As ever, the banquet hall felt strangely empty with only seven people seated.

Six Heroes and one steward sat clustered at the far end of the massive table, all attention pinned to the old man.

“‘Exterminate’ is such a strong word, don’t you think?” Said Argus, “I’d prefer to think of it as… tidying. Possibly even cleaning.”

“You want us to clean the rats in the cellar?” Neil said, staring at the old man. “With what, soap and water?”

And the morning had gone so well, Neil thought. Of course today would be the day Argus had another one of his little ‘adventures’ planned for them. At least this time they didn’t need to spend a day on horseback getting there.

Neil was still sore in places that had no business being sore.

“No, he just wants us to tidy them up a bit.” Said June, in a dry voice. “Hey Argus, how do you want your rats organized? By color? Size? Maybe by how likely they are to bite our faces off?”

The old man blinked at Neil and June in turn, expression blank.

“They think they’re being funny,” Said Pete, raising a hand to speak. “It’s not working though, guys. Time and place, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Thomas, before June or Neil could defend themselves. “Is no one else stoked that we’re getting a quest to kill the rats in the basement?”

All present—save Anne, who looked paler than usual—shook their heads, looking at the increasingly doughy man.

“This is videogame one-oh-one,” Said Thomas, eyebrows and voice raising in tandem. “There’s probably gonna be a boss fight, and everything. Some kind of rat-king, maybe.”

Anne stiffened at this, and June scowled. “The heck is a rat-king?” The latter asked.

Before Neil had a chance to lean into June and explain that a rat-kings was what you called a mass of rats with their tails tied together, Argus spoke—

“The Rat-kings were all killed centuries ago, my boy. Hunted to extinction by the fairy lord Oengus.”

The old man shook his head at Thomas’s apparent naivete, and Neil—realizing that he didn't know nearly as much about this as he thought he did—snapped his mouth shut and righted himself.

‘Look up rat-kings and fairy lords.’ Neil made a mental note, lips pulling into a thin line.

He’d have thought, after spending as much of the last week in a library as he had, that he’d stop feeling like a clueless child by now. He wasn’t that lucky. Every other day Argus casually dropped the wildest information, and then claimed that everyone and their grandmother knew about it.

For example: Dragons were hunted to near-extinction across the entire peninsula. Neil didn’t even know they were on a peninsula before last week.

Thomas frowned, deflating slightly. “But they aren’t normal rats, are they?”

“Well…” the old man made a weighing gesture between his hands. “What is ‘normal,’ really, when one lives in times such as these?”

“*Bullshit*.” Neil feigned a sneeze into the crook of his elbow, pulling all eyes towards him.

“Sorry,” he said, in a high and innocent voice, raising both hands in apology. “Allergies.”

“In all seriousness,” continued Argus, after shooting Neil a patronizing glare. “One does not live very long by underestimating their enemies. These are dark times: the ‘normal’ has become vanishingly rare.”

“Cool.” Said Thomas, smiling with the innocence of a child. “So are they super huge, or strong, or what?”

“I don’t know.” Said Argus, the shadow of a frown crossing over his face, lip curling with what Neil read as disgust. “You have to talk to the caretaker to find out more, I think. He was the one to discover them. He will know more than I how to deal with them.”

“Alright,” said Jackie, pushing up from her seat. “Where can we find the caretaker, then?”

“The cellar.” Argus bared his teeth, a misbegotten bastard of an expression that might have once been a grimace or a smile. “Did I not say? Phineus lives there. I suggest you bring torches.”

…

…

Neil wasn’t aware that the castle even had a caretaker, let alone one that lived in the cellar.

‘What would that make him, then,’ he thought, ‘the maintenance man to Argus’s landlord?’

Was it rude that he’d never introduced himself, Neil wondered? It felt rude.

Although, considering the trouble they had to go through to even get to the cellar, Neil was feeling less and less guilty by the second.

“This guy really lives down here?” Neil whispered, weaving around another curtain of cobwebs, barely visible in the glimmering torchlight.

He didn’t know why he whispered. The cellar had a similar compulsion towards silence as a library, for all that they were opposites.

The library was a place of dry, comfortable warmth. The shadows may have been numerous, but they danced around the books and papers and candles like reveling fairy spirits.

The cellar was cool, moist, and smelled faintly of mold. A place lethal for books. The shadows, cast by torchlight, did not dance, but swoop around them, like a pack of vultures that smelled dinner.

Jackie and Pete each held a lit torch. Jackie was at the front of the pack, lighting the way forward; Pete was at the back, making sure nothing snuck up on them.

Neil was comfortably in the middle, carrying his own unlit torch, along with Thomas, Anne, and June. Thomas had an easy, wide, careless gate, though Neil couldn’t see his face. Anne was stiff, taking small, short steps forward, her head turning on her shoulders in a motion that Neil found distinctly bird-like.

June—

“This sucks,” she yawned, making no effort toward silence. “They’re rats, guys. We eat rats for breakfast.”

“We most certainly do not!” Whispered Anne, surprising Neil, who was about to say something similar. “We eat porridge for breakfast. And eggs. And cereal. This morning I had an apple. Never rats.”

Her voice was low, hurried, and intense, far from her normal dreamlike cadence.

“Oh, relax,” June was behind him, so couldn’t see her face, but he knew an eye-roll when he heard one. “We’re not even in the cellar yet. This is, like, the foyer to the cellar. See?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Neil looked back, and only saw June, gesturing forward into the encroaching darkness as if proving her point.

The ceiling was low, held up by stone arches that put Neil in the mindset of the Gothic. The walls on either side were gray and pitted, almost porous, like a sponge. Torchlight reflected eerily across the walls and the floor, damp with condensation. Neil saw no door.

“I’m not gonna lie to you guys, this isn’t as fun as I thought it was going to be,” said Thomas, brushing aside another cobweb. “Kinda reminds me of my dad’s apartment. I bet there are centipedes fuckin’ everywhere.”

“Thomas, if I see a single centipede, I’m blaming you.” Whispered Neil, shooting a glare at the larger man.

“Better centipedes than rats,” Supplied Anne, tremor in her voice. “Does anyone else care that the Pentarchy sees rats as the incarnation of sin? And their tails.”

The small blonde woman shivered, hugging her unlit torch to her body like a lifeline.

“We’re here.” Said Jackie, in a booming voice that banished Neil’s compulsion to whisper.

And they were.

At the end of the hall was a wooden door, studded with iron bolts. At the center of the door was a heavy iron knocker held in the mouth of a gargoyle, staring at them as they walked closer.

Shadows flickered across the monstrous decoration’s face, with eyes that seemed to track Neil’s movements.

Jackie strode forward, and knocked.

The door opened, and Neil took an involuntary step back.

In the torchlight, a milk-white head hung six-and-half feet in the air, like the moon, seemingly disembodied. The head floated forward, revealing the black robes of the body it was attached to.

The caretaker had sunken eyes, a long face, and a nose that a crow could perch on and have enough room to feel ashamed and inadequate. His hair was full but mostly gray, more ‘pepper’ than salt.

There was something odd about the age lines etched across the man’s face, Neil thought. Mostly the lack. It was like the man hadn’t smiled once in the last thirty years. The orange glow of the torch reflected dimly in the man’s dark eyes, and even through the robes, Neil could see that the man was rake-thin.

“Welcome,” said the specter of a man, stepping to the side of the door. “To the dungeon.”

…

…

“It’s a dungeon crawl,” Thomas whispered, looking back over one shoulder. “I can’t believe we’re going on an actual—”

“Shush.” Interrupted Jackie, turning her attention back to the caretaker. “We’re here for the rats, Mr.…”

Neil rolled his eyes. The muscular woman projected authority and confidence in her voice that Neil associated with superheroes and engineering students.

“Phineus,” The man said, in a high and sharp voice, looking down his nose at the woman. “Or ‘caretaker,’ I suppose. I imagine that you are the… Heroes, yes?”

He said the word ‘heroes’ almost like he was tasting it, Neil thought, and didn’t much care for the flavor.

Phineus’s peregrine eyes hunted through the Heroes’ faces, as if searching for something.

Jackie nodded. “We’re here to help.”

“I can see that,” Said Phineus, in a dry voice. “It’s about time, I’d say.”

Neil frowned.

Jackie glanced back at the group, lips pursing. “We’re sorry, Argus only just told us about it today. Have you been waiting long?”

“Not as long as the steward hoped, I’m sure.” The gaunt man smiled.

There was something… predatory about him, Neil thought. Not merely the unnatural pallor of his skin—Neil had more than one friend with what seemed like a phobia of the sun, Amelia included—but in the whiteness of his teeth, and the thinness of his lips.

Dark bags hung under the man’s eye sockets, yet the eyes themselves had a glimmering vitality to them, mirroring the flickering light of June’s torch.

June’s torch. That was another thing. It was the only source of light in the room. From the little that Neil could see, it was an old, small office, the same dimensions as Argus’s, though half as decorated. The man must have been waiting for them in total darkness.

“Not to be rude,” Neil frowned at the skeletal man. “But are you, like, a vampire, or something? No judgment, just… you’ve got that kind of vibe.”

Dark were the eyes of the caretaker, twin pools of shimmering night.

“‘Or something,’” He smiled. “Why do you ask?”

Not, Neil noticed, refuting him. Though his teeth lacked the requisite fangs, and the sun was up, for all that it was hidden behind fifteen feet of dirt and stone.

It was not a friendly smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, and looked more like a deliberate display of his teeth, in case a Hero insisted on checking.

“Just making conversation, sorry,” Neil waved a hand in mock surrender. “I talk when I get nervous, and… you’re a tall, gaunt stranger who lives in the abandoned cellar of an old castle. Were you just waiting here in the dark before we got here?”

“The mouth of the band,” Quoth the specter, dark eyes boring into Neil, before moving to the others. “Which of you are the brains? Perhaps one of you might offer some intelligent observation to make up for this fool’s attempt at reasoning.”

June stepped in front of Neil, craning her head upwards to look at the rake of a man. “Fuck you, buddy. If you think—”

“Both of you, quit it!” Jackie snapped.

He pulled June back, gently by her arm, giving her a half-smile when she looked at him. He appreciated the defense, and attempted to communicate it without the use of words.

June’s lips pressed into a thin line, and she nodded back at him, slightly.

Jackie took a breath, before turning back to Phineus. “We apologize. We’re new to this, and we have a lot to learn, clearly.”

She looked back at Neil, expression set in stony disapproval. “And I’m sure Neil didn’t mean to offend you.”

Neil shrugged. He didn’t consider himself to be the best judge of character in the world, but… just looking at Phineus set off all sorts of alarm bells for him.

Did the caretaker deserve his derision? Maybe not. Was he on the fast track to earning it?

Yes. Yes, he was.

Jackie scowled and nodded intently at him.

“Yes,” Neil lied. “I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to offend.”

Phineus did not so much as look at him. All his attention was on Jackie.

“The leader.” He said, leering. “I suppose discipline can act as a substitute for intelligence, if the need for it is dire.”

“Dick,” Neil muttered under his breath to June, nudging her with his shoulder.

“We’re here to help, caretaker,” Said Jackie, in an iron voice. “Not fight.”

“If you’re not willing to fight, I imagine the rats will have the advantage.” Said Phineus, sounding satisfied with himself.

The gaunt man’s dark eyes swept over the group once more, setting on an unlikely target.

Anne.

“You’re shaking like a lapdog, girl,” Phineus observed. “Why?

“I don’t like rats.” Said Anne, in a soft voice, looking up at him.

“Don’t worry, my sweet.” The specter of a man leered. “The rats will like you even less.”

‘Alright, that’s enough.’

“If you’re the caretaker,” started Neil, stepping forward, “Why don’t you take care of the rat problem yourself?”

“If you’re a Hero, why don’t you have a sword?” Phineus immediately retorted, smiling down at him.

Neil grit his teeth, and glared at the older man, praying to whatever gods were out there that he didn’t look like a petulant child.

“If you’re a—”

“That’s enough,” Jackie stated, looking between Neil and Phineus, and settling upon Neil. “We’re all adults here, aren’t we?”

Neil shrugged. June jostled him with her shoulder, smiling mutedly at him.

“Speaking of being adults…” said Thomas, in a careful voice. “Do we get paid for this? Err— rewarded, somehow? Maybe on a per-rat basis?”

Phineus’s dismal gaze transferred to the larger man. His expression was still, but he somehow managed to sneer using just his eyes.

“If the satisfaction of a job well done is not a prize enough for you,” said Phineus, staring imperiously down at Thomas. “Consider the fact that the next time you find a raisin in your morning porridge, the cook won’t have been the one that put it there.”