"No, I'm human. Well. Formerly-human undead. I don't have elven ancestry¹, drow or surface."

More dryly:

"If it's any consolation, I'm not down here by choice either."

¹Since Miko is an Azurite, this is technically an untrue statement. Not that she knows that.

"If neither of us is steering the cart we're on less lopsided footing, but that doesn't mean I like it. You're clearly better oriented than I, at any rate; what's the situation?"

"I don't like it much either. I'm doing my best, though."

At any rate, she can give a report!

"I woke up this morning in an alley on the surface with unfamiliar equipment, including you. There was some sort of festival going on that was soon interrupted by a demonic attack. I tried to fight the demon lord; it knocked me into this pit along with some others who I found and joined up with to find a path to the surface. On the way we found a small village of people descended from the crusaders of a hundred years ago and an angel's sword; due to the latter the former is going to return to the surface and take us with them in the morning, or at least what passes for morning down here.

"I think the plan for what to do then will hinge on a lot of information that I don't know yet, mostly about what state the city is in after the demon attack. Or if the attack is still ongoing. The city was nominally under the protection of a silver dragon but she got killed only a couple of rounds into the battle and I don't know if she's been raised yet."

Finnean is quiet for a long moment.

"Unfamiliar equipment," he says, slowly. "Including..."

Miko's impeccable tact strikes again!

"Oh, I thought you knew you were a scabbard."

This coming from the woman who didn't realize she was undead until she accidentally reverse-Laid Hands on someone.

"Hm."

Another long pause.

"I do not feel my legs," Finnean remarks, his tone neutral. "I have... a sensory modality that I am coming to realize is not sight, along with one that I am beginning to realize is not hearing. And... if you will excuse me a brief experiment?"

There is now a hilt protruding from his sheath, with an eye on its pommel; the eye on the scabbard closes, as it was before he awoke. "I see. How very... efficient. Would you do me the favor of unsheathing me? I will need to acclimate quickly, and there's nothing like total immersion in one's absurd new circumstances."

Miko briefly entertains the notion that the talking sword might be lying to her and she should not do as he asks just because he asked. But, well…

He's been there since she woke up, along with all the other equipment that so far has only helped her. And she has another sword, at any rate, in the event that Finnean tries to double-cross her. And it'd be better to know sooner rather than later what his true nature is.

That's not the real reason that she takes the eyed hilt of the sword and pulls it from its sheath. In reality, she empathizes with this man who woke up in an entirely different form with entirely different senses and who has no choice but to, in essence, swim.

The blade is black. Not shining obsidian, nor matte wrought iron; it is darkness, nothing more or less. A hole in the world, with a razor's edge. It's not very long, by the standards of such things, and there's a curve to it that she's familiar with.

Finnean hums thoughtfully as he cuts the air before her. "There is something to be said for efficiency," he muses.

He bursts into flames. The flames tighten into coursing loops of lightning, which freeze into jagged thorns of ice, which soak back into the blade like nothing was there. There's a few more shifts like that, mostly not as obvious - a shift in balance, or in one case weighing nothing at all.

He settles on a configuration. The air around the blade is strange - it keeps trying to settle, to organize itself into pure geometric forms. Like watching snowflakes crystallizing and melting away and reforming, half a dozen times a second. His balance is perfect, magically enhanced beyond any blade she's held in her life. And she can feel the way he's just slightly out-of-tune with reality, the better to carve through foes who aren't properly real, or shouldn't be where they are.

To put it in terms she'd understand: he's a +4 Axiomatic Ghost Touch Demonbane wakizashi.

Miko makes an appreciative noise at the various enchantments and enhancements. He may have been put into this situation against his will, but even so: it's objectively really cool.

"Are you making these adjustments yourself?" she muses aloud.

"Yes. Ah... this is not, perhaps, as drastic a change as you had imagined. I was a Black Blade in life, one who externalizes the soul in the form of a weapon. Not the part of my soul that directed the day-to-day affairs, you understand, but enough of it that this is not a total sea change. And one of the main things that a Black Blade does is adapt. When one's weapon is 'enchanted' only by one's own will, that magic is far more malleable."

That's a pretty cool prestige class.

"Interesting. Is this… something that normally happens to Black Blades? Or do you know as much about what happened to you as I know about how I became undead?"

"Mm. Depends how much necromancy you know, really. I know a good amount about item enchantment, and sentient items were an area of interest, though I never made one myself. Still, I have enough expertise to know that this would have been beyond all but a handful of people - and people here should be construed broadly."

Well, obviously she doesn't know any necromancy, because that's Evil and only the most twisted of villains would ever use any necromantic spell for any reason.

"Interesting. I'm not sure if I'd be any use in helping you find whoever did this, but…"

She thinks, weighing Finnean in her hand.

"You automatically took the form of a wakizashi. Is that a kind of blade you typically projected, before?"

"I was wondering," he comments. "I imagine it's your weapon of choice? Mine was a bastard sword."

"Half of it," she says idly. "It's meant to be wielded with a katana."

She thinks for a moment.

"What are your immediate goals? I intend to stay here as long as it seems I'm needed, then return to my homeland."

And hopefully this entire subplot will feature her getting resurrected properly and becoming a paladin again.

He thinks about it.

"These crusaders," he says eventually. "From a hundred years ago. Do you know what they fought against?"

Miko thinks for a moment.

"My assumption is that it was the demon lord from earlier," she says eventually, "because Terendelev—the dragon—had made a comment that the crusade wasn't any more urgent than it had been for the past century. But nobody's told me as much directly."

"The demon lord," he insists. "Describe him."

"Oh."

She shuts her eyes, thinking back to when it first appeared.

"There were… grasshoppers. Locusts. But the demon wasn't a grasshopper, though he was like an insect. A massive insect. With the—eyes. He had a scythe."

"Ah." Finnean's voice is tired, and grim. "Then I have been dead for a century. My wife and daughter lived, I assume, but if either lives now, I will be very surprised. Everyone I knew, except that obnoxious elf, is a matter of history if they are remembered at all. And still, Deskari ravages my homeland... admittedly, my homeland was shit, but it's the principle of the thing. If you promise me that you will work toward his defeat, then my immediate goals will be to support you in every capacity available to me."

Miko's hand tightens on Finnean's hilt.

"Of course."

It still feels uncertain and frightening to commit to an undertaking as weighty as this before she can go back home, or even before she knows what's going on back home. It's like she's abandoning Azure City to the goblins.

At the same time, the worst thing about the last few days was the uncertainty. Having to wildly guess at possibilities with no idea of what was actually true because everything she had ever been told could easily be just another lie. This is much more straightforward: defeat the demon lord and avenge Finnean's family. Besides, if Xykon is still alive, he'll most likely have left for another Gate already. Still a threat to the world, but…

Well, maybe she'll get enough levels out of this to go toe-to-toe with him.

Finnean emits a noise that carries the distinct auditory impression of a firm nod. "I'm going to take stock of those capacities now, if you don't mind."

"I can sense my environment for sixty feet," he says after a few moments, "which includes the ability to read both ordinary and magical writing, even from a closed book. I've retained my mental acuity as far as I can tell, though I'd hardly know - if you need magical trivia I'll help, but you may want to fact-check. And my spellcasting abilities have changed; the scaffolding has been... altered. I can spontaneously cast three spells I know from each of the first through third circles per day, and one of the fourth. And Sending? At will? Which is bizarre. I couldn't cast Sending when I was alive! Ahem. Finally, I observe within myself some kind of internal reservoir-amplifier for negative energy, which will react to the channeling thereof."

He pauses again after that. A bit more awkwardly. "...and, of course, like all intelligent Items I could attempt to suborn your will and turn you into a meat-puppet. I don't actually know how capable you would be of resisting that, since it doesn't have an attached estimate and I'm certainly not going to try it."

That last thing is basically the first thing that every adventurer learns about intelligent magic items. Miko supposes she can sympathize with Finnean for feeling awkward about having a capability like that. She's not particularly worried, even if he does turn against her. She had good saves in life and her relevant scores have only increased. She doesn't have any ranks in Spellcraft, so even if Finnean's knowledge is flawed it's likely to be a leg up from hers. She'll have to get his spell list before it comes time to prepare her own…

Sending at will, though. That's a game-changer. She doesn't know who's still alive—well, she can at least try everyone whose corpse she didn't see in the throne room, since it's effectively unlimited. She starts to think of wordings, in the back of her mind.

"Thank you for telling me," she says politely. "I'd like to compare spell lists. Sending at will is fantastic; there are some people I'd like to contact before I prepare spells."

She taps her lips.

"This is all very… convenient. I'm not sure what to expect from that except a suspicion that whoever put us in this situation, or someone claiming to have done so, will approach us with some sort of favor to ask."

"If they do," Finnean drawls, "I will have questions."

Miko nods firmly.

"The next thing I wanted to do was to find a place I could safely summon my new mount. I can put you away, if you'd like."