Writ in Flame
Seventh Day of Ashinu-hamba (Ashinu Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
"Sheathe it in the flame..." the voice is clear and sharp in your mind, like the hiss of sourceless fire. Something holds you back, a warning you got as a boy from the blacksmith at Verley. 'Never set a sword to fire least you are a smith, t'would be like a green boy trying to blood it.' A moment taken, a breath let go... and so you do, the mists turn back and for an instant you can see the tongues of flame fully rising from the waters of the pool in defiance of all natural ordering. Phantom heat courses up your arm, just short of pain, a flash of fear turned back and then you draw your sword back.
Mist trails it in strange coils, clinging to its edge. You look again to where the Serpent of Flame coils and the question falls from your tongue almost without meaning to. "May I...?"
"Yes," it hisses and that is all the encouragement you need to turn the blade and strike the wall of the chamber where the water had worn a groove into it.
The mist flashes to white flame in an instant and the stone parts, though only a little, not even enough to shift your footing. If that had been flesh and blood and not unfeeling stone you would be looking at a corpse now.
This blade has earned a name if any did.
[] Write in a name for your new sword
***
The others have to wait a while for their own gifts, though not near as much as any mortal craftsmen would take in the making of such things... if mortal craft were even capable of it. For Esha there is a staff that seems at first to be wrought of ebony capped with red copper, though as you take a closer look you see the wood is in truth black obsidian polished into false semblance with veins of copper flowing through it in the shape of strange runes. "I
would demonstrate it, but there is only so much magic in it and I have not yet learned how to restore it once it has been spent," she says with a smile that recalls your own test.
Your own thought does not linger on the teasing, but on the conversation of precisely what magic is and how it is made manifest on the world. "Restore?"
"Worry not, my soul is safe... safe as it has ever been. This is a work of masterful craft to allow one to weave spells into its substance with no more effort than one would take in casting them freely, and as for letting them loose... well I wager I could teach you to do it."
"That is alright my lady, I shall keep to the sword," you chuckle.
The other things brought from the depths of the hill that evening are far heavier and more ungainly. First there is a cauldron of bronze adorned about its rim with a serpent swallowing its tail, which warms and cools at words of arcane power. Surely it would be impossible to tear Zaia from it... had it not been for the fourth and final gift of the living flame.
A plinth of back stone stands in the middle of the clearing at the center of the village. Seven sided, with a base about three feet wide and nine feet tall, you do not think anything other than the mammoth of the Wyrdoki chief will be able to carry it comfortably. Though there is no sign of magic upon it according to Esha the swirls of writing that twist 'round and 'round it hold the secrets of transmutation, or at least such of those secrets as the spirit possesses and could share with a mortal without harm.
"D'you think he will get any sleep tonight?" Antonio asks, coming to sit beside you on the long flat stone that serves as a sort of simple bench worn down by countless Danuk before you.
"Maybe if Esha casts the spell on him...
maybe." you answer, managing to keep a straight face, if barely. "Do you regret not asking for something of your own?"
"Ah, there is more to treasure than what you can weigh in your hands, oftentimes it is what you know,
who you know and I think a few words from
that one, carried up here," he taps his temple. "Will be worth quite a lot in the long run." For a long moment there is silence, then Antonio's expression darkens. "Hopefully this works better than the last time I went looking for local contacts. I fucked up with Ulk, could have gotten all of us killed..."
How do you reply?
[] Point out that he was not the only one the daemon fooled, none of the rest of you had recognized it until it had been ready to act
[] Remind him that you are all strangers in a strange world, it is no more reasonable to expect him to spot a daemon than it is for you to know how to fight a lion
[] Write in
OOC: Not the most exciting update to start the year on, but hopefully an interesting one just the same. 
] Maiden Slayer