<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars IV: Infernus (g) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR Beyond the portal was another short corridor of stone followed by another series of large pits in which languished beasts of remarkable size and girth. Charles averted his eyes from each pit and from each cage, but the suffering seemed to exude from each. He could hear no cries, but each step tore at his heart, calling to his eyes, summoning him to the edge to peer over and know misery. He stumbled as he walked, drawn against his will to sate a morbid curiosity that balked at understanding. How could anyone be so cruel to everything that had life? The deep silence was penetrated only by the soft crush of stone beneath his paws and Qan-af-årael's gentle boots. The pits slipped past them like empty boats at a dock, miserable from rain and fog. Charles tightened his grip on his Sondeshike and finally stepped toward one, the effervescent touch of the Åelf's fingers at his shoulder bidding him come back. He slipped beneath his protector's grasp and peered down into the pit and ground his teeth together, hissing in sudden fury. The pits in the chamber were large as if they were meant to contain an elephant or young dragon. Instead what he found was a small series of chambers separated only by different sorts of walls, some stone, others clay, and some wood, in each of which trembled a naked human. Three of the humans were covered with pustules bleeding a greenish ooze, with the old man in the corner also bleeding out of his nose and blinking rheumy, yellow eyes up at the rat. The other three did not appear to have succumbed to the sickness yet but they were chained to the ground so tightly that any motion caused them to bleed around their bonds. Charles met the old man's gaze and shuddered when he saw the man's lips moving. Rotted teeth, blackened and loose hid just behind his lips. He tried to speak, but the enchantments placed over the pit prevented any sound, any glimmer of the words from reaching the rat's ears. The rat lashed his tail back and forth and glowered. “We have to do something!” he hissed with a glance back at the Åelf. “There is nothing you can do. Come,” Qan-af-årael beckoned with an outstretched hand. “This is the task of those who dwell here. You can do nothing.” Charles seethed and peered back into the pit. The old man was bleeding from his ears as well as his nose. Horrified, he could only watch as the flesh of the old man's head ruptured in place after place, collapsing and then expanding as if some great pump were operating within. Blood trickled down out of his eyes, as the rictus of pain stitched itself across his cheeks and cracking his lips. It could have been only seconds that the rat watched but if felt as if hours drained past while the man's entire body fell apart. And yet, even as his flesh sundered, sloughing off like snow sliding from a roof, the life never seemed to leave his eyes. Blood-streaked and yellow from jaundice, nevertheless, a faint spark of life remained there in even as they dangled from his eyes sockets and bounced against the rotten flesh collapsing beneath. Overwhelmed by nausea, and unable to look at the other victims, Charles flung himself to the stone path, one paw over his snout, the other against his belly willing everything within to stay there. His stomach protested, heaving, even as he clenched tight his throat and eyes. Something touched him softly between his ears and he felt a warmth fill him. The heaving subsided, and his nausea passed. His heart stilled and beat at a steady, unhurried pace. He opened his eyes and stared into the pearl gray-skinned and golden eyed face of Qan-af-årael. There was an assurance there, a confidence that called to him, beckoned him to belief. Here was one in whom he could place his trust. Here was one in whom he would always find rest. “When you are ready.” The words were warm silk and as satisfying as a long drought of cool milk. Charles nodded and climbed to his paws, averting his eyes from the pit, focusing instead upon the Åelf. He kept one hand wrapped about his Sondeshike, but otherwise looked only at his protector and guide, walking at his side and doing his best to ignore all else. They made their way through several more rooms filled with larger and more complicated pits. No longer did they just reside beneath them, but seemed to tunnel around in a vast burrow network like a gigantic colony into which the lord of this realm poured his infectious experiments. Twice they were forced to wait and hide while pairs of Gardeners checked on the victims, but both times they were fortunate not to be noticed by the monstrous insects. Their fortune could not continue forever. In the granite passageway between rooms Qan-af-årael turned to him with a brow faintly furrowed with concern and whispered, “The Bridge is in the next chamber. So is this realm's master.” Charles grimaced and nodded, trying not to let his friend see the fear clenching in his heart. How could they evade the author of the tortures and disease riddling this place? The rat steeled himself and rolled the Sondeshike back and forth in his hand, short claws tapping the brass ferrules at the each end. His snout fixed in a moue. His tail curled at his ankles and his toe claws dug into the stone beneath them. But even though he tensed for a conflict beyond his reckoning, the Åelf remained calm, radiating a sense of peace and stillness as of an ageless forest or a vast sea. The passage widened as they continued and opened above them to the bitter sun much larger in the sky as if it were plummeting to the earth. A wide arched doorway stood open, and beyond a room fashioned from dark stone, and arranged in three tiers. The lowest tier had a pit of indeterminate size in its middle with sloping walls down to a small puddle of putrid brown water framed by blooms of yellow mushrooms with oozing phosphorescent caps. At either side of the pit waited two of the Gardeners, their green chitinous armor vaguely dimmed despite the blazing sun. Their faces were turned downward into the pit, and their antennae stilled as if they too were quiescent until beckoned. The second tier rose up a horse's height from the first, and across this stretched a small garden replete with wilting flowers, drooping vines, stumpy trees riddled with blight, and a fungal bloom infesting every inch as if it were the ground from which all else sprang. Along either wall at the side of the second tier were cabinets filled with bottles and beakers and all other sorts of containers brimming with liquids, stews, and other concoctions of every hue and consistency. Though each were sealed and through the otherwise overwhelming stench of decay a miasma of chemical pungency jabbed at the inside of his nostrils. But what he saw above this filled him with a terror beyond any horror of the nightmare forest that had driven him nearly to beasthood. The topmost tier was lined with shelves of what appeared to be books each with bindings wider than the rat was tall. These rose upward in stacks that stretched beyond his sight. A vast desk fashioned from bones from humans and animals surmounted the tier, stretching at least twenty feet wide and over six feet in height. Some of the skulls could have been those of Keepers, but it was impossible to tell if they were truly his kin or mere beasts. A few were still coated in rotting flesh and all of them were discolored yellow or purple to varying degrees; not a one of them had been polished white. Sitting at the desk and writing with a quill pen, the strands of feather shriveled, was a tall emaciated man with pale skin garbed in a voluminous brown robe. His expression was cold and detached, dour without appearing hostile or contemptuous. His eyes were sunken so deep in his skull that Charles could not see their color or even if they had color at all. He had no hair anywhere that the rat could see. The pale dome of his head seemed blotchy but he could discern no imperfection; pasty and white it seemed an affectation rather than something natural. His entire form shimmered with a febrile sheen of a yellowish green mucus. Charles felt as if stricken with palsy at the mere glimpse of him. He did not lift his head from what he wrote, but his voice coursed through the room, echoed off the walls, and enclosed them as if they had been grasped by a fist. “It is fitting that a mortal rat would peruse my work. You are untouched by the variety of my experiments though I am not unaware of your escape from my nurses. I am always keenly interested in the progression of disease through mortal kind and the effect it has on your physical well-being, but also the deterioration it causes in your mental and spiritual health. Your presence here provides a most advantageous opportunity. Though I am certain you are unaware of the necessity of control subjects in any experiment, allow me to expound on the importunity of your arrival in my demesnes and my intentions for your ultimate disposition. “But first you must pardon my inattention as the chronicles of my work occupy my hands for but a moment more. I am confident that you will not proffer any argument at my necessary delay.” The two gardeners – 'nurses' as Tallakath had called them – turned toward them both but made no move to intercept them. The reverberating echo of the daedra lord's voice held Charles immobile more firmly than the insects could even with all of their limbs. An iciness crept up his legs and his grip on the Sondeshike faltered. Out of the corner of his eye Charles could see the edges of Qan-af-årael's lips moving though no sound escaped his tongue. After a few seconds more the daedra lowered the quill and folded his hands over the volume in such a way that despite the angle Charles could see them clearly. His fingers were long and bony, the nails a discolored yellow at their tips, but otherwise perfectly manicured. The flesh covering his bones appeared cold as if he himself possessed no life. And yet the daedra's words, firm and unyielding, returned with an icy grip that clenched deep into his heart. Charles felt certain this being could snuff his life with an errant blink. Tallakath studied him for only a moment, seeming to pay no heed to the Åelf at his side. “Your method of travel into my demesnes is of no interest to me nor is your intention to leave. In any event that is no longer possible. Very shortly I will provide you with a place that you will remain so that you can offer an invaluable service to the pursuit of knowledge I am undertaking and which occupies my time. It is the work of generations and aeons but it is work of inestimable value and numerous applications.” Charles had an image of himself, fully disrobed and cast into one of the stone pits he'd witnessed, shivering in the bitter cold shade, and blistering in the unforgiving fire of the sun. And all the while suffering from the terrible consumption of disease as something devoured his flesh and riddled him with endless agony. All to satisfy this daedra's curiosity and nothing more. He would become a data point in one of those volumes, a curiosity dictating further experiments to be unleashed on his brethren in Metamor at the first opportunity. Tallakath's lips did not even offer him the suggestion of a cruel smile. “But before that you can assist me in expanding the wealth of knowledge concerning the mental anguish that accrues to mortal-kind when witness to suffering. You have seen many in this place who are in various stages of disease, consumption, and degradation. As a mortal you are naturally equipped with a degree of empathy that allows you to vicariously share in the sufferings of others; I noted this while you witnessed my nurses at their tasks. I am keenly interested in sampling that voyeuristic pain. Please, in detail and with complete honesty, provide for me an account of the anguish you experienced in your soul.” Bony shoulders rose and fell negligently beneath his robes. “Also, quickened by a live, beating heart and flesh, you offer a rare opportunity to examine the effects of my research. I have long sought to understand how the illnesses I initiate here can be transferred to a living host, which requires a living host – such as yourself.” He tapped the ragged end of the quill pen against his lips as if in thought. “And that will allow me to sicken, and remove, a tool of my sister by which you came into this realm. The Dreamers have long thwarted my nurses when they seek to find mortals wandering her realm to aid in my work.” The icy grip that heretofore rooted him in place seemed to withdraw from him. Charles blinked several times as he tried to understand how that could be and what he was being asked to do. The Gardeners with their multifaceted eyes, glimmering black like diseased fish eggs, stepped closer, rubbing their arms against one another in a discordant hum. Qan-af-årael did not move apart from his lips which framed soundless words. The rat took a deep breath and stood as tall as he could. One paw traced the sign of the Yew and with a defiant stammer he said, “You will learn nothing from me! I deny you, and in Eli's name I confound you!” The ancient scientist scoffed with a lazy chuckle. “Your contumacious reply is hardly unexpected.” Tallakath waved one hand before resting it back on its twin. “Nor is it entirely as uninformative as you have no doubt intended it to be. By demonstrating a degree of resistance you also demonstrate that the suffering you have witnessed during your journey has not caused a level of anguish requisite to inducing compliance. However, it does imply that the suffering you have seen has wounded you. You are affronted by it; your personal sense of justice has been violated by it. What anguish you did experience has hardened you to a degree so that in some aspects you are no longer concerned for your physical well-being. Yet as you did not come to this chamber to challenge me under the misguided assumption that you could bring what transpires in my demesnes to an end it is clear to me that you have not been disturbed to the point of seeking to right a perceived a wrong. This leads to one of three possibilities regarding the initial state of your character which will provide the necessary baseline for my subsequent analysis. Either you are a callous individual for whom the sufferings of others provides only a minor degree of discomfort, or you have hardened yourself against the sufferings of others in order to accomplish some other goal which is more important to you than the well-being of your fellow kind, or lastly you have hidden away your empathic reactions in order to avoid the emotional instability engendered by them for the purpose of escaping this place. “The interesting question at this time is which of these three will be the true response you will choose. In order to discern that it is necessary to continue my experiments. Now that I have you within my presence I am capable of directly noting your reactions to various stimuli. Given what I know of your travels through my demesnes the first possibility, that of a callous spirit bereft of all but a meager empathy appears the least likely and so unless your reactions indicate otherwise we can dismiss this for the moment and focus instead on gauging whether you have steeled yourself or hidden yourself in the face of suffering.” Charles flicked wide his Sondeshike, and began twirling it over and over in his paws. What else did he have left but bravado? If not this he truly should be a rat in mind and body. “If you don't want two more of your gardeners to die you'll keep them away from us both. I warn you I will not hold back if you do not.” The emaciated figure picked up his quill and jotted something in the volume resting upon the desk of bone. “An intriguing reaction. I have not yet provided any stimuli of suffering to gauge your internal state and yet you react with hostility. A curious reaction given that at present I am not interested in bringing you to any physical harm.” His fingers splayed toward the insectile servitors, “I am worried not of their fate, I have more. As I previously noted I am interested in your reactions as a control subject at this time. Your experiences will expand the horizons of knowledge and contribute to our understanding of the human spirit and enable me to expand my work more directly through your somnolent flesh while it is still quickened with Life. While I can glean the truth from anything you say and any reaction you provide, it is simpler if you would convey your internal state without useless posturing or threats you lack the ability to consummate.” Charles kept spinning his Sondeshike, focusing all of his fearful trembling into his tail to keep it from his snout. His whiskers twitched anyway as the Gardeners shifted back and forth, their mandibles rubbing over one another and dripping. Tallakath's musings continued as if silence were unnatural for him; and yet, though his voice enclosed them in the room and drove out all thoughts from their minds, it never raised above a conversational din, nor seemed emotional in any way. Cool, detached, and without empathy, it chilled the rat's limbs anew. “Perhaps it may help ease the transmission of your valuable data if I were to describe my intended experiment once I no longer have need of you as a control subject. The souls which I usually have at my disposal react somewhat differently to the various contagions I prepare for use on the mortal plane than a mortal such as yourself would. They are not capable of death as you are, merely of being drained of all useful essence. Your ability to die – your living flesh, to be precise, as I will retain the spirit wrestled from it – provides a valuable data point in my studies, as well the progress of that contagion through the mortal realm you have created such a convenient bridge to by coming here, to my very workroom. By allowing a disease to run its course very near to completion in you I will be able to better determine the final stages of the disease's development before expiration. And if I am careful enough in the application of restorative measures I will be able to obtain valuable data on the progression of not just one but many different diseases, and perhaps even begin to understand the interplay of multiple active diseases in your system. The fact that your human physiognomy has been supplemented with that of a rodent will not be an impediment to my investigations as there is a great deal of similarity between the two. The points of convergence far outweigh those that diverge; there will be little issue of your rodent nature compromising the value of any data I obtain. “Do you have any thoughts on my proposal? As the host for the development of pathogens I am keenly interested in understanding your perspective on the experience and not just the physiological changes that will naturally occur during the course of any disease's progression. Please, be honest in your appraisal.” With each question the lord of pestilence seemed to withdraw his hold on the rat. He could take him and break him at any time and he wanted Charles to know it. Knowing it might be his last moment, Charles snorted, casting a quick furtive glance at the Åelf whose eyes had narrowed to slits. His pearl-gray body seemed rigid yet soft, as if it were waiting. His gaze pierced the edge of the pit toward the brown pool below. He turned back to the daedra lord and spun his Sondeshike faster. “You like to hear yourself talk don't you? Well keep talking if you wish! You will learn nothing from me, nor through me!” With a lift of the spinning shaft he struck downward, ringing the ferrules upon the stone at his feet with a scintillating bell-like note that reverberated in his ears even as the shaft continued it humming revolutions. “The only words you will have from me are contempt!” “Your intransigence is not unexpected,” Tallakath replied without any change in emotion. Despite Charles' bravado, he felt a terrible weight in the daedra's words, one wearing heavily on his soul. He could not help but remember all of the people and beasts he had seen in the pits, left to wallow in their own excrement and covered with sores of such excruciating pain that to even move was to invite mind-rending agony. “Seeing as revealing my intentions for you has not secured your cooperation I will proceed with my original intent of determining a baseline for your spiritual and mental health.” He made no motion. From his place behind the desk of skulls and bones the lord of pestilence and plague vanished, to appear on the second tier in that same moment. He had in one hand a long, thin blade the likes of which Charles had seen in a healer's hands, only longer and larger, intended to harm rather than heal. In the other was a carved human leg bone inscribed with green script of no language Charles knew. “There are certain elements of both physical contagion and magical inducement I will demonstrate that I might elicit a response to indicate your current state. Your guardian has prepared while my attention was focused but I cannot allow its work to be completed, nor its spirit to persist though it can offer me no insights.” Tallakath's wrist flicked toward Qan-af-årael, the edge of the blade in his grasp gleaming a pestilent hue. “It will be eliminated, for it can no longer protect you, mortal.” The Gardeners advanced on Qan-af-årael who remained where he stood for only a second more. His voice was quiet but sure, and with simple assurance murmured, “It is done.” He spread his arms wide and a fiery blue light erupted from both palms to bathe the Gardeners. Chittering screams erupted from both as their armor seared away, arms flailing and abdomens erupting in a vile yellow froth. Bilious and filthy, the mucus smeared across the wall up to the second tier and ringed the outside of the pit as the two Gardeners crumpled into writhing piles of flailing limbs. “Into the pool!”Qan-af-årael pushed the rat forward. While Tallakath watched with the same dour expression he had borne on their arrival, rat and Åelf raced down the sloped wall into the pit. Charles held his Sondeshike tightly at his side and took a deep breath, narrowing his eyes shut as he jumped into the pool, sinking quickly into a limitless depth beyond. As they disappeared within, his tail whipping over his head, he heard the master of that vile realm murmur, “So that was your secret purpose. Hardened against suffering...” And then his head plunged beneath the slick surface and all went black. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>