By the time the sword and its wielder walked back out of the shallow gnoll den to find his waiting friends, he was covered in blood. In the minutes they’d been separated, he’d killed everything with a pulse in the cramped, disgusting place and returned to find only fresh air and judging eyes.
The slaughter he’d just enacted wasn’t in vengeance for hurting him or for killing his horse, though. It wasn’t even because they’d tried to kill Vara. The blade knew that now because the rampage had given it enough power to claim Enhanced Connection 1, letting it sense and even influence its wielder’s emotions, though his conscious thoughts remained out of reach.
That had cost it 150 Life Force, and removed some of the rust on its wire wound pommel. Still, despite that, thanks to all the pups that its wielder had slaughtered, it still had enough left over to spend another 60 LIfe Force on Increase Reserves 4.
That upgrade had increased its pool’s maximum Life Force and deepened the carved runes on its blade ever so slightly, even as it had reduced its current Life Force totals to almost nothing.
Life Force: 31/500
In this case, it was the Enhanced Connection with its wielder that had paid for the second upgrade. The man had fought like a demon, without any urging at all, through the guards, the old mutts who were too old to raid that had been behind them, and the vicious bitches that had followed. However, for whatever reason, when Ren had seen the youngest members of the pack, his rage had faltered.
That delay only lasted until the blade’s hunger and bloodlust had been enough to tip the scales and make Ren see what the right thing to do was. A heart was a liability, but the man still had one. The blade did not, though, and it had been satisfied by its ability to influence him. Still, it was disappointed to find that when it tried to do the same thing when his friends appeared, nothing happened.
Kill them all, they’re only slowing you down! It raged. Save one horse for yourself and go as fast as you can to…
Its words trailed off when its wielder sheathed it and made it clear he had absolutely no intention of taking any more lives just now. It was a disappointing moment, considering how much it had paid for such a marginal advantage and how much more it would apparently have to pay to increase its hold on him even further. The next level of Increase Connection had revealed itself, but it was 300 Life Force, which was a significant investment, especially in this empty place with no one else to kill.
Increase Connection 2: Can you feel it? The gap between souls lessens and your grip on your wielder tightens. At this level, it extends past emotions, allowing some level of insight and influence into their very thoughts.
There will be time, it assured itself. It has only been a few days, and I’ve already come this far. In a few weeks or months, he, or whoever replaces him, will be nothing more than a puppet to exercise my will.
-1 Life Force
Ren’s friends were all surprised and overjoyed to see that he didn’t have a scratch on him. Well, everyone except for Elliah. He was so pale that he was barely holding on to his reigns.
It was clear that everyone knew how badly he was hurt, but it was equally clear that they could do nothing for him as he slowly died of the internal bleeding that had slowed but not ceased, and the infection that was starting to bloom within the man like a dark stain.
“I was so worried,” Vara said as she hopped down from her horse and moved to hug him. It was only when she saw just how drenched in gore he was that she held back. “I thought for sure they’d shot you almost as badly as your horse, but—”
For just a moment, the blade could feel he was about to confess that he’d been hurt but that his sword had healed him. It couldn’t let that happen and ruthlessly suppressed that urge.
“N-no,” Ren lied, “Just the horse, thankfully. I fought my way free and took them out, though. These things will never—”
“I’ll say!” Mardem said, pointing to his first battlefield. “You chopped them into pieces so small we might as well sell them at market as stew meat!”
“I did what I had to do,” Ren said dismissively, looking at his blood-spattered body. “Now I need to find a stream or something to wash off.”
-1 Life Force
It turned out that a stream wasn’t too far, and after a half-hour walk, he was stripped to the waist and splashing himself clean. The sword spent that time wondering if its wielder realized all it would take to heal his friend would be to let him hold it for a minute and draw its lingering power out.
It assumed that he had, since Ren had figured out he could heal himself with it in the same way. So, the fact that he wasn’t volunteering that information to anyone was a good sign. It didn’t know whether that secrecy was driven by paranoia or indifference, but the blade did the best it could to inflame that with its urgent feelings of possessiveness and jealousy.
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If you let someone else hold me, even for a moment, they will steal my power for themselves! It raged. Even though the words did not reach the man, it was certain that the feelings did.
-1 Life Force
Ren might not understand where the sudden strains of anger and paranoia were coming from, but he was quieter after that, and he looked to his friends with more suspicion, especially Mardem. The blade could feel the rift growing between those two in almost real-time and it was almost enough to make it salivate. Once the trust was gone, the bloodshed could start.
-1 Life Force
-1 Life Force
The blade’s energy lasted long after its wielder was clean, and the four of them spent the rest of the day riding toward the town of Tollin’s Cross, which was still more than a day away. Though it did not stay active long enough to see the place, it wasn’t expecting much. Apparently, it was just a speck of a village at a crossroads between two of the larger trade routes in the region.
The location itself was unimportant. It was just the place where two important roads happened to cross in the middle of the plains, and create just enough traffic to give life to commerce.
Their plan was a simple one, and they stayed up for hours that night worrying and fretting over it while Vara stroked her dying brother’s hair as he laid his head in her lap, and the other boys promised that they’d do whatever it took to see him well again. They were sure that there would be work for mercenaries, at least in such a far-flung place.
-1 Life Force
“Just a job or two would be enough to pay for more food and the best medicines!” Mardem boasted, trying to reassure her.
“But what if it isn’t?” she asked plaintively. “He can’t die from saving me. That’s just too cruel!”
“I’d do it again,” Elliah said softly, squeezing her hand.
He was trying to act strong, but the blade could see the weakness growing inside him. Disease was taking hold, and the dying boy’s Life Force was getting so thin and diffuse it had lost almost all interest in him. It just wanted him to finally die so that the rest of them could keep moving that much faster.
They were all hungry now. The blade had always been hungry, of course, but now the four of them felt some measure of its pain there. Ren agreed with his friends, but never once mentioned that his sword could heal most of those hurts right now.
-1 Life Force
-1 Life Force
-1 Life Force
It was an amusing dilemma for the blade, and it enjoyed the rising levels of guilt it could feel coming from its wielder right up until its Life Force ran out, and the world became dark and cold once more.
-1 Life Force
. . .
+10 Life Force
When the blade returned to life, it was not in the company of a caravan as it expected or even anywhere near something that might be called a town. It was in the dark, downwind of a campfire, where Ren was slaughtering one of their remaining horses.
+6 Life Force
The group had not reached their destination. They had only reached a new level of desperation.
+8 Life Force
+11 Life Force
It took one blow to cleave its head cleanly from its neck, but after that, they carved it up to get as much meat as possible. Even so, the blade only got 34 Life Force from the exercise. Life Force wasn’t the point, though. It was all about the meat. They were slaughtering a lamed horse to keep going.
Wherever their destination is, it must have been further than they expected, the blade thought silently to itself.
“Why are we doing this so far from the fire?” Marden asked Ren as he tried not to get himself slathered in too much blood.
-1 Life Force
“Because we don’t want whatever comes to snack on our leftovers to ambush us in our sleep,” Ren answered coldly, obviously not happy about this either.
“But if we’d walked the horse to—” Marden started to say.
“If we’d walked the horse all the way to Tollin, then Elliah would be cold and gray before we ever got there, and you know it,” Ren sighed. “We have to keep moving. He needs medicine. You know that Vara will never forgive herself if he dies likes this. He needs meat to keep up his strength and the attention of a healer as quickly as possible.”
-1 Life Force
-1 Life Force
They talked more after that, but the conversation ceased to be of interest to the blade well before they returned to the firelight with the meat they’d harvest. The boys stayed up long enough to skewer and roast the meat until it was tough as leather. It was edible, though, and that was more than they had before.
Their trip was slower going after that with two of them on each of the remaining horses, but the blade stayed awake long enough to watch them reach the town at least. There, they sold one of their two remaining horses to a shady-looking man who probably cheated them.
It wasn’t as if they had a choice in the matter, though. They needed enough silver to pay for a healer and got scarcely more than that.
Unfortunately, despite the less than generous payment, there was little the old man could do. Given how much time had passed and how severe the wound had grown, the gash caused by a filthy knife had festered into an open wound that had already begun to putrify.
-1 Life Force
“You’ll need magic. Herbs and fire only do so much. This will take more,” he told them with a sad shake of his head, “And for magic you’ll need gold, not silver, I’m afraid.”
That was news that hit them all pretty hard. Vara had promised the healer anything if only he could heal her brother, but the old man had shaken his head sadly. “I did not mean to suggest that I had such talents at my disposal, miss. You may yet find a priest or a mage in one of the caravans that pass through, but I do not think that many of them would take even a body as young and pretty as yours for payment for such a thing.”
Ren very nearly murdered the man for the comment. Even suggesting the woman that he loved was a whore was enough to make him draw his blade, but she held him back, and even the sword’s relentless desire for bloodshed was not enough to make him consider cutting through Vara to get to the man that had offended him.
The four of them rented a single cramped room to save money and ate horse meat instead of the stew and freshly baked bread they could smell coming up from downstairs while they talked in circles once more. The discussion was tense, but the blade ran out of Life Force before they reached anything approaching a conclusion.
All they needed to do was make peace with the boy’s death and move on with their lives, but none of them was willing to do that, not even its wielder. The sword found this darkly amusing, and wondered how this little melodrama would play out.