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Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars IV: Infernus
(r)
Saturday, May 12, 708 CR
Deeper and deeper into the warred of architecture
designed for royalty Charles descended, darting
past doors that offered brief views into the
desires that came in so many varieties and forms
that the rat was left bewildered. He had imaged
that desire was a simple thing one love for his
partner's desire but staggering past rooms full
of art gazed upon by the blind, symphonies
attended by the deaf, and feast where those who
sought to feast were themselves the main course
Charles found that his understanding was flawed.
Even something as simple as cheese left him
staggering trying to escape its alluring scent
and the hint of its delicious bouquet. Were those
damned souls left tortured in this hellish
afterlife those who gave their eternal fate over
to whichever dark god held sway in this place
those who sought to satisfy a desire so profound
for feasts, for music? For art? For possessions
that now buried them under an immovable weight?
What had they desired so much? What did he?
In the realm of Klepnos all the scents, sounds,
and sights had overwhelmed him with their
potency. But here there was a sick center to
each, as if the delectable enticements were
merely a chocolate shell about a rotten egg. Here
there was no feast as in the Duke's hall where
the revelers were making merry and enjoying each
other's company. Nor were the cries he heard the
practiced exhalation of a whore house where those
selling their body at least had some coin to
cover the death of their dignity. This was even
worse than the carnal weeping lining unseemly
docks at night as those who had nothing left to
hope for but a scrap of bread or moldy potato
offered their diseased carcasses to the lust of
sailors who never glimpsed anything but flesh.
The moans and groans were dead voices unable to
resist, and incapable of hoping for any return on
the use of their flesh to sate lust. The scent of
consummation, so filled with love in his own
home, was nothing here but lust hardened by hate.
To desire this deep was to enslave. A hand lifted
to the torn fabric at the nape of his neck and
the cowl hanging down his back. Hours before a
spiked black-iron collar had been enclosed around
his neck, and he felt all the fire of rage course
through him. Power over the very stones had been
at his command. And yet the price had been
enslavement beneath the heel of Revonos. Would he
now risk another slavery for the mere
satisfaction of the scrumptious scent of cheese?
Charles, unable to bear witness to any of
desire's manifestations, kept moving along the
myriad yellow pathways as he waited for the Åelf's rescue.
To his horror after navigating a broad set of
stairs that appeared to be fashioned from smoky
marble, the short walls on either side came to an
end. Before him stretched a vast hall between a
row of decorative pillars which towered into the
shadows of the groined ceiling high above. In the
center of the huge space was a broad fountain of
wine so heady that the mere scent of it made him
dizzy. Arrayed about the fountain were monstrous
shapes and things that seemed to have once been
human unable to escape their grasp.
The path descended the stairs, splitting at the
fountain, and continued into the distance toward
the far end of the Hall. But to reach it he would
have to pass unmolested through the gaggle of
demons which he knew was impossible.
All but one of the creatures arranged about the
fountain were voluptuous and sensuous with nubile
curves on every inch of their flesh. They bore no
clothing and so there was nothing that the rat
couldn't see. He tried to make the sign of the
Yew, but his arm had become a thing of lead that
he could not lift. They lounged around the
fountain, some laying half in, others just on the
edge, their long hair drenched and purple,
concealing wicked horns that spiraled from their
temples. Their skin was lusciously tanned with a
veneer of scarlet. Manicured hands with
fingernails stretched into sharp razors ran down
their bodies, emphasizing and forcefully exposing
their breasts, hips, thighs, and everything else that there was to see.
The other monstrous figure was mostly man-shape.
Chiseled muscles that gleamed as if oiled rippled
across his chest. The flesh was burnished as if
on fire with nary a hair to mar the perfect gleam
of its sheen. Long wavy locks descended from the
crown of his head, flowing across a quartet of
horns that lifted upward and outward like the
setting for a ring. His feet ended in cloven
hooves of obsidian black, and these were beset
upon by the ruby lips of a quartet of the
succubae. The incubus reclined with supreme
contempt as it gnawed upon quivering flesh,
juices spilling across its perfect chest only to
be washed away by the spattering fountain.
The monsters were not alone as they reclined on
the fountain. Things that had once been human but
were now missing parts of themselves were also
kept close. The rat's beady eyes flicked from one
to another as he trembled in his dark corner. For
what parts they possessed they appeared human
though they were as naked as the monsters. Some
were missing only a hand or an ear, though no
scar remained to show it, only empty flesh as
there was nothing but more skin underneath. A few
had no limbs at all, only stubs that left them
prone on the ground, with only their torsos
intact for the pleasure and consumption of their
masters. Yet they still moaned, unable to move,
unable to feel anything at all except the
ministrations of the succubae deadening everything that they were.
Charles' eyes swept to the pavilions nearby in
search of some escape, and there he saw even more
of the denuded humans. Some were molested by the
demons and could only cry their misery of lust.
Others were molesting each other. One pair had
been reduced not just to their torsos, but just
to the skin of their chest, belly, face, and
genitals, so that they looked like nothing more
than a pair of desiccated leaves buffeted together by the wind.
One of the succubus had taken the skin of a human
and stretched it out across her own body
despite being quite a bit more voluptuous than
the unfortunate soul she had garbed herself with
so that the man's face was distorted by her
breasts, the rest of him stitched across so that
only his hands, feet, and loins extended beyond
the frame of the succubus' body. Mad black eyes
roved from that disgusting countenance, even as
the succubus laughed and poured a ewer of wine
down across her face and chest, bouncing it
behind the taut, suffering skin. Charles met
those eyes and quivered in a panic and the certainty that he knew that face.
The form was ruined, the shape devoured until all
that was left was the skin, but there was
something there that could not be mistaken.
Charles could see the puffy cheeks, the corpulent
frame, the dark hair, the meaty fingers, and the
avaricious glint that sought to absorb all into
itself and yet could never be satisfied. Those
black eyes spat hate with every lustful thought,
and pined for any measure of vengeance it could
obtain. Charles knew those eyes. Charles had
almost been a slave to them but for the intervention of a white rabbit.
The name came, one that filled him with loathing. Altera Loriod.
Once a man of low nobility and connoisseur of the
darkest of carnal lists, now become nothing more
than the carnal accessory of a succubus.
As if sensing that the garment stretched taut
across her chest had been distracted by something
beyond the tortures she had for it the succubus
raised her gaze toward the stair upon which
Charles had halted. A smile drew the corners of
her succulent lips and a forked tongue slipped
from between them to caress the glistening mouth
with a seductive lick. Loriod's mad gaze never
wavered, fixed on Charles with a rabid hunger
that seemed to infuse the demoness that wore him
with a degree of yearning as well. Slipping from
her recumbent pose at the edge of the fountain
she languidly strolled across the hall, her smile
becoming more broad, revealing the tips of sharp
teeth behind. Every move, each step, each twitch
and jiggle of the succubus' salacious form, made
the taut flesh of the late Altera Lodiod moan with unfulfilled lust.
Charles trembled for only a moment before
retreating backwards up the stair hastily only to
stumble against something that was not marble. A
long, serpentine tail that was of no rat ever
born and most certainly not his own, fouled his
footing and sent him reeling backward to smack
his head upon the marble terrazzo. Blinking, the
rat pushed himself up only to gape at the long
sinuous shape before him, wreathed in a glow of
shimmering red. The long, serpentine body spilled
down the stair in relaxed curves, the tail which
Charles had fallen over tapering from a long body
that led upwards to a svelte feminine shape.
And that shape was of a white rat so unspeakable
beautiful that Charles felt his heart and body
trembling in awe of her. Even having lost her
legs to the abalone white scales of the serpent
emerging from beneath her royal gown she was the
perfections angels would yearn to achieve and
mortals could not so much imagine. Hungry blue
eyes gazed down at Charles and a smile lifted her
whiskers, perfectly scalloped pink ears twitched
toward him while she held something cradled in
one arm. The other reached down to offer him a
hand getting his paws back beneath him.
Hello, the word, so simple, yet offering
something beneath it smooth askance that went
beyond desire, beyond hunger, to a promise of
things that would leave Charles' very immortal
soul struck dumb with pleasure. The people at the
table, the deaf attendees of an orchestra, and
the woman pinned in the corner of a corridor were
mere motes barely even sparks in the face of
what that single word offered him.
This creature; half milk white serpent and half
opaline furred white rat, was the embodiment of
yearning. All lust and all desire were
consummated in her form; scale and whisker and
azure blue gaze. Charles wept and cowered but
could not raise his arm to take that offered hand.
Her eyes glimmered but there was no warmth within
them, I like you. Never had words lied so
sensuously and Charles' ears burned to hear more.
He is mine! A voice, strained to the baritone
croaking of a strangled frog, rumbled from
somewhere forgotten behind Charles' back. Not the
succubus' voice, for he knew that one would be a
pale shadow of the rat Queen's voice before him,
but another voice. The low, cultured, but
wheedling voice of a spoiled aristocrat stretched
impossibly over the breasts of a hell creature.
Charles could see them now, from the corner of
his eye, as the succubus with her damned attire
had waddled up the stair to stand to one side of
the angelic serpentine rat. Loriod's dark eyes
filled with hate as if they could launch
themselves from the shell of flesh to bore into
the rat's chest and perforate his hammering
heart. He agreed to be mine! I want him!
The beatific queenly rat, a presence as powerful
as any of the daedra Charles had thus far
encountered, seemed amused by this request and,
with a nonchalant gesture of nothing more than
her white, claw-tipped figures, signaled her
acquiescence. The succubus on which stretched the
flesh of Loriod like some bedchamber fancy licked
her lips and leaned in closer. Charles pressed
himself back, away from both rat-topped naga and
succubus, against the baluster of the stair.
Feeling the cold stone of the railing Charles
tried to gather his feet beneath him as the
leering, distorted face of Loriod stretched
before him atop twin mountains of soft flesh.
None of the other demons succubae or lone
incubus seemed to express the slightest
interest in their tet'a'tet. Charles could not
trust in that indifference but he would have to
take that risk. The only thing he lamented was
the inevitable displeasure of the lovely rat
whose scent still filled his nostrils and left
his loins aching with need. But the memory of the
woman in the hall banked that fire and cleared
his mind enough to consider his actions. Did a
naga even have the right anatomy? Such thoughts,
dancing about within his min like flame-drunk
moths, served only to repulse him and curb those needs further.
Planting his hands upon the baluster Charles
turned and leaped at the same moment. The fall on
the other side was not great and managed to land
upright, briefly crouching to absorb the impact
before darting along the yellow pathway across
the Hall. Before Charles had managed to clear the
sprawl of the stair's lowest steps the naga's
tail spilled over the curled knoll post and
lashed across his front like a wall of opalescent
white scales. He jumped again but not high enough.
The blow upended him in mid-leap forcing him to
adopt an awkward tumble that found him on his
feet, and moving with little loss of speed, when
he recovered. She moved with blinding speed, her
upper body swaying only slightly with the rapid
sinuous writhing of her long serpentine length,
to cut across his path. Snatching the Sondeshike
from his cloak he gave a single jerk to extend it
and drove the top through the meat of the naga's
python body. It stabbed through, and skirled
angrily from the floor beneath, as if there were
nothing there. Charles blinked in surprise,
staggering a step when the resistance he expected
was not there to react against, and then gasped
when the white tail entwined him and pinned his
arms at his sides. The naga's regal, royal
rodentine muzzle rested against the back of his
ears and a forked serpent's tongue flicked past
her prominent front teeth to caress them. The
coils squeezed around him and he gasped for
breath, unable to move. Her voice, soft and
perfectly cultured yet alluring and sultry in the
same breath, filled his ears and mind with ideas
that shamed him with only a pleased exhalation.
The claw-tipped fingers of one hand, much like
his own but white, caressed his chin and throat
suggestively both with what those fingers could
do to please his flesh as well what they could do to rend it.
He wants you, handsome little rat. The queen
rat-serpent crooned delicately, her whiskers
tickling his ears and cheek as her perfectly
white muzzle and one brilliant blue eye filled
the field of view on one side. I enjoy... the
word was drawn out as if nothing satisfied her
more, helping people get what they want.
Charles gnashed his teeth and dug the tips of his
finger claws into the pads of his palms. The pain
was sharp compared to the aching crush of her
coils; sharp enough to drive the seductive
undertones of her unspoken promises into the
darkest corners of his mind. I am not alone.
A sibilant, churring chuckle and a warm caress of
breath across the back of her ears sent a tingle
racing through his chest, down his stomach, to
drop into the furnace of his loins like a dollop
of molten wax into a chandler's kiln. It is as
you say, little rat. The coils undulated,
massaging his body from every direction with
surprising facility. It tugged at his tail, drew
his legs out straight, pushed inward at his
belly, and then rolled against him so that he
could feel his hips moving back and forth,
grinding him against the cool, smooth surface of
the serpent's muscular body. The gentle fingers
of one hand raked up the back of his neck, the
tips of her claws rasping against the flesh
beneath his fur and sending a tingle down his
spine, upward across his scalp. Charles tightened
his fists wincing at the feel of his clawtips
pressing against the tough pads of his palms
until they pierced his flesh to draw forth blood
and pain. You are not alone. In the corner of
his vision he could see her lips move; the
glisten of teeth and tongue beyond while in his
mind's eye he could see what those lips and
tongue could do when they were not talking. Shame
clutched at his heart, but instead of reaching
for a prayer to Eli in that moment of lustful
doubt he could only envision the face of his
wife, the Lady Kimberly, who even in the sight of
his memory was a trollish visage in comparison to
the serpentine rat queen who now held him.
But, trollishly grotesque or not, it was the face
of his Love that pushed those dark, carnal
thoughts back. It was Love that buffered the hard
edged fire of raw lust. With no hesitation
Charles grasped at those memories and held them
fast; of Kimberly's smile as she reclined
unconsciously seductive upon a picnic blanket
in the shadow of Metamor's walls. Of the glimmer
in her dark eyes when she held her first child.
Her first child.
His first child.
THEIR first child. Nothing in the beauteous
serpent's promises offered that. The could never offer that.
Her whiskers and warm breath tickled his ears,
but the seductive warmth washed against a glacial
wall within the mind of the mortal held within
her coils. Merely call my name and I will rescue
you from him. Past the prominent rodentine teeth
her forked tongue snaked out to brush across his
muzzle and whiskers, leaving a glistening trail
of saliva as it slid across the fur of his cheek
and across the ruined flesh around his eye before
slipping along one ear to disappear between those
lips with so many promises. He wants you, and he has been ever SO loyal.
He is damned, Charles rasped, ignoring the
tantalizing of her fingers, tongue, and voice
with images of Kimberly's joy. He could feel that
joy suffusing his heart against the fire of his
loins; a spark before a furnace but also a spark
against the darkness. The damned can ask for nothing!
Ahh, my pretty rat, the damned ask for all.
Charles felt her hand working down his chest
beneath his jerkin, combing at his short fur as
if seeking the pulse of his heart. Her nose
brushed his ear; a nuzzle of promises that he
already knew were offered by another with more
meaning. And yet, here you have come. Because you are seeking something.
I do not come alone! Charles snarled again,
yielding against the grasp of those coils he
could not pry himself out of. His Sondeshike was
pinned at his side as neatly as his arms. Even
collapsing it would do nothing against those
pearlescent scales as he now knew. Where was his
protector Åelf, Charles wondered with a rising
panic. The warmth within his heart was a steady
strength, but against the wiles of the beast in
whose embrace he was bound it was such a small thing.
Perhaps not. He could hear the shrug in her
voice. For his demands Loriod had fallen
completely silent. After his vault over the stair
railing Charles had lost sight of him, which was
all for the better. But you came seeking, and
what did I say, my handsome little rat?
Nothing I listened to, Charles bluffed,
fighting to keep Kimberly's beautiful smile a
real smile as opposed to the artifice drawn
across the muzzle hovering near his own in his mind's eye.
I do so enjoy helping people get what they
want. Soft, warm, seductive, and so very, very
close at hand. A turn of his head and her nose,
so perfect as if sculpted, would brush against
his cheek in a rush of heat. Call my name you
know it, oh, you do and we can find what you
seek. The coils tightened briefly about him, and
he felt his legs and tail pressed tight together,
before the undulating motion resumed which
buckled his hips. Out of the corner of his eye
Charles glimpsed the succubus with Loriod's skin
sewn into her flesh leisurely glide around the
base of the stairs. Hungry eyes found him immediately and the rat grimaced.
Qan-af-årael, where are you?
The queen rat dangled her arms across his neck
and he felt his ears pressed against her breasts.
The soft warmth of her fur and the delicate touch
of her arms felt relaxed and enticing. If they
but belonged to Kimberly instead he could enjoy
them! But until you are ready to let me help
you, and it would give me great pleasure, to do
so, little rat, I will let this one have what he
wants. Charles swallowed as the succubus
sensuously ran her hands across Loriod's flesh as
she walked around the abalone coils that had
ensnared Charles, until she and the vile,
distorted face of Loriod were in front of him.
And then the petty little noble's skin began to
stretch, drawn outward across the succubus' body
until the limp hands slipped over her manicured
nails, his feet encased her own, and his head
engulfed her neck and face. The succubus pulled
by her queen's consent the skin of Loriod across
herself as if he were nothing more than a costume to be donned.
Loriod's flesh was distorted in every direction
by the shape of the succubus within, yet she
appeared to show no distress at the revolting
consumption. The flesh of his head was drawn so
taut that his corpulent features were stretched
bone thin. His lips spread and his mouth
distended as if he too were a serpent. Charles
felt the rat queen's coils tighten about his
chest so that he could neither breath nor bend.
His body, straight as a rod, was angled toward
that gaping maw in which he saw nothing but darkness.
Charles choked for even a gasp of air as he tried
to twist his head away even though in his
writhing he was brought almost lip to lip with
the rodentine opalescent naga. The corpulent mass
of damned soul and succubus pressed closer, their
combined breath a fetid warmth across Charles'
whiskers. Loriod's lips had been drawn so thin
that they were nothing more than a scarlet
circle, but there was no creature hiding within.
All Charles could see was darkness; a void that
passed around his snout no matter how he fought
to escape. The coils of the serpent were far too
powerful to force and too tight to slip out of.
His fevered brain screamed the name of his
protector, but Loriod's lips wrapped themselves
around his head. He felt the flesh tighten
against his neck and then crawl across his
shoulders as the coil undulated over his body,
releasing more and more into the monstrous jaws
of his tormentor. Yet he felt nothing inside that
maw; there was neither tongue nor teeth to greet
and grind him, nor stink of breath to gag him or
succubus to tease his tortured soul. And into
that emptiness his body was shoved and swallowed
until for one brief moment he felt nothing at all.
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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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