Sorceress Super Hero

by Darius Brasher

  When it became obvious whom I pointed at, the wererats around the brown wererat shied away from him. The fearful way they did it, I got the feeling a wererat attacking someone without the king’s knowledge was a definite no-no. Assuming, that is, the king wasn’t lying about not knowing of the attack.

  After hesitating for a moment, the brown wererat I pointed at said, “I have no idea what this human is talking about.” He said human the way Loopy had said it yesterday, like it was an insult. “I’ve never seen her before today. But if she comes over here and bends over, I’ll introduce myself to her.” The wererat thrust his pelvis back and forth suggestively. All three heads of the Rat King laughed, followed a beat later by everyone else in the cavern. The laughter was not good-natured. More like gleefully mocking.

  I waited for the laughter to die down.

  “He’s lying,” I said. I held my left palm up so the Rat King could see the glowing arrow hovering above it. “See? My locator spell points directly at him.”

  “The creature foolishly tries to trick us. We should kill it before it reproduces,” the red-eyed head said. I had never seen a broken record in rat form before.

  “Any Gifted fool can produce a lightshow in an attempt to dupe us,” the white-eyed Rat King head agreed. “I knew an illusionist who could make his manhood appear as long as his leg. I bit his leg off, making his leg and his manhood equally long in reality.” The throng laughed again. When you were a king, the whole world laughed with you.

  “Several of our brethren can vouch for my whereabouts here in the sewers all day yesterday,” the brown wererat said. The others who attacked me, no doubt, I thought. “I have not been Aboveworld in days. The human lies, not me.”

  The white-eyed Rat King head impaled me with his gaze. “The protection the Compact affords you is nullified if you abuse its provisions by deceiving your host.” The red-eyed head whistled, and the wererats armed with halberds instantly lowered their weapons, pointing their silver tips at me. Under different circumstances, I might have admired how on the ball they were.

  “If I’m lying and that wererat has never seen me before, then how do I have a clump of his fur?” Moving slowly so as to not provoke the wererats with the halberds, I pulled the sandwich bag containing the fur out of my pocket. I unsealed the bag and pulled the fur out. I kept my disgust off my face as I held the fur out toward the Rat King. “I retrieved his fur from the alley he attacked me in.”

  The blue-eyed head looked at me with interest, with things still writhing right under the skin of its body. A part of whatever the squirming things were rose into the blue-eyed head’s throat. It looked like a giant, wriggling Adam’s apple.

  As I watched with disguised disgust and horror, the blue-eyed head opened his mouth. The bulge at his throat slid upward. Two big rats crawled out of his mouth, one after the other, like noxious gas bubbling out of a swamp. Both rats were black and slick with film, like they had just crawled out of an oil spill. They landed on the Rat King’s lap with wet plops. Their tiny eyes glowed blue, just like the head they had come out of.

  In a flash of revolting insight, I realized the things crawling around inside of the Rat King were rats. There must have been dozens of the rodents inside his big body.

  The two rats hopped from the monarch’s lap to the dais. They shook themselves dry like wet dogs. I thanked my lucky stars I was far enough away I didn’t get splattered by the droplets. No amount of bathing could cleanse me of that grossness.

  One rat scampered off the dais toward the brown wererat. The other scurried over to me. As I suppressed shudders of disgust, the black rat crawled up my leg, past my stomach, and perched on my breast. Its twitching whiskers were so long, they grazed my chin. It took a superhuman effort of will to remain still and not slap the thing off me.

  From my chest the rat bounded onto my outstretched arm, scampering across it to where I held the fur of the wererat who had attacked me. Its small claws dug into my wrist as it sniffed the wererat fur. I looked over and saw the other rat which had come out of the Rat King’s mouth doing the same thing to the brown wererat. The rat sniffed the brown Otherkin like a bloodhound catching a scent.

  The blue-eyed head turned sharply to stare at the brown wererat. His blue eyes blazed, like a fire splashed with gasoline. “The sorceress speaks truly,” he hissed balefully. “It is your fur. You dare lie to your king?” The wererats near the brown wererat shrank even farther away from him, obviously not wanting to be near someone who had incurred the wrath of the Rat King.

  The brown wererat cursed. He snapped his long tail around like a whip. It smacked the sniffing black rat. The rat’s body split open like an overripe cantaloupe. Blood went flying like spray from a sprinkler. The ruptured rat’s keening died stillborn.

  The brown wererat looked at me with hate in his bloodshot eyes. His hand disappeared under his loincloth. It reappeared holding a curved silver dagger.

  The wererat’s legs coiled and sprang. They propelled him into the air, over the heads of the throng. He shot toward the dais.

  The brandished dagger glinted evilly under the skulls’ glow as the wererat hurtled toward us.

  CHAPTER 12

  I reacted without thinking. I released my hold on the locator spell. “Terra!” I cried, waving my hand in the necessary pattern at the dais and exerting my will as Dirty Gray and Brown Patch scrambled out of the way. The blue-eyed black rat fell off my gesticulating arm with a squeal.

  The brown wererat was about to land on the dais near me. The small part of me that wasn’t focused on casting my spell realized the dagger-wielding brown wererat hurtling through the air wasn’t aiming for me. He was aiming for the Rat King.

  The wererat was going to land on the dais between me and the Rat King. Knowing what was going to happen, I dove to the right, out of the way.

  The brown wererat’s feet touched down on the dais. The stone under him exploded like he had stepped on a land mine thanks to the earth-based spell I had cast.

  The wererat was blasted backward. He fell heavily. The force of the blast made him roll like a ball. He tumbled back off the dais.

  The wererats armed with the halberds rushed forward in pursuit of the brown wererat. The Rat King stayed them with a whistle.

  The Rat King got up from his throne. He had been terrifyingly large seated. Standing, he was the stuff horror movies were based on.

  Moving faster than I would’ve expected a creature his size being able to, the Rat King snatched the halberd out of the hands of one of his guards. With his skin still rippling with all the rats inside his body, he stepped off the dais toward the brown wererat.

  The brown wererat was back on his feet. He staggered slightly due to being blasted off the dais, and he bled from a gash on his snout. He still held the curved silver dagger. He waved it in front of himself at the Rat King in silent invitation.

  The Rat King and the smaller wererat circled each other, brandishing their weapons, like wary gladiators in an arena. The wererats and rats near them quickly got out of the way. Everyone else in the cavern just stood and watched. I might have intervened had I known which side to intervene on. After all, the brown wererat had tried to kill me, and two of the three of the Rat King’s heads wanted to kill me as well. Maybe I should have been cheering, “I hope you both die!” but even someone as undiplomatic as I knew that probably wasn’t the right move.

  The cavern was so quiet, you could’ve heard a pin drop. The only sounds were the shifting of the dueling wererats’ feet and the brown wererat’s labored breathing. I had really walloped him with my spell. The fact he was still moving was a testament to how tough he was.

  The Rat King made the first move. He lunged forward, thrusting the spiked tip of the long halberd at his opponent. The brown wererat sidestepped the thrust, and rushed forward, slashing with the dagger.

  The brown wererat had made a big mistake. The Rat King’s thrust had merely been a feint. The Rat King spun out of the way of the flashing kni
fe, and simultaneously yanked the halberd back. The sharp axe edge of the weapon sliced through the back of the brown wererat’s leg.

  Blood flooded from the wound. The brown wererat shrieked. He staggered and fell to a knee, his injured leg rendered useless.

  The Rat King kicked the downed wererat hard. Like a toppled domino, the wererat fell on his back with a thud. The halberd became a blur in the Rat King’s hands as the weapon spun, reversing direction. The Rat King slammed the weapon down. Its blunt butt hit the supine wererat square in his chest. There was the loud crack of breaking bones. The wererat’s scream abruptly died to a whimper. The dagger fell out of his hand. The Rat King kicked it away.

  The Rat King flipped the halberd around again. He stood over the brown wererat with the axe edge of the weapon pressed against the downed creature’s throat. The brown wererat’s limbs twitched a little, but he otherwise appeared to be incapacitated.

  The center head of the Rat King screeched at the supine wererat in the creatures’ native tongue. The brown wererat responded in a weak voice.

  The two went back and forth like that for a while, with the rest of the cavern completely quiet as the two spoke. Maybe they were talking about what they would have for dinner post-fight, but I doubted it.

  I was right. Once the two finished talking, the Rat King took a step back. He raised the halberd over his three heads like he was about to chop wood. The halberd descended. The axe part of the halberd cleanly chopped off the brown wererat’s head like his neck was made of butter. The brown wererat’s head went rolling. His decapitated body gushed blood.

  The cavern erupted into squeals, squeaks and cheers so loud I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to, but did not. I was still doing my tough as nails impersonation, despite the fact I wanted to turn away from the revolting sight and throw up everything I had ever eaten in my life.

  The Rat King dropped the halberd. He stepped over to where the head had stopped rolling. Picking the head up by its ears, the Rat King drank blood from the dripping head just as the wererat on the dais had done earlier. Clearly this was not the place to lose an argument or fight. The cheering got even louder as the three Rat King heads took turns drinking the dead wererat’s blood. Wererats stomped their feet; rats jumped up and down in glee. I felt the vibration of the pandemonium in my teeth. It was as if I stood in the home stadium of a football team who had just scored the winning touchdown.

  The Rat King dropped the head like it was an empty milk carton. With his faces’ mouths slick with blood, he mounted the dais again. He went right by me on his way back to the bone throne. I got a whiff of blood as he passed, strong and sickly sweet. My stomach rumbled threateningly again. I really regretted those rich champagne donuts I had for breakfast.

  The Rat King sat on his throne again. He raised a single clawed finger. The screeches and cheering died off into nothingness as if a dimmer switch had been twisted to an off position. The king’s white guard hopped off the dais to retrieve the halberd the Rat King had taken from him. Other wererats in the crowd hustled forward to pick up the brown wererat’s decapitated body and his head. They disappeared deep into the crowd with him. Four-legged rats scurried forward to lick the blood off the cavern floor.

  The rat that had crawled up me to sniff the brown wererat’s fur bounded back over to the Rat King. It crawled up the monarch’s seated body and began to lick the blood off the muzzle of the blue-eyed head. The other two heads vomited up rats of their own, and those rats licked the muzzles they had been disgorged from.

  All three sets of the Rat King’s eyes stared at me as the heads were groomed. Incredibly, the heads’ crowns had not fallen off. Because I didn’t know what else to say, I said, “I guess it’s true what they say: If you attack a king, you’d best kill him. I’m glad that did not happen here. I was rooting for you.”

  “It was your moral support that sustained me in my hour of need,” the blue-eyed head said. The other two heads laughed, which set off a chain reaction of laughter which rippled throughout the cavern. Now I knew what my life was missing: A sea of sycophants who would laugh and cheer me on command.

  I decided to not mention that if it hadn’t been for me and my spell, the brown wererat might have been the one to survive the fight with the Rat King. Diplomacy. If I ever lost my job permanently with Capstone, I could become the ambassador to the wererat underworld. It would be the worst job ever.

  “I’m happy about what happened, but I must admit I don’t entirely understand it,” I said. “Why did that wererat attack you and not me?”

  The rats that had been grooming the Rat King were finished, and they crawled back into the Rat King’s throats. Once his rat’s tail disappeared down his throat, the blue-eyed head said, “In our society, all mercenary work must be approved by me. Further, I receive a percentage of all the proceeds. Since that wererat attacked you without my approval and without tendering my kickback, he violated wererat law. Rather than submit to punishment, he chose to challenge me. Had he succeeded, he would have assumed my mantle and become the new king.”

  “Before he died, did he tell you who hired him and his companions?” I asked.

  “He did,” the blue-eyed head said. “He made a full confession after I defeated him, as is our way.”

  “Good. Then if you’ll tell me who hired him and his friends, I’ll be on my way.” I couldn’t get out of here soon enough. I didn’t know if there was water hot enough or soap strong enough to wash the stench of this place off me.

  “No,” all three Rat King heads said at once.

  “No?”

  “No,” they repeated firmly.

  “It is not our way,” the white-eyed head said.

  “This creature is more valuable dead than alive. We should kill it before it reproduces,” the red-eyed head said.

  “My brother speaks truly,” the blue-eyed head said to me. “We must assume the obligation of the contract on your head. You indeed are far more valuable to us dead than alive.” So much for him being my favorite head.

  I was suddenly hyperconscious of the fact that the white guard was back on the dais, having retrieved his halberd. I didn’t want either guard to use their weapons on me. I had gotten used to my head being right where it was. “But I saved your life,” I protested. Diplomacy could go to Hades. My diplomacy ended where my life began.

  “We hardly needed your help to fend off one wererat,” the white-eyed head scoffed. “And even if you did assist in some small, insignificant way, it is of no matter. You should not expect gratitude. Gratitude is a human emotion, not a wererat one. As we wererats say, a contract is a contract is a contract. If we do not do the job we are hired to do, soon people will stop hiring us.”

  “Under our laws, the only way to nullify the contract on your life is if you buy it out,” the blue-eyed head added.

  My heart sank to my stomach, and they both took up residence in my feet. I couldn’t even pay my rent. How was I supposed to pay for my life? But what choice did I have? If Ghost hadn’t intervened, I wouldn’t have survived the first wererat attack. There was no way I’d survive swarms of them coming after me.

  “How much to buy out the contract?” I asked. I dreaded the answer.

  “The contract itself is ninety-three gold talents,” the blue-eyed head said. Gold talents were the universal currency of the magical world. “Add to that the twenty percent buy-out surcharge, for a total of one hundred and twelve gold talents.”

  I did a rough conversion to dollars in my head. My stomach twisted at the answer: over forty thousand dollars. It was both too much and too little. Too little because my life was apparently only worth that. Too much because I didn’t have forty thousand dollars. When you were almost flat broke like I was, forty thousand dollars might as well be forty billion. There was no way I could pay that amount.

  “I’ll give you twenty-eight,” I countered. Twenty-eight gold talents equaled a little over ten thousand dollars. I did not have ten thousand lying around, but it w
as better than trying to raise forty.

  “This is not a negotiation,” the white-eyed head snarled. The Rat King’s fist thumped the throne’s armrest in irritation. “Our rate is our rate. Take it or leave it.”

  I felt the eyes of all the rodents in the cavern on me. With a word from their Rat King, it could just as easily be their teeth and claws on me.

  Again, what choice did I have?

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  * * *

  I paced the floor of my tiny living room. My hair was wet. I only had on my robe. I had just finished showering after returning from the sewers. The stench of the sewers seemed to be baked into my clothes. I would just throw them away instead of trying to wash the filth and smell out of them. Besides, the fewer the reminders of my idiocy, the better.

  I took a swig of Elven wine. The fact it did not make me feel better showed just how massive a mess I was in. I was worse off now than I had been before I had gone down into the sewers. Before, only four wererats had been trying to kill me. Now, the entire wererat community would try to kill me if I did not come up with forty thousand dollars. The Rat King had given me two and a half weeks to produce the money. If I didn’t, my life would turn into The Fugitive, with me playing the role of Harrison Ford, and every wererat in the world chasing me.

  Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. I wished I had never heard of a sewer, much less ventured into one. I was like a reverse King Midas—everything I touched turned into complete crap. First the Institute of Peace, now this. I shouldn’t even venture outside. I was a hazard to myself. I should lock myself into this apartment and throw away the key.

  The problem with that plan was that first Mrs. Leverette and her sons would come knocking, and shortly thereafter, a hit squad of wererats would then knock to knock me off. And that was assuming the Conclave didn’t get to me first for my First Rule violations.

  I took another swig of wine. What to do, what to do, what to do? Coming up with forty thousand dollars was problematic. Even if I sold everything I owned, I would not come even close to that amount. Ghost had been right when he said I had no assets to speak of.