The Guild of Radner's Wicked Sword.

I am the ninety-three-hundred and thirty-fourth Radnerian Guard.

You will memorize this story. When you can recite it to me, word for word, in its entirety, without a single variation, you may be accepted into the Guild of Radner. I will not test you every day. Then again, I might. I may not test you for ten or fifteen years—but when I do test you, you must repeat this story word-for-word, in order to convince me that you’re ready… to be the ninety-three-hundred-and-thirty-fifth Radnerian Guard. Until then, you are an intern, nothing more. This is our destiny, our privilege, and the story.

***

She stood in the midst of the Royal Courtyard, a bucolic sanctuary, her sword sizzled and popped with mystical energy. Magnetic fields rippled across its blade, sometimes coming out of the sword altogether. She held it with two hands. The courtyard was steeped in silence. Not even a bird tweeted.

The ‘catacomb’ King stood rigid before his throne and surveyed the carnage she had just wrought. His gleaming metal arm and polished breastplate reflected well the morning sunlight. The gore of his splattered kin, his decapitated counselors, their heads all laying scattered about. His elite Royal Guard, eviscerated, their limbs and entrails strewn among the topiary.

*****

It seemed likely, to us in the Guild, that the world was given to her by someone higher up, to manage its burgeoning population and wealth of resources. She was certainly not of this realm. To mere mortals like us, she was an avenging angel, a goddess of wisdom whose heavenly gaze and stunning appearance alone could disarm the most devious foe.

In harsher times she had slaughtered men of honor; razed entire counties; and made more than one king lay down his sword and tremble at her feet. Her exploits were legendary. But this man, the one she now faced, knew no fear. He was unique in that regard. He was also massive, ruthless, and cunning. His calm disdain, in the face of her unquenched wrath, was so infuriating… this man could shake the faith of an immortal Goddess.

Who could do this? The catacomb King.

The King was a mutant. The girth at his shoulder was the height of an ordinary man of the realm. Born with enormous arms as well, one got caught in a mining machine and was torn off by a rock crusher. Now he has two arms, one of flesh, the other a metal prosthesis. His size, his ordeal and metal arm had earned him friends and favors previously unheard of by a man in the phosphor-mines.

He recovered, went back to work, friends became allies and favors became debts. It was better to be his friend, because strange things happened to his enemies. There were rumors—that he possessed a deadly, alien weapon with great power. Much was said of it, but nothing was known.

An unexpected drop in the value of phosphor was all he needed to rally an army of disgruntled workers, thoughtlessly brandishing deadly tools as they emerged from the catacombs. They intended to negotiate for better conditions, time off, extra sick leave—but their appearance was so terrifying, most of the villagers and even some of the idiots fled the kingdom in haste, and would not come back, leaving the King and his crew entirely in charge, not just of the mines, but the refineries that smelted the ore, the ovens that heated it, and the wharves that loaded it onto ships..

The Goddess had been away too long. Things had to be put right. She doubted the existence of an alien weapon, nor would she tolerate one, not on this planet, her world, but she had to be certain. She paid the King a visit. He was properly smitten with her in every singular aspect of her body and soul.

She found his bionic assets intriguing and his rigor charming. One could not deny that he was a man who understood people’s motives, and desires. Even the Gods are fallible when it comes to emotions. The king, however, was not. He had skills that exceeded his virtue and a sixth sense in affairs of the heart. He was also skilled in the art of persuasion.

Their affair was physical and torrid; their passion burned hot and bright for a short time until all that remained was a blackened scar.

To sanctify the tryst, he arranged a gaudy celebration—a kind of unofficial public marriage that came with obligations for her, but no authority. To him, the wedding was a trivial invention to justify a feast; to her it was another insult, a social trapdoor. Her fleeting lust was all that protected him.

In the brief but intricate term of their intimacy, she found the fake arm disturbing, but no other evidence of a strange, secret weapon ever surfaced; on the other front, the King did not believe she was a Goddess, not without irrefutable evidence, which she would not provide on command.

When the magic of the romance disappeared, (in record time), they settled into an uneasy truce of coy slights and meaningless apologies, until one day, when the King, in her presence, speculated to his courtiers on what would most frighten a Goddess. “My greatest fear,” she said, “is that I might lose my head.” She bid him a fair day, summoned his dogs with a snap of her fingers, and took them hunting till the following day.

Her abrupt departure did not sit well with the King or his advisors, after extensive consultations, he raised the issue the following day. “On the topic of losing your head, my, uh, Queen, did you fear that I might grow tired of your favors? Is that what you meant?”

“Favors? I don’t have favors, I have skills.”

“Yes, you certainly do.” He glared at several courtesans, a silent admonition to refrain from giggling. “You don’t think I’m one of those barbarians who beheads everyone he sleeps with, do you?”

She frowned. “I hadn’t really thought about it until now. Thanks for that. But no, What I meant, My Lord, is that I fear I might lose my temper, and slay half your subjects. Why do you badger me? It benefits no one to pursue these pointless questions. I fear nothing.” She took his leave without another word.

‘Such talk is bold,’ his advisors clucked, ‘even for a Goddess, a doddering idiot, or whatever she is.’ He had to quell their indignation, despite being in agreement with them. She was as fearless as he, “…and no one can be as fearless as me.”

The third time he raised the issue of her fear, she said, “I—am invincible. Do you not understand the word, My poor, dull, simple Lord? Perhaps the jester can explain it to you.” She left the King’s court in a state of embarrassed silence. Thunder, lightning, and the trumpeting of enormous herds of elk could be heard throughout the realm that night, ‘everyone but the King cowered in fear.’

For his part the King’s own anger was a match for the tempest outside. He was not well-suited for long-term commitments, especially with ‘Hell’s Whore’, as he soon began calling her, and made it widely known that he would ‘welcome her sudden drowning’. He was now determined to drive her from the kingdom by any means possible.

So here they were, in the court yard, each braced for battle.

Twenty paces distant, the goddess yanked her sword from the jester’s severed head. It fell to the floor with a sickening ‘thlopp’. He should have been funnier when he had the chance.

She extended the sword, to examine it for nicks and dents.

“Are you finished?” The King said, in the driest tones possible.

“With what?” She said, “Oh, you mean playing with your things? King?”

“Let’s be reasonable, shall we? Queen? Uh. What was your name again?”

The sword jerked as if struck, and began to pull her towards the throne. It tugged and twisted in her grasp, like a hound, straining at its leash.

“Are you going to try and kill me?” The unperturbable King inquired. “With that?”

“You would test the patience of my sword?” She was so stunned, it nearly slipped out of her grasp. He was taunting her from the precipice of death. Surely he knew where he stood. “Answer my question,” she hissed, “Lord of blood. Have you discovered my singular fear?”

“Yes,” he whispered back.

“I did not HEAR YOU,” she bellowed into his face.

“Yes, Queen.”

“And was the pursuit of this question worth your whiles, oh king of desolation?”

He looked around, at the breached gates, the tattered bunting, the blood of his servants, the heads of his advisors, the remains of his Royal Guard. They would all have to be buried together in one, vast, interminably deep…

“SPEAK!” She thundered. Shattering his ruminations (and loosening the keep’s mortar.) His own mighty sword tore itself from its decorative scabbard, and clanged to the floor in fear. It didn’t just lay there either, it continued to rattle, in fear.

“It was not fruitful,” he admitted, fearlessly.

“Pray tell us, why not?”

“Like most gods, you fear rejection.”

“Then I am a God. Am I not? And naught else,” she concluded. “You will surrender your artificial limb.”

“I’d rather die,” he said.

“If you live, or die, you will forfeit the limb.”

“I’d rather not,” he said, with the arm pointed at her midsection, “and stay your distance. My weapon is lethal, even to a Goddess, if that’s what you are.”

In the blink of an eye, her sword severed the bonds of his metallic arm, taking a thin layer of skin with it. It clattered to the stone floor in a heap.

The loss of all that weight threw the King off-balance and he found himself back on the seat of his throne. Unhurt, but disarmed so quickly, he was wounded more in pride than in his person. “You filthy, vile, detestable…”

She and the blade had the skill to cut his offensive tongue from his head as he spoke—but the sword pulled her towards the severed, metallic arm, skewering the awful thing from the floor and lifting it up for inspection.

The King’s ruse had fooled the sword, but not her. Before turning away, she glimpsed a weapon in his other hand, the hand made of flesh and bone, a curious, short, angular lump of polished metal, with a hole in one end. It had an alluring appearance.

She froze, with the metallic arm still skewered. “What is that, King half-wit?”

“It is a ghun, you psychopathic…”

She swung the sword so swiftly, it sheared the king’s head from his body before the metallic arm hit the ground. His headless body, obeying nerve impulses already sent to its limbs, jumped to its feet.

As his head rolled to a stop, the dead king’s body turned, raised the weapon and squeezed its trigger. The deafening sound was as loud as anything she’d ever heard, and not as bad as the crushing blow to her body that followed. The pain was like having a hole punched through her torso, with no concern at all for the torso. Which is exactly what had happened.

The dead king still wasn’t done and pulled the trigger again, the ghun just clicked, then he slumped in a heap at her feet.

With her immortal strength ebbing, she raised the hilt of her sword above her head, blade down, jumped straight up into the air, seemed to hang there for a moment, then came down and plunged the blade through the heart of the dead king with such force, that the sword continued to drive itself into the stone beneath him, embedding itself into the rock, where it still resides to this day.

She seemed given to die, but a group of genuine clerics took her in, gave her shelter, food, rest, and hid her from the random retribution served up by the king’s supporters; some say for years afterwards. It’s hardly surprising that a secret group of disgruntled, introverted, fanatics would coalesce to protect her.

She recovered, in time, changed somewhat, as Goddesses do, and lost her memory of the event, and with it, any knowledge of her sword, or its location.

The courtyard, sitting high in the Uzbekistan mountains, began to crumble, the rains came again and again, finally the sword and the rock slid down the mountainside. There are myths of a sword in stone, but so far, none has ever been found. We thought it best to leave her unaware of the reason she’s unique, and immortal, until we find the sword, but the choice to continue this deception will some day be yours.

When you become the ninety-three-hundred-and-thirty-fifth Radnerian.