Bloodstained Blade

Chapter 199 - Flames of Vengeance

Creating a ghost was a stranger feeling than creating a zombie. The Ebon Blade knew that. What it didn’t know, until it felt the dragon souls start to pour out of it, was how different it would feel with more powerful souls. While they looked small in comparison to the twin goddess souls that rotated at the center of its soul, they were giant things, and the metal around its soul gem grew noticeably warm as they poured out into creation and coalesced around Geral’s corpse.

-5 Dragon Souls.

It was charred and scarred already, but if it hadn’t been, the sword suspected that would have changed immediately. As each giant dragon soul wove around the still warm body, and their flames poured out inside of him, he was sheathed in a nimbus of purple flames. The flames filled his veins, too, as the dragon souls empowered the corpse, returning it to life.

When a zombie was animated, nothing changed about them. They were just a corpse on puppet strings. When a zombie became a death knight, it developed a dark aura; its shadows intensified, and it became clear that it contained some dark power. This was different, though.

The revenant throbbed with power. As it came to its feet, it burned from the inside out, like a slowly burning coal mine. Its eyes glowed too, and while not quite nimble, when it bent to pick up the Ebon Blade, it did so in a manner that was graceful for a zombie.

It’s not a zombie, though, the weapon reminded itself. It was a revenant, and the flesh was merely a totem that held the burning, writhing soul it had created in place.

The blade felt powerful. Every interaction it had ever had with a dragon soul demonstrated their power, but these five had been twisted together inside the mechanical drake for centuries; they had been tainted by strange magics, and it tasted the acrid chemical tang of those magics more than the dusty, rotten flavor of death in the hand that held it.

Geral’s corpse moved through a quick kata at its direction, testing the range of motion that the corpse had as well as its speed and dexterity. It moved almost as well as it had in life, and the blade was satisfied with that. It cannot heal, though, the blade reminded itself. Aside from its discomfort and its desire to be wielded, that was the true weakness of using a corpse; it would be used up a little at a time, until there was nothing left.

That was almost enough to make the blade consider retreating. This body is strong enough to make it back down the mountain and find a real wielder, but is it enough to face whatever awaits me beyond these gates? It wasn’t sure, but the idea of retreating repulsed it, so it moved forward, adjusting to the feeling of being in complete control again. This wasn’t how it wanted to face Hydonar, but it would just have to hope that it found a better wielder along the way.

As the Ebon Blade took its first steps into the heavens, it found no defenders. No guardian beats sprang from the void, and no armies rushed out to meet it. No gods tried to smite it, even though it felt the two god souls that it held within its soulstone churn uneasily; whether that was because they were struggling to be free now that he’d arrived or because they were struggling against each other, it couldn’t say.

As the sword went, ruin followed it. It had noticed some degradation in places where its zombies had lingered, like Argandin’s monastery, but this was more extreme. This was closer to the Hellfire that it could wield so freely, only it contaminated everything as the revenant that held it passed.

Flowers and grass withered as it approached, and everywhere it stepped, it left smoldering footprints that started slow-burning brushfires in its wake. Without even intending to, it left a trail of destruction behind it, and before it ever got close to the city of the gods, flames ravaged the heavens, sending a thick cloud of smoke into the sky.

Still, none of the other gods reached out to try to stop its approach. They are afraid of me, the weapon realized as it noticed the army forming up on the walls of the city rather than riding out to fight it. They saw what I did to the Goddess of Death,

and they think that the same fate awaits them.

The Ebon Blade couldn’t blame them for that; that was certainly its intention, but it thought it interesting that they would cower away from it. That might make sense for the Goddess of Elves or Song, but why is the God of War in there, and not out here fighting me?

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The blade didn’t come up with an answer before it reached the defenses. There, it found forty-foot walls of alabaster manned by thousands of semi-transparent souls that were made of light. Some had spears, and others bows, but it saw nothing there to be afraid of.

From the brightness of their souls, it could see no avatars or other beings of true power set to face it immediately. Those hung further back on towers and secondary battlements, waiting to see what would happen. When the first assault happened, it was a rain of arrows released toward it like a scintillating cloud. That stopped the blade for a moment, but only to spin its blade in a tight circle with blurring speed, transforming it into almost a solid shield. Some fragments got through that whirling defense, but those bits of shaft turned to ash before they managed to strike its wielder, by and large.

The blade had expected more than that. It had thought that the arrows might pin it to the earth or pass right through its blade. Instead, they were all but deflected. So, instead of waiting for the next surprise, it responded by running right toward the wall, and then right up it.

Even with its strength and speed, it could not entirely defy gravity. Still, it made it nearly a dozen steps up the steep stone before reaching its apex. Fortunately, that was far enough to reach the first row of the arrow slits. It paused there only a moment before leaping the rest of the way to the top. That got the blade an arrow through the calf of the corpse that wielded it, thanks to the waiting archer, but its wielder felt no pain, and when the revenant landed hard on the battlement, the shaft broke in two as the muscle clenched.

What followed then would have best been characterized as a blood bath, if either side had any blood. The blade was held by an angry revenant, and the heavily armed defenders were translucent ghosts, wielding weapons of light. It expected their armor to be just as real as the weapons it parried, but as it ran the first man on the wall through, he popped like a bubble, and the blade took his soul.

+1 Heavenly soul.

That surprised the blade almost as much as the other defenders, but before they could decide to retreat, it pressed the advantage, lashing out at the next two to its left. Both of those died in a single slash. No, died, was the wrong word; all of them were already dead. They were absorbed. They were drawn into its blade with a touch. It had not expected that.

+2 Heavenly souls.

In creation, its most powerful ability was the way it stole Life Force from the dead and dying. Here, they had no bodies to bleed and no protection for their souls.

The sword cut through the men and women that rushed to meet it like cobwebs in the next minute, slaying dozens as its mastery over the soul captured them with a touch. It was one of the least satisfying fights of its entire existence, but it did appreciate the look of growing horror on their faces.

+31 Heavenly souls.

After the first wave, the defenders tried to retreat, but the weapon was faster than them, and when the mages and avatars tried to bombard it with scintillating magic that was as devastating as it was lovely, it used Bolt repeatedly to dash among the masses of fleeing soldiers erratically, causing most of those spells to crash among their own people while it escaped entirely.

-200 Life Force.

+46 Heavenly Souls.

It was pure chaos, but as the blade flashed through the crowd, reaping souls, it was only barely scathed. Rather, it had the opposite problem. As it moved through the fleeing soldiers toward the first mage that shone with power, its soul reserves were filling up much too quickly. Normally, it burned Life Force constantly in moments like this, making its wielder whole, but it couldn’t heal a corpse, so instead it burned as many powers as it could while it consumed the souls.

+71 Heavenly Souls.

It bent space and time, it amplified its strength and speed. Burning with every power in its panoply, it was able to slice the mage that sought the scourge it from this world to ribbons, while she did no more than singe it.

No, it’s probably worse than that, the blade realized, examining the corpse it wielded. Even with its penetrating gaze, though, Geral had been so badly scared and burned that it was hard for the weapon to tell which marks were old and which were new.

It didn’t matter; what did was that it was unlikely to find another wielder here, not when everyone who touched it ceased to exist. Its soulstone was filling up, though, and then, after a few more kills, it was entirely full. After that, it started to burn souls automatically, flooding its Life Force Reservoir beyond capacity.

+3291 Life Force.

Energy Reservoir Full.

Life Force reserve limits exceeded!

That was bad, but perhaps not as bad as the last time. In hell, the ocean of tears had cooled it enough to keep its soulstone from shattering, but here, the flames around it only stoked higher and higher. The weapon was no longer wielded by a flame-shrouded corpse, but by a bonfire that set fire to everything around it.