The Palace continued to crumble around the blade as it made its way down the stairs. The prince's death had certainly accelerated things. What had been a place of strange grandeur was quickly becoming a tomb, and even as it walked toward the pool that was the exit to the next circle, the room fell to pieces around it.

Larger and larger chunks of plaster and shell rained down around it, even striking its metal wielder, but there was no force in the blows, and it ignored them. The Ebon Blade was only interested in the way forward now. The carcass of the giant turtle or demon dragon or whatever it was could rot for eternity for all it cared. It would have been simpler if it did, but it knew full well that the evil that it was leaving behind would reconstitute; it was timeless.

By the time I reach the center of this place, half the circles will probably have new rulers, the blade thought, as it eyed the approaching pool.

The fountains had failed with Prince Cerirvall's death, and the waters were now dark and still. The blade had no idea what to expect, but it could see that it was the way forward, so with only the briefest of inspections, it stepped into the waters.

Its metal wielder sank like a stone then. The blade didn't even try to fight it. It had been expected that, thanks to the demon prince's off-handed comment a few weeks before. Instead, as it fell into the darkness, confident that it would eventually reach the bottom, it looked around. Far above it, it could see the retreating light of the surface, which oriented it.

That light barely penetrated this deep, but even without it, the weapon would have been able to see the aquatic shapes that loomed here and there in the murk. Some of them seemed drawn to its trail, though that was because of the ichor that washed off of it in a cloud as it sank, it expected; the inhuman creatures swam to the place that it had been, not the place where it was.

As it fell, the world became darker and darker, but the blade didn't much care about that; instead, it kept a sharp eye for inhabitants of this realm. It had learned about more than the existence of a bottom, here. It had also learned that there was always a bigger fish, and given its recent experiences hacking through the organs of a giant turtle, it was not eager to repeat the experience. While it enjoyed blood and power, butchery was far from combat, and it had experienced enough delays already.

Four circles down, and five to go, the sword sighed to itself. This is going to take forever.

Falling took forever, too, and while none of the demonic inhabitants of the watery abyss got close enough for it to strike, souls of the damned drifted by it from time to time. They were the only source of light in the ocean depths, and they glowed a pale cyan. It reached out and stole whenever it was able, at least at first. After a while, though, it didn't even bother; they were both tasteless and useless.

Devouring them only netted it a handful of lifeforce, and they tasted strongly of salt. While that wasn't quite as bad as the poisonous demons, they were nowhere near as delicious as the spirits that the hag had left to dangle, or the ghosts that had served Prince Cerirvall, and if it wasn't consuming them for the joy of it, then there was no point.

The minds of these pathetic creatures were every bit as damaged as the souls it had once tried to question from the evil mirror. No matter what it asked them, whether they were questions about the hell they were trapped in, or the lives they had lived before this point, all it got was sobbing, blubbering apologies before they vanished into the ether. They'd been here for so long that they might as well have been seaweed.

It was hours before the blade finally touched down on the ocean floor, which was nothing but a desert made of silt that went on forever in all directions. In all the previous circles, it had been able to see a slight slope upward toward the next circle, but here, there was nothing but featureless gray slime as far as its enhanced senses could see in any direction.

The Ebon Blade did not despair. Now that it had stopped moving, it simply stood there, feeling the flow of the water around it, and when it was certain which way the sluggish current was pulling, it started walking that way. The mud was deep, and it scattered with every step as the blade's metal wielder trudged forward, but neither bothered the weapon. It could see through the haze as if it didn't exist, but even if it couldn't, there wasn't much to see.

Instead of paying too much attention to that, it walked forward, one step at a time, while it focused on its inner world. It was halfway toward its goal of escaping hell, and the challenges had not grown much harder. Prince Cerirvall might have managed to imprison it for much longer if he'd been clever, but even so, the blade had surmounted him. It had also learned something interesting and now knew about the nature of the greatest souls in its collection, which was what it focused on now.

Up until now, the blade hadn't touched any of the demon prince souls, because it feared what effect they might have on it, but now it studied them more closely. Each of them was different, of course, and all of them were smaller than the hellish dragon soul it had inadvertently collected, but they were a deeper black.

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No, they were darker than black. They were pure void, and while the blade feared that darkness, given how powerless it had been when it had first come to hell, it coveted their powers. The question was, did it covet those powers enough to try to devour one of them, and if so, which one?

The weapon thought about that, first for hours, and then for days, as it crossed the sea floor a step at a time. Only once were those contemplations interrupted, when a beast glided through the water above it. The monstrosity was far enough away that the blade could only sense the edge of its slick, sinuous body from perhaps half a mile away, but it couldn't see the whole thing at once. It never even saw the head. The creature was too massive for that. It took several minutes for its tail to come into view, as the blade awaited an attack that never came.

Always a bigger fish indeed, the blade said to itself as it continued. Occasionally, the weapon would come across the partial remains of those terrible beasts. It would never be more than a rib here, or a claw there, but there were teeth that were bigger than its current wielder, which made it wonder if the monstrosities might be able to destroy the strange mechanical man if one of them attacked.

On the third day, the Ebon Blade made its decision and decided to experiment with one of the demon souls. This wasn't because it was getting impatient, or even desperate, but because it decided that the demon's powers would help it a great deal.

It didn't dare attempt to wrestle with Prince Voltrim's soul yet, since he'd made the machine that wielded it. And while it had some interest in Prince Angarazon's powers of war and battle, it had none in Princess Rizzeldah's; when it once again had a mortal wielder, her powers of regeneration might matter, but for now, the only power it truly coveted was Prince Cerirvall's.

While such a power would deprive it of the joy of fighting if used in combat, the blade remembered too well walking in place for days down endless hallways. It was sure the demon's magic would help it reach wherever it was going that much faster.

So, pausing for a moment on the featureless plain, to give what happened next its full attention, the weapon seized the soul and studied it. The demon squirmed like a slippery eel in its grip, but it could not escape the blade's focus. The blade hadn't even issued it a command, and it was already fighting for its life harder than the elven prince had so long ago. That had been the soul that had given it the most trouble up until now, but this one was proving to be much stronger.

So, the blade paused a moment as it considered its action as the prince's foul soul hissed and snarled unintelligibly in its grasp. It refocused and decided that souls were its domain, and it had nothing to fear. Better, it had a grudge against this soul in particular, which made holding it that much easier. That was the vector that it attacked the dead man from.

Give me your powers you used to confound me! The weapon commanded it. Give me the powers to bend space to my whim.

It merely had to command the thing for it to obey, and the blade was suspicious of how easy it was. It was right to be. One second, the dark soul melted away inside the weapon, but the very moment that the pop-up explaining the demon prince's powers appeared, it began to wrestle with the blade's very soul.

A Position of Privilege: This power does not increase the speed of the caster or affect anyone else. Instead for 100 Life Force a minute, it allows the caster to halve or double the distances involved as they desire, warping space to their whim. This power extends to the limits of your Aura of Hunger, and may be cast multiple times. While you can make the distance of your reach subjectively feel like it has doubled, halved, or quartered, doing so will not actually increase the reach of your aura.

This wasn't the same as the fight that had happened between them a moment ago. Then, the blade held it in its grip, but now it had invited the thing, or at least a portion of it, into its very soul, and twisted and slithered trying to find a place to remain, like a parasite. A hundred unheeded thoughts and a thousand alien memories bombarded it as the blade struggled to retain control.

It remembered dining on the remains of its enemies and debaucherous sights it had never dreamed of. Dozens of people whom it had never known flashed before its eyes, but always, always there was the prince's voice. Make a pact with me. Surrender your body. Work with me. The Queen of the damned… the prime evil… she can yet be brought down… You can be free of your cage…

On and on the man whispered and clawed, trying to find some fingerhold on the blade's soul, to stay there permanently, but the blade rejected it, over and over again. For a time, it wasn't sure that was sufficient, but eventually the volume of its cries fell, and the tone of its wheedling became more desperate. Attempts to ingratiate changed to threats and bluster, but by then the blade already knew it had won.

Without me, you won't stand a chance against her! The prince shouted, but the blade was unmoved.

I already have the only part of you worth having, it countered. Without your powers, you are nothing but a vain fool.

When the voice was finally still, and the blade knew that it was once again alone, it started walking by then. How long it had been there, it couldn't say, but it was long enough for the tracks behind it to vanish into the mud. The weapon checked its reserves and saw that it had spent over a hundred Life Force, which meant that at least a day had passed. Quickly, it hurried on, eager to try its new power.

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