Kre blinked his eyes to wash away the strange golden glow and realized that Bel was holding a bladed weapon across her two hands. The hilt and cross guard were brass, not gold as in Kre’s vision, but it was the blade itself that was truly odd.
He had seen quite a few weapons in his life, especially living so close to the military base for the region, and none of them had quite the reddish color in the blade that this weapon had. It was also longer than he had seen most merchants wearing when they came to town, but maybe half to two-thirds the length of the sword that the townsfolk had gifted to Noj upon his commencement. To call it a dagger would be an understatement, but it wasn’t quite a standard sword either.
“It’s a tyrfang,” she said by way of explanation, as if that was supposed to help. Thankfully, she followed it up with an actual explanation.
“A tyrfang is simply a secondary blade that Dragon Knights would carry. Because of its smaller size, it’s often not seen as a threatening weapon and was used more as a status symbol. Still, it is quite deadly, as any blade can be, in the right hands.”
“Why is the blade red?” Kre asked.
Bel chuckled, “Worry not, for the color is no indication of mystical power or anything of the like. It is simply a quirk of the forging.”
“Honestly,” Kre sighed, “I kind of wish it did have mystical powers. That would make me feel a bit better about what’s going on around here.”
“In my experience, mystic powers are of little use against the creatures we will be seeing.” Kitalia emerged from the back room in her new garb, a suit of close-fitting light leather armor and tightly laced, calf-high boots. Her pack was secured to her back using four different straps and a coiled bit of thin rope was somehow attached to the small of her back. Kre also counted no less than four weapons on her person, and he had no doubt there were still one or two better hidden from his view.
“Don’t the Ylveryan use magic?” Kre asked, immediately regretting it after recalling their conversation during the blue rasher incident from a few days back.
Apparently Kitalia remembered the incident as well as she gave him a side-eye, “Do you really want to get into that topic again?”
Kre swallowed hard before he responded with a meek, “No.”
“Smart,” she said with a sweet smile. “You might just be teachable after all.”
“Let’s hope so,” Bel chimed in. “We need to get going so you’ll need to teach him pretty much on the run.”
Kitalia caught that change in Bel’s words, “Where will you be?”
Bel gathered up the two balls of light and collapsed them into her own. “I’ll be leading the way. Just follow the blue lights.”