In the blink of an eye, the foreman’s hand shot up, streaking into the air between throat and blade. A clawed hand that was shod in a solid steel gauntlet.
Half a heartbeat later, Nick’s knife rebounded from the ratman’s armor, releasing a bright spray of sparks and the hideous screech of tortured metal. The force was redirected into his hands, shocking him badly enough that he almost dropped his weapon. He had a brief flashback of the time he had swung an aluminum baseball bat at a stop sign as a kid, then suppressed the memory to focus on the battle. Thanks to his new leather gloves, he was barely able to maintain his grip.
Although the foreman’s hasty defense stopped Nick’s dagger from punching a hole in its jugular, the impact knocked its body to one side. The angle caused the creature to fall instead of rising to its feet, granting him a few extra seconds to analyze the dynamics at play.
That armor is a problem. I won’t be able to wound the rat with anything other than a precision strike. It seemed that Nick would have to bet everything on a single, decisive blow. But he wasn’t going to blindly rush into the range of an unknown threat. Not while there was still time left on the clock. Charging an armored warrior with a six-inch knife would end in defeat in almost every scenario that he could imagine.
Instead, he used the opportunity to take in as many details about his opponent as he could so that he could come up with a tentative strategy before committing to a course of action.
Running his gaze over the foreman, who was in the middle of rising to its feet, Nick saw that it was bigger than the other ratmen he had encountered, at least a foot taller and wider at the hips and shoulders, although its body was so bloated and twisted by the parasitic growth that it was hard to make out the details. Beyond its sheer size, the foreman looked a lot like the other ratmen, with one critical difference. Instead of being wrapped in layers of rotting cloth, this creature was clad in a suit of decrepit chain and plate.
As its head turned to face Nick, the rat’s eyes opened, whites veined with writhing threads of scarlet fungus. He found himself meeting a soulless gaze. One utterly devoid of emotion instead of being consumed with the rage he had seen in the others of its kind. The instant it rose to its full height, the foreman’s hands came streaking for his throat.
Although he was still off balance from his deflected knife strike, Nick had anticipated the move and begun to lean back the moment the creature started heading his way. As a result, a steel-clad fist passed by his face so closely that he could have puckered his lips and kissed it instead of rendering his skull concave.
Nick leapt back to recover his stance as the foreman turned to face him head-on. There were fewer mushrooms growing on its chest, which had been resting against the stone floor, letting him take in a few additional details. Like the other ratmen, the foreman’s armor had begun to merge with its flesh, bits of skin and rot bleeding through the links of its chain, although the solid sheet of steel guarding its torso remained intact. Fucking plate mail? You must be joking. Shit, what am I going to do? What can I do that will even slow it down?
He started hyperventilating as panic descended upon him like a blanket of raw electricity, warring with the icy calm he had summoned earlier. He had few tools and even fewer stratagems that could help him best an armored opponent. Calm down, Nick. Breathe. Think. You aren’t dead yet. The rat still has weak points, if you can manage to hit them. You just need to create an opening, stab it in the eye, and perforate its brain. Easy peasy.
No sooner had that thought crossed Nick’s mind than the foreman rose one hand up to its face, lowering the metal visor of its helmet with a clink that chilled his soul. He hadn’t even noticed the helm beneath the mantle of throbbing mushrooms covering the surface of the rat’s skull. He spared a heartbeat of irritation at Taltos and the System. Okay, now you’re just fucking with me.
As he struggled to process this most unwelcome development, Nick noticed that thin threads of mycelium were trailing from the foreman’s body, connecting to tiny gaps in the walls and floor, crevices filled with more of the ruddy fungus. He wasn’t sure if something external was controlling the foreman or if it was the other way around. If he should try to sever the threads to impede the creature’s movements, or if killing the rat would destroy the network of mushrooms running throughout the sewer. Regardless, there were too many filaments to sever them all while the foreman was trying to strangle him.
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He was really feeling the pressure now. He had only fifteen minutes remaining until the fungus merged with his body on a cellular level, at which point the parasite would assume control and Nick would be no more. He wasn’t sure how quickly his mind would deteriorate as the clock approached zero, and he had no desire to find out.
He wracked his brain for a plan—anything that might let him survive this nightmarish situation. But this was too intense. Too real. Nothing from Nick’s life as a gamer had prepared him for anything like this. He would have to wing it and pray. The problem was, nothing that he could think of would allow him to hurt, let alone kill, a fully armored warrior with only his knives and the limited tools at his disposal.
Watching the ratman stagger toward him, Nick decided that, enthralled or not, the foreman was not completely mindless. It retained at least animal instincts while under the parasite’s control and seemed to be better coordinated than the other rats he had fought. He had to work fast and find some way to create an opening.
One solid blow will cripple or kill me. Those fists alone are more than enough. But that was all the time for observation that he had, because at that point, the foreman charged him. There was no warning. It didn’t even turn its head to look at him. Fortunately, Nick had been expecting the sudden surge and had anticipated the attack that followed.
The foreman unleashed a furious barrage of blows, fists streaking so fast they were reduced to a liquid blur of steel before his eyes. It took everything he had to avoid being slaughtered on the spot, beaten like a meat piñata until his organs burst. Every second of Nick’s training, every insight that he had harvested from his prior battles, every attribute that he had improved—all of it came together in that moment.
For what felt like an eternity but was probably closer to thirty seconds, he dodged and spun. Ducked and rolled. Threw his body from one side to the next at the last possible second. Sweat was pouring down his chest, and each breath had become a battle of its own.
As he desperately dove to avoid the rat’s fists, Nick could feel tendrils of rot spreading below his skin, weaving their way into his muscles and organs. When they finished permeating his heart and brain, it would be the end of his journey, and there was a chance that he would lose his mind first, despite the strange, chilling calm that was helping him keep it together. With its help, he was able to shut out the overwhelming terror and put everything he had into winning the fight while he still could.
If he had been battling the foreman in its prime, Nick would have lost his life within seconds. His fledgling skills were nothing compared to its years of martial training and combat experience. However, the parasite-driven shell of the ratman seemed incapable of strategic planning. Thus, it continued pursuing Nick blindly rather than trying to control or predict his behavior, like it was a vessel containing the warrior’s reflexes and muscle memory but not the understanding of how to use them effectively.
Thus, although the foreman was stronger, faster, and generally more dangerous than Nick, it could not quite manage to land anything more damaging than a glancing blow. While he found the comparison absurd given the stakes, it almost felt like he was playing a game against a computer. At least enough to help him analyze the rat’s patterns and predict its behavior. Maybe my gaming brain isn’t useless here after all.
Every time that he entered range, the foreman would jab with its left hand, then unleash a roundhouse blow with its right. When he ducked, the ratman would snap a kick at his chest. At the end of each of these maneuvers, there was a momentary pause, as if the rat’s body wanted to follow up with a more complex combination but could no longer remember what attack should come next.
Spotting this narrow window gave him an idea. A way to create an opening and do some real damage, while he still had some gas sloshing in the bottom of his tank. The next time that the ratman completed its combination punch, instead of leaping back, Nick ducked under the blow, nearly losing his ear as a gauntlet went whizzing past his head. As he had anticipated, the foreman’s foot came snapping at his chest. Using all the concentration he could muster, he tracked the trajectory of the blow as his left hand slid down to his belt to retrieve his wand.
Half a heartbeat before the rat’s metal boot could shatter his sternum, Nick pointed the business end of the wand at the inside of its leg, staring at a foot only inches away from landing a crippling blow.