the evolution of a violent thing 

Deep in the heart of the swamp the knife waits. 


Like a pearl it changes, so slowly, building itself over time into something new. But instead of sand and nacre the thing it gathers to itself is magic.

It knows that Only will be back for it, one day. It has not carved its last ghastly smile for him. It will be ready when he comes.

Tinea is a holy place, and not only because the goddess Vespera’s footprints are still pressed into the soft soil, blooming now with wild poinsettias. Their petals are red, as red as the blood spilled by and from Ilati in this sacred place for century after century, building that strange divinity up and up like a pearl, like a magic blade.

It has learned to be good at hiding. It has disguised itself with rich and fertile mud from autumn rains, with a blanket of a hundred leaves of crimson and gold all broken down now to death. It has learned from the things of the swamp, from the herons and the lizards to the owls whose wing-shadows fall over its home as they hunt at night.

When Only comes for it, it will have learned to hide, too.

Tonight the world holds its breath. Tonight a little bit of the blade is visible, gleaming in the thin starlight filtering through the canopy like a small sliver of moonlight cut free and left to fall. The knife has absorbed the magic of the strange swamp, and the crickets and the frogs sing in a chorus around it, all of them crying here, here.

Wherever he is, Only will hear this song (or perhaps Stephan will hear it first). Perhaps he is searching Tinea even now for the thing he has lost; perhaps he is dreaming. Either way he will feel it, at first like an itch in the back of his mind, a presence that gnaws at his consciousness here, here. All the night-hawks and the bats are in a frenzy tonight, converging above the space where the knife rests - where it waits.

Oh! It wants to show its master all the ways in which it has learned to hide, all the magic it has drunk up for itself so that its blade gleams bright with secret things. It wants to cut for him, wants again to be wielded, wants anything but to wait beneath the black leaf-litter and deny the rust that comes to eat it up.

The knife can hear him coming, slow footsteps on soft ground. The water is murky, restless, reflecting the baleful eye of the moon. The bats are shrieking but it sounds like thick silence, the same sound the knife makes. Here, here.

There is only a gleam of it visible, like the shine of an eye in the darkness. But a weapon does not worry.

It knows that Only will find it.

It is so eager to be reunited.

@Only will feel a pull the moment the moon rises. His lost blade has decided that it has waited long enough. It's bloated with magic and it has made itself a clever weapon by all the secrets held in these swamps. Tonight the air feels heavy with a strange magic and it might feel like he is moving through oil instead of brackish water. The bats are flying in patterns they've never flown in before. The whole swamp seems gathered by that blade glinting in the moonlight. Only's weapon has missed him. 

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This quest was written by the lovely griffin <3

Enjoy!