Chương 205: Ur-Dragon (part 3)

After all this time away from the taint of hell, it felt foul to that familiar darkness slide through the Ebon Blade and into the God of Creation, but that didn't stop it from defiling the god's soul with the demon's darkness. However much it hated that sensation, Hydonar certainly hated it more because his roars of pain only amplified, even as it pulled away from the Ebon Blade. +3 Life Force. (5% effective)"What have you…" What have you done?!" the god cried out.

The weapon ignored the words and noted that the blood that was escaping the wound wasn't nearly as bright as it was before. It also wasn't healing shut anymore. Hampering the God's ability to heal was important. That had been the whole point. Something more important had happened, though: now that it had polluted Hydonar's soul, it could actually drink from it, and that told it two things.

The first was that this fight could go on much longer than it had before, and the second was that the god's blood was still far too pure. Fortunately, it had more demon souls to use. As Hydonar retreated, the sword's revenant advanced. He could no longer spout walls of fire, but he still had wings, tail, and claws, and used all of them to keep the blade at bay. That worked for a few seconds, or a minute at a time, too, but inevitably, he left the blade an opening, and the sword rushed to fill it.

After that, it used a demon soul with every strike. First, it used the remaining souls and greater souls that it had left, but after only half a dozen, it was down to the demon prince souls. That made the blade hesitate, but only for a moment. +64 Life Force. (33% effective) With every strike, Hydonar's attacks grew more frantic, but less dangerous. It was only when the blade forced the Penitant's soul inside the golden dragon, though, that it froze.

The blade had heard the strange demon's whispers after holding it for a moment. It had no wish to hear more than that. +92 Life Force. (50% effective) The weapon had no idea whether that loathsome creature had finally overwhelmed the dragon, or if it was because it was simply reaching a fatal dose of darkness. It didn't really matter. As long as he was paralyzed. He was vulnerable. So, the blade reached for another powerful demon soul to finish him, but instead, Nuella made her move.

In the decades that the blade had held her soul, she had sometimes whispered to it, or struggled against it, but never with much success. Now, though, after years of silence, she struck and grabbed the blade's soul as it reached for another demon soul.

"He's mine, to kill, not yours," she hissed. The blade struggled with her then, but it was conflicted. It wanted to be rid of her soul, but it had a bad feeling about this. You shall never be free again, it growled, holding her back, even as she tried to escape through its blade into Hydonar's soul. The two stood deadlocked there for one second, then two. It was the most powerful will that the blade had ever encountered.

Still, a few seconds more would have seen her back in her cage; unfortunately, that's when the dragon chose to shift dangerously, distracting the Ebon Blade for a moment. A moment, though, was all it took, and she was free. It was a painful transition for the blade, and memories of her time in hell and even before that flashed through its mind as their souls mingled. It saw her fall from grace from eons past and glimpses of her cruel reign in hell.

For a moment, it felt like she might take it over completely, but then it was gone, and inside of Hydonar. It had felt the grudge from within her; she hated Hydonar far more than she hated the Black Blade for striking her down. The sword had never been the target, only the vector. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. The God of creation unleashed a scream of pain then that was louder than any of his previous roars.

He twisted and thrashed, babbling, and he wreaked havoc on their delicate surroundings.

"You fool, you let her loose!" he bellowed deafeningly.

"You said you killed her! But… but why? What have you done?" Those words were interment gasps of sensibility between screams of pain as the two gods fought for dominance. In the end, the blade didn't care who won. Only that the dragon's blood had gone dark, and they were beginning to tarnish. They'll still both die, it thought as it waited for the paroxisms to die down. But when they do, what will I do with their souls?

The blade's revenant stayed well clear of the thrashing and instead studied the gods who were excluded from the battle. The dwarven deity was no longer there, but the others all wore looks of horror as they tried and failed to break into the battlefield. As they all watched, Hydonar's dragon form changed. It grew extra limbs, and where each wound tried to heal, bulges grew like cancerous growths. It no longer looked like a dragon, but it didn't quite look like a demon, either. It was something in between the two.

No, it was something between everything. Whatever the Queen of Hell was doing to the Lord of Creation, it was forcing him to create pieces of every animal that existed as his powers went haywire. The Ebon Blade spotted gills, claws, fur, scales, and tentacles as the behemoth mutated before its eyes. When the creature finally gained enough control that it focused its red glowing eyes once more on the blade, it was no longer identifiable at all, except as a horror.

Where it had one pair of beautiful white wings before, it now had a second small pair, and a malformed limb that might be growing a second head. The blade wasn't sure, but it was beyond caring. It just wanted to finish this, and as the tow charge each other, it set about hacking the thing to pieces. +384 Life Force. It might be larger and more horrific, but it was no stronger than it had been before. It was certainly slower.

The sword no longer had to use preternatural tricks to dodge most of its strikes, and except for where it used Vorpal Strike to penetrate the still intact patches of dragon scales that it found, it rarely used any powers at all as it feasted on the god-corpse's strength, one attack at a time. +242 Life Force. -200 Life Force. Even with plenty of Life Force, though, the blade could feel its wielder's strength waning. There didn't seem to be anything it could do about that.

Vergozza's spirit was like a clock ticking down to zero. Every blow she suffered weakened her faster, but no amount of healing seemed to help as she became more and more translucent. If there had been another corpse around here, it might have animated it instead, but there was nothing half so physical in this divine place, and it lacked any strong souls to replace the Death Goddess's ghost with. Instead, it sped up the process as much as it could with copious amounts of Hellfire. +466 Life Force. -150 Life Force.

Fortunately, the tainted black blood that the behemoth leaked with every savage blow no longer sliced right through it as the light had. With every hack and spray, the blade's enemy restored the weapon's reserves. It was nearly as tough as the golden dragon had been, but the black hellspawn was dying. Even now, dozens of wounds remained open, and most of them were leaking more hellfire and smoke than they were blood.

The blade severed every limb that was thinner than its blade and hacked through the spine in several places. Even so, the monstrous creature lived until it hacked almost all the way through the neck, making the cottage-sized head rest against the ruined plaza. The creature kept twitching even after it died, but it knew that the battle was done when it finally received the behemoth's malformed soul. That was a moment of pure madness. +1 Polluted Greater God Soul.

The blade felt its soul gem crack as it took in a soul more than twice as large as Nuella's had been. It swirled black and white more than gray, and all of it hated the blade with every ounce of its being. Even as the monster that its wielder stood astride began to melt into a pool of black ooze, that titanic soul attacked the blade with everything it had.