Beleg narrowed his eyes at Barry and his new weapon. “What?” he uttered softly, so softly that even Kre had difficulty hearing it. Though inadequate, it seemed to be the only word that Beleg could find to encompass all the things going through his mind.
Kre’s own head seemed cleared now as well, and the strange odor seemed to have dissipated.
The Ylveryan assistant glanced over at Beleg and Kre, “Perhaps I could offer the gentleman some direction in finding a blade more to his liking? I believe the Master has another of this size, just over there.”
“Yes,” Beleg muttered. “Yes, let’s go look.” He pulled at Kre and went the long way around the tables, avoiding some of the others in the room.
“What just happened?” he asked Kre. “Back there, with that sword?”
Kre shrugged subtly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just… I just knew that sword was trouble. It didn’t smell right.” He was ready for the admonishment that was surely to come, for trusting his nose more than Beleg’s sense of weaponcraft.
Instead, Beleg only nodded once. “There was certainly something odd about it,” he said finally, pretending to look over a brace of throwing knives, each one unique from the others as if they were from a variety of differing sets, which of course they were. “We’ll discuss this more later, but for now we need to pick a weapon.”
Kre nodded, noticing that all of the others had done so and were being escorted from the room. Only the stoic Ylveryan aides and the impatient looking announcer remained to wait on Beleg.
“Let’s head to the polearms, over there,” Beleg said. “None of the other great swords seem like they suit me, but the style of polearms doesn’t seem to have changed over the centuries.”
Kre was impressed by the number of long weapons, to include the one that Barry had initially been handling before he took the one that had entranced Beleg. He wanted to run his fingers along the metal hafts but feared any residual enchantments that any of them might still possess.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked of the voice in the back of his mind. While he waited for a response that he wasn’t even sure would be coming, he looked closer at a long spear-like weapon and noticed that the shaft had been repaired in several spots with replacement steel. The blade of the spear was two feet long and far more flexible than any he had ever seen before.
‘I’m… not mad,’ he thought, wondering if it needed to be said. ‘I won’t tell Bel, if that’s what you’re concerned about.’
At the mention of the dragon’s name, he felt a chill run down his spine. He knew it wasn’t his own emotion of fear, so he knew that he was right about the voice. ‘We can talk later,’ Kre thought. ‘I just wanted to say… I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t know.’
“I’m afraid I’m still torn,” Beleg called out to the pacing announcer. “I do apologize, but for me, weapons are more than just tools. I need to find one that feels right in my hands.”
“Oh, of course sir,” the man called back, clearly unhappy at the delay, but knowing that there was nothing he could do about it.
“If you want, you can call in the next group and I’ll continue on while they browse as well. No need to delay things just for my sake.”