Even though the Ebon Blade was not happy with the way that its wielder had chosen to dispatch their enemies, it was pleased with how much faster they went with a horse. If others were hunting them, it would be easier to stay ahead of them this way. There were other benefits, too, though those mostly involved Lucian getting fed better and more frequently, now that he could claim to be a humble servant of the Aetharchy on an urgent errand for his master.

+284 Life Force.

It wasn't even fear of reprisal that drove peasants to help him when he was dressed the part; it was hope of currying favor with the faraway mage lords. While priests could help with fevers and plagues, if a drought or some more serious condition afflicted the land, the entire community would be at the mercy of the Aethearchy, so they did their utmost, even for a lowly apprentice like Lucian.

Of course, he'd expected this behavior, which is why he'd thrown off his disguise as a beggar and a refugee in favor of something a bit more dignified. The fact that he was wearing a large sword got some looks, but no one dared ask him about it. Instead, whether it was an inn or a small farmstead, they offered him hot meals, warm beer, and sometimes other favors like directions or provisions for the trail, which he greedily accepted.

He was almost as greedy with the attentions of the women that flirted with him on several occasions, and as he moved from village to village, following the blade's directions toward the next waystone, he bedded anyone who showed him that sort of interest.

The blade did not approve of that sort of behavior at all, but it was more puzzled than anything. Searching his mind after one of these pointless acts of fornication revealed the truth; it was largely believed that a talent for magic was passed through the blood, so any woman who lay with a mage was more likely to have a child who might grow up to be one.

+119 Life Force.

Such things were rare, but they did happen. Lucian didn't seem to know the truth of the rumor either. According to his memories, no one did, but he certainly enjoyed this form of hospitality almost as much as the meals he was served.

Unfortunately, all of this made him comfortable, and that comfort led to a waning desire on his part to kill bandits now that he wasn't starving, which was only partially balanced out by a renewed interest in practicing, which was only half-hearted at best.

"Why should I need to jump around when I can just fling you across the battlefield with magic?" he'd demanded on one occasion when the blade pointed out that he was going through the motions. "It works great!"

Suppose that while you're doing that, you take an arrow to the eye or a club to the neck, the blade countered. What then?

"But we've shown your power works as long as I maintain the spell," the boy insisted. "So I'm in no danger as long as I do that."

A painful enough blow would make you regret that mindset, the blade answered.

The boy insisted it wouldn't, so that night, in lieu of training his footwork, which was sorely needed the blade chose to test his concentration by having him pick up burning coals with his left hand while he tried to maintain focus on his spell, and manipulate the blade with his wand in his right.

Lucian lasted almost ten seconds before he released the spell, which was longer than the Ebon Blade had expected, but short enough to prove its point. By then, the coals had burned all the way to the bone, creating a ghastly wound that healed almost instantly when he ran to the blade to fetch it.

-43 Life Force.

"I see your point," its wielder said grudgingly as he marveled at how his hand looked. "But maybe next time we could do it without the pain?"

I would if you would listen, the blade agreed, but it didn't bother to tell that to the boy. It already knew he wouldn't.

It wasn't that Lucian was lazy, not quite. He was quite devoted to learning from a few of the grimoires he'd liberated from that last tower; he liked to learn, just not exercise, slowly increasing the blade's ire because he was proving to be far from a proper wielder in a number of respects, and even efforts to subtly improve his behavior while he slept were meeting with only limited results.

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Even Evelyn, a widow… a mere woman, was a more devoted student than you, the blade told its wielder one day, as it tried to shame him into action. Lucian managed to shrug even that off, largely.

The difference was obvious to the blade; she'd been devoted to the cause of vengeance, but Lucian merely sought power in some vague, general sense. Now that the Golden Tower was rubble and dust, everything was a grand adventure.

Since those who had wronged him specifically were dead now, that was quite enough for him. The weapon needed more than that, so, over time, it tried a new tactic. Instead of attempting to fan the flames of martial desire and glory that simply weren't there, it focused on his greed and desire for power. On some level, this would make him a much worse person than he'd started out, but the weapon accepted that. The blade would probably never have a good master, and if it did, it wouldn't be for long; such contrasts were too extreme.

Of course, very few of the mage souls it interrogated during this time would have counted as good, either, and none of the Archmages would have. Past a certain point, power corrupted everyone, and it savoured the pain of those monsters as it shredded their souls for an answer or two to its question.

Before, its questions had largely revolved around the towers and their vulnerabilities, but it had already learned more about ley lines, waystones, and the logistics of mana. It no longer cared about those things, and while it could have probably learned even more from the minds it had trapped, it focused on a new topic: the pits below.

Ever since it had glimpsed the depths of hell in its memory, in the forges of Ul-Magora, they had been on its mind. So, it learns what it could from many of the medium souls that it had while saving the most powerful among them, just in case it required a truly important answer.

The Ebon Blade learned a lot from the thirty-seven dead mages that it asked about the subject. For starters, it learned that, at least according to the most competent cosmological experts on the subject, the world itself was formed from Xar-thar'ix, a dead titan, who had been overthrown by the Gods at the dawn of creation. The blade found that intellectually interesting, but it was far more interested in the fact that those same gods had fashioned the hells below from the bowels and stomach of that same titan.

It seemed gruesome to the Ebon Blade, but also interesting. Most of the mages it asked agreed in the broad strokes, even if it didn't seem literally true. The earth itself was not made of flesh, and it couldn't imagine any stomach that would hold back a world of fire and blood, but apparently, it was so.

The weapon couldn't quite deny it entirely. Not when it thought back to what it had seen, and some of the strange organic shapes that stirred amongst the fires of damnation.

That was where the Gods had dumped all of the devils that had filled the world before the first true dawn. In the same vein, apparently hell had been considered a place to dump some of the worst artifacts before by learned mage lords in the past. The only reason this was not done, even for objects like the Ebon Blade, was because they did not wish to empower the demon lords of the world below and create even larger problems for themselves in the future.

Surely it would be harder for me to escape hell than it would be a mine shaft of the bottom of the sea, the weapon had asked one of the mages.

"Such a thing might rid us of you for an age, or even an eon," the ghost of Josephian Fireward admitted, "but what would it do to the balance of the pit? The world is safeguarded only by their eternal war with each other. Were one of the nine demon princes to find and wield you, then they might conquer their fellows and find some way to wage war on the world itself. That would be a far greater catastrophe than whatever damage you might cause."

While the reasoning was sound, the blade's dignity was rankled by the idea that anything could do more damage than it. I took down the unbeatable Juggernaut in an afternoon, it boasted. Nothing in hell is more dangerous than that.

The mage never got the chance to respond to that charge. He merely faded into the ether as the last spark of his soul was exhausted by imbuing some knowledge of who the prime evils were, and what damage it is they might wreak on the world if they were ever released.

Of course, one of the many reasons the weapon consumed so many souls on a topic that was not immediately relevant was simple. It planned to take down another tower soon, and it would have to make room for all a fresh wave of souls that it planned to devour after they turned north.

Throughout all of this, none of the progress they made was major, but it was swift. They'd had enough little victories, and even without real diligence, its wielder had improved enough that despite dragging his feet, the blade felt he was ready for something more challenging.

+171 Life Force.

Over the course of the month, they smashed, defaced, and altered nine waystones across a wide swath of the east, and the blade no longer had the ability to view the country as a whole to see how badly its careful web had been snarled; it knew they'd done real damage.

All they'd really done was misdirect and sabotage, but that was good because it meant no one would be ready for it when it took down the largest tower in the region, Lucent Shard.

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