His blade... ripples, and is suddenly consumed by deep, black, pitchy darkness.

It’s an odd sort of darkness, no doubt about it. He can still see the blade itself perfectly well, every detail just so, even whilst it remains all insistently gloamed. It’s almost like he’s in a dark room, looking at a pale object, eyes perfectly adjusted - except for the fact that his eyes are still adjusted elsewise, and his surroundings aren’t so much as dim.

Cooper startles a bit at the sudden change in the edge of his field of view, but relaxes once he realizes it's not a glass monster.

The dagger doing that is weird and new. He turns it over a bit, then, out loud, "Uh. You awake?" he asks, because weird things happening with magic weapons usually seems to indicate changes in the magic. Like starting being sapient.

He can sense his environment and that means something, he gets the impression that he’s been able to do it before but that before he wasn’t a he, he’s always been taking in sensory information but it was meaningless, useless - vision, but not something which can see with it, hearing, but not something which can hear with it - maybe even thought, without any consciousness to listen in - only he can’t know, because he can’t remember, he must have some onboard memory because he has a set of available concepts and facts but he doesn’t have anything autobiographical - he mentally catalogues his resources and his environment, but he doesn’t know what he’s cataloguing them for because he doesn’t have any goals, not yet, not quite -

Think so. Hi.

"How much do you remember? I don't know if I need to start at, like, 'I'm a human' level of explanation or a 'hey do you have a name you want'..."

I have - basic concepts - I knew what a human was once you mentioned it - but I don’t really have any sensory memories, can’t distinguish between true and false concepts without added explanation. Maybe try something between those two?

"Hm. We're in a dunj right now. They're sort of pocket dimensions I think, that sometimes connect to the main world and start spewing monsters everywhere. Monsters are aggressive, and attack places, and the dunj seems to respawn them. It's possible to close a dunj from the portal stone, and when you do that everyone ends up in their proper dimension."

"Uh I don't know how to explain Earth. There's humans and weapons, and weapons sometimes are also humans, but all awake weapons can shapeshift into at least one form so other than some differences in like documentation, people are people. Weapons and wielders have to work together to make magic? I've heard it's easier and better when you know each other more."

... I think that’s enough to work with, for now.

And I want to be named Jamie, unless that’d be weird.

What should I call you?

"Jamie's a good name! I'm Cooper."

Nice name. I assume that you’re trying to close this dunj, and that’s why we’re here?

"Yeah. It's been a problem locally, and we're too rural for any kind of fast response. So, here I am. Figured I could also get experience, this is a smaller dunj."

I, too, find that I want to acquire experience and prevent people from being terrorized. Can I try shapeshifting?

"Yeah. I think there's something I need to do, too - that'd also be good practice syncing..."

There is a dagger.

And then there isn’t. 

He’s 5’11, perhaps, lean and fairly muscled, wearing a tasteful ensemble of black and silver. 

And then he’s just going to... cautiously sit down on the floor. And be very, very still.

”Hi,” he says, carefully pronouncing the word. “This is, apparently, my body. It isn’t even slightly a dagger. I am slightly overwhelmed.”

" - Wow, yeah, that'd probably be a huge change," he says. "I, uh, have ever helped a small human learn to walk and all but I don't know how that generalizes to shapeshifting."

“I think that I have prepackaged knowledge of how to use it, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk, I just don’t want to make a mistake and it’s all very strange... could you turn around for a minute?”

"Sure."

He does so.

“Thank you.”

He carefully, cautiously, tentatively stands up. He shifts positions. He - carefully, cautiously, tentatively - takes a single step, and then another, and then starts pacing. He stops, abruptly, and jumps, and attempts to smile, and frown, and narrow his eyes.

He manages a cartwheel on his first try, and then a - somewhat graceless - pirouette. 

“Feel free to turn turn back now, I think that I can move in normal ways without risk. Being a body is very complicated, but I like it. How do we experiment with other magic?”

He turns back around. "Not a hundred percent sure, but I think for fighting, go through the motions, see what clicks with the both of us? I'm not sure what magic you can use in human shape, though."

“Okay. I can go back to being a dagger, then. How do I go about that?”

"Uh, my sense of it's kind of 'the same way as the other direction'? Maybe if there's more shapes with like visualization or something. I don't think we need to be touching, and maybe you can do it yourself since you're normally a dagger? But me holding your hand and helping might not hurt."

Jamie looks at him. 

He removes the barrier of intervening distance...

And he holds his hand. 

"Let's try this, then," he says, and sort of flexes his mind.

Jamie, smiling slightly, does the same -

And then Cooper is holding a dagger, again.

"It worked! Want to practice fighting next?"