Testing the Blade’s Edge

Later that day…

The ascension complex chosen for the test had been so picked for being the farthest from the center of the Plate, where the target bridge waited for the Bitter Nines. Compared to the fortress surrounding the anticipated battle, this bridge was fairly unguarded: only two long, squat buildings to host the Lawmen dedicated to its defense and about a dozen Lawmen flying on patrol. They were close enough to the edge of the Ninth Disk to enjoy a bit of the evening sunlight that shined through the Violet and the dust, and by its light the blue structures below shimmered in a dull emulation of the glittering gold of their sentinels.

The bridge itself, still a pillar of thick, hardened metals, cast a long shadow on the side opposite of its glittering, reflective surface; that shadow marked the path to its only entrance, an oval opening at which ten Lawman Hammers sleepily kept watch. As Golgon explained just a few nights ago, its front door remained closed while the tower was not being operated. The only change, then, would come when there was some reinforcement of the Lawmen hailing from above. It only took an hour or so of waiting before those mighty zeetok gates, glimmering silver on flat, boring surfaces, finally opened to unleash two dozen more Lawman Braves, each armed and ready for a scrap.

But John had no real intention to engage them… nor need. The only clue any of those sluggish guards had that they were about to suffer an attack was a quick, winking spot above their heads and behind the platoon that had just taken flight towards the center of the Plate. One looked up, swearing he saw something more than a mere particle in the air… but the tunnel over John’s eye was gone just as quick as it permitted him to launch the next one just behind the guard’s head. The doors were drawing to a close, but too late: John saw the inside of the bridge and, with another tunnel, was inside the tower proper.

John positioned the tiny hole in space so he might scan the room and memorize its form: past the oval mouth to enter, and after a walk underneath the thirteen feet of tower wall fortification, the tower’s lowest point consisted of nothing but a barren, depressed chamber. The dip in the room was such that a platform from above might nestle itself into it and level the floor; the only exception to this depression was a rim a single Lawman wide upon which stood and watched two Lawman Braves, their weapons at the ready.

Your serpent’s lunge deals 772 damage to Lawman Brave.
CRIT! Your serpent’s lunge deals 2,356 damage to Lawman Brave!
Lawman Brave defeated!
Lawman Brave defeated!

John opened this latest battle with simple strikes to the notably weaker Braves and, for the first time since traveling by tunnel to this place, opened a portal large enough to drop himself in. The Lawmen at the gate, now spinning about as the deaths of their comrades reached their minds, hurriedly requested that the doors be opened so they could kill whatever infiltrator had somehow snuck past them. Reprimands were whispered through the Lawman Network even as the commanders ordered the doors open.

The Lawmen barely noticed John, however, once Tita’s tentacled form came into view. Her tentacles seemed to ooze about her as her hands explored her body in idle boredom; the display had no effect on the brainwashed guards and, with a battlecry, the lot of them charged.

“Be gone.” The whole pack of Lawmen was engulfed in a fireball. Their panicked screams didn’t cease even as the heat of the explosion rapidly shrunk and seeped into the tallest Hammer’s body and, with a pop of white light, burst his form into so much ash and plate.

The survivors wallowed in their agony until Fairy suddenly dove through the portal, her chains flying out with hooks and spikes to drive into their broken bodies. They brought their weapons up as well as they could, but Fairy’s fishing lines were too soon inside their armors or limbs, too powerfully dragging them towards her, and her axe, gleaming black in the hateful light, too sharp to be denied. Their arms raised in pitiful self-defense were each broken with single, wide chops of her demonic weapon.

John’s orders kept his minions busy as he focused on his own part of this task. He selected the Praxis weapon once more, trusting his minions with securing the location. This time he had been prepared to carry its bulky weight, but it was still absurd in his grasp; cradling the entire thing just to point it upwards proved incredibly awkward as he slowly arched his back and, with the three prongs of his weapon aiming at the petals of pelos that made the ceiling of this place, squeezed the trigger-grip.

The mana battery that John had just manually recharged was now hissing again, and again that geometric anomaly spawned in the cradle of the disruptor cannon. But this time, John was prepared to squeeze the trigger again. He flexed his fingers… and nearly lost his grip on the weapon as it made him nearly bow backwards with unexpected recoil. From what he could see through the blinding light, the boxy bullet ceased its rotation, began to fuse its smaller cubes into a single blob of light… and finally ruptured upon striking the center of the ceiling.

The weapon fired with barely a hiss, reminding John of the sound it made when Galley had gripped the live round… but instead of a harmless trickle of smoke, John was treated to a violent, green sunburst of energy rays arcing outward only to dive back towards the center of the point of impact. The optical nightmare lasted mere tenths of a second… and just as quietly, the light vanished.

In its place… was nothing. Every petal of the pelos gate above had been reduced to a black-ended nub… and a 30-foot-hole would now permit John’s entry into the Ninth Disk.

It worked…! John put the cannon away as he contemplated the gate beyond, now seemingly too close to be real… and its equally closed petals. But it really could only open a single gate… so I need to test it… John had described the weapon to everyone back at headquarters before he left to execute this test run, but even he was unsure of it now. Gripping the weapon, unsheathing it, and attacking with it… which of these acts had killed Yarrick Dell? Could John survive as long as he had more than what Dell lost: a whole 1,000HP? John had more than four times that, now… but would it suffice?

He called the blade from his inventory… and looked, with a touch of hesitation, at the lacquered, blood-colored sheath of the katana. The golden pommel and manji guard suddenly seemed so tacky, even innocent, for what the weapon claimed to be; somehow, the silk of the handle remained its pure sky blue and bleach white despite whatever it had been through since its creation. John checked its description again, hoping for clues.

Umbral Voice of Southern Winds: unique relic. The blade is made from voidsteel, an Outside material that makes it effectively indestructible but also makes it consume the lifeforce of any soul who wields it. The entire blade is magically void; it cannot be affected by spells, and spells cannot resist its edge. Wounds made by the Umbral Voice are opened within the Tapestry of reality, preventing all damage resistance, including divine, preventing healing except by paragon or divine magic, and making it capable of damaging leylines.

There were none… save that this weapon claimed unbelievable power.

“More are coming,” Fairy reported as she flicked blue blood from her axe and onto the scorched wall nearby.

“Should we let them come so near? It may be difficult to save you,” Tita warbled, “while you continue to ogle that bit of treasure.”

John gripped the sword tightly… and with his hand on its hilt, waited.

Nothing.

Then touching the hilt was not the key. “Just hold them off. We won’t be here for much longer.”

“You!” suddenly came a call from above. John’s eyes flicked up to catch a whole troupe of Lawman Braves suddenly descending upon him. The one who yelled continued, “Stop there, or we’ll kill you where you stand!”

Two of the Braves were suddenly grabbed by the crushing white appendages of Tita; a third Brave, already intent on beating her as well, redirected and charged into her, his weapons glowing as he smashed his maces into her left shoulder and tit in a double strike.

Before John could avenge her, Tita avenged herself… with a soft touch of her hand on the Lawman’s helm.

Tita’s entropic touch deals 694 necrotic damage to Lawman Brave.
Lawman Brave defeated!

The visor cracked, the armor blackened, and the screams from inside the helm gurgled as she lifted her fingers from the head and let the hovering body hang grotesquely in the air. The other Lawman, caught in her tentacles, did their best to attack the offending appendages before they could do harm; the rest faced John, to their predictable ends.

In another six seconds, the second wave was done before Fairy could double-back and join the fight. John looked down at the weapon still waiting in his right hand… and, with an eye upwards, cast a tunnel beyond the Plate for the first time.

It opened diagonally just below the next pelos barrier… and John, with a quick squat, stepped into the matching, diagonal tunnel just next to him, letting him stand within sword’s reach of the new barrier. He gripped the handle, and still felt nothing. Please just be another 1,000HP…! With a sharp inhale, he pulled on the sword-

Just a few minutes ago…

“Voidsteel?” Tricia asked uncertainly. Her curiosity was the most affirmative response; all around the table where he had gathered Galley, Collide, and even the eldest Order members, John received only confused shrugs or looks of disbelief. “I have never heard of such a material, nor of a material that would have such properties.”

The round table had become a sort of unofficial clubhouse for John and his council of humans. For their consideration, laid out at the center of the table, was one of the few pieces of loot that remained from John’s adventures the week before: chained in thin silver strings of linked metal, decorated in gold and silk, and sheathed in crimson, the Umbral Voice of Southern Winds had, by John’s reckoning, simply been a powerful, cursed artifact. He had yet to draw it… and because of what happened the only time he ever saw it drawn, he was sure that had been the right call until now.

None reached for the weapon—not after what John described—but Galley narrowed her eyes as she sniffed at the air.

“The tooltip says it drains life from a soul… so maybe it could be wielded by a robot?” John offered. “Since you’re able to make small drones already, maybe a huge one would…?”

Tricia’s almost offended stare left John trailing off. “John, I’ve never created an automation larger than a fist, much less some form of… android.”

“Besides, it eats magic, right?” Travolta offered. “I don’t think there’s ever been an android made without relying on mana, or at least not one worth a damn with a sword… so wouldn’t it just drain the android until it fell apart?” Rave and all the table looked at him with enough surprise to make him self-conscious. “W-What?”

That’s weirdly insightful for you. None said it aloud, however.

“Perhaps it only consumes the energy of effects or individuals touching its blade, if the effect described is real in the first place.” Tricia’s holographic display lit up as she checked the readings—such as they were—again. As far as her suit was concerned, the sword still wasn’t actually anything more than a wooden sheath topped with a hilt. “It coincides with the fact that I cannot actually detect any metal inside the sheath. Was the blade itself wood…?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” John answered, but he greatly doubted it.

Galley sniffed again, then coughed softly into her fist. “I don’t like it,” she finally offered before reaching for the sheath. John was quicker on reacting to her this time, however, and snapped his hand onto her wrist, his eyes wide with alarm and his mouth prepared to hurl warnings at her. “I’m not going to pull it,” she chided and, with a tug, freed herself from his loosened grip. A moment later, the Hound of Titusville was cradling the sheathed blade with care… and sniffing at its handle.

Travolta snickered, “What the Hell are you doing?”

“She can sense magical traces with some combination of her olfactory receptors,” Tricia quickly explained, “and her… uniquely magically-resistant nature.”

“Wait, so Soulless have some kind of super-scent power?”

Galley offered no correction. “I can smell lots of things,” she muttered, “… about people, and how they’re feeling or what they’ve done. I can also smell magic usually from far away and easily if it’s strong; I wouldn’t miss it if it was this close no matter what. It’s part of what makes… made me good at my job.” She sniffed hard before sighing, “But this… this doesn’t smell like anything.”

“So it’s not magical,” Tricia concluded, “or excludes magic to such degree that even your-”

“No, I didn’t say it didn’t smell magical. I said it doesn’t smell like anything. I can’t smell anything from it at all except some trace smells of people who probably held it before. I smell John on it,” she explained with a small stutter, “a-and others. Mostly one other male… and blood. Lots of it, as if a gallon of it got sucked into the silk… but I don’t smell the silk, or the gold, or the wood, or even the ‘voidsteel’ you’re describing. It’s like it’s not even… here... in my hands.”

John shook his head nervously. “Well, it’s real… and it killed the last person to swing it, so I need to test it… and test it carefully.”

“Then we should open an illusion barrier, one where I can administer first aid the moment you-”

“No… I mean, if it turns out it does permanent damage, then I’d at least want to make sure it works on the real thing: the pelos doors, enchantments and all.”

“Why would it be permanent? That samurai-wannabe seemed healthy enough waving it around.”

“He didn’t wave it around… in fact, he only used it once that I saw, and maybe once to get out of that trap barrier your friend made.” John tried to think back to that last time Yarrick Dell drew his sword: when the wannabe-samurai attacked the space where John had been a moment before… but John struggled to do so. What did it look like? A fog of white seemed to coat the blade wherever John tried to recall its color, shape, or anything else about its nature. He recalled Yarrick pulling upon it… and then the blade was sheathed as Yarrick’s flesh was violently sucked into its hilt. He had the sword out for awhile though… so why can’t I remember what it looked like? Fairy had just barely scooped John up mid-air at the time… but had he really been so light-headed at the time that he just didn’t pay attention? This doesn’t add up… I should remember at least what it looked like…

“Well then,” Galley finally asked as she offered the weapon back, “how are you going to test it?”

“The same way we agreed I’d test the cannon. I’ll go raise a giant alarm at the farthest ascension bridge I can find, test them there… and if it works, we strike the Peak today.”

A bit of alarm showed up on every face present. Tricia was the only one to voice an objection. “The mana battery took a fourth of your power to reload and only four exist on that Praxian weapon; how do you intend to reload it enough times to break through… and still fight?”

“Well, it starts charged so… that’s eight shots, or more if I borrow mana from my summons… and if the sword’s an option, I’ll save even more mana with that. All I need is a small opening to peek through and open a tunnel on the next level up, minus any levels they open trying to stop us. If this cannon and this sword can break through those gates… then there’s nothing stopping us from going right up to the Peak in basically one go.”

“Unless the absolute territory screws up your portal trick,” Rave interrupted, “in which case we need to fly up some other way.”

“That’ll be for me to solve once we find the limit of that effect; I’ve got enough summons to solve that problem, and I’ll need to call them all out beforehand anyways.” John nodded with some confidence before standing from the table. The others looked up at him with an odd hesitation; none seemed pleased with what little they knew of the enemy. “… I know we all wish we had more information, or a more solid plan, but even with just this? We will reach the enemy… and with our combined might, and what we’ve seen of their strongest defenders, I don’t think they’ll stand a chance. So I’m going to test the gun…” John gripped the sword as hard as he could manage, trying to find a bit more confidence as he added, “… and this sword… and then we’re going to go up there and kick the Peak’s ass one way or the other.”

The speech had some minimal effect on the faces John scanned… and that was enough to bolster the confidence with which he gripped the relic sword.

As before, the chains shrugged themselves away from the hilt and slapped against the sheath. As before, the holder of the weapon drew it, anticipating pain, anticipating its cruel nature. As before, fetid materials of blood and bone, of skin and brains, of wastes and wants… all came spiraling into the blade’s focus. The body, the physical tapestry of a being, was naught but the cage of the soul… and through the soul, through that ugly lens of existence, of the real world and its real connections to the Dream and to all the horror it held, the sword could finally see and be.

The Umbral Voice speaks only with the air drawn from the lungs of the fool soul who draws it… and it inhales the blood, the skin, the brains and bone, the wastes and wants, and all the mixtures betwixt before screaming at the nightmare of reality. It screams a black pitch, and then sheathes its screeching in all the stolen aspects of its bearer until it becomes a vile song. With its song, it ends all creation laid before it… and so the Umbral Voice sings. When drawn by an Amalgamation, a cluster of souls bound by foul magic, it might be **** to sing against the choir, to drown out the voices of dozens of such wretches… but here…

… here and now, John Newman, only you shall hear me sing.

The blade was dressed in the purple light of John’s summonings and captures, of the platforms and accessories of his Temple, and of the sigil that formed in John’s mind the moment he captured Fairy. The sword was not voidsteel, but was made of John: it drank from his being to form a blade of vengeful, destructive anger. John had not felt such hatred or ambition before, burning now from purple to white-hot, but it existed somewhere in his core. The Dream wrapped about the blade in John’s vision, and the sword went from the blank heat of a star into a darkness that John half-remembered and all-feared: this sliver of night was from his core, and he felt his flesh wither as it was drunk from his soul and through his flesh.

Furious at his own folly, John continued the unsheathing of the blade in a wide, arcing cut above him. So without resistance was the barrier of pelos that John feared the blade was an illusion, or that he had somehow missed.

SUSFDS(FHHGfgf Umbral Voice of is09sugfdgjsfsf dealsaufauf
-1,000H89dFDfP

John’s body screamed as the sword drank a full thousand health from him; that it did not exceed his prediction was no comfort here. What little John knew of Outsiders or their threat became the core of his fear: this blade was not of this world! It thinned John’s skin, tore open the veins on his neck, and burned his eyes as he dared to wield it. Gamer’s Body was no barrier to its pull: it was eating John as readily as it-

… peeled apart the space before him.

The pelos bloomed like a rip in fabric, as if some god had taken either end of the thing and pulled it apart, and so too had the air there been sundered… and so too had the very reality that once sat there. John saw a glimpse of it—prismatic and terrible and infinite and perfect—the raw Dream just beyond the thin veil of a Kingdom, the absolute chaos of creative power kept out of this static existence with the frailest cloth. The Umbral Voice had cut the barrier, the air, and the very Kingdom there; and before John’s mind could finish reeling at the tempting, consuming madness of this peek into Creation Herself, the wound healed. The pelos barrier did not. The molecules of air would never return. John could perhaps fit his body through the cut made through the pelos above… but all his ****, pained mind could think to do now was to re-sheathe the terrible thing in his hand, to stop this consumption of his being.

His agility afforded precision, and the sliver of black’s tip was in the sheath-

8vJDSF%hjdf45^3fbral Voice daed09sug6”9)a^f
-1,0$%vH86HdFC<fP

… and the blade slammed home, and then the blade was no more. The silver chains leapt to encircle the sheathe as if angered by John’s temporary theft of it. John tugged his hand away, ripping cleanly away the pale, blighted patches of skin, bathed on the inside in red and purple, that had become the surface of his hand. The raw meat of his fingers twitched and bled in trails as he looked upon it with dry, itching eyes, and his skin continued to grow gaunt against strained muscles and bones. He was withering-

Gamer’s Body restored.

… and then it was gone. His hand was normal… and the bloody, ragged flesh glued to the hilt dissipated into prismatic mists.

John had lost 2,000HP to draw the blade and resheathe it in a breath’s time… and it had cut through the pelos like air with John’s untrained hand on its grip. He had no damage indicator to even contemplate what it had done… but now John understood, in some small, terrible way, what the item meant when it might tear through leylines or drink of the user. The doors above opened as Lawmen came to pour in and stop the intruder… but by then, John and his coterie were gone.