Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats
by Charles Matthias and Ryx
Pars VI: Acceptio
(d)
Saturday, May 12, 708 CR
However, the clouds were disconcerting. Before
they had been far above, remote and
unapproachable. But now they loomed as if bearing
downward toward them and they were effulgent with
a scintillating golden light that made his
substance sizzle with renewed anguish. He
crouched even more tightly within his Master's
shadow but still their radiance burned him.
We are almost there.
The thought was clear and rich with meaning. More
than a mere destination, it was restoration as
well. It was goal and purpose. There. He yearned
for it. He burned and charred the ground with his
being and desire. But, for a moment, he knew not
what that goal he strove for was.
Something; some tangible thing that pulled at his
heart though his anguish and pain-wracked mind could not, at first, discern it.
A son.
A word, as bereft of meaning as ant and squirrel,
but he felt it deep down within the core of the
essence that made him what he was. A son.
Ro. Like the shard of a shattered whole; a single
syllable. Desperately his mind snatched it up,
turning it over and over to glean some meaning
from something no more complicated than a modulation of the throat.
Lo. Another fragment, sharp edged and glimmering
like the first but somehow not whole.
Did the strange vocalizations define what a son
was, or were they simply the remnants of those
things that his Master had tempered from the
unfit mettle of his essence? Mulling the oddities over he strove deeper still.
Dare. Ahh, another discarded bit of memory that
shone as glimmering clear as the others; shards
cast from a single whole that had been stripped,
crushed, and forgotten. In his mind, even as he
crept across the ground in the shadow and cringed
from the searing agony of the light, Núrodur Nuruhuinë toyed with the sounds.
Ro Lo Dare. Grist in his mind, rough within his mouth.
Dare Lo Ro. A stone beneath the shadow; sharp edged and irritating.
Each mental examination met with as much sense as
ant or squirrel or even of Self had he once a
vocalization the defined the untampered, flawed
substance that he had once been.
Lo Dare Ro. He stumbled for a brief half step,
too frightened of the flame to succumb to the
startled realization that the substance of those
three syllables had not been forged away as so
many others had. Somewhere, at the very edges of
his hearing, the quieted music rose to a
triumphant crescendo bent upon a single word.
Ladero. A son. His son! The son he sought, the
reason he undertook the forging and tempering
that would make of him what his Master wished. To
see his son, the one called Ladero. A memory,
crystalline in the perfection of its clarity,
suffused his emptied mind and he grasped at it as
a drowning man to a buoy, drawing it into the
center of his being and secreting it away as he
had the music and the image of the beautiful lady in her gown.
But what more must he relinquish first? The
question unsettled him in a way he did not expect
it would. His Master had already proven to him
that once he'd been purified of some little thing
he no longer was capable of recognizing it or
even regretting its loss. So why did he hesitate? His Master did not.
His disquiet did not go unnoticed by his Master.
He felt the presence, immense and searing with
its power, boring into him and with it more than
mere meaning or words, but immersion.
He stood in a courtyard of moss-covered stones
and old statues positioned along low garden
walls. The statues had once been of men, perhaps
heroes and nobility of whatever kingdom this had
once been, but now their faces were obscured by
the wear of ages if not missing altogether
while limbs either lay in jumbled ruin at their
feet or were only half present. These titans of
men were of an age now dead and already forgotten
but for the remnants against which time and the
elements worked their inexorable power.
Nothing could be seen beyond the courtyard but
silhouettes of taller walls of decaying stone
that also suggested a dilapidated state equal to
the statues. Overhead a moonless night peeked
through a heavy veil of cloud. Everything persisted in a tranquil gloom.
But he was not alone in the ruin. No name could
be given, but he knew that there were others
subsisting in the shadows that stretched from
statue to garden wall and back again. Each seemed
familiar as if they were not truly
indistinguishable. Separate each of them were in
that they occupied different locations within the
courtyard, but they had a likeness that made him
wonder whether they were merely different
manifestations of the same being or form of
being. He experienced them rather than sensed
them, for like he, they were part of the ever
deepened shadows covering the ancient ruins of man.
Into the vision appeared a new being, one of
light that shone bright and cool and yet did not
dispel the shadows cloaking the graveyard.
Rather, he seemed to make each shadow darker and
more present, as if they were more than just a
place where light could not reach, but a tangible
substance that had him as their source. The being
of light was clearly not a man, but something more refined and ancient.
He stood in the presence of one who had seen ages
rise and fall and yet who remained the same.
Another age was past and now he guided all again.
This ruin, though he could recognize nothing of
it, was not merely an expression of the being's
power, but also of his magnanimity. He turned to
the others with him in this being's shadow and understood.
Each and every fellow creature of shadow felt so
similar to him because they were all incarnations
of the same being, provided not just once but
time and time again in such profusion that they
covered all of this ancient city with the
substance. They were all so familiar to him
because they were his goal, purified as he had
been of all that kept him from the being of light.
His son, profuse and multitudinous, but his son.
And there in this fallen place here none dwelt
but the shadows they could find their protection
from hated light and merely be together. More
that his own will desired this, but that of the
being of light as well. His Master.
Nothing else cold distract them, for there was
nothing left to stand between them. Father and
son could dwell together and always under the
generous suzerainty of their Master. Nothing else need be but they three.
The impression lingered longer than the others
he'd witnessed and with it before him he could
only continue forward as they climbed the
terrace. He left no blade of grass standing in
his wake, but burnt all down to the roots as he
dwelt on the image. He would have what he truly
desired once his Master had finished tempering
him; once he had been purified of all but his Master's shadow.
The image did recede somewhat by the time the
reached the end of the terrace. Before them
stretched one last wall of stone and fissure
rising upward to the very tip of the spire. A
being of eyes and wings stood before the portal,
its finger effacing a letter from the forehead of
one of the souls so that no more stain remained.
But this soul was different from the others
they'd encountered on the terrace. It was not the
strange shape he bore, with long ears that turned
about his head, a boxy snout and flat nose, a
thin chest and arms, wide hips supporting a long
tail and large feet with three toes each tipped
by claws. Seeing beasts that walked as men did
struck him as natural though he could not quite discern why.
What made this soul special was that he too stood in his Master's shadow.
Núrodur Nuruhuinë regarded the soul with a
measure of curiosity he had only offered to the
images that had come to him. A strange song
seemed to pass into the pain of his thought as he
noted the dimensions of the beast-man. He felt a
glimmer of another beast-creature, this one of a
rat adorned in lace, intertwined with the melody,
as well as something hidden within the thought.
Something exalted yet concealed. He felt an ache
that was not fire pain him from within at this
thing he could not know about the song, the lady,
and then beast-man that stood in his Master's shadow.
The beast-man hopped toward the cleft on his long
feet, heavy tail drooped behind him as he leaned
forward with each bound. None of the steps took
him from the pool of darkness that stretched
forward from his Master's feet to welcome him.
While his Master walked confidently past the
being of eyes who seemed to shimmer with a
spectral light Núrodur Nuruhuinë slunk past in
the safety of shadow, pressed as tight to the
ground as he could, leaving a trail of charred
earth in his wake. Once they were past he lifted
his substance from the shadow to study the hopping beast-man again.
At the entrance to the cleft the figure had
stopped and turned, extending his arms to block
all passage beyond. His eyes, a hazelnut brown,
glowed as if the moon at its most brilliant shone
through them. The shadow undulated at his feet,
and veins of black danced upward across the
russet fur of his legs, thighs, and concentrated
in a black mass punched into his left side. The
wound appeared grievous and was the first real
wound he could recall witnessing upon a soul
traveling the terraces; yet it did not seem to
hinder the beast-man as he stretched himself across the path to bar their way.
And to the surprise of Núrodur Nuruhuinë, his
Master slowed his pace as he approached, sculpted
face betraying nothing. Nor did his thoughts
indicate any displeasure at this act of defiance,
at least none that he shared with his servant
crouched at his heels. Uncertain what he should
do, Núrodur Nuruhuinë waited and watched,
studying the beast-man and wondering why his
countenance seemed familiar. Images, disconnected
and haphazard brushed through his inner being,
but none lingered long enough for him to identify
why this one was familiar to him, only that he seemed to have been important.
----------
May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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