[Solo] When I Raise This Sword
Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2022 10:03 pm
The Reichtum, Gel'Grandel
Ash 1, 122 Age Of Steel
Ash 1, 122 Age Of Steel
Setting the weapon case on the workbench, Vanessa was filled with a confusing tempest of emotions. Part of her was glad to know the stories her uncle told her about her mother, how her body was found surrounded by the corpses of a half dozen Reconciliators, might have been more than lies meant to soothe her as a child.
There was a slight stabbing of regret too. If her family had been powerful, noble, or rebellious in any constructive way, and may well have died defending those beliefs, then what was she? A killer that robbed, drank, and killed her way across Karnor, not caring who she hurt. It had been so easy to think of her parents as innocents, a man and woman caught in the crossfire of a conflict they neither understood nor asked for. The perceived senselessness of their deaths had made it trivial for Vanessa to cast aside others as her own family had been cast aside. If she had known – if she had believed, then she might have turned out different.
It was a rare moment of introspection for the bodyguard, and she found herself enjoying it about as much as she enjoyed the healing stab wound in her side.
Vanessa inspected the padlock currently keeping her from inspecting the contents of the six foot long case. It was a hefty thing without the key in sight. Luckily Vanessa was no stranger to breaking into lockboxes. As a brigand, forcing her way into them had always irritated her. She no longer felt that same burbling annoyance as she lifted her hammer and sent it slamming into the lock.
The lock frustratingly endured.
Vanessa swung again, this time making a dent in what she now knew was runeforged iron. Vanessa swung again, this time with her full strength behind it.
This the lock did not endure.
It fell to the stone floor with a great clang, and Vanessa swept it off to the side with her foot. She would clean it up later, definitely. For now though, she had more pressing things on her mind.
She lifted the lid of the stained cherry box, and the rusted hinges groaned their protest at being forced into action after so long. Despite the worn look of the exterior, the black velvet cloth on the inside of the case looked positively untouched. Vanessa guessed that whatever enchantment had been placed on the lock had also been able to keep water out. But the condition of the cloth was not what had caught Vanessa's attention.
No, what Vanessa focused on was the executioner's sword laid into the cloth. There was no mistaking it for anything else. The flawless silver sword was thick throughout the entire length of the blade, and it did not come to a sharp point at one end. Instead the blade ended abruptly in a squarely sharpened edge, giving the weapon a more cleaver-like appearance.
The craftsmanship was so obvious that even a brute like Vanessa could tell. When she lifted the blade, it settled effortlessly into her hands despite what should have been an odd distribution of weight. Executioner's swords were meant to be top heavy and otherwise unwieldy, but Vanessa felt none of it even while gripping it one-handed..
Just from this cursory inspection, it was clear the weapon had been enhanced by a runesmith of considerable skill. Vanessa would have killed entire crews for a weapon like this years ago. Now it was hers by right, and still she could not be certain of how that fact made her feel.
She turned the blade over in her hand, looking at the pommel and crossguard. The quillons were straight, flat, and otherwise unadorned. Standard for the weapon of a headsman, Vanessa supposed. The same could not be said for the hilt , which was wrapped in black leather and its pommel inlaid with a black gemstone. No-- not just a gem, a dragonshard, and a damned big one.
Vanessa ran through the lectures she'd attended with Anton as well as the prizes she'd won as a pirate. She counted off the dragonshards she knew. Not Aetherite, Aerolyth, Hydrolyth, or Magmatyte. She wracked her brain for agonizing minutes, cycling through what felt like half of Anton's curriculum, and finally it came to her.
Magebane.
Holding the weapon in one hand, Vanessa ran her thumb across the dragonshard with the other. What could her mother possibly needed a weapon imbued with Magebane for? Her family had no ties to the Order of Reconciliation, of that much she was certain. But there weren't mages enough in Zaichaer to justify a weapon like this for personal defense, and her uncle had never mentioned any particular hatred towards spellcasters despite the death of his brother and sister-in-law laying squarely at their feet. She had thought him spineless for that once, or perhaps merely broken, but now she thought there was more to it than that.
If it wasn't a tool meant to be used against the mages that had holed up in Gateway all those years ago, what use was a sword that negated magic? Vanessa thought back to her time as a skyscourge, and the mages she'd often pressed into working wards around her ship. Their wards were not born from a hatred of magic, but from pragmatic need.
A need to protect those under her command. To that end, no tool was too barbarous, not even those of the enemy.
Had her mother intended for the holdout at Gateway to have been a battle as opposed to wholesale slaughter? It would explain why they had known about the ploy beforehand, and made arrangements for Vanessa's safety. Had something gone wrong then? It must have, or Vanessa would not have held the blade as she did now. A rat, bad intelligence, or simply bad luck? Whatever the reason for the outcome had been, Vanessa felt it reopening old wounds she'd thought scarred over years ago. She took a steadying breath, and refocused.
Even if the last stand angle was true, it still left her puzzled as to why the blade was fashioned after that of a headsman. Even enchanted as it was, it was a bizarre choice of weapon
She thought again to her crew, pulling on the thread once more in hopes of a breakthrough. When people spoke of her in hushed tones, it was not because of the pragmatic way she hunted isolated, overloaded merchant vessels and left their crew battered but alive. No, when they spoke of the Dread Captain Quill, they spoke of the examples she made, and the ruin in her wake. They spread word of the five Zaichaeri gunships she'd hunted to the last man for daring to fire upon her, and lit on their imagination after helping popularize an aerial variant of keelhauling.
So perhaps this was fashioned not only to be a weapon, but a symbol as well? Even Vanessa could see the potent message writ by using a weapon such a this against the agents of Zaichaer. A sword such as this represented the king's justice against those for whom death was absolution. To use it against Zaichaer's own apparatus of oppression was to cast the entire government as usurpers.
Vanessa had never believed her uncle when he had told her that her mother Orphea and she had the same flair for the dramatic. The list of things she was eating crow over was getting frustratingly long.
Pulling aside the black cloth used to swaddle the weapon of war, Vanessa found its matching sheath and sword belt resting below. It was made largely from boiled leather dyed black as pitch. Capping either side of the sheath were bands of gold, and the filigree etched into the metal stood out starkly when it caught even the low light afforded by the work shed. Even this, dwarfed in majesty by the blade itself, was a work of art. So much so that Vanessa did not hesitate to replace her old sword belt and leave her new blade hanging off her left hip where her cutlass had remained steadfast for so many years.
Vanessa had not often thought of her cutlass. She cared for it, certainly, oiling and sharpening it regularly, but the cutlass had never elevated beyond being an effective tool. Getting sentimental was something she had reserved for ships, and even then it had taken time. This weapon was different. Already she found her hand resting on the hilt of the executioner's sword just to feel nearer to it.
For so long, Vanessa had clutched every scant memory of her parents in a bloody fist, afraid even to release the grief for fear of forgetting. Though this weapon had likely never been seen by her mother before her death, Vanessa felt an undeniable connection to the blade. A connection far greater than ever she'd felt for a simple tool of terror like her cutlass.
The cutlass had not been forgotten entirely, of course, though its position was slightly less dignified than before. She wedged the scabbard between her belt and trousers, so that the blade was kept in place by friction. It was not an elegant solution, but neither was carrying two swords in the first place.
Vanessa stood in silence for a time, enjoying solitude in the same way she often enjoyed anger. It wasn't long Vanessa heard Anton's sister calling for her. Little Amelia was not outright demanding another flying lesson, but she was getting as insistent as her years of etiquette training would allow. It had gotten so bad now that Vanessa could hear some of the family's servants beginning the search for Anton's bodyguard just to satisfy the poor girl.
“Coming!” Vanessa called from the shed, rare warmth in her voice as she headed out to begin Amelia's lesson.