I, am a sword. I operate as the hand of my master and strike down his foes when they rear their head against him. I slaughter his adversary, maul his demise and sate his blood thirst. I, am a sword.



The Shepard herds Agrin from the group. The large demon parting his jaws and revealing the six rows of jagged and misshapen teeth.

His hiss strikes a cord in me, I am a broken sword unable to call my blade as I have many times in my life. I smell decay on his breath and see the flesh of recent kills swaying from teeth.

A shout rings forth and my shaken state is roused by my master.

"Do something Legna!" His distressed tone does nothing to cure my affliction and only causes more panic as I search my mind for my blade.

The vigorous and cold steel grip. Half circle guard angled away from my hand and dull grey. Long basic blade extending from the hilt exactly five foot and sharped to a reflecting shine. Simple but effective. I am not my master's favorite sword.

I try and continually fail to create the blade in my hand. Large dirty hands remain turned up and empty. I can't conjure even the smallest of facial expressions. I feel broken.

The Shepard meets the long dark claws of Agrin and falls to the ground in sections of four.

My master becomes the target of the gangly and gaunt black demon. His black husk like flesh reflects my image back to me as he turns his back.

I can't find an expression to make. I frantically search but my expression betrays my emotions. I, am a broken sword.

The mages release witchfire burning the sky a dark gross color of green and black to rocket to the demon. Four of five strike yet they neither drag Agrin's attention from my master nor mark his body.

The brush is set aflame by the last ball of fire lighting the night's darkness a dark green as it spread from brush to brush and filled the area with smoke so black it reminds me of the tar pit of the Brawn marsh.

Master strikes out with his rapier aiming for the beast's throat but nicks his horn causing it to deflect the paper thin blade and master to stumble. Master was an awe inspiring swordsman in the arena.

In the dark glow of green flames Agrin looked more beastly than he had before, gnashing his elongated jaw as the black stirrup like teeth curled up toward his dome at the back of his vicious jaw. The emotion he stirs in me is something I had never felt before.

Is this fear? I hadn't moved in some time and still stood with my arms lowered at my front open to grasp air. I couldn't shape the metal of my shackles and weight to form my blade.

Master couldn't move fast enough when Agrin snapped out at him. His foot had been grabbed by thin arms while the second set of arms grabbed master's own frail and finely tailored arms when he fell to the ground.

Master was lifted with his back to the demon as he shouted and screamed at me, the mages and the gods that watched. He begged and pleaded for return to safety.

Agrin roared and his six toned voice rang filling the air with his rage that caused the gut to knot. Rolling the thick and oddly placed muscles of his neck back his jaw cracked widening the width of them then snapped forward completely enveloping master's head and upper chest. At the moment his teeth sunk in his arms snatched back ripping Master's body apart and leaving only a portion of his torso and a single leg falling to the ground.

I still see myself in Agrin's husk between the splatter and streams of blood I can make out falling between his legs onto the portion of corpse below him. This is the same as the first time I saw Agrin's cruelty, the moment will forever be something I remember.

Turning away from the grotesquely curled mass of flesh that was once my master Agrin holds his limbs eating one of the arms as he rumbled and turned his eyeless dome toward the panicking mages. Taking master in his fourth arm he clutched the corpse by the ankle dangling the remnants of a life he snuffed and threw an arm entirely into his mouth.

The crunching and blood flow running over his mouth is all my attention focuses on. I can feel my eyes grow dry the longer I stare at the carnage of him eating masters torso like an apple, the leg torn off like the stem.

Even as he picks up pace to chase the fleeing mages he devours the corpse. Digestion inside Agrin is something to feel sympathy even for someone like master. Master would never join his ancestors as demon touched.

I watched them all die. The mages, Master and the Shepard. As Agrin turns back and sees me frozen I still cannot act. I cannot find my blade. The closer Agrin comes I'm still frozen.

I'm.....No sword.

Suddenly I see it. The hilt. But that is not my hilt, I don't recognize it.

The world grows silent, Agrin's hiss no longer filling my senses.

My kind face death with pride as swords, I failed my ancestors by freezing before the foe of my master.

They, are swords.

I am not.

The world remains silent and without feeling. The only sound that rings as Agrin comes closer slowly is the sound of my shackles and weight falling to the ground.

My hand slowly rises, the position unfamiliar and the feeling of magic filling my body foreign.

I suddenly know my scope. The ranges of power that had been unknown to me for so long suddenly known.

The form my mind finds speaks to me. My other hand goes to my bicep bracing my upraised arms as my body arches with the stretch of my arm.

I can see it.

I see no metal.

I see stone and crystal.

I open my raised hand and grab the imaginary grip of the massive sword.

A section of magic veins explode, my brain wounded from the extent of power that just touched me.

The sword gains weight slowly approaching an unimaginable weight that I can't imagine my body being able to handle.

Legna Scale can't take this weapon. But I am not Legna scale anymore. I can't place who I am but I am not the slave I was before.

My arm strains as blue smoke thick and dark in color rises from my hand where it closed on the imaginary sword. The smoke holding such power that it threatens to smother me before the weapon crushes me.

I see the sword. The sword a piece of brown dirty stone running for longer than my body at seven foot. The molten crystal cut in sharp flat edges that made the edge of the large and hulking sword. The basic shape reminds me of a single edged feather.

The sword takes form in my hands. The weight smashing into me all at once.

Under the weight the armor running up my right arm bearing its' weight bursts bearing my veined and angry arm to the world.

My sight is stolen and I look on at a world of darkness while my back feels like its' bending in at the brink of breaking. I see and hear nothing now but I feel my feet shift and shake while my flesh burned.

I know now. I, am NOT a sword! I, AM NOT A SWORD! A sword cannot do what I will do!

The world flashes white, my body burning as if it was ready to break in half the moment I moved. The world was back in view and the surroundings changed greatly.

The ground chard and pools of molten earth bubbled in a circle of four meters around me. Flames burning white hot cast a glow against the green light thrown from the now brush fire the witchfire had become.

Agrin was crouched not far from the black blemish left on the earth. He sat low hissing hard and making his lips vibrate and wave. He had three arms holding an arm burned to a meaty hunk of swollen and white flesh. The burn extending down his side and dripping bright green blood to the ground.

I look up, the sight of the molten sword in my hand almost shook my core. If I was a sword, this is the sort of sword I wanted to be.

I hear Agrin hiss and snarl, my eyes snapping to him as he pushed up and began to charge me. It would take only four seconds for him to reach me.

Again the sword spoke to me. I swung the hulking molten rock and I felt a part of my brain explode at the strain.

I don't feel the heat of my surroundings anymore, my arms already burned to a black crisp ran with lines of molten orange over them where veins had once been.

I slashed over and over again, the swords weight breaking parts of my body with the vigorous swings and cut I ripped across the space between me and the demon. Left then right my body was pulled with the sword each pass I made through the air.

Agrin swung his claws at me. Four daggers aimed to skewer me cut free from his body. the sword made good cuts boiling the demon's blood and sending him recoiling back with each effortless pass it made through his husk. Black lines cut and boiled white by heat.

Each swing splattered his large and imposing body with molten ore and stone burning tiny holes into him and confusing him.

I was wrong.....

Ripping him apart with the large sword I pause and slide my foot forward. This was the demon that ate my village. The unstoppable plague. I would jam his head on a pike.

Agrin recoiled again taking a step back and throwing his head to the side to scream out a human shriek. It infuriates me. How dare this monster pretend to be what he could never be. I slice through arms, tail and legs dropping his weight to the ground and forcing him to thrash with his elongated head in agony.

They say you can't kill this monster. They say he lives longer eating babies and drinking the blood of pregnant women before clawing them open and feasting. I will test that.

I pulled myself to the side and heaved the sword over my head letting the glow it cast engulf our surroundings the more hate I pour into it. The sword answers my raw emotion glowing hotter until finally the flames die and leave the black crystal that made the edge. I hear it sizzling and the air around us grow hotter until the rock of his den turns cherry red and melts.

The scream of fury and hatred that left my mouth rang the longer I let this moment of impending triumph carry over the silence between us and I bring the sword down severing part of his head and neck in two. The close proximity of the sword lit his body on fire and burned him into nothing at that very moment.

I stumble back staring at the black imprinted burn left where he had been thrashing. My knees giving out drops me to the ground as the sword destroys the ground that would catch it.

I lay on my back in the pouring flood of my own blood.

I stare to the sky watching the white glow disappear into a fiery orange fury. The sword was gone.

I laid in the floating ash and ember letting my body come back to senses and a pain unlike anything I have ever felt grasp me.

I spasm and scream, bones are broken and organs damaged beyond repair. But Agrin is dead. Master is dead. I hurt in freedom.

Now I lay here releasing a guttural scream forgetting what I had been doing and why in response to agony but I lay here a free man.

I will lay here until this agonizing pain of burns and broken bones dissipates then I will move on with my life.

Death, slavery once more, pain, loneliness, whatever I may face when I leave I will brunt the full load of but at this moment I will squirm in my freedom.

I, am free. I am an instrument of death and destruction. I cleave foes in two and slaughter in the name of war. I am an abomination, a weapon given flesh through magic. But among those I will never be one thing. I will never....Be a sword.

In the moist and damp air I sat for hours staring at the same spot in the cloudy grey sky. I grow still to keep the agonizing pain at a dull and brunt lull Pounding at the back of my mind.

My hair continually falls into my face and blocks my gaze with long flat strands of black falling into my eyes and causing them to flutter shut and my head to jerk against my will.

My neck feels as though it is on fire and radiates heat I can physically feel in the intact sections of flesh growing tight and leathery tan where it had once been such a creamy coffee color before. The misty weather did nothing to alleviate my itch and general discomfort but I didn't grow stiff now.

The cool breeze grown nippy with how cold the mist had become made me shiver involuntarily sending a bolt of pain through my body reminding me steadily I was alive.

I wonder though if this is what being dead is really like" Writhing in agony so great you settle and resent the fact you have feeling at all. Is this what it feels like to be a body discarded along the road side" I don't even have the desire or will to roll myself and check if I even breathe.

to be honest breathing wasn't an issue. With every breath I feel my chest heave and lift shaking under strain as blisters pop crossing what had once been cut muscle and now looked like pink and white meat on the butchers slab.

At the moment even breathing has become a chore. My lungs feel burned and each breath brings a sharp ping of pain to me like a frozen gust rolling over smoldering flesh.

My eyes turn again and roll in the safety of moist sockets gladly free of smoke and heat damage they had felt before the rains last night. It's comforting to be able to move something on me without feeling the brutal ping of more pain atop the general.

Looking to the left I see my arm laid out to my side and glowing with harsh tone of raw meat and peeled back flesh. It resembled the grotesque moment a piece of flesh is thrown onto a flame and sears turning pale grey with lines of tendons and ligaments over bone.

Shriveled and sinewy my arm looked crippled in a stain of black dirt that was blood some time ago. Where black had encased my arm from finger tips to bicep I could see the swollen sections that blistered and mangled red muscle in such a fashion I tried to count the boil like blemishes doting red in infectious green and white domes. Twelve. The worst that looked inflamed and furious right at the curl of my elbow and laying on a section of peeled flesh laying on the ground like tattered cloth.

I can't take the sight anymore and have to look away.

On my left I am met with a similar sight that differs only in places the muscle melted completely from the bone leaving jagged swells of muscle and peeks of the bone running between the drained muscle.

The sword had marked me, I couldn't even see the damage it caused to my broken legs. I couldn't see the bone jutting through my calve and the way muscle spilled from a massive burn on my thigh like ribbons from melted armor.

I returned my eyes to the sky and felt frustration begin to swell. I hadn't had a wide range of emotions before today. I only felt sympathy and my master's rage. Now I felt broken, I didn't want to die here in the middle of these plains forever forgotten.

I laid staring at the sky and fighting back tears of anger for hours until finally I felt the sting in my stomach I dreaded would come.

Hunger began to gnaw at my stomach walls, my mind suddenly stolen completely that I forgot just how much pain I was in. Two days since I had last eaten.

I have heard warriors that await help on the battlefield eat their own tongue for that last minute of nutrition. I pray that I die before I reach that point.

It was maybe five minutes after that I heard the scattering of rocks and turned my eyes up to whatever it could have been.

A few feet from me a white rabbit had ventured onto the black blemish and wiggled it's nose at the sight of me. It's head dipping as it moved slightly closer then froze and laid against the ground. It's eyes remained on me and wide the longer the moment I stared back at it with a hiked brow and incredulous look.

I stared at the rabbit for hours. My sole focus as my mind ran.

At dawn it had yet to move and I still sat looking at it but a devastating hunger crossed where my look of confusion and wonder had been.

The rabbit was dead. Little bead like red eyes glazed over and body stiff while wind tussled its' fur.

I was starving.

I wanted the rabbit, I wanted sleep.

I couldn't move...

At my sides are bloody streaks, a grotesque play on the childish act of snow angel making. In long sweeps the bloody arches reach over me and past just missing the rabbit corpse by a few feet.

My arms are bloody pulps. Meat clinging to the ground in dull clumps of flesh and matter sitting in puddles of their own murky refuge where the ground would tear them.

At the point my leg had broken it laid to the side twisted and gruesome coiled like a snake where my movement caused it to roll and turn.

Then you have me, panting and staring to the sky with pitful ruined lips parted and pale. I have dark rings under my eyes, a pale yellow tone coming over my flesh as I grow stiff and brittle, long hair frayed and damaged sprawled like a dark damaged mop under my head and neck.

What happened to me"

My eyes roll back up to the rabbit corpse. It swole in the summer sun looking unappealing to the normal man but to me....To me it looks like the greatest meal it could ever be cooked into.

Murky and decaying eyes stared back at my own and reflected the mess my burnt and blistered shoulders that peeled like paper had become. Torn back from the pop the gases building in its' stomach and organs had blown through didn't have the pink tone that spelled sickness and disease it should to me.

The rabbit is my meal.

I want the rabbit.

The grinding like glass has returned to my eyes and limply clinging eye lids that drooped and fell from my eye in deep rivets making me resemble a hunting dog of some noble.

Along the crease of my eye a heavy bulge had built and threatens to impede my blinking more than it had already.

Dark crust stabbed into the soft numb flesh under my eye lid and run along the bottom of my eyes where the eye lid had dropped filling the space with dark brown and crusting yellow. I fell the thick crust ripping the thin enamel over my eye.

With each long stare I see white floaters in my vision float downward unable to follow between foggy moments of sight.

I hallucinated, the cause could be any number of things really, the rabbit waking and running away as the limp eye that fell from the socket bounced from side to side with each hop. I can feel my cery soul crushed the farther the small white blip on my sight became until I blink and see the corpse once more.

The smell here only growing worse the longer it sits in decay. I could smell death on the air literally.

It was hovering here.

Death was waiting for this tired and hungry man to let go.

I gave up on moving. Pain growing to the absolute manner it had been the first night made me light headed in the painful sort of way and my breathing to slow more than I wanted.

Something was making me cling to life though. I cling like a child on Da's boot to the mistress of life.

Dusk settled before I had registered time had changed.

My eyes ground against crust and stiff feel back to the sky and stared into the clouds that floated the dark violet sky. I clung.

I clung.

I clung.

Suddenly I feel my body go limp and my mind wanders. I can cry and feel the hatred that burned in my soul suddenly. Faces I had never seen before ran by.

A woman with pale green eyes and hair like satin sheets of pearl.

A man with eyes as murky red as blood, smile that made my blood curdle and hair and beard the same empty black as horns.

A saint covered in white robes that shadowed his homely jaw leaving only his shape to sight.

A child with ears like the young fox roaming the wild gracing her.

Countless in rows cheering and screaming to an orc with lip torn in two and yellow eyes forward as he panted.

A bulbous man in finery holding chains next to his fat and round ears.

Now nothing.

I see nothing.

Feel nothing.

Have I finally....

Become nothing"...

Soft winds blew over the rolling hills of the savannah this day. It was a warm summer's breeze the people and animals of the harsh dry lands loathed but welcomed openly after the cold misty day that had fell upon them in their sleep only a few nights ago. Cool winds carried the warmth of the sun with the few leaves of Camballi trees that rode the wind from hillside to plains.

Herds of strange four horned creatures that resembled zebra from the stomach to tail but a goat from stomach to head roved the plains and hills eating the vegetation and lazily traveling with pack of what looked like a cross breed between an elephant and a Rhino.

These herbivores of the savannah were untouched by the hands of men, none domesticated like the canine creatures that roved homes and roads aimlessly in the city and village. In great groups of seven to sometimes in the twenties these creatures would roam as a large multi species family watching for predator and hunter warily as other members of the herd grazed.

Maybe a good twelve meters from the herd a group of four hunters crouched in the dry bones of brush and watched the prey animals that wandered on long stalk like bony legs. Two remained crouched while the other two at the front of their formation began to slide through the soft rustle of branches and leaves only pausing when a long neck would jerk up and look from side to side in search for them.

It wasn't until the first group of two moved to their spot opposite the gaggle of herbivores that the second began and showed twice as much careful and wary caution to the animal's jumpy nerves after the sharp and instant whistle the first hunting party made to signal they were in position. Olive skin glinted in the sunlight as a glistening sheen came in the beaded sweat brought on from the sun on the hunters. Leather aided in silent movement as it didn't rattle and bang about like plate or rustle and snap when snagged on twigs the same way as cloth. They had done this countless times and moved like shadows through tall yellow grass and dark browns of earthy toned brush.

As hunters set themselves for an ambush a strange large jawed canine only maybe the size of a house cat hopped over mounds of grass and sniffed at the ground in search of rats and mice. Fine fur striped in black and gold like a tigers blending with the long dry grass as overly large black eyes turned over the world around it while it huffed and puffed over the dusty earth.

Large and fox like ears stood at attention atop the canine's head and flopped each time the animal would land from a springy hop and pad over the ground. Grass was easily parted for the small creature and fed an ego over inflated with little man syndrome making it feel like the large and dangerous animals that preyed on man and creature alike.

Panting the canine pushed through a patch of grass only to come eye to horned trunk of a large grey beast lumbering through the grass itself. The two creatures stood silent as round beady black eye stared into an overly large black eye in a silent western showdown.

The larger won.

The grey beast trumpeted and caused the canine to drop onto the ground and lay flat with ears pined back and a whine pushing dryly from it's small and tightly squeezed throat. The horned trunk was pulled back like a battering ram just at the same moment the grass was pounded and a hunter lunged in the air.

With perfect form his arms where tightly griping a spear overhead and legs had bent back arching his body to allow full weight and thrust when his spear sunk into the beast's back.

A second hunter came from the side and jammed a spear into it's back as the other sunk his spear into the spinal crease and brought the beast down to the ground with a loud horned grunt.

The canine's ears jerked up and it scampered back only curling to look back and make sure it wasn't being chased by the hunters or the beast and maybe it even felt relieved seeing them locked in mortal combat. That was its' cue.

The canine bolted through the grass barely creating a rustle as arrows from the second group of hunters found mark in some of the strange horned creatures and caused them to thrash nearby and nearly trample the wee creature underfoot.

After some harrowing maneuvering, and near death experiences, the canine was free of the plain and running along the valley until it hit burnt black ground and slowed to a halt in confusion.

The landscape here had changed, it knew that much.

Where once there had been a large den for a creature of nightmare now there was something melted down like butter into something that could only be called modern art.

The ground that had once had fine and short green and yellow grass was now a chard soot and charcoal littered with the corpses of brush and rock alike and heavy with the scent of decay.

Wait....Decay?

The canine perked and his ears went upright as it yipped and started sniffing the ground weaving left and right with heavy pants. Something smelled amazing around here.

Powerful lashes of a white tipped tail bushy and full against the fine fur of its' body the canine was on the hunt for that delicious smell of decay.

For a few meters it trotted over the black burns on the ground until it came of white fur and rotten grey meat spilling from a festering wound on a rabbit.

Elation, or the closest thing an animal can feel, shot through the canine as it nosed the rabbit over and huffed the scent taking a bite of gruesomely soggy meat and tearing it free to gnaw on. The rabbit was smaller than the canine but not by much but this meant the creature could feed today and hunt tomorrow, the perks of scavenging.

Distracted by the fruits of a corpse the canine missed the heavy thud and groan behind it and growled as it shook a small piece of flesh and skin free. It was such a cute creature truly.

Suddenly the white tip of the canine's tail burst into flame and the creature yipped loudly as it ripped off from the rabbit as the sounds of scuffling grew louder and rocks rolled toward the rabbit.

As the wind rustled the stiff and matted fur of rabbit the canine could be seen running back and forth in terror as the flames spread up its' body and smoke billowed from the fur. The noxious scent of burning hair filling the area.

The white fur of the rabbit was encased as taloned fingers with the look and glisten of rubber dug in the soot as they wrapped the rabbit. A head of white hair hung to the ground and the body it belonged to shuddered and rose with each hard breath that left it.

The wind ran through the white hair of the form distressing it and weaving lines of white until the body went still and collapsed.

The canine, now veined and glistening red, slowly padded its' way beside the muscular shape until it's wide eyes twitched and it collapsed on the ground still beside it.

————-

One goal down.....Three more to go....