Chương 171: The Wheel of Time

For months, and then years, the seasons wheeled above the Ebon Blade. In spring and summer, it was conscious most of the time, but it saw only the arrival and departure of winter each year. The darkest days were entirely given over to nightmares that the Demon Queen inflicted on it, but they were almost absent during the rest of the year, as if she needed more time than a few hours to slide past its mental defenses.

The blade was certain that without Centered from the Path of Vengeance, should would have been able to do far worse. Carrying the soul of a god was a heavy burden, but the worst she could do was torment it with missteps and imagined betrayals, and the blade could endure those indefinitely. After two springs, the ashen area around the hellrift began to heal, and though nothing grew too close to that line of fire hanging in mid air, it otherwise appeared to be the burn scar from a forest fire.

It looked practically mundane. Ethereally, though, it was much more interesting. While the heat dissipated, the energies of hell trickled down the slope like a river of evil. It had flowed for some time, so surely someone should have noticed it, and yet no one acted. Perhaps even the closed rift bled these energies, and the gods have not noticed the change? It wondered. More concerning, though, was the lack of mages, or people in general.

It had assumed at first that it had left hell somewhat close to where it had entered, based on the terrain, but that did not seem to be the case. In the second year, just before winter struck, a dwarf and his small mule train crossed through the Ebon Blade's small domain with a load of bronze ingots and silver jewelry, the blade drained enough of the lead animal's strength to lame it, and then while the dwarf transferred the load to the rest of his tiny caravan, it drained him dry.

No amount of resistance messages could save the short man from the blade's silent predations. Once he was dead, the blade didn't devour his soul. Hungry as it was, it used it before it could be tempted to ask a question. Where am I? Where did you come from? Where were you going? It hadn't used a soul to map out the lay of the land in a long time, and it hadn't done so frequently since its ill-fated military campaign against the Inner Kingdoms.

Still, it was a valuable use for a soul that had no other importance, and a two-century-old dwarven trader had a better knowledge of the roads than most. He resisted more than a human ever could have hoped to, but one city and crossroads at a time, the world around them took shape. They were hundreds of miles and weeks of travel north of Severon, and nearly as far from the hellforge. The lands weren't exactly uninhabited, but they were small and self-sufficient, sheltered behind walls this far north.

The only real power here was the dwarves, who dwelled beneath the mountains, avoiding much of the surface strife. The dwarf held back that information the longest, which amused the Ebon Blade because it cared about that part the least. A dwarf might make a fine wielder, save for their height, but it had no interest in descending into the earth where some trick could see it buried alive for an age with only the poisonous whispers of the demon queen for company.

The dwarf revealed a series of mountain paths and deep roads that could cut the travel time south in half, but the blade cared little about those details. It wasn't even sure it wanted to return to Sevrin just yet. At this point, it wanted to get its bearings and understand what was going on in the world, but the dwarf knew little of surface events and even less of their politics. All that mattered was his clan's forge and human coin. Still, it was something.

The blade was high in a large mountain range that didn't seem to have much of a dragon or a goblin problem, thanks to dwarven efforts. The first one was good; it meant humans would settle closer. The second was bad. It would love nothing more than to let carcasses collect until goblins arrived for a taste.

As it was, the only thing that the donkey corpses summoned now were ravens and vultures, and while they were simple for the weapon to pluck from the sky, eventually even they stopped coming, and it lapsed back into fitful slumber. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Some months after that encounter, it devoured its first goblins that had come to the surface to forage.

The blade even managed to let one of them escape unharmed, hoping it would bring more, but no more of the little green vermin returned in the weeks that followed. The following spring, one of them appeared alone and injured. The blade drank as deeply as it could from that one so that its soul couldn't escape. It had learned the lesson that prey didn't always give it a second chance too recently to let this one slip away. The only unfortunate thing about its range was that its victims didn't form a nice pile.

When it had been embedded in a tree, there had been something satisfying about watching the piles of carcasses and corpses grow as each new carrion feeder added to its collection. Here, nothing changed, beyond the weather and the time of day. It had hoped that by embedding itself in some sort of ceremonial site, the worshipers who'd created it would find it. It was natural to assume that such people would return a few times a year for their holy days, but no one came.

Whatever cult had created this place, though, seemed to have died out a long time ago. It took the blade a long time to understand why the portal would open here, but eventually, it came up with a theory. Whether that was inspired by the dreams of the Demon Queen, it couldn't say. It had heard various stories of the gods in its travels, even before they started attacking it with their miracles.

It hadn't cared at the time, but it dimly recalled that when Nuella's quest to usurp the heavens met with failure, and she was forcefully ejected from Mount Olyvel, she was thrown across the sky. The legends didn't say where she landed, only that where she did, she struck with such force that it breached a hole into hell itself. If that was the case, and the rift it crossed through was the same one, then it should only be leagues away from the mountain of legends. The geography lined up.

According to the dwarf, the mountains here grew to stupendous height, and the home of the gods was supposed to be somewhere to the north of the known world. Where, though, it couldn't say. Even if it was at the foot of the right mountain, it would not be able to see it, of course, since it rose so far above the clouds that it nearly kissed the heavens.

Still, the blade would have expected to see some clue in the weave of the world, but there were no bright shining spires of power or celestial echoes that indicated the divine was nearby. I could always just ask her, it mused, but the blade decided against it. Weak and immobile, that was a Pandora's box that it absolutely didn't want to open. Instead, it patiently waited, fading in and out of consciousness as the world around it changed in fits and starts.

The weapon would fall asleep during a thunderstorm, only to wake up to a clear blue sky. Then it would be night, and the moon would be hanging high in the heavens. It was a fragmentary existence that didn't let it contemplate on any one topic for too long. So, it thought a little about everything. It considered each of its previous wielders by turns, as well as the things it had done. It tried to find some sort of lesson from the battles it had faced and defeated in hell.

Most importantly, it tried to decide what it was it most wanted to do when a wielder finally drew it from this cursed rock. Would it knock down more mage towers and magical monoliths? Would it try to destroy the throne a second time, or go after the gods themselves? None of those answers felt quite right, and it took some time for the blade to come to grips with the fact that its blind rage had largely been spent cleaving a bloody swath through hell. It had not found peace by any means.

It wanted to fight, but it didn't want to slay villages full of women and children just to feed its power; it had no more powers left to claim for now. Such an act would have been pointless. Well, pointless after I've refilled my reserves, the Ebon Blade corrected itself. What it wanted more than anything was a fight against an equal. Whether that meant striking down another god in single combat, or teaching someone like Ivarr to bring down his first orc, it didn't really matter. It just wanted to move and fight.

Those deeds were impossible when stuck in a boulder, though. So the blade contented itself to dream of past triumphs and future glories as the wheel of the heavens turned above it in stuttering bursts.