Chapter 2

Three days ago, the sword had been on an altar in the Anvil Temple, waiting for his next wielder to appear.

Being left for the next wielder to find was a semi-regular occurence for the sword, nearly as common as being taken from his previous, defeated, wielder’s body.

Life had made sense three days ago.

Then, an earthquake, and half the temple, the sword’s stone altar included, had tumbled into a ravine. But instead of eventually reaching the bottom of the ravine, and then waiting there for his next wielder to find him (a rarer, but still familiar state of existence), the sword had kept falling. And falling.

And falling.

Until he’d landed in the middle of the Crossroads Academy green, in a human body. Disoriented, overwhelmed, he barely remembered any of his arrival, but what he did remember was not pleasant. Mostly, he just felt a sense of loss when he looked at the green; the place on Earth where he had been closest to what he’d once been.

Now he was running laps around it.

Ms. Lopez had not been joking when she’d said there would be physical tests. After she’d collected their exams, she’d brought them outside and ordered them to run ten laps around the green, as a warm up.

“The Academy needs to know your physical abilities, but so do you. So start sweating.”

The sword did not enjoy sweating. It was so…wet. He was one of the last to finish his ten laps, straggling in the midst of the final group, all moaning with exhaustion.

“Good,” Ms. Lopez said, as if they’d never left. “Now that your hearts are moving, the next task is simple.” She cracked her neck, first one side, then the other, and settled into a fighter’s crouch.

“Form a line please. And then, all you have to do when its your turn is fight me. First touch loses.”

No one moved.

Ms. Lopez waited a few moments, then said, “to make it more interesting, anyone who actually manages to hit me gets to skip the afternoon exam.”

Another moment of silence.

Then a boy stepped forward from the crowd, shorter than average, sandy-haired and freckled, bright red from his run. “Let there never be a day when I shrink from such a challenge! I, Haldar Brassbones, will be your opponent!” He cried. It was the kind of line that would probably have sounded impressive if he’d had a deep, booming voice. Until recently, he’d probably had one. As it was, his voice cracked part way through.

To his credit, Haldar Brassbones didn’t seem bothered by that at all. He shrugged off his shirt, revealing a skinny chest and sharp elbows, and flung it to the ground.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but there is a dress code,” Ms. Lopez said drily.

“Come! Duel me beneath the sun, and let her witness glory!” Haldar cried, slamming his fists into his chest in an unmistakeable salute.

Ms. Lopez cocked her head to one side, shrugged, and pounded her own chest, mimicking the boy. “Ready when you are, Mr. Andersen.”

“Sun Fist.” The boy charged as he used his skill, his right fist glowing a fiery orange. He swung well short of Ms. Lopez, but a ghostly fist, the same fiery orange his own, appeared in front of his own fist. If Ms. Lopez had stayed put, she would have been hit, but she stepped to the side with an easy grace and the ghostly fist hit nothing but air, then dissipated. In the split second in which Haldar’s arm was extended, she closed the distance between them, and tapped his right shoulder.

“Thank you Mr. Andersen. Next.”

There were a few gasps from the other students, and the sword heard one of the girls whisper “I didn’t even see her move,” which confused him, as she hadn’t been moving all that quickly. But another student was already stepping forward, and the rest were shuffling into a line, which the sword was pulled into as well.

Every match went about the same as the first, the student used some sort of skill, whatever they’d been left with on their arrival back on earth, and Ms. Lopez used none as she dispatched them. No more shirts were removed, however.

As the line moved forward, and the sword’s turn grew closer, it occurred to him that he still didn’t have a wielder. Ms. Lopez said they had to fight, but that was nonsensical for the sword. He couldn’t fight without a wielder.

Luckily, one of the candidates, the amber eyed girl, was just in front of him. He tapped her shoulder. She turned around, her face politely blank, but she didn’t say anything.

This was really not how this usually went. If someone found him, they just took him. He’d never had to do this before.

“Would you like to be my wielder?” he asked, holding out his hand.

The girl’s polite mask never wavered, but her eyes flicked up and down as she considered him, and her long, uncalloused fingers tapped softly against the side of her straight checkered skirt.

“Please, never speak to me again,” the girl said. Her voice was soft and confident, and she smiled pleasantly at him before turning back around and engaging the girl in front of her in conversation.

The sword shook his hand, feeling like he’d just been burned. Behind him he could hear more whispers. Why was everyone always whispering? Such an annoying sound. It made him want to itch at his ears.

He looked around for the other two candidates, but they were nowhere behind him, they must have already gone.

“Mr. Smith, any day now,” Ms. Lopez called out. He looked up, startled. He was now at the front of the line. Ms. Lopez was a few paces away, just out of arm’s reach. She hadn’t even broken a sweat, and more than half the class was done.

“Oh. I can’t fight without a wielder,” the sword said.

“Yes you can,” said Ms. Lopez. She did her usual approach, she was right handed but had been using her left fist all morning for some reason, and it made her swing just a little bit uneven. The sword slid by her easily.

“Why aren’t you using your sword?” he asked her.

Ms. Lopez blinked. Then she stepped back and laughed, hands on hips, head thrown back. “Because I don’t need it today.”

The sword thought about this, and supposed that it was true. “You should probably at least change up your attack, I can’t be the only one in line who has noticed you’re just doing the same thing over and over again.”

“You mean like this?” She asked, whipping forward with a right jab aimed at his side. He had to dance away to avoid that one.

“Shockwave,” Her fists lit up again, but instead of swinging for him, she slammed them into the ground, sending a line of ruptured earth up and under his feet.

Feet.

How easily tangled they got. He fell over backwards, awkwardly slamming his head into the ground as he did, making the world spin.

He staggered to his feet, just in time to see her readying her next strike. If he moved fast enough he could probably still evade, but if she really wasn’t going to stop, then he would have to do something.

But what would that be?

Yes. What would that be? He found he was stuck on the question.

As Ms. Lopez charged forward, he shrugged his shoulders, sticking his hands in his pockets.

Swords were used by wielders, they did not use themselves.

She stopped just short of him, and tapped his shoulder, as she’d done with all the others. “Good enough for today.”

His head was still spinning, but he understood that as a dismissal, and went to join the other finished students.

Next they were taken to lunch. One of the main buildings off the campus green was a refectory, a tall building with equally tall windows looking out over the green, one wall taken up with a long bar on which sat a variety of foods.

The sword didn’t have an opinion about food, although he remembered the necessity of eating. He copied the person in front of him, loading a tray with sliced bread, greens, meat on sticks, a glass of water.

He picked one of the round tables at random and sat, shoveling the food into his mouth, he’d found he could eat more if he ate quickly, and more seemed to be the correct amount. Around him, students streamed around him, all talking animatedly.

“Wow, you also defeated a [Demon King]? Did yours have wings too?”

“Oh my god, real bread. Real bread!!!”

“Yeah when I first arrived I already had all one thousand and one spell books in my inventory. If I still had number seven seven seven there’s no way she could have gotten me.”

“I always liked the dungeons, even when they were underground. I guess I just liked collecting loot. Like, where do you find a gold chain on Earth?”

Talk talk talk.

Of course people had talked on his other world too. But it had been so much easier not to pay attention when he’d been a sword.

He finished his food.

No one became his wielder during lunch.

Maybe, it occurred to him, as he followed the rest of the class back to the classroom, they didn’t need swords anymore. This was Earth after all. His memories were hazy, but he was sure there hadn’t been that many swords around.

And it wasn’t as if he was a useful sword in this body anyway.

His thoughts circled in a similar manner through the next two exams, and kept him preoccupied as he followed the others back to their assigned dormitory hall. He got lost on the way back to his own room, and had to go and ask for help from the attending staff.

His little room held a desk and a bed, and a small bathroom, with a narrow window that looked out onto a smaller green than the main campus one, with a large tree growing in the center, currently covered in green leaves.

It was sort of quiet in his room, but not really, he could hear conversations coming from both of the walls he shared.

Talk talk talk.

If no one needed a sword on Earth, then what was he doing here?

He didn’t have an answer to the question. But he thought about it, sitting at the edge of his bed, until night came.