True to the rat’s word, Fiona and the others soon found themselves meandering through the hallway of stone, past more piping and the thrum of pumps going. Whatever was going on here, must be related to water processing for the city of Fiefdala. “So tell me, Kae the second. Who do you work for?”

“Let me go, and I’ll call out a name.”

“Haha, like the rat would rat out his clients?” Fiona couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Why do you also go by the name of Kae?”

“Code names.”

“Ya’ll are idiots, if two of you picked the name Kae–wait. You said Kae the thirty-first. How many of you picked the same damn name?” she demanded, even as they rounded the corner, the lights flickering and possibly just worn out from years of continuous service, with no maintenance.

“Hey, it’s a great name!”

“On that account, I agree. I would know, because I read it in a book. Or, several! I guess it’s a trendy name!” She puffed out her chest proudly at that notion. She’d been an avid reader before getting murdered by an eldritch dragon god. Or, maybe she should have done less of that, and more tending to her store, and her--

She shook her head. That was a dead past. She had a future to focus on, now. “Alright, back on track. Why are you stealing priceless heirlooms and pocket change?”

“Hey, it wasn’t personal! We rats gotta make a living, too! We all got transfigured, and now we gotta go pay this mad hat druid dude. Or he’ll turn us into something worse! One guy got turned into a beetle. Then one of the other rats ate him.” He twitched visibly at this mention.

“I find it highly surprising that a druid was able to force shape on someone with little effort. Unless, of course, you signed some kind of contract or other ‘I owe you’ writ?” Greg left the question hanging, and Kae the second fell notably silent. “Uh-huh. That’s what I figured.”

“Hey, it’s a tough economy! Oh, by the way, the guy’s probably counting coins and treasure–”

The rat was pointing around the corner when there was the sound of discourse, and the rat looked nonplussed. “Um, what was that?”

“Kill it with fire!”

“Vengeful undead!”

“I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!”

Fiona took that as reason enough to get her hammer back to size, and they arrived at the door, which had a small bone sticking out of the lock, and was now ajar. Regis had been quite busy, and she kicked the heavy door wide open. Greg gingerly grabbed the skeleton key and put it in a vest pocket–she would have laughed, but now she heard the sound of a fight.

She rounded the corner, a flash of gold shine in her hand and awaiting a chance to blind foes, and her hammer wielded in the other. Her eyes darted across the spectacle of the room.

Four guys dressed in matching uniforms that looked like it was from some kind of guild, were surrounding Regis and the rat perched on his shoulder. They were all terrified of the undead, and she winced as one bashed his head clean off his vertebrate--right towards her!"

"Heads up."

Regis sounded just a little dejected--or detached--at this embarassing moment as she grabbed the head with her outstretched hand. The gold shine illuminating the inside of his skull like a gristly lamp that had no business being fashionable, except for maybe Darla, and Regis regarded her with a bony frown. “Hey Fiona, am I dead?”

“Yep. Alas, Regis, I hardly knew ye!” she posed, and glared at the ruffians who were staring at her, and the other newcomers. Regis’s bony body was still standing there, feebly waving around, looking for his skull. “Uh, that’s creepy, are you doing that?”

“Uh…no. Also, these guys have been stealing a lot of pocket money. Also, also, Kae ran off with a few other rats to warn the druid, and these guys aren’t cool with Lost Souls Day.”

“Oy, enough!” one sharper-looking man with a black beard glared at her with coal black eyes, teeth biting on a corn pipe. “You’re trespassing! This is a legit business! We uh, subcontract the ratfolk for repossession claims!”

“Buddy, that might have worked for about five seconds, but your lack of enthusiasm for festivities and respect for the dead is shocking! Also, yeah, you look like thieves.”

One of them pointed at Greg, however, and shrilled. “Ah dragon crap, it’s Lockheed's kid! What do we do?!”

“Same thing we do when dealing with the rest of our ‘problems’,” the bearded one grinned as he grabbed a knife, and the others followed suit–one guy in a floppy hat also conjured a fireball in his hands. “Make sure they go to sleep with the fishes.”

Fiona bellowed out in laughter, breaking up the tension. “Dude, that is a classic line, and you have no idea why!”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Well, we toss bodies to the fish in the fishery. It’s a super clean way, those rainbow Remarian trout do make short work of problems–”

“Shut up, clod! Make short work of them, then we’ll figure out what to do with the pile of bones walking around!” Another snarled. “Kill the ginger first! She looks tough!”

“Hey, no one beats up my mage!” Fiona protested as she got underway. Distantly, she heard Greg call out that they were probably referring to her, instead.

To say it was an uneven match, would be an understatement. Fiona walloped one into the wall and he left a ruffian-sized imprint in the brickwork of the storage room. Another slashed at her with a knife, and she parried it away with her weapon and let out a flash of bright light through Regis’s skull–which served as quite the nice damper, so she didn’t blind herself.

“Aw gods, Fiona, the brightness of a thousand suns burns in your bangle, which is currently lighting up the inside of my head!” Regis protested. She had to admit, he was able to hold quite a coherent conversation as she and the others bludgeoned, beat up, and ensnared the ruffians into submission. She hastily stuffed him into her work satchel so he didn’t become more broken.

She stole a glance around her, and the situation was well-handled. Greg had taken a liking to this fighting with rolled-up sleeves and his leather gloves in full force, punching, kicking, grappling, and using improvised weapons like a workbench, a chair, and occasionally, smashing the ruffians into crates that exploded like loot pinatas of packing peanuts. She was pretty sure those small gold baubles housed within were not charity donations.

No tax write-off, for these guys. Bonnie also dodged and weaved while using her wand to shackle the remaining two together with golden chains, and Darla finished them off by roundhouse kicking them in a way that even Chuck Norris would have been proud of. Fiona stood on one of them triumphantly and roared in victory.

“Who’s next?!” she challenged them. The bearded one was being restrained by Greg, who jarred his head into a table, and he collapsed to the ground. “Greg, no need to bruise them too badly.”

“They know me. And they know my father.” That little factoid from a few minutes ago had not been lost to him, and he smoothed his frazzled hair and put a boot on the bearded one’s chest, twisting. The man groaned and tried to resist, but Greg summoned up his papery bindings, winding them around his wrists and forcing them behind his back, where he lay belly-first on the ground. “Talk. Either to me, or the town watch, who are already on the way. Where’s the druid?”

“How about, we put my head back on my pile of bones, first?!” Regis cried out from nearby, and Fiona peered into her satchel, seeing glowing eyes giving her a vacant, bewildered expression from the depths of his skull. “Also, you have good taste in fashion, from what I can see from my vantage point."

“Why, thanks! Now, let’s see here, the skull bone connects to the neck bone, and…hey, can you tell your lower half to sit still?” She frowned as Regis’s lower body continued to tap around, as if looking for his head. She rolled her eyes. “Well, this is an unpleasant first.”

“Just put my head in my hands.” Fiona tried not to snerk at this, but obliged poor Regis, whose lower body grasped his skull, and promptly put it on backwards. He rolled his eye orbs at this, and let out a soft sigh.

“The indignity of this.” One crunch of bone against bone later, he was facing the right way, and grinning at the ruffians too. “Where’d Kae go?”

“Hi, Kae here,” Kae number two grumbled. Regis had to do a double take.

“Are you multiplying? Why do you all have the name Kae?”

“We all wanted to sound cool! Now we just go by numbers,” Kae number two called out with a chattering of annoyance. He was warily watching Tucker kneading on one sprawled-out offender, who yowled in protest at the cat using him as a scratching post. “Haha, better you than me, buddy!” he cackled in a tiny, squeaky voice.

“Now then, back to business. Where’s your boss?” Fiona pressed the exceedingly heavy hammer onto the guy's chest. “There’s a certain rat that has a treasure that belongs to Regis–specifically, his family! Do be a good thug, and point me in the direction of the nefarious boss henchmen! Or, I’ll let my ferocious attack cat have his way with you!”

“Grrr.” Tucker’s hair raised on end, and electricity crackled along his limbs while leering at the bearded man. Fiona stroked his fur gently, and he purred approvingly.

“Door at the far end leads upstairs to an office. The druid is likely whipping his ratfolk army into shape.”

“Why, thank you for the tip! Bonnie, shackle them until the town watch gets here. Greg, bruise them if they get up. Darla, continue looking prickly, that’ll suffice!”

“You’re gonna handle this?” Darla asked with a sharpened smile while striking a pair of cleavers together, as if sharpening them.

“Oh, this wishy-washy plant worshipper has messed with the wrong elf, today!” she declared, and dashed up the stairs to confront this villain.

Bashing the door off the hinges probably was an excessive show of force, but it sure felt heroic as she charged into the room, her deadly phase cat growling with all the cuteness of a litter of kittens. They were in a large office area, where there were dozens of ratfolk assembled, none of them more than two or three feet tall, and they all gasped and screamed. A few fainted from fear, but none of them moved an inch from their assembly formation.

A hulk of a man stood there at a lectern, dressed in plain brown trousers, a green cloak with a hood, and a regular business shirt, gasping and pointing at her

“Hands up, kiddies! This is the police!” she declared, teeth on edge and waiting for one of them to dare to make a move. “Which one of you fast-fingered pilferers took something from my bone friend?”

There was a burst of anxious laughter from the room, and a hollow-sounding groan from downstairs. “Not that the statement is inaccurate, but that sounded awful, Fiona,” Regis called out.

The bulky man narrowed his eyes at them, and pointed a single finger. “Kill them.”

“Buddy, you just made my day a lot more fun,” She added with a flourish of her hammer and then pointed to the rats who had grabbed rat-sized weapons--some of them. “I have one question, before we throw down. Will the real Kae, please stand up!?” she roared.

It ended predictably, as all the rats looked at each other, and they all started fighting with each other over the too-cool name. Arguments broke into shouts, shouts broke into shoving matches, and them biting at each other's tails in a full-out brawl. The druid at the front stared at this spectacle, all his minions now fighting each other, rather than their foe. “I command you, to chew this woman to pieces, and bring me what’s left of her head to me!” he shouted, banging a staff but to no avail. A brow sweat broke out on his face, and she hefted her hammer.

“Guess it’s just you and me, buddy. In the words of my kinda-dead associate, you’re boned.”

“Dammit Fi, I heard that one-liner coming from halfway across Cepalune!” Bonnie shouted from downstairs–but the words were lost, as Fiona charged into the fray.