The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 22-26

5 more chapters, and that number is only likely to go up next week! I hope you are enjoying the story.

Ch. 22 - Save Yourself

The goatman screamed as it fell in both fear and pain as fire enveloped it. Earlier in the day, fire had been an amusement. It had laughed as other humans and beastmen had burned alive. Now that joy was gone, and even when it crashed through the third floor, to the second, and finally the first in a spray of flaming debris, its torment didn’t end. It couldn’t because the blade it held healed it almost as fast as it died. 

The blade didn’t feel pain in the same way its wielder did. It had been embedded in the molten heart of a dragon for weeks and endured it without issue. This was nothing by comparison. Still, it suffered differently as it watched its energy plummet to keep its wielder alive as it should have died over and over again.

2396/4000 Life Force

2352/4000 Life Force

2338/4000 Life Force

The Ebon Blade Watched its Life Force ebb in real-time as the burning goatman struggled to its feet and staggered toward the door. Part of it wanted to spend as much power as it possibly could to avoid letting such a subpar wielder squander it, but the rest of it didn’t want to be buried alive even more. 

If it makes it onto the street, then I shall act, it told itself. 

Gar-lok never got that far. It reached the main door, covered in flames, and struggled with the bar one-handed. Even before it could try to find a better way to lift it, though, the ceiling collapsed on the goatman, burying him alive in burning rubble. 

2282/4000 Life Force

The blade acted then as the life force drain doubled in its speed. Technically, what it was doing was a mercy at this point. Its wielder would never rise again, but it still clung stubbornly to the blade. That meant that if the Ebon Blade didn’t use its power, its wielder would suffocate and burn for several minutes longer than it needed to. Already, the echoed agony that they shared through their bond was almost painful to the blade, even if it wasn’t nearly as hot as it had been when it was bathed in black dragon blood.  

2243/4000 Life Force

It didn’t hesitate. It spent 3 of its twenty human souls to briefly peak above 2500 Life Force, and then it activated Repair Soul 3. It could have simply spent 2000 on Improved Siphon, but the blade had already let Gar-lok waste enough of its power and had no wish for it to waste anymore.

78/4000 Life Force

32/4000 Life Force

It never got to see the number hit zero again because, at that moment, it was bombarded with images again, just like it had been the last two times. This time, though, whether it was because of the increased energy it had used or the fact that its wielder was burning alive, all of it hurt worse than either of the other times. 

This time, it felt everything. First, there was its imprisonment, but that was a brief glimpse. Now that it had been there, it knew everything about that temple and it didn’t care how grand it looked before it had been abandoned. 

After that, there was a battle. No, a series of battles. They were blood baths, and the dark armor of the man that wielded it against so many was bathed in blood. That fight had a tinge of madness to it, but the ones that followed were more sedate. There were armies then, and he was leading them. Then there was the fight with the dark scaled dragon it remembered so well. 

That had more detail this time, which was enough to make it think that it wasn’t Baraga. The armor was different, but the face seemed different. His features were finer than it remembered, and he was clean-shaven.

Was Baraga always clean-shaven? It wondered.  

Before it could decide if its wielder had simply shaved between the last fight and this one, though, its memories returned to that terrible furnace and its incessant pounding. Is this the right order? It wondered as it judged the dark-eyed mages, imbuing their terrible magics into the black metal of the blade. 

This image lingered longer than before. It could feel itself being forged. It could feel the dark runes being carved along the length of its blade, one sharp strike at a time. As each inscrutable glyph was completed, it began to glow, joining the others as flaming brands on its soul. 

Do I have a soul? It wondered. Can swords have souls?

It didn’t matter. As soon as it lost focus on the cruel eyes of the lead magus, the whole image fell apart. Suddenly, it was replaced by scenes of betrayal. What should have been a wedding feast for its wielder quickly became a trap. 

One minute, the unarmed Baraga stood before a mass of nobles raising a toast with a bandaged hand while they cheered him with raised glasses instead of swords. The next, the powerful warrior was drugged into submission and held bound hand and foot. 

This enraged the blade. It should care nothing for who wielded it, but these terrible revelations, along with the fact that they were incomprehensibly out of order, made it impossible to figure anything out completely. 

Still, it knew enough. It had seen the princess, shocked as she was standing next to her smiling father in the moment where its master had realized it was a trap. It knew which kingdom it must aim toward, but now it knew that all the nobles of that place should be made to suffer and that its war should be absolute. Every bloodline must be erased, it told itself. 

Before it could try to learn their faces or names, though, the second dragon fight arrived. This one showed its wielder at his peak. He still wore armor, and he was bleeding in several places as he hid behind a boulder while the red dragon bathed the world in fire. That wasn’t enough to so much as singe his beard, though, as he charged back toward the source of the flames, even as they began to ebb.

The dragon reacted immediately, recoiling as soon as its prey became visible, but by that point, Baraga had already grasped its lower fang and used it as a handhold. Even as his hand started to smolder in his metal gauntlet, he didn’t let go. 

Instead, he used the momentum of the move to time his strike, and when the giant metal skin beast pivoted, he used the momentum of the serpentine movement to jam three feet of steel through the dragon’s giant eye into the lemon-sized brain beyond it. 

It spasmed then, flinging him aside, but not before the blade turned the thing's brain into stew meat. Its wielder was already on his feet before thing had even finished dying. In that moment, its pommel glowed brightly as it siphoned the soul of the gargantuan beast into the soul gem, making the previously dull jewel shine bright. 

That was a moment of triumph and one that it was profoundly interested in. After that, though, there were others that it cared less about. It had no interest in who its wielder attempted to woo or how the king had promised his daughter Drezellia to “Any hero that slays the terrible beast and brings me its burning soul as proof shall be given my daughter’s hand and made defender of the north!”

Past that, there was a barrage of images. Inns, banners, friends, and allies of its now dead master, and other less comprehensible things. One image that it couldn’t shake in all of this, though, was the way that Baraga looked at the woman. She was no doubt beautiful, but the way he gazed at her made it look like she’d ripped his heart from his body. 

Perhaps she had, it noted because whatever his master had been doing before he became a dragon slayer hadn’t seemed half so glamorous or dangerous. It was hard to piece together all the broken shards, but if it had to guess, it would have said that he was nothing but another mercenary before love had driven him to new heights. 

But why would someone be content to be just a rank-and-file mercenary when they had the Ebon Blade on their hip? It wondered as the vision faded away. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t have long to wonder because as soon as it returned to the real world and pierced through the veil of that terrible fugue state, it felt empty. Somehow, despite only being a finely crafted lump of metal, it ached everywhere. It took only a moment to figure out that its former wielder was dead and that its Life Force was at zero. 

It spent the first human soul without even thinking, gaining 104 Life Force. That would buy it the best part of a week, as it lost a point every hour or two. Once that was done, it might allow itself to drift into darkness, but for now, that was an unacceptable outcome. Right now, more than anything, it needed to process and understand what it had seen, and it couldn’t risk losing those clear recollections as it slept in the dark. 

The Ebon Blade, it pored over every last thought, trying to put the ever-sharpening memories together in a clear sequence of events. It was sure that decades at least had passed since all this, but it paid special attention to the mages it had seen at first. Even if it had been centuries since it had been forged, which might very well have been the case, it strongly suspected that they would still be alive.

The same magics that powered its unnatural life powered theirs, too. It was certain of that, which meant that even after it wrecked Severon and anyone in the three Kingdoms who had ever wronged it or its wielder, it could likely seek them out next, both for vengeance and for answers. 

Ch. 23 - A New Owner

The Ebon Blade lay there beneath the smoldering rubble long after the embers cooled. It lay there for days and burned another soul when its Life Points approached zero just so it could wait there longer as it strained to find some evidence that there was hope it would be found. 

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

At first, the answer was that there was none. Other than ashes, burned timbers, and slow tick of indicators, the only evidence of life was the slowly decaying body of its charred former wielder. Sometimes, it could hear horses or wagons go past on the cobblestones, but it could not see them, which was frustrating. 

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

Normally, the blade could see all directions at once, up to several dozen feet, before shapes began to blur and colors started to fade. Even when it was sheathed, it could see several feet quite clearly. Still, for reasons it did not understand, its view was entirely blocked by the stone that buried it. It might have given up then and preserved its remaining souls if the digging hadn’t started then.

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

Worse, even though it could hear people nearby, it couldn’t reach out to them and began to drain them with its aura of hunger. That was deeply frustrating since it should have been the perfect solution to its current dilemma. 

-1 Life Force

-1 Life Force

More than a week after it had been buried alive, the survivors of Kalraka started to rebuild or at least bury their dead. It didn’t know which was the case, and it didn’t care. It had long tired of reliving all the little scenes in the hopes of making them fit. It got more information each time it used that terrible power, and each time it did so, it felt more alive and whole. 

The Ebon Blade 

Life Force: 67/4000  Siphon: 12-22  Siphon: 10-20

Path: Death, Level 3

Reserves: 8 - Your gemstone is large and clear.
Siphon: 6 - Your blade is sharp but tarnished.
Connection: 3 - Moderate - Your hilt is tight but tarnished.
Control: 3 - Moderate - Your runes are clear.
Senses: 2 - Dim - Your hilt is tarnished.
Soul: 3 - Cracked - You are starting to understand your past.

Powers:
Aura of Hunger: Drain Life Force from nearby victims.
Drain Soul:  Harvest the souls of your victims for later use.
Convert Souls: Devour a soul for its constituent essence.
Ineffective Immunity: Natural immunities no longer protect your enemies.
Deathly Touch: All strikes deal +2 cold damage.

The blade would just have to gather the power to do it again and figure out what other secrets were being held back from it. 5000 Life Force to repair my soul again, it sighed. That’s going to take a long time to gather. 

Indeed, even if it drained a couple dozen from every human and another hundred or so from their souls, 5,000 Life Force represented hundreds of deaths. That was fine, though. It always craved battle, and at this point, it wanted to do literally anything else, even if that something else was to sleep away the years.

But if I do that, I will lose the progress I’ve gained, its mind whispered. That was the dichotomy that held it back and made it listen anxiously to the sounds of digging as the sounds of men got closer and closer. 

For days, it was there in limbo, listening to the sounds of scratching shovels, twisting ropes, and shouted orders. Then, one day, when it was close to giving in and fading to slumber, one of the largest stones on top of it rolled free, and a slender crack of daylight reached down through the rubble to it. 

Suddenly, it could see not just the single beam of sunlight, which penetrated through several feet of rubble down to where it lay, and that was enough for it to escape its tomb, at least in part. Its physical form might still be trapped, and the amount of vision that it could extend to the outside world was still hopelessly blurry, but it could see the outside world, and for now, that was enough. 

The people working nearest to it were only blurs, and beyond them, the ruined buildings that had once lined this street were nothing but indistinct shapes of black and gray that bled together. Still, that was enough to experience a measure of freedom, and more than that, it was enough to latch on to those who were closest to it and begin to leach their Life Force. 

The distance of its Aura of Hunger was diminished, and it could only affect those that were closest to it, but that was still enough to latch onto three targets and begin to drain them. Minute by minute and hour by hour, it drained those who walked by as well as those who labored to fill baskets with rubble before carrying it away in wagons. 

It made sure not to kill any of the humans, but only because it didn’t want to stop work. If it found a rat, raven, or other vermin, though, it drained it dry for the animal soul. All of this was a trickle of Life Force compared to what it had wielded before in the heat of battle. Still, it was enough not just to stop it from fading out into nothingness but to begin to rebuild its strength as well. 

Paradoxically, this had the added effect of slowing the rate at which it was unearthed. Workers that dug within its reach moved slower than their comrades elsewhere because of drain-induced lethargy, but it didn’t care. 

Now that it was in no danger of succumbing to oblivion, it didn’t care. It didn’t even stop when they started using orphans to help speed things up. This was fortunate not just because the children gave it more targets to sate its hunger but also because it gave the blade more people to listen to. 

One or two workers by themselves rarely did more than labor or grumble about the attack, but when there were a handful, they gossiped, and that let the blade know more than anything about the aftermath of its assault on Kalraka. 

“I hear they’s seen another army on the move,” one of the boys said, nearly a month after the building had collapsed. “More beasts are already headed this way!”

“Nuh-uh,” another boy who was both shorter and younger than him. “The Fieldmarshal said they had a thousand men with him and that they wouldn’t let no one, not even the orcs, take advantage of the sit-siation!”

The two argued about it for some time, and the Ebon Blade even stopped draining them to make sure they didn’t become listless and apathetic, but in the end, it found nothing definitive. The idea that there was a large army in the ruined city was exactly the opposite of surprising. 

It entirely discounted the idea that a second horde of beastman was moving on this location since it had been the prime mover behind the first one. Its first advance had sucked up every tribe along the way into its hoard, and any stragglers that might be left alive would present no challenge to alert defenders. 

That they feared the possibility enough to worry was entirely believable. Aftershocks often followed terrible tragedies, and a second wave of the same monsters that killed their parents must have seemed not just possible but probable. 

Still, out of everything the children mentioned within its slowly expanding zone of sight and hearing, the orcs were what interested it the most. Not only were they larger and stronger than the beastmen, but they were more human-like, too, which should make them slightly better at wielding it. 

And if they’re common enough to be a problem, then they might represent a vast reservoir of new warriors for me to turn to my advantage, the blade thoughts, as it lay there. 

Fortunately, no matter how many days it slowed the workers that sifted through the rubble, eventually, they succeeded in hauling it all away. When it was finally found, it wasn’t one of the children that did so, but by one of the young men working alongside of them to lift the heavier stones. The young man waited only long enough for the nearest other workers to be distracted before he picked up the blade immediately. 

Wow, a ruby that big, it has to be magic, the boy thought to himself as he held the blade for the first time. 

Ivarr, the blade thought, reading the surface of the boy’s mind, even as he scanned the rest of him. His name is Ivarr. It was impressed that even without it whispering anything to him, the boy seemed to know what it was that he had. 

Name: Ivarr Garson

Occupation: Cooper’s Apprentice

Toughness: 5 +1

Strength: 6 +3

Agility: 5 +2

Speed: 5 +1

Intelligence: 5

Willpower: 5 -1

Morality: Good

Bloodlust: Low

Status: Normal

Martial Skill: Medium

Armor Proficiency: Low

Dodging: Low

Athletics: Low

Goal: To be a hero and avenge his family’s death.

He instantly drew the battered old long sword he’d had in his scabbard, tossed it aside, and slid the Ebon Blade there in its place. Then he took a rag and tied it around the pommel to hide the faintly glowing ruby there. That not only cleared up the blade's vision nearly completely, but it also told the blade that the boy was clever. He’d just succeeded in not only gaining himself a magical weapon but also in making it look like he had nothing but a beat-up old blade, just as he’d had before. 

It was smart, and more than that, it was quick thinking. He may yet make for a good wielder, the blade thought. As much as it liked the idea of leading an army of orcs against the Three Kingdoms, it would be happy to be held for a time by a young man who was this decisive. He might not be as strong as he’d like, but Gar-lok had, been loaded with strength and it hadn’t done the blade much good. So, it would see where cleverness could take it instead.

Ch. 24 - Big Dreams

The Ebon Blade said nothing to the young man that first day. It didn’t even attempt to sway him except for the one time he seemed to ready to show a friend what he’d found when they ate together in the ruins of what had once been an inn during dinner when the other boy asked if he’d done anything interesting that day. 

Ivarr paused only a moment before he answered, “Nah. Same old stones, different pile. You?”

Even that pause in the conversation had only taken the barest surge of secrecy to accomplish. Its wielder’s friend never even looked up. 

“I think that when they gave us blades, we’d be doing at least a little fighting,” Sammel complained, “They might as well have issued us shovels instead.”

“I wish they did,” its wielder laughed. “If there were enough shovels to go around, we’d be done cleaning this place up by now. Then we could go out and find some monsters to kill.”

Though Gar-lok’s assault on Kalraka was a failure, it had been a bloody one, and as the blade listened and siphoned Life Force from its wielder’s friend, along with any other boys that joined them at the fire, it learned much. Mostly, it learned that they were afraid and that hundreds of beastmen had fled into the mountains to the north of the city. 

Beast men, apparently, were not typically found this far to the east. The near mountains were usually goblin territory, with orcs lurking further out. Now, in the aftermath all of that had been upset, and they worried that some new threat would materialize. 

The blade doubted it, even though its wielder hoped for it. Apparently, when the army was done securing the city, burying the dead, and doing some basic reconstruction, they planned to march north and cleanse any burrows they found, no matter what monsters dwelled in them. 

That was what the group of them talked about the longest before going to bed. They talked about how they would be heroes and seek justice for the wrongs that had been dealt to their people and their families. The blade probably should have felt bad about that since it was the architect of this slaughter, but it didn’t. It only wished that it had been at the head of a host that was more numerous and effective. 

If one of the stray sparks from the bonfire it had created wanted to pick it up and go on to light new blazes? Well, then, that was ideal. That was the part where the blade’s interests aligned with its wielder’s completely. 

It wanted to siphon that sweet energy to fuel future growth, and its wielder just wanted revenge. That was an understandable and even laudable motivation that the blade could get behind. Its last human wielder had wanted revenge, too, but there was no one left alive to take it on. Ivarr would have better luck. The blade wanted revenge too, but its enemies were too far away in both distance and time, so for now, Ivarr’s revenge would have to suffice for both of them. 

As understandable as it was, though, it really only discovered all of the details once it delved into the boy’s dreams while he slept. There, it learned that Ivarr had been one of the few people in this city to rise to defend more than himself. 

He’d started with nothing but a pitchfork, but in time, he’d found a sword and managed to kill three of the goat men. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been enough to save his mother or his younger brother. For that, even though he was eighteen and old enough to know better, he wept bitterly when he’d come home to find their corpses. 

In the morning, before anyone else was awake, Ivarr unwrapped its hilt and examined the blade itself. “A hexed blade,” he whispered in a tone of muted awe as he studied the faintly glowing ruby in the hilt and ran his fingers along the runes carved into the blade. “I wonder what it does?”

The question was largely rhetorical. Before all this, the boy had been an apprentice to a cooper and spent his days shaving staves and helping his master put iron rings into the fire. He couldn’t read, but it was evident he’d heard stories of magical blades before, and even as he carefully wrapped the hilt with a rag again, his thoughts were loud and clear. Something like this would let him be the hero he’d always dreamed of.

The blade spent the day encouraging that. Whenever its wielder was talking to someone about revenge or heroism, it would send a thrill of excitement through him, and whenever he worked diligently to dig through the rubble, it would permeate him with feelings of boredom and listlessness. While it did that, though, it wondered at its reaction toward Ivarr almost as much. 

Was it so taken with the lad because it was tired of being wielded by a monstrous hand, or was there more to it? Ivarr wasn’t so different from Ren, and it had loathed being wielded by the Shepard boy. 

So, what was the difference between the two? Had the weapons mind changed so much as its soul came together, piece by piece?

No, ultimately, it decided that it was the details that separated the two boys. Ren had been content to remain a shepherd forever until he’d found the Ebon Blade. He would never have found the will to fight without its magic. Ivarr, on the other hand, would fight alone if he had to. He’d found his own strength before he’d ever used the weapons, and as it turned out, that made all the difference. 

It wanted to make a worthwhile master stronger, but it did not want to make a weakling strong any more than it wanted to be wielded in battle by a goblin a second time. No matter how easy it was to control their little minds, the vileness of the experience had robbed those moments of the joy they should have had. 

The blade’s little nudges didn’t take effect overnight, but then, it didn’t intend for them to. It was happy to spend each day leaching slowly off of the men that Ivarr ate near, or worked beside as it steadily refilled its pool of Life Force, and it was far closer to the larger kingdoms to the east than it had ever been before, and currently it was in do danger of being buried and forgotten about. 

As it slowly increased, its Life Force from just over one hundred when it was found beneath the rubble to nearly five hundred after a week of this routine as it sipped at dozens of people’s souls with its Aura of Hunger without leaving behind any tell-tale bodies in its wake. It was also during that week that it saw, and more importantly tasted its first dwarf. 

It hadn’t even noticed that the short man wasn’t human until it had tried and failed to drain Life For from him the first time. That was when the blade saw a new message for the first time. 

Aura of Hunger Resisted. 

That had annoyed it, and even after it realized that it was a dwarf it tried again and again, until after the third try it succeeded. It noticed that the Life Force felt different than the stuff it had drained from the other men at the bar that night, which was interesting to it. 

If I was to kill it would I get a human soul, or a greater monster soul I wonder? The blade asked itself quietly enough that its wielder would not hear it. 

Though it longed for the battlefield, as long as chaos churned around it and its wielder kept it hidden, it was content to see what kind of choices this wielder would make. The dwarf proved to be only one interesting distraction among many as it lingered here in civilization, and in the end, it was not disappointed. 

Only ten days later, after Ivarr had found the blade, he was making plans to go find adventure rather than wait for it to come to him. He convinced several of his friends to go with him. They were going to make a grand adventure of it. 

Up until now, all of them had talked a big game, but the blade knew that most of them didn’t have what it took to step outside the walls with only their swords for protection. Once the idea of actually leaving the safety of the walls behind and venturing out into the dark was upon them, each of them chickened out in their own way. 

Hallen said, “I would, but I’ve got me mum to think about.”

Brik told him, “I mean, even if we do come back with a load of beastman horns for the bounty, it's not much more than just doing this job after you count the cost of supplies, now is it?”

Both of those were reasonable answers meant to cloak cowardice, but Ivarr let both of them off the hook. It was only Sammel’s answer the boy really took issue with. He’d talked a big game right up until the last minute, then rather than meet Ivarr after work, the boy just vanished. 

Ivarr had to track him down, and when he finally did, hours after they were supposed to depart, the young man who had talked so tough for so long practically begged him not to make him come. “I’m not scared of fighting them, you understand, but how are we to sleep or eat?” Sammel continued. “Those little green savages… They could attack us at any time. We might wake up dead or worse!”

For a moment, the blade thought his wielder might strike the coward down. He would have deserved it, and the blade could have pushed him to do it without doubt, but he was still more interested in seeing what sort of man his wielder was and saw no need to turn him into a puppet yet. So, it was surprised when he turned around and headed out by himself. 

“I don’t need you,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t need anyone. Not as long as I have this,” he said, patting the sword. 

Despite his brave words, Ivarr halted at the west gate for several minutes while he tried to convince himself that it might be better to set off tomorrow. It’s already late in the day, he told himself. It would be better to go when I have more daylight. Besides, it might rain later. 

The blade could hear all of those excuses rolling around his head, but it didn’t put its finger on the scales. If the lad chickened out, then it would find a way to get him killed and find someone braver to wield him, but if he went off into the unknown with no one, well…

The Ebon Blade was very pleased when Ivarr pulled his cloak a little tighter to him and strode out of the gate with nothing but a few days of food, a bedroll, and a magical blade of unknown provenance. Somehow, that moment felt familiar to it, and it wondered if it had felt this way at the start of Baraga’s adventures, or if it had even been there at all. 

Ch. 25 - Wild Places

That first night was a trying one for the blade’s wielder. He managed to light a fire despite the damp wood. Despite that, he was not attacked, immediately, which the blade considered to be a lucky break for the inexperienced young man. Still, Ivarr didn’t get much sleep, and the lights of the city, only a few miles away, called to him. The Ebon Blade kept a lookout the entire night, but it saw nothing that needed Ivarr awake, even during his brief few hours of sleep. 

The following day was more tenuous, though, and it very quickly became apparent that as much as the boy wanted vengeance, he didn’t have much to achieve it besides boldness and an untested blade. He walked right past one set of beastmen tracks that were only a few days old, confusing them with mule deer, and he almost completely missed the first goblin lair he came across because the crevice was too narrow for a human to fit through. 

The blade tried to decide which one it should direct its wielder’s attention to when a distant rumble made the decision for him. The sound originated well past the Ebon Blades's sight, but it could see a single blurred figure standing on top of a nearby ridge, visible only because it was moving. Ivarr barely hesitated and instead drew his weapon and ran up the slope to charge it. 

The thing, in turn, lifted a club high and charged Ivarr. It was a tectonic clash, and the Ebon Blade thought it was a fitting first battle. After all, a beastman wasn’t so challenging for a man wielding a magic blade. 

Only, it wasn’t a beastman, not in the way that it had thought. It was part man and utterly beastly, but as they got closer the weapon could see that it was bigger than any of the goatmen that the Ebon Blade had encountered before. 

This was a minotaur, which was a beast that was significantly more dangerous than any of the goatmen that had been part of Gar-lok’s tribe. They were eight-foot-tall, solitary hunters and insanely strong. 

The Ebon Blade felt no guilt. It hadn’t urged the boy to charge the thing, but it had no desire to lose such a promising young wielder. Originally, it had planned to let Ivarr fight the beastman with no intervention on its part, just to see how the boy did. It changed its mind as soon as it realized what it was the moment it saw what he was up against, though. 

Rather than test him and watch his skull get crushed, the blade gripped the soul of its wielder as tightly as it could and took full control. It was the only way to avoid the devastating side swing that was about to come from an opponent that was twice the weight and had an advantage in both reach as well as the high ground. 

The Ebon Blade parried lightly as it dove through the creature's legs, using Ivarr’s body as if it belonged to it. The motion wasn’t to block anything so much as misdirect. It had intended to follow that up by slicing away one of the thing’s tendons and crippling it, but it moved too quickly, and it had to move away quickly lest Ivarr get his rib cage caved in by a stomp from one of its massive hooves. 

Even as he bounded clear, though, the landscape had changed noticeably. Now, the giant cowman wasn’t on the uphill slope. He wasn’t even charging. He was standing there swinging that club like a force of nature, but there was no subtly to it. 

The blade felt confusion stirring in the mind of its wielder. Ivarr wanted to fight, but he didn’t feel in control of what he was doing, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. The Ebon blade did everything it could to suppress those thoughts as it focused on the fight. Neither of them could afford a distraction in this moment. 

Its healing powers were immense, and right now it had substantial reserves, but against an opponent like this, that wouldn’t be enough. One incorrectly judged block would send the blade flying out of Ivarr’s hands, and if the beast actually connected, and managed to crush a knee or a shoulder, well, an injury like that could take half a minute to fix, and in the time it took the blade to do that, its wielder would take half a dozen more similar blows. 

That was why every move had to be defensive and clean. The blade moved forward just enough to make the monster think it was going to charge, but even as it swung the club, it redirected and brought its slice down, then up again in a long J-stroke that opened up a bleed gash across the right side of its abs. 

The creature roared in pain, even though the Ebon Blade didn’t have time to slice too deeply. It had to pull away before the creature’s weapon whipped back around like a meteor, and the blade had to move its wielder in the same direction just to avoid the strike.

How am I doing this? Ivarr wondered. The blade ignored him; it didn’t even let the numbers or the pleasant surge of Life Force flowing through it distract it. This was as close to a worst-case fight as it could be in at this moment, and it would have rather faced a hundred goblins. 

+21 Life Force.

The next few minutes were tense as the minotaur went in for the kill, time and again while the blade fought more defensively. Conscious of the differences in reach and strength, the blade used the terrain to its advantage each time. It never let the thing take the high ground, nor did it even try to strike unless some rock or outcropping gave its wielder better footing than his opponent. Most of the strikes it lashed out with were never intended to connect, and those that did were glancing blows at best that only made the creature angrier.

+1 Life Force.

+17 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

+14 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

That each of them drained its life force was nice as the fight went on for minute after minute was the important part. A scratch wasn’t as satisfying as slicing through muscle and seniew, but it was effective.  Each one added to the slow drip of sustenance that its Aura of Hunger. 

What mattered most, though, was keeping its wielder whole and intact. Any serious wound would be all it would take to end this fight for young Ivarr, but the blade wasn’t about to let that happen.

For his part, the boy seemed to understand that he was not the one who was moving with perfect timing and grace, but he did nothing to fight the blade, which was good. A single moment of hesitation was all it would take to remove his head from his shoulders. 

Still, even as the fight crept over the ten-minute mark, it wasn’t the draining, or even the exhaustion, that brought the minotaur down. It was his own strength. He slammed his thigh-thick club into the ground one too many times, and it cracked loudly in two. 

The thing barely seemed to register the damage to its own weapon and lasted out again anyway with the jagged stump of wood, but for the Ebon blade, reducing the thing's reach by nearly two feet made all the difference in the world. Suddenly, it didn’t have to leap aside after every shallow blow, and it proceeded to carve the beast up like a fine roast. 

+16 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

+1 Life Force.

+11 Life Force.

Five strokes later, the thing was disemboweled, and after another five, it was dead on the ground from frostbite and life drain as much as blood loss. Ivarr wasn’t in good shape himself either, of course. Despite being young and healthy, he’d just participated in a twenty-minute-long duel with a vastly superior opponent, and even with magical strength flowing through him, he was all but spent. 

You have received a greater monster soul!

He sat down on the closest large stone and watched the minotaur’s corpse steam in the cold mountain air. It was several minutes before its wielder caught his breath and dared to ask the sword a question. 

The blade spent that time reflecting on the new soul and how it was that much closer to its next upgrade, but still, it had been expecting it. It was hard for its wielder to keep a secret when it could hear him rehearsing it and second-guessing himself in his mind. 

“I… did you help me win that fight?” the young man asked. 

I hadn’t planned to, but it proved to be necessary, the blade confessed. Still, you acquitted yourself well. If you had panicked and resisted me, you would certainly have died. 

“I— You can talk?” Ivarr asked. “That’s amazing. Do you have a name?”

I do, the blade answered, But I would prefer to focus on you, not me, Ivarr. Why did you charge such a large opponent? You were hopelessly outmatched. What would you have done if I had not come to your aid?

“I didn’t think it was that big, not from far away,” he sighed. “I… Honestly, I didn’t know that beastmen grew to be that big.”

There are worse things than beastmen out here, the blade answered. As it spoke, images of different sorts of monsters flashed through its mind, bombarding its wielder. For a moment, Ivarr’s mind was filled with vivid images of monsters that the blade had battled. Some it remembered fighting, but others were torn from the depths of its mind, and it could not recall ever actually facing them. 

There were ogres, griffons, hydras, trolls, greater slimes, dire beasts, and other horrific megafauna. The dragons flickered there for a moment too, but the blade suppressed them. It didn’t want to have that conversation with its young wielder. Neither of them were ready for that. 

There was also the fact that it didn’t wish to scare the lad into returning to the safety of Kalraka’s walls or anything. Still, it wasn’t about to sugarcoat any of what they might find. Especially since it planned to hunt more of these monsters down next. 

Well, maybe not next, it corrected itself. 

First, it would find challenges that were more appropriate to the young warrior. It was only when he was ready that they could truly move as one and take down something as large and powerful as an ogre or a troll. 

Ivarr seemed to take all of this in stride. Instead of arguing and looking for an excuse not to fight something so terrifying, he stayed quiet as he knelt beside the minotaur and hacked off its horns with the blade. 

Then he said, “I’d planned to come up here to hunt goblins for their ears and beast men for their horns while I learn to fight, but this, well, I guess it works too. How much do you suppose they’ll pay me for killing something like a griffon?”

For the first time that it could remember, the blade was tempted to laugh then. The invincibility of youth, it said, both to itself and its wielder. Maybe we will stick to something smaller than griffons for now, but perhaps in time, you can bring something truly wondrous back down the mountain with you.

Ch. 26  - The First Week

After that interaction, staying entirely silent was no longer an option. Once the young man knew that he wasn’t completely alone in the wilderness, he developed an incessant need to chat with someone who hadn’t existed that first day or even during his time laboring away in Kalraka. 

Though this wasn’t much more annoying than Ivarr’s thoughts had been, and the Ebon Blade took an aloof approach. Instead of getting caught up in a debate, it gave curt answers sparingly, and its wielder seemed to respect that, for the most part, in the days that followed. The only time the blade became vocal was during their weapons drills. 

Ivarr was clever and hard-working, but for all of his other strengths, he was not a good swordsman. It found that out the hard way the first evening when they found a tribe of stray beastmen. After the blade helped him with his tracking ability, they spent two days following the tracks of the small splinter clan of less than a dozen, which would be a good first test for him. 

As it turned out, when they finally found them on an upland boulder field, more than half of that number were does. That should have made the battle incredibly easy for its wielder. As it was, though, Ivarr was wounded twice in blows that never should have struck him. 

+149 Life Force
+8 lesser monster souls

He fought with wild strikes that had no technique to them and committed to every attack he launched. In that way, he was no better than the Ebon Blade’s last wielder, Gar-lok, and the weapon cringed at the thought. 

The blade had spent hours trying to decide whether its current wielder really was less skilled than Ren had been or if it was simply angry at him for wasting Life Force the way he had. Not even lesser monster souls or the bountiful Life Force that it drank, bringing it to 684/4000, was enough to blot out the memory of the sloppy technique it had endured. 

In the end, it didn’t really matter. What did was that when Ivarr said, “I really showed them!” while he was cutting off the horns of the dead beast men to bring back for the bounty, he’d listened to the Ebon blade’s chastisement with a little humility.

You really didn’t, it informed him. Without me, you’d be bleeding out on the stones, and by nightfall they’d be roasting you over a fire.

“That’s true,” its wielder admitted, “But in fairness, I had no idea you could heal me.”

That makes it worse, not better, the blade answered before lecturing Ivarr on everything he’d done wrong during the fight, from telegraphing his blows too often to not watching his footwork or his flanks. 

The blade quickly put him to work on improving that. That night, before Ivarr ate, it walked the boy through a series of exercises that it only barely remembered. The memory was so faint that it didn’t even know where it knew them from, but it was certain that it must have been from Baraga. 

There was nothing complex to the exercises. They were a series of basic attacks in increasing power, interrupted by some sort of step or defensive move. Overhead slash, block and riposte, side step, side slash, ninety-degree pivot, reverse slash, and so on. When the blade demonstrated it to its wielder, it looked almost like a dance, with clean motions and flourishes that showed an economy of motion that even it did not truly possess in the heat of battle. 

Its wielder, though, displayed just the opposite, and it was days before he started to show any skill. That frustrated the sword. 

Combat is not a separate skill from what you already know, it explained to him. It is an extension of all the skills you already have.

“Killing feels pretty different from everything else I do to me,” Ivarr answered defensively. 

It's that morality that holds you back, the blade lectured him. The right time to decide whether or not someone is going to die is well before weapons are unsheathed. Once that happens, the death of one side or the other is the only outcome. 

Its wielder bristled at being talked down to after every encounter and training session, but the blade couldn’t help it. During the rest of the day, it was nearly silent, but in those moments, it needed the young man to understand just how much he had to improve. 

Part of it knew its purpose wasn’t to help its wielder get better. Someone was either good enough to wield it, or they weren’t. In this case, though, it could practically taste the other greater monster souls it needed to advance along the path of death, and it desperately wanted that. 

The blade could not hope to win against minotaurs and griffons while being wielded by a goblin or the sword arm of an unwilling man. That meant that it needed someone brave and reckless like Ivarr. 

It did need to those souls, too. Need wasn’t too strong of a word. If it ever wanted to find the power that would allow it to absorb the Life Force of all the carnage that was taking place around it the next time, it led a horde or an army to ravage a city. That made a little bit of instruction a necessary evil. 

That first week in the mountains was the hardest. Not because Ivarr ever came close to dying again but because his lack of skill annoyed the blade almost as much as the questions he would ask it. 

“Where do you come from? What other powers do you have? Where did the governor find you?” Variations of those were the most common questions, but without fail, they almost always led to the fourth question, “Why didn’t anyone use you to save Kalraka when the beasts came?”

Because I entered the city at the head of that ragged army and razed it myself! Was the answer it wanted to shout, but it could not do that lest it find itself buried somewhere on a scree-covered slope and left to rust. 

More strangely, it found itself unwilling to lie to its wielder anymore. This was another change caused by its recent soul repair. It would have lied to Kell without a care. 

I was willing to betray my first wielder, Ren, though, it remembered with a pang of guilt. It was like each time it repaired it own soul, its code of honor became a little stricter. 

Now, though, the idea of lying felt almost as bad to it as the idea of betraying the man wielding it. It gave this a great deal of thought but had no answers as to why such behavior was now anathema to it. 

Instead, it gave dismissive answers like, As you are in the midst of discovering, there is a limit to what magic can do when it is in the hands of someone without the skills to wield it. It was a true statement but not a definitive one, which is why the topic came up again and again. 

Still, Ivarr wasn’t hopeless. He was just unpracticed. He was brave and clever, which were things that could not be taught, and in the battles that followed, he did better each time. The second group of beastman Ivarr encountered only landed a single blow on him, and that was from a bow. Although he was squeamish about pulling the arrow out, he didn’t let himself get surrounded that time, which was real improvement. 

+121 Life Force
+6 lesser monster souls

Even the night when he woke up in the middle of the night at the blade’s warning to fight a skulking warband of goblins bent on ambushing him when he was stripped to the waist and half asleep, he acquitted himself better than he had in that first fight. If anything, he'd shown himself to be a better warrior when he was so tired he couldn't think straight.

+222 Life Force
+13 lesser monster souls

Ivarr managed to avoid any serious wounds in that fight, too, which was an improvement. Well, at least serious wounds related to the goblins. Charging around in the dark, he slipped on some ice, breaking his ankle. That mended quickly, at least, and none of the little green vermin managed to escape him because of the temporary lameness. 

That was as pleased as the Ebon blade could be. Even though they had yet to find another giant beast worth killing, the fact that he’d killed more than a dozen goblins and beastmen before turning back toward town, combined with the hundreds of Life Force it had gathered, was acceptable. With each encounter, that number rose. 

What had been 684/4000 after the first beastman clan, 845/4000 after the second group of savage goatmen, and 1067/4000 after the goblin ambush was real, steady progress. While it might take weeks to boost its storage or its siphon at that rate, it was enough for now. So, when Ivarr had eaten the last of his hard tack and decided to head back down the mountain with a bag full of horns and ears to sell for the bounty that awaited him in town, the blade didn’t complain. 

It was not heading towards its goal very quickly like this, but it was making progress. In a few weeks, it might have a few more of the greater monster souls it craved, as well as a wielder who had some idea of how to use it properly.