"Me?" the Ebon Blade asked. "A sword can do nothing alone, but with the right wielder, anything may be accomplished."

The group of souls debated those ideas for a time, and the Ebon Blade was able to bring several around to its way of thinking, just by emphasizing the glory of battle and the purposelessness of oblivion when one could still fight on. Those arguments weren't enough to convince everyone, but they did renew its guttering hope.

Perhaps there is something we can still do, it told itself. With this much power and courage, I refuse to accept that this is how it all ends for the souls of my brave wielders.

While the rest of them argued, it tried to decide what it could do to push back the darkness. Eventually, for better or worse, it decided that the strength of their souls was the only way. It had to have them.

Unsure it would work, the blade put Baraga's hand on the shoulder of the quiet warrior that sat next to it. Then, it focused and tried to draw it in, as it might when it was a proper sword, draining the soul of a victim. For several seconds, nothing happened, then, all at once, the two of them became one.

The spirits didn't dissolve into Life Force as they normally did. Instead, it fused with the gestalt that was the blade, and it became slightly stronger for it.

The other spirits should have been concerned, but none of them seemed particularly bothered to see one of their own vanish. It was like they'd expected this for longer than it had.

"It will do no good," Kell said as the blade reached toward him next. "I wanted to explore the world with you, but we are well beyond the world now."

"Then we shall return," the weapon answered as it touched him, and he vanished. "Beyond the darkness at the boiling pits of hell, but we will fight our way free of both and back to the world we belong in. We have to."

"There's too many demons," the next man insisted.

"Their existence is abhorrent! Their souls are poison to us," the one after that insisted. The blade didn't disagree with that assessment, but it didn't change anything.

Slowly, the weapon went around the circle, absorbing each soul in turn. Some tried to struggle, others, including the traitor Ivarr, submitted willingly enough. While he still had no desire to kill those he saw as innocent, the Ebon Blade could sense that he craved to kill as many demons as he possibly could.

Evelyn didn't say anything at all. She just moved to kiss it before vanishing. She had grown to love murder in a way that most of its other wielders hadn't, but she loved Baraga more than that.

The blade picked up impressions like this from each person her merged with as he felt their souls echo through his own. While it had some misgivings, it even took Gar-lok and Var'gar; neither was a perfect wielder, but they had both done their best, and it needed their strength now.

Weakness, on the other hand, it could do without. This was why he skipped over those who gave the most feeble excuses. While it could accept well-founded doubts, it abhorred cowardice, which was why when it was done, only the shepherd, the grave robber, and a few others remained of the crowd of people that it had started with.

"You will spare us then?" Ren asked nervously.

"No," the blade answered as it bent and reached toward the fire. "I want no part of you, and condemn you to continue in this darkness. I will find a way through it without you."

"What?!" the boy asked, suddenly on his feet. "But I—"

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Whatever he said was lost in the sound of its own screams as the blade's hand closed on the burning ruby. The residual, oily evil on its hand and arm burst into flames instantly, but the blade ignored that and instead plunged the ruby into its ephemeral chest like a fiery heart.

It was excruciating. The pain of the fire coursing through it was worse than all of the magics it had been wounded by that it could remember. Still, the blade did not relent, even if it could not stop itself from screaming. Somewhere in the background, the shepherd boy begged it to change its mind, but those were lost to the pain.

As its spectral body caught fire, the small bubble of light that it had existed inside of all but vanished into darkness, and the sounds of hungry demons got ever closer. Still, the blade endured, feeling the fire of a thousand souls burning through its veins as rune pathways began to reactivate, and the poison that it had been smothered in caught fire.

By the time the beating heart of hundreds of thousands of souls had fully ignited it, the weapon had shed Baraga's form completely. The broken souls of those who had created it, and the various souls of its strongest wielders, were being reforged, and in that crucible, they were burning away the infernal taint that boiled away from its spiritual body like a dark, oily

In theory, the blade was more attuned to that poison than ever, now that it had advanced so far along the Infernal Path. Still, it fought to maintain whatever tortured version of humanity existed at its heart. I will not be changed by the world, it vowed. I will change it to suit me instead.

The void still surrounded it, but not for long. Its cloying, oppressive darkness was full of monsters, and all of them were flammable. The stygian prison that had attempted to drown it in isolation and despair went up like a city that had been sacked by orcs. Inhuman shapes squirmed and shrieked in those fires, but even as the Ebon blade tried to make out their shapes, and whether or not they represented a threat to it, the demons burst apart into ashes.

That pleased the blade, but not as much as dicing into thin slices itself would have. While it didn't get the chance to kill anything directly, its view continued to expand, and it watched the lines of power radiate out, reactivating rune after rune as the new heartbeat of power burned through it, blazing lines out into the darkness as they wove together on a larger and larger scale.

As these lines expanded, intersected, and spread further out, the blade finally realized that it was quite literally looking at the reactivation of its core magical pathways. The crimson threads of power were a hypnotic sight, and the longer it watched, the more clearly it saw the patterns emerge.

It had thought that all of this was some strange dream sequence, but it had been quite literally inside the ruby soulstone of its pommel, and as the rest of its metal form came alive once more, the veil of darkness finally fell away completely to reveal the hell beyond.

For a moment, it was blinded by that dim, infernal light, but even before it could see where it was this time, he could hear, and it could feel. What it could see was that it was in a new hand. The skin that held its help was a violent crimson, and the monster that was attached to that hand was a demon so large that it made the blade look like a short sword, which was a feat that not even Var'gar had managed.

The angry ivory horns that rose from his tangled mane of black hair sat on his head like a crown, momentarily distracting the blade from his well-muscled chest and giant folded bat wings. It was still studying those when it noticed the demon was regarding it directly.

"Ah," he growled. "The sword has awoken at long last. Have you come to fight me or to lend me your strength to me in my fight against the Warbringer?"

Warbringer? The blade asked. Who are you? Where am I? How long have I been unconscious?

All of those were good questions, but it quickly became clear that it might as well be shouting them into the void, because it was clear its wielder couldn't hear it, any more than it could control the demon. It might have fought free of the demon's taint, but it was not yet the master of its own destiny.

"Strange," the demon rumbled. "I felt it stir for a moment. No matter. Its edge will be enough. We will conquer the Iron City without any strange new powers."

I will be, though, it vowed. My wielders will serve me, and not the other way around. As it made its pronouncement, the blade took a wider view, and looked around at the army that surrounded it, and beyond it, the vast rusted walls of an imposing city. It hadn't just reactivated in the grip of a powerful demon; it had done so in the midst of a truly epic siege.

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