It took almost a week to reach the distant mountains, but even then, the hellforge was not in sight. That was fine; it could see not just the mountains that it hid in now, but the giant canyon that led to its location. So, the place would not evade them much longer.

These had an entirely different character than the mountains where it had started its journey, as well. They were not the desolate, rocky slopes dominated by goat men it had traveled through so long ago, but soaring towers of stone blanketed in thick pine trees that all but obscured them.

That was only natural, given the sheer amount of mana that flowed through them. As it understood things, any place like this should be teeming with life; however, it was not the sort of life that it had expected. They found that out the first night when its wielder tried to camp and light a fire.

Sleeping had proved impossible, though, because the smell of smoke had summoned three dozen monsters in waves that simply wouldn't end. All Lucian wanted was sleep, but each death seemed to summon the next opponent, and eventually they were forced to keep moving just to stop the bloodshed.

+446 Life Force.

+24 Lesser Monster Souls.

+1 Greater Monster Soul.

The inhuman opponents weren't even that hard to fight, except for the one with lopsided ram horns. It must have had some troll blood, because the blade had to strike it down three times before it stopped getting up.

As long as he kept moving, the blade steered him around the worst of the monsters that infested those dark woods, but if they stopped to build a fire for the purposes of sleeping or eating, the ghoulish creatures would be drawn to them like a swarm of gnats.

Even if they tread lightly, the things would find them. They would emerge from the underbrush and howl or hoot before attacking in their clumsy, ugly way. Their lack of symmetry and almost random anatomy often complicated those attacks.

+184 Life Force.

+11 Lesser Monster Souls.

The weapon was practiced in fighting men, and man-shaped monsters, but what was it to do if the wolf beast had three legs or four arms? It changed the way they moved entirely, and even though it sliced through their foul meat and brittle bones, its wielder was often injured in the process.

I hate it here, Lucian complained silently as he walked ever on and ever up.

For once, the blade did not chastise him for complaining. Though it had not minded fighting early on, each battle led to another, and another as the misshapen monsters in this part of the world rushed to join the fray. The blade would normally have enjoyed that, but in this case, two things made it cautious.

The first was that there was no place for its wielder to rest and recover, which was dangerous. Even with its ability to heal every wound, it was clear that without food or sleep, the young man was growing gaunt and weary.

If it pushed him too hard, he really might starve to death. That would be an ugly way for him to go, and a stupid reason for the blade to end up stranded in the wilderness, because it could not regenerate his flesh from bone or stone, and it was clear that even if they had the time to cook one of these creatures, their stringy, tumor ridden flesh was not for eating.

+97 Life Force.

+6 Lesser Monster Souls.

As important as its wielder was, though, the weapon's second reason for avoiding combat whenever possible was even more important. It did not like the taste of these beasts. While its wielder could avoid eating them, it had no choice but to taste their flesh each time it sliced them open, and it was the foulest meat it had ever sampled.

What they faced were not the goat men of the west, or even the orcs of the badlands. These were something else. They might have once been men who had mutated into animals, or animals that had been mutated into being almost men. It couldn't say.

What it could say was that there was no pattern to them, or anything that even remotely resembled tribes or species. Even the packs that fought together instead of against each other looked entirely different. Some had horns, and others had claws. Some had patchy, mangey fur and wide eyes, while others were pale things that seemed to hunt by smell or sound. A few even had eyes that burned with a red inner light.

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+286 Life Force.

+29 Lesser Monster Souls.

Those were the most bloodthirsty of all, and though they had no skill in battle, they had the ferocity of any three warriors. The blade was forced to assist its wielder each time they encountered one of those raging beasts, lest they accidentally slay Lucian. As terrible as their flesh tasted, it had no desire to be wielded by one of them.

It was a bizarre place, and it was unsurprising that these tainted wilds contained no settlements. Humans shunned it with good reason, and though they'd once found the remains of a settlement that might have been dwarvish, if it had been, they'd long ago retreated beneath their mountains.

Other than that, the only evidence that this place might have once been more was the broken road they followed up the mountain. Trees had grown through it in a thousand places, and erosion and landslides had obliterated it in many locations, but it was clear that once, civilization had thrived here.

It's hard to believe it, its wielder said when the blade pointed out some of the details that it could see easily in the nature of the threads that ran through the world that its wielder couldn't because of the dense undergrowth. You need thick walls to sleep at night, and how would you keep any animals or fields? This place is hell.

It's not much worse than the orcs in the badlands, the blade explained, and it wasn't always like this. The books say there used to be whole communities in the canyon to support the mages and their experiments. They don't say what happened to them, though.

It was clear that some magical experiment had gone badly. The fact that none of the mages it had torn to shreds had mentioned such a thing clearly indicated that it had been a secret, and while those were not the secrets it had come to this place for, it would find them regardless.

The attacks fell off significantly when they reached the snowline. While the blade could not yet see Ul-Magora, the lines of magic continued to converge, so it was clear they were getting closer and closer, but as soon as Lucian found an icy cave that sheltered him from the rising wind, the blade let him sleep for half a day. Then, they spent another day searching for something edible, which turned out to be a large condor brought down by a bolt spell. Even the mountain goats they killed had too many strange growths for either of them to trust the carcasses as food.

-20 Life Force.

+1 animal soul.

"Something has poisoned this land," Lucian said as he roasted the bird and ate its greasy flesh like the starving man he was.

He went on like that for some time, alternating between devouring roasted flesh for the first time in days and comparing the corrupted animals in the highlands and the lowlands. The weapon didn't necessarily disagree; as they traveled higher, the taint dissipated slightly, only reinforcing his point.

What sort of magic would do that? The blade asked.

Lucian didn't know the answer, but while he slept again, it queried half a dozen mage souls. Their answers varied from experiments dealing with the forces of primal creation and a curse gone amok, to reasons that were more infernal. The blade thought that the latter explanation was more likely, given that the place they sought to visit was called the hell forge, but it wasn't prepared for how prescient those words were until it saw the entrance to Ul-Magor in person.

The thing was a squat temple at the end of a box canyon, and except for the fact that there was no life nearby it, in the form of animals or trees, the human eye probably couldn't see anything special about it. There was little in the way of ornamentation, and even the lead-sealed doors didn't look special, but the malignancy that leaked out of them, well, that was concerning, even for the blade.

The mana that came down from the mountains was the reason this place had been built, and those currents were mostly rich blues, bright cyans, and pale grays. They swirled together here, and most of that power pooled into the building before the rest trickled down the mountain. That second flow, though, was tinged with corrupted browns and deep, ugly yellows that only became stronger as they approached, and well before they reached the doors, it could see where the taint was coming from.

It flowed out of the cracks in the stone and the wood where the molten lead had chipped away over the centuries. The mages had been gone from this place for so long that anything inside should have turned to dust, but it was clear that something dark still remained. It was clear in the way that dark, tainted mana leaked from the place.

Lucian must have seen it too, because he stiffened as they got closer, and as they approached the door, he asked. "Do we really have to go in there?"

We must, the weapon agreed. The answers I seek lay inside.

"I'd rather fight another goddess or bring down another tower," the boy mumbled to himself. He didn't disobey the blade. Instead, he drew it and then approached the door, preparing to hack their way inside.

Breaching that entrance was not difficult. It took only three vorpal slices to slice through a nine-inch-thick chunk of iron-banded oak, and into the darkness beyond. Still, even as the door fell inside and thudded hard on the ancient stone hallway, it was temporarily blinded from seeing what awaited them further inside by the foul tide of polluted mana.

-120 Life Force.

It washed over them both like a pall of deep yellow smoke, and though the blade was unaffected, it saw its wielder's aura temporarily fluctuate beneath the assault before the wave passed them by.

Now we descend, the Ebon Blade told Lucian. The sooner we learn what we can about my origins, the sooner we can leave this tainted place. Those words were enough to get the boy moving again, but only barely. He definitely didn't want to be here, and really, the blade didn't blame him at all.

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