As Simna relaxed and his levels of excitement, energy, and adrenaline began to decline, he and his companions were treated to another piece of sorcery that, if asked, Etjole Ehomba would insist he had nothing to do with. Using a slightly different two-handed grip to hold the damaged sword out in front of him, the herdsman held himself steady and watched blue effulgence expand. Soon the chipped and scored blade was throbbing and vibrating like a live thing. The effort Ehomba was expending to hold it in place showed in the whitened knuckles of his fingers and the strained lines of his face.
Gradually, and then more swiftly, in ones and twos and small groups, the thousand-plus miniature swords that the conflict had given birth to returned to their metal of origin. Streaks of drifting, razor-edged silver-gray and blue bolted in the herdsman’s direction, the combined rush of their mass returning generating a small blue typhoon that roared and howled above Ehomba’s clenched hands. Steel swirled giddily about the parent blade. The etched span of sky metal drank them down, soaking up each and every sibling sword in an orgy of resplendent sapphire metalogenesis.
Then the last was gone; vanished, redigested and amalgamated by the original length of star steel. The cerulean glow faded, the complaining roar of displaced air fell to a whisper, and the sky-metal sword was once again whole.
Without a word of comment, its owner slid it back into its empty sheath. As was usually the case, Ehomba’s expression could not be read, but it was clear that the effort had cost him. Perspiration poured in small vertical rivers down his face and body, staining his shirt and kilt and running off down his legs and between his toes. If he was not breathing as hard as Simna, he was certainly fatigued.