“Ah, to laugh once more. What a marvelous gift to pair with the freedom you have brought me.” Nick scrambled back in confusion, causing the rat to laugh again.
“Calm yourself, child. I’m dying, and the parasite that controlled me is already dead. Through some strange twist of fate, it seems that I have been granted a final moment to thank my liberator in person.”
Nick tensed, ready to run, when the ratman began to move. But the foreman merely adjusted its position on the ground, bending its knees to sit cross-legged and then placing its hands in its lap. It was bizarre watching something that had been trying its hardest to kill him change its demeanor so abruptly and completely.
He was worried that it was some kind of trick, but Nick could no longer sense any hostility in the foreman’s posture, which radiated a calm joy that felt starkly out of place within the dungeon’s depths.
“Don’t worry.” The creature put on its battered helmet and closed the visor, obscuring the weeping ruins of its face. “I won’t bite. Your strike destroyed the parasite controlling my body, and the danger has passed. You did it, youngling. You won. You should have received a System notification confirming the truth of my words. Take a look and read it now so that you know you can trust me. I want to enjoy my final conversation, no matter how brief it may be.”
Nick glanced at his message, reading just enough to see that the ratman spoke true. It seemed that despite the odds, he had completed the tutorial dungeon at the last possible moment before he perished.
“How did you know?” Nick asked, bewildered by this unexpected and unprecedented situation. Nothing within the dungeon had prepared him to converse with an alien creature, let alone one that had been trying to kill him only a few seconds prior. “And how are you still alive? I thought that I stabbed you through the heart.”
In response to Nick’s question, the foreman began to laugh once more. A rusty chuckle that came bubbling out through the slits in its helm, like it had been so long since the rat had last laughed that it was struggling to remember how.
“Lucky and new. Ah, to be young again. I will answer your question, and any others I can in the little time I have left. It’s the least I can do by way of thanks. To begin, I knew that you were on a quest because that was System healing if I’ve ever seen it. Well, smelled it to be more accurate, as your attack dissolved my eyes. After you were run through by my blade, you were closer to death than I am to my own shadow. Then, in the next breath, you’re back in peak condition.
“Not that death would have saved you from the blight. The controlling core would have been more than capable of completing the fusion and then reanimating your body. It’s why I was allowed to attack you to begin with. My parasite wasn’t trying to kill you, at least not for long; it merely wanted to prevent you from completing your quest. The core was likely planning to use your body to make it back to your people, unleashing the horror of the Crimson Blight upon them. Your quick thinking saved not only your own life but likely your entire species as well.”
While Nick tried to process what the foreman had revealed, horror rising in his breast, the rat continued.
“I assume that the System finally took pity on us. Or, more likely, we were just convenient tools, and it turned this place into an official dungeon to serve its own ends. These sewers have been a prison for me and my crew for what has to have been decades now, judging by how much of that blade has been eaten away by the blight. If you have not yet freed my friends from their bondage, I beg of you: Do so before you leave this place. Wait—” The rat sniffed at the air. “I can smell their blood upon you already. How many of my kind did you fell?”
“Besides you? Three others that were living in the sewers. I didn’t see anyone else.” He saw no harm in answering the question, and the foreman sagged in relief on hearing Nick’s reply.
“Praise to the Deep Father. You saved them all. From the bottom of my soul, I thank you.” The foreman bowed from where it sat. “To answer your second question, my heart is central and lower in my body. I assume that you aimed for where your own would be?” Nick nodded, then felt dumb for gesturing and grunted an agreement.
“Fortunately for all of us, the heart of your species is in the same place that the blight’s nexus resided within my own. Stabbing me through the heart would not have saved you anyway, despite your brilliant final ploy. The parasite would have healed the injury within minutes, and you would have become a host for its spawn.”
Nick shuddered at the thought.
“Be it through skill or blind luck, you have won, and the blight is no more. Now the changes it made to my body, which allowed me to live far beyond my natural lifespan, are crumbling like a rotten roof in a summer storm.” A wet cough racked the foreman’s body to emphasize the point.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hopefully the parasite didn’t have time to tinker with your insides, those kinds of changes are much harder to reverse. I have enough time left to answer one final question, maybe two if they are brief. Ask, and I will answer true.”
Nick knew that he should probably ask something profound about the System. Something that would give him an edge in the days to come. But in part because he was curious and more because his mind had gone blank as the reality of his close brush with death washed over him, he asked instead. “What happened here? Who are you, and what is your story? By the way, my name is Nick.”
“I am called Trell.” The foreman nodded. “And I am honored to know ye, Nick. The short version is that this is a section of the sewers and aqueducts that run below the Grand City of Kastilla, Capital of Bravil, the Empire of Flames. I served as vice-captain of the Underguard, who work alongside the miners and engineers that keep this place running. Or at least we used to. My job is—was—to drive away or clear out the various creepies and crawlies that occasionally dig their way up from the depths and attack. Sometimes, something particularly nasty shows up and people die. In such instances, the empress sends down an elite squadron of dragoons to pacify the area. But that wasn’t what happened here. What happened to my crew was something else entirely. Something so much worse.
“The miners were finishing a routine extension of Tunnel 329 when their excavations broke into what we thought was a natural cavity in the bedrock. You must have passed by it on the way here. We thought it might connect to the underworld, which is always a nightmare to seal away, but instead it led to what appeared to be a single, System-generated room. When we looked inside, we caught sight of this cursed relic.” Trell gestured to the crystal box.
“We thought that it had to be a diamond reward chest, not that any of us knew exactly what one looked like. Of course, we didn’t tell anyone. One glimpse of the chest and we were driven mad with greed. That much was not our fault and would have happened to anyone. Someone besides the royal family finding an iron chest happens once or twice a generation, and the contents are almost always valuable enough to elevate the caste of their entire family.
“And here we had the chance to open not silver or gold, but diamond. Bigger than any chest we had ever seen to boot. The kind of treasure that the empress herself would have emptied the treasury to acquire. It was odd that it was sealed, which should have warned us that something was not as it seemed. But by this point, we were no longer thinking clearly. We tried hacking through the surface, but soon discovered that it would have taken years to break through.
Nick listened intently, captivated by Trell’s story.
“When we finally brought down enough explosives to crack her open, we did indeed find a prize worthy of song. That sword is an artifact beyond gold, or at least it must have been when it was still intact. But the weapon wasn’t all we found, or we would have been the luckiest crew in the history of the empire, instead of the most cursed. I don’t know the story behind the sword or why it was sealed away in such a manner. The reason must have something to do with the Crimson Blight, because the parasite was trapped in there as well, along with a single egg. Imprisoned for what must have been eons, slowly eating away at the blade’s weapon core to keep itself alive.
“The parasite infected us before we knew what was happening. The moment that I understood, I activated a mist ward to seal us inside this room and keep the blight from getting out, although that effort was ultimately futile. The others escaped, leaving me trapped in a waking nightmare. After being starved for decades, the parasite’s grip slowly began to weaken. Granting me a few hours of awareness each day while it slumbered. I used that time to carve the history of my people—the story of my life—into the stone around you. Perhaps one day, my descendants will find this place and learn about the glory of our empire. The honor of our people, and the duty I was proud to fulfill.”
Nick realized that he was weeping, moved by the passion in Trell’s words and the lives that had been lost.
“Since no one came to rescue us, I am afraid to ask. But I must know. The fifth member of our crew specialized in resisting corruption and disease, granting him a natural resistance to the parasite. Not that anything could hold it back for long. I fear that he lived long enough to reach the surface and spread the blight throughout the capital. Tell me true, Nick. What has become of my people?”
Nick didn’t have the heart to tell Trell the full truth. That his entire civilization, everyone living on the surface of the planet, had been corrupted by the blight. That his world had fallen into chaos before the parasite was finally purged. So instead, he said only, “The blight spread throughout the city, and a lot of people died. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how many. I believe there were some survivors. I wish I had better news to share.”
Trell let out a long sigh, thick with sorrow and regret. “I thought it would hurt more to hear those words. But it seems I knew the truth all along. The corrupted waters flowing down from above could only have resulted from calamity. Our mistake was responsible for the deaths of so many others. But I have paid the price for my sins, and now I will join my people in the great beyond. One last”—Trell opened the visor to spit out a mouthful of black blood—“Request. Take the sword with you; I give it to you freely. It is but a shell of its former glory, even compared to when I first found it. But that shell contains a whisper of a power greater than any I have known.”
Trell must have sensed Nick’s hesitation, even without eyes. “Worry not, with the final egg hatched, the parasite no longer infests the sword. The blade has some connection to the blight I do not pretend to understand, but the core remains whole and uncorrupted. If you ever discover who was responsible for bringing the Crimson Blight to my world, I implore that you take our vengeance for us. It seems our conversation has come to an end, young Nick. I can feel death coming to claim me at last… May the Deep Father bless the road you walk…”
With that, Trell shuddered for a final time and then went still.