The box rattled as I held it out, prepared to drop the thing to Old Man Wellington. The man stood below me, his hands lifted in greedy claws while his red eyes gleamed with unsatisfied need. The whole image, along with the bit of bubbling drool lingering at the corner of his thin lips made something deep inside me clench.
Pete rattled in his bright green box, desperate to be set free again. I had to do this. It’s what the quest demanded. The box was getting too big for me to hold anyway as my body continued to morph into that of a mouse.
“Give it to me!” Old Man Wellington roared, spewing spittle in every direction.
His red eyes turned into burning pits as crackles of flame crept from his fingertips and up his arms, burning away his fine white shirt. The man didn’t even flinch.
The thought came to me, hitting me in the head with enough force that I actually felt dizzy: a demon cannot hide its eyes.
I tightened my grip on Pete’s box, pressing it so hard against my chest that the corner dug into my sternum, and opened my quest menu, filtering through it until I found the description for this one.
The Candlestick in the Ballroom
You found Old Man Wellington himself. The fool brought a trinket into his home that he scavenged from overseas. Much to everyone's surprise the trinket held a poltergeist that has now claimed the man’s manor house as its own. You’ve been told if you take too long to solve the poltergeist’s puzzles he’ll turn you into a mouse. So hurry, solve the puzzles, and find the clues to trap the poltergeist and get the hell out of here a slightly richer and less mousey man.
The quest wanted me to feed Pete to a demon to get my reward. How messed up is that? And if I did, would this thing be able to leave the manor house to do whatever the hell it wanted in the outside world? That’s what demons did, right? They didn’t just hang around in one place waiting for their next victim to stumble in.
I’m being over dramatic, aren’t I? I kind of like Pete though.
Knowing I was probably making the worst mistake I could have made I lifted the box high enough to lift the lid with my disturbingly large incisors.
“No!” Old Man Wellington screamed from below me.
Pete came flying out of the box in a torrent of icy wind, the blast of it strong enough to rattle the windows. Old Man Wellington turned and ran, taking the stairs two at a time like I had wanted to earlier. Flames danced around his feet with every step, making the man look like he was wearing those little light-up shoes kids loved so much.
Pete was more angry now than he had been before I’d stuffed him back in his bright green box. His wind gusts had whipped into a fury around me snatching me from the wall like I weighed little more than a feather. My sword came with me, a small blessing despite the fact Pete slammed me into the ceiling and then the floor. My health bar sunk by half as I suffered his wrath.
“You fool!” Old Man Wellington howled from the middle of the stairs as he desperately gripped the balustrade. “Now we’ll both be mice in this monster's playground. I would have given you a sack full of riches. Now you get nothing.”
“You would have devoured Pete,” I squeaked.
“He is a wayward soul! He has no worth outside of the ritual. What happens next is all your fault.”
Talk about a flashback to the fourth room. It seemed that everything bad that happened in this new world was somehow dropped on my shoulders. I have no idea how or why I’d managed to become Atlas but here we are.
Pete, on the other hand, had chilled out a little now that he knew his escape wasn’t an accident. The wind carrying me around like a discarded plastic bag released me onto a comfortable padded chair on the upper floor. A force that wasn’t my own hand stroked my head making me stiffen in place until the discomfort of it went away.
The whirling wind whipped forward sucking Old Man Wellington up and swinging him in violent circles. The man screamed as he spun around. I couldn’t watch it all. My body ached from the end of my tail to the tip of my long nose. Scents hit me like a freight train, overwhelming me with a surge of rainbow colors. Smells should not appear as colors, but worse than that, everything aside from the wavering lines that weren’t real looked like it had been coated with a black-and-white filter. I snapped my eyes shut but it didn’t stop the swirling images from stabbing into my brain. Now they danced on a darkened background more intensely than before. Some of the smells I could recognize like wood varnish, animal dander, and ash. The rest was just unintelligible noise.
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Speaking of noise, as if the intensity of my sense of smell wasn’t enough, my ears were picking up every sound including the ticking of the grandfather clock on the floor below despite the howling vortex and Old Man Wellington's screams.
I squeaked out my agony, folding my somehow still-gloved paws over my ears and shoving my nose deep into the plush cushion of the chair.
New Achievement: Heart of a Mouse…
…and body of a mouse, and tail of a mouse, and tiny ridiculous paws of a mouse. Am I missing anything? Well, there is one other part but I think you might stuff your head in a mouse trap if I mention it.
The invisible force returned, gently stroking my leather-covered back. It would have been comforting if the way my armor grated on my bristly fur wasn’t so damn loud. I almost wished I was naked.
Cautiously I lifted my head, ignoring the dazzling visuals brought on by my twitching nose. My vision was whacky. Everything very close was perfect down to the individual threads in the cushion of my chair but things further away, unless they were moving, were blurry. I’d never needed glasses before but I assumed this is what it was like when you did. Even the things that were moving were not clear but I knew they were there.
A gentle bubble of dense air picked me up, cupping my belly and lifting me high into the air before carrying me to the fireplace. I kept my paws over my ears, shuddering at the sensation. I didn’t even care if Pete threw me in the fireplace. Let me burn, it would be a relief. How my health bar wasn’t being affected by this I had no idea.
Instead, Pete held me up to stare into the mirror sitting on the mantel. Like the spirit wanted me to watch some whacked-out horror movie a jet of air rushed past me, slamming a familiar white mouse against the reflective surface.
You will regret this decision, you fool, Old Man Wellington’s squeaky voice screamed inside my head.
I opened my pointed snout but nothing came out aside from a weak chitter. I guess you had to be a demonic mousy creature to actually manage to talk. It seemed highly unfair that I couldn’t tell the red-eyed jerk that he wasn’t a cartoon villain and could stop using the word ‘fool’. Seriously, there were so many better words.
Get out…
Pete’s roar was surprisingly satisfying when it wasn’t directed at me. I would have smiled if it was possible with a stupid sticky outy nose with whiskers that wouldn’t stop moving.
The glass of the mirror rippled the wrong way, from the corners inward toward the mouse. An uncolored light glimmered in the waves. It was time for Old Man Wellington to be introduced to my favorite thing about mirrors in Melumek’s messed-up idea of a world. I hoped Pete would send the mouse to the Witch of Evermore, she would roast the demon alive.
The ripples reached the mouse and he was sucked under like a piece of flotsam swallowed by an ocean wave. I hopped up and down on the dense pocket of air until the image of the floor bouncing directly under my paws made me sick to the gut. I didn’t want to find out if mice could vomit or not.
Pete settled the moment the little white mouse disappeared from the manor house. The gale he whipped up to force the mouse through the mirror portal died down and I found myself floating over the balustrade and down to the floor below. I was deposited on the doorstep right as the grandfather clock behind me struck twelve.
The twisting wind gusts swirled behind me making my whiskers flap about uncomfortably. The gust morphed into a cloud that kind of looked like a person but it was difficult to tell when I could see right through them.
The man smiled down at me and turned away marching toward the clock and opening the case door. He gripped the pole of the pendulum and gave it a hard yank. There was a loud click and the clockface swung open. The ghost collected a small chest hiding in the hole before turning back to me. He placed the chest in front of my face and opened the lid. Inside was a pile of gold and gems.
Thank you…
I wanted to be furious that my Enhanced Shadow Eye hadn’t revealed that hiding place to me but it was hard to be mad when there was a pile of gold right in front of your face. I blinked my tiny mouse eyes before diving in and swimming around, shoving all of it into my bum bag with what was probably an unhealthy amount of greed. The ghost placed a hand on its belly and tilted its head back but made not a single sound.
When the chest was empty I leaped from it, a little surprised by how dexterous I was as a mouse. The ghost reached down, booping my nose the same way I pressed Stella’s sometimes.
New Skill Unlocked: Shapeshifter (I)
With little more than a thought, the player can shapeshift into a level 1 creature. Duration of the shift is dictated by the player's Fatigue stat. +10 Endurance +10 Agility when active.
Requires the Ranger class to activate
A wave of ice froze me to my core, a small blessing as my body stretched out. The fur dropped away and the tail disappeared. My armor grew with me and my sword returned to its former glory. I sucked in a breath, stretching out my arms and basking in the quiet and scent-free world I’d been returned to. Damn, humans had nothing going for them. Except for color, I could see in color now and boy had I missed that.
Quest Complete: The Candlestick in the Ballroom
Reward: 12,000 exp points, 3,000 gold, Uncut Sapphire x 3, Uncut Ruby x 1
Level 35!
The grin on my face made my cheeks ache but I didn’t care. I was me again, and a much richer me than before.
“Thank you, Pete,” I said. “I really didn’t like being a mouse.”
The ghost reached out, placing an icy ethereal hand on my shoulder before the familiar voice filled my head.
My name is Harold.
“What, no!” I bellowed but it was too late. The wind came back, gently shoving me from the manor house and slamming the doors in my face.
Stella jumped to her feet, wagging her properly proportional tail with fervor. Yes, I know she was bigger than she’d been when we were on the farm together but this was the real her now. My smile stayed plastered on my face as I reached to scruff up her beautiful short tan and white coat, enjoying the way her soft brown eyes gleamed in the early morning light. Her tongue flopped out of her snout, hanging over her teeth before she let out a loud sneeze and bolted away up the path.
“His name is Harold, girl,” I called after her as I started walking. “Harold. It doesn’t even start with the same letter as poltergeist!”