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Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars IV: Infernus
(s)
Saturday, May 12, 708 CR
Light sprang back into his eyes, the stench of
fresh manure clogged his nose, and Loriod's
contemptuous voice crooned above him. Charles
blinked a moment as his eyes focused on the pile
of excrement in front of him and in which his
hands were half-buried. Richly booted feet stood
a short distance away across a floor covered in
hay where not despoiled by heaps of neglected,
decaying animal droppings. The hobnailed boots of
soldiers surrounded him just clear of the manure
but he dared not look up, suffused with sudden,
heart-crushing fear. He felt a terrible pain in
his back where a gauntlet had struck him.
You promised me, Matthias. Loriod's
condescending croon cut through him like a rusted
blade; jagged and rough, compounding that sudden
fear. You promised that you would come live on
my land and swear fealty to me; your true lord
and master. He lifted his head just enough to
see Loriod whole and fat with jewels on his
fingers with an expensive doublet and hose hiding
his girth gloating from beyond the muck of the
stall into which Charles had apparently been
cast. The corpulent lord's smile was one of
triumph. Beside him were two solders, hard faced
and thick, their expressions ones of blank
ferocity and vapid brutality regarding him with
disgust. You did not do as you promised. Now,
for all eternity, you will. You are charged with
the manure and cleaning the privies. Henceforth and forevermore.
Charles snarled, finding no restraint on his
flesh, and willed he willed but he could not
think of what it was he was striving for. A
strength, something within himself, but whatever
it was he could not grasp it and it would not
come at his desire. I'll never do anything for
you! He snapped even as he realized that
something that should have been there, something
that had been with him since the earliest days of
his youth, was simply not there. His eyes widened
in alarm as he sought within, mentally scrabbling
about like a mouse in an urn but finding nothing
to grasp. Something was supposed to be there, he knew it!
He just could not remember what!
One of the soldiers shifted and Charles was too
slow to move, caught in the horror of his missing
something. A heavy fist drove into his back and
Charles collapsed into the pile of manure, unable
to catch himself with arms suddenly gone weak.
His face plunged into a heap of the vile leavings
and the putrescence of his tongue nearly made him vomit.
That is not what you are to call me, Loriod
snapped in anger as he stared down at the fallen
man, as if Charles were of middling consequence.
Next to him and lashed to a stall was a
sable-black horse whose features were very
familiar, but Charles did not know from where. He
knew that horse; it had or should have been a
noble steed but somehow Loriod's corruption had
fouled it; reduced it to a bony nag that stared
listlessly at Charles with no care for its own
fate or that it stood hock deep in its own
excrement. No hint of fire glimmered in those
equine eyes and his coat looked unkempt from
neglect. The walls behind him, and parts of the
ceiling, were an off-white hue perfect in its
uniformity as if it were part of a canvas that
had been touched by paint. Everywhere else
appeared to be the main stables in Lorland but
somehow washed out; like the walls and ceiling roughed out but incomplete.
Charles slowly pushed himself back up, spitting
the crap from his mouth and scrubbing his nose
with the back of one wrist. His skin was hardly
paler than the manure that fouled it stained by
the muck as thoroughly as leather in a tanner's
cauldron. Somehow the sight of his own hands,
bony and thin and pale under the tanning of
manure soup, struck him as maddeningly wrong but
he could not understand exactly why. His fingers
squelched through the mire and his back screamed
in protect; a rib was surely broken. Someone he
knew not whom, but someone, surely would come
for him. In this he would trust; he had to trust,
for he had no other escape. Let Loriod think he
had won for now. Milord. The word burned his
tongue worse than the manure, but it kindled a
gleam of victory in the fat man's eyes.
Loriod turned back to the man crouched on his
knees in the worst sty in the land and smiled.
Once proud, but no more. Now he was the meanest
of the low. Do your duty then.
Charles nodded as slow as he dared. Aye, milord. I will.
Loriod laughed and nodded, glancing at the two
guards. They had kept perfectly still until
Loriod looked at them; then they began to breath
and move slightly. Puppets, each of them. One
soldier kicked him in the stomach and he dared
not flinch away under the lord's regard, and then
both of them turned to follow after their master.
Loriod stopped a few paces past the stall and
half-turned. His voice savored every word. Until
you learn your place your family will not receive anything from the stores.
He will save me, Charles thought grimly, even
though he did not know who that 'He' was. Someone
important, he knew. Another lord, but nobler, and
far more powerful, than the corpulent monster
stumping away on legs as thick as Charles' torso.
Someone Charles would follow, willingly, when
asked. This thought kept the humiliated man
moving despite the agony in his back. Somehow his
past had prepared him for cleaning a stables
though much of it was incomplete like the wall
and ceiling, but that past he could not recall.
It was there, but a fog. Somehow, in the depths
of that fog, the nag roped to the wall was more
than a mere broken down flea hostel he was a
Royal. But Charles, knees in the muck, could not
imagine who, or how, or why he might bend knee to
the beast or any beast yet somewhere in the
back of his mind he knew he had, and would again.
There was no pitchfork to gather the used straw
and no other tools to improvise. In the end
Charles used his hands and arms, scooping the
revolting mass into his embrace to transfer to a
heap outside. By the time he had finished
spreading fresh hay he stank worse than the
meanest peasant and his back was in so much pain
he could barely rise past a crouch. He crawled from the stables on all fours.
Somehow he found a little hovel crudely fashioned
from a few planks of wood, mud, and bits of cloth
that was meant to be his home. The thatch of the
sagging roof was little better than the straw
Charles had mucked out of that revolting stall.
Lorland castle glimmered like a diamond in the
midst of the fields and mudpits, clearly visible
from any place within the hovel through gaps in
the walls. Charles found Kimberly there also
coated in mud up to her ankles, while his
children cried with stomachs distended from starvation.
There were four of them, but somehow he knew
there should have been more. A small chair of
rough twigs drew his eyes. In it sat a pitifully
small object, some strange sort of effigy, but
somehow wrong. It had a tail emerging from the
feed sack that adorned it as well as the
twisted-straw legs. The effigy's head an old
rotten apple was horribly misshapen into a
pointed taper where a face should have been.
Kimberly glowered at him. You fought his grace
again, didn't you? Fool! Now we will all go
hungry again! she snapped, fists on bony hips
garbed in little more than cast off feed sacks.
His own children were similarly clothed in
sack-cloth so crude that they were little more
than actual sacks in which holes had been poorly
cut for their heads and scrawny arms.
Charles shook his head. He is not our lord. He
hissed, trying to stand but succeeding only in
rising to a bent stoop. Like a viper her hand
lashed out and laid smartly across his cheek. He
recoiled and closed his eyes. This is not my
wife, Charles thought. But she looked like his
wife but then, somehow she did not. Under the
grime of her hard life her skin was still pale
and dotted with freckles now made invisible under
the overall brown; her hair a natty tangle
colored as much by dirt as its natural hue. She
looked like Kimberly, sounded like her, smelled
like her, but it couldn't really be her. Surely
not, he tried to tell himself. Yet, he did not know why she seemed so alien.
You force me to beg again just for scraps! She
shouted over the cries of the children. Charles
collapsed against the straw-strewn ground, trying
to cover his ears. Don't you hide from them!
She jerked a finger toward the wailing children,
all of a similar age. How had she whelped so
many, being as waif thin as she was? Shameful
husband! Be obedient to him and we can eat!
Stomping toward the door she wrenched it open.
The gleaming lines of Lorland castle shone on a
rise in the distance. How, then, could it also be
seen through the gaps in the wall at the back of
the house? Now I must go to him and beg! I will
have to pay for your stubbornness!
Kimberly climbed from the hovel, bumping him in
the side where the guard had kicked him. He felt
the lance of pain from the broken rib stab him in
the back. He gasped and collapsed against the
dirt. He could only gasp two words between the coughs and agony. Beg? Pay?
Kimberly turned and shot him a scowl as she
started toward the castle. Another woman stood on
the pathway, her beatific expression curious, as
she gazed upon Charles stooped in the ramshackle
doorway. The stranger was breathtakingly
beautiful but Kimberly did not seem to notice
her. Even the dust of the pathway failed to find
purchase on her immaculate white gown. Beg for
succor, fool! Pay by giving him what he wants, of
course! The woman his wife, you somehow not
snapped back at him as she trudged up the dusty
trail. My body to use as he will. Again! The
fact that the strange woman, an observer to their
familial strife, bore the countenance of a rat
seemed not to dawn on any of them.
No! Charles tried to stretch out and stop her
but she was already too far away. Charles beat
the mud with his manure-soaked fists and gagged
on his own stench. The wails of his children filled his ears for hours.
Charles, A soft voice, seductive in its gentle
caress, whispered in his ear. What is it you
desire, Charles? Not this, surely. A hand
touched his cheek, heedless of the dirt and filth
that turned his tanned skin almost treebark
brown, but it brought no surcease to the pain. I
am right here, Charles, if you but say my name. I
can free you of him, if you say my name.
Charles turned ever so slightly at the
suggestion. He could not form the words, but he wondered after her name.
You know it. Merely say my name and he will have
no more power over you. You... you will have
power over him. Only say my name. Her hand, soft
yet tipped by a sharp nail like an animal's claw,
brushed over his cheek one last time and then she was gone.
Thought he could not recall sleeping, nor eating
whatever lop that Kimberly had brought back save
that it was revolting, it seemed to Charles that
a day had passed. The same two burly, stone-faced
guards dragged Charles to the latrines used by
it seemed an entire city, handed him a bucket
and rope, and then shoved him down into the pit
beneath the privies to clean them. Other than the
bucket he was given no tools, and the underside
of the privies was too low for him to stand. He
spent hours upon hours scooping refuse, including
his own vomit when the stench proved too great,
into the bucket. The soldiers emptied this into a
cart, and then tossed it back down, often aiming
for his head. Many times their aim was true. All
of this he did while the latrines were still
being used by the hudreds of servile peasants
under the fat lord's thumb. Most looked almost
identical; shambling manikins who only showed a
facsimile of life when their lord was near.
Loriod put in a single appearance that day.
Charles stared at him without feeling. The fat
noble sneered. Do you not kneel before your sovereign?
He groaned and did so in a spot he'd managed to clean. Forgive me, milord.
Do not rise until I give you leave. Charles
held his pose for several minutes, his entire
body trembling with the strain. Something warm,
heavy and slick splattered atop his head. A
stream drenched his back. Charles closed his eyes and thought of rescue.
Each day he toiled, that strange rat woman in the
white gown would watch from a short remove,
unobserved by Loriod, his guards, or anyone else
that lived under the corpulent lord's crushing
boot. Each day she came to him when he retired to
the whip sharp lash of Kimberly's anger and
watcher her storm off to bed and pay for some
succor for their children. And the effigy in the
chair stared on, but Charles could never wrench
his eyes from it. Therein lie what he most
desired, but he had forgotten what it meant. Each
day her seductive voice would croon in his ear,
promising surcease, if only he let her know his inmost desire.
All he could do was point, voice stolen by her
beatific presence, at the effigy in its little
twig chair. Was it that she was a rat and he a
man that turned his desire to a twist of straw
topped by a misshaped old apple rather than her?
Somehow, he knew, it was not her rodentine
appearance. That, if anything, was strangely familiar.
He slept twisted by agony; the ache of his labors
and fresh new insults delivered at the boots and
fists of Loriod's brutal guards, and never ate
anything fit for consumption of man or beast. The
scent of manure never dimmed. And yet days passed
with no end to his labors, humiliations, and the
sudden violence from the soldiers or from his
wife. His children never stopped crying. Loriod
never touched him and he didn't have to.
He merely watched and gloated. Often he did so
while performing acts that left Charles revolved,
knowing that those actions alone were as
insulting to the tortured muckrakes as the labor itself.
Good milord, the shrewish woman who claimed to
be Charles' wife called from the edge of a corral
in which Charles labored to remove a decade's
worth of heaped manure. Small ponds of vile black
water surged into each hole left by the shovel he
was given as he bore the noisome load to a wagon
parked nearby. The bony black nag stood in the
traces, another victim of the corpulent monster's
conquest. Seated on the headboard, idly striking
the haunches of the nag with a short whip solidly
enough to draw bloody weals through the black
coat, Loriod glanced up at the inquiry. Again
that slovenly creature has let us go without
food, Milord, in sufferance of your grace with
his unrestrained tongue. She glared past the
wagon at Charles laboring before a pile of dung
nearly as tall as he would be if he could stand
straight. Around her legs Charles' four
starvation bloated children clustered sullenly.
The queer effigy from the chair was clutched in the arms of the eldest.
The wagon groaned as Loriod turned and dropped
down from the buckboard. Despite its load of
leaking manure it lifted noticeably once the fat
caricature of ignobility dropped to the ground.
Oh, yes, he has left you going hungry yet
again? He crooned, his voice grating to Charles'
ears though no doubt the epitome of masculine
nobility to the speaker. Come, come. With a fat
arm he bade the group of woman and children
around nearer the rear of the wagon. Once there,
where Charles could see everything, Loriod turned
his back to him. The clink and creak of a buckle
and belt came to Charles' ears. Come to your
lord, I have more than enough to see you all fed.
Out of the corner of his eye he espied the
strange woman, beautiful even though a rat,
standing upon the road watching. She regarded him
with an arched stare; for a moment their eyes
met. His fingers bent tightly around the shovel
and though his tongue was fixed behind his teeth,
he sensed at the same time some part of him yet
not himself turn toward that rat and murmur a single word.
Suspira.
If it were possible, the eyes, whiskers, and
snout of the rat woman stretched out in
satisfaction beyond his ability to describe. Her
voice carried across the air as if shouted, but
caressed him as if whispered into his ear. O my
champion of Dream and Hells, he is now yours.
Before he was aware of his feet moving or
thoughts of his actions Charles found himself
turned from the watcher and moving across the
soupy ground as if across hard packed earth. He
charged out of the corral, between the two inert
guards who stared vacantly at the lord and his
supplicants, with the old iron shovel raised
high. With a snarl he brought it down, the
dented, nicked, rusty metal edge cleaving into
the back of Loriod's head with a meaty crunch.
Jerking it up, even as his snarl rose to a
shriek, Charles brought the shovel down again;
and again; and again. Each time flesh and hair
was sent skyward in an arc of gore. Five times
the shovel rose and fell before Loriod hit the
ground. The guards, wagon, Kimberly and the
children all simply ceased existing.
There was only one existence; that of Charles and
Loriod sprawled upon the polished flagstones of
the courtyard. Beneath his knees the tattered
remains of a form rendered unrecognizable as
human save for the pale hue of the furless flesh.
Charles' hands rose and fell, fingers extended
and splayed not as fists but claws. Against they
rose, striking down and across, shredding the
flesh of the form beneath him even as it cried
out in agony and fear. That what remained of
Loriod could still cry out was testament that his
flesh was not truly alive Charles could spend
an eternity rending him, and for that one moment
fervently desired to. With each slashing plunge
of his claw-tipped fingers Charles ripped away
more of Loriod's flesh but, rather than casting
the shreds away, he brought them to his muzzle and consumed them.
Like a starving man suddenly placed before a
banquet he stuffed himself gluttonously with the
flesh of the damned lord, the man's piteous cries
as much succor to him as the flesh he shoved into
his muzzle. He relished it! There was a taste;
cold and harsh like biting a rusty rod of iron.
Yet Charles savored it and basked in the wails of the damned.
A gentle hand grasping his shoulder brought his head up with a snap.
Who are you? The slim, aristocratic man asked.
His face was sharp; chiseled and angular with
sharply angled brows and ears drawn up into
tapered tips. His eyes were intense, blue and
boring into Charles like badgers after a vole.
The rat tried to wrench away, his desire to do
nothing more than return to the violence he was
wreaking on the tattered remnants of his foe. All
that remained of Loriod was a bit of shoulder and
his corpulent face. That face was not stretched,
not distorted. There was no trace of the creature
that had worn him like a garment. The fingers of
the slender man's hand tightened powerfully on
Charles' shoulder. Who are you? He asked again, more sharply.
Blood dripping from his muzzle Charles looked up
at the man, his dark rat eyes wild. Vengeance!
The rat snapped gleefully. Rage! Fury! Hunger!
The man held before him a bit of twisted straw,
sack cloth, and apple. Who are you? He asked
again, hissing as if afraid to be overhead. What
do you seek? Before his eyes the effigy
softened; straw became flesh and fur, sack cloth
to swaddling, and the apple to a head; a face.
The effigy faded to nothing the moment he recognized it.
Ladero, Charles growled, stumbling in his rage
even as he distractedly shoveled a torn hank of
flesh past his bloody whiskers. I I am am
Charles? Charles? Matthias...! He gasped,
suddenly realizing how lost he had become in his rage.
What Loriod wished; what he desired, Charles had
lived! But there was no Loriod left beyond a few
bits of blood, flesh, and bone slowly fading into
the polished flagstones of the courtyard. He had
lost his desire, and found fury... for that shrew
of a woman; his not-wife. As she had been, or
might have been, had the curse of Metamor not
touched her. Somehow that love had seen past the
unpleasant masquerade. He blinked and looked at
his hands but saw no blood, no lingering remnants
of the creature that had buried him in the dark
desires that had led him to the rat queen's realm.
Good. Qan-af-årael hissed with a nod, his hand
giving a last squeeze before he stood. She will
not be distracted long, we must slip past while
she chases your simulacrum. The Åelf nodded
toward the stairwell upon which sprawled the
serpentine form of the Daedra of Lust. Before her
a facsimile of Charles bent knee, his head bowed,
as she held before him an offering that wrenched at Charles' own heart.
She held his son in her arms, his Ladero! She
cradled the babe and smiled upon the illusory
Charles as if awaiting him to ask for that which he desired.
Wrenching his gaze away Charles stood easily,
feeling strangely energized. For all of his
trials and tribulations through the hells he
expected each would have worn some bit of his
away. After Revonos he had felt utterly spent,
but now he felt as if he had rested a week.
Where is the bridge? He asked, falling into step because the taller Åelf.
There, Qan-af-årael waved a hand toward the
ground. And we must make our way there before she sees through my masquerade.
What of Loriod? Charles cast his gaze around.
The succubae and incubus still reclined around
and upon the fountain of blood dark wine. They
regarded the approaching pair with mild interest,
too taken with their own pleasures to show much
concern for the rat and Åelf drawing near. The
rat expected the fat lord to spring out of
hiding, hale and whole, at any moment.
That one ah... Qan-af-årael shook his head. He is here no more.
What?
Charles, remember the beasts of Lilith's realm?
What happened to the damned who could not escape
them? Glancing back at the stair he quickened
his pace, reaching out to take Charles' upper arm in one slender hand.
Their... essence went to sustain Lilith, I guess?
Their potency rather, but verily. She consumes
them until only their essence which none can
destroy remains. Of Loriod there is nothing but
that for oblivion to claim. Now, come! With a
tug he pulled Charles forward more swiftly,
breaking into a half run as, behind them a
startled hiss became a sharper, steamkettle wail.
If it could be said that such a sound could have
issued from a steamkettle smaller than a
warhorse. She has vanquished your doppleganger.
Charles chanced a glance over his shoulder, not
stumbling in his side-crabbing sprint when he saw
the great serpent descending the stair with
frightening speed. If the features of that
rodentine face had once been beautiful they were
no longer such; loving eyes had gone the color
rubies full of fire and prominent incisors had
become terrible, long fangs. Glistening claws
extended from upraised hands ready to rend him as
thoroughly as he had rent the damned soul of Altera Loriod.
The preternatural perfection of maleness
reclining upon the fountain looked on in bemused
surprise as the Åelf and rat charged headlong for
his burbling throne. The succubae moved aside as
if merely perturbed, their attention roving from
them to the serpent swiftly closing upon them.
Dive! Qan-af-årael bellowed when they reached
the lip of the fountain, scattering demons and
their toys like a bully might the playthings of
their younger siblings. With perfect form Charles
leaped up, extended his arms, and plunged into
the pool of wine, Qan-af-årael a scarce heartbeat behind.
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May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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