Despite spending almost everything it had earlier in its attempt to crush the throne, the blade’s Life Force reserves were entirely full. It had exactly 10,400 Life Force and was reasonably sure that no matter how much it spent, it would have that much.

It’s like the dragon, but on a much more massive scale, the blade realized. I’m not embedded in a single creature but an entire kingdom. That seemed too good to be true, so its first instinct was to look for a catch. Still, after several seconds, it did not see one, so it tentatively purchased its cheapest power as a test and obtained Aethersight 2.

-800 Life Force.

+800 Life Force.

Aethersight 2: The nature of this vision is unchanged, but can now be used without cost as desired.

The blade used that power to take a long look around the throne room and at itself, but other than the slightly different patterns its runes had taken where the gold had washed over its hilt, it saw no changes.

Bah. The blade did not like the idea that it had been altered by this monstrosity in even the smallest way. Still, if that was what it took to reunite its first wielder with the woman he’d loved, the Ebon Blade would bear it somehow.

For the moment, that wasn’t important. What was important was what it would buy next. If it could purchase anything, then there was really only one item at the top of its list.

Primary Powers:

Aethersight 3: 1,500 Life Force

Inferno 2: 1,200 Life Force

Accelerate Wielder 4:

3,000 Life Force

Amplify Wielder 4: 3,000 Life Force

Amplify Blade 4: 4,000 Life Force

Disrupt 5: 5,000 Life Force

Repair Soul 5:5,000 Life Force

Empower Blade 4: 7500 Life Force

Golden Storage: 10,000 Life Force

Bolt 5: 15,000 Life Force

Golden Range: 15,000 Life Force

Golden Strength: 20,000 Life Force

Secondary Powers:

False Image 5: 4,000 Life Force

Giant’s Strength 5:

3,000 Life Force

Speed of the Shadows 4: 2,000 Life Force

At least, it thought it did. Once it opened the menu and several new options, though, it was more conflicted. The unexpected development forced the blade to consider all of its options before continuing.

Golden Storage: Double the amount of existing Life Force and Soul Storage.

Golden Range: Double the range of all attacks, including Aura of Hunger.

Golden Strength: Double the damage of all secondary abilities, and increase the strength of Siphon by 50%.

Each of those was abominably powerful, and its paranoia increased slightly at the sight of them. Those powers were not only insanely powerful, but it could afford all of them if it wanted them. In fact, given the amount of power the throne contained, there were probably upgrades beyond them. It wondered what other powers it could obtain, though the only way it would know for sure was to pick one of them.

If I was trying to convince someone to enslave themselves, this is how I would do it, the blade told itself, as it remembered the chains that had tried to ensnare it.

The Ebon Blade had come out on top of their little exchange, but as sorely tempted by these gifts as it was, it remembered the grip of those chains, so it started elsewhere instead and spent 5,000 Life force on Repair Soul 5.

The result was instantaneous. The world, with its damaged masonry, golden knights, and glowing traces of magical energy, fell away. In their place, shards of its soul surged forward as a whirling, glittering storm of memories that surrounded it. The largest part by far was the one that depicted Baraga and his princess. As the storm of glittering glass whirled in its mind, there were many others, too, and slowly, they were joining together.

The memory shards didn’t join seamlessly, but the scars they left behind distorted the image only a little. This time, instead of being bombarded with out-of-place snippets, the blade could see the story more or less in order, and as soon as that was clear, it drove events back as close as it could to the beginning.

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It was done avoiding this. I needed to know who it was and who it was made up of if it wanted to move past this. The King was dead, and the blade vowed that his line would die with him, which put it at peace as it stood in the eye of its own storm.

That by itself was a huge difference compared to last time. More than anything, it noticed that there was less pain than ever before. It understood the truth about its forging, and now that it accepted it, those minor shards of friendly archers, helpful halflings, and all the others that had died so that it might live fused together into a larger whole, and as the image grew, it became less of a broken mirror, and more of a window into who they’d been.

Through it, the weapon could see not just Baraga’s most daring quests that the blade had already seen several times before. It could also see how the man had come to meet his companions and even catch the eye of the princess. It could also see his strange origins for the first time, which the weapon couldn’t make heads or tails of.

The warrior that was its beating heart wasn’t even from this world. He’d been summoned from a strange place with towers of stone and glass that were filled with moving carriages that lacked horses of any kind. The Ebon Blade didn’t understand, and really, it didn’t need to. It didn’t care that the man’s name had been Bartholomew Vega then or the strange evolving magic system that had been granted to him when he’d arrived in this world.

All that mattered to the blade was that it was that system… the system that powered it and the throne that it still controlled. That’s what damned him.

The weapon realized as it watched everything play out with clear eyes. The very people he helped coveted what he had and took him apart so that they could better understand it.

A wave of revulsion washed through the blade at that thought. The Aetherarchy. They were there, scattered all throughout Baraga’s quest. They’d summoned him into the world, they’d helped him in his adventures, and ultimately, with the assistance of King Paralon, they’d slaughtered him like a pig to steal his magic.

Seeing all of this information laid out like this did little to make it feel bad about slaughtering the King. More than anything, it made the blade decide that it had been pursuing the wrong enemy. It needed to slaughter the mages, not the Inner Kingdoms.

The blade looked at the region as a blood-soaked banquet waiting to be eaten, but that was harder to see when he saw Baraga, Pippa, Karn, and all of the other members of his little group running around saving people. They’d been doing what the throne had been neglecting, and though the Ebon Blade saw those adventures as hopelessly naive, it did enjoy watching them fight so fiercely at Dwarf’s Fist and everywhere else they’d been.

Still, it was the Mage towers that its gaze settled on. The Aetherarcy wasn’t limited to the Inner Kingdoms, but they had a presence in each of the former nations, as well as the lands beyond. In fact, it realized only belatedly as it watched a young Baraga bargain with mages in one of his first adventures that the small tower that Var’gar had knocked down was fairly typical of their smaller outposts.

It had nothing on their largest institutions, of course, but they would be good places for it to harvest mages souls so that it might learn more about their strengths and weaknesses. They will make an excellent group to crush next. The weapon told itself as the memories began to fade.

It might not understand every aspect of its soul yet, but it had a unified picture of who it was and at least some idea of who it would become in the next phase as its vengeance evolved.

By the time its visions had dissipated completely, some of its golden guardians had returned. Despite the damage that it and its wielder had done to them earlier, all of them were whole and polished. There were no punctures or dents. It was like the fight had never happened.

That only distracted the blade a little, though, as it looked out on its temporary kingdom at the mage towers that dotted the land. As it did so, it noticed that there were still a few glowing dots that it resonated with more than the rest of the kingdom.

The blade only had to focus on them for a moment to understand why. The brightest ones were Evelyn’s brothers and sisters. The King had scattered his family far and wide, and though many of them lay dead two floors beneath where it now sat, there were still over a hundred of them scattered across the Inner Kingdoms and hundreds or perhaps even thousands of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The further away they were from King Paralon and the throne’s connection to him, the dimmer they were to the blade. However, for the man’s direct descendants, the blad seemed to be able to use its powers of connection, even from vast distances. While it couldn’t read their minds or control them from here, it could see out their eyes and hear through their ears.

The first one the blade tuned into, a man named Marius, was having dinner with his wife. He lived blissfully ignorant that the kingdom had fallen that evening and likely wouldn’t learn of it for days.

The second descendant that it tried was a woman. It quickly learned that her name was Tinaria, and moments later, it learned that the man who shared her bed was not her husband.

A whole family full of disloyal traitors, the blade spat.

The Ebon Blade had not expected her to hear what it had to say, but when she bolted up in bed and looked around, it realized instantly that she had. Tinaria Keldith was over a hundred and fifty miles away on the shores of Moran Lake, but that did not save her. Once the blade figured out how deep their connection was, it decided to see how deeply that connection went, and with very little effort, it ripped her soul free from her body, killing her on the spot.

+1 Human Soul.

Fascinating, the Ebon Blade whispered to itself as it consumed her screaming.

It had no way to touch her paramour or even her children, but right here, where it sat on the throne, it could reach out and touch every direct descendant of the man that had sat here until today.

Even if it couldn’t touch their children, or their children’s children, though, it could see out of their eyes. Suddenly, the blade knew why the man had spent centuries making his family ever larger. He'd had spies in every household and organizations all across his kingdom.

If he could see so much, then why didn’t he see Evelyn and I? The blade wondered. It was a fair question. It had the King’s soul. Perhaps that was an important enough question to ask it. The blade understood that one couldn’t watch a thousand different members of ones family at once, but one whose husband had been killed by it? Surely that would have subjected her to additional scrutiny.

As the weapon lay there, considering what to do next, the first barrage of magic struck its gates in a volley of magenta flames. The walls and whatever wards they contained held, but

Attack on the Main Gate. (89% intact). Recommend deploying forces. Would you like to summon reserve armies from the city (y/n)?

As much as the blade liked the idea of summoning more men for more bloodshed, it was fairly certain that whoever arrived would join the fight against it. It instead chose to wait, letting its nine golden pawns assemble in the throne room to wait. It didn’t care if they burned down the rest of the structure. It rather hoped they did, but even more, it hoped that it would find a new wielder among them because, for all the power of this throne, it wanted to be free of it as soon as possible.