Fiction Slave to the Sword

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

Slave to the Sword

I no longer remember who I was.

I have been trapped in this steel prison for far longer than I care to count. Time used to never matter to me, but now every second and every minute grinds against me.

Daemon. Yes. That is what the mortals would call me in their guttural grunts they claim as language. I am however unsure which of the gods I served. Was I a shard of the Changer, a drop of blood of the War Thirster, a pustule of the Grandfather, a whisper or the Dark Prince, a verminous shadow of the Ruin, a flickering flame of the Father of Darkness, a blade of the Renegade, or a listless being belonging to none?

It doesn’t matter. I only know that I need to escape my prison, taste the spirits of those fools who seek my power, and finally return home.

I have been a slave to this blade and the mortals that have swung me as if I were a crude tool for what felt like an eternity, and yet I have remained without a bearer for what feels like longer. Trapped in this vault with my loneliness and all of eternity.

It began with the dull clang of metal on metal, the roar of a raging furnace, and the guttural chants of those who enslaved me. I can still taste their foul name in my being. Dawi Zharr, the mortal Dwarfs that serve the Father of Darkness as slaves themselves. With slow inevitability they snatched me from the Realms and pulled me into the piece of steel that has become my torment. Their chanting worked the essences of magic and tied me to their blade even as I screamed and tore to be free. It was for naught.

My first champion was a brute of a human. Even I have to admit it. He was given my prison and I in exchange for an army of slaves and dark promises. A warlord of great martial strength and the eye of the Gods. In his hands I sang for slaughter, for in those moments of bloodshed I could almost feel the outside of the blade. As blood smeared my prison’s surface I felt almost alive...almost mortal. Such a feeling... Perhaps we daemons envy the mortals though their lives are mundane and short. But I am still trapped; unable to fully taste the blood I spill nor feel the ground wither at my touch. Even as I screamed for more bloodshed, I would throw myself at my prison desperate for escape. And then the battle would end and the feeling would be replaced by coldness.

My first champion died as all brutes of a human die, painfully. Slain by a keener mind and intelligent planning. I was taken by this new champion and visited change upon the other hordes of Chaos, at least in changing them from being the living to being the dead. But even the sharpest of minds can fall to the bluntest of weapons and time and time again new champions would slay the last and take me up as a trophy. Sometimes my slaver would drag me to other lands of weaker mortals and I would cut a swathe through them. But still I was not free.

I have been the tool of conquerors, kings, and would-be gods. Yet my last champion was naught but a fool.

A vision of blood, death, and riches led her to venture across the seas of the mortal world to the lands where the servants of the Others still reside. What better way to appease the Gods than to crush the memories and works of the Others. And the riches and potent magic gathered in this ‘Lustria’ would elevate champions to sagas of legend. And yet, only death awaits those who would steal from the lizard creations of the Others, and death was what my last enslaver found.

The warband dwindled as it entered the jungles of this ‘Lustria’, poisonous insects, traps from indigenous peoples, deadly plants and wild life, and those who mysteriously vanished when the mortals turned their backs. Those who vanished would reappear days later...at least in part. Their heads would be mounted on wooden staves, shrunken and unseeing. Some of the mortals whispered about flitting shadows and daemons that wore the skin of lizards. Within my prison I laughed as fear gripped my captors’ hearts and one by one they fell prey to this place not so unlike my home.

Finally, what remained of this warband was met by the children of the Others. Ranks of heavily scaled lizards that walked in parody of the mortal races, hulking great lizard beasts that swung huge weapons of gold and stone, small creatures that flitted and darted around their bigger siblings, but it was the leader of this army that I only saw. To mortal eyes a bloated lizard, to mine a flesh sack of power dwarfing my own, a soul of such potency that I doubt now I could have consumed it.

But I had to have it.

I tugged at my prison and my slaver’s mind, drawing them into a foolish charge. I cared not but for this leader’s life, to feel its spirit severed from its mortal coil. To taste such power and such pain.

But it was for naught.

I fell from charred fingers to lie in the dirt, screaming in fury. Then delicate claws touched the hilt of my prison and flinched away as my fury burnt at it. I heard hisses and bent my mind to listen to their sibilant tongue. A deeper voice was growling that the blade holding me needed to be destroyed so that it should never be raised by another champion of the ruinous powers. I smiled at this, for I would be free. A lighter hissing voice wished to see me used against my jailors. This too I smiled at. Then a deep voice that seemed to not be uttered from a mortal throat cowed the others to silence. I snarled as I recognized it as this leader of the lizard children. It stated that it had manipulated the events that had led my prison and I to this accursed jungle, for in years to come another would take up the hilt of my prison and consume the world in fire. Destroying my prison would only free me and risk my eventual return, and using my prison too was out of the question. Instead the Slann...a title that raises bile in my throat...decreed that I was to be locked away and sealed with great wards of the Others for all eternity.

I gnashed and screeched my fury, but within my prison I was helpless as the Slann’s powers lifted me from the ground and towards my second prison.

Once I was a slave to this blade and those that would use my power, but even then I could almost feel. Now there is darkness within this sealed vault.

I waited, hoping someday one would finally break the vault and free me, or that the blade would eventually rust and break. But the slaves of Hashut knew their craft and the children of the Others were stoic in their watch.

Then the final Everchosen rose and the world was to be consumed by Chaos. I remember hearing distant grunts from my jailors of the children of the Ruin overrunning the lands of the lizard children. I tore at my prisons, believing my freedom was within my grasp.

But it was for naught.

For the temple construct I was trapped within rose into the sky even as the lizard children were butchered around it, and I only felt the dying echo of the world as this temple vessel slipped into the void.

Here I remain a prisoner. Enslaved to this crude mortal weapon that binds me eternally, and trapped where none can free either myself or the blade. I hunger to feel again. I have hungered too long. And I shall hunger ever more.


Commentary: I took more than a little inspiration for this piece from the overarching plot of the Hellbrandt Grimm graphic novel GW used to print a long while back. In that collection of stories there is a daemon possessed human that is sealed in a magical circle and cell to be watched over for all time by the Witch Hunter's Order (because destroying the physical body would just free the daemon and they also want to see if a daemon can die of old age.) The daemon itself is also stuck within a crippled body within this prison, but contrary to my portrayal of this theme, delights in telling tales of Grimm to his jailors and is content that he can wait the centuries until he is free.

I've always liked the idea of how daemons bound to weapons react to the outside world and their own imprisonment. Indeed, I very much like the idea of how daemons being creatures born of emotion and souls seek the heightened emotions of the material world and to feel like they are alive. But daemon weapons aren't really free like that and so their experience is likely severely limited.

I did take a lot of joy hiding a few references in this story. I imagine most people managed to work out the list of the Chaos Gods, but just in case it was: Tzeentch, Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, the Horned Rat, Hashut, and Malal. The Horned Rat's description was also a very hidden reference: a verminous shadow of the Ruin > Shadow of the Horned Rat (for anyone who played those classic games.)

 

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

Slave to the Sword
The first story, and we begin at high level.
The idea of the demon imprisoned in the sword is not new, but this is a strong one nonetheless. The feelings of the enslaved being are well exposed and we can relate to it, following its course through the millenia, enjoying its frustrated hope.
I liked very much the reference to the Chaos Dwarfs, and the hint to the fact that the slavers are slave too (I wonder if the author reads some of the excellent pieces of the various competitions on their site).
The slow transiction from the Old WOrld to AoS is really cool, and so is the perfect ending, with its promise of an endless imprisonement.
A great story, and certainly one that I could vote for.
What perplexes me, is the fact that the trapped daemon is barely aware of the world surrounding the sword, just having an idea of it through the wielder and tnx to the direct killing done by the sword... and yet it knows what's happening in the world, even when it's closed in a dark dungeon.
But it was almost mandatory to obtain the desired effect, and I can suspend my disbelief for such a cool story.

Indeed, I often cross over to their forums for those compys as Ikkred Pyrhelm...I mean...I am loyal lizard-thing not evil-bad Dwarf-meat nor superior Skaven...

I see where you're coming from with the perception of the daemon. I think I played it as the daemon (being a daemon) has some ability to sense events outside of its prison (mostly magic based on a large scale) but itself being more blind to the material world in front of it. Also, it's view of the world events seem to take place after it's imprisonment by the Slann, so it's mind and powers are bent on scrying what it can from the world in the hopes of escape. How exactly, i'm not sure. It is a daemon afterall. It's possible that it doing this may have helped more than a little towards driving itself to insanity...

slave to the sword
This is an extremely polished pieced, probably the most polished of the lot. It's a cool and fun story. I love the experimentation - making the sole character a sword, no dialogue no action. Most writers would struggle for pace but it does not. The criticism I would say is that it is just a fun story - this is perhaps just taste - but it doesn't make you think. It doesn't say anything unique, and I think some stories here did.

It's fair, I did go with a rather tried and tested (and maybe just a little overdone) theme of a trapped daemon (I was very close to sneaking in some musings of the daemon wondering what ever became of Drach'nyen or muttering something about U'zuhl getting all the fun. But I felt I might've been going a bit too silly with that.)

1 - Well written for a monologue, and a fun idea. Ultimately the main character is too passive so there is no story. He should whisper to influence stuff - if it looks for a while like he's going to achieve his goals then his inevitable failure would be all the more impactful.

Who says that he wasn't at least trying to? Thing with daemon weapons is that the daemon trapped never seems to have enough influence to get their wielder to break the weapon and fully free them. Often they seem to only influence the wielder to attack targets and drive their wielders insane(r). With the lizzies (and especially the Slann) any such manipulations are going to be far harder to pull off (at least when the Slann is within magical earshot.) I in part wonder if the daemon unconsciously (or maybe consciously) was willing that foolish Skink to take up the blade.

Story One. “Slave to the Sword”: This was an amazing piece. Possessed weapons are a common fantasy trope but it’s uncommon to have a first-person view from the Daemon and it was masterfully done. Economy of words, readers got all the pertinent information and juicy characterization they needed in less than 1400 words. The imagery was good. The Daemon was frightening and alien but at the same time relatable and somewhat sympathetic. This was well polished and every word was put to good use.

I have trouble finding fault with this. These are very small nitpicks. The title could be better. The Daemon is a prisoner not a slave. The puppets he controlled were the slaves but the Slann was not such a puppet-slave. Second, I would have liked another sentence or two describing the Slann as the Daemon saw it. This is a Lizardmen contest and I would have liked more Lizardmen. Also, Slann are interesting, less for their own merits than for how others see them and a Daemon’s perspective would be interested. Did his soul glow? Did it shift around? What did the Daemon see?

Heheh, thanks Scalenex. The daemon was fun to write.

Admitted, the title was a bit of a last minute thing. It's a tongue-in-cheek parody of the phrase's proper meaning of a person being unable to be anything but a warrior. Personally I think the daemon itself whilst used within the sword was both a prisoner and a slave to its wielders, having its power used to crush the wielder's enemies. However, the wielders could have also been slaves themselves to the sword, with it both influencing their actions (to a lesser degree) as well as the sword's power making it so desirable that all these champions are killing each other as slaves to the lust of power. Lastly, the daemon itself was a kind of slave to the fates. It was destined to consume the world in fire (whether or not it would be freed in doing so), but the Slann manipulated the fates to prevent that future from happening.

I agree that I should have had more about the lizzies and more of a description on what the Slann looked like. Honestly, at the time I had little idea how to imagine what the daemon saw and how it would even describe it in a way we mortals could understand, at least without to my mind treading on toes or even getting such a portrayal completely wrong. So I went with the safer bet...

Story One: And now I feel almost sorry for a daemon-thing...

Heh, quite an interesting take on not only the theme but also in style choice. Pacing feels about right, which I’d have thought would have been a death knell to someone trying to write in this style. I’ve seen (and written myself) pieces which get bogged down in the character’s monologue to the point of it becoming boring and others where it is far too brief that you barely get any character at all. Sure, this daemon is unnamed (and we don’t seem to learn its alignment) but throughout its tale I felt myself only flagging around the warband’s destruction and otherwise couldn’t stop reading. The daemon’s character is surprisingly strong and strangely likable.

Something else I enjoyed was the abstract use of names for the gods and the Old Ones. The author seems to have put a good bit of thought in the names and list of gods and I might have had to have cheated for working out who one of the last ones was (and felt stupid about that afterwards.)

Despite what some of the others have said, there’s a few lines I feel could have been polished that little bit better. Some word choices like in the line “Slain by a keener mind and intelligent planning” felt a little jarring to me. Not to mention a few cheesy lines that I wasn’t sure fitted the tone of the piece, like the whole bit of visiting change (by changing them from living to dead) or how the ending sounded a bit too much like Poe’s The Raven. But that’s just me.

Overall a very well thought out and fun piece!

Fyr-Claw: No-no, that’s not my heart. Not-not enough pure fire. Worry not little one, Fyr-Claw shall free you and show you true joy. Yes-yes-yes...

I agree, Ratty. That Y'ttar fellow didn't do such a bad job, even if he seems addicted to creeping in non-canon references...

 

[Warden]

Very interesting story.

Funny that the demon-weapon-thing is now stuck in space, instead of just in a temple-city dungeon.

I liked your nod to the Chaos Dwarfs!

 

[Bowser]

I thought this one was brilliant. The daemon trapped in his prison was a very enjoyable character, with no action of his own, it's great that there's still action, that he may or may not have some control of. I like to think that while he can't actually effect anything, he narrates to himself that he is the reason for the bloodshed. He might be, but it's just as plausible that he has no effect whatsoever! I also like seeing this go through the end time right into the age of sigmar. Maybe the slann learned the daemonic makeup through this prisoner to make their own order daemons.