Finally, got 3400+ words done today, starting to get back on track. We can win this thing! An excerpt:
Cosgreave cleared a space on the table, then opened the black plastic case and withdrew a small bundle of embroidered cloth, which he unrolled upon the table. He reached into the case and withdrew by its leather-wrapped handle a long, dark object, which rang as it hit the air and kept singing faintly until he carefully set the weapon down on the soft, bone-white cloth.
“The Salzkammergutschwert,” Cosgreave said reverently.
The Salzkammergutschwert was a strangely curved dark sword almost four feet long from the circular pommel of its oddly-angled leather-wrapped hilt to the oddly-angled tip of its gleaming blade, forged from some strange lustrous metal so dark it reminded me of hematite.
Upon closer inspection, the sword wasn’t curved, merely angled, like a geometric S. The hilt had two angled parts, one short, one long, neither quite aligning with the dark blade, which was straight like an European sword, but with a strange triangular taper, like a cleaver.
I had never seen anything like it … and it creeped me the heck out.
-Anthony