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Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars IV: Infernus
(j)
Saturday, May 12, 708 CR
And sat bolt upright in a comfortable bed.
Sitting in a wicker chair was a handsome fox
dressed as a hunter with knives in his vest. He
held a flute in his paw-like hands and blew from
his narrow snout that delicate melody. The room
around them was bathed in the warm colors of
autumn, but these colors were comfortable to the
eyes. For once there did not appear to be any
pain or anything strange about the sensations.
Everything felt right from the touch of the
quilts on fur, to the scent of cooking flesh and
steaming vegetables, to the sound of the fox's
gentle melody as if it had been something beloved from youth.
The handsome fox blinked open soft blue eyes and
his snout opened in a smile that seemed to span
years. He lowered the flute and a long sigh
escaped his throat. Mechtilde. Is it you at last?
Mechtilde? Blinking and glancing downward, a
new surprise came. Sitting in the bed and draped
in a soft-white nightgown was the body of a
red-furred vixen and not the rat expected. She
blinked, trembling a moment as she lifted
black-furred paw-like hands; she turned them over
and then touched her narrow fang-filled snout.
Triangular ears perked on either side of her
head. A soft, luxuriant tail was tucked between
her legs. She was not a rat as her memories suggested, but a vixen.
The fox rose from the wicker chair and came to
her side, taking her right hand in his own and
holding it to his chest. She could feel strong
muscles beneath his warm fur. His gaze was filled
with tenderness, patience, weariness, and love.
She felt both vulnerable and assured in that
gaze. Is the curse broken, Mechtilde? I'm here. Your Kinder is here.
I'm Ma... the name slipped from her mind. The
voice she heard was familiar. Kinder was a name
that resonated deep within her and stirred
feelings of love and memories. The name she
thought she'd had and the memories associated
with it felt like errant flies that deftly
escaped her paws. She could glimpse them, even
take them in as a whole, and a whole life they
seemed to span, but she could not linger upon any of them.
Kinder slipped his other arm around her back,
through the long locks of braided fur between her
ears, and rested his strong hand upon her
shoulder. Oh please, Mechtilde, tell me you're
back to me. I have missed you so.
I... I don't understand, she murmured, feeling
lost and alone despite the comfortable surrounding and heartening fox.
Kinder pulled her into an embrace so that her
snout rested against his chest. She could hear
his voice, strong and certain build within amidst
the pounding of his heart. There was a curse on
you, my sweet Mechtilde. A curse laid by the
Rats! You thought yourself one of them no matter
what we did. No matter what... I did. A profound
sadness filled him and Mechtilde felt a horror
overcome her. How could she see an entire life's
memory of a man who'd become a rat and have it
only be a curse. This could not be!
And so she said, pushing against Kinder, shaking
her head and trembling anew. No, this cannot be!
I... I am not a fox. I am not a vixen.
You are, Kinder assured her, his snout opening
into an inviting smile. She met his gaze and felt
a warmth come to her. He was so handsome and sure
of himself. His eyes were radiant like a deep
lake warmed by hot springs. A part of her wanted
to believe him. You are not only a fox and a
vixen, but you are my wife, Mechtilde. My wife of
ten years now. Please tell me you remember! Do not break my heart again!
She blinked and tried to remember, looking first
at the memories of the rat, but they seemed to
drift even further away now. Instead, what she
found when she looked within were memories of a
fox, a vixen true. Snatches of time as a little
kit playing in the woods with her brothers and
sisters rushed back to her. The first time she
had met Kinder at a festival, staring across the
fields at each other, neither daring to say a
word to each other or even trying to approach,
brought a smile to her snout and a twitch to her
tail as it returned. She felt her heart warm as
she remembered the first time they had danced
together, minstrels playing the very tune Kinder
had just serenaded her with. She almost wept when
she felt anew the sorrow of losing their first
kit even before he had been born, and did let go
tears when the memory of their second kit's death
from sickness came back to her.
She was Mechtilde, wife to Kinder the huntsman,
and this was their home in the village at the
edge of the forest. And yet, the memory of the
rat remained. How could it have all just been a
curse? The love the rat felt for his wife and family was so real and so tender.
Still, in those memories she could hear her
husband's song, and she could her hear own voice speaking. What had happened?
I... I do remember, Kinder. I do, she admitted
with a long sigh. I'm... I'm just very confused right now.
Kinder took a deep breath and then nodded,
wagging his black-tipped tail. I should not
expect any less. I am overwhelmed with relief to
have you back, my sweet. There is some food
cooking, can I bring you something?
She slipped out of the bed and set her paws on
the ground, testing the feel of her legs. They
felt weak, but not so weak that she could not
stand. It smells delicious, she said with a
winsome smile to her husband. By the gods was he
handsome! The way his smile turned the red fur of
snout and cheeks, and the little raising of his
ears, it all made her heart flutter. A part of
her seemed to assure her that with such desire
for her husband there could be no doubt which set
of memories was true. Take me to it.
She held out her hand and he grasped her paw in
his. Little black claws pricked through the fur
at their wrists, as callused palms rubbed
together. They stepped around the bed, and then
side by side their fingers threaded together. He
stood a head taller than she, and his shoulders
were broad with the rigors of outdoor life. She
felt drained, and knew that in years past she had
a healthy plump that the years of madness had
sapped from her. Kinder was strong and would support her.
Mechtilde and Kinder stepped out of the bedroom
through a cloth-covered door and into a modest
chamber with a fire and grill on which a iron
platter was set. Strips of flesh sizzled there
and the heat of the fire made her feel flush
again. Rows of cushions dotted the far wall, and
a wooden doorway stood between two windows
through which autumn light entered. Another
doorway stood off beyond the firepit, this one
banded with iron. Something rattled within. Her
nose wrinkled with a faint scent of refuse and blood.
Come and sit, Kinder invited as he guided her
toward the cushion. She reclined, grateful for
the softness. Her legs were weak, but the
strength would return in time. The scent of
cooked meat made her ravenous. The scent of
refuse felt familiar as well and did not bother
her. As her husband took an earthenware bowl and
scooped the strips of meat and seared vegetable
within she realized that both scents mixed
together had come to her in the final moments of
the rat madness as well as her husband's melody.
This he whistled from his curved tongue as his
deep blue eyes cast quick glances to her,
confidant and gentle, ears upturned and handsome.
He filled a second bowl with what remained on the
iron platter and added a log to the fire before
bringing both bowls to where she reclined.
Mechtilde took the offered bowl in both paw-like
hands and cradled them so that her thumb claws
just gripped the edges. Kinder sat cross-legged
with black-tipped tail swishing behind him,
facing her over the lip of his bowl, snout
lowered ever so slightly in a whispered prayer
her ears inclined but could not catch. She felt
entirely too famished to try and recall any
prayers, but waited until her husband finished.
Eat my love, my sweet Mechtilde come back to me.
Eat. So saying he dipped his snout into the bowl
and began to gorge on the meat and vegetables
within. She held the bowl to her snout, ravenous
from the scent, and began to east as well. The
meat had a stringy quality and a well-seasoned
flavor that stirred her memories. She did not
ponder what sort of meat it was until her tongue
lapped the insides of the bowl to capture all of the juices.
She had just eaten rat. And not just rat, but
meat strips from the tail of a rat.
A rattling sounded through the iron door and she
turned her head, a sullen horror touching her.
She thought of the rat the curse made her think
to be and their family, the gentle love and the
children they possessed but which she'd been
denied. A sickness overcame her and she had to
struggle to hold the bowl in her paws. She
lowered it to keep it from breaking but it still
fell and clattered on the wooden floor, spinning
for a brief second before settling upright.
Kinder's ears lifted in question. Are you well, Mechtilde?
She stammered, one paw clutching at her chest. I... I just ate rat!
Her fox husband smiled and a short chortle
escaped his throat. Of course my love. It is
your favorite; it always has been. This is your
own recipe passed down through your family.
Mechtilde's horror increased, though her
husband's gentle confidence sought to assure her.
But you said the Rats cursed me! This is not the flesh of just any animal!
He reached out one paw and gripped her wrist,
blue eyes limpid. My love, the Rats did Curse
you. There was a revolt among them, and they
struck many of our people. They could not reach
me, but before they were stopped and returned to
their rightful place, they captured you and
through you, struck at me. They have always been our food and always shall be.
Mechtilde searched her memories and found
everything her husband had told her was true. As
a kit she had watched her parents kill captured
rats, skin them, and then divide their flesh up
for meat for a variety of recipes. She could even
recall the day her dam had taught her how to make
the choice cuts and how to properly season them
so the meat would keep. Her heart fluttered
weakly as she recalled her sire tending the pits
where they raised the Rats. Their eyes stared
back with hatred, the older ones clutching the
young ones to their chest, wrapping them in their
arms to protect them from the hooks and nets her
sire used to draw them out before breaking or cleaving their necks.
And with those memories her head turned toward
the iron door from which she could hear rattling.
Kinder, please, tell me this isn't real. What do we have behind that door?
It is how things are, my love, he offered with
a faint smile. What they did to you still hurts
you, I see. Come, let me show you. He extended a
paw and trembling she took it. They stood and
crossed the small room to the iron door. The
edges flecked with crimson rust. Kinder produced
a brass key from inside his vest and slipped into
the keyhole. He turned and a click sounded as the
tumblers released. Mechtilde felt her heart jump
and then fall silent in awe of the sound.
The room beyond was somewhat larger than their
main room. One side was dominated by a stone cage
with iron bars in which cowered five rats.
Mechtilde stared at a mother rat, no taller than
three feet, clutching around her four frightened
children. One corner of the cage was filled with
their filth, while bowls of fetid water and grain
were placed in the other. The grain had not been
disturbed. All of the rats appeared unhealthy as
if they had barely eaten in weeks.
The other half of the room was dominated by a
large table and basin on which was spread the
body of a young rat. The head and skin were
removed; the skin, white on the underbelly but
black along the back, was stretched and drying
against the wall, while the head, also skinned,
was positioned on the cutting table so that its
lifeless eyes watched the cage. Strips of salted
meat hung from hooks, but some still remained to
be cut free from the flesh. The tail was denuded
so that only the sinew around the bones remained.
Everything stunk of blood, filth, and death.
Kinder took one of the blades from his vest and
made an expert cut through the flesh at the dead
rat's ribs. You see, my love? We have always
eaten Rats. It is the way of we Foxes. The more
you do the more you'll return to your true self
and the faster their vicious curse will be wholly
broken. Come, see for yourself. You know these
cuts as well as I. You have made them all your
life. He offered her the knife and his handsome smile returned.
Mechtilde grasped the knife and stared at it. All
of her memories showed her exactly what to do
with the rat child's corpse. A faltering step
brought her to the preparation table. She half
turned so that she wouldn't see the rat mother
and brood staring at her. The stretched skin
stayed in the corner of her eyes. She trembled,
wanting to please her husband, but horrified. It
felt as if she were being asked to carve her own
flesh. Kinder whistled that never-ending and
always changing melody, one paw pressed to her shoulder.
A shadow besmirched the iron doorway and both
their heads turned. Standing taller than the
transom yet somehow unaffected by it was a
pearl-gray skinned being with sharp, angular
features. He was attired in rich silks filled
with subtle colors. White hair cascaded from the
dome of his head. Ancient eyes regarded her with
sympathy, but were hard as steel toward Kinder.
Do not put that knife to flesh if you ever wish
to leave this place again. This is not your
husband. You are not a vixen. The voice, ageless
and deep, brought the rat's memories to the fore
again, and she knew him to be the companion
guiding the rat through darkness. She yearned to
trust him, but her memories of life as a vixen,
and the attraction of Kinder, so dear to her, were hard to deny.
Still, his name came to her. You are
Qan-af-årael of the Åelf. How can you be real?
He is not, Kinder snapped, a growl fetching his
throat. He is a liar! He would spin a false
world about you, Mechtilde. Do not listen to him!
And you, Qan-af-årael replied in an even but
certain tone, eyes fixed upon the fox, are Klepnos.
Kinder blinked and shook his head. Who? My name
is Kinder. This is Mechtilde my wife. And you are
a liar sent by the rats to steal her from me
again! Get your vile presence from our home!
But the Åelf paid him no more attention, merely
staring at the vixen with a concerned moue.
Charles, he has lied to you and cast this net
over you. Put down the knife and step away from
him and the madness will leave. You will see true again.
Charles, she murmured, looking over the red and
black fur of her arms, legs and tail, and then
down at the dead rat child on the preparation
table. A moment ago she had scarfed down the meat
from its tail and savored it. Now she felt like
vomiting. The knife wavered in her hand.
Mechtilde, please, let go of the what the rats
did to you and stay here with me, Kinder begged,
his voice warm and smile fetching. Her heart
fluttered with desire but it could not take
flight. The dead rat, the scent of blood and filth, all of it balked her.
Klepnos has spun an elaborate illusion about
you, Charles. He wants you to let go because you
are still holding my robes. If you let go of your
past you will be consumed by him. Look at the
rats in the cage. Look at the skin. That is your
family. The skin is your son's.
He is lying to you. He is an ally of the rats
who cursed you. I am your family, Kinder
insisted. He stepped closer to her to get between
her and the Åelf, lifting his arms as if to
shield her from the interloper. Just cut free
some of the meat and you will put all of this behind you forever.
She glanced at the skin stretched across the rack
and imagined it still on the body of the rat dead
before her. It would have been of a white rat
with a black hood down its back. Glancing into
the rat's memories she could see that very rat
child and how dear he was. The very child the rat
had been seeking and for which reason he had passed into the realm of Klepnos.
The name, so familiar to her, but unfamiliar at
the same time, now came into clear focus. The
firm touch of the fox's paw on her shoulder made
her shudder, and she turned her head to stare at
the rats in the cell. The mother, though naked
and filthy with matted fur and scars, bore the
countenance of the rat's wife. The four children
with her also matched the memories that had been
pressed away from her. A subtle glow, a ruddy hue
somewhere between purple and red, pulsed steadily
from a stone about the female rat's neck. Her
dark gaze held the vixen, resigned to the fate
that was before her and her offspring at the
blade held in black-pawed hands. While Mechtilde
stared at the captured feast the rat's paw stole
up to grasp the stone about her neck.
You are a fox, Mechtilde, Kinder added softly,
cold nose nuzzling against her ear. The melody
breathed from his throat. You eat rats. Show him
that you do. Show him what you are. A throb of
something washed over the vixen, staggering her
back a pace. The sudden emanation that was
neither sound nor light nor anything Mechtilde
could lay a thought upon to put a name to filled
her him! with such a feeling of Love to which
her husband the fox could not compare that the
room seemed to list and, for only the briefest of
moments, only the female rat seemed upright and
Whole. The stone in the grasp of her small paw
shone brightly, spears of purplish light leaking
between her fingers as she became the bottom of a
downward falling funnel for the blink of an eye,
the beat of a heart. Into that wellspring of
something Mechtilde felt herself himself!
fall, only to jerk back when reality seemed to right itself.
She glanced down at the knife in her paw for
several seconds and then closed her eyes tight. No. No! I cannot!
You must or he will not leave us!
She turned, putting the knife between her and
Kinder, snarling at the edge of her jowl. Why?
If you are my husband, why do you not protect me
from this stranger? Why is he still here if he is
allied with the rats? Why must I choose?
Because he needs you to let go of me,
Qan-af-årael said in his measured but clear
voice. If you do not let go of me he cannot
claim you for himself. You still clutch my robe,
Charles, though your senses tell you otherwise.
Kinder shook his head. He lies to you for his
own benefit. He will not leave this place unless
he knows the curse on you is truly broken,
Mechtilde, my love. That is why you have to prove
to him that you are a fox once more. I could
throw him out as many times as I like but until
you choose he will keep coming back to torment us.
Klepnos, step back and let him decide. Qan-af-årael challenged irritably.
Kinder sneered over his shoulder at the Åelf but
he did take a step back. His snout favored
Mechtilde with invitation and warmth. I love
you, Mechtilde. Do not listen to him. He is a
liar and wants to destroy your world.
Her ears perked at that, and her grip on the
knife tightened. 'Your world'? Don't you mean,
'our world'? She tried to level her angry,
surprised glare at her husband but the throbbing
glow from the cage kept the corner of her eye and
she could not bring herself to fully turn her gaze away from it.
The fox blinked and then nodded. Aye, of course,
our world. He will tear you from me again if you
let him. Just help me prepare the rest of this
rat meat and you'll never need worry about him or
those terrible memories again.
Qan-af-årael stared at her in silence awaiting her decision.
She glanced at the imprisoned rats one last time
before turning back to Åelf and fox. A long sigh
escaped her chest. The knife fell to the ground
and she stepped over it toward Qan-af-årael.
The house vanished in that moment, and with it
drained away the memories and form of Mechtilde.
Blinking, the rat came to himself and realized
that his left hand was still firmly grasping the
silken robes draping his guide and protector.
Kinder remained as the fox, but his countenance
now bore a sadistic moue. He bared his fangs and
snarled in frustration for a moment, before
stretching his back and letting out an exasperated sigh.
I tried. I wouldn't have driven you completely
insane quite so quickly either. You would have
had many years to enjoy life as Mechtilde first.
His blue eyes glinted with malice, And you would
have become quite adept at killing rats,
especially their young, my sweet vixen! Hah! Even
that silly female and her bauble!
And then, the red fox jumped with a flourish
before vanishing into a smear of gray. His
laughter bounced around them before spreading in
an ever widening curl that was sucked away into
the distance, ever stretching and never-ending.
Charles shuddered as the laughter lingered for
nearly a minute before it too had been absorbed in the maelstrom beneath them.
Where are we? Charles murmured, searching
through his thoughts to see what traces of the
vixen remained. Little snatches of the images
that Klepnos had placed there, and what had
happened since he had woken in that bed, but
nothing else was left. The sight of his family
cowering in prison waiting to be skinned and
chopped to bits to feed others made him burn with hatred for the mad daedra.
We stand in witness to the reality of this
place, Qan-af-årael gestured at the wide disk of
gray above which they seemed to hover. Charles
recognized it from the brief flashes he saw when
first arriving and after Hindemar ripped his own
eyes out. Around them the disc curved, bending
beneath them down into a darkness his eyes could
not pierce. A whirlpool of immense proportions,
the fluid of which was made from mortal souls all lost in madness.
I would have ended up in there too? Charles
asked, swallowing heavily and tightening his grip on Qan-af-årael's robe.
Not at first, his guide replied with a gentle
touch on his back. You still have your flesh.
Klepnos would have you believe you were whatever
he wished you to be so long as he could. By the
time your body finally died you would have been
so completely insane that he would have been able
to absorb every last mote of your being and leave
what was left of your soul to be torn to the
tiniest shreds in his maelstrom before losing it
to the Beyond. He wanted you to kill your own
family to make the break in your mind complete,
and to get you to let go of the one thing that kept you from his clutches.
You, Charles replied. He shuddered, took a deep
breath, and then exhaled. He did it again but
still he felt weak and strangely violated.
I am sorry you had to endure that. But I dared
not break Klepnos's hold on you until I knew we could leave.
Charles blinked and looked up at him. You found the bridge?
He nodded, a slight gesture accompanied by a
slender smile. It is here and open. Step forward
and we continue. I caution you, we are continuing
downward. It will only grow worse.
But I have no choice. Nocturna waits for me
above, Charles grimaced, and then steeled
himself. I trust you to protect me,
Qan-af-årael. So saying, he stepped forward. The
maelstrom beneath their feet tipped toward them
as if they were falling into its depths. It
rushed past with one final scream of insanity before the darkness took them.
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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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