Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 22 - Save Yourself

The goatman screamed as it fell in both fear and pain as fire enveloped it. Earlier in the day, fire had been an amusement. It had laughed as other humans and beastmen had burned alive. Now that joy was gone, and even when it crashed through the third floor, to the second, and finally the first in a spray of flaming debris, its torment didn’t end. It couldn’t because the blade it held healed it almost as fast as it died.

The blade didn’t feel pain in the same way its wielder did. It had been embedded in the molten heart of a dragon for weeks and endured it without issue. This was nothing by comparison. Still, it suffered differently as it watched its energy plummet to keep its wielder alive as it should have died over and over again.

2396/4000 Life Force

2352/4000 Life Force

2338/4000 Life Force

The Ebon Blade Watched its Life Force ebb in real-time as the burning goatman struggled to its feet and staggered toward the door. Part of it wanted to spend as much power as it possibly could to avoid letting such a subpar wielder squander it, but the rest of it didn’t want to be buried alive even more.

If it makes it onto the street, then I shall act, it told itself.

Gar-lok never got that far. It reached the main door, covered in flames, and struggled with the bar one-handed. Even before it could try to find a better way to lift it, though, the ceiling collapsed on the goatman, burying him alive in burning rubble.

2282/4000 Life Force

The blade acted then as the life force drain doubled in its speed. Technically, what it was doing was a mercy at this point. Its wielder would never rise again, but it still clung stubbornly to the blade. That meant that if the Ebon Blade didn’t use its power, its wielder would suffocate and burn for several minutes longer than it needed to. Already, the echoed agony that they shared through their bond was almost painful to the blade, even if it wasn’t nearly as hot as it had been when it was bathed in black dragon blood.

2243/4000 Life Force

It didn’t hesitate. It spent 3 of its twenty human souls to briefly peak above 2500 Life Force, and then it activated Repair Soul 3. It could have simply spent 2000 on Improved Siphon, but the blade had already let Gar-lok waste enough of its power and had no wish for it to waste anymore.

78/4000 Life Force

32/4000 Life Force

It never got to see the number hit zero again because, at that moment, it was bombarded with images again, just like it had been the last two times. This time, though, whether it was because of the increased energy it had used or the fact that its wielder was burning alive, all of it hurt worse than either of the other times.

This time, it felt everything. First, there was its imprisonment, but that was a brief glimpse. Now that it had been there, it knew everything about that temple and it didn’t care how grand it looked before it had been abandoned.

After that, there was a battle. No, a series of battles. They were blood baths, and the dark armor of the man that wielded it against so many was bathed in blood. That fight had a tinge of madness to it, but the ones that followed were more sedate. There were armies then, and he was leading them. Then there was the fight with the dark scaled dragon it remembered so well.

That had more detail this time, which was enough to make it think that it wasn’t Baraga. The armor was the same, but the face seemed different. His features were finer than it remembered, and he was clean-shaven.

Was Baraga always clean-shaven? It wondered.

Before it could decide if its wielder had simply shaved between the last fight and this one, though, its memories returned to that terrible furnace and its incessant pounding. Is this the right order? It wondered as it judged the dark-eyed mages, imbuing their terrible magics into the black metal of the blade.

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This image lingered longer than before. It could feel itself being forged. It could feel the dark runes being carved along the length of its blade, one sharp strike at a time. As each inscrutable glyph was completed, it began to glow, joining the others as flaming brands on its soul.

Do I have a soul? It wondered. Can swords have souls?

It didn’t matter. As soon as it lost focus on the cruel eyes of the lead magus, the whole image fell apart. Suddenly, it was replaced by scenes of betrayal. What should have been a wedding feast for its wielder quickly became a trap.

One minute, the unarmed Baraga stood before a mass of nobles raising a toast with a bandaged hand while they cheered him with raised glasses instead of swords. The next, the powerful warrior was drugged into submission and held bound hand and foot.

This enraged the blade. It should care nothing for who wielded it, but these terrible revelations, along with the fact that they were incomprehensibly out of order, made it impossible to figure anything out completely.

Still, it knew enough. It had seen the princess, shocked as she was standing next to her smiling father in the moment where its master had realized it was a trap. It knew which kingdom it must aim toward, but now it knew that all the nobles of that place should be made to suffer and that its war should be absolute. Every bloodline must be erased, it told itself.

Before it could try to learn their faces or names, though, the second dragon fight arrived. This one showed its wielder at his peak. He still wore armor, and he was bleeding in several places as he hid behind a boulder while the red dragon bathed the world in fire. That wasn’t enough to so much as singe his beard, though, as he charged back toward the source of the flames, even as they began to ebb.

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The dragon reacted immediately, recoiling as soon as its prey became visible, but by that point, Baraga had already grasped its lower fang and used it as a handhold. Even as his hand started to smolder in his metal gauntlet, he didn’t let go.

Instead, he used the momentum of the move to time his strike, and when the giant metal skin beast pivoted, he used the momentum of the serpentine movement to jam three feet of steel through the dragon’s giant eye into the lemon-sized brain beyond it.

It spasmed then, flinging him aside, but not before the blade turned the thing's brain into stew meat. Its wielder was already on his feet before thing had even finished dying. In that moment, its pommel glowed brightly as it siphoned the soul of the gargantuan beast into the soul gem, making the previously dull jewel shine bright.

That was a moment of triumph and one that it was profoundly interested in. After that, though, there were others that it cared less about. It had no interest in who its wielder attempted to woo or how the king had promised his daughter Drezellia to “Any hero that slays the terrible beast and brings me its burning soul as proof shall be given my daughter’s hand and made defender of the north!”

Past that, there was a barrage of images. Inns, banners, friends, and allies of its now dead master, and other less comprehensible things. One image that it couldn’t shake in all of this, though, was the way that Baraga looked at the woman. She was no doubt beautiful, but the way he gazed at her made it look like she’d ripped his heart from his body.

Perhaps she had, it noted because whatever his master had been doing before he became a dragon slayer hadn’t seemed half so glamorous or dangerous. It was hard to piece together all the broken shards, but if it had to guess, it would have said that he was nothing but another mercenary before love had driven him to new heights.

But why would someone be content to be just a rank-and-file mercenary when they had the Ebon Blade on their hip? It wondered as the vision faded away.

Unfortunately, it didn’t have long to wonder because as soon as it returned to the real world and pierced through the veil of that terrible fugue state, it felt empty. Somehow, despite only being a finely crafted lump of metal, it ached everywhere. It took only a moment to figure out that its former wielder was dead and that its Life Force was at zero.

It spent the first human soul without even thinking, gaining 104 Life Force. That would buy it the best part of a week, as it lost a point every hour or two. Once that was done, it might allow itself to drift into darkness, but for now, that was an unacceptable outcome. Right now, more than anything, it needed to process and understand what it had seen, and it couldn’t risk losing those clear recollections as it slept in the dark.

The Ebon Blade, it pored over every last thought, trying to put the ever-sharpening memories together in a clear sequence of events. It was sure that decades at least had passed since all this, but it paid special attention to the mages it had seen at first. Even if it had been centuries since it had been forged, which might very well have been the case, it strongly suspected that they would still be alive.

The same magics that powered its unnatural life powered theirs, too. It was certain of that, which meant that even after it wrecked Severon and anyone in the three Kingdoms who had ever wronged it or its wielder, it could likely seek them out next, both for vengeance and for answers.