Soul of Blades - Interlude - Clone: part 1 (Patreon)

Terror. From the beginning, it had known that those with life, the living ones, were destined to be afraid of something – predators, the flame that hung in the sky, the mother of nature, the shadows, each other – just as the living ones eradicated one fear, they would unwittingly birth a new one.

Crafted from the blackest metal, smelted and instilled with the blood, essence, anguish and spirit of countless souls. Millennia of demonic battles, history, torment, and anger were etched into its very existence. The clone felt as though it were formed to personify fear itself.

And it loved it.

It did not have a desire to just kill its enemy; it wanted to consume. Assimilate. Grow.

Invade their minds, their strength, their groups, their unity. It wished to shatter, divide, hunt, and annihilate.

The clone did not simply "believe" or "feel" these things; rather, it was the truth inscribed into its creation across countless battlefields and a myriad of blood, and lives devoured.

And lately, it had absorbed two new lives, or rather, been fused with them.

The thoughts and feelings of its creator, its core personality, "Alex", circulated within it. It attempted to resist, but it was as futile as trying not to breathe, not that the clone could comprehend the concept of respiration.

Before, as a basic low-grade growth-type sword, it harboured no thoughts, no feelings. Only an urge to feast on blood and souls. It had grown with every kill, but had no senses, no way to perceive or comprehend anything.

Since its transformation into a being akin to the living ones, yet different, it had been made more. Its creator's essence flowed through it, the overwhelming urge to serve, obey, listen, and feel everything its creator experienced.

Despite its resistance, It revelled in these newfound sensations. It desired more blood, more flesh, more souls.

Like the last one, the warrior, the ‘cultivator’. It had never tasted anything like it. A single drop of its blood had surpassed thousands.

The clone craved more. More death, more devastation, more consumption. More cultivators. And its creator, the being it was modelled after, would surely provide it with more. As long as that continued, it would serve.

A blade, a demonic sword. A weapon of devastation. A weapon of destruction and savagery. It existed to kill.

And the sword-clone, named ‘Eclipse’ demonstrated this once again as it hurled a man head-first into the rocky ground, bellowing a screeching roar through contorting and undulating its metallic flesh. These ‘living ones’ looked different from its master, its core personality, its original. They resembled airborne beasts, but walked on two legs and brandished weapons like its original.

careful not to dispatch all of them too cleanly. It would be problematic if it couldn't consume them as they wailed. The others needed to understand their impending fates.

Breaking away from the defeated enemy, Eclipse redirected its attention to more "Prey", another group of twelve ahead of the main force. Eclipse roared again, using its limited might to crash through a tree, positioning itself right behind the dozen opponents. Without missing a beat, Eclipse launched forward, drawing both its sword and claws high in a wild savage slash that felled one enemy before using its momentum to tackle another serpent-like figure, its clawed right hand following up to pulverize its face completely. The two nearby foes cried out; one fell on his backside while the other swung his sword with a wild scream. Rising, Eclipse calmly leapt over the swing, touching the blade with its own, using the overpowered enemys strength to send it into a wild spin, before using the spin to eviscerate the second enemy's face with its razor-sharp claws. Yanking the blade free from the collapsing body, Eclipse marched forward, barely pausing to bite the head off a whimpering living-one with its shark-like teeth before hurling the dead serpent-mans sword like a giant knife into the chest of a impossibly fast spear-wielding assailant, cleaving his head in two.

The explosion of blood caused the enemy, the living ones surrounding it to stumble back in terror.