<html> <body> Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars VI: Acceptio (d) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR However, the clouds were disconcerting. Before they had been far above, remote and unapproachable. But now they loomed as if bearing downward toward them and they were effulgent with a scintillating golden light that made his substance sizzle with renewed anguish. He crouched even more tightly within his Master's shadow but still their radiance burned him. We are almost there. The thought was clear and rich with meaning. More than a mere destination, it was restoration as well. It was goal and purpose. There. He yearned for it. He burned and charred the ground with his being and desire. But, for a moment, he knew not what that goal he strove for was. Something; some tangible thing that pulled at his heart though his anguish and pain-wracked mind could not, at first, discern it. A son. A word, as bereft of meaning as ant and squirrel, but he felt it deep down within the core of the essence that made him what he was. A son. Ro. Like the shard of a shattered whole; a single syllable. Desperately his mind snatched it up, turning it over and over to glean some meaning from something no more complicated than a modulation of the throat. Lo. Another fragment, sharp edged and glimmering like the first but somehow not whole. Did the strange vocalizations define what a son was, or were they simply the remnants of those things that his Master had tempered from the unfit mettle of his essence? Mulling the oddities over he strove deeper still. Dare. Ahh, another discarded bit of memory that shone as glimmering clear as the others; shards cast from a single whole that had been stripped, crushed, and forgotten. In his mind, even as he crept across the ground in the shadow and cringed from the searing agony of the light, Núrodur Nuruhuinë toyed with the sounds. Ro Lo Dare. Grist in his mind, rough within his mouth. Dare Lo Ro. A stone beneath the shadow; sharp edged and irritating. Each mental examination met with as much sense as ant or squirrel or even of Self had he once a vocalization the defined the untampered, flawed substance that he had once been. Lo Dare Ro. He stumbled for a brief half step, too frightened of the flame to succumb to the startled realization that the substance of those three syllables had not been forged away as so many others had. Somewhere, at the very edges of his hearing, the quieted music rose to a triumphant crescendo bent upon a single word. Ladero. A son. His son! The son he sought, the reason he undertook the forging and tempering that would make of him what his Master wished. To see his son, the one called Ladero. A memory, crystalline in the perfection of its clarity, suffused his emptied mind and he grasped at it as a drowning man to a buoy, drawing it into the center of his being and secreting it away as he had the music and the image of the beautiful lady in her gown. But what more must he relinquish first? The question unsettled him in a way he did not expect it would. His Master had already proven to him that once he'd been purified of some little thing he no longer was capable of recognizing it or even regretting its loss. So why did he hesitate? His Master did not. His disquiet did not go unnoticed by his Master. He felt the presence, immense and searing with its power, boring into him and with it more than mere meaning or words, but immersion. He stood in a courtyard of moss-covered stones and old statues positioned along low garden walls. The statues had once been of men, perhaps heroes and nobility of whatever kingdom this had once been, but now their faces were obscured by the wear of ages – if not missing altogether – while limbs either lay in jumbled ruin at their feet or were only half present. These titans of men were of an age now dead and already forgotten but for the remnants against which time and the elements worked their inexorable power. Nothing could be seen beyond the courtyard but silhouettes of taller walls of decaying stone that also suggested a dilapidated state equal to the statues. Overhead a moonless night peeked through a heavy veil of cloud. Everything persisted in a tranquil gloom. But he was not alone in the ruin. No name could be given, but he knew that there were others subsisting in the shadows that stretched from statue to garden wall and back again. Each seemed familiar as if they were not truly indistinguishable. Separate each of them were in that they occupied different locations within the courtyard, but they had a likeness that made him wonder whether they were merely different manifestations of the same being or form of being. He experienced them rather than sensed them, for like he, they were part of the ever deepened shadows covering the ancient ruins of man. Into the vision appeared a new being, one of light that shone bright and cool and yet did not dispel the shadows cloaking the graveyard. Rather, he seemed to make each shadow darker and more present, as if they were more than just a place where light could not reach, but a tangible substance that had him as their source. The being of light was clearly not a man, but something more refined and ancient. He stood in the presence of one who had seen ages rise and fall and yet who remained the same. Another age was past and now he guided all again. This ruin, though he could recognize nothing of it, was not merely an expression of the being's power, but also of his magnanimity. He turned to the others with him in this being's shadow and understood. Each and every fellow creature of shadow felt so similar to him because they were all incarnations of the same being, provided not just once but time and time again in such profusion that they covered all of this ancient city with the substance. They were all so familiar to him because they were his goal, purified as he had been of all that kept him from the being of light. His son, profuse and multitudinous, but his son. And there in this fallen place here none dwelt but the shadows they could find their protection from hated light and merely be together. More that his own will desired this, but that of the being of light as well. His Master. Nothing else cold distract them, for there was nothing left to stand between them. Father and son could dwell together and always under the generous suzerainty of their Master. Nothing else need be but they three. The impression lingered longer than the others he'd witnessed and with it before him he could only continue forward as they climbed the terrace. He left no blade of grass standing in his wake, but burnt all down to the roots as he dwelt on the image. He would have what he truly desired once his Master had finished tempering him; once he had been purified of all but his Master's shadow. The image did recede somewhat by the time the reached the end of the terrace. Before them stretched one last wall of stone and fissure rising upward to the very tip of the spire. A being of eyes and wings stood before the portal, its finger effacing a letter from the forehead of one of the souls so that no more stain remained. But this soul was different from the others they'd encountered on the terrace. It was not the strange shape he bore, with long ears that turned about his head, a boxy snout and flat nose, a thin chest and arms, wide hips supporting a long tail and large feet with three toes each tipped by claws. Seeing beasts that walked as men did struck him as natural though he could not quite discern why. What made this soul special was that he too stood in his Master's shadow. Núrodur Nuruhuinë regarded the soul with a measure of curiosity he had only offered to the images that had come to him. A strange song seemed to pass into the pain of his thought as he noted the dimensions of the beast-man. He felt a glimmer of another beast-creature, this one of a rat adorned in lace, intertwined with the melody, as well as something hidden within the thought. Something exalted yet concealed. He felt an ache that was not fire pain him from within at this thing he could not know about the song, the lady, and then beast-man that stood in his Master's shadow. The beast-man hopped toward the cleft on his long feet, heavy tail drooped behind him as he leaned forward with each bound. None of the steps took him from the pool of darkness that stretched forward from his Master's feet to welcome him. While his Master walked confidently past the being of eyes who seemed to shimmer with a spectral light Núrodur Nuruhuinë slunk past in the safety of shadow, pressed as tight to the ground as he could, leaving a trail of charred earth in his wake. Once they were past he lifted his substance from the shadow to study the hopping beast-man again. At the entrance to the cleft the figure had stopped and turned, extending his arms to block all passage beyond. His eyes, a hazelnut brown, glowed as if the moon at its most brilliant shone through them. The shadow undulated at his feet, and veins of black danced upward across the russet fur of his legs, thighs, and concentrated in a black mass punched into his left side. The wound appeared grievous and was the first real wound he could recall witnessing upon a soul traveling the terraces; yet it did not seem to hinder the beast-man as he stretched himself across the path to bar their way. And to the surprise of Núrodur Nuruhuinë, his Master slowed his pace as he approached, sculpted face betraying nothing. Nor did his thoughts indicate any displeasure at this act of defiance, at least none that he shared with his servant crouched at his heels. Uncertain what he should do, Núrodur Nuruhuinë waited and watched, studying the beast-man and wondering why his countenance seemed familiar. Images, disconnected and haphazard brushed through his inner being, but none lingered long enough for him to identify why this one was familiar to him, only that he seemed to have been important. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>