Ignis Fattus

Up and up the craggy keep, my very ghost wouldst I glady give,
for a quarter’s sleep.
Nigh a league from the tavern door,
that pub, Le nepenthe, of local fame.
Tame was the evening with nothing a foot, less the customary revelry and yelling.
Yet there was no telling, as to why my teeth were set gnashing and icy sweat had broken from brow to nape.

Ah! abate this folly and suspect.
Pay mind to the slumber and succor that awaits, but footsteps more.
I summon thy imagination and fantasy, the five wits fe,
as I recount what chanced at—
Forgotten Fief.

Verily, ever sithen,
its infamies were enlivened,
by the whispers of wary children, told unto the witching hour,
so feared was its power,
that in all the centuries prior of our hamlets and our boroughs,
no soul would lay claim to this dread swamp,
not for herd,
not for furrow.

I dare say ‘twas nigh Le Nepenthe way, that me step were fastly stayed, when I first beheld in the bowels of Forgotten fief,
that lapis flame emanated that stalking, haunting light.
Of neither smoke nor sound it gavest none, only a bewitching entreaty were proffered.

That from my path I shall exhume and to my current journey, by the by I may resume.
With a trembling step I crossed myself and that domain frequented by sorcery and those whom Death was not their final way.

Familiars, undines and goblin-kind
frequent these gloomy fens, sithen no one know when.

Embroiled in the foulness and offal of that swamp, unto that flame sublime was I brought with each labored lunge,
still failing to expunge my festering revulsion that this flame could issue benevolent light and malevolent darkness part for part.

Nevertheless, desirth me heart,
that remote and joyous mount,
that unlike Dante’s unfledged climb, I shalt surmount.

The garish debauch of Le Nepenthe on its retreating knoll assumed the somber tone of the elegy’s knell.
Grim portent that from among the quick here,
I was starkly lone,
no other of the flesh,
no other of the bone.

Now on knees and hands through this putridity, brought low as a purifactory, just as my viscera screamed from strain I had arrived at that risen tabernacle, august and aflame.

“Sanctum sanctorum, endow me to the utterance!
Philosophus per ignum!
thy art sacred and vital to mine desire,
when I commit myself, to thee in sacrificial rite,
on this most hallowed of nights.
Agent of alchemy that through ablution grants gold,
by my offering forsworn,
elevate my crude form!”

I plunged into that blue flame, Promethean bold, by the morass of the swamp was I engulfed, that flame had fled.

By the fire was I fooled, my soul forfeit,
Evermore I be married to the deep of my brackish crypt.
That flame freed by pact consummated,
did flit ether-ward unto the elements it hath propitiated.

‘Twas the will o’ the wisps, though the will was not mine,
I trained my stare on Le Nepenthe there,
Alike the fief my fate is to be forgotten and unseen.
Darkly mire seeped into my mouth to stifle the scream,And quench the fire.