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Angels' Fall
At the end of the Godslayer's War, the sword that slew Maghredan shattered into seven shards. The largest of these was crafted into a sword of great renown, known as Angels' Fall.
Silver-hilted, with strands of silver woven into and wrapped around its crystalline blade, it never dulled or rusted. In the bards' tales, Angels' Fall was sharp enough to cut through lies and strong enough to hew through guilt, and indeed that was the most fabled of its powers: that it could not draw the blood of an innocent. Swung at a man who had committed no crime, Angels' Fall would stop short of breaking the skin; a giant, slashing with all his strength, would find himself unable to make the sword clip a single hair.
Often, as Sir Cadifar rode through small towns and villages, the people would ask him to do justice in a particularly thorny case. This was not uncommon, for it was and still is the custom in many of the Twelve Kingdoms and much of what is now Calantyr for locals to ask traveling priests and paladins to resolve local disputes. Most such problems revolve around questions of deep suspicions but dubious evidence, and require someone with the gods-granted ability to determine truth, as well as a mantle of divinely approved authority, to be resolved.
As Cadifar the Beneficient was an ideal person to quell long-simmering disputes, he was often asked to solve such cases, and he relied heavily on Angels' Fall to separate guilty from innocent. The process of testing was itself often the execution of judgment, for the sword cut deep when it did not stop itself from harming an innocent, and most of the guilty were slain at the moment their guilt was proven.
Eventually, however, it was time for the knight to retire from the field. He had seen his share of griefs and been scarred by his share of battles. Weary, and wanting nothing more than peace, he handed Angels' Fall to his squire and retired to the country estate he had won years back, but never had time to tend. He married and for the better part of a decade was content.
As time passed, however, Sir Cadifar found himself increasingly suspicious of his wife, who was half his age and exceedingly beautiful. He wondered how she could truly love a man so old, and suspected her of taking lovers while he was away. He grew quarrelsome and petty, constantly jealous of the brash young knights, boastful singers, and even the noble guests of their home. In time his wife's affection truly did begin to dim, and his bitterness grew even more.
One fateful day, his squire -- by then, a knight who had begun to build his own legend -- paid his old master a visit. Sir Cadifar and his wife welcomed him graciously to their table and their roof. After a fine meal that evening, they sat out in the garden, and Sir Cadifar asked if he might once more see Angels' Fall. The former squire, seeing nothing strange about the old knight's request, gladly gave him the sword.
Sir Cadifar took the crystal sword, swung it a time or two to test its balance, and then thrust it straight into his wife's heart. He intended to test her faithfulness. He learned, instead, that his sword -- his holy sword, his faithful sword, forged from the shard of a godslayer's weapon -- carried the Betrayer's taint deep in its core, as had the fatally flawed blade from which it was made.
Angels' Fall killed Sir Cadifar's wife, who had never betrayed him and who loved him even through his cruelties. And in that moment, as the sword imparted its innumerable betrayals to him, Sir Cadifar learned that it had killed many others who had not committed the crimes of which they were accused. As no man in this world is truly, perfectly innocent -- everyone has told some small lie, committed some small sin -- the sword could destroy whomever it pleased, and chose its victims accordingly.
Sir Cadifar was destroyed by the knowledge. But he was so devastated that he never thought to warn his squire until it was too late. Shocked, the younger man had seized the bloody sword and fled from a master gone mad; later, it is said, he was betrayed by the sword in similar fashion and chose to meet his end on a quest he knew was doomed.
Through the centuries, Angels' Fall went from hand to hand, betraying its wielders at the moment of their greatest sorrows. Finally it was lost somewhere in the hollow halls far beneath the surface, when one of its wielders went to slay a dragon in the deeps and never returned. As far as anyone knows, the sword is still there, and the world is likely happier for its loss.
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