The Song of Ceber
Argument: Ceber finds her way to Takara's palace only to discover her way blocked by the Breathless, undead monsters raised by Takara to guard her halls.
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Seven: Takara
The Breathless
Heading from the web of the Weaver Worms,
The blood poison secure,
Valiant Ceber Hammer of Tanis
Sought Takara’s silver mountain,
But could not find which way it was.
She asked all creatures and spirits,
But none knew.
Not one knew occidental from oriental,
An impossible impasse.
A terrific conundrum.
“Well, who knows!” a widow spider said.
And sure Ceber didn't!
In the most abject ignorance
Of locale and location
She traveled thinking Takara beyond her reach,
Not knowing if the locals lied or leaded.
Every hill of the heath held nothing,
Every end a dead one.
No answers.
Until she thought to brave the air currents
And perhaps be smashed to pieces on the stony ground.
Even as this thought advanced,
Gained foothold for a few seconds
She noticed a notch in the heath.
A jagged place just on the horizon
Where the light lanced brightly off
Bronze-colored towers.
“Whoever lives there must be wise.
And with wisdom comes worldly knowledge
Erudite knowing and hopefully geographic education.
A literate laureate of luminous stature,
A spirit of the realm, a great reader.
Kind to guests, I hope, generous and true.”
So Ceber said starting out at once.
Nearer to the notch, her notice clear,
She began to be dismayed
For arranged around the bronze assembly
Was silver sickle grass bringing sickness
With a touch of a single tuft.
Poisonous grass, faded green
Each blade with an edge as sharp as a sword.
Noxiously toxic a nick could kill:
Come hallucinations, come convulsions,
Come death.
“I’ll have to fly and face fast winds,”
Brave Ceber realized,
“Or else find a path. Poor choices.
I like neither.
To fly, to be dashed aground
Into the very plant whose poison I shun
Or to search forever for a footpath.
Oh, Terite, Dragon tear this grass from the ground
Or set it aflame. After today, I could use help.”
The winds dropped and she gazed in wonder
At the masked god appeared before her
As if in vision visible yet vague
In the daylight
The Ever-light or that place.
“Ceber Starlight,” it said shimmering as a haze,
“I will calm the currents,
But be warned: no benefic host awaits.
That is the clock tower.
Her place that pursued you
Throughout your life. Yet you will prevail.
I hope.
Beware of her guards
Bound to her by madness base insanity.
They hunger under her heavy weight.
Stinging won’t slay a single one.
They are dead already no dignity left to them.
Decapitate them, dismember them,
Do not let them scratch or bite you.
For though not toxic it is terrible enough.
The curse upon them finds those they kill.
Fatal and foul fiercely dangerous.
You’d die and join them.”
“I’ll remember,” Brave Ceber said.
“Thanks for silencing the storm.”
Away over the stalks she went
Aware of awash’d white faces looking up
From between the stalks. Bleached bones,
Hungry skulls, strange shadows
of the living. Livid, leering, sharp-toothed.
Beasts both wasp, beetle, and mantis.
Soggy with rot, rigid in death,
yet ravenous rage-filled. Hateful.
They watched her flight flinging insults up
Wretched in their misery as malicious as their mistress
.
The grass soon parted to metal
As if the earth were painted with it.
Bronze dirt bleeding out of the clockwork tower.
Ceber landed instantly under assault
From the breathless dead.
They rushed her enraged, roused to fury
By their mistress.
But the breathless broke on Ceber's iron defense.
Mindful of the warning,
She let no claw clash on her carapace
Nor no bite bloody her hide.
Mandibles flashing maulings for all
Whether it be brazened beetle
Or stalking mantid.
The crowd so eager to close
Parted as if she were a meteor
Splashing through the sky streak-like,
Burning all before her.
The undead's lines undulated back until
One hoary mantis molding, half-melted,
Was all that stood between Ceber
And the great bronze door.
It made no sound this mantis.
It was one of those lost souls seldom seen since
The Great War. When the war-hornets
Divided the middle kingdoms in conflict calling
Their allies against the gods' authority.
Those that sided with the hornets were cursed.
Never aging nor living
On and On and On
Though their limbs putrefied
And every aspiration evaporated as hunger
Became their eclipsing force forever more.
“More to pity than to fear!”
Ceber said, striking with twofold force.
It dodged, praying legs leaping forward.
Empty air was all they attacked.
Ceber came again cutting its head off,
But still those limbs advanced
Driven by necromancy
No head guided it to glory.
She had to dismantle it
Piece by piece
Until, no treat to anyone,
The parts quivered. Animated, but useless.
Let it remain so!
Quitting the quiet field,
Ceber Monster-slayer strode into Takara's hall.
All gold and gears. Great machinery made the hall
From bottom to top low to high.
Lofty chains, gears, belts, clicked with life.
Monstrous machinery making deep rumbling
A constant clanking chorus from below.
And throughout it all
The bereaved, breathless, and banal dead
Looked out.
Bears, wasps, hornets humans, wolves.
All thinking creatures represented.
They attacked as a mob.
She flew up, dodging flashing gears,
For she doubted she could fight so many
Without getting some sort of wound.
Up a level, leaving the crowd behind,
She arrived at a place where artifice ruled.
Great machines stood and metal screeched on metal.
Still she went up,
Ceber ascending,
Until she came to a great door
Upon which inscribed:
TAKARA MISTRESS OF THE MACHINES
Ceber prepared her sting
With the Weaver Worm’s blood
And continued on.
The Song of Ceber
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