Unbeknownst to the ratmen, they are considered a plague. A ravishing troupe of beast with little intelligence. It was quite recent when a specific tribe of ratmen suffered the consequences. This is their tale.
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The stone sky weighs heavy as the hundreds of ratmen flee through the colossal tree trunks supporting the massive canopy. Behind them, the large bipedal-lizards delight in the bright, blue rays emitting from the bountiful sun crystals; the light imbedded in the stone surroundings, reminiscent of the large stone called Sum, strikes today’s game with deadly accuracy, causing their query’s brown furs to stand out sorely amidst the blue grasses. On these plains there’s scant places to hide. Sharp spears soar true. Tonight, they will rid the land of the pests.
Blood paints the blue plains, and bats scatter at the screams.
The ears of the ratmen fill with their beating hearts and helpless screams. In the relentless chase, they lose their families, their partners, their dear leader; all mercilessly struck down.
At the end of the week, the lizards go home, but lost and scattered, the frightened vermin scramble, their pink feet rushing through the soft grasses to seek refuge. Anywhere. This beautiful place won’t accept them; the lizards will hunt them down with unwavering devotion.
In the aftermath of the onslaught, the rats gather as many of their kin as are still left, and a group of about a dozen venture for a way out.
A dozen pink snouts pull up as they find an entrance to the tunnels below below these lands, a path deep underground. Someone is waiting for them. Their leader, Gharava, stands in front of the entrance, clothes bloody and ragged, a smile on his pale face. They thought they lost him. They had seen him struck down by the spears. Yet, here he stands. Alive. They smile timidly, relieved to find him safe and well. He beckons them closer to lead them underground. Brokenhearted, they draw to him, looking anxiously over their shoulders.
The tunnels prove treacherous and depthless in the dark of night, yet he leads them though as if they are his own. The rich earth gives away to endless, gray stone. The lush blues and yellows of the botanic wonderland above diminishes with every other stride, suffocated by petrified roots climbing the tunnel’s sides in chaotic webs, covered with sickly black moss; A monotonous landscape, which all too sudden turns days into a haze of gray and slow passing strobe lights.
despite this, the new land is suitable. The vines prove to be a good substance to file their teeth on, and the moss attracts a rich bounty of insects and reptiles.
Come morning, the distances between the small, blue sun stones embedded into the walls are far and between, casting looming shadows, warped like the slender shapes of their hunters. Gharava guides the rats through the treacherous tunnels like they belong to him. He captures large spiders to feed the young and kindles fires from the moss to warm the wounded, letting them look over their shoulders to know they are safe.
However, when they watch forward, with every other stride the stones shine more light on how Gharava is changed by the hunt. His purple eyes gleam dangerously, and he is excluded from any brawls to determine standing within the tribe. This is due a mix fear and worry. Below his sleeves the right hand is colored pale ivory, as is the foot on the right. A sickly sign next to their pink limbs. Across the floor drags a yellowed tail, stripped of its meat, leaving only ligaments and vertebrae to click about the stones. If he isn’t dead, he is surely dying.
Seeing their confusion and grief, he turns to smile, purple light glowing in his eyes. “Have I ever led you astray?”
The ratmen trail behind him, careful not to trip over the interminable web of vines, until a new home emerges. They stumble into a spacious area, overwhelmingly wide and tall compared to the winding tunnels. Before them lay a cobbled path with houses on each side. Above them in the stone sky looms a large sun crystal, its blue light warm and nearly blinding to the ratmen. Gharava laughs heartily, his voice shrieking. “This place is Haven!” The rats run to infest the abandoned town, and shortly the population swells from a dozen to several.
Months pass by while the ratmen built a life around the abandoned Haven; but the questions remain. How is Gharava still alive? What are his ivory limbs? Are they bones? Could they really be? It takes one day to turn Haven into a nightmare when a hunting party returns in distress. Panicked rats carry two corpses, and support a wounded ratman as they stumble back into the town, shouting for help. They lay him on the ground and watch the pinkness recede from the wounded rat’s snout as the gaping wound where his arm is supposed to be bleeds less and less. Half a dozen ratmen arrive to provide whatever support they can give, but the young man is running out of time. He will die soon. Frustrated, the ratmen witness the first deaths since their perilous flight. some of them have yet to experience death in this manner, this closeness.
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Gharava simply laughs as he arrives, his purple eyes shining in the dim light of dusk. He steps over to the corpses, grabs one of their arms, sets his foot against the corpse’s side, and forcefully tears the arm off, hitting the onlookers with a spray of carmine. He swings it around and walks towards the dying warrior. Kneeling next to him, he starts to wedge the stiff appendage into the shoulder socket, causing the wounded soul to wail in unimaginable agony until Gharava utters unintelligible words that seem to reverberate through the entire town, down to the hearts of the distraught rats who watch with raised fur, their ears flattened to escape the screeching of their loved one.
With disgust, they watch their leader as he tortures the young warrior with this disrespectful ritual, but the dying rat soon stands up. He raises the recently severed arm up high and the ratmen watch as the meat rots and falls off the bone to leave his arm ivory, stained with fresh blood. The ratmen don’t know how to feel.
Gharava walks away, cackling. This would have been all well and good if it had stopped there, but It doesn’t. From this point, Gharava decides to venture with all the hunting parties. Every day, they return with ivory limbs and empty eyes. Before long, Gharava deems the rats too feeble to fend for themselves, pleasing himself in the augmentation of their limbs, improving them. Tails are fitted with sharp spikes, and shredded claws are used to make the ivory arms deadlier.
Then, the corpses are no longer carried back, they walk on their own, purple flames burning where their eyes used to be. In one instance, it even crawls into the town long after the hunting party returns. From their houses the rats can hear it grunting and dragging itself through the night, crawling up a tall, stone stairwell, stretching along the edge of town to a balcony. Within this balcony lies a crevice, holding an unholy jail cell filled with corpses. Bit by bit, Gharava becomes viewed as a festering wound, an infection that leaves its victims shell-shocked or delirious, the kind to reunite a mate with a monstrosity, to happily bestow a limb incapable of love.
It is enough.
Ira drags him by the scruff. Gharava struggles wildly, but Ira is large and strong enough to overpower him with his bare claws. They reach the plaza below the sun stone, and five other rats rush forward to pin down all of Gharava's limbs, including his tail. All the rats in the town gather around the plaza, forming a sea of brown, nearly a hundred pairs of eyes, shining in the weak light. Gharava gazes up at the blinding light before dusk, crying from laughter. "You've had your fun, Ira! Let me go before you regret it."
Ira kicks him in the head, and Gharava groans in unfamiliar pain. “We've known each other for a long time. At one point, you were like a brother, but you've become unrecognizable. I thank you for finding us that day, and I thank you for giving us our Haven. It is enough."
“I don’t understand. I’ve given you everything. I’ve saved your lives, over and over and over again.”
Ira picks up a large stone, his arms tensing as he stares deeply into the purple eyes. Still, they betray no fear. Still, Gharava is not there. He feels a shiver run through his spine before bringing down the large stone. Again and again, until there is no more head to speak of.
Ira picks up the blooded corpse. There is no joyous cry among the masses, no victorious shouts as they carry the lifeless body up the stairs and throw it onto the pile in the jail cell. They seal the entrance, laying a large stone in front the doorway. From experience, they know that some of the corpses are still alive, and they don’t want those to walk into Haven at night.
Forlorn, they look through the stone bars and wonder what happened to their leader, what caused him to change into this cold mockery of the Gharava they knew. They hardly notice when the body first twitches, and draw closer as it twitches again. Its chest rises, pushed up by the elbows of the carcass. They jump at a hard sound. Beneath their feet the vertebrae of a tail grips around two of the stone bars. As they look up from the tail, they find Gharava’s corpse standing right before them. Ira bellows, falling back as blood squirts from the corpse’s gaping neck and the tail uncoils itself to stabilize the body. One of the other living carcasses walks towards it, an ivory claw lashes out at the discs of its neck and rips the ivory head straight off. With two hands, Gharava’s corpse jams the bony neck between its own shoulders, and the mouth produces an unintelligible, deep sound.
Ira retches as two purple flames burn within the skull as pallid skin and fur grows to cover the ivory in pale skin and retched patches. The other corpses shriek with laughter until Gharava speaks, his voice ringing.
“You’ve made a grave mistake.”