The Ebon Blade had spent weeks exploring its system and pondering the broken images of people and places it did not recall. It had even given a great deal of thought to its current predicament, but it still had no plan for what to do in this moment.
But no plan would not suffice. Now that it was embedded in a corpse, the clock was ticking, and eventually, the fabulous stockpile of energy wealth that it had built up would slowly dissipate, hour by hour, and it had no abilities that might stop that.
Perhaps if I increase my storage even more, an ability to reduce those losses might appear, it considered before deciding against it. Additional storage capacity was the one thing it didn’t need in this moment. Not unless it wanted to consume the dragon’s soul, but it seemed best to hold on to that for now.
In battle, the blade was incredibly decisive, but in this moment, it froze, deliberating endlessly. It wasn’t until it saw the message it had been dreading that it finally made the decision.
-1 Life Force
As soon as the blade saw that it was hemorrhaging out once more, it finally decided. Its best chance was not to pick at random and hope that something miraculous showed up. It was to pick from the best choices that it had.
So, the Ebon Blade selected Aura of Hunger and felt a chill pass through it as a quarter of its stored energy flared away, bringing it from 999/1000 to 749/1000. In its place, it had expected to see Aura of Hunger 2, but instead, there were four new options.
Aura of Hunger:
Breadth 1 -> 2 - 250 Life Energy - Affect up to five people instead of three.
Reach 1 -> 2 - 200 Life Energy - Reach up to fifteen feet away instead of ten.
Speed 1 -> 2 - 500 Life Energy - Drain a target over half a minute instead of a minute.
Strength 1 -> 2 - 300 Life Energy - Increase Aura of Hunger’s Drain from 10% of your Siphon to 20%.
That changed things considerably, and for a moment, the blade was once again puzzled with what to do. It was right at the edge of the dragon’s lair and only about twelve feet from the entrance. So, increasing its reach would theoretically allow it to target birds that sometimes flew by.
As if they would linger for a minute, it chastised itself.
Scavenging energy from any source that was available was certainly the best plan, but right now, there were no targets to work toward. However, in the end, it decided to take both Speed 2 and Reach 2 just in case the opportunity presented itself.
Aura of Hunger:
Breadth 1 -> 2 - 250 Life Energy - Affect up to five people instead of three.
Reach 2 -> 3 - 400 Life Energy - Reach up to seventeen feet away instead of fifteen.
Speed 2 -> 3 - 1000 Life Energy - Drain a target over twenty seconds instead of half a minute.
Strength 1 -> 2 - 300 Life Energy - Increase Aura of Hunger’s Drain from 10% of your Siphon to 20%.
That brought the blade all the way down to 49, which wasn’t enough to do anything. It was barely enough to stay awake and conscious for two or three days. That wasn’t something that it was looking forward to, but more and more, it found itself dreading the idea of going back to sleep.
Ever since it had tried to repair its soul, and it had glimpsed that it had once been far more powerful than this, it had started to view such a fate as a sort of death. It knew on some level that staying asleep for too long would start to undo all the progress that it had made, and it wanted that least of all.
The Ebon Blade did not think that was likely to happen after a day or a week of slumber, of course, but if it stayed here, embedded in the rotting corpse of a dragon for years, then who knew what would happen. It might wake up a second time with no memory of even simple concepts of who it was all over again.
As it considered that, it remembered the description that the shepherd boy had given to his friends about the temple where the blade had been imprisoned. The room had been sealed with iron bars he’d been forced to slip between.
At the time, it had thought that those bars were there to keep people from stealing it, but now that it had this new power, it realized that was probably the radius of whatever its power had been at its height, and those who had locked it away from the world wanted to make sure that it could not so much as get a single taste of life force.
It had slaughtered dozens of beastmen, a handful of humans, and a dragon. It would not give up that energy lightly. If only I’d been able to harvest souls from the beginning, it sighed, watching its Life Force tick down to forty-eight. I would have so much reserve power to fall back on then!
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For the next two days, nothing else happened. It searched and schemed, but nothing it could do would stop the clock. It lasted through two more sunsets, but somewhere before the third sunrise, its reserves fell to zero, and it lapsed into unconsciousness.
It didn’t approach that moment with fear. Instead, it was worry and concern that it had allowed itself to get itself in this situation. It dreamed more about the forge and an unfamiliar man screaming. It also dreamed of dragon fire and dead dragons at the feet of its wielder. Those at least were triumphant, and it was during one of those moments that it stirred slowly to life once more.
+1 Life Force
It had hoped that when it next awoke, it would find humans in the cave, looting the place. Instead, it found only a pair of ravens pecking at the exposed eye of the dragon. It devoured both of those in less than five minutes but obtained only a paltry amount of life force from them.
+2 Life Force
You have claimed 1 raven soul. It has been devoured for 2 Life Force.
+1 Life Force
You have claimed 1 raven soul. It has been devoured for 2 Life Force.
It was surprised more that it had instinctually reached out for the living even when it slumbered than that carrion birds had finally found the giant carcass to feast upon. It only further reinforced its belief that the bars were put in that temple for keeping people out, not for keeping it in.
When it was all said and done, it was alone again, but only for the next eight or ten hours. That gave it time to watch the thunderstorm raging outside and contemplate its situation, but the blade fell right back to sleep swiftly after that, and the darkness of the cave was replaced swiftly with the darkness of unconsciousness.
That cycle of predators and scavengers continued several times. Each time, it was a different pest, that it siphoned from. There were more ravens, a condor, a mountain lion, and more than a few mice and other rodents.
You have claimed 1 mountain lion soul. It has been devoured for 6 Life Force.
Each of them was enough to wake it up, but even the mountain lion barely kept it awake for a day. It noted that each of the creatures tasted a little different, but that was the only note it made in the experience. For a time, the blade worried that it might exist there in limbo forever. Then, the goblins came.
They were the first creatures in a long time that the blade actively tried not to kill. That would have been counterproductive. If it killed the first one to creep into the cave that night, it would not be back with more of its friends.
It drank ten Life Force from that first scout while the goblin devoured the corpses of birds and rats. For more than an hour, it poked around the corpse of the dragon, and twice, it seemed like it had seen the blade’s handle, but it did not reach for it. Instead, it tried and failed to get past the scale of the dragon to feast on its flesh before settling for the remains of the mountain lion.
Then, after it failed to find or steal the weapon for its own, the blade allowed the thing to flee with great difficulty. It did so with the uncertain promise that it would be back. It shouldn’t have doubted it, not when there were a thousand pounds of rotting meat lying there for the taking.
That was a greater treasure to the goblins than any amount of gold or dragon scales. That morning, it fell asleep in an empty cave as the sole goblin that was its lifeline to the world fled, and that night when the faint currents of Life Force stirred it to life again, it woke to a cave crawling with the pests.
Even then, though, the blade did not kill any of them, at least not right away. Instead, it rotated through all the creatures, siphoning a little life at a time. This was apparently not enough to make them flee, but it did make them surly and prone to fighting each other. The Ebon Blade didn’t care about any of that, though. It just watched them feast, even as it feasted on them at the rate of ten to fifteen life force an hour so as not to consume the renewable resource.
The goblins were brutal, using stone-tipped spears and broken short swords that were half rusted to pry up and then rip out the dragon scales. Once that was accomplished, and they’d ripped a few of them free to reach the giant beast’s flanks and soft underbelly, the entire thing became a bloodbath.
Then, the goblins were doing more than feasting. They were doing more than even gorging themselves. They were bathing in blood and practically mining the meat in an effort to get at the still-warm organs deep in its core.
It would have been vile if the blade cared about such things. It didn’t, though. Instead, it simply took advantage of how distracted they were, siphoning away enough Life force from each of the dozen members of the troop until they started to show signs of fatigue. That was when it left them alone to recover.
That earned the Ebon Blade just over a hundred Life Force. It thought about spending that immediately to increase its reserves, but it decided to wait and see if they came back a second day.
If I am left here alone, I will need to save this power, it counseled itself. 134 life force wasn’t exactly a lot, but it was nearly two weeks of consciousness. Still, if they return, then I can start to really build something.
That they would return was truthfully never in doubt. It was just the blade’s sense of worry and isolation. If there was still food to be eaten, then there would still be goblins coming to eat it. This time, there were even more of them. Nearly two dozen arrived to rip apart the spoiled flesh of the dragon’s corpse.
Still, despite all the progress they made in that regard, not one of them found the blade and tried to pull it free. It was maddening. The Ebon Blade tried to will them to do exactly that, but it had no ability to communicate at all to someone who wasn’t touching it. For days and weeks, the fact that it had been embedded deep under the scales near the dragon’s wings had been an advantage, but now, with those leathery wings draped across the faintly glowing ruby in its pommel, it was a terrible location.
If only one of these pitiful creatures would draw me, It fumed as it watched them feast. I would slaughter the rest and then use the survivor to bring me down the mountains and find a proper host.
Although that didn’t happen, night by night, it feasted. By the third day, the goblins were no longer leaving. They were simply retreating to the rear of the cave to sleep away the day before they continued their endless, bloody feast. It was a messy, monstrous thing, and when the blade approached a thousand Life Force, it finally spent 250 on Increase Reserves 6.
That brought its total reserves up to 2000, and made the ruby in its hilt grow slightly even as its facets became sharper. The new upgrade let it store more than ever, but even that did not unlock any interesting new powers the way it had hoped, forcing it to wait ever longer as it drank from its growing herd of goblins like they were no more than a herd of cattle.