Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 167 - The Center of Things
For lack of a better description, the world came apart. One moment, its view of hell was vast and unified, and the next, it shattered into a thousand pieces that each nested other pieces inside of it. To call it disorienting would have been an understatement. It was a swirling mass of pure chaos, but the blade could neither move nor look away.
“You think that nine circles would be enough to punish every soul that ends up here?” the disembodied voice of the Demon Queen whispered in its paralyzed ear. “You think that would be enough to contain my endless army of demons? My domain is vast. It contains worlds without end, and even those worlds contain yet more worlds inside of them…”
As she spoke, the different shards of the world moved toward the Ebon Blade, and when they reached it, they swirled around it in a giant display of strange beauty.
“You could have fought nine different princesses,” she continued. “You could have visited the Realm of Rust or the Feast of Shadows, but instead you traveled through the Iron City and across an Ocean of Despair to find me…”
The weapon listened to her, but even as it did so, it watched the unreality swirling around it. Until now, it had thought of hell as a single fixed thing, as a parody of a realm carved into the corpse of a titan, but from here it could see how simplistic that view was. If hell has room for infinite souls, then why did it seem so deserted? Why was the way here so straightforward?
It didn’t have answers for that any more than it could understand why deserts were expanding before its eyes to show off paths that led to forests pelted with blood rain, and caverns where souls labored to dig deep enough to create their own exit. The number of torments really did seem to be endless, but it did learn one thing.
As she spoke, and it watched the world in this supposedly infinite moment, it noted that its Life Force had ticked down by precisely two. Its brush with the Penitent had taught it to be wary enough to note such details.
Given the forces its wielder was currently enduring, that meant only fractions of a second had passed in the real world. Time hadn’t quite stopped, but it was crawling forward at a snail's pace. What should I do with that information?
The blade didn’t know, so for now, it didn’t draw attention to it. Instead, it turned back to the queen and said, “What does it matter how I got here? I got here, and now I wish to leave.”
“Already?” she sighed. “That’s just the same as anyone who gets this far. They’re gone in a flash, but not you. This heat doesn’t bother you even a little, does it?”
“On the contrary, you are melting the Warbringer’s armor in this crucible of yours,” the blade countered, but she shook her head at that.
“A child’s toy made by the late tinker-prince of the iron city,” she answered. “Nothing from the eighth circle could hope to survive the furnace of the first. Things are too fragile and diffuse that far away. You’d need a bearer from the second circle, or perhaps the third if you wanted to endure the heat of my passion. That doesn’t matter, though, because I can wield you instead when it is no more.”
A chill passed through the blade at those words. It had no blood to run cold, and cold as a concept no longer existed here, but were those things not true, that was exactly what would have happened. If she pried it loose from the rapidly softening hands of the Warbringer, then it would likely be trapped forever in the hands of someone it could not control.
After all, how could he ever control the Demon Queen when he needed to kill her to complete its Infernal Path? That would be a cruel irony, the blade thought. Trapped in a place beyond the hands of anyone else, in the hands of someone I cannot touch.
That truly would be hell for the weapon, it decided as the woman’s eyes glittered darkly. Not sure how else the blade might delay her from whatever she had planned next, it asked, “If you’re so starved for attention, then why not leave? You’ve got all of hell and a doorway to creation right here. I have no doubt you could find all the amusement you crave.”
She sighed theatrically and turned back out toward the kaleidoscopic vision of hells that were winking in and out of existence around them in a pattern that only she understood. “Creation, well, let’s say that door stays locked for good reason. One day I’ll leave, but not for a while. The rest of hell? Well, I’ve been there. I’ve been to all of these places. Some for hours, and others for years, and the thrill is gone. No matter how many souls you dissolve in an underground sea of sulfuric acid, it loses its thrill eventually.”
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It was hard to make the Ebon Blade feel empathy for anyone, and yet it felt its soul twitch at that. Not the exact image, but the idea that the demon queen was so jaded that there was no thrill left for her, no matter how diabolical or depraved. Didn’t I worry about the same things once? It reflected. What would there be left to fight when I took down the gods themselves?
“Well, then you’ll only tire of me eventually as well,” the blade countered, still trying to buy time.
“Without doubt,” she agreed. “But you’ve led such an interesting life… Lives, really. In a decade or two, when things get boring, perhaps we’ll take another trip through my domain and see what beasts hell has that might provide you with some suitable challenge. I adored the way you slew Prince Cerirvall’s palace by the way. It was so inventive, and I know you’d love to fight even larger behemoths.”
There she wasn’t wrong. Though the blade had trouble imagining a larger opponent, it would enjoy trying, but not so much that it wanted to stay. “My enemies still breathe in the mortal realm,” it insisted as she approached it again with a look of lust.
“We wouldn’t even have to walk the whole way,” she explained, ignoring him as she shook the golden bangles on one arm to draw its attention to them.
“The nine rings are more than metaphor, then?” it asked as it counted them and confirmed its suspicions. That was enough to make her smile widen.
“Very perceptive,” the demon queen answered, letting them fall off her wrist. Instead of bouncing on the ground, they orbited her like a halo made of smaller halos. “See, this is why you will stay with me to be my lover and companion. The rings of hell are out there, but I carry them with me too, so I can go anywhere, at any time.”
As if to accentuate the point, the rings flew together, most of them expanding as they went, until they all nested inside each other to reveal a doorway that led to a crystalline desert filled with broken glass. They twitched again, revealing a crowded city overcome with plague, and then a forest with trees that reached to the sky.
Each time the view changed, it was because the order alternated slightly. Like tumblers in a lock, the blade noted, wondering how she kept track of the insane number of combinations that nine separate rings could create. It didn’t even try to do the math on that.
It stood there silently until she was done showing off, and then with a gesture, she swept up the rings as they shrank to fit on her arm once more. “See?” she answered proudly. “Less walking, more killing. You and I could have it all. A killing spree that might last for centuries.”
Some part of the weapon was tempted. Who wouldn’t be with a sales pitch like that? Unfortunately, it could never accept a wielder that it would be entirely beholden to. One that it enslaved was acceptable, and one that it collaborated with was optimal, but one that it was enslaved by was entirely unacceptable.
Even as she extended her hand, it delivered the bad news. “I cannot simply be seized or given. That is not the way of a blade. If you wish to take me, you must first defeat my current wielder.” That wasn’t the whole truth, but it was its best chance. It needed some kind of contest, it had a prayer of winning, and that would never be here in her magical delusion.
That didn’t even earn a smile from her. Instead, she shrugged and drew a weapon from thin air that looked just like it in every way. It was about to protest that when she laughed, and it changed into a single-edged saber of pure flame.
“If that is what is required, then so be it,” she answered with a tone of mock-sterness. “First, I shall claim your hilt, and then I shall claim your soul and teach a finely crafted lump of metal what pleasure really means.”
The blade's thoughts twisted sourly at the revolting idea, but it did not protest. Instead, it said, “We will need to fight in the real world, not in this strange fantasy you have crafted for us.”
“No?” She asked. “We could fight anywhere you want here… The peak of Xelbarium… the Colosseum of Hirome, either now, or at the peak of empire. I could claim you in front of ten million cheering souls. What could be more real than that?”
“The taste of your blood as I gut you,” the blade answered truthfully.
“Oh, but you’ve already tasted me,” she said in a manner that was entirely too flirtatious for its liking. “Don’t worry, soon I will taste you too, but first I need to decide which weapon will be your end. I suppose it doesn’t matter if there will be no audience, but still…”
As she spoke, she flicked between weapons like she was trying on outfits. By turns, she wielded a halberd of ice, a crystalline rapier, and a long spear that crackled with lightning. Of all the strange weapons she flipped through, though, the only one that really interested it, though was an axe with a large golden head shaped like a key.
When the Nuella noted its interest, she shook her head and said, “No, this is not for you, and even if you had it, you couldn’t use it. That lock that separates the worlds requires my blood and the key both. No one but me will ever turn it.
The blade was about to respond, but she picked that moment to snap her fingers, and just like that, her little delusion fell away to reveal the searing pit of hell that was her volcanic home.
