Thread: The Blade of Balance (Heartlesskitten)

Some days were better than other in the hamlet of Ale's Gate, a peasant village in the eastern edge of the Calur Provence. Most income came from farming, though there was one decent mine open, it's coal deposits helping keep the ramshackle town with it's dirt roads and thatched cottages from being a total sore on the surface of the world. Weather was usually decent, though the muddy roads became impossible to move on whensoever the rainy season rolled about. Few strangers ever visited, and the only ones who left were traders going to peddle their wares. Nobody of any great importance had ever come from Ale's Gate. Eala had just been another face in the town, a peasant boy to a simple farming couple. Being of some decent handsomeness was to be his only claim to fame it seemed. And now, at only sixteen he knew that same claim was on a finite limit. This day had started much like any other, with the dark-haired young man roaming the fields and shooing off any stray animals. Nothing major, just some rabbits wandering in, with the potential to spoil the earth with their digging. Eala had chased them off of course, brandishing a dirt-encrusted hoe as a weapon, and he was all set to walk back from the green grass back toward the what patch when he heard something, a soft tone carried ont he wind. 'Eala...' A strange voice one he had never heard before. On some strange level he briefly thought the voice was coming from... inside his head. All the same he was bored and curious, as peasant farm boys were known to be, and seemed to walk in the general direction of the hushed whispers. Closer he went, and louder the beckoning voice became. Soon the dark-haired teen found himself standing outside the mouth of some kind of cave, hewn into the face of a rolling green hill. A strange wind blew from within, rattling the tattered brown fabric of his pants and the stained white of his vest. Had that cave always been there? This is really weird... he managed to murmur, reaching up and stroking lightly at the barely-visible stubble of his jaw. But hell, this was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him. Probably the most interesting thing to happen to all of Ale's Gate since Lord Ale gave the town it's name two centuries ago. Eala braved inside. The interior was dark and dirty, reeking with all the scents of the earth he had grown used to from living on the farm. Deeper in he went all the same, while mud dirtied up the soles of his feet. There it stood, in the center of the modest cave carved into the hillside, a shashka blade in a black and green snake-scaled scabbard danging on a rope from the roof. The voice calling to him grew louder and Eala continued his approach. It held a name deeply foreboding, a name that appeared countlessly throughout history in a myriad of ways. The Sunder. By all accounts the Shashka had existed in the earliest records of history and had changed hands at least a hundred times. It's appearance always heralded great change, sometimes good and sometimes bad, usually choosing who was worthy to wield it. The capacity for 'worthiness' changed on a dime it seemed. But one thing remained certain, the immensely powerful magic blade, known to disappear and reappear at it's leisure, was that the one who held it had a grand destiny ahead. Eala, a mere peasant, had no knowledge of any of this of course. All he saw was a cool sword. So without thinking he just reached up and grabbed the scabbard, suddenly flooded with a rainbow light of intense titanic magic that flowed abruptly into his body, his muscles bulking a bit while the ground rumbled beneath his feet. In that instant a great surge of magic had blossomed out of the previously unremarkable Ale's Gate, like a signal flare shooting out to any and all mystically attuned to catch onto. The surge simmered away, and Eala was left clutching the strange sleek sword in his hand while steam eased off him. Neat...