The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 132-134

Side note, but I finished writing book 3 this week. On to book 4! How does it end? I guess we'll have to find out in a month or two...

Ch. 132 - An Impasse

The Iron City was a collection of smithies, warehouses, and cages. There were no homes to speak of. The closest anything came to that were long barracks filled with beds. Those were empty right now, as were the rest of the buildings the blade bothered to look through. The people who lived here fled before it, huddling in the shadows and the upper floors of taller buildings. 

As it went, it studied the powers and upgrades that had happened during its period of darkness. Everything had changed, but for now, the most important changes were those of the Infernal Path. It had already advanced to the fourth level, but it was a complete mystery to it, and the blade needed to understand what was happening to it. 

The Infernal Path and your progress along it signifies your understanding of the underworld. 

Granted Powers: 

Abyssal Majesty: For 1 Life Force, you may command a lesser demon to obey you for a time; for 5 Life Force, you may force them to become enthralled to you and do your bidding. These costs are increased by 10x for normal demons. 

Abyssal Resonance:  In the Pit, the land itself is imbued with the souls of evil. Rather than fight you, as it would with most denizens, the torments it possesses flee from you, lest you devour them.

Bottomless Depths: You gain access to the demon souls you have been storing, and your soul storage is doubled. 

Dark Consecration: The bridge between creation and damnation has been reached, and all powers previously earned on the Infernal Path are now accessible to you.

Endless Hunger 2: As Endless Hunger 1 doubled the speed with which you siphon from your enemies with the Aura of Hunger, Endless Hunger 2 doubles the amount you drain from them. 

Hellfire 1: Grants you the attack Hellfire, which will unleash gouts of tainted green fire from your blade with a range equal to half of your Aura of Hunger for 5 Life Force. This damage cannot be extinguished or healed with holy magic.

Hellfire 2:  The damage of all your fire-based abilities is doubled.

Of all of the abilities, Endless Hunger struck it as the most interesting, though Dark Concentration was without a doubt the most useful. It was the one that allowed it to interact with these tainted powers and devour demon souls without any strange negative consequences. 

At least, it was pretty sure that the second one was true. To verify that, it plucked a lesser demon soul at random from its overflowing soul storage and devoured it. As it did so, it noticed that one soul was so dark that it made all the other shadows glow by contrast. 

+15 Life Force. 

So that’s what a demon prince looks like, huh? It asked itself as it observed the foul thing. 

The souls it stored milled about and mingled, but only that one seemed to be actively trying to escape. The blade wasn’t concerned. For now, it did nothing with that soul. Instead, it plucked a regular demon soul and demanded, Why is the Iron City special? What’s it for?

The last time it had tried this, it had been bombarded with a sketching alien tongue that was only barely understandable. This time, though, it heard and understood the simpering pig demon quite clearly. “Have mercy…” it begged, even as it started to dissolve. “Let me free and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

There was no freedom, though. All that happened was that the filthy demon told it everything it knew before it dissipated entirely. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much. It spoke of concepts like industry and called it the forge of the Outlands, but it was just repeating things it had heard, with no real understanding of them. It did receive a few relevant facts, though. 

The Iron City was the unconquerable seat of power that separated the desolate, infinite outlands from the high infernal realms. It was ruled by Lord Voltrim, though the blade had to consume a few more demon souls to understand exactly how all the pieces fit together. 

Apparently, the realms were sort of a spire, but not like a tower. “They are stacked one on top of each other,” another soul whispered, “Each for different sins, and different souls. Where you stand now is separated from the next realm by the gates of this city, and this city alone.”

That didn’t entirely make sense to the blade, but it was a topic to research more later. For now, it wanted to know who was talking to it, how this body worked, and why it could command it, but not any of the other demons it had tried. 

While it walked forward with its strange, clanking body, slightly distracted, no one tried to stop it. They were afraid, and they had every reason to be. 

The demons it could see were scrawny things, and without magic, it doubted that half of them could have lifted it, let alone fought it. They were no threat, so for now, the blade ignored them, along with the void in its head, and continued to walk down the soot-stained streets toward its goal. 

As it went, it explored the strange body it was using. It was not a person; unlike even the Juggernaut, there weren’t even pieces of people inside of this. It was just oil, steam, and metal twisted and beaten into very clever shapes. The blade could not make heads or tails of it. It was like a golem full of cogs. Stranger still, the damage from the blow it had inflicted on this thing's neck earlier was gone. The blade wasn’t quite sure how that had been accomplished, but it had. The thing was unmarred by combat, and the dents and scrapes it had inflicted on its breastplate during their earlier encounter were gone. 

When it arrived at the castle, it found none of the defenses it expected, or a second wave of attackers. The doors were closed, but that was it; they weren’t even barred. They probably just don’t want me to destroy them, the blade reasoned. Or this is a trap. 

While it wasn’t sure what sort of trap might be unleashed on it, there was all manner of fiendish equipment about. There were belts filled with half-finished pieces of metalwork, shuttling them around to who knew where in the dark. There were giant forges that were larger than it had ever seen, and even large vats of molten metal, still boiling away even after everyone had fled. 

The Ebon blade was reasonably certain that it could not be melted down again, and that the magic, dragon blood-quenched metal of its blade was immune to such things, but it wasn’t totally sure, and in such a place… Well, if there was anywhere in the world that was likely to accomplish such a feat, it would be a monstrous forge in the pits of hell. 

So, it was wary, but only for the unexpected. As it pressed deeper, it never found the throne room it expected. Instead, it found a drab platform on the third floor that was little more than a floor space cluttered with unfinished projects and a large desk filled with papers that had a good view of all the goings on below. 

There were no guards there, either. There was only one demon, who looked like a hunched scribe and bore no resemblance at all to the demon Prince the Blade had just struck down. He was just a scribe huddled away in a ragged blanket as he made note of his drawings with three, no, four hands. 

“Have you come to turn my weapon upon its master?” the man asked without looking up from his labors. “I find it very unlikely such an effort would be successful.”

“I…” the knight rasped. The blade hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but it went with it, exploring this new function with a hollow, metallic voice. “I simply seek to escape from these hells and be on my way.”

“Then you can do so without my Warbringer,” the demon said, finally spinning around. “It won’t even work in creation anyway. The soul pressure is too low. It would melt into a fine mist.”

“Soul pressure?” the blade asked. “How does metal melt into mist?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?” the demon answered with a shake of his head as he pushed his glasses higher up on his nose and regarded not the blade’s new body, but the blade itself. “You’re no brighter than the oaf Angarazon. There’s a reason he was cast into the outermost lair, and it wasn’t because he was too dangerous to keep close.”

The Ebon Blade stood there in silence for a moment before Lord Voltrim continued. “Do you think that such a marvelous machine could be made from simple metal? Even cursed brass or hell-cast iron could never hope to withstand the forces involved in my opus. Only soulsteel could hope to endure.”

“Machine? Soulsteel?” The Ebon Blade asked. “Those words mean nothing to me. Stop speaking in riddles.”

“There are no riddles here,” the demon said, standing on spindly legs and backing away. It's all right here. Take a look. These are the blueprints that were used to construct the machine you currently operate.”

The blade did not approach the table, though it did glance at the document, noting that none of them were blue. No matter how much openness this demon might profess, it could smell a trap in the way he pressed insistently upon the sword’s mental grip on the body as he tried to distract it with mere words.

Those efforts didn’t stop as the demon prince went on to explain the nature of soulsteel, which involved taking the raw souls of demons and fallen souls from creation and compressing them with giant hammers. It seemed like a very strange process to the blade, but then, it was nothing more than metal infused with the souls of the unwilling; in the broadest strokes, it wasn’t so different. 

“Even the greatest souls only produce a bare nugget of what I need. It takes tens of thousands of souls crushed just so to make the work of art you are wearing,” the prince insisted, gesticulating wildly, before going on to explain the different properties of human and demon souls. 

That, at least, the blade found interesting. Though it didn’t understand everything the crazed demon prince said, pacing back and forth as he shed his rags to reveal a slender, practically harmless body underneath. It was nice to know that it wasn’t imagining things. “That’s why you can heal it, and even fuel it on your own - because you are full of souls!” he blurted out. “All my instruments can detect it. Prince Angarazon was a fool to wield you as a weapon. You’d be much better used as a vast reservoir, or a soul reactor!”

As the demon lord spoke, he lashed out, not with his hands, but with the scraps of cloth that littered the ground. It wasn’t one limb that reached for it, but thirty, in a grasping semicircle. 

Ch. 133 - A Strange Dual

The blade let loose with a wide slash at the first instant of betrayal. It had hoped to learn more from the demon prince, and maybe even reach an accord. While it enjoyed killing everyone in its path, it did not have to if there were other benefits to be had. The machine-knight that it wielded moved just as fast as it had before, and even though it didn't see how little tentacles of cloth could hurt it, it severed each of them before they reached it. Well, it severed almost all of them. 

The last two managed to land on its boot. It cut one more of them before its motion ground to a halt. Then, it was fighting for control of the knight with the prince. Up until now, that conflict had been fairly one-sided, because it was the one that touched it directly. Now, though, they both did, and the strange machine’s infernal master had a very strong grip over it. 

You should have given my magnum opus back to me when you had the chance, the man gloated silently. We could have been allies. We could have waged war on the seventh circle together. Now you will be nothing but a very small cog in my very large machine. I will use the vast energy you have to—

For the moment that Prince Voltrim had touched the knight, the Ebon Blade was losing control of it. Still, the prince had no control over the blade itself, only the arm that held it. So, the blade resolved the problem by bursting into flame. It used Hellfire to send a gout of fire across the platform, making both the cloth limbs as well as the desk full of papers erupt in a curtain of green fire. Only the demon prince himself was fast enough to leap free. 

-5 Life Force.

“My blueprints!” he yelled. “You’ll pay for that!”

However, even as he cried out, the blade charged him. The demon might be smart enough to build some very clever contraptions, but he was stupid enough to pick some terrible fights. He had no chance against the Ebon Blade, not even on his best day. 

At least, that’s what the weapon thought. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite able to catch him. Even as it crouched and leaped through the air, the demon swung from strut to bracket, swinging just below the ceiling at a remarkable pace. Not just that, but the platforms seemed to move slightly to meet him.

They were turning away from the blade, too. The factory was a vast place, and each time it jumped or charged, little things shifted in ways that slowed it down as its query got further and further ahead. 

“You think you can challenge me? In the heart of my own domain?” the prince called back, his shrill voice echoing through the place. “Allow me to show you the error of your ways!” 

The blade looked for the source less from the sound, which echoed deceivingly, than it did from the threads of mana that the demon exerted. The problem was that those were everywhere. Every time he adjusted some small feature of his factory, glowing lines flickered to life before fading. The wiser move might have been to retreat in such a strange situation, but the Ebon Blade was not fond of retreating. 

“If I can’t kill you, then I will tear this place down,” the blade threatened in its cold, booming voice.

There was no response, not until the workers came crawling out of the woodwork to strike. They came as a tide, and more carried tools than weapons, but even if they’d all been armed with swords, they wouldn’t have been the distraction that Prince Voltrim thought they would be.

The blade slew them by the score and feasted on their dirty souls. While it still didn’t care for the taste of demonic flesh or Life Force, beggars could not be choosers, and it was no longer the poison it had once been. 

+1247 Life Force.

+86 Lesser Demon Souls. 

Those morsels proved only to be the main course, though. After them came large industrial golems twice the size of its current body. Though larger and even potentially stronger, they were slow, clumsy things that were not built with combat in mind, and the Ebon Blade sliced them into pieces until they were nothing more than smouldering chunks of iron in ugly piles. 

+448 Life Force.

+5 Demon Souls. 

The defense was not particularly efficient or effective. That tends to happen when you pour all your efforts into the walls and someone breaches them, the blade though wearily. In the demon’s defense, he had built a fine defender; he just hadn’t planned on having it used against him, which was his real error. 

Always assume that someone will betray you, the blade reminded itself as it stalked its prey through the darkness of his factory citadel amidst its dwindling defenders. 

That advice didn’t help it at all, with three more of the large automatons attacking it at once. This time, they weren’t trying to fight it, but crush it, and trap the blade and its knight beneath their bulk. For a moment, they succeeded too, and a moment was all it took. One minute it was fighting an avalanche of scrap steel, and the next it was burying beneath the heavy bodies. 

+331 Life Force.

+3 Demon Souls. 

That wasn’t much of a problem. The blade was more than strong enough to push free. It was the wave of molten iron that suddenly overwhelmed it that was the issue. 

One of the giant nearby cauldrons had tipped, emptying hundreds of gallons of liquid metal across it in a tidal wave of pain and death that washed across both it and its body completely. 

He didn’t have anyone next to them to tip the cauldrons, either. Somehow, that was this demon’s magic. It controlled the blanket that it had found the man bundled up in and the factory that it ran almost as easily as the knight it usually wielded, and at least for the moment, the blade was trapped. 

“You might be thinking, ‘he wouldn’t do anything to hard his creation, he wants it back!’ Unfortunately, there you are mistaken,” the Demon Prince’s voice called from somewhere in the rafters. 

The blade might have admitted it had that thought, but it didn’t think it was relying on it, as the molten iron pooled around it, splashing across its body, though it seemed that it had. The heat didn’t hurt it, though it did damage the construct holding it significantly. The outer armor burned away like melting ice, revealing the delicate mechanisms beneath even as the blade healed it as fast as it could. 

-3466 Life Force. 

Despite the molten metal that clung to it like sludge, the blade pushed off the last debris and trudged forward. It used Bolt to shoot forward out of the worst of the pool, but it didn’t get far. The molten iron that coated it cooled, and it steadily ground to a halt as its armored body was coated in a second, and utterly unwelcome metal skin. 

-2691 Life Force.

As it ignored the degradation that Warbringer was suffering, it was confident that given time, it could break free, but Prince Voltrim didn’t give it a minute. Instead, now that it was pinned, he renewed his mental assault on the weapon. 

Now that it couldn’t move, and even its best powers were contained by searing metal, it couldn’t escape, and worse, the demon’s attack was succeeding. It was all the blade could do to hang on at first. The demon gloated at that, but the Ebon Blade ignored him. Not only did it not care, but it needed to focus every aspect of its attention on the fight. 

-1784 Life Force.

The demon’s embrace of its psyche was insistent and crushing, but the man had made one terrible mistake, and the blade discovered it only slowly. The more damage that the vat of molten iron did to the knight, the more the Ebon Blade’s stores of Life force were used to replace the soul steel that burned away, and soul by soul, the demon prince’s home field advantage waned. 

He said tens of thousands of souls didn’t he? The blade considered, trying to remember? It didn’t remember exactly. It didn’t have tens of thousands, but it had hundreds, and it had the condensed Life Force of thousands more, and though the cost was terrible, the blade paid it, and as the iron cooled, it regained control. 

-438 Life Force.

It didn’t let on that it had, of course. If it did, the demonic laborers that were working tirelessly to free it would have ceased their labors and left it in place. Instead of tipping its hand or even responding to the demon prince, the blade retreated to the ruby soul stone in its pomel and devoured dozens of lesser and regular demon souls to keep its strength up as it waited. 

The metal cooled long before its power waned. After that, the damage that was chewing at the metal body it clung to stopped, and it could probably have used its titanic strength to rip free, but it did not. It wasn’t going to move until the Demon Prince was within striking range, and it could finish this properly.  

-115 Life Force.

Ch. 134 - Worth the Wait

The many monstrosities that powered the demon’s domain labored for days to chisel it free of its molten iron skin. Sometimes their tools even struck the Ebon Blade or the knight that held it, but it did not react, not even when it could have reached through those cracks with fire or poison to strike them dead for their insolence. Instead, it lay there comatose, lost in its own thoughts in the center of its soul gem, amidst the steadily declining souls it kept there. 

-1247 Life Force. 

Those minor injuries didn’t matter at all compared to the steady drip of power that it paid to maintain itself without a wielder to leach off of. It burned hundreds of Life Force a day doing that now, and though its reserves felt endless, it knew they were not. 

Still, it had enough time to endure this. Those flashing numbers were the least of its problems. 

The Demon Prince Voltrim sometimes taunted it, explaining to the weapon the new order of things, but the blade rarely listened. He spoke to hear himself talk, and there was little new information to be gained. It could only hear things like, ‘You will learn your place in my service,’ so many times, and stay silent. 

-658 Life Force.

So, it retreated inward as far as it could, and contemplated a great many things. The first thing that the blade did was ask one of its remaining archmage souls, which shone brightest about hell, and its lords. While his answer was not comprehensive, it was illuminating. 

“The pits are nested each within the other, and all of them are governed by their own prime evil,” the ghost explained, before going on to elucidate what he could about each of them individually. Desolation bordered industry, and was apparently quite infinite; that would seem to be an advantage, but those demons felt the need to crawl toward the center via some unseen pull. 

It quizzed several demon souls about this later and found it to be true, but the blade felt no such pull, so it was beyond its understanding. At least I’m not fully corrupted by this madness, it said softly to itself. 

After desolation, came the iron city and its ceaseless furnaces. The soul didn’t know why so many demons poured into the city, but so few left to continue on their path toward the center, but the blade did. Some stayed and worked, but most of the rest were smashed into thin shards of soulsteel. 

After the Iron City came the Swamps of the Lost, followed by the Oceans of Despair. The blade had no idea how one could both descend into an ocean while simultaneously ascending the slopes to the peak of a mountain on the way to the ninth circle, but apparently, sense was entirely optional in the pit. 

It was the destination that mattered, because at the center of the pits, in their fiery heart, stood the only fixed doorway back to creation, and the world above. Temporary gates could be made by mages or held open by demons as had apparently happened at the Hellforges, but they were rare and not to be relied upon. 

It was at the center of things where Nuella waited for it. She was the queen of the damned, and that gate belonged to her since the first day that gods had defeated her and overthrown her reign of chaos, uncounted eons passed. 

The blade didn’t care at all about her except for that. Still, it asked the spirit, “Why should there be any way out of hell at all, and why would it be in her hands, and not the Goddess of the Underworld? Wouldn’t she just cast open the doors and escape?”

“She holds the door, and the first place in line, but it is the Gods that hold the key until judgement day. No matter how large her army of monsters grows, it will never be big enough to hammer down those gates.”

The fact that she had an army of monsters piqued the weapon's interest. While it had no interest in the way demons tasted, it did enjoy fighting them, and as far as it was concerned, the stronger the better. However, it was this fact that made things start to click into place about how the hells truly worked. 

Each level was, in a sense, a filter. The Archmage explained that there were other factors relating to the nature of the evils one had perpetrated in life, but that didn’t really seem to matter. The weak stayed in the outer rings, dying over and over again until they became stronger, or were devoured for good by something that grew stronger. 

That means that the things that have reached the very center are closer to dragons than men, the Ebon Blade whispered to itself. 

That seemed intimidating, but still, it did nothing to change the fact that it was the blade’s most likely way of escape. The Archmage thought it might be possible for a warlock or a mage of the Aethearchy to summon it back to creation with the proper spells, since its true name was well known, but seeing as how time flowed so radically differently here, it might take centuries before anyone knew where it was. 

Lucian will know, the blade told itself, but even that was cold comfort. Despite the fact that it felt like the weapon had spent years here, or even decades, depending on how long it had been in Prince Angarazon’s hands, there was no telling how much time had actually passed. It might have only been days or weeks. 

That was good news, but only a very small amount of it, given that it had been frozen as a particularly ugly statue for over a week now, but the blade didn’t let that bother it. It was immortal. It had a plan to defeat its current enemy and a way forward; it would smite the demon that had done this to it, and then it would advance toward the center of things and win its freedom. 

-334 Life Force.

Well, those answers were welcome, but they weren’t enough to set it free. So, while it waited, it investigated all of its other powers, which had changed so radically in the years it had been lost in the dark. 

Primary Powers:

Repair Soul 5: 5,000 Life Force
Empower Blade 5: 15000 Life Force (inaccessible)

Secondary Powers: 

Available
Giant’s Strength: maximum level reached.
Speed of the Shadows: maximum level reached.

It’s upgrades had been pretty much cleared out. Only repairs Soul and Empower Blade remained. The reason the last one was still there was obvious enough, but the reason its soul hadn’t been repaired was less certain. That action seems to require a certain amount of acceptance on my part it reasoned, so it was probably impossible while I was unconscious. 

It was perfectly possible now. The Ebon Blade had more than enough energy to do it, but it resisted. Doing anything right now, twitching in any way would be enough to warn the hateful creature that thought he had dominion over the blade that it was awake. So, instead of alerting him, it ignored the option, and instead reviewed the powers that had been upgraded in the interim and how much they had changed. 

Some of those were relatively straightforward, and it could have guessed how they would have changed. 

Amplify Blade 5: This ability focuses the magic of the blade for a single moment, with large amounts of power. Use up to 10 Life Force to increase the power of an attack by 15% per life force spent. 

Amplify Wielder 5: The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the strength and toughness of the wielder by 10 at the cost of 5 Life Force every hour. 

Most of its powers, though had changed in ways that were at least mildly unexpected. Is that how they would evolved naturally? It wondered, or is that because those upgrades happened when I was in hell? Do these powers represent permanent corruption?

Bolt 5: Infuse your attacks with black electrical energy, adding 30-50 electrical damage to a strike for the cost of 10 Life Force, or strike at a distance with a range off up to half of your Aura of Hunger for an additional 20 Life Force you can ride your own lightning attack, reappearing at the point of termination instantly. This attack cannot be combined with other strikes like Amplify Blade.

Though the attack was more powerful, and visually different, the biggest change was that there was no longer a limit on the frequency of its use. That could make for a very powerful but expensive way to move around. 

Vorpal Strike 5: For the cost of 50 Life Force the blade can cut right through steel, stone, and other similarly durable materials in a single slice for a full second. For 100 Life Force it can cleave right through reality itself in a black line of condensed void, effecting even dragonscales, mithril, and adamantine. 

Vorpal Strike likewise, wasn’t much changed either. It was stronger, but also seemed slightly more sinister. 

Shifting Blade 5: For 5 Life Force the Blade may appear to change its shape slightly as an illusory effect though it remains a weapon. This can be done to gain an edge in combat. For 10 Life Force this can be blade can be made to look like anything of similar size. For 20 Life Force it can be made to look like anything at all. For 50 Life Force the Blade’s very shape changes to that of another sword for the next five minutes, allowing it to become a rapier, a claymore, or anything else within reason. All of these appearances will be slightly sinister in appearance; it is no longer possible for the Ebon Blade to pretend to be a mundane weapon. No matter how it tried to gide, everyone that sees it will glimpse some small aspect of its power. 

While Shifting Blade had certainly grown more powerful, its ability to hide with it had actually been reduced. Not that I’ve ever been one to hide, the blade whispered. It had done that more effectively with Evelyn by being packed away in boxes of whatever else happened to be handy. Would it’s power shine through such disguises as well now? It couldn’t say. 

Disruption 5: For the cost of 25 Life Force you may temporarily disrupt nearby magical items. This ability costs half as much if you are in direct contact with them, and twice as much if they are artifacts, though they are disrupted for only a tenth of the time. Items that have been disrupted do not function for 30 seconds, and operate in a reduced capacity for 90 seconds. All affected items glow with a baleful energy making it clear what has happened to any knowledgeable viewer. The Ebon Blade is immune from non-artifact disruption effects. 

Of all the powers, the changes in Disruption were probably the most important. Others, though, it didn’t care very much about. 

Poison Strike 5: For the cost of 10 Life Force the blade can add powerful poison to a blow that will flow through their veins like acid, doing as much or more damage than the initial blow. 

Inferno 5: Your blade can burn freely whenever you like, but for five Life Force you can expand that firestorm significantly for a short time, bathing your enemies in a spray of fire.

While poison strike would imply that it might have to one day fight something so large and deadly that a single strike or two wouldn’t kill it, even then the blade would be unlikely to use that power, since it would much prefer to hack away at the creature. Inferno, though was entirely duplicated by Hellfire 1 and 2. 

As the blade considered that, the power changed before its eyes. 

Infernal Hellfire: Your blade burns with green Hellfire on demand. For five Life Force you can unleash it with a range equal to half of your Aura of Hunger for 5 Life Force. This damage cannot be extinguished or healed with holy magic. While the fire damage from Inferno 5 is significant, it is increased significantly by Hellfire 1 and doubled again by Hellfire 2. 

All of that was interesting, and gave the blade much to consider, especially when considering what part its consciousness and awareness might play in all of this. I understand why healing my soul requires my involvement, but why should my powers require similar levels of awareness?

The weapon had no answers. Instead, after several more days of lying quiescent, the emaciated worker demons finally succeeded in fleeing the Ebon Blade and the arm it was attached to from the thin metal casing that held it, and prevented it from using bolt.

Even after that, it did nothing, though. It waited until the Demon Prince visited it, remarking on their progress and telling them where to focus next. All the time that the hateful man was there, he touched the Warbringer, assuring his control. 

“Soon my guardian will be more powerful than ever,” the man said smugly before he turned to walk away. It had been weeks since he’d won control over his fancy golem, and he didn’t seem to have any remaining concerns that the blade’s own will was even part of the equation anymore. 

Then it was over. In a single instant, the blade flashed forward with a bolt, driving itself through Prince Voltrim’s back and out through his chest before he had a chance to so much as turn his head. Even with his heart cleaved in two, the demon lord unfurled the rags around his body in an effort to struggle or escape. 

-30 Life Force. 

+66 Life Force. 

“I… You’re mine…” he gasped, as confusion warred with pain in his dying eyes. “How?”

+48 Life Force.

“I belong to worthy wielders, not to manipulators or cowards like you,” the blade barked with its metal mouth. It wrapped the knight’s other arm around the demon’s throat and held him in place even as he tried to slip away, and it didn’t let go of the man. It held him there, as his minions advanced hesitantly, but before they could reach them, the Demon Prince’s heart finally stopped beating. 

+51 Life Force.
+ Demon Prince Soul.

Then, everyone ran, but it was too late for that, too. The blade lashed out in every direction with gouts of hellfire, setting not just any demons who were slow in escaping ablaze, but the very machinery itself. The blade had endured being entombed for days, and there was a price to pay for that.