Chương 206: The Heart of the World

That invisible battle wracked the weapon even as its wielder flickered and threatened to extinguish itself entirely under the strain.

"You did this to me!" failed the voices of Hydonar and Nuella.

"To us! To the world!" The blade didn't care at all about their suffering. It cared only about getting them under control and ending this, but that was apparently impossible. The combined god-soul was just too much for even its soul stone to handle. Grudgingly, it realized it was going to have to devour them entirely, though that was the last thing it wanted. Still, it was only lasting as long as it had because they fought each other as much as they fought with it.

Their screams and recriminations only intensified when the blade began to take their strength for its own. It had no idea what the consequences of such an action would be, but it knew that the alternative was to be shattered beneath the weight of their power. It expected many things then, but what it didn't expect was insight. More of their memories flashed through its mind. It saw creation and hell from a dozen perspectives and a hundred ages. None of those mattered to it, though.

What mattered was the ruined plaza all around it. It wasn't an artistic piece that depicted the world below. The mosaic was the world below, and the blade had destroyed it in its battle. It felt that realization like a physical blow. While it had no qualms about killing, the wanton destruction of most of the civilized world horrified it. Across the length and breadth of its bejeweled battlefield, the world below was in ruins. Cities and villages burned.

Once upon a time, it might have gloried in such a view, as it did when it led Gar-lock to victory so long ago. Now, though, it could only think about the men and women like Geral's family who had died so needlessly. Armageddon had come, and the blade hadn't even realized it. This is all your fault, castigated Hydonar's voice as it looked out across the toppled mountain ranges and burning forests. Glory in this moment, Nuella continued. You've ruined the world and unlocked the doors to hell.

Demons will consume the survivors and drown the world in blood. The blade didn't want to believe them. It wanted to believe this was a trick, but it knew that wasn't the case. It could feel it in the zeal of both twisted gods. They hated the weapon almost as much as they hated each other now, and that made them honest. The more it consumed their power, the more it understood, and the more it regretted its decision to force this encounter.

Vergozza, and in his own way, Argandin had both tried to avoid this moment, or at least minimize the damage. They hadn't said as much to the blade, but they'd known that the cost of bringing down the gods would be paid for by the entire world. Would that knowledge have changed anything? The blade asked itself. Would I have done anything different if I'd known? That doubt slackened its grip on the god soul that it consumed, so it was forced to abandon it before it could examine it in great detail.

Instead, it focused on the struggle at hand, and as the strength of the divine entity failed, it noted the changes that were taking place in its very structure. The runes were shifting, but only a little. The bigger change was the glow. It was brighter than it had ever been. The light that radiated from its cracked soul gem would have sliced through its fading wielder if the revenant held it wrong. The blade's wielder was all but spent, now, but that hardly mattered.

Now that the roaring voices of heaven and hell shouted at each other in its soul gem, the blade knew what it was that it must do. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Just glancing at its own runes had told it the answer. Those were the rules of its own enchantment, and thanks to Baraga's strange origins and its struggles, they'd grown and shifted for its entire existence. It was now going to share that power with the rest of the world.

For better or worse, it was the Ebon Blade's only answer to the apocalypse unfolding in the world below. As the Goddesses Lusitiverie and Terri'nera advanced cautiously from the thrones on one side of the room, and the ghostly heroes began to fan out closer to the entrance, the Ebon Blade ignored them as it limped toward the center of the grand plaza. It was looking for a specific rune.

Individually, it didn't really understand how any of them worked, but as a gestalt, it knew almost intuitively, thanks to the unwelcome divine memories it was being flooded with by turns. The goddesses and their soldiers had almost closed with it by the time the blade found what it was looking for. It didn't hesitate.

At the same moment that Lusitiverie declared something to it, the blade stabbed deep into the first word of creation and commanded the mutilated god soul that it now possessed completely, tell me everything about the magic that underpins the world. Tell me about the heavens above and the hells below so I can fix this chaos.

The Queen of Hell whispered that it couldn't be done, and the Lord of the Heavens sneered that it would only make things worse, but even so, the weapon drained that tortured soul of a hundred lifetimes of magical knowledge. While it connected those dots, the remaining goddesses and their minions opened up, bombarding it with bolts of powerful energy and magical explosions in every flavor. It ignored them entirely. They could do nothing to harm it.

Its metal was all but indestructible, and its tortured wielder had already faded. No one new is likely to pick me up for some time, the blade whispered to itself as a complete understanding of the forces that underpinned the universe flowed through it. That took several minutes, but even before the goddesses had stopped slinging spells, the blade began to focus on the world around it.

The jewelled plaza that was smashed and shattered was the very tapestry of creation below, but the runes underneath it weren't cosmetic either, and now that the blade understood them, it began changing them. The Ebon Blade had cleaved into the stone heart of the world, and as its baleful red light began flowing into the runes around, it rewrote them. At first, that reaction was slow.

The Goddesses didn't even notice the change amidst the maelstrom of magical fury that they unleashed around it until one of the creeping red lines touched one of the honored dead. When that happened, everything changed. One moment, the vast plaza was filled with a cacophony of fire and fury, and the next, the ghost had time to let out a single scream as the blade's runes called up his body like a strange living tattoo.

The Goddesses stopped their spells immediately, but the ghosts that came to assist the one that the sword had snared became captured in the same web. After that, everyone fled, as its reach expanded wider and wider. Ironically, it wasn't even an attack. The weapon was just claiming the entire world. Let whoever would wield me be forged by the fires of this new world, the blade said, to no one in particular. It was alone now, save for the souls it had snared.

They glowed red now instead of golden white and took position as its honor guard. The weapon had no desire to wield itself now, or perhaps ever again. It had claimed the whole world, and it would watch over it until someone was strong enough to claim it. The heavens still persisted, but just like the world, they were becoming a stranger place than before. The world below, though, was stranger still, for it had remade it in its own image.

If its titanic battle had hammered it and forged a new world, then it would give those who remained the tools to survive and thrive within it. The blade looked to the three mortal souls that it still held, and then to the burning world below. It studied the regions for several minutes. It looked at who the wars were fought between, and where the monsters were thickest. There were any number of crucibles to birth a new hero, but Geral didn't need to be tested again.

So, instead of tying the man's destiny to one of those places, it found an out-of-the-way pocket of safety and bound the souls there. When the fires died out and the battles were done, the world would need shepherds, too, and with any luck, Geral would find his wife again, and they'd live long, happy lives together, free of the demonic taint that had ruined things the first time around. That wasn't a fate that it could give to everyone.

Fortunately, for those who were fighting and dying in the service of those they loved, it had a better plan.