Bloodstained Blade (Gamelit, Sword MC)

The Ebon blade twisted and fought against the sensations flooding through it, but somehow, it found itself defenseless against them. In all past situations, even when it had faced that awful mirror, it had been able to resist such things, but this was an order of magnitude worse than that had been.

It had experienced regret, and it remembered sadness, but what it felt now was so much stronger. This was pure angst; it was weaponized despair, and no matter how hard the weapon fought against it, it fought even harder not to let its wielder sink to its knees and weep.

The strange wind-up toy didn't even have eyes. I had no mind or soul, and yet somehow, some way, it wanted to give in to these terrible corrosive emotions as bad as the blade did. Up until this point, it hadn't regretted a single thing that it had done, but now it regretted everything.

It keenly felt every life that it had ended, and every regret the pieces of its patchwork soul held. A moment ago, it had been proud of the violence that it had inflicted on the wider world, but now not even this ocean would be enough to wash away the stains of what it had done.

Rebelling against it, the weapon forced its wielder to take a step forward. All it wanted was to end the demon that was responsible for making it feel this way, but even that step was all but impossible, and its wielder staggered forward to one knee. It even dropped the Ebon Blade as it did so! Fortunately, the automaton's metal fingers still rested upon the hilt as he crouched there on hands and knees, but even so, the weapon was inches from losing contact with its wielder, and it couldn't make that hand close to take it up again.

What is this! The blade screamed silently, fighting with everything it had to resist it.

The weight of this one frail demon's gaze was heavier than the rest of the ocean combined, and none of its strength or powers seemed to matter. It was immune to mind control, the draining magics that undead monsters wielded so effectively. It didn't have any sympathies to play on, but somehow it was wracked with sorrow.

Then, something inside of it cracked under the strain, and its conscious efforts to resist were washed away by the unending emotions. If the blade had possessed eyes, it would have cried then, preposterous though it was. More than anything, this felt like the jarring rearrangement that happened to its mind whenever it tried to fix its own soul, but that insight did very little for it. Instead, it was swept away by its memories.

The blade was bombarded by the death throes of everyone it had ever killed, and everyone it had tasted, then rose up from its mind like a geyser of souls, and they dragged it down into the darkness with them. Normally, it would have shrugged off all of their attacks and accusations, but the armor that bound its soul had vanished. No, it had rusted away in the saltwater depths, and now it was defenseless.

In a sense, the blade was lucky. The Demon Prince's gaze was locked on its wielder, not on it. So there were moments of lucidity amidst the tumult, but even being a foot or two from the epicenter of the demon's power was no blessing.

For hour after endless hour, it was forced to endure people begging for their lives, as well as feel their death throes. It shared the agony of every death that its razor edge had ever caused, but that was the least of its suffering. The blade was a weapon, and the people who made up its chimeric soul had all died grisly deaths. It was the sadness and the shame that it had no defense against.

The Ebon Blade was not built to grieve or apologize, but that was all it could do for an endless eternity as all of the violence it had wrought over its existence returned to it a hundredfold. That was the reason its wielder could not pick it up again. Because it was crushed down by the weight of its endless crimes.

It had killed tens of thousands of people and nearly as many demons. It had maimed hundreds more and drunk enough blood to fill a small lake. Even the deaths of warriors that it had intentionally caused didn't hurt it as badly as the deaths of those who'd simply been in the way. Wives, children, and old men had all been cut down, either by its edge or by its armies, and it had fed on all of their souls.

Now, they tore at it like the vengeful shades they were, trying to shred it to pieces. The Ebon Blade prayed for such a fate. It would have gladly been consigned to oblivion in those awful, endless days. It would have been better than this, but such mercy was denied it. No matter how bad the emotional turmoil around it fluctuated and churned, there was more just waiting for its turn.

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The weapon had incurred lifetimes' worth of sins, and whoever this devil was, it seemed that he was here to make it pay forever. As it did so, the blade's Life Force ticked away to nothing. Hour by hour, and day by day, it drained away. Nothing was stealing it. Its wielder wasn't even a very large burden. It was just the steady trickle of Life Energy that kept it moving and thinking, slowly fading away to nothing.

The blade had entered the dead city with over fourteen thousand Life Energy, and as it drowned in memories of tragedy, it was rarely able to come up for air, but whenever it did, that number had fallen precipitously.

Life Energy: 12,994

Life Energy: 11,318

Life Energy: 9,877

Each time it looked at the number, it had collapsed, and though math was all but lost to it in its present, pathetic state, it was fairly certain that it burned slightly more than a hundred a day, which meant that weeks were passing by in this horrible fugue state.

That was just one more thing for the blade to despair at, though, unfortunately. Nothing it could do, or it could think, could break the endless cycle of doom that it was trapped in.

-9,030 Life Force.

For the thousandth time, it tried to reach out and use Aura of Hunger on the demon that was lying there, helpless before it, but its mind recoiled from it. All the sustenance it ever needed was right in front of it, but it dared not harm another living soul, evil or otherwise.

It could only watch that number sink lower and lower. For months, it dropped thousands at a time between its lucid moments, before it was carried under again. Then, one day, it was dangerously low: 847. That was more than a week of power; it knew that. Normally, the number would have been large enough that it wouldn't have bothered the blade. It would have refrained from using certain powers and found someone to slaughter so it could replenish itself.

That stirred it to life, at least a little bit, but the idea that it might pluck the souls of the damned from where they floated above it in their cycles of never-ending torment was enough to reduce it to complete apathy again. Just the thought of snuffing out another life made it sick with sadness all over again, and the weapon once more lost itself to the tumultuous emotions that filled its soul.

Some small part of its mind knew that it would never wake up again after that. It would just lie there helpless until its mind vanished into the void like it had several times before. The swirling voices of everyone it had killed and maimed over its long existence tried to force it to accept that.

It's better this way… they whispered. You'll never hurt anyone else again if you stay here.

This Demon Prince was trying to euthanize it. Without so much as a word exchanged between them, he was trying to end the blade without a fight, and so far, at least, he was winning.

The blade's runes no longer glowed black or even the dull blood red that they usually glowed. They were a cold blue now, and they were almost extinguished. It was no wonder why. For centuries, it had burned with the fires of vengeance, and now it was on the verge of being extinguished by pure despair.

The blade could not struggle against its fate. The best it could manage to do was watch its dwindling Life Force as it ticked down.

12, 10, 7…

Despite all of the other torments plaguing the blade, it couldn't turn away. It tried again to use Aura of Hunger, first on the demon prince lying helplessly before it, and then on any number of spirits floating through the waters above it. The weapon might have lain here for months, but those poor bastards were still there, ripe for the taking.

It couldn't have them, though. Each time it tried to grasp one, its powers failed as a new wave of torment consumed it.

You wouldn't kill anyone else, would you? The voices whispered. Not after you know how terrible it is…

5, 3, 1…

Every few minutes, another -1 Life Force message would appear. Each time that happened, a wave of dread surged through it, but that only seemed to make the spectral chains that bound it stronger.

0 Life Force remaining.

The voices surrounding the weapon and surging through it screamed for it to give in. It wanted to. Even though it was against everything that the weapon was, it wanted to give in.

But it couldn't. With a sudden desperation born of the fear of the oblivion that awaited it, the blade's survival instinct kicked in. There was no thought or resistance, at least none that was effective. With no energy remaining, it reached into its flickering soul gem and grabbed the most powerful soul that remained to it, and consumed.

The guilt and recriminations tore through it then in a new wave. However, that pain wasn't nearly as strong as the pain or the fire that started to burn through its veins and its runic pathways. It had devoured the soul of a demonic dragon the size of a city. That was not how the Ebon Blade had planned to use that soul; it was sure there would be a cost for that, but for now, as its Life Energy total surged upward, it had at least one more chance at life, or better, vengeance.