[Mkguild] Divine Travails of Rats - Pars III. Descensum (t)

[C. Matthias]

Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx

Pars III: Descensum

(t)


Saturday, May 12, 708 CR


Charles looked around in confusion; the realm of 
dreams was far from what he had expected. It was 
neither nightmarish, though most certainly gothic 
enough, nor a bright and cheery place. It was, 
above all else, a rather bland admixture of gray 
and black, like a forest after a fire. On all 
sides, stunted, twisted trees blocked his sight 
beyond a dozen feet. Naked branches clutched at 
the cloud-streaked, moonlit sky overhead and 
clacked like desiccated bones against an unfelt 
gale. A single path of crushed stone, only 
slightly less ashed gray than the surrounding 
forest, meandered through the twisted brush.

Where was the tree, Charles thought. He needed to 
find the tree, because that was where he would find Ladero!

And where in the hells was Malger?

Not yet. You must go to her, and ask, first. You 
must draw her focus upon you. Distracted, the 
path can be sought without her wiles hiding it away.

With a moue of frustration Charles turned and 
began striding along the path, clutching his 
black traveling cloak about his shoulders. He did 
not know how long he walked; it seemed like days, 
or hours, the passage of time defied his senses 
while his thoughts tumbled and jumbled about, 
focusing more on his goal than his guide.

“Pleasant dream,” Malger opined at some point 
during his long hike, wandering at his side as if 
the marten had always been there. The flute that 
dangled at his hip glistened in the gray pall of 
the dream realm so starkly it seemed a lighthouse beacon on a clear night.

“What is this place, minstrel?” Charles groused. 
If this was the vaunted Dream Malger spoke so 
highly of and sought each night the fop could well enough keep it.

“The Dream.” Malger's tone was insufferably 
affable, as if the gloom and skeletal knackering 
of the branches was as common to him as the burbling of a brook.

“Bright damn place.” Charles gave him a sour 
sidelong look. He figured he would've been taken 
to some mighty, heavenly temple or facsimile of a 
king's audience; not trudging a dusty path in an ashen forest.

“Well, perhaps I should have coached you to 
embrace a more pleasant view in your dream?” 
Malger offered with a lift of his furry brows. “A 
vision, perhaps, somewhat less dramatic?” They 
stepped out onto the top of a towering spire of 
stone up which the path through the bracken lead. 
In all directions the world fell away into vague 
forms of mountain and valley but all were below 
and above were only clouds and the ever-present 
moon. Atop the tor was a circle of mighty stones, 
rough-hewn and primitive, in the center of which lay a flat stone slab.

It was a sacrificial altar from ancient times 
before Eli's son tamed the barbaric ways of men. 
Charles felt his upper lip curl at the pagan 
sight but he could not stop his feet their 
forward progress. Malger seemed not concerned in 
the slightest about the portent of the place they 
approached. Within the standing stones hearts 
were stilled and blood flowed in the name of ancient, heathen gods.

“This is not my dream,” Charles hissed.

His ears were backed when a voice croaked, like 
boulders grinding together in the depths of a 
mountain, “The petitioner defines not the venue.” 
A shadow, formless as mist, flowed around and 
through the standing stones opposite them. It 
spilled up to the heathen altar even as Charles 
and his guide came to stand opposite. Crashing 
against the stone the darkness roiled upward, 
like smoke suddenly stalled by a column of cold 
air, and quite suddenly took on a beastly, dark form.

The Star-Eyed Crone, queen of Ravens, totem of 
the lost Methratii of ancient Sondeshara. In the 
aeons when the Sondeckis were young, when Pharos 
ruled from their bejeweled empires of the desert 
sands, the dark cabal of the Methratii spread 
darkness across the sands. Their queen was the 
Raven, thief of souls, in whose eyes the stars of 
the Cosmos were born. Charles felt a shiver of 
terror race up his spine, lifting the sparse 
coarse hair of his tail and bush up his hackles. 
The Sondeckis had vanquished the Methratii, 
ending the rites of blood and stone!

This is the guise the pagan witch chooses! The 
Crone is no more. Her faithful – no more! Quell 
your fear, for the sake of your son!

Gritting his teeth Charles fought back the heart-crushing fear.

“You have come?” Nocturna croaked in the raven's terrifying voice.

Taking a breath Charles raised his gaze to look 
up at her, for she stood easily twice Malger's 
height, who was a head taller than Charles. 
Charles fell back a pace, tail dropping and eyes 
wide, as he gazed upon the full majesty of an 
entity he had forsaken all belief, and trust, in 
long ago. There was simply not enough room in 
creation for one of Her, much less an entire Pantheon of them.

And, yet, before him she towered, black as night. 
Grinding his teeth Charles steeled himself and 
strode forward, stopping before the slab that 
stood between them, his shadow brushing against 
with the moon at his back. “I have!” He forced 
out, his lungs shriveled in his breast as if his 
chest was caught in the tight fist of a titan, 
slowly squeezing the life from his frail mortal 
coil. “I seek one who has passed beyond!”

The crone towered above him, her visage cold and 
crushing. No stars glimmered in the sky tenanted 
only by the gibbous moon, but within those 
depthless black eyes stars glinted like diamonds 
in pitch. “One who has passed beyond the veil of 
Night, beyond dreams.” Her hand reached, thin and 
raptoral, black talons glistening as they clawed 
at the air as if to grasp the unseen with a bony hiss. “Beyond my grasp.”

Though his heart strove to pound itself free of 
his breast Charles strove on, unable to run even 
had he the thought to do so. “But you know where 
he may be found!” He had to learn forward against 
the mere weight of her presence as if it may bowl 
him flat where he stood. He clutched the heavy 
black of his traveling cloak tight about his shoulders.

“I do.” The crone bobbed her black feathered head 
slowly, favoring a groveling subject with her 
regard. “You come before me, to seek, to ask of 
me a bequest?” She leaned forward with each word, 
beak clicking and croaking voice rolling across 
Charles like an icy wind, until he found himself 
staring up the length of that dark beak like a 
sword hovering an inch from his nose poised to 
thrust. “You ask that I seek to find him?”

Charles' throat went desert dry as he felt 
himself drawn toward the unending cosmic depths 
within the frightening apparition's star-strewn 
eyes. He had to swallow, violently, twice before 
he could find his voice again. “To bring him 
back, mistress!” He rasped, clutching at his 
shirt. “I beg, please! Bring him back to me, that 
I may know him one last time!” Clutching his arms 
around himself for fear that the crone's regard 
might blast his dream-self to tatters he forced 
himself to hold her unwavering gaze. “To say 
farewell, to know a father's love – one last moment!”

The foundations of the bridge are laid. Where she 
cannot reach other paths can lead. Keep her focus 
upon what she desires until the path is opened and she cannot stop you.

Abruptly the crone stood, towering above him once 
more, her wings sweeping outward and casting the 
far side of the henge into darkness only vaguely 
defined by huge feathers. Charles felt his body 
sag forward and found himself resting a hand 
wearily against the stone. It was cold; glacially 
cold. He quickly snatched his hand away. “To 
bring him back from the Beyond place, from His 
grasp unto yours,” she intoned; not 
admonishingly, but to clarify his bequest. “A 
task of greatness you ask of me. The price of a soul is steep.”

“A soul lost can be found, mistress!” Charles 
cried out hastily, lest her regard turn from him 
to other things worthy of a god's attention. “I 
seek it, I understand the cost!”

“Do you?” Charles was sent reeling by the sudden 
explosion of sound. Even Malger, standing 
silently a short distance away, flinched and 
quailed at the outburst. The bracken ringing the 
tor cracked and rattled and the clouds vanished 
from the sky overhead. “He does not relinquish 
His claim lightly, seeker, even to one such as I.”

Steeling himself, Charles pushed his bowed back 
straight once more. “Ask what you will!”

Snapping her mantled wings down with a thump of 
heat she leaned forward so swiftly Charles braced 
himself for some dramatic end to his quest. Only, 
he felt a mere touch, deadly sharp but 
deceptively light, in the hollow of his chin. “Kneel.”

Charles lifted his chin a little but the prick of 
one talon, easily as long as his hand from wrist 
to fingertip, pressed upward more solidly. “Mistress?”

Kneel, but know that she is false. She cannot 
reach your lost one. Only... patience, her 
attention is still upon her goal and not yours.

Charles' heart skipped and, momentarily, stilled 
and his knee began to bend but something within 
him, deeper than his overwhelming need, deeper 
than his love for his lost son, hardened him 
against the baleful, star-filled gaze and the 
deadly threat of that talon at his throat. He 
straightened his knee and from that deep place uttered a single word. “No!”

She knows not what she asks. She can never truly 
embrace your soul, kneel or not.

“NO! My soul is given to Him, and only He can claim it!”

Rather than slice him gullet ear to ear the talon 
simply trailed upward, and then drew away like 
the teasing blade of an assassin toying with 
their prey. “The price of a soul is a soul in 
return, seeker.” With a snicker of hard edged 
bone she laced her fingers together over her 
stomach and stared coldly down upon him. “Have 
you one to offer, to ask such a boon, and yet be 
so unwilling to lay forth your own?”

You do. Look, you have with you that which can be offered in exchange.

Charles looked down at a weight in one arm and 
found, safely tucked into the fatherly cradle of 
his arm, a sleeping child; a rat child. His 
child. He blinked in surprise, for a moment his 
thoughts completely scattered. With his empty 
hand he reached up to brush his eldest son's 
brow. Could he trade one son for another? One 
bereft of the Sondecki gift for the one stolen from him with that inheritance?

There is no trade, for this only opens the door. 
The pathway is very nearly before you! Do not 
question what she desires, lest her attention waver.

I cannot! Even in deceit! Charles fought against 
himself, but his body moved of its own accord, 
his voice issuing forth from a throat he gave no 
breath to. “I do,” he intoned, shifting the 
slumbering burden into his arms and stepping 
toward the stone. Kneeling before the stone, he gently laid his burden upon it.

The crone is blind!

Charles felt his heart throb and wilt within his 
breast, growing brittle even as he watched 
himself, unable to stay his reaching arms as they 
bore his eldest son away. The world grayed at the 
edges of his vision as he laid little Charles, 
his namesake, upon the cold stone of the blood 
altar, its etched grooves eager to drink life 
afresh from the rat's willing sacrifice. He 
sensed the crone, the Raven Queen, dark goddess 
of the Methratii; Nocturna torturing him with a 
story torn from the legends of his own 
birthright, leaning close over him. A shadow 
greater than her presence loomed about him, 
narrowing his gaze until he could only see the 
slumbering visage of his son. And then, that too, 
disappeared in darkness with a sharp pain lancing through his ear.

----------

Tuesday, June 22, 724 CR – Twilight


Charlie glared across the short space separating 
him from his sire, a cauldron simmering in his 
gaze. Charles looked back upon it calmly, with 
resignation. Slowly he raised a hand, somewhat 
surprised to see his fingers shaking. It had been 
nearly fifteen long, torturous years since he had 
looked back upon that moment, which was still as 
crystal clear as an event only moments past. 
“Aye, my son, in my blindness, I saw nothing but 
the goal I sought. But, you will see, you should 
already know, She sought you for you, not a bargaining chip or prize.”

“More like a fish,” Charlie spat, his body fairly 
vibrating with renewed fury. Thus far he had 
seen, and had borne witness to, the exact vision 
four times, each time suffering only minor 
variation. Like an omen, knelled four times, 
before the fall of the headsman's axe. “A prize 
tossed about for the whims of everyone but me!”

“Charlie, Charlie, hear me out, please?” When the 
youth rose he was somewhat shocked to find that 
his sire had risen first, and far more swiftly. 
“I can bar the door, son, and speak my peace.” 
The elder rat muttered flatly, but with 
contrition in his voice. “I wish... honestly and 
in truth? I wish I had spoke to you of this when 
you were five, or ten, not on the cusp of manhood 
and filled with half dreams and broken memories.” 
Charles relaxed his posture slightly when Charlie 
also relaxed, realizing that he could run, again.

But to where?

“Now is what you have, Charles. Make good of it.” 
Crossing his arms Charlie angrily sank back down upon the bench.

----------

And this brings Pars III to an end!  I hope to share Pars IV ere long.

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

Charles Matthias
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