The Fluorine flows through the water we drink, finding its way into
our bones and teeth; it bargains with their keepers to lend its
strength. But its stronghold is the fluorspar: delicate in color with
ultraviolet glow, seemingly innocent and fragile. Miners know its
power, begging its help to make the hardest iron flow.
A chemist, fool that he was, wanted to treat with Fluorine and learn
its secrets. He made acidic summons at the castle walls; Fluorine,
answering in rage, burst forth clad in hydrogen armor. It moved with
such force that it left its own battlements in ruins. The fool
chemist leaned in, thinking his rude gesture would be met with peace,
but the Fluorine savagely lept up to burn and rip his eyes. The
chemist's sight was saved by its weakness, his glasses bore the brunt
of the Fluorine's assault. He was amazed to see the crystal turned
milky, its surface etched.
That man's disrespect and ignorance knew no bounds. Not recognizing
the Fluorine for the power and terror it was, he thought to enslave
it, making dainty articles whose sale would weigh down his purse. He
called the Fluorine out again and again to battle. The Fluorine never
refuses a challenge and came each time, but the chemist used subtle
arts and masks to deceive it, channeling its fury against glass once
more, but this time to work beautiful patterns. Frosted flowers,
children playing in a background of fog, seals of kings and nobles,
all these the Fluorine was forced to etch in service to its
tormentor's design. But the Fluorine is ever patient and never
forgives. It waited in servitude for the time that foolish chemist
would grow lax. Soon enough, thinking the demon his tame pet, he
began to relax his guards and grow careless in his arts; then the
Fluorine burst from its prison. Not content to blind this impudent
man, it followed his breath to the secret places of his lungs. It
devoured them from within, cutting him off forever from life-giving
air. As the chemist lay dying, the Fluorine moved through his
laboratory, throwing down his tables and chewing his apparatus to
pieces. As a last act of spite, it reduced all the gold he'd gained
to dust, and in the man's last moment of life he heard the Fluorine
swear death to all chemists.
In the years to follow, scores upon scores of chemists stormed the
Fluorine's stronghold, trying at first to study it and, later, to rip
it from its hydrogen armor. The Fluorine went forth eagerly, bursting
its stronghold asunder with joy and lust for death as soon as it knew
their approach. Each chemist fell before it, dying like first.
Others, not content to concede the battle between their clan and the
Fluorine, became more desperate. They devised a plan to use the
lightning (a fearsome enemy their kind had enslaved a century before)
to pry the armor from Fluorine's body. The lightning worked, but all
too well. The naked Fluorine's rage grew towering at the affront.
Their foe's berserk frenzy made its previous strength seem the
tenderness of a mother toward her child. It ripped holes through the
vessels with which they had thought to contain it and they all met the
fate of their fathers.
Now, Platinum was the noblest of metals: rare, precious, stately in
mass and slow to anger. Platinum seldom fought any battle, but was
better able than any others of the metals to weather an onslaught.
Platinum even kept its unscathed luster through attacks from foes that
crumbled its brother, Gold.
Yet another chemist launched an attack. This time, he allied with
Platinum, entreating it to help him hold the Fluorine captive.
Platinum found the Fluorine's excesses and rages unsettling, and it
gladly agreed to help the chemist. The chemist called the Fluorine
from his castle, and in its armor trapped it within the Platinum. He
cooled the chamber to a chill unknown except in the pole (for, while
cold could not shield against the Fluorine's attacks, it did slow its
rage.) The chemist then called upon the lightning and the lightning
undid every bolt and weld in the Fluorine's hydrogen armor, leaving it
naked and raging within that Platinum cell.
The chemist forgot the door! That door could no metal be, else the
lightning would turn back at its touch and be lost within the walls.
The door of simple rubber proved no match for the Fluorine's enraged
might. It did the Platinum grievous harm, throwing itself against the
prison's walls, but it could not break through. When it saw the door,
the Fluorine devoured it in a breath, rushing out to embrace the chemist.
That chemist's apprentice was wiser than his master (or, perhaps, he
learned from his master's death.) Knowing that the door could be no
metal, but knowing the need to hold the Fluorine at bay, he hit upon
the idea of carving a door from a stone of the Fluorine's stronghold.
A single crystal of fluorspar became the new gate to the prison. The
chemist led the Fluorine into the chamber, then sent in the lightning
once again. The Fluorine fair lept from his armor, ignoring the
walls it knew it could not break and bent its fury upon the door. In
horror, it found it could not scratch it! The power of its own walls
was turned against it! The Fluorine was at last imprisoned, naked and
cold.
The chemists made the Fluorine their servant; as with all their servants,
they used him illy and for ill purpose.
The inert gasses were the most chaste and modest of all the elements.
None had ever seen one join with another; most thought they never
would. One chemist charmed Xenon, the most stately and second-eldest
of those maidens (the oldest sister, Radon, wore her modesty well for
a time, but often cast it off, losing her nature and transforming into
something else as base as any other substance.) He charmed Xenon,
the little stranger, for he knew that, as an elder, and a more stately
member of her family, she was mild and moved with slow dignity (unlike
Helium, who ran from the slightest touch), and was thus the most
suited for his purpose.
The chemist led her into a chamber with that demon, Fluorine, knowing
it to be the most vicious element of all. But, even Fluorine was held
back by her modesty. At first, it danced around her, leering, yet it
was not brave enough to touch her. The chemist, not content to marvel
at how her mien held even Fluorine in check, pressed them closer and
closer, rudely shoving them together. Fluorine, driven mad with lust
by Xenon's touch, finally overcome his reluctance and joined with
her. Not content with that, revelling in his power and depravity, he
joined himself to her six times over. Yet, the Fluorine still raged
against the chemist for using him to such an end.
Seeing that Xenon had been joined, the chemists now rechristenned her
entire family the 'noble gasses.' Such a name made mocking jest,
painting their purity as merely snobbishness requiring a forceful
enough boor to overcome.
One last time the chemists used their enslaved demon. They led him
forth in cold and chains made from his castle walls to join and work
his way with Uranium and Plutonium, the titans whose hearts held the
unstable fires of creation. Fluorine came as gentle as a kitten and
peaceful as a dove. It knew in its yellow-green heart that they used
it, now, to create the Atomic Bomb. And Fluorine saw that this could
lead man to death at his own hand.
Now Fluorine waits, gentle, content to build our teeth and bones,
flowing in our water. For, from within us it hopes to, one day, watch
the death of us all.
