twelve

Somebody was approaching through the forest on stealthy feet. He was familiar with the cadence of all of the animals that wandered by his clearing, every sound that he heard was evaluated for its possibility as a sign of rescue. This was a bipedal cadence, slow and furtive. He was used to the quiet quadrupedal cadence of deer and coyotes, involved in their lethal games of hide and seek. Most bipedal things that he heard were birds, and he, like Dioganes before him, knew a featherless biped when he heard one.
He made preparations to put his plan into action. The plan itself was a kind of shitty thing to do to someone. In his realm, he had been ensnared by the narrative countless times, it was sneaky. His most recent brush with it in Grenoble, which seemed a thousand years in the past, had merely taken a second of inattention for him to be ensnared. For whoever was sneaking through the forest, he had a more elaborate ruse in store.
Whoever was skulking around, they were certainly good at it. When Fyndraxis was able to see their movement, which was rare, it seemed to be the forest itself that was moving. When Fyndraxis deemed his quarry close enough to hear what he was planning on doing he began.
“Pick up the sword,” he whispered faintly, in the most aetherial voice he could summon, “it is your destiny.”
The man, for Fyndraxis knew the scream of a full grown man, took off at a dead run through the forest, eschewing all attempts at stealth. Perhaps, he had been a bit too creepy? He was happy to be able to make his first attempt at this plan, but no plan survives first contact with reality. The man didn’t seem to be completely put off though, because a few hours later, as light was beginning to fade, he began another approach to the clearing.
“You may approach, Chosen One,” Fyndraxis tried out a less creepy angle.
“Who ‘sere?” The man asked furtively as Fyndraxis slowly began the light show he had planned for this. It was actually a good thing that he had come back a little bit later. The light show would be far more effective during the golden hour.
“I am Lightbringer, the Divine Sword Of Gaia,” blue and aquamarine light rippled along his sheath, making the Daemon Blade appear as if it was at the bottom of an enchanted river.
The man stepped into the clearing where Fyndraxis had spent his winter. He was clad in homespun burlap and leathers that had all seen better days, like the boy that had come before. To his credit though, he did blend in with the forest rather well.
He was in his mid to late twenties and looked like he had seen a number of rough winters. His hair was about shoulder length and a stringy dirty blonde, a patchy beard decorated a sharp chin. Across his back he had a longbow and a quiver of arrows, and at his hip he kept a hatchet.
“Come out, I can’t see you,” he bade as he looked around. He was speaking English, but it was oddly accented and rather hard to understand. Consonants at the end of words seemed to be an optional thing and words themselves seemed to cling stubbornly in the soft palate. It was clipped and a bit nasal, a rough and rural accent that was something born of a Cornish farm girl and a wandering Frenchman.
“You have been chosen to wield an instrument of destiny,” as Fyndraxis said this, the man retreated once again into the woods.
“What are you? A talking sword?” The man asked from the wood as he made a quick circuit around the periphery of the clearing, trying to find the man behind the curtain.
“I am the Divine Sword of Gaia, speech is one of my many powers,” Fyndraxis answered, voice brimming with mysterious overtones.
“Scarin’ the shit out of everyone in the Valley is what you are,” the man gave in answer, “we all thought it was ghosts up here, or the Wendigo.”
“I have laid in wait for you for a thousand years,” Fyndraxis started riffing, narratively speaking, now that he had the man’s attention and he wasn’t screaming his way through the woods back to wherever he came from. “The Wendigo have stolen the crystals that contain her power,” he was really cooking now, “I have chosen you to retrieve them.”
“Shouldn’t be glowin’ blue then,” he answered cryptically as he poked his head back into the clearing.
“Pardon?” Fyndraxis asked, temporarily thrown off course.
“Brown,” he clarified, “you should be glowing brown ‘cause you’re full of shit. Ain’t no one fight the Wendigo. That’d be like tryin’ to fight the wind.”
Fyndraxis may have actually stumbled into something usable with this Wendigo thing. He’d take what he could get at this point. He had no idea who the Wendigo was, but that didn’t really matter. All he wanted was to be out of this particular patch of forest.
“Draw me forth and test my worth,” Fyndraxis intoned and ramped up the light show, opting not to go brown as the man suggested.
“Listen man, I can only understand ‘bout half of what you are sayin’” The man confessed, “You talk like one them shitheads from the north.”
“Pick me up and chop down some trees to see if I’m sharp,” Fyndraxis suggested, trying not to sound annoyed.
“Right,” the man said, approaching the sword, “not a bad idea.”
The man picked up the sword and pulled it from the sheath. It was quite impressive, when he began the pull the sword began to lightly vibrate. By the time he got it out of the scabbard it was pulsing in his hand. This was done to demonstrate the kind of barely tamed godlike power he would be wielding. There were also impressive sound effects and dazzling lights. The sword itself cracked and hissed while it cut through the air, its electric blue glow could just barely be seen in the early evening light. Fyndraxis was pulling out all the stops and the strategy was working. The man gave a devilish grin.
His athletic abilities were surprising. He had a wiry grace in his movements and a natural aptitude for the blade. He swung for the closest tree. It happened to be about as thick around as his torso.
When the blade made contact with this tree something odd happened for Fyndraxis. Time itself seemed to slow down. The journey from bark to heartwood seemed to take hours. While he was yet again killing time, he was able to make some rather interesting observations. He of course could count the rings of the tree, which he did. It was thirty seven years old, but there were further things that commanded his attention. He was able to make some atomic observations.
He was able to bring his awareness to the edge of the blade and observe the stately jostlings of individual atoms. While he was never a huge fan of chemistry, he was able to see the complex interactions of carbon and oxygen bonds. He could see at the very edge of his blade, the sword itself was honed to a single neutron. This neutron edge was able to shear these molecular bonds as if they were never even there. Every once in a while, this neutron edge would slice cleanly through an atom, producing a small flash of electric blue light. He was sharp. Unbelievably, irresponsibly, lethally sharp.
This was an astonishing revelation for the Daemon Fyndraxis. The atomic observations were pretty incredible, but beyond that were some further implications that were giving him some discomfort. He was an artifact of pure violence. A sword was a thing with a singular purpose. Although they make passable letter openers, and apparently they are useful for harvesting lumber, that is not their intended purpose. They are an object made with the express purpose of killing people.
Fyndraxis, not really considering himself a violent being, would have to square this new reality with his system of internal ethics. Sure, he had done some extremely violent things during his tenure as chief deity of his inner world, but that felt a bit different.
In terms of the sharpness and lethality of the blade, the man reached the same conclusion, although somewhat more quickly, relatively speaking. Time had not slowed down for him, only for Fyndraxis. The blade had whispered through the tree it had been tested upon. The man stepped deftly out of its way as its limbs began popping and cracking, signaling its journey to the forest floor. He moved on to another and another, all the while his grin grew wider and more maniacal. Every stroke of the blade was heralded by a flash of sky blue light. Finally after a couple dozen trees had been felled he seemed satisfied.
“Yeah, this’ll do. I’ll quest for your Gaia. I'll need to grab some stuff from town first,” the man spoke as he examined the blade, “So, you’re Light Bringer? They call me Hunner.”