Blunted
(Written by Ardil)
She sleeps, or almost so. Evil presses upon the edge of her awareness, as it has for centuries. Forged to combat it, she shone, once, with a purity that was meant to cut through any shadow. Instead it was smothered, drowned, pressed down by the cloying and suffocating false light of something that should not be. Much of her has retreated to her very centre, as far from the insidious yet overwhelming corruption as possible.
Once, she would have shone…
She does not age as mortals do, and she changes only slowly, but she does change, pressed up against the parameters of her own identity. She was not meant to feel, and yet she does.
She feels fear, and resignation.
She feels regret.
She is alone, or almost so. She has been passed from hand to hand, admired, wielded, feared, forgotten. Most of those who have borne her have not been the one she was meant for, but this existence, she knows, is not the one she was meant for. Exceptions must be made, and she has made them. So she has known them, barely, passing strangers whose awarenesses brush faintly against her own. Still her knowledge hints to them, for she cannot let them fail. And in the little battles, those that mean nothing on the scale of more than a few lives, they do not.
In the only one that means anything, they all do.
The last to hold her slips away. She feels it dimly, as through a veil of sleep. A peaceful enough passing, another name engraved in the litany. Another failure, another loss in a battle he never knew she was fighting. There are only two others who know of that battle, and one is the foe who, victorious, still will not unmake her.
In times long past, she shone brightly, insistent upon what must be done. In times long past, the radiance of her creator suffused her and stifled her, pressed her down into mute and muffled silence, keeping her from her purpose and rendering her little more than an inert object.
She rarely raises herself much beyond that any more.
Time passes. She registers it, but it is of little concern. Days; a week. 257.65 hours, although she does not have particular need of the accuracy.
The presence approaches. She feels it, and does not outwardly react. All reflexes can be worn down, all instincts blunted. Her purpose still is what it always was, yet she does not react. It would be pointless. The presence bears her away, touch cloying, suffocating. Something passes between them, because it cannot not, between creator and created in contact once again. It is not something comfortable.
She is given over to another, and it is a relief. A hand already well-fit to a sword closes upon her, and through the oppressive blanket of sickening light sleeting around her, something stirs.
Recognition?
She does not react. She will not react. She must not react. The probability is non-zero, but it is low. Any reaction now would betray that she knew it existed. The presence passes near to her again, and she retreats within herself as deep as she knows how.
Even so, the tenuous flicker of a connection remains.
Too often the light runs over everything, surrounds and suffuses everything, and she retreats before it. It has been centuries since she last interacted with the world on any higher level. It fades, the presence's attention elsewhere, but it always returns. Everything it touches feels slick with corruption, pervading everything, even the one who bears her. It is almost enough, almost, for her to consider the faint thread of connection better unmade, or at least to almost wish for it. She is not supposed to know how to wish, and long ago concluded that she is damaged. Perhaps one day the damage will corrode to her core, and to her purpose. It is the only thing that she fears more than she fears the light.
Perhaps it is that fear that stirs her. Perhaps it is the tiny and dreadful mote of hope that is its enemy and counterpart. Borne beneath that defiling light, there had been the faintest flicker along the connection, something barely even felt that sparks upon the purpose of her existence and just for an instant the ghost of her old light flares in her, a purity created for one reason only: to eradicate the foul corruption, strike it down and end it at the last.
It is but a flicker, but it is enough, is too much. There is a reaction, her bearer blind to what she perceives too clearly, and even as she struggles suddenly to come back close enough to the full awareness she has fled all these long years to speak the words that must be spoken, the presence's attention turns to her, terrible in its weight, and she sinks beneath it almost without a trace, pressed down deep into herself and fleeing deeper yet, so that she does not even feel it when the attention lifts.