Will
Even though it was stowed safely in his rifle case, Will could sense a… wrongness radiating against his back, like a film of corrosive, unclean waste soaking through his clothes and clinging to his skin.
A small part of him wished that he had never asked Bogleg to make the thing. That he had not persisted.
At the same time, his heartbeat thundered in his ears, racing with hungry ambition. Yes, the risk involved was real, but if he could make it work… eleven enchantments on a single weapon, with free slots to bring it up to thirteen. The potential uses of such an item were dizzying. And if his theory about cursed items turned out to be correct, even that might prove less of a drawback than expected.
He was grateful to himself for having the foresight to pick up Soulbind at Level 13.
Bogleg had looked supremely relieved that Will did not intend to stay and Soulbind the weapon in his shop, nor ask for the last enchantments to be slotted in immediately.
In truth, it had not been an act of consideration on Will’s part. He preferred complete privacy for what he needed to do next. As he could not think of any such places inside the city itself, and he obviously could not return to the farm to carry out his task, he had simply wandered out of Sheerhome at random in search of a suitable location, eventually leaving the tended paths as he passed the guard tower perimeter to trudge through untended meadows and head-high thickets.
His Orienteering passive, augmented by periodic pulses of Detect [Terrain], eventually allowed him to find a dilapidated farmstead that did not appear to have been inhabited in at least a decade, blocked in on all sides by small trees and dense shrubbery so that it was nearly impossible to spot if you were more than twenty feet away.
The door had been torn off its hinges and lay discarded on the dusty, moss-covered floor inside. Will had his old saber at the ready as he entered, but a Detect [Life] revealed nothing, and he did not see anything out of the ordinary inside the darkened single-room building, so he sheathed it again and let his guard drop a hair.
Most of the furniture had been smashed by some careless burglar or beast, broken glassware and crockery strewn everywhere. Will did not bother searching the place to see whether there was anything worth taking—he had nothing on his mind except the task at hand.
He got down on one knee and unslung the rifle case, placing it down with a hollow thump against the old floorboards. Undoing the clasps, he flipped the lid open to reveal its contents.
There it lay, nestled against the semi-automatic rifle he had considered his most valuable possession until just a few hours ago.
If the beautifully ornate scabbard was anything to go by, the blade was long and slender, with a slight curve that roughly matched the saber he already carried. It had a short, one-handed grip of all-metal—an impossibly fine web of hollow steel—with sinuous quillons that reminded him of two serpents entwined at their tails.
Though he could not make out anything visibly odd, not one blemish that detracted from the sword’s sublime beauty, the aura that emanated from it was so oppressive that Will had to keep reminding himself to breathe. He removed the blade from the case with a thick cloth and placed it off to the side, handle toward him.
There was nothing to do but pick it up so that he could begin the Soulbinding process, but something in him hesitated. Some animal instinct in the deep recesses of his brain screamed at him not to touch this thing, to leave it and run.
If I am going to save this world, there is no room for weakness.
Will hesitated.
Pick it up, coward.
Unless you want to see Sam’s head on a pike because you were too weak to clear a path for her, pick it up.
Suddenly, Will found the fingers of his right hand curling around the cold steel grip, while he slowly removed the long scabbard with the other.
With a hiss like a pit of snakes, the sword was bared, and Will let the scabbard drop to clatter at his feet. The sword was well-balanced and mirror-bright, the metal bearing an intricate wave pattern of black and white and gray where different types of steel had been mixed together in the forging process.
It’s—
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Agonizing pain shot up Will’s right arm. He instinctively tried to let go of the sword, but found his hand frozen to the hilt as though cramping from electrocution. Something dark and urgent slid up his forearm, tiny biting mouths and clawing hands that he could not see, but producing streaks of ripping agony as real as anything he had ever felt.
The cramps were migrating up Will’s forearm, brought freezing pain tinged with fuzzy numbness. His muscles spasmed and flexed without his consent, arm hyperextending, his elbow wanting to rip out of its socket.
Will screamed. He grasped his right wrist with his other hand in an attempt to hold it still, but the blade’s wickedly sharp point jittered wild in his cramping grip all the same.
“O Era,” Will spat through trembling lips. “Bind me to the world, that I may flourish.”
[Soulbind failed. Invalid target.]
“Fuck!”
A chorus of discordant laughter echoed in his skull.
His hand began to roll erratically at the wrist despite his best efforts to stabilize it, the sword swiping with a mind of its own down at his legs and feet.
“O Era, bind me to the world, that I may flourish.”
[Soulbind failed. Invalid target.]
The sword jerked sharply down to impale his foot. Rather than resist, Will leaned into the movement as he shifted his stance, driving the point of the blade firmly through one of the floorboards. It quivered furiously in the wood, the bones in Will’s arm creaking with the force of the convulsions.
I’m missing something, Will thought, trying to hang onto some shred of rational calm. There has to be a way to make the binding stick.
He could only think of one thing that might work.
Every good weapon needs a name, doesn’t it?
Holding both hands over the grip of the downturned sword, his mind a chaotic churn of foreign voices screaming and crying and laughing, Will called: “O Era, bind me to the world, this Anathema, that I may flourish!”
[Soulbind failed.]
[Soulbind f—]
[Invalid target.]
[Target ???]
[Soul—]
[...]
[Soulbind accepted.]
At once, the voices quieted to discordant whispers and Will’s arm fell slack, stopped trying to fold itself the wrong way. With a cry of exertion, he dislodged the blade from the floor, scrambled for the fallen scabbard, and clutched it between his knees as he rammed the sword home. Once safely sheathed, he pried open his fingers and hurled the sword with all his strength, which bounced over the edge of the rifle case before tumbling inside. He slammed the lid shut, secured the clasps with fumbling fingers, and staggered back once it was firmly closed. The voices had vanished the moment he let go. The dark presence slid—much more slowly—from his arm, like the unspooling tentacles of a dying octopus, until at last he knew that he was free of it.
Will was left panting and sweat-soaked. He clutched his trembling right hand to his chest, feeling as though his forearm had been gnawed to the bone even though not a mark showed on it.
Dipping back on his haunches, he took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to still himself.
Then he wept.
Whether from joy, or fear, or pain, he could not tell. Maybe he was just overwhelmed. Maybe the pain he wept for wasn’t his own, but for the eternal agony he had sensed from those poor wretches trapped in that sword.
Anathema.
It had been a spur of the moment choice, but the name felt intensely appropriate.
After maybe a minute, Will was interrupted in his sobbing by an influx of sensory input.
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 15!]
He flinched, at first thinking it was another attack from the ghosts in the sword, then gasped in amazement once his mind actually processed what it was being fed.
Level 15?
That doesn’t make any sense. How could I be leveling up now? I wasn’t doing anything related to the activities of either a Cook or an Explorer.
Unless…
Unless doing something that has never been done counts as ‘exploring’.
It was an unexpected development on top of everything else. Will let himself fall back onto the dusty floor, staring up at the sprawling ribcage of rotting roof beams. He lay there and simply breathed, tried to process everything that had just happened. It took almost as long for him to accept that he was now Level 15 as it did to compartmentalize what he had been through with the sword. At least with the latter, he had expected it, had time to steel himself.
Will had thought he would have more time to think of a semblance. He had expected to be trying for some time yet to reach that threshold.
I do have some ideas already, I suppose.
I’ll do some brainstorming tonight.
Slowly, Will collected himself, got up, and retrieved his rifle case, handling it as though it contained a deadly animal.
Then he headed back for the city, tottering hurriedly on exhausted, jelly-weak legs to make it back before dark, swearing at every tangle of vegetation he tripped over.