The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 59-62

Ch. 59 - The Agony of Victory

The quarrels clattered around Var’gar almost from the first moment as he started to climb the rough stone. It was like a hard rain that paused only periodically when the men at the top of the wall reloaded. At the start, he was only one target among many, but even after he was struck twice, he continued while one of the orcs that followed him was hit badly enough that he fell to the flagstones below.

-18 Life Force.

The chieftain ignored that and kept climbing. Nothing could stop him, and even in moments when he hung there by one hand to rip out an arrow that had embedded in his flesh in some inconvenient place, he seemed in no danger of falling despite the blade’s earlier concerns. His grip was so strong that it expected him to leave claw marks behind. 

-26 Life Force.

Perhaps I underestimated this monster’s strength, it thought to itself. 

Eighteen strength made it at least three times stronger than an average man, but the difference seemed like more than that. It was sure that Var’gar was at least five times the strength of anyone he’d faced tonight, and as he scaled the wall, he moved faster and surer, quickly leaving the rest of his band far behind. 

-22 Life Force.

Such an act of athleticism was an impressive feat, but it also made him a target. With one orc so near the top of the rampart, everyone soon focused their meager firepower on him. “He’s coming!” one guard screamed. 

“We need help over here!” another called out. It was useless, though. By the time more defenders were running up the stairs to aid the archers who were moving slowly away from the arrow-riddled orc, it was too late. 

-8 Life Force.

“I’m not coming for you,” Var’gar growled to himself. “I’m already here!”

The Ebon Blade thought that the first thing he would do would be to remove several of the dozen or so quarrels that riddle his body. They were embedded in his face, chest, shoulders, and arms. Var’gar didn’t do that. He didn’t draw the blade, either. Instead, he took one of the merlins from the wall he’d just climbed and, with a roar, lifted it up over his head and threw it at the coming group of soldiers with swords and halberds. 

+44 Life Force.
+3 Human souls.

The weapon was unusual, but it was also unusually effective. It not only shattered the bodies and bones of half a dozen men. It also shattered the walkway beneath them, sending even the uninjured ones down to the courtyard below as a mass of rubble and bodies.

-11 Life Force.

The remaining soldiers responded by filling the orc full of arrows a second time. Those he ripped out in great handfuls as he approached the nearest archers. One he backhanded off the wall, sending him down to the orcish horde below, and the other he picked up by the helmet and shook violently enough to snap his neck before dropping him into the courtyard. Unfortunately for the blade, neither died fast enough or close enough for it to devour their souls. 

-14 Life Force.
+18 Life Force.

Unsheathe me, and let me feast! The blade commanded its wielder. Truthfully, it was preparing to force the orc to do just that if he hesitated, but he didn’t. He drew the black blade and then barreled down the length of the wall, cleaving everyone who didn’t run away fast enough into bloody pieces, while the sword basked in the feeling of ruptured organs and shattered bones. 

+226 Life Force.
+6 Human Souls.

Other orcs were on the way. Soon, they would be inside these walls and killing some of the poor bastards who were just starting to make their last stand. It was a brutal assault that the blade did little to egg on. It adjusted the orc’s stance or guard if a counter-attack seemed likely, but unlike its previous wielders, there was no need to make a blow as precise as possible. Each slash and thrust was so brutal that they often left the armor as broken as the body wearing it. 

+381 Life Force.
+9 Human Souls.

Yesss… the blade whispered, lost in the embrace of its primitive wielder. It wasn’t the perfect, precise combat against a skilled opponent that it most enjoyed or even a hard-fought victory against impossible odds like it had been with the manticore that came in a close second. It was less than that, but at the same time, more, and for once, it basked in savagery instead of skill and let its wielder’s fury flow through it as Var’gar leaped down from the catwalk to turn the courtyard into an abattoir. It wasn’t just on the Path of Blood, it was a tide of blood, and now it was going to feast.

Synchronization Achieved, +100% damage, +100% dodge for one minute.

The message flickered across the blade’s vision, but it ignored it. The two of them needed no more damage, and even if the orc’s movements became slightly more graceful, it made no move to dodge incoming strikes. Every hurt was healed, and every opponent was mutilated. 

+451 Life Force.
+12 Human Souls.

The longer they fought, the fewer enemies they found to fight, but the more the blade’s glow began to increase. The last time this had happened it had been when Ivarr was fighting for his life. This time, the circumstances were entirely different, but the feelings were nearly as intense. 

The blood was dancing around the two of them in ways that were utterly unnatural, and red haze moved in patterns that were as shifting as the battle lines while creams of dying were echoing off the inner walls of the keep. The blade didn’t attempt to analyze any of these things any more than the numbers ticking by. It only gloried in them. It hadn’t been used like this in a long time, and for a moment, its thoughts drifted away from this fight and back to the only other one it could remember.  

-34 Life Force

It had been held by its first wielder then, and the fact that Baraga had been slaughtering orcs the way that Var’gar was now slaughtering humans was an irony. Still, everything else fit. Instead of nighttime gray stone walls, Baraga had fought the endless hoards on a day when he’d turned the ocher stone green with orcish blood. 

+552 Life Force.
+15 Human Souls.

Though the memory was literally the opposite of this moment, the scene it was experiencing flickered back and forth. An orc versus humans, then a human versus orcs, and back again. They blended together in such a way that for several minutes the blade had trouble remembering which was happening now and which was the memory. 

Was it fighting humans, or was it fighting orcs? Was the blood that glided around it in lazy waves that were the afterimages of its strokes red or green? It could feel the jagged pieces of its soul shifting uneasily in that moment. It was even tempted to try to repair its soul again but decided against it. That could wait until later, though, when everyone was dead. 

-28 Life Force.

It was hard to say as everything blurred together. It was only when its wielder finished the slaughter and kicked down the heavy oak door to the main hall like it was nothing more than a curtain that things snapped back into focus. There, in that crowded hall, the blade finally found an opponent worth fighting. 

Him, the sword whispered to its wielder, the elf with the blade. He is the only threat here. Everyone else is just another corpse in the making. 

The hall was a large space, but even so, it was full to overflowing. On the far side of the final line of defense was a vast mass of the well-to-do. They were practically helpless, and when their last line of defense fell, no one would be able to save them. 

Of the dozen men who were armed with breastplates and even plate mail, only one even stood a chance. The elf in the center of the line glowed with danger compared to the rest. He wore a haze gray cloak along with chain mail so fine that at first it looked like a silver shirt, and when Var’gar charged him, all he did was smirk, then flicker away at blazing speed. Using the men to his right as cover to flank the giant orc. 

+99 Life Force.
+2 Human Souls. 

None of those things were what marked him as dangerous, though. That was the hex blade he was holding. It wasn’t the massive sort that glowed red that it had seen Elom wield. This one was a cutlass that glowed with complicated blue runes up and down both sides of its blade. 

The Ebon Blade didn’t know what it could do exactly, but it didn’t want to take any chances. Even if every other knight in this room stabbed Var’gar at once, he’d be fine. It was overflowing with power right now, and the Path of Blood was making him heal faster than ever. A single strike from a magical sword, though? It couldn’t be sure what that would do. 

+243 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

Still, even as if focused completely on him, the man disappeared. He just vanished into thin air. That was concerning, and even as it whispered to its wielder, it gave the orc pause. 

After a moment, Var’gar returned to action and swung wildly at the place where the elf had been knocking two human knights off their feet as the Ebon Blade shattered their shields while maiming a third. Still, there was no sign that the blow had struck the elf. In fact, it never saw the attack from behind coming from behind until the blade had pierced the orc’s chest, from back to front. 

-66 Life Force.

It was an interesting and unexpected sight. One second, there had been no threat, and the next, its wielder’s heart had been pierced as the elf faded into view in a fluid garde position. The Ebon Blade thought that would be the end of it, but even as the orc tried to spin around to deal with the problem, a jolt of electricity flowed down the blade and arced through its wielder’s body. 

-63 Life Force

No, not a jolt, the blade noted. A lightning bolt. A torrent of electrical power flowed through its wielder into the blade itself. That was enough to connect the two magical weapons, and for a moment, they flowed together. The Ebon Blade felt the strange elven magic, and for a moment, while its wielder spasmed and screamed in pain, its red runes flashed blue. When it returned to its normal red color, it was changed by it. 

-54 Life Force. 

You have connected to a storm blade. You have learned Accelerate Wielder. 

Ch. 60 - The Agony of Victory (part 2)

The blade didn’t have time to process those words because even as its wielder lurched sideways to take the elf’s head off with a wild haymaker, the knight was already gone, and so was his blade. Instead of staying where they were, the lightning arced out from the tip to a spot twenty feet away, and the elf reappeared there. 

-43 Life Force. 

The Ebon Blade was stunned. It had seen Altharia cast a few spells. It had even seen her use her strange molten fire-lightning, but it had been nothing like this. It was like the knight had traveled along his own lightning bolt. 

-39 Life Force. 

While it struggled to understand that and figure out the best way to fight its foe, its wielder struggled to heal. Even with its newly increased healing powers, its magic struggled to heal wounds that had been cauterized by magic. It took several seconds for the scorched green heart to mend enough that it started pumping again, even spasmodically. 

-33 Life Force. 

For a moment, Var’gar staggered and looked like he was about to fall. Everyone else stood back, waiting to see what would happen, which was good because he was healing from the inside out, and after a few seconds, that healing was advanced enough that he could once more move, breathe, and act. 

-22 Life Force. 

He roared in pain then and charged the nearest knight, thrusting the Ebon Blade right through the man’s wooden shield and hardened steel chest plate. The warrior dropped his sword from slack fingers and vomited blood as the orc picked him up and flung him off the blade at the elven knight. 

+44 Life Force.
+1 Human Soul.

No matter how hard he flung it, the corpse made for a poor projectile. Still, the elf only barely dodged it before he pulled his cloak back up and began to fade from view. 

So that’s the secret, the weapon hissed. The cloak! The hex blade allowed him to move quickly and maybe even to blink across the room, but it was the garment that allowed him to vanish. 

-19 Life Force. 

While the blade considered these things, its wielder was already swinging wildly in an effort to scythe down the invisible knight. He was nearly healed, but he’d come close enough to death to be pissed off about it, and the blade only helped to guide his strikes a little. It could have improved them more, but it did not yet wish to reveal too much skill to their foe. 

+221 Life Force.
+3 Human Soul.

Let him underestimate the orc, it thought to itself. It’s certainly an easy thing to do. 

The orc swung wildly to keep their enemy at bay, turning almost at random to attack the air as much as the remaining knights. It seemed to be working, but the blade was distracted by something else. Instead of guiding Var’gar’s strokes, it reached out with its Aura of Hunger in a desperate bid to find the elf in an unconventional way. 

It should be possible, it told itself. If the man has a heartbeat and gets too close to me, then I should be able to consume him. 

It could feel the slender thread of connection to all the other nearby knights, and each time the orc killed one of them, the number of souls it could reach out and latch onto shrank. Still, it wasn’t until the elf reappeared that the blade finally felt the elf’s soul and greedily latched on to it with its power. 

+344 Life Force.
+2 Human Soul.

This time, his first blow didn’t land. The orc, with luck more than skill, happened to be swinging wildly, and when the enemy’s sword faded into existence, the blade was able to adjust the swing ever so slightly, bringing the pommel down to block the strike. That prevented the elf from stabbing Var’gar a second time, but it did nothing to stop the lightning magic that coursed through the orc via the sword in that instant. 

That half-second delay of muscle spasming was something that not even the Ebon Blade's control of its host could completely overpower as limbs warred with themselves. That gap allowed the elf to get in a thrust that became a slash, However, the weapon forced its wielder to recover slightly faster than their opponent anticipated, and he was forced to make a dramatic backflip to keep from being cut in two as the Ebon Blade cleaved through the air. 

-56 Life Force.

What followed next was closer to mockery than combat. The orc recovered moment by moment and swung ever faster in a barrage of strokes that were as powerful as they were fast. Half of them used its Amplify Blade power, shattering the air as they just missed their target, but each of them would have killed even a minotaur in a single strike. 

Unfortunately, none of them managed to land on their slight opponent. Sometimes, this was due to skill, and other times, it was because of the strange spells the man used to fight. 

-31 Life Force.

Sometimes, he would duck a blow or sidestep a thrust to land a blow of his own, even if there was no power behind any of them at the pace of the current fight. Other times, the elf would use a lightning-charged attack to halt Var’gar just long enough for a more brutal blow or use his superior speed to bound around to attack from an unexpected quarter.

Nothing he could do could shake the Ebon Blade’s grip on his soul. Even if he blinked into nonexistence for a few seconds now for another surprise strike, the blade had his scent now, and he could not escape. Still, it frustrated it that it had yet to land a blow on its opponent. This was its first foe in living memory that it couldn’t quite touch, and though it enjoyed the challenge, it also hated it. 

-49 Life Force.

No one is better than me, the blade thought bitterly. No weapon. No wielder. No one. 

Both upgrades were cheap, so the Ebon Blade purchased Amplify Wielder 2 and Accelerate Wielder 2. Combined, they were less than 1500 Life Force, but it had been approaching 5000 again, so it needed to purchase something. This combination added Parasitic Link 3 to its list of upgrades, which meant that it had increased its burden on its wielder enough to be noticeable. That made sense, of course, given just how much power was churning inside of it now, but it was a problem for later. 

-37 Life Force.

For now, the blade concentrated on the fight at hand, and on the way, its wielder was faster and stronger than ever. It wasn’t enough to close the gap. It couldn’t be. The elf was fast enough to run on the walls, and it often taunted the orc with words neither of them could understand in its strange musical language. Even when he wasn’t using magic to leap across the room in a bolt of lightning, he was still devilishly fast.

+9 Life Force.

It took almost two minutes of non-stop, berserker action to even cut the elf’s cloak as he moved a little too slowly and was almost cut off at the knees. Still, that brief moment of shredded cloth was enough to bring up another message. 

You have connected to Cloak of Disguise. You have learned False Image. 0/3 Secondary Ability slots remaining. Additional Secondary Abilities will replace an existing one. 

False Image 1: Blur and alter your appearance making it slightly harder to parry your blows or that of your wielder, making it slightly easier for them to dodge attacks at the cost of 1 Life Force/minute.  

The idea of being able to turn invisible interested the blade, but as it stood now, the power of the new runes that had burned into the center of its hilt was a far cry from that. I don’t have time to experiment with this, the blade cursed as it focused on the fight. 

+11 Life Force.

It had been draining the elf steadily the whole time, and it was starting to show. His movements were more sluggish than they’d been up to this point. Sometimes, he held back to catch his breath rather than strike back out with a vicious riposte as he would have done only the minute before. That was when the blade decided what they needed to do. 

Act like you’re getting slower, the blade counseled its wielder, but slowly. You need to…

The blade stopped when it realized the orc’s only response was confusion. This was not a human wielder. It was not clever enough to hold back, so the blade held bad for it. It couldn’t restrict the magic that powered its wielder’s strength and speed, but it could work against it. 

So, moment by moment and attack by attack, Var’gar’s attacks slowed under that internal resistance. The blade paid for the subterfuge with more Life Force and healing, but that was fine. It was happy to let the elf believe that he was winning until the right moment. 

-76 Life Force.

With every slash and pivot, Var’gar’s movement slowed until the elf was almost always dancing in and out of his blind spot. Unfortunately for the strange knight, though, the blade didn’t have a blind spot, and it waited for its opponent to step a little too close before it finally struck. 

The elf lingered too long in an effort to hack away the orc’s spine. He got a little too near the orc’s empty left arm, and in the end, that was all it took. The Ebon didn’t last out with itself. Instead, it just continued the swing and elbowed the elf in the side of his hooded head. That was enough to stagger him, even as he faded from view. 

+10 Life Force.

Such a blow wouldn’t have been enough to do more than stun him, but that was just the warm-up act. The blade stopped trying to fight its wielder’s every strike at that point. Instead, it took nearly full control over the blade and guided its motion precisely along scything paths. One, two, and three, they woosh-ed through apparently empty air. 

The blade could feel its hold on the elf, though, and while it couldn’t pinpoint that location exactly, it was a good directional indicator, and it continued to pursue him, time and time again, until finally, the slippery bastard was pinned with a wall to his back. The blade felt the elf’s location starting to move up as he tried to run up the wall and flip over its wielder. Unfortunately for him, when he was in the air, and his course was irreversible, the blade flipped itself into a reverse grip in the orc’s hand and then thrust straight backward with enough force to pierce even its opponent’s fine armor. 

+35 Life Force.
+1 Elf Soul.

That was it for him. The fight ended just as it had started, with a blade through the back of the other man. The only difference in this case was that the elf couldn’t heal from any wound. Still, even as his blade fell from his fingertips and he struggled to retrieve and open a healing potion, the orc turned, and with a final twist, he pulled the blade free, sending blood everywhere from the wounds in his back and chest. 

Ch. 61 - Spiritual Spoils

Even after the elf finally fell to the ground, and his sword’s blue light extinguished itself, the blade continued to replay those final moments in its mind as it looked at the box that had appeared in front of it.   Var’gar didn’t see the pop up, but he ignored everything else. 

He just finished his opponent, and then rather than bask in the fountaining blood, he put the last few knights who were still squirming on the floor out of their misery. Then he advanced to the far side of the room to kill the baron who was begging for his life and all the women and children who were sheltering behind him. 

+2256 Life Energy.
+83 Human Souls.

This would be an ugly bloodbath, but other than spending 5,000 life force on Increase Reserves 10 to keep its energy to a manageable level, and its need to burn most of the human souls to make sure that it didn’t accidentally consume the elven soul, it ignored the violence as women and children started to scream while its wielder hacked them to pieces and bathed it in blood. While their life force might be important, it was far less interesting than its most recent interaction with the storm blade. 

Accelerate Wielder 1: The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the agility and speed of the wielder by 2 at the cost of 1 Life Force every two hours. 

Bolt 1: Infuse your attacks with electrical energy, adding 2-5 electrical damage to a strike for the cost of 3 Life Force. This attack cannot be combined with other strikes like Amplify Blade.

It looked from its new abilities back to its old ones, which were currently available for upgrade. They were certainly in a similar vein, but just like the other abilities it had learned from the first hex blade, they were not Secondary Abilities like the False Image it had just unlocked. Somehow, the runes that powered them had braided themselves into the runes that ran up and down its blade. They’d changed it, but still, it wasn’t sure that it wanted to spend energy upgrading them. They seemed foreign somehow. 

Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force - This ability focuses the magic of the blade for a single moment, though not without cost. Use up to 3 Life Force to increase the power of an attack by 10% per life force spent.

Amplify Wielder 2: 700 Life Force - The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the strength and toughness of the wielder by 5 at the cost of 1 Life Force every two hours. 

By the time the blade started paying attention to the world around it instead of the numbers. The slaughter was over, and other orcs had finally joined their chieftain in the hall. Many of them were bleeding from cuts and arrow wounds. Only Var’gar stood alone, covered in red blood instead of green, and his men looked at him awestricken, like the God of Battle he was. 

Well, the avatar at least, the blade quipped to itself. It was the God of their tribe. He was just the one that got to carry it around. 

Even though no one was dying anymore, it was still getting several points a second just from the corpses of the fallen and the wounded orcs around it. The blade only had 1187/7800 Life Force now, though, so it didn’t need to worry about overflowing any time soon, no matter how many helpless noble families its wielder slaughtered. 

+889 Life Force.
+11 Human Souls.

Though not many human souls continued to flow, because it was mostly surrounded by the dead rather than the dying, the blade was still concerned about burning them as fast as they came in, while it considered what it wanted to do with the elf. The man had certainly seemed quite capable as a warrior, which meant that he was likely to have a very old and powerful soul. The blade didn’t know how much more powerful an elven soul was than a human one, but it likely contained hundreds of Life Force. 

It might even rival a Dragon Soul, it whispered to itself. That was tempting, but the thing also possessed unique knowledge. Was the knowledge of an elven soul worth more than its power? Given the rate it was currently devouring the lives of others, the answer was almost certainly yes, but in a vacuum? 

The blade pondered this while its wielder went about his business. Var’gar was congratulating his men on their victory and ordering the smallest of the orcs in sight to begin building a great bonfire for the celebration to come. “We shall feast on their finest, softest citizens!” the orc bellowed before cautioning everyone, “But the elf is mine, do you understand? I’ve never had an elf before, and now that I’ve worked up an appetite and split the bastard open, I aim to savor every morsel.”

While the chief lectured and boasted, the younger orcs got to work dragging out anything flammable into the inner courtyard of the keep. That started with straw and farming implements, but soon enough, the pyre was stacked high with delicately embroidered tapestries and the silken ballgowns of noblewomen. The blade basked in that warm glow, delighting in the wealth of lifetimes being put to the torch. 

That is the nature of war, it thought, People die, and everything else burns. Part of it felt like it should be getting power from the spectacle, but of course, no matter how beautiful an oil painting was, there was no Life Force in it to be drained from it.  

Humans would have tried to have half of this as spoils, but the greenskins cared nothing for wealth unless it came in the form of food or weapons. The blade might be disgusted by their filth and canibalism, but it respected their straightforward, honest natures almost as much as their violence. Once the fire got going, they looted both wherever they could find them while all the true finery that was on offer was burned or otherwise defiled. 

The feasts that followed those crude pronouncements went on for half the night and were only occasionally interrupted by screams and laughter when some living soul was found escaping from a burning building or dragged from their hiding place. The orcs were cruel, but the blade could hardly recriminate them. With all the bodies being cooked over the roaring bonfire, it was still getting hundreds of Life Force an hour without even draining the surviving warriors. It basked in an intoxicating sea of Life Force. It wasn’t as intense as the bursts from death and battle, but the sheer number of dead that were stacked around the edges of the courtyard made that thin, remnant energy linger like a perfume.  

+453 Life Force.

That night, the blade considered asking the elf’s soul a question immediately, but instead it decided to check a few things first. It started with reviewing the current status of its many abilities, but the only one it got immediately was Parasitic Link 3. It still wasn’t sure how that one was powered, but the last thing it wanted was a constant drain on its own resources. 

If I strengthen my wielder, let them bear the weight of that magic, it decided with almost no hesitation. 

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 Senses 4: 1500 Life Force
Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force
Lesser Life Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force
Lesser Soul Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force
Increase Control 4: 3000 Life Force
Empower Blade 3: 4000 Life Force - not currently accessible
Repair Soul 4: 5000 Life Force
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

Everything was about as it had expected. It had a variety of new powers to choose from, and though things were getting more expensive all the time, they’d never felt cheaper to the blade. If every assault was like this, then it would be able to upgrade half a dozen abilities with every fight. 

The thought was thrilling. Since it had awoken it had dreamed of nothing but gaining what former glory it might have once had, and now that goal was being realized. In the next month of battles as it fought its way to the capital city, it would gain thousands of souls and tens of thousands of essence. For a moment it was tempted to just start buying all of the cheap powers it had blindly, just to advance them, but it resisted. 

I will run out of new powers before I run out of victims to slay, it decided, satisfied with that situation. It had not dined this well since the dragon, and the main course that was the Inner Kingdoms still lay far ahead. 

Ch. 62 - Spiritual Spoils (part 2)

The main course for its journey might lay far ahead, but tonight’s main course would be consumed as soon as the orcish celebrations quieted down to a dull roar. Then, when there was nothing to distract the blade, it turned to the elven soul and finally compelled it to answer the question it had been thinking of all night. 

Tell me of the elven people. Who are they, and how will they try to oppose me? The Ebon Blade commanded. 

The soul then did something that no other soul it had ever unraveled or consumed did before. It fought back. Like the occasional dwarves who somehow resisted its ability to drain their life from a distance, the elf was somehow managing to resist its compulsion. 

I will never… tell you… anything… the soul hissed, straining to hold itself together as the blade’s grip on it intensified. 

All of the souls that the blade captured swirled darkly in the large ruby embedded in its hilt. Right now, the thing was almost empty because it had been burning so many human souls the moment it received them. Still, it was easy to see the difference between a Greater Monster Soul and a Human Soul. A Greater Monster Soul was grayish and indistinct. It knew that what it had once been, but not so clearly enough to hold its own shape. 

Human Souls were more fully featured. They looked like pale, ghostly imitations of who they’d been in life because they knew who they were. They were fragile, though, and almost as soon as it decided to devour one or ask it a question, they came apart like a cobweb. 

The elf was different, though. Its soul was almost solid, and it glowed with an inner light. Still, the blade would not be denied, and as its full force of will began to focus on the defiant soul, it crumpled like plate mail beneath an orchish club. 

You will tell me what I wish to know! The blade repeated. The elf’s spirit was strong. It had whole human lifetimes to grow and learn, but it had not been forged in magic and pain like the Ebon Blade, and as the soul of Prince Elzharam began to scream and come apart, knowledge poured into its mind. 

Four Hundred and sixty-three years old next month. That was the first thing it learned. The man that it had slain in single combat and who didn’t seem to think the orc had a chance was older than the blade itself. The second interesting fact was that the Terrestrial Prince of the Southern Storms had heard of the Ebon Blade, but he hadn’t known that was what he was fighting until the moment it had taken his soul. 

Why would an orc ever have that cursed relic? Its mind asked in disbelief as the memories of a dozen lifetimes began to spill out in all directions. It was locked away somewhere where no would-be warlord would ever find it again decades ago after the last time it escaped from its imprisonment. 

That, though, interested the blade. It had thought that it had only been imprisoned once, but if it had tried and failed to escape before, what did that mean? How had it been thwarted? Would repairing its soul help it find out the answers to those questions?

It wasn’t sure. Each time it did so, its memories focused only on the time around its forging. There was very little about the time after that, even though it knew it had been wielder again. Could it have done this before, though? Could it have escaped from a prison designed by Gods or Mages only to be recaptured? 

That frustrated it, and it told itself it needed to be on the lookout for more information about how that might have come to pass. Before it could examine it further, though, those thoughts were ripped away in a tide of answers to its previous question. 

The first answer was that the elves were dying. That did not seem to be a new problem, though. They were always dying, at least in the mind of the Prince, and they had not ruled the world in millennia. Despite the fact that they were immortal, every year, a few were born, and a few more died, and the world was diminished for it. 

Most did not leave their far-flung cities now, which were mostly on forested islands in the western seas, far from their many monstrous and infernal enemies. Only a few like this Prince and Altharia had urgent enough business in the lands of men to force them to travel in dangerous places. 

Altharia. The mere mention of the name was enough to make the unfolding map of elvish dominance waver a moment. The Prince seemed to know her. No, he’d even been looking for her. He seemed to disapprove of her quest. He had a certainty that the Mirror of Unending Vistas should not be found, and even if it was, it could not be destroyed. That amused the blade, but before the weapon could delve deeper into that, the whirlwind tour of the elves and their prowess resumed. 

Masters of magic, they took to the field of battle with carefully chosen hexblades they had spent lifetimes mastering. Unlike human hexblades, which they regarded as crude implements, they were not fueled by their fragile life force. They were fueled by mana, which all elves possessed in abundance, which gave them access to many more interesting effects than a human wielder might have. 

The elven soul tried to fight the Ebon Blade as it sought more information about that, but to no avail. The Storm Blade was a powerful weapon in its own right, but it was no artifact. In all the centuries that the Prince had carried it. No one had laid a finger on him until tonight. His combination of speed and stealth was simply unbeatable, and he walked the land with impunity until the moment his life was ended at the hands of a lowly orc. 

No, not an orc, the blade crowed. He is just my wielder. You were ended by me!

Belmorath. Hybernial Spring. The Ice Palace. Dozens of places important or sacred to the elves flickered across the blade’s mind. All of them were lovely, but most of them were near wilderness areas or gleaming cities. None of them were fortresses or places of war. 

That intrigued the blade, and it wondered how much Life Force it would gain by sacking an entire elvish city. The soul bristled at that idea, but its pain wasn’t enough to stop it from showing the blade everywhere where it might engage in such a grisly quest. 

Now wasn’t the time, though. Perhaps after I have sacked the Inner Kingdoms and revenged myself on everyone who has done this terrible thing to me, then I will dine on the blood of elves. 

Even in their relatively peaceful applications, though, the magics the elves used were quite impressive. They didn’t forge bronze statues of their great leaders; they erected fifty-foot-tall translucent illusions and filled the streets of their great cities with glittering faerie lights at night so that they were never truly in darkness. 

With what they did with their hexblades, the weapon had no doubt that many of those magics could be turned to more destructive uses, but the Prince knew little of that, for he had never studied to become a mage. He had only ever studied to master the blade, and he had, lifetimes ago. The Ebon Blade would love to halve a master half so skilled, but it wouldn’t be this man because even as he continued to whisper secrets about the elven gods and the vagueries of the royal family, he began to dissipate. 

Even after he was gone, though, he gave the blade much to think about. It spent the rest of the evening wondering how much it should fear the elves and where it should strike at them first as its map of the world began to fill in a few more of its blank spots. 

Though many of the orcs slept in until almost noon, the pounding of the most inquisitive or intelligent of them started just after dawn. The blade did not get to see what it was they were doing, though, until Var’gar was finally up and about. It turned out the orcs were making use of the armor of the dead now, and in some cases, they were even using their weapons. 

+331 Life Force.

None of them were being used as they’d been intended, of course. Short swords were being strapped to poles with leather thongs to make spears, and breastplates were being hammered out of place to make spaulders and greaves. At the same time, other, smaller pieces of metal were riveted to hides to create strange armors that straddled the line between studded leather and scale mail.

The orcs weren’t quite learning from the humans, but they were certainly emulating them. The Ebon blade thought that was interesting. While they weren’t smart enough to work out proper forging techniques, the green skins seemed greatly enamored of human magic, as they referred to it. Siege engines were only of marginal interest to them, but steel seemed to fascinate them, and the orcs replaced their stone weapons with metal whenever they could find a good replacement. 

Those efforts did not reach fruition in a single day, but then, neither did the feasting. Thousands had died, and between that and beer and wine that the greenskins sometimes found, the revelry would continue for some time while the Ebon Blade continued to soak in more than fifty Life Force an hour just from the dead. It wasn’t satisfied with that, of course, and it also began to nibble at the souls of the uninjured orcs. They wouldn’t need their strength until the next battle, so they might as well borrow it. 

Two days later, the massive army left the city. They might have walked out of it with a couple of hundred fewer orcs than they’d come in with, and they were much stronger for it. Not only was this the first time that any of them had attacked a fortified city, but now most of them had better weapons and armor. 

+2318 Life Force.
+8 Greater Monster Souls. 

Whoever we fight next will curse those developments, the blade thought to itself as it reviewed its status and decided what it should do next while the orcs began their long march to the northeast. 

After they left Holmen, the blade no longer let the orcs travel in a straight line. They preferred to follow the river so that they wouldn’t get lost, but in the aftermath of the keep’s conquest, it had quizzed more than a dozen souls about the surrounding area. They had been peasants, merchants, and knights, and though their opinions varied, they had greatly expanded its knowledge of the region. The blade didn’t just know where they were going now; it also knew the best and bloodiest way to get there. 

This time, it vowed they wouldn’t travel in a straight line. They wouldn’t give the men and women of the small farming town ahead the luxury of warning. They would envelop, strike, and eradicate each one until they reached the borders of the inner kingdoms themselves and finally found a real army to fight.