The Unity of Chaos and Order

Drawing the Sword

In the old days, before the Court destroyed my home and killed my family, my father would often host performers to tell classic adventure sagas. The common features of such sagas, such as quests found in ancient texts, magical weapons of indescribable power, and fallen nobility seeking revenge and fleeing the law, did not lose their irony on me.

The temple inside the Rift through which I now wandered was, however, not quite as ironic as I had first assumed. In those stories, the ancient temples holding the equally ancient artifacts would fall into one of two categories: either abandoned and dilapidated, with cracked stones and vermin crawling about, or preserved through magical energies to appear as it was at its prime. This temple was, strangely, neither and both of those things simultaneously. Stones lay shattered next to those as clean as if they were cut yesterday. Dirt and grime were as common as polished marble. Of the main doors entering the chapel, the left barely remained. A few strips of rotted wood were held loosely by rusted iron. The right door stood firm and tall, almost too perfect. A single unknotted wood plank as large as any tree was fastened to the frame with shining steel hinges and was masterfully decorated with gold inlays.
I entered through the gap in the left door and proceeded to the front of the chapel, ignoring pristine marble tiles, burnt columns, candles lit with fresh wax, and spiderwebs so old that the spiders who made them hung like criminals on the gallows in their own home. 

I walked past all those things because my goal, my entire purpose in being here, my final step in defeating the Court and taking my vengeance for what they did to my family, hung proudly behind the altar at the end of the chapel.

Two hooks protruded from the back wall, pointed up, holding between them a five feet long sword. A long straight steel blade extended from the hilt and tapered slowly to a rounded point. The crossguard curved slightly forward, each ending in a rounded knob, the grip was plain leather, wrapping in a spiral down to the open-ring pommel.  A stark contrast with the rest of the temple, it wasn't perfect, and neither was it decaying. It wasn't an artistic masterpiece like the Court's Rift Swords, it wasn't a poor man's sword, it wasn't ancient, it wasn't new. It was a sword.

It was in almost every single way, unremarkable.

Almost.

Coming from the sword were two voices. The first was my own, but the me after I had completed my mission. The me who had defeated his foes and returned honor to the Vanguard name. His voice came from the sword and resonated as realistically as if I heard them with my ears rather than my mind.

"Take me." It said. "Make things the way they should be. Take this unruly land into your hands and impose a true law so that none will be broken as you have been."

"Take me."

The second voice was not so much a voice, as much as an idea, a series of images, impressions, feelings. It showed me carrying the sword, cutting a path through the Court, destroying their temples, their authority, it showed me their pain equalling that of my own, it showed me standing at the top of a hill surrounded by the burning corpses of those who would stand in my way.

"Take me."

And the two voices hated eachother, and they were the same voice. Together they worked towards opposite goals, pulling against each other to a powerful Unity. In every way they differed. And in every way they were inseperable.

"Take me."

I stepped up to the sword, reaching a hand towards its grip.  This was the moment that would change everything.

I grabbed the sword and took it from its placement. 

"Let us do great things."

But the sword had other plans.