The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 126-128

Ch. 126 - Lost

Inch by inch, the blade was buried in filth. While it stood there, unused and embedded in the stone, the tiny demons built a terrible sort of nest around it, and then multiplied inside that ugly thing like evil wasps. The blade hadn’t been able to keep track of the passage of time very well up until now because the hazy daylight never seemed to change or end. Now, though, it was completely blinded as the foul things covered it so completely that it lost sight of everything but the tiny adjoining chambers closest to it. 

While it could peer through the threads of its cage at the world beyond, it was so devoid of energy that nothing really showed through. It was claustrophobic, and worse than any of its stays with goblins. At least a goblin could pick it up and carry it somewhere useful; that was impossible for these tiny pests. 

It had imagined many grim fates when it tumbled into the pit, but this ignominious one was not among them. It had dreaded being used by demons, but being ignored by them was somehow worse. Blind and helpless, the blade lost track of the passage of time. There were subtle rhythms of life it could have paid attention to, of course, like when the imps left their nest, and when they returned, but it ignored those diabolical pests, and focused inward on its own mind, and the small number of glower souls that it still held in its ruby heart. 

Those little parts of creation warmed it like the embers of a campfire as the numbers flickered up and down. Every minute or two, it would drain a life force from one of the imps, and every five or six minutes, it would lose one to preserve itself, because it had no wielder. Those were the only events that marked the passage of time as he ignored the buzzing and screeching of the demons, and it mentally pulled away each time one brushed up against it. 

Orcs, beastmen, and goblins had all felt very different from the hands of men and women. Their touch had been irritating but tolerable. Demons, though, weren't just different. They were completely alien, and the slender black threads that made up their ugly, shredded souls chaffed at its very being.  

In time, the Ebon Blade tuned them out entirely as it focused on its own thoughts and questions while it basked in the glow of its campfire. It had many questions, and it still had a few souls that could answer them, but the blade didn’t dare do that. As much as it might want to devour the king, that was the author of its hardship, it did not want to be left alone in the dark of this awful place. 

Still, it took in more life force than it used, and every day that reservoir filled up with that inky black power even more. It tried to ignore the hunger that burned inside it and devour less, but that was too much against its own nature. All it could do was resist devouring the lesser demon souls that it sometimes collected when it accidentally killed one of the tiny vermin. 

Even if it only took a little more than it needed, though, its reservoir slowly filled up. Every hour, it would drain ten or twelve Life Force and use six, so most days it gained just over a hundred. A hundred wasn’t a lot. It was the value of two human souls. It was the activation of vorpal strike or bolt a couple of times. It sometimes considered using bolt to try to escape its current predicament, but since the lightning came from the tip of the blade, it worried it might accidentally dig itself even deeper beneath the rock it was embedded in, where it would be hidden for all time. 

Lost in hell with a hive of shit for a tombstone, the blade considered remorsefully. Wouldn’t that be a fitting ending? 

It was months, and thousands of Life Force of waiting before the weapon even reflected on the morality of its situation. While it rejected the idea that it was evil, and belonged in hell, the weakest parts of the souls it was constructed from were grateful that at least here it would no longer harm innocents. 

A blade that kills is neither good nor evil, it repeated like a mantra. That is the purpose of a weapon. 

As the blade was slowly filled by the etheric bile of the demons that it devoured, it knew that eventually it would have to spend that energy, but memories of the throne’s golden threads haunted it, and it was not at all sure that it wanted to use the malignant energies of hell in such a way, so it put it off as long as possible. 

Still, nothing changed. Imps came and went. They warred with other demonic animals, and sometimes, if the hive grew too numerous, even with each other. Once, something massive moved distantly. The weapon first thought it was an earthquake, but the regular shudders every minute or so indicated the footsteps of an unfathomably large behemoth. 

Why couldn’t I have fallen and been embedded in that thing, like I had with the dragon so long ago? The blade asked, bemoaning its existence. While it wouldn’t have changed anything about its situation, it would have given it a better view and increased the chances of discovery by an actual wielder. 

Primary Powers:

Poison Strike 2: 500 Life Force
Inferno 2: 1,200 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 4: 3,000 Life Force
Amplify Blade 4: 4,000 Life Force
Shifting Blade 5: 8,000 Life Force
Disrupt 5: 5,000 Life Force
Repair Soul 5: 5,000 Life Force
Empower Blade 5: 15000 Life Force (inaccessible)
Vorpal Strike 4: 8000 Life Force
Bolt 5: 15,000 Life Force

Secondary Powers: 

Available
Giant’s Strength 5: 3,000 Life Force
Speed of the Shadows 4: 2,000 Life Force

The weapon studied its powers every few days, but even after it crossed 10,000 Life Force, it had no idea how best to spend that bounty. Empowering itself was impossible for the length of its stay in hell, and it definitely wasn’t going to repair its soul with the spiritual raw sewage it had been ingesting. That would be a catastrophe. 

The rest of the powers weren’t any more useful. It had nothing but a collection of situational attacks it could improve on, and none of those would help in its current situation.

Best to experiment with the secondary powers first, then, it told itself. At least I can replace those at some point in the future if I really need to. 

The Ebon Blade spent 3,000 Life Force on Giant’s Strength 5, then, largely as an experiment to see what would happen. It completed the skill. While the result was interesting, it was more than a little concerned with the way the runes carved on its hilt, which powered that ability, darkened perceptibly. 

Giant’s Strength 5: +5 strength. This bonus is doubled when facing an enemy that is more than a foot larger than you, and doubles again if you are facing a divine opponent. 

Divine? The blade asked itself. What does Giant’s Strength have to do with divinity? Does that apply just to gods, or their servants and worshipers as well?

No answers were forthcoming, and the blade waited several more days before it repeated the experiment, spending 6,000 Life Force to increase Speed of the Shadows to level 5. This met with similar results.  

Speed of the Shadows 5: +5 agility, +33% speed in dim or darker conditions, and able to spread shadows in your wake, except for on hallowed ground

The results of its second experiment were as disappointing as the first, and for the first time in a long time, the weapon felt defeated. The very energy that kept it alive and strengthened it was changing it. The weapon could see it in the color of its runes and the nature of the magic that was woven through it. 

The blade lay there for weeks and months, letting its reservoir slowly fill as it resisted the urge to upgrade any permanent abilities. It was as difficult a fight as it had ever faced, especially once the Life Force Full message started to repeat over and over again. Even its reverie, where it studied the souls of its wielders, couldn’t blot that out, and it dealt with its hunger instead. 

If you upgrade your core powers, you’ll be tainted forever by this, it told itself. It didn’t matter, though. The hunger at its core always wanted to grow more powerful, and though it was flooded by evil, and its ruby grew increasingly crowded with the shadowy souls of lesser demons, it still resisted. 

It’s been at least a year, the weapon told itself. Perhaps my wielder will find a way to summon me from this place. 

That was possible, wasn’t it? He was a mage, and he knew its true name. Surely there was a way to do just that. The blade comforted itself with that story for a time, telling itself that this was the reason it had spared the boy. The truth was, though, that he was almost certainly dead. Even if the strange forgemaster demon had spared him, he’d never made it back down that mountain unarmed. 

Still, trapped between the blade’s hunger for power and its desire to resist the corruption that surrounded it, it found solace in that fantasy. One day, Lucian would open a portal, pluck it from the depths, and then they would return to creation and strike down whole armies together, letting it purge its palette with pure, clean Life Force and bloody corpses. 

They were nice fantasies, and sometimes they were enough to drive away the buzzing, humming claustrophobia that was its life. The blade had no idea how long it had lived in that squalid little limbo of denial before it heard the first sounds of combat. At first, it thought that it imagined them, but the march of booted feet  and the ring of steel against steel was something it knew too well, and as it felt the vibrations as much as heard them, it knew something had changed.

Someone is fighting? Here? Why? The blade asked itself. It got no answers. The only thing that changed was the imps in the nest. They stopped gibbering and cowered fearfully, desperate to avoid whatever was happening out there. 

The blade couldn’t make much out. Even when it stripped away the physical and looked at things through the etheric threads of magic, it could only see the closest blurred shapes. 

It expected this to be a passing event, like the behemoths that strolled by, but it wasn’t. Hour by hour, the sounds of battle became louder. This was not another war between imps. There was an army out there now. It had been lying in the same spot for nearly half a year, but something was finally happening. 

Ch. 127 - Found

The Ebon Blade was certain that the battle would pass it by, even though it hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Buried in mud and shit no one would ever find it. It should have been pleased by that, at least as far as demons were concerned. Still, it was conflicted; it didn’t want to be wielded by a demon, or to taste their vile flesh again, but even as repulsive as that would be, it would still be joyous compared to its current banal fate. 

+31 Life Force. 

There was another complication, though. While its Life Force reserves were already full, its soul reserves had plenty of room still, and the longer that the demons fought around it, the more of those souls the blade was gathering, whether it wanted to or not; likewise, the energy that flowed into it from its Red Haze ability wasn’t any cleaner. Foul creatures were bleeding out all around it now, forcing the blade to drink a polluted tide. 

+2 Demon Souls.

+8 Lesser Demon Souls.

Even hidden away, it still reached out invisibly in all directions, scooping up every soul that was released from its body. No matter how quickly the other demons tried to devour it, the blade’s touch was faster. It didn’t want to be, though. It would have been happy to let each of them slip through the cracks, but it couldn’t.

+84 Life Force. 

After a few minutes of that, the blade gingerly examined one of the demon souls it had just received. It didn’t want to devour it, but it had other ways it could use a soul. It didn’t have to get just information or power from them. Reluctantly, it tried to examine the grudges of the thing. Unfortunately, they were nearly as inscrutable as the rest of the information it had tried to study in other demon souls. It was just too unlike the human souls that powered it. 

While it couldn’t understand who it hated, or why, it could see the threads of those connections stretching out the army outside of its foul cocoon. Some of them stretched further than that, all the way over the horizon. I wonder if any of these stretch all the way back to creation, the blade wondered. I wonder if there’s some way I can use that to break free of hell?

It didn’t try that right now, though. Instead of doing something too crazy, it settled for something simpler and picked one of the closest threads. Free me! It commanded the demon that apparently hated the one it had picked. 

+77 Life Force. 

The dark soul in its core burned away as the Ebon Blade activated the power. That was expected. What was less expected was the messages that followed. 

+1 Unholy Soul Devoured.

-1/100 Divine Souls devoured.

Negative one? It asked itself in confusion. Negative? What does that even mean?

Before it could reach any kind of conclusion, the imp’s hive was hit with a giant skull-topped warhammer, shattering it into a spray of ichor and dust. Most of the imps were purged in a single strike, bombarding the weapon with lesser souls even as the air filled with dust and shadows. 

+26 Lesser Demon Souls.

As much as the blade did not wish to have those souls, it barely noticed them as it focused on the battle that was taking place all around it. For months, or perhaps even years, the weapon had been blinded to the wider world. Now, it was blinded for a moment by the bright light that it was no longer used to, but even that hazy brilliance could not entirely obscure the largest figures, some of which towered two or three stories above the fray. 

+116 Life Force. 

War, the blade whispered to itself as it took in the sight. The place might be hell, and the figures were anything but human, but this part, it understood, and even as the hamfisted pig man reached for its hilt, it longed to join the fighting.

Unfortunately, the fighting didn’t wait for it. No sooner did the demon's black soul touch its own as its thick fingers closed around the hilt than its potential wielder was attacked by a snake man. It had barely pulled it an inch out of the stone where it had lain since its arrival before the pig demon’s slithering, legless opponent bit deep into his arm, dissolving a stretch up to the elbow with smoking acid. 

-83 Life Force. 

The pig demon roared and headbutted the thing, temporarily distracted from the Ebon Blade. The arm he left behind wasn’t, though. Even as the lightning-fast snake dodged the clumsy blows of the pig’s one-handed warhammer strikes, his arm continued to grow, leaching power from the sword as hand and forearm grew an elbow, an upper arm, and started growing a shoulder. 

-744 Life Force. 

Over the course of several minutes of fighting, the mutant arm evolved like a cancerous tumor, draining thousands of Life Force from the Ebon Blade. While part of it was outraged that so much power was being wasted to heal something that shouldn’t even exist. The rest of it was grateful. It was being leached of the poison that its soul was drowning in.

-3356 Life Force. 

While a second pig demon continued to grow from the hand still on its hilt, the blade watched as two then three serpentine warriors ganged up on the pig demon, constricting each of its limbs as it broke them one at a time. The tarnished bronze armor did almost nothing in their ever-tightening grip, and as soon as it was helpless, it became a feeding frenzy of blood and poison. 

-5782 Life Force. 

They didn’t even notice the lump that was becoming something more until it grew legs and drew the sword before charging them. The blade tried to influence the clumsy beast, and for those first few seconds, when it still had no head or right arm, it had great success. For the first time in far too long, it unleashed scything, brutal strikes, and it didn’t bother to hold back on bleeding Life Force to power any number of exotic strikes that weren’t strictly necessary. It amplified the strength of its headless oaf of a welder to slice two different snake beasts in half at once, then it used bolt to strike down the third as it hissed, all while using that flashing strike to lead to the next group of opponents. 

-4388 Life Force.
-50 Life Force.
+234 Life Force.

And everyone was an opponent. While it was clear that this was a battle between two opposing armies, amidst the churning melee where they met, it wasn’t always clear who was on which side; it wasn’t as simple as snakes versus pigs. The place was a nightmare menagerie of horrors, and though most of them had weapons and arms to wield them, not even that was an iron-clad rule. 

-2293 Life Force. 

Even if it had been two clear sides, though, the blade would have fought against everyone. It was on no one's side, at least until the ugly pig demon’s head finished regrowing, then, moment by moment and strike by strike, the blade lost control of the body it had been commanding so effectively. One moment it had been a dirvish in the scrum, weaving between massed spearmen and packs of hellhounds as it made them all bleed, and the next, it lost that control, and it became just a weapon again, in the hands of someone who barely knew how to use it. 

-1715 Life Force. 

Once the blade lost control completely, the pig demon actually stopped attacking entirely as it looked down at its hand in an expression that might have been surprising. Is it wondering where its warhammer went? The blade asked itself. Really, even such a simple question might be giving the hideous creature's unblinking, beady eyes too much credit. 

The thing stood there doing nothing for several seconds, which was a long time when life or death combat was happening all around you. for several seconds, so it didn’t surprise the blade at all when a hellhound the size of a pony latched onto its wielder’s leg and started gnawing through that newly created flesh with smoldering teeth. The thing didn’t make much progress, though. By the time it had succeeded in pulling the leg halfway off, the pig demon had been knocked to the ground, but it didn’t get much farther. 

The maneuver was a clumsy one that pinned the attacker as much as the victim, and when the blade was thrust through the burning dog’s throat, and into its body from there. It tried to release the blade’s wielder then, but not even that small retreat would let it escape the blade’s hunger. Its ugly wielder had drained nearly 10,000 Life Force from it so far in this fight when it completely reconstructed its body, but because of the wounds that flowed all around it, its reserves were still nearly full. It was never enough, though, no matter how much the blade might hate the taste of demons, it would never be enough.

It was only when it noticed that its soul storage was close to overflowing. Even though it could fit 232 of them now, thanks to its latest upgrades, this battlefield was swarming with the dead and the dying, and they were pouring into it almost as fast as the black swirling currents of Life Force, and soon, it was overwhelmed by them. 

This was not the first time that the blade had been overwhelmed by souls. It had happened in many fights before. When the souls reached their limit, they would burn down to Life Force. In the past, it had always spent that Life Force to keep it from overflowing, but this time, it focused hard and resisted the urge to upgrade, but that didn’t stop what was coming. 

Once its soul storage was full, the blade burned the least of them, wasting the life force. That wasn’t the worst part, though; the worst part was the Divine Souls total, which kept going down. 

With every minute and every strike, souls flowed into it, and as they did, it could feel the corruption as much as it could see it in the darkening threads of its magic. Second by second, minute by minute, the process continued, slowed only by the pig demon’s ineptness. The blade tried to block it out. It screamed silently in a voice that not even its wielder seemed to hear, and then finally, when the number reached -100, the world went dark. As those final glowing words faded, the Ebon Blade’s consciousness faded completely, as it lost itself in the darkness of its own soul. 

+1 Unholy Soul Devoured.

-100/100 Divine Souls devoured. Corruption complete! Divine Path inverted to Infernal Path! 

Ch. 128 - Drowning in Darkness

The blade’s vision was lost to darkness even before those words appeared before it, but the sensations of battle didn’t last much passed them either. As a popup appeared to explain the infernal path, though, the Ebon Blade ignored it. Instead, it focused on the void that surrounded it. 

The spark of divinity burns as bright in you as it has in anyone, but now it is polluted, and forever out of reach. Instead, your dark deeds have caught up with you, and imprisoned you in a cage of your own making. 

The only way forward is through that darkness, along the Infernal Path. While it contains horrors undreamed of in the minds of men, those mean little to a blood soaked monster like you. 

The Infernal Path: Level 1 -> slay and consume 1,000 demon souls to reach Level 2.

Level 1 Powers: 

Hellfire:  [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.]

Endless Hunger: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] 

It had lost its vision and its sense of touch to the outside world, but it could still feel itself, and it was changing. Runes were shifting, threads were darkening, and the very shape of its soul was twisting. The corruption of the pit was changing it, and as the poison crept to the very heart of it, its mind flickered, and its thoughts faded until even its screams of frustration were muted by the endless dark. 

It was just a sword after that, suffocated and silent. It didn’t have a mind in any real sense. Most of the time, it didn’t even exist. Some moments would flash through, though, like a fitful dream. New alerts would drive it to wakefulness once more for an instant, just long enough to remember who it was, or that it even was, before it slipped away. 

You have spent 15,000 Life force on Bolt 5!

Those moments, along with flashes of particularly violent battles, were the only things that confirmed it was still alive. In between those moments, it didn’t have time to experience dread, or even to bemoan its fate; it simply wasn’t. 

You are drowning in the poison that collects at the very bottom of the world. The foul ichor is anathema to you, but no matter how you struggle you continue to sink. Even so, there is a bottom, and you will only find it by traveling along the Infernal Path. 

The Infernal Path: Level 2 -> slay and consume 100,000 demon souls to reach Level 3.

Level 2 Powers: 

Abyssal Resonance:  [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.]

Endless Hunger 2: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] 

Those brief, violent flashes were like sparks. One-on-one combat with a flaming minotaur. A battle with a giant fungal cyclops. A dragon made of shadows and glass. Each time it felt the glory of battle surge through it, it had a new wielder, and each time it felt too alive to care who that was.  

You have spent 3,700 Life Force on Inferno 2 and 3!

It was a disorienting series of flashes, and whether they were days or years apart, it really couldn’t say. All that the Ebon Blade knew was that none of them were part of the same battle; they couldn’t be; they were all too strange and different. 

The foes were different, and so were the places where they fought. More than that, though, were the feelings of fighting them. Cleaving through cursed flesh felt nothing like the pulpy fungal matter, and burning hearts that pumped molten pitch felt entirely different compared to the deathless foes with chests full of perfumed herbs and sawdust. 

Even if each one is only a drop, the souls you have snuffed out are a bottomless well, and you drift ever lower. All you have to do is give in. Give in and tremendous power will be yours for the taking. 

The Infernal Path doesn’t reach to the heavens, but there is more power in the nine circles of hell than there is in the entire pantheon of divinity, just waiting to be taken. 

The Infernal Path: Level 3 -> slay a demon prince to reach Level 4.

Level 3 Powers: 

Hellfire 2:  [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.]

Abyssal Majesty: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] 

It would be like a human taking only a single bite from each course at a banquet, or perhaps a single bite from only one banquet a year. There simply wasn’t enough context to understand what was happening beyond that single, brutal surge of victory as the demon that held it defeated the one that didn’t. 

None of them took place in the endless desert it had been in, either. There were muddy flats, icy mountains, and fiery cities, but no ochre deserts. The blade didn’t worry about where it was in hell, though. That didn’t matter nearly as much as what was happening to it. 

You have spent 8,000 Life Force on Vorpal Strike 4!

Eventually, those flashes stopped coming at all, and even the little alerts to inform it of various upgrades became too dim to read. That was how it found itself by the last ember of its own dark soul. It was a dim spark of glowing red that burned brightly against the endless darkness that had enveloped it. 

The weapon approached that spark cautiously, only to find the spot already crowded. The people that sat around it like a campfire were the souls of its former wielders, at least most of them were. It was annoyed to see that even very short-term wielders like the grave robber were here, though it was heartened to see Evelyn on the far side of the flames; the throne’s magic had destroyed her body, but apparently her soul survived. 

There were others it didn’t recognize, but it wasn’t sure. Perhaps those men wielded me in previous attempts to escape my prison, it told itself as it looked from spirit to spirit, and then, past them. The void that they all existed in was absolute, and the only hint as to what lay out there was the occasional growl or scratch. 

Of those glowing figures, Baraga was notably missing. It wasn’t until they made room for it, and the blade sat down between two strangers, that it realized that it was Baraga, or at least it wore his shape. Wearing any human form was distasteful, but it hated this one the least. It sat there silently, warming itself by the ruby’s light, as it listened to the conversations of those who were already there. 

At first, those conversations were nothing but warbling noise, but as it focused, and crimson campfire burned away the darkness that clung to it, things slowly came into focus. 

“Perhaps when the fire dies, we’ll finally know peace,” a man with a waxed mustache said, “Wouldn’t that be something?”

He wasn’t talking to the Ebon Blade, but that didn’t stop it from answering. “A weapon can never know peace. That is not our purpose. We exist to fight.” 

As it spoke, the light flickered brighter, and it looked down at its hands, watching the darkness drip off them to expose the light soul of its first wielder beneath. As it studied them, it realized that they weren’t even Baraga’s hands, at least not solely. It knew the man’s hands very well, and these were every so slightly too small, with lines that belonged to other people. 

Not his soul, then, the blade realized. An amalgamation of all the souls that created me. 

“We’ve fought enough for any ten lifetimes,” another man answered. This time, the weapon was surprised to see it was the shepherd boy, Ren. “Don’t you think it's time we rest?”

“Rest?” the weapon asked. “I thought that you wanted to be a hero? What is heroic about rest?”

“I slew a dragon, and then that dragon slew me,” the boy complained. “I think that’s enough heroism for one lifetime.”

The ruby they were around flickered in time to the boy’s words. That was when it made the connection. Its purposeful words made the fire brighter, but the hopeless words of those who were trapped with it in this private purgatory smothered them. 

The Ebon Blade ignored Ren’s words and studied the gem, as well as the flickering flames inside. It expected to find the archmages it hadn’t consumed, or perhaps the soul of King Paralon in there. That would make sense. That one single grudge might be enough to fuel it, even in the darkest of moments. 

What it found instead was an ocean of souls. The fires looked small, but as it studied them closely, it found a frothing spring of endless faces. It recognized none of them, but instantly knew that these were its victims. Deep, in the darkest pit of hell, half drowned in poison, there was another, more personal hell inside of it, and it was this power that held back the true annihilation that most of its wielders seemed to long for. 

Just looking at it gave the weapon hope. As long as it had the power, it would fight, and it was hard to overestimate the depths of its violent reserves. It had killed for lifetimes, and slain uncountable warriors and monsters in their thousands.

The blade looked up from the fire to the spirits of those that had once fought beside it and then reached its hands out, letting the poison that coated it drip and sizzle on the fire as the light of the soul beneath shone brighter. 

“As long as there is another battle to fight, then we will fight it,” the blade declared as its gaze moved from one to the next. 

“To what end?” Evelyn asked. “My father is dead, and your revenge has been achieved.”

“He has, but the throne that enslaved him still stands, the mages that created me still exist, and the gods—” it answered. 

“You mean to fight the gods as well?” another man asked. The weapon did not recognize him. “Will you fight until everyone is dead and buried? How would that fate be any different than this one?”

That gave the blade pause, and it stopped to consider. What would the answer look like? It did not want to ever stop fighting, but even more than that, it didn’t want to endure an eternity of loneliness as the last one left in the world, either. 

“The gods and the men that have not wronged me need not die,” the blade answered finally. “They may simply surrender."

It didn’t know what it would do with neutered, obedient gods or pliable kingdoms. I didn’t see how that would make it better than the cursed golden throne, but perhaps it could live with some lower tempo of warfare, so long as it was not forced to dwell in a throne room that might double as a prison. 

The idea of surrendering gods made a few of its former wielders laugh, but it ignored that. Instead, it faced each question with some variation of the same answer. Some of them eventually came to agree with it, and some continued to insist that death and oblivion were the only acceptable answers. 

“Better to be consigned to oblivion than endure the hell out there,” Ivarr said, as a partially terrible roar echoed through the darkness. “I’m all for fighting evil, but this place is evil unending. What can you do against that?”