Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 45 - Broken Pieces

Ivarr babbled about what he’d seen, but he needn’t have bothered. The Ebon Blade had already guessed the broad strokes as he staggered drunkenly in a bid to stay standing while he ranted about the terrible things he’d seen.

It was far more concerned with the way it had erupted like that at the end. Its blade had dissolved from battle-hardened metal at the end there. Was that a dramatic metaphor or a hint of a larger power it did not yet understand? It wondered. If it was a real power, wouldn’t I have unlocked something new, like soul blast or flame strike?

The weapon wasn’t sure, and its wielder was hardly in any shape to shed light on his own experience right now. The man seemed more punch drunk than intoxicated as he spoke at length about how real it had been and how those he’d let die tormented him with both words and violence.

It had only been a couple of minutes, but the man would have sworn it was closer to weeks than days. He might have broken down into tears had he not mentioned the elven mage’s name in his ramblings. That was enough to make him whirl around and look for her while she still lay on the pile of gold.

“Altharia!” he cried out a second time as he ran to her and very nearly avoided falling on top of her.

The blade could see her chest rising and falling lightly like a bird and secretly hoped she wouldn’t make it. Were she to perish so close to it, it would certainly use her soul to answer a variety of questions on the nature of magical artifacts. It was so tempted to try to finish her off by draining her life, but just as it decided whether or not it wanted to risk her wrath, her eyes flew open.

“The mirror…” she breathed. “Oh, Ivarr, it was so much worse than I feared! All of that ageless poison and pain! They wouldn’t listen to me… The things they did to me…”

“It’s over,” its wielder told her, stroking her blonde hair, “My sword struck it down and shattered it.”

“Your sword?” she asked confused.

“Me, with my sword,” he corrected himself immediately. “I… My fist didn’t work any better than your spell on the glass, but I was able to chop through the frame easily enough with its magic and—”

The woman seemed to accept that. She clung to him then and very nearly kissed him before she interrupted him by asking, “Where’s Dero?”

Both of them did a double take then, and after only a quick glance, they found him where he had fallen. For a moment, they tried to rouse him, but he didn’t respond. As soon as they rolled him over, it saw why. The man was stone dead.

A chunk of the ceiling had fallen on him and partially crushed his skull. It would have been an almost instant death, and there was nothing anyone could do for him.

That surprised the blade. It hadn’t stolen the man’s soul, so it had assumed that he was still lying there, very badly wounded. Now that he’d died without giving the blade what it craved, it felt frustration shooting through it instead of power.

How could it have escaped me? It wondered.

It only took a cursory check of the Path of Death to reveal what had happened, though. Its powers allowed it to take souls that hadn’t already been claimed by someone else. The priest’s own deity had very clearly thwarted him in this instance, and, at least for now, there was nothing that the Ebon blade could do about it.

The mage wept openly then. “No! No, not Dero too!” she wailed. “Why?”

Ivarr held her then, even as she held the dead priest. He didn’t try to give any answers because he didn’t have any. Solace was all that he could offer her, and there was precious little of that.

The two of them stayed like that for a while as Ivarr tried to console her. It was the better part of an hour before either of them was in the right headspace to even think about leaving.

The elf wouldn’t do that either, not right away, at least. Before she’d hear of it, Ivarr had to first carry the priest's body back to the crypt’s entrance while she gathered the shards of glass from the mirror along with pieces of the frame for her studies.

The blade found that darkly amusing and watched the spectacle while Ivarr made a second trip to gather the corpse of his friend as well. All around them, undreamed of riches were scattered around, and she was gathering broken shards instead.

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The two took less than a pouch of gold between them. It was a touch ridiculous. They were leaving behind almost all of the wealth they’d found in favor of corpses and worthless glass.

Those efforts took hours, and by the time the two of them finally emerged, it was into the blood-red light of the setting sun. As a result, they made camp at the entrance of the cave despite the rough conditions. Their donkey didn’t like the idea of being tethered in a cave entrance that stank of shit and burned flesh, but it had little choice. It, like the blade, could only wait for these two to decide what they were going to do next, and in the pensive atmosphere, it decided that it might well end up waiting for a long time.

Ivarr made a campfire to ward off the darkness, but the two ate little. That wasn’t a surprise, given that the number of dead in their camp almost outnumbered the living. What was a surprise was when the silence exploded into kissing and nudity.

The blade was nonplussed by it, but then it hadn’t expected any of this to ignite the long-simmering passion that had been building up between these two for days and weeks. It just hadn’t expected their overflowing emotions about everything they’d endured that day to explode into sex. They’d only exchanged a few words, and then, just like that, there was no more speaking at all, only the sort of moaning and grunting that was usually found on the battlefield.

As the mage stripped, the blade noticed that whatever strain the magic had put her under had made her look years older than she had this morning. Ivarr, too, suffered from something similar, though to a much smaller degree. His eyes were merely a little sunken, but whole streaks off the blonde woman’s hair had gone white from the fear and torments they’d endured for only a few minutes.

After that, the Ebon blade ignored them and instead kept a watchful eye on the area around them in case their activities drew monsters to them. It was tempted to burn one of the tormented souls that it had obtained earlier and use it to learn more about the God-King and the magic they’d just endured, but for the moment at least, the blade decided against it. It couldn’t let itself be distracted at the same time everyone else was. So, instead, it reviewed its current numbers while it kept watch in an effort to come up with a better plan.

The weapon had gained no Life Force from all of its battles with the dead. Indeed, it had even lost a little after the initial surge that the goblins and their tiny souls had given it. It currently had just under 1000 Life Force, but it had 34 souls. It wasn’t sure how much Life Force a tormented soul might contain, but if it was anything like a human soul, then the blade could afford anything it wanted.

What is it I should buy myself? It wondered as it reviewed the list and tried to ignore the sounds of sex in the background.

Primary Powers:

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

Lesser Soul Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force

Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force

Increase Control 3: 1500 Life Force

Empower Blade 2: 2000 Life Force

Improved Siphon 7: 2000 Life Force

Increase Reserves 10: 5000 Life Force

Repair Soul 4: 5000 Life Force

Secondary Powers:

Giant’s Strength 2: 400 Life Force

Speed of Shadows 2: 500 Life Force

The Ebon Blade had been preparing to decide if it wanted to increase its Siphon ability, or start down the Path of Blood, But instead it stopped flat as it noticed a change to its ability display.

What in the abyss? Why do I have secondary powers? It asked itself. What even makes something a secondary power?

Its question was answered almost immediately.

Secondary powers differ from primary powers in that they are assimilated from external sources, and incorporated into the magic of the blade. The blade may only have three secondary powers, do to the limitations of the vessel. To obtain a fourth, one of the three existing powers must be dismissed.

Dismissed? Limits? It considered, not used to any real limits on its growth. Technically it had already found the end of the increase reserves chain, but it wasn’t really the end, because it had spawned secondary branches on the penultimate level. Then why aren't the Amplify abilities secondary powers?

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The magic did not spring up a second time to answer that question, leaving the blade to guess. Is it because they’re on secondary locations? It wondered. The other power in question had inscribed the reverse part of its blade, not its hilt. That was the only difference that it could see.

It continued to ponder the imponderable, though. It beat listening to the sound of its wielder enjoying himself in the background.