Even though the Ebon Blade had no wish to get to know this wielder more than its previous one, once it was on his hip for a day, it had a pretty good idea of who it was he was dealing with. Between the conversation of the prospectors and the darting surface thoughts, he was an open book.
Kell was an eager young boy who longed to be a hero. That much wasn’t so different from the shepherd he replaced. This wielder, though, was blooded and had fought for his life against beast n and bandits more than once. While Gern and Mika were related, Kell was an orphan, and until he’d grown in size and ferocity over the last couple of years, he’d mostly been Pa’s pack mule on their various adventures.
From what the sword could gather, they hadn’t t with a lot of success. The group had ransacked a couple of small tombs, but they’d mostly been picked clean already. They’d also found the remains of a caravan in the not-so-distant past and taken what the bandits hadn’t. The blade liked those kinds of flexible morals.
Still, it didn’t drink too much of any of them, and it left its wielder entirely alone. It didn’t so much as urge that the lad leave, even though that was what it wanted most. The last thing it needed to do was spook anyone.
The three of them took their ti, though. The blade didn’t bla them. Humans loved gold. That was half the point of killing a dragon, and this furnace beast’s hoard was spattered all over the walls and floor, piled in layers so high they’d need a lot more than the hamrs and cold chisels they’d brought with them to get to the bottom of those decades-old deposits of tallic shit.
At one point, they reached the back of the cave, and they finally found the pile of goblins that had died. Strangely, that didn’t spook them like the sword worried it would. Gern just explained that it was bad air caused by the decay of the dragon’s corpse, and they moved their ager camp that much closer to the exit so that no one suffocated in their sleep.
Still, they got enough good samples to fill a few sacks. They were mostly tin, copper, and other trace tals, but there was plenty of gold and a fair bit of platinum in the mix, which was enough to make this their biggest score of all ti.
“Plus, we can co back for even more or just sell the location to so fancy asshole and call it a day!” Gern said. “There’s riches enough in a jackpot like this for everyone as long as we keep it quiet.”
“Keeping a score like this is going to be a little tough,” Mika answered, but his father blew him off.
The man said things like that a lot, actually. It was a refrain that was so common that the blade started to tune it out. It didn’t care what these people did with their lives, just as long as he had soone strong and bloodthirsty to wield it.
The jury was still out on whether that would be Kell or not, at least until their first fight, but for now it was enough to be carried by soone again.
Once they started making their way down the mountain, it only took a few days before it looked like it was going to get to taste beastn blood once more. The group moved fast in the highlands, but once they were back in the foothills, they quickly relaxed.
Kell was asleep along with everyone else, when the creatures had started to slink in on the camp. In fact, they all had. They’d set a watch in the cave because they’d feared more goblins, but in the lower reaches of the mountain they were climbing down, they sohow thought themselves safe. That was a huge mistake.
“Too low for the beasties, too open for gobblers, and too far from the roads for bandits,” Gern had pronounced confidently as they’d turned in for the night.
The Ebon Blade woke its wielder with a sudden surge of danger and urgency, but only after it spent half a minute considering its options while their lives all hung in the balance. After all, if it left these n to their fate, they might well die before they could stand, and in the hands of one of these beasts, it could surely overpower their weak will. Still, sothing about it preferred that a human hand wield it, and it was that potential that made it decide to stick with Kell a while longer.
As the boy woke with a start and shouted an alarm even as he drew his sword, the Ebon Blade was equally busy. It had 1893/3000 Life Force, and it wasn’t about to let its wielder use all of that. Its soul storage was nearly full as well, so even as it started to spend its Life Force, it liquidated its eleven goblin souls for 43 more Life Force. Then, even as Kell charged at the first goat man, it spent 600 points to increase its connection.
The blade did not want to deepen its connection, but it did want to et the requirents to improve its control over those that held it now and in the future, so it took the next logical step. As it took Increase Connection 3, its wire wound hilt tightened, and another layer of sensations flooded through it from the man that was wielding it as it was reduced to 1293/3000 Life Force.
Increase Connection 3: You have word your way deep into the soul of anyone who grips your hilt. Your grip on your wielder tightens, allowing you to understand more about them. This link extends past emotions, allowing so level of insight and influence into their very thoughts.
It could feel the panic in his mind and the joy in his heart as he brought the blade down hard through his enemy’s spear. It knew it could check the boy’s sheet too, and that it would likely get more information, but there was no ti for that now.
The boy shouted in alarm to everyone as their weapons t, and the beastman’s weapon gave away imdiately, and the sword bit deeply into its hairy flesh, snapping the collarbone and making its left arm useless.
19 Life Force.
You have claid a lesser monster soul.
That, on its own, would not have been a fatal blow, but the additional siphon drank deeply of its vitality, and it slumped imdiately to the ground. That surprised both the blade and its wielder enough that Kell had trouble lifting the weapon in ti to parry the next strike.
Fortunately, he did, and as he did so he bought ti for the other two n who were roused slowly. This pleased the blade because it did not want to waste Life Force healing him. Not when it was so close to reaching 1500.
Its wielder followed the blow-up with a cross-cut across the thing's midsection, gutting it and killing it in a single stroke. Then he moved on with a wide slash to his right to gain so breathing room to his right before he killed one to his left. He…
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12 Life Force.
17 Life Force.
You have claid a lesser monster soul.
The Ebon Blade’s blow-by-blow analysis of the fight tapered off as he realized it was considering what the optimal move was monts before its wielder actually did it. So I have so control over the lad already, it thought greedily.
To test the theory, the sword held back on tactical thoughts for the next half a minute. It was not surprised to find out that it had been correct. Though the boy kept fighting fiercely for that ti, there was a mont of hesitation before each of his attacks as he decided what the best move was. The fluid grace that he’d borrowed from the blade’s experienced urging was gone.
It had to struggle mightily to sway Ren’s blade even an inch or two, but now with more control, it could sway Kell’s strikes almost without thinking about it. That’s real progress, the blade told itself. Making the boy do things not related to combat would probably be harder, but making him fight better felt almost natural.
19 Life Force.
11 Life Force.
You have claid a lesser monster soul.
By the point that it made those realizations, the fighting was almost done, and the rest of the beasts were in retreat. Gern and Mika had killed so of the beasts, too, but they’d also left so maid and bleeding out, and the Ebon Blade quickly prodded its wielder to finish off each of them, just to be sure, so it could devour what was left of them while the n caught their breath and talked.
4 Lesser monster souls.
“By the Dark Ones, Kell,” Mika said, “If you hadn’t heard them, well, our bacon would be cooked!”
“I can’t believe they’d co down this low,” Gern said, shrugging off the bla. “They musta’ slled our cookin”
“And Kell musta’ saved our asses. Co on, Pa, can’t you admit the boy did good?” Mika followed up, unwilling to let the issue go.
“Aye, he did,” the man nodded grumpily as he cleaned his blade. “Took him the best part of a decade and a magic sword to boot, but he finally did sothing worth keeping the lad around for.”
The sword was amused by the way the man could turn a complint into an insult, but that amusent faded instantly the mont its wielder spoke. “I think it was the sword, actually. It warned in a dream.”
The sword froze at the words, and it took all that it had to lay there still and quiescent as the n continued to speak. What it wanted to do was yell at him to shut his foolish mouth, but it knew that would only worsen things.
“Did it now?” Gern asked. “It tell you anything else? Like where we should stake a claim, or which way to go to avoid bandits and the like on the way back.”
“It's not whispering anything evil to you, is it?” Mika asked, with more concern than his father.
If the blade had blood, it would have frozen in its veins at the mont. It imdiately regretted saving its wielder. It should have let them get ripped to pieces and taken its chance with a lesser wielder. It didn’t say any of that, though. It just waited, worried about what the young man would say next.
“No, it’s not like that,” Kell said quickly, causing a sensation of relief to wash through the blade. “It hasn’t really done anything else. Maybe using it makes a better fighter, I’m not sure, but it’s not telling to kill or anything like that.”
“Well, if it does, you let us know, and I’ll put you down real easy in your sleep,” Gern said with a yawn. “For now, I’m goin’ back to bed, but you can stay up and keep playin’ hero since you’re so good at chopping these things to pieces. You can be our watch for a while. Wake Mika at the first signs of false dawn.”
Kell didn’t protest the obviously unfair treatnt. The lad had probably had that beaten out of him a long ti ago. Still, there were barely even any embers of resentnt there even after being disrespected so casually, and the blade resolved to fan those flas in its wielder the next ti he slept.
There were no further attacks that night, and though the blade stayed silent while its wielder was awake, it started whispering to it when the young man went to sleep. Rather than whispering words that would sew discord as it had to its last wielder, though, the weapon told the man how well he’d fought, and how the only respect he’d gotten from the n that were supposed to be like family to him in a long ti ca from that fighting. Fight more, and often it told him. The path to true power and respect is splattered with blood.
While it was true that Kell was due more credit, the blade wasn’t sure any of its darker ssage percolated through its wielder’s dreams. As it turned out, though, credit was the one thing the boy didn’t get.
Not in the day that followed or on any day after that. With Tollin’s Cross still nothing but tents and ashes, the n were making for a town further afield called Trodden. The blade didn’t know where it was exactly, but to it, it looked like they were heading back toward the place the shepherd and his friends had co from on its first trip. The Ebon Blade couldn’t say with any certainty, because it had been asleep for most of that trip, but it found the idea to be an interesting one.
That was good and bad. It was bad in that the local myths might cause more people to recognize it, but it was good in that it might get a chance to revisit the temple it had been locked inside. The blade didn’t know the exact way to get there, but it could probably make its way back to the shepherd’s village, and from there, it couldn’t be too hard.
Even though it suggested the destination a few tis in Kell’s dreams, the n had no interest in any detours. Not when they were loaded down with tal samples to be slted and assayed. Unfortunately for the blade, there were no other monsters or bandits to fight, either, and not even the six lesser monster souls it used could quite bring it up to 1500 Life Force.
At least I’m not dropping anymore, it told itself, as they got closer and closer to their destination. Rather than burning twenty or so Life Force every day that fed its existence, that cost was now born by its wielder. That would have been almost enough to drop a beastman, and yet Kell seed unfazed by the burden.
That made the Ebon Blade wonder exactly how the cost was being paid. Is it magic? Is it his soul? The weapon reviewed the man’s status sheet for any answers, but when it found none, it decided it didn’t care.
Na: Kell
Occupation: Prospector’s Apprentice
Toughness: 5 1
Strength: 6 3
Agility: 5 2
Speed: 5 1
Intelligence: 5
Willpower: 5 -1
Morality: Good
Bloodlust: Low
Status: Normal
Martial Skill: Low
Armor Proficiency: Low
Dodging: Low
Athletics: dium
Goal: To go on many adventures and strike it rich!
As soon as the town was in sight, it started siphoning off the other two mbers of the group. It could only steal five or ten points of Life Force a day from each of them like this without making them noticeably lethargic or weak, but if it kept that up, it would soon reach its goal and unlock another tier of control, and in the hands of a strong wielder, that would always be its objective.
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