3,000 years. For most, that timeframe would feel like an eternity, but for me, that would be a cruel understatement. You might be expecting some sort of introduction at this point, but I'm sorry to say there is none to give. I've had many names over my life, some more vulgar than others, but none have ever "fit" how I've really felt, and I'm certainly not creative enough to box my experiences into a single word, so you will have to make do with what I can tell you in the time we have together.

As always, it's best to start at the beginning. Like most, I was born out of love, raised by a caring soul who only wanted the best out of his creation. The difference between you and I, however, is in the process that brought my best to the forefront: I was doused in liquid flame and left in the cold for months at a time to harden, struck against the finest wood and rock to be sharpened to a vicious point, and kept smooth with the treated skin of a lamb as my nightly home. My father, as you may call it, deemed me his masterpiece. He promised I would only be given to the best, that I must be prized as a piece of art that would one day be a symbol of unity. I doubt either of us understood the sacrifices it would take before that happened.

I was so excited the day the man who would become my first master entered my father's shop. He was adorned in the most beautiful armor I had ever seen, and his stance showed he was a man of true valor. The minute he locked eyes on my hilt, he knew it was meant to be. My father was paid handsomely for the exchange, and my journey began. I never saw my father again, but there was no way he could claim me as his work after what I had done. Nay, forced to do, like a common servant.

Training began with my first master soon after I entered his service. His movements flowed like silk, and his strikes were lightning fast. Townsfolk came by the cartload to see his routine, and I was his dance partner through it all. It was a craft I still cherish, but I never considered its true usage until the day we rode through the woods near the south of our village. I had never smelled the stench of death before, but I could instantly feel the evil it carried close behind. The way the bodies were strewn about... soldiers, farmers, children... I couldn't believe someone's soul, whether they be victim or perpetrator, could survive such evil. We barely had time to study our surroundings as the monsters behind the slaughter lunged at us. While it is true I wanted to harm them in the way they harmed the innocent (How could I not? For it was supposed to be my nature.), I knew it was necessary to capture them so that they may pay for their crimes, and perhaps lead us to whoever orchestrated this strike. Sadly, my master was not so easily convinced and drew me from my bed to dance. I was unprepared for how this routine would go, however. The feeling of my first pound of flesh as the master gutted a young soldier aiming at his neck... I was like a young virgin feeling the touch of a lover. It was a clever mix of agony and euphoria like nothing I had seen or felt before. I am disgusted I ever took pleasure in such acts, for that day was the first time my honor was stained, just as it was also the first time I realized my master had none to spare either. I shudder at the thought of the enemy's wrathful blood still seething in the ground of that very same forest. Ten soldiers, perhaps with families of their own, cut down by my steel, with not a second allowed for remorse. The first ten of many. An uncountable many.

I stayed with my first master for five years. We fought against many threats against my home village, and dozens more fell under our ferocity. At this point, I could still rationalize the deaths. After all, they threatened those who could not defend themselves. The only way to protect our people was to obliterate theirs, yes? I told myself these words constantly, almost daily as my master cleaned the blood from my side. As messy as it was, we had a good life and an unshakeable reputation. If not for that idiot student he took on, perhaps it would've continued. One arrow that escaped that damned boy's view, and my master's life was gone. He grabbed me off his corpse (as if he had even earned a tenth of the right to touch me) and fled. The village burned, barely any escaped, and somehow the survivors believed him to be a hero simply because he had the gall to say my master ordered him to flee and help the retreat instead of fighting by his teacher's side. My home was gone, my father had been burned alive during the invasion, and I was stuck with this fool as the attackers claimed our land unopposed and the people I swore to protect were forced to scatter and rebuild in nearby villages. My new, excruciatingly inexperienced master did not settle in one of these villages. Whether it was guilt or the fact no other warriors would train him, we became wanderers, drinking until the taverns closed and taking jobs for any lord with enough coins. It was at this point my rationalizations ceased to work.

For twenty painful years, every kill was more gruesome than the last, with each hit showing more weakness as he agreed to kill political enemies, their families, even helping raze villages that didn't agree with a duke's taxes. The hypocrisy dripped off of us more than the crimson fuel, and he felt it too. Soon, the bastard drunk so heavily he fell off a roof and cracked his skull. Don't ask me how he got on the roof in the first place. I was relieved as he took his final breath, for perhaps I would be found by a gentler, happier warrior and finally have a moment of peace. Yet again, my hopeful arse was failed by fate. Another drunkard (a pirate, as I could tell from the salty air leaking from his pores) stumbled out of the bar and snatched me from my second master's side like a karmic deja vu. He took me to his boat to show off to his mange-ridden crew, and they set sail to the East. It was at this point I lost track of how many masters I was bound to, but I shall attempt to remember as many as I can for your sake:

First, the pirate captain was gutted during a mutiny and his first mate grabbed me as a token of leadership. Then, when we landed in a spice market in Asia Minor and he couldn't pay a gambling debt, he sold me save his hide. Then the pit boss in said gambling den gifted me to his top enforcer, and we rode from Italy all the way to Greece and Syria to collect debts from the lowest of the low. I don't think the enforcer knew how to work a sword, however, as there were a bit more blunt strikes than I was used to. I had survived every battle shining and unscathed, but that brute's inept sword fighting was the only time I ever garnered a scratch, let alone nine of them, on both my hilt and blade. Thankfully, the enforcer was put out of his misery by a royal guard in Iran. To this day, I'm still amazed he thought he could break into a palace and force a prince to pay a single coin, but I digress.

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The guard brought me to the palace's prince as a trophy for his enemy's death. He sent his soldiers to deal with the gambling den, and I was left on the prince's mantle as an ornament. Most in my line of work would be offended at such a thing, but it was welcome respite after endless war and petty squabbles. Aside from having to watch the prince's opium-fueled 'parties', it was a nice life. I had felt a good polish for the first time in years, and was finally appreciated as a work of art, as my father intended. I stayed in the family for five generations until death returned to my doorstep. Apparently, declining to pay debts seemed to run in the genes, as the prince's five-times great-grandson owed two neighboring kingdoms an amount of money I didn't even know existed at this point in history. The two kingdoms had made a pact to split the indebted kingdom between them and sent their armies to take over. The familiar scent of burning flesh and sound of near-dead screaming and begging rang through me, and once again I was forced to watch needless killing as the soldiers beheaded the prince and his family. The first time in nearly two centuries I wanted to fight, and I was stuck with a master who couldn't even work a butter knife. The kingdoms split every ounce of riches equally between them, and as I was loaded into a wagon and prepared myself to be in the service of yet another foul man with misplaced ambition, a small miracle happened. A guard had forgotten a strap on the contents beside me, and I jostled loose a few miles from the scorched palace. No one noticed I was gone, and soon the winds twisted the sands and made it impossible to look. I was left beneath the dunes, and after I finally allowed myself to mourn all the slaughter I had seen and heard for hundreds of years, I slept. Time rushed by, and I didn't have to care about a master. I was free.

After what I later learned to be 2,400 years under those sands, I was unearthed by a man in strange garb and a bowl-shaped hat. He was far too old to be a warrior, but he was certainly excited to find me. He held me like a newborn child and walked to a large, metallic wagon that he called a 'truck' and drove away. We arrived at a large building, what seemed to be a palace filled with spears, shields, and perhaps even a few blades forged by old competitors of my father. I was carted off to a dusty room in the back of this palace and observed by a group of five people in white coats holding tools I had never seen before. After they seemed satisfied with their investigation, they placed me in a glass box which they then put in a room filled with lights and Turkish artifacts they referred to as an 'exhibit'. At first, I thought it ridiculous they couldn't see my origin was not of Asia Minor, but I saw this rectified a few days later as large crowds began to form almost weekly in front of my box. A man with a suit worthy of aristocracy and a head covered in thick white hair would make grandiose gestures in front of my box and begin to explain my craftmanship hailing from Brittanica, and then reveal a map charting my journey from my original home to my current resting place. I don't know how, but they had pieced together my story, from my father's smithery to my final master, cowardly as he may have been. Instead of looking at me with shame or fear, the patrons saw me as a hero. Children with little pieces of paper began to draw me. They were taking inspiration from my travels, and used it to create, not destroy. As they learned from me, I also learned from them; I studied every piece of information uttered by the caretakers as they explained the history of the other pieces, as well as what I could gather from the patrons about the outside world. There was no doubt that this new era still had its fair share of violence, but for once it felt like the urge to build was finally outrunning its volatile reach.

My father's wishes had been fulfilled: I was prized, a symbol of unity. Cherished as a work of art, bloody story and all. I was happy and honored to be celebrated by these people in this way, but my heart sunk when I spotted two patrons standing a few feet away. They were looking at a mobile phone and were reading a news report about a newly released product. There wasn't another presentation for about an hour, so I decided to entertain myself with whatever gossip of the day. The phone showed a man using a new contraption that could release small pieces of sharp metal in rapid succession in mere seconds. It was more dangerous than any crossbow or archer I had witnessed, and I could feel its wrath pouring out of the video. The man was attacking a grocery store, and the excitement on his face as he did it was dastardlier than any warlord I had seen before. Parents, Grandparents, and babies killed for nothing more than the sake of violence, no different than the practices of the marauders of my day, except for the skill; this man was far from the warrior he claimed to be, and deep down he knew that. The reporters called this machine a gun, and for some reason mixed in with the despair of the crowd was excitement over the device's potential.

I had never considered that they had ceased use of my kind in battle altogether, much less replaced us with a machine of such vile intent, but nevertheless my happiness was shattered; I had lived long enough to see humanity's warlike tendencies come full circle, and I feared it would now be my curse to watch this cycle forever, until soon the weapon in that video sat in a box next to me and we both contemplated our service as we watched in horror the next contraption of battle, and the next, and the next... but then it hit me: After seeing all the damage caused by a single word, sword, or arrow, could humanity even survive long enough to create something after this? There was a time where I would be sorry for all the harm I was commanded to cause, with so many bloodlines destroyed by my masters, but after what I have witnessed it is replaced by sorrow for two new, yet opposing things: One, that I did not shatter when my second master fell from the roof so I could avoid millennia of sorrow and pain, and two, that I currently did not have a master to wield me. Perhaps if I did, I could show them how to stop the beings who wish to wield these new weapons and cause division and destruction the same way my first master handled those invaders... without honor, and without remorse...