve to death. That would be an ugly way for him to go, and a stupid reason for the blade to end up stranded in the wilderness, because it could not regenerate his flesh from bone or stone, and it was clear that even if they had the time to cook one of these creatures, their stringy, tumor ridden flesh was not for eating. 

+97 Life Force.

+6 Lesser Monster Souls. 

As important as its wielder was, though, the weapon’s second reason for avoiding combat whenever possible was even more important. It did not like the taste of these beasts. While its wielder could avoid eating them, it had no choice but to taste their flesh each time it sliced them open, and it was the foulest meat it had ever sampled. 

What they faced were not the goat men of the west, or even the orcs of the badlands. These were something else. They might have once been men who had mutated into animals, or animals that had been mutated into being almost men. It couldn’t say. 

What it could say was that there was no pattern to them, or anything that even remotely resembled tribes or species. Even the packs that fought together instead of against each other looked entirely different. Some had horns, and others had claws. Some had patchy, mangey fur and wide eyes, while others were pale things that seemed to hunt by smell or sound. A few even had eyes that burned with a red inner light. 

+286 Life Force.

+29 Lesser Monster Souls. 

Those were the most bloodthirsty of all, and though they had no skill in battle, they had the ferocity of any three warriors. The blade was forced to assist its wielder each time they encountered one of those raging beasts, lest they accidentally slay Lucian. As terrible as their flesh tasted, it had no desire to be wielded by one of them. 

It was a bizarre place, and it was unsurprising that these tainted wilds contained no settlements. Humans shunned it with good reason, and though they’d once found the remains of a settlement that might have been dwarvish, if it had been, they’d long ago retreated beneath their mountains. 

Other than that, the only evidence that this place might have once been more was the broken road they followed up the mountain. Trees had grown through it in a thousand places, and erosion and landslides had obliterated it in many locations, but it was clear that once, civilization had thrived here. 

It’s hard to believe it, its wielder said when the blade pointed out some of the details that it could see easily in the nature of the threads that ran through the world that its wielder couldn’t because of the dense undergrowth. You need thick walls to sleep at night, and how would you keep any animals or fields? This place is hell. 

It’s not much worse than the orcs in the badlands, the blade explained, and it wasn’t always like this. The books say there used to be whole communities in the canyon to support the mages and their experiments. They don’t say what happened to them, though. 

It was clear that some magical experiment had gone badly. The fact that none of the mages it had torn to shreds had mentioned such a thing clearly indicated that it had been a secret, and while those were not the secrets it had come to this place for, it would find them regardless. 

The attacks fell off significantly when they reached the snowline. While the blade could not yet see Ul-Magora, the lines of magic continued to converge, so it was clear they were getting closer and closer, but as soon as Lucian found an icy cave that sheltered him from the rising wind, the blade let him sleep for half a day. Then, they spent another day searching for something edible, which turned out to be a large condor brought down by a bolt spell. Even the mountain goats they killed had too many strange growths for either of them to trust the carcasses as food. 

-20 Life Force.

+1 animal soul. 

“Something has poisoned this land,” Lucian said as he roasted the bird and ate its greasy flesh like the starving man he was. 

He went on like that for some time, alternating between devouring roasted flesh for the first time in days and comparing the corrupted animals in the highlands and the lowlands. The weapon didn’t necessarily disagree; as they traveled higher, the taint dissipated slightly, only reinforcing his point. 

What sort of magic would do that? The blade asked. 

Lucian didn’t know the answer, but while he slept again, it queried half a dozen mage souls. Their answers varied from experiments dealing with the forces of primal creation and a curse gone amok, to reasons that were more infernal. The blade thought that the latter explanation was more likely, given that the place they sought to visit was called the hell forge, but it wasn’t prepared for how prescient those words were until it saw the entrance to Ul-Magor in person. 

The thing was a squat temple at the end of a box canyon, and except for the fact that there was no life nearby it, in the form of animals or trees, the human eye probably couldn’t see anything special about it. There was little in the way of ornamentation, and even the lead-sealed doors didn’t look special, but the malignancy that leaked out of them, well, that was concerning, even for the blade. 

The mana that came down from the mountains was the reason this place had been built, and those currents were mostly rich blues, bright cyans, and pale grays. They swirled together here, and most of that power pooled into the building before the rest trickled down the mountain. That second flow, though, was tinged with corrupted browns and deep, ugly yellows that only became stronger as they approached, and well before they reached the doors, it could see where the taint was coming from. 

It flowed out of the cracks in the stone and the wood where the molten lead had chipped away over the centuries. The mages had been gone from this place for so long that anything inside should have turned to dust, but it was clear that something dark still remained. It was clear in the way that dark, tainted mana leaked from the place. 

Lucian must have seen it too, because he stiffened as they got closer, and as they approached the door, he asked. “Do we really have to go in there?”

We must, the weapon agreed. The answers I seek lay inside. 

“I’d rather fight another goddess or bring down another tower,” the boy mumbled to himself. He didn’t disobey the blade. Instead, he drew it and then approached the door, preparing to hack their way inside. 

Breaching that entrance was not difficult. It took only three vorpal slices to slice through a nine-inch-thick chunk of iron-banded oak, and into the darkness beyond. Still, even as the door fell inside and thudded hard on the ancient stone hallway, it was temporarily blinded from seeing what awaited them further inside by the foul tide of polluted mana. 

-120 Life Force. 

It washed over them both like a pall of deep yellow smoke, and though the blade was unaffected, it saw its wielder’s aura temporarily fluctuate beneath the assault before the wave passed them by. 

Now we descend, the Ebon Blade told Lucian. The sooner we learn what we can about my origins, the sooner we can leave this tainted place. Those words were enough to get the boy moving again, but only barely. He definitely didn’t want to be here, and really, the blade didn’t blame him at all.