Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars III: Descensum
(c)
Tuesday, June 22, 724 CR Early Evening
His sire sat on a long bench with his back to the
door. His fingers retied the laces of his tunic
while his tail shifted about on the floor. His
scalloped ears lifted at the creak of the door
hinge. Father? He turned his head to the left,
and what had been an expectant expression faded
like butter left in the sun. His features drooped
as one as his eye met Charlie, softening but
never leaving him. His voice, soft and sad, could
only murmur, No; son. Come in... and shut the door.
Charlie took a step closer, pushing the door shut
behind him. He did not take another step into the
room. The chamber was wide with a series of
raised platforms like steps in a ladder for the
choir to stand on, cabinets for instruments,
robes, candles, and music. The walls were more of
the same gray stone familiar in Metamor, though
the surface of several walls had been covered by
plaster and painted with intricate frescoes
depicting scenes from the Canticles. Charlie's
eyes did not linger on them long enough to
discern which ones. All he could do was return his sire's regard.
Baron Matthias let his gaze lower to the floor
and his tail. He sighed. I suppose you are here
for an explanation of what you saw in my dreams.
Charlie knew he should mention how he had also
come to apologize, but those words would not
leave his throat. His fingers trembled and he
felt his claws pricking his palms again. Aye. My
father, he emphasized the word with an iciness
he knew he should not feel, has told me some of
it. But there was a lot he did not know. If I
want the truth I must hear it from you.
His sire nodded and sighed. Slowly he turned so
that he was half-facing Charlie. The top half of
his tunic was still open, and there where the
laces were undone, he could see a sliver of
granite marring his brown-furred chest. The
banded steel from the ruin of his shield had
pierced him there moments before his sire had
changed to stone, grabbed his arms and forced him
to his knees. His claws dug further. Your chest.
Charles lifted one hand and touched the bit of
stone in his flesh. It is nothing for you to
worry about. I am sure you saw Abafouq leave me a
moment ago. He and my other friends will help
solve this mystery. They understand you know, my
son, what happened that night better than anyone
else. They went through the same thing themselves.
They gave up their children too?
Charles winced and shook his head. Not like
that. Please, Charlie, I love you and have always
loved you. But what happened to me back then,
what I almost became... it is too horrible to
contemplate and so most of the time I try to
forget it. But I cannot shut it out of my dreams.
I hoped you would never stumble upon it and would
grow up knowing you were loved by two fathers,
one who gave you life and loved you from afar,
and one who formed your life and loved you up
close. This is... this is the most painful thing I have ever had to do.
More painful than giving me up? Charlie found
his gorge rising and he had to force himself to
unclench his hands lest his claws draw blood.
Explaining yourself to the son you wronged is
more painful than selling me for a favor from a god?
No. What is so painful is making you share what
I had done. I did not bargain you away because I
did not love you. I bargained you away because I
was a monster who would tear the world apart from
heaven to hell and leave it in ruin for one more moment with Ladero.
Charlie wanted to sneer but there was something
in his sire's voice and manner that kept his
tongue in check. He had heard his sire boast
before, and had heard him tell foolish tales to
children who were easily swept away by his
lyrical gifts. But this time he heard only an
earnest seriousness in his sire's words.
Ludicrous exaggeration it may have seemed, but
the baron meant it exactly as he said it.
You are not hiding anything from me anymore.
What happened sixteen years ago? Why did you
bargain me away like you did? I deserve to know the truth.
Sit then and I will tell you everything.
I do not want to sit.
Please come and sit, Charlie. It is a very long
tale and you will regret it if you try standing for its length.
Charlie took a deep breath and then walked toward
the other end of the bench. He straddled the
bench, letting his tail slip off the side facing
the door, so he could face his sire. The baron
resumed lacing his tunic and then slipped a fresh
red vest over both shoulders. Once he finished,
he offered Charlie a faint smile, but one that
did not expect anything in return. He then
reached into a pouch dangling from his side and
withdrew a pair of short chewsticks. You will want this as well.
He accepted the chewstick, smelled that it was
fashioned from cherry, and muttered his thanks.
Even though his teeth ached he did not gnaw right
away; his eyes and thoughts were too fixed on his
sire. The Baron took a deep breath and then
asked, Do you remember three years ago, after
returning from Sutthaivasse with your father, how
you spent a week in the Narrows with your
brothers and sisters and finally cajoled the
story of my adventures from the year of your birth?
I remember, Charlie admitted with a long sigh.
It had been the longest stretch he had spent with
his birth family since his first trip to
Sutthaivasse with his father at the age of seven.
It hadn't been intentional; violent storms had
washed out the road and made travel hazardous.
He'd enjoyed the chance to go exploring in the
caves beneath Matthias Keep with Erick and
Bertram, to play songs for his younger siblings,
and to have a break from all of his studies. But
his sire's tale of that great evil in Marzac had
been mesmerizing. He had heard many of the
details before, but just as his father could
weave a tapestry for the heart with his songs,
Master Murikeer an illusion for the eyes with his
magic, and his mother a festival for the tongue
with her delicacies, so too could his sire
conjure adventure for the soul with his words. I
still think you should let some bard immortalize it in verse and song!
The baron's smile increased, a genuine smile
pleased with his son's enthusiasm for the tale
even three years later. But it faded before his
next words left his tongue. I did not tell you
all of the story. Marzac, the power within it,
did not die with the destruction of the Chateau.
Nor with the destruction of the three weapons. It
lingered on in my friends and I. It was a...
corruption that had touched all of us who went to
Marzac. This corruption took on different forms
in each of us, but its goal was the same. What
had been there, spilling into our world and
killing it, wanted us to open a way for it to
come back to our world and do it again.
Charlie frowned and nodded. Master Rickkter has
told me some of this two years ago.
He did? His sire's expression filled with
surprise and confusion. Why did he do that?
Charlie grimaced and narrowed his eyes. His sire
had managed, without even beginning his tale, to
relax him with a few words of introduction. He
was not going to be so easily lulled by a
storyteller! A hyacinth. I brought one back with
me from Sutthaivasse at his wife's suggestion. He
did not take kindly to the surprise gift.
His sire's expression almost brightened into a
laugh. I had not heard about that! I can imagine
Rick's ire. So you have heard of the hyacinth
that nearly destroyed Jessica. Well, that same
corruption that poisoned her mind against her
friends and sought to take new life through that
hyacinth struck all of us. It tried to convince
Lindsey it was the child of the man who she had
wanted to take as a husband. It came to Kayla in
the form of a dead dragon and attempted to get
her to place him in control of Rickkter's body.
It appeared to James in the form of a bell; nine
tolls against a man and it would have been born
from their flesh; eight were struck against me
before he was stopped and rejected its evil.
For Jerome... His eyes grew distant and he
quickly drew the sign of the yew from forehead to
chest. For my friend Jerome it came as enemies
chasing him into darkness. It wanted him to hide
from everything, and would have convinced him to
pull all the world asunder to find some place to
be safe. In the end he turned away from that to
return to his duty as a Sondecki and he nearly
ended up a mindless beast. As it is... Matthias
shook his head and sighed. No more of that. Who
have I missed? Ah, Abafouq who was just here!
My friend Abafouq was tempted to destroy his own
people in order to make them take him back. He
would have crushed all of their councils and
traditions and set himself as arbiter over a new
Binoq culture, one based entirely around the
darkness growing inside of him. And Guernef, ah,
the one who saw me tempted by mountain dreams, he
was tempted to give Abafouq a home by forcing him
to walk the Paths of the Sky as he once did. A
surprise that none of us would have expected of
the Kakikagiget of the Nauh-kaee! In the end
Abafouq accepted the judgment of his people,
painful as it was and still is, and returned here
to Metamor. Guernef gave up his desire to have
his friend at his side in a place inhospitable
for him and brought him back to Metamor. I hope
he visits again soon; he is missed.
You know of Jessica and what the corruption made
her do. It tempted even the Åelf, ancient and
wise, with dreams of returning his people to what
Prince Yajakali considered their rightful place
above humankind. And yet at every stage of the
corruption doing as it wanted seemed to us the
right thing to do. With unerring cunning and
cruelty it clouded our judgment until friends
became enemies, goodness seemed to us as evil,
and the acts of evil seemed righteousness itself.
And always, like all corruption, it used something that was good against us.
For Lindsey it used the love of a mother for her
child to enslave her. Kayla's love for Rickkter
blinded her to the dragon's malfeasance. James's
unrequited love for Baerle turned into obsession
and a belief that his dearest friends were
stealing her from him. Jerome's desire to protect
our family from the other Sondeckis made him
paranoid of everything around him. Abafouq's love
for his home brought him to the brink of
destroying that home. Guernef's love and sympathy
for his friend nearly made him destroy his
friend. Andares's love for man drove him to the
brink of asserting domination of man. And
Jessica's heartfelt desire to help those
suffering with ruinous curses nearly made her
make all who suffered the curse her slaves.
This corruption spoke to us in words, feelings,
impressions, and in ways so subtle that none of
us realized what was happening to us until it was
nearly too late. Even knowing what had happened
to our friends was not enough. We still fell
victim to it. We still fell short. We still
showed our weakness and our need for redemption.
Matthias closed his eyes and shook his head. His
claws dug into his trousers at either knee and he
flecked his jowls as if he wished he were gnawing.
The first time I heard it speak to me, it wasn't
in words, but a sense, an impulse. It was the day
I returned from Marzac. Garigan led me to your
brother's grave and in my weeping I knew deep
down, some horrible possibility. As I put my
hands on his grave, as I felt the grooves and
roughness of the stone marker, I knew as if it
had been seared into my heart like the Shrieker's
hand seared into my face, that what had happened
was not the way things should be. The injustice
was so gross that it could not be allowed to
stand. This was not the misery and wailing of a
father in grief; this was the certainty of a god thwarted.
Matthias took a deep breath and turned away for a
moment, staring off behind and to his left, as if
he expected his eyes to pierce the stone blocks
to where the altar and tabernacle reposed. In a
very quiet voice he added, Your mother told me,
Lady Kimberly that is, that in the last hours of
Ladero's life she sought the aid of Lothanasa
Raven. Raven arrived in the final minutes, and
even though Garigan valiantly struggled to hold
your brother together, no aid came from Akkala
until the moment after he was sundered.
His sire's eyes dampened and he rubbed them with
the back of one hand, Forgive me, son. Just
thinking of it... Charlie nodded, preferring
silence to any other acknowledgment. The few
times he had seen either his sire or his real
mother speak of Ladero they had always begun to
cry. A part of him wanted to reach out and clasp
his sire on the shoulder to steady him and show
empathy. But then a scowl crossed his jowls and
he remained where he was. His paws reached for
the chewstick Charles had given him instead.
Through lowered lids, cool and distant, he
watched his sire regain his composure while his
incisors worried at the end of the cherry stick.
After several long seconds of eye rubbing and
deep breathing, Baron Matthias let out a sigh. I
suppose you are wondering what this has to do
with what you saw. I will get to that soon. A
little more and I will describe it. After Akkala
appeared she told your mother that Ladero had to
die to save me. When she told me this that
February, I was filled with a wrath that, if not
for my family and friends there at my side, would
have seen me tear the trees of the Glen apart.
But that was only the beginning. The corruption
took its time to prepare me. Its efforts were
focused on Kayla at the time, and after her it
went after my other friends in turn. But all the
while it was twisting my mind and readying me for how it wished to use me.
During the plague I was separated from you, your
siblings, and your mother. I was heartbroken and
mad with fear that I would lose all of you too.
Every morning I would find myself before Ladero's
grave. I would turn myself to stone and merge
with his marker as if I could bring him back that
way. I didn't understand why I couldn't let go of
my loss, but it was the corruption making his
death more and more present to me, and making his
absence more and more painful for me.
It was abated some after Jessica remembered that
she could speak to Misha through a spell gem and
we used it so I could see you and the rest of our
family. But it was not gone. During my
convalescence after James cracked my ribs and my
jaw, I had plenty of time to ponder what could be
done to return my family to the way it should be.
At first I just believed that it was about
bringing all of you home, but even after the
quarantine was lifted and we were reunited, I
felt that ache the corruption had planted in me.
I felt an emptiness even in my family. Slowly,
even you and your siblings, and even your mother,
meant nothing to me as long as Ladero was dead.
Matthias lowered his snout and traced the sign of
the yew slowly from forehead to chest and
shoulders. My new duties as a knight for the
Glen and surveying the Narrows gave me ample time
to continue to ponder away from all of you. But
it was not until the corruption of Marzac failed
to ensnare Jessica and the second hyacinth was
destroyed that all of its preparations came to
terrifying fruition. On the fifth of May, 708
Cristos Reckoning, Jessica destroyed the hyacinth
root and branch. One week later I made the
bargain you glimpsed and challenged the powers of
Heaven and Hell for Ladero's soul. It only took
seven days for the corruption of Marzac to turn
me into a loathsome and murderous beast.
Charlie bit through the chewstick, splinters
showering his breeches and landing even on his
tail curled about his feet. Simmering in his
anger, he nevertheless leaned forward as his sire began his tale.
----------
May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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