<html> <body> Sorry I forgot to post yesterday. It was a crazy day. Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars VI: Acceptio (h) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR Charles opened his eyes to a vista of branches flush with broad green leaves and weighed down by plump, purple figs. His nostrils were filled with a panorama of fruits, flowers, and the subtle hints of people beyond counting. A warm light bathed him and he felt a gentle breeze rushing across his fur and whiskers. Blades of grass provided soft cushion and they tickled the edge of his scalloped ears and along the length of his tail as they bent in the wind. A familiar voice speaking in the southern tongue reached his ears. “Rise, my dear friend and brother. You are not yet finished here.” It had been nearly ten years since he had last hard that Eaven accent. Yet he knew it better than he knew his tail. “La... Ladero?” He climbed to his feet, toes splaying in the grass, and saw before him a black-robed man with olive-skinned complexion, short, dark hair, wide nose and cheeks and large brown eyes. His hands were crossed at the waist, but on his chest was a shield with a white palm in which was inscribed a red sword. No stubble touched his chin even though he was clearly in his late twenties. The man smiled, and there was a assured beauty there. A glow encased him as if he himself were the source of the light that brightened the garden. “It is I, Charles. Do not be afraid.” “Ladero...” Charles stared at the man in dumfounded awe. When he was only seven years old, on the final journey crossing the Darkündlicht mountains on his way to Sondeshara for the first time, he had met three other boys: Krenek Zagrosek, Jerome Krabbe, and Ladero Alenez. They had lived together, trained together, learned together, ate together, prayed together, and schemed together. Inseparable friends from the very first, their skills progressed at the same rate, each of them raised from Yellow to Green, Green to Blue, Blue to Red, Red to Purple, and Purple to Black always at the same time. Such synchronized advancement was rare in any of the mage clans of the Southlands, and it further united them in ways that no other friend amongst the Sondecki could hope. Of all of them, it had been Ladero who had taught them of Eli and Yahshua and what it meant to be a prayerful and faithful Follower. It had been Ladero who had once considered a vocation to the priesthood amongst the Sondeckis. And it had been this Ladero for whom he had named his youngest son born with the power of the Sondeck. His snout broke into a smile and he stumbled toward his friend, arms extended. “Ladero! I... I never thought I would see you again!” Ladero lifted one hand and slowly shook his head. “You cannot touch me yet, Charles.” The rat stopped, bewildered and blinking. “Why not?” “You are still in the shadow.” That one word woke in his mind a chain of memories stretching backward through nightmare. He felt anew the fire and pain that scoured him of his identity. He remembered the anguish that each deeper pit of the Daedra's realm had inflicted. He felt the terror of Lilith's midnight forest and plain. He quivered from the suffering endured by the prisoners of Tallakath. His stomach turned from the insanity of Klepnos. His flesh trembled at the memory of Oblineth's ice. His Sondeck tensed at the merest taste of the rage of Revonos. His body threatened betrayal at the recollection of the temptation of Suspira. He yearned to weep at what Agemnos forced him to do to Baldwin. And he was overwhelmed by horror at the very presence of Ba'al. But all of it was there merest whisper of emotion compared to the total recollection of all that he had done and had done to him beneath the guidance of 'his Master', the ancient Åelf Yajakali. Charles collapsed on the grass, heaving as he stared down his snout at his black arms. The stain he'd received from Baldwin's spirit remained there. His eyes burned as he sobbed. Nothing coherent came from his tongue though he desperately tried to speak. A little voice called to him. “Dada. It will be okay.” His heart tightened at that sound and he turned on his hands and knees. Standing in the patch of clover in the midst of brilliant rays of light descending from a small cleft in the clouds above was his youngest son. The black cape of fur that draped his head and shoulders shimmered in the gentle breeze, while the white fur of his chest and legs glimmered a white so full and resplendent that his eyes hurt just gazing at him. “My son... Oh, my son... I have done terrible things...” “Why not embrace him?” He knew the voice. It startled him to hear it after witnessing the two Laderos, one of his closest friends and the son he'd lost, but it was present just the same. He turned his head even further, and saw a smear of black crossing the grass toward a tall figure. The alabaster robe was now tattered and threadbare as if it had been used as a funerary cloak for centuries. The silvery-black hair was disheveled and full of tangles. Little scars marred the once pristine flesh as if he'd been raked across a field of rock. The majesty and power that had once belonged to that figure and that had led Charles through the hells and up the mountain was gone. But the voice remained. Compelling and reasonable, he felt a deep urge to listen. His legs shifted and he turned once more toward his son. He is false! Charles stopped, straightened himself and shook his head. “My friend bids me not to touch. You bid me do so, Yajakali. That is reason enough. I will obey you no more.” “Charles,” the battered Åelf said with an imploring sweep of his bruised and bloodied arms. “We want the same thing, you and I. We want our families, our very people whole. This child was stolen from you. My entire people were stolen from me. I have sought these many years to bring them back. I have sought it with all my being. Everything we have experienced together... was to bring you here. Have I not done what I said I would do?” He nearly fell to his knees again at the mere suggestion of what he'd endured. “You brought me here, aye. But in what condition? Look at me!” He lifted his arms and felt a fury build within them. His fingers curled and his claws raked the air as if rending flesh. “You are a liar! You did not bring me here for my sake! You brought me here for your own! Go back to hell where you belong!” “Dada!” “Charles!” Both Laderos shouted as one, their voices stricken as if Charles had condemned them. He shrank back, pressing his black hands to his face and feeling his claws dig against his soft flesh. He wanted to rip the black from his fur, but all he could do, his rage struck dumb, was to continue to weep. “Please, Charles,” Yajakali pressed when neither Ladero spoke. “You must take your son. You must! I am Yajakali! I am the purpose for our being! I am the reason we are here at all! You must take him or all that is will be undone and the very creation itself will be thwarted! I must have them back! I must have them, Charles! You must do as I command you! Now! There is no more time!” Charles tightened his grip until he felt pain in his face. “No!” He felt the presence touch the edge of his mind but where he once could slip inside and reshape the rat's thoughts, now there was no opening. That door had truly been shut and in that moment Charles was grateful for it. Instead he saw deep within the face of his wife gazing back at him. Could he ever stand again if she did not hold him up? Rebuffed, Yajakali bent down to grab him by the shoulders. He felt the Åelf's touch but there was no supernatural strength to his grip. Misha had a stronger hand that this dethroned prince. Still he shook the rat , trying to pull his hands from his face and to pull his knees from the grass. “You must come claim your son! You must! You must! I need you to do this! I cannot go on if you do not! Do it! Do it! Do it!” Charles shrugged his shoulders and with one elbow pushed him aside. There was nothing more Yajakali could do. Impotent, he tilted back his head and screamed toward the clouds above. “I was Prince of Jagoduun! I was promised everything! I was promised! Why will you not give it to me! Why!” Ladero, Sondecki of the Black, killed five years ago by a Shrieker's dread touch, stepped forward and placed a hand upon Yajakali's shoulder. “Oh Prince of Jagoduun, your time is finished. A grace beyond measure has been given you to persist as long as you have. But it is finished. All have rejected you. None more remain through whom you can act.” Yajakali would not look at the Sondecki, but kept his blue eyes, harried and bloodshot, focused on the black rat. “Charles, you can give me everything back. You can.” Ladero pressed lightly upon the Åelf's shoulder and he stumbled backward toward the child who had not moved from the patch of clover at the edge of the garden. “Charles is no longer yours. He has rejected you several times already. Nothing you say or do now will change his mind. Look at yourself, Prince, see what is left. You have nothing to offer him or anyone else. Nothing.” “No!” Yajakali tried to squirm from Ladero's grip but the Sondecki could not be shaken. “you... you humans destroyed everything! You invaded my home and slaughtered my people! You! You should all be animals like him! You should all serve me!” “Prince Yajakali,” the little voice of Charles' son stilled the torrent of hate erupting from the frail Åelf more surely than the Sondecki's grip stilled his body. In that moment even the wind seemed to keep still. Not a leaf, branch, or blade of grass stirred as they waited for that voice to continue. “I am so sorry to hear what happened to your people. It was terrible. But please, Prince Yajakali, take heart. Your family faced their death bravely.” His boy smiled and for a moment Charles could see a strange, jagged red line that ran from the top of his head down his chest and abdomen. The rupture disappeared as soon as the boy spoke again. “But my Dada and everyone else now had nothing to do with it. They are innocent. Please do not hate them, Prince Yajakali. Please forgive.” “Forgive?” Yajakali coughed the word, but nothing else came forth. He spluttered incoherently for a moment and then cast his gaze toward the prone rat. Charles turned his head aside to gaze at his son. Little Ladero had not even been two months old when Charles had been forced to leave for Marzac. He, like his litter-mates, had begun to crawl about but nothing more. Kimberly had told him that they had begun to speak by late Summer and had a mastery of words that would be the envy of a two-year old at only five months. His little Sondecki child had asked for him even as he lay dying in his crib. Yet now he looked to be as old as the rest of his children, though with a wisdom and comprehension beyond even their advanced abilities. This child whom he had boasted of on the terrible journey to Marzac, of whom he spoke with such love and hope, had been snatched by death and yet now stood before him speaking with such gentleness to the very creature who was responsible for atrocities committed across the span of eleven thousand years. Charles would have strangled Yajakali and torn him to pieces were he able. His dead son sought to console him. Charles lowered his head to the vibrant grass and felt nothing but shame. In a whisper he made his tongue work. “Listen to him, Yajakali... listen to him.” The elder Ladero twisted Yajakali's shoulder, forcing him to turn toward the boy standing in the clover patch. The clouds billowed downward from above, circling that side of the garden so closely that the little rat's tail danced in its mist. The light was brilliant as if the sun itself were veiled inches behind the soft mass. Both Charles and Yajakali averted their eyes as the child was wreathed by that light, a light that burnished within his fur as well. But the dead Sondecki smiled and gazed into it without pain. “The extraordinary grace given you is almost spent, Prince Yajakali.” Ladero's voice thundered and each tree in the garden and every vine laden with grapes seemed to thrum with it. “The time for your choosing is at hand. The little saint, beloved Ladero, will guide you. Go with him now and you may yet avoid the damnation you sought for the world of men.” Charles's son stepped from the clover patch and held out a paw, his nose quivering and whiskers twitching with a rat's smile. “Please come, your highness. I have so much to show you. Come. Take my hand.” His heart held still in that moment. He could only watch Ladero his son stretching forth a glowing arm covered in fur and a hand tipped with little claws toward the creature that had caused Charles and his friends such misery and loss. In turn he saw Yajakali's aged and beaten blue eyes stare at that hand with an incomprehensible expression. No more did the Åelf look back at the rat who he'd nearly conquered. He only stared at the child and the clouds of light behind him. And then, impossibly, Yajakali lifted one arm. His fingers, bruised and swollen with calluses, rested upon his son's outstretched paw. Little fingers curled upward and the smile on his son's face stretched with beauty. Charles felt his heart swell so that his ribs groaned. The Sondecki released his grip and the Prince of Jagoduun stood, slow and unsteady. Ladero guided him toward the patch of clover and the clouds. The light splintered in a million scintillating rays, parting the clouds before them. Only radiance shone within. The little rat called toward them in a sweet voice that knew only joy. “I love you, Dada!” “I love you, my son!” he cried out, his voice barely a whisper in the chorus of light that thronged them. His son's eyes sparkled even as he stepped into the clouds. Yajakali's face was lost, shadowed by so much light, but he too stepped from clover to firmament. The clouds closed behind them and they were gone. As he took one breath after another, the clouds dispersed from the edge of the garden and returned to their place far above. Charles lifted a black arm before finally crumpling against the ground, overwhelmed and unable to speak. He wept, the only thing he could do. The grass bent near him and a black cloak swept over it. Ladero sat cross-legged beside him and offered him a smile. “Your son, Charles, has been tasked with something you will spend the rest of your life in vain trying to comprehend. He is offering redemption. A single tear of contrition is all it will take; Yahshua died even for that one. Bear him no ill will for his fate is no longer the concern of any living creature below.” Charles managed to still the racking in his chest. He brushed the tears from his eyes and forced himself to a kneeling position a few feet from his friend. Lifting his arms he stared at them, confused. “Why am I still covered in soul tar? Am I to be like Jessica, stained black as shadow all my days?” “The black is not upon your flesh; about this Yajakali did not lie. When you wake from the dream you will be as you were before. But the shadow is no longer beneath you. Look.” Charles glanced down at his knees and saw that he crouched upon bright green grass and even the root of a fig tree. He climbed to his feet, lifted one paw after another, and marveled in a relief too great for anything but an exhalation. “It's gone. The shadow is gone!” “His hold over you has been completely broken. When he took your son's hand he relinquished his claim on all mortal flesh. Now all that remains to see is if he will repent of any of the sins he has perpetrated in all the ages of his being. I cannot describe to you the contest that is taking place for his soul. Your son will offer him every love for more ages than man can recount.” Charles lifted his head and nearly bumped his nose into a heavy fig. He stretched out one hand, felt the rough bark of the tree, and then leaned against it. Despite its pits and irregular shape, he felt no discomfort. “I feel as if I have been in this dream for countless ages of men already! How long, Ladero. How long has it been since I last looked upon my wife? How long has it been since I made that dread bargain with Nocturna? The bargain! Oh no! Charles! My little Charles!” He fell back to the ground and beat at the grass with his fists. “Oh, Ladero I have been a fool. I have been worse than a fool! I traded my boy, my precious boy, to nearly be Yajakali's shadow! My boy, my boy!” He wept anew, seeing clearly the stone tor, the frightful raven, and his little child stretched out on the cold table with her talons draped over his chest. His heart, a moment before swollen with love, now shattered with that memory. Ladero's voice was soft and gentle. There was no doubt in his words. “He is safe, Charles. Your son is safe. Nocturna cannot lay any claim on his soul by your hand. He has already been Immersed and that is a touch that cannot be erased. Love him dearly. You have not sold him.” “But...” he murmured, even as he tried to gather his composure. It took all his strength to force himself to lean against the tree. “But, what if Nocturna tries to claim him?” “She will not. But, your son will know her regardless. This much you must know, Charles, for your son's sake. Understand first that this was not the doing of Nocturna. Her power, frightful as it can be, and soothing as it can be, is limited nevertheless. But this she knew as now so will you. Your eldest son can Dream.” Charles blinked. “I do not understand.” “He can enter the dreams of others, touch them, reshape them, and speak in them. He has already been in yours.” He swallowed and knew it to be true. Only a few days earlier he'd been woken by his eldest from a nightmare. Little Charles had not been scared by a dream of his own, but had been frightened by the dream of his father. He slumped against the tree. “What shall I do?” “You and I were born with the Sondeck. You will know what to do for his sake.” Ladero lifted his eyes to the clouds and a small smile played at the edges of his lips. He said nothing and yet an entire conversation seemed to take place in that moment. The smile broadened to cross his entire face until an expression of profound and complete gratitude filled it. “And whatever happens, do not be afraid for him. He will be protected.” “Ladero, why is this so? Two of my children given such gifts. The one taken by death, and the other a gift I do not understand? What gifts do the other three possess? Will other children my Kimberly bears for me also be gifted?” But his Sondecki friend only shook his head. “That is not something I can tell you. Only four things remain for me to say to you. First, you asked how long you have been on this journey. When you wake from the dream it will be only a short time since you laid down and slept beneath the minstrel's flute. Time is one more creation of Eli's and it passes here as He wills it to pass. You are on the cusp of eternity here, Charles. You should not expect it to be like a journey by foot, horse, or sea!” “Then I haven't truly abandoned my family at least,” Charles said with a sigh. “What else must I know, Ladero? I know so much now that I wish I did not.” “These last things will be a comfort, my friend. You did not ask, but I know it is in your heart. This solace I can give; you did not destroy any of the souls you sought to harm on your journey. Our old friend the seller of ancient books did not suffer from your touch; even now he enjoys the beautiful vision denied him in life and the company of family long lost. Lay no blame on yourself on their account. “But very soon you will have the chance to aid two who suffer greatly. One of those you have already met on your journey. The other is a dear friend we both know. When he comes to you, the time will have arrived for you to set aright the wound that broke us all. You will know it, never fear.” Charles grimaced but nodded. “I trust you, Ladero. I do not understand but I trust you.” He lifted his eyes to the trees, the fruits, and the bountiful clouds above that gleamed with a golden light. “Will... will I see this place again?” Ladero stood and offered him an enigmatic smile. “That is for you to decide, Charles.” He turned his head to one side and a distant cast came to his eyes. “It is done. The choice is made. It is now time for you to return. But first, a grace is granted you, one of infinite worth. Look to the heavens, my friend. Behold it is she!” Charles lifted his gaze and beheld love itself. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>