The Cynic's Blade
[WP] You are an ancient, sentient cursed sword known for corrupting even the most valiant and well-intentioned of heroes. However, you cannot corrupt the most recent hero whose hands you have fallen into - not because of their purity of heart, but because of their incorruptible cynicism.
*****
"I'M THE GOD-DAMNED HERO, AND YOU-" were the last words out of my host's mouth before it was replaced by the black, corrosive sanguine fluid that spilled from his punctured lungs and up his throat. A pity. One a fine princeling with delusions of heroism, then a tyrant-king who slaughtered all before him, now just another ashen corpse among many. Such is life. He was replaced quickly.
"Well now you're dead, so shut the fuck up," the wandering warrior, covered in scars and aged far too quickly for his time, spat without sympathy as he took his blade from the sheath of greyed flesh. He smirked in expected displeasure to find his old steel armament melting in the viscous bile that flowed through my host's veins. "Shit."
Without thought or care, he took me from the skeletal hand of the tyrant-king, that should have been his downfall. SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
"Thank you for freeing me, mighty hero!" I spoke into his heart, in a flash of light I turned from a curved and jagged wretch of blackened metal to an exact image of his ideal blade: A simple, straightened sword of undecor'd steel, scratched yet sturdy like his dented armour. "Rejoice, for I am a blessed relic! Your heart is pure, your hand swift, allow me to join ye on thine-"
"Oh, nice, a cursed sword. Lemme guess, this" he gestured to the dark throne room decorated with old skeletons and fresh corpses, "is your fault?"
"I... Have no idea what you are talking about! I am the Blade of Saint-"
"Save it." he interrupted as he sheathed me into the scabbard that once held his previous weapon. It was a perfect fit in my current form. "Just keep quiet and we'll get along just fine."
"As you wish, mine own saviour..."
It didn't take long after my previous host's demise and my new host's introduction to me for the leaders of this rebellion to come into the throne room. A cabal of rich men, clergymen, lesser nobles, all with delusions of democracy.
"Brave Sir Ritter, you've done it!" a man of little importance and ego as inflated as his stomach called out, moving forwards before the sickly, aged frame of the high priest stepped forward as well, stopping the rich man's path with his staff.
"Thanks to you, we are free to put in place the suffrage of man, and bring prosperity back to our humble city-state! May the All-Father bless you in all your endeavours, Sir Ritter!"
"Yeah, whatever," this old wandering mercenary, Johanne Ritter, said with little pomp or fanfare, "This was your revolution, it's my job. Job's done, just get my pay together and meet me at the inn. If nobody blew it to bits with a cannonball, anyways."
With that, he left the throne room to let the revolutionary cabal bicker amongst themselves over minutia and rank. "They are fools, Johanne," I whispered, "Corrupt, greedy, vile fools."
"Yep," was his response.
"Do these fair people not deserve better? The king, he was cruel, but his father, he was a man of great renown, of nobility and generosity. It is said that where democracy goes, bloodshed will follow; Tis only the wolves allowing the sheep to choose who shall devour them, now that the shepherd's head is decorating the cathedral."
"Mhm," the wanderer shrugged, not a proper answer, a statement dripping in smarm that spoke unto me 'I am ignoring you.'
"They are battling amongst each other already, I can see it. You could be the one to stop this vile lie, to restore order that the tyrant-king sto-"
"You talk too much."
"KILL THEM, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! KILL THEM ALL! TAKE THE THRONE! BE THE MAN WHO YOU WERE MEANT TO BE! KING JOHANNE, FIRST OF HIS NAME, FIRST OF THE RITTER DYNASTY!"
"Nah. I did what I gotta do, and if they stiff me on the bill, I got collateral. I can just sell off their jewels next town over."
"Very wise, very wise! Your father, he was a banker, a dove in a profession of snakes, you learnt from his mistakes, he never got collateral."
"Hit the nail on the head, as cursed swords tend to do. Now quiet down, we're heading into the public," he admonished me as he stepped from one empty hallway to the entrance hall of the palace where the dead and dying soldiers were being tended to by their brethren.
"This is as much their fault as his, Ritter. They need to pay!"
"They've already paid," he whispered behind the hand that stroked his chin. He moved past the corpses and soon-to-be without making a scene. The most emotion was a sympathetic gaze to a man who happened to lock eyes with him. In that half-second, kindness broke through his callused facade, and then out onto the wartorn streets we went.
*****
TO BE CONTINUED
Well, all I can say is that April was an uneventful breeze of a month. Can't really point to one thing I spent the past 28 days doing and somehow the month just flew past. Welp.
