<span style="font-size: 85%; line-height: 116%;">OOC: Went a bit in a different direction with this, tell me if it's not your thing and I'll change it about. Also, apologies on taking so long to post.</span><br/><br/>"Tell us what he's won, Vana..." he muttered idly under his breath, but his thoughts were already trailing off, his attention already focusing on the blade, on the magic of it...<br/><br/>Isaac hated Harry Potter.<br/><br/>Passionately, almost violently, because it was the sickest kind of truth to tell children. Magic is real, my darlings, my duckies, and some of you have it and some of you don't! And the ones that do can roll it off their fingertips, jack it off out of magic wands by chanting some made up Latin and stroking it just right, and the ones that can't<span style="font-style: italic">can't</span>. And the ones that can't live in their own pretend little world, doing the best they can with their poor, stodgy muggle ways while the wizards snicker behind their white gloves and cheer them on like the poor retarded children they are when they're not gallivanting around in their fabulous, secret<span style="font-style: italic">real</span>world. It's not the muggles<span style="font-style: italic">fault</span>they can't do magic, you see, it's just that not everyone can be secret and special or nobody would be!<br/><br/>And some people can, and some people<span style="font-style: italic">can't</span>.<br/><br/>The one, quiet lie in the story.<br/><br/>Gaelic, by the way, was a tremendously obnoxious language made by people who lived in poverty and houses of mud who dramatically undervalued the role of consonants in words. Isaac had never really understood people's fascination with the cultures of the English Isles pre-Roman era--they never really progressed themselves past squalor, their magics were arcane and more difficult than necessary and only occasionally powerful enough to warrant the extra intricacy. Still, magic was magic, so Isaac had spent his time, energy and money on it for a year or so and gotten it down pat.<br/><br/>The magic on the blade seemed to be as she said--a manner of channeling energy towards whatever creature it was that created it. The blade itself, a long and heavy-looking bronze thing, was almost green with age. Though the decorations on it had almost faded with use, and the edges of it were notched and needed sharpening and shaping badly, the magic of it was still plain to see for someone with Isaac's eyes. The imagery along the blades was beautifully forged, of course, the magic stamped in vibrant green across the sea of tarnish--stags bursting from the edges of the blade into the fuller and running in a line to meld into a circle around a stick-ish figure with outstretched hands and a crown.<br/><br/>Watching Isaac work was an odd thing, precisely because he was so eclectic as to be virtually encyclopedic. He began to work his way through the Gaelic vowels, quietly and with frightening efficiency, as he spread his hands and pushed and pulled at the air, separating out the layers of magic binding the blade like he was adjusting the lens of a microscope. He found himself switching to an archaic Tang dynasty dialect, which was much more efficient at dissecting the binding spells that formed the base layer of the incantation, only to reverse into a quick and monstrously efficient Aztec metamagic, which really was quite unparalleled at deciphering the sacrifice and siphon spells. He did all of this mechanically and efficiently, in a swift and uninflected staccato rhythm, and after perhaps five minutes of concentration he looked up to Clara, pausing with his arms spread and his fingers bent at odd angles precisely where he was so as to disrupt nothing.<br/><br/>"I think..." he said, cocking his head in that vaguely avian manner of his, "that you've stumbled across the Mebd Kingsblade, Clara." It took him another minute to verify, turning his attention back to the blade and returning his muttering to Gaelic for an uninterrupted 40-second power chant before finally he collapsed the magical HUD he'd assembled for himself with a motion quite similar to closing a briefcase. He breathed, stepped backwards, and looked to her.<br/><br/>"The blade is very old--bronze age, certainly. Probably from Ulster, but I'd guess it saw its use all about the British Isles. There was--possible is--a mythological sorceress named Mebd who served as a queen figure or sovereignty deity for several crucial kings in their mythologies. The blade exhibits what some scholars of Gaelic Magic refer to sarcastically as Island Giantism, the idea being that while most enchantments of a region are minor on a comparative scale, freak instances such as this fluctuate far outside of the norm and are, in fact, quite powerful. This one, as you said, happens to be focused on draining the magic from those that touch it--also those who are slain or struck by it, as an aside. Not into an entity, though, into a receptacle, probably a crown forged from the same material. It has been referenced in some obscure sources that a true king of power must ceremonially marry Mebd in order to gain strength and power for his rule--if she gave him the sword, he wouldn't realize his power was being drained so long as he also wore the crown. The more he fought with it, the more powerful he would become, and when he died, the next king could put it on and access that accumulated strength. Theoretically the crown could be used as a battery, for someone who knew how to use the accumulated magic, but they're intended to function as a pair."<br/><br/>He looked up to her, then, exiting his exposition mode without seeming to care that he'd just rambled on for the better part of a minute or so about Gaelic obscurities. It was, after all, why she called him here. "You wouldn't have been able to tell the receptacle wasn't a person without checking the tertiary conditions on the binding clause, which were actually woven into the siphon  spell and difficult to notice. Don't feel bad." He added, in the same tone, before looking back to the blade.<br/><br/>"Where's the Crown?"