Chapter 106: Divine Blade
Astra holds with the sword with both her hands and closes her eyes.
I stand beside her and watch as a gust of wind is conjured out of the thin air below her and shoots upward into the sky, picking up her golden hair and floating it behind her like a cape.
The atmosphere has suddenly gotten tense, for what apparent reason I do not know.
When I held the sword and ran divine energy through it, only the prayer stone was illuminated. It is a completely different case with Astra. Not just the stone, the entire sword, blade and hilt and whatnot, is now enveloped in a soft glow.
Astra's steel stance and the divinity emanating from the weapon in her unmoving hands, combined with the gale twirling around and fluttering her blue dress, make her look like a valorous soldier in the form of a beautiful water spirit.
She looks like a child of no more than ten years of age, yes, but I wouldn't refuse charging into battle under her command if she told me to.
Wait, no, what am I talking about? Of course not. She is just a child.
A few seconds later, the light begins to die down rapidly along with the wind, and Astra opens back up her eyes.
"Did I look cool?" She asks with a smile, unfitting with the sword she is holding that is nearly as tall as her.
"A little," I say, "Are you done?"
"Yep. Now this broadsword has become the first-ever Divine Blade to descend upon the mortal plane," Astra says and swings it around like a conductor with a baton.
"And how do I summon it?" I ask.
"Easy, all you need to do is…" Astra stops talking and stares blankly into the distance, as if she suddenly remembered something in the middle of her sentence.
"Oh… this might be a problem." She snaps her eyes back to me.
"What is it?"
Astra sighs.
"You see, to summon a Divine Blade, you will have to picture the weapon you want in your mind. That is supposed to be fine, given that I never planned on having more than a couple of them at a time, but…" She gestures her hand at the carriage load stocked with Holy Weapons.
"You are saying that I wouldn't be able to remember what each individual weapon looks like?" I ask.
"Yes, exactly."
"That's not a problem, actually."
"What do you mean? Do you have perfect memory of something?"
"No, but… well, yes, to a certain degree. I can make a, um… painting of whatever I see and store it and look at it whenever I want," I say.
"A painting? There are like, a hundred of them. Are you going to draw them all? And where are you going to find the room to store a hundred paintings?"
It's a little hard to explain the concept of digital photography, especially when I know nothing about them apart from their major manufacturers and industry size.
"Uh, the painting is only an analogy. I can make one in an instant and store them in a conceptual realm that doesn't actually take up any space," I say.
"Huh? Ah, I have no idea what you are talking about. If you say it's not a problem, I will take your word for it, then."
"Yeah, just hold it up for a second."
Astra reaches out her hand and displays the full sword in front of me. "Like this?"
"Yep. Comms, take a photo of my view."
A text slides into the bottom of my sight. "PHOTO TAKEN AND STORED IN LIBRARY."
"Done," I say, "And now how would I summon it?"
"Close your eyes, picture the sword, and recite, 'O courageous spirits, fetch me my blade of divinity from the City of Silver so I can cut down the vile'," she says.
"Alright."
I close my eyes and imagine the sword's bronze hilt, iron blade, and gem cross.
"Oh, and hold your hand up to the sky."
I do as she says. O courageous spirits, fetch me my blade of divinity from the City of Silver to strike down the vile.
"It's working," Astra says.
"How so?" I ask, not feeling anything happening.
"The sword is disappearing from my hand," she says.
"Oh."
"Keep your eyes closed though. It won't work if you open them too early."
"Okay."
A few seconds pass, and I feel my palm coming into contact with something cool. It doesn't have any weight. The only way I know of its existence is through the sensation.
Gradually, it starts to form and gain mass, and I am now able to grip my hand around it. It is a sword handle, there is no mistaking it.
"You can open your eyes now," Astra says.
I open my eyes and drop my hand down in front of me, curious about what was happening.
I am holding a sword, no doubt, but it's not… complete. The hilt looks normal, including the prayer stone, but the blade above it is somehow translucent, and not in the sense that it's made of a translucent material. It appears almost… ghostly.
But it's quickly gaining opacity, and at the same time, weight. Soon, the blade solidifies wholly, and now I've got the original sword back in my hand.
"There, you've done it," Astra says.
"What exactly happened?" I ask, still not entirely coming to my senses as to what had just happened.
I understand that this is not a world that I am familiar with. There are many things I've seen since arriving here that no amount of science back on Earth could even begin to explain, but this is on another level.
Most miracles I witnessed were some sort of energy production, which is on a certain level plausible, but this is literally teleportation. Well, I guess that is how I got here in the first place, so maybe it's not much to be surprised about.
"The spirits that you called upon are exactly that, spirits," Astras says, "They are like angels in that they can travel between Heaven and Terradivina, but they aren't actual beings with consciousness. Think of them as wind. By asking them to bring you your sword, they first go locate it, sweep it up this plane of existence, and dive back down to where you are, quote on quote blowing it into your hand."
I am not sure whether this or quantum mechanics is easier for me to understand.
"Right…"
"Anyways, it will eventually make sense to you. You've got a few hundred years here, don't you? Should I start with the others? There is quite a few to get through," Astra says.
"If you will so please."
"Oh, aren't you polite?" Astra chuckles and reaches into the chest for the second one.
Was I?
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