Bloodstained Blade

Chapter 198 - Death and Everything After

In the end, the Ebon Blade didn’t try to speak to her again. It had already taken long enough. Leaving on the doorstep of its destination was impossible. Geral would get his dual, because that was the right thing to do. It could no sooner turn its back on its wielder than on the very concept of vengeance that animated it.

It flicked briefly through the souls in its soul stone, looking for one that might grant some insight into Vergozza. The only one that might was the Demon Queen’s soul, and it was unwilling to touch that one. So, instead, it considered its opponent. The goddess of the underworld was spiritually fearsome, but visually, she looked like one of the undead it could summon.

Could I use one of my powers to command her or contain her? The blade wondered. It quickly decided it was unlikely to be that easy. Still, she’d said she was the master of life and death, but undeath was neither of those things. Does that make her the master of it, or those powers outside of her purview?

It had been able to reclaim its ghost simply by passing its ebon edge through it, and it could capture even a god’s soul. It knew that much. Could it capture her that way, though, insubstantial as she was?

The sword didn’t have an answer to that, but it didn’t really have a choice. Slowly, it forced Geral to turn away from her as he was about to leave, and then it struck. The weapon didn’t care for treachery, but in this moment every advantage counted.

An instant before it lunged, it warped space twice, and the length of its blade once. When it wheeled around to stab her through the heart, its action was instantaneous, as if there was no distance at all between them. It was the fastest it had ever tried to end a fight.

-250 Life Force.

Vergozza did not move, but then, she did not die, either. The blade succeeded in stabbing her right through the chest, but it was insubstantial, and there were no threads to cut. It tried to Sever the Thread, but there was no ability to target. She was a void.

Then Geral died. She made no move to attack. She just gave a small sigh, and then the man’s heart stopped beating.

The blade would have wondered why its regeneration didn’t start the organ right back up. It might have even tried to force it to, but it was far more concerned about the man’s soul slipping away than it was about his body as he suddenly fell to the ground.

He is not yours to take! The blade growled, grasping and gripping at the ethereal vapor as it fled toward the woman.

“All souls are mine to take,” she answered indifferently as Geral’s corpse landed on the ground and the blade’s hilt tumbled free of his hand. “All that haven’t been warped by magic and malformed like yours at least.”

She continued to lecture it about how it belonged in a prison, but everyone else deserved an afterlife, but the blade was no longer listening. It had no heart or ears, yet the rage that flowed through it then was so powerful that it blotted out the world like the sound of blood rushing through a man’s ears.

To lose in a fight was one thing. To lose to a god on some level was expected, though perhaps not like this. What it couldn’t tolerate, though, was the idea that its wielder’s soul would be taken from it, yet here it was, slipping through its fingers. It might be able to steal the souls of the faithful from a god that wasn’t present, but when she was standing right there, the tug of war was all but hopeless.

Geral belongs with his family! With me! The blade raged, and for the first time in a long time, the runes carved into its black blade flashed a deep red as its anger shone through the darkness of its hell-tainted metal.

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“Oh, you have them, too, do you?” she asked in obvious annoyance. “Well, I’ll take them too, and see that they are reunited in their next lives; it's the least I can do when their lives were ruined by a monster like you.”

The weapon might have offered a retort, but it felt her soul touch its soul gem, rooting around the soul gem looking for the souls hidden within, and it froze. In that moment, all it could remember was the way that the Penitant One had violated in the same way. That was far enough. The blade lashed out instinctually with Sever the Thread, but it did not work as expected.

-100 Life Force.

In the past, each use of the power had nullified a given set of powers that its opponent possessed. It had robbed the Penitant One of his illusions and stolen the Mechanical Drake’s flames. This time, though, it did not target a power, but the soul of the Goddess herself.

Even as it tried to understand what had happened, her body came undone, and the woman-shaped hole that had gaped only a moment ago in the skein of the world was refilled by the threads of creation. She wasn’t banished, though, or killed either, not technically. Instead, her soul was dragged kicking and screaming into its soul gem now that it had cut her off from her body. In that single instant, she went from predator to prey, and as her body vanished, their two souls battled.

Give him back! The blade roared. This felt much like the times it had fought with the Demon Princes and Princesses for their powers, but instead of feeling the filth of hell, it experienced only the chill of death.

Still, the Goddess of Death could not escape its grip anymore than the other powerful souls had now that the battleground had shifted so completely.

What have you done?! She screamed silently as she shifted from trying to beat the blade to trying to escape from it.

The blade resisted the urge to taunt her and instead searched for Geral’s soul tucked away somewhere in hers, half-shredding her black, deathless spirit in the process. Eventually, it found him, tucked away in the folds of her inky black robes like a tiny candle flame, dwarfed by the goddess. The blade snatched the soul of its wielder and moved it to the outskirts of his family, where they orbited the hellish star that was Nuella.

That felt right, but it would have to find a better solution for them later. Perhaps I can take Vergozza’s powers when this is done and find them a proper afterlife.

While it did that, the goddess tried to escape, but that was no longer an option. The blade had already won their fight. It had been as anticlimactic as it had been brief, and now her soul was trapped in its ruby hilt, orbiting her sister, and eclipsing her like a dark, binary star. It was beautiful, but the blade didn’t care about that.

The Goddess was its second divine prisoner. That heartened the blade on some level, but even as she thrashed around, it wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do. It had no wielder, and while it could simply reanimate Geral’s corpse, that wouldn’t make for a wielder strong enough to face a god in battle.

Perhaps I should just wait for one of their worshipers or agents to come pick me up, the blade considered, but even as it thought about the option, it rejected it. They knew better than that. I would need a zombie or something like it, at least long enough to carry it to where it might have a better option.

Still, it did not wish to be made defenseless. So it flipped through the various options at its disposal. A wraith might pick it up, but it wasn’t much stronger than a ghost in the same way that a death knight wasn’t that much stronger than a zombie.

As it spent a few minutes missing Geral, or even the Warbringer before him, the blade moved further up the food chain, eventually settling on the revenant as its best option. The description was straightforward enough. It was a step past a specter, and death knight, and theoretically the strongest undead it could make. Even with the cost cut in half thanks to the level four power, though, it still cost five souls to create. Fortunately, the blade had souls to spare.

The description described it as ‘a powerful ethereal warrior bound to his dead flesh that is at its strongest when it is a soul seeking vengeance.’ That certainly implied that Geral was the best choice for that. Not only was revenge the only thing that had kept him alive for a long time, but it was also his body. Still, the blade refused to do that.

It wasn't just that it refused to abandon its wielder, or its unwillingness to deny it a happy ending with his family. It had something else in mind.

For a long time, the blade had understood that zombies animated with similar souls worked better than those fueled by disparate ones. A corpse raised with only orc souls was faster and more comingled than one that comingeld with goblins and men. Power mattered, too, though, which was why it was going to use the dragon souls that had been in its collection for the last few weeks.