A large brown rat person's particularly-long whiskers bristle in the cool air of the bay. The ships are all tied in for the evening, and the land-dwellers are mostly asleep.

He squints his ratty eyes with a mousey concentration, watching carefully for movement.

"Okay, let's go," the front rat says with a flick of his arm forward. The time has come to lead the platoon out of the sewer and into the moonsoaked streets of Glorious Laresha.

At once, a dozen ratkin storm out from the drain, punching through the pre-cut grate with ease to usher out a set of enormous spell slips, a massive roll of inscribed paper sheets, out over their shoulders. With a few to guard the flanks, the mass of them cut through the streets with furtive steps. They cut past the shipman's quarters, the quartermaster's ship, and the shipping master's office in only a minute's time. Just as rehearsed, they've reached the palace gate in only three minute's time, and without a single cleanman glance their way.

"Do the thing!" a cloud-gray rat shouts, his eye-patch covering the beady red eye he lost in his fight with the sewer dragon.

A short black rat with a killer gaze leaps forward and slaps one of the large at the gate. He nips his finger to draw blood and slaps his hand into the seal of the paper's inscription. This happens the same moment a tall white rat does the very same thing with another scroll, except she jams the tightly-bound scroll in through the inch-wide hatching of the gate.

A faint purple glow overtakes the plaza around the gate, and a startling hum emanates along with the rift between the two scrolls.

"Go, go!" the brown rat snips under his breath. All twelve of them dash into the glowing scroll on their side, leading out through the mystic rift and out the other end.

They're inside.

"Here we go," the eyepatched rat says with a grimace. "Time for give those landwalkin' elf-loving, orc-kissin' cleanies what's been coming to 'em."

Past the multi-layered, wired and barbed front gate, it's a simple affair for the twelve to climb up with the other scrolls and their equipment. They've practiced too long and too hard to make a noise. They've transformed from a rag-tag pile of sewer refuse into midnight incarnate: furry, cheese-loving death. With their rapiers at the ready, they fold into the window of the royal family's quarters.

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Without a single land-dweller to stop them, the twelve creep past into the royal family's chambers and it's where they flip out the final scroll.

King Routhous wakes with a start, his eyes already aflame with violence.

"What in the devil are you rats doing in my castle?!" he shouts, the queen shuffling to get behind him and shield her from the hideous sight of the grinning, ill mannered, unwashed rats. Before he can react, the grey rat is already upon him, cutting the vault key off the chain around the king's neck. With a leap showcasing dexterity that would challenge even the nimblest of elves, the old rat returns to the group with the key in hand, and a shocked king frozen in place.

The brown rat opens the second to last scroll and nips his thumb. "The Big Fat Rat Gang gives its regards," is all he says before smacking his thumb into the sealage of the inscription. A blinking golden light flashes from the scroll comes a moment too fast for the guards rushing down the hall, as from the chamber doors gush a mass-explosion of sewer refuse. The scroll opened a gate to the bottom of the city's sewage system.

As the Big Fat Rat Gang swing their tails wildly in the air, they lean into the current of the nastiest, smelliest, deepest and dankest flow ever to grace any palace of man.

King Routhous screams at the top of his royal lungs as the shit water fills his mouth, everything he's struggled for swept away with him in the current.

The gang laughs and dances their way down using a royal recliner as a raft, the torrent of wastewater delivering them through ancient, hollowed chambers, across priceless works of art, and all while seeping very, very deep into the carpets.

A cultured looking pair of an orc and an elf run for their very lives when the tidal wave smashes into the diplomat's wing, giving all those blueblooded royals a deep taste of their worst. Washing through the royal kitchens, the eyepatched rat taps the brown one, breaking him from his trance.

"Wh- oh! We're almost there!" the brown one answers to himself as he readies the final scroll. He hands it to the older gray rat, who draws a dagger, nicks his hand, and stabs the bloodied knife into the wall with the final scroll and the key impaled onto it.

The rats wash away with the royal family, their guards, their possessions, and absolutely everyone and everything else in Laresha's royal palace... that is, except for one particular room.

The massive, vomitous rush of the wave dies down after a minute, having cleared out the palace all the way down to the entrance, and in the dripping quiet next to the large vaulted, magically-reinforced door, the final scroll opens up to reveal a single pair of smelly, fuzzy little light gray hands, like a passing mist that beguiles and fools all that travel with it.

"It's cheesin' time," a chuckling voice says.