"You knew about this?" asked Nabiki, switching her glare from Akane to Cologne.
"The Ring Of Doom is able to hide itself from view, when it has found someone whose mental defenses are insufficient to contain its malice," said Cologne, glaring back. "If not - it wants to be found and it can escape from any barrier given enough time. Were all the world destroyed and sucked into oblivion, that would still find a way to be found. I battled Happosai for it, and it slipped from his pocket during the fight."
"So why not destroy it?" asked Ranma.
"If you have a means available, by all means - let me know," said Cologne drily. "When it has crossed my path before I tried that. When I was a teenager I was part of a questing group of adventurers briefly, and we threw it into the deepest part of the ocean we could find. I was considerably older when I gathered together with another fellowship and we threw it into the wet concrete of a dam being built. Before my time, a group of adventurers even tried throwing it into an active volcano. The next day Pompeii was buried in ash. If I had managed to get it from Happi this time, I would have gone to the United States, snuck it aboard one of their satellite launches, and seen if it could be thrown far from this world by one of their space probes."
"So this thing is an Amazon treasure?" asked Akane, wanting really really badly to pin the blame on someone else.
"No, the Amazons have tried to destroy it," said Cologne. "Now it's back and it's apparently found you. My sympathies."
"So it's called the 'Ring Of Doom'?" asked Nabiki.
"That's one name for it," said Cologne. "It was the source of the ring of the Wagnerian Ring stories. It was the fall of civilizations and the doom of individuals before there was even an Amazon tribe. The stronger the desire, even if fleeting, the more power it wields. Over the centuries its power has grown. Some call it the 'Soul Catcher' - for it is said that once it has used up a wielder, it drains their very soul to further enrich its power."
"In some stories," said Kasumi into the following silence, "the cursed item can be destroyed in a manner similar to its forging."
"That may be," said Cologne. "Nobody knows how it was forged. Some legends state it was forged by a dwarf from gold stolen from yousei. Some legends have it as having been around since the universe began, forged in the universe that came before and surviving to work its evil. Some say it was forged of Pandora's Box, or was the Original Sin before someone changed the story to put apples in there. Some scraps of legends tell of an ancient kingdom of the Earth and another of the Moon, and they did battle, and that the souls of the most evil of those who died were entrapped within the metal. Every time you run across a reference to that ring - there is a different creation legend. None alive today, at least that I've heard of, know which of the legends is true."
"So what does it do? Grant wishes? Why can't I just wish everyone was back?" asked Akane.
"It might do that, but only if it can find a way to do so that it causes more problems," stated Cologne.
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(Posted Mon, 12 Sep 2005 09:53)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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