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Libermane potive used to prevent the cruor of a monster from clotting too quickly as it is stored in a bruicle. Useful as this is, it also affects the quality of the blood, thinning it and making the cruorpunxis it is used for pale, less distinct. Therefore libermane is used only when teratologists believe they are more than a couple of days' journey from a punctographist. Another function of libermane is its application on swords, knives and other blades of war, to make a wound flow more than it ought, though by the Accord of Menschen this practice is deemed unacceptable in modern conflict
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Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill peered about at the many personages who had reconvened in the clerk- master's file. 'It may be that when I first declare the notion that has occurred to me,' he began, 'you shall think it a mad genius-leap, so I ask you, gracious Officers of the Board, to please bear with me. The full play of my thoughts will clarify if I am given the time.' He cleared his throat histrionically, giving Rossamund an odd look from the corner of his eye. 'Officers of the Board, paritous inquisitor, peers, ladies, gentlemen, I have listened this whole morning to the witness of these two young Imperial servants-listened long and keen-and what I have heard troubles me greatly. However, one question vexes me over all others. What truly does all this evidence point to, and how is it such a runty…lad might do such feats as he has done?' He pondered a moment, a fine act to focus people's attention upon him. 'In view of an answer, if I may I would like to address the whole room with this question: how many of you have heard of Ingebiarge? Perhaps you know her as Biarge the Beautiful?'
The Master-of-Clerks and Scrupulus Sicus, the Imperial Secretary, nodded.
The Lady Vey made a face as if to say, What does it matter if I have or have not?
No one else indicated either way.
Rossamund knew of Ingebiarge. Craumpalin had told him of her more than once. She was meant to be a cannibalistic woman living in the remotest coasts of the Hagenlands who, by forgotten habilistics, had kept herself alive many thousands of years and made prey of any who passed too near. Such an unnatural length of life had apparently twisted her: she was gray-skinned, with red and yellow eyes more terrible than any leer's.
'Some of you might dismiss this Ingebiarge as a fiction, but any vinegaroon who has sailed east beyond the Mare Periculum through the Beggar Sea, or harbored in the road-stead off the Stander Lates near Dereland's western shores, will tell you she is a very real and very factual danger. If we could ask a mariner of one thousand years gone of her, he too would give the same ghastly report.'
The normally indulgent Master-of-Clerks, most likely aware of Secretary Sicus sitting immediately to his right, started to show impatience at this bizarre divagation.
The surgeon lifted his hands appeasingly. 'Now please, sirs, attend to me, I do have a point. Ingebiarge, the great abomination, the shame of the Hagenards, known as an ever-living monstrous everyman-or woman.' He corrected himself with a peculiar look to the calendars and Europe. 'Yet she is not the only one. The obscurest corners of history will reveal the occurrence of other such abominations, though most, when discovered, were destroyed before they could become the terrible canker Ingebiarge is to southern shipping to this day. For this Biarge is not some clever skold, as some might reckon, but rather a manikin-a monster in the shape and form of a person, and as such more assuredly an abomination.'
Fransitart had become a wan gray.
Craumpalin had a haunted glimmer in his eye.
'Pray, Surgeon Swill, you must bring us to your point of view, sir-the morning runs long,' purred the Master- of-Clerks, a hint of chill in his voice, though he never let slip his patient facade.
'Most certainly, Marshal-Subrogat.' The surgeon bowed a third time to the Officers of the Board and went on as if he had not been interrupted. 'But how can such a wicked abomination happen? I see the question clear on your corporate faces: how can a monster be found in the form of an everyman? As you are all well familiar, we know so little of the where and the why of the monsters, of how they perpetuate themselves.What we do know is that most teratologica survive so long they can be considered-as the short generations of men reckon it-to live forever.Yet the monsters do replace their numbers.We know some repeat themselves, budding like so many trees, dropping bits of themselves to grow into replicas of the original. This can be most commonly observed in the kraulschwimmen of the mares or the vicious brodchin of the wildest lands such as the Ichormeer or Loquor.'
Here Swill paused, took a breath.
An awful, sick sensation was blossoming in Rossamund's gut.
Everyone expectant, the surgeon poured himself some wine from a sideboard, drank it all and continued.
'But what we have never seen is the creation work of the ancient gravid slimes, those places said to have been the nurseries of the earliest monsters, the eurinines-the first monster-lords-and used by them in turn to bring forth the lesser types of the theroid races.' As he went on, a quaver of fervent enthusiasm entered the surgeon's voice. 'Some of you might even know the history that was before history, the rumors of the beginnings; that these eurinines were granted by the clockwork of the universe to be able to put forth their threwd and make the muds fertile. Heated by the sun, worked on by the threwd, the very ground was made womblike and would pop to bring forth from the foul cesspits of the cosmos many of the worst and most notorious of the monsters that still stalk this groaning world today.'
Rossamund did have some small understanding of the things said, but he had never heard the most ancient of histories put so directly. If he had not been in such a great anxiety, he would have eagerly listened to Swill wax learned like this for hours.
Wiping his mouth, Grotius Swill took up the cause once again. 'Now these gravid muds continued to be used by the monster-lords, even through the rise and fall of ages, whereby they take the remains of some fallen nicker and bury them in the slimy womb-earth. After a time this spews forth some vital regeneration of those parts, another full-fledged monster to terrorize the homes of men.' He looked about shrewdly.
Not one person moved. Swill had intrigued them all.
'But here is the rub, you see. The movements of the races of men and tribes of theroid, all those risings and fallings, have left many threwdishly fecund places untended by their monster-lords, deserted but still oozing with foul potential. Yet unattended and unchecked by a eurinine's will, these most threwdish of places we seldom if ever dare to navigate can still produce life, making strange beasties of whatever creatures might fetch up and die there. This abominable process we learned few call abinition, and this, lords, ladies, gentlemen'-Swill raised a salient finger into the air-'this is how Ingebiarge was made: a woman, some woman, nobody knows who, three thousand years ago perhaps, dies in one of these gravid places and falls, her remains swallowed by the hungry ooze. Sometime later out comes-what?' The surgeon shrugged and stared at his audience expectantly.
Expressions were blank, except Fransitart and Craumpalin: both were gray-faced, as ill-looking as Rossamund felt. Despairing, Rossamund looked to Europe. The fulgar was not paying him any mind, her astute, raptorial gaze fixed on the surgeon.
'Is it human? Is it monster? This thing sprung from the muds. We do not know for certain,' Swill pressed on, unaware of this calculating regard. 'What we do know is that what is 'born'-for the need of a better term-is reformed from the debris of human matter, birthed from the threwd, a wicked repeat of some lost and departed person. This we call a manikin, and whatever it might be, this reconstituted creature is certainly not human. I
