The Alchemist's Avarice (~500 words)

Listen close to the wind as it rattles the pane.

To the tale of a miser driven wholly insane.

Old Silas Machen, a creature of greed.

Who planted a dark and metallurgical seed.

Deep in his cellar, away from the sun.

He melted the treasures his cruelty had won.

He sat by the furnace, his face bathed in red.

Communing with wealth while ignoring the dead.

For Silas loved only the shine of the ore.

The clanking of coins on his desolate floor.

He worshipped the silver, so pale and so cold,

But it wasn't enough to satisfy his soul.

But a rot in the spirit breeds rot in the bone.

And a man who loves metal will turn into stone.

Or worse, as the alchemical ledger decrees.

He will catch the metallic, unholy disease.

It began in the veins of his withering hands.

Like the shifting of heavy and heat-shimmered sands.

His skin, once a pallid and sickening white.

Now gleamed with a bronzed and unnatural light.

His joints became hinges that rusted in place.

While a terrified rictus was forged on his face.

He clawed at his throat as the sickness progressed.

A terrible heaviness crushing his chest.

He stumbled and fell to the cobblestone ground.

But his knees striking stone made a clattering sound.

Not the breaking of bone, nor the tearing of meat,

But the ringing of anvils upon a dark street.

A mercury sweat from his forehead did pour.

As his shivering body convulsed on the floor.

He wept for his life, for the sins he had sold.

As his teardrops crystallized into pure gold.

They rolled down his cheeks with a beautiful clink.

Leaving trails on his flesh, turning grayish and pink.

His eyes, once alive with a treacherous shine.

Grew heavy and blind, of a gilded design.

He tried to cry out for a god or a priest.

But his vocal cords snapped like the strings of a beast.

And what happened then? Well, the villagers say

That his shriveling heart grew three sizes that day.

It swelled not with joy, nor a welcoming warmth.

But expanded with iron, and malice, like cold from the North.

It tore through his ribcage, a grinding machine.

The most gruesome contrivance that ever was seen.

He slithered and slunk to his mountainous hoard.

A jagged monstrosity, forever abhorred.

With his newly forged claws, sharp as carving knives.

He sat in the dark where no goodness survives.

There would be no redemption, no singing of songs.

No carving the roast beast to right all his wrongs.

No welcoming circle of hand-holding friends.

Just a desolate vault where humanity ends.

Just the ticking of clockwork, the grinding of gears.

As the monstrous man-statue stood weeping his tears.

So beware of the glint of the treasure you seek.

Lest the copper and iron rise up for the meek.

For the metal remembers, the metal is cold.

And the flesh cannot carry the weight of the gold.