Chương 124: Dance with a Devil

Ch. 124 - Dance with a Devil The moment before it struck, the demon might have looked a little strange, but it had still been recognizable as some strange multi-armed forgemaster. For a minute or two, the presence of the Ebon Blade had been an inspiration, and the fact that it was itching to make something new was obvious. Moment by moment, though, and word by word, its form had changed as it shook free from the dust of ages, and its number of limbs had multiplied.

By the time it had struck, it was obvious that it was going to, but even that certainty did not entirely prepare either of them for the thing's voraciousness. Suddenly, it struck out, not with a limb or even half a dozen of them, but a tide of grasping hands and claws. Lucian swung wide and fast, shearing many of them off in a powerful strike that sliced through the rubbery limbs without resistance that didn't seem to disturb their owner at all.

While all of that happened, the weapon forced its wielder to duck reflexively to dodge a strike by a trailing arm that he'd misjudged. Even as all of that happened and he leaped away, more arms still chased after him. +39 Life Force. Against any other opponent, that would have been a decisive victory, but the demon seemed utterly unperturbed by the loss of eight hands, or the black blood that oozed from its stumps.

"Give me the weapon! You lack the skill and the hands to appreciate such perfection! It was forged for me and me alone!" A stray hand landed on Lucian's leg, a few inches above his ankle, and in the half second before he whipped the blade around to shear it off, it squeezed hard enough to mottle the flesh and crack the bone. Even after it was cut free, it continued to hold on for several seconds more before it finally withered and fell away. +41 Life Force. -18 Life Force.

That leg healed enough to take the strain as they landed again, but next time they might not be so lucky. Still, the Ebon Blade would much rather the thing touch its wielder than touch it. The blade had come here looking for answers, but for the first time in quite a while, it decided it might have been better off not knowing about any of this. In that moment, the blade was certain that it never wanted to be wielded by such a thing.

It might be a murderous killer, but there was something twisted and poisonous in the taste of its tainted flesh, and it would rather be wielded by a hundred orcs than a single demon.

"Give it to me!" the demon gibbered.

"GiveIt! GiveIt! GiveIt! GiveIt! GiveIt!" As it did so, the blade queried the first mage it found in its soul. How do you kill a demon? The answer that poured out of the young man's mouth was rote and formulaic; he'd obviously learned from a book, not experience, but the blade didn't let any of that distract it. Instead, it fended off attacks and kept its wielder aware of attacks from every direction as it absorbed the highlights, but there was no good news there.

Demons are not easily killed, except by other demons who devour each other's souls with long-practiced ease. For anyone else, it requires catastrophic damage, which is nearly impossible given its proximity to a gateway. The dead mage explained. Instead, you should always try to banish them back to the pit from which they came. This is easily done if you have a man of faith by your side or know the creature's true name. Otherwise, your options are limited.

The blade cursed the answer as it sundered a dozen more limbs, but that did little good. So, instead of trying to slay it, at first they focused on attempts to escape, but even with the Ebon Blade's help, though Lucian couldn't reach the door to escape before one of the demon's far-reaching limbs slammed it shut, and once they reached it, it could not buy him enough breathing room to open it. +186 Life Force. -31 Life Force. The two of them fought defensively and moved acrobatically, but it was everywhere.

In less than a minute, the room had transformed from a hellish forge into a red, fleshy spiderweb. The center still glowed, but that terrible portal was forgotten by all of them as they fought for primacy. When it became clear that evasion and escape weren't options, they pressed the attack, trying to cut away the body that housed all of these limbs.

It was a pitiful thing now that had atrophied almost completely as it unfurled into hundreds of arms, but even so, they could not reach it to strike the final blow through the thicket of flesh it had become. Even the few blows that scored serious hits on its withered torso were shallow, and the flesh was quickly replaced. +226 Life Force. -27 Life Force. That wasn't done by healing shut once more. That would have been too sane.

Instead, each wound became a cavernous orifice that vomited forth a dozen new limbs to engulf them. No matter how many arms there struck away, there was always more, and however fast Lucian moved, the demon moved even faster. Its wielder was bound by how fast he could move his legs, and whether he ran on the walls or leaped through the air, the boy simply could not keep up with a creature that pushed off of every wall and ceiling simultaneously, moving itself around like a puppet.

"Mine!" it chanted in an endless litany.

"Mine! Mine! Mine! It's Mine, not yours! I will have it!" After a couple of minutes of fighting like this, the blade was tempted to believe that their demonic enemy wasn't even moving anymore. It was simply the world that moved around it. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. That's what it had become. It was both spider and spiderweb, and all the time the battle raged, it shrieked its desire to possess the blade.

The battle was frantic and ferocious by turns, and sometimes the blade thought it had sliced enough arms free of their maniacal host that the assault began to slacken, but those ebbs never held for long. Eventually, in a desperate maneuver, Lucian was forced to toss the blade into the air and then whip it around him with magic at ever-increasing speeds. The blade did not care for the maneuver, but things were desperate.

The demon was raining grasping hands down on them from all directions now, and its tainted flesh had piled around it up to calf height.

"I will have it!" the forgemaster roared.

"You cannot stop me!" At this point, the Ebon Blade was no longer sure that it could, but it could think of no better option. As long as Lucian's concentration held, the two of them could keep the thing at bay, but only in the way that a meatgrinder might, spraying ichor across the room such that any answers it might have found were entirely erased by the ride of violence. Eventually, some strikes started to get through the whirl shield, but the Ebon Blade could see that it was only because Lucian was letting them.

He was picking the blows that were going just a little wide of where he stood and letting them get through his razor-edged defense so that they could hammer at the door with their full unrestrained power before he severed them. It was a clever strategy, and it made the blade appreciate its wielder's intelligence all the more.

Neither the blade nor its wielder could spare the moment it would take to cleave the heavy wooden door open, but they could waste their opponent's strength on the task as long as it took to batter their way free of the trap, and then make their way outside. It might have even worked, too, but eventually their opponent adapted to the technique, and as the increasingly convoluted pattern became predictable, it used the timing to grasp its hilt for the first time. After that, things went downhill quickly.

After the first hand landed on its hilt, it was followed by a second and a third. Each time it cut itself free, but each touch slowed it, allowing two more to take the place of the severed arm. The weapon knew that it was all over almost immediately then, and while it warred with the mind of the interloper, those efforts weren't nearly as effective as they might have been if the grip had belonged to a human.

It had struggled with the bestial desires of an orcish wielder now and then, but this demon's mind was entirely alien.

"Yes!" it roared in triumph, completely ignoring the mage as its many severed limbs started to regrow.

"With this, I can conquer all nine thrones and rule the pits myself! I can forge the world anew!" As much as it was concerned about that, though, or the fact that the demon was dragging it toward the gateway to hell, it was more concerned about its wielder.

Lucian had not been the best wielder, but he'd been growing, and after Evelyn's tragic death at the hands of the throne, the last thing it wanted was to take the boy with it, and as the two of them fought for the weapon in a vicious tug of war, the Ebon Blade made a decision.

"You cannot have it!" Lucian screamed, activating the blade's powers one after another in an attempt to burn the grip away. Fire, poison, and lightning all arced along the weapon, but the demon barely noticed. Live, the blade commanded its wielder, using its influence to break the spell that continued to link them as the demon dragged it into the yawning pit. In retrospect, it realized that it was probably a dumb decision; how would Lucian fight his way down the mountain?

How would he survive the beasts that filled the wilderness? It doesn't matter, it whispered, answering its own question as it tumbled end over end into the fiery hellscape below. A chance at life was better than the certainty of damnation. The weapon watched the wound in reality slowly close above it, as the demon that had held it open for so long fell with it.

"Mine!" the thing roared possessively.

"With a weapon such as this, no Demon Prince will be able to stand against me!" A hundred hands caressed its hilt, slowly, but surely, combining, one at a time, until The blade first fought to resist it, but when that didn't seem to do much, it tried to pry into its mind to get its name, status, or anything else. That didn't work any better. Instead, all it could do was watch them fall further and further away from the portal that had brought them here as it shrank to a dark pinpoint. Name:?????????????????

Occupation:?????? Toughness: X Strength: X Agility: X Speed: X Intelligence: X Willpower: X Morality: None Bloodlust: Yes Status: Wounded Martial Skill:????? Armor Proficiency:????? Dodging:????? Athletics:???? Circle: 4th That rend closed long before it hit the ground. As they fell, its demonic wielder tried to transform its hands into giant, floppy wings to slow its fall, but there at least, the blade was able to do some good.

It could not stop the thing from doing whatever it wanted, or from siphoning its power away to heal the bloody wounds it had spent the last ten minutes carving, but if it fought with all its might it could keep the thing's form fixed, so it barely had the chance to change forms at all before they both impacted the world below hard enough to leave a crater. When that happened, the weapon embedded deep into a boulder to such a degree that its blade was embedded almost up to the hilt in stone.

The demon that had been holding it all the way down with so many unnatural arms slammed into the ground hard enough to break every bone in its infernal body. If it had managed to hold on, the Ebon Blade would have been forced to spend thousands of life force healing it. Unfortunately for it, its powerful grip was interrupted by the force of the impact, and it bounced uselessly and bonelessly away from it.

When that happened, a few more limbs sprouted from the smear it had become and groped blindly toward it like bloody creeping vines. Unfortunately, they were unable to locate it before it gracelessly expired several feet away. +1 Demon Soul. All those arms, and no ability to fight through the pain, the weapon thought as it watched the thing expire. It had thrown its limbs around so casually in the depths of Ul-Magora, but a single miles-long fall had been enough to do it in.