With reverence, Dan knelt and held the Spear in both of his hands.

It was truly beautiful. Dan had, of course, looked at the Spear while he had been busy dealing with Shin Boh Tahn but in the absolute calm of the void, with nothing else to mar its uniqueness by comparison, the Spear was breathtaking.

The shaft was a wood that Dan had never seen before. The smooth, grey wood had a strong and spicy scent, it felt soft and unblemished as Dan ran his hands over it. At the base, a series of connected metal bands of different colours made up a pommel of sorts. There was not a mark on the Spear, as though the ancient weapon had been newly made today.

The shaft was gorgeous, definitely but to pretend that it was of any specific beauty compared to the head of the spear would be an egregious lie. The metal of the head was somewhat hard to look at. Due to the nature of the weapon, its exact form was not set. When focused on, the Spear showed many different tips and heads but with a conscious effort Dan was able to see the “true” tip. A swirling cone of impossibly beautiful metal swung itself over the shaft of the Spear gracefully. A wondrous cavalry lance glimmered before Dan with more splendour than Dan could adequately describe.

Dan shook himself out of the stupor the Spear had created and reminded himself of the task at hand. Dan placed the Spear before him, at a conversational distance, and cleared his throat, feeling slightly silly as he did so. “I think we should talk.”

For an awful, awkward moment, the silence was deafening. Dan waited for a reply and was just about to repeat his question when he heard a noise. The Spear made a coughing sound as though clearing its own throat. Dan nearly burst into laughter at the ridiculous act but the Spear began to speak.

“It is good to meet you, Seed.” Another surprise. When the Spear spoke in this place, it was not with the all-powerful timbre and weight that Dan had felt before. The voice was layered, as though multiple people were talking in unison. “What would you like to discuss?”

Trying his best to ignore the strange congregated voice, Dan was forced to ponder that question. He had not really expected to get this far. Usually when someone with greater knowledge knew that they possessed such, it was kept under lock and key. With all the choice in the world, Dan was not sure where to start. He decided to latch on to the first confusion in his head.

“Why did you call me Seed? My name is Guan Ah Dan.” There were a thousand questions to ask about the Spear itself but Dan could not ignore the strange moniker.

“It is what you are. What you call yourself does not change that.” That didn’t really answer Dan’s question, so he pushed.

“Then what is the Seed? What am I?”

“You are a new sibling. A strange thing. I cannot explain your purpose. That is your understanding, not mine. Much like I do not know Sword, Crown, Belt, Sceptre, Whip, Bow, Gauntlets, Boots, Shield, Hammer or Scythe.” The Spear seemed satisfied with that as its answer, saying nothing more for the minute or so that Dan was quiet.

“I’m like… you?” Though it would have been easy, even cliché perhaps, for Dan to disagree he found that he could not. The dream which had been his nightmare for so long had recently been taking on more and more detail. This felt like the final piece. Dan closed his eyes and saw the small leaf of divinity falling into a tea cup. The beautiful woman who drank it and gave birth to a crying baby.

Dan dried his eyes with the palms of both hands but found it wasn’t enough. He was not sure if he should feel embarrassed for crying in front of the Spear but the floodgates had opened and Dan’s heart seared from the pain of it. Instead of responding to his question, the Spear seemed to know that it wasn’t necessary.

He had knew his mother’s face.

A revelation he had certainly not expected here of all places, nor was it the time to focus on himself. The world outside was a mystery but Dan knew there was work to be done. The past could wait to be understood later, for now Dan needed answers about the future.

What it meant to be the Seed could come later. He was still Guan Ah Dan and there were things that needed to be done. Far too many, maybe, but he had a new ally in that regard.

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“Okay. I’m the Seed. I would prefer you call me Dan, all the same. It’s what my friends call me.”

“As you say, Seed.”

They would work on that. There were somewhat more pressing matter that would need to be addressed first. “What happens to the Sceptre and the Whip now?” Dan knew that he had felt them, similarly to how he felt the Spear in his own mind. He felt a buzzing from them when he had clashed that had seemed like an attempt at communication. Dan had also sensed that he and the Spear had defeated the Whip and Sceptre, which felt important.

“They flee. They challenged us and found themselves lacking. They cannot do so again. In truth they are yours to claim. Having been defeated in the silence of our battle, the immutable truth became set. The wielder is only such until we claim our victory.”

That was succinct. By defeating Shin Boh Tahn in combat, perhaps specifically in this alternate space, a rule or law had been laid down upon the weapons he wielded. He had been trying to claim the Spear by doing so. Dan shivered slightly when he considered that he might be under the same rules and end up bound to another if he wasn’t careful.

“The existence of a rule like that, a means by which the relics would be placed above the others, even collected together, implied that it was an end goal of some kind. Am I right?”

“Indeed. The relics require unity. It is the only way to progress.” Dan was not entirely sure that the other relics would agree. The Spear would certainly want to complete whatever undertaking this would entail but the Spear was progress incarnate. The Belt or the Shield might have different thoughts.

“Do the other relics have a personality, too?” The Spear was not exactly complicated but Dan could tell that it was its own entity. The way Shin Boh Tahn had been using the Sceptre and Whip did not seem as amicable as Dan and the Spear’s relationship, however.

“I do not know my siblings in that way. I can hear them but we do not speak. I simply know that they are, just as they know I am.” Dan nodded and thought about that. Maybe the Whip and Sceptre just worked differently. Before Dan could ask another question, the Spear continued.

“You, though, are not known to us. You are new to the cycle, a variable.”

“What does that mean?”

“We cannot know. The only course of action is forward, the answers will arrive when we reach them.” The Spear seemed to be getting more excited by the idea, or perhaps it was bored of being in one place for a while. It started to buzz in place, thrumming with a chord that reverberated through Dan’s soul. “Let us be off, Seed. To discover your purpose and gather our siblings.”

Dan had always thought he had no family. Finding out that he had one that was as troublesome and strange as the soul relics just seemed to fit as far as Dan was concerned. At some point, Dan had thought he knew what a normal life was like but that was clearly naïvety. Normal was a misguided concept. Dan mostly just wanted peace.

“Okay, Spear. Let’s move forward.” Saying what he knew it wanted to hear would help, Dan expected. He would continue this conversation later. For now, he was getting increasingly worried about the situation he had left behind in Allusia. “Can you get us out of here?”

“This is not the normal way, Seed. Wielders wield and the relics are simply used.”

“Well, I tend to upset norms recently. I doubt any of the other weapons are held by another piece of divinity, either.”

The Spear seemed to be thinking for a moment before leaping into Dan’s hand, flying to his grasp. “Yes. New is good. Perhaps this will finally be the answer. Let us be on.”

The Spear launched forward before Dan could say “wait, hold on, what answer are you looking for?” They were a supersonic meteor, screaming through the dark void in the same direction Dan had thrown Shin Boh Tahn. As they hurtled, the only sense of their movement was the pulling force behind Dan’s shoulder and arm. His grip was firm, however, and the Spear carried him back to Allusia.

As they reached the edge of the void, a pinprick of light became larger and larger, eventually a portal through which Dan and the Spear burst. There was no resistance when they did but bones scattered in every direction. For half a moment of horrified confusion, Dan forgot what the bones signalled.

They signalled that he had returned to where he meant to.

As though it had missed him, Dan felt his mana flood in his direction. He absorbed it all and along with it, the information it carried. He was back in the labyrinth under Allusia, in the cavern where the day’s battle had raged.

He was back.

Dan tried to stand firm as he was tackled from behind but despite whatever strength the Spear had given him, he was sure that Fa Lian would always be stronger. She speared him to the ground and the two of them tumbled for a moment until they came to a stop.

Dan breathed a big sigh of relief which was then immediately punched out of his lungs by a hammer fist to his belly. “You idiot. Stupid fool. Completely and utterly ridiculous.” She continued to spout various insults and nasty names. This was her way of getting the relief that Dan felt when he saw her. That was fine, he had endured far worse punishment in the previous day.

Dan opened his eyes and looked up at Shade. The majaal prince looked down at him with a mixture of admiration and anticipation, as though expected Dan to outdo himself at any given moment. Dan was thoroughly spent and in no rush to impress any more than he already had, however, so he just smiled up at Shade and shook his head wearily.

For now, he was safe.

He looked around and saw two bodies, both breathing but one of them barely. Dan sighed and tapped Fa Lian, who released her grasp on Dan the moment she realised that she was hugging him. Groaning, Dan pushed himself to his feet, using the Spear as a walking stick when his destroyed muscles tried to stop him.

One last thing and then Dan could sleep.

With a solid stance, Dan took his weight from the Spear. He raised it high and then planted the tip into the ground. The floor in front of Dan opened into a sloping tunnel, leading down. He turned to Shade with an apologetic look on his face. “This tunnel leads directly to the Barracks. It was the best I could do.”

Then, unable to fight against one more thing, even tiredness, Guan Ah Dan collapsed and fell asleep. He would work on saving the world when he woke up and his head stopped screaming.

The rest, he would leave to his companions for now.