Wielders of Radiance

Prologue

The only illumination in the darkened chamber was her own not-quite-an-eye, and she rarely saw fit to open it.

Relative to the time she had spent in the sealed chamber, quite little had changed. While she did not believe the chamber to be airtight, it was certainly secure and sealed enough that not even rats made their way inside. And so despite the indeterminate yet doubtlessly long time she had resided within these walls, it had remained the same. The same gray stone making up the same pillars. The same walls. The same runes circling the same pedestal into which she had been placed for the ritual that created her.

The same bodies.

She preferred not to dwell on those. When she did manage a look, she could see that they were considerably deteriorated from the warm, still bleeding corpses they had been when first she became aware of her senses. Their dessicated, shrunken forms did not muster the same fury in her that their fresh bodies had. Still, she preferred not to dwell on them.

It was a time like any other time in the chamber. Silent and dark and boring. She hoped there was water slowly eating away at the halls of this place, maybe it would one day carve a hole large enough for an insect of some kind to make its home in there. It wouldn't be much, but it would be company, of a sort. Activity. Something to observe.

She had concluded a few decades or hours ago that something about the magic in her creation prevented her from going insane. For surely this much time in one place, alone and bored, would drive a mind to madness. (She had already previously concluded that she had a mind.)

The grinding of stone against stone broke the seemingly eternal silence. The door was moving! Then light, wavering and orange. A torch!

She had not considered the possibility of discovery in such a long time, she scarcely knew what to do. She wanted to look presentable, powerful, inspiring. She was soon to be drawn! Wielded! Swung in the service of righteousness and heroism! She focused, drew upon the well of her power, and a golden glow suffused her blade. She could shine brighter, but she did not want to blind her rescuer, only draw their eye.

The man crept carefully into the chamber. He wore a mix of armors, a rough iron breastplate over a mish-mash of leathers and padded twill. He was several days unshaven, with a cross of scars on his face. Not exactly a shining paladin in glistening plate, but Radiance was several years or days past being picky. He looked at her, standing proud and shining in her pedestal, and continued to glance carefully around the chamber. His eyes fell upon the bodies, and he paused. He kneeled over them, seeming to examine their state. He used a booted foot to turn one of them over. The dusty, armored almost skeleton clattered over, revealing the holes from which he had bled to death so long ago.

"Fighting over this?" the man mused aloud. He stepped closer, pausing at the edge of the runes. He looked them over, poked them cautiously with the end of the torch. Satisfied that he was not in mortal peril from the faded writings, he crossed them, and stood before Radiance. More inspection, this time her and her pedestal. Seeing none of the traps he seemed to expect, he finally reached his hand to draw her from the stone.

Slowly. Agonizingly so. It was happening! She was finally going to have purpose! To strike down the wicked and protect the innocent! She-

She was struck by the force of revelation. The instant his hand touched her hilt, she was flooded with the image of him. The shape of his story.

A brute of an adventurer, more interested in coin than righteous crusades. Bereft of purpose or drive, he thought only of his next night in the tavern or with the local courtesans. All funded with coin taken from the crypts of those no longer deemed important enough to defend. In truth, he was a graverobber whose theft was hailed in this age as brave and daring. There had been partners, accomplices. They either left the life behind, or died in petty squabbles over shares of ill-gotten wealth. He had sent several to their graves himself for an extra handful of gold. Petty. Greedy. Vain. Murderous. His was not a life she wished to lend her edge to furthering.

…All of which was rather beside the point as the man preferred to wield a pair of battleaxes.

He named them Glory and Fortune. Remembering it now usually prompted Radiance to roll the glowing ball of light that approximated an eye around the diamond opening in her guard. An expression of her disgust usually only for the benefit of herself.

So it was that the first to wield her was not the one who took her from the tomb.

Despite her vexation to be unearthed from the site of her awakening by such a bastard, she was more than glad to quit the horrid place. She did feel some small measure of gratitude to the arrival of the man that plucked her from the pedestal. As well as relief that there was no enchantment binding her to that pedestal until she was drawn by someone worthy.

Herald knows how long it might have been before someone of good character had come to that darkened chamber.