<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars IV: Infernus (n) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR The little rat did not so much as feel warmth on the bridge as he felt the lack of the life-stealing cold. Nothing surrounded him for a moment and even though he was only a hand tall this bridge seemed no larger than the others. His whiskers twitched and he breathed a long sigh of relief which turned into a coughing spasm. His thumbless paws rubbed across his snout and brushed free the encrusted blood, even as the presence of his guide appeared on the bridge. Qan-af-årael smiled down at him from a distorted height. From the folds of his elegant robes he produced the rat's meager garments. “Are you well, Charles?” To hear his voice in his ears instead of his mind made him squeak in surprise. Charles willed himself to grow and his body swelled, shifting proportions, straightening his back. When his thumbs returned, he grasped his breeches and held them before his waist for modesty. His bare chest rose and fell as he attained his full height, still looking up at the Åelf but not nearly as far. “I am whole. And I am very grateful for your protection. I know that I could not have come this far on my own. How much torment remains?” “Four realms more you must cross before the Beyond can be reached. Any souls you meet in these realms will be far more evil and corrupted by sin. You will have no friends below.” This last was said with an almost apologetic sigh, as if the Åelf thought himself responsible for the composition of the daedra realms and the souls trapped within. Charles stepped into the breeches and pulled them to his waist. He cinched them with his belt, a pensive claw rubbing across the rat-head buckler “I haven't had any friends since the Gardens save you.” He grimaced but offered his guardian a lop-sided grin that stretched his snout and jumbled his whiskers. “Thank you again for helping me.” He pulled the tunic over his snout before he said anything more. “I will protect you and bring you where you must go,” Qan-af-årael assured him. “After all that you have done to aid my people and save our world, how could I do less? Such base ingratitude is a terrible injustice toward one such as yourself, Charles.” Charles shimmed into his tunic and then donned his vest. He checked his gear, found the Sondeshike where he had kept it inside a secret fold, and rubbed it between his fingers. “Thank you again. What must we face now?” “The Lord of Rage,” Qan-af-årael replied with a veneer of disgust. “You will need your weapon.” Charles took his torn Long Scout cloak and threw it across his shoulders; it brushed over the rat's ears as it settled against his back. “More creatures like the Gardeners, or those things we saw in the forest?” “Worse things than they await us below.” He swallowed and flicked his tail. “Of course.” Charles pulled the Sondeshike from its place within his tunic and extended it. The ferrules snapped out to either side, but did not fully extend. It appeared that they had struck something immovable, but all that the rat could discern was the curving boundary to the bridge. They could not extend because there was no reality into which they could reach. Through his weapon Charles had touched an edge of creation. Unsettled, the rat turned the Sondeshike sideways; the staff extended the rest of the way along-side him. He ground his molars together and wished for something to chew as he walked down the bridge. The optical distortion rushed to meet him as everything shrunk to a single point. And then he stepped through. A snarling noise rose up around him as he fell to all fours, the Sondeshike still gripped in his hand. He lifted his head and blinked at the shifting of fiery red fur and rippling muscles that surrounded him. The muscles twisted, each attached to four legs which ended in paws with sickle-sharp claws, as they turned to reveal monstrous dog heads lathered in saliva with fangs so large they could never close their jaws. Their eyes were black as coals and burning with anger and hunger. Charles felt their breath strike him like a muddy field after a brutal battle in which bodies had been left to rot. Boxy snouts snarled and snapped at the rat as he scrambled to his feet and leaped backward. Standing, Charles was finally able to make sense of what he saw. Before him, standing nearly as tall as he did, were six infernal hounds. Spiked collars of black iron were fastened around each of their necks, and the chains disappeared he knew not where. Slavering jaws snapped at him, heavy paws dug into the ground and launched them forward. Charles lifted the Sondeshike and spun it as fast as he could before him. The nearest of the hounds struck the spinning disc with its ravenous snout. Bones cracked as his momentum scuttled him sideways, his face caved inward where it had been struck. Yet still the beast rose, blood frothing forth in a mist as it scrapped its claws over caked stone. The hounds bounced on their paws, moving around him to attack from either side. Charles stepped back to keep himself from being surrounded, shifting the spinning disc from side to side as he tried to decide on what else to do. He summoned forth his Sondeck, willing it to fill his arms and legs as he danced on his paws looking for a way out. A second hound lunged from his right as he turned aside. Had he been human he would not have seen the attack, but as a rat his eyes were better placed to see what happened at either side and even a little bit behind. He side-stepped, lashing his tail toward the left even as he drove the tip of his Sondeshike into the face of his attacker. The brass ferrules smashed into the hound's forehead, caving it inward with a sickening crunch. Blood and gore spewed through the open jaws only to be turned into a fine mist where Charles spun his Sondeshike through what was left of the hound's jaws and upper body. The bones snapped and the muscles fell to paroxysms as the creature was knocked aside. And yet it too climbed back to its feet, the ruin of its head disorienting it but otherwise availing the rat nothing. The other four hounds bounded away from him for a moment before rushing to encircle him. Charles tried to find some place he could escape, but there did not appear to be anywhere he could go. For the first time, in that brief moment when their hideous jaws were not snapping at him, the rat could glimpse at the desolate land to which he had come. Light suffused the place, and an uncomfortable heat permeated everything, but it was not a desert sun crisping his skin. Rather it was the blaze of a flame that breathed across the sky; all of the land lay scorched and appeared to be nothing more than a maze of jagged red rocks. The red was not the mesmerizing glow of a warm fire, nor was it the delicate sensuous hue of a Spring rose in full bloom. This was no twilight sun kissing the horizon, nor was it the amorous rouge of his wife's tongue reaching to kiss him. This red had no royal aspirations, had no clerical dignity, and no use to heraldry. It was not even the color of blood spilled from a wound. Those were all reds Charles knew. Most of them were reds he loved. This red was neither. This red was putrid and formed by the spilling, the baking, the burning, the freezing, and the cracking of blood over ages uncountable. This was blood dried upon the rocks, pounded by foot, hoof and paw, beaten and slavered by parched tongues, ground beneath all until it had become the very dust of the air. This red was that dust of blood bound together, forged and fused until it rose up as the very rocks upthrust in every direction. The sinew of the realm beneath his feet was fashioned from this beaten, crushed, pulverized, and reformed blood. Drained of all its potency, there was nothing left but desiccation; a barren red fed only by the endless effusion of dismemberment. No paint could make this red and no ink could illuminate it. No wine could be soiled as this. His heart beat with fury at the mere sight of it; at the sight of the bloodstone. While the two injured hounds shook their heads about as if they could force the bones and muscles back into place, the other four surrounded the rat and snarled, licking their jowls, posture tensed. Charles danced back and forth, keeping his Sondeshike spinning as fat as he could. He willed his Sondeck into his tail and lashed it about, sending little strikes through the air to slow them down. He knew he could probably crush two more heads before the other two would be on him and it would be over. He could only hope that they attacked one at a time. He had no such luck. All four charged as one. Charles stood in the very center and spun on his paws, eyes narrowed, entering the Tanze wie Zherd. The dance could only properly be done with two Sondeckis, but it was the only thing he knew that would allow him to strike in all directions. He turned and turned and turned, hands spinning one over the other, as the silver disc ran through the air, kicking up a red dust that enfolded him in a crimson pillar of choking air. All of the world about him, barren and dangerous, skipped by in a flash. The hounds crashed into his Sondeshike. He felt more than saw as the first one was clipped on the side of the neck by the end of the metal staff, the bones shattering and the body flung outward in a heap of scarlet fur and claws. The second nearly snatched his tail in its jaws when the staff crashed down into its head, pushed through the flesh, and ripped the jaws apart in a spray of ichor. From the third he felt stinking hot breath and then the Sondeshike lifted it up from beneath its forelimbs and flung it, chest caved in, out across the rocks. He even managed to strike the fourth, but not before its momentum crashed into his side and knocked him from his paws. Charles sprawled from the Tanze and struck the earth so hard that the cloud of red coated him in a fine mist. He gasped for breath and choked on the dust, his hands clawing at his neck as if they could rip out all the poisoned air. He forced himself to grab his Sondeshike with his right hand even as the left continued to dig, choking and coughing for a single breath of pure air. The sixth hound limped as the Sondeshike had shattered one of its back legs, but the jaws, the head, and the chest were all fine. Yellowed fangs dripped with spittle, and a meaty red tongue pressed out between those fangs, eyes burning with hunger. It stepped toward him, confident that Charles could do nothing more to stop him. Beside the hound the first two he'd injured rose up, their faces reforming, their wounds mending. Charles stared in horror but could not make his arms work. The three beasts stepped closer, snarling and ready to feast. A brilliant plume of green light struck downward from the side, and the lead hound's head bounced across the ground as its body fell to pieces behind it. Stepping out from behind a stand of rocks was Qan-af-årael, bearing in each hand a blade of brilliant green that bifurcated like a vast tree. Charles remembered seeing those same blades in the Hall of Unearthly Light when he had done battle with the Marquis. Then he had been matched by a foe of limitless power and the blades had only managed to dissipate the Marquis's attacks. Never before had he seen their true potential. The other two hounds bayed, turning to attack the interloper, but were themselves reduced to slices of flesh that did not even bleed. The remaining three hounds, each of them in varying states of recovery, tried to circle this new bit of prey like they had Charles moments before. As the rat continued to hack, eyes glazing over from the bitter poison, all three advanced with powerful leaps. The Åelf lifted his arboreal blades and skewered two of them. Their flesh bounced from his chest and legs in chunks, carried forward only by their momentum. The third hound was only grazed, not from a lack of skill on Qan-af-årael's part, but only because its wounds kept it from leaping true; this final beast had veered off course and fell to the ground with a snarling yipe and half its tail missing, before turning tail and fleeing into a cleft in the maze of rocks. The brilliant green light of the tree blades vanished from the Åelf's hands, replaced by a pulsing orb of blue. Unlike the red all around, the blue was a pleasant blend like a carefully polished bit of lapis lazuli in the process of melting. Qan-af-årael extended this orb in his arm and then dropped it on the ground in front of the gagging rat. It splashed and erupted a gust of sweet air. The blood dust lifted from the ground and scattered in every direction. Even the dust in his throat was drawn free. Charles gulped the sweet tasting air. The panicked trembling of his limbs subsided, and after several deep breaths he stood, clutching his Sondeshike close. “You saved me again. Thank you, ancient one. I am in your debt more times than I can count.” “You may have the chance to repay a portion of that debt here. Everything we see will try to kill us.” Charles grimaced and nudged a hunk of scorched flesh with his toes. Blood a dull red in hue oozed from every side. “Can we avoid them? I don't see anything else here.” “It is better to kill anything we find.” The rat frowned and held his Sondeshike tighter. “But won't it attract attention if we are constantly fighting everything we see?” “In this realm, the surest way to draw the attention of its master is not to fight. He will not care who we are so long as we fight and kill.” Qan-af-årael's expression was touched by a glimmer of profound disgust. “At least until we reach the bridge.” The rat lifted his ears in hope. “You know where it is?” “I do. It will not be easy to reach. Charles, are you prepared to kill anything you see in this place? There is no quarter offered, no mercy shown, and no victims here. Strike without anger, for rage is what the master of this place wants, but strike nonetheless.” He swallowed and nodded. “If I must. What of the hound who got away?” “The hound is returning to its master.” Qan-af-årael gestured to a small cleft between the rocks. Without sun in the bloodshot sky, it was impossible to tell the difference between any direction. “We must move quickly before they return.” And then he felt the presence resume in his mind. And for now you will wish only to speak in this fashion. The air is poison; cover your snout. Charles nodded and drew his cloak over his snout. It felt awkward, but at least he could breathe. His protector led him down into the cleft which twisted in either direction for a few minutes as if trying to shake them off before straightening and opening out onto a jagged tumble of hard, red rock between ridges on either side. Charles eyed them warily. His ears and whiskers twitched at the sound of snarling and anguished screaming that carried over the almost serrated saw-like bluffs accompanied by rending and gnashing of fangs of a more beastly character. Who was killing who and what? The rat neither knew nor wished to know. The ridge to their right grew in size until it stretched into the murky scorched air, lost to sight amidst choking clouds. To their left, the labyrinth of crimson stone fell away to reveal a long slope toward a chasm. Charles sucked in his breath at the sight of the precipice which stretched at least a league in width if not more, and whose bottom was imperceptible and swallowed in darkness. Equally forbidding peaks rose beyond the chasm, crater-domed volcanoes busily spewing ash and disgorging streams of blazing lava. A faint echo cast across the chasm, and his ears turned to catch its receding touch. More screams. Qan-af-årael turned to him and his thoughts coalesced in words. It is as you fear. Souls cooked in the lava before being consumed by the lord of this realm's minions. For once I am glad a rat's eyes cannot see that far. Charles almost spat the thought toward his companion, and then grimaced as he fought the rising of his gorge. He tasted the red dust on his tongue and grimaced. At least it did not seem to choke him anymore. The path sloped toward the chasm but they cut across near the escarpment on their right. The heat from the volcanoes cooked the air, and the ash made it even more difficult to breath. Charles focused his thoughts on moving forward and breathing as slowly as he could. Still his heart would not settle; the disquiet made his claws twitch and dig into his cloak. The attack came without warning. The escarpment did not run in a clean line along the top of the defile, but was riddled with alcoves and jutting rock that forced them to risk the steep incline above the yawning abyss. As they navigated around one such bend, from the rocks above leaped a trio of shapes that landed on their backs and sent them sprawling. Charles slammed snout first into the stone, his arms and legs scratching at the stone as it slid past, little pebbles hammering his chest and legs as he careened down the defile. Something blunt beat at his back and between his ears. An upthrust stone caught him in the side. He wrapped one arm about it and rolled upward. The thing on his back snatched a meaty hand at his cloak, ripping the front from his snout and pulling the clasp tight against his neck. Charles gagged, inhaling a mouthful of the red dust, even as his free hand searched for his Sondeshike. He caught a glance of Qan-af-årael throwing a red and black striped almost Lutin-like creature from his shoulders, the lanky creature vanishing with a wail over the side of the chasm, while another had its baboon-like arms firmly wrapped about his protector's legs. The creature hanging on by his cloak dug its feet into the ground, found purchase, and began climbing up the rat's back. He felt a gust of hot, putrid breath stream across the back of his neck. Charles' shivered in fury; his tail lashed from side to side even as he dug the claws of his left hand into the stone that had saved him from a fall into impossible depths. He felt the firm smack of flesh against a scraggly hide and heard a satisfying screech. Still it climbed. His claws touched metal, and he wrapped his hand about the weapon of his clan. Charles stretched out his arm, and extended the Sondeshike over the top of his back. A wet splatter struck him and it burned as if he'd been dipped in lye. He twisted the staff and felt the weight from his back move with it. He turned his head and glimpsed the creature's head sliding off the end of the ferrules. It dropped to the defile and in a clatter of stone disappeared over the edge. Charles ground his molars together, got his feet under him, and dashed back up the incline. Qan-af-årael had summoned his tree blades and was carefully nudging the meaty remnants of his last attacker over the edge of the defile where it tumbled down into the abyss. Radiant blue eyes regarded him with disapproval. The presence filled him. You must not let anger guide you here. It is a chain that will bind you to this place. I'm not, I... His objection was cut short by the sound of small stones clattering down the slope. The staccato bouncing lasted for several seconds before vanishing into silence. Charles held his breath, fingers tightening about the bloodied haft of his Sondeshike. Qan-af-årael turned, silvery-black locks gliding between his pointed ears. Something hunts us. Let us move. Calm your rage, my little friend. The Åelf offered him a faint, but reassuring smile. Charles nodded and continued on their way along the escarpment. All the while he sought the Calm within himself, that very center of his Sondeck that all in his clan were trained to know and abide in. It proved elusive, for his focus was on stepping swiftly and with silence across the shattered rock and loose pebbles covering the blood-fused sandstone, a task already made difficult just by the slant of the rock. Nevertheless, the mere search for his Calm settled the trembling in his flesh. The depth of his Sondeck imbued him with preternatural strength. This he felt and savored against the ravages of this realm. He could feel the power in each of his limbs and knew it would not fail him in his time of need. His arms were limber and his blows could strike mountains. His claws were hard as steel and could rend the very rocks around him. His legs could propel him into the air any height he should require, and no fall could break his bones. He twitched his whiskers against the cowl stretched across his muzzle, eyes spread wide and ears turning to capture the tiniest sounds. Distant screams lined the other side of the chasm, but they were too faint to distinguish with any detail. A cry resounded from above and both Charles and Qan-af-årael lifted their heads. A figure, misshaped but not by Metamor, hurtled down from the top of the escarpment, limbs flailing. Charles had only time to extend his Sondeshike before the creature smashed into the defile not twenty feet away, its body crushed. A cloud of red dust scattered in the impact so that he could make out no details of its form. The shape quivered and groaned even as it slid down the slope over the edge into the precipice. The screaming began again; it did not stop this time, but merely dwindled until the rat could no longer hear the thing's fall. A faint stirring in the air brushed the whiskers above his left eye – those over his right a year gone beneath the Shrieker's touch – and he lifted his gaze to the escarpment. Another form hurtled downward, but this one with bat-like wings spread, angling its trajectory as if it were chasing the creature that had already fallen. Charles snarled and bared his incisors behind the cowl, snapping the Sondeshike into place. His fingers turned and turned that metal shaft until it spun in a silver disc limned crimson from the dust ripped from the rocks. The creature swung away from the rock wall, banked its wings, and came about until it had turned to face them. The wings flapped with a heavy beat that made the stones bounces on the defile, scattering them around until they poured over the edge in a rippling tide. Charles braced himself against the escarpment with his left hand, claws digging at the stone. His cowl slipped across his snout and the red dust tickled his nose. Fire filled him, a fire he poured into the spinning Sondeshike. The winged creature bore a long, thick lizard-like tail covered in spikes ending in a broad, flat spade that glistened a bilious green. Muscular arms and legs suggested a form similar to a Keeper, but infernal with protruding spikes and vicious claws on an eight-fingered hand. Each digit splayed in a radial direction as if it each were a thumb. The head was sunk against its shoulders and was shaped like its hands and feet, with eight starfish arms spreading out around a vacuous black maw that opened like a sphincter into whatever hellish torments could be imagined inside. From this abyss poured a burbling insanity laced with strident peals as of claws slowly scrapping against glass. A wave of revulsion struck him and Charles felt a sickness in his stomach and a weakness in his knees. The rat snarled deeper, and let his Sondeck hold him upright in the face of the terror. Qan-af-årael spread his arms wide, a sheen of verdant life ringing round the both of them like a vast shield. The monster dived forward, crashing into that shield and bending it out of proportion. But the spell held it at bay for a moment, long enough for the rat to regain his composure. Out of the sphincter-like mouth erupted a stream of perfidious vomit. The leprous mass spread across the shield and ate through it like a legion of maggots gorging upon a pit of corpses. His protector watched this without fear, the tree blades springing to life in his hands. Charles kept away from the ichorous mass and kept spinning his Sondeshike. His thoughts were jumbled in the face of the winged-horror. As he ground his teeth together in his attempts to focus on the hell-beast, an image kept intruding into his thoughts. It took shape only dimly, as if in a dark room lit only the smoldering wick of a single candle. Twilight rust in hue, it seemed to be metal, thin, and stretched beyond his sight. His attention was called back when the beast smacked its tail against the remnant of the shield, cracking it and bringing it down. The beast dropped onto the defile as if it had dived into it. Charles felt the ground shake beneath his feet, and to his horror, realized that it had come loose from the rest of the rock around it and started to slide down the precipice. He jumped to the side, and then ducked as the colossal tail swung toward him. He felt the edge of the of its spade brush against the back of his left ear, which immediately began to itch and burn. Charles gasped and clawed at the back of his ear with his free arm, digging so deeply that he drew blood as the flesh was shredded. One of the octopus feet stomped the ground next to him, and Charles bounced into the air where eight long fingers wrapped him round the middle, upending him on a journey toward the yawning maw. The flash of green from the tree blades interposed itself and he felt a searing heat at its presence. The creature howled with a nightmarish cacophony that afforded the rat a view down into its gullet. What little light penetrated to those depths revealed a long sarcophagus lined with gangrenous, serrated teeth that would reduce anything consumed to a vitreous mush, but only after interminable hours of chewing and scraping. The wound his protector had inflicted convinced the beast to flap its wings and propel it backward over the precipice, carrying Charles with it. Death stood moments away. Charles stared at it, and felt an enormous hatred fill him. He had not come this far to become a meal to this fetid monstrosity. The image in his mind grew in radiance, and he realized it was a vast chain, each link of a substance similar to his Sondeshike; they conveyed strength and power. All that he should need was his for the asking. Charles blinked the image away, letting the rage in him fuel his Sondeck. He spun the Sondeshike before him, battering it against the creature's head. The eight tentacles ringing that maw quivered and bent beneath his assault, and another scream of protest erupted from it, bringing with it an otherworldly hissing as of a thousand distant screams all clawing one atop the other. Its arm pulled the rat away from its maw, and now he could see the wound Qan-af-årael had inflicted. A deep gash rent into its chest, leaving behind a bright, red scar into which a jaundiced set of ribs protruded. Seething, Charles drove one of the brass ferrules beneath the bones, and then spun outward. The front of the creature's chest exploded in a spray of blood which coated the rat's face and chest. It flung its arms wide in a roar of anguish and Charles found himself flying through the air. The precipice and escarpment twirled in his vision, but he demanded it stop with a furious beat of his heart. For just a moment everything seemed clear to him and his trajectory his own to command. His paws landed on the defile, claws digging into the stone for purchase, as momentum returned and he buckled beneath its pitiless strength. But his grip held and he readied his staff for another volley. The octopoid horror let lose another vomitous mass, but Qan-af-årael had slipped behind it. With a downward strike the tree blades shore the beast through the middle down to its waist. It quivered one last time, before, limp and oozing blood and puss from every sinew, it collapsed against the defile and slid down into the waiting abyss. Only a wide smear of its vomit and blood remained to show it had ever been. Charles took a deep breath and reached one had toward the ruin of his left ear, wincing as he did so. There seemed to him a strange weight against his shoulders and around his neck, but felt nothing there apart from the cowl of his tattered cloak. The flesh of his ear still itched even though he'd already ripped it apart, and it took all of his will power to keep from tearing into it further. Instead he grabbed at the collar of his tunic and tightened his grip. A faint rattling of chains echoed in his mind. Qan-af-årael surveyed him and a glimmer of a frown crossed his lips. He crossed the short distance to where the rat stood and laid a gentle hand upon his torn ear. The presence filled him with a warmth that cooled the anger of battle. No mortal wounds taken in this place will leave with it. Your ear will be restored to you once you cross the bridge. But a mortal wound if not healed by my hand will trap you here. The rat stood straighter, snout turned in a defiant moue. I will take no such injury from anything we face here! Not with your protection, Master Åelf! There are wounds mortal to the soul as well you must ware. Do not listen to the false promise of anger. He could only grimace anew and nod his head. The scent of blood staining his cloak nauseated him but he tried to ignore it. The vision of the vast chain dimmed in his eyes but did not go dark. He glanced down at his cloak and wiped a smear of blood covering the Long Scout insignia on the front breast. These foul beasts would not besmirch the company of friends and family. Charles lifted his good ear at the sound of baying. Qan-af-årael glanced behind them but there was nothing to see but the escarpment, the defile, and clouds of red blistering the horizon. The hunter is closing on his prey. We must make haste. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>