I remained silent.
She was right. I was operating on anger, arrogance, and bravado. Her calm experience undid my bluster and stubbornness with ease. She held onto me as she walked me back to my bed. Mercy came into the room and approached. Calisto held up a hand stopping her.
“Your sword,” Calisto said, looking at me. “Retrieve it.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and caught my breath, looking over to where my weapon was. Perdition lay on the floor where I had dropped it. I made to let go of Calisto and go pick up my sword, but she held fast to my arm with a grip of steel and shook her head.
“What? I’m going to get it,” I said, trying to remove my arms from her vise-like grip. “Let go.”
“No. Retrieve it from here.”
“From here?” I asked, looking across the floor at where Perdition rested. “It’s too far.”
“If it is, then you don’t deserve to wield it,” Calisto said, her voice as hard as her grip. “Retrieve it…from here. Or lose it. Your choice.”
NINE
She didn’t know what she was asking.
I had barely managed to manifest my weapon, and now she wanted me to reabsorb it from across the room. What she was asking was impossible.
“You probably think it’s impossible,” Calisto said, echoing my thoughts. “If you drop your blade in battle, do you think you will have the opportunity to run to its location and pick it up?”
“I expect that if I drop my blade in battle, I’d resort to other methods of staying alive.”
“With a normal blade, I would agree,” Calisto said. “With your blade, leaving it on a battleground would prove to be a tremendous liability.”
“A liability?”
“You still don’t understand?” Calisto asked. “You wield a dark blade. Now you and your blade have been infused with the Jade Demon. You…are…linked. What do you think happens if your blade is taken from you now?”
“I’m assuming nothing good?”
“Perceptive of you,” she answered with a short nod. “If the Unholy get their hands on your blade, do you think they will just return it in a spirit of fair play?”
“No,” I admitted. “That would be foolish.”
“Do you think any enemy you face will allow you that luxury?”
“Thinking like that will get me killed,” I said after a few moments, keeping my gaze fixed on Perdition. “But you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I don’t?”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “It was nearly impossible for me to even form Perdition in this new state”—I glanced over at where my blade rested—“and now you want me to get it from over there.”
Calisto released me, placed her hands together, and separated them as she reformed her blade. The next moment, she extended her arm, throwing her blade into the wall across the room. It buried itself into the stone with a resonant thunk and vibrated in place.
“You mean you find it difficult to retrieve your blade from a distance,” she asked. “That is your problem.”
“Great, now you really sound like Gan,” I said. “What is my problem?”
“That you think there is distance between you and your blade. You keep saying it’s over there when it isn’t.”
“Unless my problem is with my eyes, I’m seeing both our blades across the room at this moment. You expect me to believe my blade isn’t sitting on the floor way over there?”
Without taking her eyes off me, Calisto rotated a wrist and her blade transformed into blue and white energy. The stream of light shot across the room and into her hand, materializing into a sword again, which she swung around in one smooth motion, stopping as the blade rested against my neck.
“Yes, I do,” Calisto said with a nod as her sword disappeared into her hand. “Aside from the strategic aspects, think about the consequences if an ally tried to pick up your sword in the heat of battle. Their death would be immediate with Perdition in this state, and completely your fault. Very few would be immune to its effects.”
I looked over at my sword. Black smoke was wafting up from the blade, tinged with green energy. It had been dangerous before the Jade Demon was fused with it; now it was beyond lethal.
If someone did try to pick it up, it would be the last thing they attempted to do before the power within Perdition obliterated them where they stood. There was no way I could believe my weapon was meant for anything else but death and destruction.
That was its purpose—that was my purpose.
Something inside me fell into place. Something dark, but welcome. I was aligned to the sword now. I may not have had the strength to use it, but I knew what it was for—I knew what I had to do.
“I won’t ever let that happen,” I said, determined. “No one is going to lose their life that way.”
“Really? You can barely form it now. What’s to stop someone from picking it up if it ends up on the ground? Your strongly worded warning?”
I glared at her.
“Not everyone has your skill, and I’m not usually this weak,” I answered. “It’s not that easy to strip me of my weapon.”
“The enemies seeking you out now are not only fearsome, but skilled. If you are operating under the illusion that they lack the ability to strip you of your weapon, I may as well end you now and save you the agony of a horrible death.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Confidence and ignorance are vastly different things,” Calisto said. “I will not have you be exposed to danger under the impression that you are now invulnerable because of the Jade Demon. Never forget, your mother was killed. She didn’t retire of old age…Hunters rarely do.”
“The only way someone will lose their life to Perdition is if I take it,” I told her, my voice dark. “No one is going to accidentally meet their end
