The Light and The Darkness

"Lost they may be, those two swords, but perhaps not forever, but we can hope they are."
Felcher Smythe - Guildmaster of Thieves - Blacksand

Summary

Sometime in the Age of Legend, there was a holy knight, a Paladin of The Order of the Sacred Light of the Three Stars whose name was Crispain. Devout and humble, he rose to become the most notorious defender of humanity against the terrible tide of the undead. It was said that he once destroyed a horde of skeletons with his incredible holy aura in a single blast. It was known that he wept as he slew those he had once known as brethren, turned and corrupted by the forces of the Necromancer Cassus Callus into unholy husks.
Saint Crispain never gave into temptation, never doubted his resolve, never flinched from battle against the Dark. He ventured into deep tunnels and caves where the unholy creatures festered, not without fear or dread, but instead striding forward into the evil to defeat it. "Courage is not about having no fear..." he would say. "It is about ignoring that fear and proceeding regardless."
Great vampires including Mobiat he slew, banshees and revenants he blessed freed. He purified crypts and burial mounds and could bless water to make it a holy weapon against the undead to the point where ghouls and other gravelings were almost wiped out.
His deeds did not go unnoticed by the High elves of Quenya and the greatest smiths and magicians amongst them forged a sword that radiated the light of the three stars that was deadly upon its touch to all but the mightiest of the undead. The blade was known as "The Light".
Cassus Callus was not one to be bettered, so when he received knowledge of the sword known as "The Light", he construed a terrible and evil scheme to make a weapon that would be it's equal and to raise a champion to wield it.
Over dark tomes and volumes he poured, putting together a grisly list of components that together would incorporate the greatest evils in the known world. Cassus was patient. He recruited the vampire knight of Mobiat named Thessus. He gathered and built an underground chamber lined with lead. He enlisted the aid of hags and creatures of shadows and forged a cursed blade that consumed the life force of a fire elemental. Cassus himself would lure a female child of not yet five years and cut her throat to extract her virgin blood for the quenching, such was his evil. Yet, the sword was not complete. Upon it he transcribed and entrapment spell so if any should touch the blade, their essence would be transferred to it and bound.
Cassus Callus placed the blade in the centre of the lead lined chamber and convinced Thessus to coerce a lich lord into parley. The lich was tricked into entering the chamber, surrounded with blood candles - the blade waiting within, his ego being his undoing. After he grasped the blade, thinking it was a gift, the lords undead frame crumbled to dust and his hungry spirit trapped within the cursed blade that Cassus named "The Darkness".
Armed with the newly forged evil weapon, Thessus sent a challenge to St Crispain who he knew could not resist the duel. The two met somewhere on the open plains south of the Trove mountains and dismounted from their steeds, black and white.
St Crispain was silent and moved into battle stance and Thessus did the same. They circled each other, blows were struck and parried and the two fought for the entire day. As the last light of the three stars was about to fade from the sky, Saint Crispain prayed to the stars and closed his eyes, his sweat stained brow creasing with concentration and then relief as he turned his back, closed the distance and swung his sword toward his rivals neck. Thessus, seeing the night was upon them, opened his eyes wide and felt renewed strength and turned his back and swung his sword toward his rivals neck. Both Thessus and Crispain decapitated each other in that same moment and the swords fell to the ground at echoing their severed heads.
It is said that a tree with dark bark and dark autumn leaves is entwined with a tree with pure white bark and evergreen leaves somewhere on that plain in some eternal struggle, and perhaps the swords are still there somewhere, buried, waiting to be discovered and reclaimed by the forces that still fight this very day.