Chương 186: Exodus

The following day wasn't any different than the few before their encounter with the Mechanical Drake, save for the slowly retreating wreckage of the monster in the distance as they walked away. However, it didn't stay that way. Before that pile of steel and bones was entirely out of sight, the blade noticed it was attracting flies. Not insects in the literal sense, of course, but people curious as to what happened.

It didn't like that, but it doubted its wielder would accept wholesale slaughter, and that would be the only way to keep something like that a secret when it could be seen from miles away. They brutalized a tribe of orcs after that, and Geral fought well enough now that he made it look easy because he used more of the blade's abilities in a more casual way. The Ebon Blade didn't try to stop him.

At this point, the man had nothing to prove; the blade was overflowing with power, and learning to smoothly incorporate those powers was probably the only remaining advancement he was really capable of. +2, 734 Life Force. +22 Monster Souls. The orcs made ideal fodder for experimentation, too. Its wielder dashed toward them, hacking through limbs and crude weapons with equal ease, using Bolt to escape when he was hemmed in by leaving a burning hole in the chest of one of his largest attackers.

He even started to use the weapon's Path of Vengeance abilities in those moments to experiment. While neither of them bothered to understand the culture of the orcish clan, it was clear that they had one, and the warrior could use those bonds once the blade explained them to twist one or more members and force them to ally with him, if only for a moment or two. They still met the same end, but those betrayals were always unexpected, sowing chaos and buying the man time.

Even the Ebon Blade could not be everywhere at once. It was when one of those fights was winding down, and Geral was burning down the tents of their crude camp, that the blade noticed the caravan for the first time. It snaked away from one of the larger fortified cities in the valley and was snaking toward the exit. Where do you think they're going? It asked.

"They seek to flee the valley while they can," Geral answered.

"The guardian is dead, and the way is clear, but who knows for how long." I thought they could always leave, the blade answered. We've seen many traders come and go.

"Those traders are from outside the valley, so they don't have the same taint as the rest of us," Geral clarified.

"Or at least that's how my father explained it long ago. Those from here are trapped here. That's why he fled up instead of out." So the valley will empty then? The blade asked, trying to decide if that was a good thing or a bad one for them. They'd steered clear of those settlements, but such an exodus would certainly attract the gaze of one or more gods if they'd fought to keep the poison contained for so long.

"Empty?" Geral answered.

"No. I think some will stay. Our, uhhmm, my people certainly will, but as long as we stay clear of the rift, we don't really share their problems." The blade decided that, on the balance, the exodus would distract whoever might have noticed them, but it reevaluated a couple of days later, when the stream of people became a flood, which was followed by an actual flood. That could have just been a storm, of course.

They happened, but by the time the rains grew hard enough for Geral to seek shelter and the mudslides started, the sword was sure it was divine intervention. It could see the magic jumping from cloud to cloud like lightning bolts. Whoever had noticed the departure from this hell-tainted place had decided that the fun was over. Did that mean a new guardian would be added? The blade didn't know. Neither did its wielder when they discussed it.

That didn't matter to the blade, of course, because it didn't matter to its wielder. They weren't going anywhere, and someday, when the blade decided that it wanted to depart, no force by the gods themselves would hold them back. Three days later, the rains stopped and the clouds cleared. There were still sporadic mudslides, but they were nothing that they needed to be concerned about.

Well, they didn't endanger the weapon or its wielder; they did concern Geral, though, and despite the fact that they'd planned to stay in the lowlands and kill for another week, he made the decision to return home immediately to "check on his family." While the blade considered that a waste of time, arguing about it wouldn't have done any good. They were at least two days away from his home, and by the time they returned to the village, everything would be fine or it wouldn't.

There was no explaining that to Geral, though. Still, as they climbed higher, the blade could see more of the valley, and as it did, it saw a distant pillar of smoke that likely signaled a bad end for those who had sought to escape their verdant prison. That distant sight reminded the blade of the time that Golden Throne had dropped the fires of heaven on its own city in the wake of their encounter.

For those people, it had certainly been an ugly end, albeit a quick one, and the weapon wondered if any of them had managed to avoid their doom. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Are their hunters out there even now, fanning out and looking for tainted survivors? It wondered. It hoped that few remained. More survivors meant fewer people looking for it. It felt fairly safe about their current situation, though.

It would have been less precarious if they hadn't slain the guardian, but if nothing bad had happened in a week, then nothing was likely to. As they approached the high valley, the blade noted nothing amiss. The slopes had shifted their shape slightly in the torrential rains, and once they reached the village proper it could see that some of the buildings had been damaged by high winds, but there was nothing that required their attention. Geral no longer cared about that.

He had his typical teary reunion with his wife as if this wasn't something that happened every month. The blade endured, though, for a day and a night without complaint. Instead, it examined its odd collection of souls. It had devoured or disposed of all of its lesser souls. Now, in addition to the God Soul and the handful of greater demon souls that remained in its core, it had nearly two dozen Greater monster Souls and half a dozen Dragon Souls. -38 Life Force.

They swirled around each other, orbiting like bright stars of increasing magnitude in its heart of hearts. The power felt dangerous, but it had little to do with it. What is a goal worth spending a god on? It wondered. Should the weapon try to seal hell, or even destroy it? Such a goal didn't seem possible, but then, as tainted as it was by the place, it still didn't wish to touch the queen of the damned. The Dragon Souls were more interesting, but it just wished it had a goal worthy of them.

The Ebon Blade was briefly contemplating what it would be like to raise the dead with souls of outlandish power when it felt a ripple through the nighttime bedroom where its wielder lay. It woke Geral in an instant, though it did not know why. Something is here, or perhaps watching us, it explained. I felt their magic, but can say nothing else. Wordlessly, Geral rose and walked out into the night in only his small clothes, clutching the blade in a two-handed grip.

By the time they were outside, the blade had found the culprit. He stood near the pass that led to the valley in loose robes. That would have been disconcerting even if they hadn't glowed with power. That is almost certainly the avatar of a divinity, the blade said as it turned its wielder's head toward the figure. How do you want to— Before the blade could finish the thought, its wielder was charging the person. He'd bent space and launched himself forward, covering the ground in giant, hundred-foot-long leaps.

Each one took only an instant, but a dozen instants added up, and as the power built around the figure, the blade could see they were going to be too late to stop what happened next. -455 Life Force. The magic that the man wielded started as a circle that orbited around him. Before they were halfway there, that circle had bifurcated, becoming an orb that had multiplied into a three-layered shell. The blade had seen this sort of magic once before when it fought a mage of the Aetherarchy, but this was different.

That had been glowing gossamer. This was tightly wound, and the magical sigils were nearly as dense as chainmail. Geral reached it with terrible speed and hammered down against it with all the enchanted force he could muster, but only broke the outermost layer. The second barely cracked as the glittering runes flared to life. The man at the center was unperturbed.

"More than a century later, and you emerge again, like a bad copper. Why won't you stay buried?" he said, addressing the blade more than the wielder.

"We thought… I thought that hell was a deep enough pit to serve as even your grave, but it would seem that I was wrong. Is your escape tied to my sister's silence then, Baraga?"

"My name is not Baraga," Geral answered, bringing down the Ebon Blade in a vicious series of strikes. The divine avatar ignored him. It was only when the blade silently growled, No grave can hold me, no matter how deep, that the man reacted as if he could hear the blade's silent words.

"This part of the world holds nothing of value," he said, and when you are buried in ashes and sealed beneath a layer of glass, no one will even know where to look for you. As he spoke, his hands wove together symbols with preternatural skill and speed, and when he was finished, he said a terrible word that made Geral's ears bleed for a moment.

That was the least of his problems, though, because even as the final syllable went still, the rings on the shells that surrounded the man aligned, and a terrible beam of golden light lanced out to cut Geral in two. It was not successful. The blade saw to that. It took control of its wielder's arms, moving them to parry it in an instant. Pain arched across it as it did so, as it always did when it was struck by spells that touched its soul, but it ignored the pain.

Even as it did, it couldn't ignore the way the force of the magic blasted it back. The weapon hadn't thought to use Nullify in its first strike, but it would remedy that on its second. It did remember to the ability on the beam it was parrying before it slipped and cut its wieder in half, which halted the magic immediately, but it did not arrest the momentum as Geral soared back through the air, or the rockslide on the other side of the pass where the reflected beam had carved a rent in the side of the mountain.

-385 Life Force. As they landed, the blade hoped that the rocks would be enough to do in their foe, but they were not. When Geral rolled to his feet, it didn't need to wait for the dust to clear to see that the avatar still stood, and that they would need to move in for the kill all over again.