Upon the tallest silo of Fleapit’s foundries, a duel was about to break out that would determine the fate of the entire Underkingdom.

Marcus often recalled tales of such duels in the books he loved to peruse as a child – fanciful stories of men and women going off to conquer fantastical realms and slaying dragons or witch covens after proclaiming the inherent purity of the human spirit.

Such tales rouse the hearts of young men. They become the same young men who run off to wars thinking that mass combat will afford them the same kind of moral superiority.

For Marcus - a man trapped in an ugly rendition of one such world - such superiority was a luxury he would never have. Heroes are supposed to bandy words with demons. They are supposed to show their valor in righteous battle.

But the battle that unfolded atop Fleapit’s highest point was not honorable. It was not righteous.

Instead, one armored rat brought his vicious halberd to bear against two humanoid snake-hybrids, and the strikes they made were to kill, not to entertain their spectator.

First, the youngling threw Marcus aside and leaped directly for Festicus. The ratman anticipated the attack, shifting his weight to his right to sidestep and cleave the snake-woman from belly to breast. The attack was one of pure, raw strength, but it was one burdened by the heaviness of the creature’s weapon. In the moment of impact the young Yokun twirled and slashed at the ratman’s exposed neck, her blade coming away with his crimson blood gleaming along its edge.

He staggered, dropping to his knees just in time for the Matron to came at him with her mercy strike.

A strike that he met with his bare teeth.

His head jerked up. His mouth opened in a snarl, and Marcus saw his fangs clamp down on the blade as it entered its throat. The Matron’s eyes narrowed as she tried to free the blade, watching the ratman’s gums fill with gushing blood as the Wakizashi's edge nicked his tongue. Then, in her moment of pure confusion, his halberd swept the Yokun elder’s feet.

“Sister!”

Festicus smirked as he felt movement behind him – the youngling spinning in a deadly pirouette that struck for his armored spine. The blessings of He-Who-Festers was with the ratman on this day, for the Yokun’s blade merely pierced the outer layer of his armored hide and ripped the metal pieces away, letting them fall in a hail of iron that rained down on the spectators watching the small snippets of the battle they could see below.

The ratman thrust the pole of his weapon back to knock against the ribs of the youngling and push her almost straight off the silo’s precarious platform to join the bloody mess that was her sister below.

“MMMHMMM!” Marcus wheezed from his position, still gagged. He couldn’t help it. This fight was showing him just how skilled the Marrow rat truly was. And it was telling him that his spirit was still loyal to his Shai-Alud after all.

As Festicus turned to hack away at the thin leathers of young Yeeva’s chest, the Matron regained her footing. She sent a flurry of blows angled down at the ratman’s armpit joints that struck faster than Marcus’s eyes could follow. All he saw, when he blinked, was that Festicus was reeling back, his mouth, elbows, and arms all bleeding profusely, coating the dark metal of the silo in his life fluids.

The Matron brought her youngblood back up to her knees, and both of them angled their blades at the mauled rat before them.

“Sire..Marcus,” Festicus groaned, drawing his eyes towards the human huddled at the edge of the bloody platform.

With a single twist of his claws he ripped through Marcus’s gag and the human heaved a wail of release.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Festicus,” he said, trying to maintain his commanding tone. “Stand. Down.”

“I would listen to your monkey friend,” the Matron spat through her smiling lips. “You face two Sisters of the House of Whispers, little cretin. We have slain more of your kind than you can count.”

Festicus rose steadily, using his halberd to push up from the floor of the platform as the two Yokun circled, both picking their target that would end the miserable ratman’s life.

“Clan Marrow…” he wheezed. “Never…back…down.”

He turned to Marcus abruptly after coughing a torrent of dark crimson.

“I will be living…to see…those cannons,” he sputtered as he brought his halberd back up, holding it across his chest straight backed and regal, like some Arabian prince’s honor guard. “In the name of Clan and King…I will be living…to see…our victory!”

Both women’s blades flashed through the air, trailing arcs of brilliant light as they curved to bring death upon the beleaguered ratman.

And the eyes of the rat flew to Marcus’s as he swept up his halberd to meet the Matron’s strike at his right flank.

The Wakizashi of the youngling flew to cleave through his ribcage to the left, and it would have done so if she had merely followed through.

Instead, Marcus watched as her arm writhed like it had a will of its own. She dropped her weapon and it slid across the platform while she screamed in agony – an animal scream that pierced not only the air, but the ears of her Sister who was taken off balance by the sudden change in her companion’s demeanor.

And that opening was all Festicus needed cut right into her waist.

She opened her mouth in a gasp, arms flying to dislodge the blade while the ratman that held it grit his teeth and pushed through her scaled skin with all the force left in his hulking frame.

“SHAAAAAA-HAH!”

Marcus watched awestruck as the Matron’s torso was cleaved clean through. Her legs flopped beneath the purple-soaked blade of Festicus’s halberd while the rest of her body spun in the air, crumbled, and fell back to the platform in a heap of twitching limbs.

“SISTER!” Yeeva screamed, her arms still gyrating with a life of their own as Festicus collapsed to one knee, seeing the ghostly form of someone familiar appear just over the lip of the platform’s north face.

“By…the Unclean…” he wheezed. “Could you not be coming…a little…more early?”

The hooded rat man that had his eyes trained on the twitching Yokun before him twisted his face into a smile.

“A Gloomrava of Glumrot isssss coming exxxxxactly when he issssss needing to.”

“Look out!”

The shout came from Marcus as his eyes flew to the still spasming Yokun Matron’s body. In a macabre display of pure, uncanny willpower, her fingers wrapped round her blade and sent it spinning towards the tiny legs of the newly arrived priest, drawing a cry of agony from him that sounded more like the shrill wailing of the undead than the pained voice of a rat.

Festicus watched his Brother go down and made to rise again to finish off the last female, but this time the Yokun youngling was faster – spurned on by the death of her senior.

She met Festicus’ sweeping strike with such fury that the ratman was sent staggering back, and, holding the blade of her Matron in her hand, got the other around the ratman’s throat and held him down, her nails penetrating deep into his neck and drawing tiny trickles of blood that traveled through her scaled veins.

“Miserable, scaleless swine!” she railed, pushing her Wakizashi closer and closer to the ratman’s face, watching the life in his eyes and strength in his arms gradually fade away to nothing. “Vlitark take the Matriarch! You all die here and now!”

Festicus’s arms began to give way. The power to even bite back at the vengeance-filled face of the snake was going – it was draining away like the rest of his blood. It seemed he would have to be satisfied with slaying one of them. An honor most of his Clan would still respect him for, even if it had to be in death…

But before he closed his eyes he saw the Yokra’s go wide. He saw the passionate fires of fury die away on her scaled features and then felt the wet spew of her blood that had just spurted from beneath her chest. Both ratman and Yokun looked down to see where her discarded Wakizashi had just penetrated her lower abdomen and, as the blade was twisted, Yeeva finally fell to the side.

And revealed the human standing above her who had just stabbed her in the back.

Festicus wanted to laugh then more than any other time in his life. But, try as he might, all he could manage was a slight smile.

“You truly…are…having the soul…of a rat,” he wheezed.

And as Marcus bent down to check the vitals of the ratman, discovering, too late, that there was nothing more to be done, Festicus of Clan Marrow closed his eyes and left the world of the Underkingdom behind.

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