Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 195 - An Early Grave

As the Ebon Blade and its wielder fell into the darkness beneath the mountain. The blade tried repeatedly to use Bolt to reach the dwarven god even as he vanished. When that didn’t work, it tried to distort space to slow its fall by lengthening the distance with Position of Privilege. That didn’t work either.

You have been disrupted.

You have been disrupted.

You have been disrupted.

You have been disrupted.

While it struggled frantically, Geral didn’t do anything but go limp as they fell. He probably would have released its hilt entirely if the blade had allowed him. It would never allow that, though, dead or alive, triumphant or doomed, they were bound together.

Instead of panicking, the sword studied the cave they tumbled through. There was so little stone around it, and the spaces were so vast, that it had to have been hollowed out in advance. This wasn’t just a strange spell that had split the stone. This hole had been prepared ahead of time. When the weapon figured that out, it felt quite stupid. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

This is why you don’t walk anywhere in straight lines, the weapon chastized itself. It could have easily diverted Geral’s path at any point to avoid such obstacles, but it hadn’t felt the need. While little details wouldn’t have hidden their destination, or the ambushes they had been most afraid of, it would have prevented anyone from digging a damn hole in the middle of their path.

As it fell faster, it saw right through the darkness, noting the tool marks and leftover scaffolding. This had been part of a larger mining complex, and while it was dug by dwarves with tools, only some of the work had been recent. As their speed increased and the details became harder to pick out, the weapon didn’t care about the details. It didn’t matter what the little bastards had been mining; on that, they had been digging its grave.

It looked quite effective, too. As the floor hove into view, the top of the shaft had all but vanished as the expanding wall of rubble blocked its view. This place had been rigged to drop it into a deep hole, kill its wielder, and bury them both under a thousand tons of stone.

It wasn’t about to let that happen, though. If this was a mine before it was a grave, then there’s more than one way in and out.

In the final seconds before it hit the ground, it searched for those tunnels, and it found them, or at least it found what was left of them. Geral was falling into a large room that had apparently been a multi-level intersection of a larger mining complex at some point. It had a dozen different exits across three levels of exposed rock that had been separate before this trap had been made. Most of those were collapsed, and those that weren’t had been bricked up.

The Ebon Blade didn’t have to guess what lay beyond those walls, not entirely. While it couldn’t quite see through them, it could see how thick they were by the thickness of the weave. The real rockfaces of the mine were a dense fabric, like layers of burlap sacks stacked on top of each other.

The collapsed entrances weren’t a lot better. They were tangled and knotted, but just as dense.

A handful of entrances were more hastily sealed, though, and, and those were no more than the flap of a canvas tent to the blade. They were less than that. It could see dwarves moving quickly away behind the furthest one. It would never reach it, though. It was out of time, and sought the closest refugee out, though even that was probably too far away.

In those final seconds before they hit the ground and were buried alive for a thousand years, the blade hammered Position of Privilege. Over and over it endured the error message that its magic was denied to it, and then, at the last instant, just before Geral landed and broke his ankles on the rough stone floor, it finally worked.

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You have been disrupted.

You have been disrupted.

You have been disrupted.

-100 Life Force.

Run! It commanded, using the ability nearly a dozen more times as it pointed Geral toward the correct opening. Run if you want your revenge!

-1200 Life Force.

Geral didn’t need to be told more than that and moved with all his speed toward the brick. As he did, the sword focused all of its attention on the mountain of debris hanging above their head. The Ebon Blade had never tried to use the ability so many times at once, and despite its crystal clear vision, even in the dark, the whole world warped dangerously as it lengthened the last few feet between its wielder and the avalanche about to crush him.

It did not have to hold up the thousand tons of rock. It just had to stretch it. A hundred feet became two hundred, then five hundred, and a thousand. As Geral charged the walled-off passage, the weapon couldn’t spare the focus to shorten the distance for him. All it could do was command, Hurry! Cleave through the wall! Now! As it forced those final few inches to stretch further than they had any right to.

The act strained not just the blade’s iron mind to the limit, but the world around it. Position of Privilege was obviously not meant to be used in such a way, and the threads of the world began to fray. In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t have mattered very much. The world was already falling to pieces here, but the way the ugly chartruese energies of hell leaked in from beyond through those cracks told it that it was twisting this world harder than it ever should have.

Will I tear another gateway into hell? It wondered as its wielder attacked the blockage with its razor edge, and it tasted old stone and the mortar’s lime.

Even going back to hell would have granted it an escape route, but it would rather be buried alive than face that horrible place again. Fortunately, it didn’t have to. Seconds before the wall of rubble crushed Geral into a fine paste, he forced his way into the sealed tunnel, just ahead of the wall of dust, and the roar of stone sealed the door behind them. It didn’t stop, there, though, the weight of the stone settling against the walls was enough to crack them and make the shoring timbers buckle.

Geral ignored that, charging blindly into the dark as the tunnel collapsed behind him one section at a time, but he could only move so fast as he charged forward, hunched over. The sword fixed that after a moment, widening the passage, but it could no longer slow down those dominos. The shock moved instantly through the stone, but it could speed its wielder up by shortening the distance in front of him. Still, it was nerve-racking.

They were moving so fast that every few seconds they reached another junction, but it had no clear idea of which direction they were meant to go. The weave of the rock told it nothing, so any turn might be a dead end. So, it was filled with relief when the collapse finally stopped, and they slowed a little after that.

“Which way now?” Geral asked absently after a few seconds of silence.

The blade didn’t answer immediately because it didn’t have a good answer. It might not be crushed beneath a wall of broken boulders, but it was trapped almost as surely as it had been. There might be no way out, or there might be further traps waiting ahead.

Even now that the dwarvish god might be preparing some new spell to raze this whole second to the ground, it grumbled silently to itself before realizing that probably actually wasn’t the case. So far, the only magic the dwarf had shown was related to sealing its powers, which wasn't magic at all; it was just the opposite. The god had been forced to use real labor to dig this hole.

After a moment of reflection, the sword chose to believe that meant he didn’t have any power to move the earth. It didn’t know that for sure, but the thought allowed it to relax enough to consider their larger problem.

Are we really doomed to wander down here forever? It reflected. If we had only stumbled across a dwarf i could have used its soul to discover the way out.

It could feel Geral growing impatient as they stood there. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t walking forward, and the agitation was palpable. Still, the blade considered its last thought and stumbled upon an answer.

We will continue soon, it whispered finally. First, I must scout and find us a way out.