Isarnfur

Chapter 1

Being a spirit imbued into a heroic item is indeed an unsung position, for spirits like me. You see it's hard to convey the outer world when an ignorant wizard specifically puts a rune onto the bracer you are in that mutes you. Which sucks because I can certainly correct how people understand the mediocre levels of Iron magic, from raw spells to some runes. Oh the Mighty Spirit how the mortals of this world misunderstand the runes.

For an example of my existence, being set onto an armor rack with other spirit-imbued pieces from the "Great Runesman, Auro". That period of life was of constant grief and irritation towards those who kept our little cages nice and polished, along with desperately trying to get into touch with the more affluent of the society that walked by. The wizardly types or the more scout like types irritated me the most. Their entire jobs was around using magic and detecting magic respectively. Yet they could not hear a peep out of me

This wasn't a simple couple decades either I'll have you know, I watched the world change to great degrees. There were plenty of times when the Dwarves attacked the Human realms when they attempted to make peace with the goblins through treaties. I watched as the borders shifted on a map that the king ironically carried out of a genetic habit, something I watched be passed down with a shift of a blue and bone white hair to that of a sky-tinged blonde. I noticed how the tongue that the humans used slowly differed from that of Auro's time. All of this knowledge passed to me and no one to pass it to, a sterile bank of knowledge.

The most irritating thing was to watch the wizard types that claimed "to have an affinity with the spirts, able to speak their unheard tongue" pass me by, only looking at an old relic of the pass that gaged me from speech along with my fellows. The runemasters that took us out of th cage only looked at the runes a bit, seeing only baffling runes to them. Some etched were beyond their comprehension totally, others that they noticed were only now a little bit more understood. But none could notice me or my siblings.

Only once during this time, and for most of my life, were we heard. A middle aged man from a place called "Earth" or "Britain" I forgot which, heard us loud and clear. A man to help deal with the horrible threat that encroached on that kingdom during that era. A day I loathe remembering, especially the aggrontly enraged king's scowl, one who couldn't make many practical decisions, only could "keep the tradition going", and some tradition too, editing out only the most beneficial parts of the tradition. I think he was trying to destroy the kingdom inside out in spite of his father.

Which made the fall of the kingdom bittersweet. The castle was raided, sacked, and abandoned. Apparently the kingdom which harboured my kin was not up to snuff with the others to resettle even after the threat returned home. Something about the king cursing the land to fall permanently in the hands of that threat. To this day I still think using dragons and wyrms was a bit much from that threat, considering that it burned the armor stand we were perched on. Burning away the leather, only leaving the runed metallics left

After that, I was scavenged from the weathered debris. Making a "new life" out of the relics, being rebonded to leather which had runes of it's own. This "new life" I had was spent as a short couple decades being auctioned, stolen, bought, and repeated.

I found some self-determinism that I did not find before when worn. Serving to those who were kind of heart to the best of my ability. What about those who weren't? Lets just say being an Iron Spirit has a certain sway over any sentient's body. After all, iron dust inhaled, blocking the lungs is deadly no matter how big the said lungs are.

Though this did allow me to travel with some interesting people, which typically was renegade other-worldly dwarves. Why one might ask? Mainly because they treat their property with respect and almost as if they sense spirits in the items that do have them in there. You'd be surprised how many spirits accidentally went into a cook pan. Though they, unlike us who are truly trapped, can find their way out in a couple days. So yeah I just might be able to do more when a dwarf uses my bracer.

What is an Other-worldly dwarf? Oh, it's a dwarf from another planet, or maybe dimension. The theories on that aren't so clear cut to even me. But it has been something that has been constantly been used throughout my life, becoming something more and more sinister even if it was deemed as a "holy magic" by the religions of the realms.

Back to my life being traded off as an uncommunicative piece of armor, I was currently being sold in some two-pence kingdom erected on the edge of a contested region of land. The dude that was buying me was someone who had a very nasty tattoo on his hand around his finger. Plus the fact he was slowly draining the health of those a couple stalls down.

However, all the man at the stall saw was a small little piece of paper, muttering about how good it was for his business to have a "High Guard" purchasing at his stall and not somewhere else. It didn't look good for me.

~

A couple weeks passed, I found out why he was in such a position, almost blatantly being a traitor to the group. He most definitely was one of a more rotten nature, the person that was second to his position almost seemed normal compared to him. He used his standing to secretly get into the morgue, taking the bodies of criminals and the such, the morgue for civilians was in a different building under someone else.

With this new supply, he started practicing the currently rare arts of dark necromancy, making slavish undead squads. The necromancer was called "Snekder" by his true comrades. But all of them didn't truly deserve a name. Only "allies of Ankchioas" seemed fitting. Ankchioas was the threat that haunted the entirety of this world. How does he make the undead? That I won't explain.

The worst part? The goddamned man had a Curse of Stagnation, something that made it impossible for magic to truly affect him, and poisoning to be of little effect. Only way to kill him was to do damage through force. Sadly the typical type of death, that of being blood loss through a thousand cuts or bruises, was only a large inconvenience instead of the life-threatening "debuff" it should have been. I sensed that he was once blessed by a spirit of health. Damned abombinition was lucky enough not to just turn into a pain-blind puddle of flesh. Like all of the others that were blessed by a healing spirit and been cursed with that particular line of curses.

Suffice to say, I was desperate, which made me a little mad with giddiness when he was placed for summoning guard duty. It did take a couple weeks on this post, and no I didn't just sit by, watching the summonees walk off. At this time summoning became an easy way to get slaves now, like I said, it had become a sinister practice. Something the Elves, forgot which streak of debauched reign of rulers, started practicing. Anyways, I didn't wait. I yelled, or what us spirits consider yelling, to every single person that came out of the summoning gate. Especially to those that passed by me and this fugly thing of a blob of flesh.

All that mental screaming only brought a couple dull stares to us from a couple per day. A distasteful thing, there was a new way to bring the summonees in the world in a dull state using some new runes. They had the same look as if they took too many doses of Grayweed or something.

Until, that was, Will Yank Freeman came unto this plane. His eyes were that of one who showed the cold-style kindness, if one wasn't busy looking at his predatory body posture.This man was the kind that either stories of reverence were told, or ones put in the history books as someone who you loathe to even mention. And, damn my luck, he looked straight at my bracer!