Aragorn woke up in another dark alley.
The dead littered around him, their corpses frozen in twisted agony. Aragorn savored on it as he walked through the alley. They we not the first nor the last group of people to try to take his sword by feeding him horneater drinks. It was the only thing that allowed him to sleep, to drown out the damnation of the dead. To drown out her calling.
Chasms how long had it been since the betrayal? Years? Months? Centuries? Could it even be milenium?
Aragorn didn't know anymore, and a quiet voice interupted his thoughts.
You're late, they managed to call reinforcements this time.
Aragon chuckled softly, don't tell me you didn't enjoy it.
Well...yes I did, admitted the voice. If your still looking for me I'm under this pile to your left.
No need, I can just follow the trail. You always leave one.
Ah yes, the trail, bitterly spoke the prescence, always leading me back to you.
Stooping down, Aragorn shoved of the petrified people, feeling their energy lingering in the air. It had the familiar sensation of having been ripped from them, being drawn towards the hidden sword. Reaching through the frozen people, Aragorn pulled the sword out of the grasp of a horrific creature. It was made of an organic material, one Aragorn had never before seen in all his years. It was a lighter green with hidden veins of a darker green, and strange spurs jutted out of the hilt and the sword. But it had served him well, never had another been able to successfully weild the blade. It had drained each one who tried, causing rapid mutations, seemingly making them the perfect vesel for the sword. Yet...yet they became seemingly autonomous beings of destruction, draining themselves and all around them in a rapid burst of destruction.
It was his duty, a duty he had long abandoned. Instead he let fools take the sword and destroy themselves.
Why, whispered a voice from his past, why must you do this?
He heard his words, years ago, because they will cleanse themselves and we will be free, finally.
He shut his eyes against the tears that came. Slowly they dripped downwards and he huddled in the alley, voices wracking the sorry excuse he had for a soul.