>>5350752>13You focus and focus, but ironically your very intensity makes it hard to lose yourself in the meditation—to access the half-emptied frame of mind, the place of idle and drifting consciousness, which allows the veil of the material realm to part and to reveal the mystical underlay beneath mundane reality. In other words, no luck. You curse your own distraction, your impatience, and begin to re-wrap the moon-blade.
However, as you do so, you relieve yourself of the pressure to succeed, and to know immediately. You allow your mind to wander, and your senses to focus on the young dwarf-boy’s musical stylings. Karz the Throat-singer’s oscillating voice fills the cavern aaround this ancient elven spring, filling the space with a peculiar harmony. It is as if the stones, the slightly-trembling and effervescent waters, sing with him…
>-2 DC for bardic inspiration..And so does the blade. It trembles in your hands with a hidden power, beginning to glow faintly once more, and then brighter and brighter. To your startlement, it begins to rise, levitating before you. You stand, reaching out to grab it before it floats away, and its vibrations travel up your arm, through your bones and into your ribcage and skull. Your heart and mind heart its song. In its own tune—its response to Karz’s call—you sense another attunement. It is an alignment between the sword and something within you… A magic already known.
Your retinue is staring at you and your luminescent sword now. Even Karz is staring, wide-eyed, but he does not break off his song. The hum of the sword will not allow it—nor, you sense, would he allow this peculiar and revelatory moment to pass him by, even as he has no desire to assist you in your quest. He continues his song, and you join in with a ululation of your own—the elven words which correspond to the <Moonbeam> spell, but altered… Older, perhaps, or of a secret language-of-power such as the human mages use. At the same time, you whirl about swinging your sword in a wide arc, and a great crescent of light explodes froth from the blade, a faint blue-white light which spreads out in a mirror of your arc. Agno yelps and ducks below it as the blade of light cuts a deep gouge into the stonework before you, bisecting an ancient elven king (or god) in bass relief.
You stare at the sword, as do the others. The song dies down, and Karz sits down, shaking, holding his beardless face in his hands as if his very throat, tongue, and lips have become alien to him. You wrap up your sword, as the glow dies away once more.
You’re pretty sure you could do that again. You think you could do even more, given time… And given the Throat-singer’s assistance.
