Mithril Blackblood
The Golden Sword
?????
The attacks rang out against a certain madman. A certain man known as “Mithril”. He was a fighter. Someone who would act in such a way that even to the grave they would go out laughing upon the forms of their enemies.
A monster. Someone who had long given themselves up to madness. Someone who was unable to think for themselves without the sword.
To him, his sword was his everything. Something he couldn't live without. He currently had upon his mind that it would be impossible for him to fight without the sword. He couldn’t just leave it. It was his. His. HIS!
But the elf stood in the way. She would have to be eliminated. Killed without any trace of her existence. But a fleeting memory. She was the obstacle that Mithril needed to push over to defeat his opponent.
The blades began their assault. Without his sword, he only had a single ability. The elements of “fire” were within the man. His gate might not have been as strong in his life, but the connection he shared with the sword had given him the necessary power to defeat those before him, both ingrained upon his body and his damned soul itself.
“Goa” A simple term with such immense power. Magic was something many took for granted. Though everyone had a gate, it was rare to have the talent or the quality of gate to effectively utilize the spells within your given field. However the connection to the sword, the talent was selected between its understanding rather than his own. It drew his understanding from “somewhere else”, so he didn’t need a single lick of talent to utilize powerful magicks. Perhaps his former self had the comprehension to understand the complexities of magical formulas and the like, but his madness bounded him as a cage to a bird. Perhaps that former understanding existed “somewhere”. The sword itself would also provide excess energy in the event his gate was no longer able to produce the needed mana.
One could say that this cursed blade was something “unearthly” entirely. “Something” couldn’t be created by “nothing”. The sword had to be drawing its power from somewhere. At the core of the blade, there must be a “dangerous thing” giving Mithril his strength.
The connection was still faint, but it existed. If he had his blade with him currently, then the onslaught of the blades would have been as easy to deal with as breathing. But separated from the thing that made him “him”, his power was given a sharp decrease.
For a master of magicks such as Mithril, this should have been as simple as eroding each blade with a well-placed fire that would turn the magic into gas, unable to be controlled without a connection to the user.
But his sword.
Without his sword, he was vulnerable. The first of the fire was able to completely erode one of the many blades coming to him, just as the second and third had been able to. But his mana was already running low from his former attack had caused irreparable damage to the city rooftops and likely death.
The fourth of his goas didn’t completely melt the attack as he had expected it to.
His sword.
Only partially melted, the blow hit his head, and he felt the feeling in his legs grow weaker.
How could he be losing? He was a story that the wives told their children to not go out in the streets past dark. The sort of existence that struck fear into the hearts of the most skilled warriors, tales of a “demon on the battlefield”. A real-life “boogieman”.
The next of the blades, without the ability to think in a cognitive fashion, entered through his stomach and through to the end of his spine. The feeling of weakness in his legs grew from “an odd numbness” to “nothing at all”.
The next gouged out his tongue, his ability to speak no longer available to him. He could only watch in horror as the other blades took his vision, the seventh of the blades going through his eyes and blinding the man, unable to move. Unable to feel. Unable to hear. Unable to speak.
His only comfort was that his blade would be his. This wench would die before his golden sword. He just needed to grab that blade. He just needed to get to the blade. But where was it? He couldn’t be certain. He could only flail his body, which ice blades in his body tore and destroyed his muscles and body as he tried to do so.
The last blade had entered his heart, and the man known as Mithril was no longer able to ‘think’. He had been defeated. He was dead. .
But…
Victory was far from achieved.
This was all just a “vision” that the Elf-Knight Atisha Eluvian had experienced.
No. it was too real to be just an illusion, Atisha had experienced this, but for whatever reason the man, Mithril, stood before Atisha without a single scratch of what he should have experienced, which was the mutilation of his entire body.
Instead...
A hand was through Atisha’s body. It was strange. Had that hand always been there? It was an impossible occurrence, but there it was. As if it was as natural as can be, a hand had penetrated through her abdomen, through her spine and her innards.
Reeling his hand backwards, the blood began to flow as it once did, but without the connections of intestine and veins and skin to keep it on the track it should have been within, it began to come out in droves along with her intestines and the like.
It was impossible. How could she have failed.
“That ‘experience’ you had. That wasn’t something that ‘didn’t’ happen. I am sure you are confused, but-” His voice was clear. Unlike before, his voice wasn’t found within the depths of madness. Or perhaps it still was, but rather than being there without a purpose, he had been given his orders to act in such a way. He was given his clarity for but a moment. Without the words from his Lady, he couldn’t exist. He was lost without her.
With another movement of his hands, he he ripped through her back once more and crushed her heart in one fell-swoop.
“I am sorry it had to be this way, but to those who contest the will of my Lady, Perhaps you could find peace in the afterlife. But I still have my pride. For forcing me to use my ‘gift’, I shall give you my name. Not the name I was born with, but the name you shall give to your maker when you meet them. You may refer to me as “Chastity”, the virtuous bishop, and the enforcer of my lady’s will. Even if you refuse my Lady, i shall forgive you. But only once you have passed.”
Maria von Hohenzollern
Maria couldn’t believe what had happened. She had tried to protect the stranger in the street who had given her such kindness, but because of her actions she had not been able to protect the Knight Malakaus. Was her choice wrong? Today was something that she would be forced to remember for the rest of her life. She couldn’t save both the people who had been within her sphere. She was a failure of a knight who had it within their design to protect those citizens of Lugnica and her lord.
But she hadn’t protected her friend, and a Knight that she had respected, Malakaus.
Tani had been rendered unconscious by the attack and was on the floor, unable to move. The sword was no longer within her grasp. If it was the sword that caused Tani to have such a breakdown, then it was more dangerous than Maria understood. But the emblem on the blade. She had recognized it, and only now understood what it meant.
A symbol that was known to appear in certain areas of the city, mostly as a prank of some sort, and hardly anything serious. A symbol associated with the Witch’s cult.
“Hehehe.” Maria couldn’t help but give a chuckle. Perhaps it wasn’t because anything was funny, but rather because she was hardly maintaining to the understanding of her world. She had never seen someone die before. Sure, there were times where she would fight against the enemies, and she had even killed Mabeasts in the past, but it wasn’t as if she had actually witnessed someone else die. She was the sort to desire to find peaceful solutions to problems. Force was not something she would prefer to use if given the ability to peacefully resolve the situation.
Maria’s father, the great hero of the war, had given her with a piece of information that she kept to her ideals. That the sword wasn’t an instrument of death, but rather something used to protect those you loved.
“I am sorry, Mr. Allen Balton. You have experienced something you should not have. This is my fault. I’ve failed my teachings as a knight. My friend is dead, killed by another one of my friends..” There was nothing Maria could have done to prevent this situation. She had desired to get the sword away from Tani to the best of her ability, but she had failed. She had pushed back Tani from killing Aleph, but she had given her the opening to kill her friend.
Was the life of Aleph worth, to Maria, that of Malakaus?
She couldn’t answer that moral question. Why couldn’t they have both lived? Maria wasn’t strong enough to protect the two of them. She was only one person. A girl who was given the title of a Knight. She thought back to her times as a child where her father would forgive her for any mistakes she had made. But could she forgive herself for this mistake?
It didn’t matter if she could forgive herself for her inability.
She had a motive.
Unlike the Knight Tani, Maria was given very special blessings as a child. A “gift of the world”.
“I shall correct my mistakes.” Lodged deep within Malakaus was the sword. She had walked up to his body, knowing what she had to do. If she was going to lose people to this disgusting blade. If this blade was going to snuff out the flame of life from her friends, then she would take it as her duty to subjugate the blade.
After all, she was the only one she knew who could.
With a single swoop, she grabbed the hilt of the golden blade and pulled it out of Malakaus.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
It hurt.
Misdiagnosis
Concealment. Maria could hardly move. It felt as if she was going insane. Perhaps she would have welcomed the insanity that the pain had brought her. But it wasn’t as if she could comprehend such an idea. The blade was whispering sweet nothing to her, but unlike Tani or Mithril, she would be able to resist these temptations.
Violate
Destroy. But the pain. It felt as if her soul was going through a shreder, grinding itself into fine paste as her body did the same. Maria had experienced terrible pain before. She had been nearly burnt alive once before during a mission. However, her body was made of tougher things than simple flesh and bone. It was her pluck. She would not lose. She would not give up at the first sign of danger.
To her knees she went. But this wasn’t an act of submission. She had been told to use the sword, but rather an act of her defiance!
She was convinced she could subjugate the sword with her body. Even if she was to be violated and destroyed in the process, She writhed in pain. Perhaps not the pain that Tani had to be a slave of the blade. She had to pursue further
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Die
Die
Die
DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! The blade wanted her dead. She could feel it. She had a “connection” to the sword, but she refused to submit to whatever monster was controlling the blade. Perhaps she had been the only person to resist such a disgusting thing’s grasp. No human could resist the blade. It was a tantalizing offer of power. Perhaps that is why someone like Mithril, or better yet someone like Tani, had been subjugated before.
The blade would refuse Maria.
Maria, with all her body, would refuse the blade.
“I will defeat you, monster!” she spoke, but she was in pain.
She could not allow the “monster of the blade” to take her over. She couldn’t let go of the blade, no matter her strife. Perhaps she hadn’t become insane by the blade, but rather through the burden of what she had witnessed had given her will beyond most mortals.
But she was close to completely cracking. She couldn’t, however, lose to the blade. It had taken the life of her precious friend, and had forced her other precious friend to know the agony of killing a comrade.
There was no way in hell she would let go.Even if her body was to be destroyed, she would not let go of this blade. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t allow another to get harmed by this sword.
Member