Summary Of Abneiro's Solopoly

Crimson

Anesthesia. Blood. Scalpels. Needles. These sights have always been all too familiar to doctors and their aids. However, the familiarity of these things was, to Abneiro, a sign of his woebegone past. The origin of Abneiro’s suffering was all too grounded in modernity. It was a measly 2 years ago when Abneiro had his fateful first encounter with his new allies. Abneiro’s life was simple before he found his way to Solopoly. Abneiro spent his early life tending the fires in the Trobo of the Rock, a desert tribe that had been in a non-stop war with Solopoly for many years. It was in the stark winter that the Trobo launched an attack on the Solopoly compound. Among them was Abneiro, armed far too lightly to handle the colony’s defense. A stray rifle shot went through the side of Abneiro’s head, grazing his cerebellum, incapacitating him and leading to him being imprisoned. After being given an ultimatum of death by malnutrition, Abneiro decided to join the colony. There was, however, a rather significant problem in that the bullet grazing Abneiro’s cerebellum permanently damaged his fine motor skills, so all he could ever do for the colony was clean and carry around rocks and the goods his comrades produced. From here forward,
Abneiro spent most of his time cleaning, carrying, and attending physical and cognitive therapy with Solopoly’s star doctor, a stout man named Hiltenun. Unfortunately, even with the technology eras ahead of the Trobo’s, the Colony couldn’t seem to fix the damage to Abneiro’s brain. Abneiro still found joy in his simple life, though. After a year of living in Solopoly, Abneiro was given permission to adopt a young Yorkshire Terrier which he chose to name Sparkplug. Soon after, Abneiro fell in love with another previous fire tender named Phillip and the two seemed to have the world ahead of them. It was not too far ahead that Hiltenun called Abneiro into the hospital for a special visit with particularly good news. The previous night, when a caravan passed by the colony, Hiltenun had chosen to purchase a pack of red pills. These were sold to him as a cure-all, even able to reverse scarring and mostly permanent damage. Hiltenun was excited to let Abneiro try the drug out in hopes of curing the damage to his brain. Abneiro was prescribed one pill weekly for a year, with hopes this could stretch the colony’s short supply long enough to cure Abneiro. Abneiro’s first hit of the drug was a nearly out-of-body experience. Abneiro felt truly alive in a way nothing from his old home ever had. His veins pulsed with new life, his breathing was gentle and steady, and his eyes saw with a clarity that Abneiro had never imagined. Even the marks of battle weathering Abneiro’s body began to fade. Abneiro was a new man, and he spent his days doing his old duties, alongside farming and excavation work, while training Sparkplug and spending time with Phillip.
With his newfound abilities, Abneiro chose to help Phillip achieve his lifelong dream of upgrading his body. Phillip had always felt limited by his flesh, and as such went to work with Abneiro to build replacements to his body. The two spent many days in the workshop slaving over intricate components and refining alloys masked in the heat of the foundry. After two weeks of this process, Abneiro had become a master smith and Phillip was satisfied to replace his legs, arms, and many of his organs with far superior replacements. In this time, Phillip taught Abneiro some of his techniques for creating and maintaining powerful armor given only to the best soldiers in Solopoly. Abneiro was certainly passionate about listening to Phillip’s lectures, but little of the information stuck for long. The pair even worked together to create a pair of bionic eyes for Sparkplug after a Warg found her wandering in the night. After Phillip’s upgrading, Abneiro and Phillip worked together on another joint project for Phillip. The two forged an artisan blade made from a dull red alloy that the two had scraped together from around the colony, and, on it, they inscribed the stories of their lives with the hilt end of the blade stopping at Abneiro and Phillip falling in love. The blade didn’t leave Phillip’s side from that day on.
As the year drew towards its end, Phillip and Abneiro worked on their final project of 5504. The two built an expansive house separate from the rest of the compound. Their house had its own garden, a yard for Sparkplug, and a television which Phillip bought from a trading ship. The two also received an intricate marble bed inlayed with gold from Hiltunen’s family and an intricate stone flower pot sent from the Trobo of the Rock as a gift of peace. After construction ended, Phillip and Abneiro took a trip to the Trobo of the Rock to introduce Abneiro’s family to Phillip and meet with the tribe’s leaders to reciprocate his message of peace. As the impending winter threatened to strand the pair in the Trobo, the two made their way back to Solopoly, returned to their duties, and prepared to spend their winter, and hopefully more, together in peace, for however that could last. When the year ended, Abneiro’s upstroke in life began to tilt down.
He was still at peak functionality, but he felt something wrong deep within him. Abneiro could feel his veins and organs writhing within him as if they were rejecting their very place in his body. All Abneiro’s functions were reduced, and he had trouble so much as leaving his bed. Abneiro spoke of this to Hiltenun, but the doctor could never diagnose anything wrong with him. Within a week of the new year, Abneiro began to feel a deep emptiness within him. He craved the pills that saved him, but there were none to be had in the colony’s entire stockpile. Abneiro hoped to turn to other drugs to achieve the same feeling, drinking and smoking heavily, but nothing
worked. Another month later, Abneiro’s withdrawal became far worse. He began to break down and lost most cravings except for his need for more. Abneiro started to become far more irritable, snapping at people, neglecting Sparkplug, and ignoring Phillip. Abneiro had not a thought in his head about this, however. These types of issues weren’t as important in his mind as getting his next fix. By his second month clean, Abneiro had shattered as a person. He no longer held any reverence for the society that made him himself. Abneiro felt nothing to his fellow man. He needed one thing in his life, and there was none of it to be found anywhere. In the middle of the night, Abneiro broke into the Solopoly armory and stole a powerful explosive launcher, which had been looted from a gang of pirates, and a high-powered rifle. Abneiro began to shamble towards the edge of the compound when he met a familiar face. That night’s guard was none other than Phillip, and it took only one shared glance for the two to realize what was about to happen. Phillip glanced downwards in shame before drawing his chosen blade and facing the man he once loved and slipping on his helmet. Abneiro had nothing with which to fight in such close quarters, but he had no intention of giving up or dying here. Abneiro charged towards Phillip and the two began to clash, steel against flesh, man against man, and Phillip knew from the very start that he could never take Abneiro on. The pair wrestled for several minutes, adrenaline coursing through their systems until Abneiro finally threw Phillip on the ground. Phillip looked in terror upon Abneiro’s feral countenance in his final moments, as Abneiro readied his rifle and, with an unmistakable roar of gunpowder, extinguished his lover’s life forever. He hastily rustled through Phillip’s jacket and discovered something he never expected: a single, crimson pill, wrapped in wax paper. Within minutes of ferally scarfing down the pill he had taken from the cadaver, Abneiro began to feel normal again. Within this time, Abneiro became truly aware of what he had done. Abneiro was overcome by a combination of panic and an emptiness far beyond that of withdrawal. Abneiro then slowly and carefully, drew Phillip’s sidearm from his side, and the man who was brought into Solopoly by a bullet to the brain, was ended in the same manner.