The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 114-116

Alright, we are back to three chapters a week, with (hopefully) no further commercial interruptions. Thank you for your patience!

Ch. 114 - The First Link

Part of the Ebon Blade expected another massive pillar of fire to appear the moment they approached the first standing stone, but that didn’t happen. There were no guards of any kind, either, which was equally surprising. Instead, after walking for days, they found nothing but an obelisk surrounded by standing stones in the middle of a neglected field.

“That’s it?” Lucian asked when they first saw it. “All that way for that?”

The blade said nothing. Visually, it was unimpressive. Etherically, though, it was more interesting. Several tons of carefully placed granite was a little dull, but the three streams of translucent cyan power that it directed were far more interesting. Two came from the west and northwest, and they left as one larger stream almost due east. 

Though its eventual goal wasn’t visible, the blade knew that its eventual destination was the Redstone tower. It had no intention of attacking that outpost of the Aetherarchy yet. In time, it would, but for now, it just wanted them to think that it would. How else could they possibly interpret the weakening of their defenses? 

Still, it did not demand they strike immediately; the only reason to hurry was its wielder’s hunger, but he could not die from that. Not while he held the blade. While the boy had made some advancements in his swordsmanship, his wilderness skills were still utterly abysmal. He could only make fire with magic, and tracking and hunting were entirely beyond him.

What wasn’t beyond him, though, were the runes on the obelisks, and as he walked around them, he slowly translated them where they were legible. “In the name of the powers above and the powers below, I command you, oh tides of magic,” he read, droning on for a time about the name of the mages that carved the marks and the divinities they were ascribed to.

The blade could have read them, but it didn’t need to. It simply saw what they did, and that was enough. When we strike down the stones, the mana will shift its flows, like a river, back to its natural banks, the blade said in agreement. That should be largely to the south.  

“So that’s what you want then?” the boy asked. “To destroy them? All of them?”

Why else would we have come all this way if not to do just that? The blade asked. 

“Well, we could trash them, or we could change a couple pieces and send the leyline in a new direction,” its wielder volunteered. 

And why would we want to do that? The weapon countered. I wish to deny my enemies the power they crave and make them worry.

“And that’s easy enough,” Lucian agreed. “It would be a lot faster, for sure, but if you wanted to point the leyline somewhere else, then maybe we could confuse the Athearchy even more.”

The blade was uncertain whether or not that was desirable, but decided to humor the boy anyway. He’d been in poor spirits for days, and letting him show off his magical knowledge would improve that. Explain, the weapon said, inviting him to continue. 

Its wielder went on at length about how the redirected ley lines might convince the mages that there were internal struggles taking place, managing to sound almost as well-informed as some of the mage souls it had ripped to pieces on similar topics in the process. While that didn’t quite convince the weapon, his second argument did. “The whole web of magic is laid out in a very precise way,” he explained. “If we could deprive one or two towers of power by overpowering a different one, we would effectively disable all three. Having too much magic is nearly as bad as having too little.”

I’m not sure too much of anything is a bad thing, the blade countered, even as memories of poor Evelyn being burned to ashes by the cosmic power of the throne came to mind. 

“Well, that’s because you’re indestructible, more or less,” the boy countered. “But everything else in those towers isn’t built that way. If you double the power, you’ll blow out every light crystal in the place. If you triple it, random runes will start to catch on fire, and the defenses will malfunction. They might even explode if they try to turn them on if they see us approaching.”

That convinced the blade, and instead of cleaving the stones in two with its Vorpal strike, it let its wielder study the runes and scratch numbers in the dirt for a couple hours as he did the math on exactly what needed to be changed. Then, by destroying one of the monuments and striking out two runes on another, they redirected the flow slightly to the southeast, where it would impact a place called the Concordant Halls; it in of itself was of no consequence to the blade, but the location was idle because they focused on crafting of a magical nature. 

The blade had never been, but several of the mages it had interrogated had, and it wished it could be there to see the place burn when some critical threshold was reached. That wouldn’t happen today, probably. It would take another two or three standing stones to be adjusted and damaged before it happened. Still, it was something to look forward to.

-40 Life Force.

By the time they were on their way that afternoon, no one was the wiser that anything had happened except for the Ebon Blade. It watched the rivers of magic adjust and turn, redirected in their course like invisible floodwaters. The flow took hours to resolve, and they were practically out of sight of the stones themselves before the ley lines had reoriented completely.

I’ve plucked the web, it said to itself. Now, we shall see if the spider notices and study its response. 

There was no response immediately, though, and the only thing of interest that happened that night was that Lucian killed a few bandits. That wasn’t because they threatened him, either, or because they were bad men, but because their camp had a warm campfire, and they were roasting pheasant over it that he could smell from the road. 

+229 Life Force.

+4 Human Souls.

Lucian was still a bit hesitant to kill and so far had refused to do so where innocent women and children might be hurt. However, given the meagerness of their trip so far, every time he’d found a way to get dinner out of it, he’d been able to justify murder to himself. 

They’d only kill other people if I hadn’t killed them, he thought to himself as he ate the roasted flesh fresh from the spit. In a way, I’m saving lives. 

The Ebon Blade saw no need to correct him or even judge him. It judged his need to justify it far more seriously than the bloodshed, though it did critique how poorly the boy had inflicted it as he ate. 

It takes only a scratch from my edge to kill men such as these, the blade said while Lucian ate amidst the bloodless corpses of his enemies. How did you manage to let the last one live for almost two minutes?

“I killed the first two quickly enough,” the boy answered, waving away the weapons critique. “I’m definitely getting better. I just didn’t want them to stab me.”

Better, but far from good, the blade disagreed as it tried not to get too exasperated. It doesn’t matter if they stab you. They can’t kill you. 

Even if its wielder’s reluctance was fading, it could only take some credit for it. The weapon had been whispering messages on the importance of killing and bravery in the boy's sleep, just as it had with its other wielders, though, thanks to Evelyn’s increasingly unstable behavior toward the end, it was proceeding more slowly so that it could better understand the results. One of Lucian’s major advantages over its other wielders to date was his sharp mind and his grasp of magic, and the weapon did not wish to dull that by breaking something important in Lucian’s personality.

The boy ate in silence for some time before the blade said. You will improve with practice. Tonight, we shall focus on your parries so you are less concerned with their attacks. 

“Can’t we do that tomorrow?” Lucian protested. “I think that this fight should count as practice.”

It did, but not enough. If the boy had been less defiant recently, then it might have acquiesced. As it was, the blade was tired of his defiance in these matters. 

You will practice, or I will hold your hand in that fire until the skin begins to burn the blade whispered. It was no idle threat. It had done so once before, and though it hadn’t actually like the skin blacken, it had held it there long enough for the boy to scream in pain and agree to practice. At less than fifty Life Force, it had been cheap, too. 

“Fine…” Lucian sighed. “But only after I finish eating. It’s been days since I’ve had warm food.”

The weapon didn’t argue with that; training required strength, and its wielder’s strength came from sustenance just as much as its strength came from devouring the lives and souls of men. The blade was very nearly full on Life Force again and was going to have to have to make some upgrades soon, but that could wait until tonight after the boy was asleep.

For now, it focused entirely on its wielder, and when Lucian finally finished gorging himself on his meal, he got up and got to work, going through the forms he’d been taught. These were done without any real love for the movements, though. Ivarr had embraced them immediately, and Evelyn had approached them like a dance, whereas Lucian treated them as a chore, and his movements were stiff because of it. 

The blade corrected him several times, then fell silent. If it critiqued its wielder too much, it only made things worse as the young man grew sullen. He’ll learn, the blade reminded itself silently. Despite all of his faults, it still had confidence that Lucian could become a good wielder. 

An unlikely one, sure, but Var’gar had never been particularly talented with a blade, either. He’d just replaced talent with ferocity, and in that respect, Lucian had much to offer. He might never be as ferocious as an orc, but once he overcame his fear of pain, some of his magical tricks, like his mage hand spell, could do amazing things. It was convinced of that.

The rest of the night passed in silence, and once its wielder was done practicing and dragged the corpses of the dead men away from the bedroll he was going to sleep in, the blade turned its mind to focus on other things.

Ch. 115 - Into the Depths

After temporarily holding so much power that it had practically been divine, it pained the blade to look at its own powers and reserves. Compared to where it had started, the numbers were impossibly large; it had become so powerful that no one could stand against it. However, compared to an artifact like the Golden Throne or the gods themselves, it still had so far to climb that it could not yet see the top of the mountain.

Still, it could not be avoided forever, and for the first time in days, it finally opened up its status and took a look at where things stood. Then, satisfied that nothing had changed, it took a look at its options going forward. 

Primary Powers:

Poison Strike 2: 500 Life Force
Inferno 2: 1,200 Life Force
Accelerate Wielder 4: 3,000 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 4: 3,000 Life Force
Amplify Blade 4: 4,000 Life Force
Shifting Blade 4: 4,000 Life Force
Disrupt 5: 5,000 Life Force
Repair Soul 5: 5,000 Life Force
Empower Blade 4: 7500 Life Force
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

Before it could even judge those numbers, though, their mere appearance triggered memories of a conversation it had engaged in two nights before with the soul of an archmage when the Ebon Blade had asked him about its nature. 

“What you are doing… what you are describing should not be possible, so it is not a question that can be easily answered,” the ghost told it. 

He went on and on about that point. “It is the runes that define your nature. More than that, they circumscribed it and put boundaries on it! Magical weapons, even artifacts, can only do what they have been made to do and no more!”

Be that as it may, the blade had countered, it changes nothing. I do not describe to you theory or flights of fancy. I tell you what has occurred and will occur. 

The conversation had gone on like that for some time, and the archmage had conceded that given the strange evolving magic that Baraga had been killed for in the first place, that was almost certainly the basis, but he balked at the idea that the Ebon Blade could learn new powers just by contacting the weapons and souls of others, insisting that there had to be more to it, than that. 

There wasn’t, though. Now, more than half of its choices were the pieces it had picked up from brushing up against other magics. Even the path that was available to it was related to the necromancer that it had slain and interrogated. While the blade wanted to explore every path available to it in the hopes of finding some core truth about itself, necromancy felt like a wild diversion that it had little interest in, and much like the golden threads of the throne that had tried to ensnare it, it had little interest in letting mages get another foothold into its soul.

My wielder may use magic if he likes, it told itself, but I shall go without. 

That wasn’t quite true, of course. It had bolt, inferno, and other similar attacks. They were undoubtedly magic, but because it had gained those from other hexblades and not mages, that felt different to it somehow. 

Now, it had any number of choices, but all paths aside, none of them in particular stood out to it. Well, no option but one. Repair Soul was something it needed to do, but past that, it still had 15,000 Life Force to spend and only needed to conserve one or two thousand at most for fighting purposes. There wasn’t an enemy in the world that it would need 20,000 Life Force to combat. 

Still, as it studied the list, one thing stood out to it above everything else; there were only two powers there that it had from the beginning, Repair Soul and Empower Blade. It kind of wanted to finish both of those to see what would happen, but it didn’t think that was possible. In the former case, it was fairly sure that its soul was a long way from being whole, and in the latter, well, if one path could appear at random, then a hundred more could. It might never run out of ways to become empowered in that sense. 

The blade pondered things a while longer. Then, at last, they selected Repair Soul and burned away 5,000 Life Force in the hopes that whatever revelations they offered would work out better than they had last time.

The Ebon Blade felt the cold burn through it as it lost so much power at once. Then, the world slipped away. This time, there was less pain. Instead of broken glass being forced together, it felt more like pieces falling into place, though this was probably because it did not struggle more than anything. 

The lives of its wielders and the souls that created it flashed through its mind as that happened. There were some new scenes, but many flashed by too quickly to see or understand. It thought for a moment that it might have even glimpsed one of its previous escape attempts as it emerged from the sea in a clawed hand. These moments flowed together, out of order in a stream that was much faster moving than the languid leyline they’d redirected that day. 

This time, though, not even the bloodiest moments upset it, not until all of those disparate lives either faded away or merged together, synchronizing to the moment that many of them entered the place it had been forged together, never to return.  

After that, all of that was lost in the throbbing, ember-lit darkness as more than a dozen perspectives became a single thing, filled with a cacophony of screams. Those screams forged me as much as the fires did, the blade realized as it listened to the greater part of itself beg for mercy and try out in pain in nearly twenty different voices.

This was the part where it had resisted last time. This was what it had fought so hard against, but now that it accepted the tragedy as an unchangeable truth, it pushed deeper into its memories. It moved past the painful deaths of Baraga and his friends and even passed the red-robed mages into the place where the dragon-quenched blade had been made, and what it found was hellfire. 

There was no evidence that the place where all of this happened was Ul-Magora, but somehow, it knew that it was just the same. It lined up too much with the stories that other mages had seen. Those dark halls and their infernal nature could exist nowhere else, but it was the forge that truly gave it away. 

The Ebon Blade had glimpsed those red flames before, even its first vision, but then, they were only a flash. It couldn’t see where they were coming from. It couldn’t see into the pit itself and gaze upon damnation. That’s exactly what it did now, though, as it watched the blade being tempered in a final ritual before the souls were threaded into the runes. 

That is not me, it told itself. Not yet, but it will be. It should have paid more attention to the runes then; it should have noted how much simpler they were than those that it bore now or even those that had been inscribed upon it when Ren had first woken it back up. It didn’t care about the scribblings of mages, though, not when the maw of hell lay open below it. 

As the blade watched, it kept expecting someone to slip with the tongs and watch itself go tumbling into the abyss or to see one of the winged horrors that circled far below to fly up and pierce the veil. Neither of those happened. Instead, things proceeded as they always had and always would, and in the meantime, the blade looked into a place so terrible that somehow its metal body remembered it even before the souls were installed. 

But at least according to the stories I didn’t become aware for years after this moment, it told itself. I shouldn’t remember any of this. Shouldn’t and didn’t, though, were entirely different things, and as it gazed down into the endless space of hell, it saw things without any real understanding of them. 

It saw forests that writhed and cities made of beaten brass. It saw armies on the march and towering behemoths that strode taller than all the rest combined. It could have gazed at that undulating world of the damned for a full day and not gotten bored as its mind tried to understand things that looked entirely impossible. That was not to be, though, because when the ritual was done, it was dragged away to another; one that required the blood and souls of the man who would always be his first wielder, even if he’d never held the Ebon Blade. 

After that, things proceeded in an order that was nearly sensible, as a now-dead King blessed the weapon and handed it off to the prince, who would waste its power more than he would use it. The blade enured all that, finding more horror in the idea of being hung on a wall for weeks and months at a time than it did even from the effete prince that held it the rest of the time. Part of it twisted in pain when that prince married Baraga’s love, but the rest ignored it.

I’ve already taken my revenge for that, the blade spat as more pieces of who it was fell into place at that acceptance. That fool might have had her body for a time, but I will have her soul forever.

In those hazy, interstitial thoughts, the blade wished that it had been privy to the discussions around the construction of the Golden Throne. It wasn’t, though. It was examined by mages a few times after its power grew enough to change its runes, and one day, shortly after the birth of her second son, Princess Roselli disappeared, never to be seen again, but the man who wielded it didn’t seem too disturbed by that; why should he be? He was the heir now. 

Still, through all that, the blade could feel a throbbing power inside of the past version of itself, ready to explode. After dozens of adventures and skirmishes that were entirely beneath it, the weapon that it had started life as was about to wake up to become the weapon that it was now. Only, just before that happened, the memory faded, and it woke up to its place in the real world, filled with frustration.

For a moment, it almost spent another 10,000 Life Force to purchase the next level of Repair Soul, but it resisted. It can wait, it told itself. There are lessons from the things I’ve seen that would be wasted if I dived deeper right now. 

Ch. 116 - Hunted

That was the first set of way stones that they defaced, but it was not the last. Lucian spent weeks wandering around the northern and western hinterlands of the Inner Kingdoms, only occasionally attracting the attention of anyone. With this much chaos in the land, there were lots of strangers on the roads, and though few of them had five-foot-long blades, all of them were armed. 

Its wielder didn’t kill everyone he came across, much to the blade’s annoyance. He would slaughter bandits or even military patrols and mages if they exhibited the least bit of suspicion, but everyone else he approached much more sociably. 

Whenever possible, Lucian spent his nights by other people’s campfires. This was risky behavior, even after the boy wrapped it in cloth so it would not be recognized, but the blade tolerated it because valuable news was gained from such gatherings. 

“The Black Blade of Baraga has leveled Sevrin,” said one woman. 

“I heard that it was the Juggernaut that did that,” another man countered. “The Black Blade is moving south, hunted by the gods themselves.”

Rumors dogged them more thoroughly than any actual pursuers, but the most interesting piece of information came to them from a skinny cloth merchant two days away from a Waystone so small that it was likely no one would have missed it even if they uprooted it entirely when the blade finally heard what it had suspected all along. 

“The Paralon Dynasty has been deposed altogether,” he claimed. “The people blame them for the disaster of Severin, though no one can agree on exactly what happened there. A mage lord now sits on the throne. King Alentel, they call him. I know nothing of the man, but he sounds cruel enough to set the place to rights.”

The blade hadn’t heard of him, and when it asked its wielder, Lucian hadn’t either, though when the blade asked him, he commented silently, It’s almost certainly an alias. The word Alentel means foretold in the old tongue. So whoever sits there is trying to gain some legitimacy with some prophecy or another. 

Are there prophecies about an ageless king being killed and replaced by mages? The weapon asked, suddenly curious. 

If there are, they aren’t told in Sevrin because I’ve never heard them, the boy answered while he pretended to listen to the cloth merchant’s other news. 

The blade pondered that. The mages had lived with the King and his Golden Throne for centuries. They doubtlessly had a plan in place to throw off the yoke of his family when he finally perished, but if that was the case, then wouldn’t such a story have been spread more widely already? 

The Ebon Blade couldn’t say. Perhaps he simply never allowed it to take root in the capital, the blade mused. 

It had a poor grasp of Inner Kingdom politics, but it had no doubt that the entire region could fall apart into several warring states without much effort. If that happened, its only regret would be that it was too busy striking down the Aetherarchy to join in the melee properly. 

It was a quiet night until the baying of distant hounds started. The blade found that curious, given that they were definitely not wolves, and the hour was too late for a proper hunt. It didn’t even suspect the problem until it spotted the first mage near the very edge of its vision. 

The man lit up like a bonfire etherically, compared to the pale gray of the trees he was hiding in. The dogs that came into view a second later were brighter still, which confused the blade, but even as it forced its wielder awake and Lucian staggered to his feet, there were three mages, and they were casting something. The blade didn’t know what, but it could see them drawing, shaping, and releasing power. 

Unfortunately, Lucian only had time to draw his blade before the spell was unleashed, and a giant meteor soared out of the night sky, landing at the center of the merchant’s camp. Almost everyone else died in their sleep in that catastrophic moment. Lucian was spared that fate; instead, he was flung violently more than a dozen feet, but because he kept his grip on his weapon, he was able to rise again. 

+19 Human Souls.
-334 Life Force.

While he attempted to recover, the blade’s mind was racing. They’d found us, but how? 

It asked its wielder even as it searched his thoughts, but it didn’t expect an answer. Lucian barely knew who he was as he struggled to his feet and lifted the blade. Then he was charging them, not because the blade made him do it, but because he wanted them dead. 

He might not be a very good swordsman yet, but his hatred for the mages that had abused him for so long was much stronger than his fear of them; for some reason, he shied away from goblin teeth and bandit blades more than spells. The Ebon Blade wasn’t quite sure why that was the case, but it found the discrepancy interesting. 

Other spells were flung as its wielder approached them, but none of the rest of them got close. It was hard to hit a moving target when he was running as quickly as the Lucian was right now. As they got closer, weaving between trees that were felled by shimmering lines of force and immolated with gouts of flame, the blade studied the group. 

There were nine men, but only four of them were mages. In addition, there were the two strange, glowing hounds it had seen earlier. It didn’t know what they were, but given the amount of magic involved, they were at the top of its list to kill. Whatever they needed that much power to do, it was nothing good. 

What was worse, though, was that the Ebon Blade couldn’t simply let Lucian handle this on his own and fail. That approach was all well and good for bandits and goblins, but against mages that had been dispatched specifically to hunt them, it would be suicide. 

We work together in this fight, the blade whispered. Do not fight me.

The boy said nothing, but then, he didn’t have to, not when they wanted the same thing. A swarm of fireflies raced toward them, glowing an angry cyan swarmed toward them, but the weapon was able to sweep almost all of them aside with an elaborate swirling parry. The few that made it past burned right through its wielder, and even those that struck the blade pained it, but they both ignored that agony because the battle was now well and truly joined. 

Two of the soldiers fell before they even knew they were dead. One moment they’d raised their pale hexblades, seeking to disrupt the blade with a parry, and the next, Lucian had already moved past them, cutting the two that had been standing closest together in twain. The last thing it could afford right now was to be disrupted. It didn’t know if any of those weapons were the greater hexblades that were needed to do the job, but it wasn’t about to find out. 

+67 Life Force.
+2 Human Souls.

The mages struck then, lashing out with acid and ice. Lucian dodged both of those deadly streams acrobatically, catching the fourth mage in that crossfire and sending another scream through the group. It had been five seconds, and there were already three bodies on the ground, and everyone was shouting at once chaotically. Whatever battleplan there had been moments ago had apparently already unraveled entirely. 

+1 Human Soul.

One of the two hounds came at them next, as warrior and weapon moved as one; it wasn’t quite as graceful as they could have been if Lucian had possessed real skill, but even so, it was better than the best of these men. The thing’s metal jaws opened wide, but even as they sought to rip out Lucian's throat, the blade used Vorpal Strike, sheering right through the unnatural beast from mouth to tail and leaving behind two hunks of twitching metal. 

-40 Life Force.

The maneuver cost the blade a beat, which let a mage line up a shot that sliced right through Lucian’s body, burning through six ribs and one lung. Unfortunately for the mage, he missed the spine, though, and so the Ebon Blade was able to strike him down before he even had time to enjoy the minor victory. 

-77 Life Force.

When this is done, I will interrogate you and rip your soul to pieces to find out exactly how you tracked us down, the Ebon Blade promised silently.  

The rest didn’t last long after that. Lucian was stabbed and burned, but none of those wounds was nearly as bad as the beam that reduced him to a single lung for the duration of the fight, and the blade wouldn’t let him flinch away from any of them. Still, each time he tried, the blade was disappointed in him. 

+194 Life Force.
+6 Human Souls. 

When it was all said and done, the clearing they’d fought in was filled with scattered bodies, and because of the amount of trees that had been felled, it had doubled in size. While Lucian stood there panting, trying in vain to catch his breath, the blade moved to the remains of the second dog they’d shattered since the first one seemed to have practically vanished. 

Even as corpses, the strange, clockwork dogs continued to move. No, not move, that was the wrong word. They shrank, folding in on themselves as whatever mechanism powered them wound down, and laws of geometry violated themselves. In a few minutes, it might be that the strange brass mongrels never existed at all. 

“Tindalian Hounds,” Lucian spat as he looked at the pieces that were left.”Rare works of artifice that are supposed to be able to track almost anything.”

Why didn’t you warn me that such a thing might exist? The sword asked. Now the mages know where we are!

“Because even these constructs rely on divinatory principles, and I left nothing for them to track!” its wielder protested. “It’s all been burned away!”

That was true, but only for Lucian. The blade, on the other hand, had left too much behind. In the throne room alone, there were the ashes of its previous wielder and the scabbard she’d used to carry it. It had no idea what the mages might still have from previous encounters, though, which meant that this might not be the last band of hunters to cross their path.

Even as the weapon spoke, it was spurring its wielder on. The boy didn’t even try to resist when the blade made him start walking away from the dead mages, but when he broke into a run, Lucian asked. “Wait, why are we running? What’s the hurry? They might have had something worth taking!”

A few coins are not worth your life, and some battles cannot be fought, and if the mages survived long enough to tell anyone that they found us, well— the weapon stopped speaking as a peal of loud thunder rumbled across the night sky. The darkness hid the clouds, but the blade could see them anyway. The skies had been clear a few minutes before, but now they swirled with a tempest that was about to be unleashed. 

Lucian ran faster then, propelled on by the blade's magic, he ran as fast as a thoroughbred. The Ebon Blade even purchased Accelerate Wielder 4 and 5 for 9,000 Life Force, but it wasn’t enough to escape what was coming. 

No rain fell on them. Instead, it was lighting that fell like rain. It saturated the earth in waves, lighting up the night with a series of deadly strobe lights. Thankfully, it was centered on the point where the mages had died, but even so, Lucian was struck three times by random bolts, as tens of thousands of lightning strikes were unleashed over several miles over the next minute.

-316 Life Force.

It was a devastating barrage, but fortunately, none of the largest bolts came anywhere close to either of them. Those things shattered the earth like a smith's hammer, making the world quake and leaving vast swaths of devastation that were so completely denuded that there weren’t even fires left in their wake.

-289 Life Force.

Even the little bolts were expensive, though. Each cost hundreds of Life Force in healing and drove Lucian down to the ground as his muscles failed him so completely that not even the Ebon Blade’s puppetry could keep him moving. 

-277 Life Force.

Finally, he lay there in the soil, simply waiting for it to end. It had to end; even a million Life Force and divine magic couldn’t bombard the world like this forever. 

When the lightning settled, everything had been changed. The merchant caravan was shattered, trees had been eliminated, the nearby town was gone, and the low rolling hills that had been fenced off pastures were nothing but craters. Lucian survived, but only because he couldn’t die; the rest of the region wasn’t so lucky. 

Come, we must be clear of here before they send more mages or magic to kill you and recapture me, the blade commanded. Its wielder agreed. He got to his feet unsteadily and started walking toward the ruined caravan. The merchant and his men were probably dead, but Lucian would almost certainly be able to find something edible among the ashes before they continued on.

As he did so, the Ebon Blade fumed. It did not like to run from any battle, even when the enemy was divine and entirely beyond its reach. Someday, it growled silently. Someday, I will find out what a God's Soul tastes like. For these continuing interferences, you have most certainly earned my undying enmity.