Over the Sunken Realm – Part 8: The Sword of Garral

Having finally met Ilaïva the Dreamer, you are presented with a choice: to learn of your past Down Below, or to discover your connection to an ancient legend: the Sword of Garral.

You choose to learn about the Sword.

The black void around you turns bright once more, engulfing you and the silhouette of Ilaïva. Just as it vanishes from your sight, her voice rings out around you, as if she were right beside you: “so you have chosen, so you will see.”

Once again, your entire body is swept up, and pulled back with incredible force – yet causing no pain. It feels like you are back on the Druegans’ train, but going backwards at breakneck speed. The void around you is streaked with multicoloured rays shooting past your hurtling body, going faster and faster, until it all turns into a tornado of vibrating lights, a shimmering tunnel stretching out into infinity. And you start feeling like you are being stretched out yourself, as the tunnel closes in on your body, compressing it from all sides until you can see nothing but light blazing all around you.

This is when you fall “into” yourself.

READ PART 7 HERE:

It is a hard sensation to describe: it is as if your unshackled mind had been flying at a dizzying speed around the earth, and was then brutally stopped in its tracks, and weighed down by invisible anchors back into your body. You can feel your spirit, maybe your very soul, drop into your corporeal form like a rock into the ocean; and slowly, you start to re-inhabit it. You can almost sense consciousness coming back into your limbs, starting from your head, then continuing from your heart down to your legs and toes. It is like putting on old clothes that age and lack of use have made itchy, rigid and cumbersome.

As your senses reawaken, you realize how heavy you are: your limbs, your head, even your fingers seem to weigh a ton as you try to move. It reminds you of how heavy you felt when you first walked on land, after the lightness you had experienced in the water.

You open your eyes – though your eyelids feel like they have been sealed by fire – and can only see a blur of black and deep blue around you, with a few dots of orange light. But you do notice something, a lightness in the head, some sort of vertigo… And the darkness seems to grow before you, and under your feet…

In a flash of panic, before your mind can understand, you throw yourself back against a steep rock wall: right before you, hungering for your fall, yawns a stygian precipice.

After a few seconds to steady your breath, your eyes begin to adapt to the darkness: you can now guess the sharp edges of high-pointed shapes in the distance, stretching all around like a vast row of titanic teeth. Even in the deepening dark, they stand out by their blackness against the grey-blueish stretch of sky above.

A thrill tingles up your spine: what you are seeing now are Mountains. Perhaps these very mountains the Druegans, according to Bazkiór, grew out of the earth in days long gone.

As your heartbeat grows steady, you glance at your legs: they are covered in odd-looking blue-grey leggings, something you have never seen anybody wear before. Black shoes cover your feet. Looking over your body, you realize you are entirely dressed with such strange clothes: blue, soft on the skin, but with pieces of cold, hard metal on your shoulders and chest. You don’t remember anyone, not even the Druegans, who wear such odd armour. Where have you fallen into?

Dismissing this futile question from your mind, your attention turns to the sparks of orange light laid out across the scenery: they shine, but only shakily. You intuit that they must be fires, set about the wide valley below. There is comfort in that thought: it implies there are people down there, Druegan, human or otherwise, but nevertheless needing the light and warmth of a campfire. And as if to mirror them, in the darkening sky, the stars appear.

Somehow, you know what they are. Even after spending your life in the underwater realm you only know as “Down Below”, you recognize these ageless, shimmering shepherds of the night-sky. This blueish one, right above the rim of the mountains to your right, is Aradag; and to its right, you can just see the three stars that make up the left wing of Gam-Yûn, the Northern-Eagle. And if you are not mistaken, the star above it, turned southwards, is part of the Diadem. These two constellations so close to each other, on a blacknight no less? Now there is a mighty omen indeed!

You can tell these thoughts are not your own: how on earth could you know about diadems and eagles in the sky? But even more surprising is how little you seem to care. It is as if these intrusive pieces of knowledge occupied their natural place in your head. No matter how much you try to reason, you find yourself accepting them as your own, and yet not “your own”.

But before you can ponder on it any further, another surprise comes crashing down on you: as you glance behind you, you realize you are not alone.

Was this gap in the stone always there? Or did it just open now, sliding noiselessly on invisible hinges, as is common of Druegan gates? Whatever the case may be, there it is: like a wound cut into the mountain side, gushing out a pale, greenish glow, which cuts out a sharp silhouette that stands before you now.

It is a small, humanoid creature, a Druegan by all account: his head and face are covered in long, black locks, and his eyes burn like dying embers. And when he speaks, your heart skips a beat:

“Welcome, Basquionná!”

The rugged voice, the heavy accent… Without a doubt, this Druegan standing before you is none other than Zvakar!

You try to speak up: how could he be here, wherever “here” may be? Was he sent by the Dreamer to help you on your journey?

But Zvakar does not reply: he merely gives a knowing nod, and his eyes beam with reverent awe. “I have done nothing but what I owe you, Lord Grizmalda.”

Startled, you still try to understand: doesn’t he recognize you? Does he remember Elmorlèm, and the battle against the Kobolds?

But your questions, once more, fall on deaf ears. You don’t even hear your own voice as you try to speak. And once more, Zvakar responds as if to someone else.

“Yes, you may take it tonight, as promised.”

And with a servile bow, the Druegan turns back toward the gap in the rocks, and motions you forward. Without knowing why, you follow, moving almost instinctively without really meaning to.

You pass through the entrance of the cave, and enter a dark tunnel stretching out for a few paces. The deep reddish light ahead is barely enough to sharpen Zvakar‘s silhouette. You can hardly even see the cave’s ceiling…

Suddenly, your hand extends above your head – and meets a rocky asperity right above your forehead. Had you reacted an instant later, you would be showing off a painful lump!

But did you react? It seems your hand acted on its own…

You press on, and reach the exit. Before you spreads a gigantic cave, lit by uncounted red crystals embedded in the rounded rock walls surrounding a platform in the center. Rocky steps climb up to a great anvil made of some dark metal. And yet, somehow, you are unsurprised by it all.

Having climbed half-way to the platform, Zvakar turns back: “my lord, will you not take it yourself from Wâldâ’s humble anvil?”

To your own surprise, you find your mind divided in starkly opposed thoughts. One sighs with disappointment: Wâldâ… So this is not Zvakar after all. The other boils with repressed anger: who does this damned imp think he is to give me orders? If I needed him not so, I would cast him myself in the pit of Môlg!

It is at this moment that you finally understand.

These strange clothes and intrusive thoughts that seemed to come from somewhere else, the Druegan hearing words you did not speak… They all point to one possibility: this body is not yours. Your mind has merely been grafted onto it for a time, allowing you to share its experiences without interfering with them. What you thought were “intrusive” thoughts were merely the thoughts of your unknowing host.

After a while, at Wâldâ’s behest, “you” start up the stairs, and reach the anvil. Upon it, dazzling blue against the blood-red cave, lies a sword.

You have seen it before: this is the famed “sword of Garral” you have been told about. You recognize the finely forged handle, the long, ornate sheath, all in changing hues of blue, white and gold. You make a gesture towards it, giving a final look to Wâldâ. The Druegan simply bows his head, and opens his hand: “the blade is yours”.

Taking it in your hands seems surreal: the thing barely weighs anything! At least that is the first impression it gives: by holding it from either extremity, you can tell this blade is heavy enough to cut, but so well-balanced it would feel like fencing with air.

Then your fingers lock around the handle, finding their grip as if with pure instinct, and you pull it out. Its blade shimmers like a frozen bolt of lightning in this subterranean realm. You swing it round, and it feels as nimble as a feather, as murderous as a living flame. You see it turn round and round around you, as your trained hand tries strike after strike, guard after guard, stance after stance. As it slashes the air around you, its blade becomes translucid, and as if in reaction to the red of the cave, grows warmer until it is as red as a burning ember. Then, you hear your voice – but sharp, joyous and exalted – echo under the red dome:

“Ah! Wâldâ, you have surpassed yourself! This blade is indeed worthy of a Grizmalda – nay, worthy of an emperor’s hand! There is not one other Druegan who can match your skill!”

“As there is no ithraúldos in Garral to match you, my lord,” answers the Druegan with feigned modesty. “Who among the Guild of Ethralda has ever deigned to approach one of my race before you? Who among them has ever dared to do the unthinkable – to shape the Shards-of-Ether into a living sword?”

“Aye, ‘tis true they mocked me for it,” you hear yourself respond. “They would use it to drive carts without horses, or to craft weapons to kill at a distance – Pah! Merchants, peasants they are, with silk for skin and mud for blood!”

The same brood as those who had Father executed, you hear yourself think. Your own roaring voice, deformed by rageful enthusiasm, echoes sharply across the cave:

“Let them once more learn to fear! Let them remember the Grizmalda of old, lest the Empire should crumble into dust!”

And with a blood-curling cry, you bring the blazing blade right down on the anvil.

A deafening crack shatters through the air as the white metal cleaves right through the dark stone. The cave, like a gigantic bell tolling for the dead, sends it echoing for almost a minute. The anvil falls in two, molten metal hissing as both halves tip over the platform and crash down at Wâldâ’s feet.

The Druegan looks up at you, with absolute terror on his face, and tears twinkling in his eyes. As he falls on trembling knees, you continue on, raising your voice to the heavens:

“No Wâldâ, no other man shall ever bear such a blade! Let it be bound to me, and my true heirs, by the Right of Bâzâk, by the Runes of Ancient Celd, and by the blood of my kin!”

A sharp pain along your arm, and blood drips over the blade, sizzling and hissing as they fall upon the burning metal.

Between hiccups and sobs, Wâldâ, his face a mask of pain, whimpers: “do not swear by Bâzâk, my lord… You know what it means… I cannot remake the sword. No other shall ever bear another! Spare me!”

You can feel you stand on a precipice: tip the balance to one side or to another, and things would never be the same. The instant seems frozen in time, as you see through Grizmalda’s eyes the terror and pain of a Druegan you feel kinship with. Not only do you feel for him for Zvakar’s sake, but you know Grizmalda himself considers the crying dwarf a friend and ally.

And yet an imperious desire to save a falling land, to regain your family’s honor, and a deep, twisted lust for revenge lead you to another conclusion.

In the end, you can only act as a witness to the horror that unfolds. The decision comes, cold as ice, burning like acid: the Right of Bâzâk demands it. For the greater good. Hundreds of years will look upon me as a hero. For my name. For Garral.

And, in spite of your best attempts at wrenching control of your body away from Grizmalda, your legs move forward, and your hand raises the white-hot blade high above your head –

The Dreamer’s voice echoes around you: “you have seen and heard what your ancestor did. Do you wish to witness his full story? Or would you go back to Now, and help your friends?”

“Time stands still here. The choice is yours.”

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