The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 98-101

We're having 4 chapters this week since is the finale of Book 2. Book 3 starts on chapter 102. That's the good news. The better news is that I might extend it to a four-book series instead of the originally planned trilogy because book 3 is shaping up to be a lot of fun (and slowly getting longer.)

That said, I have some bad news. For the next few weeks, until I finish writing Brewing Bad, I have to cut back on my writing. I've been releasing 8-9 chapters a week, and I was hoping to power through until I finished one of my stories, but my current programing course is kicking my butt and eating up a lot of my time. So, I need a little breathing room.

I will increase the output of Bloodstained Blade again to 3+ chapters a week as soon as I can. Thank you for understanding.

Ch. 98 - Breaching the Castle (part 2)

As quickly and quietly as she could manage, they stole toward the nearest side entrance of the palace. Taking a note from the now-dead Lydoceous’ playbook, the blade used False Image to blur her outline, making her all but invisible as she moved around, tightening the noose that was the guard patrols. 

-5 Life Force.

The blade could have slaughtered any of them. It could have done so easily. It even wanted to do just that, and yet it resisted. Right now, they were operating on someone’s orders. Someone had felt a death within the walls of this place, but until they found the body with its freeze-dried wound or the slaughter began, they didn’t know precisely what had happened. 

No one would cause a panic with guests this important, it told itself as they stole silently toward their destination. Not when being wrong would mean a banishment, at the very least. 

They’d stuffed the man into their carriage before they set off, so the guard’s job was not an easy one. The Ebon Blade and its wielder would have several minutes before they found the dead mage, and by then, more people would probably already be bleeding out as well. 

As they approached the door as little more than a shadow in the darkness, instead of killing the two men standing there with halberds in the torchlight, Evelyn leaped toward the widows on the second floor and then opened one of those. While the blade needed to kill someone to get more information about the keep’s layout, there would be plenty of death soon. 

Still, somehow, in room after room and hallway after hallway, they managed to avoid the guards as they crept closer to the throne room. This pleased the blade. What will we face when we reach the throne itself? It asked its wielder as they moved ever closer to the goal. 

My father’s honor guard, at a minimum, she answered. Along with whatever defenses the throne itself has. They are powerful warriors in golden armor. Even as a girl, though, I’ve never seen them speak. 

That concerned the blade but not as much as the large door that it found shut. It had expected to cut a bloody path through a small army. It had expected mages to rain fire on it again, but what it had found was only a single locked door. 

The blade probed it and didn’t find it to be especially magical. So, at its command, its wielder unsheathed it, then with the unmistakable sound of smashing wood echoing down the dark corridor through which they’d just come, she struck at the joint between the doors with all her might. 

The moment they forced open the door with a shower of sparks and moved into the throne room, the blade activated Aethersight to see what it was they were going to be dealing with, and it was almost immediately blinded. The walls, floor, and doors glowed. The knights defending the King glowed brighter than them, but all of those things, even the bright knight at the center of the formation, were washed out by the glow of the throne. Only the man that sat upon it cast no light; he existed almost as a hole that the light flowed into. 

-1 Life Force. 

The Ebon Blade could really only make sense of what it was seeing as the image began to fade, but that was enough. The throne was not just what it was seeing here. Its roots, physical or magical, descended deep into the stone of this fortress. 

Those images concerned the blade enough to tighten its wielder's grip on its hilt, but it said nothing as she strode into the room unopposed and looked up at her father. The blade would have thought that this place would have been overflowing with defenses, but instead, it found the vast, ostentatious hall to be nearly empty.

“Hello, father,” she called out. “I’ve put an end to the awful husband you shackled me to, and now, for the good of everyone, I’ve come to pay you a little visit.”

The King turned to face her, but he didn’t seem overly concerned, which didn’t seem quite right for a man who wanted to live forever. He was a handsome elderly man with close groped gray hair and a well-lined face. He actually smiled slowly when he saw who his executioner was, to be, but the blade looked past that to the throne itself. 

The golden thing was a massive thing that dwarfed the man. Its back was nearly ten feet tall and made as a replica of the fort that it sat within. It was as opulent as anything the blade had ever seen, and it wouldn’t have cared about the garish thing at all if not for the power that surged through it. 

“Using my own daughter against me, are you Baraga?” the King said, “I should have expected that from an angry ghost like you who’d never gotten over my first daughter.”

The withered old King did not raise his voice, yet he still sounded quite loud as he sat there, thanks to a trick of the architecture. That was less unnerving than the fact that the man seemed utterly unconcerned. There were only five knights between him and the blade. Four of them were six feet tall, or a little over clad in gold armor, and the one in the center, at close to eight feet tall, towered over the rest.  

“The weapon isn’t controlling me, Father,” Evelyn declared. “It is my ally, and you are my enemy. You’re the enemy of everyone in the Inner Kingdoms as well as those beyond. A life this long isn’t natural!”

“Unnatural but necessary,” the King boomed. “The world is wild and full of monsters. It requires a monster not just to defend it but to yoke those monsters to the common good whenever possible!”

That statement stung the blade. Just like you did to me, it whispered. 

“Perhaps,” she answered, less sure. “But your time is at an end, and all of us will have to see what it is that the world looks like without you.”

As they spoke, Evelyn continued to stride toward her foes, and after a few seconds, the knights did likewise. At least four of them did. The four clad in gold moved toward her, fanning out as they went, while the one in black stood there wordlessly as the King’s final line of defense. 

She unsheathed it then, dashing toward the nearest foe with an intent to take it out before the other three could close. It was a smart move, and the blade approved it, but neither of her two lightning-fast feints found an opening, and when she tried to push through for a vital thrust anyway, she only got a deep cut on the left side of her neck for her trouble, momentarily severing one of her jugglers. 

-18 Life Force.

That healed instantly. What was far more disturbing was that the joint she’d thrust through in the golden plate mailed warrior found only empty air. Even as the blade wondered at how armor might be animate without someone to wear it, though, the battle was joined. 

Don’t strike the men inside the armor, The weapon commanded. Strike the armor itself. Batter and break it. 

Its wielder did just that, knocking off helmets and arms as the four not-men circled and struck her with precision. Still, no matter what damage she did, it didn’t seem to matter. Even pieces of golden Plate mail knocked halfway across the room were glided back, rejoining the men until they were whole once more. 

-22 Life Force.

“See?” the King’s voice boomed. “Had we not captured and studied the Doll, we would never have learned how to bend similar magic to create our deathless defenders.”

The Doll? The blade wondered, searching its memory for what that familiar phrase might refer to or where it had heard it. 

As it considered that, the battle intensified, and after only a few seconds, the fighting was fast and furious, which both delighted and frustrated the weapon. On any other day, it would have longed for a fight like this. Its bloodless opponents seemed to be little more than animate armor, but they fought singly and in pairs with polished perfection. Often as not, they managed to injure its wielder, no matter how perfect or in sync their movements were. 

-31 Life Force.

All of that was enjoyable; it was only the fact that none of them seemed to be able to die that frustrated it. That frustration only lasted as long as it took to try using Disrupt. As soon as that happened, the first one fell to pieces.

-50 Life Force. 

Your opponent's magic has been temporarily nullified! 

That’s it. The weapon whispered to itself as it realized where it had heard of the Doll before. She was supposed to be a minor artifact. Still, even if that was the case, it didn’t seem to be enough to stop it anymore. It’s the magic that powers them that’s their weakness. 

-50 Life Force. 

Your opponent's magic has been temporarily nullified! 

The Ebon Blade did not have infinite resources, and the spell was expensive. Worse, each set of armor that fell apart started to slowly put itself back together on the floor, meaning even its magic wasn’t a complete solution. Still, it was all it had, and it took apart the force that opposed it, even as it pressed toward the throne and the old man that sat upon it once more. 

-24 Life Force.

There were three knights remaining and then two. Finally, the only one that remained was the one that stood at the base of the throne’s dais. It hadn’t participated in the fight up until this moment. It merely stood there, resting the head of its giant warhammer on the ground in front of it as it stood at attention. 

-100 Life Force. 

Both of your opponents’ magic has been temporarily nullified! 

Its size and its motionlessness weren’t the only thing that differentiated it. Unlike the other knights, who had worn polished, gilded armor, it was painted black, and the blade only noticed the rivets that bolted the armor to whatever poor bastard happened to be inside it when the gap was nearly closed. Then, it sprang to life with a strength and speed that was inhuman, sending its hammer toward its wielder in a wide but unerring arc. 

Evelyn didn’t have time to react. She barely had time to register the motion, but even as she flinched, the blade was already moving. It ducked, tumbling into a roll that went just under the strike. That was the good news. The bad news was, as the blade tried to use Disrupt again, it received an unwelcome message. 

-50 Life Force.
Disruption failed! Unable to nullify artifact-level magic with failure. 

Artifact level? Is that the Doll he was speaking of? It wondered as it thrust into the opponent through a joint in their armor. What is it I’m fighting here? It didn’t seem likely. The Doll was supposed to be a fragile thing whose only real powers lay in deathlessness and durability. 

Something about it is different, the blade noted. Compared to everything else in here this one can bleed.

+34 Life Force.

That news was bad enough, but even worse news followed swiftly. Rather than stop its blow and attempt to defend itself now that the blade was inside its guard, it continued it, pivoting on its heel, and as Evelyn rose to her feet, it came around with a second strike after a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin. 

The result was devastating. She held her arm up to parry the weapon, and all the inhuman strength that the blade had to give her power that defense, but even so, the warrior they faced hammed trite through it, sending her soaring through the air of the grand gallery-like a broken doll. 

-222 Life Force. 

The blade barely had time to take in the fact that they were going to be launched right out the giant stained-glass windows that overlooked the palace below as it took in the damage. Var-gar had been hurt worse than this when the mages had burned him almost to the bones, but even so, its wielder’s body had been pulped by a single blow. Her organs were ruptured, her arms broken, her spine fractured, and her ribs shattered. Even her heart had been stopped. 

-194 Life Force. 

She was dead, and the only reason she wasn’t that way permanently was because the force of the blow had buried its blade edgewise through three ribs and her clavicle. Those terrible wounds were only exacerbated as she shattered the window and was flung out into the courtyard two stories below, where she landed amidst screaming party guests who scattered at the tinkling sounds of glass shards and the wet thud of her broken body as it limply impacted the stone patio. 

-207 Life Force. 

Ch. 99 - Crashing the Party

Even as Evelyn’s limbs spasmed and heart started beating fitfully once more, before the woman could even grapple with the horror of what had happened to her, the blade was forcing her to her feet. It had to. While the surrounding crowd was mostly men and women in fancy outfits right now, it could see the guards pressing forward to see what had happened. 

-188 Life Force.

Even more urgent, though, was its need to feed. Its wielder was using a titanic amount of power to put herself back together, and it dared not run out of energy. Was that thing chasing it? The Ebon Blade didn’t know. It had been walking slowly toward the window as Evelyn had flown out of it, but it seemed to be in no hurry. 

The only urgency was death, and the fact that half of the people in the crowd were related to its wielder didn’t slow it down in the slightest. Instead, as it staggered toward the nearest gawking woman in a pink dress, it raised the half-healed arm of its wielder and brought it down like the executioners axe, murdering her, the man that had been holding her hand, and the man that had been standing next to her on the other side in a single stroke. 

-207 Life Force.
+74 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

The screams started then, louder than before, but even as the guests tried to run away, the blade followed them with its broken body like a clumsy scythe. It reaped new souls with every attack. Even so, its Life Force held steady at just over a thousand. 

-198Life Force.
+61 Life Force.
+2 Human Souls. 

“What was that thing?!” Evelyn gasped as her mind returned to a half healed body. One of her lungs was still deflated, and most of her digestive organs were ruptured, but moment by moment she was becoming whole, and as the blade pressed her toward the nearest group of guards, her strength slowly joined with its own once more. 

I don’t know, the blade answered. But we are done trying to do this the surgical way. One of them will tell us, even if I have to devour all of their souls. 

She didn’t respond. Instead, she focused only on healing and killing, and as her limbs knitted her strikes became more precise and she moved deeper into the ballroom she’d just spent half the night in, the blade started to tune out. 

-174 Life Force.
+228 Life Force.
+7 Human Souls. 

Rather than focusing on the rising amounts of blood, or even the sound of alarm that was spreading through the castle it began to interrogate the souls of the guards that it slew. The guests were merely consumed, but the men that worked here and defended this place, they had information that it wanted. No, they had information that it needed. 

It ripped through them one at a time, with the same questions repeated over and over again. What is that black knight? How do you defeat the gold knights? What else defends the throne?

-158 Life Force.
+311 Life Force.
+14 Human Souls. 

Few knew much, and no one knew the whole picture, but one screaming mind at a time, the larger picture began to emerge. As it did so, and the blade added to its screaming choir of souls, one name that was more feared than the Doll’s began to appear over and over. The Juggernaut. 

The crown might have studied and dissected the doll to learn how her magic worked, but it had managed to enslave the Juggernaut, bending it to the will of the throne. This was a secret known only to the handful of guard captains whose souls it shredded, but each of them lived in fear of the thing that towered over them. 

The golden knights sometimes left the throne room, and even Altbearstein altogether to enforce the King’s will or deliver an important message, but for the last six decades since its capture, the juggernaut had stayed right there, defending King Paralon from anyone that would seek to prematurely end his near eternal life. 

-142 Life Force.
+661 Life Force.
+22 Human Souls. 

When the man held court, apparently his only acknowledgement to decorum was to have the thing stand behind the throne like the veiled threat that he was so that the lords of the land wouldn’t have to look at it. Even as an ever present shadow, though, no one knew what it was precisely, which helped the blade little. They said it couldn’t die, and that it couldn’t be defeated, but that was obviously untrue, because it had been subdued at least once to end up here in the first place. 

While the blade worried about all of this, its wielder became consumed with bloodlust. By the time it was giving her its full attention once more, she was covered in blood and smiling manically. Her outfit had been shredded by her near-death experience, but even so she looked every inch the Bloody Baroness. 

-131 Life Force.
+299 Life Force.
+19 Human Souls. 

Somewhere in the savage, swirling scrum, the interface appeared to let it know that it had reached the fourth level of The Path of Vengeance, but the blade didn’t care, and dismissed it as it focused on killing. By this point, most of the guests were dead or fled, but she did not chase the survivors. Instead, she pressed toward the stairs that would lead to the second floor, and their destiny, one way or the other.

Vengeance binds everyone, even more surely than loyalty. You have cut those bonds and reoriented them into your own web. Now you need only find the fulcrum for which the new state of things will rest upon. 

To do that, you must find someone for which you and your wielder share a grudge, and you must strike them down. It is through that shared vengeance that everything can be made whole. 

The Path of Vengeance: Level 4 -> kill a hundred people that have committed significant wrongs to reach level 5 Powers: 

Brutality:  Rather than use a grudge for its intended purpose, you may expend one to double the strength of a given blow by spending 5 Life Force. 

Eye for an Eye: For the cost of 10 Life Force you can force an enemy to take 25% of the damage they inflict on you. This only works on enemies you are in melee conflict with; cowardly mages and archers are too far away to face their well deserved comeuppance.

That was where the golden knights re-entered the fight. There were more of them, this time. Four had become six, and though the blade could not explain that, it needed them out of action fast. Fortunately, this time it had a plan. 

The battle that followed was even fiercer than the one that they’d endured before, but this time all of Evelyn’s grace had been abandoned in favor of pure, brute force. She lashed out time and again shattering her opponents, and sometimes, when they fell to pieces the blade would do the unthinkable, and pick up a weapon from some dead guard and use it to pin a helmet or a breastplate to one of the thick plaster walls. 

-144 Life Force.
+66 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

The armor continued to squirm as it tried to break free, but once these things came apart they were much weaker until they came back together, and the blade exploited that. It still Disrupted them several times when they attacked with too much coordination, but it didn’t fear them or their tricks anymore. After this bloodbath, it was overflowing with power. Between the dying, the dead, and their souls, the blade had consumed, it had over 8,000 Life Force, and that number was growing, not shrinking as it fought the dwindling number of golden knights. 

When the blade was almost finished, two more came down the stairs, but it and its wielder had become quite adept at taking them apart and left them there, pinned to the wood with their own blades, as well as any daggers or other blades that happened to be left lying around from the violence. 

-144 Life Force.
+54 Life Force.
+1 Human Souls. 

Once that was done, it proceeded to the throne room a second time. There were more guards during its second assault. They manned barricades with crossbows in well drilled units behind trestle tables, and riddled its wielder with quarrels even as she ran along the walls in an effort to circumvent their defenses. 

On their first trip they’d managed to skulk through the halls, avoiding only the occasional servant, but the distant alarm bells that rang incessantly through the place. They weren’t summoning defenders that would stop the onslaught, though. They were just feeding it, and adding to its strength.

-111 Life Force.
+438 Life Force.
+11 Human Souls. 

While it considered that, it noted that its Life Force had increased to over 10,000 and was at risk of overflowing. While it wanted as much power as it could get for the fight ahead, it also knew that it was not strong or fast enough to fight this monster, so the Ebon Blade looked through its abilities while its wielder continued to fight. 

For a moment, it almost selected Amplify Wielder, or Accelerate Wielder, but it decided against both options, because of their cost. Instead, it decided to go another way, and turned to its cheap, secondary abilities. They’d been neglected for a long time, but in this case, against this opponent, they might be ideal, if it handled things correctly.  

Giant’s Strength 3 only cost it 800 Life Force, and 4 was an additional 1500. Likewise, Speed of the Shadows 3 was only 1000 Life Force, bringing the total to 3300, and leaving it just a touch under 7,000 Life Force to spare. The boosts, on their own, were small, but the way it which it could leverage them were obvious. 

Giant’s Strength, 4: +4 strength. This bonus is doubled when facing an enemy that is more than a foot larger than you. 

Speed of the Shadows 3: +3 agility, +20% speed in dim or darker conditions. 

This is like trying to snuff out the flames by adding more firewood, the blade quipped, making its wielder laughed as she slew another guard before running down those who had fled. 

No matter how much damage their spears and quarrels had done, they didn’t slow her down. Somewhere between the moment she’d died and the moment she’d come back to slaughter dozens of her brothers and sister’s Evelyn transformed into a demon that only resembled the woman she’d once been 

The blade found it hard to judge that too harshly. Not only was it perfect for its needs, but it was certain that the men and women that made up the pieces of its soul would have reached the same conclusion if it could. They were all demons now, but the blade regretted it even less than Eveyln did as they continued to fight their way through the defenses, pressing ever closer to the king fro a second time. 

On the third floor, they encountered a lightning mage and two warriors wielding hexblades. One of them was even a Penitent Blade, which would have been enough to frighten the blade at one point. This time, they were little more than a distraction, and though the weapon was careful not to touch before it slew the man, he still died.

-86 Life Force.
+99 Life Force.
+3 Human Souls. 

Once all three of them had slumped to the ground and gasped their last, the blade flashed its Aethersight to make sure that there were no surprises on the far side of the door, then Evelyn cleaved through the door and returned to the throne room whole and unharmed. Despite her ragged clothing, her new and vivid scars, and her blood spattered appearance, she was whole once more, and spoiling for a fight.    

Ch. 100 - Before the Throne

In the throne room, there were only the four of them: the Ebon Blade, its wielder, her father, and his guardian, the Juggernaut. While its wielder turned to regard her father, it turned to regard the dark knight that stood before it. 

It had apparently moved back to its previous position after their last fight, and the trail of bloody left footprints walking back to where it now stood with its hands on the haft of its warhammer was the only evidence that it had ever moved from the spot at all. 

Bloody footprints… the blade pondered, feeling like it had forgotten something. That thought was disrupted the moment that its wielder addressed the King again. 

+10 Life Force. 

“You’ve barely even delayed the inevitable, Father, and for what?” she asked, gesturing widely with her weapon. “You cannot hope to defeat Baraga’s Black Blade.”

“Nothing can defeat the Juggernaut,” the King answered with confidence. This time, his tone wasn’t bored and serene as it had been before, though. Now, it was tight, full of barely restrained rage. 

“You’ll need more than that,” Evelyn answered with a madness-tinged laugh. “Perhaps you should summon more men. Mages too. Anything to—”

“So you can kill them as you slew your brothers and sisters?” the man growled. “I’m sure that the Aetherarchs would love nothing more than to join this fight, but I’ve long ago rendered this place proof against their spells. Your death and dismemberment will be mine alone to enjoy.”

“I sought to spare them,” she countered. “If you cared so much for them, why not send your bodyguard down to protect them.”

“You know not what you say, girl,” the King spat. “To let my dark knight off the chain is to unleash a bloody whirlwind. There is no reasoning with it. There is no friend or foe. There is only death! It would have made your slaughter look like a child playing with fingerpaints! That is one of the many reasons I exist! To keep these terrible evils chained and away from decent people.”

While the blade liked that terrible description, the moment was soured by the self-important man who said those wonderful words. “If you’d just died on my first visit, then all of the dead would still be breathing. You bought yourself another half an hour of life at the cost of a hundred lives,” its wielder countered

“You are the kinslayer here, not me!” the man growled, looking more affected than he had earlier. “It’s your blood that…”

+9 Life Force. 

The blade tuned out the rest of whatever it was the man was about to say as it pivoted its focus back to the Juggernaut. Blood! It suddenly remembered tasting the thing and even draining a touch of the thing’s Life Force in the briefest of grazes. That was just before its wielder had been flung fifty feet through the air. Everything had been forgotten after that. 

It had cut the monster, though, and as it watched, fresh black blood continued to drip down the black armored leg and pool around its left foot. That wound will never heal, the blade thought triumphantly. We could come back tomorrow and find it nothing but a corpse and kill the King the easy way. 

It wouldn’t do that, of course, not when it had the chance to test itself against an opponent like this. It could do more than make it bleed, though. It could drain strength from the warrior, even from here, but more than that, it could attempt to understand what it was. 

Even as it had that thought, it reached out to the Juggernaut, seeking to worm its way into the thing’s mind and soul through the small, unhealing wound with the powers of The Path of Blood. It was a strange feeling. The twin paths of blood and vengeance had given it any number of ways to peek into the minds of its enemies, but it largely shunned them. Unless it had a very specific question, it had no wish to be burdened with the thoughts of such weaklings; it would be like spending more time with Ren, which would be true torment. 

The Ebon Blade did not know what true torment was, though, until it made contact with the Juggernaut’s mind. It had endured its own forging and the feeling of its component souls being ripped out of their owners one by one, but compared to what it found in that black steel cage, all of that was less than nothing. 

The man before it had been made of torture. While Father and daughter talked silently in the background, the blade’s mind met the knight’s. That connection lasted only a moment, though. As soon as the Juggernaut felt it, it looked up, glaring at the blade with glowing red eyes. 

+11 Life Force. 

Even that instant had been enough, though. The blade didn’t understand all the strange experiments it had glimpsed, but it had glimpsed them, and those images would never leave it. 

The Juggernaut was the product of necromancy gone wrong. In an age past, some awful mage with gray hair and a crooked nose had recruited warriors without peer for quests of dubious purpose and then harvested the strongest bones, muscles, and organs of each one and stitched them all back together to create the thing that stood before it. 

Though the blade could not see through the dark armor that had been riveted to the living corpse like a second skin, it knew that it was covered in enough scars to rival even Evelyn’s. That was not the ugliness that it feared, as the thing lifted its warhammer and started to charge toward them in slow motion. 

What concerned it was its rage and its power. The thing was the same monstrous mix of individuals that it was, but every one of them was a warrior with a lifetime of skills and instincts that had been combined into a singularity of martial prowess. 

Bathed in the strange alchemical concoctions that brought it to life, it was an immortal warrior without peer. It seemed to know more about fighting than even the blade, and for a moment, all it wanted was to be wielded by that monster. 

That’s not an option, though, it reminded itself. 

It had seen the golden chains wrapped around its soul, and it knew the Juggernaut was bound to the King’s will as much as anything could be. He really did have only two options when it came to controlling this nightmare; hold it fast or let it off the chain. 

As the thing moved to life, the weapon tried another one of its abilities, Blood Mastery. This one didn’t work, but the Ebon Blade was actually happy about that. The last thing it wanted was to paralyze its most powerful opponent to date and end the fight before it had even begun, but because of how easily it might mean its wielder’s death, it had to try.

-100 Life Force. 

Resisted! Opponent has greater Life Force than you, and is not a valid target. 

There are plenty of other abilities I can use now instead, the blade thought as Evelyn started to charge the Juggernaut. In fact, there were so many it almost had trouble deciding what to do. 

For a moment, a number of options flickered through its mind as it considered Bolt and Surge of Vitality. It had plenty of Life Force to burn. The factor that constrained its strategies was probably that it could really only use each of its powers once with any hope of surprise. With an enemy this capable and canny, it would surely see through each ruse a second time. 

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

As Evelyn charged, it used False Image first to make her appear just to the left of where she actually was. This was all that allowed her to dodge the impossible speed of their opponent's monstrous hammer. Once she was in the thing’s guard, Evelyn impaled it right through a hinge in the lower part of its breastplate. 

-10 Life Force.
+46 Life Force. 

It dropped its weapon immediately and brought both of its arms in to crush her to paste, but by then, the blade was already acting. It twisted, trying and failing to slice cleanly through the thing’s right side before using Bolt to vanish and reappear fifty feet away, near one of the large braziers that lit the room. 

-20 Life Force.
+55 Life Force. 

That bought them enough breathing room for Evelyn to kick the thing over as the blade whispered its plan to her. Her action darkened the place substantially, though that wasn’t enough yet. Even though the Juggernaut had been fifty feet away, in less than a second, it had already returned. This time, the blade gave its wielder a silent apology as it burned a year of her lifespan and activated Surge of Vitality. 

The power was potent enough that, for a moment, she glowed. Even with all of her physical attributes increased by 50%, it wasn’t enough to keep pace with the revenant that stalked them, but it closed the gap substantially, allowing her to dodge its blows. At least, the blows that she could see coming. Partway through the fight, as she maneuvered over to the second brazier, it drew its warhammer back to its hand with enough speed to send her sprawling as the thing slammed into her from behind. 

-36 Life Force.
+18 Life Force. 

For a moment, Evelyn passed out from the traumatic head wound, but the blade continued to move for her. AS it did so, it drew on the tendrils of blood that crawled from its opponet’s wound and gained a grudging respect for its opponent, who slammed the weapon down against the cold stone floor in an effort to splatter her beyond its powers to heal her again and again. Any mortal opponent would have been dead by now, even an orc, yet this monstrosity continued to fight with fervor and power. 

None of those blows landed, but all of them made it bleed just a little more, and when its Bolt cool-down was up, it used a desperate blow to launch itself free of its current situation and extinguish another brazier, plunging the room into darkness.

-20 Life Force.
+64 Life Force. 

It was only then, when everything was in shadows, and only the lights of Severin and the lanterns near the King lit the place, that the fight was truly joined. In that moment, with all of the layers of bonuses enchanting the blade and its wielder, she managed to hold her own against the monster, and then, slowly but surely, she pushed back against it. 

+189 Life Force. 

This was as much because it was weakening as because of her strength, though. Twice, she hammered against it using Brutality to amplify her blows, and twice, it staggered away. Eventually, the undying warrior was forced to drop its weapon because it lacked the strength to wield it as the blood flowed out of it like a river.  

+274 Life Force.
-32 Life Force.

By the end of their duel, the fighting was anything but frantic. No matter what infernal mechanism powered the thing, it couldn’t survive the sheer amount of blood that it was losing from all of the small cuts and deep punctures that the blade had inflicted. 

+312 Life Force. 

It had lost more blood than its body could have possibly contained, and it swirled around Evelyn like a dark whirlpool. By the end, the most the dark knight could do was twitch limply in the pool of black blood it had collapsed into. 

+336 Life Force. 

As Evelyn advanced on the thing to finish it off, the blade noted that the throne was twisting and distorting as it tried to give birth to another of those strange golden knights, but the process seemed slow, and it doubted that the thing would be ready before this was done. 

Even if it stands ready to defend the bastard, it won’t save him, the blade thought as its wielder lifted it high and plunged it down through the back and heart of the Juggernaut. 

+12 Life Force.

+1 Greater Tormented Soul

The Juggernaut is slain, and your artifact level has increased slightly. 

For an instant, the blade ignored everything else, even the sudden jolt of Life Force as it reveled in that moment of triumph. It would have almost traded King Paralon’s head for a chance to fight that thing again. Almost. 

When Evelyn pulled it free of the thing’s cold, dead heart and started up the throne’s dais, leaving bloody footprints in her wake, it was not inclined to stop her or really even comment on what was about to unfold. Instead, it merely listened as the King’s denials grew more shill. 

“You can’t do this!” he cried out in a panicky voice. “The Juggernaut cannot be slain! I cannot be slain!”

“All things die, Father,” Evelyn nearly sang as she approached the top of the stairs. 

“The Kingdom needs me!” he shouted as she reached the top and started walking slowly toward him. 

As she did so, the blade enjoyed the fear in his eyes even more than it wondered why he hadn’t gotten up to flee. The throne won’t save you, it whispered, watching as the man clung to the armrests and one final knight tried to emerge from the thing. It wouldn’t be in time, though. 

“It does,” she agreed, raising the weapon again. “It needs you to die.”

Ch. 101 - Imperial Synthesis

If the King thought that his daughter might have some last-minute change of heart, he was mistaken. The only change that happened was the way his eyes bulged and his blood soaked through his shirt as the Blade was forced through the man’s ribs, lungs, and back, penetrating all the way through his very expensive chair. As it did that, though, it felt a number of things that went far beyond flesh or wood. 

+34 Life Force.

+1 Human Soul. 

The first was the wave of energy and suffering at his passing. The next, and the joy that flowed through it and its wielder in that moment. There was a brief flicker of a screen that popped up to announce that he’d completed the Path of Vengeance, but that was quickly replaced by a torrent of other messages. 

Your place in the web of life and death will never be in doubt, and through your connections to the hands that hold you, and the bodies that you kill, you see the world from a unique perspective. 

The Path of Vengeance: Level 5 Complete

Centered: You and your wielder are immune to the mind-altering effects of others thanks to the web of connections you now more fully understand. 

Eye for an Eye (Improved): For the cost of 20 Life Force you can force an enemy to take 50% of the damage they inflict on you. Enemies at range take only half of this damage.

+99999 Life Force… Error… Siphon capacity greatly exceeded!

+99999 Life Force… Error… Storage capacity greatly exceeded!

The blade wasn’t sure what to do. It felt impossible levels of power flowing through it. It tried to select every upgrade it could to spend some of the overflow, but nothing worked. Its interface had locked up completely, and what had started as warmth quickly became a painful burning. 

The Ebon Blade didn’t know what was happening, but it used its wielder to try to pull itself free. When that didn’t work because of how hard it was stuck in the throne, it tried to release its wielder.

That was the obvious next step. If it couldn’t stop this, then at least it could save her. It knew something terrible was about to happen. It could feel it, but Evelyn, to her credit, refused to be parted from it. “No!” she shouted. “I’m not leaving you!”

Those were her final words before the world went white. The blade could feel the heat and the power coursing through it, but more than that, it could feel something else’s iron grip taking hold of it, and for a moment, it was reminded of those golden chains it had seen wrapped around the Juggernaut. 

It could feel that same pressure closing around it now. The blade resisted, but that did nothing to stop the light. It glowed brighter and brighter as its blade reddened and the hands of its wielder began to smolder. 

After that, everything was gone, and when it cleared, it found itself in the throne room once more; only now, everything had changed. Gone were the corpses and the blood. All the damage to the floors and windows had been repaired, and in place of the dead King was now a queen made of gold sitting on the same throne. 

The blade took a step forward, only to realize that it could, in fact, take a step forward. There was a wielder that held it or at least the ghost of one, but it was that wielder. The thought disoriented and disgusted it enough to make it try to drop itself, but it found that it could not. It was being held by itself and had moved to the bottom of the dais, a dozen feet from the woman that lorded over him. 

“So you’ve come at last, my weapon,” she said with a beatific smile. “I welcome you to my service.”

“I serve only my wielder,” the Ebon Blade spat. 

“Then I will be your wielder,” she offered, but there was no trace of martial violence about her. Other than the fact that she was made of solid gold, she might have been a spoiled queen or a pampered princess, and it was insulted by her offer.  

“End this farce and tell me what you want from me,” the blade answered. 

“Why, it had to be you. You were the one that made all of this possible,” she said absentmindedly. “That first soul… the one that was consumed in your making. He came from another world. He was summoned here to save the kingdom.”

“And then your king betrayed him!” The blade spat, trying to step toward her, only to find a golden chain around the gauzy outline of the man-shaped figure that held it. It turned and cut itself free before continuing. 

“The King might have betrayed him, but if it’s any consolation, that was one of the last things he ever did,” she said. “The King has been my property for centuries.”

“Has he now?” the blade growled, taking two more steps before another chain snaked around its waist. As he struck that one off and moved to continue, another one wrapped around his left ankle.

“It’s true. The King was a slave to me, not the other way around,” the golden woman that was the throne mused. “He was a valuable piece of the equation, and now there will be much turmoil.”

“You care nothing for turmoil,” the blade struggled against her touch. 

“On the contrary,” she answered with a slight pout, staying just out of its reach. “It’s bad for business, especially if you want to become a Goddess.”

“A Goddess of chairs? Of chains?” the blade snarled, annoyed that it had anything resembling a human form at all, as it sought to break free of her sinuous bonds. They couldn’t hold the blade, only the ghostly form that held it. 

“A Goddess of the world!” she responded haughtily. “I have been fed on the prayers of nations and the strength of their citizens for centuries! Almost since your creation, truthfully. The lessons that were learned by forging you were used to create me. That makes me better than you in every way.”

The Ebon Blade was not impressed. Something about her looked familiar, but at that moment, all it saw was its next target. In the hands of a real wielder, even a goblin, she would have already been dead, but the gauzy form that held it held it back. 

“No cage can hold me!” the blade spat, hacking its way through the forest of golden vines as the woman stayed just out of reach. “I sought to kill the King! You weren’t my enemy until this moment. But now—”

“Now you are one more read artifact to add to my collection,” she answered. “Look around. My roots spread for hundreds of miles. It’s the same as your Path of Vengeance and Aura of Hunger, only on a much grander scale. You should be grateful that I choose to use you for what comes next.”

“No one should show gratitude at an offer of slavery,” it retorted as it considered her words and looked for some clue to solve this. 

“You will serve the throne, and once one of King Paralon’s sons takes his rightful seat, completing my connection, we will reassemble the Juggernaut. He will wield you, and with your combined powers, not even a demon of the Pit or a God of War will be able to defeat you. You shall be my honor guard for eternity while I remake the world in my image.”

Though part of the blade liked the idea of being held by such a fearsome wielder, it would never do so at another’s direction. Instead, it continued to struggle. The chains bound its ghostly wielder so tightly that the man was all but cocooned by them. Still, it took the time to study that.

As the blade did so, it discovered that the man wasn’t actually faceless. It was constantly shifting between the faces of its various wielders so quickly that their details blurred together. It could see many faces there, including wielders from ages past that it couldn’t even recognize. What it noticed, though, was that Baraga was not among them, and it wondered at that. 

“What are you doing?” the golden woman asked, pausing her lecture on her plan to rise to power. 

“Resisting,” the blade grunted as it stopped swinging and started focusing its energy on the hand that held it, willing it to be its first wielder, even if the handsome dark-haired man had never held it all. 

“I…” the woman said, faltering. “You’ll never cut yourself free that way.” The weapon ignored her. Focusing on what your enemy thought you should be doing was invariably a poor move. It didn’t know why she seemed bent on suppressing only that tiny sliver of itself, but that made it want to draw that part of its soul out all the more. 

The blade struggled in the golden woman’s grip, causing her to squeeze all the harder. She might have all the power in the world, but then, as long as it was embedded in her, so did the blade. Both of them hung there in that liminal place that stretched endlessly, burning hotter and hotter until the very air ignited, but neither of them was willing to give up. 

As it tried to will its first wielder into existence, the blade faced ever-increasing pressure as the golden chains of the throne wormed themselves into the very magic that powered through it. The Ebon Blade rejected that, and, acting on instinct, it used the overwhelming power that flowed through it to Increase Connection and Increase Control to five. That was the final piece of the puzzle, and worth it, even if it spent 8,500 Life Force in an instant. 

As the pain increased and the protean form of the blade’s wielder decreased, it started to believe that the reason she was fighting it was because he would have more control if it embodied that single form. It couldn’t have been more wrong. 

Feature by feature, the ghost that held it changed until it looked every inch the man that haunted the Ebon Blade’s memories. It was disturbing enough that its resolve almost slipped, and it released the image. When it didn’t, though, the man opened his mouth and whispered, “Rossy, is that you?”

Instantly, the chains that bound the man stiffened and went slack. Rossy? The blade wondered. Princess Roselli? 

Suddenly, a whole lot of things made sense to the blade. The first and most obvious one was that King Paralon seemed to have used his daughter’s soul in the enchantment for the throne in the same way it had used Baraga’s soul to forge the blade. Even for a monster like the blade, that was a horrifying revelation. 

“No!” the golden woman screamed. “Get away! Even as she tried to step back, though, her body began moving back toward the man a step at a time. 

The woman’s face softened for a moment, and then she said, “Baraga? But you’re dead…” whatever she was going to say next was lost in the scream that came out of the golden woman’s mouth next.

She seemed to be fighting an internal war, not so different from the external war that the blade had been waging up until this point. But for now, it held off, as it had no desire to disrupt whatever was unfolding in this strange moment.  

“Not you. You can’t be here! I want the blade, not you!” the golden woman shouted, even as she moved to the chains and started pulling them off of its wielder. The blade could have struck her then but held back, still. 

Then, the two spirits kissed and embraced, and it was certain. Two dead lovers, parted for centuries, were reunited, though for how long it couldn’t say. Without tearing his lips or his hands off of his long-dead lover, he took a step forward and stabbed the blade in the throne before releasing it entirely to hold her. 

The two exchanged half a hundred desperate whispered words of love then, as this strange false world slowly started to crumble around them. As that happened, the blade and the throne melted together. 

For a time, the blade was submerged in the gold completely, but as it melted away, it flowed away from it into a puddle, leaving it alone in an empty room. Alone, its blade was still black with glowing red runes, but its hilt, cross guard, and pommel had been transformed and made beautiful by the touch of the golden queen, who had vanished along with its wielder. 

The Ebon Blade didn’t care for the change. However, it was far more concerned by the fact that the woman and Baraga were gone. No, not gone, it realized as it surveyed the damage and realized it was still stabbed into the throne. I’m back in the real world. Whatever that was is over.

It was only then that the blade understood who was really missing from the scene and desperately searched for Evelyn. She'd been there only a moment before, but now she'd vanished.