The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 95-97

Ch. 95 - Getting Her Affairs in Order

When they returned to Evelyn’s domain. The first thing the Baroness did was make a perfunctory visit to her dead husband’s grave. After that, when she returned to Gilles Hall, she wrote two documents. The first was to her father, informing him of her visit to the capital and asking for permission to visit him in the castle. 

The Ebon Blade didn’t understand why a daughter would need her father’s permission to visit him, but seeing as he had hundreds of living children and grandchildren, it was probably a protocol born of logistics more than security. Still, it was her second document that interested it far more. 

The Baroness couldn’t walk around her manor with a giant black claymore strapped to her back. So, she most often kept it in the corner behind a dressing screen where it would be easy to access in an emergency. From there, it would while away the hours nibbling on any maids within reach, as well as any workmen visible from her window, but it was a thin gruel compared to the joy of violence. 

+84 Life Force.

There was little it could do about the flimsy hiding place, but it made the Ebon Blade feel intensely vulnerable. However, those concerns were almost certainly overblown. 

The guards entered her room on a regular basis, and once a visiting mage and priest met with her in her chambers to ask questions about the man she saw fleeing her bedroom after her husband’s death. Even in that case where adepts capable of detecting were right there, they didn't even bother to look for it. No one even considered it possible that the beautiful, petite widow could have played a part in the tragedy. It was simply a bridge too far. 

They talked about the precariousness of that situation regularly, but though the blade was dissatisfied, it had no good answers, and its wielder urged it not to worry. “Soon enough, we’ll be on our way,” she explained. “Just another week or so until my father replies.”

While it sat there, impatiently, it could easily see everything that happened in her room, and she had to only reach a little bit past her writing desk to touch its hilt so they could talk. It was in one of those conversations that it told her how it had twisted the guard’s desire to protect her. 

“How is that even possible?” its wielder asked. 

The Ebon Blade explained, It was a favor gleaned from a grudge against a man that we killed in the inn. As my vengeance gets closer, my powers continue to grow. 

It didn’t explain everything to her, because she didn’t need to know. In their solitude, they’d practiced with a few of its powers like Bolt and Amplify Blade, but it still preferred to hoard its secrets whenever possible. Still, what it told her piqued her interest enough to start making a list of everyone she wanted dead before she left her sleepy community. 

We should be cautious, the blade argued. All of these delays… they were all to garner the advantages of stealth and surprise. If we start killing people in large numbers, it will attract attention. 

“You said so yourself,” Evelyn said, obviously unswayed. “We may never come back here. I might not survive what comes next, and if it's vengeance you seek… well, I can’t leave these vengeances unfinished. We’ll just have to make sure they don’t find any bodies.”

The weapon wanted to argue with that, but not as much as it wanted to kill. It hated waiting day after day, inviting rust and capture. The names on her list meant nothing to it, but when she peered into her mind, it could see that a majority of the men, and all of the women on the list, were those who knew how badly her husband had abused her before his death. 

+221 Life Force.
+9 Human Souls. 

The rest were a mix of miscreants and former lovers. A few of that last group she actually fucked before she killed them, which the blade found distasteful. Given that her husband was dead, it wasn’t exactly a betrayal, but it was an odd choice. 

Why would you love someone enough to couple with them but hate them enough to want them dead? The weapon asked itself several times during her killing spree. It didn’t really understand sexual desire in general, but its current wielder seemed to have a very twisted view of it. 

Most of those murderous nights in the week before they journeyed to the capital started out the same. Eveyln would dress in dark clothes and then, using its strength, she would sneak out of her window and leap to the ground before meeting one of the night's targets. At first, some of these were scheduled trysts that occurred in the wilderness outside of town or at the properties of wealthy men. 

+376 Life Force.
+12 Human Souls. 

Those who wanted her rarely questioned what she wore as long as it came off, and those who didn’t never had a chance to ask. It was here that the blade worried that its incessant whispers to her sleeping mind might have gone too far. 

After a few days, when the first body was found, these little missions of vengeance became harder, but not impossible. She simply started burning down the buildings while the corpses of her victims lay inside. While that destroyed the evidence of direct murder, arson was an even harder crime to hide.  

In their first few days together, after her husband’s death, Evelyn had deplored the idea of killing anyone, save a handful of people that she desperately wanted to die. Now she enjoyed people who had shunned or insulted her, as well as their servants if necessary. 

+551 Life Force.
+17 Human Souls. 

The blade didn’t judge this. It just tried to understand it. It wanted death and slaughter, and any soul it could devour was a good one, but what it needed more than anything was a reliable wielder, and Evelyn was growing reckless. 

Sometimes she’d even lecture those who had abandoned her in her hour of need for their misdeeds before she struck them down. “You could have saved me!” she told her priest before she struck him down and left him there on the desecrated altar. 

The blade enjoyed those moments almost as much as it hated her little romantic interludes, but either way, it grew more concerned, and one night, when that mage and priest who failed to notice it before ambushed her in the woods on the way back to her town, it was unsurprised. 

“It was you? All along, it was you?” the priest asked, in obvious denial.

“Guilty…” Evelyn said with a smile, drawing it and taking a look around the clearing as a dozen men began to fan out. 

The most important thing now is that no one lives to tell the tale of what happened here, the blade whispered. 

“The Bloody Baroness,” the mage gasped as his men drew their weapons. “That’s what they’ll call you… They’ll—”

He never finished his statement. With no warning at all, Evelyn sprang forward, splitting the warrior standing in front of him in two with a downward chop that had enough reach that it cleaved through the man's robes and well as his ribs. The strike was not enough to kill the mage instantly, but it was enough to silence him until he drowned in his blood as everyone else joined the fight. 

+74 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul. 

The next two men to attack Evelyn did so from either side. Unfortunately, one of them seemed hesitant to strike a woman. The blade assisted her with a series of perfectly executed moves in the moment that followed, and she struck the one with a little too much mercy in his soul with its pommel hard enough to give him a concussion even as she used the blade to parry a blow from the other side before running him through. 

After that, it was a melee, and blood ran on all sides. The priest called upon their God and gave the warriors that fought at his side some kind of battle prowess spell. That was enough to make them stronger and faster, but not strong enough that they could parry more than a glancing blow from the Ebon blade. 

+109 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

As more and more bodies fell to the ground, footing grew treacherous and tactics became more haphazard. When mobbed from every direction, it was impossible to parry every blow, and its wielder was run through several times, once by two swords at once. She yelled in pain, but the expression on her face was one of feral joy, and even before her organs had finished healing, she’d ended the lives of every warrior that had laid a hand on her. 

-74 Life Force.
+226 Life Force.
+5 Human Souls. 

The priest blasted her once with a bolt of light that seemed like it was meant to purge her of evil. That froze Evelyn in place for a moment, but the blade continued to move on her behalf, and made short work of the man, and returning quiet to that bloody glade. 

It occurred to the blade only when everything was still and it counted the corpses that there was a problem. One of them is missing, it whispered as it whirled around looking for him. 

-35 Life Force.
+99 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

When it spotted the runner, it yanked at its wielder’s body so hard it almost pulled her off her feet. After that, the chase was joined. Despite the boy’s head start, though, it was over in seconds. At night, Evelyn moved faster than ever thanks to Speed of the Shadows, and even as she overtook him, she beheaded him. 

+36 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul. 

“Bloody Baroness,” she whispered to herself as she pulled the Ebon blade free of the last corpse and watched the blood that lingered on it get absorbed by the metal. “I quite like that sound of that.”

While the weapon enjoyed the fight and thought that the monkier was very appropriate given how its wielder was drenched in blood, it did not like how close they’d come to ruin. If not for its night sight, this last warrior would have escaped and ruined everything, and it admonished its wielder. 

There will be no more killing here. The blade commanded. Not until we depart. It is too dangerous. 

Evelyn agreed, offering no verbal pushback, but it could feel the disappointment in her heart and decided to urge restraint instead of murder from now on when she slept. She clearly needed no more reinforcement in that regard. 

Despite staying in at night from that day forward, two days later, she received a message announcing that the Witchhunters were returning to her domain because they worried the Black Blade had returned to the area. That was enough to make her panic. She stayed long enough to draft a letter extending them every courtesy because the blade insisted, but after that, they moved their plans to travel to Severin by several days and made a hasty departure.

Ch. 96 - Severin by Night

The blade was blinded for the duration of their three-day carriage ride to the city of Severin. It knew the way, roughly, thanks to all of the souls it had interrogated about the area, but even with half a dozen mounted guards escorting its wielder the whole way, it felt intensely vulnerable. 

Each night, Evelyn stayed in a tavern while it stayed in one of her trunks tied to the roof of her carriage. That situation had the unfortunate side effect of denying the blade any sustenance by nibbling at guests or even horses, and instead it was forced to watch as it lost five or six Life Force an hour for the duration of the trip. 

-240 Life Force.

While it had more than 8,300 Life Force thanks to Evelyn’s rampage over the last week, it was painful to watch it slip away. It was even more painful to watch it slip away, knowing that right now it could afford the upgrade it wanted. The weapon dare not take it, though. Not only because it would need all the reserves it could get in such a dangerous place. It also couldn’t afford to lapse into slumber. 

Even if I stay locked in here for a month, I’ll be fine, the blade reassured itself, but it was not happy about it. 

Even blind, it could still listen to the rumors, and those weren’t good. The people were afraid and on edge. They worried that another army of orcs would be raised up, but they also worried that the Black Blade had returned. 

While the rumors of orcs and armies were obvious lies, the rumors about it were mixed, and ran a spectrum all the way from, “The servants of the Aetherarchy have captured it and are making plans even now to banish it to the outermost hell,” to “The ghost of Baraga reborn stalks the world even now, and marches on the capital with an army of the undead.”

As much as the blade would love to have an army of undead, that was well beyond it. It only had slain 41 of the required 100 villains for the next level of Path of Vengeance, but the Path of Undeath was well beyond it. 

The rumors didn’t need to be true, though, to be concerning, and every city they passed through, the guards seemed to stop them to investigate their business. When they reached the walls of the capital itself, they were stuck in a line for hours, and despite Evelyn’s black dress, dark veil, and documents that proved her identity, she was still interviewed by the captain of the watch before they were let in. 

-120 Life Force.

Once there, they didn’t have to stay at another Inn, at least. Instead, Evelyn stayed in the guest room of one of her sisters. Even after their arrival at the mansion, which lay in a good part of the Royal quarter, the Ebon Blade still had to wait in the darkness of its wielder’s luggage for three days before it was removed for a moment at a time.

-360 Life Force.

Then, finally, Evelyn removed it and placed it in her wardrobe amongst her blankets. Then, she lay with it while she updated it on the situation. “My father has denied all visits after everything that has happened,” she explained. “Even to his own family. No one but his heir and his closest advisors are allowed to enter the grand hall. It’s—”

It’s because of your little rampage, isn’t it? The blade asked. 

“It’s not, I swear,” she insisted. “This was announced months ago, right after the orcs were defeated. The rumors are everywhere that the Black Blade has finally come to end the Kingdom, and my father with it…”

That bitch… the blade whispered to itself, sure that the Elf’s escape was what caused this. If only I’d killed her, word would never have gotten out. 

Before the blade could spiral too far into self-recrimination, its wielder added, “That won’t be a problem, though, because next week there’s to be a ball in the palace to celebrate the birth of his newest son.”

The man is paranoid enough to lock down his entire castle, yet vain enough to throw a party? The blade asked, confused. 

“That’s my father,” she sighed. “He won’t risk his life, but he also won’t miss a chance to glorify himself. Not many men can claim to have fathered a hundred and fifty sons.”

None should be able to. The blade reflected. That’s vile. Why live for centuries just to cavort like that? Surely he has enough of a legacy. 

Evelyn ignored that and continued. “My point is that the grand ballroom is only three floors down and a few hundred yards away. I could attend the party for an hour or two, and then, when everyone is occupied, drunk, and deadly dull, I could sneak back out to the carriage, retrieve you, and then we could…”

Force our way into the throne room and catch everyone off guard, it said, finishing her thought. 

Though it wasn’t as violent and showy as it would have preferred, there was no denying that it was a good option. There was only one problem. 

As things stand right now, they will certainly see me. The blade said. I have no doubt that when we cross the threshold into the castle, they will be able to detect magic, and even with all my shrouds, I will still glow like a lantern. 

“Can we fix that?” she asked quietly. 

By killing about a dozen people, the blade answered. Really, it only needed three or four, but it wanted at least some kind of margin before it began its assault on the castle. 

“Well, that’s easy,” its wielder said with a smile. “We can just sneak down into the slums, clean up some garbage and…”

And get ourselves discovered, the blade continued. Your father may be a fool, but he’s not foolish enough to do this if he thinks his doom has made it this far. 

+28 Life Force. 

They argued about it, but two nights later, she had a single trunk packed and loaded into her carriage. She told everyone she was meeting with one of her husband's business associates to square up accounts, and her sister that it was just a tryst with an old flame. The truth was that she’d picked an inn right on the edge of a bad part of town, and just after midnight, she slipped out of the window like an avenging angel, spoiling for a fight. 

Evelyn didn’t really care who she fought. She left that to the blade, who scanned the streets with both its sight and its Aethersight as it looked for the right target while she leapt from rooftop to rooftop and vaulted over low walls topped with cement and broken glass. 

+17 Life Force. 

What it decided on, eventually, was a drug den. That was both because it could see dozens of people in it, some of whom were wielding hexblades, but because there was only one heavily guarded way in or out, which made their odds of discovery minimal and gave their victims nowhere to run. 

The battle that followed was more of a slaughter than any real fight. That disappointed the blade. It would have preferred to take its time and test its mettle against real warriors, but at that moment, they could not afford to cause a panic in Severin, so they went through the place like a bloody scythe, extinguishing the lights as they went with blasts of electricity. It didn’t matter if it was forty on one when only one of them could see in the dark.

+641 Life Force.
+22 Human Souls.
+1 Halfling Soul.

That had been the plan, anyway. As it turned out, three of them could see. There were two dwarves among the rest of the criminals, and they were the only members of the whole crew that put up a real fight when the last of the exploded oil lamps had guttered to nothing. 

“It’s just a bloody wench!” one of them yelled, just before he lost his head. 

Life Force Drain Resisted.
+1 Dwarf Soul.

It was an ugly slaughter, but ugliest of all was Evelyn’s glee. In the dark, she was merely a puppet on its strings, but still, she had a look of glee on her face, and the blade was quite certain it had created a monster with her. Something important had broken inside that woman. 

+591 Life Force.
+21 Human Souls.
+1 Dwarf Soul.

Still, it was hard to care as the red mist swirled around it and corpses lay spread out in all directions. By that point, it had reached nearly 13,000 Life Force, and it could have probably spent the rest of the night just standing there soaking in the deaths for hundreds more, but it was time to go.  

As soon as the fighting was done, they set fire to the place and fled to cover up all evidence of the half-drained bodies. The blade spent 8,000 Life Force on Aethershroud 5, reducing its presence 100%, which showed as only the barest outlines when it looked at its own mana flows. That part of the night, at least, was a success. Now it just had to see if they’d get away with it. 

When they returned to the inn, Evelyn bathed and changed while the blade listened to the sounds of the night, but never heard the sounds of an alarm being raised. The following day, their trip back to the mansion they were staying at went every bit as smoothly. Only 

Everything was going well until the footman found it. The man was poking around Evelyn’s things, obviously looking for something to steal. He didn’t find gold, though, or even jewels. What he found was an ancient artifact of unfathomable power. He had no way of knowing that when he set his hand upon the handle. 

Then, the blade sprang upon him, seizing the young man’s body, and freezing him in place as the two grappled for control. I… what’s happening? The boy screamed silently, unable to make a sound or do more than tremble. 

The Ebon Blade did not respond. Instead, it peered into his psyche to make sure that he wasn’t any more than he seemed. Truthfully, though, he was even less, and though the weapon couldn’t hurt anyone that held it, it wanted to strike him down itself when it saw the word coward used to describe his temperament. 

Name: Nedden

Occupation: Footman

Toughness: 5+4

Strength: 5+16

Agility: 56+9

Speed: 5+4

Intelligence: 4

Willpower: 3 -1

Morality: Greedy

Bloodlust: Cowardly

Status: Normal

Martial Skill: Average

Armor Proficiency: None

Dodging: Average

Athletics: Above Average

Goal: To get rich anyway I can. 

For the blade, the hardest part wasn’t holding the boy in place; it was tolerating his touch. Even if he hadn’t been a coward, it was his true wielder’s touch, and it despised it. 

Still, it could not let go. It had to hold him until its wielder returned, however long that took. The real problem would be if some other maid came in when the boy was like this. It would have been an impossible situation to explain. 

Still, the blade did not dignify the footman’s silent cries with any responses. It just left him alone in the darkness of his mind. 

Evelyn didn’t return for almost two hours, and when she did, she nearly screamed until she realized that the servant was frozen in place. Then she walked up behind him and hammered him in the head with a wash basin hard enough to brain him and send him tumbling to the floor. 

“What happened!” she hissed as she seized the blade. 

He was trying to steal from you and found more than he bargained for, the blade said. I cannot harm my wielder, but I could prevent him from doing anything until you returned. 

“Well, what are we supposed to do with him now?” she asked, holding the blade near enough to him that the blood that was leaking from his skull drained into the weapon instead of pooling on the floorboard of her room and leaving a stain. 

+1 Human Soul.

We can make sure he’s dead and then toss him down the stairs after everyone is asleep, the blade suggested. Everyone will think it’s an accident. 

“But they would still talk,” she insisted. “Rumors would spread, and that’s more dangerous than anything right now.”

They talked about it for a while, but eventually decided it was better to hide the body for a few days than let it be discovered in a plausible way. Of course, people might wonder where a footman had gone, but there was nothing they could do about that at this point. 

In the end, she embedded the blade in the heart of the unlucky young man and left it there for several minutes, even after he died and turned cold. The goal wasn’t just to kill him at this point. It was to drain every last drop of blood from his body, so that it was so desiccated that it would take a long time to rot. 

That much was accomplished easily. Folding him and breaking bones to fold his mummified corpse into a large hatbox so that it wouldn’t be found for weeks or months was somewhat harder, but Evelyn managed. She was no longer squeamish about such things. 

Ch. 97 - Breaching the Castle 

The night of the gala was a tense thing, but the blade’s travails started the previous evening. That was when Evelyn snuck out in the night and wedged both its scabbard as well as the clothing she planned to change into above the axles of the carriage they would be taking the following evening. Then, the blade was forced to linger there the whole day, completely exposed for anyone to find. 

After their near miss with the thieving footman, it was nerve-wracking enough that the Ebon Blade would have rather faced down an opposing army. Still, that was not an option. All it could do was lay there and wait to be drawn in anger at the right moment. 

Though it had a good view of the courtyard and could freely taste the servants that came and went, offsetting its losses and building its strength, that did little to pass the time of the fear that someone might notice it. All it would take was one teamster who was just a little too devoted to his task to undo everything; fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any of those found in this household’s employ. 

+39 Life Force.

Still, even when horses were harnessed and Evelyn, her older sister, and the woman’s husband finally boarded the carriage, the blade’s concerns were far from over. Evelyn might look serene in the black gown she’d chosen for the event, but its anxieties would continue to mount until she held it once more.

It had worried that it might be found during the day and that it might be found at the gate, but the idea that it might simply fall from where its wielder had lashed it in place did not occur to it until the carriage started clattering over cobblestones, and it started to wiggle ever so slightly. 

The weapon had charged heavy cavalry in the fragile body of a goatman with less anxiety than it faced that short ride across town. By the time they arrived at the gate, it was still more afraid of simply falling on the ground than being found by the cursory exam that the guards gave the carriage and its occupants once they supplied their invitation. 

The Ebon Blade watched her go without a look back at the carriage as she went inside, then the coachman pulled the carriage off to one side with all of the other conveyances that had delivered their noble occupants, and then the driver went off to smoke with the other teamsters, leaving it alone. 

Of course, with the range of its hunger and its improved senses, the blade was never truly alone. It lingered at the edges of those conversations, nibbling at the souls of those servants as it listened to their rumors and gripes and studied the castle that rose up around it in all directions. 

+61 Life Force.

The curtain wall of Altbarstein was a huge and imposing thing that would have been unbreachable by any orc, save perhaps one who wielded it. It seemed larger than it had in the fragments of memories it could recall. The lower palace that it surrounded seemed to have expanded over the centuries as well. The inner keep that towered above the rest, though, that was unchanged. 

The blade wouldn’t need to breach those defenses, though, not if Evelyn was correct. She was certain that her father was where he would always be, on the throne of the kingdom, preserving his life for as long as he could like a rapacious parasite. At most, she expected the man to walk over to the balcony and perhaps wave down to the revelers in the garden at some auspicious moment, but that would be the most that anyone could expect from him. 

In theory, that way was practically clear now that they were inside the giant ironwood gates, but still, the blade worried, and even as it nibbled on the souls of the teamsters and servants that wandered in reach and studied the layout it considered asking its final mage soul more information about this.  

Only the furtive movements weaving between the carts stop it, making it refocus. The blade had not noticed the man because he was hiding under a cloak of invisibility. That hadn’t fooled the horses, though, and they stirred visibly enough for the blade to find him. 

No, not invisibility, it realized. The man is wrapped in shadows. 

It had been nearly dark when they’d arrived, but such things did not bother the Ebon Blade. This did, though. Mages rarely lurked without reason, and the fact that this one seemed to be peering intently at carriages and not robbing them indicated that he wasn’t a thief. 

As the mage drew ever closer, the blade became more and more concerned, but it wasn’t until he muttered, “It has to be somewhere over here. I can see the life drain, but not the blade I…”

The mage stopped as the blade stopped siphoning the Life Force of a random carriage driver with Aura of Hunger in that moment. It had been trying to build up as much energy as possible, but it hadn’t realized anyone could see that. It should have, though. In retrospect, given all that it had learned from Aethersight and Aethershroud, the decision had been a grave error on its part. 

The mage noticed that the effect stopped, but instead of fleeing as he should have done, he merely cursed and started searching the nearby wagons one at a time as they grew ever closer to the weapon’s hiding place. 

“Where is it,” he muttered, looking in and undercarriages. “It has to be—”

Fortunately, that was when its wielder walked down the lane between the parked carriages, close enough for her gown to brush by him as she moved past. The man staggered back, seemingly more frightened that he’d almost been caught than anything. 

More than anything, in that moment, the blade wanted to warn her, but it couldn’t. This is why we should not separate, it complained silently. Not as she moved to the carriage nor as she stooped to retrieve it. It couldn’t tell her that she was being followed, nor that the man was drawing a dagger as his cloak of shadows fell away from his body and condensed around the steel in his hand. 

He moved to strike at the same moment that her hand gripped its hilt. In that moment, it didn’t even bother to warn Evelyn. As soon as she reached down and held it in its grasp, it whirled her around like a puppet without resistance. Then, it ran itself right through the stealthy mage that had been following her, pinning him to the opposing carriage with a single thrust through the chest like a butterfly. 

His blow had missed. However, instead of even trying to strike again, his weapon fell to the gravel with a metallic clatter.  

“Why… didn’t I see…” he gasped as he died. “Why can’t I see you…”

+32 Life Force.
+1 Human soul. 

The blade didn’t bother to answer his question, or Evelyn’s, as she demanded to know what was going on. Instead, it barked, be quick. Someone will have noticed his death. We must move.

Then, as she wiggled out of her skirts and dressed in the riding leathers she’d brought along for what came next, it ripped apart the soul of the mage who had been spying on them. Tell me everything! Its voice boomed, making the slight thing evaporate. Tell me why you were looking, what you hoped to find, and who will know that you’ve died!

The answer was not what it had expected. The blade had thought that the man would have been part of the castle staff or even a member of the royal guard, but he wasn’t. Lydoceous Vex was a shadowmancer of the Aethearchy, and he’d been here because of a prophecy, not a threat to the king. 

Sadly, he hadn’t been given that prophecy, but he’d been told to investigate by his superior just the same. “There is every reason to believe that the Black Blade will yet find some way to cleave the throne despite every measure we’ve taken,” Magister Tychee told him. “It has not yet been found, and though I cannot say this will be the celebration that ends in tears, it is possible, so go and seek it out.”

“What can I hope to accomplish in the face of the thing,” the mage had sniveled. “It's a menace! Not even dragon’s blood can melt it!”

“Nothing,” the older mage snapped. “When you find it, you are to yell for the guards at the top of your lungs and keep everyone well clear of it. It's quite helpless when it lacks a wielder. We have specialists just waiting on standby to deal with it once someone finds it. You send a whisper, and we will do the rest.”

“But… how will I find it?” Lydoceous asked again. “Surely it—”

“An artifact of that power will glow plainly,” the archmage sighed. “The divinations say that it will sneak into the palace amidst a celebration, unwielded, and beneath a shroud. All we have to do is find it when it is separated from its wielder, and all will be good.”

“But what if it isn’t this celebration?” the younger mage asked. 

“Then you will stay and investigate every celebration until you find the correct one,” the older man snapped. The vision began to fade then, but even so, the blade got the impression that Lydoceous Vex was about to receive a dressing down for his impertinence. 

It was clear to the blade that the man had no love for the assignment, but it turned out that the celebration they were attending now hadn’t even been the one they were discussing. He’d been here for a month, attending every festival and feast in his search for the Ebon Blade, and now that he’d finally found it, it had been the end of him. 

The vision troubled the blade. They knew I was coming. They have at least a month head start on me somehow. It knew that it should be annoyed at Evelyn for causing the delay, but it couldn’t. Her plan had been a good one, spreading the search for it across a wide and indistinct area, but if the Aetherarchy knew where it would be eventually, however imperfectly, then that was all for naught. 

Worse, though, it had hoped this soul would shed some light on the castle’s defenses, and it had not done that. What it had done, though, was attract attention. Even as Evelyn finished getting dressed and belted it to her back, it could see several guard patrols with lanterns spreading out through the parked carriages. 

In the hours leading up to this moment it had seen less than five guards on this whole side of the courtyard. Now, there were nearly thirty, and they were converging on their location. 

We have to move, it whispered to its wielder. Now, before they sound the alarm and, the ripples of this man’s death spread any further than they already have.