The Ebon Blade’s opponent’s movements had been as disconnected as the footprints they left behind. Sometimes their shifting, invisible afterimage seemed more like the real target than the shards that moved first, but it was only as the blade studied all of those strange things that it noticed just how frayed the threads of the world around it had become.

While the threads that made up the men and monsters of creation were thicker and braided more tightly together, the beings of hell were reasonably well defined, too. The souls of demons were more twisted, sure, and the landscapes could be anomalous, even at the etheric level, but not like this. This felt precarious.

Here, in the heart of this dark jungle, it almost felt like it would fall into the void if a few more strands were severed. The blade stood on solid ground, but it didn’t feel particularly solid to it, not once its opponent darted forward with impossible speed.

One moment, she was on a tree branch forty feet away, and the next, she’d closed more than half the gap in a single stride, and its wielder barely had a chance to parry with its deathly, impenetrable edge. What happened next was painful.

In that moment, the weapon that had been gliding translucently through the darkness moved toward its wielder’s neck, transformed from an amorphous curving blade to the wickedly spined foreleg of a giant spider. Regardless of what it was, it met the attack with a shower of sparks, and then the unexpected happened. It cut the blade, rather than the other way around.

-139 Life Force.

+41 Life Force.

Its hard metal edge that had endured oak, bone, granite, and steel cracked as its enemy cut into it rather than the other way around. The glancing parry deflected the blow, but not enough to stop it from partially severing the head of its wielder.

-697 Life Force.

The blade allowed the warbringer to slump to its knees, then, not because the injury to its neck threatened its life or anything, but to buy time.

-88 Life Force.

What just happened? It asked itself, struggling with the jolt of real pain that went through it as it studied the notch in its edge and the cracks spreading out from it that had only begun to heal. How was this even possible?

-79 Life Force.

In the last circle, it had felt emotional distress in a way that it had only ever experienced in an attempt to heal its shattered soul. Physical pain, though, that it hadn’t felt since it had been forged, not like this. A few spells of the Aetharchy had managed to strike the blade and hit the soul contained within it, but even those moments hadn’t felt like this. It was a physical wound, and even as the weapon studied itself, it ached and throbbed from the damage.

Fortunately, the one who had inflicted this wound didn’t follow up with an immediate counterattack. She had problems of her own; while it hadn’t severed her leg, it had cut it, and she was bleeding black ichor. The Ebon Blade still couldn’t see much of the body that the wound was attached to, but it welcomed the reprieve.

Even with those precious seconds, though, it took the weapon several seconds to understand the cause of the wound. It turned out not to be physical at all, actually. The metal had not been damaged; it was the etheric threads that made up everything that had been cut.

-61 Life Force.

That shouldn’t be possible, the blade told itself, but even as it said the words, it ignored them.

What was possible didn’t matter; exactly what mattered was how it was going to fix them. In a moment or two, its enemy would realize it wasn’t about to fall over dead, and when that happened…

Even as it had the thought, she flashed forward again. Its wielder’s wounded, nicked edge couldn’t handle another attack. It knew that, but it wasn’t sure it could survive a blow like that either. If she struck its metal puppet in the wrong place, well, the innards were quite complex, and it wasn’t sure that it could fix them.

-48 Life Force.

So it parried again, with its other edge, but this time it used Vorpal Strike, making itself infinitely sharp for that single moment. The change was instantaneous. Though it felt another strand or two of its soul snap under the weight of her strange blow, this time it did not merely leave a wound on its opponent. This time, it severed her leg even as she sought to sever its wielder’s body in two.

-91 Life Force.

Then she was past it again, like a night breeze, and the only evidence that she’d been there was her leg on the ground and her sizzling black ichor that burned at Warbringer’s armor. Then the scream started. This wasn’t quite the terrible power of the Songstress it had struck down before it had ended up in hell, but it was still a seismic thing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It revealed her shape, too, just for a moment. The instant her scream started, she was more than a few stray brush strokes or a whisper of shadows. She was an outline made in the world by the ripples of her own pain, and the blade could see he faced a five-and-a-half-armed warrior that was also a seven-legged spider, which was as predatory and inhuman as it had ever seen.

Her face was simultaneously beautiful to look upon, and its strange symmetry also held eight glowing red eyes. Likewise, her hands held vicious, curved machetes, before flicking into existence as great scything legs again, back and forth until she vanished in the echoes of her own agony.

-33 Life Force.

+61 Life Force.

The scream of the bug queen’s agony shook the very darkness where they did battle, momentarily reordering the world. For a moment, the strands that made up the earth, the trees, its wielder, and even itself vibrated with a terrible resonance. The weapon thought that she had some terrible power that was going to shake it to pieces, then, just as suddenly, it stopped as she fled the field.

Not entirely, it told itself as it recognized she had only slipped a few trees back.

She was in the same position as the blade itself. She was either trying to heal herself or figure out how to keep fighting wounded. For the blade’s part, it was focusing on healing. Its wielder’s armor had stopped melting, and its neck was halfway recovered, but only the smallest of its own cracks had healed, and the dozens of strands that the bug queen severed remained stubbornly unchanged.

For a moment, an unfamiliar sensation rippled through the blade, and it took a moment for it to realize that it was fear. Even if it used its vorpal powers again to soften the blow, unless it managed to kill her in a strike or two, it would shatter completely, and she had seven more legs or weapons or whatever they were to strike her with.

-29 Life Force.

Still, it did not despair. Instead, anger surged through it then, overwriting the other, less useful emotions like fear and pain. It would push through this and strike her down. There was no other option.

With anger flowed its mana, as its thoughts flickered through half a dozen other powers while it considered what it might try next. That’s when it noticed a couple of the threads that made up the damaged portions of the blade started to re-extend, and grow together once more.

-299 Life Force.

It redoubled those efforts, using intent instead of random urges to Life Force to travel through those damaged pathways, and as it did so, the physical reality of its existence followed suit, and the cracks that stretched deep within its metal began to seal. The notch that was taken out of its edge stayed behind, even after that, but it could worry about that problem later. The weapon had no vanity, only a need to be strong enough to strike another blow.

-560 Life Force.

The more power it utilized, the faster the healing occurred, too, and soon all of its runic pathways were glowing the dull, baleful red that it was used to. The connections were ragged and threadbare at the center, but with a little time, the blade was confident it would be able to resolve that.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t something it was going to get, and the only warning for the next attack was the sudden silence. This attack caught it by surprise, and it knew there wasn’t enough time to get itself into position to parry. So, instead of trying, it used Bolt

to jump forward a dozen feet, only just avoiding the jagged rents in the soil that its opponent left in her wake.

-138 Life Force.

The blade did not stand idle as it reconstituted at the end of the lightning bolt. Instead, it turned and charged toward the Bug Queen, and more surprisingly, she turned and ran. Her wavering outline blinked away from its metal wielder in irregular bounding leaps, and no matter how fast it moved, the erratic nature of her next steps steadily increased the gap between them.

She has every advantage, the weapon growled to itself. And even with them, she’s still almost losing.

It had her number now. It couldn’t guess every move she was making, but it was starting to see the pattern, and it knew that even with seven limbs, it needed only one clean shot with a vorpal strike to cleave her in two.

She didn’t give it one, though. While she doubled back to strike at its wielder several times, the blade saw these strikes coming and dipped away almost as quickly as she did. It burned hundreds of Life Force as it used Bolt repeatedly, but it was worth it. Attack by attack, it learned her pattern, severing a second limb, and then a third.

-734 Life Force.

+316 Life Force.

More importantly, though, in that moment, it saw how her movements were being governed. She’s not teleporting, or jumping, it whispered to itself in surprise. She’s using the world itself as her web.

In that moment, everything it had noticed about this strange jungle snapped into place. The Bug Queen’s movements weren’t jerky because they were random, but because she was using the strands that made up the world itself. In some ways, it was almost the opposite of Prince Cerirvall’s strange power. That was the reason that the threads looked so damaged and frayed as well. To use them to leap from one side of the clearing they did battle in to the other was to sever something. It would have no doubt noticed sooner if there had been any light to judge the condition of the world by.

There wasn’t any light, though. There were just two dangerous people, dancing in the dark with blades, and when it was over, only one of them would remain.

Seeing the way she leaped along her web finally made her movements make enough sense that the blade could counter them with more than guessing, and for a moment, they met in midair, in a place where there was nothing for either of them to stand on.

It brought its edge down hard, cleaving through her left forelimb and glossy black hair. It very nearly carved a hole in her chest, too, though it lost a leg at the knee for it. That didn’t hamper the blade. It landed on the far side on one foot, even as the other began to regrow. It could heal from her attacks, but she couldn’t heal from its.

+57 Life Force.

-434 Life Force.

She didn’t leap to strike at it again, though. Instead of pressing the advantage, she skulked back and let out a screech like broken glass. The blade braced itself for some sonic attack, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, as she melted back into the shadows, down to four of her eight limbs, the silent darkness around them erupted with answering calls. There were more squawks and shrieks, but both of those sounds were overwhelmed by a buzzing that only got louder and louder. Something was coming.