2: Candle
Geli’s sword was covered in wax: it was, perhaps, one of the worse uses of a sword I had seen. She held it like a torch in front of her, a wick that she’d wrapped around the blade in an ascending spiral poking out of the tip, giving her blade the look of a particularly bizarre candle.
“I don’t think that’s going to light,” I finally said, an hour into our expedition. “Like, is that wax coating thick enough to not just burn through too quickly?”
Geli turned her eyes on me, faintly amused and faintly annoyed by my question. “You have such little faith, my friend! Didn’t you ask me to aid on this trek because quote, ‘You’re so much better at this whole dungeon diving thing than I am?’”
I frowned and readjusted the straps on my pack so that it sat a bit more comfortably on my shoulders. “If I’d known you’d be so godsdamned smug about it, I never would’ve said it.” “Relax,” Geli said, all confidence, “I do this all the time!”
“What do you do if we like, get attacked? Doesn’t stabbing someone kind of… rob us of our light source?”
Geli waved a hand dismissively. “That’s why you’re here! You can pull out an actual torch from that bulky pack of yours while I do all the fighting and keep us alive.”
I could have mentioned that looking through my pack for a torch in the dark wasn’t exactly an easy ask, and added in the fact that really I should just have a torch out now because having a sword for a candle was stupid, it didn’t make any sense at all, but I didn’t because I was being a good friend. Also because the giant beast that had been stalking us in the cavern chose that moment to pounce and it really became something of a moot point after that.
I’ll give her this: the sword’s candle-flame did at least catch the beast’s fur on fire, and that made a much more substantial light source for me to find a proper torch.