<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars II: Denuncio (v) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR The landscape was harsh; forbidding and desolate. Stunted, twisted trees clutched at the sky in agonized benediction as if wracked by some eons-long torture between barren soil and icy, dry winds. Their branches rattled like old bones in the wind that rippled across the hilltop and tendrils of cloud whipped frenetically across a moonlit sky bereft of stars. Malger found Charles standing on a wandering path through the bracken that stood taller than they but was in no means anything greater than stunted shrubbery. Everything was cast in shades of monochrome gray and the pale white-blue of the moon save the gleaming silver flute at Malger's hip. “What is this place, minstrel?” Charles asked with a scowl, clutching the black cloak that adorned his shoulders as if stricken by a frigid wind though none stirred its hem or the lace at the marten's wrists and throat. “The Dream,” Malger offered with a smile. It was not the most forbidding of settings, and it was most certainly not what he expected, but it was Charles' dream after all. He would have preferred Nocturna's midnight temple but one did not force the Dream to suit their desires. Together they strode along the path finding no other passage through the twiggy, rattling bracken. “Bright damn place,” Charles groused. The path wound up a steepening hill as they walked, switching back and forth upon itself like a drunken centipede counting its own toes. 'Night is the Dream, Charles. Perhaps I should have had you focus on something a little less...” He waved a hand toward a hilltop as they stepped from the encircling bracken and onto the moonlit crest, “dramatic?” Two hundred paces across, the hilltop was bereft of any plant, though rough stone plinths towered from the earth like oarwood trunks. The ancient, weather blurred stones stood in a circle around a huge flat slab of rock upon the very center of the hilltop. They cast not a single shadow though the moon hung, fat and ominous like a summer spider on her web, overhead. Charles gaped at the circle of towering stones that looked as if they had been brutally shorn from the earth and planted, madly, by a monstrous fist into the ground. The slab in the center was a pale silver so deep it seemed to drink in the moon's light, flat and etched with an intricate miniscule of runes so dense that there was no sense to be made of any of it. “This is not my dream,” the rat hissed, his whiskers drooping and his tail wrapping about one of his legs. “The petitioner defines not the venue.” A rattling croak filled the air sending Malger's hackles up, though neither of them could still their paws upon the path before them. Charles' shadow shifted and wavered under the moonlight as they passed between the standing stones and approached the slab in the center. From the hilltop opposite them darkness shimmered, formless and towering like a wraith, flowing through the air and around the stones like mist. Even Malger, accustomed to the visions of the Dream, felt his heart hammer within his breast and his tail tuck low. The black mist writhed into the semblance of a shape separated from the only by the width of the flat stone between them. “You have come?” The raven queen towered over them, twice their height and breadth even without the mantle of black wings at her back. Gleaming black eyes bored down upon them, merciless and severe, and black talons raked at the air as if the slab were a barrier between them. 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, must 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 it with the moon at his back. “I have!” He called out as if to someone at a great distance, not removed by the span of a mere – if frighteningly long – arm's reach. “I seek one who has passed beyond!” The raven queen rocked back, standing to her full height, her head dipped until her beak nearly touched the vague cleavage of feathers at her breast. “One who has passed beyond the veil of Night, beyond dreams.” One hand reached out, grasping the air between them with a shrill hiss of claw against claw. “Beyond my grasp.” “But you know where he may be found!” The rat strove on, leaning forward as if buffeted by a headwind though his hooded cloak did not stir against any breeze. At his feet the rat's shadow slowly stretched with the passage of the moon across the heavens. Malger looked on, his role fulfilled, and awaited the outcome of their unsettling parlay. “I do,” Nocturna croaked with a regal bow of her avian head, black eyes glinting like a crow spying a shiny thing in the sunlight. “You come before me, to seek, to ask of me a bequest?” Leaning forward, bending over the slab of the henge's altar stone until her beak hovered a whisker's length from Charles' nose, she asked, “You ask that I seek to find him?” Though Charles' throat rose and fell quickly and his tail sought to strangle one of his legs, Charles did not back down, gazing up into those unwavering black orbs. “To bring him back, mistress!” He forced out, digging his fingers into his shirt while the shadow at his feet shifted and wavered, growing and shrinking with each cloud that scudded across the face of the moon. “I beg, please! Bring him back to me, that I may know him one last time.” Charles clutched himself with both arms as if he felt he might fly apart under her cold regard. “To say farewell, to know a father's love one last moment!” “To bring him back from the Beyond place, from His grasp unto yours!” The raven queen's wings rose up and swept outward, occluding half of the henge in darkness wherein only her form was given definition, corvid gaze unwavering and cold. “A task of greatness you as of me. The price of a soul is steep.” “A soul lost can be found, mistress! I seek it, I understand the cost.” “Do you?” The raven's croak boomed, rippling the darkness, flattening back the bracken with a snapping rattle of broken branches and banishing all clouds from the starless night sky. The moon gazed down upon all with solemn light and only Charles' shadow stretched away from his feet, beyond the towering stones and down the hill beyond. “He does not relinquish his claim lightly, seeker, even to one such as I.” Charles' teeth ground against the sheer weight of her presence but he stood rooted, unwavering in his conviction. Malger could not help but be impressed by his fortitude. “Ask what you will!” Abruptly the raven's wings dropped, snapping tight at her back, banishing the shadow of their breadth until, for a fleeting moment, she appeared almost matronly. One bird-slender arm reach out, the long curve of a talon coming to rest with the lightest prick beneath his chin. “Kneel, then, seeker.” “Mistress?” Leaning closer she cocked her head, bearing one eye upon him, her croaking voice deceptively soft. “Kneel. Swear faith unto Me.” Leaning back so sharply he staggered a pace, Charles slapped at her arm as if burned by the merest touch. “No! My soul is given to Him, and only He can claim it!” Rather than show affront at the sudden unwillingness of her petitioner the raven queen merely chuckled; a sound that filled Malger's heart with clutching dread. “The price of a soul is a soul in return, seeker.” Lacing the deadly talons of her fingers together over her stomach she tipped her head to stare down at him. “Have you one to offer, to ask such a boon, and yet be so unwilling to lay forth your own?” Charles looked down at a weight in one arm and found something that captured his gaze and filled his eyes with surprise. Curious, Malger peered but could not discern the shape of the weight against his enfolding cloak. The rat stared into the crook of his arm for several seconds before finally lifting his gaze back to the raven queen. “I do,” Charles intoned flatly after several long moments. Straightening his back and squaring his shoulders he shifted the burden in his arm and cradled it in his grasp gently. The raven's wings fanned outward again, more slowly, as if intrigued by his offering. Stepping up to the flat slab, an ancient altar of sacrifice, Charles knelt and carefully laid a sleeping child in swaddling upon the stone. “A soul for a soul in return, mistress. That is what I offer.” “This cannot be!” Malger, upon seeing what Charles proffered upon the stone, gasped in horror. The raven did not even look up, merely extending a staying hand toward him, black talons gleaming. “Nocturna, no! He is not himself!” Malger strove against the force of that staying gesture but he was rooted, a mute witness, to the horror unfolding before him. Slowly Nocturna, the mistress of omens and nightmares, Goddess of the Dream, reached down her other hand. Black talons gleamed razor edges as her fingers opened and, with deceptive gentleness, came to rest upon the sleeping rat's breast. “The bargain is struck.” The rattling croak of her raven's voice cracked like a thunderclap as her head turned to drop her gaze not toward Charles, who surrendered up his eldest for his lost, but to the tendril of shadow stretching away from the rat's paws. Only then did Malger notice, too, that the moon cast no shadows in the realm of Dreams; not stone, bracken, or cloud yet at the rat's feet darkness pooled like ink. “The exchange is agreed.” Her head snapped forward, the sharp edged tip of her beak slicing into the rim of Charles' ear. But when her head drew back Charles was not there. In a flicker almost too fast for Malger's eyes to follow the shadow snapped back, engulfing the rat in darkness, and vanished like mist in a gale. Nocturna reeled back in surprise, wings and hands flaring wide. Upon the stone the child began to wail. ---------- Tuesday, June 22, 724 Late Afternoon “That's what I saw!” Charlie snapped, jumping to his feet. “That is exactly what I saw, Father!” All during his father's tale of the visit to Glen Avery he'd felt a fiery agitation that made it difficult for him to keep still. All he could see was his sire's bewildered expression on the battlefield. And all he could hear were his sire's words, 'I offer you my eldest son for my youngest.' “I know it is,” Malger replied, motioning for him to sit down. “Charlie, please, there is more you need to hear.” “More? You said you were going to explain it. Now I know that Nocturna wanted me all this time! You knew something was wrong with my sire, and yet, you went along with it anyway. You've always taught me to be thoughtful in my actions. But what did you all just do there. It's insane; and it cost me.... it cost me...” Charlie wanted to weep almost as much as he wanted to rip the table from the floor and smash it against the wall. Lacking the strength to do that he beat one fist on the table and closed his eyes tight to keep any tears from breaking free. “Son, you heard what I said. Nocturna told me of this long ago. And she also told me that someday someone would come asking why. That was you. She knew how much it would hurt you, but that this was the only way. I love you. You are my son.” Charlie felt the fierce prick of the knife at that first words: 'Son'. His sire had called him that on the field of battle as he hid behind the rat standard of his house. His sire who had no right to call him that after selling him for a ghost. Nocturna had purchased him and his father had gone along with it. That was the truth that had been revealed to him. The painful, awful, and pitiless truth. He dug his claws into the table and trembled, trying to keep them from dragging through the wood and breaking. “Only because my sire gave me up. Only because...” He turned and jumped from his seat with a barely contained scream. Malger shifted to try and grab him but the rat spun, his long tail slashing through the air to smack heavily into the wall. “Nay! Leave me alone!” “But there's more to tell,” Malger insisted, his voice beckoning and pain in his eyes. He stood when Charlie stood, chairs grinding upon the floor. He backed toward the stairwell door when Charles began to pace. “Charlie, listen! Nocturna didn't hold him to that terrible bargain.” “Nay,” Charlie snarled, shaping a furious glare at him when his exit was balked by the marten's frame. Despite his training he knew there was no getting around his sire. “You! Were a part of this! You!” Malger winced and reached out for his adoptive son but Charlie recoiled, retreating toward the far wall. “She did not take you from your sire! Your sire did not give you up that way.” To his side was the alleyway door, and to that he turned, flinging it open to reveal the drop to the street below. His face burned with anger, and though tears wanted to burst forth he would not let them. “Leave. Me. Alone!” And with that he leaped out into the alley through the escape door, hit the ground eight feet below and rolled across the stones. Ignoring the fresh pains and bruises joining those from his earlier battles he put his claws beneath him and began to run. Charlie refused to look back. Before him he could see the tower of Metamor Keep. Toward them he ran, eager to fling himself into its depths and disappear. Malger stood in the open door and stared after him, confused at where he had gone wrong in his retelling. Charlie had not let him finish, and now he feared that his son's ears were closed to him. ---------- And so ends Pars II! Here's hoping I'll be able to post the next section soon! Please let me know what you think about the tale so far! May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>