Principia Infecta

A Cask of Woman-Fat Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment

I know not what called me to first cross the great Lantac ocean to the strange lands of Emreca. The Demon-King's wrath burned yet bright within my eyes in that age of the Black Palace; all I knew had died; men were as maggots, women as flies. Yet still the world turned beneath the sun, as though to bring decay to each land and black-hearted King in equal measure.

I learned the reading of stars in exchange for rotten bread and feigned kindness given to those unfortunate apprentices cast up as unworthy from the deep caverns of Hambegh, forsaken by those below and those above. The apex star and Grecha's Seven Eyes guided me across the lands of men and lands of beast, and then beneath stolen sail to cross cold and stormy waters to Alben.

Serpents thick and thin churn those seas between lands in every age I have known. The beasts mate without cease, and will crush men heedlessly in their vile and scaly lust. The needy sailor lashes casks of blood and flesh to his deck as serpent-offerings, and prays to whatever Gods will listen. The wise sailor sails not; only sorcerors and the mad journey to Alben across the narrow sea. I, then, was Amaxathroth the Mad for a time. Upon the pebbled Alben shore, I came to rest with ten crystal teeth within my arm and ten bloody serpent heads yet snapping weakly at my feet.

In that age, there yet lived a scholar in Alben - in a tower built within a cavern, hollowed by unknown slaves beneath ruins of aeons past. This secret I wrested from forested Hambegh for a blind beggar's price - there is naught so pitiable as one who blackens his heart and slays joy for gain, only to be denied by greater powers. From the hidden scholar of Alben, I learned of the giants of the Green Isle, and of a way that a clever man with no fear of death might cross the Lantac ocean.

The city of Lurthen had yet to suck the bone of Alben clean of marrow, but its shadow was long upon the land. The villages of those fed to the Arch-Poisoners' contests stood fresh, as though waiting for the dead and tormented to return. Long after, the scholar's tower beneath the ruins became a tomb, sealed from within by an ancient and mighty ward, proof even against the blood of demons. How the red-haired Lurthenac cursed at the loss of a single victim for their sport! The scholar is forgotten in this age, as scholars are doomed to be, but the last word remains his - repeated again and again in the decay of those pale Lurthenac Poisoners and their crumbling city.

But in the years in which I followed the apex star, Arch-Poisoners yet held great festivals to make merry while the dying twitched for their entertainment. Bards amongst murderers, they strove for novelty and perfection, pouring endless failures - those poisons that merely slew their victims - into a river turned black and turgid. Only dark, strange fish were to be caught there; twisted things dried and mounted atop spiked blocks at every corner and vault entrance of Lurthen.

I entered Lurthen beneath great carven adrons upon an eve of sleet and hail, the fanged and fanciful stonework of the adron beasts coiled about the Angled Gate - and beyond a fane of the Undergods. The gates stood open and unguarded - for who would travel the snow-bound highlands of Alben to be the guest of Poisoners? None but Amaxathroth the Mad!

The snow did not rest upon the river bridges and runnels of Lurthen's ill-lit ways; there it steamed, burned by venoms discarded in the Arch-Poisoner's revelries. The split tower of the Arch-Poisoner Fenelth stood tall against the grey sky and beckoned me - for that was the way pointed by the outflung limbs of stiff corpses upon the streets, contorted in their final moments and grimacing beneath the the shimmer of frost. Lurthen was still as a field of graves when not at festival, its fearsome black barges at sea and far from the stone docks; the Lurthenac used slaves for darker purposes than to send abroad on winter errands, and they themselves ventured but rarely from their barred vaults and high towers.

This I learned from the hidden scholar: that giants who dwell upon the storm-lashed Lantac coast of the Green Isle beyond Alben tell one another tales of women. Men who live for an age without women grow sorcerously large - and weak of mind, for they tell tales of women as the most gentle of beasts, more so than even butterflies resting upon the rune-marked ancient stones set high upon Green Isle hills. Such an awakening would come could but the whores, witches and murderesses of any stinking city of the Meddin Sea descend upon the Isle!

But women amongst giants would not live beyond the night, broken and torn by clumsy lusts. The giants would sigh and turn crushed bodies inside-out for fat to grease their boats, for the sea is their true passion. Upon circle-boats hollowed from the rock of great boulders and paddles made of whole trees, they race from wavetop to wavetop, scarce touching the roiling waters. Were womankind to die, these giants would still tell their tales, but the sea is their blood. When the world gratefully leaves the last age of man behind, there will yet be a Green Isle and giants if there is yet a Lantac ocean.

When I passed once more beneath the Angled Gate of Lurthen, I bore a sealed cask of woman-fat upon my back, and the Green Isle was my destination. I had guided Fenelth, a soft beauty of silk and suppleness wrapped about a scorpion's heart, to understand my curse rendered me inviolate to any venom of Lurthen - rather than that I was the very philtre of immortality for their poison-lust; ever suffering but never unto death. I took great risks in that age of madness, the fury of the Demon-King but a few lifetimes past and yet burning in my blood. But torturers are ever weaker and more gullible than the tortured, and fair, insect-hearted Fenelth yearned for the exotic.

In bedding Fenelth, I earned the ire of the Arch-Poisoner Malcam - ire that was slowly creeping its way into the opulant, pillowed rooms of the split tower, intending to drown us in clever venoms. But the murder-dance of the Poisoners was slower in that age, distracted by the wealth of suffering and new victims brought upon black barges for each festival. Malcam yet brooded in his deep vaults of alchemy and bottled spiders from far Kresh when Lurthen's walls were far behind me.

The woman-fat I took from Lurthen lately belonged to Teathe, daughter of the Arch-Poisoner Emben, who had fallen afoul of Fenelth's lust to sting those who showed her kindness. Six years this daughter passed in a stone vault, fed to bloating enormity like a bird soon to be slaughtered, tormented drop by drop with venoms that paralyse and burn. A poison of strange provenance had come into Fenelth's collection, that caused its victims to shed fat in bloody rivulets from every pore and orifice. With this she had suddered in pleasure to bring a dire, thrashing end upon fattened, surly garuthe beasts that yet roamed the highlands in that age - but she saved the rest for Emben's daughter and the Festival of the Undergods.

In but a few moons after I entered Fenelth's tower, Teathe's newly skeletal, contorted body lay amidst her fat and blood upon Fenelth's vault-stones - save for that I carried away to the Green Isle. A year and a day of suffering I saved her, and no gratitude would I gain from any for such an act, blackened of heart like all men of this aeon of the world.

The first thaw brought me to the Green Isle's flowered hills, ruins and strange standing stones. Witches paint their skin red to dance naked in the deepest wooded valleys, and clawed demons dwell within the greatest rune-marked stones - but I sought the giants of the Lantac cliffs and shores.

It is the rare giant who hollows his own circle-boat of rock; it is a great labor, even for one whose arms are temple pillars and legs mighty trees. Instead, they choose from boats of the past that litter the shores like giant nutshells beneath the agui trees of Dramarak. In twilight, I watched giants gather before caves upon the rocky shore, there to light a blaze to roast serpents and greater sea-beasts; I listened to rumbling voices and tales of regard for women - and their flesh.

Many a time did I watch these giants until I settled upon the one called Treshal, who had made his own stone circle-boat of pride rather than seeking upon the shore, and who talked the longest and most longingly of women. When other giants were far, within their own caves, or out upon the Lantac to wrest serpents from the waters, I descended the cliffside to meet with Treshal.

Lies flow like water to the thirsty who wish to believe; Amaxathroth was a wonderous connoisseur of women - and the last was the most gentle of all creatures. Yet she succumbed to my forgetful nature, when in a careless moment I accidentally crushed her; so, I journeyed to meet her many sisters and cousins in search of my next partner. Treshal hung upon my every word, he of more bone and flesh than all a bard's audience in Undragar, yet half the sense of any one of them. As proof, I offered my cask of woman-fat in trade for a crossing of the great Lantac ocean - for the women I sought were upon the far shore.

In truth, in that age I did not know there was a far shore; the Lantac might stretch beyond even the endurance of a giant. But I was pulled onward, ever to follow the apex star. Treshal caressed the cask and Teathe's fat as through they were a living woman yet, and the deal was struck.

[ Posted by Reason on October 27, 2006 ]