Gee, Rats!

“Now, Georgie!” shouted the dead rat.

With a wild yell, George whipped his hands out from under the bed, and grabbed ahold of the commie’s legs. He pulled, as the slim figure tried to step back, and toppled them to the ground. There was a clunk and a thunk as their mask-covered head rebounded off the edge of the fireplace, and they lay there twitching, in no shape to fight back.

George made sure anyway, scrambling out from under the fur-covered bed and seizing the nearest fireplace log. Two, three, five times he brought the heavy chunk of wood down on his captor, until blood seeped out the eyeholes of their mask and the twitching stopped.

Next to them, a tray of what looked like oatmeal (doubtless poisoned!) congealed on the floor among the shards of the bowl that held it.

“That’ll teach you, COMRADE,” George said, as the adrenaline slowed and oh boy, that log he was swinging around was heavy. Especially since he was sick. Less sick than he’d been when he woke up in this prison, but still not at a hundred percent.

They’d almost fooled him. Almost.

George wasn’t quite sure what was going on here. One minute he’d been fighting off a whole town full of Russian agents who were posing as Texas rednecks, (rednecks? Ha!) who were desperately trying to kill a genius patriot veteran inventor, the next moment he was running for— he was making a strategic withdrawal after being wounded, and following the inventor through a swirling mass of rainbow light.

But the light had winked out midway through, leaving him some place dark, and cold. There had been stars, maybe, and he had struggled to hold his breath until he realized he wasn’t breathing.

Then he’d screamed a lot.

Looking back on it, he knew that a lesser man, a foolish man would see that as a sign of cowardice. But after judging himself to be merely misremembering the situation, George thought that no, perhaps he’d been more clever than that. Obviously he was trying to attract the attention of the inventor, to let him know that he needed out of whatever strange device he’d been drawn into.

And he had been right to scream! It had worked! The light had reappeared, and he’d managed to find a way to move forward and exit into someplace new.

Things had happened very fast after that, and he’d had to put down some big sonuvabitch who was obviously holding the inventor hostage. But they’d winked out just as he shotgunned the unknown enemy right in his helmeted face.

Then he’d gotten shot full of a lot of arrows, fallen through a window, found himself near a corpse with a shiny crystal on it, and tried to break it off so he could end his life himself, rather than give those goat monsters the satisfaction of killing him.

That was when things had gotten weird. There was a dead rat in his head, talking to him, telling him weird stuff about runes and how he was in danger. Telling him that he couldn’t trust any of the strangers who had hauled him out of the swampy mess that definitely wasn’t Texas, and bound his wounds at their camp.

They’d almost fooled him. He’d woken in this stone castle…thing… in a cozy bed, with fresh bandages, a servant who brought him food whenever he asked and tended the room’s lone fireplace, and time to heal.

It had all been very convincing.

But that door was locked.

And the servant wore a mask made of actual gold.

George didn’t know where he was, or who had him, but that mask was real gold. George had grown up around enough wealthy people to know what it looked and felt like, and just how much it was worth. And that much gold, on a servant? That much gold could buy a building in Washington DC! A good one!

The only people who would do such a thing were people who didn’t value gold.

And the only people who didn’t value gold had to be Communists!

George had landed right in a nest of the vipers! They were clearly wanting to interrogate him for his secrets.

He’d toyed with the idea of clamming up, and only giving them his name, rank, and serial number, but the dead rat had talked him into something a little more… active.

And so George stripped the corpse of its mask and robes, used the water in the nearby washbasin to clean the blood away, and did his best to fit himself into the new disguise.

*****

“Oh that’s too high! We’ll die!” whispered the rat, as George stared out of the window, and down, far down past the clouds. It was half a mile if it was an inch, and sure, the tower was studded with balconies like an artichoke stalk with fruit, but they were too far apart and too unevenly spread to hop down without breaking his everything.

The mask almost slipped from his head as he stared, and it took a few precious moments of fumbling to catch it before the straps completely untied, and get back inside to re-tie the damn thing. The creature he’d killed had been small, and its brown and purple and orange colored tunic and baggy trousers were way too tight on him. George wasn’t a broad fellow; he kept in shape, and recovering from being shot had cost him some pounds, but the clothes just weren’t his size. And there just wasn’t enough ribbon to keep the mask secure.

But it worked.

He’d passed by several other creatures as he went, their golden-beaked masks twins to his own, and they hadn’t given him a single sideways look. Just padded silently along in their booties that he’d had to rip to fit on his feet, carrying pots of food and mops and rolls of cloth and other things he couldn’t stare at without blowing his cover. Nothing worth swiping, even if the food DID smell good.

One time he’d seen a taller figure in the distance, someone in robes moving between rooms and he’d immediately turned around and gone down a side corridor.

He’d seen what was under the mask; the things he was fooling weren’t human. But he didn’t expect his disguise to work too great against actual people.

“The windows would have been easy, if this place was smaller,” he told the rat without looking directly at it. Looking at it made him remember how it smelled, and he didn’t need that right now.

“But it’s not. It’s a huge place, George,” the rat said, practically breathing in his ear. George shuddered, but it continued happily. “We’re going to have to kill so many commies to get out of here!”

“That might work for one or two, but we’re wounded. If we come across a group, it’ll be bad.” Talking to the rat helped him sort out his thoughts, at least. He just wished it would stop trying to shift itself into his field of view.

It shifted again, and he whipped his head away from that flash of brownish fur and reddish viscera. “You can kill anyone you need, George,” the rat breathed. “You have magic now! You can make them die!”

“This nonsense again?” George whispered, as he retraced his steps back to the staircase he’d found, the one he’d decided to leave alone until he finished checking the floor. “You keep trying to sell me on this pipe dream, buddy, and I don’t chase that particular dragon.”

“All you have to do is make the words, George,” the rat whispered in his other ear. “Make the words and let the magic do the rest…”

“Nuts to that. Now shut up and help me keep an eye out,” he told it as he started down the stairs. “God knows what’s down here.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

*****

Stairs, mostly. That was what was down there. That and about a dozen more unfinished floors. George checked a few rooms as he went, finding relatively little. There were a number of rooms set up like the one he’d been held captive in, and a couple of heavier, locked doors that didn’t open to the spoked key he’d taken off his jailor, but George didn’t have time to poke around in every nook and cranny. He had to escape before his absence was noticed!

That said, he couldn’t push himself too much. He’d recovered fairly well from his nearly-lethal wounds, for which he’d surely receive multiple purple heart medals once he’d get back home, but it had done a number on his stamina. So when he came to a floor of the tower that actually had a somewhat-finished look, he found a bedroom and holed up in it, pushing the bed in front of the door and bracing it against the fireplace with a couple of sturdy chairs.

“We don’t have time to sleep, George!” said the dead rat, holding its paws to its snout in horror.

“I’m not going to sleep. I’m just going to lie on the bed a bit. Calm down.”

“Now you’re closing your eyes!”

“Well there’s too much light in here. Relax. I know what I’m doing.”

“Then stop yawning!”

“I’m not—” George wanted to tell him he had it under control, but he was yawning too hard.

They’d made good time. He’d just get a quick nap. They could surely spare half an hour or so.

Wham!

The bed frame shook, and George snapped awake. Muffled voices rose from outside, and the door shuddered in its frame, as whoever was out there tried to push it open again.

George had no idea how long he’d been out, but he didn’t feel rested. That didn’t matter though. He left the mask lying where he’d taken it off, and rushed to the window.

Wham! Krik…

He looked back to see the chair on the rightmost side splintering, just a bit. He bared his teeth. “Trapped like a rat!”

“Excuse you!” the dead rat said, but George grabbed the bars in the window and pulled himself up, arms wobbling, to stare through it. There was a balcony out there, not too far down. But the bars were solid. He dropped down, pulled on the metal, hissed as the rough edges bit into his hands.

“Use your magic, George! Use it and we can get away!”

Louder yelling from outside, a different voice speaking some language he couldn’t understand. Russian, no doubt!

“Focus! Rot the bars! Just like I told you!”

“You can’t rot metal! You can only rust it, and I don’t have RUST, now do I? I have corruption!”

“It doesn’t work like that…” the rat said, and George chopped his hand, angrily. “I’m the magical guy here, not you! Now shut up and let me work!” he yelled as the chair broke, and the door pushed the bed in a bit. A beefy arm reached through, felt around and checked the bed. Tried to budge it, but from the angle it was working George knew that was futile.

George focused on the words he needed. Three little words, that’s all it would take.

All he had to do was imagine them in front of his eyes. Just visualize them, and lean into the pulling feeling. That was how it worked, according to the dead rat. That was it, that was all.

And it was damn near impossible.

George tried, but his thoughts scattered as he watched the arm withdraw, and the door shook back and forth, slamming the bed against the remaining chair, as it crackled and broke. He tried, as the wood crumpled, and the door burst open, revealing four very angry people in black metal armor, wearing white cloth over it. One was a woman and that surprised him, but she looked as angry as the rest and the sword in her hands looked very sharp.

George held up his hands and closed his eyes. He heard one of them laugh, and boots ring on the stone as one approached and grabbed the back of his tunic, roughly.

And the dead rat, that fucking deceased rodent, had things to say about it. “They’re going to win, George! They’re going to torture you! You just couldn’t do it, you weren’t good enough, and now they’re going to rip your guts out and you’ll be like MEEEEeeee… oh no, Georgie! Oh no!”

That did it.

George was a man who’d spent his whole life knowing that people thought he was a fuck up. George hated that. And hate let him overcome his fear.

With cold clarity, shielding his face as they threw him to the floor, George found the focus to imagine the words in front of his face, rolling by like a ticker tape in his mind.

“Rot them all,” he whispered.

Black letters flashed as he did so, and the whole world wobbled as a feeling similar to the longest, strongest piss he’d ever taken flowed out of him, not from his cock but from almost every part of his body.

And that’s when the screaming started. Screaming that ended with metal hitting the ground, gurgling, and whimpering.

“Yes! Yes! You did it, I was worried Georgie, but you did it! You saved us!” the rat chittered in glee.

“Shut. Up.” George said, opening his eyes and staring at the floor. It hurt to rise… any energy he’d regained from the short rest was gone now. Those words had said he’d gone through about half of some weird foreign word—

“Chakra,” the rat whispered.

“Shut up,” George said, as he stood, blinking and wobbling. “Stop reading my mind. That’s private!”

“But I’m IN your mind—” the rat said, then fell silent as it looked through his eyes, and saw the corpses.

Well, what was left of them. They were more like puddles of red and green around skeletons. One of their chests deflated as George watched, the metal sinking to the ground, and the cloth slowly soaking through with blood and pus. More red and green seeped through the cobblestones of the hall, trickling toward him as he watched it and tried to keep from vomiting. The SMELL, good God…

“Maybe don’t let that touch us,” the rat said, delicately picking up its disemboweled guts like a lady picking up her skirts, and walking backwards away from it.

George nodded drunkenly, turned…

…and stopped.

There was a man at the end of the hall. Brown-robed, tall, bearded, and staring at him with piercing eyes. He carried a fancy walking stick in one hand, and brought it up to point at George almost like a rifle.

“Oh no,” the rat whispered. “Rot him, quickly!”

“That was impressive,” the man said, eyes locked on George. “You ARE the chosen one after all. But do not try such things on me, or I will burn you with a word.”

“George Liddy,” George said, holding up his hands slowly, slowly. “Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Serial Number, uh, five four two one four.” That last part was actually a lie. He couldn’t remember his serial number.

The man took a step forward. “Has your familiar taught you to assense, yet?”

“Name, rank, and serial number, pal. That’s all I’ll tell you.” George kept his hands up, and took a long blink. How had he gotten those words to come up, again?

When George open his eyes again, the man was uncomfortably near, and George took a step back.

The man stopped. “Assense me. And you will see that I’m more than a match for your raw spells.”

George glared at him. This close, the man was pretty old. And yeah, he had a walking stick, but George was pretty sure it wouldn’t help him once he was inside the guy’s reach. That said, he acted pretty sure of himself. Maybe he should assense him, or whatever it was called.

“It’s a trick, Georgie! Don’t do it!” the dead rat whispered, and that decided George. He wasn’t about to let the rat tell him what to do twice! Fuck that disgusting rodent!

“All right, but no tricks,” he told the stranger.

“No tricks,” the stranger said.

George closed his eyes and tried to remember how to do the assensing thing.

And the stranger promptly beat him unconscious.

*****

George woke to a throbbing pain in his head, tied to a chair, with a circle of bathrobed weirdos standing around him. He glared at the man in brown, who looked back at him, solemnly.

“I said no tricks!” George muttered. That old bastard had CHEATED.

“You said no tricks,” the stranger smiled. “You didn’t say no staves.”

“Enough foolishness, said the man in red robes, stepping into the circle of light around George. The others bowed to him, and stepped back.

“I am Zarkimorr. You live by my whim; remember this—”

“Wrong!” George said.

The old man glared at him and snarled, “You dare?” He raised hands rippling with some sort of lightshow, but George managed to stay unimpressed.

“I’m alive,” George said, and though his head throbbed whenever he moved it, he looked down at the ropes around him. “You need me for something. You wouldn’t have gone through this trouble to keep me alive if you didn’t. So, COMRADES, what’s your plan here? If you want me to betray my oath, know that I’m not afraid to die for my country. Are you?”

The old man choked, and stepped forward, drawing an arm back…

…and the woman on the fringe of it laughed. She was attractive, even if her hair was dyed in some outlandish way that indicated she was a hussy. “Zarkimorr. We’ve become used to dealing with children. Remember the King’s command.”

“Oh, wait, kings?” George said, straightening up. “Shoot, I thought you were filthy reds! So you’re British, then? Or one of their colonies?”

The old man stopped glaring at the woman, and looked at him with confusion.

The man in brown stepped up, smiling. George didn’t buy it, he remembered how the guy had sucker punched him. With a stick. But George found that he did like what he was selling, as the stranger spoke.

“Clearly, we have misjudged you, chosen one. You would bring honor and glory to your home nation? Would you lead armies against foes who would seek to corrupt and conquer your realm?”

“Buddy, that’s what I was born to do,” George said. “Why don’t you get me out of these ropes, fill me in on your problem, and we’ll talk about what I can do for your king…”