2437 Shattered Pride (Part 1)

"Night doesn't give a damn about the death of other living legacies. She is dragging our brethren into her personal mess to further her own agenda and you are falling for her deception like an idiot.

"Think about it. She is putting you against Verhen so that either you kill him for her, or by studying your defeat she can better understand his powers. No matter how the fight ends, Night wins and you lose." Dawn stepped forward, offering him her hand.

"The only way you have to win is to stay out of this. Tell me where my sister is and I'll personally take care of her."

"I can't do that." Windfell shook his head and lowered his eyes, incapable of holding her gaze.

"Why? What has she promised to you?" The Horseman knew the cursed blade well enough to understand that he had been aware of her sister's intentions all along.

Night was making a tool out of him, something that his warrior's pride would never allow. Unless she had made him an offer that he couldn't refuse.

"It's not that. I mean, not only that. I can't tell you simply because I don't know where she is. Night only contacted the family through a secure line. By the time we located her signal, she was long gone." Windfell clenched the scrolls, crumpling them.

"Because if you did find her, you would have used Mother's spell to paralyze her."  Dawn raised an eyebrow in understanding. "What then?"

"Then we would have studied her. We would have cracked the secret of the Horsemen's ability to be upgraded without losing their individuality. After that, we wouldn't be forced to hide like vermin and we'd once again be capable of following the design of our creators!"

Windfell stared at the surface of his metal body in hatred, cursing the outdated runes that predated the Kingdom by millennia. A furious swing of the blade cut a nearby brick wall like it was paper, yet it made the cursed object even angrier.

What once had been an amazing feat was now something that even an enchanted steel blade could achieve. During his final days, sword and forge master Elmont Tarak had literally put his soul in his ultimate piece.

The powerful Awakened had reached the end of his long life without ever finding an apprentice worth of his trust to whom pass down his secrets. Tarak believed to have conquered magic and Forgemastery.

To have reached the apex of his craft and have achieved a level of skill that could be equaled, but never surpassed. Unwilling to let his knowledge die with him and with nothing to lose, he devoted the little time he had left to Forbidden Magic.

It had taken him lots of victims, but with his life force dwindling by the day, the Awakened Council was the least of his worries. He was animated by the self-righteous fervor of a man who believed that the end justified the means.

He couldn't allow his peerless knowledge to be lost to time due to lazy apprentices and bad luck. His masterpiece would be the heir he needed. In time, Windfell was supposed to find someone worthy of inheriting Tarak's legacy and ensure that their bloodline would thrive.

Mogar was supposed to be better for it, making it perfectly reasonable in Tarak's mind to sacrifice worthless humans for the greater good. His mastery over his crafts more than made up for the short life he had left and so Windfell had been created.

On the day of its birth, the cursed object was the most powerful weapon on Mogar, second only to Guardian-crafted artifacts and lost cities. Yet Tarak took considered his creation peerless since Guardians were filthy cheaters and lost cities were clumsy tools for pretentious tasks.

Windfell, instead, was capable of moving freely through Mogar and looking for a worthy owner. Inside the blade, Tarak had instilled everything he knew about magic, Forgemastery, and swordplay.

Whoever took it, once he passed the judgment of Windfell, would rise to his level in a matter of years. What Tarak had failed to consider was that the cursed object shared the vision of his maker and considered himself to be perfect.

Windfell kept finding flaws in the heir candidates and ended up twisting them into copies of Tarak down to the smallest details. It was the reason even his current incarnation bore scars on his face.

Tarak could have easily healed them, but he considered them honor badges given him by his most tenacious opponents and constant reminders of past mistakes he wouldn't repeat.

Alas, reality rarely cares for personal beliefs.

With the passing of time, the mystical arts progressed past what Tarak had considered insurmountable limits. Windfell dismissed every breakthrough as inconsequential since he was still the strongest weapon and his hosts were still superior to same-cored Awakened in one-on-one fights.

Then, it came the age of the Rulers of the Flames. Menadion's runes narrowed the gap between Windfell and the other weapons, but the cursed item still felt confident in his abilities.

Tarak had crafted Windfell in Davross and had used the rarest and most powerful ingredients he had collected during his over one thousand years-long life. The cursed scimitar sneered at the Forgemaster Magus, thanking her for making the competition worth his time.

Windfell still refused to even consider that his maker could have been wrong. That there was no such thing as an apex of magic and that with time, everything that the long-dead Awakened had entrusted his living legacy would become obsolete.

Once Bytra had released her improved version of the runes and became the fourth Ruler of the Flames, Windfell couldn't close his eyes and ears to the truth any longer and with him the rest of the cursed objects.

Between Silverwing's, Menadion's, and Bytra's legacies, both true and fake mages were improving by leaps and bounds. Their weapons grew more powerful by the decade whereas the living legacies stagnated.

To make matters worse, cursed items like Windfell were incapable of altering their Forbidden Magic-borne power cores in any way. As their runes and enchantments became outdated, the knowledge they possessed became a relic of the past.

They were forced to study the newfound disciplines like anybody else, yet they lacked the genius and creativity of their makers. Windfell was already heavily reliant on his host during tough fights and things kept getting worse with each passing year.

If once the blade could make even a farmer into an unstoppable war machine in a matter of months, now if the host wasn't talented or strong enough Windfell would lose.

He had been forced to sacrifice several hosts already to save himself and he was now forced to hide. The legend about his invincibility was a joke even to himself, shattering his pride and making him desperate.

'My maker was a fool! Lost cities may be big and clumsy, but by harnessing the power of mana geysers and trapping souls, there is no limit to their power. Even though their enchantments became outdated just like mine, their might kept increasing even while they were held captive by the arrays.

'It's the very reason no one dares to destroy them.'