Post by Tomas on Jul 20, 2011 9:19:48 GMT -5
Tegid beckons you to come sit with him by the fire when you ask to speak to him. Llew, Tegid's ever present shadow, takes a respectful step back in order to give the two of you privacy. Tegid motions to him, and tells him that if he wishes he may stay, but that Tegid is pretty sure that he is not in grave danger in the heart of Meldron Mawr's war camp. Llew chuckles, and then leaves, promising to return shortly with something to eat for everyone.
Tegid thinks a while on your question before responding. "It is not that I do not wish to answer your question, Paden. But I do not wish for you to pursue another's destiny over your own." He glances to the side a moment, and points out a few young men, backs bent and straining as they lift lumber to carry to the smith and the bowyer. "These young should be pursuing their own ends, learning the craft of their fathers, or studying as ovids, or training with the warband to fight for honor and not for blood. Instead they carry timber to the hands of those who will fashion it into weapons to kill our brothers in Llogres, they raise sword and spear in malice and with hate, and they ask if the tales of our people are of any importance. These youth need a leader... one of their own to follow. A man of honor, though few remain to be found. There are those among us who like this new world far more than the old, those who have embraced the violence. But let us not speak of this. You asked an understandable question; I will answer. I pray to the Dagda that you share his courage, but not his fate." So saying, Tegid pulls his hood up to cover his head in a gesture and pose that you have come to recognize as one of formal bardic storytelling and declamation. He lays his staff across his knees, and gazes deep into the fire before removing a pinch of ash from the pouch at his side. He mutters a few strange words in a low voice, and then tosses the ash into the fire. It blazes up for a moment, and white smoke rises quickly into the chill breeze, before the flames die away almost entirely. Tegid, speaking quietly, rises and extends his fingertips towards your forehead, marking you with the ash in the three-rayed sign of the sun; he says to you in a strange voice, "Gaze into the flames, Paden Bright-Spear, and see..."
Your eyes are drawn to the embers, and in the heat-waves which rise from the fire, you begin to see. Tegid's voice drones on, but his words no longer matter or hold meaning for you; only the scene in the fire seems real to you at this moment.
The land that you see is green and lush, fertile and ripe. The hills are gentle, and the trees are straight and tall. The sky is clear, and the profound peace of the scene overwhelms. The children, three boys and two girls, are running through the fields, following closely behind a tall man with long, flowing brown hair, tightly braided. As they approach the edge of a large forest, the man turns, and you see his face - he appears young, though he has a bearing of authority and pride that belies his youthful appearance. He gestures to the children and they respond, though the scene is totally silent, with only the soft drone of Tegid's voice in the background, a rhythmic chant that seems to drive the pace of the scenic vision. The children shake their heads, and the man throws back his head in laughter, before gesturing for them to go back across the field. This time they obey, clearly singing as they move. The man smiles broadly, his hazel eyes twinkling with a mix of pride and pleasure. Then he turns and moves swiftly into the forest. The light glints off of bronze and iron, the sword at his hip and the speartips on his back.
Your eyes are drawn to his right hand, which grasps the haft of a shortspear, much the same size and shape as your Caldefwych. The image grows blurry as his speed increases, and you only see moments of his time for a while. He stalks through the forest, he sights a stag on the path ahead, he stops and stands still as a statue in the shadows. The stag looks up and gazes around quickly, seemingly knowing that something is wrong, out of place, different. Then it staggers for a moment and falls, a twinkle of sunlight hitting the speartip as it slices the creature's throat and buries itself in a nearby tree. Movement catches your eye as the man leaps forward, and is at the stag's side in an instant, quickly finishing his bloody task. He freezes for a moment after he delivers the final blow, head down, in what is clearly a gesture of respect for the fallen forest-lord.
The next thing you see is the man, holding his youngest daughter, as a beautiful woman, with hair of red-gold curls and laughing green eyes, brings a trencher of meat to the low table at which the man sits. She is stunning in her white dress, clearly homespun but elegant nonetheless, bound at the waste with a red-dyed leather belt; she is athletic without being masculine, soft without being decadent, in all ways the equal of the man she is serving. She takes the dagger from her shapely hip, and quickly carves a steaming piece of the meat for her husband, who flips it gently into his mouth, smiling. He nods, ritual honor observed, and begins to help his wife to cut meat for the children, before cutting a hunk for her and for him. The scene fades and blurs again, as though moving quickly through time, until it slows again, the man kissing the forehead of his children, before moving quietly to the side of his wife. He takes a mead-skin from the table, and leads her out of the small, wooden dwelling. They sit by the fire, their lips moving as though talking though you cannot hear the words. They drink the mead, and then move to the other side of the outdoor fire, where the man takes his wife in his arms and kisses her, drawing her down to the soft embrace of the earth, as the firelight obscures your sight.
The vision quickens, and the days pass by in a blur of hunting and gathering, farming and play. The seasons pass, winter comes and goes; all is well, all is the same. Then the vision shifts, and the man is speaking to his children, all save the oldest boy, who stands beside him. The others are nodding and listening to the silent monologue, while the wife stands nearby, tears glistening in her eyes but a proud bearing in her neck. The man turns and pats his oldest son on the shoulder, who smiles bravely and scoots the children away while the man and his wife embrace tenderly. Finally she releases him, and he turns and walks without haste or looking back to his horse. He swiftly checks what little tack he uses, preferring to ride essentially bareback, except for a leather blanket thrown over the horse's back. He checks his holsters and bags as well, and puts his favored shortspear in a special leather pouch near the horse's neck.
He mounts in a flash, and the horse's hooves strike sparks from the gravel as it races across the plains, towards the hills. Miles roll by in mere moments, and you catch glimpses of campfires and nights under stars, and days full of riding, while the man lifts his face to the sun, mouth wide open in an eerily silent song.
The vision moves quickly still, and his arrival in a camp of many men, outfitted much like him, slides by your sight. You see weapons being prepared, stores being readied, horses groomed, and men silently moving around the campsite. You notice a figure of regal bearing moving through the midst of the camp, a golden torc at his throat and a finely wrought sword at his side. His dress is fine, but functional, and his horse is clearly a fine beast of the highest pedigree. On each side, he is flanked by those who are clearly his chief advisors - one of massive size and muscle, a warrior among warriors, and the other wearing garb similar to that of Tegid, plain but fine. They walk among the common men, jovial at times and deathly serious at others. The subject of your vision is among these common men, and his face lights up at the sight of the kingly man, and he kneels and offers his favored shortspear to the liege. The royal champion inspects it and smiles brightly, clearly satisfied. The druid takes it from the champion, and raising his hood, blesses it and sains it with some ash from a pouch, much like Tegid's. The king takes it from the druid, and clearly satisfied, places it back into the upraised hands of the warrior-husband, who accepts it graciously. The three move off, and the man rises to his feet, and continues making his preparations for the evening. The vision blurs again, and the next thing you see clearly is the gruesome sight of the spriggan horde.
Creatures of reddish fur and flesh, with razor sharp fangs and tusks, armed not only with tooth and claw, but also with weapons and armor of iron and steel, advance towards the king's army, men of the farm and field, who are arrayed to stand for what they love. The battle is hard and cruel, the creatures showing no quarter, nor asking any; this fight is not to humble the enemy, but to destroy them. As you survey the battle, the wielder of the spear fights bravely, protecting his warrior-brothers and more than once risking his own life to save another. He strikes out with his spear, slashing and piercing the calloused hides of the spriggan fey, with a strength born of desperation; the numbers of the spriggan appear simply overwhelming. He takes their blows on his shield arm, until his light wooden board breaks and splinters; he then tosses it away, and draws his sword to match his spear's parry and thrust. He takes to throwing his spear, and following up with his sword, before retrieving the haft from the corpse of his foe; the spear always flies true, seemingly seeking the body of the fierce monsters. After a particularly spectacular throw, as he moves to retrieve the shortspear from the fallen enemy, he stops, his eyes drawn to a site a few hundred yards away from him.
The vision follows his gaze, and you see, a little ways across the field of battle, the king's party and his elite guard, dragon banner waving in the wind, besieged. Though the men fight like whirlwinds, moving so fast that their blades are not even visible, they are being pressed inexorably back towards a nearby stream, where the unsteady footing will prove their demise. The man takes all of this in instantly, and seizing his shortspear free of the fallen foe with a jerk, he sprints across the field towards the king. He takes but a few steps when a spriggan steps into his path, and quickly loses its head to the man's sword. Yet it seems that for every step the man takes, another foe appears to slow him. He fights with every fiber of his being, past exhaustion and fatigue, until his sword arm is leaden and his spear proves nearly impossible to lift. He glances up from his red work again and again, and each time there are fewer and fewer soldiers left defending the king. Now the monarch is mounted and striking about him with his notched sword, his shield long since abandoned. It is valor and not the spriggan that keeps the king from retreating, as he and his men fight on to the last; they will not abandon their army and the field.
The father-fighter works on, but a look of despair creeps into his eyes - there is no way he will reach the king in time. His sword is now gone, broken as it sheared through tusk, hide, bone, and brain of an enemy now gone. His spears are broken or cast beyond retrieval, save one - his beloved picell, made by his own hands. You see momentary flashes of the spear's creation; the haft was crafted from a branch which his son had found, and used as a play-spear during childhood. The point had been forged by his father, who fell protecting his family from a wolf pack during the winter of his fourteenth year. Now, as he gazes across the few feet remaining between the king and himself, it seems that his efforts are in vain; the last of the king's men fell, leaving only the champion, who is himself battling three of the monsters. The king's druid is also fallen, his staff splintered by one of the spriggans, which now moves toward the king, whose back is turned as he himself goes to the aid of his war leader. You see that the king will be blindsided by the tusked monstrosity; the battle is nearly over. The man is trapped, surrounded by a sea of enemies, his only chance of survival lying in retreat and defense.
Then you see something, like a star twinkling in the gathering darkness, streaking across the gap between the king and the nameless hero. Like a meteor out of the mass of swarming spriggans, the light strikes the largest one, their de facto leader, as he finally reaches the king. In the same instant, you see the spriggans surrounding the man react by rushing towards him, both of his empty hands rising in a futile effort to ward off the attackers. He goes down beneath the mass of them, and the scene shifts towards the picell.
What you notice first is that the spriggan leader is still standing, with an expression approaching bafflement on his face. The spear is buried in its back, having pierced the crude metal hauberk it wore. Its waraxe falls to the ground as its fingers lose their strength, and the king turns, sword slashing high. Before the king can claim the creature's head, however, it falls to the ground, face forward. It is then that you notice the light surrounding the creature. The spear is glowing, pouring radiance forth in a flood that is growing swiftly, and traveling outward like the ripples on a pond. Quickly the light grows bright enough that the nearby fighting calms momentarily; all eyes are shifting to its source. The light grows and grows, till every eye on the battlefield is drawn towards it. Though it has only been a few seconds, the light has grown from a twinkle into a tiny sun, and it is still growing. It is then, when every eye is on the source of the light, that the sun goes nova.
You are momentarily blinded by the light, and it takes a moment or two for the spots to clear from your sight. When you regain your vision, the scene has shifted; the battlefield is empty of spriggans, living or dead. All that remains of them and are piles of dust and ash, with rust scattered around them in place of their weapons and armor. The king is kneeling, and gently reaches out his hand to take the spear that saved his life, and the lives of his warriors and subjects. It is the picell of the nameless hero, but subtly altered. Now on one side of the blade, the Endless Knot is inscribed; on the reverse the trifold rays of the Dagda. Whorls decorate the haft, and the blade's edge is as sharp as the day it was forged; it glows with a warm, white light like the sun itself. The king picks it up, and looks around for the man who will claim it, but all are silent. The king asks everyone around him to whom the weapon belongs, but none know the answer. Many men use the picell, and none have seen one of this magnificence in all their lives, let alone one with the miraculous powers that this one demonstrates so dramatically.
The vision shifts again, and speeds through the men gathering the wounded and the dead, treating those who can be saved while honoring the those who cannot in death. A few druids and bards take up their harps, and the remnant of the warband lifts their faces in silent song, before beginning the long march back to the king's caer. On arrival, the king places the picell in his great hall, in a place of honor, and the bards craft the tale of the salvation of the kingdom, traveling near and far to tell it. The rightful owner is not found, and the monarch decides to make a gift of the marvelous weapon to Scatha, the founder and warrior queen of Skye, as thanks for her training of a large group of his young warriors. It is then that the vision ends, as Scatha, whose face you know so well, carries the picell to a low cairn. She holds it reverently, before placing it on a low table of stone, positioned in the center of the cairn, in a place of honor. You see runes on the table, telling the tale in brief which you have now seen in full, as well as the name "Caledfwych", roughly translated as "Cut Steel". The vision fades slowly, as the stone is rolled in front of the entrance, and the light from the picell grows slowly dimmer.
The vision fades, and you realize that the fire is nearly out. Tegid's chanting has ceased, and when you look up he is gazing at you intently. He gestures to you for silence, takes a cup of clean and pure water, and quickly douses what remains of the flame. He then speaks a single syllable of his druidic tongue, before returning to your language.
"Do not speak yet, Paden. I have shared with you a measure of my Sight, and to one unused to the mental and emotional rigors of it the experience can be unsettling. This will linger with you; we do not forget those things which we See. Speak with me more on the morrow if you wish, but for tonight you should get some rest." He turns to Llew, who is staring at you in a mix of wonder and perhaps a little jealousy. "Can you see Paden to his tent, Llew? See that no one disturbs him this night, and give him a good skin of water, a loaf of brown bread, and a goodly sized hunk of cheese. He needs rest this night, and he will need to eat in the morning." He motions to you both. "Go now, and speak to no one, Paden, until morning. Then if you wish to discuss what you saw, I will be willing. Know that you alone saw this vision, for it was the Dagda's to show, not mine, and He chooses those who receive his gifts by His own sovereign will. Good night." With that, he stands, and taking up his staff, retreats away from the fire and towards his tent. Llew gestures to you to go if you wish, and he follows you as you do.
Tegid thinks a while on your question before responding. "It is not that I do not wish to answer your question, Paden. But I do not wish for you to pursue another's destiny over your own." He glances to the side a moment, and points out a few young men, backs bent and straining as they lift lumber to carry to the smith and the bowyer. "These young should be pursuing their own ends, learning the craft of their fathers, or studying as ovids, or training with the warband to fight for honor and not for blood. Instead they carry timber to the hands of those who will fashion it into weapons to kill our brothers in Llogres, they raise sword and spear in malice and with hate, and they ask if the tales of our people are of any importance. These youth need a leader... one of their own to follow. A man of honor, though few remain to be found. There are those among us who like this new world far more than the old, those who have embraced the violence. But let us not speak of this. You asked an understandable question; I will answer. I pray to the Dagda that you share his courage, but not his fate." So saying, Tegid pulls his hood up to cover his head in a gesture and pose that you have come to recognize as one of formal bardic storytelling and declamation. He lays his staff across his knees, and gazes deep into the fire before removing a pinch of ash from the pouch at his side. He mutters a few strange words in a low voice, and then tosses the ash into the fire. It blazes up for a moment, and white smoke rises quickly into the chill breeze, before the flames die away almost entirely. Tegid, speaking quietly, rises and extends his fingertips towards your forehead, marking you with the ash in the three-rayed sign of the sun; he says to you in a strange voice, "Gaze into the flames, Paden Bright-Spear, and see..."
Your eyes are drawn to the embers, and in the heat-waves which rise from the fire, you begin to see. Tegid's voice drones on, but his words no longer matter or hold meaning for you; only the scene in the fire seems real to you at this moment.
The land that you see is green and lush, fertile and ripe. The hills are gentle, and the trees are straight and tall. The sky is clear, and the profound peace of the scene overwhelms. The children, three boys and two girls, are running through the fields, following closely behind a tall man with long, flowing brown hair, tightly braided. As they approach the edge of a large forest, the man turns, and you see his face - he appears young, though he has a bearing of authority and pride that belies his youthful appearance. He gestures to the children and they respond, though the scene is totally silent, with only the soft drone of Tegid's voice in the background, a rhythmic chant that seems to drive the pace of the scenic vision. The children shake their heads, and the man throws back his head in laughter, before gesturing for them to go back across the field. This time they obey, clearly singing as they move. The man smiles broadly, his hazel eyes twinkling with a mix of pride and pleasure. Then he turns and moves swiftly into the forest. The light glints off of bronze and iron, the sword at his hip and the speartips on his back.
Your eyes are drawn to his right hand, which grasps the haft of a shortspear, much the same size and shape as your Caldefwych. The image grows blurry as his speed increases, and you only see moments of his time for a while. He stalks through the forest, he sights a stag on the path ahead, he stops and stands still as a statue in the shadows. The stag looks up and gazes around quickly, seemingly knowing that something is wrong, out of place, different. Then it staggers for a moment and falls, a twinkle of sunlight hitting the speartip as it slices the creature's throat and buries itself in a nearby tree. Movement catches your eye as the man leaps forward, and is at the stag's side in an instant, quickly finishing his bloody task. He freezes for a moment after he delivers the final blow, head down, in what is clearly a gesture of respect for the fallen forest-lord.
The next thing you see is the man, holding his youngest daughter, as a beautiful woman, with hair of red-gold curls and laughing green eyes, brings a trencher of meat to the low table at which the man sits. She is stunning in her white dress, clearly homespun but elegant nonetheless, bound at the waste with a red-dyed leather belt; she is athletic without being masculine, soft without being decadent, in all ways the equal of the man she is serving. She takes the dagger from her shapely hip, and quickly carves a steaming piece of the meat for her husband, who flips it gently into his mouth, smiling. He nods, ritual honor observed, and begins to help his wife to cut meat for the children, before cutting a hunk for her and for him. The scene fades and blurs again, as though moving quickly through time, until it slows again, the man kissing the forehead of his children, before moving quietly to the side of his wife. He takes a mead-skin from the table, and leads her out of the small, wooden dwelling. They sit by the fire, their lips moving as though talking though you cannot hear the words. They drink the mead, and then move to the other side of the outdoor fire, where the man takes his wife in his arms and kisses her, drawing her down to the soft embrace of the earth, as the firelight obscures your sight.
The vision quickens, and the days pass by in a blur of hunting and gathering, farming and play. The seasons pass, winter comes and goes; all is well, all is the same. Then the vision shifts, and the man is speaking to his children, all save the oldest boy, who stands beside him. The others are nodding and listening to the silent monologue, while the wife stands nearby, tears glistening in her eyes but a proud bearing in her neck. The man turns and pats his oldest son on the shoulder, who smiles bravely and scoots the children away while the man and his wife embrace tenderly. Finally she releases him, and he turns and walks without haste or looking back to his horse. He swiftly checks what little tack he uses, preferring to ride essentially bareback, except for a leather blanket thrown over the horse's back. He checks his holsters and bags as well, and puts his favored shortspear in a special leather pouch near the horse's neck.
He mounts in a flash, and the horse's hooves strike sparks from the gravel as it races across the plains, towards the hills. Miles roll by in mere moments, and you catch glimpses of campfires and nights under stars, and days full of riding, while the man lifts his face to the sun, mouth wide open in an eerily silent song.
The vision moves quickly still, and his arrival in a camp of many men, outfitted much like him, slides by your sight. You see weapons being prepared, stores being readied, horses groomed, and men silently moving around the campsite. You notice a figure of regal bearing moving through the midst of the camp, a golden torc at his throat and a finely wrought sword at his side. His dress is fine, but functional, and his horse is clearly a fine beast of the highest pedigree. On each side, he is flanked by those who are clearly his chief advisors - one of massive size and muscle, a warrior among warriors, and the other wearing garb similar to that of Tegid, plain but fine. They walk among the common men, jovial at times and deathly serious at others. The subject of your vision is among these common men, and his face lights up at the sight of the kingly man, and he kneels and offers his favored shortspear to the liege. The royal champion inspects it and smiles brightly, clearly satisfied. The druid takes it from the champion, and raising his hood, blesses it and sains it with some ash from a pouch, much like Tegid's. The king takes it from the druid, and clearly satisfied, places it back into the upraised hands of the warrior-husband, who accepts it graciously. The three move off, and the man rises to his feet, and continues making his preparations for the evening. The vision blurs again, and the next thing you see clearly is the gruesome sight of the spriggan horde.
Creatures of reddish fur and flesh, with razor sharp fangs and tusks, armed not only with tooth and claw, but also with weapons and armor of iron and steel, advance towards the king's army, men of the farm and field, who are arrayed to stand for what they love. The battle is hard and cruel, the creatures showing no quarter, nor asking any; this fight is not to humble the enemy, but to destroy them. As you survey the battle, the wielder of the spear fights bravely, protecting his warrior-brothers and more than once risking his own life to save another. He strikes out with his spear, slashing and piercing the calloused hides of the spriggan fey, with a strength born of desperation; the numbers of the spriggan appear simply overwhelming. He takes their blows on his shield arm, until his light wooden board breaks and splinters; he then tosses it away, and draws his sword to match his spear's parry and thrust. He takes to throwing his spear, and following up with his sword, before retrieving the haft from the corpse of his foe; the spear always flies true, seemingly seeking the body of the fierce monsters. After a particularly spectacular throw, as he moves to retrieve the shortspear from the fallen enemy, he stops, his eyes drawn to a site a few hundred yards away from him.
The vision follows his gaze, and you see, a little ways across the field of battle, the king's party and his elite guard, dragon banner waving in the wind, besieged. Though the men fight like whirlwinds, moving so fast that their blades are not even visible, they are being pressed inexorably back towards a nearby stream, where the unsteady footing will prove their demise. The man takes all of this in instantly, and seizing his shortspear free of the fallen foe with a jerk, he sprints across the field towards the king. He takes but a few steps when a spriggan steps into his path, and quickly loses its head to the man's sword. Yet it seems that for every step the man takes, another foe appears to slow him. He fights with every fiber of his being, past exhaustion and fatigue, until his sword arm is leaden and his spear proves nearly impossible to lift. He glances up from his red work again and again, and each time there are fewer and fewer soldiers left defending the king. Now the monarch is mounted and striking about him with his notched sword, his shield long since abandoned. It is valor and not the spriggan that keeps the king from retreating, as he and his men fight on to the last; they will not abandon their army and the field.
The father-fighter works on, but a look of despair creeps into his eyes - there is no way he will reach the king in time. His sword is now gone, broken as it sheared through tusk, hide, bone, and brain of an enemy now gone. His spears are broken or cast beyond retrieval, save one - his beloved picell, made by his own hands. You see momentary flashes of the spear's creation; the haft was crafted from a branch which his son had found, and used as a play-spear during childhood. The point had been forged by his father, who fell protecting his family from a wolf pack during the winter of his fourteenth year. Now, as he gazes across the few feet remaining between the king and himself, it seems that his efforts are in vain; the last of the king's men fell, leaving only the champion, who is himself battling three of the monsters. The king's druid is also fallen, his staff splintered by one of the spriggans, which now moves toward the king, whose back is turned as he himself goes to the aid of his war leader. You see that the king will be blindsided by the tusked monstrosity; the battle is nearly over. The man is trapped, surrounded by a sea of enemies, his only chance of survival lying in retreat and defense.
Then you see something, like a star twinkling in the gathering darkness, streaking across the gap between the king and the nameless hero. Like a meteor out of the mass of swarming spriggans, the light strikes the largest one, their de facto leader, as he finally reaches the king. In the same instant, you see the spriggans surrounding the man react by rushing towards him, both of his empty hands rising in a futile effort to ward off the attackers. He goes down beneath the mass of them, and the scene shifts towards the picell.
What you notice first is that the spriggan leader is still standing, with an expression approaching bafflement on his face. The spear is buried in its back, having pierced the crude metal hauberk it wore. Its waraxe falls to the ground as its fingers lose their strength, and the king turns, sword slashing high. Before the king can claim the creature's head, however, it falls to the ground, face forward. It is then that you notice the light surrounding the creature. The spear is glowing, pouring radiance forth in a flood that is growing swiftly, and traveling outward like the ripples on a pond. Quickly the light grows bright enough that the nearby fighting calms momentarily; all eyes are shifting to its source. The light grows and grows, till every eye on the battlefield is drawn towards it. Though it has only been a few seconds, the light has grown from a twinkle into a tiny sun, and it is still growing. It is then, when every eye is on the source of the light, that the sun goes nova.
You are momentarily blinded by the light, and it takes a moment or two for the spots to clear from your sight. When you regain your vision, the scene has shifted; the battlefield is empty of spriggans, living or dead. All that remains of them and are piles of dust and ash, with rust scattered around them in place of their weapons and armor. The king is kneeling, and gently reaches out his hand to take the spear that saved his life, and the lives of his warriors and subjects. It is the picell of the nameless hero, but subtly altered. Now on one side of the blade, the Endless Knot is inscribed; on the reverse the trifold rays of the Dagda. Whorls decorate the haft, and the blade's edge is as sharp as the day it was forged; it glows with a warm, white light like the sun itself. The king picks it up, and looks around for the man who will claim it, but all are silent. The king asks everyone around him to whom the weapon belongs, but none know the answer. Many men use the picell, and none have seen one of this magnificence in all their lives, let alone one with the miraculous powers that this one demonstrates so dramatically.
The vision shifts again, and speeds through the men gathering the wounded and the dead, treating those who can be saved while honoring the those who cannot in death. A few druids and bards take up their harps, and the remnant of the warband lifts their faces in silent song, before beginning the long march back to the king's caer. On arrival, the king places the picell in his great hall, in a place of honor, and the bards craft the tale of the salvation of the kingdom, traveling near and far to tell it. The rightful owner is not found, and the monarch decides to make a gift of the marvelous weapon to Scatha, the founder and warrior queen of Skye, as thanks for her training of a large group of his young warriors. It is then that the vision ends, as Scatha, whose face you know so well, carries the picell to a low cairn. She holds it reverently, before placing it on a low table of stone, positioned in the center of the cairn, in a place of honor. You see runes on the table, telling the tale in brief which you have now seen in full, as well as the name "Caledfwych", roughly translated as "Cut Steel". The vision fades slowly, as the stone is rolled in front of the entrance, and the light from the picell grows slowly dimmer.
The vision fades, and you realize that the fire is nearly out. Tegid's chanting has ceased, and when you look up he is gazing at you intently. He gestures to you for silence, takes a cup of clean and pure water, and quickly douses what remains of the flame. He then speaks a single syllable of his druidic tongue, before returning to your language.
"Do not speak yet, Paden. I have shared with you a measure of my Sight, and to one unused to the mental and emotional rigors of it the experience can be unsettling. This will linger with you; we do not forget those things which we See. Speak with me more on the morrow if you wish, but for tonight you should get some rest." He turns to Llew, who is staring at you in a mix of wonder and perhaps a little jealousy. "Can you see Paden to his tent, Llew? See that no one disturbs him this night, and give him a good skin of water, a loaf of brown bread, and a goodly sized hunk of cheese. He needs rest this night, and he will need to eat in the morning." He motions to you both. "Go now, and speak to no one, Paden, until morning. Then if you wish to discuss what you saw, I will be willing. Know that you alone saw this vision, for it was the Dagda's to show, not mine, and He chooses those who receive his gifts by His own sovereign will. Good night." With that, he stands, and taking up his staff, retreats away from the fire and towards his tent. Llew gestures to you to go if you wish, and he follows you as you do.