I find myself in the company of three familiar faces. A mean looking woman. A stern bald man in black robes. A king with a full beard, majestic crown and a sword with snake patterns running along the scabbard.
‘I address all of you with regard to our current predicament.’ The king bellows with grave gravitas. ‘My king’ resounds with aggressive devotion, and I realize thousands upon thousands of people stand at my back, looking at our ruler. We find ourselves at a high balcony of the king’s quarters overlooking the crowd.
‘It has been over fifty years since my deal with Ashe. Our lives, as people, are short. I know this span of time is insignificant in the grand scheme of the world. To us, however, this time means the world. Our connections, our ambitions, our love. Fifty years ago, I made a deal with death. We would worship her, and she would leave our people to live another hundred years. These years have been wonderful, haven’t they? We’ve achieved much together. We’ve built the most prosperous kingdom in history. We’ve battled gods and won. Now, we are at our end. I can see it from this balcony, clearer as the sky. Destruction approaches to take us in exchange for what we’ve taken from him. Nevertheless, I feel hope!!! I feel strong!!! You need not fear, my people. Stand proud, as our deal with death stands. We have many years to live.’
The crowd cheers, though I doubt they understand. I’m not sure I do myself. The king looks fearful despite his boasting. The mean girl doesn’t seem at all interested. The stern bald man in the robes wears a deep scowl of anger. I look above to the sky and see the luminous green stone floating, waiting, glowing.
I look behind me and see the approaching danger. Dark black clouds, laying waste to all, striking lightning at all life. Four great vortexes shine in its depths with the deep color of wine, swirling unmoving in the middle of the cloud as it faces us, as it looks at us.
Whatever King has planned, I doubt that it will work.
---
I wake up to the screeching of metal on stone. A terrible sour smell of trash makes me gag, and keeps hitting me in nauseating waves.
‘What the fuck is this?’ I mumble with a pained voice as I spit beside me and see stone bars in front of me. A big Ratman behind them scrutinizes me, rumbling in its weird guttural language. A curious snarl on its face. The rat looks like a warrior, much more so than the ones I encountered before. He wears metal armor around his chest and on his side and carries a legitimate sword. Chuckling, it turns around to leave.
But really, what the fuck is this? I don’t remember falling asleep, though that’s almost thematic to my story, isn’t it? Am I not supposed to be dead? Did I not blow up?
My world spins and blurs. My throat hurts. So do my chest and head. Everything is sore.
---
I wake up again, groaning. This time no rat looks at me from beyond the stone bars. A quick look around reveals that I’m in a prison of some kind. A shallow room closed off by stone bars, stretching out for several meters. The sour smell is still there and the origin quite clear. Dead rat bodies lie around the prison. I gag. I groan. My body hurts still. Especially my chest feels badly bruised.
‘You hurt bad.’ A raspy voice whispers in amusement. ‘When you here, whole body is wound. Now? hairless patch.’ Raspy laughter resounds around through an echo in the cave.
With pain in my neck, I try to move my head and look around. Within a pile of dead bodies, I can make out two eerie purple lights, like will o whisps. ‘You look for me? Have look!’
The lights jump at me and reveal the face of a very ugly rat with bald spots disheveling its black fur. And within his eye sockets I see two purple flames burn instead of eyes.
‘What are you?’ I ask as I try to move away from the rat. It looks diseased to me.
‘My name is Gharava. Be not scared. I not hurt you. If behave good. You put here by Ira. Clan leader of Ira Ghadai. You like corpse. Burn marks whole body. Grave burn marks. But you was not corpse! I would know, hahaha. I know much of corpses. You bleed from breast and mouth. You twitch from pain and broken bone. Now. Two days you have not wound on skin. I watch the flesh mend. I watch you pull energy from air to heal broken body and broken mind. I ask now to help me escape prison. Then I help you with dreams of past.’
‘Fuck off.’ I cuss. The rat was practically on me, and I try to push its eager face away from me. With a certain ease the rat slaps my arms away and something hard hits me in the nose.
‘I said not hurt if behave.’
A growl sounds from the other side of the bars. The big rat soldier has returned. And growls and grunts, intently looking at me with dirty yellow eyes. This is not my day.
‘Look,’ I say as I address the big rat. ‘I’m tired, in pain and you’re spitting on me. So, how about you come a bit closer, and I punch your teeth out?’ This confuses the rat, and he turns to Gharava to grunt some more.
‘This is Ira, he wants me translate.’
‘Please translate what I said.’ I say as I pull my body up to sit straight. Gharava chuckles as he grunts at the big rat who in turn roars with rage. Gharava and I die of laughter after which I wheeze with pain through my, seemingly, broken ribs.
The rat steps back and grunts loudly.
‘Oooh, this not good.’ Says Gharava as a group of ugly rats bearing spears start to walk forward. I somehow manage to jump over Gharava to dodge the spears coming through the bars. The big rat grunts again.
‘Means again!’ My jail mate informs me while I use one of the corpses to block more spears. A few spears spike Gharava, but he just waves at me and assures me it’s ‘No matter.’
‘You want to escape, you said? I have a very bad plan.’
‘Well maybe discuss first, yes?’
‘No, no time I don’t think.’ As I speak, I try to pull out the magical energy from my soul. No weapons. Heavily injured. This really is a last-ditch effort. As I feel the static running along my fur, I focus on the stone pillars between me and the rats. I push away the corps I hide behind. And I push further. I push with my mind against the stone bars. Push so hard that they explode with clouds of dust, and I send shrapnel flying through all the spear bearers, ripping them to shreds.
Stolen story; please report.
That went surprisingly well. To use the chaos and the dust cloud I start running, even though I’m in serious pain with every step I take. As far as I can tell Gharava runs behind me, laughing manically. Shouting ‘Arise! Arise!’
---
Painfully I turn a corner into a more open area. Nothing in the labyrinth I’ve seen so far looks like this space. We’re on a lifted area in a giant room. The hallway ends up at a balcony of sorts that attaches to honest to God stairs. From where I stand, I see streets, grey stone houses, and storages filled with all types of wild game.
‘Is old town.’ Gharava speaks with a voice like metal on stone. ‘No people live here. There is many old towns on this floor.’
For a moment I take in the colony of rats living in the old stone houses. All of them are clothed with brown leathers and some kind of cotton. Ragged but clothed. Some of them work together to disassemble a giant, headless snake carcass, stripping the scales from the hulking shape. Others pull carts filled with all types of stuff around the little streets. This is what life in the labyrinth can look like. A faintness hits me. I shake myself out of it. We must get out of here before they notice us, and before our pursuers catch up.
Turning around I take in the freaky rat for the second time. He grins at me in a wacky way. Something about the patchy fur accentuated the purple fires in his face. The fire in turn seems to amplify the feeling of crazy he emits. Now that I see him again, I see just how messed up this guy is. His right arm doesn’t have any meat on there. It looks hard colored with a mix of yellow and ivory. It looks like bone. From behind him four shapes appear.
‘Watch out Gharava!’ I shout, but he doesn’t seem worried. The shapes step into the light and don’t seem right. Some can’t walk properly because of fractures in the legs. One other is missing a chunk of its head. These aren’t rats at all, these are corpses. The dead, somehow animate, undead. Within their eye sockets burn purple flames.
‘Let mess shit up.’ Gharava states as he shakes his limbs in a manic fashion.
‘Uhm, yes.’
So together we descend. Quite slowly actually because I’m still injured and Gharava just isn’t very physically gifted. Soon enough the rats in the little village turn up their noses, probably because of the group of corpses that precede our path downstairs. We carry on along the sides of the town. The looming stone wall and oblong houses leave us with ample walking space. On our left, we pass multiple streets, but we pass by them. We really need to exit this place.
We follow our troupe of dismembered frontrunners. A group of seven ugly black rats stumble from a side street ahead, and take out their ivory weapons to charge at the corpses. They crash into them, and a wet crunch resounds. Like a wall of flesh and bone, the undead aberrations take the full force of the rats whose anger turns to fright in a second as one of the undead rips its arm off and another rat gets its snout bit off, spraying the group in carmine blood. More rats join the melee, and my companion remains to laugh maniacally.
‘FRENZY.’ His voice echoes through my soul, and I witness the rats in front of me twitch before their eyes take on a purple glow and they start ripping each other to shreds. Seconds later he roars again, ‘ARISE’ and laughs as fallen enemies join the fray of undead versus rats.
The last rodent involved with the fight falls and we continue without further resistance as the villagers let us pass with a snarl and a growl.
‘Is good we friends, no?’ He chuckles. ‘I never ask name. What is name?’
‘Very good indeed. My name is Anite. I guess we’re safe now?’
‘Very safe. Very safe. Nothing in way, now.’ He cackles and I notice that his tail is also a white yellow instead of the signature pink. As by magic bone segments move in a naturally flowing motion. Suddenly we hear a loud roar from upstairs and we see Ira. Covered in wounds and rage the massive rat throws two moving rat corpses down the balcony. ‘Ah, will get in way.’
As Ira screeches, the rats rally. With droves the rodents start to seep from the streets.
‘You lie to me Gharava.’
‘I leave toys to play. Now, he bored.’
Something in my soul quivers, and I notice two solitary shapes perched on a tall rooftop of the buildings. Their hands seem to glow with a green and red glow.
‘Who are they?’
‘Ooooh, are old students. Not very good, sadly.’
The rat with the green glow screeches as a green bolt leaves its hands, flies straight through the air at the undead and reduces one to mush.
‘Oh oh.’
Then the rat with the red rises its arms, hitting the rats below with a wave of red mist. The rats shake for a second before their eyes shine red and they all pull out their weapons to jump at our zombie defenders.
‘That not good.’ Gharava mumbles.
‘For fuck’s sake, there’s hundreds of them.’
A crashing sound makes me turn around again to see the hulking rat Ira sprinting down the stairs and pulling out a metal sword.
‘Ooooh, no is not good at all.’
‘You said they were not very good!’
‘Is not lie. Very talent, but no practice. Waste talent. Bah. FRENZY.’
His voice echoes again and some of the rats start aiming their new bloodlust at random targets as another one of our undead melts away after getting hit by one of the green bolts. With a grunt I rise a wall of stone in between of us and the magic users.
‘How am I going to fight all these people? I don’t even have a weapon.’
‘Make magic weapon.’
‘Make weapon???’
‘No think, do.’
I swallow hard and channel more magical energy trying to not envision a shape, but a feeling in my hands. In front of me a thin stone pillar rises. I grab the top and kick the bottom to break it off and feel the weight of the staff, letting the other end swirl to land into my left palm. This will do. Just in time as the ugly rat leader lands in front of me, I take another good look at him. He is at least three times my size. He wears armor on his chest and around his crotch. The rest of his limbs are covered with brown leather. His sword looks dull, but heavy. With it being nearly my size, it will crush me on impact. His arms seem lithe with muscle. Strong enough apparently to take out several undead in a short time.
He takes a wide right swing at me, and I raise the staff in both hands to duck and deflect the blow by letting it slide across its length. The heavy blade hits the stone ground with a crash and sends shrapnel flying. The staff swirls in my hands and crashes into Ira’s right ankle. The staff explodes into dust as Ira falls to his knee. This short exchange leaves me breathless. The only thing keeping me standing is the static that runs across my entire body. Short breaths. Keep fighting.
Slowly, Ira gets to his feet. My staff was not sturdy enough and exploded before it could break his bones.
He jumps at me. His blade will pierce with the force of the lunge. My blessing is that he is a mediocre swordsman. I duck past the blade and plunge the sharp edge where my staff broke into Ira’s lower sword arm. Blood sprays my face as he flies by in a roar of pain.
Looking around quickly, I see my miscalculation. Our troops are pushing the rats back. Gharava is safe from the acid bolts behind the wall. From Ira however, he is not safe. Ira’s lunge takes him straight the weird rat and from where I lay on the floor, I can see Gharava’s arm getting chopped of by the rat leader’s charge. The weird rat falls over. I shout in anguish. I could’ve protected him.
Ira gets up and takes his blade in his unhurt left hand while I create another staff. As I break it off and take a succession of quick short breaths, I wonder who I’m really fighting. The rat or my faintness.
He turns to me now, reaction to the sound of me dragging myself over. As he runs at me, I get an idea. I raise up stone spikes from the ground in front of him and he steps straight on them. I hear a wet sound as he screams, falling to the ground. In his fall, I grip my staff tight and slam it straight onto his head, exploding into an explosion of dust, stone shards and rat fangs. He looks at me viciously, bringing his sword arm to sever me in half, but the dust disturbs his aim. In a split second I step underneath his arm, jamming the edge of the broken staff into his neck, roaring as his body slams onto the ground.
I stand, panting. There’s no time to take in the victory or rest up. Looking around to check on my fallen comrade I find him standing and shouting spells in a cheerful effort to manage the battle, but slowly he’s losing ground. What a tough bastard. It would be best to join him.
‘Sorry about your arm.’
‘Aaaah, is bad arm.’ He laughs, ripping an arm from a corpse, attaching it to himself. He moves it around triumphantly, and to my disgust the flesh melts of the appendage to fall wetly on the ground, leaving only bone. He takes a look at me. ‘Look good in red. I see Ira dead. I not done. Will take while.’
‘I have an idea how to get out of here, maybe. Give me cover.’ I say, rubbing the blood out of my face.
He nods as I stumble to the large wall. I pull at my soul once more, deeply, feeling the currents race through my body, cramping my muscles and burning my brain as I pull viciously at the earth. I roar and I rip the wall apart into a small hole of about two times my length in depth. On the other side I see a hallway. Gharava giggles maniacally as he shouts one last spell, and jumps over me while I struggle to the hole. Behind us I hear roars of rage until I seal off the hole behind me.