actually hi i got briefly possessed
The sword is plain. An unadorned pommel, a disintegrating leather ribbon wrapping around the grip, a simply functional crossguard. No runes etched along the length of the fuller, to weave magic into steel.
But the blade is black and shimmering like ravenstone, and the edge is sharp.
It cut him, when he first found it. His blood on gray steel and gray stone and black something. It almost felt like glass. Hidden amidst strange ruins, towering slabs of rock above a network of caves and tunnels with alien writing along their walls, all for a grave that held no body, only a sword.
The dreams started soon afterwards.
A tall figure, wreathed in a cloak of shifting darkness. It stood beside him, in a field of grain bathed red from the setting sun. Foreign mountains rose in the distance. Its voice came from everywhere.
“Ser Ludwig, knight of the Serpentsong.”
“And what is your task, oh knight?”
“My Lady bid me purge the Dark from her lands. I drive back its encroaching wherever I find it.”
The figure turned to him, but there was no face within the cloak. Perhaps not even a body. He stood firm. The figure’s head tilted, first to the side, then down to him.
“A task that requires a sharp blade,” the voice whispered. “You shall have it.”
His fingers clenched around nothing. The scabbard sat at his hip, empty.
When he awoke, the taste of blood was on his tongue.
The sword is warm when he touches it. It seems to hum in his hands, coming alive like an animal from sleep. He cleans it, he oils the blade, he replaces the leather ribbon around the grip. Supple goatskin, dyed oxblood red like his dreams have been.
As he sleeps, even the mountains are red. The figure is nowhere to be seen, but his scabbard is no longer empty.
The sword is warm when he touches it. It seems to come alive like an animal from sleep in his hands. Its edge is sharp.
He cuts down a pack of bandits who thought to ambush a lone knight as if they were hewn from straw and twine. The monsters born of the Dark that follow them fall just the same.
You shall have a sharp blade. The sharpest there ever was.
He stands there, exertion driving sweat onto his skin, his breath echoing within his helmet. He stares down at the sword in his hand, the blade drenched red with blood and shining with whatever the Dark’s creatures possess in place of it.
“You must be a gift of the Saints,” he whispers and takes the hilt in both hands and lifts the sword to press a kiss to the pommel. His helmet is in the way, but even through the cold metal he can feel the sword’s warmth against his lips.
From all around him, he can hear a sad laugh, as if out of a dream.
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