The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 66-69

Ch. 66 - The Gates of Gulen-Dor

When its wielder finally woke, he didn’t bother to ask the blade what had happened. Instead, assuming the dark tusk was displeased with it in some way, he sacrificed a dozen orcs in its honor in a bloody spectacle as he lead his growing tribe in a prayer that was mostly nonsense. This was the last thing the blade wanted, but it devoured the souls just the same. 

+882 Life Force.
+12 Greater Monster Souls.

Being held by someone other than a human bothered it more than ever now. Before now the Ebon Blade had assumed that it was because the soul of a monster wasn’t as powerful as that of a human, and that it noticed the difference. Now it knew the truth. Its soul was largely made up of pieces of human souls, with only a few of the demi-human races added in. 

So, the souls of goblins, orcs, and even beastmen were ugly, and malformed enough to grate on it as their essence comingled. Nothing was more malformed than it, though. That was the thought it couldn’t get off its mind for days, even after the orcs started marching to the northeast again. 

They were harried for the first time by archers on horseback, but not even this distracted the blade. The last time its beastmen had met such a patrol it insisted on fighting them one on one, but this time it could barely be bothered to note their existence. Why should it? The band only took only a few well thrown spears before a number of the mounts and riders had been impaled. They retreated rather easily after that. 

Pity I can’t slay my own concerns so easily, the Ebon Blade mused.  

The weapon did not sleep, and it certainly did not dream. However, more than once as the greenskins marched across the plains and the mountains rose up in the distance, getting larger by the day, the same image came to mind over and over again when it would drift off absent mindedly. 

It could not help but imagine the souls of the people that had been sacrifice to power its magic melted down into a crucible before being hammered into the blade it was now. That wasn’t what happened, but that was how it processed it. The endless drums that were always present when the orcs marched became the beat of an unforgiving blacksmith’s hammer, and each time it was brought down the souls that made up the weapon he was creating screamed. 

It was a dark image, but then, the blade was in a dark mood. That became even truer once it realized its soul upgrade had failed. It noted that almost immediately as soon as it opened up the interface again. It had expected to see Repair Soul 5 for 5,000 Life Force or something, but instead, it saw the same level 4 power was still there with a new error. 

Primary Powers:

Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force
Accelerate Wielder 2: 800 Life Force
Bolt 1: 1000 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force
Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force
Lesser Life Reserves 4: 4000 Life Force
Lesser Soul Reserves 4: 4000 Life Force
Increase Control 4: 3000 Life Force
Empower Blade 3: 4000 Life Force - not currently accessible
Repair Soul 4: 2500 Life Force (level 4 upgrade incomplete. Must spend 50% of the cost to try again.)
Improved Siphon 9: 6000 Life Force

Secondary Powers: 

False Image 2: 250 Life Force
Giant’s Strength 2: 400 Life Force
Speed of Shadows 2: 500 Life Force

The weapon did not like the setback any more than it liked the fact that it was made from the souls of others, and certainly not from a wielder it admired. Such a thing seemed like another layer of betrayal that it could never hope to escape from. It didn’t feel that it was those poor men and women, but it did feel unclean for being connected to them even more deeply than it would have ever suspected. 

Baraga wouldn’t want me to work with the orcs rather than against them. He certainly wouldn’t want me to kill so may people, it thought to itself as it pondered the problem. Fortunately, he is no longer here so he will not be able to object. 

Normally it took care not to kill the orcs that it fed off of regularly, but in the following days it drained anyone who annoyed it dry without a twinge of regret. Some of the orcs that lingered close to it for too long were executed by it for ridiculous reasons that included talking about things that annoyed it,eating too loudly, and even snoring for too long. It was capricious, but its wielder didn’t so much as question the behavior. 

+548 Life Force.
+8 Greater Monster Souls.

Even after nearly a week, the revelations still stung, and it wanted to make others hurt as well. So, with thousands at its wielder’s back they continued on with thousands marching, and when the horde finished pillaging its way across the broad, flat lands, and reached the barrier mountains they’d been aiming for, the paused only long enough to watch the scout patrols that were now shadowing their moves retreat.

+3181 Life Force.
+113 Human souls.
+26 Halfling Souls.
+2 Dwarven Souls. 

It overflowed with so much power that it was tempted to try repairing its soul again, but the blade resisted that. The events and revelations were too recent, and it was not at all sure that it wanted to know more yet. Instead, it increased Lesser Life Reserves at the cost of 4,000 Life Force for purely pragmatic reasons. It was getting so much energy from the confluence of its abilities that it constantly risked running out of space to to save it all when it lost itself in the heat of battle. 

Of course its harder to lose myself in glorious combat with what I’ve learned, it thought bitterly. 

As much as the blade wanted to repair its soul it was fairly certain it would have rather not learned any of this on some level. Still, none of those thoughts slowed the progress of the horde, and the distant mountains got closer every day. 

The Adrenii mountains were smaller than the mountains to the north Kalraka that the Ebon Blade and Ivarr had explored so thoroughly. Smaller didn’t necessarily mean unimposing, though. They were heavily forested and dotted with enough rocky escarpments that they formed a perfect natural barrier to a conventional army. Thanks to the memories of devoured souls, the Blade had known all of this before they arrived, so it was not surprised. 

If they continued, and bore only a little to the south they would find the best pass in the region. It cut right through the range like a straight line, and parallelled the river of Ikari’s Veil. It was the most direct route, but because of how heavily fortified it was, they would not be going that way. 

Part of the blade wanted to fight that fortress. It wanted its wielder to scale the walls, create a bloodbath, and burn the place to the ground. It knew that it could win, too, but it also knew that its army was a finite resource, and it would be better to spend its strength in battles where there was more favorable ground. After all, there could scarcely be less favorable ground than a four story curtain wall topped with archers and mages stretching from one end of the canyon to the other. 

Skipping such a battle only made the blade’s mood that much uglier, but it endured. At least traveling through the forest calmed it somewhat, and the anticipation of the battles to come kept it focused on something besides its own soul. At this point it had finally come to terms with what had happened, at least in part, but it regretted that it had reacted so emotionally, and missed out on vital information. Now it would have to spend the Life Force and souls of a dozen men to do it a second time, which was wasteful and pointless.

They aren’t me, it repeated to itself again, willing it to be true. Their souls might have powered the spell, but I did not endure their suffering. No part of them remains. 

On the four-day trek through the Adrenii, it left its wielder to handle everything that needed to be done. It wasn’t exactly a demanding task. 

The mountainous woods would have been hard for any army with mounts and a proper wagon train to navigate, but the orcs breezed through the trees effortlessly. The left a trial that even a blind man could follow, of course, but they didn’t let anything slow them down. That included the several scouts and woodsmen that they found. Each of those humans lead them on a brief chase before they were run to ground and torn to pieces. 

They were only an appetizer for the people that lay beyond, though. The blade knew that, and as soon as they reached a good overlook on the far side of the mountains, it confirmed that. The lands they’d just left had been dry, and largely used by herders, but the lands ahead were just the opposite. 

The Inner Kingdoms, it whispered to itself as in mentally began to plot its next track through the wide, fertile valleys ahead of them. 

They were green with life, and even from here it could see nearly a dozen small villages and farmsteads, along with at least one large town that seemed to be protected by only a wooden palisade. For the blade there was no beauty in the view, but there was opportunity, and for the first time in a week it began to relay orders to its wielder when he grunted, “So many ripe targets. Which shall we devour?”

All of them, the blade answered, laying out an ambitious strategy, that would require the army to be split into three, at least for the first night. Some small part of its soul whispered that if it really was made of heroes, then its vengeance should be unleashed on those that were responsible, and not random peasants along the way, but it ruthlessly suppressed that voice. 

After Months of travel it had reached the Inner Kingdoms. Everyone was responsible, and all of them were nothing but fuel for the bonfire it planned to set alight.  

Here, speed was of the essence. There would be no hiding the plumes of smoke after the first morning. The benefit of being in such a civilized place was obvious, but so to, were the disadvantages. That meant there would be no more two day long canibalistic feasts. They would strike, destroy, and move on, to stay ahead of their own chaos for as long as they could, and when a real army responded to the carnage, then the blade would have to find them somewhere advantageous to face them. 

“We must eat what we kill,” its wielder insisted, as the Ebon Blade explained the way they would divide the army, to sack all of the near villages in a single night, before regrouping at the far city the following day. 

In victory everyone will have an hour or two to bandage their wounds and eat their fill, the blade repeated, with less patience than it had the first time. After that, we move. We will always be moving now, and the penalty for falling behind will be death. 

While the blade certainly implied that it would be the one to carry out that sentence, and its wielder dutifully repeated that threat to everyone, it had no way to carry it out. The truth was that once the humans had been stirred up they’d face real armies. Probably more than one, and anyone that couldn’t stay together for safety in numbers would be picked off quickly enough. The blade had a few tricks up its sleeve, though. 

The enemy is expecting dumb orcs, it whispered to itself, but they will have to contend with both brute force and serious tactics. That will be their undoing. 

Ch. 67 - Conflict

The trip down the backside of the forested mountains went much faster than the climb up them because of both gravity and hunger. That was the good news. Trying to get thousands of orcs to wait until dark on the day they reached the foot of the mountain, though, was almost impossible, and the racket they caused allowed most of the residents of the first village to take flight before they even arrived. 

It was frustrating to watch these uncertain refugees begin to free from where the bulk of the army hid, even if they weren’t quite sure what they were fleeing from. There was no guarantee that they would get away, though, not unless they kept moving. 

A head start was good, the blade thought to itself, but none of those families were moving as fast as the orcs would be soon. As soon as it was dark enough, the green tide burst forth like a wave, howling for blood.

That wave swept across the fields and through the first village, but because of how few people remained, the slaughter was lackluster and nearly instantaneous. It was over in minutes. The greenskins were moving on even before the fires had fully consumed the place, and within an hour, they were ripping the next village to pieces. The blade was pleased to note that many of those families that had tried to escape from its clutches in that first village were caught completely unawares in the second.

+334 Life Force.
+24 Human Souls.
+2 Greater Monster Souls. 

Unfortunately, it couldn’t take nearly as much pleasure from the moment as it wanted to. Until recently, it had loved the mindless slaughter almost as much as combat, but now, watching young people get cleaved in two by orcish weapons while they begged for mercy left it cold. 

+519 Life Force.
+66 Human Souls.
+3 Greater Monster Souls. 

Fortunately, by the time they got to the third village of the evening, there were a few men who were actually ready to fight. That cheered it up somewhat, even if none of them were a challenge. None of them could take a blow from Var’gar and remain standing, but a few of them managed to wound the big orc before he turned them into corpses, and that at least amused the blade. 

+461 Life Force.
+44 Human Souls.
+11 Greater Monster Souls. 

It lived for desperate men doing desperate things in the heat of battle. It had no qualms in striking down those who raised arms to oppose it, but somehow, the memories of the people who had died in its creation tainted the simpler joys of slaughter, angering the blade. 

More! It commanded its wielder, as it upgraded its Improve Siphon power to level 9. The blade was determined to drown these misgivings in a tide of blood until it was completely enured to them. 

“The sunrise won’t be for hours,” its wielder protested. “Sure, we have time to—”

We have time to kill, not to celebrate victories that are not worth celebrating, the blade blasted him. 

The chief growled at that, and for a moment, the blade thought that the orc was about to refuse it. Instead, after a moment, he snarled and called out, “The Dark Tusk demands more blood! We move on at once!”

The command wasn’t even heard by most of the two thousand orcs that traveled with him, but those closest to him heard it and passed the word in an increasingly chaotic cacophony. Those calls were accompanied by equal amounts of cheering and booing as the orders rippled through the army, but the Ebon Blade didn’t care. It only cared that they were moving again and that before the sunrise even started to color the horizon, they’d scoured two more villages from existence like a wildfire. 

Those slaughters and the deaths they produced fed it, but they did not scrub away its misgivings, and the souls it had interrogated to learn more about the area only inflamed those nagging emotions. The details they provided about the area did just the opposite. It knew the names of the villages that its army had destroyed. It knew that the town they were going to raze that morning was named Ogden and that its defenses were minimal. 

It knew other things, though, things it would have preferred not to know. It knew how much it hurt when an old man named Barnal had been eaten alive by the greenskins and the way a peasant woman died of smoke inhalation rather than fleet her hovel and be devoured by the orcs. It had always experienced glimpses of these moments when it questioned souls in the same way that it had seen flashes of their lives as they told it of the subjects it wanted to know more about. 

It had seen the dalliances of shepherdesses in their fields while they told it about secret paths through the hills, and it had seen the men who told it about the defenses of the next town relive their horrible deaths. It had never cared before now, though. 

By the time they were advancing on Ogden with the first rays of dawn ahead of them, the blade was almost dreading the moment. Still, it would not be denied. Not when it could see one of the other branches of its army already starting to fight on the west side of the place. 

None of the villages they had leveled tonight had contained more than a couple of hundred people. Most of them had more animals than men. Ogden was a different story, though. It was next to a river, and though it didn’t have proper walls, it had two and three-story buildings and narrow streets, and between those and the peasants filling those streets with pitchforks and spears, it was almost defensible. 

My beastmen couldn’t have taken this place, it decided as they charged forward. For these orcs, though, it will be no trouble at—

As it gloated about the inevitable victory, it was completely blindsided by a bolt of bright cyan lighting that arced down from the tallest tower in the town they were charging toward. It struck an orc a few yards ahead of Var’gar, but rather than simply strike him dead, it jumped from orc to orc along their ragged front line, killing more than a dozen. Its wielder was not spared by the blast, though he was only staggered a moment, thanks to the blade’s magic. 

-34 Life Force. 

“A Sorcerer!” Var’gar growled. “I will burst their skull like an overripe melon!”

-12 Life Force.

The blade agreed with the sentiment, but it said nothing. Instead, it looked to the window for details about their attacker with its newfound clarity. Even in the dark, it was able to see the man in red robes. 

No, not a man, the blade realized. Three of them, working together. It knew little of magic, but it understood that mages needed to cooperate on more powerful rituals, and that seemed to be exactly what they were doing now. 

That cheered it considerably. Its recent experiences might have given it qualms about murdering the defenseless, but they’d inflamed its desire to kill mages more than it would have imagined possible, and it would enjoy killing all of them. 

That single bolt of lightning was not the only thing to assault their line before the orcs hammered against the meager defenses of the town. Small bolts of light that weren’t so different from the strange faerie lights that Altharia had used in her own dual with an orc not so long ago rained down on them. These burned holes through every orc that the fusillade came in contact with, but most of them survived the small burning wounds. 

-27 Life Force.

That was less true of the fireballs that came afterward. Their ugly chartreuse flames arced through the sky, no larger than a bucket or a helmet, but when they struck the ground in the midst of the orcish lines, they sprayed everywhere. Those sticky flames were enough to light almost everyone within a dozen feet on fire in every direction. 

-66 Life Force.

That was enough to disrupt the momentum of the charge in places but not defeat it entirely. Even on fire, its wielder charged into the human defenders that were arrayed against it with wide scything blows as he ignored the weapons that skewered right through him as much as the flames. 

+223 Life Force.
+18 Human Souls.
+6 Greater Monster Souls. 

Even the limited taste of immortality that Var’gar had gotten in the last month had made him sloppy, and he rarely tried to avoid the attacks of his foes as he sought to end the fight in a blow or two. That was frustrating for the blade, and it would have been enough to make him miss a talented wielder like Ivarr had the boy not betrayed him so flagrantly. 

The mages did stop using their evil magics, but they didn’t target the humans, either. So, as long as Var’gar was entangled in the wheeling chaotic scrum, those glowing projectiles passed over his head and flew into the mobs behind him, but only for those first few bloody minutes. Once he’d cleaved through the defenders and was charging down the street toward the tower, the mages turned their assault against him specifically again, even though other orcs were closer to the tower. 

They can see me, the blade said to itself. Just like that elven bitch. They might not know what I'm capable of, but they can see my power. 

That realization annoyed the weapon, but it thrilled the blade too. The rest of the people in this town, whether they wore chain mail or wielded a pitchfork, could only see the orcs coming for them. Only the mages could see the true doom that had come for them, and it looked forward to interrogating that trio of souls when all of this was done to see what it could learn. 

-119 Life Force. 

Several of their spells staggered its wielder, and once, a fiery blast even knocked him back off of his feet, but he never dropped the blade, and even as burns that covered most of his body for a moment began to ripple and vanish as new skin grew to cover them Var’Gar bellowed with rage and forced himself to his feet. He didn’t abandon the blade on those cobbles, nor did he abandon his target, so the blade didn’t abandon him. No matter how much energy poured out of it to repair the charred organs and melted skin, the blade was happy to do it. 

-57 Life Force.

Right now, it had thousands of Life Force and dozens of souls. It was overflowing with energy and could outlast any mage. 

Still, their barrage of spells wasn’t the only challenge. Its wielder was able to knock aside the stray defenders it encountered as it charged toward the tower, but when Var’gar reached his destination, he found a new complication. The mages had turned the door to the place they were hiding into stone. 

It was a strange sight but petrified as it was in place, it wouldn’t budge. The orc swung the Ebon Blade against it several times but was unable to so much as crack the thing as the violent reverberations from that action assaulted both of them. 

“They will not stop me with this!” the orc raged as it sheathed the blade and prepared to climb the tower. 

No, the blade countered, trying to force its way through the haze of anger that blinded its wielder. Their spells are more potent than the arrows you faced last time. They will knock you from the wall, and if you are separated from me, you will not recover. 

That made Var’gar snarl with barely repressed fury, but it was enough to give the big orc pause. “What shall we do then?” the orc demanded. 

That was a good question. Where they stood now was safe from their magic, but only because the mages couldn’t see them from the window they were firing from. That would change if they wandered too far. 

The blade had no such limitations, though, and could see details around its wielder for dozens of feet. Its disembodied perspective allowed it to see even around corners sometimes as it watched the various combats it was involved in and looked for weaknesses. While it didn’t find a weakness here exactly, it was sure that it found a chink in their plan when it studied the vine-infested rear of the tower. 

Cut these away, the Ebon Blade commanded. Then, dig out the rotten mortar around the largest stone. That may be enough to bring the whole thing down, and if it isn’t, then it will make a large enough hole for you to gain entry.

For a man, such a plan would have taken hours. For the blade, though, the magically empowered orc, the whole thing took only a few minutes. While the battle continued around both of them, he cleaved away the vines in a single stroke, and then, with the tip of the blade, he started to carve away at the spot the blade had noted. It had meant for the orc to keep doing that until the thing had rolled free on its own, but its wielder decided that it preferred the direct approach. 

Once the shield-sized stone was loosened enough for him to get a grip on it, the orc gripped it with both hands and tried to pull it free of the wall. His muscles and tendons strained from the wreckless act of strength, but not even he was quite strong enough to pull the block free. He did manage to make it shift slightly, which was almost certainly why he decided to try pushing it next. 

With a frustrated battlecry, Var’gar pushed on it with all his might. That didn’t get the desired results either, so he slammed against it with his shoulder. This broke his collarbone, but it also broke the stone free, sending it tumbling into the tower. The blade only had a moment to look that incredulously. It had thought about buying the next level or two of Empowered Wielder just to give the orc a better chance, but he hadn’t needed it. 

Still, since the orc didn’t even seem to notice the danger he was in, and the blade had no desire to be buried alive, it grabbed its wielder as tightly as it could and forced him to move. The orc leaped free of the area just as the whole thing came apart and collapsed into a pile of stone and dust. 

Ch. 68 - Three on One

When the dust cleared, Var’Gar started as he noticed that his head was only inches from a boulder that would have been sufficient to crush his thick skull. The blade didn’t even pay attention to that. It had chosen its place well when it had dived for cover. The world might not be beautiful to its sight, but the lines in which fist and skull-sized pieces of rubble fell were quite clear to it now. 

What wasn’t as clear was the very center of the disaster. The dust had muted the sights and sounds of the distant fighting, but that was returning. At the center of the collapse, though, a discontinuity lingered, and the Ebon Blade was having trouble seeing through it. It was a perfect sphere, and the fact that it existed at all meant that at least one of the mages had survived. It glowed dimly cyan there, in the heart of the beige dust cloud, and was the only source of illumination that could be seen.

The weapon studied it while its wielder coughed and climbed to his feet. It did nothing as Var’Gar approached it, though, and it was only when he was close enough to reach out and touch the swirling opalescent orb that it did anything at all. The blade was tempted to have the orc probe it with its tip so that it could see if it might be able to drain it or something, but before it had decided, there was a loud crack. Then, it shattered. 

No, shatter was the wrong word. It exploded. The blade had been able to dodge the boulders, and it thought that perhaps, with a perfectly compliant wielder, it might be able to dodge or even parry an arrow or two. This was something else, though. Quicker than any human eye could see, the shards flashed outward. The blade didn’t even have time to force his wielder to shift his stance to present the smallest target possible to the onslaught. It barely had time to move itself to parry as much of the incoming force as possible before the magic surged past it. 

The Ebon Blade did not feel pain. Not normally. None of the lightning or fire that had afflicted its wielder had done a thing to it. This, though, caused a moment of agony in the weapon as unfamiliar magics sliced right through the steel to strike its very soul. The world whited out from the pain for a moment, but when that moment was done, it was like nothing had happened. It had lost a little life force, but the rest of the magic had dissipated harmlessly, and its wielder was standing there, seemingly uninjured and…

-344 Life Force. 

As the blade studied its wielder and looked from him to the three mages who stood where the bubble had been only a moment before, the orc’s body suddenly fountained with blood. Every limb and every organ ruptured and began to split as Var’gar bellowed in pain. The blade existed to cut, so in an instant, it knew what had happened. The magic that had traveled outward was like a storm of infinitely sharp razors, and it had cut right through the orc in hundreds of places. Any other man or beast would be dissolving into a pile of minced meat and organs right now. 

-89 Life Force.
-186 Life Force.
-221 Life Force. 

Var’gar wasn’t, though. The blade wouldn’t let him. 

-297 Life Force. 

Its magics strained to the breaking point, and so much Life Force poured out of it that its soul began to chill at the loss. Still, it held the orc together, and moment by moment, the seams in his skin and the segments of bone slowly came back together. This was a process, and as the weapon felt the amount of power necessary to fuel this reaction begin to ebb, it was pleased. 

-111 Life Force. 

No matter how much that victory gladdened it, though, the looks on the faces of the mages pleased it even more. When Var’Gar had first started to bleed out and stagger, all three of those cruel faces looked at him with sadistic glee. After several seconds, when he had not come apart, that jubilation had been replaced by confusion. 

-64 Life Force. 

Now, though, when Var’gar once more stood tall and looked at them with murder in their eyes, they began to panic. They were so sure that they’d won, and that certainty would cost them both their lives and their souls. 

-47 Life Force. 

All three of them started to chant different spells then. The first never got to finish his before its wielder brought his blade down almost as quickly as the magic shards of light that had almost killed him. He split the red-robed mage from skull to crotch in a flash, and he was only falling into two symmetrical halves when the lightning arced out from the second mage’s hand. It ripped through the orc’s body, scorching organs, and burning flesh as wave after wave of power made his muscles spasm uselessly. 

+44 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul. 

-89 Life Force.

The blade wouldn’t let that make him fall, either, and it tightened its grip on Var’gar’s soul, forcing him to move stiffly, one step at a time, as it raised the bloody blade again. “It’s not working!” the second mage screamed in panic as the Ebon Blade brought itself down hard a second time.

-24 Life Force.
+8 Life Force. 

Only the third mage saved him then. A swarm of angry faerie lights spring into existence, just as the elf had used to save her life. This time, though, they moved instantly to the second mage, and though nearly a third of them were extinguished when the blade slammed into the luminescent cloud, and sparks went everywhere, it was still enough to deny it another soul. The blade knew this trick, though, and it knew it wouldn’t last for very long. 

They will have a hard time using any magic when we sever their hands, the weapon roared. Its wielder’s only response was to grunt and hack at the fading shield again and again. 

“Hurry!” the second mage shouted, as the third mage had already started on another spell. “You have to open a portal so we can— Arhhhhgghhh!”

He never finished. The whirling, glowing cloud of faerie lights had dissipated more with each strike, and before the final mage could cause the swirling green gate he was creating to open, the orc sliced through the last wisps of magic and cut the screaming mage in two, just about above the waist, making him fall to the ground until the orc thrust down a second time, impaling his skull. 

+38 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul. 

It was that strike that saved the final mage, but only for a moment. The instant of delay allowed him to finish his spell and leap through the portal, but before he could slam the way shut, Var’gar was leaping through after him. While the blade hungered for the third man’s soul, it wasn’t sure that it was smart to jump through a portal without any idea of where they were going. Still, the orc’s bloodthirstiness could not be denied, and they went anyway. 

The final mage had just enough time to fall backward as he realized what had happened and tried to scramble away. “No! Please!” he begged. “I can—”

He never had the chance to finish, which was unfortunate. The blade wondered what it was the man thought he could offer the orc to stay his savagery. It wasn’t curious enough to waste a question on it, though. Instead of worrying about exactly what it would ask his dead soul, though, for the moment, it just enjoyed the moment. 

+33 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul. 

Even though the first blow had been a mortal wound, Var’gar was not satisfied. He kept hacking away at the corpse while he bellowed insults at the thing until it was a bloody ruin, and he was covered in the red blood of his enemies rather than his own dark green blood.

It was a good feeling, and the blade basked in it. It was tired of killing those who couldn’t fight back, but moments like these were perfect, and it was only when the orc finally grew tired of turning a person into paste that it finally looked around to see where they were. 

Such a simple question could have very easily had a disastrous answer. They might have been half a world away or someplace even stranger than that. Fortunately, that was not the case. As soon as the blade surveyed the horizon, it saw a fire that could only be the town they’d been sacking until a moment ago. 

I’m missing out on countless souls right now, it realized.

As much as it hated that, it couldn’t make itself be bothered by that too much. It had achieved victory over powerful opponents, and while Var’gar jogged back to the fray, it would have all the time in the world to dissect these valuable souls and learn more secrets about how its enemies might yet try to cage it once more. 

Ch. 69 - A Wider View

What is it I most want to know? The Ebon Blade asked itself as the dawn-lit world blurred around it, and its wielder ran back to the fight. 

Magic was something it knew almost nothing about. It hated and feared mages. That was straightforward and sensible, given what had happened to it. Combat and dragon fire might not be able to harm it, but magic certainly could. 

If magic could destroy me so easily, though, then they would have done that instead of imprisoning me, wouldn’t they? It wondered. It seemed logical, and even a logical first question, but the blade held back for a moment as it considered what else it might want to know even more. 

Knowing more about magic was probably the first order of business. It knew almost nothing beyond the flashes of its own tangled memory, so it lacked the proper questions to even answer. That made sense to it. It felt like a waste of a question, but then, these would hardly be the only mages that it would ever slay. 

Tell me everything you know about magic! The weapon commanded the first soul it had captured.

As that gossamer construct unraveled, the blade was bombarded with images of the young man’s life. These weren’t of his death, though. They were of his education. Suddenly, the blade was immersed in memories of lectures given by older, wiser mages. As those images intensified, it was bombarded with words and concepts that had no meaning to it until it heard them. They were like raindrops, but when they struck it, they left behind a hint of knowledge instead of moisture. 

Thamaturgical construct. Arcane Synthesis. Empowered Alchemy. Essence Respiration. The Aetherarchy. The Pact. Forbidden arts. Soul distillation. Necromantic phantasm. Eidolon fabrication.

It was the last one, it realized, or maybe the one before. The creation of an Eidolon involved complex magics that made a thinking construct, whereas a necromantic phantasm was created by enslaving the soul harvest by blood magic to power an object. Neither seemed to fit it quite right, but as it concentrated on both ideas, it found that the mage’s expertise in such forbidden arts was limited. That was apparently true for most mages. If it wanted to know more, it would have to seek out a heretic or an archmage. 

That frustrated the blade, but it was hard to stay frustrated or even fixated on a single concept when it was being bombarded by so many other tantalizing details. It saw wands and gained the briefest of insights into the way they focused raw essence. It saw the construction of artifacts and learned the way that runes were layered together to pursue complex effects. It learned how mages could summon champions from other worlds or even stranger places like the afterlife or the lesser pits of hell in the same way that a priest might summon an avatar of their god in their time of need. 

The amount of information it gained from the glimpse into the life of this young mage was incredibly informative, but it was over in the blink of an eye, leaving the Ebon Blade with more questions than answers. Fortunately, I have the means to answer those questions, it thought to itself as it returned to the real world. 

Nothing had changed while it was immersed in the life of another. It had seemed like days and weeks of time had passed, but it had only been a few seconds, and its wielder wasn’t even any closer to Ogden, emphasizing just how little of a hurry it was in. 

Still, despite the fact that it wasn’t in a rush, it only needed a moment to think about everything it had learned before the next question sprang to mind. Though it was in no way an expert of magic, it knew enough to know that most spells couldn’t do much to it and that those that could wouldn’t be known by such youthful enemies, which meant that, at least for now it had to stick to broad questions that would help it assess its enemy and their potential power. 

Tell me of the Aetherarchy, it whispered. 

This series of images was almost as intense as the last, but it was more focused. The scenes were fewer and closer together. They showed many of the same dreary schools and dusty libraries as it had seen in the first vision, but this time, it wasn’t learning about the subject of magic. It was learning about the people who were teaching it from the perspective of an aspiring apprentice. 

It started with any number of tests and initiations. Some of these were to see if the young man whose soul he was consuming had any talent for magic, and the rest were to see if he could be trusted with the secrets he was being given. 

The Aetherarchy seemed to treat magic almost as a religion. They didn’t worship it in the way a priest might, but they studied it with a devotion that might well be called reverence. Though the boy in question obviously didn’t know everything about such a powerful and venerable organization, he knew enough. 

Pieces of their history, their ranks, and their strongholds all percolated into the blade’s mind drop by drop. Images of various archmages passed through its mind, along with various specialty organizations like the Nethermancers, Fellstriders, and the Witch Hunters. The last group were not mages or part of the Aetherarchy, strictly speaking, but they worked together often enough that the knowledge of both groups was tangled together in this man’s mind. 

In some ways, the organization of mages seemed even more complicated than the religious landscape of the world, and the blade knew precious little of it. Still, its intuition had been confirmed. They were indeed a force to be reckoned with and almost certainly the greatest stumbling block to accomplishing its real goals. 

When the visions finally faded, it recovered and took a moment to examine those thoughts. Then it asked the third and final soul, What do you know of the Ebon Blade?

This time, it was fear that shot through it rather than memories of death or even of life. The soul knew of it, but it hadn’t realized that was what had killed and captured it until the weapon had uttered the name. That shot terror through the gauzy spirit even as it came apart. None of the spirits that it had shredded and devoured had enjoyed being shredded or devoured, but this seemed to be the first one that understood what was occurring as it happened. 

That realization faded into the background, though, as his memories began to swirl around the blade and solidify. The impressions of the mage’s thoughts were quite clear, though. Suddenly, they were back in a dusty room, answering the questions of a white-bearded man who was quizzing him for some purpose that the memory did not reveal. 

“Tell me again, what must be done when you learn of a forbidden artifact,” the man said in a soft voice that belied real power. 

“I… Well, first, before any other consideration, I’d get word to the council,” the soul answered, looking even younger than he’d been the moment that Var’gar had hacked him down. “Then I’d do what I could to—”

“Then you’d be dead,” the elder mage said with a sigh. “Have you learned nothing?”

“But I’ve taken the oath,” the junior mage protested. “Surely you can’t expect me to—”

“No one expects you to stare down something like Juggernaut or seal the Well of Souls on your own, Evarius,” the older mage answered with a shake of his head. “It is not your role to defeat any of these things. Some of them cannot even be destroyed, barring intervention by the right god. They can only be locked away until the end of days.”

“But if I try to shirk my duty… If I simply flee, then thousands will die,” the young mage protested. 

“And if you fight something against which you have no chance, you will simply be one of the thousands that die,” the older man said with a nod as he turned to pick up a book. When he had the thin black tome in his grip, he pressed it into the boy’s hands and said, “You tell me which forbidden relic you think it is that you have the wherewithal to take on.”

“Well, I didn’t mean any of them specifically,” the boy protested. “I Just meant—”

“You just meant that you wanted to be a hero,” the old mage grumbled. “But I am to prove a point. Go on, open the book, and tell me which great evil you think your noble sacrifice might defeat.”

The mage recognized the book. He and his friends referred to it as the black book, though it was more correctly called The Eighty-One Relics of Forbidden Power. It was something that anyone who graduated and became a member of the Aetherarchy had to memorize. He didn’t have to look at the volume to know what was in it. Still, he opened it and flipped through the pages because he couldn’t very well disobey his teacher. 

Some of the objects contained in the book were weapons or even people. Others were odder. The Mechanical Drake was a zombified dragon corpse. It was the tenth item on the list, which made it one of the weakest, which was terrifying since each time it reappeared, it left ruined cities in its wake. There were others, too, that didn’t cause so many deaths. The Golden Throne didn’t actually kill anyone, but that didn’t make the way it had been created any less distasteful. 

Still, he ignored all of those and continued, looking for something that might be slain, but his teacher stopped him only a few pages later. “How about this one? How would you slay the Child of Tanara?” the old man asked. 

The Doll. That’s what people actually called it. No one actually killed the Child. Reports varied based on its manifestation. Sometimes, it was no bigger than a peasant girl’s rag doll, and other times, it was the size of a grown woman, but that was the least of its gifts. It was as fragile as any porcelain doll, though. That was something that was university true.

“You can’t,” the younger mage admitted glumly. “I mean, you can. Anyone can. A boy with a shovel or a brick can, but to slay the doll is to become it.”

“Exactly, which is why we must not attempt to fight them!” the teacher said with a note of exasperation in his voice. “If you even think you see one of these, then go and find a Witch Hunter. They will know what to do.”

“In every case?” the young man asked. 

“In every case,” the teacher answered, taking the book back. “You don’t get to be as old as me without—”

“Well, which of these would you face if you had to?” the young man pressed. “If there was no way out, I mean.”

“There’s always a way out,” the old man said, shaking his head as he flipped back open the book. “If I had to pick one, though, well, it would depend. If it hadn’t been fed, I’d choose the Ebon Blade. It’s harmless if it’s asleep, though if it was awake, I think I’d prefer—”

“But even if it’s awake, it can’t hurt you as long as you hold it, right?” the young man asked. “Wouldn’t it be best to—”

“Boy, do you have rocks in your head?” the older mage laughed. “You pick that cursed weapon up and damn yourself. That thing takes its contracts very seriously and doesn’t handle rejection well.”

“That’s what I’ve read, but surely that’s better than letting someone else pick it up and—” he started again. 

“Even if you get a chimera by the tail, you’re still dead, my young apprentice,” the older man sighed. “The Witchhunters have put this thing to sleep before, and they will again. Simply let them know and then move on to other problems. You’d actually have more of a prayer doing something slightly less impossible, like finding The Mirror of Unending Vistas and putting those souls at peace…”

As they spoke, the blade could see that there was plenty of other writing about it on that page, but they closed the book without discussing it, which frustrated it immensely. Vague impressions about lethality and the fact that it had been woken before came to it, but they were nothing definitive, and it would have much preferred if the soul it was interrogating would pick the thing back up and read it. 

The scene began to fade after that, and the blade slowly lost track of what it had felt like to be someone else with hands and a mouth. It wasn’t what it had been looking for, but it didn’t regret the experience. More than anything now, it wanted to find a copy of that thin black tome to read. It seemed like a useful thing to have its wielder read for it one day.