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

[C. Matthias]

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

Pars IV: Infernus

(i)

Saturday, May 12, 708 CR

The world whirled around him so that he could not 
tell what bit of ground he saw spinning around 
him was actually the ground and which was the 
sky. Lush vegetation of so many colors that it 
hurt to stare rushed past as he hurled aimlessly. 
Trees with roots spread in every direction swam 
past him with their leafy boughs like a man doing 
the backstroke. Giant fish bounced along after 
them, flapping their fins as if striking drums. 
Streams of color like ribbons of light which 
smelled like frying fat and decaying eggs bounced 
between each and then spun around Charles, 
sending him spinning on his side so that he had 
to close his eyes to keep from throwing up.

Air grasped him from every direction. Things 
struck him and pushed him along, slicing as they 
went so he was sure half of his tail had been 
chopped off. Something wet smacked him in the 
face and chest and for a moment he thought it his 
own blood. He screamed and flailed, hoping for 
any purchase at all in the madness of his fall.

And then, for no apparent reason at all, the air 
around him slowed and he felt something soft 
gliding past his whiskers. Charles opened his 
eyes. Little petals of bright yellow drifted in 
the air as if a child had blown them there from a 
flower picked on a lazy summer afternoon. He 
stared for a moment in wonder, stretching out one 
hand. The petals brushed against the pink flesh 
of his fingers, broke and shattered like pollen into a scintillating dust.

After passing through the petals, Charles looked 
around him to see where he was. There was no 
where since there was no sense to be made of 
anything he saw. But a seeming short distance to 
his right he saw a broad field of wildflowers 
that from his vantage looked normal. He waved his 
arms as if swimming to angle himself in that 
direction. And to his surprise it worked. A 
moment later and he was setting his paws on the 
ground. He grimaced as he felt hard stone where 
he should have felt grass, but he would not risk listening to the music again.

He did not breathe too deeply on landing, rather 
he glanced at his tail to make sure it was not 
shorn in two. The pink flesh was whole without 
any sign of injury. He gripped his tail, pressed 
it to his snout, and was comforted by the 
scraggly smoothness he always felt from it. At 
least he was real and felt as he should. Charles 
lowered his tail, sighed, and glanced around 
wondering what might have happened to his guide.

The field he landed in was rich with wildflowers 
of red, white, yellow, blue, and violet blossoms. 
An eerie breeze of such gentleness flowed through 
the meadow but its direction changed moment to 
moment as if in a tempest. The meadow was framed 
by trees whose roots were bushy with leaves and 
whose branches were gnarled and coated in dirt, 
as if they had grown upside down from the air and 
were now burrowing into the meadow. Beneath one 
of them a colorful awning had been built from 
poles with red stripes down the sides. Sitting 
under the awning was a dark-skinned man in a black robe.

Charles gaped in surprise as he stared at the man 
in the robe not only because he was the first 
person he'd seen here, but also because he was 
familiar to him. Unlike Craig or Wessex, this was 
a man he'd known from his life in Sondeshara 
before he'd ever even heard of a place called 
Metamor. How often he had dreaded standing in the 
shaded market squares while this man asked them 
question after question to force their minds. 
Unlike most Sondeckis he had never been a 
Follower and had been content with the 
consolations of philosophy and abiding by the 
call of justice he felt from his Sondeck. A 
Master, a man of erudition, and one of Charles' 
instructors, he had died from old age ere Charles fled the Order.

Now he seemed advanced in years but with a 
renewed vitality. The skin of his cheeks and head 
were smooth as if freshly shaven. Long ears 
framed a wide face with wide-set, penetrating 
eyes which remained closed. Hands with 
spidery-long fingers covered his knees. The robe, 
black, had upon the breast the familiar symbol of 
upturned white sword in a palm inscribed in a red 
shield. His posture appeared relaxed, but from it 
the man could leap and cleave the air with a 
thunderclap. Or so he had once shown many years ago.

Charles walked toward him and saw that the man's 
eyes were closed. The rat took a deep breath and 
stopped seven paces away. “Master Hindemar,” he 
called, only to wince as his voice sounded like a 
woman's voice again. “Master Hindemar!”

The face turned ever so slightly, but not quite 
in his direction. “Hindemar is merely a 
collection of sounds to indicate that something 
other than myself seeks the attention of my mind. 
Or so its sounding would suggest if I paid any 
trust to such things. Rather than the word of 
some other whose existence cannot be proven, it 
is more likely that I am, for the purpose of 
testing ratiocination, imagining a vocal 
emanation originating from outside myself. To 
provide verisimilitude to this imagination, and, 
concurrently though not primarily, allow for the 
possibility that an actual other than myself is 
participating, I shall provide my responses to 
this apparently imagined inquiry with the use of 
my tongue, or at least, what I imagine to be my tongue.”

The voice, the scholarly enunciation, and 
dizzying circumlocution were familiar to Charles, 
and for a moment it was as if one of his teachers 
had come back from the dead. And then, an upward 
glance at the upside down trees recalled where he 
was. The woman's voice resonated from his throat 
as he said, “I'm really here standing in front of 
you, Master Hindemar. It is I, your old student, 
Charles Matthias of the Sondeckis.”

“An identity to this emanation? If offered as 
evidence of a separate existence it is 
insufficient. The operation of thought is capable 
of providing an identity to offer verisimilitude 
to its imaginative construct. To borrow from the 
vaults of memory is also possible, but the 
Charles Matthias I recall was a man and did not 
possess the aural characteristics suggested by 
this apparent voice which has more of woman about 
it. But neither is this proof of the existence of 
the other for the mind is very capable of 
engaging in error when presenting ideas to the self.”

One of the man's hands lifted and a single long 
finger was held up though not toward the rat, as 
if to bid him silence a moment longer. “Because 
of the obviousness of the ploy, and its inherent 
weakness, I would like to forestall the apparent 
other from offering up recollections to 
demonstrate its veracity. Any memory that it 
could recall to convince me is a memory my own 
mind will possess and so the assumption of my 
imagination conjuring this conversation is also 
satisfied. Nor would stating a memory that I do 
not have because the mind is fully capable of 
developing ideas in absence of sense perceptions.”

Charles felt a bit flustered as he tried to 
follow the chain of logic that was presented 
before him in Hindemar's rapid Sondesh. His nose 
tickled with an earthy scent as if somebody were 
cooking some sort of meat nearby. He brushed his 
paw over his whiskers and tried again. “Then I 
won't, Master. But I am who I say I am. Why not 
open your eyes and see for yourself?” He grimaced 
a bit when he realized that he'd still been human 
when his teacher had seen him last.

“To what end should I open my eyes? They are a 
tool of sense and as such cannot be trusted.”

“My eyes brought me to you,” he squeaked in that 
persistent female voice that was starting to bother him. “I trust my eyes.”

“Then you, O murmuring thought who claims to be 
my student, have much to learn. Perception is 
fickle and cannot be relied upon to form our 
thoughts. Our thoughts must be clear and reasoned 
first through introspective ratiocination before 
our senses can be tested for comportment with thought.”

“I do not understand your meaning, Master. 
Please, speak words that I can understand.”

A grimace touched the dark-skinned man's pink 
lips. “Clarity of thought requires clarity of 
diction to express it. Imprecision in my words 
will mar the purity of my thought. If you are 
other, then you are capable of thought. Allow my 
instruction to challenge your thought so that it 
will be trained to understanding.”

Charles grimaced at the rebuke. During his years 
in Sondeshara he had often had to ask Master 
Hindemar to speak with simpler words. Never 
before had he been denied that request. Hindemar 
had once prided himself on his ability to be 
understood by everyone who came to ask. He always 
began with exquisite and painstaking erudition, 
but if no one could understand he would reach 
down to their level and draw them up step by step.

What then did his rebuke mean? A possibility came 
to the rat, and so Charles twitched his whiskers 
and took a deep breath. “You refuse to speak more 
plainly not because you believe I can with 
careful thought follow all that you say, but 
because you do not believe I am here at all. You 
believe I am just an imagination!”

“That is a perceptive observation and one I would 
expect my imagination to note.”

“I am not part of your imagination!”

“To what end do you, O phantasm suggested by the 
ears that claims to be an old student named 
Charles yet who sounds the delicate tones of a 
woman, proffer such a denial? The imagination is 
equipped to test the acumen of intellect via 
false claims. Without a logical chain of 
reasoning to establish it a denial is of no substance.”

He ground his teeth in frustration and narrowed 
his eyes. “If I were to touch you, you would know that I am real.”

“A sensation proves nothing. It is only in thought that truth occurs.”

“We learn truth by our senses; it is the only way 
in which we are capable of having thoughts. If we 
do not experience through our senses, then we have nothing to think about!”

“Thought shapes our ideas. What we experience 
only conforms to our thoughts. It is only by 
thought that we know we exist. All that we sense 
must be doubted because the senses are not 
reliable.” The master's head tilted curiously 
though his face did not bear toward Charles, as 
if the man were lost in his own thoughts. “You, a 
noise in my ears that claims to be the voice – a 
woman's no less – of my long ago student, trust 
so keenly what your eyes offer, and your ears 
provide from my own lips? Are the words that I 
speak the words that reach your ears, if there 
are truly ears to perceive them, for I can 
discern only denial of wisdom and caution. Open 
mine eyes, these utterances that touch mine ears 
proclaim, trust that which cannot be trusted?”

“But our thoughts are reliable then? What we 
conceive, through logic, is what is real?”

Hindemar appeared to scoff at the suggestion. 
“Thought alone is incapable of verifying the 
verisimilitude of the other. Only the self is 
discernible through thought. Thought demonstrates 
the existence of the self but not the other. No 
amount of sensory perception can be employed to 
demonstrate the existence of the other due to the 
unreliability of sensory perception. It is 
equally likely that the other is a conjuration of 
the imagination as it is a distinct but unverifiable reality.”

Charles blinked. He could faintly hear the 
strange, wandering melody again. The scent of 
cooking meat was stronger and tantalizing. He had 
to fight to keep from panting in hunger. It made 
clinging to the slippery threads of 
epistemological pondering even more difficult 
than it was to begin with. Still, one thing was 
becoming clear and with a grating sigh, he 
lamented, “So you are saying that there is 
absolutely no way that I can convince you that I 
exist, Master. Will I always be just a figment of your imagination?”

“The senses are an unreliable means of 
information outside the self being conveyed to 
the self. In order for the other to demonstrate 
its existence it must rely on some other means of providing proof of itself.”

“What else is there but our eyes, our ears, our 
hands?” Matthias stretched his arms wide, flexing 
his fingers, and folding back his ears. The 
melody was growing stronger and he could not 
discern from whence it was coming. It seemed to 
almost follow the strange lilt he heard in his own feminine voice.

“The mind is all that there is,” Hindemar 
pronounced as if the matter were settled. “There is no other.”

Charles wrinkled his nose as the scent of refuse 
mingled with the cooked meat, and with it he 
thought he saw something dark at the edge of his 
vision, as if for a moment his hands were black 
instead of a fleshy pink. He glanced at them, 
turning them over once but saw nothing untoward. Anxious, his tail wagged.

How could he argue that the senses could be 
trusted when his own seemed to lie to him? 
Charles swallowed and decided to attempt one last 
time to convince this man whom he had once 
admired. “Master, you speak about the other and 
ponder its existence. But if you are all that 
exists, if there is nothing real except your 
thought, then how could you have pondered the 
other in the first place? If there is no other, 
how could you have even conceived of it?”

Hindemar's face tilted upward, though the eyes 
remained firmly shut. The tight lips and cheeks 
softened and a faint smile seemed to touch the 
edge of each. “Now that is the first intelligent 
question that you have asked of me. How could I 
conceive a you if I am all that there is? To 
suppose I am all that exists and then to imagine 
things that do not exist suggests that I am 
insufficient. But if I am insufficient, I can 
only be satisfied by something that must exist. 
Therefore, even though I may not be correct, and 
that my senses may indeed be suspect, 
nevertheless, my ability to imagine something 
beyond myself necessarily implies that something 
beyond myself does indeed exist. There is an 'other'.”

He lifted a finger and Charles fancied the melody 
danced around it like angels on a pin. 
“Nevertheless, while this does demonstrate that 
the other exists, it does not demonstrate it in a 
given case. Therefore, I still cannot conclude 
that you are anything other than a consciously derived phantasm.”

Charles grabbed his ears in his paws and tugged, 
claws digging through the fur at their tips. “Why 
can't you just open your eyes and look at me! I'm right here!”

“And now you sound like any other woman, 
incapable of reason and prone to frustration.”

He grimaced and tucked his tail between his legs. 
Charles took a deep breath, fairly certain that 
he would never learn anything useful from 
Hindemar. Is this what this place did to the 
souls captured here? Lied and lied and lied to 
them until they finally sat with their eyes 
closed, ears stopped, and mind running in circles 
like a cat chasing its own tail?

“All right, let me make one last challenge to 
you, Master, and then I will leave. How do you imagine I look?”

Hindemar's frown returned. “I recall how Charles 
Matthias appeared when last I saw him, and 
despite the woman's voice I hear I have imagined 
you, if there is a 'you', vaguely in his guise. 
Though of late I suspect you really are, if you 
really are, a woman and have lied to me about being Charles.”

“But you would not have suspected that I have 
been transformed so that I have an animal guise and not a human one.”

Hindemar opened his mouth and for a moment said 
nothing. At last the dark-skinned philosopher 
admitted. “No, I had not imagined that. Perhaps 
there is an other here speaking to me. Could it 
be that my senses for once are not betraying me?”

“Take a chance and open your eyes. See for yourself.”

Hindemar's face relaxed for a moment. The eyelids 
trembled as if they had not been used for years 
and were weighed down by more than just death. 
Charles stood with hands on hips, snout turned a 
little to the side so that his old teacher would 
see him in quarter profile. His eyes opened, 
white iris about a dark pupil filling with light.

The Sondecki leaped to his feet screaming. 
Charles stumbled backward as his old instructor 
shouted incoherently, his hands balling into 
fists. “Lies! Lies! Lies!” Charles managed to 
hear before the cries became strangled again. 
Hindemar punched himself in the forehead and 
temples again and again until the bones in his 
face cracked and all of the flesh fell forward 
like a pouch of broken pottery. His eyelids 
opened once more and the eyes fell out, dangling 
by syrupy red cords. They whipped against either 
side of his temples leaving bloody smears as they bounced.

Even through the screaming Charles could hear the 
melody without rhythm or repeat as if somebody 
were whistling into his ears. He turned to try 
and scramble away, but the ground beneath them 
both buckled, collapsing inward. Chunks of earth 
were sucked downward their vibrancy lost in a 
smear of gray. Hindemar sank with the shattered 
earth, hands wrapped about his retina cords to 
try and rip them free from the inside of his skull.

Charles dug his claws into the earth but froze in 
horror as his old Master sank into a huge 
maelstrom laying just beneath the ground. The 
dark-skinned man's flesh was bled of all hue as 
it stretched outward, bent like taffy as a 
thousand other wailing soul reached out and 
clutched at his legs. Hindemar screamed and 
laughed at the same time, his upper torso 
remaining in view for several long seconds before 
it too was whisked away into the spinning disc 
and its dark vortex which howled with the roar of 
a sea pouring down from the heavens. For one 
moment before it was swallowed in the maelstrom, 
Charles saw his mentor's face, eyes dangling 
against his stout, dark cheeks, the lips creasing 
in a rictus of insane laughter that had no end.

He felt something brushing against his legs and 
Charles scrambled upward against the sinking 
stones, trying to gain some purchase to keep from 
falling into the same abyss. Their taunting 
voices redoubled in his ears, and their touch 
seemed to fill him with a fiery thrill. The only 
other thing he knew was that strange song dancing 
around over his head. With one last grasp he reached for it.

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

Charles Matthias
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