Silver black seed pearl anklet
This item was a prize from the Hunt for History.
Item
a silver black seed pearl anklet
Show
Coiled lengths of silver are bound in a sinuous mesh that forms the loop of this anklet, flexible and smooth yet amazingly sturdy. The only apparent adornment is a tiny black seed pearl set into the weave opposite the clasp, which is a complex series of hoops and fingers that lock together tightly in a ring. The pearl seems incongruent to the piece, though quite lovely, and appears to have originated from another article of jewelry.
Details
No other details are known.
Loresong
As your song enfolds the anklet in your palm you begin to feel it stir in response. Your eyelids slide shut and a vision of immaculate clarity unfolds.
Peering into a large oak-trimmed mirror, a beautiful woman sits fitting a net of black seed pearls onto her auburn hair. Over her shoulder the door suddenly bursts into a cloud of debris, and the frame darkens with a massive cloaked figure stepping through. Behind the figure two large armored forms lie motionless in the hall, her hired bodyguards. Faster than memories can record, the woman is clamped inside a muscular arm and the man and his prize launch through an eruption of shattered glass, out the window and down to the waiting beast with a long neck and two great humps on its back.
Sight twists and narrows back to black, and you slowly open your eyes and blink at the light.
As your song issues forth the anklet starts to resonate strongly, and suddenly your vision clouds and reshapes into broad visual illusion.
With days already passed, the woman's clothing showing the wear of travel but her hair still cleanly held within the pearl netting, she seems to understand now at least why she is here. He is a bounty hunter of Phannus, a great desert warrior hardened by the seas of boiling sand. Now that they were away from the eastern city where she once thought herself safe, he explained quietly, precisely with bare words, what her future would hold. Two weeks of hard travel, being presented alive and unharmed to the jeweler in Tamzyrr, the hunter collecting her bounty, and then her being tortured slowly to death in the privacy of the jeweler's basement for robbing him.
As the vibrations from your song fade into imperceptibility the vision ends and your eyes reopen.
Focusing your magic into the anklet you are rewarded with a pulse of power, and your sight clouds into a vision.
Trekking along the southeastern edges of the DragonSpine, the past week of the journey has left the woman threadbare and despondent. Continuous pleading, bargaining, and demanding avails her nothing from the stony male, who keeps her leashed closely on the animal behind him. When she struggles, he is not rough, but shifts so her efforts avail little result. He ignores or tolerates her rambling, remaining silent except for an occasional calm command or simple answer. A creature of honor, he would follow his contract to the very letter. He would deliver her, alive and unharmed.
Sight twists and narrows back to black, and you slowly open your eyes and blink at the light.
Bumping more frequently against him as they began the first days of travel through the mountains, her tired muscles not accounting completely for her desire to lean against his solid back, the woman has given up her struggles and now is studying her captor. A bark-colored viper swings down at her from a tree limb, and without shifting his weight he cleanly severs it in two with his dagger. With waning reluctance, she gazes on him more truly, seeing this man of enviable virtue and power among a world of the weak and despicable.
A few short days travel out of the mountains, still with miles of plain and hill ahead, and her life's end, the hunter and captive's path winds slowly beneath a beating white sun. She was unbound now, physically and perhaps more, for they both seemed to know she would not run from him. She even elicited a chuckle or nod from him occasionally as she spoke about her life, and when her spoken hardships caused his own eyes to tighten in remembrance, she sees his spirit is kindred. Within her tales there is a question, unnoticed or ignored by the man. An offer of freedom, together.
As your song unfolds the anklet starts to resonate, even stronger than before, and your sight falls to pitch black instantly. Black resolves to dark grey, and then to the interior of a modest city building.
Stepping down into the cool recessed room below the jeweler's shop, the journey of the two strangers comes to an end. She looks into his eyes a final time, knowing that to plead would diminish her and be pointless, and sees that feelings also dwell behind his gaze. The jeweler giggles mercilessly, and speaks that she is turned into his custody, handing the payment to the hunter.
The definitions of the agreement met, that she be delivered alive and unharmed into the jeweler's hands, the bounty hunter takes her by the head and snaps her neck with one quick jerk. As she falls to the floor, the jeweler's wailing cry of lost revenge splitting the musty air, her hairnet of black seed pearls breaks and scatters.
As the vibrations from your song fade into imperceptibility the vision ends and your eyes reopen.
You attempt to withdraw more hidden secrets from the anklet, but meet with heartsick failure.
This loresong is incomplete.