It was said the dark swords were forged by the fiend Lich himself, and that Dutbangr, his final blade, was more terrible than the dark powers of all the others combined.
The former of course was pure myth. The blades had been forged by a mortal man, one twisted to the point of being labeled a fiend, but by design, but not by nature. His mind was likely devoured by the blades he forged, each one leaving him with a little less of his humanity until it was gone altogether. The blades themselves were forged from bones of a zombie dragon the man had stumbled across deep in the forest, and infused the bones with a magic that leeched the life from the user to take it again tenfold from the victim.
The latter assertion, however, was entirely true. The dark blades were originally forged for the use of the zombified legions. They would pass the swords one to another after feeding their unlife into the blade, cutting down wave after wave of the living. It was a perfect situation. If captured, the swords' dark energy was next to useless against their former wielders. Dutbangr, however, was in a class by itself, requiring only the slightest of grazes to pull life from a body. So potent was its magic that the first life it took was that of its creator, who accidentally (as told in somewhat truer version of the legend at least) nicked himself before the blade was even finished. Those who found it sensed its power, taking it just as it was, rough and dark and entirely lacking the dubious beauty of the lesser blades.
Its reign of terror was a long and glorious one, an almost unending cycle devouring the lives of its enemies and the souls of its bearers.
Some lasted longer than others, clinging to morals or love or honor, but they all fell in the end. Then they would wander, in a vain attempt to feed the insatiable lust for blood that flooded from the sword to become their very being until some hero came to put a stop to the menace and unwittingly began the cycle once again.
A nation was on the rise, one that believed in might and using whatever tools were available to come by it. Slowly but surely it collected the dark swords, creating a strictly regulated fraternity to prepare bearers and slay those who fell to their common temptation. Along with men who flew with the dragons these knights conquered their land for their liege and protected the land from those who would threaten it as much through the dark stories whispered on stormy nights as through the strength of their arms and their blades.
This arrangement suited Deathbringer just fine. Freedom was nothing but an abstract ideal so long as it had purpose, and method allowed it the richest battlefields and souls primed for the taking.
Nothing stood out about this knight until the aftermath, and even then Deathbringer could find no explanation for this break in all that had been certain. War and its causes were eternal, so how could this man have simply put the blade aside?
Whatever with ill-formed ideal or hypocrisy, Deathbringer was stashed away, not to be used at some later time but because a nation of faith such as this believed itself pure enough to remain above war and conflict.
Purity, the blade whispered as withered hands wrapped it in cloth and hid it away. Is it purity to deny one's heart its desire for power and blood?
And yet the man had left without a backwards glance.
But such pedestrian methods would not keep the truths of human nature locked away for long, Deathbringer knew. It was merely a matter of time.
The blade had nearly shuddered in delight when it was once again drawn from that infernal box to be put to its proper use. But then, it had always been aware that they would come for it eventually. It knew all the secrets of the darker side of the human heart; there was no way such a glorious tool as itself could be left unused for long.
Its bearer this time was little more than a child, barely into adulthood with a soul already full of indecision and doubt. Oh yes, this would be a long and glorious run, a grand return and revenge and reminder to the world's fools of how pointless the gesture of the last misguided miscreant had been. Utterly pointless, to try to purge the darkness from humanity by locking it away. The sword itself was merely a reminder of what had always, always been there.
The child bearing it had been waylaid and turned its power on the belligerent wildlife instead of the mages traveling with him. But Deathbringer was patient by nature. Why not be, when a bloodbath was ensured and it had, almost literally, all the time in the world?
And so it tolerated the man's lack of initiative and common sense and he battled his way through hordes of the undead, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was his call they were answering. The time was passed subtly, whispering back the child's own fears and doubts as undeniable fact.
There was light, and a change. Within the mirrored chamber the child was suddenly open and willing. Elation and bliss. At last it could once against fulfill its intended purpose, playing through its cycle.
But a shining figure barred its way, no matter how he was bloodied and battered. Long practiced patience gave way to frustration, then rage, as the figure continued to stand.
The light had been a complete shock, enough to momentarily stifle the rage before bringing it back stronger than ever. Its willing host was naught but a shell, and the shining figure whose bloodied corpse should be staining the mirrored floor was now merely an image and just as inaccessible. Deathbringer screamed, anger and betrayal resonating through the man-shaped husk still holding its handle.
The blade fumed for ages, or what were probably ages, staring out at its crystalline prison. Occasionally it would notice that it was shrinking, consolidating its power and bloodlust into purest spherical crystal within the chamber's mirrored shell.
Of all its numerous experiences, of its long and exalted legacy of blood and war and betrayal, it was its ultimate defeat in the mirrored chamber that weighed on the former-blade the most. How could that child have trapped it so effectively? War was eternal, and Deathbringer with it.
This thought train was a comfort, reassuring the sword of the infallibility of its logic without realizing it had been in doubt.
The world had grown around it once again, the mountain having worn away to so much rubble and the sword-now-sphere far below it. Winding underground passageways came to reach its resting place, tendrils of malice floating up from the depths along with fragments of human thought, further reassurance of the ultimate stasis of human nature. It was only a matter of time.