I double-checked the runes against the pages in the tiny book just to be safe. One could never be too careful with ancient inscriptions. Especially when they were less than half an inch tall.
Yes, that’s right, I use both imperial and metric measurements. Sue me.
Anyway, I was right. This was it. Grax’thor, Hope Render. The blade I’d been searching for. Supposedly, the weapon was cursed to bring bad luck and misfortune to whoever wielded it. Which was probably why it was buried in a tomb and not still used in combat today.
But it would do nicely for my purposes. Who knew? Maybe this blade would cancel out the amazing, stupid blind luck that seemed to follow me everywhere and finally let me end this blasted existence of mine. Maybe.
I felt my heart rate speed up as I stared down at the blade, the object of ten years’ worth of effort, the one artifact in the world that might help me speed my own demise.
“Calm down, Damian,” I told myself.
That wasn’t my real name. My real name was Li Xiang, but Damian sounded better. And decidedly less Asian, which could come in handy sometimes. The world wasn’t always a nice place.
“Just calm down, you can do this,” I said, my hand inching forward toward the bladed weapon.
A little side-note here; as someone who’d been alive for three hundred years, I have been through a lot. The rise and fall of empires, communism, world wars, pandemics, you name it. I’d experienced love in all its many-splendored forms, had all kinds of relationships, lived through the birth of rock n’ roll and 80s hair bands - still the best thing ever, don’t judge - you name it. I’ve been through it all.
And I was starting to get a bit tired of it. Immortality might be nice and all, but after the twentieth or so time you watch a dear friend die of old age only to have to live on without them, it starts to wear on your consciousness.
Even so, I had a weird thing about just ending it myself. It would spoil the family’s honor, and I couldn’t have that hanging over my head. My mom would never shut up about it. But a glorious death on the field of battle? Now that was how to go out in style. That I could live with.
Sorry for the downer, kiddies. I’ll try not to let it happen again.
My hand reached deftly toward the blade’s hilt, inching ever closer. In the back of my mind, I wondered if there might be some sort of trap set on the blade and quickly dismissed the idea.
Who would put a trap on a cursed weapon? The weapon itself was the trap, right?
Still, the thought wouldn’t go away. My mind went back to that Raiders movie that had come out some years ago, about how the protag had tried to gauge the weight of the little idol head to offset any traps. But that hadn’t worked out well for him either, so I dismissed the idea out of hand.
Finally, my hand came into contact with the cool metal of the handle. The touch felt… like touching a piece of cool metal, honestly. What were you expecting, a jolt of electricity? Sorry to disappoint, but this was real life and not a movie. Swords are just swords. Even cursed ones.
With greed in my eyes, I wrapped my hand around the hilt and lifted the weapon, giving it a good heft, checking the weight and balance. The sword was surprisingly light and easy to maneuver.
“Methinks… it will kill,” I uttered with a slight emphasis on the last word, just like that cool Asian dude from the forging TV show. I loved that show. Could hardly wait for the new season to start.
I gave the sword another practice swing, admiring the craftsmanship, then belted it in place into a scabbard I had hanging on my back for just this purpose. It would make squeezing through that tiny door at the entrance a bit harder, but I figured I would have plenty of time to unbuckle it at that point if I had to.
Grinning broadly, I turned to leave the barrow-downs, my treasure in hand.
That’s when I heard it - the unmistakable grating sound of stone on stone as some sort of hidden mechanism kicked into high gear.
“Crap!” I swore. So it was like that Raiders movie, after all! I guess they had to get their inspiration from somewhere…
I spun on my heels to see a hidden door opening up high in the ceiling, well above my head as the noise grew louder. I sat there stunned for just a second, watching the doorway slowly creak open, then I did the only sensible thing - I bolted.
“Thwit, thwit, thwit!” I chanted as I ran past the rows of the carved heads of Queen Boudicca and friends, imagining in my head that there were tiny poison-tipped arrows shooting out of their mouths as I did so. There weren’t, but it was more fun imagining it that way.
Hey, what can I say? Movie reenactment night wasn’t for another two months. If I wanted a real-life Raiders experience, now was as good a time as any.
A loud crash came from behind me and I craned my neck to see what had made all the commotion.
Sure enough, it was a giant boulder coming to chase me down the overly-long corridor. The boulder lurched and started rolling in my direction. It was only then that I realized the ground actually tilted slightly downward towards the entrance of the compound, meaning that rock could really pick up speed along the way and wouldn’t stop any time soon.
I redoubled my efforts. Becoming a boulder pancake was not how I wanted things to end. Could you imagine the ridicule for that one at the next family party? No, thank you!
My legs
