<html> <body> Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars III: Descensum (t) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR Charles looked around in confusion; the realm of dreams was far from what he had expected. It was neither nightmarish, though most certainly gothic enough, nor a bright and cheery place. It was, above all else, a rather bland admixture of gray and black, like a forest after a fire. On all sides, stunted, twisted trees blocked his sight beyond a dozen feet. Naked branches clutched at the cloud-streaked, moonlit sky overhead and clacked like desiccated bones against an unfelt gale. A single path of crushed stone, only slightly less ashed gray than the surrounding forest, meandered through the twisted brush. Where was the tree, Charles thought. He needed to find the tree, because that was where he would find Ladero! And where in the hells was Malger? Not yet. You must go to her, and ask, first. You must draw her focus upon you. Distracted, the path can be sought without her wiles hiding it away. With a moue of frustration Charles turned and began striding along the path, clutching his black traveling cloak about his shoulders. He did not know how long he walked; it seemed like days, or hours, the passage of time defied his senses while his thoughts tumbled and jumbled about, focusing more on his goal than his guide. “Pleasant dream,” Malger opined at some point during his long hike, wandering at his side as if the marten had always been there. The flute that dangled at his hip glistened in the gray pall of the dream realm so starkly it seemed a lighthouse beacon on a clear night. “What is this place, minstrel?” Charles groused. If this was the vaunted Dream Malger spoke so highly of and sought each night the fop could well enough keep it. “The Dream.” Malger's tone was insufferably affable, as if the gloom and skeletal knackering of the branches was as common to him as the burbling of a brook. “Bright damn place.” Charles gave him a sour sidelong look. He figured he would've been taken to some mighty, heavenly temple or facsimile of a king's audience; not trudging a dusty path in an ashen forest. “Well, perhaps I should have coached you to embrace a more pleasant view in your dream?” Malger offered with a lift of his furry brows. “A vision, perhaps, somewhat less dramatic?” They stepped out onto the top of a towering spire of stone up which the path through the bracken lead. In all directions the world fell away into vague forms of mountain and valley but all were below and above were only clouds and the ever-present moon. Atop the tor was a circle of mighty stones, rough-hewn and primitive, in the center of which lay a flat stone slab. It was a sacrificial altar from ancient times before Eli's son tamed the barbaric ways of men. Charles felt his upper lip curl at the pagan sight but he could not stop his feet their forward progress. Malger seemed not concerned in the slightest about the portent of the place they approached. Within the standing stones hearts were stilled and blood flowed in the name of ancient, heathen gods. “This is not my dream,” Charles hissed. His ears were backed when a voice croaked, like boulders grinding together in the depths of a mountain, “The petitioner defines not the venue.” A shadow, formless as mist, flowed around and through the standing stones opposite them. It spilled up to the heathen altar even as Charles and his guide came to stand opposite. Crashing against the stone the darkness roiled upward, like smoke suddenly stalled by a column of cold air, and quite suddenly took on a beastly, dark form. The Star-Eyed Crone, queen of Ravens, totem of the lost Methratii of ancient Sondeshara. In the aeons when the Sondeckis were young, when Pharos ruled from their bejeweled empires of the desert sands, the dark cabal of the Methratii spread darkness across the sands. Their queen was the Raven, thief of souls, in whose eyes the stars of the Cosmos were born. Charles felt a shiver of terror race up his spine, lifting the sparse coarse hair of his tail and bush up his hackles. The Sondeckis had vanquished the Methratii, ending the rites of blood and stone! This is the guise the pagan witch chooses! The Crone is no more. Her faithful – no more! Quell your fear, for the sake of your son! Gritting his teeth Charles fought back the heart-crushing fear. “You have come?” Nocturna croaked in the raven's terrifying voice. Taking a breath Charles raised his gaze to look up at her, for she stood easily twice Malger's height, who was a head taller than Charles. 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, much 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 with the moon at his back. “I have!” He forced out, his lungs shriveled in his breast as if his chest was caught in the tight fist of a titan, slowly squeezing the life from his frail mortal coil. “I seek one who has passed beyond!” The crone towered above him, her visage cold and crushing. No stars glimmered in the sky tenanted only by the gibbous moon, but within those depthless black eyes stars glinted like diamonds in pitch. “One who has passed beyond the veil of Night, beyond dreams.” Her hand reached, thin and raptoral, black talons glistening as they clawed at the air as if to grasp the unseen with a bony hiss. “Beyond my grasp.” Though his heart strove to pound itself free of his breast Charles strove on, unable to run even had he the thought to do so. “But you know where he may be found!” He had to learn forward against the mere weight of her presence as if it may bowl him flat where he stood. He clutched the heavy black of his traveling cloak tight about his shoulders. “I do.” The crone bobbed her black feathered head slowly, favoring a groveling subject with her regard. “You come before me, to seek, to ask of me a bequest?” She leaned forward with each word, beak clicking and croaking voice rolling across Charles like an icy wind, until he found himself staring up the length of that dark beak like a sword hovering an inch from his nose poised to thrust. “You ask that I seek to find him?” Charles' throat went desert dry as he felt himself drawn toward the unending cosmic depths within the frightening apparition's star-strewn eyes. He had to swallow, violently, twice before he could find his voice again. “To bring him back, mistress!” He rasped, clutching at his shirt. “I beg, please! Bring him back to me, that I may know him one last time!” Clutching his arms around himself for fear that the crone's regard might blast his dream-self to tatters he forced himself to hold her unwavering gaze. “To say farewell, to know a father's love – one last moment!” The foundations of the bridge are laid. Where she cannot reach other paths can lead. Keep her focus upon what she desires until the path is opened and she cannot stop you. Abruptly the crone stood, towering above him once more, her wings sweeping outward and casting the far side of the henge into darkness only vaguely defined by huge feathers. Charles felt his body sag forward and found himself resting a hand wearily against the stone. It was cold; glacially cold. He quickly snatched his hand away. “To bring him back from the Beyond place, from His grasp unto yours,” she intoned; not admonishingly, but to clarify his bequest. “A task of greatness you ask of me. The price of a soul is steep.” “A soul lost can be found, mistress!” Charles cried out hastily, lest her regard turn from him to other things worthy of a god's attention. “I seek it, I understand the cost!” “Do you?” Charles was sent reeling by the sudden explosion of sound. Even Malger, standing silently a short distance away, flinched and quailed at the outburst. The bracken ringing the tor cracked and rattled and the clouds vanished from the sky overhead. “He does not relinquish His claim lightly, seeker, even to one such as I.” Steeling himself, Charles pushed his bowed back straight once more. “Ask what you will!” Snapping her mantled wings down with a thump of heat she leaned forward so swiftly Charles braced himself for some dramatic end to his quest. Only, he felt a mere touch, deadly sharp but deceptively light, in the hollow of his chin. “Kneel.” Charles lifted his chin a little but the prick of one talon, easily as long as his hand from wrist to fingertip, pressed upward more solidly. “Mistress?” Kneel, but know that she is false. She cannot reach your lost one. Only... patience, her attention is still upon her goal and not yours. Charles' heart skipped and, momentarily, stilled and his knee began to bend but something within him, deeper than his overwhelming need, deeper than his love for his lost son, hardened him against the baleful, star-filled gaze and the deadly threat of that talon at his throat. He straightened his knee and from that deep place uttered a single word. “No!” She knows not what she asks. She can never truly embrace your soul, kneel or not. “NO! My soul is given to Him, and only He can claim it!” Rather than slice him gullet ear to ear the talon simply trailed upward, and then drew away like the teasing blade of an assassin toying with their prey. “The price of a soul is a soul in return, seeker.” With a snicker of hard edged bone she laced her fingers together over her stomach and stared coldly down upon him. “Have you one to offer, to ask such a boon, and yet be so unwilling to lay forth your own?” You do. Look, you have with you that which can be offered in exchange. Charles looked down at a weight in one arm and found, safely tucked into the fatherly cradle of his arm, a sleeping child; a rat child. His child. He blinked in surprise, for a moment his thoughts completely scattered. With his empty hand he reached up to brush his eldest son's brow. Could he trade one son for another? One bereft of the Sondecki gift for the one stolen from him with that inheritance? There is no trade, for this only opens the door. The pathway is very nearly before you! Do not question what she desires, lest her attention waver. I cannot! Even in deceit! Charles fought against himself, but his body moved of its own accord, his voice issuing forth from a throat he gave no breath to. “I do,” he intoned, shifting the slumbering burden into his arms and stepping toward the stone. Kneeling before the stone, he gently laid his burden upon it. The crone is blind! Charles felt his heart throb and wilt within his breast, growing brittle even as he watched himself, unable to stay his reaching arms as they bore his eldest son away. The world grayed at the edges of his vision as he laid little Charles, his namesake, upon the cold stone of the blood altar, its etched grooves eager to drink life afresh from the rat's willing sacrifice. He sensed the crone, the Raven Queen, dark goddess of the Methratii; Nocturna torturing him with a story torn from the legends of his own birthright, leaning close over him. A shadow greater than her presence loomed about him, narrowing his gaze until he could only see the slumbering visage of his son. And then, that too, disappeared in darkness with a sharp pain lancing through his ear. ---------- Tuesday, June 22, 724 CR – Twilight Charlie glared across the short space separating him from his sire, a cauldron simmering in his gaze. Charles looked back upon it calmly, with resignation. Slowly he raised a hand, somewhat surprised to see his fingers shaking. It had been nearly fifteen long, torturous years since he had looked back upon that moment, which was still as crystal clear as an event only moments past. “Aye, my son, in my blindness, I saw nothing but the goal I sought. But, you will see, you should already know, She sought you for you, not a bargaining chip or prize.” “More like a fish,” Charlie spat, his body fairly vibrating with renewed fury. Thus far he had seen, and had borne witness to, the exact vision four times, each time suffering only minor variation. Like an omen, knelled four times, before the fall of the headsman's axe. “A prize tossed about for the whims of everyone but me!” “Charlie, Charlie, hear me out, please?” When the youth rose he was somewhat shocked to find that his sire had risen first, and far more swiftly. “I can bar the door, son, and speak my peace.” The elder rat muttered flatly, but with contrition in his voice. “I wish... honestly and in truth? I wish I had spoke to you of this when you were five, or ten, not on the cusp of manhood and filled with half dreams and broken memories.” Charles relaxed his posture slightly when Charlie also relaxed, realizing that he could run, again. But to where? “Now is what you have, Charles. Make good of it.” Crossing his arms Charlie angrily sank back down upon the bench. ---------- And this brings Pars III to an end! I hope to share Pars IV ere long. May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>