"Don’t fear the basilisk"
Flash Fiction
From a prompt from radicalward.
“And so what brought you here?” It was not the form that I expected the voice of a basilisk to take. Instead, it was a slightly stuffy and had an old professor’s kind of diction. I brushed aside my long and blondly bladed hair from my iron helmet and tried to stare into the gloom which my map, as old and tattered as it was, guided me to the lair that was at the center of the of the maze.
“Do not you talk? I really hate the kind of adventure who stomps into my oubliette swinging a blade or cleaver without any talking to go alongside the main dish.” Pat this point I could see a horned head and a long snake body that coiled up just out of my blade’s reach. There was a green luminescence in rows along his long body. But it was the eyes that held them in their grasp: they were also phosphorescent but in a deep red hue.
“I don’t want to take anything from you.”
“That is the first. Where is your retinue? And what do you want if I may be so bold as to ask?”
His voice became unsteady because I had not turned to stone as almost all of his other victims had done. Thus, he was waiting for time for the magic to take effect. “I left my servant back at the top of the oubliette.” Dropping my torch, I reached down to my chainmail enwrapped skirt, shoving aside my bread and cut vegetables for my snack, and pulled out what seemed like a hazy pearl about the size of my thumb.
“This is a trinket from St. Occam’s Kirk, and I think it might have value to you.”
The head was swaying right to left in a mesmerizing swoop, but he caught himself and shook away the temptation to strike and simply grab with his fangs. “And what challenge does the little girl want me to meet for this small trinket?”
“Only this: if you answer correctly the riddle that I ask you get the broach.”
“And if I fail?”
“Then you must depart and never come back to this baronage again.”
The basilisk reached up under his chin and thought. It was clear he had grown accustomed to his mire. And had the used to lunching on the odd knight that was occasionally said down to remove him. But the pearl brooch held sway with him. I knew this because the last basilisk had envied the same thing 100 years ago.
I pulled out a razor and sliced up a few long shallots and put them in my mouth.
But then he said: “It seems to be a rather reasonable challenge. I accept.” Now my eyes were adjusted, and I could see that he was grinning as he came near my armor. It was clear to me that he would not depart should he fail but would open his mouth and swallow my neck whole.
So I began:
“When I am alive I do not speak.
Anyone who wants to takes me captive and cuts off my head.
They bite my bare body
I do no harm to anyone unless they cut me first.
Then I soon make them cry.”
With this, I spat out the onion into the basilisk’s face and he started to weep and weep and weep. He could not even speak.
I then declared: “You have failed.” It was a technicality but those are the best when dealing with trolls and other monsters.
The basilisk could not stop crying and my hand was on the broadsword as a deterrent. He climbed up to the gap of the oubliette and flew away never to be seen again.
I collected my torch and roused my haggard old servant.
He was relieved and said: “Weren’t you frightened?”
“First the was the spell from St. Occam’s Pearl– that spell would make him cry when the razor punctured the onion peel and it protected me from his gaze by the old magic. If the spell did not work, I had a second plan.”
“Which was?”
“He was going to swallow my neck.”
“Yes?”
“I would recite Psalm 51.”
“The neck Psalm.”
“Precisely, sparing my neck from the King’s justice.”
“But why would they work against the basilisk.”
“Because basilískos is Greek for ‘little king’ and even foul magic must obey the word.”
It was all so logical.