The blade's wielder tightened its grip on its hilt at that word. Serve. It was an insult nearly as bad as coward or traitor. Still, it didn't know exactly what had happened. It couldn't miss; such a result defied credulity.

Still, it had, and as it regarded the man, other guards started to make themselves known, pushing through the crowd of dancers while Prince Cerirvall stood there smugly. The fact that he made no move to defend himself bothered the blade more than anything, so it attacked again. This time, with a fire-free lunge, so that it could see what was happening.

While its second attack was no more effective than its first, the blade saw what happened. The man didn't move, and it didn't miss, but the space between them distorted so that the blade seemed to bend. I did not bend! The blade shouted silently. I cannot be broken or bent!

The strange magic outraged it, but it stayed calm, and instead of attacking a third time, or attempting to overpower it with a flurry of blows, the weapon turned to the soul of the chamberlain it had stolen at their first meeting and demanded, What is this power? How does he dodge my blows without moving?

The spirit tried to resist the question, but that was impossible, and moments later, it gave up all of its secrets. Prince Cerirvall controls everything that happens inside the Moving Panoply. It whispered. That, of course, obviously wasn't so. It didn't control the blade, nor had it been able to stop the weapon from killing two of its minions to date. There were clearly limits to its control, but it did not argue.

There wasn't time for that. Instead, it listened to the burst information, absorbing all that it could from it as it learned the truth: the demon prince was the absolute master of everything within the palace.

It wasn't just a matter of protocol or decor either. The man could literally bend space to his whim. According to the soul of the Chamberlin, straight lines didn't always have to be straight, and even the smallest closet could become as big as the largest ballroom with some effort. The blade found that difficult to believe, but it was impossible to deny what it had seen with its own eyes just now.

Still, it could compensate. Even as the prince stood there, quite certain he was invincible, the blade struck again, this time using shifting blade to bend its blade, transforming from a claymore into an unwieldy saber. This succeeded in drawing blood, but only barely. Still, that drop cut was enough for the blade to feel the demon prince's life force flow into it.

-10 Life Force.

+38 Life Force.

More importantly, it was enough to wipe that man's smug expression. He stepped back, nonplussed, but the blade could sense his fear. "This shirt is completely ruined now," he complained. "And for what, you won't be leaving here until I get what I want."

"I serve no one," the blade growled. Lashing out again, this time becoming a spear to stretch even farther.

-10 Life Force.

That didn't work, unfortunately. Now that Prince Cerirvall was on guard, he distorted the space between them harder than ever, and its tip didn't even get close. The rest of his demon guard reached the blade then, but it ignored them, focusing on the prince himself.

It blurred forward with a bolt attack, but even that was ineffective. The lightning bolt it launched was more than a hundred feet long, but even though the demon prince stood only a dozen feet in front of him, it never even got close.

-50 Life Force.

"Well, aren't you full of tricks," Prince Cerirvall murmured appreciatively. "I'm beginning to see how it is you took down the princess of mud in the first place."

The Ebon Blade didn't answer. It just lashed out with a flurry of attacks, both at the man and his guards. Maybe I should have used that trump card to escape to the pool and the fifth circle beyond it, the weapon considered as it did so, but it was too angry to retreat just now. It would find a way to make this insufferable princeling suffer first.

Razor slashes and gouts of hellfire filled the air, but not even all of these found their marks. Everyone within arm's reach should have been dead. Instead, half the ugly demons were still standing to attack with their halbards, and dodging was tricky when space was being used against you.

-20 Life Force.

+114 Life Force.

+3 Lesser Demon Souls

The blade's wielder took several hits that were hard enough to breach its armor, but none of them were deep enough to damage the internals, so it ignored them. Unless a wound was crippling, it was far less concerned about it than it was about killing the one who had inflicted it.

-37 Life Force.

For the first time since the battle at the gates of the Iron City weeks ago, steel rang out against steel as it faced a real challenge. None of its opponents were worthy, of course, not the cowardly prince or the pathetically weak demons that served him. Together, though, they were a unique challenge that it hadn't faced before, forcing it to adapt.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The Ebon Blade relished that almost as much as it hated the fact that Prince Cerirvall lingered beyond its reach. Crippled by the strange magic that it had trouble seeing even with its enhanced senses, the blade moved from an aggressive style to a defensive one, and every time it parried a demonic weapon, it used the lesser version of bolt to transmit a brutal bolt of power through it. If it could not strike these monstrosities with its blade, it would do so in other ways.

-49 Life Force.

+234 Life Force.

+5 Lesser Demon Souls

Even as it fought off the guards, the blade tried to move, using bolt repeatedly to move to a better position. In this case, though, better didn't mean closer to the demon prince. It meant nearer to potential victims. Even as they fought, the mockery of a ball continued throughout most of the room, and the blade moved toward them, seeking to cut a bloody swath through the party guests.

-250 Life Force.

Each time it teleported to a new location, it had an instant where its jailor had to refocus. That meant it could attack once, or perhaps twice, before it was once again isolated on an island of distortion amid whirling crowds that otherwise ignored it.

It was a strange, surreal experience, and the best way to fuel itself was simply to tug at the souls of the damned, devouring all of them that were within range. That too only worked for a short time before the prince had all of them leave the room, but the blade didn't try to escape. It was studying the strange power that was being used on it, and examining the very weave of the world in order to better know where the edges of its amorphous prison were.

+34 Damned Souls.

This was difficult because of how chaotic the power seemed to be, but weapons edged managed to find their way through the gaps a few times to strike at those beyond it and feed its hunger. It wasn't until the ball ended and the room emptied that the prince approached it again.

By that time, it was walking steadily toward the door, but then it had been doing so for more than ten minutes and had scarcely gotten any closer. The Ebon was trying to stay calm and in control in the face of such a power, but it was maddening. It was worse than the mud outside had ever been. That at least it had been able to move past with enough force, but this was like being caught in a cage of air, and there was nothing to push against.

"Well, are you impressed enough by my powers to reconsider my offer?" Prince Cerirvall asked, casually standing just beyond the blade's reach like he wasn't in mortal danger. "I think you'll find we can accomplish far more together than we can alone."

If you wish to work with me, then you must first beat my current wielder, the blade thought, but it didn't say it. Not only did it have no desire to be wielded by a demon, but the man still spoke to the mindless metal knight that wielded it, and it had no intention of giving him any information he could use against it.

"Just remember you had the choice to let me be on my way," the blade reminded him with its borrowed metallic voice. "You could have survived this. Your palace could have been unscathed."

The prince's only response to that was to laugh. "Well, I won't try to convince you, not yet anyway. I've got an orgy to attend. We can discuss this again in a week or two."

The man left, leaving the blade alone, but his powers stayed there the whole time. Their intensity never waned, and it took hours more for the blade to reach the door. Once it was in the hallway, it proceeded to systematically trash the place.

It might take a hundred steps to match one normal one, but the man couldn't protect every wall and tapestry. Not when he was doing other things. So the blade ruined all that it could as it tried to make its way out of the palace.

It gouged deep rents into the wood and plaster and destroyed any item of beauty or value that was within arm's reach. Still, as the hours crept by and it made progress down the corridor, it noted that all of it was healing in its wake.

How could a wall heal? It had no idea, but it was the only damage the blade could do, so it inflicted as much as possible. It torched whole rooms with hellfire, but even as they burned, it knew they would come back. All it could hope was that the cost of using so much magic was high enough that eventually it would get tired of toying with the weapon and let it go. It might not be able to kill him, but it could make it very expensive to restrain him for too long.

-45 Life Force.

It was a fine plan, but no matter how many rooms the blade trashed or torched, the man didn't seem to care. In fact, palace life seemed to go on as before, except in its immediate vicinity. It wallowed in an invisible tar pit of warped space, while his servants and demonic courtiers stayed well out of reach.

-118 Life Force.

The only thing that changed was that sometimes Prince Cerirvall visited to taunt it while it searched for the source or the limits of the demon's powers. Each visit would culminate in the same question, and every time the blade would refuse him.

"You will fail at this," the blade said finally. "Your little game will end in tragedy."

"Tragedy? For you, maybe," the prince laughed. "How many times must I tell you that my rule over my little kingdom is absolute?"

"One man, no matter how powerful, will ever stop me," the blade insisted, not bothering to stop its slow march down the hallway as it spoke.

"Ah, but I am not just the man before you," the demon prince boasted. "I am the palace itself! I am everything!"

"Then I will destroy everything, if I must," the blade growled, hacking through another wall and destroying the furniture on the far side. The damage did not heal immediately, but it started to. As it had done before,

"You could shatter a thousand rooms and a hundred thousand vases and you'd be no closer to the heart of the matter," the demon prince boasted.

Those words were one step of arrogance too far. While the man enjoyed talking down to him, he'd all but admitted the true nature of the situation, and the weapon now knew what it must do.

The blade turned from him then, ignoring the demon prince's jeers as it sought a way deeper into the belly of this beast. It was more than aware that the demon controlled everything in this place, but it seemed to have limits to the amount it could twist space, and the blade sought to use that gap to its advantage.

Prince Cerirvall could make every hallway and stairwell feel endless, but whether he made them ten times longer than they should have been, or a hundred times, he couldn't stop the blade from proceeding, and after the blade walked for a long time without destroying anything, the demon prince seemingly lost interest, and the passages shrank to their normal size.

-264 Life Force.

This was a fatal error on his part. Hour by hour, and day by day, the blade descended into the belly of the beast. It found floors that were so low that they were empty and filled with nothing but dust and refuse. The further that the blade got away from the edge of the demon's domain, or the things that mattered to it, the less interest he paid the blade. While that made sense, given the man's proclivities for feasts and balls, it would cost him.

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