The quarrels clattered around Var’gar almost from the first moment as he started to climb the rough stone. It was like a hard rain that paused only periodically when the men at the top of the wall reloaded. At the start, he was only one target among many, but even after he was struck twice, he continued while one of the orcs that followed him was hit badly enough that he fell to the flagstones below.
The chieftain ignored that and kept climbing. Nothing could stop him, and even in moments when he hung there by one hand to rip out an arrow that had embedded in his flesh in some inconvenient place, he seemed in no danger of falling despite the blade’s earlier concerns. His grip was so strong that it expected him to leave claw marks behind.
Perhaps I underestimated this monster’s strength, it thought to itself.
Eighteen strength made it at least three times stronger than an average man, but the difference seemed like more than that. It was sure that Var’gar was at least five times the strength of anyone he’d faced tonight, and as he scaled the wall, he moved faster and surer, quickly leaving the rest of his band far behind.
Such an act of athleticism was an impressive feat, but it also made him a target. With one orc so near the top of the rampart, everyone soon focused their meager firepower on him. “He’s coming!” one guard screamed.
“We need help over here!” another called out. It was useless, though. By the time more defenders were running up the stairs to aid the archers who were moving slowly away from the arrow-riddled orc, it was too late.
“I’m not coming for you,” Var’gar growled to himself. “I’m already here!”
The Ebon Blade thought that the first thing he would do would be to remove several of the dozen or so quarrels that riddle his body. They were embedded in his face, chest, shoulders, and arms. Var’gar didn’t do that. He didn’t draw the blade, either. Instead, he took one of the merlins from the wall he’d just climbed and, with a roar, lifted it up over his head and threw it at the coming group of soldiers with swords and halberds.
The weapon was unusual, but it was also unusually effective. It not only shattered the bodies and bones of half a dozen men. It also shattered the walkway beneath them, sending even the uninjured ones down to the courtyard below as a mass of rubble and bodies.
The remaining soldiers responded by filling the orc full of arrows a second time. Those he ripped out in great handfuls as he approached the nearest archers. One he backhanded off the wall, sending him down to the orcish horde below, and the other he picked up by the helmet and shook violently enough to snap his neck before dropping him into the courtyard. Unfortunately for the blade, neither died fast enough or close enough for it to devour their souls.
Unsheathe me, and let me feast! The blade commanded its wielder. Truthfully, it was preparing to force the orc to do just that if he hesitated, but he didn’t. He drew the black blade and then barreled down the length of the wall, cleaving everyone who didn’t run away fast enough into bloody pieces, while the sword basked in the feeling of ruptured organs and shattered bones.
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Other orcs were on the way. Soon, they would be inside these walls and killing some of the poor bastards who were just starting to make their last stand. It was a brutal assault that the blade did little to egg on. It adjusted the orc’s stance or guard if a counter-attack seemed likely, but unlike its previous wielders, there was no need to make a blow as precise as possible. Each slash and thrust was so brutal that they often left the armor as broken as the body wearing it.
Yesss… the blade whispered, lost in the embrace of its primitive wielder. It wasn’t the perfect, precise combat against a skilled opponent that it most enjoyed or even a hard-fought victory against impossible odds like it had been with the manticore that came in a close second. It was less than that, but at the same time, more, and for once, it basked in savagery instead of skill and let its wielder’s fury flow through it as Var’gar leaped down from the catwalk to turn the courtyard into an abattoir. It wasn’t just on the Path of Blood, it was a tide of blood, and now it was going to feast.
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Synchronization Achieved, +100% damage, +100% dodge for one minute.
The message flickered across the blade’s vision, but it ignored it. The two of them needed no more damage, and even if the orc’s movements became slightly more graceful, it made no move to dodge incoming strikes. Every hurt was healed, and every opponent was mutilated.
The longer they fought, the fewer enemies they found to fight, but the more the blade’s glow began to increase. The last time this had happened it had been when Ivarr was fighting for his life. This time, the circumstances were entirely different, but the feelings were nearly as intense.
The blood was dancing around the two of them in ways that were utterly unnatural, and red haze moved in patterns that were as shifting as the battle lines while creams of dying were echoing off the inner walls of the keep. The blade didn’t attempt to analyze any of these things any more than the numbers ticking by. It only gloried in them. It hadn’t been used in a long time, and for a moment, its thoughts drifted away from this fight and back to the only other one it could remember.
It had been held by its first wielder then, and the fact that Baraga had been slaughtering orcs the way that Var’gar was now slaughtering humans was an irony. Still, everything else fit. Instead of nighttime gray stone walls, Baraga had fought the endless hoards on a day when he’d turned the ocher stone green with orcish blood.
Though the memory was literally the opposite of this moment, the scene it was experiencing flickered back and forth. An orc versus humans, then a human versus orcs, and back again. They blended together in such a way that for several minutes the blade had trouble remembering which was happening now and which was the memory.
Was it fighting humans, or was it fighting orcs? Was the blood that glided around it in lazy waves that were the afterimages of its strokes red or green? It could feel the jagged pieces of its soul shifting uneasily in that moment. It was even tempted to try to repair its soul again but decided against it. That could wait until later, though, when everyone was dead.
It was hard to say as everything blurred together. It was only when its wielder finished the slaughter and kicked down the heavy oak door to the main hall like it was nothing more than a curtain that things snapped back into focus. There, in that crowded hall, the blade finally found an opponent worth fighting.
Him, the sword whispered to its wielder, the elf with the blade. He is the only threat here. Everyone else is just another corpse in the making.
The hall was a large space, but even so, it was full to overflowing. On the far side of the final line of defense was a vast mass of the well-to-do. They were practically helpless, and when their last line of defense fell, no one would be able to save them.
Of the dozen men who were armed with breastplates and even plate mail, only one even stood a chance. The elf in the center of the line glowed with danger compared to the rest. He wore a haze gray cloak along with chain mail so fine that at first it looked like a silver shirt, and when Var’gar charged him, all he did was smirk, then flicker away at blazing speed. Using the men to his right as cover to flank the giant orc.
None of those things were what marked him as dangerous, though. That was the hex blade he was holding. It wasn’t the massive sort that glowed red that it had seen Elom wield. This one was a cutlass that glowed with complicated blue runes up and down both sides of its blade.
The Ebon Blade didn’t know what it could do exactly, but it didn’t want to take any chances. Even if every other knight in this room stabbed Var’gar at once, he’d be fine. It was overflowing with power right now, and the Path of Blood was making him heal faster than ever. A single strike from a magical sword, though? It couldn’t be sure what that would do.
Still, even as if focused completely on him, the man disappeared. He just vanished into thin air. That was concerning, and even as it whispered to its wielder, it gave the orc pause.
After a moment, Var’gar returned to action and swung wildly at the place where the elf had been knocking two human knights off their feet as the Ebon Blade shattered their shields while maiming a third. Still, there was no sign that the blow had struck the elf. In fact, it never saw the attack from behind coming from behind until the blade had pierced the orc’s chest, from back to front.
It was an interesting and unexpected sight. One second, there had been no threat, and the next, its wielder’s heart had been pierced as the elf faded into view in a fluid garde position. The Ebon Blade thought that would be the end of it, but even as the orc tried to spin around to deal with the problem, a jolt of electricity flowed down the blade and arced through its wielder’s body.
No, not a jolt, the blade noted. A lightning bolt. A torrent of electrical power flowed through its wielder into the blade itself. That was enough to connect the two magical weapons, and for a moment, they flowed together. The Ebon Blade felt the strange elven magic, and for a moment, while its wielder spasmed and screamed in pain, its red runes flashed blue. When it returned to its normal red color, it was changed by it.
You have connected to a storm blade. You have learned Accelerate Wielder.