The Wait: Four Centuries
As I laid there, there, sitting, thinking, staring. My only sign of change was the crack in the earth that eventually grew enough for me to see the sky as rain eventually wore it open. I stared out at the sky counting the days cycles and tracking the movement of the stars so I could figure out how much time had passed. I was quite carefree for the first week, I'd assumed they would find me searching the rubble for Heidroch's corpse, I was fairly surprised they hadn't found us in the first week honestly as there was another two weeks before it where Heiroch was still alive.
I also found out something new about my capability to urge someone. They had to see me first. Which was quite annoying as I occasionally saw people walk or go over the crack. They never ended up finding the body though and conversely didn't find me. Seeing how their searches failed I assumed it'd be up to random chance like last period of solitude, give or take 4 to 6 years given the compromising location compared to last time with me largely underground.
I had no clue how long it made it to be underground. Nothing even happened while I laid there as my corrosion ability begun to effect the land around me over the years driving away all the animals and people. Not even plants grew in my surroundings with it all dying out, even the stuff left over underground that survived the carpet bombing was destroyed.
There was this constant ringing noise from the silence with the occasional hard wind or rain breaking the silence. After a century of silence I finally noticed that I could talk with the ghost of Heiroch. It seems it must have been an extremely situational ability as It seems to activate only when I'm buried with a corpse for a 103 years 3 months 23 days 8 hours 11 minutes and 58 seconds as it only happens once more in my time existing under those same conditions.
We had joyous conversations talking back and forth about anything and everything. Sometimes we would just repeat all the words we knew in a random order so it was different from any previous conversation
We knew we were getting bored once we realized we had repeated the same order by pure chance two hundred years into doing so. So we did the next best thing and started making up words to add to the list so that way it would be too long for us to ever possibly repeat the same order of words. It was quite fun honestly. Heiroch was super slow at coming up with new things so I as my great self did him the favor of making things for the ghost to say.
As me and him were going through our 154th newly ordered reading of our new septic dictionary (our 539th iteration of the expanded dictionary we made). There were 4 clouds visible in the sky from the crack and the next rain was due to pass in 17 days. At exactly 1,363,940,718 seconds which translates to roughly 432 years, did I finally hear them. As my third approaches.
The Third: George [Unknown] 4 Hours
George was adventuring with a party of explorers sent on a job to document and map the barren lands that I and Heiroch resided in. He was tripped by a fellow adventurer as a joke and got his head buried in the ground landing head first in the dirt after falling a meter or so. Directly through the crack I had used to peak out and observe the sky through. He got cut slightly from my blade when doing so. He pulled himself out and checked out that which cut him, and discovered me. He reached down and picked me up digging me out of the earth.
I was so excited I could hardly speak and simply giddily started saying words from my new dictionary that could be used as a form of exclamation. George then grabbed me by the handle as well, with it covered in dirt so not seeing the blade. Officially becoming my third wielder. It was spectacular, finally being able to feed on mortal life after so long and to be free of the dark empty confines of the ground
He and his party dug up Heiroch's skeleton and what remained of his decimated equipment before settling in for the night and going to bed. During of which George died in his sleep due to my corrosion ability still effecting him despite it being the tiniest of paper cuts. The party didn't notice till the next morning though and freaked out when they did.
I got to see my own reflection briefly though in the chaos off of the reflection of someone's shield. I had rust. It was horrendous, my perfect form had a huge amount of rust it was awful. Their was a full 2 centimeter diameter circle of rust with a point upwards all in the shape of a tear underneath my ethereal eye. Like what are you calling me weak world, I don't feel sadness much less cry. It was humiliating. Not only was I a failure of my original purpose, but even the world mocks my sadness that I don't have. Truly humiliating.
Back to not that the party had eventually figured out they weren't being ambushed and packed up leaving the site to return home with their findings, including me. After a few days of bouncing around in their bags I arrived at the the city they worked out of. They headed straight for the guild center where my fourth would be found.