Disoriented by the extra source of sensory perception, on unsteady feet I rose. The Mimic shield relinquished its grip on the floor with a crack of stone, as its roots withdrew back into itself. It was a cumbersome thing and heavy even with my enhanced Strength.

I started to step slowly back, but Larynda stopped me.

“Behind you!” she wailed emphatically.

I turned to see twin orbs the color of diseased yellow materializing in the darkness, just at the edge of the Zajasite's light. What began as two quickly multiplied to four, then eight, until a multitude stared back with a foreboding hunger. They were the eyes of a verminous horde. The sound of chittering squeaks escalated, gradually overpowering the background noise of flowing effluvia and the lingering echoes of the Quiverings’ primal scream.

Approaching us were creatures the size of wolves, but they bore large incisors and long, sinuous tails, instead of the canines and bushy tails of their very distant lupine cousins. Their bodies, covered in matted fur, carried the grime of the sewers, and their eyes reflected a bold, unwholesome hunger.

As predicted by Larynda, the Sewer Rats of Al-Lazar had found us.

“I did not bring you down here just to sing a few tunes! Use your magic, damn you!” I commanded Larynda, who nodded and drew a piece of paper from her pouch, a magical Seal. She began to chant a spell of her own in a small and panicked voice.

Slimes and bloody rats. Instead of fear, I felt anger and resentment, and oddly, a need to set an example. Me feelings blossomed into a rage that was echoed by the magic within. How dare they set such creatures against me? Entropic Aura beckoned to be released, the perfect spell to deal with the multitude of rodents that had snuck up upon us.

I released the magic from within and let it ride upon the waves of my emotion. As the first circle of gray night spread from me, I felt oddly at peace, as if the universe and everything made sense. As if everything that was meant to be, now, simply was.

The magic pulsed.

The monstrously large rats squealed, squeaked, and hissed in terror as they moved away from me. The Quiverings, unfortunately, was not so easily dissuaded. It continued its alien advance, activating the marked trigger plate and swallowing up Gersal’s remains.

Bladed darts rained from the ceiling down onto the gelatinous, tentacled blob to little effect. Its body seemed to absorb the force of the sharp metal and it suffered damage only in the single digits. Still, it writhed in place, strange appendages striking in random directions as it searched for the source of this new attack. It was, at least for the moment, distracted.

And so I turned my attention to the vermin horde, preparing to cut a path through them with blade and spell.

Just as I was about to cast Drain… no - Greater Drain, to reduce these creatures of flesh and blood to a bundle of zeros, I heard a quiet voice, a mere whisper. Pitted with the promise of the grave, it called to me in protest, and with it a sense of rot and release, of turning and of change played on my senses. Decay demanded attention. Surprisingly, the voices agreed in their sage wisdom. So, hooking my crossbow to my belt, I formed the rarely cast spell, my free hand running through the strange somatic gestures.

The spell of rot and ruin washed over the vermin, the denizens of this terrible place. Almost immediately, pustules grew upon the giant rats as if they had been suddenly overtaken by virulent sickness. This was soon followed by an explosion of vile liquid, leaving behind cancerous weeping sores all over the rodents’ bodies. A sense of wrongness came over me, a stark contrast to my earlier feeling of tranquility. Decay, the spell at least, did not work like this.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The rodents, instead of running away from us in fear and pain, drew ever closer, their number increasing by the second, even as more of their number were overcome by my spreading disease. They formed almost a living mass of their own, crawling over each others’ bodies to reach us.

Then suddenly, I felt a rush of diseased air as Larynda unleashed a spell of raw Chaos. “Nara Sakullu,” she cried out in a tremulous voice that, nonetheless, rang out with notes of destiny. She had summoned the Black Flame.

Black jagged lines of dark flame that absorbed what little light there was, rushed upon wings of night into the giant form of the Quiverings. The slime creature gave out a baleful shriek as it felt the unnatural fire’s caress. I laughed in maniacal glee, glad that I had chosen to take Larynda with me. A weapon that I could command.

The ebon fire burned at the Quiverings, filling the air with hot, newborn steam. Its health dropped suddenly, the unnatural magic of Chaos eating away at it as it was dissolved by the liquid flames.

But the fires did more than just burn, for I saw that they emanated something very ancient, very ancient indeed, that resonated with a part of my soul. Primordial Chaos. Where the flames licked the stone floor and water, growths of vegetation sprouted from the stone and wastewater. Ghost-white, they wilted and died in scant moments, but as suddenly as they died new flames stoked their corpses to birth new life. Where there was death, fungus spawned in the myriad shades of life, only to soon also wilt and rot.

The Quiverings itself was more dramatically affected. After the Quiverings’ Health dropped, it soon rose again. Rise and fall, rise and fall. A curse of change was overtaking it, mutating its form and bending it into new and random shapes. The spell was raw Chaos indeed, as harmful as it was helpful.

Our released unknowable magics mixed, and they created a warped duet that played in constant counterpoint. In this most discordant of songs, a melody of oblivion that resonated and echoed with itself, a harmony of controlled chaos sounded.

I knew in my bones that the Quiverings could not be defeated by my magic or blade now. Larynda’s strange magic had seen to that.

A link was formed in this medley of arcane power, a link between me and the flood of vermin. And with this link came a question, a skittering mental screech repeated by a multitude of individuals. What do you wish of us? They asked, not really words, not even a true question, but more of a demand of their own. The many were seeking purpose.

My next words were ripped from me, ripped as it seemed from the very fabric of my soul. I felt profoundly lessened.

“Be more,” I croaked in a voice that was not all quite mine. Such simple words, but with great and heavy meaning. Larynda looked at me in confused horror.

But this was no one-way street of communication. As did my command fall upon them, so too did their multitude of lives fall upon me. There came impressions of a life of darkness, of swimming through watered blight, and of days fought with tooth and claw. Through our fell link, I knew now, with great intimacy, of their urge to survive and live, and knew, too, of their equal urge to rut and reproduce. Their hunger for all things.

The rats listened. More importantly, they obeyed. Now they would be more in all meanings of the word. My words would become a catalyst for their great change.

As if marking this moment, the game heralded me with a new message. To me, it was just a system notification, but had these low creatures been able to understand and witness them, it might have well become the start of their new gospel.

You have gained 1 Wisdom.

You have gained 1 Luck.

You have learned Entropic Aura (lvl.5)

You have learned Decay (lvl.2)

You have learned Monster Taming (lvl.2)