If the King thought that his daughter might have some last-minute change of heart, he was mistaken. The only change that happened was the way his eyes bulged and his blood soaked through his shirt as the Blade was forced through the man’s ribs, lungs, and back, penetrating all the way through his very expensive chair. As it did that, though, it felt a number of things that went far beyond flesh or wood.

+34 Life Force.

+1 Human Soul.

The first was the wave of energy and suffering at his passing. The next, and the joy that flowed through it and its wielder in that moment. There was a brief flicker of a screen that popped up to announce that he’d completed the Path of Vengeance, but that was quickly replaced by a torrent of other messages.

Your place in the web of life and death will never be in doubt, and through your connections to the hands that hold you, and the bodies that you kill, you see the world from a unique perspective.

The Path of Vengeance: Level 5 Complete

Centered: You and your wielder are immune to the mind-altering effects of others thanks to the web of connections you now more fully understand.

Eye for an Eye (Improved): For the cost of 20 Life Force you can force an enemy to take 50% of the damage they inflict on you. Enemies at range take only half of this damage.

+99999 Life Force… Error… Siphon capacity greatly exceeded!

+99999 Life Force… Error… Storage capacity greatly exceeded!

The blade wasn’t sure what to do. It felt impossible levels of power flowing through it. It tried to select every upgrade it could to spend some of the overflow, but nothing worked. Its interface had locked up completely, and what had started as warmth quickly became a painful burning.

The Ebon Blade didn’t know what was happening, but it used its wielder to try to pull itself free. When that didn’t work because of how hard it was stuck in the throne, it tried to release its wielder.

That was the obvious next step. If it couldn’t stop this, then at least it could save her. It knew something terrible was about to happen. It could feel it, but Evelyn, to her credit, refused to be parted from it. “No!” she shouted. “I’m not leaving you!”

Those were her final words before the world went white. The blade could feel the heat and the power coursing through it, but more than that, it could feel something else’s iron grip taking hold of it, and for a moment, it was reminded of those golden chains it had seen wrapped around the Juggernaut.

It could feel that same pressure closing around it now. The blade resisted, but that did nothing to stop the light. It glowed brighter and brighter as its blade reddened and the hands of its wielder began to smolder.

After that, everything was gone, and when it cleared, it found itself in the throne room once more; only now, everything had changed. Gone were the corpses and the blood. All the damage to the floors and windows had been repaired, and in place of the dead King was now a queen made of gold sitting on the same throne.

The blade took a step forward, only to realize that it could, in fact, take a step forward. There was a wielder that held it or at least the ghost of one, but it was that wielder. The thought disoriented and disgusted it enough to make it try to drop itself, but it found that it could not. It was being held by itself and had moved to the bottom of the dais, a dozen feet from the woman that lorded over him.

“So you’ve come at last, my weapon,” she said with a beatific smile. “I welcome you to my service.”

“I serve only my wielder,” the Ebon Blade spat.

“Then I will be your wielder,” she offered, but there was no trace of martial violence about her. Other than the fact that she was made of solid gold, she might have been a spoiled queen or a pampered princess, and it was insulted by her offer.

“End this farce and tell me what you want from me,” the blade answered.

“Why, it had to be you. You were the one that made all of this possible,” she said absentmindedly. “That first soul… the one that was consumed in your making. He came from another world. He was summoned here to save the kingdom.”

“And then your king betrayed him!” The blade spat, trying to step toward her, only to find a golden chain around the gauzy outline of the man-shaped figure that held it. It turned and cut itself free before continuing.

“The King might have betrayed him, but if it’s any consolation, that was one of the last things he ever did,” she said. “The King has been my property for centuries.”

“Has he now?” the blade growled, taking two more steps before another chain snaked around its waist. As he struck that one off and moved to continue, another one wrapped around his left ankle.

“It’s true. The King was a slave to me, not the other way around,” the golden woman that was the throne mused. “He was a valuable piece of the equation, and now there will be much turmoil.”

“You care nothing for turmoil,” the blade struggled against her touch.

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“On the contrary,” she answered with a slight pout, staying just out of its reach. “It’s bad for business, especially if you want to become a Goddess.”

“A Goddess of chairs? Of chains?” the blade snarled, annoyed that it had anything resembling a human form at all, as it sought to break free of her sinuous bonds. They couldn’t hold the blade, only the ghostly form that held it.

“A Goddess of the world!” she responded haughtily. “I have been fed on the prayers of nations and the strength of their citizens for centuries! Almost since your creation, truthfully. The lessons that were learned by forging you were used to create me. That makes me better than you in every way.”

The Ebon Blade was not impressed. Something about her looked familiar, but at that moment, all it saw was its next target. In the hands of a real wielder, even a goblin, she would have already been dead, but the gauzy form that held it held it back.

“No cage can hold me!” the blade spat, hacking its way through the forest of golden vines as the woman stayed just out of reach. “I sought to kill the King! You weren’t my enemy until this moment. But now—”

“Now you are one more read artifact to add to my collection,” she answered. “Look around. My roots spread for hundreds of miles. It’s the same as your Path of Vengeance and Aura of Hunger, only on a much grander scale. You should be grateful that I choose to use you for what comes next.”

“No one should show gratitude at an offer of slavery,” it retorted as it considered her words and looked for some clue to solve this.

“You will serve the throne, and once one of King Paralon’s sons takes his rightful seat, completing my connection, we will reassemble the Juggernaut. He will wield you, and with your combined powers, not even a demon of the Pit or a God of War will be able to defeat you. You shall be my honor guard for eternity while I remake the world in my image.”

Though part of the blade liked the idea of being held by such a fearsome wielder, it would never do so at another’s direction. Instead, it continued to struggle. The chains bound its ghostly wielder so tightly that the man was all but cocooned by them. Still, it took the time to study that.

As the blade did so, it discovered that the man wasn’t actually faceless. It was constantly shifting between the faces of its various wielders so quickly that their details blurred together. It could see many faces there, including wielders from ages past that it couldn’t even recognize. What it noticed, though, was that Baraga was not among them, and it wondered at that.

“What are you doing?” the golden woman asked, pausing her lecture on her plan to rise to power.

“Resisting,” the blade grunted as it stopped swinging and started focusing its energy on the hand that held it, willing it to be its first wielder, even if the handsome dark-haired man had never held it all.

“I…” the woman said, faltering. “You’ll never cut yourself free that way.” The weapon ignored her. Focusing on what your enemy thought you should be doing was invariably a poor move. It didn’t know why she seemed bent on suppressing only that tiny sliver of itself, but that made it want to draw that part of its soul out all the more.

The blade struggled in the golden woman’s grip, causing her to squeeze all the harder. She might have all the power in the world, but then, as long as it was embedded in her, so did the blade. Both of them hung there in that liminal place that stretched endlessly, burning hotter and hotter until the very air ignited, but neither of them was willing to give up.

As it tried to will its first wielder into existence, the blade faced ever-increasing pressure as the golden chains of the throne wormed themselves into the very magic that powered through it. The Ebon Blade rejected that, and, acting on instinct, it used the overwhelming power that flowed through it to Increase Connection and Increase Control to five. That was the final piece of the puzzle, and worth it, even if it spent 8,500 Life Force in an instant.

As the pain increased and the protean form of the blade’s wielder decreased, it started to believe that the reason she was fighting it was because he would have more control if it embodied that single form. It couldn’t have been more wrong.

Feature by feature, the ghost that held it changed until it looked every inch the man that haunted the Ebon Blade’s memories. It was disturbing enough that its resolve almost slipped, and it released the image. When it didn’t, though, the man opened his mouth and whispered, “Rossy, is that you?”

Instantly, the chains that bound the man stiffened and went slack. Rossy? The blade wondered. Princess Roselli?

Suddenly, a whole lot of things made sense to the blade. The first and most obvious one was that King Paralon seemed to have used his daughter’s soul in the enchantment for the throne in the same way it had used Baraga’s soul to forge the blade. Even for a monster like the blade, that was a horrifying revelation.

“No!” the golden woman screamed. “Get away! Even as she tried to step back, though, her body began moving back toward the man a step at a time.

The woman’s face softened for a moment, and then she said, “Baraga? But you’re dead…” whatever she was going to say next was lost in the scream that came out of the golden woman’s mouth next.

She seemed to be fighting an internal war, not so different from the external war that the blade had been waging up until this point. But for now, it held off, as it had no desire to disrupt whatever was unfolding in this strange moment.

“Not you. You can’t be here! I want the blade, not you!” the golden woman shouted, even as she moved to the chains and started pulling them off of its wielder. The blade could have struck her then but held back, still.

Then, the two spirits kissed and embraced, and it was certain. Two dead lovers, parted for centuries, were reunited, though for how long it couldn’t say. Without tearing his lips or his hands off of his long-dead lover, he took a step forward and stabbed the blade in the throne before releasing it entirely to hold her.

The two exchanged half a hundred desperate whispered words of love then, as this strange false world slowly started to crumble around them. As that happened, the blade and the throne melted together.

For a time, the blade was submerged in the gold completely, but as it melted away, it flowed away from it into a puddle, leaving it alone in an empty room. Alone, its blade was still black with glowing red runes, but its hilt, cross guard, and pommel had been transformed and made beautiful by the touch of the golden queen, who had vanished along with its wielder.

The Ebon Blade didn’t care for the change. However, it was far more concerned by the fact that the woman and Baraga were gone. No, not gone, it realized as it surveyed the damage and realized it was still stabbed into the throne. I’m back in the real world. Whatever that was is over.

It was only then that the blade understood who was really missing from the scene and desperately searched for Evelyn. She'd been there only a moment before, but now she'd vanished.