Apparently once mice and rats reach a certain size, they no longer “squeak.” Instead they snarl, growl, make hacking barks, and generally make every predatory sound you hate to hear.

I was hearing them now!

Before any of them could catch me, I had already jumped across another boundary between rooms, and ended up in a totally different part of the dungeon-castle.

Immediately I cursed myself. What drove me away from those rats wasn’t me intelligently observing that they were stronger than me—on the contrary, I bet they were all weaker and the swarm, at best, equaled me in strength. No, I’d escaped out of a lizard-brained fear. Those rats had smelled cruel, rabid, and evil. Like they would try anything. Like they would infect me.

…And that made me curse myself more. What if somehow they ended up changing course and going after Bayce? What if some other swarm of them was doing that now?

Now I was alone, and all these doubts could plague me.

The Beam was still hovering beside me. I’d have thanked it if it had ears. This felt like a closet, with the rawest scraps of clothing hanging from poles and hooks above. Big for a closet, small for a room. It intensified my drive to escape.

I started cobbling together a plan, but it was a plan that sucked.

Sure, my Map wasn’t working, but my mind still did. If I could keep it steady and stop letting rat hormones throw it into disarray, I could work to memorize all I could about every room I passed through, and especially about the rooms they connected to. With two different connections to consider—where they “should go” and where they really went—that would be a lot, but I had to try.

If I warped around enough, things had to link up eventually, or even repeat.

Maybe I could talk to the rats…

Wait, what was I thinking? No way those rats would be open to negotiation. Even if we shared a common understanding of animal body language, they were…they were just…

I shivered. They weren’t just enraged. They were diseased, and the disease was making them rage.

That was too scary to think about right now. I had to focus on my plans.

Without much hope, I opened my Map. It looked the same as before, but…now there was a different message. Not an error, either.

Recalibrating…

Hm. That seemed like a good sign, but I wasn’t about to wait for it to finish. For all I knew, it was glitched up and would keep “loading” forever.

Without further ado, I took a fairly calm step through the doorway. Naturally, I didn’t end up in a bedroom, but in an unrelated hallway, seeing pits in the wall that once held torches.

Wait…I was overlooking a couple of crucial things here. I looked up at the archway I’d just passed through, and then my gaze drifted down to the bare stone wall. Setting my paw against it, I wondered what would happen if—

Egh! Of course my best train of thought would get interrupted. And by rat screams that were bone-shakingly close.

They’re not as strong as you think! I reminded myself. Still I wheeled around far too quickly and unsteadily. The rats were congregating in the room behind me. Running—they had to be running after me!

I shook that assumption off. Actually, once I began to really listen, I knew they were relatively far away. They were in the next room…but the next room was huge, and they were careening down the middle of it.

Yes, they were a terrifying sight. I peered through as closely as I could without sticking my head inside—and without causing the Beam to cross that threshold, just in case. What I saw was a mass of rats grouped so thick they could’ve been sludge. Fierce chitters were starting up as they set their sights on something—someone—at the other end of that room.

I turned and saw Bayce, with her candle-wand in one hand. I doubted that flame was enough to see them all, but no doubt she heard it. Horror was written on her face and in her tense body. She needs to RUN! I thought, almost angry at how little she was moving.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Maybe I could lure her over to this hallway. It wouldn’t bring our party back together, of course, but it would get her away and that was all that mattered. But before I could shout, Bayce launched a Spell.

It went totally off course.

Then, with a fading squeal, she turned and started running even farther from this doorway.

“Mraow!” I cried, as angry as I was scared for her sake. At this point, I could only pray that some of the rats would be drawn toward me, not her.

My line of thinking changed once I saw what Bayce had cast: an Ice Spell on something high above.

Crystalline clinking drew my eyes upward. Just barely, I saw hints of ice on the bottom of a huge light fixture. A few of the charging rats stopped in their path as rocks and dust fell—then I heard a chain snapping, and an entire chandelier covered in ice hurtled from the ceiling. Half the rats, maybe more, were crushed underneath, and even those who barely escaped found their hind legs coated in immobilizing frost.

I meowed again, but with triumph. Bayce! I wanted to cheer.

That Spell had been powerful, but it hadn’t gotten them all. Several rats hadn’t been stopped whatsoever. A few, mercifully, charged toward me. I froze at the sight instinctively—only to marvel as they blinked out of existence. Yep, they’d been sent to another room, just like Bayce and I had been all along.

I heard and smelled the launching of magical fire at rats closer to where Bayce was. The biggest problem was, I could no longer see what was going on. The archway I was looking through was just too small.

Recalibrated!

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map109-1.png]

Current Location: ??? (S.??)

This new Map proved my point by showing just how tiny the hallway opening was compared to the room ahead, as well as how distant Bayce was. And it also amplified my point by making it impossible-er to see.

Even if Bayce could do this alone, we both had limited Spells. Even if she was a way better-traveled mage than I knew, I could battle without expending resources—I could fight with aura-less claws.

How could I get from here to there, though?

THWOOM. One of my Earth Spells went careening through the wall, busting it wide open. As I coughed out the dust of a thousand years, I bounded through the hole. The plan worked! I was in the same room with Bayce and all the rats.

Now I spotted Bayce launching flames from her wand. That gave me a better idea of just what she was doing. See, the fire on that candle-wand looked exactly the same as it had when we’d first entered, yet was also loosing little fireballs at the rats. The downside appeared to be that all those fires were much smaller and less effective than a single ordinary Fire Spell. It did conserve resources. (Like the Amber Beam!) But could it drive off the dozen-ish rats now congregated around her? I figured no.

So I dove in with whirling claws, challenging myself not to use a single Skill.

My Earth Spell gatecrashing had already drawn their attention. The rats sped at me with no coordination, like river rapids from three different streams. I found it surprisingly easy to keep calm—it was as if realizing just what had scared me, and getting the “victory” of reaching this room under my belt, was all I needed to be confident. I fell into speed and power. A pure energy I hadn’t felt since we landed in this damp muggy prison filled me. And a kind of happiness, now that I felt like a rescuer.

Aura-charged teeth and claws barely clipped me. Dancing between blows, I seemed to taste the power I’d had when I wielded the golden blade. I began to remember the way I’d moved when I fought several times as many raccoons…

And then it was done. All too soon, the rats were defeated. A few were fleeing, squeaking amongst themselves, but seven were scattered across the floor.

EXP: 93% (4046/4350)

HP 93% (770/828) SP 34% (268/795)

My only loss, besides a few HP points, was the disappearance of the Amber Beam. It must’ve bumped into some poor rat’s face and burned away. With Bayce’s wand, I’d manage.

She had helped. She’d continued casting tiny fireballs even when I’d entered the fray, and not one had hit me. Any wound is a wound, and all the damage she dealt helped distract the rats and slow them down.

Her posture was still rigid, her breathing heavy—maybe she’d go on feeling frightened and trapped until we finally busted ourselves and Reed out of here—but she looked at me with, I thought, a new affection. And I did the same back at her.

“Genius thinking,” she said. And with no sarcasm! “We keep doing that”—she pointed toward the hole in the wall with her wand—“and we won’t even have to look at a door.”

I nodded…though I wasn’t sure we had enough high-power Spells to bring down enough walls. This seemed to be an entire castle, after all.

“Now…I think that’s a throne over there.” Bayce pointed. “It’s not a great hint, but it’s a start. Let’s investigate?”