Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 164 - Berserk
The Ebon Blade walked up the slope at a steady pace, but before it was halfway there, the creature, whatever it was, charged it. Once it was closer and clear of the glare, it wasn’t hard to see that this was the demon prince of the second circle. The creature was neither a three-breasted sulfurous harpy nor a bronze minotaur, though it was some kind of reptilian centaur.
The sword had never seen anything like it. That wasn’t particularly unusual given all that it had seen in hell, but as it settled its warbringer into a combat stance to await the charge, it considered how best to fight it.
Dragon-like scales almost certainly mean heavy armor, it decided, as it hefted a molten-bladed axe with its right arm. I’ll need to use that momentum against it, then, and perhaps redirect it.
In that instant, it decided its plan, and seconds before the two met, it had already decided what it was going to do. The weapon would use Shifting Blade to transform into a pike, plunge deep into a seam in its scales, and then use the same power a second time to transform into a harpoon once it was embedded. From there, Warbringing could either mount the creature and ride it like some hellhorse or bring it to the ground with its enormous strength, depending on how the creature reacted.
Only that’s not what happened at all. While the blade had no trouble transforming into an eighteen-foot black spear, it didn’t penetrate the monster’s armor. Instead, it skittered off in a trail of angry sparks. While the blade was still trying to understand that, the beast charged the Warbringer, snorting fire and bringing down its axe. It wasn’t bringing it down on the knight’s head, though. It was bringing it down on the wrist that held the Ebon Blade.
-50 Life Force.
It knows! How? The weapon hissed in alarm as it transformed back into its normal shape. Even as it did so, it knew it would be too late. It wondered for a moment if Reforged would make its armor strong enough to resist the heavy attack, but it decided not to risk it. For the other arm, or its head, it might have, but losing connection to the body was too terrible to contemplate. So instead, it used one of its other recently gained powers, Flows Like Water, and became momentarily insubstantial, letting the blow pass through it.
-25 Life Force.
“I charge and you flee?” the beast roared as it charged past the blade and wheeled to a stop. “Did you not come here to fight? Then fight me!”
As the beast spoke, the guttering fires and magma channels began to slowly refill around the blade as its confusion erased its rage. “I did not retreat,” the Warbringer countered. “Nor will I, not from any demon in the pit.”
“Good!” the beast bellowed. “Very good! Then stand there and die as an example to the rest!”
The dragon centaur charged again, but this time it was going uphill, giving the blade a little more time than before as the scree-filled slope slowed its steps.
This one is smart and formidable, the blade thought, and not to be underestimated. What is the best way to handle that?
The blade had to think about it for only a moment before it decided that its best play was to pretend it had learned nothing from their first encounter and transform into a pike again. The roar of exaltation from its opponent told it that it was the right move, but even as it prepared to do the next part of its plan and use Vorpal Strike to cleave right through him, the weapon’s opponent vanished.
-100 Life Force.
No, not vanished, it realized as the rocks continued to shift. We’re moving out of phase somehow.
The blade moved at the last minute, but Warbringer still almost lost its head because the blade could no longer see its opponents. Even so, a large part of the metal man’s helmet was sheared away and sent to the ground. It didn’t hurt, of course, but the shame of the failure burned through the blade almost as powerfully as the Life Force as it rushed to regenerate and replace the ruined helmet.
-181 Life Force.
“You think yourself a warrior? With a warrior's heart?” the demon prince rumbled. “You’re an empty suit with a magic sword, and soon you’ll be nothing but scrap!”
The words angered the blade but only enough to make the monster reappear as a shimmering outline, as it moved to parry the demon’s monstrous axe. For a moment, it feared the molten edge would slice right through its own, the way the strange Bug Queen’s weapons had, but the parry rang out loudly, and it felt no more than steel on steel.
What is this? The blade asked itself, striking out while the demon recovered, only to flick through the outline of the demon’s body without resistance.
-89 Life Force.
It occurred to it only slowly that it could either see the volcanic eruptions or the demon prince at any given time. That, combined with the comment about the warrior's heart, led to its understanding as it pivoted to parry the next attack. It couldn’t even see this one; only the ripples it left in the air indicated where it would fall. The blade deflected the blow again, but it did not like it.
You’re thinking too much and feeling too little, the blade chided itself. That had served it well in many of hell’s strange battles, but not in this one. Still, it was hard to stay angry when it was more confused than anything, but the blade tried, with mixed results.
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True to its word, it didn’t retreat, even in the face of a nearly impossible fight. Instead, it alternated between parrying the attacks it could see and phasing out of the ones it could not, but expected anyway. This was a workable strategy while it tried to stoke the forge-fires of its own base emotions, but those artificial efforts at getting angry were only enough to make the ten-foot-tall, six-limbed beastman appear spasmodically, and eventually its luck ran out.
-48 Life Force.
The blade parried just as it had several times before in the last few seconds while its invisible foe taunted it, but one of those attacks ended with a backhanded strike that whipped around, embedding eighteen inches of molten edge several inches into the mechanical man’s breastplate, and beyond, into some of its inner workings.
-641 Life Force.
“Scrap,” the demon spat, barely more than heat haze as it lifted the Warbringer and blade both effortlessly like a worm on a hook.
It wanted nothing more than to strike the contemptuous demon’s head from its shoulders, but its wielder’s arms locked in place immediately because of some damage that had occurred inside the construct. More worrying, though, was the molten metal that dripped inside and started to foul things up. It moved like the Bog Hag’s roots, or the Bug Queens worms, crawling around the inside of its body, leaving trails of scorched metal where they went.
The blade was distracted from this momentarily when the demon used its grip on its long axe handle and launched it a hundred feet down the slope like he was half siege engine. When it landed in a heap, though, it started to understand what the molten metal was really doing. It was infecting the Warbringer with the demon’s rage.
-591 Life Force.
So he does think the construct is the opponent, the blade realized. The demon prince’s first attack had led it to believe that he'd known the blade was the true threat all along. That was not the case, though. He just thinks being disarmed in the first strike would be more humiliating. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
Even as the wound began to heal, the blade decided to do something paradoxical and let go of control to its wielder. This was similar to what it had done in the Last City when it had looked out of its eyes, and the normal state for how it would have treated most other wielders. The blade preferred to be wielded than to wield; that was the natural order of things. It was just that with the Warbringer, that normally wasn’t possible. The thing was a delicate work of artifice as much as it was an empty husk.
Its opponent had changed that, though. Whatever damage it had thought to with the last blow, the molten metal that the axe injected flowed through it now like blood through its veins, and even as the blade let go, it got up all on its own, eyes glowing red with an inner fire.
-447 Life Force.
Rage is no longer my strong suit, the blade reflected, but my wielder has no such concerns.
As the Ebon Blade relaxed, the lava all around them burst forward again to create a hellish landscape, but neither the Warbringer nor the demon prince saw or was affected by any of it. They existed in some parallel moment, but it couldn’t quite unravel the nature of the strange dichotomy. It didn't matter. All that did was that in the place where the two warriors existed, the only thing that was molten was their hearts as they fought amongst the ashes.
The Warbringer’s movements were clumsy in those first moments, but step by step, what had been broken settled into place, and by the time their blades met, it was moving nearly as smoothly as if the Ebon Blade had been puppeting it.
There was no thinking after that, only fighting. If not for the utter lack of thought, instead of joyous orcish bloodlust, it would have reminded the blade of Var’Gar.
Yes, it whispered silently, drinking the moment in. This is what I’ve been missing.
-388 Life Force.
It wouldn’t last. The blade could already feel the molten metal that had so enraged its wielder starting to cool, but that was okay. It had only one more demon left to slay, and then it could return to the mortal world and find a mortal wielder left to carry it into battle once again, and all would be well.
“Have you found your heart at last?” the demon prince roared, obviously enjoying himself as much as the blade, as its edge, even enhanced with vorpal magic, failed to pierce the creature’s chest. “Because you’ll never get to mine that way.”
Finally, the blade understood what was so difficult about this monster. It was an opponent you could only fight if you were thoughtlessly enraged, but also one you needed a clear mind to see through its trick to beat.
-311 Life Force.
It’s the axe, the blade told its empty-minded wielder. Sheathe me, and take the axe. That’s the only weapon that can kill it!
At first, the Warbringer ignored it. There wasn’t enough of its mind to process such abstract ideas. When the blade repeated itself, the thing actually tried to drop the sword, but the Ebon Blade didn’t allow it, and instead forced its wielder to sheathe it. Only then did it lunge for the axe.
That effort was only partially successful, as it took a blow to its face for its trouble, but the Warbringer didn’t care, and neither did the blade. “You think to face me unarmed?” the demon prince roared. “Folly!”
The demon learned what folly truly was when he tried to pull the axe free a second time and found the warbringer’s hands upon its haft. The metal man’s head sizzled and melted as it held the blade, but it did not relent. Neither did the blade. It used Amplify Wielder, Surge of Vitality, and every other power that made the thing that much stronger.
-643 Life Force.
After a few seconds, it was stronger than even the monster would ever be, and the Warbringer ripped the weapon out of his opponent's hands. As it did so, it whirled with the momentum, and even as the demonic centaur reared up to lash out with its hooves, the blade’s wielder came back around, hacking off both of its front legs in a single violent motion, proving the blade right.
Its edge, even made impossibly sharp, had done nothing to the creature. It suspected that no weapon from any world would have done any better. Its axe, though, sheared right through its draconic flesh as if it were nothing special.
After that, it was over as quickly as it had begun. With the loss of its two front legs, the demonic centaur collapsed toward it, making the two warriors the same height for the first time. The final blow to its neck happened in the blink of an eye, then, sending the head into the distance like a child’s ball; it evaporated into smoke and shadows before it hit the ground, and its body lasted only seconds more.
+1 Demon Prince Soul.
Then, with that done, the blade turned and entered the volcano. It was still overflowing with rage, and past done with this place, and while it had enjoyed the fight, it would enjoy finishing this and escaping hell much, much more.
