The Ebon Blade had been slightly concerned that it would have to walk across the bottom of some vast lake until it reached the island it sought. That proved not to be the case. Like everything else in this circle, the water was filthy and shallow. The worst part of it was the way it sucked the metal knight that carried it even deeper than the firmer mud of the shore had.

At first, that was only to the knees, and then the ankles, but by the time it could see the outline more clearly, the water had reached its chest, though the mud only reached its mid-thighs. This was true even though the blade avoided the worst of the sinkholes, and it carved a trench in the silt as it went.

A mortal creature would never have been able to come this far, it decided, noting how quickly it was bleeding Life Force. Neither the weapon nor its mechanical wielder might feel exhaustion, but its engine grew hot under the lengthy strain, and the blade noted how quickly it was losing energy with some concern.

-31 Life Force.

Still, the island was getting closer, so it was not concerned. At least, it should have been getting closer. After an hour of slogging through the shallow lake that had not reached its chest, it had expected to have reached it already, but it still remained elusive.

Is it moving? The blade asked itself, studying the outline. Is this some sort of mirage, or a trap for the unwary?

The Ebon Blade studied the distant, fog-shrouded silhouette at length for the next hour before eventually deciding that it was real. It was also really moving, deepening the mystery.

As it continued forward, it found several souls stuck in the mud. Those that were within reach it devoured, but the others, it left to their suffering; they simply weren’t worth the effort it would have taken to move from the shortest path.

-19 Life Force.

+4 Damned Souls.

Steam was coming off of the overheated knight before it realized the truth. While it was getting closer to its destination with every step, its destination was moving away with slow steps of its own, because it wasn’t an island; it was a tortoise. It was a gigantic tortoise the size of an island striding slowly away from it.

That was interesting enough that it wasn’t even annoyed by the inconvenience. It had never imagined that such a creature might exist. That wonder faded long before the blade reached it. The turtle took a step every few minutes, but each time it did so, it moved a distance greater than a hundred of its metal knight’s strides. If not for the deepening mud, the blade would have caught up hours before.

The weapon considered using bolt to flash forward. It could move very quickly that way, but if it did so, it would reveal its location almost instantly, so for the moment, it decided against it. If the mud gets any higher, I will try it that way, it promised itself.

It didn’t, though. It actually got shallower, falling back down to its knees, and letting the weapon and its wielder close the gap. When they got close, the blade noted that its next challenge would be leaping atop its shell. The thing’s cliff-like lip was a dozen feet above the mud. That at least didn’t prove to be a problem.

Despite the sucking mud, it only needed to coil its strength and use Amplify Wielder, and it sprang high enough that it was able to climb on the monster’s giant armored back, where it saw the city for the first time. Above it, the sword could see balconies, towers, and other structures emerging from the shell.

-10 Life Force.

From the foul lake, the weapon couldn’t see the top of the shell through the murk, and the threads that made up the giant beast pulsed with enough Life Energy that it made them difficult to read. Once it started to scale the ancient craggy shell, though, and worked its way through the thickest layers of fog, it could see that the entire thing had been carved. Past a certain point, someone had spent a great deal of effort turning the beast into a vast moving temple.

The weapon was unsure if it should enter it, but it still approached the first entrance to learn what it could. There, the Ebon Blade found paradise. Not a paradise it would enjoy, but certainly something that didn’t belong in hell. The bony temple was not a crude, shoddy thing, like the Iron City had been. It was filled with finery.

While it could only see down that first hallway without entering it, it saw thickly woven carpets, silver candelabras, and several oil paintings. Looking at the essence of the objects via the magical threads that they were woven from, it could see that it wasn’t an illusion, either. Those things were really there.

Curious, the weapon whispered to itself as it decided not to enter and scaled higher up the shell.

The weapon couldn’t say why it was unwilling to enter the structure, even after it scaled to other balconies and found other similar sights. The Ebon Blade rationalized its decision with the idea that inside it was much more prone to ambushes. Out here, it had all the room in the world to maneuver, and if it needed to, it could leap free of the giant shell and back into the foul swamp below; a soft landing was all but assured.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

While that logic was sound, the blade hadn’t actually seen any guards. It kept expecting to. If not men with weapons, then certainly flying vulture demons or flaming goat men should find it soon enough. On this near-vertical surface, it was slow and out of its element.

So far, the blade had seen nothing but servants tending to tasks like cleaning and bedmaking. They had nothing more dangerous than a broom or a bedpan, but the fact that they seemed to be human souls more than demons gave it pause.

They had obviously noticed its muddy, metal-wielding climbing onto a balcony, but not even that had made them run from it. It got the sense that they were more afraid of abandoning their posts than they were of being killed by a strange knight.

Even when it stopped and asked it in a metallic voice, “What is this place?” they did not pause in their labors.

The first ghostly servant responded, “It is not for me to speak of such things, though his majesty would gladly treat with you. He is down the hall.”

The second spirit that the blade asked on another balcony gave it a similar answer, though, which didn’t make a lot of sense, because the hallway he pointed to went in an entirely different direction. When the blade asked it about the discrepancy, the human swallowed hard and said, “In the end, all roads lead to the throne room.”

While not impossible, the blade found the explanation lacking. It was just about to steal the servant’s soul and ask him more directly when he said, “No! I didn’t say anything! I—”

And then he was gone. There was nothing dramatic. He just wavered out of existence. The woman who had been sweeping the floor vanished a moment later.

What is it they are trying to keep from me? The blade asked itself. And who is trying to keep this secret?

The Ebon Blade couldn’t say. It hoped that it wasn’t the turtle, because it had no idea how it would kill something so large. It was the size of ten dragons put together; still, if it had to, it would find a way.

Eventually, it reached the top of the shell, and there it found the city it had first seen from far below. It was every bit as elaborate as the Ebon Blade had assumed it to be.

Spiraling minarets dotted the back in a way that made it seem as if the giant turtle had spines, and narrow streets wove between them and all the other buildings that had been built, or perhaps grown up there. It was an impressive sight, and far more beautiful than any city it had visited before, including the capital of the inner kingdoms.

Still, no matter where it went, the streets were empty. It could hear the sounds of life, but before it reached the spot where they should have been, whoever had been making the sounds vanished. It was very off-putting. Now that they know I’m here, they flee before me, it whispered to itself, but why?

That was what finally made it enter the largest, most ornate temple that it could find. The thing had been constructed in the shape of a golden elephant with an elaborate headdress, and it looked ridiculous, but the blade didn’t care about that. It wondered where everyone was hiding. At first, it knocked over a table of offerings, hoping to cause a swarm of scurrying servants to appear and clean up the mess, but when that did not materialize, the weapon went deeper into the shell, looking for answers.

The hallways that traversed the shell were well-appointed, brightly lit, and spacious. They weren’t claustrophobic in the least, but even so, the blade worried, and at times, the only sense of direction it had was the muddy footprints that it left in its wake.

Still, as it moved through the giant temple, it took it as a good sign that things were only getting grander as it went, and wall sconces were replaced with golden chandeliers. This has to be the way to the throne room, it said to itself. Perhaps there I will get my answers.

Still, it found no one until it reached a huge door where two demon guards stood. One looked like an ugly warthog, and the other like a half-plucked bird. Neither would have presented it the slightest challenge, but rather than brandish their halberds at it, though, they nodded in unison, and each opened one of the large double doors, revealing a crowded entrance hall beyond.

A quiet murmur went through the crowd as the blade cautiously stepped inside, where it found more ugly demons wearing mortal finery in a way that made them look absolutely ridiculous. What is going on here, it wondered. It supposed the hideous creatures could be a hidden army lying in wait, but something about that seemed unlikely.

That wasn’t special, though. Everything about this situation felt unlikely.

It wasn’t quite the throne room that the blade had been expecting, though it should have, it supposed in retrospect. It was pointlessly elaborate, with a triple gallery crowded with demonic spectators dressed in finery that made the room look more like a theatre, and a large pool in the center with fountains that made the place look almost like a court garden.

At the far end of the room, there was a throne so high above everyone else that it was practically parody. No human court would have thought any of these arrangements made sense. Yet, as it walked in, toward the far end of the room, no one attacked it.

Part of the Ebon Blade hoped that they would. At least that would have made sense. Before it could contemplate that further, though, a blare of trumpets silenced the crowd, then the woman on the throne began to speak.

“Come in,” she declared in a voice that was a hair too deep for her appearance. “Come in, and know that you are in the presence of Prince Cerirvall, ruler of the sixth circle, owner of the infinite panorama, the wandering city, and Lord of Lords himself.”

Oh, not a woman, the blade corrected itself as it realized it was looking at a very pretty man, and not the woman it had assumed the flaxen-haired beauty to be.

He certainly was effeminate, though, and even as the blade walked past the large reflecting pool and toward the throne, it still hadn’t entirely decided if it was a man or a woman it faced, but I supposed that didn’t matter.

If they were reasonable, they would live; if they were not, they would die. It didn’t have to kill all of the lords of hell after all, it only had to kill the last one, and it had no wish to dirty itself fighting such an obviously inferior opponent; however, if given the opportunity, it would gladly feast on the hundreds of lesser souls in attendance. The people who dwelled in this city had fled before it up until now, but now that they were in one place, it could feast, should it desire to.