Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 34 - Aftermath

“Good work, kid,” Dero said, patting Ivarr on the shoulder while its wielder stood there trying to catch his breath. He didn’t stay to chat, though. Instead, the priest started jogging toward the fallen member of his team to see if he was beyond saying.

Despite his fatigue, Ivarr turned to join him, but before he could move, the mage stopped him in his tracks by asking, “Your blade… What is its make? I find its magic to be very strange.”

The Ebon Blade waited for its wielder’s answer almost nervously, then, as Ivarr turned back to her and regarded her silently. Then he decided to go with the truth and said, “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I found it in the ruins of the Governor’s Mansion when I was helping to rebuild the city in the aftermath of the beastman attack. I’ve just been using it ever since to strike down what monsters I can. Why do you ask?”

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She ignored the question and asked. “Does it… speak to you?”

“What? No, of course not,” the young man lied badly enough that the blade cringed at it, but the elf didn’t seem to notice. She instead breathed a sigh of relief.

“Some hexblades are made from… unsavory methods,” she said. “Since yours was so different, I thought it might be one of those.”

“Unsavory methods?” Ivarr asked. “What does that mean? Like evil magics, or—”

“Magic is not evil or good,” the mage corrected him before turning her gaze to the rest of her party. “Come, we must help them. We can speak later of this if you wish.”

That pause in the conversation hurt the blade almost physically. It felt like it was just on the verge of some profound insight, and then, just like that, it was snatched away, leaving it to sulk in silence.

It wanted to throttle her. It wanted to put its blade against her neck and force her to reveal what she knew. It wanted to… that volcanic outrage tapered off the moment that its wielder silently asked, What do you think she meant by unsavory. Does she mean you’re cursed?

I have no idea, the blade confessed. But I would like to. Continue this conversation with her as soon as you are able. She is more likely to know about my nature than anyone else we could hope to find.

The blade found it darkly amusing that yesterday it had been worried she would see its true nature, and now it was practically insisting she do just that. How a few simple words change things, it mused.

Of course, now that its wielder had ingratiated himself by saving her life, she was much less likely to act against it. That was doubly true since he’d dispelled at least one major concern she seemed to have. None of that was the reason its view on the situation had changed. It was down to pure curiosity, and if it wasn’t so desperate to build the storage needed to advance along the path of death, it would be saving to fix its soul again already.

Perhaps if she gives me a pretext I could simply force my wielder to strike her down and then pull what answers she has from her soul, the blade considered. Its wielder wouldn’t like that, so it would be a last resort, but it was still an option.

While the blade pondered these things, its wielder tried and failed to make conversation with the mage as they walked to where Elom lay. The priest was using some kind of divine blessing on the man in an attempt to help him, but even that did not appear to be enough to make him rise.

When they arrived, Dero said, “He’ll live, probably, but I think that ogre broke pretty much every rib in his chest and more bones besides.”

Under the warrior’s chain mail, it was impossible to see the extent of the injuries, but it wasn’t hard to imagine. Being struck like that would be like being kicked by ten mules. It wouldn’t just be his skin that was hopelessly bruised; his organs would be just as traumatized.

While the three of them discussed what they should do next, Ivarr asked, Do you think if he wielded you for a minute, it would—

Absolutely not, the blade roared in his mind with more outrage than it really meant to, making the man flinch hard enough that the mage gave him a strange look. I share my energy with my wielder. To give me away to another is to renounce your claim on me. If you do so, I would not welcome you back. Weapons are not treated in such a way.

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Early on, it had faced a similar moment with the shepherd boy, but it had reacted far differently. So, even as Ivarr struggled with that ultimatum that the blade really had no power to enforce, it struggled to understand why its mindset had shifted so much. Eventually, as Ivarr and Dero set about building a stretcher for the man, it decided that the issue had changed from fear to loyalty.

With Ren, it had feared that it would be discovered and locked away in the dark once more. While it still had that fear, the idea that its current wielder could simply give it away disgusted it. It had been loyal to Ivarr and saved his life on several occasions, directly and indirectly.

Not only would it be massively stupid to reveal its powers to other men. It would represent a betrayal of that loyalty, and the blade was certain that if the young man so much as suggested it again, it would no longer feel the need to keep him alive.

Fortunately, Ivarr did not do that. Chastened, he helped fashion a stretcher while the elf fetched the gravely injured man’s sword, and then he and Dero continued on their journey. This time, though, because of their heavy burden, they were much slower. The remainder of the trip should have taken two or perhaps three days down the slopes, depending on how late they made camp each night. As it was, though, it would take a week with this much dead weight.

Fortunately, that week was as heavy in new information as it was light on food for the three conscious members of the party. Hunting was poor this close to the city, and only a few edible roots could be found since it was a little too late in the season for berries.

Still, the blade didn’t care about those things. It cared more about what the mage said over the fire that night when she explained what she’d meant about unsavory means and the nature of magic. “A proper artifact is one that is fueled by its wielder,” she explained. “The techniques that flow the other way, where the object powers the wielder… those are more complicated and very often forbidden.”

“Why would they be forbidden?” Ivarr asked, failing to entirely hide his nervousness.

In that moment, the blade wished that its wielder would be distracted by the beauty of the delicate blonde woman as he had been before. He looked like a guilty child, and it was sure the elf would pick up on that. This time, though, he was too worried about the blade on his hip to even pay attention to how pretty the ageless elf was.

“As I told you before, magic itself is neither good nor evil,” she lectured him in her accented voice. “But even though that is so, magic can be used to do very evil things. It can cause great suffering. Sometimes, even suffering without end. It can—”

“Hence why we’re looking for a tomb in the area,” the priest interrupted. “The good lady Altharia here is looking for a cursed object. It was buried with its owner, and she wants to destroy it to set it free.”

“To set the object free?” Ivarr asked dumbly. “I don’t see how—”

“The Mirror of Unending Vistas is an abomination that was crafted with the souls of an order of seeresses at the heart of its dark magics,” she explained.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ivarr admitted.

“Nor should you have,” the priest agreed. “This was centuries ago. The cursed name of Al’Hazzarin has long been wiped away by history, but the elves remember these things and still seek to correct ancient wrongs.”

“When the mage-king died, he commanded that his mirror be buried with him so it could not reveal the location of his tomb, you see,” the mage explained. “So the souls of those poor women have been trapped alone in the dark all this time.”

“If he was so worried, then why didn’t he just break it?” Ivarr asked.

“Because some men’s greed knows no bounds,” she answered immediately. “The mirror is easily broken if only the tomb could be found. When that happens, they will return to the cycle of life and death and be born anew like the rest of your kind.”

“The rest of my kind?” its wielder asked. “Are you saying…”

Ivarr received the shock of his life that night when he learned that it wasn’t simply a myth that elves live forever. After that, as much as the blade wanted to return to what it was she saw when she used her magic to look at it, the conversation was lost in a rehash of things the weapon already knew.

Elves were functionally immortal and rarely ventured into the wider world. She told him a bit about their cities and their culture. That part was interesting, but the blade was pretty sure it had known all of this at some point. What it didn’t know was about its origins, and it felt like it was so close to some breakthrough that it would have asked her itself if only she'd touched its hilt.

That didn’t happen, though, and no matter how much it told its wielder to dig into the topic again, the opening didn’t come up again in the slow days that followed as they made their way down the mountains with their injured companion, step by treacherous step.

On the third day, after the priest prayed for the wounded warrior for the fourth time, he actually woke up, however briefly. That was a good sign. However, when the man lapsed back into unconsciousness, and Ivarr asked the priest, “Why can’t you just mend his wounds?” he received an interesting answer that surprised the blade as much as its wielder.

“Holy magic can only do so much,” the priest explained. “It can reattach limbs if it is used soon after battle, but even then, it would be days or weeks before such an arm or a leg could be used. The love of the gods can only augment the strength of the body's natural healing.”

“So there’s no way to just… make a wound heal completely?” Ivarr continued, trending more dangerous ground.

“Well, there are ways,” the priest admitted, “But all of them are forbidden. We will just have to be patient and hope that Elom makes a complete recovery in the fullness of time.”