Chapter 310: The Abomination (2)

“I know a great deal,” the Abomination said, its tone unhurried and certain. “When do you think I entered you? I am the only being in this world that understands your origin.”

It had lived inside Ketal since shortly after he arrived in this world, since the long-ago days when he was so weak that even Whitie would have crushed him without effort. From those fragile beginnings until now, the Abomination had been there, silent and coiled.

“I know you,” it continued. “If the others truly grasped what you are, they would beg for mercy and plead with you to keep your distance. I will not bow my head to you, nor will I whimper and cooperate to save myself. I will not do that. That is my pride.”

The words carried a strange note of self-satisfaction, as if it took honor from refusing what any prudent creature would choose.

“Do as you please,” Ketal said with a small shrug.

No matter its bluster, the Abomination lived inside him. It had fused with his Myst to the degree that calling it a part of him was hardly an exaggeration. It could not leave. It had no intention of leaving. Ketal’s Myst reserve had just stepped into the Transcendent realm, and he could manifest Aura without relying on it, so there was no need to force cooperation.

“Even so,” he added after a moment, “I will give you one warning. That is something you must keep to yourself.”

Ketal smiled, and the temperature in the air changed. It was not a metaphor. A settled chill flowed outward from him, the result of emotion concentrating so densely that it shaped the world’s skin. The Holy Sword took a sharp breath, because even it felt the shift and could not ignore it.

“Much as I dislike the admission, I am bound,” the Abomination said at last. “I will not step on the tail of the one who can shake me by the scruff.”

“That is enough,” Ketal said. “I am a resident of this world. That is all that matters.”

He hummed, set the matter aside, and returned to work. The Abomination muttered under its breath as if put upon.

“Twisted creature,” it said. “To think I ended up inside something like this.”

Ketal spent his days maintaining Aura and sharpening control. He remained in the holy land for two reasons. First, his mastery over externalizing Myst was still immature, and steady practice mattered more than anything else. Second, the matter of the Holy Sword needed resolution, which would require Hephaite to act directly. Until the God of the Forge arrived through Grombir, Ketal would wait here and train.

He looked up from his exercises and spoke into the quiet. “I have a question.”

“I already said I do not intend to answer anything,” the Abomination replied, bored.

“I was not asking you,” Ketal said, amused.

“Silence,” the Abomination said in a low voice that sounded like it was grinding its teeth.

“I was not speaking to you in the first place.”

“Be silent....”

Ketal snorted and let the matter drop, which only made the repetition funnier. For something that insisted it would not answer questions, it responded every time. He left it to sulk and addressed the other occupant within him.

“You said you have been trapped inside Ketal for a very long time. Before that, you were buried in the White Snowfield as an axe... It’s quite similar to my own situation, isn't it? I think you may have longed to talk with someone. Thinking of it that way, I feel a certain kinship with you,” the Holy Sword said toward the Abomination.

The Abomination’s emotions rippled, but it did not speak. It had judged that saying anything now would only put it at a disadvantage.

“This is awkward,” Ketal said, rubbing his chin. “Having both of you attached to me makes conversation messy.”

He could not attach a proper name to every sentence like a court herald and still expect to get anything done. He abandoned the thought and returned to the question he had intended for the Holy Sword.

“If your blade were restored,” he asked, “what would you want?”

“If I am honest,” the sword answered after a pause that sounded like thinking, “I do not want to be thrust into that place again. I do not want that. Not ever.”

It was the obvious answer. If the Holy Sword were planted again and used to select a worthy vessel, that success would also be its death. Its function had always been to devour a host who possessed a high affinity for holy power and serve as the conduit that dragged a god down to the Mortal Realm. That process erased the sword’s self without a trace. There was no reason it would desire that fate.

“I thought so,” Ketal said quietly.

Time passed, more practice rounds with aura passed with it, and the message finally came. Hephaite summoned him. The God of the Forge descended to the Mortal Realm through Grombir and spoke with a gravelly voice that creaked at the edges like old leather.

“Apologies for the wait,” Hephaite said. “Everything is ready.”

The Holy Sword made a small, strangled sound.

“Oh no,” it muttered, and Hephaite chuckled.

They looked at Ketal. For a beat, they said nothing. Then their eyes narrowed with interest, like a master looking at a metal that did not behave like anything on his shelves.

“Hold,” Hephaite said. “You feel different. Something is there that was not there before.”

“So a god can sense it,” Ketal said. “Grombir did not notice.”

Ketal glanced down toward his own sternum, where the Abomination coiled like a shadow behind bone and muscle.

“What about a greeting?” he asked lightly. “I imagine the two of you have some prehistory.”

“Why would I?” the Abomination said without the slightest hint of respect.

The sound of Hephaite’s power rose like a sudden storm. The vault filled with the clangor of blades coming into being.

Steel sang. The god’s authority poured out of Grombir’s body and took form as weapon after weapon, every pattern the world had ever known, every thrusting point, every cutting edge. Spears, swords, axes, hammers, picks, glaives, and knives circled Ketal from every direction as if the air itself had sprouted teeth. Hephaite was not thinking. They were reacting with something closer to a primate’s instinctive recoil at the sight of a snake. To the gods, the Abomination was that kind of thing.

However, the Abomination’s tone did not change.

“You bring out toys,” it said. “Put them away.”

“Calm down,” he said, and he meant it. Ketal did not flinch. The blades hung close enough to cut hair, and he looked as relaxed as if he were a man standing at a window, watching rain slide down glass.

Hephaite stared at Ketal for two long breaths and then let out a slow exhale.

“So this is how it is,” they said. “You did not merely feed it strength. A portion of it is inside you. Since when?”

“It says, since I picked up this axe,” Ketal answered.

“So, since you were weak. And nothing went wrong.”

“I did not even notice it until recently,” Ketal said.

“You did not notice?” they said, their composure quivering. “With the Abomination inside you?”

It was impossible. If that sentence was true, two explanations existed, and neither was comforting. Either Ketal had been so foolish that he could not assess his own state. Or he was something that made even the Abomination a lesser weight on the scale. The latter was absurd. The Abomination had once darkened the world itself. Even if only a portion remained, nothing could surpass it.

“Is that truly so?” Hephaite asked Ketal.

“Yes,” Ketal said, and nodded.

A different thought tugged at Ketal as he stood there. Quests that had always chimed at the edge of his battles when the Demon Realms were involved were quiet, so quiet they might not exist. The silence pricked at him. He let the curiosity rest for now and asked Hephaite a question instead.

“Do you know what authority the Abomination holds?”

Hephaite’s face lost color.

“It kills,” they said, and the word did not feel like breath. “It kills to the root. It leaves wounds that will not disappear.”

“A killing authority...,” Ketal murmured.

If so, the Quests that belonged to the Demon Realms could not attach to it. The Abomination did not belong to that structure. Hephaite stood there a long time, breathing evenly, and only after the long count did the tension wash out of their shoulders.

“Are you able to control it?” they said.

“There seems to be no problem,” Ketal said.

“Then I will trust you,” Hephaite said. “I knew you were an oddity, but this is beyond odd. You are the most alien thing I have seen.”

“You accept that more easily than I expected,” Ketal said, confessing a little surprise. Hephaite had flared and filled the chamber with weapons, and then they had stopped. They had not tried to force a confrontation.

“I thought we would fight,” Ketal admitted.

“You have done much on the Mortal Realm,” Hephaite said. “You have helped others. You have fought evil. You have stood on our side. If you could not control it, none of this would have been possible. You have shown us your conduct and the results of your conduct. There is no reason to oppose you.”

Ketal felt that response land and settle. He had worked to hold himself cleanly and to act as a part of the world. Hearing that work reflected back at him struck him hard enough that emotion stretched across his face before he could smooth it.

Hephaite tilted their head as if shaking off a fog.

“It is remarkable,” they said, and their voice turned dry with an old irritation. “The Abomination should have died in that place rather than scuttle on like a roach. What a pity.”

The Abomination did not bother to answer. Hephaite shook themselves once and returned to the purpose of their descent.

“We have wandered from the path,” they said. “To the matter at hand. The restoration of the Holy Sword is possible.”

It was possible to return the blade to the condition it had held before it snapped in Ketal’s hands.

“Planting it again is another matter,” Hephaite continued. “The Holy Sword has acknowledged you as its master. It cannot now go out and find another. It itself now has a clear sense of self and would refuse.”

Ketal considered that and made a small sound. It matched his expectation. The Holy Sword belonged to him. Even if it did not, he would have refused to let it be used to drag a god down by erasing its own mind.

“So I return to a simpler question,” Hephaite said. “Do you need the Holy Sword?”

“If you ask if I need it,” Ketal said, “I would say I do. I do not possess everything it knows.”

𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The Holy Sword carried extensive knowledge about gods and demons that Ketal did not have. That mattered.

“That means, as a weapon, you do not need it,” Hephaite concluded.

“I do not,” Ketal said. “I have this.”

He patted the axe at his hip. It was part of the Abomination. It had never chipped or bent even once since he first took it up. Now that he could shape Aura, the Holy Sword had little meaning as a blade.

“Then I understand,” Hephaite said. “We can proceed as I planned. Give me the Holy Sword.”

Ketal watched him for the span of a measured breath, then handed over the broken blade. The Holy Sword keened in Hephaite’s grip.

“Ah—!” it said, and the sound cracked like thin ice underfoot.

“Quiet,” Hephaite said, and the word landed like a tap of a hammer.

They looked at the Holy Sword with an expression that held too many emotions to count. When they spoke, their voice was lowered farther than before.

“I made you,” Hephaite said. ”It is not wrong to call me your father. Yet the reason I made you was to use you as a vessel, not to treasure you.”

The Holy Sword’s function had been to find a mortal with high divine affinity and consume that body in order to manifest a god on the Mortal Realm. In that process, the Holy Sword’s own self always vanished completely. It was, in one sense, an instrument created to die.

“I made you to kill you,” Hephaite said. “Do not think I took that lightly. I did not.”

They were the God of the Forge. No craftsman with any soul could be indifferent to their creations. To make a sanctified relic like the Holy Sword demanded their full attention and their best heart. They had cared as much as a god could care, and then they had accepted the cost as necessary for a larger purpose.

“That purpose has fallen away,” Hephaite said. “You are no longer needed for that end.”

“Are you going to throw me away?” the Holy Sword asked them, and the question sounded more hurt than afraid.

“No,” Hephaite said. “There is something I have wanted to try for a very long time. This is a good chance.”

The Holy Sword rose into the air.

“Come,” Hephaite said.

The god’s authority unfurled, and the forge’s twin forces of making and refining wrapped around the broken blade. The snapped edge knit. The surface smoothed and gleamed. That work continued, and then it went beyond simple restoration.

“Oh,” the Holy Sword said, and the syllable climbed into astonishment. “Oh...!”

The blade changed. The shape shifted. The whole became something else. Ketal’s eyes widened despite himself. The transformation followed an intelligible direction and aimed at a single form. Five slender fingers extended. A wrist, a forearm, and a shoulder flowed into existence as if hammered out of moonlight. Hair erupted like a spill of thin silver wire and drifted in a wind that was not there.

“A-ah,” came a voice, not as thought but as sound that resonated from a throat.

The floating figure touched down with a careful step. She blinked, and the movement was awkward in a way that made sense for something new to a body.

“What...?” the Holy Sword said, and the word rose like a question from a child’s mouth.

The Holy Sword looked down at her hands and moved her wrists as if testing joints. When the Holy Sword had been a blade, it had been a thing that someone else moved. Now she stood on feet that belonged to her and listened to muscles report. She looked like a young adolescent girl, perhaps in the early or middle years of the teenaged span, slight of build and light on her feet, with silver hair and eyes the same shade.

Ketal whistled softly.

“Now that I think about it, this is not as unusual as it looks,” he said, half to himself. An Ego Sword that gained a body was a fantasy tradition old enough to have pages worn thin by thumbs. Seeing it done by the god who had made the sword, still pressed on the breath.

“Hephaite,” the Holy Sword said with a small, uncertain bow of her head.

“I grant you a body,” Hephaite said. “Do not be a tool for gods or evil any longer. Walk the world freely by your own will. That is my final gift to you.”

Then, they turned to Ketal.

“And I must apologize to you,” they said. “In a sense, I forced a change on something that belonged to you.”

“No,” Ketal said, and his smile was bright with plain delight. “I am grateful. I just watched a sword become human. That was worth a front-row seat.”

His expression left no room for doubt. Hephaite huffed a laugh despite themselves.

“You are, as I said, unusual,” they said. “Thankfully, your kind of unusual is good for us. We look forward to a long relationship.”

“We do,” Ketal said. “Let us keep it that way for a long time.”

Hephaite nodded and withdrew. The god departed Grombir’s body, and the dwarf reeled as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and replaced all at once. He reached for a table to steady himself.

“All right,” Grombir said, and his voice creaked. “It seems the discussion went—”

He stopped. His eyes had found the newcomer, and the rest of his sentence fell away. The Holy Sword, which a moment ago had been a broken blade, raised a hand and gave him an awkward little wave.

“H-hello,” she said.

“What is going on?” Grombir said, and his mouth stayed open. He looked exactly as foolish as the Holy Sword had a moment before, which felt like balance returning to the room.