Chapter 32

The sword spent an uncomfortable few days in a world where no one seemed to have any idea what he was supposed to be doing. His arm was still in a sling, he wasn’t sure if it should be, but the healers hadn’t had time to see him yet. There had apparently been a serious assault elsewhere on campus at the same time that the four adventurers, the leaders of the group, had been mounting their attack on the lower level.

Classes still hadn’t restarted, but neither had the trainings. He showed up in the kitchens in the mornings, and Cadmarius usually wasn’t there, though there was always some kind of food and a note reminding him to eat.

The chaos was understandable, the morning after their battle, a portal had opened on the lawn, and an emissary had come through to bargain for the return of the [Prince] they’d captured.

The sword was not sure how he felt about that. He decided he did not need to decide on the matter, and took to walking the length of the campus, every floor of every building, and then into the woods at its edges. He got lost often, but since no one needed him for anything, this was not particularly a problem, and the campus wasn’t that large, so eventually he would figure out where he was. With no more curfews, it didn’t matter how late he returned to his room, which was nice. One less thing to bother with.

Arthur caught him as he was leaving the kitchen one morning, preceded by a typical The Demon Lord Approaches—You Must Fight! warning from Status.

“Ah, the wandering hero! Trying to disappear into the sunset? Kind of awkward when you have to stick around eh?”

“Hi, Arthur,” the sword said, and kept walking. Arthur joined him, hands held loosely behind his back.

“I figured you wouldn’t have heard the news,” Arthur said, and kept going without waiting for the sword to reply. “They officially took my corpse from me. Even though I—well, ok, you, killed him fair and square and he’s demonstrably not a student. But I guess ‘desecrating the dead’ is somehow against school policy. I thought they were making it up but the Headmaster showed me the rulebook so…”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the sword said.

Arthur nodded his head. “Yeah. Anyway. In slightly less important news, Classes are starting again tomorrow. Peace treaty was signed, indemnities paid, bodies exchanged. Probably still going to be some guards around, but nothing like before, and I expect our worlds get out of sync shortly. They usually don’t stay aligned for this long anyways.”

The sword nodded.

“Sorry,” Arthur added. “Figured you’d be disappointed.”

“Not really,” the sword said.

“Why not?” Arthur asked, “wasn’t it fun?”

They proceeded down the stairs to the lawn, half of it was roped off for repair, and much of the lawn was still just furrows of dirt. The gravel paths at its edges had already been raked over, and they wended down one of them, in the direction of the dormitories.

“It’s not about if it was fun,” the sword replied. “It’s about if it was right. Swords…aren’t supposed to wield themselves.”

Arthur made a face. “Who cares about right, about proper? You think anything about this school is proper? [Demon Lords] in math class with [Barbarians] and [Aristocrats]?”

The sword halted, the gravel crunching under his feet. At last, he felt he had the words to express what he’d been thinking on for the last few days. “But that’s just it! This whole place is wrong. The longer I’m here, the more I do things that aren’t…aren’t correct, the less I feel like I’m…myself. Even when Francois was wielding me, that also didn’t feel right. What if…what if I’m never going to feel like me, ever? I want to live, but what if staying alive means stopping being me? That…I don’t want that to be true. Is it true?” He asked, as Arthur started walking again.

“Jeez, don’t look at me. If you’re looking to [Demon Lords] to figure out how to have a good life, you’re in deep doodoo.”

The sword caught up with Arthur, not saying anything.

“Oy, fine. Look, man, ‘me’ is a very squishy concept in my opinion. People are different in different places and like, that’s not an interesting observation, it’s utterly banal and normal. Actually, it’s the people like you who are more consistent wherever you are that are the freaks. But yeah, you might be different than the literal hunk of metal you used to be, big whoop.”

The sword considered this. “I feel…quite uncomfortable without a wielder.”

“Yeah, and I haven’t gotten to kill all the people who annoy me here, among many other crushing disappointments,” Arthur said agreeably. “I know you and time don’t exactly understand one another, but sometimes I feel like you just need to chill out a little bit dude. Like, you just managed to use all your abilities without accidentally killing me, and that seems great. I, personally, am thrilled by that achievement. Sometimes things can just be…good enough for now. There’s a reason [Demon Lords] are always biding our time, it’s because it’s a good strategy.”

The sword didn’t reply, this time, not because he wanted Arthur to talk more, but because he was thinking. Arthur didn’t say much either, a few comments about their various classmates, speculations on what school would look like tomorrow. He didn’t seem to mind when the sword didn’t say anything in reply.

Their path had took them to the dining hall.

“You hungry?” Arthur asked.

The sword shook his head.

“I’m going to get lunch. Try not to kill yourself in the meantime.” Arthur said with a jaunty waive. And, just before he disappeared through the entrance, he said, “Oh, and stop avoiding Mei. She’s taking it out on me.”

Mei had attempted to talk to him several times in the last few days, the sword hadn’t completely ignored her, but he hadn’t stopped to talk with her either, and she’d never followed him.

The sword waited outside the dining hall until lunch was over, conspicuous enough for Mei to see him as she walked out of the hall with two of her followers. She dismissed them both and met him under the shade of one of the trees that lined the gravel path.

“Arthur said you wanted to talk to me,” the sword said.

“I did,” Mei replied. She crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. It was uncharacteristically undignified of her. “I’ve decided I owe you something. More than just to be used in a way that I find comfortable, and that you do not.”

The sword blinked. “For what?” He asked.

“You need to sleep,” Mei said.

“What?” The sword asked.

“Sometimes, during practice, you can barely keep your eyes open. I’ve seen you almost drop your practice sword. You need to sleep.”

“Swords don’t sleep.” The sword said.

“Show me your room,” Mei said. “I mean, would you please show me your room?”

“I don’t really want to,” the sword told her.

“I know,” Mei said, “will you anyway?”

Mei walked with the sword back to his dormitory.

“Huh,” she said, when they reached his door.

The sword waited.

“I live right below you,” she said.

The sword nodded, he had been aware of this fact, although he had not had a reason to talk about it.

Sometimes she talked with her followers late into the night, and at some point, he didn’t remember when, he had begun to recognize her voice.

They always laughed a lot, but the sword was never sure if it was because they were talking about something funny, or if there was some other reason laughter was needed.

He opened his door and sat on the bed.

Mei inspected the place thoroughly, the sword didn’t know why, there was nothing to see. It was the same desk they were all issued, the same loud heater. He supposed the view from his window was slightly different.

“Do you like it here?” She asked him.

“No,” the sword said.

“I didn’t think so.” She said, looking around. “Will you try something with me?”

The sword didn’t see a reason not to.

He followed her out of the dormitory, back to the main building, then back down to the floor where Arthur’s room was.

To a closet. A janitor’s closet, full of brooms and mops and things that did not smell good.

“Inside,” she said, and stepped in, shoving an array of brooms out of the way.

The sword followed her into the cramped little space.

She shut the door.

It was dark.

It was just the two of them, the sword could barely see Mei, but he could hear her breath in calm rhythm, hear his own breathing begin to match hers.

“I used to hide under the bed,” she said. “Usually it was after one of the other princesses had been killed. There was always something so unamanageable about those moments. It’s funny, the queen’s palace was so big, this huge sprawling fortress of stone. It should have been the most solid thing in the world.

“But every now and then it wouldn’t feel solid at all. One of us would die, usually because the queen decided we weren’t good enough, but sometimes it was an actual assassination. Those were the worst. It felt then like…”

The sword waited.

“It felt like the walls were only as thin as paper. That the roof would come down at any moment. That an assassin would be waiting for me in the bath, at dinner, in my study.

“I used to read a lot of books about people being sent to other worlds, before I went to the other world. Power fantasies, people always called them.”

She exhaled. “Now that I’ve been to another world, I think all books are power fantasies. You can always put them down. In real life, all you can do is hide under the bed, because if you’re under the bed, the assassin can’t be there too.

“You’re a sword, aren’t you?” She asked.

“Yes,” the sword said.

“So, don’t you think you need a scabbard?”

“This isn’t a scabbard its a closet.”

“And you’re a sword in a human body,” she shrugged. “Anyway, I thought it would help. Your room is too big for you. You should ask Cadmarius to get you a smaller one.”

She left, shutting the door behind her, leaving the sword alone in the darkness.

Close darkness. Contained.

“It does help,” the sword said to no one. “Thank you.”

Sleeping, the sword discovered, was amazing.

The next day, feeling as restored as if he’d woken in the school’s clinic, he went to Cadmarius at lunchtime.

“Do the magic users have their own practice class?” He asked.

Cadmarius looked up from the fish he was deboning. “They do. But it is at the same time as the practice sessions you’ve been going to.”

“I’d like to attend,” the sword said. “It turns out, you can’t cut yourself on accident, if you just don’t parry.”

Cadmarius continued to debone his fish. When there was a small pile of bones, he said “…I suppose if I’m there no one can get too badly injured.”

The sword recognized this as acceptance. “Thank you,” he said, his heart beating a little faster.

His most powerful wielder had been a [Wizard], he needed to remember that.

As he was about to leave, Cadmarius said, “I heard from one of our janitors they found you asleep in a broom closet this morning. What’s all that about?”

The sword didn’t answer. He waived his hand goodbye and went to his next class.