Azure

The Mumbling Blade

Once upon a time, there was a man who left his country to pursue higher education. On the airport his father parted with him by giving giving him a gift and a warm hug. The man was was filled with enthusiasm to discover a whole new country, new people and to make new friends. And of course, he was also excited to open all the gifts received he received.

The flight was almost 20 hours long. After reaching his destination, the boy- jet lagged and weary went to the campus and got settled into his dorm room. He was told that he would have two roommates. He wasn't disappointed. After the awkward introductions, the two roommates went out for some much needed grocery shopping and left the boy alone.

Glad to be left on his own, he quickly opened the gifts he had received. Most of them were just perfumes and souvenirs to remember his home country. However, upon opening his father's gift, he was perplexed. His father seemed to have given him what appeared to be a blade of a sort. He was examining it when all of a sudden, he heard mumbling. For an absurd second, he thought it was coming from the blade. Discarding the idea, he went out to see if his roommates had retired, but this was not the case. Strange, he thought.

Entering the room, to his great surprise, he saw that the blade was shining a bright red. And the mumbling did in fact, seem to be coming from it. However, all he could make out of its mumbling was to destroy evil. Terrified, he closed the box and locked it firmly into a drawer.

After, he tried surfing on the internet about it but, to no avail. Next day while unpacking his bags he again heard the same whispers and this time the light was flashing out of the drawer. Thankfully, the other two roommates were out. He too, left the dorm and went out. He decided to grab some brunch and to explore the city, as he had quite a lot of free time on his hands. Wandering around aimlessly, he came across a huge library. Intrigued, he went in to try to get some information about the blade.

After about an hour of searching, he came across a book where he thought there might be some information related to the blade. He rented the book and went back to the dorm. Fortunately, the book indeed proved to be very helpful. He learned that this blade was made years and years ago. The creator of the blade was an ordinary craftsman. He had made the blade for his daughter so as to protect her from evil.

But unfortunately, once when he was away, some cruel humans came to their house and pillaged it. The daughter died while fighting them off. When the father received the news, he collapsed too. However, he couldn't die completely, vengeful as he was.

From that day onwards, his spirit was captured in that blade and it would leave only when someone kills the culprits. However, years passed and the culprits weren't found. The craftsman's spirit was trapped in the blade, for years to come.

When the boy realised the full story, he was stunned. He had grown up listening to fairy tales but not quite believing them. But the blade was definitely something that could come straight out of one. After absorbing the truth as much as he could, he called his dad.

To his great astonishment, his dad was ecstatic to know that he had made and evoked to know more about the blade. He also explained how he had come to find the blade. In the days when he used to work at construction sites, he had found the blade at one of them. Thinking it to be quite weird, he had picked it up and kept it with himself.

In addition to this, the son came to know that whoever accepted the blade wholeheartedly, would be eternally safe from danger of all kinds. So it was, that an ordinary boy with an ordinary life came to be in the possession of a talking blade, which was quite extraordinary, considering.

-Rtr.Harshvi Shah