After the ordeal, Cor needed sleep. Every part of his body began to ache, and he felt slowed as if he walked through sand. He stopped in the larder briefly to consume an apple and what was left of a stinky cheese. Cor barely remembered lying down, and he did not remember anything before falling asleep. Cor awoke with no idea how long he slept, and looking outside, he found it was yet still dark, at least three hours from sunrise. He had the unshakable feeling that he needed to do something right now, and the anxiety increased as he neared the stairs to the catacombs. Cor remembered the crypt he had felt drawn to before, the crypt of a Lord Dahken named Rena, and he turned for the study, though he felt urged to go into the catacombs.
He reached the study in darkness; Cor rarely needed much light to simply move around these rooms in Sanctum. Once there, he lit a candle, then in turn lit five more on a candelabrum. Cor spent some time searching the shelves before finding a thin tome that looked promising, and opening it, he found an accounting of every Lord Dahken of Sanctum going back to Tannes himself. The tome was clearly modern, and Cor was certain it was written in Rael’s hand. In fact, the name of the last entry was Rael’s, starting at seven twenty eight A.C. Cor took the book to the study’s table and sat down. There was always a quill pen and inkwell at the table, and Cor entered the current year, seven thirty eight A.C., to mark the end of Rael’s service.
He continued to search the pages of the ledger, finally finding Rena. She was Lord Dahken for nearly two hundred years before The Cleansing, and there was very little information about her. Idly, Cor wondered what the Dahken did with themselves for nearly two thousand years. Rena was known as a great warrior; her ability to channel the power in her blood to increase her strength was apparently unmatched in her time. Cor reached a section that gave him a tingling sensation in his right arm and flooded his entire body with warmth. Rena fought with a single edged longsword that she had found in an ancient tomb, but there was no explicit description of the weapon. Regardless, Cor knew he would know the sword the moment he saw it, and he also knew exactly where to find it.
Cor placed the book back on the shelf from whence it came, and candelabrum in hand, made his way back to his room. There he strapped on his armor; he wasn’t sure that he would need it, but after the incident on the road, he vowed never to be caught without it again. It consisted of a chain shirt he simply pulled over his head, a steel breastplate that strapped over the shirt and a set of arm and legguards.
Cor walked to the stairs leading down into the catacombs. He had forgotten to extinguish the torches before lying down to sleep, but they had burned themselves out anyway. When he reached the catacombs, the air felt noticeably different from a few hours ago. It was thick and heavy, almost humid, and Cor had to force the breath in and out of his lungs. It almost felt as if the air itself impeded his movement.
His destination was Rena’s crypt, of course, but he realized he had forgotten one thing when he interred Rael. He stopped at the crypt and examined the door closely; it was like the others, a heavy oak door banded with iron. Cor drew his knife and quite carefully scarred the door deeply, carving two Rumedian glyphs into the wood, one for Lord Dahken and the other for Rael. He appraised his handiwork and, finding it sufficient, sheathed the knife and continued on.
Cor had no trouble finding Rena’s tomb again; it seemed he was inexorably drawn to it. Barely breathing, he stood outside the small limestone crypt staring at the marked door. He knew he would enter, but something about the entire matter unsettled him. He supposed it was his leftover sentiments towards the morality of Garod. Reminding himself that what he was about to do would not be viewed negatively by any Dahken in history, Cor set his candelabrum gently on the floor and pressed against the door. Déjà vu again swept him as he pushed with increasing force. It likely hadn’t moved in nearly a thousand years, and it stubbornly resisted his strength. The door finally budged and, with a screech of rusted iron hinges, swung slightly inward. Cor retrieved his candelabrum and cautiously entered the crypt.
Lord Dahken Rena’s tomb was no different from Rael’s other than its contents. A great number of artifacts, trophies from adventures no doubt, littered the floor of the crypt, and many were in varying stages of decay due to their age. The northwest corner contained several pieces of armor, made of a mix of leather, scale mail and plate, though what protection it would have afforded the wearer he wasn’t certain. It seemed to Cor that the armor would leave vast portions of the body uncovered. Time seemed to stand still, Cor’s heart in his throat when he saw a sheathed sword leaning in the crypt’s northeast corner, covered in centuries of cobwebs and dust.
Cor wiped the detritus away with his free hand, examining the sword closer, and as he did so, the air grew heavier. An oppressive feeling built within the crypt. Sweat rolled off his brow onto his face and dripped off the end of his nose. The scabbard itself was made of rigid leather; gold accents inlaid with small gemstones adorned the tip and the mouth of the sheath. The sword’s guard, hilt and pommel were all wrought of a gleaming metal, which Cor was certain not to be steel. The guard itself was relatively plain; unadorned, it was a straight crosspiece about six inches wide that turned up slightly at either end. The top half of the hilt was leather wrapped, leaving the bottom half naked to flow into the pommel, which was some sort of stylized skull, shaped as nothing Cor had ever seen. He longed to feel the weapon in his hand, inspect its blade, but somehow he knew he couldn’t just yet.
Cor turned to the limestone slab that lay against the rear wall of the crypt. On it lay a near naked skeleton; tatters of clothing remained, but most of it had decayed over time with the corpse itself. The skeleton was smaller than him, perhaps only five feet in length, and Cor was certain that in life Rena had been a fairly small woman. He sank to both knees before the remains of the Lord Dahken.
“Lord Rena, your sword has called me for years, since I first came to Sanctum as a child,” Cor said. He wasn’t even certain why he spoke to this skeleton; it just simply seemed the right thing to do. “I am young, but I’ve already spilled the blood of men. Your sword yearns for someone to wield it; I feel it in my blood. I swear to you I will do you no dishonor.”
Cor bowed his head reverently to the remains for a long moment, and as he did so, he felt the oppressive weight of the air begin to dissipate as if pushed away by a light breeze. He stood and picked up the sword and his candelabrum, and turning from the crypt, he pulled the door shut behind him. Cor ventured back up the stairs, the sword cradled lovingly across his left arm to find the sky beginning to lighten with the first rays of dawn.
Cor could barely contain his excitement, as he wanted to see the sword in the morning light. But his stomach growled, and he dug through the larder, finding little to eat except for some remaining fruit and vegetables. Rael apparently stocked the larder with extreme efficiency, purchasing exactly what he needed for a set amount of time. He laid the sword on the table while chewing through the last few edible apples, staring at it with wonder, and the longer he looked at the weapon, the more anxious he became to use it. Finished with his small meal, Cor stood up and took the weapon outside, again cradling it in his arms as if it were a babe. The sun had broken the horizon, and yellow and orange light filtered in through the open gate and damaged parts of the walls. It was cool this morning, and everything seemed to be coated in a layer of fine, cold dew. He breathed deeply of the spring morning air, smelling the ocean on the wind.
Cor quite carefully and deliberately fed his belt through the sword’s scabbard and then buckled it on. He took his pestle fetish in his left hand as normal and stood in solemn consideration of the sword’s hilt. He could feel something in the back of his mind, as if something were singing to him, urging him to draw the weapon. He only placed his right hand on the sword’s hilt and immediately jerked it back, stricken with the sensation of pins and needles clear up to his elbow. The feeling faded and left him feeling oddly alone in the courtyar
d. Cor gripped the sword again, and the sensation returned, though not nearly as strong as before. He held his hand there for a few moments, not releasing the weapon, and the feeling again faded.
Cor drew the sword in a quick, high arc meant to decapitate a foe. It was amazingly light, seeming to weigh no more than the fetish in his left hand and cut through the air with lightening speed. The blade had a single, razor sharp edge that was completely free of rust, and the other side of the blade was dull and strong, designed for parrying. A channel ran up the center on both sides of the blade. The weapon was absolutely gorgeous, completely free of notches or scratches, and the blade gleamed with an odd purple shine in the morning light unlike any steel Cor had ever seen.
He practiced for some time with the sword, finding that he could maneuver it with far more agility than his old weapon. This weapon felt more like an extension of his arm rather than a separate thing, and it moved precisely as he willed it with grace and strength. Cor noticed the sword’s hilt warmed in his hand as he used it, but not from a sense of exertion. The sensation was both comfortable and assuring, and as he sheathed the weapon to return inside, one word came to unbidden to his mind - Soulmourn.