It's a really pretty sword, but kind of hard to clean. Scouring the blood out of that gold filigree might take more time and better tools than she has available. The glass-slick black blade, on the other hand, comes clean in about one and a half wipes with a damp cloth—

—and as it does, a rippling gleam spills down its surface, not born in any external source; it's just there, shifting like the shine of sun on water, a wavering thread of light.

She pauses.

"Sword?" she asks, tentatively.

??

"...Are you awake?"

maybe

"Oh! Oh wow! Um, what do you - remember, know, uh I've never had a weapon wake up before so I don't really know how to explain everything, sorry."

The sword gives off a general impression of sleepy confusion.

"Um! I'm Kate. We're in a dunj, which is sorta a magical dimension full of monsters? They were messing up my village's crops so I went in, I noticed you were getting magical so I took you but I haven't had you for long - sometimes weapons get magical and kind of wake up as people?"

oh. huh.

Another ripple of light traces the blade as it—he—takes a moment to think this over. (It's not clear how a sword can project an emphatic sense of gender but this one definitely is.)

i like being awake, he concludes. c'mon let's go kill more stuff

"Alright!" she says. "That's what we're here for, I guess." Hopefully she didn't get a bloodthirsty sword. Well if she did she can hand him off, she's not like planning to be an adventurer, and hopefully he wouldn't mind too much.

An excited gleam flickers across his surface.

She'll valiantly set off into the dunj then, suppressing her nerves not very well but decently. She doesn't know much about how wielders and weapons work together, but sort of tries to communicate what she does know - wielder makes a weapon-appropriate gestured, like swinging or stabbing, weapon does. Something? And the coordination makes an effect. Like, this traveling adventurer had a staff that did fire this one time. But wielder and weapon need to work together and what happens is influenced by both.

Calling him 'sword' is weird, so she asks, after their first successful attempt at stabbing a weird bird-lady, "Hey, do you have something you want me to call you?"

i don't really know how names work

"Uhhhhhh. They're sounds that someone consistently calls you by. A lot of them don't mean anything anymore but some are words, I know a 'Joy.' I was just named after my grandma, Katherine, but I go by Kate because it's shorter. So, like, if you're naming yourself, you'd probably go by a nice meaning or sound, and people naming others usually do honor-names, after some other person, or virtue-names, of some trait they want someone to have?"

He glimmers consideringly.

all right, I'll think about it

"I can list some if you, like, don't remember hearing names? But yeah, it's not something I've thought a lot about."

Trudge trudge trudge, practice switching between stabs and swings, trying to get a feel for the sword, but it's hard.

On her next little break, something occurs to her. "Oh, hey, a lot of weapons can shapeshift. You want to try? - Maybe not while we're in the dunj, but, like, you can walk back to the village with me and maybe get some food or something. I'd miss food if I was a sword..."

shapeshift??

There is a pause.

Then there is a man.

He's tall and broad-shouldered and built like a dancer, strong but streamlined. He's wearing mostly black, with a few subtle touches of red and tasteful accents in gold-filigree embroidery. His hair is black; his eyes are black with flecks of gold.

He beams, radiantly delighted, and twirls with joy and overbalances and rolls and bounces up again and scoops her into a crushing hug.

She helps with the transformation as best she can. A dramatic pose is involved. She's not sure it helped any, and feels a bit silly.

Random hugs are unexpected but not too surprising, she'd want to hug someone maybe if she had arms for the first time.

(Oh wow he's cute, not the time brain.)

She does though 'eep' when hugged, because not too surprising on a meta level or not she was surprised.

The eep makes him giggle.

"Having a body is the best thing," he says, somewhat muffled because of how he's smushing his face against her shoulder. "It's so good!!! It's even better than stabbing things!"

Awkward wriggle because her arms are trapped that really should've been an awkward shoulder pat. "I approve of it too?" she says. She's not sure how normal it is for weapons to actively like stabbing things. Maybe it's, like, a doing a good job sort of thing? And that's kind of what weapons are meant for?

...How does she ask the overexcited sword to stop squeezing her ribcage, is the tricky part here.

He giggles again and rubs his cheek against the side of her face like an affectionate cat and then shifts back, sparkling excitedly. c'mon I wanna kill something!!

"Uh. Okay."

Fight fight stab, ugh why do these monsters have to be so human-like and pretty. This dunj feels deep and exhausting and long, worse than the tales she's heard - she's not sure if they establish themselves more when left along, if the long trudges just get left out of the tales, or what. At least they've only found hoards so far, no bosses.

...She really shouldn't have jinxed herself like that.

She runs into another small hoard, and swings her sword with a little dramatic flick to her wrist that she hopes will help the magic. They're not syncing well yet. A bird woman lunges at her from behind, and Kate spins, bracing herself and thrusting for the monster's chest with a 'hiya!', sword gripped tight in both hands.

The only magic she's gotten out of him so far has been inconsistent flickers of fire, too brief and weak to have much effect.

This time she gets more than that.

He glows red-hot and sinks into the bird-woman's body with a crackling sizzle. The impression he gives off is of exhilarated laughter.

!!!

She did not expect that and yelps in surprise a little, and okay burned monsters are ew and at least it dies and starts doing that weird pixely thing quickly.

She regains her footing and keeps fighting - stabs to the heart seemed to work so even though she super doesn't like doing this she throws herself at the next bird woman with a half-hearted war cry and the same power stance.