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Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars IV: Infernus
(b)
Saturday, May 12, 708 CR
The tor, the stone table, and the silver moon shining on both
vanished in a flash of darkness. The last thing he saw was his eldest
son's sleeping form on that table and then he fell through a darkness
that opened out into another night. Although it seemed as if he fell
for a very long time, like an old memory savored during a day's
journey, it whisked passed in the blink of an eye. He landed on his
side, a painful ringing in his ears as he struggled to put his hands
and legs beneath him. The ground was tangled with gnarled roots,
upthrust stones, and briars, all of it suffused in a deep gloom as of
a moonlight night obscured by thick clouds. His rodent eyes were
well-suited to the dark and after a moment he began to make sense of
everything around him.
He crouched in a forest tangled with the roots and limbs of misshaped
trees rattling dry branches in a crisp autumn wind. Bushes and
brambles choked the underbrush, each sporting a profusion of long
thorns that grasped and tore at his cloak. Beneath of these and
climbing nearly every tree he could see were mushrooms and fungus of
all sorts, brown and crimson like rust in the midnight pallor. His
whiskers trembled with every brush of air and the impression of other
things watching him in the sullen wood. His ears lifted and turned to
capture any sounds, but for the moaning of wind and clattering of
empty limbs he heard nothing.
The forest stretched impenetrable in every direction. Above him and
through the tangle of branches he could see nothing but an impression
of cloud. He had no marker to guide him. As he stared upward, one
hand brushing brambles and twigs from his cloak, he realized that the
branches overhead were intact and that apart from those crushed
beneath him there was no sign anywhere that he had fallen. And yet he
was sore as if he'd tumbled out of a loft. He stretched, taking slow,
careful breaths, listening and wondering.
Where was he? Was this another dream? What happened to Malger? Wasn't
the marten supposed to be guiding him?
Or perhaps you are somewhere beyond their reach.
Perhaps, he mused. Still, one thing was clear, there was no sense in
remaining where he was, but at the same time there was no indication
which direction might prove helpful. He lifted his nose and sniffed,
turning into the wind, but he felt nothing but the bitterness of
dried leaves and the putrefaction of mushrooms coating everything. He
grimaced and gingerly began to make his way into the wind.
The underbrush clawed at his legs and tail, while thick branches at
head height made him duck and weave as he pushed forward into the
inconsistent but palpable breeze. It was difficult to move without
making noise as twigs snapped from branches at the slightest touch,
but Charles managed reasonably well. Only a few times did a branch
snap so loudly that he winced and waited to hear if anything would
stir in that spectral gloom, but as much as he turned his ears what
few sounds he could detect all seemed far away and unconcerned.
He couldn't tell how long he walked through the deep forest beneath a
cloud-blackened sky as he felt no exhaustion and the only soreness
that lingered was from where he'd landed after crossing the bridge on
the tor. He felt neither hunger nor thirst, but something assured him
that he could slake either should he choose. The woods were not
inviting and they certainly did not feel alive, but something must be
in this place.
Eventually the wind brought him the odors of some animals and he
quickened his pace. He couldn't tell what they were but it was the
first thing he could feel in this place that seemed alive. Even the
few stones he'd felt beneath his toes were impenetrable to him. He
worked his way up a gentle slope toward spires of upthrust rock, the
very first he had seen other than the wood. Though his eyes were
meant for seeing in dark places, the gloom was so complete and the
tangle of trees so dense that he was nearly upon those spires before
he first glimpsed them.
The spires stood much taller than any of the trees and appeared to be
formed from basalt with massive channels of smooth stone like the
teeth of a gear rising up each side. The trees flanking their sides
were roughly the same height as those covering the Narrows. Beneath
both he felt small, as if he were only the size of a normal rat
instead of his usual twelve hands from toes to ears. Between them the
ground dropped suddenly, framed by a ring of rock across which empty
branches stretched. The air beyond was open and hazy, though he could
discern the outline of even taller trees in the distance.
Charles eased his way through the brush until his paws rested on the
stone lip between the basalt towers overlooking a small clearing
below. The clearing stretched a hundred feet in each direction, as if
a great circle had been ripped out of the earth. The center of the
clearing was raised with slabs of speckled granite laid one on top
the other at odd angles, so that it appeared to be a gray sunburst.
Had there been any light the rat knew its reflection would have made
the cairn appear to dance. The rest of the clearing seemed to be a
mix of grass and moss.
There did not appear to be an easy way down to the clearing. The lip
of stone overlooked a steep cliff that had been polished smooth.
Charles would break a leg or worse trying to climb down. Even the
basalt towers with their columns had been smoothed where rough and
filled in everywhere else with granite so that they were a seamless
whole. The towers stood like sentinels in the wood, or the horns of
some vast nameless thing staring up at the cloud-scarred sky with its
eye of layered stone.
A brief chill ran through the wind and Charles shrank back. The scene
of animal musk grew stronger as the breeze skirled over the stone and
rattled the branches above. Twigs snapped behind him and he spun his
head to one side, but there was nothing in the midnight gloom but the
dense cluster of trees and brush. He swallowed and eased himself back
from the lip of stone, walking carefully toward the left tower.
He had walked into the wind so he might know what waited ahead of
him. Was there something else following him too?
Charles reached into his cloak and ran his claws along the compact
Sondeshike. Its cool, metallic surface settled his anxiety some, but
in this strange forest he knew he could never feel completely safe.
He followed the towering spire around the hillock, and the ground
quickly fell away. He climbed down hillocks and outcroppings, trying
to stay as close to the basalt as possible, never letting it stray
too far from his right.
The clearing came into view again, only a short distance below him,
when he heard the sound of several somethings moving through the wood
on the opposite end. Charles crouched low beneath the roots of one
trees that stretched against the tower, dangling like a monstrous
hand before a cavernous maw. He waited, one hand wrapped about his
Sondeshike, watching the trees on the other side of the clearing.
The sound of movement, the crush of twigs and the rustling of bushes,
grew nearer and nearer until out of the trees emerged a quartet of
what he first took for wolves and then for wolf Keepers, but quickly
realized that they were neither. They loped and they were coated for
the most part in lupine pelts, but there were parts of them that
seemed more man-like and not in the manner of Keepers. They did not
have beastly features grafted onto a human shape, but bits and pieces
of human shaped mingled with their wolf guise. Their snouts ranged
from long, black, with yellowed fangs flecking spittle, to shot,
almost pug-like protrusions with flatter teeth but for the canines
which protruded from thick black lips beneath swollen nostrils. Their
arms seemed to end in both paws and clawed hands, some coated in fur
and others just swollen from calluses. Patches of sickly pale skin
showed through the otherwise scraggly fur on their chest and back.
Only their legs and tails seems wholly beast.
Two of them dragged a fifth figure between them. Charles peered from
his cover and sucked in his breath when he saw that it was a woman of
child-bearing years draped in rough skins and cloth rudely stitched
together. Long black hair streaked with white lashed across her back,
mixed with blood smeared across her neck and shoulders. The rat
swallowed, claws digging into the roots around him, as he watched the
four beasts carry the dead woman toward the cairn of stones.
They stretched her body across the sunburst. Even though the air was
cool, the blood sizzled when it struck the stone as if it were a
skillet on which to cook their meal. And then, turning his stomach
once more, the woman stirred, arms and legs quivering as if she were
gasping from a sudden fall. Her eyes flicked open even as the blood
oozed from a fang-torn rend in her neck. As she began to struggle,
the four wolf-things grabbed her limbs and held her down, some with
hands and others with jaws, crunching through flesh and bone to spurt
more blood onto the cairn. The scent scalded his eyes.
He pulled the Sondeshike from its place in his cloak, but stopped
when more figures dashed from out of the woods, clubs and axes raised
above their heads. Charles marveled as the axes appeared to be stone
rather than steel, and each of them was garbed in animal skins of
various quality. They were ten in number, men of various ages and
appearances, both light-skinned and dark, short and tall, stocky and
lanky. But only on one of them did his eyes rest. That one was not a
man at all.
In the clearing at the front of the party, silent all of them but for
the fall of their feet against the turf, ran a Keeper. He had almost
non-existent ears, in the midst of a thick brown fur, dark eyes,
short angled snout, whiskers, and incisors. Little claws tipped his
hands, and a short emerged from his pudgy middle. Charles swallowed,
too stunned to move any further.
He knew this Keeper. He had briefly served alongside him in the
Longs. He had a widow and two daughters in Tarrelton whom Caroline
the otter visited from time to time.
Craig Latoner.
But Craig Latoner had died almost two years ago.
Two of the four beasts leaped from the cairn, their jaws slavering in
delight as they stretched outward, proportions shifting to make them
even more top heavy. They clattered into the men and Keeper, knocking
the first group over before the others fell on them, beating them
down with heavy clubs and stone axe. The wolf-things howled in rage
as they snarled and snapped, ripping flesh from legs and arms and
staining the earth red with blood, but their attackers continued to
crush them. Charles winced at the sound of snapping bone that
accompanied every blow, and yet not one of the men nor either beast
showed any sign of injury. Even a pack of wild dogs fighting over the
last scraps were not more violent than what he witnessed. No horde of
Lutins in fury could match the primal hunger he witnessed.
Charles noted that the woman on the cairn had managed to slip all but
one arm free and even as her head dangled from her shoulders, she
kicked and jabbed at the last of the beasts with all of her strength.
Mad as it was, he lifted one foot from his hiding place to go and help her.
And then a long-fingered hand rested on his shoulder.
The touch was so gentle, he did not even feel a breeze from the
motion of his limb. No whisker gave twitch to show the presence of
the other behind him. One moment he was alone in the crook and then
ext there was a tall figure beside him along the roots of the tree.
Charles stiffened his spine and tail, turning only his head enough to
glimpse to his left at the mystery that found him.
The figure was thin but draped in an elegant green and blue cloak
atop a prismatic brocade running from his neck down to his waist. The
cloak divided into hundreds of thin tassels spun with gold and silver
thread that shimmered about soft boots of a brown so rich he felt a
hunger well in his throat. His flesh, where it was visible amidst the
gentle folds of cloth, was a pearl gray. High angular cheekbones
framed his face, with ancient eyes peering as if from a great
distance, beneath a gentle brow. Long white hair fell behind pointed
ears with a grace that the fiercest wind could not disturb.
Charles blinked and turned his head completely, jaw gaping in
recognition. His tongue moved to speak the name, but the figure
narrow his eyes. The glance silenced him, and with a swallow the rat
slowly turned back toward the clearing.
Craig and the humans managed to beat down the wolf-things and half
carried the woman from the cairn. The last beast still crawling
leaped over the sunburst platform only to have the prairie dog drive
the stone axe clear through his skull. Blood and brains spewed out to
either side, sizzling atop the otherwise cool stone, as the beast
twitched with fast jerky motions. The woman, her neck stronger and no
longer torn raw, draped her arms over Craig's shoulder, while the
remaining hunters kept the other three beasts at bay. Even as the
stone axe left the ruined skull the flesh began to knit together and
the head reshape.
Craig and the humans all fled back the way they'd come, their faces
set in grim lines, but each of them wordless and, it seemed to
Charles, panicked. The rat tensed but the hand on his shoulder kept
him from moving. He heard it in the same moment, a crashing lumbering
thing coming toward the clearing at great speed. The trees across
from the towers shook in its passage, branches clattering and
snapping to send a rain of twigs and debris in every direction. Even
the four beasts, struggling to regain their paws, shrunk back away
from the thunderous mass.
And then something standing three times the size of any man erupted
with a heavy thump from edge of the clearing. It walked on two legs
and had two arms, but each arm split in two at the elbow so that it
had four grasping hands which stretched toward the humans and Keeper
desperate to escape. Each of its hands had three fingers and a thumb,
all of which were tipped by jagged black talons. So too was the rest
of it, covered alternately in greasy, black fur and broad, obsidian scales.
But the most horrifying feature was the creature's head. Oblong with
protruding eyes as brilliant as jasper on either side, the entire
middle from top to bottom was split in a toothsome jaw. This opened
in unearthly silence as a meaty tongue snaked out between sickle
fangs to invite all in the clearing within the cavernous maw.
Charles' heart thumped so loudly in terror that even the deaf would hear it.
Craig swung his axe as he and the humans ran toward the left-most
edge of the clearing from where Charles hid. The creature's right arm
batted the stone wedge aside and with one hand grasped the man behind
the Keeper by his arm. For the first time one of the combatants
finally began to scream as he was hoisted into the air and shoved
between the abomination's jaws and onto the waiting tongue. The jaws
pressed down slowly into the main's chest, fountaining blood across
its cheeks and down its chest where it glistened on its belly scales.
The four wolf-things slavered their jaws at the spilled blood for a
moment before turning to run in the opposite direction. The
monstrosity ignored them and took three more steps toward the fleeing
men before sweeping out its left arm. Craig spun on his paws and
threw his axe. The blade, poorly balanced, spun with a whistle and
wobble before smacking the creature across the face where a single
human arm had wedged in between its teeth. The blow did not seem to
harm the nightmare, but it surprised it just long enough for the
humans to scatter back into the trees.
Charles watched helpless as the thing reached up one of its strange
two handed arms and shoved the errant limbs from the man he'd crushed
between his jaws into his strange maw. The oblong head tilted back
until the jaws pointed at the cloud scarred sky and then with a
grinding rumble those jaws worked back and forth, chest swelling with
breath, throat distending as morsels of flesh and bone were
swallowed. This continued for more seconds than he dared remember.
Finally, the towering thing lowered its now empty jaws, and proceeded
to lick the blood from either side of its vertical jaw.
The wind shifted slightly, and Charles felt a heavy revulsion come
over him anew as the scent of the creature reached him. Offal and
metallic from the blood, it had as well a sickly sweet odor that made
his nostrils and whiskers tremble. He could only be grateful that
with the shifting wind, so too did the monstrosity's attention, as it
turned to lumber off into the forest in the direction that the
wolf-things had fled.
He remained where he hid until the sound of its frightful footfalls
faded into the eerie silence that swallowed the forest. Even the echo
of the unfortunate man's scream which had reverberated in his ears,
was gone as if smothered. Charles lifted one arm to rub the scent
from his nose, and then took a slow, deep breath. When he exhaled he
lifted his gaze to the figure still standing impassively and
immovably at his side.
One pearl gray hand lifted a slender finger to touch his lips. The
gesture was measured, simple, but clear. Charles kept his jaws
closed, but he narrowed his eyes to suggest a question. The other
extended that same hand off in a direction away from the basalt
towers and away from all of the combatants. Charles shifted from his
hiding spot beneath the roots and followed after, finding it very
easy to avoid making any sounds in the ancient one's wake.
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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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