The Nova Ranker - The Sword Almighty

Chapter 25. The Sword Almighty

As I walked up the stairs, I felt a buzzing in my ears. A sensation like when you hear someone's phone vibrating in their pocket. Distant and muffled, but I could feel it. Despite my fears of the sword somehow rejecting me I was excited. It was like King Arthur, pulling the sword from a stone, or playing Zelda and finally getting the Master Sword. You could imagine the mild disappointment I felt when I saw what waited for me.

A long, burn, rusted chunk of metal was sitting sideways on top of the anvil, with a rough approximation of a hilt sticking out of one side. Avi had described it to me like this and yet, looking at it, it somehow looked even more pathetic than I could've imagined. I leaned forward and grabbed the hilt. Not only did it feel like a static shock suddenly going up my arm, the buzzing in my ears got much louder, to the point where it felt like I was going deaf. And worse, no matter what I did, how hard I pulled, how much leverage I put on it, the blade sat there, firmly stuck and refusing to budge.

Defeated, I let go of the blade, and the buzzing in my ears returned to a more manageable volume. With the buzzing lower, I realized the sound was coming straight from my mind, as I could now hear the minds of my friends around me

[I hope he knows what he's doing...] Franziska's voice whispered in my head.

[... He's going to hurt himself...] Joey's mutters drummed against the inside of my skull.

[... He's not ready for this.] Andy's voice said worriedly, and I saw him make his way towards the stairs.

Worry. Worry. Worry. I was so tired of having them worry about me. I was so angry at feeling weak and defenseless, tired of losing control under everyone's broken expectations. I rested both my hands on the anvil and tried to tune into the buzzing more deeply. The feeling of electricity going up my arms was more painful than before, but I couldn't give in. I needed to hear something. A clue. Anything at all.

[An offer, tied with the blood of whoever would steal my weapon.]

I let go of the anvil and looked behind me. Andy stood a few steps from the top of the stairs, looking at me with deep worry in his eyes. It looked like he was trying to get closer, but something was keeping him at bay. Upon closer inspection, Avi had chains tied around him, keeping him from getting closer. Looking straight into his eyes, I grabbed the remains of my broken sword, pressed the blade against my right hand and sliced. I felt a horrible burning sensation as blood started to come down my fingertips, pain so sharp I almost wanted to cry, and I instinctively dropped the broken sword.

After taking a second to regroup my thoughts, I placed my hand on the rusted hilt, hoping my tetanus shot was enough to counteract however many hundreds of years of rust was touching my wound. The familiar sensation of the sword sending shocks up my arm made me nervous for a moment. Fear went up my spine. If I didn't make this legendary hunk of junk mine right now, Calev would've died for nothing. I looked down at the sword, my eyes watering from the pain.

Blood was spreading out over the sword, being drawn from the wound in my hand. As my blood traveled up and down the blade it almost seemed to melt the rust away, and the charred metal bent back into the correct shape. I could feel the ground underneath me shaking. Sand raised from the walls, sweat on my skin floating away from me, vegetation starting to pop up from under the sand somehow, and the metallic zippers and buttons of my clothes moving as if magnetized to the sword.

I pulled and miraculously, the sword seemed to shift slightly. But something was missing. the sword seemed to protest, something within it was nagging at me, as if my blood offer was incomplete. I tried to think of what was missing but nothing came to mind. The sword was stuck there, I was bleeding all over it and I didn't know what else to do. And then something donned on me. I remembered the words the Forgemaster had said when he gave me my first sword.