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Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars II: Denuncio
(o)
Thursday, May 10, 708 CR
Despite a lifetime of wandering the ever changing and incorporeal world of dreams, Malger was still surprised at how the landscape appeared to him when his eyes finally closed on the waking world. Always familiar was his point of entry for it was his own body, his own anchor into Nocturna's realm. But what lay beyond it depended not only on where he had chosen to sleep, but also on who slept near him, but more on whose dreams pressed close by. He found no trace of that wily fox Misanthe waiting for him on the other side; doubtless she was still awake lurking beneath his bed as a true fox ready to raise an alarm should any come to harm him. Similarly, he did not see any sign of Sir Egland, nor hear the beautiful melody of his viola amidst the spiraling roots and branches that cocooned his vision.
But for those he could see, each dreamer had a place within their mind that was never far from whatever setting the dream offered for them. To Malger's perceptions the dreams were subdued, the colors washed out and gray as if locked in a perpetual twilight under a full mood though to the dreamer they may have seemed as fully colorful and bright as a morning in the sunshine. Poor Hesgebaern appeared to be righting the observation of ignobility impugned upon his horses as he dreamt of a fallow field strewn with winter-stirred rock and muddy earth through which Versyd struggled to pull a dull plowshare. Intoran dreamt of the warmth of a hearthfire and armory as he lovingly worked to bring the armor of the Knight for whom he served as squire into blinding brightness.
Lord Avery was wrought in treaties and politicking, listening to croaking, gurgling complaints of the amphibian Barnhardt concerning a parcel of land that the squirrel was deeding to the scar-faced rat, Charles, who had recently been titled as Knight and, now, would become one of the minor landed nobility of the Northern Midlands. The put upon squirrel could not seem to escape from the salamander no matter how he scampered through the increasingly complex boughs of dream trees. The dream offered Malger no insight as to where the squirrel lord was in the waking world but, as his dreams were easily found, he was not geographically distant.
Malger visited their dreams, laughed brightly at the frivolity of each, and then ventured to explore through other dreams. Transitioning from one to the next, for him, was always made in the intricate corridors of the Cathedral of Night, Nocturna's dreamscape home that he had, himself, built for her within his mind based loosely upon the Aelven architecture of the Lightbringer cathedral in Silvassa. No doubt all of her worshipers, those who could Dream as he could, created their own environs for her. She was, most likely, attending to the needs of her faithful as she had not drawn him to her as he wandered the corridors from Hall to Hall, from dream into dream.
As Malger wandered amidst that somnolent Cathedral, he felt something he did not normally feel brush across his shoulders and ears. Stepping from the corridor into another great, cavernously arching hall, Malger beheld a towering thick-trunked tree. He craned his head back but could not espy the crest of the forest sentinel in the gables far, far above. A wind, it felt; cold and alien like the eyes of a shadow beholding him. It was so subtle at first he did not notice it, but as he neared a rather large tree that towered above with lush branches and circumscribed by a vast entwining vine with purple flowers, he felt the wind pushing at his back, drawing him into the maw of roots. Curious, and not a little bit unsettled, Malger proceeded directly toward that hole in the base of the roots.
As an awakened Dreamer, one who could walk Nocturna's dream realm fully aware of themselves and where they were, Malger had been mantled with the task of its defense. She could not ward the entirety of the shadowy realm between wakefulness and death to ward every dreamer, so it was to the Dreamers she turned to protect those who slept from creatures that had no life within the waking world but fearsome potency within the dreams. Some, many, were spat up from the lower hells through the cracks and pits invariably created with the ever-shifting potentials of magic, life, and death. Such were often directionless shades that were drawn to the potency of the life of dreamers, to hunt and consume their sleeping spirits, eventually darkening their minds and dragging them into a shadowy hell whenever they slept until they invariably sought their own ending. Others, however, were spun from the very thoughts of the dreamers during times of the highest emotional release. Terror and grief were the most powerful ground from which such shadows arose, though unspeakable joy often fostered similar entities that scattered away into the dreams of others in proximity. Each touched those nearby dreams, and dreamers, with their light or shadow but often did not exist beyond the dream that spawned them.
But under that dream tree there was something else; something dark and brooding that drew at Malger's senses like a lodestone. Something within the shadows was aware of his presence, his regard, and it regarded him in turn. It was a vast nameless thing beckoning him inward, a pit which could never be filled ravenous for more. A sword gleamed in Malger's hand, its keen silver length shining vibrantly while all else remained washed out and gray. Coming to the hollow, cavernous black pit boring between the roots of the tree Malger reached out to brace his hand against the ancient wood and leaned close, peering into the dark.
Dread filled him as he peered into the depths which no light, not even the sheen of his blade, could pierce. A menacing growl, as of a great cat defending its lair, but deeper and more immediate shivered through the bark against which his hand and feet braced themselves. Malger angled his sword forward, steeling himself against the living nightmare before him. The darkness of the pit extended beyond the limits of vision or sense, a breach to infinity that could not be encompassed, and the likes of which he had never before borne witness.
A shifting, a sense, turned his head slightly and he caught the merest flicker of motion behind him. It was small, ephemeral, but irresistibly present and Malger spun away from both darkness and the unfocused presence to bear his sword. But it was gone, the flitting thing that somehow warned him away, and when he turned back the tree was featureless and unblemished.
The tree was naught but a tree, fading slowly into the unsettled memory of whomever had dreamt it into existence, and all too soon was gone. Malger cast about, sword in hand, but could not find the dreamer, nor recall that unsettling and fearsome darkness.
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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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