There, on the battlefield, coated in
crimson sweat I emerged once again from my armour. I hissed with anticipation
as my back scraped the cold, hard leather. We faced our opponent, looking straight
into their eyes as though their armour wasn’t even there. My master wielded me,
gripping me tightly. He thought a little too much of himself, but so did we
all. It’s the way we had to think to survive in the hostile circuit. Our moment
had come; he pounced, we slashed. I felt the warm life disintegrate inside our opponent
as I passed below his jaw. For a moment, we just stood there, basking in our
conquest as a wisp of wind emerged from the cluster of warriors surrounding us.
Suddenly, my master’s grip tightened on me. Something was wrong. Slowly, I saw
the ground ascend upon me. We had been beaten. No. This couldn’t be right. This
wasn’t happening. I was held by the most skilled swordsman in all of China. It
couldn’t be that our glory had fallen at last. Could it?
I waited. All I could do was wait. In that
moment, I felt stripped of all confidence and power. I had never felt like that
before, but there I was; laid alone on the patchy, uneven ground, my master's
corpse peeled off from around me. All I had was gone, all I had worked for was
nothing and all I was, was alone.
Still cold and forgotten, I lay wedged in
place for many centuries. The space around me screamed silence until suddenly,
I heard something. Muffled above layers ground, it was the sound of voices.
Crunch. The ground on top of me was bitten off as a harsh beam of refreshing
white light kissed my blade. Quickly, I was snatched out of the ground and held
up for all to see. I was once again
whole.
by Ruby Campion
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