There once was a peaceful and prosperous kingdom called Abrogance, and the king of Abrogance was wise and just and ageless.
The means of his agelessness were the hagging childers, his best-kept secret until the kingdom's final days. And the final days of Abrogance were terrible indeed - for the king's agelessness inspired envy, and imitators, and the price of immortality is never cheap.
Abrogance was wondrous and mighty in its time, and many today claim its legacy. In all cases these claims ring farcical. The true legacy of Abrogance is clear, in the wasteland of its Anecumene, and in its artifacts of alicorn - the marvelous material of unicorn horns.
The Bacchanalian Baroness's Drinking-Flute
A drinking vessel which accentuated the poison-purging property of alicorn to the point that poisons drunk from it pushed past being neutralized to being beneficial - for example the cardiotoxic venom of the blacksnake would actually improve the health of one's heart if drank from the drinking-flute.
The baroness to whom it belonged was an infamous lush - and from the flute alcohol became a life-extending, liver-strengthening elixir of charm and confidence. In the end, she bought her own baloney and led an uprising against the king, and for this treason was put to death.
The Innocence-Devouring Dentures
A set of pearly false teeth which, when used to devour the innocent, made its user innocent in turn, restored to child-like vivacity.
The nobleman who commissioned the dentures dined daily on pure-white lambs, and died when someone snuck into his meal a piece of a goat that the village idiot had fucked.
The dentures turned black and corroded and bit their way from his corpse's jaws - they gnash through the Anecumene's earth like a rabid mole even now.
The Brooch of the Viperine Wet-Nurse
A modest thing, as the jewelry worn in the noble manses of Abrogance went - the alicorn hidden within its design.
A gift given to one of lower station. It poisons the milk of the one who wears it - it is a poison of the soul. One weaned on the poisoned milk grows twisted, cruel, small-minded, yet long-lived and inured to all other poisons and injuries. The brooch is a weapon aimed at heirs, to ruin the houses they inherit.
The Defiler's Athame
Like the Brooch, an artifact which deliberately profaned the alicorn in its making in order to invert its properties to a terrible end.
Alicorn wards off disease - the profaned alicorn of the Athame made its wielder into a disease, their flesh and their will festering in the wounds it left, pustulent clusters of little faces leering from lacerations. The defiler for whom the Athame is named is one of the few survivors from the golden age of Abrogance - or, at least, his eyes, his smile, and his malignance survive.
The Goutuous Duke's Lancing-Needles
Alicorn can purge poison from a drinking vessel - why not, then, from any vessel?
The duke was shrewd in business and delightful in conversation, but suffered greatly from a number of illnesses. He commissioned this set of needles from a single unicorn's horn, to purge the painful fluids from his boils and joints.
The needles worked wonderfully, and soon the duke was the image of health and vigour. Virtue as well, as he began to give generous alms and weep over the evil that allowed the creation of his needles.
One day, when his creditors came, they found the duke seated on his throne, his flesh torn away to reveal his opalescent skeleton beneath, sheepishly grimacing as he offered up his viscera, the long and slippery bits sliding through the bones of his fingers.
The Cat's Collar
In the ruins of the summer palace of the king of Abrogance there is a cat. She wears a collar inlaid with opalescent alicorn, and her coat is thick and spotless. She spends her days lazing in the sunbeams which peek through the cracked walls, and chasing the shadows of mice.
The collar protects her from all things which would do her harm, from Hunger and Time and Death. The collar would do this for no other, because it was made for the cat with love.
The cat is lonely - yes, even cats can get lonely - she has been waiting for her friend to return for a long time. The collar does not protect her from Hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment