The
bodies lie below. Paper-thin parchment skulls and wasted uneaten
limbs. Rare to see abandoned flesh unused. The butterfly’s throng
the walls. The blue is giving you waves of euphoric sorrow. A
tragidean high like heroes feel before the axe comes down. If you
look to closely at the butterfly wings, gaze the unending edge, your
bloodvessels will crimp and burst in your head. The butterflys will
eat your eyes and nest inside.
If
one flits across your yellow-white light it looks like the shadow of
a butterfly caught on a wall, but alive, pressed in living dimensions
and pinned, momentarily, in mid-air.
The
freshly-dead heads are burning. A soft, dim low-light infra-red,
emitted from the mouth and sunken eyes. Like a coal glowing in an
empty skull. A blood-clot ruby red. A dead-star-red.
Inside
are jewels. Pick-up the skull and turn. Ignore the tears streaming
from your eyes. Ignore the petrified childhood dreads cracking their
coverings in the back of your head. It's just the butterfly’s
bipolar-blue-glow. Inside the empty head, eaten out, they lay their
chrysalids. Glimmering ruby-bright lozenges, irregular jewels. At
their centres, knots, vaguely pulsing tangles of slight light. The
jewels defend themselves with lust. Designed to drive a predator to
unexpected doom, they embue anyone touching them with crazed, gothic
self-destructive horny lust for any available partner. Be careful
when you pick them up.
The
caterpillars that will hatch from these glimmering seeds are jewels
themselves. Perfect segmented prismatic rainbows of liquid light.
Magnificent luxurious slowly ambulatory gem-beasts. Twisting and
turning curlicues upon themselves.
The
bite of the magnificent caterpillar is the most dangerous and sacred
of all. A madness-bite. Instant schizophrenia.
These
insects are immeasurably valuable and dangerous at every stage of
their development. Much sought by decadent deep-dwelling peoples.
Many
a throne-room, netted with silken silver nets, is lit with the
butterfly's death-dark blue. Less a colour, almost a living liquid
that sloshes immeasurably slowly from surface to surface. It's long
looping wavelengths almost fingertip tangible.
The
butterfly's blues light causes bipolar behaviour. Mood swings, mania
and depressions. The kind of nobles that willing fill their arbours
with this blue either don't notice, don't care, or actively enjoy the
results. They believe deeply that the butterfly’s can sense noble
blood*. More than one feud has begun when two nobles pricked their
fingers in the butterfly room and waited, with dark blood beading on
their outstretched hands, waiting to see where the first butterfly
would land to feed.
The
fact that looking closely at the butterfly's wing can kill you in one
stroke is considered a handy shibboleth. Keeps the scum out.
The
chrysalids are worn as pervy jewels and used as drugs, for obvious
purposes.
The
liquid-crystal-caterpillars are the most prized of all.
Schizophrenia, amongst it's drawbacks, sharpens some aspects of
pattern recognition and heightens the threat-sense. For normal people
the horrific life-damage done by even temporary madness makes it a
poor deal. For the murderous rulers of knife-edge subterranean
states, things are a little different.
In
a world where almost everyone you know is probably plotting against
you to some extent, believing yourself to be under threat is less of
a hardship. The obsessive correlating of the tiniest tangential
evidence, the half-sensed look, the sly event, into tangled webs of
paranoia, this is actually useful. Those webs really do exist. They
really are trying to kill you. Being crazy about it just lends you
energy and perception. Another advantage is that deranged bouts of
terror-strewn violence, random executions, wild accusations and
frantic source-less witch-hunts keeps everyone in the right state of
apprehensive fear. If a normal person goes crazy, they fuck up their
own life. If a tyrant goes crazy, they fuck up everyone's life.
Being
known for occasional periodic violent insanity can be handy for a
rulers reputation.
They
wear them as living earrings. This has created a fashion in Drow
society. Fake costume-jewellery crystal caterpillars. (The trick is
to look for the tiny scars on the nape of the neck.)
*They
can't.
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