Reforging the Promise
“Rivers, I trust you, but right now I’m feeling a little worried.” Nameless Ravine spoke the words slowly and carefully, doing his best to sound reassuring and not terribly concerned. These fine distinctions were difficult to convey, since he was currently in the midst of a howling maelstrom of activity, dressed in an inch thick lead coverall, an adamant blast shield on his head, two fantastically oversized asbestos gauntlets on his hands, and the broken Promise held before him. Its blade was crumpled, the heavy orichalcum folded in on itself; it was a dead weight in his hands.
Around him, five hundred clockwork servitors were busy clearing the factory floor at breakneck speed while simultaneously running hundreds of cables across the floor. As drills and presses were pushed aside, forges placed in hibernation and rolled away, a space was slowly cleared in the Halls of Mars. This open floor space was being quickly filled with pipes and cables running from all directions, some as small as his ring finger, others so thick that they were taller than himself. All of these were being run into a series of three separate, house-sized boxes… and out of each box ran a single cable sheathed in pure orichalcum.
“I mean… when you said you were going to fix it… I assumed you would be reforging it.”
“No good!” Rivers Between Us, twilight caste sorcerer, lumbered into the hall from the north. At least, it sounded like Rivers, but it was hard to say, for he was currently operating a common warstrider, The Bandit King. In one hand he was loosely twirling an enormous jade serpent sting staff. “The sword will not submit to the hammer. It was never meant to be altered. The least god of your sword has fallen asleep. We need to wake him. Once he awakes, the sword will resume its former shape as a matter of course, as certain registers in heaven come into balance and its integral essence aligns.”
“How do you wake a sleeping god?” Nameless Ravine eyed the cables suspiciously.
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” The nearest clockwork servitor gingerly picked up the nearest orichalcum sheathed cable and connected it directly into one of the hearthstone sockets on the Promise. Two other clockwork servitors began following suite. “The amount of essence we’re pouring into that blade will either wake it up… or turn it into slag. I’m still not sure.”
“Are you conducting all of the energy from the Halls of Mars into this one sword?!!”
“Actually, I’m also borrowing from the two adjacent halls as well. Even this is just setting the stage.” As he said this, the one of the three boxes began to hum, sending waves of heat shimmers into the air. Instantly the cable running from the steel box to the sword gave off a flash of pure golden light. Like a living stream of magma it began to writhe of its own accord, slamming three of the automatons across the room. The sword itself began to glow with the same golden light. Then the second and third box started to hum and their cables thrashed. The light pouring out of the sword turned from gold to white; it was blinding to look at. A constant shower of sparks flew off of it in a cascading waterfall, each one melting a tiny crater in the steel alloy floor. At the same time a high-pitched scream began to peal off of the sword.
Rivers adopted his snake stance, drawing about him the essence fangs and scales. “Nameless Ravine, I am going to strike you. If you do not block with your heavenly guardian defense, you will die. I guarantee this.” He began whipping his artifact staff about him in increasingly powerful arcs, sending gusts of wind and debris across the factory floor.
“It won’t work with a broken sword… can you hear me, Rivers?” He had to shout above the sword’s screams to be heard.
“You have lost faith in your blade, and it has lost faith in you as well. When that trust is reformed, the sword will awaken and unfold, but only if you truly need it. Trust in the Promise!”
“Did the abyssal come up with this plan, because right now…”
“That’s good! Get me angry. This has to be real.” The Bandit King stepped forward. Nameless Ravine lifted the malformed blade between them, its light so bright it shone like a star, casting the rest of the room into sharp relief as everything exposed to its rays shone in purest white, while anything shielded from it was cast in blackest shadows. The three cables whipped about him in a frenzy, like drowning serpents; he could barely lift the unattuned blade while struggling against them.
Rivers spun the staff over his head three times and shouted at the top of his voice, “Now, Ravine, Now! Essence overwhelming!”
The green jade butt of the staff flashed toward him with the inevitable destructive force of a hurricane. As it whistled down, golden sparks of essence roiling off of it like a falling comet, Nameless Ravine had no doubt that it was a killing strike. He pulled the sword upwards, trying to force his own essence into the blade for that one perfect parry. He could feel its spirit struggling with him, bloated with essence and filled with the combined divine might of half the city’s manses. Nameless Ravine’s anima burst forth, and a great booming sound was heard throughout the room, resonating in the souls of all humans within a hundred miles as a knot in the loom of fate snapped free, and the sword shrugged off its defeat as a clerical error in its eternal destiny of triumph.
“Heavenly Guardian Defense!” He shouted, and the flare from the sword grew to fill every corner of the room with blazing light. The flash instantly overloaded the clockwork efficacy servitor’s sensors and blinded both of the solar exalted.
The lights went out in half of the Infinite City.
A minute later, when Nameless Ravine could see again, the room was still pitch black. He heard the sounds of shuffling automatons and the creak of a warstrider, but the only thing that he could see was the dull red glow of the Promise, slowly cooling, its blade as straight and true as the day it was born.
"It feels different."
"Different... how?"
"I don't really know how to express it, it's just... different."
Rivers sighed. "I've analyzed the Reforged Promise with the finest instruments that the city has to offer, and its geometric indices are a perfect match for what they were before. It's the same sword. Except, of course, for a .000006 stone difference in weight owing to a using a different weave of silk to wrap the hilt this time."
Nameless Ravine frowned as he moved through the kata. "It's hesitant. It's fighting my movements."
"It's probably just the residual essence from the restoration process sorting itself out. I'd feel a bit out of sorts too, if I'd just absorbed that many motes. Just repeat the attunement process until it stabilized. Or maybe you just need to remind it who and whose it is."
Rivers reached for a small control box on a nearby workbench. A pile of unused tools and components shuddered to life, revealing itself to be an ornate steel automaton. Its eighteen clawed metallic servo arms whirled in a mechanical mockery of a flight of arrows. Nameless Ravine took up a relaxed standing position across from it, and held the Promise out in front of him. Beads of sweat welled up on his wrists and forehead as he chanelled his essence through his body, suffusing himself and his blade with infinite mastery.
"Valiant blade, slayer of the wayward guardian, deathknight's bane, inviolable bastion at the Battle of Breaking Iron, remember my hand!"
The Automaton didn't have the time to actuate its pneumatic optical sensors before Nameless Ravine had plunged The Promise deep into its central housing, burying the mighty sword up to the hilt. It shuddered thrice as its internal gearing futilely ground against the orihalcum blade until its central drive shaft snapped. With one smooth motion, Nameless Ravine pulled the sword free, returned to a neutral stance, and declared in an echoing whisper: "Second Attack Posture: The Promise Hungers."
The construct's dual flywheels no longer restrained, the entire contraption exploded.
Rivers applauded as a parabolic hail of essence-infused rivets evaporated harmlessly against his Anima Banner. "Nameless Ravine, I've never seen you move that fast. I assume it's back to normal?"
Ravine frowned. "No, it still fought me. Not enough to matter, but just enough for me to feel it. It's almost like... AAaaagh!" He dropped the promise in alarm as the hilt suddenly burst into flame. The blade clattered to the ferrocrete floor of the factory as fire consumed the silk wrappings on the hilt; a moment later, the flames vanished.
Rivers walked over to The Promise and gingerly probed the bare metal; it was cool to his touch. "Huh, it's never done THAT before." He brushed the ashes of the silk aside, and glared at the blade. "You're right, it is different. Take a look at this script on the tang; it's new."
Nameless Ravine leaned closer. Sure enough, just below Rivers Between Us' finely chiselled mei stood a new line of ideograms. As he read them, Nameless Ravine flinched as if he'd been struck.
FOR MY MAKER'S SAKE ALONE DOTH THE PROMISE SUFFER THE OATHBREAKER'S HAND TO WIELD.
Rivers grew solemn: "May Heaven help us, I do believe that The Promise seems to have acquired an... attitude."
