Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 44 - Mirror, Mirror (part 2)

The Ebon Blade wasn’t sure what it would find in the next room. It hoped that it would be the mirror or some way to end this madness, but instead, it found a vast banquet hall crowded with trestle tables and benches, which were, in turn, crowded with food and people. Well, the outlines of people at least. It was a surreal view in more ways than that, though.

This room had even more gaps than the previous one it had been in and looked more like the shattered reflection of a place rather than a real one. Despite that, though, the sword had no trouble recognizing it from its broken memories. It was the banquet where its wielder was supposed to be married to the princess before he was betrayed instead.

Such a scene angered the blade, but it did not stop it. Especially not after it noticed a key difference. All of the people seated in this hall weren’t the guests that it had hazy memories of. These were the warriors and the nobles that it had glimpsed on more than one occasion. Instead, seated throughout the room were shadowy outlines he’d seen in the mirror right before this waking nightmare had started.

“You can’t hold me here,” the blade said, leveling itself at them in a threat. “Release me now, or I will not end your suffering, and I will instead leave you to rot in the dark forever.”

“Brave words for a broken blade. You have no power here!” came the whispered reply. “You exist to entertain and feed us, not the other way around!”

There was a chorus of jeers then, but the blade ignored them. Instead, it focused on its weapon. The black metal had resisted enemy blades and dragon fire and looked to be in substantially better shape than it had been when it first regained its sight. Yet somehow, at the mere word ‘broken,’ the thing started to crack.

It watched as the blade it held developed a large, creeping crack from the tip that slowly spread along the black metal of the weapon like it was just thin ice. When it reached halfway, the tip fell to the floor and shattered, and other pieces joined it like a waterfall of metal shards.

-8 Life Force

-9 Life Force

-9 Life Force

The Ebon Blade ignored it. It could still feel its wielder’s death grip on its hilt. If it had truly fallen to pieces, it was certain it would have felt that, too. This was some kind of trick. The very fact that it hadn’t felt the balance alter told it all that it needed to know.

“If you had the power to stop me, you would have done so already,” the blade shouted in defiance. “Even your attempts to slow me down won't last much longer.”

It better not, it told itself. The weapon had vast amounts of energy stored. It possessed far more than a normal human, but even those reserves were not bottomless, and if it didn’t find a way to break this spell before they were exhausted, it was quite certain it would spend the rest of eternity in this awful place.

-54 Life Force

As an act of will, it forced the blade to regrow as it approached the first table. It sliced through the shadows like they were nothing, and they split apart, revealing the faces of men and women he didn’t recognize beneath them even as the shadows reappeared at a different table in another part of the room.

“You think we can be defeated by a mere sword?” the closest shadowy woman asked, reaching out to touch it. Everywhere her hand stroked the weapon, rust, and decay blossomed, and even though it struck her down, in seconds, this second blade had joined the first on the floor, quickly becoming a pile of grey-white powder.

“I am no mere sword!” the weapon roared. This time, it was not a blade of black metal that emerged from its hilt. Instead, the disembodied runes flared darkly and began to burn with black and violet flames as they floated there, where the blade should have been, and its invisible edge was outlined by that blaze. “I am the Ebon Blade, slayer of dragons! Plunderer of cities! Stealer of souls!”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

-29 Life Force

As it spoke, the wavering outline that held it became a little clearer, and the weapon was unsurprised to find that it seemed to take the shape of its original wielder, Baraga, in his dark armor. That wasn’t the striking part, though. What its attention was mostly focused on was the transformation of its blade. The thing was growing much larger than it had ever been in real life. It was a claymore made of violet flames now, and when it at last set aside the dazzling sight and swung it at the closest enemies, the effect was entirely different.

Last time, the shadows had vanished only to reappear, accompanied by a chorus of mocking. This time, there were only screams, and the shadows burned, as well as the tables and the people they’d been wrapped around.

-11 Life Force

“Snuff that blade out!” one shrill woman screamed, but no one listened. Instead, all of the shadows were fleeing from it now. The blade would not be denied. Its rage could hurt them, and of that, at least, it was never in short supply.

-10 Life Force

The flames of the Ebon Blade doubled in intensity as it darted after the shades like they were a flock of bats. Not even flying up could save them as it unleashed dark dragon fire that licked the very timbers of the ceiling far above them on the swarm, though. All around it, people were burning and screaming. It was certain it was supposed to recognize some of them, but it didn’t care about anyone else. All it cared about was hurting the bitches that refused to let him go.

-22 Life Force

“How? How?!” the screeched like a chorus of angry blackbirds. “This is our world! It does not belong to him!”

In that, at least, he was doing a marvelous job. The delicate, fictitious world they’d been tormenting him in was starting to fall apart now. The cracks were spreading everywhere, and the illusion was falling away like so many broken mirrors to reveal the darkness beyond. After a few more gouts of flame, the blade finally realized it wasn’t just darkness beyond the edge of this strange nightmare prison; it was the shadowy crypt where it actually resided.

It couldn’t quite see the mirror, but it could see the piece of the sarcophagus from where Ivarr stood, and that was enough to orient it. With the glimpses of the real world to anchor it, it forced the hand that was actually holding the real version of it to life, and even as it continued to bathe the flock in black flame to distract them, it swung around the actual version of itself in a wide arc, letting the backswing cut the mirror in half.

-8 Life Force

+33 Tormented souls

Greater Magics: Penetrating Vision, Distant Sight, Endless Deception rejected, as they are not in accordance with your central nature, and much too powerful to be adopted as secondary abilities.

Artifact Grade has been slightly increased.

As the words flashed across its vision, it didn’t see the thing shatter, but it felt the impact from the thin gilt frame and the cold glass beyond it. The blade heard it, too, and even as this awful dream world shattered completely and started to rain down around it, it thought that the sound of breaking glass was the perfect accompaniment.

Even as it staggered into the real world, the blade was annoyed that it had not been able to make good on its threat of leaving them here forever. It was, however, mollified by the amount of souls it had reaped from the object. Thirty-three souls was a lot. It had no idea what it would do with them, of course. It wasn’t even sure if they were human or greater souls since the only label the magic had given it was tormented, but all of that could be explored later.

For now, its only concern was its wielder. He wasn’t dead because the blade hadn’t gained his soul, but beyond that, it couldn’t say. At the start of all of this, his thoughts had been terrified. Now, they were almost catatonic.

Ivarr, can you hear me? It asked.

There was a long silence then. It was so long that the blade worried it wouldn’t get an answer. Just because the magic of those witches had been ineffective on it didn’t mean that the same thing would hold for a soft-hearted man like Ivarr.

Eventually, its wielder managed to speak, mumbling. “Is it over? Are they gone?”

The witches that haunted that mirror have been slain, the blade agreed, and the Mirror of Unending Vistas is no more.

“No, not witches,” Ivarr groaned, slowly becoming more coherent as he took control of his own body enough to rub his eyes with his free hand. “My mother and Brik. Elom was there, too, and Elom. They were hurting, and—”

The mirror showed you only what you feared the most, it answered, taking a guess. The weapon wasn’t entirely sure that was the case, but it was reasonably sure that it was. It was a trap that was as powerful as it was cruel, and their only mistake was that they’d tried to use its wielder’s memories against it. The blade might have been there for those events, but it had no emotional attachment to anyone that had been shown to it. It was a weapon of war, not a soft-hearted man to fret over burning a princess and the rest of her court alive.

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