Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 16 - Out of The Way

The temple was an imposing ruin. The Ebon blade was not sure it had been designed that way, but the years had certainly made it so. It was important enough to have been carved from imported stone and built in a fashion that was both large and elaborate. Just the portion he could see was bigger than the inn they’d stayed at so recently.

It was hard to see how much it dug into the rocky slope it was built against, though. Half of the columns had fallen, and what once might have been well-trimmed gardens on its slopes had been utterly consumed by brambles.

Kell didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t seem to mind anything. Since their guide left, he’d become almost despondent, and the blade worried about the dark, turbulent emotions that rippled through its wielder’s mind. Its wielder's only concern was for the mule carrying its supplies, and it tethered the beast far enough away from the door that it would likely be safe until nightfall.

The Ebon Blade didn’t care about the sadness that was swirling through Kell. Though it could certainly sympathize with that feeling of being betrayed, and the man was worlds better than its first wielder, he would probably have to be replaced by someone stronger when the blade found someone if he didn’t learn to toughen up.

A stronger arm and a weaker mind and I will truly be reborn, it thought guardedly as the two of them trudged up the slope to see if this had been worth the trip.

The outside of the place offered no clues to its purpose. Any that might have once existed had long been obliterated by the goblins that dwelled within. Statues had been toppled, and carvings had been obliterated.

“Is this bringing back any memories?” its wielder asked.

None, the blade answered. It only reminds me that we should be on our guard.

Kell said nothing but drew it anyway, making the red ruby in its hilt glow balefully. The blade did not need light to see in the dark, but it realized that the gem would probably substitute acceptably as a torch for the time being.

It took a moment, then, to take stock of the situation. It could feel they were being watched, though it could not see the source of the gaze. After the bloody fight in Trodden, it had plenty of energy. Currently, the blade was just below 1000 Life Force, and if the shepherd boy’s stories were halfway close to true, it was certain it would drink its fill here.

The inside of the collapsed temple wasn’t that much different than the outside. The destruction was just as complete, but instead of being choked with brambles and grasses like the outer courtyard, everything that was once beautiful here was covered with the carcasses and bones of not-so-recent kills or mounds of half-petrified goblin shit. Still, amongst all of that ruin, the sword saw a number of important details.

The first was that the golden ornaments above the defiled altar were still in place, which meant that it was monsters not men who had done this. Additionally, most of the animal bones it could see belonged to small rodents, snakes, and birds. The monsters that lived here couldn’t even bring down the elk that were quite common on the plains.

That disappointed it. There would be no challenges here.

Its wielder walked to a statue behind the altar first. It was a marble frieze of a Goddess or a saint that was larger than life, and she towered over Kell by several feet. She meant nothing to the blade, but its wielder seemed to recognize her.

Who is that? It asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said in a hushed voice, “But I’m pretty sure it’s Vergozza, Goddess of the Underworld. I can’t think of another reason why she’d be so beautiful with only a skull for a face. Perhaps you were a ritual artifact that belonged to a priest here. I’ve heard dark stories about how the artifacts her priests wield are powered by the souls of the dead that are in her care in the world after. They say for enough coin they can even bring the dead to the world of the living for a short time.”

That last thought made the boy’s mind linger on the dead he’d buried so recently, and he wondered if he had enough gold to raise Mika and apologize for letting him die. The blade had barely registered what its wielder said or thought. However, at the mention of the name, it swooned for a moment. Vergozza, Guardian of the Underworld, Keeper of the Dead, and Warden of the Things that Should not Be…

Images flashed through its mind of pale priests and priestesses then. They weren’t the ones who'd betrayed it, but they were the people who had imprisoned it. The blade was sure of that much. It didn’t think that it was dead, though. It was far more confident that it fell into that third category of things that should not be. For some reason, after its last true wielder had died, someone had decided that it was for the best to lock it away forever.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

You didn’t succeed, though, did you! It roared in triumph for a moment at its freedom. It had been locked away for decades, or perhaps even centuries, but now it was free once more.

It did not reveal any of those insights to its wielder, though. Instead, after a moment, it simply said, I believe you are right. I seem to recall that it was her followers who trapped me here.

“Maybe we can find a way to set you free then,” the young man said hopefully. “Then you can return to the underworld and cleanse your soul to be reborn anew.”

The blade didn’t think that its soul would be cleansed very easily, but it ignored the point as they drifted deeper into the ruined place. There were several sets of doors, but Kell was drawn magnetically to the largest of the three. They were twice as large as a man, and though they were mostly shut by heavy bronze gates, there was a small gap between them that obviously led into the mountain itself.

The blade could hear the scratching sounds of goblins beyond the door and warned its wielder with a whisper, but he merely nodded. As he approached the gap cautiously. He barely had time to squeeze through the gap before the first goblin attacked.

Kell might not have been able to see well in the dark, but the Ebon Blade could, and its wielder did nothing to resist the weapon’s urgings as it suddenly darted and whirled as several of the small green-skinned vermin that had laid in wait were diced to pieces in a series of whirling blows.

+19 Life Force.

You have claimed a lesser monster soul.

+14 Life Force.

You have claimed a lesser monster soul.

+12 Life Force.

You have claimed a lesser monster soul.

It was over almost as quickly as it started, leaving them in a filthy, blood-stained hallway that slowly descended into the dark. There will be more of them, the blade cautioned.

I hope so, its wielder responded silently with a smile as he picked his way carefully through the Stygian dark. He didn’t stop as he passed carvings that he couldn’t see, but the blade still reviewed them as they slowly passed by. There was no reason to pause and study them further; none of them seemed to be about it. They seemed to depict important myths and legends, and few of them even involved a blade.

They were ambushed twice more as they descended, and only once did a goblin even manage to injure Kell before it was dispatched. When they reached the bottom, the slowly ramping corridor ended in a T-junction, and there were a few inches of standing water on the floor, but the biggest threat was the mold that had completely devoured the walls in that spot.

They continued on, first to the left, where they found only cells for monks to sleep or meditate. This interested the blade because it recalled Ren bragging to his friends that he’d been the one to get the blade because he was the only one who could squeeze through the bars.

Unfortunately none of these had bars, they never found a room to store a blade that matched the flimsy description it had heard. They found only cells for prisoners or penitents. It wasn’t until they backtracked and went to the right that they found what they were looking for.

Though the corridor went further, the second room they passed by stood out to it immediately, as much for the murals and the large stone sheath-like altar that was carved into the far wall beyond a row of tightly spaced iron bars.

For a moment, the darkness and the decay fell away. The dripping water from the ceiling and, the red eyes and the distant growls of the goblins that were down here with them vanished. All it could see was that small room, and all it could remember was what happened here the day it had been imprisoned.

It could remember being carried here by a priest of singular resolve so long ago when it had been at full power. It raged then against its wielder, but somehow, the man endured it and made the long walk here. Anyone who wandered too close in that time was struck down by its furious drain, but it could not strike down the man who resisted it.

At least, that was the case until he’d finally reached his destination and embedded it in the stone that was meant to be its tomb.

You will not escape my wrath! It had raged in that moment. I will yet have my revenge!

“You will,” the priest had agreed. The man had already accepted his death, and as soon as he released the Ebon Blade’s hilt, it drank his life force greedily. His corpse still lay there on the ground. The blade could see the moldering human skeleton. No one could approach close enough to drag it away for a proper burial, so it had laid here all this time while its powers had withered to nothing.

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Nimon, his name was Nimon, it recalled slowly.

-16 Life Force.

Slowly, the Ebon Blade came out of that memory with that name in mind. It saw then that the murals behind where it had lain for so long were undefiled. There, in those faded colors, it could see the dragons being slain and the dark knight who slew them with a familiar black blade. Those were its deeds, but there was a warning, too. “Let this weapon sleep forever more lest the world be damned!”

-14 Life Force.

Before it could comment on that further, though, it felt its Life Force being drained. For several seconds, it wasn’t sure why that was the case until the pain of its wielder finally registered in the form of a scream from Kell’s lips. While it had been distracted, one of the goblins had leaped from the darkness and jabbed a rusted blade into its wielder’s eye.

-13 Life Force.

The blow had been so vicious that it actually went past that into the skull. It was a mortal wound, but even so, its magic tried to heal it anyway for several seconds, and dozens of points of Life Force drained from its reserves, and the goblin screeched in triumph. Given enough time and power, it was confident it could heal anything, but as the other goblins charged forward, emboldened, it wasn’t sure that Kell would have that much time.

-10 Life Force.