Repentance

Part 5

Somehow, causing himself great pain, Antaeus procured bloodstone iron, which he gave to the Ivorywood trees as a vinter waters his vines. Many of the trees, no less sensitive than any other living thing, sickened, wilted and died, but one survived. The grueling process however left it in a weakened state, it's once pure white bark graying and shifting to a dark crimson color.

Antaeus wove this tree around with spells, with words older perhaps than Man, and charms that reached further even than the Ivorywood's roots. The tree grew strong again, and this time poisonous bloodstone ran through it like sap. The caretakers of the sacred garden seeing their charges blighted, fled and they told the Confessor. Seeing the end nearing, he would not stop his son. What use was Ivorywood now or the crops for that matter, with the Pact's forces all around.

The growing of the tree sickened Confessor Antaeus , even as it did the gardens themselves, but his will was stronger than any blight. He would outlast it, until at last it was time to reap his harvest. The ivorywood riddled with crimson veins of the bloodstone. Antaeus collected what he could and went up into the forges within the Bastion.

Antaeus, sick to madness, yet full of grim intention watched the master smiths of the White Mantle flee before him and he did not care. By himself he heated the forge, fires hotter than they had ever been; alone he chanted the words of making, all the while wielding the high smith's hammer.

Alone in the orange pulsing lit depths of the forge he made a sword, a terrible crimson sword which was streaked with black, dark magics. A sword who's very substance seemed to breathe consternation. Antaeus called upon forbidden and unholy magic during it's forging that the very air of the Vale seemed to crackle with heat and the walls swayed as though struck by a giant's fist.