[Mkguild] Heading to All Tomorrows (4/6)

[C. Matthias]

More Metamor in part four!

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Metamor Keep:  Heading to All Tomorrows
by Charles Matthias



A bright blue sky overhead blended with streaks 
of clouds until it seemed to roil like an ocean 
churning through rocks. His steps glided along 
the old road, while the smell of wood, farms, and 
pastureland inundated him from all sides, 
blending into a bouquet of simple charm. 
Intermittent copses of trees dotted the stone 
road, hoping back and forth all the way up to 
cluster of homes and buildings that comprised the 
small town that had sprung up at the road's fork. 
Beyond this a larger wood spread outward from 
which lumber and game could be found. This too 
seemed to stretch into the sky and blend as if 
all of the colors in the world were made from 
fresh paint being sprinkled with raindrops.

Andares felt a presence at his side, but was 
surprised to discover that it was a man in his 
middle ages, with only the first glimmers of gray 
framing his ears and tingling his scraggly beard. 
He was draped in a faded green cloak and walked 
with a staff fashioned from a fallen branch, now 
smoothed so many times by repeated attention that 
it was almost glossy. And yet, though Andares 
could not remember meeting this man before, it 
seemed as if they had been talking for a long time.

“Ah, there, Nenuin. You will find lodging there 
for the night,” the man said while gesturing with 
the tip of his walking staff at the town up the road.

Could one even sleep in a dream, he wondered? Yet 
when was the last time he recalled carrying on a 
discourse with anyone in a dream, let alone a 
forester and seeming mystic, perhaps even a disciple of Artela herself?

“Thank you for your kind assistance. And where shall you be sleeping?”

“I?” His smile was gentle as his eyes trailed 
past the town to the forest beyond. “I shall return to my home.”

“You live in the woods.”

“Aye,” the stranger replied with a warm sigh. “I 
live there, and they have accepted me as a 
friend, even if I remain a stranger to those places.”

“And these woods have welcomed you?”

“They are wild, simpler than the wood of your 
home, but wild nevertheless. Artela has a special 
fondness for even such small forests as that 
which blossoms at Nenuin's borders.”

Andares felt a bit of delight in talking with 
this stranger. His entire body seemed to glow 
with joy as he spoke of the forest and his eyes 
burnished with the trees and their verdant boughs 
as his gaze fixed upon them. “You are her disciple then?”

“Aye, I serve her faithfully. Nothing in these 
woods would bring harm to Nenuin, and no man in 
Nenuin would bring harm to these woods.”

“But what of other woods,” Andares asked. “What 
of the Elderwood? It lays on your borders too.”

“Not as close,” the disciple replied with a 
gentle wag of one finger. The skin on his face 
drew taut as his gaze swept northward toward the 
dark green line in the distance. It seemed to 
Andares as if the very air congealed in that 
moment, and they had to struggle to continue on 
their way down the road, thrashing arms back and 
forth for several seconds before they broke free. 
“But... thankfully quiet for many years now. It 
has been a long time since we have had to fear the northern hills.”

“Truly? You have seen nothing then?”

“Not even the birds fear the north; I watch them 
and listen to their songs. They fear each other 
more than any monsters from that cursed place.” 
The disciple turned his head slightly to regard 
Andares with a worried expression. “Have you seen 
something? I have always known your kind could 
sense things mine cannot. It is a great privilege 
to meet you and share the road with you so short 
a way. I will believe whatever you tell me.”

“Perhaps one day you may yet meet another of my 
kind,” Andares offered. He cast his eyes back to 
the north and frowned. The sky seemed so bright 
it almost felt like a barren blue, bereft of even 
a simple consoling cloud. “As to what I have seen, I...”

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April 11, 708 CR


Andares stirred when he felt a hand touch his 
shoulder. He curled his fingers around the ivory 
handle of Anna-ithil-årda, but in the bleak 
morning sky he could still discern the outline of 
Anefistar. In a quiet whisper, Andares asked, “What is it?”

The scholar gingerly stepped back from the 
lean-to and cast a wary glance across the 
remnants of their fire from the night before. The 
dawn had come, but a leaden pallor spread across 
the sky from horizon to horizon. A cold breeze 
rushed down across the top of the lean-to, but 
they could feel its clawing touch at the edges of 
their sleeping pallets. “I heard their cries 
again,” Anefistar replied in a hoarse whisper. “I...”

Andares noted that his companion was already 
dressed in his robes and, even as he shifted out 
from beneath his cloaks and reached for his 
day-time tunics, saw that the hem of his robes 
were wet with dew. “What have you been doing? I 
warned you not to wander without my aid.”

“I only relieved myself, then came straight back. 
Your choose a very good spot to sleep. I can see for miles in every direction.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Nothing. But...” Anefistar shuddered, one hand 
gripping the end of his beard and pulling. “I heard it again.”

In the week since they had first sighted the 
Elderwood, they had traveled as swiftly as they 
could, spending each night if possible in a 
village where there would be some protection from 
the monsters that were ranging more freely than 
they had in generations. Twice more they had 
stumbled upon one of the four-armed, four-legged 
beasts, but their mindless attacks were 
predictable and easily thwarted. But at night, 
they could often hear the cries of things that 
reminded Andares very strongly of another dark time.

While they had journeyed through the jungles of 
Marzac, every night had surrounded them by 
horrible noises, of beasts croaking and crying, 
hissing and snarling, and then some screaming and 
some gorging. No matter how calm he'd kept his 
exterior in those trying days, he'd never been 
able to sleep soundly. How could they when the 
strange noises seemed ready to topple into their 
tent and attempt to make a meal of them?

Yet even in the comparable safety of the villages 
they had begun to hear horrible cries, especially 
of livestock milling, frightened and ready to 
break. Something ponderous, something merciless 
would lurk nearby, its aural shadow a menace to 
the senses, forcing his heart to pound more 
quickly, shifting always with such deliberate 
purpose that Andares found it difficult not to 
leap up and try to brace the terrible mysteries that kept out of sight.

Those terrible mysteries always left a splatter 
of blood and trails of foul smelling residue from 
where they had feasted on some cow or sheep the 
night before. The villagers cowered in fear at 
the sight of it, what soldiery then possessed 
begged Andares to lend them his arm for but one night more.

But haste drove him, and his sleep kept him from 
their aid. Still, with such things moving in the 
mists of night, Andares did not dare sleep out in the open.

Until last night when they found no village 
within reach. He had erected traps in a wide 
range about their small lean-to, each triggered 
by minor enchantments, but also by little sticks 
or fishing line that either he or Anefistar had 
brought with them. He had not intended to sleep, 
and for several hours he had kept watch from 
beneath the lean-to, feeding the fire to keep 
their enemies at bay. Even there he made use of 
his enchantments to make that fire particularly 
bright in every direction except toward the 
lean-to. He saw nothing come within the wide 
circle of light that stretched for over a hundred 
yards in each direction. But still he had heard 
the sound of things moving around them, large 
heavy things that gouged at the earth and dragged 
corpuscular appendages through the long grasses 
and shrubs dotting the roadside.

And yet, despite all of his precautions, at some 
point, his exhaustion must have gotten the better 
of him. “How long have you been awake?” he asked 
Anefistar as he quickly began changing into a fresh set of clothes.

“Not long after you fell asleep I believe,” 
Anefistar admitted with a grimace. “Dawn only just came.”

“Then we should keep moving. We do not want to 
spend another night on this road.”

“Of course, Velelya.”



They packed their gear quickly, and then Andares 
carefully removed his traps, noting with some 
dismay that not a single one of them had been 
tripped. He'd hoped for some sign of what their 
nightly haunts looked like, but all he could 
satisfy himself with was a faint, acrid miasma in 
the air. Unlike the night, the day arose 
quiescent with only the wind bending the grasses 
to vibrate his ears. A few hillocks showed signs 
of passage by some fetid thing, but there were no 
profusions of blood splattered and smeared as 
they had arisen to discover in each of the villages.

Once their gear was collected, they ate a small 
bit of bread and salted jerky on the way, their 
pace insistent and unremitting. Anefistar panted 
for breath after only a few hours, and as they 
had seen no other sign of the vile Elderwood 
beasts, they rested for a few minutes before 
continuing on their way. And while the sun never 
broke through the sepulchral canopy of clouds, 
they were able to continue in this manner until sometime in the afternoon.

The road began to descend from a ridge 
overlooking the low plain that swept down to the 
first fingers of the Elderwood feasting up along 
the rivulets of streams gorged from snow melt and 
rains toward rolling terrain with its own slender 
copses of trees and in the distance a town much 
larger than the villages they had passed by. 
Beyond it lay a forest whose lush boughs were 
pregnant with health and sanguine vitality. The 
contrast was a welcome one and it gave renewed energy to their steps.

And then, as they continued down the ridge, the 
Elderwood lost to sight, they passed between a 
long line of trees on either side and Andares 
unsheathed his ivory-handled blade. As the last 
of the metal left the scabbard with a wordless 
hiss, a bilious wretch leaped from one of the 
trees, arms spread so thin that they were nearly 
wings, while its faceless head writhed with short tentacles.

Anefistar screamed and ducked low, while the Åelf 
met this new enemy with a wide slash, cleaving 
one of its wings in a spray of yellowed mucous. 
The beast, its scream throaty and strident like 
glass scratching glass, continued toward Andares, 
idiotic tentacles grasping at his tunic and 
toward his neck. Andares ducked beneath their 
putrid grasp, and slashed again, this time 
catching the creature in its middle, flinging it 
to the ground. It gibbered as it lashed all of 
its varied incoherent limbs, struggling with a 
hellish fury to right itself and reach out for the two travelers.

Its backside blossomed with a pair of arrows and 
it screamed in fury, though neither Andares nor 
Anefistar could see any mouth with which to 
scream. From out of the copse of trees to the 
south thundered a fully armored knight on 
horseback. Iron hooves stopped just before the 
beast, and the knight drove a long lance through 
its black body, fixing it to the ground where it 
continued to helplessly writhe. A trio of riders, 
two bowmen, and a man in a long blue cloak, came 
out of the woods only a moment later.

Anefistar clutched at the edges of Andares's 
cloak as they watched the archers fire a pair of 
arrows into its head. The creature convulsed a 
moment more, then collapsed on the ground, its mindless rage spent in death.

“Thank you, maethor!” Anefistar gasped in relief. “We are in your debt.”

The knight yanked his lance free from the beast's 
chest, and then drove the tip into the earth to 
clean it. “What Velelya would wander these roads 
with such vile monsters about?”

“I am Anefistar, a scholar of Dûn Fennas, and 
this is my companion and protector, Andares-es-sebashou.”

The knight regarded them from beneath his visor 
while the blue cloaked man climbed off his steed 
and began sprinkling a sulfurous powder over the 
corpse. The two archers kept a wary eye on the 
other trees. “I see. A scholar and one of the 
fair folk. You are most welcome in Nenuin. I fear 
that we do not have much time to spare for 
Velelya. But we will escort you there. These 
lands are no longer safe. I am Sir Pieter 
Nephenhir, Justicar of Dokorath and protector of 
the lands of Nenuin. Step clear, Velelya, and let my friend tend to his duty.”

Both Anefistar and Andares stepped around the 
dead thing while the blue robed man smiled to 
them beneath a close-cropped beard a bright 
mahogany in hue. “Murias,” he said with a wave of 
one hand, returning his pouch of unguents to its 
place at his side. “It is a great honor to meet you both.”

“As we are honored to make your acquaintance,” 
Andares replied with silvery tones that seemed to 
die at the edges of the woods on either side of 
the road. “What are you doing to that foul thing, Heru Murias?”

“Burning it, or I will be in a moment, Velelya. 
If we leave it here like this, the scent will 
attract more of their kind. That's the last thing we need!”

“Then continue,” Andares urged even as he turned 
to face the knight. “Sir Nephenhir, how long have 
these Elderwood beasts been haunting your land?”

The knight lifted his visor to reveal a face 
hardened and stern with deep blue eyes, wide 
cheekbones, and a crisp short mustache of black 
hair. “Three weeks now they have pressed at our 
borders, killing our herds and attacking our 
farmers and shepherds. I have pressed many into 
service defending our lands, but there are only 
so many hands to wield a weapon.”

“Has no other land sent relief?” Anefistar asked in surprise.

“None,” Nephenhir ground his teeth together. “And 
the monsters only grow bolder.”

A sudden whoomp behind them made them jump a pace 
and turn. The body was now wreathed in flames, 
licking and rising up its surface in a triangular 
spire of yellowish-orange light. Murias rubbed 
his hands together for a moment, and then warmed 
them in the face of that conflagration. It only 
took a few seconds before the body charred and 
shriveled, revealing nothing beneath its flaccid skin, not even bone.

“Well,” Murias said as he backed away from the 
quickly diminishing fire, “shall we go home?”



The hamlet of Nenuin nestled on all sides of the 
road, which forked at its central square which 
was a marketplace filled more with soldiers than 
with merchants. The northern fork would 
eventually bring a weary traveler to Frondham 
even as it gradually left the Elderwood in the 
west. The southern fork would bring them to 
Delavia, sometimes called Rhuivir, and eventually 
to Salinon if they so chose. In the smaller roads 
between the homes and shops they had erected pens 
for livestock and they bleated and lowed their 
displeasure and fear without pausing no matter 
how much the shepherds and farmers tried to console them.

Beyond the hamlet, the brighter more welcoming 
wood loomed, but it too, on closer inspection, 
seemed melancholy, dreamy and brooding, branches 
wilting and flinching from that inescapable other 
to the northeast. Of all the eyes in the central 
square, only one other cast their forlorn gaze at 
that wood. Andares saw a middle aged man with the 
first glimmers of gray framing his ears and 
tingling his scraggly beard gazing with a 
miserable ache at that wood. One hand clenched at 
the faded green cloak draped over his shoulders 
while the other clutched a staff fashioned from a 
fallen branch, now smoothed so many times by 
repeated attention that is was almost glossy.

“Rothrir!” Sir Nephenhir called and the cloaked 
man spun on his heels. “Come show these Velelya 
where they can spend the night. They helped us 
fell another beast on the western road.”

“Another?” the forester's voice asked in such a 
plaintive ache that Andares felt his heart throb 
in shared misery. “Will the gods not aid us? Will 
our own people not come to our aid, but only two 
Velelya?” He sighed and stepped closer, rapping 
the end of his staff on the ground. “Forgive my 
words of acid, but I have seen so much of 
Artela's land desecrated by these hell-spat 
beasts. Especially you, Yára Velelya.” He bowed 
his head toward Andares and nearly came down to 
one knee. “That you have come among us now, is a 
sign that our prayers may yet be answered.”

Andares felt deeply touched by this gesture, and 
by the hardships these people were facing. “I 
will do what I can to aid you. I have... I have slain such evils before.”

“You will again if you stay here,” Sir Nephenhir 
said as he dismounted and clasped Andares on the 
shoulder with a mailed hand. “But Velelya should 
not stay here. Now go with Rothrir. He will find 
you something to sate your hunger and a place to rest your heads.”

“Will you not come and dine with us?” Anefistar asked.

“I have patrols to make and men to see. Tell 
Rothrir your plans and he shall make sure I am 
informed. You will be protected as long as you are in the lands of Nenuin.”

“We are in your debt, maethor,” Andares replied, 
before turning to follow after the disciple of 
Artela. Rothrir tapped his staff on the 
close-packed smooth stones of the street, his 
cheeks twitching at each glance of person, dog, 
or horse milling around the square. He led the 
two travelers through their midst down the 
southern fork until they came to an well-kept Inn 
with a blue-antlered stag's head painted onto the 
sign above the wide oaken door. The inside was 
warm but the common area was mostly empty apart 
from a pair of nessë trying to keep things clean 
in between trying to bludgeon each other with their brooms.

“Nessë!” Rothrir said with a clap of his hands, 
staff nestled in the crook of his elbow. “These 
two Velelya need rooms and food. Prepare both.”

The boys rushed off through a door to the back 
after making perfunctory genuflections toward the 
travelers. Rothrir sighed and settled onto a 
bench at a long table near the door. He gestured 
for them to do the same. Anefistar settled 
opposite him, forcing Andares to take the seat next to the disciple.

“Have the foul beasts entered the wood to your 
east?” Andares asked gently, one hand on the hilt 
of his blade to steady it and keep it from scraping against the wood floor.

Rothrir sighed, rheumy eyes brightening for a 
moment, but only a moment. “Nae, they have not 
ventured into Nan Tavas. Not yet anyway. But many 
of Artela's charges have fled anyway. It is...” 
he closed his eyes and swallowed, a visible 
tremor passing through his face. “It is so quiet there now.”

“Not even birds?” Anefistar asked in a soft voice 
as he leaned forward, pinching his beard between his chest and the table.

“They were the first to flee,” Rothrir replied 
even as his fingers curled more tightly about his 
walking staff. “Not even the owls remained. The 
deer followed them a day later, as did the 
wolves, and I have seen neither otters playing in 
the streams nor heard frogs serenading the night 
for a week now. We have been abandoned here by 
our own kind and now by my great Lady's!” He took 
a deep breath and then shook his head from side 
to side. He lifted his gaze to Andares, an 
unspoken request creasing every line and 
disturbing every strand of hair. “Forgive my foul 
words. But our cause is desperate and my hope is strained.”

“Justicar Nephenhir is ably leading the people of 
Nenuin,” Andares pointed out, though the 
heaviness in his heart could not bring him to 
claim anything greater than that. “Will no one 
come to your aid, or the aid of those living near 
Elderwood? Do you not have mages in Marigund 
experienced in driving back monsters? Are there 
no armies in Dûn Fennas who can march these roads and slaughter these beasts?”

“Mages in Marigund, aye, there are such mages. 
All of them still in Marigund!” Rothrir replied, 
his voice first filled with a barely concealed 
anger which quickly melted into a hopeless 
resignation. “Armies are aplenty in our land. All 
to the south and to the west!”

Aneifstar narrowed his eyes as he leaned in 
closer. “Have you not sent messages to Salinon 
seeking aid? It is two weeks to reach the city, less by horse.”

“We have, but neither they, nor Delvaia, nor 
Vineta have sent us aid. We do not know if our messages have reached them.”

Andares and Anefistar exchanged a long glance, 
the scholar's gaunt expression bearing a request 
once made, but now renewed. Andares curled his 
fingers about the smooth hilt of Anna-ithil-årda. 
How could he leave them alone? “I will speak with 
my people. We will aid where your own have not.”

“It will take over a month for you to reach your 
people,” Rothrir pointed with a faint, but empty 
smile. “And well more than that to bring them 
here. Will there be anyone to rescue then? Will 
there be any forests left not drenched in their evil?”

“My path leads me to Salinon,” Anefistar offered. 
“I am not unknown in that city; I can certainly 
carry a message of your plight there. Justicar 
Nephenhir seems quite capable of holding these 
monsters at bay for a few weeks more. That would 
be long enough, if Duke Otakar agrees to come to your aid.”

“If!” Rothrir heaved a sigh and tapped the side 
of the staff against the table, his eyes peering 
into its depths but seeing none of it. “He will not listen to a mere scholar.”

“I am willing to try,” Anefistar said with a 
renewed fire. “I have seen the road and seen these Elderwood beasts myself.”

Andares lowered his gaze, and then uncurled his 
fingers from the hilt of his ivory-handled blade. 
He rested those fingers on Rothrir's sagging 
shoulder and pulled him away from his ligneous 
contemplation. “You are right. A scholar alone 
will not be enough to convince the Duke to send 
his armies. If you believe your people can hold 
out a few weeks more, and if you can spare two 
horses, then that scholar will not be alone. I 
will go to Salinon and I will lend my voice to your cause.”

Rothrir turned and stared at him with ravenous 
hope. Even Anefistar brightened, his smile full 
of relief. “You would go there and leave aside your quest for our sake?”

“Delay it only, but yes, I will help,” Andares 
replied. “But we will need horses if we are to 
make the journey as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, Yára Velelya, you honor us! We are ever in 
your debt!” Rothrir leaped to his feet, and after 
pressing his hand to Andares's back and nearly 
touching the long braid of black hair, he rushed 
from the chamber, shouting behind him, “I will 
find your horses now! Wait here!”

Anefistar chuckled under his breath, before 
heaving a sigh of vast relief, as if he'd held it 
within his chest for weeks. The scholar regarded 
Andares with a warm smile, and a gentle nod of 
his head. No words passed between them as they 
reclined in the old Inn waiting for their food. 
Andares hated putting aside the needs of his 
people, but he could no longer do nothing. He 
just prayed that they would be in time to save 
Nenuin and defeat whatever evil seeped from Elderwood.


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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,

Charles Matthias
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