Chapter 5

The Sword

New character appearing in this chapter and others:

Cassius

Minor Demon, short at 4’-8’’ tall, red skin with short horns on his head, gray hair and beard, very fancy and expensive seventeenth century clothes, silver buckles on his shoes

Bob and I entered what looked like a very ritzy saloon with fine wood furniture and wallpaper plus better lighting, but it was deserted presently. It appeared that those who had been here had left in a hurry. There were turned over chairs and drinks left sitting unfinished on the bar. There was even one table with a green felt top that was turned over, and there were playing cards lying on the floor along with coins. The one thing that was still there was a sword, and what a sword it was. The double edged blade was a good 2 plus inches wide at the guard and 4 feet long with a blood grove part way down the middle. I was unable to tell how thick it was as it was hanging against the wall behind the bar in the place of honor. The handle was a good 16 inches long above the cross guard, and it ended in a disk about 3 inches in diameter. The guard was some 12 inches long and about three quarters of an inch thick in the center before tapering to about half of that near the ends which ended in balls about half an inch in diameter. There was a scabbard hanging just above the sword.

On seeing it, I was immediately attracted to the sword and moved toward it. Bob was instantly unhappy about this and moved to stop me.

“Don’t go near the sword,” he warned me in his whiny voice.

Why?” I asked.

“It’s a trophy from the war,” he told me.

“So, it’s been hanging there for 4,000 years?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he answered in a noncommittal voice.

“Has it been hanging there for 4,000 years or not?” I demanded, turning to look at him and distracted from the sword for now.

“It had to be moved about a thousand years ago when the building that it was in burned down,” Bob told me.

“Do you have a lot of problems with fires?” I asked him.

“Not usually, but this fire was ... was... , “ Bob stumbled to a halt.

“It was what?” I demanded impatiently.

“It was caused by a fight. One of us got into a fight with several others and candles got knocked over and set the straw on the floor on fire. The fight was intense enough that no one noticed initially, and by the time they did, it was too late to put the fire out even with Magic. The building burned down, but the sword was saved along with the scabbard. It was moved here, and has been here ever since.” he told me. I turned back to look at the sword.

I was closer to it now, and it seemed to call to me. I reached out to touch it then, and found that I was somehow much closer to it, having somehow passed through the center section of the bar, like it was only an illusion.

“You mustn’t touch the sword...” Bob was shouting insistently from behind me, but it was too late, my hand was already touching the blade of the sword.

“It’s enchanted,” he ended in a whiny voice, but I wasn’t paying attention more than in a peripheral way, as things were happening to me that held most of my attention.

Looking down from a new prospective, I found that while my hand was still touching the blade, my head was touching the underside of the second floor of the building. Bob was some seven feet below my eyes, and my body was still in the process of changing.

“Oh dear! you shouldn’t have done that,” Bob whined in fear, just as I finished changing. I looked down to see scaled hands which ended in claws; claws that were made to wrap around the handle of the sword. I also noticed that my feet were scaled and ended in long claws. As if by familiarity, my right hand reached out and took the handle of the sword, snapping the wire that held it in place.

As I held the sword out in front of me, I noticed that my arms were scaled also, as was my chest and shoulders, in fact, my entire body was now covered in scales, light blue scales. As I turned to look back on the room behind me, something brushed against the wall behind me. I turned my head, but couldn’t see behind myself. Instead, I flicked my shoulders, and wings, long bat-like wings, extended out on either side of me. I also discovered that I now had a long, scaled tail.

“Oh dear,” Bob moaned in his whiny voice. “I knew that you were a Dragon, and a female Dragon at that. Now you have assumed the body of a Warrior Dragon. We are so doomed!” he moaned in a near whisper, but I heard him easily.

“Where are these Major Demons and my Familiar?” I demanded, and it came out in a deep hungry voice while I swished my long tail, knocking the bottles and everything else behind me down. Bob cringed on the floor in front of me, but nothing else moved for a time, as I looked around at the bar. There had been no answer to my demand, and I was quickly losing my patience when there was movement at the door.

Shortly, another Demon moved into the bar on his knees. He was dressed even more elegantly than Bob’s landlord had been, but he was groveling now.

“What do you want Master Dragon?” he asked in a voice trembling with fear and not looking up at me.

“Master?” I demanded in a roar that shook the walls and the very floor above me. He looked up at me for an instant before terror filled his eyes.

“Oh no!” he mumbled in terror. “A female Dragon and She has The Sword! This can’t be happening,” he groused in panic.

“What is it you want, Mistress Dragon?” he managed to ask after a short time.

“Who are you?” I demanded in less than a roar.

“I’m Cassius. The others made me come here to see what you wanted,” he told me.

“Where are the Major Demons that kidnapped my Familiar, and where is he?” I demanded while swishing my long tail and pointing the sword at him. The sword was, at least, as long as my scaled arms were.

“They and the Familiar are down on the level where the Major Demons stay. We never go down there. It’s much too dangerous,” he told me. Bob spoke up then to back up Cassius.

“I told you it’s too dangerous to go down there. Maybe you’ll believe me now,” he said but shied away when I swished my tail again.

“I am going down there and both of you are going with me, even if I need to carry you,” I told them. They both looked ill on hearing this.

“You can’t go like that. You would start a war going down there like that,” Bob insisted.

“Perhaps you could go appearing the same way that you appeared down here before. Maybe we could pass you off as an emissary looking to ransom the cat for its owner. They might agree to let you enter there like that, and not kill all of us immediately,” Cassius suggested shortly, but he was still shaking like a mouse confronted by a large, mean cat. I considered what he had said for a couple of minutes.

“Perhaps that would work, but I will keep the sword in case it doesn’t,” I told them, but now I had a problem. How did I return to my former self? Naturally, Bob had a suggestion on how to do that.

“If you put the sword down, you will return to your former self,” he told me. I smiled down at him.

“So you can pick it up and use it against me?” I asked, and smoke drifted from my nostrils to show my displeasure with the idea. Still, how was I to regain my former appearance while holding onto the sword, I wondered? Was it just touching the sword that had changed me into a Dragon, or was it being close to the sword that had caused the change? Thinking back, it wasn’t until I actually touched the sword that the transformation took place, so if I released it, I should change back. BUT, and it was a big but, if I released it, what would keep them from using it against me?

There seemed to be no way around this problem until I remembered the scabbard. If I replaced it in the scabbard and sat it down, they would need to remove it before they could use it against me. If I changed back as quickly as I had changed initially, I should be all right. So saying, I reached back and ripped the scabbard off of the wall and shoved the sword into it before setting it on the bar in front of me. My hand had no more than released the handle of the sword than I shrank back to my previous size. It was like taking the down elevator in a tall building going from being 12’-0’’ tall back to my previous 5’-6’’. The change was that sudden.

In front of me, the bar seemed as solid as ever, yet I had passed through it previously. Reaching for the scabbard and sword sitting on it, I got my next surprise. It was heavy! As the Dragon, it had seemed to weigh little as I waved it around, but now it weighed at least eight pounds or more in its scabbard. Not only that, but it was as long as I was tall. How was I supposed to carry it?

My hand had been on the cased sword for only a few seconds when the sword, scabbard and all, shrank to a replica of itself that was 16 inches long, all by itself, startling not just me but the Demons also. They had been on their way to grab it before I could retrieve it. They stopped a foot and a half away in shocked surprise.

“How ... how did you do that? No one has ever been able to make it do that, although many tried when we first retrieved it from where the Dragon dropped it,” Cassius asked in a still shocked voice.

“Perhaps one has to be a Dragon to have it do that,” I told them unsure of how it had happened, but I had a question. “Why would a Dragon drop her sword?”

“Well ... well, you see,” Cassius started, but was obviously stalling, as he didn’t want to tell me how it happened.

“Must I draw this sword again?” I threatened.

“No-no-no, don’t do that. It happened back ... back during the war. There were two Dragons that had landed on the surface. They were after one of us in particular, but we all went out to face them together and drive them off. A battle started, but there were more of us than they could kill easily, and we pelted them with stones from our slings. Someone got lucky when he launched a sharp shard and hit the young male Dragon in the eye. The older female became upset on seeing that and dropped her sword to help the young male, and we were able to drive both of them off. The female had lost the scabbard when they both took off together with her leading him. It was considered a great victory at the time. The trouble was the sword resented any of us touching it. It killed three of us before we got it into the scabbard. Two more were wounded removing the scabbard after it was hung up the first time,” Cassius told me.

“And the fire?” I prompted.

“You know about that?” he asked in surprise.

“What started the fire?” I demanded in a deeper voice.

“There was a fight over whether we should return the sword ttt ... ooo the scabbard,” he told me and appeared to be afraid of what I might ask next.

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked, but in a quieter voice. Cassius jumped on hearing the question.

“Because ... because some of us thought it was causing us to do things against our will. Things that the Dragons wanted us to do. Others laughed at us and said that we were crazy, but it was true. I was one of those affected. The sword kept calling to me to return it to the Dragon who had created me. I resisted for a long time, but one night, I couldn’t take it any more and demanded that they return the sword to its scabbard. A huge fight broke out, as others felt the same way. Tables were knocked over during the fight and candles fell on the floor igniting the straw and the building burned down. After the fire was out, the sword was found outside on the ground still attached to the board it had been hung from.

“The sword, board and all, plus the scabbard, was moved to this building. The new place for it was prepared, and it was transferred directly from the old board to its new place, but it was reversed now and no longer tried to - to influence any of us. The scabbard was carefully hung above it, and it has remained that way for a thousand years or so,” he told me before falling silent.

“So, all of you are afraid of it,” I said.

“There is a Devil, a malevolent spirit in it,” Cassius assured me with a shiver.

“Well, I have it now, and I didn’t feel any malevolent spirit when I held it,” I told them as I attached the now miniature sword to the side of my backpack.

“We’ve wasted enough time here. Get a move on and head to where we can access the Major Demon’s area,” I told them. They both moved out slowly ahead of me. I was still using my glamour of the old oriental gentleman. Outside in the mall corridor, no one was in sight, and we proceeded along it toward the far end of the mall, the area where Bob and I had first appeared. Neither Demon appeared to want to set a very fast pace, but I hurried them along by drawing the miniature sword from my backpack and pointing it at them. It was much too heavy for me to use in my Human form, but just seeing it was enough for them to increase their pace.