Our adventure had wrung us out. There was an aching that I couldn’t quite pin down to any body part. Farther down the spectrum of pain, Brynn’s body seemed to nearly fall apart. She looked ghastly pale behind her black fur, her white spot seemed almost luminescent, and her ears drooped sadly. We wheezed and groaned as we picked ourselves up from the ground to sit up against mother’s furry butt, and looked through the green lit cave as we rested.

It felt strange to be back, almost nostalgic. All the little rats were there. Most of them kept busy, working about. The mood seemed strained for some reason. They threw us anxious glances, fearfully skitting about. I looked at the dead lizards on the ground in front of us and chuckled. Brynn must have had the same thoughts, because she joined in my soft laughter. The little rats looked even more uncomfortable than before. Fair enough.

In the distance loomed dark shadows, somehow more inviting than my little brothers and sisters. Ungrateful bastards. Brynn slapped my shoulder with the back of her hand. She looked at me like she was ready to go. She must not have been excited to face King again after their last altercation, but stood up anyway. Shakily, she rocked back and forth on the balls of her heels, the tip of her tail nervously tapping the ground.

We dragged our scaly friends towards the strange shadows, seeming like a dent in the wall. I stuck my arm out towards the pulsating shadows, feeling a shock run through my claw tips as I got closer, but stopped myself. Brynn growled with impatience. Hesitantly, I knocked, sending ripples through the darkness. With every rep the shadows caved in to my knuckles like cloth, unlike the solid sensation I expected to feel. The darkness ripped itself apart, presenting King, laid back at the walls to support him. With an immense effort the big guy pulled himself to sit up straight, his hulking head hovering over us. The huge rat smiled down at us with four intent eyes and eagerly spoke as he saw the dead bodies at his feet.

‘What have you brought me?’ His voice rumbled, causing our disced ears to twitch agitatedly.

Brynn informed him about stone passageways covered with vines, lit by blue stones. She told about the spiders and the reptile men. The details of the big monster we left out, or Brynn did, whereas I didn’t feel the desire to correct her. King seemed pleased with our report and excused Brynn until he had further need for her. She gave me a look and stepped away with a sour face. Within a few seconds she passed through the shadows, and I was left with King. Silence hung clumsily in the air.

‘You want me to stay?’ I asked.

‘Indeed, I want your assistance. As my shadows aptly demonstrate, this world is filled with magic. In these caves it becomes a powerful ability, because the shadows are everywhere. I want you to get experienced with manipulating the earth itself, seeing as the earth is now everywhere. For now I am able to manage our entire kingdom, but as our dominion expands, I will need capable mages to stand besides me. You will assist me as a mage, a magical knight, if you will. This way I will be able to spread myself less thin. For example, at the moment, I’m using much energy to sustain mother’s remains. It would be problematic if she started rotting, or if the blood spoiled the meat. Sadly, we lack a regular method for draining her. There might be a magic capable of the feat. However, it would be arduous to study. Besides, where would all the blood go? Therefore, quite a fraction of my magical capacities are maintaining her corpse. I'm certain we will run into similar issues along the way.

'But I can't do magic!’

I was utterly aghast, making me do magic was surely setting me up for failure, as magic was an impossible thing. It was magic!! Asking someone casually to perform it is far from outrageous, leaning into ludacris territory. King seemed apathetic to my plight. The big guy growled, the corners of his wide toothy grin dropping in chagrin, and his beady eyes glazing over dangerously. He regarded me from above. Some drool seemed to drip down from the side of his mouth, seemingly fallen deep in thought, away from the shadowy realm he hid in, into a deeper shadow. His eyes awoke then, his throat rasping like metal scratching across a stone wall.

‘What you think you can do is irrelevant. You need only do as I instruct, and find out. Magic comes from the soul. That is where gods reside. There is power in all beings, and more so in you. Your soul is large, this is essentially all you need to become a mage of some degree, so stop whining, and use it.’

'But I'm a knight!'

'Knights do as their King commands.'

'You can tell I can do magic, just by looking at me?'

'It's quite obvious to me. You positively brim with power. You must train intensively. If you missuse your soul, you could live the rest of your life as a cripple. If you are still alive, that is.'

'Then, is this part of the blessing?'

'No, this is all you.'

King leaned back against the wall with a grunt. On that note, I sat down. It seemed impossible to me, but hearing King say over and over again made me feel really good. If I'm honest, a smile covered my face. Not only did he make me a knight, but he was also going to teach me magic. All the while, the other rats had seemingly much smaller existences, just look at my poor little brother Bart, deemed worthy of less. It made me feel special, important even, and understand on some level that this life was made for me. Even King treated me nicely.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

'King, why are you so much nicer to me than to our other brothers and sisters?'

'My, that's quite a question.'

'Well, everyone seems so scared of you, but I don't feel scared of you at all. I think I like you a lot, actually.'

King leaned deeper into the wall and sighed. Before he replied, he seemed lost in thought for a moment, looking beyond this dark room.

'Well, you are a special existence to me Anite, and I was quite happy to find you. Now let's start your training.' As he said that, he lifted his arm. The shadows around us seemed to shake like curtains in a heavy wind. With a single push the room expanded, seemingly swallowing itself to grow more. The ceiling grew taller. The walls grew wider. Within a few seconds the shadows had swallowed the space to grow three times it size. From the outside the shadows must have suddenly burst to life. Imagine how it would have looked like. Imagine what it must have felt like if you stood too closely.

I looked back at him, swallowed deeply, and nodded.

---

Thus, over the next period of time, I became an apprentice of magic. As the others were doing whatever they were doing, I spend most of my time trying to control and channel the energy within my soul, or something. The big guy explained this to be the basics, but it was very dull and incomprehensible. mostly, I just sat on the ground, focussing on the power within the earth. Trying to connect with it. Can’t say I really got what he was telling me, yet it didn’t take long for me to control a small bit of this power within my soul. This was a very strange feeling. It felt simultaneously as if the pebble was part of my body, and as if part of me was inside the pebble. Apparently, it wasn’t nearly enough. Lifting a small pebble was not an actual practical application. After what I could only assume were several hours my teacher pardoned me, somehow a satisfied look on his face.

I walked towards the other rats and a familiar sad, tired face greeted me. I smiled back, happy to see my friend.

‘Anite, good to have you back. We were wondering if you would come back.’

‘Hey Bart.’

After a short exchange I told him about what lay on the other side, and how there were these twenty lizards, which I obviously took care of without too much help from Brynn. Bart listened to my story with wide eyes and fidgeted with something in his hand.

‘What are you doing now, anyway? What's happened?’ I asked, as I pointed towards the group of girls sitting near the wall across from the big guy. The three of them seemed to have a good time, smiling and laughing while the were handling some hairlike material.

‘What happened? We were, well... You know, never mind that. Tess thought us how to do crafts.’ Bart said, forcefully carving a smile into his face, pointing at one of the girls as he held up a small needlelike object. On closer inspection it looked like ivory with an eye on of its ends. ‘The other two are Amethyst and Clementine, by the way. Tess used to be a seamstress, or something.’

I recognized no one. At least, now I knew their names.

‘Where did you find all these… all these things?’ I asked Bart, who threw a meaningful glance at mother. I noticed a patch of her fur was missing.

‘She managed to make needles out of splintered claws. She’s making us pants.’

‘Well I don’t need those.’ I said, as I waved at my unbuttoned trousers. ‘Then again, maybe they could use some tailoring.’

‘You should ask her. What have you been doing anyway?’

‘Magic training.’ I replied.

‘Life’s just not fair.’

As we talked, I gradually grew more and more tired, until eventually I curled up into a ball on the ground, and dozed off. Bart must not have been bothered by the display of rude behavior as he didn’t try to wake me.

---

In my dreams I am lost in a castle under a blue canopy that stretches beyond the edges of the sky. There are people in all colors and shapes, doing wondrous things. In a huge arena I fight warriors wearing plate armor and large swords. By the end, I stand victorious in a sea of blood and dismembered body parts.

My smile splits my face. In front of me hangs two balconies. One is richly adorned. The other is made of bone. An overwhelming light envelops me, and I hear Ashe express her love for me. An immense pressure wraps around my chest, and I hear King word his trust.

---

A familiar green glow woke me. Groggily, I raise my head from the stone floor. Having rested was amazing, but the hunger was terrible. Never have I been this hungry in my life, and I was determined to relieve the feeling.

All the rats were already up and about. The sewing group was hard at work, messing about in their pile of fur. One other guy was slamming something into a wall, which was unsettling as there didn’t seem a point to it. Brynn however, was still cuddled up near an edge of the room, opposite the dark space where King resided. Unworried.

Someone tapped my shoulder and I flinched.

‘Hey man,’ He said. ‘If you’re thirsty you can drink mother’s blood. King kept it from going bad with magic or something. So… yeah.’ Bart said.

Now that he mentioned it, I was thirsty. But…

‘Mother’s blood?’

‘Yes, or dehydration. Your choice.’

Bart made a fair point.

So as I made my way towards mom, I noticed the two lizard corpses hanging by their tails from the wall. They seemed to have been spiked against in there with hooks of shadows, perhaps Brynn asked King if he could hang them. Under the carcasses laid a puddle of blood. Their necks had deep gashes in them. On closer inspection, it smelled horrible. I cut off an arm with my new spear, which I found lying about, and took it with me as I drank from a deep cut I made into mother’s hide. It was a bit messy, but luckily, she also functioned as a towel. It was disgusting, but my thirst was gone. Slowly, I used the spear tip to skin the scales of the lizard meat, and started to chew contently.

All the while, the dark shadows loomed in front of me. Beyond those shadows resided a creature. The creature could be kind and benevolent one moment, and violently cruel the next. It felt odd that he was there when I woke up, because now I seemed more close to these little rats. A small community had formed. The one standing out from us was King. But King also felt like a special person to me.

Gingerly, I walked over to continue my magic training. However unsure I felt, he demanded to be obeyed. Something told me that none of us would refuse him anytime soon.

Apparently, I was truly a genius like no other, since it didn’t take too long to run through my basic course and use my magic absolutely proficiently. With utmost concentration I managed to lift from the ground not one, but… two small pebbles…

Magic kinda sucked.