Deja VooDoo

Mr. Drake had come to clearing in the forest, dappled in afternoon light. The journey to this place had been arduous and confusing, and the forest itself seemed to have conspired against him, deliberately turning him away from what he saw before him. The clearing was kind of a busy place. Rabbits and squirrels were going about their business doing the kinds of things that small vegetarian mammals tended to do, darting back and forth trying not to be eaten.

He had the distinct feeling that he had done all of this before, perhaps in a different world. A distant place, long ago, lost to memory. Before him was a tan stone platform, with a raised plinth. Jammed into this plinth was the current object of his quest. Weeks ago, his sleep had been interrupted by a voice in his head. It had compelled him to go forth and undertake a bit of a rescue mission.

He had gone out into a rainy night, driven by the voice in his head, and infiltrated the seat of the local government. He had found his uncle, slain by the constabulary, and taken up his sword. Armed with sword, shield, lamp and boomerang, he had extricated the princess from a castle that had become her prison. Formerly, it had been her home, but a sinister plot was afoot and Mr. Drake seemed to be the only one around who could foil it.

At first he was reluctant to take up his uncle’s blade, but once he had it in his hand, he found that he had a certain affinity for bladed weapons. They made sense to him. They were artifacts of pure will, with a clear purpose. Grab the non pointy end and swing the dangerous part at the bad guys. Simple. In this swinging the dangerous part at the bad guys routine, he found that he was quite skilled. He deliberately tried not to think about his past, because it was confusing and tended to derail whatever quest he was upon, but it was clear that he had some training with bladed weapons in the past.

Memories of bamboo, leather, the pungent reek of sweaty armor, the viscous sour milk taste of anaerobic effort, and bare feet slapping hardwood floors called to him. A vision of sliding a sewing needle beneath a loose thumbnail that had been the victim of an object lesson in the proper way to hold a shinai came to mind every once in a while. The needle had slid past where the cuticle should have stopped it, and made it about half way to the knuckle before it excruciatingly bottomed out. Lesson learned.

Hours, months, and years swinging a sword, trying to perfect his stroke. The intricate interaction between pinky finger and sword hilt that caused the tip of a blade to move faster than the eye could perceive. Drawing and returning the blade to sever the stem of a single leaf selected out of thousands. Footwork drills, untraining the lessons that he had learned as a toddler. Pain, sweat, and effort, all in the name of learning a skill that was centuries out of date.

Now, this skill was finally relevant to his life. He lived and died by the sword. A vaporous mercenary condensed out of the void to play cat’s paw and cleave the darkness with his willful blade, bringing light and order to the lands of chaos.
The sword he saw before him was of a different order than the one he had been wielding previously, but that was the way things went on quests of this nature. His uncle’s sword had been put through the ringer. When it had come to him, it had a slight patina that spoke of a semi ferrous nature. It was a bit dull, but when you swung three feet of metal at something, it didn’t really have to be all that sharp to achieve the intended purpose. This sword, with its history, and nostalgic value would be callously discarded in favor of a piece of craftsmanship forged by a god.

He placed his uncle’s sword upon the stone where he stood, feeling a bit bad for it. It was an object though, not something with an intrinsic soul, it was an artifact. How would he feel though, if he were to be discarded in such a fashion? Uncaringly cast aside to lay for eternity at the altar of a clearly better example of workmanship. The whole thing kind of bummed him out, but there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t have room in his inventory for two swords. So he reluctantly pulled the Master Sword from its resting place in the rock.
There was fanfare when he held it triumphantly above his head, but despite all that, the abandoned sword haunted his mind and he felt a little bit like an unredeemable asshole. Irredeemable? What the fuck is a deem?

Linux Firmware update: system Reboot in: 30…
…a thousand years
System Reboot in: 29…
…another thousand years