Chapter 18 – Anguish and Woe

The blistering heat from the forge flooded the room, making it an exercise in patience and perseverance to just stand in it. Yet the experienced dwarf zoomed from one corner to the other in preparation for his craft. The heat didn’t even register on his face, as he concentrated to ensure his task was completed meticulously. Aenon on the hand was sweating buckets despite having removed his armor, standing in a corner in just his pants and his mask. The dwarf had given very clear instructions not to move a toe without his permission.

Although the heat was suffocating, Aenon couldn’t care less since he was entranced by Borin’s work. The skillful blacksmith was preparing some kind of delicate mixture made from dozens of different powders, while also keeping a very close eye on the forge. He had forged two blocks of metal from the four daggers, which he was working on alternatively. He would sprinkle some of the mixture on a hunk of metal before hammering it with breathtaking precision. When the metal started cooling down, he would drop it into the forge and work on the other piece.

The most remarkable thing was the way he put his unprotected hand into the burning hot embers to check the temperature. Aenon used mana sense and found that the smith’s hand was coated in mana. He finally figured out where Jenny had learned the technique from, but it was a far cry when compared to the original’s. Borin wasn’t using the mana for heat insulation; he was actively heating the coal to ensure the entire forge was at a uniform temperature. Aenon guessed the ability to ignore heat came from whatever classes the dwarf possessed.

“Alright laddie. Come on over,” Borin said suddenly. He was standing before an impressive anvil and was holding a rune-covered hammer in one hand, and the two red hot metal bars in the other. When Aenon approached the anvil he continued, “These beauties are as ready as can be. But the soul imprints won’t let me work on them. That is where you come in. Need ya to use your soul powers to cleanse them.”

“How exactly do I do that?” Aenon asked as sweat flowed down his bare chest.

“These things have a rare black ore in them. The uptight folk have some fancy names for it, which I don’t care to remember. Just call it soul ore and know that it be expensive. The four daggers combined had about a millimeter thick sliver the size of my pinky nail. I have combined them into these two pieces which I will make your daggers from. The soul ore will allow ya to enter it using your soul powers. So bust in and remove the lingering soul imprints so I can continue my work. Get out of my shop when ya done,” the dwarf said while placing the future daggers on the anvil.

Aenon looked at the unassuming blocks and ran his hands across their surface, using the same mana mitten technique that Jenny used. He closed his eyes to focus and tried directing his attention to the blistering hot metal beneath his hand.

“AAAAAAAAARGH.”

A piercing scream made him retract his hand in alarm. The voice had come from the metal blocks, and from the look of confusion on Borin’s face, only Aenon had heard it. He looked at his future daggers again, planning on how to proceed when Bane spoke up from his shadow.

“This is trickier than I thought, Alpha. I have heard the cry too, and it reeks of malevolence,” Bane said with uncertainty in his voice.

“I know Bane. And it was just the tip of the iceberg,” Aenon said in response.

But he resolved his heart and placed his hand back, and plunged himself into the unknown. When his vision cleared, he was in his soul form and appeared to be in another foreign soul space. But the place was unlike anything he had experienced. The place was distorted and had a wild jumble of colors. He was mesmerized by the strange fractals that were forming all around him, as though he were in a house of distorting mirrors. For a moment he wasn’t sure which way to go. So, he chose a direction at random and started moving along.

He approached a flat glass like surface that was rotating at a slow speed and tried touching its edge. He recoiled in pain as he felt his soul take damage. Turning his soul into his physical body’s shape he saw that his finger had a faint cut on it. Moving recklessly in this place could shred his soul to bits. He tried calling out to Bane but found that he was unable to do so.

Seeing no other options, Aenon decided to keep moving, giving the glass surfaces a wide berth. At first, he moved towards an area where the density of the glass was getting lesser. But eventually he reached an impassable barrier, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t pierce it. He then walked along the barrier but found that it was curved, and based on his path, he would return to his starting position if he continued. The only thing he learned was that the entire space was spherical in shape and was huge. According to his estimate it was at least a few dozen kilometers in diameter.

“It looks just like my inner soul space, except bigger. If I ignore the disorienting colors and the razor-sharp glass blades”, Aenon mused to himself.

Seeing no other way, he approached a thin needle sized glass surface that was floating close to him. He tried touching it from every angle, but it always left tiny pinpricks on his soul form. He folded his hands and started wracking his brains for a solution. He assumed by cleansing the dwarf meant removing these from the area, but there were just too many of these things and he had no idea how to even interact with one, let alone remove them. Unable to come up with a solution, he decided to use his soul sense to scan the needle.

“Please…no…,” he heard a faint male voice.

It was only then that he realized what these glass objects were. They were splintered pieces of the victim’s souls, their anguish given form. He looked around the area and saw hundreds of such glass shards, no doubt from the elf’s victims. But if that was the case, he wasn’t sure where the soul imprints from his own daggers wre. It should be from the creator of the daggers, but unfortunately, he couldn’t see too far ahead, as the soul splinters distorted his vision.

He tried calling on his Void Stalker ability, and to his relief it worked. He coated his hand in dense mana and his soul presence and tried touching the splinter. Lo and behold, he was able to hold it safely. But then Aenon was faced with another problem. What to do with the piece. He didn’t know how to purge it; the dwarf did not give him any clues.

“Not my expertise laddie,” Borin had said.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Aenon tried crushing the needle in his grip, but it didn’t even budge. He probably could have asked Agatha for some advice, but he didn’t feel like it. The woman was with Jenny and was talking some things over. It no doubt involved him, but he didn’t care one way or another. He at least trusted Jenny enough not to blab about his identity, but even if she did, he wasn’t overly worried about it.

CRUNCH

A loud shattering sound pulled him away from his thoughts. And when Aenon turned to see what it was, he was stunned. Two glass orbs were ramming their way across the entire space. Each had multiple cracks, but those were getting fused as they hit other glass surfaces which got sucked into them. If he wasn’t wrong, these were the soul imprints within his daggers. And by the look of things, they were feeding off the other soul splinters.

He would have just sat back and let the two devour all the other pieces, but he sensed a problem. Earlier the broken glass orbs were of uniform colors, one red and the other blue. But the more they absorbed, the colors within them started getting chaotic. He tried sensing the two orbs, which hammered in the gravity of the situation.

“Kill Goblin… Kill Goblin…”

“Kill Goblin… Kill…”

“Kill torturer… Kill elf…”

“KILL EVERYTHING.”

The soul imprint’s anger was slowly started to devolve. From directing hate towards just the goblins, it was subtly shifting to the elf, and finally towards everything. If left unchecked, it could get to a point that they might target the wielder too. And the orbs were not even done absorbing all the splinters yet. If all that hate was absorbed by the creator’s soul imprint, it might be driven mad. Turning into a cursed object that would kill with just a touch.

Aenon covered his entire body with a mana infused armor and dove towards the orbs. He grabbed them with all his might, but was yanked forward as the balls continued on their path of carnage. He tried exerting his will on them, since they were linked to his soul after all. But the pull was too weak to hold them back.

“Enough,” he finally lost his cool and released his soul presence. He wasn’t sure if it would work, but luckily it did. But with some unexpected consequences.

The orbs stopped their mad dash. But they pulled away from his grip and were menacingly hovering in front of him. Aenon could feel the hatred dripping from the orbs, and he was their latest target.

“My vengeance will not be denied,” an ancient male voice erupted from the orbs as they flew towards Aenon suddenly.

Aenon barely managed to dodge out of the way, as the balls ripped past his head. Looking at what they did to the soul splinters, Aenon was sure that the attack would have been devastating for his soul.

“You are nothing more than an echo of your former self. Continue feeding on these unresolved emotions from these soul splinters, and you will lose that too,” Aenon tried to reason with the voice as he kept dodging the attacks.

“All goblins must die. All goblins… die. All… must die. All die. ALL DIE,” the voice kept repeating over and over, getting more unhinged with time.

Aenon realized that it was pointless to argue with the creator’s voice. He needed a new plan. So, he formed mana gloves around his hands and took a stance. When the orbs got close, he landed a sharp upper cut to one, before spinning around and giving a back hand hit to the other. They flew away from the impact, their cracks growing wider, but shrugged it off before zooming back towards him.

He dodged and weaved around, using his unarmed combat skill to get in crucial strike in between. But the spheres ignored the damage and kept charging in. By this point there were massive cracks all over the glass spheres, but they held together despite it all. The battle went on for hour, with no clear winner.

Aenon too suffered a few blows and cuts from the impact or the shrapnel from the soul splinters, but nothing too bad. After the tense confrontation, most of the space around them was clear, since the orbs were using the floating glass shards to heal the damage that Aenon was dishing out. So Aenon changed his strategy yet again.

He purposefully led the two glass cannonballs towards areas with the splinters, forcing them to absorb them. It was probably a bad idea, and wouldn’t work the way he hoped, but he didn’t know how to eliminate the hundreds of razor-sharp pieces anyway. And after another hour, he stood alone against the two pristine glass balls. But they were an amalgamation of all the hate and vitriol, and their presence was very suffocating.

“Stop… Help… Please… Kill… KILL,” the voices drowned each other out as they vied for control.

But the malignant desires soon ended with just one instinct. To destroy anything and everything around them. A desire with one singular focus, the enemy standing before them in a calm manner. Aenon stood before the roiling mass of anguished souls and extended his hands towards them.

“Yield to me. For I can channel your hate and fury towards the rightful targets,” he said firmly. “Be my weapons.”

But something unexpected happened that Aenon didn’t account for. The voices started coalescing into one, until finally there was a single voice each from the spheres. The colors too stabilized till one was blood red and the other was pitch black.

“We are strong. We are hungry,” the red orb spoke in a jarring voice.

“We do not submit to the weak,” the black orb followed its twin.

Aenon lowered his hands and stared at the two floating balls in silent contemplation. Through some stroke of bad luck, the orbs had developed their own consciousness.

“What do you want?” Aenon asked with narrowed eyes.

“Kill,” the red orb said.

“Devour,” the black on added.

“And what if I do not let you?” Aenon asked coldly.

“That would mean you are weak. We will devour you instead,” the back orb said while revolving around Aenon.

“Hehehehe,” the red orb laughed in a creepy voice. “I sense your delectable soul. It would be so fulfilling to snuff it out.”

Aenon stayed silent as the two orbs continued their patrol around him. The entire spherical enclosure was pearl white, just like a typical inner soul space. If he was to guess, this was the internal world of the daggers. Or at least the soul ore that Borin mentioned. If that was the case…

“Maybe we just leash the human. Use him as a vessel to continue satisfying our hunger,” the black orb mused.

“Oh, that is a splendid idea,” the red one said in a mocking tone. “Maybe we can…”

The taunts cut off suddenly as the entire place started to shake violently. The vibrations were focused on a central point. The boy who was standing calmly with his eyes closed. Before they could react, dark tendrils burst forth from Aenon’s body and spread out like the tentacles of a deep-sea creature. The eldritch arms grew till the entire space was engulfed in utter darkness.

The orbs zoomed around frantically, trying to find a way out but found none. They were about to try slamming into the barriers of the space when they both froze suddenly. A deep dread emanated from the orbs as they turned to see two grey eyes staring at them from the abyss.

“We submit,” the orbs shrieked as one. But before they could say anything further, eight more pairs of eyes surrounded them.

“Kill? Devour? Leash? You insignificant remnants of lost souls dare use such words before our Alpha?” Bane said with a low growl.

“The arrogance to think you are stronger,” Venge added from beside her mate.

“We are sorry. We acknowledge your power. We will serve without question,” the red orb said in a timid voice while trembling all over.

“No,” Aenon said with an air of finality before grabbing the two with his hands.

He started squeezing with all his strength, adding in the full might of his soul presence. He was furious. The threat to his life was bad enough, but the last threat; that was what sealed their fate. The orbs started wailing against the death grip he had on them, but he didn’t relent. Even as cracks started to form across their surface, he squeezed harder. Until finally the two spheres shattered completely. The wolves pounced on the fragments, devouring the lingering remains down their bottomless maws.

When it was finally done, only nine sets of cold grey eyes remained. The anger within them quelled for the time being. Waiting for their next prey.