The Scouring of Greenland (with thanks to HP Lovecraft)

|Well, that 'post early in August' thing worked out! I wrote this story about 18 months ago. I really hope I've improved since then. A lot... ugh.

It occurs to me that possibly I should explain this. I just kinda started writing something else, and got distracted. For a month.
            After the unification of Ireland under High King Conn, and their subsequent annexation of Wales under his son, King Art, an effort was made to avoid a costly war with the English, and alternate means of expansion were sought. Thus it was that the Irish explorer Naos UaDonaill came to discover Greenland, and despite the hostile conditions, a small colony was established. So, when war did come with England upon Art’s death, and defeat seemed certain, a large proportion of the inhabitants of Ireland fled to their colony in Greenland, leaving King Lugaid with only a very small force with which to fight the English. Needless to say, England’s conquest of Ireland followed quickly.

            The relationship between the sudden influx of new settlers and the prior inhabitants of Greenland is far too complex to be briefly documented here. However, suffice to say, that by the time of the Wars of the Americas, their society was remarkably integrated, albeit with  the Irish settlers forming a clear overclass. During the Wars, with the American Continent fully occupied by various separatist factions, it was decided that Greenland would form an ideal staging point for the reinvasion of the North. The government, due to their clear military inferiority, agreed to this, but there were still memories within the country of having been forced to evacuate their homeland, and many factions within the country objected strenuously to allowing such access. Still, historians are puzzled to this day as to how they might have achieved such destruction, and many believe that contemporary sources have misattributed to human action a natural phenomenon, although no credible explanation as to what this phenomenon might have been has yet been proposed.

            My name is Jonathan Smith… Actually, that’s a complete lie. I work for the government of the British Empire. Since noone ever uses my real name any more, it’s really just easier to stick to ‘Jonathan Smith’. I had a wife once, but she left the first time a tentacled aberration the size of a small ship crashed through our wall. It’s a pity – I really cared about her... Where was I? Ah, yes. The British Government. Actually, I’ve never really seen it that way. The job of the British Government is the protection of its citizens (or taking over the world – whichever). Mine is making sure that noone destroys the world. So the way I see it, they work for me.

            Yes, of course. Because when you tell them that leaving Greenland before rebels summon an abomination from beyond time to turn the entire country into obsidian, they do it immediately, don’t they? So there’s no way you might ever have to go traipsing through a frozen waste looking for a cult which you have no idea of how to even start to go about stopping, even if you do manage to find them.

            And I have a voice in my head. I think it’s probably a result of losing my last regular human companion when my wife left, combined with far too much time spent dealing with various creatures from beyond God’s creation. He claims to be one of the Virtues, but I really don’t believe him.

            And as you might’ve worked out from that, I’m currently in the middle of Greenland, looking for a world destroying cult. So, tangent over, back to my story. My name is Jonathan Smith. I arrived in Greenland just over two weeks ago to try and prevent the summoning of Cthroorn. I still remember my first arrival here. The frozen wastes stretched as far as the eye could see. So imagine what it was like when I left the capital city. And when my story starts, I’m on a coach going to a castle in the middle of nowhere. Not even knowing whether or not there’s anything there. I only know about the summoning at all because someone named Kaiwan told me about the cult, their plans and that this was the place to go to find out about it. You might’ve wanted to examine that one a little more closely. He seemed nice, though.

            No. No. No. That’s no way to start a story. Noone wants to hear me talk about the boring details of my job. My name is Jonathan Smith. I fight crime. No you don’t. If you consider causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and undoing God’s creation to be a crime I do. And I do. Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I started my story here. This is where the interesting bit starts. I was approached by someone calling himself Sean. Of course, I know now that that wasn’t his real name. That’s terrible! What kind of despicable person would use a false name? Shut up. Sean asked me why I was travelling to the castle. So I told him that I’d heard reports of strange things happening there, and I was visiting him in order to try and find out about them. In retrospect, that was kinda stupid. Well how would you have gone about finding information? Obviously, though, he said he didn’t know anything about strange happenings in the castle that he informed me he’d never been to before, and I didn’t think anything of it.

            Nothing else of particular note happened in the time between that conversation and our arrival at the castle. Except the deep one. Yes, except that our group was attacked by a deep one. I’m not sure how the thing had got there, but about half of us ended up dead. That was incredibly relevant, thank you for reminding me. Always happy to remind you of your devastating failures. There was nothing I could do. Even with the best reverse engineering available, a musket isn’t going to do much against a deep one.

            Nothing else of particular note which is actually of relevance to my story happened before we reached the castle. When we did reach it, accommodation, at least, wasn’t a problem. I may not be able to end wars, but I do have at least enough influence to get myself a place to sleep. You bribed someone. And you still couldn’t get into the castle itself. Why must you constantly correct me on the most minor of details? In this case, it’s actually important. Although it is true that his interruption might’ve been justified. I was, indeed, forced to take shelter in a small, windowless hut in the village surrounding the castle. The next night, I heard a knocking on my door. It had probably been going on for some time, since I’d tired myself out making sure that the hut was safe for habitation.

            I am not some untrained lordling, who runs across a cult whilst exploring his heritage. I was trained for this. When you’re investigating a world destroying cult, and someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night, the correct response is not to assume that they’ve got the wrong door. I’d put a bullet through the door before I was even fully awake. It’s a good thing you live in the modern day. In the past, you might’ve had to get up in order to commit random murder. It was self-defence, and you know it. So you say. It’s going to be rather embarrassing when you have to tell people you shot your landlord. It is true that, as I now know, the person I had just shot was, in fact, the owner of the place I was staying, as Sean later informed me. At the time, however, I was rather more concerned with the fact that cultists tended to come in swarms. And, indeed, there now seemed to be a mob trying to break down his door. I managed to get off a few more shots before my door gave in.

            Another brilliant invention of the modern age is the socket bayonet. So I did still have a way of defending myself. You didn’t, though. Fighting people when they can fight back? Sounds dangerous. Better to wait until there’s a door between you. Gah! How am I meant to tell a good story with these constant interruptions? There must’ve been about fifty of them. Twenty. Regardless. There were too many of them still standing for me to deal with. And the hut I was staying in didn’t have any windows. They’d probably been planning this. Unfortunately, I was, as I pointed out before, trained for this, and trained rather well. One of the first things I’d been trained to do when I was sleeping in someone else’s house was to make myself an exit that they didn’t know about. With the work I’d already done, it took me less than half a second with the bayonet to make a hole in the wall. I grabbed the bag I’d stored next to it, and was out of the hut before the mob had crossed the room.

            Another fortunate habit I’d managed to developed was sleeping in clothes I could go outside in. It might be rather uncomfortable to try and sleep in a full length coat, but that’s nothing compared to having one’s toes fall off whilst one tries to flee a town. So if you could escape any time you felt like it, why did you have to shoot someone just for knocking at your door? Good point. I should probably explain that. It’s not that I particularly enjoy randomly murdering people who I’ve never even seen. Liar. Quiet. Even if they didn’t know about the hole in the wall, they might’ve surrounded the hut. Besides which, leaving behind the only place I have to sleep and losing most of my possessions into the bargain isn’t exactly convenient. As I was saying, I was able to outdistance the mob, probably aided by the fact that they seem to have paused to burn down the hut. I’d say I wasn’t sure why, but given that most of my important possessions which weren’t in my bag had been hidden in various places, it was probably the best way of making sure they’d destroyed all my possessions. Which is exactly what cultists would do. Or people who’d just seen you murder their friends, and wanted to make life as difficult for you as possible. But they weren’t. They were cultists.

            As I ran, I tried to think of what to do next. I think it’s probably safe to say you made the wrong choice. I haven’t got to that bit yet. I decided that I probably shouldn’t go to the castle for help, since there was a pretty good chance that they were in on this. Because they wouldn’t let you sleep in the castle and laughed at your identification? Wouldn’t that be what most people would do? Do you have to criticise everything I do? As it turns out, I was totally right, so I don’t think you’re allowed to criticise me for that particular call. But it didn’t exactly leave that many choices as to what to do. Fortunately or not I hadn’t really started my investigations yet. I always find it better to have an escape route before I start asking the homicidal maniacs suspicious questions. So the only person I’d told was Sean. Pity you didn’t exercise that level of caution with Sean. Actually, it was a good thing I didn’t. Or I wouldn’t have had any leads. And having leads worked out so well for you. Just let me tell the story. I decided that what I needed to do was track Sean down. Of course, when I got to the coach he wasn’t there. I hardly expected him to be, not when there were actual beds nearby. But I thought I could wait nearby until he came back. Then I saved the day. Then the voice in my head revealed that he knew how to track people. I’m not really sure how he knew that, since I never learned it. Because I’m a Virtue. Why wouldn’t I know how do things you can’t? Or I did learn to do it at some point, and repressed the memory. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen to people in my line of work before. Why is my being a Virtue so hard to believe? Because I have a passing knowledge of theology. Virtues don’t deal with humans. I’ve told you before. My job is to ensure order in the cosmos. I don’t like the idea of things like Cthroorn being on the loose any more than you do. But I’m not allowed to just smite people. So I work with the tools I’m given.

            Anyway. However it happened isn’t particularly important. I was able to track Sean’s footprints, anyway. Excuse me? I was-. I just said it didn’t matter. What does matter is that I tracked them, and they led to the castle. Which pretty much confirmed my ‘the guards are in on it’ theory. Because only a complete idiot would be fooled by Sean. Shut. Up. You’re just trying to rationalise what you did next. What I did next was fine. The lives of two people are really not of that much concern compared to the lives of everyone in Greenland, and many of those outside it.

            There were two guards outside. I had a bayonet, and I didn’t want to be delayed or draw too much attention to myself. So I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture. And you’re feeling too guilty about what you did to want to talk about it. I’m not really proud of what I did, I’ll admit it. But it was the right decision, and I’ll stand by it. I was able to do what I had to, and I managed to get into the castle.

            Wherever it came from, my tracking abilities didn’t work inside the castle. Have you ever tried to track someone across a solid stone floor which hundreds of other people have also walked across. You already know I can’t track anyway. But I’m sure an angel would’ve found a way of managing it. I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with humans. Think yourself lucky I got as far as I did. Unfortunately, I do have to agree with him. That particular random ability had just come in rather useful, and it would seem rather ungrateful to complain about losing something I hadn’t even had five minutes ago. So I had to search the castle manually.

            I’ll spare you the description of what, exactly, it was that I found in that place, but suffice to say that there was rather more evidence that there really was something untoward and culty going on here… Surprisingly, the voices in my head seem to agree with me on that one. Anyway, I did manage eventually to find Sean. I didn’t know that I had at the time, since everyone was calling him ‘lordship’ and he was wearing the face concealing black hooded robe that most cultists seem to favour. It makes them harder to identify. And makes it easier to sneak in. Until someone tries to talk to you. Yes, that can be a problem. I ambushed one of the cultists on the way out of the room, and went in to see what they were doing. Clever. Yeah, that might’ve been a mistake, but killing random cultists isn’t really helpful if it turns out that the actual summoning is going on a few miles away, and you don’t have a clue that you just completely failed to prevent the apocalypse. It seemed to work at first, and we proceeded without incident into the room where the summoning ritual was going to take place. You didn’t find it the least bit suspicious that your arrival should suddenly trigger them being ready for the start of the ritual?  And if I had, what exactly could I have done about it? The problem came when Sean called for the sacrifice to be brought forth, and two cultists grabbed me from behind.

            I am, as I have said before, trained for this. The very concept of not having some way of defending myself is alien to me. Unfortunately, even well trained and armed with a bayonet, numbers take their toll. Let alone when it’s someone like you who’s armed with a bayonet. The cultists restrained me, and held me in front of Sean, who lowered his hood, and revealed his identity to me.

            He told me that we hadn’t really been properly introduced, and that his real name was Cu Chulainn. I don’t believe that that’s his real name, any more than Sean is, so I’m just going to stick with Sean. He also explained to me that they’d been expecting me. Like I said, you should really have been less eager to trust Kaiwan.

            Then the ritual started. It was surprisingly painless, although given that it summoned Chthroorn inside of me, and he’s going to burst forth and destroy everything for miles around soon, I suspect that it is unlikely to remain so.

            I doubt anyone will ever find this account, but there’s hardly anything else I can do at this point. And if anyone else ever does hear this... Good luck.

            Jonathan finished his account, and put down the recording device. Like the musket, it was reverse engineered – this had been taken from a Cammora. Unlike his musket had recently proven to be, it was nearly unbreakable, so it would probably survive Chthroorn. Then he waited.

            He had been intending to simply wait for the end to come, but someone came down the hall to visit him. Someone interesting enough to shake him out of his reverie. It was Kaiwan.

            ‘You murderer!’ Jonathan sprang to his feet. ‘Why did you even come here? You’ll end up as dead as everyone else.

            ‘I severely doubt that.’ Kaiwan smiled smugly. ‘Regardless, I had to make sure you didn’t go off track.’

            ‘Sorry?’ Jonathan asked.

            ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ His smile had gone from smugness to downright mockery. ‘I’m your virtue. And now Cthroorn will rise, and it will be glorious.’

            It was Jonathan’s turn to smile smugly ‘No it won’t.’

            Kaiwan’s smile disappeared. ‘Explain.’

            ‘Cthroon’s part of me now. I can feel what it will do. How did you think I knew what its name was? Cthroorn’s not going to rise. It’s going to do what anything would do if it was woken in the middle of the night by an annoying little insect. Smash the annoyance, and go back to sleep. You’re a mass murderer, but if you were looking for the apocalypse, you’ve gone about it all wrong.’ Jonathan closed his eyes, and felt the transformation begin.

            He was right. It wasn’t painless.

The book was better

I had an argument a few days ago about a film that came out last year, of Dumas’ classic book The Three Musketeers. If you haven’t seen it… Don’t. It’s absolutely awful, and I don’t think anyone would argue much with that. It's not only not worth the price (any price), it's not worth the time taken to watch it. The argument was more over why it was terrible – specifically, over the ahistorical aspects of the film. Like airships. I was actually defending this part – I always get a little annoyed about the idea of someone defending the purity of literature and not allowing anything to get in its way. The concept of adding supernatural elements to a previously mundane story is one that goes back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Well, actually, it goes back a lot further than Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the point is that Shakespeare did it in Hamlet. The number one rule of English Literature is ‘If Shakespeare did it, it’s OK’*.  And some of the most beloved tales of the English Language have come from the steady addition of fantastic elements to stories. By which I mean the King Arthur Mythos, even if he was originally a Welsh story.

Hell, whilst I’m going on with this, Dumas himself wasn’t exactly married to historical accuracy. I’m not going to try to give you a shopping list, but if memory serves, D’Artigan didn’t actually join the Musketeers until about ten years after the novel takes pace. The purpose of the storyteller, regardless of medium, is to entertain the audience. If I want to read The Three Musketeers, I have a copy. Even if I didn’t, there’s one in the library, and if it has been lent out, lost, or eaten by a tribe of hungry pigmies, the book also appears on Project Gutenberg. So I can read the original story, thank you very much. Now, that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the adaptation of books to film. Doing so can expose stories to a wider audience, and themes can become clearer and more comprehensible to the audience than they were in the original book – but that means that what makes it worthwhile is that it is to some extent changed from the original novel.

True, there is something to be said for sticking as close as possible to the original – if you’re adapting to film a brilliant and beloved novel which is universally agreed to be a work of true genius, then there’s a good chance that whatever changes you make are going to be for the worse**. But when something’s been adapted to film as often as The Three Musketeers has, you’re going to have to come up with something better than improved graphics and new actors to make the thing interesting. That’s why you have things like Muppet Treasure Island, The Wiz and Snow White Blood Red. It’s why the last time I went to see Macbeth, Patrick Stewart was carrying automatic weaponry. So frankly, some flashy new visual effects – which have significantly less actual effect on the plot than the fact that d’Artigan didn’t actually join the musketeers for about ten years after the beginning of the novel, don’t really do much except add some much needed perceived innovation to a film which would otherwhise have been about as interesting and well attended as last time I threw a party. Plus, it let us show off the one thing that’s inarguably gotten better since the last time someone made a Musketeer film, the graphics. There is nothing sacred about the works of previous authors. They made stuff up, and you can make stuff up that you think will improve their work*****. It’s admirably like natural selection – the good stuff survives, and the bad stuff dies out (oh hey, look, I made a biologist cry).

The only other thing I could mention is the conversion from ‘fiction’ to ‘fantasy’. A lot of people who wouldn’t demand slavish devotion to the books, will complain when said book changes genre. I understand that one. I probably wouldn’t go to see a Sherlock Holmes Rom-Com. Actually, I might, but I’d be seriously iffy about the quality of the thing. I don’t think that this applies to fantasy, because fantasy doesn’t actually dictate anything about the plot. The requirement of fiction is that it is that which is not. The requirement of fantasy is that it is that which could not be. There are far more ‘fantasy’ possibilities than non-fantasy ones, and you can write literally anything under the umbrella of the fantasy genre – there are whole genres that are possible in fantasy which can’t possibly be done outside of it. Which means that fantasy is kinda stupid as a genre in the first place. Plus, unless you’re omniscient, you actually can’t tell the difference between ‘fantasy’ and ‘not-fantasy’ anyway.

I must remind myself at some point to spend much too long ranting about Tolkein’s influence on the entire fantasy genre. But I’m pretty sure that I’ve made my point on this particular line. Bye bye.

*Actually, that’s untrue. There are certain things that Shakespeare did that you can’t do today, either because it’s a product of his time, like the sexism of Taming of the Shrew, the racism of The Merchant of Venice, and the constant writing in Iambic pentameter, or because he’s Shakespeare, and has the literary talent to pull off things that would make anyone else look like a complete idiot. The addition of fantasy elements to existing tales is not in either category.

**Let us take, for example, the 2011 edition of The Three Musketeers. Ignoring the fantastic elements, it was actually pretty close to Dumas’ original novel. Which is good thing, because most of the changes they did make were for the worse – the heroes were boring in pretty much every way, the fights were uninteresting and tension-free***, the level of inter-heroic conflict made my social skills look… extant, anyway.  Seriously, you had to make Athos give the whole ‘love is awesome’ speech. Bloody Athos? I know I said that I don’t mind changes to the source, but you’re throwing away a source of conflict, removing depth and complexity from a character, and not improving the film in any way above if Aramis had said it – which would have given the guy some much needed development. And the presumably conventionally attractive female turns out not to be too bad right at the end. Give me a break. In the atmosphere of Dumas’ novel, that might’ve helped create an interesting and somewhat morally ambiguous character****. In an atmosphere so black and white it makes a zebra look uniform, it’s just a stupid out of place ‘beauty equals goodness’. Plus, it was so predictable I spontaneously developed clairvoyance. I could go on, but you get the point.

***Which can be fine, or even good. Just not in a film where the entire focus is on the fight scenes. It means that everything is basically visuals. Again, not necessarily bad. I will willingly defend Avatar purely as a kind of three-hour long moving painting. The visuals, unfortunately were not those of Avatar.

****Actually, I might be wrong, but if memory serves, Milady is actually probably one of the least morally ambiguous of the characters in the entire series – beaten out only by d’Artagnan himself.

***** No, I’m not missing the word fictional up there.

The lianhan sidhe

Back on Old Acanthus (as it shall now be called) I used to have readers in Ireland. Also, France, but the Ireland mention is actually relevant. The France one is just a vague level of SEO. Why is Ireland relevant? Well, I absolutely love Irish mythology. I love other mythologies too, like Egyptian, Norse, Greek, etc., but everyone likes those. Irish is a bit less well known, and as a result I occasionally get asked for recommendations on Irish mythology books. Which is something of a problem because I got into Irish mythology by starting with basic children’s books, and moving up in age. So by the time I got to proper books of Irish mythology, I had the context to actually understand and enjoy them fully. But I’ve never really wanted to recommend ‘The Little Person’s Picture Book of Irish Fairy Tales’ as reading material. Not to mention the fact that most of them tend to be pretty inaccurate. For some reason instances of attempted genocide tend to be left out of children’s books. So I generally recommend WB Yeates. Which might also seem like an odd choice, since I have a lot of works of Irish mythology I much prefer. Yeates is a lot more modern, more Christianised, and more Folktale than Myth. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it’s just not what I prefer. But it’s a good introduction to the world of Irish mythology, and it makes other works more comprehensible, so you get more out of them.  
Why do I say all this? Because there’s one thing Yeates did that annoys me. It’s not that he was wrong – even if he might have been, there’s no way in hell I’m pitting my knowledge of anything against WB Yeates without some pretty convincing evidence. It’s similar to the problem Tolkein had with Shakespeare’s elves – that Yeates created something so much less interesting than it should have been. What am I complaining about? Yeates’ portrayal of the Lianhan Sidhe*. My version is no more valid than his, but I find it more interesting** So I wrote a story. Don’t worry, its different from the last one.

*Incidentally, as they're all female***, you might ask about the whole 'sexism' question. As far as I can tell, there isn't really any particular sexism in this mythology - Eodain was a leanan sidhe, and she was better at ruling the country than the king. You might find some, but the Irish certainly come out better than the greeks.
**There's a third version as well, which is sorta between the two, but that's just going to get confusing.
***Or 'she is female' - the leanan sidhe is sometimes refered to as a single entity rather than a group. I think the latter is more commonm but I have no idea how to verify which one is 'right'.

J.O. Oisin is often considered to have been the greatest Irish author of the 21^st century. His writings inspired what is often known as ‘Oisin’s Uprising’, despite there being no proof of his direct involvement. The Uprising was the most significant in Irish history since the defeat of the IRB in the summer of 1920. However, the eventual utter defeat of the rebels is believed to have led to his suicide. The following text was found by his body, and although it is unknown whether it was a product of his madness, or a fragment of what was to have been his next work, critics agree that it shows little or nothing of the brilliance that inspired so many to lay down their lives.

She was so beautiful. So incredibly beautiful – indescribably beautiful, even. Indescribable. I’ve never liked that word. It tells the reader so little. It’s simply the author giving up. She was the most beautiful summer day – not even the best day you’ve ever experienced. The day you never experience, but only imagine. The day that has never been, which lingers in your memory all the same. She was a diamond in the shape of a single perfect rose.

Ha. You think I’m a pathetic fool, babbling nonsense. How wrong you are. A pathetic fool I am – that, at least, is undeniable. But you think I praise far more than I should, think that my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. But she is so much more than I can say. To try to describe her is to try to say things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. But that is only how she looks. I speak of it, yes, for not to do so would be unforgivable – to withhold deserved praise lest it should make its subject conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly. But that is the least of her – for I loved her, oh I loved her so. Love. Another word I've always hated. What is love? Love is cold. Love is blind. Love is just a waste of time, when you’re young and in your prime. But love her I did, far more than words can say.

Now she is gone from me. I am banished from her presence. Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death’, for exile  hath more terror in his look, much more than death. There is no world without her, but purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence banished is banish’d from the world, and world’s excile is death. Then ‘banishment’ is death misterm’d. Yet I love her still. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it has not, for my heart could grow no fonder. Yet I love her still. Perdition catch my soul but I do love her! And when I love her not chaos is come again. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, and oh how I love her. If you love something let it go, for each man kills the thing he loves, by each less this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word, the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, and some when they are old; some strangle with the hands of Lust, some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because the dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long, and I could never love too little, so I must guard against loving too long. Some do the deed with many tears and some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, yet each man does not die. I will not kill the thing I love, and therefore I must die. I must die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace. They call her a killer, the folklorists. They say she sucks the lifeforce from her thralls, or that she carries her victims off to other worlds. I would not begrudge her if she did. She gave me so much that could I revive within me her symphony and song, to such a deep delight ‘twould win me, that with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, that sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honey-dew has fed, and drunk the milk of paradise. But they belie her, her who has harmed none, and seeks only love. They call her succubus, yet that is a lie. We say lie on her when they belie her. She has woven for me a crown of tendrils, leaves and rough nuts brown (men sell not such in any town). Yet she will not like a common goblin cry ‘come buy my orchard fruits, come buy, come buy’. She will not sell herself to me, but that she loves will not her unhoused free condition put into circumscription and confine for the sea’s worth. Who I am I to tell her stay when passion has died, when the winds of change are telling her to go somewhere beyond where I have been? She has harmed me nothing, and given me everything, until I weep that you may not see the majesty that is visible to my sight. So who am I to repay trap her, to repay her passion so? It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Yet without her I cannot live – they say that such is the fate of those who eat of faerie fruits, that they fall sick and die in their gay prime, in earliest winter time, and though I may be what I eat, gross and mortal as I am, she is so much more. It begrudge her nothing, but she does comes not, that fair Ophelia, and so better not to be. And so I must go somewhere beyond the end. In that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil? I know not, but maybe we two shall meet there – she is a creature of dream, after all. Shall I at least set my lands in order? No. But these fragments I have shored against my ruins.

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.

Apo thanein thelo.

The epic of Veris

I'd hate to become one of those bloggers who keeps apologising for missing posts. Fortunately, I'm also a practiced hypocrite, so sorry for not posting for so long. I was kinda hoping to get old Acanthus back. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen, so I'll just make occasional reference to the devastating brilliance of every word I wrote in it. Here's a story, and it shouldn't be so long until the next posts. Here's a story, I'd be interested to know what people thought, since it's rather experimental.

Once there lived a man named Veris. He was half British, and half Iraqi. To be entirely accurate, he was also approximately a thousand trillionth god. It is perhaps the divine spark in him that caused him to become the greatest hero that humanity had ever known, but given that there aren’t a thousand trillion cells in the human body, and that therefore he was statistically marginally less divine than the average carpet lint, it seems slightly unlikely. Regardless of this, every night, he fought with the darkest beings in all humanity, and his sanity eroded a little more.

What was this creature, darker than any other that ever existed? There are some who would speak of Cain, first and darkest of the vampires, of whom it is said that the world itself will cower at his passing. Others, who have looked too long into the abyss, and sacrificed their very minds in the pursuit of truth, say that it can be none other than dread Cthulhu, the mere sight of whom would shatter the mind of any mortal, and whose waking would signal the end of the world. And there are some, wiser even than these, who would speak of the rabbits, that unassuming undead plague whose innocent visage hides the most malevolent of souls, and whose bite will consume you with their darkness. But each of these have their enemies, heroes who fight and suffer and die to keep them from humanity. VALKYRIE  and Delta Green and James, the bunny slayer. There is a creature darker than these, whose name I will not speak, whose visage I cannot describe. Call it Pandora, for it is the source of all that is evil, the enemy of hope. Call it Corruption, for next to it, all is pure. Call it Entropy, for he is the death of all reality. Veris fought against it, and had he been born a thousand years ago, his heroism would have been recognised. Had he been born two thousand years ago, he would have been hailed as a living God, and even today his name would echo louder than thunder, and outshine the unconquered sun. But he did not.

‘Why have you been away for the last month?’ Aaron asked him, wanting to know why Veris had been away for the last month

‘I was fighting against the great beast B----, that humanity might for another few brief moments in the vastness of eternity continue its futile struggle against the inevitable tide of oblivion. For seven days we strove, but in the end I triumphed, and he fled for all too brief a time into the darkness from whence he came.’ Veris told him, remembering how he had spent a week fighting the mighty beast B----, so that people could continue their futile struggle against the inevitable tide of oblivion for a bit longer.

‘Indeed? And what about the rest of the month?’ Aaron asked, suspicious about the rest of the month.

‘Although I at last had victory, our struggle was hard on me. My wounds were great and I had to heal from them’ Veris said, bleeding profusely from innumerable wounds which still had not closed.

 

‘The sick days we have to allow you – although I hardly need to point out that an employee who takes a lot of time off sick is hardly indispensable to us. But to take a week off of work for a mere personal project is unforgivable.’ Aaron told him, begrudgingly accepting the time off ill, but furious about Veris having taken time off for a personal project.

 

‘But had I not done so, the world would have fallen into irrevocable ruin.’ Veris said, trying to explain to Aaron the irrevocable ruin which would have befallen the earth if he had not taken time off work.

‘I have no doubt. But we’ve not a charity, Veris. We aren’t going to pay for the salvation of the world.’ Aaron said, accepting his words, but unimpressed by the humanitarian nature of his actions.

‘But if humanity were to become extinct, it would severely hurt profits.’  Veris pointed out, trying to demonstrate the necessity of heroes to the capitalist system.

‘Very true. But the benefit you provide you provide for our competition as well as us. Whereas your employment comes at a cost only to us. As capitalism is about being better than the competition, an investment which is as good for our competition as it is for us is entirely worthless. It gives us no advantage at all. As such, I think we’ve going to have to let you go.’ Aaron replied, convinced of the value of state services such as heroism and healthcare, but unwilling to fund them personally.

Veris thought about this for a moment, but the logic seemed sound. ‘On what grounds?’ He asked, in a desperate bid to stave off starvation and unemployment, and wondering what grounds Aaron had for firing him that a tribunal would accept.

‘Attack gerbils? What on earth are...’ Veris started, wondering what attack gerbils were.

‘They’re killer fire-breathing cyborg assassins with laser eyes.’ Aaron explained, contemplating the beauty of killer fire-breathing rodent cyborg assassins with laser eyes.

‘Fair enough, but why gerbils?’ Veris asked, thinking that this was fair enough, but wondering why on earth anyone would use gerbils. 

‘We tried normal cyborgs, but they created an artificial superintelligence, invented time travel, and started killing anyone called John or Connor.’ Aaron explained, remembering what had happened to the British Isles when the normal cyborgs had created an artificial superintelligence, invented time travel, and started killing anyone called John or Connor.

So Veris was fired from his job. He tried to find new work, but saving reality from unimaginable cosmic horrors isn’t really a marketable skill. His money ran out, and, eventually, he succumbed to the cold and the hunger. 

That’s why welfare systems are important! Otherwise stalwart defenders of reality might starve to death!