- - Kaelen's Hut - -
One week had passed since Kaelen's body had definitively turned the corner, the pallor of death replaced by the steady, sleeping warmth of recovery. The village healer, after her morning examination, had finally declared the danger past. "The body is sound," she'd said to Elara in her gravelly voice, packing her herbs. "Now it's the spirit that must find its way back. Only time will wake him." For the spear, standing its silent vigil beside the pallet, this was both a relief and a new form of agony. The immediate battle was won, but the war—the waiting—continued.
To stave off the gnawing helplessness, the spear turned inward once more. But this time, its search through the fragmented library of its soul was not aimless or desperate. It sought context. It had a body of power—levitation, the crimson energy blast, the conduit healing—but no framework to understand what that made it. What was it, in the grand taxonomy of the world?
In the quiet hours between the healer's visits and Elara's fretful ministrations, it began to piece together a classification from the scattered memories. The concept emerged not from one source, but from dozens, like assembling a mosaic from broken tiles. The word, when it finally coalesced, was: Artifact.
Artifacts were tools elevated beyond their mundane nature by will, magic, or circumstance. They were weapons that thirsted, armor that remembered blows, rings that whispered secrets, cups that wept miracles. They were extensions of power, companions in purpose, and sometimes, curses in disguise. The spear learned that what separated a common sword from an artifact was not just age or craftsmanship, but the presence of a defined, repeatable magical function. A function was a law written into the object's very being, a predictable supernatural effect.
The memories sorted these wondrous items into a rough, culturally-shared hierarchy. The spear observed this hierarchy with the detached focus of a scholar studying a foreign map.
The most common were the Low-Level Artifacts. These were the foot soldiers of the extraordinary. They possessed one function, and its effect was often mild, niche, or unreliable. The memories showed a dagger that would grow uncomfortably warm in the presence of lies—a useful trick for a paranoid merchant, but useless in a storm of battle. A teapot that, when brewed at midnight, produced a minor gale strong enough to extinguish candles and scatter papers. A whetstone that could sharpen any blade to a razor's edge, but only under the light of a full moon. They were curiosities, conversation pieces, the borderline between the mundane and the magical. Their power was a parlor trick, a spark compared to a forge-fire. To the spear, its own hard-won ability to levitate and move itself felt squarely, and disappointingly, in this category. echoed a merchant's dismissive thought from within it.
Then came the Middle-Level Artifacts, classified as uncommon or rare. These were tools that could change the course of a skirmish, the fortune of a kingdom, or the life of an individual. They typically harbored two, or at most three, potent and synergistic functions. The memories provided a clear example: the Butcher's Blade. It was not a legend, but it was infamous. Its functions were a brutal trifecta: Undulled Sharpness (its edge could not be dulled, not even by stone or bone), Increased Precision (it guided the wielder's hand to vital points with uncanny accuracy), and Enhanced Strength (it allowed a weak arm to swing with the power of a veteran soldier for a brief time). This was no parlor trick. This was a package of focused, lethal intent. Such artifacts were treasures, heirlooms, the prizes of noble houses or veteran adventurers. They had names and histories. Comparing itself to this tier, the spear felt a profound inadequacy. It had its crimson energy blast—a single, desperate, destructive function.
Finally, at the apex of understanding—and often slipping into myth—were the High-Level Artifacts. These were not merely tools; they were forces of nature given form. Legends among legends. They defied standard classification, often possessing multiple functions (more than three, the memories whispered), each of which could rival the lifetime achievement of a legendary hero. Their power was compounded by age, by the preciousness of their materials, and by the weight of the stories accreted around them. The most resonant example the spear found, sung in a hundred different variations by bardic echoes, was the Phoenix's Tear.
It was described as a simple, unadorned cup of what might be red clay or crystallized fire. Its primary power was absolute healing, but to call it a single function was to misunderstand its majesty. In the meticulous view of archivists and arcanists, the Tear's power comprised multiple, distinct functions of the highest order, for each category of ailment it cured was a miracle in itself. Function One: It could heal any physical wound, from a paper cut to a bisected torso, knitting flesh, bone, and nerve without scar. Function Two: It could cure any disease, from the common chill to the Fading Rot that turned lungs to dust, purging corruption from the blood. Function Three: It could neutralize any poison, whether crafted by assassin apothecaries or spawned in the venom sacs of primordial beasts, cleansing the body of its toxicity. And these were just the classified functions; legends hinted it could do more—mend broken minds, restore lost years. It produced but a single drop of liquid light per century, but that drop was a panacea. It did not merely mend; it snatched life back from the precipice of eternity and restored it to flawless wholeness. Other echoes spoke of a crown that could command the weather of a continent, a mirror that showed the true heart of any who gazed into it, a lantern whose light dissolved enchantments.
Sitting in the dim hut, its shaft resting against the sleeping boy, the spear contemplated these tiers. A cold, heavy feeling settled in its core—not the draining fatigue of using power, but the weight of insignificance. It was a newborn thing of wood and old iron, with a confused soul and two shaky tricks. It could fly, like a low-level bauble. It could, in moments of ultimate terror, unleash a destructive burst, perhaps placing it on the lower edge of the middle tier. But against the multi-function, era-defining power of the Phoenix's Tear? It was less than a speck. The artifacts of legend shaped destinies. It had barely managed to shape its own flight path without hitting a tree.
Yet, from this crushing sense of smallness, a new, sharper emotion was forged: motivation. A pure, burning need to grow. The echoes within it were not of creation, but of use and destruction. It had no memory of how an artifact was made better. But it understood purpose. It was a weapon. A weapon's purpose was to be effective, to fulfill its function supremely well. If it was to be an artifact, then let it not be a minor one. Let it not be a curiosity or merely a reliable tool. The boy had offered it experience. Perhaps experience was the forge. Perhaps use was the whetstone. The desire crystallized into a silent, fierce vow:
But how? The question echoed in its silent self.
---
Deep within the quiet shell of his body, Kaelen was drowning in a dark, formless sea.
There was no time here, only sensation. A crushing weight of exhaustion pinned him down. A distant, rhythmic throb pulsed in the void where his left arm should have been—a phantom limb screaming in a language of fire and ice. Sometimes, the dark sea would be pierced by familiar sounds, muffled and far away: his mother's voice, humming a tuneless song; the crackle of the hearth; the healer's rasping questions. They were buoys in the darkness, but he could not reach them. He was too heavy, too broken.
Memories, sharp and jagged, flashed in the deep without context: the green blur of the hill's grass, the metallic smell of his own fear, the monstrous silhouette of the boar blotting out the sun. But another memory surfaced, not of fear, but of impossible, terrifying color. In his mind's eye, a blurry, half-formed image: a vast, majestic bird of living flame, its wings outstretched, unleashing a colossal, cleansing wave of fire that consumed everything before it. The image was tied to a feeling of desperate lunge, of his own body moving without his will, and a burst of crimson light that wasn't light at all, but something more—a roar of power that felt both alien and deeply familiar. It was the spear's magic, but his sleeping mind, grasping for a reference among his scant knowledge of legends, could only frame it as a phoenix's fury. The sound of his own scream, cut short by a sensation of incredible, final pressure, and then... nothing. A void. A missing piece.
A part of him knew. A part of him that was still ten years old and terrified refused to look at the truth, hiding it behind a wall of sleepy confusion. His arm was... misplaced. Asleep. It would tingle back to life soon. It had to.
But another new sensation had begun to weave through the pain and the dark. A presence. It wasn't a sound or a sight, but a feeling of warmth, steady and unwavering, anchored to his right side. It felt like the first ray of sun on a frosty morning, concentrated and patient. In his fragmented state, he couldn't name it, but he was drawn to it. It was a rope in the drowning sea. Sometimes, when the phantom pain became a white-hot scream, the warmth would pulse gently, and a strange, cool clarity would follow, like moonlight on a fevered brow, soothing the edges just enough to let him breathe.
In the deepest dark, he sometimes felt he could almost hear it. Not words, but... an impression. A silhouette of a thought, heavy with regret and fierce with protection.
Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the dark sea began to recede. The crushing weight lightened, not to nothing, but to something he could struggle against. Sensation began to leak back in from the world outside the void. The scratch of rough wool against his cheek. The solidness of a mattress beneath his back. The smell of woodsmoke and dried herbs.
And the warmth. The warmth was right there, a line of heat against the fingers of his right hand. Solid. Wood. The thought formed sluggishly.
The spear. The memory surfaced, clear and bright amidst the murk. The hill. The talking. The promise. The walk home. The blurry, fiery bird of his memory—that was the spear's power. A rush of childish wonder, cut with awe, pierced through the pain.
His fingers, acting on an impulse older than the trauma, twitched. They curled slightly, seeking confirmation of the memory against his palm.
The response was immediate. The warm presence flared, not in temperature, but in attention. It was as if the sun-ray had suddenly turned to face him fully.
The movement triggered something. The dormant machinery of waking life stuttered into motion. Beneath his lids, his eyes, starved of light for a week, began to move rapidly, trying to parse the sudden signal of returning consciousness. His breathing, which had been the shallow tide of survival, hitched. His lungs, remembering their full capacity, drew in a deep, shuddering breath—the first truly complete breath in seven days. It filled him with the raw, real scents of the hut, of life, and of his own recovery. He held it for a second, this proof of being, and then let it out in a long, sighing exhale that felt like the release of the entire dark sea.
He was coming up. He was waking up.
---
The spear, having just contemplated its own cosmic insignificance, felt the change in the room's rhythm like a thunderclap in its soul.
Kaelen's right hand twitched. The spear's consciousness snapped into razor focus. All thoughts of artifacts and hierarchies vaporized.
Then, the eye movement. The breath. The sign.
He was emerging. The boy was waking up!
A surge of pure, unadulterated joy detonated within the spear. It was a feeling brighter and cleaner than any it had known—a supernova of relief after a long vigil. It was the joy of a promise kept, of a bond about to sing in full duplex once more. This emotion, so powerful and utterly novel, completely overwhelmed its hard-learned discipline and caution.
In its unfiltered elation, it acted on pure instinct.
It leapt from its resting place beside the bed.
But it did not simply float. The overwhelming joy translated directly into a reckless, violent burst of kinetic energy. It shot upward like a bolt fired from a storm-cloud, with far too much power for the confined space of the low-ceilinged hut.
*THWACK-CRUNCH!*
The spear's iron tip punched clean through the dried river-reed thatching and the wooden battens beneath, exploding a dinner-plate-sized hole in the roof. A shower of dust, dried moss, and splinters rained down onto the floor and the bed. A shaft of unexpected midday sunlight blasted through the new opening, illuminating the floating galaxy of debris.
The spear found itself hovering outside, just above the roof, the cool open air a shocking contrast to the hut's intimate gloom. The joy curdled instantly into horrified, utterly stupid realization.
Below, from inside the hut, came a sound. A weak, confused, but unmistakably conscious groan, muffled by dust. Then a cough.
Panic—a sharp, social panic utterly different from battle-panic—seized the spear. It had to get back. It had to be there *now*. It couldn't be seen floating outside like some clumsy firework! With a speed that was now fueled by frantic embarrassment, it zipped back down through the hole it had just made, weaving slightly to avoid the ragged edges. It settled back onto the bed with a soft thump, aligning itself precisely where it had been moments before, trying desperately to impersonate an inanimate object.
It lay there, thrumming with a chaotic mix of residual joy, profound stupidity, and acute anxiety. A fine layer of thatch dust coated its shaft. The new, accusing beam of sunlight streamed directly onto Kaelen's face, likely illuminating his waking moments with theatrical flair.
The spear waited, utterly still, hoping against hope that the boy, in his disoriented, post-coma state, would blame the rude awakening, the dust, and the sudden skylight on a simple roof collapse, and not on his supposedly ordinary, and apparently ecstatic and destructive, companion.