In the dreary depths of Fleapit’s dungeons, a single Yokun waited for death.

The rusted pinnacles that dug into her wrists and legs cut her flesh with every move she made to free herself. She’d learned, moments upon being interred within the sandstone walls of this tomb packed with dirt, that attempting escape through conventional means would be useless to her here. These vermin were thorough in the indignities they visited upon the other races. She had known that since she was a hatchling.

Her eyes flickered up during regular intervals at the guards during their shift changes, noting every small movement of each rodent that came to keep her caged. She committed the minute gyrations of their tiny limbs to her mind – gaining knowledge that would normally take a human of Marxon’s breed months of training and observation to pin down.

Such was the gift of her kind: memory, and longevity. They had whole centuries to measure the successes of their plots and campaigns, lifetimes to hone their skills with their blades.

And it had only taking Yeeva of the House of Whispers a few dull hours to plot her revenge.

Her kind were not as dull as the greybearded dwarves whose petty tribalistic squabbles reigned for longer than any of their Kings did. For a Yokun like her, blessed by the Silent Matriarchs, whose blood ran colder than even the most sinister predators of Thea’s jungles, revenge was a matter of swiftly executed cause and effect.

The rat that killed her sisters, and the human that was to be their new God – she would have their heads. Damned be the orders of the Pale One! None of them would leave this nocturnal realm alive.

Yeeva was roused from her comforting thoughts of bloody murder by a door opening at the end of the dungeon stairwell. Light – candlelight – beamed its dim luminescence into the normally pitch-black prison ward and threw itself across the bars of her cell.

She strained her eyes to see the new arrivals to this den of debasement. One of them seemed rather tall for a rat.

“Give us the room.”

Some hesitation from the guards meets this command. But then the second figure twitches slightly, perhaps in threat, and the ratmen assigned to watch over her prison march away, twisted tails between their legs.

She was alone with these two new figures, and as the candlelight held by the little one drew closer, she finally saw the face of the man who pulled up a dingy stool and sat across from her.

The Shai-Alud. The one the Lady called ‘Marcus.’

“I hope they aren’t treating you too poorly,” he said.

She bared her teeth, but she said nothing. The other rat with him she didn’t recognize. But she could smell the musky scent of his kind’s vile magic on him. It made her stomach crawl. The pathetic tricks of ones like this had felled her sisters. It seemed ratman incantations were far more potent than her kind gave them credit for.

“Yes,” Marcus continued after a time. “You know, our King – Shrykul – was planning your execution mere moments ago on the advice of one of our most esteemed commanders. I believe he said something about scooping out your entrails and tying them round your neck, forcing you to march around the city as your life slowly expired. I’m no expert on magic, but my Gloomraava Deekius here tells me such a method of execution is quite popular round these parts.”

Yeeva watched the furrowed lips of the little hooded ratman upturn into a vicious smile. But she did not show fear. The first code of the House of Whispers was inked into her soul: never let the enemy see you bleed.

“Your execution means nothing.”

“Indeed?” Marcus asked. “Then what I am about to tell you may mean less than nothing to you, but I have halted the proceedings. You won’t die today, Yokun.”

She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, momentarily forgetting herself. Was the human’s statement true? It had to be. She could detect no fluctuations in his bloodflow, no twitches or twinges in his facial features that might reveal this to be a deception.

But she sat deathly still. She said nothing.

“The problem though,” Marcus continued in the face of her silence. “Is that you and your team killed a lot of rats down here. Not to mention a high-born commander of one of our armies. That means there’s plenty of rats out there baying for your blood, and I don’t think I can keep them away from you forever.”

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Yeeva sat back and let herself smile. The human had no idea what he was dealing with. In spite of her teachings, she decided to satisfy her own desires and tell him exactly what it was he was speaking to.

“You know nothing, do you, monkey?” she snarled. “I am a blade of the House of Whispers – a Yokun honor-bound since birth to serve a single purpose. My entire life is lived in service to my Matriarchs, and to them is my body and soul are committed entirely. You think I fear death? You think your threats of rodent retribution mean anything to me? We of the Whispers learned how to die a long time ago. When our Calling comes we are always ready. So let them take me, human slave to the dark, and spare me the incessant yapping of your toothless gums.”

The rat beside the human grew antsy, knocking his staff against the cage as though he were about to fly into a rage. But the human held up his hand, chuckling to himself.

“Eloquent for an assassin,” he said. “You remind me so much of her.”

The way he said those final words struck something in Yeeva’s cold breast. He said them with fondness. Almost with…love?

“Leave us,” he suddenly told his companion.

He sat forward, sighed, and fixed Yeeva with what she now saw were a pair of tired, bruised eyes. Only when his priest had closed shut the door behind him did he deign to say another word.

“I understand how someone in your line of work thinks better than you might believe,” he said. “You probably see me as nothing more than a marked man who’s living on borrowed time down here. Further, you don’t care if you live or die. I’d wager, in fact, that because you and your ‘Sisters’ failed to extract me you consider yourself already dead. Your people probably think the same. So, I doubt they will send any help for you.”

Yeeva did not give him the satisfaction of bowing her head in acknowledgement of these facts.

“But I’d also wager that you care about your Matriarchs,” he continued after wiping his glasses on his sleeve. “Especially your ‘Pale Lady’. Maria.”

She stiffened. He saw it, and she cursed herself.

“Do not say her name, monkey. Your lips are undeserving.”

“I don’t disagree with you!” the human replied, finding this statement funny. “But your lady happens to quite like these lips.”

“You now blaspheme before me?” Yeeva suddenly shrieked. “Do not speak to me of the Lady. What she desires from you is of no concern of mine. I had a duty. I failed. And now I am to rot or die. Get it over with before I break these chains and strangle you.”

Between the pair of them, a drop of water somewhere nearby was the only sound that reigned for a few unbroken moments. But the stare of the human never dropped from Yeeva’s gaze.

“Yeeva,” he said. “Your Lady – Maria – I must know if she is like me. Is she human? Did she come from this ‘Place Beyond’? Are her eyes the color of lily-pads? And…is she ok?”

The snake reeled back, sighing deeply into her wall of her cage.

“…what she sees in you,” she said. “I shall never know.”

“So it is her!” the human practically jumped. “She’s here, isn’t she? She’s alive, and she’s been working with you. That’s why she sent you to me, isn’t it? I just wonder…how does she know I’m here? And what does she want? Why send a pack of assassins at all – if she had just sent me a letter, just asked me to come up to join her…”

“Because your ratmen need to die,” Yeeva spat. “This whole ‘Underkingdom’ shall die. And tonight was only the beginning.”

She was breaking her oaths – she knew it. But she also knew that watching the boyish smile fade from the human’s face was giving her more pleasure than she’d had in weeks.

“Yeeva,” he said. “I need you to tell me everything. I need to know what’s happening to Maria up there. If you cooperate, I have the authority to orchestrate your safe return to your people. I need you to take a message to your Lady. I need you to tell her that I have found a way home. Tell her that-“

Yeeva spat a chunk of green slime at the Marcus’s face, cutting him off entirely.

“’Home?!’” she cackled. “Lady Maria does not want your ‘home’. She came to us when we needed her, and here she has chosen to stay.”

“…What?”

The human trailed off, and Yeeva decided she was done with this trivial conversation.

“Enough,” she snarled. “Put me to the sword or parade me before your filth-ridden ‘city’. But I will give you nothing, human. I came here to do the bidding of my Lady and to get the measure of you as I did so. Now that I have seen who you are, I am unimpressed. The Pale Matriarch was wrong. You are nothing.”

The human held her gaze for a time before slowly rising with a weary sigh. He crossed his hands behind his back, and then turned away as he delivered his final proclamation to the prisoner who was now, ultimately his.

“You aren’t going to die today,” he said again. “Because your life now belongs to me. See, I went through a lot of trouble to keep you alive and learn your secrets. And I’m afraid that, if you won’t tell me what you know, you’ll be dying for a very very long time.”

Yeeva watched as the candlelight faded away. The door opened, and the Shai-Alud addressed the ratman who had been waiting there, patiently, for the human to return.

But he had brought something with him.

And Yeeva, for the first time in her life, felt her cold heart shrink at the words they shared:

“I must ask too much of you once again, Deekius.”

Yeeva heard the snapping of pliers. The ratting of more chains. And at least a dozen other objects that clattered against the floor. Sharp objects.

“Believe me,” the little rat replied. “This is being a pleasure, Sire.”

###

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