They tell campfire stories of Noah Huzzar on his barded silver, Tintreachcogadh
His quiet mountain home abode of ranging men, demesne of crop-dependents
Depended on his protection
Elected Lictor, his visored helm’s image fixture on every household altar
His grand manse flanked by grated covers and lion gates
Peasants, peons, freemen and serfs prayed to his holy image
Covens and mages whispered spells from technical manuals to make him courageous
An angel warm with blessings came to warn him in Lionden City, who brought upsetting news
A child born in Abou Ben Adhem’s golden bucket citadel heard tell of violent swellings
Old lessons must be relearned
The angel named Thankyou Sherman gifts him a magic lance, which answers every blow but is cancerous
It is a blade not made for human hands, Gitoppa Baghasaki.
Rune-banded bandits with odd arms, Adolfus of the hundred Hittites
Third of his line rides out from Nod, God is not with them
Girdled by brackish bog and bracken, reedmace like a kraken’s tentacles in action latched around a leviathan’s tanker-sized flank
Pale birch staves, palisades of birch boscade repel potential ambuscades
Bones from previous brave escapades like drowned remnants from a ship aground
Splayed on debris dirt-sprayed
Freed from shallow graves, never to be debriefed.
A church on a hill said to be the last hump of a sunken land whose aeons-ancient primacy far precedes Man
Houses a fire-spitting goblet of arcane power ringed by salt
Guarded by a rabid slathering black dog called Naltis
If his assaultive jaws are lyre-lured to sleep, one might creep past him fast asleep
That goblet must be brought to the glass palace of vanity, to fulfil the prophecy the prelates call the Papyisabarisius Ecopeast Taariety
Mean old targe Marge wearing a red taj, eating heart-filled tarts in malice
Sings a vexing song about a king who wore a hat and his earl who wore two
He casts sand on the fire to bring his story to an end, bends to applause from the awed.
Glad of pause, Arthur gab-gifted an artful artificer dawdles atop the deep-sloped motte counting his fistfuls
Spit-shines glass on a shifting picture of Her purchased at the grand bazaar
He sets aside portions for victuals, thrills, bills and with virtually nothing leftover he chases fitfully the little death of sleep
Dots of mottled maverick moonlight thrown by the mystery orb throttle darkness’ totality, reaped corn like cavalry-snapped spears
He paws his hauberk front, his capering mind a vain house of borrowed glories
His heaped trencher he keeps mounded by articulating the gory fatalities of once-recent melees, the malaise of ancient nations whose raging gods erased them with waves
His daric-heavy claws discharge their payload in his satchel, then trawl his pockets for the awl-shape of his pipe stem.
Alchemisland 
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