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

[C. Matthias]

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

Pars IV: Infernus

(r)

Saturday, May 12, 708 CR

Deeper and deeper into the warred of architecture 
designed for royalty Charles descended, darting 
past doors that offered brief views into the 
desires that came in so many varieties and forms 
that the rat was left bewildered. He had imaged 
that desire was a simple thing – one love for his 
partner's desire – but staggering past rooms full 
of art gazed upon by the blind, symphonies 
attended by the deaf, and feast where those who 
sought to feast were themselves the main course 
Charles found that his understanding was flawed.

Even something as simple as cheese left him 
staggering trying to escape its alluring scent 
and the hint of its delicious bouquet. Were those 
damned souls left tortured in this hellish 
afterlife those who gave their eternal fate over 
to whichever dark god held sway in this place 
those who sought to satisfy a desire so profound 
– for feasts, for music? For art? For possessions 
that now buried them under an immovable weight?

What had they desired so much? What did he?

In the realm of Klepnos all the scents, sounds, 
and sights had overwhelmed him with their 
potency. But here there was a sick center to 
each, as if the delectable enticements were 
merely a chocolate shell about a rotten egg. Here 
there was no feast as in the Duke's hall where 
the revelers were making merry and enjoying each 
other's company. Nor were the cries he heard the 
practiced exhalation of a whore house where those 
selling their body at least had some coin to 
cover the death of their dignity. This was even 
worse than the carnal weeping lining unseemly 
docks at night as those who had nothing left to 
hope for but a scrap of bread or moldy potato 
offered their diseased carcasses to the lust of 
sailors who never glimpsed anything but flesh.

The moans and groans were dead voices unable to 
resist, and incapable of hoping for any return on 
the use of their flesh to sate lust. The scent of 
consummation, so filled with love in his own 
home, was nothing here but lust hardened by hate.

To desire this deep was to enslave. A hand lifted 
to the torn fabric at the nape of his neck and 
the cowl hanging down his back. Hours before a 
spiked black-iron collar had been enclosed around 
his neck, and he felt all the fire of rage course 
through him. Power over the very stones had been 
at his command. And yet the price had been 
enslavement beneath the heel of Revonos. Would he 
now risk another slavery for the mere 
satisfaction of the scrumptious scent of cheese? 
Charles, unable to bear witness to any of 
desire's manifestations, kept moving along the 
myriad yellow pathways as he waited for the Åelf's rescue.

To his horror after navigating a broad set of 
stairs that appeared to be fashioned from smoky 
marble, the short walls on either side came to an 
end. Before him stretched a vast hall between a 
row of decorative pillars which towered into the 
shadows of the groined ceiling high above. In the 
center of the huge space was a broad fountain of 
wine so heady that the mere scent of it made him 
dizzy. Arrayed about the fountain were monstrous 
shapes and things that seemed to have once been 
human unable to escape their grasp.

The path descended the stairs, splitting at the 
fountain, and continued into the distance toward 
the far end of the Hall. But to reach it he would 
have to pass unmolested through the gaggle of 
demons which he knew was impossible.

All but one of the creatures arranged about the 
fountain were voluptuous and sensuous with nubile 
curves on every inch of their flesh. They bore no 
clothing and so there was nothing that the rat 
couldn't see. He tried to make the sign of the 
Yew, but his arm had become a thing of lead that 
he could not lift. They lounged around the 
fountain, some laying half in, others just on the 
edge, their long hair drenched and purple, 
concealing wicked horns that spiraled from their 
temples. Their skin was lusciously tanned with a 
veneer of scarlet. Manicured hands with 
fingernails stretched into sharp razors ran down 
their bodies, emphasizing and forcefully exposing 
their breasts, hips, thighs, and everything else that there was to see.

The other monstrous figure was mostly man-shape. 
Chiseled muscles that gleamed as if oiled rippled 
across his chest. The flesh was burnished as if 
on fire with nary a hair to mar the perfect gleam 
of its sheen. Long wavy locks descended from the 
crown of his head, flowing across a quartet of 
horns that lifted upward and outward like the 
setting for a ring. His feet ended in cloven 
hooves of obsidian black, and these were beset 
upon by the ruby lips of a quartet of the 
succubae. The incubus reclined with supreme 
contempt as it gnawed upon quivering flesh, 
juices spilling across its perfect chest only to 
be washed away by the spattering fountain.

The monsters were not alone as they reclined on 
the fountain. Things that had once been human but 
were now missing parts of themselves were also 
kept close. The rat's beady eyes flicked from one 
to another as he trembled in his dark corner. For 
what parts they possessed they appeared human 
though they were as naked as the monsters. Some 
were missing only a hand or an ear, though no 
scar remained to show it, only empty flesh as 
there was nothing but more skin underneath. A few 
had no limbs at all, only stubs that left them 
prone on the ground, with only their torsos 
intact for the pleasure and consumption of their 
masters. Yet they still moaned, unable to move, 
unable to feel anything at all except the 
ministrations of the succubae deadening everything that they were.

Charles' eyes swept to the pavilions nearby in 
search of some escape, and there he saw even more 
of the denuded humans. Some were molested by the 
demons and could only cry their misery of lust. 
Others were molesting each other. One pair had 
been reduced not just to their torsos, but just 
to the skin of their chest, belly, face, and 
genitals, so that they looked like nothing more 
than a pair of desiccated leaves buffeted together by the wind.

One of the succubus had taken the skin of a human 
and stretched it out across her own body – 
despite being quite a bit more voluptuous than 
the unfortunate soul she had garbed herself with 
– so that the man's face was distorted by her 
breasts, the rest of him stitched across so that 
only his hands, feet, and loins extended beyond 
the frame of the succubus' body. Mad black eyes 
roved from that disgusting countenance, even as 
the succubus laughed and poured a ewer of wine 
down across her face and chest, bouncing it 
behind the taut, suffering skin. Charles met 
those eyes and quivered in a panic and the certainty that he knew that face.

The form was ruined, the shape devoured until all 
that was left was the skin, but there was 
something there that could not be mistaken. 
Charles could see the puffy cheeks, the corpulent 
frame, the dark hair, the meaty fingers, and the 
avaricious glint that sought to absorb all into 
itself and yet could never be satisfied. Those 
black eyes spat hate with every lustful thought, 
and pined for any measure of vengeance it could 
obtain. Charles knew those eyes. Charles had 
almost been a slave to them but for the intervention of a white rabbit.

The name came, one that filled him with loathing. Altera Loriod.

Once a man of low nobility and connoisseur of the 
darkest of carnal lists, now become nothing more 
than the carnal accessory of a succubus.

As if sensing that the garment stretched taut 
across her chest had been distracted by something 
beyond the tortures she had for it the succubus 
raised her gaze toward the stair upon which 
Charles had halted. A smile drew the corners of 
her succulent lips and a forked tongue slipped 
from between them to caress the glistening mouth 
with a seductive lick. Loriod's mad gaze never 
wavered, fixed on Charles with a rabid hunger 
that seemed to infuse the demoness that wore him 
with a degree of yearning as well. Slipping from 
her recumbent pose at the edge of the fountain 
she languidly strolled across the hall, her smile 
becoming more broad, revealing the tips of sharp 
teeth behind. Every move, each step, each twitch 
and jiggle of the succubus' salacious form, made 
the taut flesh of the late Altera Lodiod moan with unfulfilled lust.

Charles trembled for only a moment before 
retreating backwards up the stair hastily only to 
stumble against something that was not marble. A 
long, serpentine tail that was of no rat ever 
born and most certainly not his own, fouled his 
footing and sent him reeling backward to smack 
his head upon the marble terrazzo. Blinking, the 
rat pushed himself up only to gape at the long 
sinuous shape before him, wreathed in a glow of 
shimmering red. The long, serpentine body spilled 
down the stair in relaxed curves, the tail which 
Charles had fallen over tapering from a long body 
that led upwards to a svelte feminine shape.

And that shape was of a white rat so unspeakable 
beautiful that Charles felt his heart and body 
trembling in awe of her. Even having lost her 
legs to the abalone white scales of the serpent 
emerging from beneath her royal gown she was the 
perfections angels would yearn to achieve and 
mortals could not so much imagine. Hungry blue 
eyes gazed down at Charles and a smile lifted her 
whiskers, perfectly scalloped pink ears twitched 
toward him while she held something cradled in 
one arm. The other reached down to offer him a 
hand getting his paws back beneath him.

“Hello,” the word, so simple, yet offering 
something beneath it smooth askance that went 
beyond desire, beyond hunger, to a promise of 
things that would leave Charles' very immortal 
soul struck dumb with pleasure. The people at the 
table, the deaf attendees of an orchestra, and 
the woman pinned in the corner of a corridor were 
mere motes – barely even sparks – in the face of 
what that single word offered him.

This creature; half milk white serpent and half 
opaline furred white rat, was the embodiment of 
yearning. All lust and all desire were 
consummated in her form; scale and whisker and 
azure blue gaze. Charles wept and cowered but 
could not raise his arm to take that offered hand.

Her eyes glimmered but there was no warmth within 
them, “I like you.” Never had words lied so 
sensuously and Charles' ears burned to hear more.

“He is mine!” A voice, strained to the baritone 
croaking of a strangled frog, rumbled from 
somewhere forgotten behind Charles' back. Not the 
succubus' voice, for he knew that one would be a 
pale shadow of the rat Queen's voice before him, 
but another voice. The low, cultured, but 
wheedling voice of a spoiled aristocrat stretched 
impossibly over the breasts of a hell creature. 
Charles could see them now, from the corner of 
his eye, as the succubus with her damned attire 
had waddled up the stair to stand to one side of 
the angelic serpentine rat. Loriod's dark eyes 
filled with hate as if they could launch 
themselves from the shell of flesh to bore into 
the rat's chest and perforate his hammering 
heart. “He agreed to be mine! I want him!”

The beatific queenly rat, a presence as powerful 
as any of the daedra Charles had thus far 
encountered, seemed amused by this request and, 
with a nonchalant gesture of nothing more than 
her white, claw-tipped figures, signaled her 
acquiescence. The succubus on which stretched the 
flesh of Loriod like some bedchamber fancy licked 
her lips and leaned in closer. Charles pressed 
himself back, away from both rat-topped naga and 
succubus, against the baluster of the stair. 
Feeling the cold stone of the railing Charles 
tried to gather his feet beneath him as the 
leering, distorted face of Loriod stretched 
before him atop twin mountains of soft flesh.

None of the other demons – succubae or lone 
incubus – seemed to express the slightest 
interest in their tet'a'tet. Charles could not 
trust in that indifference but he would have to 
take that risk. The only thing he lamented was 
the inevitable displeasure of the lovely rat 
whose scent still filled his nostrils and left 
his loins aching with need. But the memory of the 
woman in the hall banked that fire and cleared 
his mind enough to consider his actions. Did a 
naga even have the right anatomy? Such thoughts, 
dancing about within his min like flame-drunk 
moths, served only to repulse him and curb those needs further.

Planting his hands upon the baluster Charles 
turned and leaped at the same moment. The fall on 
the other side was not great and managed to land 
upright, briefly crouching to absorb the impact 
before darting along the yellow pathway across 
the Hall. Before Charles had managed to clear the 
sprawl of the stair's lowest steps the naga's 
tail spilled over the curled knoll post and 
lashed across his front like a wall of opalescent 
white scales. He jumped again but not high enough.

The blow upended him in mid-leap forcing him to 
adopt an awkward tumble that found him on his 
feet, and moving with little loss of speed, when 
he recovered. She moved with blinding speed, her 
upper body swaying only slightly with the rapid 
sinuous writhing of her long serpentine length, 
to cut across his path. Snatching the Sondeshike 
from his cloak he gave a single jerk to extend it 
and drove the top through the meat of the naga's 
python body. It stabbed through, and skirled 
angrily from the floor beneath, as if there were 
nothing there. Charles blinked in surprise, 
staggering a step when the resistance he expected 
was not there to react against, and then gasped 
when the white tail entwined him and pinned his 
arms at his sides. The naga's regal, royal 
rodentine muzzle rested against the back of his 
ears and a forked serpent's tongue flicked past 
her prominent front teeth to caress them. The 
coils squeezed around him and he gasped for 
breath, unable to move. Her voice, soft and 
perfectly cultured yet alluring and sultry in the 
same breath, filled his ears and mind with ideas 
that shamed him with only a pleased exhalation. 
The claw-tipped fingers of one hand, much like 
his own but white, caressed his chin and throat 
suggestively – both with what those fingers could 
do to please his flesh as well what they could do to rend it.

“He wants you, handsome little rat.” The queen 
rat-serpent crooned delicately, her whiskers 
tickling his ears and cheek as her perfectly 
white muzzle and one brilliant blue eye filled 
the field of view on one side. “I enjoy...” the 
word was drawn out as if nothing satisfied her 
more, “helping people get what they want.”

Charles gnashed his teeth and dug the tips of his 
finger claws into the pads of his palms. The pain 
was sharp compared to the aching crush of her 
coils; sharp enough to drive the seductive 
undertones of her unspoken promises into the 
darkest corners of his mind. “I am not alone.”

A sibilant, churring chuckle and a warm caress of 
breath across the back of her ears sent a tingle 
racing through his chest, down his stomach, to 
drop into the furnace of his loins like a dollop 
of molten wax into a chandler's kiln. “It is as 
you say, little rat.” The coils undulated, 
massaging his body from every direction with 
surprising facility. It tugged at his tail, drew 
his legs out straight, pushed inward at his 
belly, and then rolled against him so that he 
could feel his hips moving back and forth, 
grinding him against the cool, smooth surface of 
the serpent's muscular body. The gentle fingers 
of one hand raked up the back of his neck, the 
tips of her claws rasping against the flesh 
beneath his fur and sending a tingle down his 
spine, upward across his scalp. Charles tightened 
his fists wincing at the feel of his clawtips 
pressing against the tough pads of his palms 
until they pierced his flesh to draw forth blood 
and pain. “You are not alone.” In the corner of 
his vision he could see her lips move; the 
glisten of teeth and tongue beyond while in his 
mind's eye he could see what those lips and 
tongue could do when they were not talking. Shame 
clutched at his heart, but instead of reaching 
for a prayer to Eli in that moment of lustful 
doubt he could only envision the face of his 
wife, the Lady Kimberly, who even in the sight of 
his memory was a trollish visage in comparison to 
the serpentine rat queen who now held him.

But, trollishly grotesque or not, it was the face 
of his Love that pushed those dark, carnal 
thoughts back. It was Love that buffered the hard 
edged fire of raw lust. With no hesitation 
Charles grasped at those memories and held them 
fast; of Kimberly's smile as she reclined – 
unconsciously seductive – upon a picnic blanket 
in the shadow of Metamor's walls. Of the glimmer 
in her dark eyes when she held her first child.

Her first child.

His first child.

THEIR first child. Nothing in the beauteous 
serpent's promises offered that. The could never offer that.

Her whiskers and warm breath tickled his ears, 
but the seductive warmth washed against a glacial 
wall within the mind of the mortal held within 
her coils. “Merely call my name and I will rescue 
you from him.” Past the prominent rodentine teeth 
her forked tongue snaked out to brush across his 
muzzle and whiskers, leaving a glistening trail 
of saliva as it slid across the fur of his cheek 
and across the ruined flesh around his eye before 
slipping along one ear to disappear between those 
lips with so many promises. “He wants you, and he has been ever SO loyal.”

“He is damned,” Charles rasped, ignoring the 
tantalizing of her fingers, tongue, and voice 
with images of Kimberly's joy. He could feel that 
joy suffusing his heart against the fire of his 
loins; a spark before a furnace but also a spark 
against the darkness. “The damned can ask for nothing!”

“Ahh, my pretty rat, the damned ask for all.” 
Charles felt her hand working down his chest 
beneath his jerkin, combing at his short fur as 
if seeking the pulse of his heart. Her nose 
brushed his ear; a nuzzle of promises that he 
already knew were offered by another with more 
meaning. “And yet, here you have come. Because you are seeking something.”

“I do not come alone!” Charles snarled again, 
yielding against the grasp of those coils he 
could not pry himself out of. His Sondeshike was 
pinned at his side as neatly as his arms. Even 
collapsing it would do nothing against those 
pearlescent scales as he now knew. Where was his 
protector Åelf, Charles wondered with a rising 
panic. The warmth within his heart was a steady 
strength, but against the wiles of the beast in 
whose embrace he was bound it was such a small thing.

“Perhaps not.” He could hear the shrug in her 
voice. For his demands Loriod had fallen 
completely silent. After his vault over the stair 
railing Charles had lost sight of him, which was 
all for the better. “But you came seeking, and 
what did I say, my handsome little rat?”

“Nothing I listened to,” Charles bluffed, 
fighting to keep Kimberly's beautiful smile – a 
real smile as opposed to the artifice drawn 
across the muzzle hovering near his own – in his mind's eye.

“I do so enjoy helping people get what they 
want.” Soft, warm, seductive, and so very, very 
close at hand. A turn of his head and her nose, 
so perfect as if sculpted, would brush against 
his cheek in a rush of heat. “Call my name – you 
know it, oh, you do – and we can find what you 
seek.” The coils tightened briefly about him, and 
he felt his legs and tail pressed tight together, 
before the undulating motion resumed which 
buckled his hips. Out of the corner of his eye 
Charles glimpsed the succubus with Loriod's skin 
sewn into her flesh leisurely glide around the 
base of the stairs. Hungry eyes found him immediately and the rat grimaced.

Qan-af-årael, where are you?

The queen rat dangled her arms across his neck 
and he felt his ears pressed against her breasts. 
The soft warmth of her fur and the delicate touch 
of her arms felt relaxed and enticing. If they 
but belonged to Kimberly instead he could enjoy 
them! “But until you are ready to let me help 
you, and it would give me great pleasure, to do 
so, little rat, I will let this one have what he 
wants.” Charles swallowed as the succubus 
sensuously ran her hands across Loriod's flesh as 
she walked around the abalone coils that had 
ensnared Charles, until she and the vile, 
distorted face of Loriod were in front of him.

And then the petty little noble's skin began to 
stretch, drawn outward across the succubus' body 
until the limp hands slipped over her manicured 
nails, his feet encased her own, and his head 
engulfed her neck and face. The succubus pulled 
by her queen's consent the skin of Loriod across 
herself as if he were nothing more than a costume to be donned.

Loriod's flesh was distorted in every direction 
by the shape of the succubus within, yet she 
appeared to show no distress at the revolting 
consumption. The flesh of his head was drawn so 
taut that his corpulent features were stretched 
bone thin. His lips spread and his mouth 
distended as if he too were a serpent. Charles 
felt the rat queen's coils tighten about his 
chest so that he could neither breath nor bend. 
His body, straight as a rod, was angled toward 
that gaping maw in which he saw nothing but darkness.

Charles choked for even a gasp of air as he tried 
to twist his head away even though in his 
writhing he was brought almost lip to lip with 
the rodentine opalescent naga. The corpulent mass 
of damned soul and succubus pressed closer, their 
combined breath a fetid warmth across Charles' 
whiskers. Loriod's lips had been drawn so thin 
that they were nothing more than a scarlet 
circle, but there was no creature hiding within. 
All Charles could see was darkness; a void that 
passed around his snout no matter how he fought 
to escape. The coils of the serpent were far too 
powerful to force and too tight to slip out of. 
His fevered brain screamed the name of his 
protector, but Loriod's lips wrapped themselves 
around his head. He felt the flesh tighten 
against his neck and then crawl across his 
shoulders as the coil undulated over his body, 
releasing more and more into the monstrous jaws 
of his tormentor. Yet he felt nothing inside that 
maw; there was neither tongue nor teeth to greet 
and grind him, nor stink of breath to gag him or 
succubus to tease his tortured soul. And into 
that emptiness his body was shoved and swallowed 
until for one brief moment he felt nothing at all.

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

Charles Matthias
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