<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars IV: Infernus (x) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR The champion is here, Núrodur. He saw nothing, but as the rat turned his head to one side he caught sight of the first bit of light that did not seem obscured in the realm. A column of glittering radiance that seemed no color and every color at once approached from their left. It was tall and narrow and moved without care for the souls of mortals strewn in its path. The rat pulled the Sondeshike closer as if guarding it with his blackened flesh. The figure stopped a dozen paces from them and Charles could see that the light shimmered from a hooded cloak he wore. The rat's eyes could not linger on any one spot of the cloak for more than a moment; there was no pain in trying, it merely shimmered with such irregularity that his eyes naturally skimmed around its surface in vain hope for an anchor. The features beneath the cloak were darkened but visible in the shadowed light of his garment. Angular cheeks, pointed ears, pale skin, and almond eyes tilted upward at the outside illumined the face of an elf, cousin race to his master. The champion's hands gripped a diamond-studded pommel. The sword was perfect in every way. Charles felt a menace in its existence more palpable than the champion himself. He hissed, crouched and swept out his tail behind him. Only his master's stilling hand and assuring thoughts silenced his tongue. “You are the Champion of Ba'al,” the Åelf said with disinterest as if the figure were no more notable than stars on a moonless night. “What errand brings you?” “The rat beast,” the champion replied with an elegant voice, haughty and cultured. “Lord Ba'al has granted him an audience and bids him come. I suppose you are also invited.” And with that the champion turned around and started back the way he came. Charles did not move until he felt the Åelf's hand gently press on his still-furred back. They will not harm you, Núrodur. Come. Charles kept as close to his master as he could without tripping over his feet. He eyed the champion warily, his eyes ever drawn to the sword whose immaculate silver tip seemed, if it were impossible, incomplete. The rat felt certain that the sword wanted to be dripping blood. There was a palpable sense of menace within its luminous perfection. The champion kept a quick pace that the rat had difficulty matching. The elf's long legs allowed him to easily step over the prone souls that were strewn about the endless wasteland. His master also showed no difficulty in navigating the treacherous maze of silhouettes. But Charles, with his short crook-shanked legs, was forced to stretch to step over the damned. Each soul appeared no clearer to him even in the glimmering radiance of the champion's cloak and the quicksilver glamor of the diamond-encrusted sword. The rat could only discern the outlines of arms, legs, heads, and even tails or wings for Keeper souls or the souls of other beastly races. He would not allow himself to look at their faces, but noted only what he needed in order to step past them. Not that he had the time to study their faces or any part of them with the pace the daedra elf set. Charles avoided more souls than he could count as they followed the path set by the champion, but the haste was too much for his short legs. One particular soul had his elbow thrust upward, and Charles caught it with the bottom of his paw. Into his mind, through the barriers placed by his master, shared that soul's vision. He saw Gibson counting coins in his webbed hands as his googly eyes surveyed a row of Glen children shackled hand and foot and threaded to a long chain. Swarthy men dragged the children up a plank onto a corsair slick with muck. The rat drove his Sondeshike downward into the soul, crushing bones and sinew. He kicked and clawed with his paws, tearing and gouging the flesh, as a shriek erupted from within him. For a moment he felt his black flesh blaze with the evisceration. More splatters of tar sizzled through the remnants of his attire to join the rest already coating his flesh. “Do not destroy the crops,” the champion said with the clipped tone of a command. Charles looked up from his effort and briefly met the elf's gaze. His master's hand rested on his shoulder and the rat straightened. “Oh, I see.” The elf's thin lips stretched ever so slightly though not into a smile. He extended the sword toward the rat, but more to show him the flat of the blade than to brandish it. “You no longer share the sins of the damned.” Even through the all-encompassing barrier within him where he felt his master's presence, Charles could sense a change. The pinpricks of vision that had found a way through were no more. What the champion had said had come true. Startled, the rat leaned into the Åelf and sucked in his breath. Before he could form a thought, the elf champion lowered the blade and turned around, casting only a single command over his shoulder. “Do not keep Lord Ba'al waiting, rat beast.” They resumed their walk in the silence of the vast emptiness. Charles clutched the Sondeshike close to his chest, trying to corral his thoughts. He stepped over another five souls before he could finally express himself to his master's presence. What are we going to do? We will follow the champion to his lord and master, Núrodur. Is that wise? What will he do to us? He will tempt you, Núrodur. Even I cannot see the manner in which his temptation shall come. But I do not believe that he will threaten you. Tallakath, Revonos, and Agemnos all threatened you but it availed them nothing. The temptation of desire and greed has been laid before you but you turned aside from it already. You conquered Klepnos's madness. He will know all that has transpired in its fullness. What he lays before you will leave all before but pale imitations. I'm not sure, master. Trust in my strength, Núrodur. He cannot touch that. Remember your oath of fidelity to me. I will see you through. Charles allowed that comforting thought to fill him as he kept walking. Whether they walked hours or days he could not tell. Nor could he recall how many more souls he stepped across, kicked with his claws, or otherwise scrambled over to follow after the champion. But eventually he sensed a change in the world around him. The air which he did not feel in his breath felt cold against his still-furred back. A power dwelt before them, immeasurable and ancient, touching everything living or dead in the realm. The ground dipped into a hollow and the gloom, if possible, deepened. The only light that still shone was the glimmer of the champion's cloak, and the corona limning his master. None of these were sufficient for Charles to even see his own blackened skin anymore. He feared tripping over the souls, but the ground was bereft of any damned, and apart from the uncertain slope Charles had no difficulty walking Beyond the champion he could sense the power coalesce. A towering form stretched above them, darker than pitch even in the moonless gloom, it nevertheless had a shape he could discern. As they neared, its height dwindled until it stood no taller than his master or the champion. The daedra elf fell to one knee before the figure, and at last the rat could see its eyes. They glowed a blue-white light as pure and as vibrant as an alchemist's flame. Those eyes captured him in their regard and Charles felt as if he were no larger than a normal rat. He put his left hand on his master's middle to steady himself, while the right lowered the Sondeshike. It would do no good here. The figure shifted, and what seemed an arm stretched forth. The voice that came from the face which seemed only to have eyes was suffused with a power that trembled in his bones, but was nevertheless soft and genial. He could do nothing but listen to that voice. “Welcome to my realm, Sir Charles Matthias. You have undertaken a very long journey to reach me here. You have faced many dangers, many threats, and still here you are, more or less as you once were. I am Ba'al, Lord of the Daedra. I am pleased to finally make your acquaintance.” Charles, in his anxiety, tried to press his tongue against the back of his teeth, but the slickness of the tar coating each made his tongue slip from his jaws instead. He gasped, drew it back, and stammered. “I have no business here. I seek to pass Beyond.” “That is possible for you,” Ba'al admitted; he seemed to shrug but Charles couldn't be sure. “The way is here. Allow me to be a gracious host and show you where the door is.” To the rat's surprise everything around them in the hollow grew a shade brighter. The light seemed to come from nowhere, and at the lip of the hollow it simply stopped. The depression reminded the rat of a dried-up lake bed, with hard uninteresting dirt beneath their feet and nothing else. They, along with Ba'al and his champion, stood on one slope of the hollow. At the center, behind the figure still dark with only the brilliant blaze of his azure eyes to give any light, was a deeper depression whose bottom he could not see. His gaze elided from its surface in much the same way he could not see beyond the sides of each bridge. Was it too an edge of reality through which they must break? Could it even be done? It can and it will. Charles stretched out an arm, and then grimaced as he stared at the blackness of his own flesh. The tar was wholly indistinguishable from the outline of his body, so that he did not appear to possess any depth; it seemed more akin to the shadow of his arm than to his actual arm. He withdrew the limb and pressed it against his chest. He was very grateful in that moment that Ba'al had not provided him a mirror. “Now that you can see it, Sir Matthias, I am going to tell you why you do not wish to take this door.” Ba'al stepped forward, and in an amorphous arm grasped the sword, claiming it from the champion's outstretched arms. The daedra lord seemed to glance at the weapon for a moment, as if intrigued by the craftsmanship of a device he had not been familiar with, before he set the point at his feet. It did not rest on the ground, but fixed firmly in place an inch above as if wedged in solid rock. “I am going to tell you why you what you truly wish is to become my disciple.” Even through his anxiety the rat snorted and shook his head. His left hand tightened its grip on the Åelf's robes. “Your disciple? Never!” Ba'al tilted his head to one side in the manner of an affable elder amused at the antics of the young. “Sir Matthias, you malign me, but I do not take offense. It is understandable that you would refuse. But you have mistaken my offer. I do not wish you to be as my champion here. I see the thirst for justice in you. I see the light that even soul tar cannot wholly hide. You are, despite much that you have done of late, a good man. I admire you for that, and would not change it.” Suddenly confused, Charles could only blink and shrink further against his master. Ba'al's face and eyes seemed to smile in a familiar way despite lacking any feature save that unwavering gaze. “Yes, I ask you to be my disciple, but that does not mean I wish you to be evil. I have my champion for such. I seek you rather as a knight, one to do good to balance the evil. We daedra are the natural balance to the aedra. Good and evil, not in conflict with each other, but in balance. Harmony. Light and dark, day and night, hot and cold, dry and wet, Winter and Summer, Spring and Autumn, predator and prey, and many, many others.” Briefly that gaze lifted away from Charles. “Creation and entropy,” he intoned, flatly, before his gaze came back to the rat before him. “You know them all, Sir Matthias. You know them all. Opposites which require each other.” Ba'al spread his free arm wide and his eyes seemed to sweep across all of reality even though the wan light only brought the narrow hallow into relief. “If you have no night, then all your crops will wither and die from the unending heat. And then all the animals and all the races of the world will die with them. If you have no day, then none of your crops will grow and everything will die again. If you have neither heat nor cold, neither the dry nor the wet, you suffer a similar fate. Balance must be maintained or all of life is threatened. So too must it be with good and evil. You know this. The Sondeckis and the Kankoran exemplify it.” Charles shook his head at that. “No, we'd be better off without them!” “Come, Sir Matthias, Sondeckis of the Black. You know the histories of your clan better than most. You know the times when your efforts to ensure justice have served to destroy the very people you are meant to guard. But think on it. Can you truly say that there is a difference between this and any other necessary opposite? You can serve to help restore the balance amongst the Pantheon by becoming my disciple. And with balance amongst the Pantheon, there will be balance amongst all your kind. When was the last time your world knew harmony and peace? Do your histories ever record such a time? No, they do not.” Charles tried to raise his right hand to make the sign of the Yew, but he still held the Sondeshike there. Ba'al still noticed his effort and offered a sad shake of his head. “Sir Matthias, why do you waste your time on a god who does not answer you?” The blue eyes flared and his voice took on an enthusiasm the rat recalled hearing in the voice of his fellow writers when the muse struck. “Let me present you with a proposition. I propose that there are no true Patildor in the world. Every Patildor at his heart still worships the Pantheon even if they will not admit it. Consider your home, Metamor Keep. How often do the Patildor there, when their prayers go unanswered, seek some other remedy, be it magic or the intervention of the Pantheon? You yourself have born the marks of both Velena and Akkala. You too are already a Lothanasi. You seek the aid of others when you do not believe your Eli will help you.” He thrust out an arm once more to encompass the blackness about them. “Cast your gaze about! Where exactly are you, Sir? Through whence have you passed to stand before me? Not in the Heavens of the Patildor, and most certainly not their Hell. Can you dispute this, Sir Matthias?” Try as he might, Charles could not force himself to reject it. He tried to look away but the lord of daedra was mesmerizing. Every mote of darkness seemed to swirl about every other mote in his shape so that his eyes were ever lost, swirled this way and that, until finally they returned to those fiery blue-white coals. Vivid and resplendent, they pierced through to his soul. Had he any secrets from this one? “I... It was the only choice! I would have been stone forever!” Master, please help me! Remember your oath. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>