Chương 166: The Embrace of A Goddess

Did I fall into her trap? The blade wondered as it was devoured by the soul of a god. Did it want me to strike her? Those were its last coherent thoughts before the blade was washed away completely by the raw power that assaulted it. When the light faded, the volcano had vanished and was replaced by a meadow. It was idyllic, but the fact that it made no sense wasn't the disorienting part. That was that; it was no longer a sword, but a man.

"No, not a man," it said, looking at his hands.

"Baraga."

"Correct!" a feminine voice behind him answered. The Ebon Blade spun so quickly to locate the sound of that voice that it almost fell over. It was unused to having the balance associated with a body. It was not the same as puppeting someone else's body and relying on their reactions. Nuella sat behind him, on a large stone next to a babbling brook.

Her appearance was the same, and she still wore her crown of horns, but she'd changed into a lavender dress, which somehow managed to make her look attractive instead of fearsome.

"You are Baraga, I am Nuella, and since you are the first guest I've had in a very long time, I thought it might be nice to chat with you a while before I consume your soul," I'm not one to play with my food normally, but you have so many interesting memories that I thought I might linger in them." Memories that triggered the blade to look around again, and it was unsurprised to recognize this place. It wasn't just some beautiful illusion she'd painted like a picture. It had been here before.

"This is… It's not where I… he was summoned," it realized, looking past the trees to where it could see the Golden Tower in the distance.

"This is where he spoke to her for the first time."

"It is," the demon goddess agreed, standing and sashaying over to him.

"She wore this dress, she stood in this spot, and she kissed you right…" As Nuella leaned in to kiss the blade, it backpeddled narrowly avoiding her lips and making her laugh as it stumbled backwards.

"I am not Baraga," the blade insisted.

"I am only his blade."

"You're not only anything," she answered with a laugh, "But as long as you are here, you will take a form that is pleasing to me."

"We are still at the heart of the volcano," the sword insisted.

"You are simply holding me here until the heat does your work for you, but no heat can damage me. I was forged in hellfire and quenched in dragon's blood."

"A reasonable theory," she answered, "But a dull one. No time is passing, no evil plans are being enacted, I just wanted to enjoy the moment. If you play your cards right, I might even be interested in taking a tumble with a big, strong man like you…"

"That will not be happening," the blade answered, taking a step back as she advanced on it again. This time, she shoved its form backward with surprising speed, and in that moment, everything changed. The sun wheeled across the sky, setting in an instant as the moon and stars came out, and it landed on a familiar bed instead of the grass that had been there the moment before. This room was familiar to it as well. This was the room where Baraga and his princess had first coupled, in one of the castle's towers.

This time, the blade was more aware of its strange, temporary body and rolled with the motion, landing on the far side of the bed with a clumsy somersault and just escaping the demon queen's pounce that followed a second later. Her dress had disappeared somewhere along the way, and it had been replaced by a translucent slip and lacy underwear that left very little to the imagination.

"While I do love it when people play hard to get, this is a bit much, don't you think?" she purred, crawling across the bed toward the blade on hands and knees in a manner that was so seductive that even it felt a twinge of temptation.

"I am not a man, and this is not a real place," it insisted, denying her again.

"No matter how you torment me, that will not change. Now do battle, or let me be on my way."

"Battle, is it?" she sighed.

"You know they do call the act of sex conquest. Perhaps this is just one more form of combat for you. You've never tried it, so who's to say you wouldn't enjoy it…" This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Battles are life or death," it sneered, "What you offer is mere debauchery." The demon queen obviously enjoyed how uncomfortable she was making the blade, and shrugged out of her slip, showing it her bare breasts. In that moment, it tried to look past the seeming of the world and view it as lines of twining power, but whatever she'd done had nullified that power, so in the end, all it could do was avert its gaze and search for a weapon to fight her.

At this point in Baraga's story, there should have been a black blade on his hip. The blade knew that it wouldn't have done any good against this foe, but still it felt naked without it.

"Don't you think it would be a shame to spend your entire existence as a blade, and yet never experience the one thrust men care most about?" she asked, pressing her chest against its back in a way that felt nearly as alien to it as the grip of an orcish hand on its hilt. It wasn't made for this.

"There are many of my wielders that would have taken you up on that offer," the blade spat, still untempted by her raw display of sensuality.

"Would they?" she smiled, "Let's find out…" The blade stiffened then, and an agony ran through it that made it double over in pain, as its body split. It was still, Baraga, or at least part of him, but Ivarr stepped out of its body. A moment later, Ren did likewise. There were others, too, even from the first two lives, which it only half remembered, and members of Baraga's band that had been used in its construction.

By the time each of them stepped away, its temporary flesh had been torn asunder, and it was in the charred and melted body of the Warbringer. The blade was far less concerned about that, though, than the fact that the men who made up who it was were about to engage in an orgy with this woman. It would seem that if she could not make it debase itself, she would make it watch, and do so by proxy. Fortunately for the blade, she had made a mistake, and it was unmoved by the repulsive display.

"Ivarr would have coupled with you without question, because he was a foolish young man," the blade said in the hollow, echoing voice of its new body, "But that is not Ivarr, Nor is it Baraga, or any of the others?"

"Oh?" she moaned, momentarily breaking the kiss she'd been engaged in.

"You could have fooled me."

"I can't say the same. I know this is trickery, because I purged Ren from my soul not so long ago, and no part of him remains within me," it answered, turning to look out the window and look away at a centuries-old copy of Severin that was every bit as fake as her lurid display.

"I didn't fight my way through nine circles of hell to be mocked. I didn't conquer demon princes to torment in new and creative ways." As the blade announced this, the lewd sounds that had filled the room died away immediately. So did the room, and even the view outside. They still stood in some kind of tower, but it was without walls or ceiling, and more of a natural spire than anything else.

"What a pity," she answered, walking up beside it once again, wearing clothes as she pretended to admire the view.

"I'd only barely gotten to taste your wielders before you ruined it."

"Is this where you push me off to find fresh torments then?" the weapon asked, as it gazed out amidst the enormity of hell. From here, it could see the curving walls that hinted at how the entire place was contained within a vast, alien organ. It could also see places that were not part of the path it had tread through the place.

"I could," she agreed, "But I meant what I said before. So few make it this far, and I seek to enjoy you before I consume you. Given the amount of souls you've consumed, is that really so difficult to understand?" The blade stood there quietly. It didn't answer her question. Instead, it asked.

"What is left to enjoy? It's clear you can take apart my mind and put me back together better than any of your servants, even the Penitent doesn't hold a candle to what you are doing here."

"I should hope not," she laughed.

"He was a pathetic wretch, and though I appreciated the way he humbled the proud, he was never going to advance further. He's one of my weakest princes, truth be told."

"I didn't think so," the blade confessed, "But some match-ups are worse than others."

"Ah, but that's because you think he was the strongest of eight, and not one of the weakest of 80, 000," she said with a smirk.

"Hell is a much vaster place than you think it is."

"But there are only eight circles," the blade answered, slightly confused by that response.

"Hell has only one center," she boasted.

"And that's me. Everything else, well, that's negotiable. The truth is more like… Let's say that the first ring is my purifying fire. Surrounding that are nine rings, sure, but not the way you think."

"Not the way I think?" the blade asked, confused.

"How else would they be laid out except concentrically, the way I traveled through them?"

"Because that first ring has nine rings, and then each of those has nine rings," she explained.

"We have only reached the third circle, and there are already almost a hundred flavors of torment. By the time we get to the fourth with approach a thousand, and it goes on and on, rippling outward into a maelstrom of hundreds of thousands of torments and delights."

"I'm confused," the blade answered honestly.

"I thought there were—""There's no easy way to explain this to a mortal with such a limited view, even one as powerful as you," the demon queen answered. Rather than trying to explain, she rested her hand on the Warbringer's shoulder, and as it felt her magic surge through its unfamiliar body, everything changed once more.