Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 36 - Insight

That night, Ivarr barely slept. While he tossed and turned fitfully, the Ebon Blade studied its new powers. In the aftermath of the fighting, it noticed that the ruby that was its heart had grown slightly clearer. The thing’s facets might even have grown sharper. It wasn’t sure. There was also a new line of runes on the backside of its blade. While it couldn’t be certain that these mirrored Elom’s hexblade, it was pretty sure that was the case.

Only one had announced itself in the middle of their recent fight, a second one was there on its option list waiting to be purchased. It didn’t have the Life Force to level either of them up without burning a soul or two, and it was loath to do that. Still, it learned what it could.

Amplify Blade 1: This ability focuses the magic of the blade for a single moment, though not without cost. Use up to 1 Life Force to increase the power of an attack by 10% per life force spent.

Amplify Wielder 1: The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the strength and toughness of the wielder by 3 at the cost of 1 Life Force every two hours.

The few details it could discover were evocative, that though it didn’t like the idea of wasting energy to fuel abilities like this, it was sure that Amplify Blade would be used often enough. Some enemies, like the ogre, called for a certain level of strength.

It was strange to the blade that it had gotten new powers and all. Stranger still, though, was the way in which it seemed to have gotten them. It had stolen them from the other man’s weapon.

No, not stolen, it realized, copied. The other hex blade likely still functions just as it did before, but somehow, I’m more than I was. As it studied the runes on its blade it saw that they hadn’t changed, but they were just as incomprehensible as they usually were.

Aura of Hunger: Multiple enhancements available

Parasitic Link 2: 250 Life Force

Amplify Wielder 1: 350 Life Force

Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force

Lesser Life Reserves 1: 500 Life Force

Increase Senses 3: 750 Life Force

Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force

Increase Control 3: 1500 Life Force

Lesser Soul Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force

Empower Blade 2: 2000 Life Force - not currently accessible

Improved Siphon 7: 2000 Life Force

Increase Reserves 10: 5000 Life Force

Repair Soul 4: 5000 Life Force

While it didn’t know why it had the former unlocked by itself but the later needed to be unlocked, it was grateful for it. It did not wish to be locked into paying additional costs for its user without a choice in the matter.

The blade spent the evening studying them both, and was only distracted sometimes by its wielders nightmares. Once the sun rose, it set these issues aside and focused on its wielder, who was acting as if he’d confess the moment anyone even mentioned Elom’s name.

With some subtle interference from the blade, he’d calmed down some by lunch. That was good because it was only a few hours after that Dero even noticed their half-crippled colleague was missing and went to look for him.

“You sure you haven’t seen him?” he asked everyone at the table. “I thought he was just sleeping one-off, but he’d be down here to eat by now at least.”

Ivarr said he hadn’t, though he did admit to drinking with him the night before. Brik and Sammel gave similar stories, but none of them thought to mention the order in which the four of them had left the tavern, which was ideal, considering that the misconception immediately removed whatever suspicion might have existed from its wielder entirely.

The warrior's room had been empty, and his bed was still made, so Dero began his search near the bar they’d been at. By dinner, the priest had found the truth, and by the morning of the following day, they’d found the culprit and arranged a public hanging.

Though the man claimed he’d found him dead and had simply stolen the two-handed hexblade that he wore, no one believed that anyone could cleave through a man’s torso and the building behind him with anything else.

This miscarriage of justice was almost enough to make Ivarr confess, but the blade convinced him not to do that. Some of this was done with a long silent discussion about it while the two lay awake the night before the execution. The rest was done by subtly encouraging the man to drink enough the following day that by the time the innocent thief was left dangling from a tree and the crowd who had come to watch the spectacle was beginning to disperse, he was good and drunk.

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While its wielder did that, the blade leached from everyone around it that would stand still long enough for it to drain a life force or two. By the time the hanging was complete, it was back to 124/5000 Life Force, which was an acceptable

That night the elf stayed with him that night for hours after his friends poured him into bed. She told him how touched she was by how Elom’s death had moved him and vowed that it would not be in vain. Its wielder wasn’t conscious for any of that, which was tragic because she was half as inebriated as he was, and it was clear to the weapon that the striking elven woman was looking for someone to comfort her.

Ivarr couldn’t handle anything close to that in his current state, though. Anything like kindness or desire would have been enough to crack his young soul right down the middle, so the blade pushed him down deeper into slumber while the elven maiden stroked his hair and complimented him.

Ivarr might be a killer when it came to monsters, but as far as humans went, he was still a kid, and he felt terrible about what he’d done. The fact that it was self-defense didn’t make the burden any easier for his soul to bear.

To the Ebon Blade, that was a warning sign that, in the long term, it needed to find a new wielder. That was probably true, but such a thing would not be someone else’s decision. It would rely on its current wielder until the main failed to meet its standards. That was the way of things.

It had been held prisoner for too long. From now on, it alone would decide what its future held. It was with that thought in mind that it turned to its final task of the evening once the mage had left Ivarr’s room in the early hours of the morning: devouring Elom’s soul.

The moment it had stolen it in the heat of battle, the blade had almost devoured it on the spot. However, after a few seconds of thought, it decided that the knowledge it contained might be more valuable than a hundred or a hundred and fifty Life Force. It could collect that much energy in a couple of days of wandering around the city with its wielder, so that wasn’t much of an incentive. The knowledge that Elom could grant about the people he’d been traveling with, though, that was unique and priceless.

Tell me about the mage and her mission! The blade commanded as the thin cobwebs that had once been a man’s existence blazed to life and then evaporated under the weight of the question.

Even as the Ebon Blade asked, it was bombarded with memories and thoughts from the dead man. Many of them were vague and half-formed, but slowly, they bled together, filling in each other’s gaps to form a fuller picture. There was a first meeting where Elom seemed to have been more concerned with payment than mission. It was clear that he’d planned to betray the other two as soon as it was convenient to do so.

There were also snippets of nights around the fire discussing the place they were looking for and the man who had made it. They came together, one at a time until they were one long conversation. It was more than a little repetitive, but the main thing to be gleaned from it was that the elven mage didn’t seem to know much beyond what she’d already shared.

While the map revealing the supposed location of the tomb led to this region, the legends regarding the man were older than the stones of Kalraka’s city walls. He was a vile man who had coveted his possessions until his last breath and had apparently built a trap-ridden tomb to protect them for all time.

What did the tomb look like? How big was it? How many levels did it span? No one could say. Those facts were as mysterious as its location, and all anyone knew about that was that it had remained hidden for a long time. Until Altharia’s research had uncovered the notes made by one of the man’s surviving apprentices, no one could even say what part of the old empire it had been in.

Still, the warrior hadn’t balked at any of that. Neither the traps nor the monsters they might find on the way there had concerned Elom. The idea that deathless guardians might have been left behind to protect the man’s crypt didn’t seem to trouble him either, but that didn’t surprise the blade.

In these memories, he was much as he had been in life. He was a brash man with a large, magical blade. He thought that his ability to cleave nearly anything in two had made him invulnerable. He quickly found out that wasn’t the case when the ogre’s foot had left him with two dozen broken bones, but that had no bearing on the mage’s mission.

The memories continued to flow through it, giving it a much better idea of some of the places they’d already searched and how little they’d found. Apparently, they’d been on the verge of giving up when they’d found Ivarr.

The blade thought it might have been better if they did. Though it was certain its wielder would get to hunt more monsters either way, it wasn’t sure that it wanted to get tangled up in this mess.

Is it really worth dealing with all this for a few answers about how magic works? It asked itself. Does she know enough to shed light on how and why I was made?

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Unfortunately, that answer was probably still yes, it realized. Even now, when it could probably get Ivarr to abandon these people and flee into the wilderness alone, it realized that it probably should keep them together until it learned more from her about the nature of magical artifacts.

As the rapid-fire images faded, it was a little disappointed in the memories it harvested. The weapon knew everything that Elom had known about the mage and her quest, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough to fill a tankard. The man simply had no curiosity and had asked very few questions. Most of the stray answers had come from Dero's idle curiosities while the three sat together around the fire.

The Ebon Blade had been hoping for some more insight into the mage and some hint of treachery about her mission, but there was none to be found. Altharia, it would seem, was an open book.

There were flashes of some of the previous battles and moments where they thought they’d found the ruins in question. The only value those had, though, were the flashes of various spells she’d used. It wasn’t just lightning and fire that danced to her tune. She could also wield ice and other stranger forces that it had no names for.

I should be wary of her, the weapon decided. She is dangerous, though perhaps not so dangerous as Ivarr’s guilty conscience.

The blade spent the rest of the night more worried about the latter than the former. It could do nothing about the mage, but there were things that could be done about its wielder, and it vowed to harden the young man’s heart before it gave them away at some inopportune moment.