[Mkguild] Divine Travails of Rats - Pars IV. Infernus (h)

[C. Matthias]

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

Pars IV: Infernus

(h)

Saturday, May 12, 708 CR

Charles shivered as he crouched on the narrow 
strip of gray slipping through a hole in reality. 
He could almost feel the spectral touch of 
Tallakath wrapped about his limbs, and the horror 
of it left him only by degrees. The ancient Åelf 
stood behind him implacable and silent. A few 
minutes without seeing such terror was all he 
yearned for, but the unreality of the bridge was 
too great to give him even that surcease.

The rat grabbed his tail in both hands and rubbed 
his thumbs across the short strands of fur 
dotting its otherwise scaly surface. Warm to the 
touch, a mark of the beast he had long ago 
accepted with delight and a measure of pride, it 
soothed him to hold it. He wiggled the tip up and 
down so that it brushed across his snout and whiskers.

For a moment he imagined that it was not his tail 
he touched with his nose but his children. Their 
bright faces all eager to press against his own, 
each overjoyed to see their father and to be in 
his arms. He yearned to hold them and press their 
little bodies with wiggling limbs and tails 
against his chest and feel every breath they took 
and every laughing squeak. And how he wished it were Ladero he could hold.

The rat sighed and lowered his tail to the bridge 
before straightening. He did not turn, but felt 
the Åelf's presence at his back. “What shall we see at the next realm?”

Qan-af-årael's reply was gentle despite its 
severity. “It is the realm of the mad one, and 
that is what you should expect to see and feel – 
madness. Everyone we see there will be mad. Talk 
to none of them, for they will try to drown you in their madness.”

“Surely they cannot all be mad? Not everyone was a prisoner of the pits.”

“Perhaps those who only recently arrived have not 
succumbed to the madness. But can you tell them apart?”

Charles pondered that for a moment and then 
shrugged. “I do not know. I just know I have to 
keep going if I am to reach Beyond.” He set one 
paw before the other, and the non-reality beyond 
the edge of the bridge twisted around them like a 
lens coming into focus. His steps carried him 
closer and closer to the ever narrowing point of 
the bridge. He sucked in his breath waiting for the end.

The sensation of all things becoming microscopic 
returned for a brief moment before he stumbled 
into a colorful landscape overlaid with wave 
after wave of swaying grass, flowers, mushrooms, 
and ferns. He stared in bewildered awe at the 
vivacious colors, each of them bold and sharp 
with contrast, the reds a pure red as deep as 
blood, the blue as peerless as cobalt, the green 
as rich as jade, and every other shade each 
striking with such distinction that he could 
almost see lines marking the boundary of each 
with each other. The flowers towered above him, 
their fragrances overwhelming him with a 
sweetness so strong that he felt nauseous. 
Mushrooms strove to a purple sky dashed with 
golden clouds, their caps swollen like a 
watchtower cupola and their base as hard as mountain stone.

Charles stood upon a patch of bare earth that 
felt as smooth as glass despite being pockmarked 
with little roots and stones. A breeze rushed 
over him that seemed hot on his left and cold on 
his right. A sticky miasma seemed to coat the 
inside of his mouth from his incisors to the rear 
molars. All around him the susurrus of the wind 
and brushing fronds of petal and pistol carried a 
suggestion of chattering voices, screams, and 
hysterical laughter, all blended so tightly that 
he could not discern which was which.

Wincing, Charles narrowed his eyes and attempted 
to cover his ears with his hands. Even though he 
pressed his palms over the holes – he felt the 
prick of his head fur on the soft backs of his 
ears as the jabs of needless – the strange 
discordant flow of voices penetrated as if they 
were breathed into his mind from some other 
direction. He grunted and tried to scan the 
overlarge garden for some signs of where he might 
go, but every direction appeared the same as any other.

Qan-af-årael appeared a moment later only a few 
feet behind him. The Åelf's countenance twisted 
ever so slightly as the ground beneath him 
buckled as if the stones, dirt, and roots were 
all as malleable as taffy. Their eyes found each 
other, and the first thing Charles noted was that 
the colors in his friend's guise were all muted 
in comparison to the realm. He could look at the Åelf without discomfort.

“Please tell me you know the way to the next 
bridge. This place doesn't feel...” Charles 
stopped and blinked, ears lifted higher in 
surprise at the sound of his own voice. The words 
came from his throat but the pitch was off; even 
for a rat it was far too high and light. The 
intonation and inflection that he heard from 
within his chest and through his ears was clearly 
feminine. His paws lifted to his chest, but he 
found nothing unexpected there. His tunic, the 
cape about his shoulders, and smooth chest 
beneath was as he'd always known them to be.

The Åelf's expression was quizzical, even as he 
took an experimental step, one eye watching the 
ground bend beneath him as if he were standing on 
the skin of a large drum. Charles sucked in his 
breath and asked, “Do I sound like my wife?”

“No,” he replied, and whatever oddities seemed to 
exist in this place were for the breath of time 
it took for the sound to strike his ears and 
register in his mind completely annulled. “But 
this place does not always show us the same 
things. The Bridge... I do not feel it yet. I will tell you when I do.”

“Thank you,” Charles said, and winced at the 
hearing what almost seemed his wife's voice from 
his throat. He rubbed his paws together, and took 
a tentative step into the tall grass. The flowers 
may tower above him but the blades of grass only 
came to his middle. The ground which bent beneath 
the Åelf's boots seemed solid, if extraordinarily 
smooth. And then he took another step and felt as 
if he'd shoved a knife through his foot.

“Ah!” Charles leaped backward then fell onto his 
side, face pressing into the ground which flowed 
up across his snout as if it were the surface of 
a still lake. And yet, though his eyes were 
pushed into the dirt, he could dimly see 
something stretching into limitless depths before 
him. It was faint and gray, a dull color drained 
of all vitality. He could see no edge to it but 
it had shape. Something in its manner suggested a 
disc of impossible width and breadth. His gaze 
was drawn along as if by an arm, spinning about a 
central point. It sucked at him like a lodestone, 
vanishing deep within itself in a place where no 
detail or differentiation could be made. All 
substance, all thought, all being, funneled into 
a mass from which there was no escape and into which he felt himself drawn.

The maelstrom vanished as he felt a hand grip his 
shoulder and pull him upright into the brightness 
of the over-sized field. Charles gasped and swung 
his limbs, eyes wild as the vibrancy struck him. 
But they found Qan-af-årael and settled there as 
in an oasis. Charles stilled himself, stretched 
out a hand, and gripped the ancient one's robe, 
savoring the soft feel of the fabric and the way 
it caught his claws. This felt right.

Together they pulled him to his feet, and he 
winced anew at the strange texture of the ground. 
“I feel like I'm either standing on ice or 
knives. I wish I had boots!” He grimaced at the 
sound of his voice which now croaked like a frog. 
Even some of the words seemed to be more animal noises than actual speech.

“It is not real. Hold on to me and you will be able to walk.”

Charles held on to the robe long enough to grab 
his sleeve with his other hand, and then 
side-by-side the pair began to walk through the 
grass. The ground felt odd beneath his feet and 
continued to change with each step. Sometimes it 
was soft as if he really were walking upon the 
ground; other times it was hot like coals, and 
then sharp as blades, and then again smooth as 
glass. When the pain came he clutched more 
tightly to the Åelf who did not seem affected by the randomness of sensation.

Nor was it only through his feet he felt so 
assaulted. The blades of grass felt like trailing 
claws, soft feathers, cold iron, brittle dirt, 
jagged clay, supple leather, porcupine quills, 
silky hair, snakeskin, and many more things he 
could not describe. Charles flinched from their 
touch after only ten paces and huddled close to 
the Åelf like a child pressing to his father in the midst of a strange crowd.

The grass parted after another thirty paces. 
Above them swayed the flowers and mushrooms as a 
foul and sweet-smelling wind rushed just above 
their heads. The whispered glimmer of laughter 
and screaming danced at the edge of his hearing. 
The syrupy fragrance poured from each petal like 
a bottle of perfume emptied onto his head. A 
burning taste lingered on his tongue.

Beyond the grass they were met with a sight more 
remarkable and more unbearable than tall flowers. 
The ground, if it could be called that, curved 
upward and then backward before breaking into 
trailing paths that spread in every direction and 
at every orientation. And yet, though Charles 
could discern actual ribbons of land curving in 
the distance without horizon, each ribbon seemed 
impossibly wide, as if it contained a world 
infinite in each dimension, all of them folded 
one atop another. He stared for only a few 
seconds before the attempt to place each piece of 
ribbon in proportion to every other piece left him with a sharp headache.

The rat groaned and lowered his eyes to the 
ground which was too bright a contrast in green, 
brown, pink, blue, and red between a layer of 
moss growing over broad slabs of vibrant granite 
suffused with various minerals. Frustrated, he 
just closed his eyes completely, tightening his 
grip on the Åelf's robe. “Guide me, please. I cannot look.”

His voice boomed in his ears and he winced, 
lowering them against the back of his head. He 
felt a soft touch from the Åelf's hand on his 
own, and then they kept walking. He set one foot 
ahead of the other tentatively, hoping for once 
he would feel the ground as it was.

For several long minutes he endured oddity after 
oddity. His toes felt sore from all of the 
changes they suffered; from bitter cold to 
searing heat, from ice smooth to razor sharp, 
from gooey soft to steel hard, and from 
desiccation to hoariness. Charles attempted to 
block the sensations by willing his feet turn to 
stone but even that accomplished nothing. When 
his feet brushed against each other he could 
indeed tell that he had made them stone, but the 
myriad touches continued, each one different than 
the last. He pondered if he could use his Sondeck 
to fight back the sensations, but how to even begin?

He attempted to guess what he would feel with 
each step. Sticks, stones, mud, moss, glass, ice, 
fire, steel, coals, brass, and anything else he 
could think of that he might recognize through 
the callused flesh of his feet and the prick of 
his toe claws. At first he was always wrong. He 
sought some pattern in the order in which each 
sensation came, but after more paces than he 
could count he abandoned any such thought. Why, 
in a place where the ground did not feel as it 
should, where scents were not as they ought to 
be, and where everything appeared wrong and the 
land itself was impossible, should he expect an order to any of it?

Even as he continued to guess with a near perfect 
record of failure, one paw gripping tightly the 
robe of his Åelf guide, his ears danced with a 
melody which cavorted in the air as if the entire 
world were speaking to him. The longer he kept 
his eyes closed the clearer the sound became to 
him. There was no rhythm to the melody which 
seemed to at times be played by a flute and at 
others by some stringed instrument. And there 
were moments when he felt certain this strange, 
sinuous, and almost innocuous melody was 
performed by shattering rocks beneath a hammer. 
That too gave way to the strident sensation of 
claws dragged against glass. But through all of 
those changes he could still discern a true 
melody, even if it was one that seemed to have neither beginning nor end.

To the rat's surprise, the more he listened to 
the melody, the more he let it seep into his 
thoughts, the better he was able to guess what 
sensation he would feel beneath his feet. Now 
when he heard a fragment of tune he knew that he 
would feel dry leaves between his toes. A upswing 
in the melody guided him to a hard iron slab. A 
stuttering murmur signaled the chill of ice. And 
a sforzando tone announced that he was about to be stabbed.

Charles discovered that this sensation, not only 
predicted by the melody wending its way through 
his thoughts, could also be altered by pausing 
just a moment to allow the melody to change. He 
experimented haphazardly at first, by making a 
brief pause as if he were about to stumble 
whenever the sforzando notes struck. Something 
else would always follow, and soon he no longer 
felt the jabbing pain of standing on knives.

Not only could he avoid that anguish, but he soon 
learned how to avoid the burning of coals and the 
freezing of ice. He was, in some strange way, 
dancing to the music of the world. In that dance, 
a strange sort of conforming to a meander without 
meter and to a pace without purpose, Charles 
found he could determine what sensations he would 
feel beneath his feet. Not only could he avoid 
those that were unpleasant but he could dictate 
the sensations he actually wanted. Should he 
desire dry leaves to crunch between his toes so 
he might know the pleasure of a warm autumn 
afternoon he merely had to step with a drifting 
theme that floated ever down. When he sought the 
soft loam of freshly turned earth a pastoral lilt 
sufficed. And should he seek the solace of stone 
a three note question amidst the cascade of melody would guide him true.

Charles delighted in this for a time though the 
length of time was lost to him. Mere seconds of 
discovery and only few steps did he make, or had 
it been hours and he'd been dancing with abandon 
in a forest glade of his imagination? He did not 
know. All he knew was that at some point when the 
melody made him wait longer than he liked before 
settling on the motif he desired that he was no 
longer gripping Qan-af-årael's robe.

Charles blinked open his eyes and screamed as 
light poured in like water sucked down a 
sinkhole. He slapped his hands over his face and 
opened one of them a sliver, peering out between 
his fingers at the tiny cleft of the world before 
him. Even that sliver stung but through it he 
began to make what sense there was to be had.

The rat found himself on a small moss-covered 
path that rose up before him, curved over his 
head, until it joined itself back again. The 
world beyond his little wheel was tilted at an 
odd angle so that it seemed he would fall to his 
death should he step outside the wheel. Charles 
blinked several more times until he could finally 
lower his hands from his face. The music that had 
guided him, once so present to him, now seemed 
absent and he had to strain to hear it.

No matter which way he turned he could see no 
trace of his guide. He cupped his paws to either 
side of his snout and bellowed, “Qan-af-årael!” 
This time, to his surprise, he could barely hear 
his own voice. It was as if his ears and his 
throat were on mountain peaks standing on 
opposite sides of Metamor Valley. Only the 
faintest of echoes of that shout remained.

“Qan-af-årael! Help me! I'm lost!” Charles 
shouted again, but as before it was as if the 
words were stolen in the air before he could even utter them. “Qan-af-årael!”

A strangely appetizing smell touched his nose and 
he found his head turning back into the wheel. 
Right in front of him, along the path, he felt 
all of his animal senses drawing him. His jaw 
gaped, whiskers twitching, and tail dancing 
behind him as he found himself leaning forward, 
taking step after step along the path. The ground 
twisted beneath him, the wheel turning, even as 
the world beyond the wheel rocked back and forth 
like a boat on the sea. Before he quite knew what 
was happening he had fallen to all fours and 
clawed at the ground with both hands and paws.

The rat felt helpless as he continued to run 
forward. Any slight turn he managed to push his 
body to take was punished with the sensation of 
stepping on knives. And, as his pace quickened, 
he became aware of not only the allurement that 
was always only a few paces ahead of him, but he 
could feel a heat building behind him, as of an 
oven following behind, the bristling snarl of 
flame licking across black iron grates, ravenous 
and roaring as it grew hotter and hotter.

The rat scampered faster and faster, the world 
outside his little path tossing back and forth. 
Before him his whiskers felt and his nose savored 
a delectable flavor of indescribable desire. His 
posture pushed him forward, legs and arms 
shortening, body stretching, and back arching. He 
could not make himself think of anything except 
obtaining that which was just before him other 
than escaping the fire that raged just behind 
him. His tail sizzled and he dug his claws into 
the ground and pushed faster, uncomfortable in 
the strange bindings that bounced along his back and legs.

Those bindings eventually tangled in his 
hindquarters and made him trip, smacking his 
snout into the ground. The wheel rushed forward 
for a moment before settling back down, as he 
kicked his legs and scrambled to get free. 
Rolling onto his side, the rat blinked at the 
dark brown thing wrapped about his hind paws, and 
the strange black thing dangling from his 
shoulders, as well as the other brown thing 
wrapped over his chest. He bent his head forward 
and nibbled at it to get it off.

The rat just managed to wriggle his legs free and 
gnaw through part of the thing clinging to his 
forelimbs when a strange but pleasant warmth 
filled him from whiskers to tail. For a brief 
moment all fear of the fire behind him or the 
inducement before him was washed free and his 
mind, stretched thin between those two extremes 
was suddenly vibrant again. It was like he was 
being loved. He took a deep breath, staring down 
at himself and his beastly posture, and began to tremble.

My name is Charles Matthias.

He repeated this thought several times while 
forcing his body to take on its most human shape. 
He pulled his trousers back up and secured them 
over his tail, then inspected the damage down to 
his shirt. The tunic had been chewed through 
along his right breast up to the side, but the 
lacing at his sternum still held it together. And 
with his cloak drawn over his chest none would 
notice the damage. Slowly, Charles stood up and surveyed his surroundings.

The heady scent that had rendered him for a short 
moment a beast in mind and almost wholly in body 
returned. He gagged and put a hand over his nose, 
casting his eyes around the wheel of grass and 
dirt, and then out at the landscape beyond the 
edge which seemed miles away. The scent slipped 
through his fingers and his nostrils flared, his 
legs and back beginning to buckle, the 
compulsion, the raw need to chase after this scent already eating at his mind.

With what will Charles had left he turned and jumped out of the wheel.

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

Charles Matthias
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