Chương 197: The Long Way

After that, they no longer traveled in a straight line. At night, that wasn't a problem, but by day, Geral kept bending their course directly toward the mountain range that loomed ahead of them. No matter how often the blade steered him away, whenever it got lost in thought, it found him once again turned toward the cloud-shrouded peak of the mountain. Their destination drew his eyes like the needle of a compass.

Other than mumble about his family every few hours, or talk to someone who wasn't there, that was really all he did, and the blade didn't see fit to disturb him. He wanted a fight, which was good, because they'd almost reached the place where he'd get his chance. The weapon had no idea if the gods knew they were still coming, but it acted as if they the bastards knew that the pair of them had escaped from the depths and stuck to forested stretches whenever possible. There were no longer any settlements to avoid.

This far up in the range, wind-warped pine trees and granite escarpments were the only things that separated them from the rocky snow fields further up the slope. The blade kept them below that line until the peak of the mountain they were looking for. Well, at least the portion of the mountain that led to the peak. Mount Olyvel was taller than it would have believed, and even after traveling thousands of feet higher, the summit still wasn't in sight.

By day, it could sometimes see the silhouette of the peak rising out of sight through the mist, but that hardly compared to the view by night. By night, the stars were largely invisible now, but sometimes it could see the city of the gods at the top of the peak, or perhaps the light of the heavens themselves leaking out of the cloud cover. That faint golden light was a beacon that drew them ever closer.

Still, the lessons of the dwarvish trap were fresh in its mind, and they took the long way, spiraling around the tightening peak as they made their way toward the top. For the three days it took to crunch through the snow and trudge across the glaciers, Geral rarely rested and never complained. Sometimes he would say something like, "Steady now, we're almost there," or "Daddy's coming for you." He wasn't talking to the Ebon Blade, though.

He was talking to the imagined ghost of his dead child, or perhaps the spirit he expected to find at the top of the mountain. The sword didn't tell him that it still held his family's souls for him. It doubted that he would have understood it at this point. The man was clearly coming unglued, but as long as his heart beat, that would be enough. The whole time they advanced, the blade kept waiting for another trap.

At any moment, it expected the sky to open up with lightning and fire or the ground beneath them to give way, but they went higher and higher, unmolested. No armies or champions waited to ambush them over the next rise or around the next corner. There was only the howling mountain wind to break the silence.

Even days of calm were not enough to drop the weapons guard, though, and each time its life force ticked lower by a point or two to heal the frostbite that nipped at its wielder's limbs, it looked around for an attack that was never there. Along the way, it continued to study its powers of reanimation, but it still saw little use for them. It was not a knife to conduct surgery and stitch corpses together. It was a blade, made to sunder them, and spirits interested it scarcely more than corpses.

Then one day, they were there. Geral topped a snowbank in a frozen pass, and they beheld a meadow that should not have existed. For a moment, the blade thought that they'd wandered into some kind of geothermal hot springs, but that wasn't what they found at all. The truth was much more surreal. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Before them stood the gates of heaven.

They were not some metaphorical construct, and even without examining their nature etherically, they glowed. Above and beyond the blade and its wielder, and the valley they stood in stretched the yawning gates of paradise.

They were made out of a lustrous wood, mounted to clean marble walls that looked more decorative than defensible, and the warm air that spilled out from beyond them was enough to thaw the valley in the immediate area, creating a small patch of spring while the rest of the world was dominated by an endless winter. Geral tried to move forward immediately, but the blade held back, studying every detail. The gates might stand a hundred yards from them, but past them was another world entirely.

It was just as different from the creation it was used to as hell had been. Only this time, it was so pure and vibrant that it made creation seem tainted. In fact, now that it was studying the world around them, it could see traces of the same pollution that tainted the Geral's valley and the green hell below it. Being tainted by light probably didn't lead to horrors undreamed of the way the poisons of hell did, but still, the blade wondered what effect that leakage was having on the world.

Whatever it was, it mattered a lot less than what lay beyond the gates. There, a palace the size of a city waited for them, or perhaps a city surrounding a large palace. The blade could not be sure from this distance. All it could say was that it was large and extended upward quite a ways above them. They'd already climbed one mountain to get here, but it would seem that they'd have to climb one more to reach their goal.

The blade spotted many details: a road, fruit trees, and even signs of people and activity in the distance, but what it didn't see was something like a trap or a guard. So, it released its grip and let Geral walk forward once more. As he moved, he tightened his grip on the sword. He was more than ready to slay a god. He was eager. Then she appeared. One moment, they were halfway to the gate, and there wasn't a guard in sight, and the next, a dark-haired woman appeared between them and their destination.

There was no great flourish to mark her appearance; she simply appeared as all of the shadows that lingered between the blades of grass wove together to create her.

"You are the Black Blade of Baraga," she intoned.

"I imprisoned you a century ago. It would have been better for everyone if you'd stayed there." Vergozza, the blade whispered. It was clear she was speaking to it directly and not its wielder. She barely seemed to notice that Geral existed. For a moment, anger flared through the Ebon Blade. This woman, no, this Goddess had stolen its last life, locking it away until it had forgotten everything.

For a second, it wanted nothing more than to strike her head from her shoulders; the sword might have tried to do just that if it suspected it to be so easy. However, it doubted a goddess would be vulnerable in any normal way. The Goddess of the Underworld did not acknowledge the statement. Instead, she raised her arm to reveal a bony hand and pointed at the way they had come.

"Turn back, and never return, and I will spare you." You cannot kill me, the blade countered. It wasn't sure of that, but it was reasonably sure, given that she would surely have killed it in its previous lives if she'd been able to.

"That is true," she agreed.

"I possess absolute power over the living and the dead, but you are neither. That arrogance will not save your wielder." The Ebon Blade didn't even consider her offer. It only pretended to as it studied her and tried to figure out how it could beat her. This was the second true god that had crossed its path, and the nature of her power was entirely different than the dwarf that had dropped it in a hole. Vergozza was a hole in the world.

She might look like a ghost, but really, she was an anathema, and the threads of the world curled away from her like scorched grass or burned hair. She wasn't oil-soaked and foul the way that hell was. She was a void that led to a place darker than hell. How do you defeat death itself? The weapon asked silently. I didn't have a good answer.