That night, when Ivarr and Altharia were spent, and curled together, fast asleep by the embers of the fire, the Ebon Blade began to execute some of the decisions it had made. The first thing it did was burn one of the tormented souls so that it could find out just how much Life Force it actually contained.
The result was shocking. It had expected perhaps a hundred, but the result was closer two hundred. 186 Life Force flooded into it as the soul disintegrated. That wasn’t the shocking part. It was the surge of emotion and imagery that flooded through it.
Normally when it burned a soul, especially a human soul it got only the faintest glimpse of the person they’d been or the way they’d died. It was almost like an echo. This was much more extreme.
For a moment, it wasn’t a blade. It was a young, beautiful woman, and it was strapped down to a table and screaming, but it wasn’t for reasons that were nearly as enjoyable as Altharia had been until so recently. It was because she was being tortured. Why? Where? It couldn’t say. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩·𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢·𝔫𝔢𝔱
The blade couldn’t even see how. There wasn’t a mark on her, and yet somehow the mages around her were inducing a state of terrible agony upon her and smoke swirled and twisted around her like a living thing. The experience was as brief as it was painful and disorienting. One moment it felt like someone was unraveling the body it never had, and the next it was back here, laying beside its wielder.
It was also enough to make its wielder stir restlessly in his sleep. The blade’s original plan had been to see how much life force it would be sacrificing to ask the soul's questions instead of using them for raw power. Now it wasn’t sure it wanted to do either. It had no idea what its wielder would think being bombarded by nightmares in rapid succession.
He’ll blame me for that, somehow, the blade decided. And that will make the elf’s suspicions grow.
There was no way it could avoid it, though. It had already decided that tonight it was going to activate the Path of Blood, and that was nearly a thousand Life Force away from where it was now. It had started the night with 977 Life force, and with the first soul added to it, it was up to 1163, which put it 900 away from that reasonable goal.
The Ebon Blade burned Sammel’s soul next for a paltry 74, bringing it to 1237. That still put it four or five tormented souls away from what it needed. I should really burn six if I want to keep a reserve buffer for Ivarr in case we’re attacked in the night, it reasoned. The odds that goblins would attack were low, but they would never be zero, and it did not wish to lay here in perpetuity should he die.
The blade considered its options for several minutes. It was not concerned about the phantom pain of some long dead specter. Such discomfort might even grant it a bit of insight. It did not want to alarm its wielder unduly, though.
In the end, the weapon decided to burn six souls at once. That was extreme enough that it would almost certainly wake up its wielder, but quick, and hopefully disjointed enough that the man should brush it off as a nightmare.
For a handful of second, its mind was assaulted by the ghastly deaths and torments of half a dozen women. The room they were in wasn’t the same, and they all screamed in a different key of pain, but what happened to them, was more or less identical. Red robed mages conducted ritual sacrifice of each of these women. Sometimes they were together, and sometimes they were by themselves. The only thing they had in common was that each of their souls were ripped out, and pulled into a black mirror while they died screaming.
1311 Life Force later, as the brief vision came to an end, that’s exactly what Ivarr was doing. He wasn’t dying, but for a moment he sounded like he was. The scream bordered on the inhuman, and it pierced the night and silenced all of the nearby wildlife.
The blade was actually concerned that it might have hurt him with the waves of spiritual agony. He calmed down when the mage was woken by his cries of agony, though even for her it took several minutes. Afterward they talked for a long time. At first talking consisted mostly of repeating to the young man that he was going to be okay, but eventually it became more interesting and less embarrassing for the blade to listen to.
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“I told you,” she said, stroking his hair. “The Mage-King ripped the souls of an entire order to power that awful thing. All you saw was that. It was just their final moments. Nothing more.”
“Why?” Ivarr asked. “What could the man possibly gain from that? Was the mirror nothing but a torture device? I thought it was so like… he could see things from far away.”
“I could do both those things,” she agreed, “And more as well. Try to imagine what the souls of thirty-three powerful seeresses could do, what they could see. That mirror was capable of drowning a favored servant in a lifetime of their favorite memories, or submerging a disloyal subject in torments so deep that they would beg to confess. It was a tool that could do many things, but without an owner to command it, and a few centuries of neglect, well, it twisted into something even darker.”
Ivarr nodded at that, though it could tell that the young man didn’t understand, not really. He knew what it was like to drown in horror, but the implications of such a powerful tool went far over his head. The blade could see how powerful it was, it just didn’t care. Nothing about its existence would help it kill any better than it already did.
“Truthfully, you shouldn’t have been able to break free of its grip,” she revealed after a quiet moment. “I used all the techniques I’ve learned over a very long life, and they did nothing. Those terrible, tormented souls only squeezed me that much tighter for my disobedience. Do you think your success had something to do with your weapon?”
“My sword?” Ivarr asked, resting his hand on the blade. “Why would a sword have anything to do with—”
“Its magic is very strange, Ivarr, I know you’re very attached to it, but I’ve told you that much before.” she said, laying her head on its wielder’s shoulder. “I think that at the very least we will have to take it back to my tower to study it. If we don’t like what we find we might even have to destroy—”
“No!” the boy and the blade cried out as one, pulling away from her.
“I understand what you mean, but this… this is too much,” Ivarr continued. “With this weapon I can save people. I can—”
“But can you save yourself?” she asked. “Do you understand just how hungry that weapon is? All hexblades use the strength of their wielder, but yours… when it has no one else to devour its devouring you. Can’t you feel it?”
“I feel stronger than ever,” Ivarr answered curtly.
This conversation drove the blade closer to rage than it did to fear, and it only barely resisted the urge to try to drain her dry. If she can see the way my strength is fueled by my wielder, than she will almost certainly see it if I do the same thing to her, the blade decided.
While it tried to decide the best way to handle the situation, Ivarr and Altharia argued about the topic. That bickering decided nothing, though, and in the end the two of them went back to sleep in their own bedrolls.
Perhaps she was trying to seduce him for his weapon the same way the barmaid was for his coin purse, the blade considered. It was a reasonable theory, even if it wasn’t true, and the blade resolved to lace its wielder’s dreams with it to take advantage of this moment. Though it desperately wanted this woman’s soul, the last thing it wanted was to be studied, and perhaps even destroyed by her.
In the end, though, activating the Path of Blood was much more important than even creating that rift, and the Ebon Blade spent 2000 Life Force to do just that, and as it did, its runes flared briefly. Since it had chosen the Path of Death, they had glowed with black fire when they’d activated, but now that it selected a new path, they returned to the familiar crimson of its ruby. For a moment the blade thought that the glow might have returned to its original shade, but after a moment it decided that it was a little darker than that.
Death comes at the end of battle, but Blood
Violence in all forms is now your banquet.
The Path of Blood: Level 1
Kill, maim, or grievously injure 100 men and monsters to reach Level 2. These acts of violence must be perpetrated by you and you alone, for now…
Vampirism: all physical damage dealt results in 120% Life Force gains.
Hemophilia: wounds inflicted by your edge don’t stop bleeding for hours, or until treated by magic, fire, or stitches.
The loss of so much power pained it as it always did, but even as it struggled to take in the words, and resist the chilly sensation of emptying its reservoir, it noticed something unexpected. The mages serene sleeping expression shifted, however briefly.
The witch is spying on me, it realized.