Truly magical items are vanishingly rare in our age, and the more I read, the stranger that rarity seems. No pre-Binding text I have found describes the creation of such artifacts at all; they simply appear in ancient accounts as given facts. I am increasingly persuaded that what we now call “magical items” are remnants of the lost civilization before the Binding, stumbled upon and passed down as relics rather than crafts.
Take the so-called Sword of the Sky: not a sword in any honest sense, but a hilt-shaped device said to drink vharin from its surroundings and, at the wielder’s will, emit a solid beam of light that slices through anything it touches within a hundred feet, leaving only blackened halves behind. If that description is even half accurate, it would neatly explain the uncannily smooth cuts in ancient stonework across the world. Unfortunately, the last confirmed account places that particular relic on one of my people’s ships, lost at sea some twenty millennia ago. I have heard whispers of other such relics, but never laid hands upon one.
The closest modern analogue is the pale-aelvar’s aeteri steel, which drinks the bearer’s vharin (aether, if one insists) and uses it to bite through or turn aside most materials, depending on whether the blade was forged into a weapon or armor. It is impressive work, but still feels like an echo of something far older.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
