The Quest 2

LEVEL 1. THE CELLAR

The cellar was dim. Not so dark that they couldn't see, but dim enough for most of it to be in shadow. Some of the shadows moved. There was a scrabbling noise somewhere deep in the room.

Garrial never felt comfortable underground. He was a Wood Elf, born and raised on high platforms in the distant woods. A hundred feet above the ground, he was a happy elf, ten feet underground however...  he shuddered, pulled an arrow from his quiver and stepped cautiously into the dimness. Behind him he heard the brief scrape of Merryn's axe on the stone walls and the crackle of electric. He hoped Ulric wasn't planning on using his lightning spell, last time he' done that the bolt had zig-zagged off the side of the academy wall and grazed Garrial's head. It had taken two months for his eyebrow to grow back. It still was a little stubbly.

"I don't see any rats," Merryn whispered.

Garrial couldn't either, and didn't expect to, not if she couldn't. He could certainly hear something though; not the multiple scratching of dozens of rats but a soft breathing and the occasional  shower of dusty grit falling to the floor, as if something was brushing against the grimy walls. Something furry.

"A ray of light, my friend?" Garrial suggested to Ulric.

Ulric began to murmur under his breath, rubbing his hands together. A ball of light formed in his open palms, and when Ulric raised his hands, it drifted upwards to the low ceiling, illuminating the entire cellar. And the rat.

The six foot long rat in the corner.

Garrial let his arrow fly. It bounced off the brickwork inches above the rat's head and clattered to the stone floor. The rat turned to look at them. It blinked slowly, then reached out and grabbed the arrow with its disturbingly human-sized hand. It sniffed the arrow and, finding it agreeable, began to pick its teeth with it.

Garrial let loose another arrow. This one lower, right on target for the beast's snout. The rat's reflexes were impeccable, it simply snatched the arrow from the air.

"I never saw a rat do that before," Ulric said.

"You never saw the rats back home," Merryn hefted the axe, "I swear, I once saw one juggling,"

"I believe this may call for heavy weaponry," Garrial said. "Lady, after you."

Merryn snorted. She approached the rat with her axe ready for blood. The rat raised itself up on its haunches.  Garrial watched Merryn launch herself at the rat, screaming the war cry of her people and raising the axe high. She brought the axe down, the rat feinted, grabbed the handle. Merryn stamped on the rat's toes. It squealed. And then the entire room seemed to be filled with rats.

Garrial shrieked. Like a girl. he hopped around from foot to foot as the small beasts swarmed over his toes. At some point during this dance of utter humiliation he decided that he was never going to hit any of them with arrows and instead drew his dagger.  Using the good old technique of stabbing wildly into the murine carpet he managed to impale several on his dagger.

"Rat kebabs anyone?" Merryn called, she was still wrestling with King Rat for possession of her axe. The King was not for letting go, it chattered at her in an incessant rant of rodent obscenities. Merryn must have understood at least a little of the profanities spewed at her for Garrial heard her ask the rat just what it thought her mother did in the mines with trolls and then he watched in astonishment as Merryn pulled back her heavy leather boot and drive her heel deep into the area where Garrial suspected the rat kept its testicles. 

The King's drew a breath like a punctured lung and folded neatly to the floor. Having completely lost her axe, Merryn finished the beast off by jumping on its head. Garrial watched in horrified fascination as the creature's eyes bulged and blood ran from its snout, there was a sickening crack as the snout broke and teeth scattered across the floor. And then the sickening stench of vomit as Garrial quietly disposed of his lunch. 

Ulric yelled out something behind him and Garrial was blinding by an explosion of white light. For a few moments he stood blinking, his hands still on his knees and strings of bile still hanging from his jaw. He could still vaguely feel rats squirming over his feet, and hear a chorus of frightened ratty shrieks but he had no idea what was going on.

The impossibly bright light faded and Garrial blinked the room back into focus. The Rat King was dead, and all his minions were flat on the floor, rolling around in their final agonies.  Merryn had both palms pressed into her eyes swearing under her breath.

"Sorry," Ulric said, "meant to aim downwards."

"I've gone blind, you congenital idiot," Merryn snapped. "What the hell was that?"

"Ray Of Light," Ulric said. "Very effective against rats. And, um... other underground creatures."

"Dwarf!" Merryn shouted, "Underground Race! What part of Underground do you not understand?"

"Sorry," Ulric said again.

"Are they all dead?" She asked, "I can't see a damned thing."

Garrial looked down at his feet, he mopped up his boots with the nearest rat carcass, dragging it across his toes with the tip of his dagger.  "They all seem to be deceased," he said.

"Good," Merryn snapped, "there'd better be some damn gold in this place. You two had better look."

It suddenly occurred to Garrial that he was going to have to shift rat corpses to search the cellar. His stomach did another lazy slide. "There's wine?" He said. "Lots of wine?"

Merryn snorted and informed him that Dwarves did not drink wine, they left that sort of thing to poncy Elves.

"And there's this," Ulric said.

Garrial looked up. Ulric was at the far end of the cellar, standing in a stone alcove between two large sets of shelves. At first he couldn't see what Ulric was referring to, not until Ulric knocked on the wall. The muffled thud suggested it was not stone but wood.  They had found a door.