<html> <body> I'll be visiting my family this weekend so next part will come on Sunday. Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars III: Descensum (m) Wednesday, May 9, 708 CR Sir Charles Matthias walked down a long road. Barren pines, dead with shriveled needles strewn at their base, lined either side of the road. A brittle sun cast a pale scorching heat that made his paws sweat and thrust his tongue from the side of his snout like a panting dog. A pallid quiescent air smothered everything. Hard, sharp-edged rocks were mixed into the cracked earth beneath his toes, and he winced as they gouged his flesh. A trail of blood drops sizzled behind him. In the distance he could see a mighty tree. Many of its branches hung dead, bereft of their leaves. But there were a few which still glimmered green which made the tree the only living thing he saw in the burned out wasteland around him. The road led toward it and so he stayed on the road, wincing as every step squeezed another drop or two of blood from his scarred paws. He could not recall when he had started walking along this road, nor what he left behind. All the rat knew was that he did not dare turn around. Something waited there. Something malevolent. Something ravenous. He must have been frantic with fear at some point to have so incautiously run along the road to escape it. It was not hard to avoid the jagged rocks which slashed his flesh, but a running rat would skewer himself in short order. Charles frowned in the miserable heat, pondering what could have frightened him so greatly as to risk running. He could not recall. He contemplated turning and facing whatever lurked behind him. The still air was broken by the slightest of mists across the back of his neck. His blood ran cold, heart clenching in his chest. He picked up his pace, whimpering at the pain of his bloodied paws. After a few minutes the rat was able to regain control of his fear. Nothing had come for him. Nothing had touched him. It had only been a brief, almost non-existent brush of wind and not the breath of some monstrous thing slavering at his neck. For what could survive in this desolate and utter ruin of land? As if in answer to his question he caught sight of something poking up from beneath a charred pile of pine needles at the side of the road ahead. Charles cautiously lowered himself to all fours and crept toward it, tail lifted behind him to keep it from scrapping against the volcanic rocks. Rheumy and discolored, it emerged from the layer of needles like a mutilated wolf trap. Charles kept a slight distance as he brushed the needles free. What emerged from the desiccated foliage was a half-digested cadaverous husk. At the top was a disgorged pile of shattered bones, the marrow sucked dry from the glinting ribs and limbs while a skull leered at him with lips of tattered flesh. Beneath it, beginning at the waist was a putrefying, gangrenous mass that had once had fur and walked on two legs like a man. The overripe and almost rubbery flesh made his stomach clench and one paw went to his snout to hold back the contents within. His eyes trailed to the long, thick tail that was gnawed and wormy. What had once been vibrant with life was now bloodless and mouldering beneath the protective cover of dead needles. Freed of its sepulchral foliage, the wounds sizzled as the suffocating heat made them cook and seep with a scent so repulsive and poisonous that he could no longer thwart the quivering of his gorge. Charles stumbled away on all fours, back aching but unwilling to rise. Tears burned in his eyes, drying before they reached his cheeks in the miserable sun. He lifted his snout to look for that one sentinel that offered hope in the perfidious wasteland. The massive tree still stood, watching but indifferent, inviting but ever distant. He scrambled on. Walking on all fours did provide him the advantage of giving his hind paws a rest in turns. First Charles would favor his left leg, tucking it back against his belly as he charted a winding path through the rock-strewn road. And then when the misery in his right grew too intense he would scurry with his left paw down instead. Apart from the initial discomfort in his back he felt nothing incongruous with his four-footed posture. Likely he'd become more feral in appearance, animalistic despite his anomalous size. The numbing fear of the kangaroo's corpse and the brush of air on his neck from what lay behind him kept him from worrying about his shape. His parched throat hungered for water so much that as he continued on his way, he began to lick the sweat from his fore paws. Sticky and bitter with the dust of the road, it did not slacken his prurient thirst. Nowhere did he see any signs of pools to dip his snout into. And even if he did he knew that they would be sulfurous and would kill him, either from the burns on his flesh or the fire in his belly. Either way, he would end up like that putrid corpse half buried behind him. Over the endless hours of crawling he saw six more corpses along the road, the bodies all in varying states of decay and digestion. He did not dare investigate any of them. The vomitous bile caked his throat and threatened to freshen itself with each disfigured corpse. But as he neared the tree, the one thing even half-alive in this blasted and hellish landscape, he could not help but ponder what had happened to those seven who'd come before him. Had they tried to turn from the road and the tree to which it lead only to be devoured by what lurked behind them? Or was he unwittingly running directly into the mouth of the beast lurking in the tree? Though the only sound he heard in all that serotinal blight was the crunch of dust beneath his limping paws, he could not help but feel a heavy tread following him, a vibrato growl of something monstrous edacious for his flesh. And more. This thing, eldritch and abominable, would not be sated with mere matter, but would savor every mote of his spirit, chewing on his substance with hellish perfidy until nothing at all remained of Sir Charles Matthias. His only hope was in the tree. Charles continued, eyes set only on that tower of wood, branch and leaf. He saw no more corpses as the hours trickled past. His thirst and hunger only increased. The tree swam in his vision. He felt weak from blood loss. The blistering heat set his flesh to trembling with palsy. But to turn and give up his quest was madness that ended only in dissolution. Before he quite realized it the road ended at the base of the tree. The roots stretched for almost half a mile in every direction, and between these walls rising twenty feet or more, the road wound, delving within. Charles followed, savoring the shade it provided, and enjoying the feel of soft earth beneath his paws. Charred twigs littered the path, but these were easily swept aside in the ever narrowing passage. Where the roots met the trunk of the tree an open door invited him inward. Charles stepped through and collapsed onto a soft carpet stretched over the wooden interior. His tongue, dried and swollen, stretched from his gasping jaws, while his paws trembled and curled, blood still trickling from the gashes in his hind paws. But the coolness of the air within and the softness of the carpet could not relieve his agonies. “Charles!” a familiar voice gasped from the other end of the cavernous chamber. He blinked his eyes and stared into the darkness, shapes beginning to resolve themselves. It looked like his home only stretched with wide empty spaces between furnishings. Rushing to his side was his wife, dressed in a russet gown marred with scorch marks where a fiery rain had struck her. Nestled in her bodice was the purple stone medallion and it glimmered in the unremitting sunlight streaming through the open doorway. But for the nonce he paid it no heed, preferring instead the ewer of cool water she poured across his tongue. “You finally made it,” she said with a deep relief in her voice. “I thought you'd turn back like the others.” Despite the water his tongue still hurt too much to speak. He stretched out a foreleg and to his delight discovered it was once more an arm. With this he reached up and stroked his wife's snout ever so gently. Her whiskers thrummed beneath his touch. “Let me bandage those wounds. Wait here.” Kimberly rushed back into the deep gloom of the chamber while Charles panted for breath, control returning to his body bit by bit. His eyes spied four children waiting and watching, fearful of the doorway, but hopeful in their glance toward him. For the first time, Charles gazed back along the path, but apart from the drifts of fallen twigs gathered against either root, there was nothing back there to be afraid of. Yet in the brilliant and sickly light, staining the jagged edges of the roots a faint crimson, there was something to fear. Something was out there. He should shut the door, he knew it, but could not make his body move toward it again. His wife returned with salve and bandages and set to work on his feet. His four children emerged from the darkness, their faces curious and anxious. He tried to smile to assure them but could not. Instead he tried to mouth some question to his wife. Nothing came from his throat but painful coughing. “Only you can save us, Charles. I love you.” She washed his feet with the cold water, gripping his ankle with one hand to steady his trembling legs. The fire of the wounds felt like glass jabbed and dragged across his back. He beat his fists against the ground and screamed into the carpet. The salve cooled the pain, and about this she tied the bandages so tight he knew he could not walk again until the wounds were healed. Instead he crawled, dragging his legs with him, away from the door and into the interior darkness. It welcomed him with a coaxing assurance. His children remained where they were, with his eldest going so far as to lie down and fall asleep. Something whispered just out of sight, like a tickle at the back of his neck. He quivered in a heap as Kimberly finished the bindings on his feet and disappeared back beyond where his children reposed. A dry wind drifted through the open door, hot and scorching his throat, full of dust and ash. He quivered at each brush as if spectral hands caressed his flesh, intoxicating and voluptuous in their intimate touch. Charles pushed himself deeper into the chamber. Along the root walls framing the path to their door he could see embers scorching the wood. Crimson and angry, they stank of sulfur and decay as of a thousand mangled corpses left to rot in a pit. Vapors swayed in the open doorway like sashaying dancers, seductive and incorporeal. Charles tried to scream for his children to run, but his tongue would not leave the roof of his mouth. The stygian phantasms were not nearing the portal into his sanctuary yet lingered with perverse interest just beyond beneath the desolated rust spewed sky. And yet, despite their mesmerizing allure, loathsome in their sightless and pulsating intangibility, Charles' gaze pierced through them to the shadowed thing he now glimpsed gibbering down the path between the roots. Its gurgling breath was the rumbling of borborygmus from the belly of a nameless terror, all slime and mucous oozing from its many slobbering jaws. Wretched and yammering, it crept down the path, shape obscured by the phantasms through which it passed. Charles, hapless and fighting to bite back a vomitous mass which threatened to erupt from his throat and spew across his tongue, jaws, and chest, clawed at the wooden floor, stretched toward the door. Its edge ever a breath from his claws he vainly gasped, his eyes ever remained on the obnubilated horror encroaching down the path. A foul odor wafted through the doorway, full of quagmire and primordial slime. And yet his children and now his missing wife persisted in their insouciance, watching from the shadowed interior without expression, if not, in the case of the one, sleeping. A sharp pain forced the rat backward from the doorway. Through the wooded floor thorns thrust upward, long, baleful, and glistening as if poisoned. The spikes gathered around the entrance, but spread inward, from the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, driving Charles backward deeper into the gloom away from the stagnant light. From each spike sprouted more thorns, until each teemed with millions of razor-sharp needles. Charles scrambled back as quickly as he could, though the bite lacerated his tail as hapless it slid across one of the falcate spikes. A soundless scream ripped ragged from his throat as the pain revealed itself with an oozing smear of blood along the length of his tail. Frantic, he pushed with his agonized feet and managed to scramble toward where his wife had disappeared, back away from the entrance, the vaporous silhouettes in the pallid light, and the gibbering thing writhing down the path to his door. Piercing the veil of dancers, the bulbous thing emerged in the doorway. With a crimson aureole around a large, flat head grayish and heaving, three mouths opened beneath five large simmering yellow eyes. It shambled on seven legs, and stretched eleven pseudopoidal arms in every direction. Green warty skin dominated its limbs and every exposed surface – there was no way to tell whether it had either chest or back. Charles gasped in horror, even as it leaped across the maze of spikes and tendrils of pain flowing from the doorway like aeolian poison. His youngest daughter, Baerle, screamed as it landed near hear and flung out a long, pink and leprous tongue at her. She tried to claw away, but the monster dragged her back, the ichorous muscle wrapped about her waist, searing her flesh. Its many arms grabbed her limbs, contorting her into a tight ball while one of its jaw spread wide. Her screams were cut short as she was shoved head first into that cavernous maw, wriggling and writhing even as tight lips closed down across, sealing her within a fiery tomb. The head warped as muscles pressed down, mutilating and jellying his little girl. Kimberly cried and rushed from out of the shadows to protect little Erick who cried in terror. “Charles, only you can save us!” His wife exclaimed, as the gibbering beast lumbered toward them. But there was no weapon at his side, and his feet were in so much agony he couldn't even force himself to stand and brace the monstrosity. Blood loss made him dizzy and weak. The pitiless beast croaked in enormous repugnance, opening the wide maw into which his daughter has disappeared to reveal only smears of red amidst the gangrenous cavern within. He waved to his wife to flee and get the rest of his children out of there. Even though he could not stand, he turned to the beast, dragging himself between it and his family. With all his strength, he pushed his quivering flesh upward until he was crouching on his knees. Those throbbing jaws, vast and malicious, puckered with an ineluctable menace. And then it bunched its legs beneath its disgusting mass and leaped over his head. Kimberly screamed once, as both Erick and Bernadette bawled. The bloated monstrosity wrapped his wife in its arms and enveloped her head within one of its maws, while the other two crushed her chest and legs. Charles pushed up with his legs to try and leap after the beast, but felt himself struck when its fixed lips closed around his wife's neck in a spray of blood. “Charles! This way!” He turned his head away from the weeping of his children to see a strange light in one corner. There, before a strange whirligig in the floor, was another young rat. This one was white-furred with a black hood covering head and back as if he bore a cape. He felt his heart skip a beat when he recognized him. A scream pierced the air from every direction and then with a whisper it vanished as if a hole had been punched through the substance of the tree. His other children still wept as the slobbering amphibian masticated the remains of Kimberly's flesh. Standing before him, beckoning him closer was his lost son Ladero. Charles wept of his own, rushing as quickly as his drained and scarred body allowed him. Ladero nodded and motioned for him to quicken his pace. He felt the tendrils of thousands of wisps tugging at him to keep him back. Through them he pushed, caring not for their perfidious touch. Beneath Ladero the ground spun away in a cyclone descending down through the floor as if some vortex were sucking them down. Yet Ladero remained standing even as he fell, as if the ground itself were the illusion and only he remained fixed in a fluctuating world. The hellish beast behind him croaked at the sating of its unrelenting hunger, even as his other daughter gave a shriek when her body was plunged into the abyss of one of its maws. Charles closed his eyes in horror at the slurping, gelatinous crunching that followed. He dove forward into the vortex, arms stretching after his boy as they plunged away from the house and its horrors, spiraling ever into a deeper darkness in which the brilliance of his son's fur and the glimmering of his eyes became clearer and starker. He stretched out an arm to snatch him out of that sucking spiral, when everything shook and broke like a stone thrown through glass. “Dada! Dada!” A voice echoed in his ears. Charles blinked and in the darkness broken only by the deep crimson of the cinders in his hearth, he realized he was laying in his bed with one of his children at his side trembling and clutching the fur of his chest. He blinked and pushed himself into a sitting position, one arm wrapping about the little boy he recognized as his eldest. “Little Charles? What's wrong?” “Dada!” The little boy whimpered. “Your dream scared me!” Charles blinked again, confused by his son's choice of words, but knowing fright when he saw it. He wrapped his son in his arms and rocked him back and forth, while Kimberly slept fitfully at his side, though she did not stir. “It's all right. I'm here. I'm here.” He cooed to his little boy as the rat child trembled against his chest. Beside him Kimberly calmed and began to rest peacefully. ---------- Tuesday, June 22, 724 CR – Evening “Wait, wait,” Charlie waved one paw to stop his sire's lengthy recitation. Already he'd had to get up and stretch twice as he listened to detail after detail without ever once getting at what he really wanted to know. But something in that nightmare unsettled him, leaving him trembling and on edge as he listened. The Baron appeared frightened and at times had to be coaxed to continue. But with the waking and comforting of his one year old self, something had finally become clear to him. “I remember that dream. I remember it.” Baron Matthias grimaced and narrowed his eyes, though one of his paws still trembled and clutched his trousers so tightly that he was tearing a hole into it. “I'm surprised to hear that. You don't seem to remember anything else of that time.” “I've had that dream, nightmares of it. Not in many years now. Father helped me overcome it...” He shook his head. “But I don't remember the frog monster scaring me. It was something else...” “Do you remember?” Charlie shook his head, and then scowled. “Nay, and nor do I want to.” He let a little of the anger simmer in his voice. “You aren't telling me of the deal.” “I am almost there,” the Baron assured him with a grimace of his own. “At this point I was already a slave to Marzac and did not know it. It now looked for an opportunity to use me. I will spare you some of the details for there are three days left until the deal was made. And there is much to be said after that as well.” “So far all I've heard tell of is some voice telling you what to say.” “And do.” Charlie grunted and stretched his neck from side to side to work out a little kink. “I suppose it told you to give me up in the deal?” His sire grimaced but did not say anything for a moment. His eyes turned inward and he slowly shook his head. “Not quite. But if you let me continue you will understand shortly.” Sometimes he hated his sire's penchant for storytelling. He had an irritating habit of withholding the most important piece of the tale until just that moment when it had to be revealed. But until that moment he could not be forced to divulge it; even to the son he gave away who desperately sought the truth it was still a nugget that could only be shared at the right moment. Still, everything he'd said up until now was supposedly important. He schooled his heart and bid his anger restrain itself as he settled in to listen to more. “Well then, go on. Tell me.” Baron Matthias nodded his head and with a deep sigh, continued. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>