The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 112-113

I'm making a post about it in a couple of days, but just to let everyone know, I plan to resume posting this story three times a week next week or the week after. While I will still be posting Brewing Bad for a couple of more months, it is now written, allowing me to focus on two books, and my ongoing editing projects. Thank you for your patience.

Ch. 112 - Lifetimes of Knowledge 

That night, while Lucian slept, his already troubled dreams were only made worse by the screams of the souls that the blade tore to pieces in a search for answers. It would have been been troubled regardless, but the echos of those wretched souls rang through his psyche while the blade conducted its inquisition, mixing today’s violent images with others that were more surreal and traumatic. 

He woke up several times during the night, convinced they were about to be attacked. Each time, the blade paused what it was doing and reassured him. I am keeping watch over both of us. No one even knows we are here. Then it waited for him to slumber once more before it started its questions anew.

It would have been easy to label Lucian a coward for this, but the blade refrained from that. He was merely untempered until today, but the violence and the fire had reforged him into something more, and even a hard man would have trouble bearing all of the nightmares that the weapon was unleashing in its quest for answers. 

Only the souls of the servants that it still happened to have kept in the chaos got off easy. Those, it simply devoured. 

+1946 Life Force.

Then, after the dross was disposed of, it started with the youngest and dimmest of the mage's souls. Each of them only knew so much, of course, but it used them as stepping stones to slowly work its way up the hierarchy of the Golden Tower, one question at a time. 

Who was in charge of the Golden Tower? What was he like? Which mages are the oldest and most knowledgeable of you? Where are the closest minor towers? What is the name of the next closest great tower, and where can I find it?

Sixteen souls died to provide trivial answers. However, their storm of whispers as they each did their best to tell it what it wanted to know slowly came together into answers of a sort. Together, they populated a map of the area in ever more detail as it worked out what was where and how dangerous it might be, but the blade didn’t care. Being undone and damned to the void was better than any mage deserved, and it would have sent them to hell if it was capable of such a thing. 

It devoured the mid-level mages next, noting how strange it was that magic seemed to be an almost human endeavor; it only had a single elf soul in its entire haul. That was interesting enough to waste a question on a soul that might know the answer, and the blade was not disappointed. 

The elves have their own magical organizations and are not part of the Aethearchy. They pursue their own backward goals when they could be helping us achieve the Aetherarchy's, much to our annoyance. Likewise, the dwarves practice no magic at all, and the halflings and other demi-human races have only marginal talents. True magic is the domain of men and men alone. 

The view seemed ego-centric, but the man earnestly believed it, and what little evidence the blade had seemed to point that way. 

It was an interesting question. Did the other races have magic of their own? What were the elves up to precisely? It would love to look more into it, but right now, that point was only a distraction. With the exception of one very specific elf, they were not its concern. 

Instead of getting distracted, the blade continued on with its course of questioning. Tell me everything you know about the Golden Tower’s defenses. Are they typical? What can I expect when I reach the Crystal Overlook or the Redstone Spire? How are these mechanisms most easily disabled?

These questions inspired a discordant glimpse at the magic of artifice. Symbols carved in stone, patterns etched in metal, and even glowing threads woven into thin air flashed through its mind as the answers came together into something comprehensible. All of them were reminiscent of the way it saw the world now, though presumably, the mages couldn’t see things the way it did. 

These were of interest to the blade since it had been presumably created by such methods. Certainly, other hexblades had been crafted by the means that the dead mages described. 

It took a dozen more souls before the blade finally got the answers to all of those questions. The mages faded to nothing, screaming, but eventually, they told it what it needed to know. Towers of any size were equipped with golems and powerful doors, but only the largest had the shields, fire lancets, and other strange weapons it had witnessed in the capital. There were only half a dozen similar buildings in existence, making them the exception, not the rule. 

Those enchantments were rare and powerful, and in an age defined by peace, they were largely unnecessary. The mages that dwelled in each tower, large or small, were more than capable of taking care of themselves. At least, that was the theory. Var’gar would have begged to differ, of course, but then, the powerful Orc had never begged in his life, not even on his own deathbed. 

The dead spirits assured the blade those were fearsome opponents, but it did not associate the word fearsome with men who wielded words instead of weapons in their own defense.  

Even the Golden Tower, as it turned out, could have been defeated in ways that would have been far less dangerous than the way the blade had done. 

Every large magic structure in the kingdom, from the largest tower and academy to the smallest way stone, which directed lay lines across the land, used runes to direct their powers. If those were defaced, then their magic would be reduced or crippled entirely. 

This was the first real chink in the armor of the mages that it had found, and it explored it intensely, spending another half dozen knowledgable souls to learn everything it could on the subject. Though it couldn’t see any of the things from where its wielder lay, it now knew what it was looking for after looking through the eyes of the mages. It was like a cyan tide or a river that hung faintly in the air. 

River was probably the right metaphor, though in most cases, according to the mages it interrogated, it was more like a lazy stream. Still, streams combined to become rivers, and those rivers fed the major towers and the many experiments that lay within.

According to one scholar, Thebius the Gray, who evaporated after giving a particularly informative speech on Geomancy, the destruction of the Golden Tower would have already thrown the whole region into chaos, magically speaking, since it was such a powerful focal point.

After it knew more than it ever wanted to about the way mages harvest the energy of the natural world, and it had some idea of the pattern, it finally addressed one of the most powerful souls it had taken. While it did not know the identity of the glowing Greater Soul, as soon as the blade asked it a question, that was made clear to it.

The soul had belonged to Paracimol the Farsighted, an archmage of the inner circle, who had unnaturally extended his life until he was over a hundred and fifty years old. Though he’d been ancient and decrepit by then, he yet had hope of living to two hundred with the right rituals before the room he’d been sleeping in had come apart at the seams, and he’d been crushed by rubble before he could reach for his staff. 

Where was I forged? Do any who were involved still live? It demanded. 

The spirit struggled to resist for several seconds then. It put up nearly as much of a fight as the spirit of the elven prince that the Ebon Blade had devoured months before. In the end, though, it was pointless. Its power was irresistible. 

However, as it turned out, the spirit of the archmage didn’t know the answer to either question. He knew enough to make some educated guesses, though. 

The books speak of demonic involvement, but I do not think that likely. The hand of man is at work here; it has to be if they needed to use dragon-blooded tempering to create you. While the records do not speak of where such a grand ritual might have taken place, given that it was centuries ago, there were only a handful of options, as most of the modern towers had not yet been erected. 

That made sense to the blade. It had been learning what was where but not when they were put there. It hadn’t thought to ask that question. 

As it watched, the spirit of the mage showed it a map of the region as it was now, with a hundred different tiny leylines extending up from the sea to the south and down from the mountains in tiny, snaking lines. It was much the same as what the Geomancer’s spirit had shown the weapon earlier in the evening. 

What the archmage did next, though, was run the clock back, decades at a time. Whenever some monument or tower disappeared, the lines associated with it moved. It was like watching a glowing spiderweb being unwoven at high speed. 

The end result was a much more chaotic picture. Instead of being the delicate pattern it was now, there were just lines going everywhere with only a few focal points between them.

In those days, magic was freer and more powerful, but concentrations for such rituals were far more scarce. I know of only one spot within the kingdoms where you might have been forged. Ul-Magora, the ancient site of the dark circle. It was a place built to summon demons and, for a time, a workshop of horrific creations, but now… It is not something we speak of. 

The weapon tried to force the issue to squeeze more information out of him, but he had no more to give. No one had spoken of the ancient dungeon in centuries. It had been stricken and sealed. So, he had nothing to offer but stories of its hellish history, which were interesting but only helpful in that they made the blade think of those terrible memories.   

As to who created you? No man saving the king himself survived from that time to this one. If any of the mages involved yet live, they would be men no longer. Before the blade could even demand to know what it had meant by that, the archmage’s spirit exhausted itself and faded away. 

He gave me much, but not everything, the blade thought to itself as it considered all it had learned about the layout of the world. It considered burning another of the greater souls for a second opinion, but for now, it resisted the urge. They were a scarce resource it was not likely to find again until it felled another tower. 

For now, it would work through the rest of the lesser mages for smaller things it thought they might know. Still, already, it had enough to formulate a plan. It had a place to go and an understanding of how to weaken it. 

They’d spent centuries taming the magic of the land and directing it toward their focal points, and now the blade was going to tear down those that still fed this mystery dungeon, and then it was going to find the truth about its creation. 

The problem was that it was a simple plan, which meant it was predictable. First, I will have to cause some chaos so that my aims are less clear, it decided.

Ch. 113 - An Ephemeral Web

When its wielder woke in the morning. After he’d drunk from a horse trough and washed his face, the blade explained just enough about what was happening to steady the lad and give him purpose. The Ebon Blade still was not entirely certain that the Golden Throne, or even the mages they fought, might be able to overhear him or even locate it somehow through its wielder. Lucian was able to quell that worry, though, at least in part. 

“Divination magic is powerful, but it requires connection,” he explained as he searched through the nearby farmhouse that had been abandoned for robes to cover his near nudity and even a pair of shoes to replace his half-scorched sandals. “To find a thing, you need a piece of it or something closely related to it. If you have that, then the right spell can lead you to it like a compass; if you don’t… Well, then, it doesn’t know what to point to.”

While Lucian believed he was telling the truth, the blade still burned one of the dimmer mage souls to verify it while he clothed himself and found that its wielder was correct. The same threads of magic that connected the world to itself needed a piece of the target to find it. That piece could be as small as a single hair, though a large sample would be better. 

Then we will have nothing to worry about on that front, the blade agreed, after a time. Everything that you touched in Sevrin has been scourged clean. 

The boy nodded at that but seemed sadder than the blade had expected. It did not bring it up again. Instead, it turned to the topic of training, but there, the boy was lackluster as well. 

“Don’t you think hiking halfway across the Inner Kingdoms counts as training?” he asked. 

The journey will toughen you, but it will make you no better in battle, the blade admonished him. You must improve.

“Why?” he asked again. “You seem to be more than capable of making me fight for you.”

While it was a fair point, it annoyed the weapon. That is true to some degree, but more false than anything. My efforts wielding your body are far more clumsy than your efforts will be wielding me, the blade told him. You must improve because, as you have seen, the challenges that lie ahead will be severe. 

“What challenges?” Lucian asked. “You killed the king and destroyed the Golden Tower. What else is left?”

Vengeance, the blade answered, unwilling to elaborate any further. 

No, come, it continued after a moment, I will show you a series of exercises you can use to—

“No, we can do that later,” its wielder interrupted. “For now, I just want to get as far from whatever that fire was as possible.”

For a moment, the blade felt molten rage that its stripling of a wielder would dare to disobey it. It took real effort to push that down and try to recognize the situation from his point of view. He’d just survived a minor apocalypse and spent half the night tormented by dead mages. He could probably use a little more time to cope. 

So, instead of chastising him, the blade quieted as he packed up what fruit and cheese he could find in a cloth satchel and then set off down the road in the direction the blade had directed him earlier. It was not the way to Ul-Magora or even the Redstone Tower, which was the closest of the large mage towers to the Golden Tower. Instead, they were proceeding toward a series of standing stones partway between the two to start their mischief. 

Those first few days on the road were hard, quiet affairs. When it started to rain, the Ebon Blade discovered that the boy didn’t even have a modicum of wilderness survival skills, and it had to help him find shelter. He could light his own fires, at least. He needed only a few whispered words for that. It wouldn’t be enough to 

Each night, as the boy slept, the weapon queried another ten or twelve souls, seeking to broaden its understanding and fill in any gaps it might have had. It would sometimes ask about specific aspects of the Aetherarchy, like its ruling structure or their initiation rights, as the weapon struggled to understand its enemy, and each day, the boy would march on toward a destination that had not been revealed to him. 

Away was easy. It was the instruction he was most likely to follow without complaint, but the complaints he offered were only shallow ones. He didn’t say much of what was on his mind, which the blade appreciated. Such behavior represented signs of maturity. He might complain about the mosquitos, the dust, or the lack of food, but all the important things went unsaid. 

He didn’t complain about how he regretted picking up the weapon because of the damage he’d caused with it or the fact that he’d do it again in a heartbeat because it was the only reason he was still alive. He just quietly marinated in his survivor's guilt until the goblins attacked one night in the predawn darkness, and the weapon stirred him to life.

Be ready, the weapon whispered, waking Lucian up from a sound sleep. They are coming for you. 

“Who?” he murmured as his eyes flew open. 

Goblins, the Ebon Blade answered. Six of them. They hide on the far side of the clearing.

The weapon felt fear shoot through its wielder’s body, but not the overwhelming sort that had made him flee for his life the last few days. This had an undercurrent of determination, which the blade was grateful to see. It was even more grateful to be drawn in anger for the first time in days.

Strangely, Lucian didn’t even complain that it was too dark to see, as Evelyn or even Ivarr might have. Instead, he crept forward under the thin starlight that filtered through the trees, and when he closed most of the distance. Then, when he heard the sound of movement, he spoke the words for flare, and the forest clearing was suddenly lit up like day as a stream of white sparks erupted like a geyser. 

Then, while the goblins were blinded, he attacked. The first two went down in messy chunks before the other four recorded and attacked him simultaneously. There was no art to Lucian’s strokes; there was no skill or art to it, especially after he was bitten the first time. 

-18 Life Force.

“You little beast!” the boy shouted as he stepped back and swung, trying to keep them at bay. Those slashes were lightning-fast but poorly targeted, and his diminutive opponents were mostly able to move beneath them.

-22 Life Force.

They should all be dead by now, it whispered to itself as the mage’s light spell began to fade, yet three remained. This will take some work.

The Ebon Blade did nothing to help him. It would have taken away the enhanced speed and strength that it blessed him with, too, if he was able. He had to learn, and fighting for his life was the best way to do it. 

He wasn’t in any actual danger here. No matter how many times the little beasties got their claws or teeth into him, as long as he didn’t let go of the blade, ten times as many goblins wouldn’t be able to kill him. Still, they gave him far more trouble than they should have and wounded him painfully several times in the process. 

-9 Life Force.

Short of culling children, they were the weakest opponent imaginable, and yet it still took several minutes for him to hack the beasts to pieces. When it was almost done, and Lucian was splattered in green blood, the last goblin tried to run, and foolishly, the boy threw the Ebon blade at its retreating form.

That was a terrible idea for a variety of reasons, but the blade didn’t stop him. That wasn’t because it thought he deserved to be taught a harsh lesson, either. It was because he could see what he was planning and was curious if it would work. 

As the blade hurtled end over end toward the goblin, the mage produced his wand in his left hand and cast the spell that had gotten the Ebon Blade’s attention in the first place, Magehand. For a moment, the weapon had lost all contact with its wielder, which was always an anxious, troubling sensation, but then, a few seconds and more than a dozen feet later, it felt Lucian’s spirit hand grip its hilt again, adjusting the trajectory just enough to spear the goblin.

Spear really didn’t cover the damage. The diminutive monster was practically split in two by the force of the blow, but it didn’t stop there. The Ebon Blade expected the throw to pin the wretch to the earth, but instead, its wielder pulled back, and it returned to his hand in a wide slashing stroke that sliced through a handful of thin tree trunks on the way, felling all of them. 

That is an interesting trick, the blade murmured. Imagine how much more powerful it would be if you knew how to wield me properly. 

“After that, you might have a point,” he said, checking his arms and legs and making no attempt to hide his shock that he was entirely whole. 

You survived the fires and the fall. Did you really think I couldn’t heal goblin teeth? The weapon asked. 

“I just…” its wielder stumbled. “The damn thing took a bite out of me. It hurt worse than getting burned. That wasn’t nearly as serious as this. That’s all. I know your magic is powerful.”

That amused the blade; the reason the burns hadn’t hurt was because they’d been so severe, at least for a few seconds, that they’d robbed the young mage of his ability to feel pain. Instead of sharing that with him, though, it just said. As long as you don’t let go of me, with your real hand or your magical one, you will not die. Nothing can kill you.

Lucian conceded the point easily enough and promised that he wouldn’t. That was more because he didn’t want to be bitten and hurt so much the next time than any real pride as a warrior. That was fine. They had to start somewhere. They had several more days between here, and the first standing stones, and it would take weeks or months before they would do enough damage to the careful arrangement that spread across the country.