The Rat King’s breath was coming in shallow bursts. Rats surged towards their master, then stopped, confused. It was like their bond was unraveling in the presence of a greater willpower.

  Kaelen turned his head toward Jade. “Are you injured?”

  Jade stared at the Rat King clutching his stomach, then back at Kaelen. “No,” she said slowly. “Jus’ plenty disgusted. But I’ll live.”

  “Good. I’m not sure one will.” Kaelen stepped toward her as the Rat King wheezed behind him. “We need to hurry. I’ve wasted too much of my time on lowly vermin.”

  The Great King Rat screamed. He staggered onto his throne of rubble, claws scraping stone as the rats around the chamber convulsed. Some collapsed outright, others shrieked and fled. A few surged toward him.

  “No, fools!” he hissed. “No, back! Back to me!”

  The rats obeyed.

  Mildly intrigued by what he was witnessing, Kaelen did not advance. He stood where he was, hands at his sides, watching as the rats piled onto their king. They did not bite him, even if they looked ravenous enough.

  Instead, they pressed themselves against him, layer after layer, squealing as their bodies twisted and broke under an unseen compulsion. Bone cracked, spines tore free. The rats died screaming as their flesh was torn into shreds and reshaped.

  [Body Manipulation: Living Armor]

  It was a spell that was entirely unfamiliar to Kaelen, though he could intuit what it was meant to accomplish. The Great King Rat straightened, shuddering, encased now in a living shell of fur, bone, and splintered limbs. Shattered bones and ribs overlapped like crude plates. Rat skulls fused along his shoulders and chest, eye sockets staring outward, some still with tiny half-leaked eyeballs.

  The wound in his stomach still bled, and the rats drank greedily from it.

  “You see?” the Rat King said, his lisp enhanced by pain. “I do not fall so easily.”

  Despite his armor, the self-appointed king was a sorry sight. Kaelen could barely contain his laughter. “You look unwell, Your Wormship. Let me prepare an adequate resting spot for you.”

  The Great King Rat raised his hand. “You want the girl? Fine. Let’s have a treaty, then. The girl’s life is yours, as is your own. Walk away from here and I swear not a single of my subjects will touch you. I’ll even show you the way to the surface. A true king knows when to be open-handed.”

  Kaelen winced as if the Rat King befouled himself. “Worm, prate not to me about treaties. There can be none between dragons and rats. You’d sooner grow a pair of wings and soar into the sky than make me consider you my equal. My life is not yours to offer it to me as a gift. You are barely in control of your own.”

  The Great King Rat circled Kaelen slowly, his overgrown toenails clicking against stone. He laughed, a wet, rasping sound. “I am the Scourge incarnate, boy. The Dark One. The Tyrant King who has once put the surface world to the torch and almost made it his.”

  Kaelen felt something unpleasant move in his chest. This single word felt like a cruel mockery of all his accomplishments.

  “The Scourge built an empire on blood and obedience,” the vermin prattled on, “but he made one mistake. He ruled the surface, oblivious to the things that were growing in his empire’s underbelly. I will rule what cannot be seen. The Belowground. The guts and bones of this wretched world.”

  He spread his arms, rats shifting with him like a living cloak. “I WILL EXCEED HIM! My empire will not fall to a single boy with a broken blade. I will finish what the great Dark One started.”

  Kaelen stared at the creature with an unreadable expression. , he thought.

  Of all the insults history could conjure, this one was no less than a twist in the gut.

  “You’re not the Scourge, child of pestilence,” Kaelen said. “Only a pale imitation, one of many. A shadow of a shadow.”

  “SILENCE!” the Rat King screamed, but his lisp made it sound as . The rats hissed in unison. Several detached and skittered forward, forming a low wall between Kaelen and the Rat King.

  “You think yourself above this palace,” the Rat King said. “Above me. But lest you forget, you stand in my realm now. The Belowground answers to me. ME, DAMN YOU!” His eyes gleamed.

  From the mass of rat remains in his right hand, the pretender king drew something long and jagged. A sword – or something in its likeness.

  [Body Manipulation: Weaponsmith]

  It was a mockery of a blade, forged from fused spines and sharpened femurs, serrated and uneven, still slick with rat filth.

  , Kaelen recalled. He summoned a demon and fashioned a spear out of its spine. It felt like a distant memory now, even if from his perspective, it only happened no more than two days ago.

  The air filled with the reek of blood and feces.

  Jade gagged. “Gods, that’s… stinkin’ vile.”

  The Great King Rat laughed, breathless and wet. “YOU SEE NOW!” he shouted, his lisp getting more pronounced as he got more agitated. “You cannot kill me! I am the Scourge reborn!”

  He swung at Kaelen, and the Dark Lord caught the sword with his bare hand. The bones bit into his skin, drawing blood, yet he did not flinch.

  “Let’s see how well you fight, Your Grace.”

  He wrenched the sword free and snapped it across his knee. The blade shattered, bone fragments clattering across the stone. The Rat King stared at the ruin of his weapon, then willed his rats to form a new one.

  The blade regrouped and grew between his fingers. The shape of the new blade was markedly different from the first one, but no less deadly or disgusting.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Kaelen glanced around the chamber. The gas was heavier here, pooling low, barely noticeable if not for its unmistakable stench. One careless spell and the entire room would become an oven. While Kaelen could encase himself in a fire-resistant shield and escape unscathed, he could not guarantee Jade’s safety – and he still required her knowledge.

  “A crown does not make you a ruler,” Kaelen said calmly and summoned a bright-green mana blade of his own. In the dark of the chamber, it glowed like a falling star. “No more than the sword makes you a warrior.”

  The Great King Rat lunged.

  He was fast – faster than a creature of his stature had any right to be. The mass of rats moved about him like a single organism, muscles amplified by dozens of bodies acting in concert. The bone sword whistled through the air, leaving a trail of foul droplets.

  Kaelen leaned aside, letting the blade pass inches from his chest, parried the next few strikes, then caught the Rat King’s wrist with his free hand and twisted. Rats shrieked as their bones cracked under the pressure. The Rat King tore free, his own arm undamaged, skidding backward, claws carving lines in the stone.

  “Still holding back?” the Rat King spat and turned to Jade. “Are you witnessing this, my queen? I already made you a gift of my heart, now I will present you with , while it’s still raw and beating.”

  Jade bristled. “Hey, I thought I told ya, I ain’t—”

  It was Kaelen’s turn to advance. He blocked the rat blade with his sword and struck the pretender king with his open palm, cracking rat skulls embedded in his shoulder.

  [Inner Palm Strike]

  The impact reverberated through the living armor, rattling teeth and bone. The Rat King staggered but did not fall. The bloaters absorbed most of the damage.

  The rats’ remains around him shifted, flowing like a living thing, spines locking into place. The sword lengthened too, adding fresh edges. The Rat King slashed low, then high, then low again, forcing Kaelen to retreat two steps.

  Kaelen sighed. That’s why fighting an amateur was sometimes more difficult than fighting a master. Sheer unpredictability. The Great King Rat was untrained, but tenacious and utterly without fear.

  “You are wasting your breath, King Vermin,” Kaelen said coolly. From what he had seen, his opponent had a short temper. Insulting him was the best way to force him into predictable maneuvers.

  True enough, the Rat King shrieked and drove forward, his living armor rattling as dozens of small bodies shifted across him like scales. Before Kaelen could capitalize on his foolish attack, something slammed into the side of his head.

  A rat. Then another at his knee.

  They came in twos and threes, not enough to wound him, but just enough to distract. They were leaping from cracks in the walls, from beneath broken stones, from every shadow around him. They bit and clawed at his legs, his sleeves, his neck. The moment he moved to crush them, they scattered, only to return moments later from a different angle.

  The rats would lunge when he least expected it, forcing his gaze away from their master, then scurry back into the dark or crawl up the Rat King’s legs to rejoin the shifting armor.

  Kaelen swatted one aside without looking and ducked under a horizontal slash from the bone-forged blade. He stepped inside the Rat King’s reach and slammed his elbow into the creature’s chest.

  The impact echoed through the chamber, though the bone armor absorbed most of it again. The sheer force still drove the Rat King backward. He crashed into his own makeshift throne.

  Kaelen cast [Moon Bolt], and a narrow beam of concentrated arcane force lanced toward the Rat King’s head. For half a heartbeat, it seemed like it would hit him right on the mark.

  Then the Rat King’s armor . Three bloaters tore themselves free from the writhing mantle and leapt directly into the beam’s path. The spell carved through them in an instant, but the deflection was enough. The beam skewed a degree to the left and blasted into the wall behind the pretender.

  The Rat King laughed, breathless and manic. “Do you see? They love their king more than their own lives!”

  Kaelen tried again and again – another [Moon Bolt], followed by [Shadow Lance]. But every time, a cluster of rats flung themselves outward. The beams pierced them, flash-freezing their fur and flesh, but the spells would also falter enough for the Rat King to pivot and let it scorch harmlessly past.

  The chamber filled with the smell of burnt fur.

  More rats leapt at Kaelen’s back while he recovered. One sank its teeth into his sleeve, another clawed at his cheek. He managed to catch and crush one of them, never taking his eyes off the throne.

  “Enjoy your throne while your puny kingdom still lasts,” he said.

  The Rat King roared and hurled himself out of the debris, swinging even more wildly now. Bone fragments flew in all directions, and rats burst from the armor as it shed and rebuilt itself in jerking motions.

  Kaelen drew back for a decisive thrust…

  …right as something red and glistening punched through the Rat King’s chest.

  For a heartbeat, Kaelen thought it was another rat .

  A narrow, blood-slick spike burst out just left of the Rat King’s sternum. It quivered there as the Great King Rat froze with a stupid expression on his face. He let out a strangled gasp, and his ugly sword clattered to the ground.

  From behind the Great King Rat, a face appeared over his shoulder. It was angry and full of disgust.

  She had circled while the two fought, moving when the Rat King’s attention was fixed entirely on Kaelen. In her hands was the scepter he had given her earlier, now driven through the shifting armor and into flesh beneath.

  For a moment, even Kaelen was caught off guard. He had not sensed her approach. He had been too focused on the blade and armor and rats throwing themselves into his spells.

  The Rat King looked down slowly at the metal jutting from his chest. His mouth opened and closed, teeth clicking uselessly. He then turned his head slowly, looking more hurt than angry. It seemed that all the ire was leaving his body along with his blood.

  “My… queen…” he whispered, half-turning.

  Jade yanked the scepter free and kicked him in the side.

  He tumbled and toppled, his living rat armor sloughing off in chunks as the psychic force holding it together unraveled. His legs buckled and he fell face-first into the sewage with a wet splash, the crown of bones dissolving around him.

  A pack of rats hurried to him. Kaelen half-expected them to try and help their master, but instead they started nibbling at his exposed parts.

  “Rat king becomes rat food,” Jade scoffed, then turned to Kaelen. “How’s that fer a one-liner?”

  Kaelen rolled his shoulder once, as if loosening a joint. He glanced back at the girl. “It needs some work. Otherwise, well done.”

  Jade stared at the sewage where the remains of the Rat King lied, then at the scepter in her hand. She flung it aside, panting hard as if it was her who was fighting this whole time. “Team effort.”

  * * * * *

  The tunnel twisted and turned like the innards of some giant beast – only it was a dead beast, and the quiet that settled was only broken by water dripping from the ceiling in uneven intervals. Somewhere far behind them, a few rats skittered, but they kept their distance now. They lost their hunger for provocation as soon as they lost their king.

  Jade was unusually silent and kept glancing at Kaelen, uncertain. For once, she didn’t have a joke ready. The silence stretched, awkward and unfamiliar.

  “Hey, so,” she said at last. “I ain’t sayin’ this often. Or ever, for th’matter.” She hesitated, lips twisting as if she was about to utter sacrilege. “But… thanks. I guess.”

  Kaelen gave her a measured look. “I did not do it to get a thank you.”

  “Oh, right.” Jade stopped to fumble inside her coat and produced Kaelen’s book. She held it out so casually, like it was something he forgot on a park bench. “This fell into my pocket. Ya can ‘ave it back.”

  Kaelen looked at the book with a flat expression.

  “That’s why ya came back, right? T’get the book?”

  Kaelen did not respond. He was too furious to find any words.

  For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to slap this little thief who had twice stolen from him, but something stayed his hand. His face remained a perfect mask, calm and unreadable. Jade did not know that he hadn’t realized the book was missing. She did not know she had just exposed him. Some illusions, Kaelen decided, were worth preserving.

  He took the tome from Jade, sliding it back into his [Inventory].

  Jade blinked. “So… We’re even?”

  “Far from it. You remember the deal. Show me the way. No more distractions.” He pointed a finger at Jade.

  “Hey now, that last one wasn’t actually my fa–”

  “The way. Now. Please.” Kaelen’s tone carried the barest trace of restraint. It was anything but polite.

  For once, Jade decided not to talk back. She swallowed her next retort, then gave him a short nod. They still had a long way to go.

  This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us, a song by Sparks. They’re a lesser-known rock band, but I love them dearly. My favorite song of theirs, though, is Seriously, give it a listen!