The man was in pain. His legs were broken. He was in a dark, damp place. The only source of light came from a grate on the ceiling, too far away to safely reach. The stone walls of the circular chamber he was at arched and met at the aforementioned grate. The stone floor was filthy, covered in dust, grime, and bits of whatever. Mold, chips of bones, shards of glass. It was somewhat plain with a single feature being a cross-shaped wedge of stone right under the grate that was the reason he broke his legs when they tossed him inside.

The man was in pain. His head hurt. He could only remember when he woke up in a dark, damp place other than the one he was at right now. That one had a straw pile that was better to sleep on than the grime and sharp bits of bone and glass he had to crawl on. He couldn't remember anything before that. Some other men with metal covering their bodies came and dragged him through dark, damp corridors and creaking wooden stairs until they reached the grate. Unceremoniously, they opened it and tossed him inside. Then he fell leg first on the cross-shaped wedge and broke his legs. He didn't remember anything else.

Not even his name.

The man was in pain. His spirit despaired. He knew they stole everything from him. His name. His memories. They were searching for something, something he couldn't speak about even if he wanted. And to stop whatever terrible things they did to him that he didn't remember now, he tried to speak. He knew because he felt ashamed that he tried to speak, to commit treason just to ease his pain. When he showed that couldn't speak, they decided to ask his brain directly. They brought someone that ripped the information from his very mind. But he could not let it go. He knew that protecting what they wanted to know was more important than his life. So he erased what they wanted before they could get it. He felt despair at forgetting it, but he did what he must. When they found nothing, they took everything.

The man was in pain. His heart hurt. There was one thing they couldn't remove, the only thing that drove him to try and keep functioning as a person. A drive, a compulsion, his raison d'etre. He had to protect her. They couldn't erase that because that was his purpose. He had no idea who she was but to him she was everything. Everything that was left, a single drop of water in the void of nothingness. And he was thirsty, not for water but purpose. Protect her. Let no harm fall on her. She who cared for him. She who protected him and helped him. He would die for her, gladly. Maybe he did already.

The man was in pain. His stomach told him he was hungry. Food would only come every now and then. Sometimes when he was sleeping or just passed out from the futile exertion of trying to remember anything. They would open the grate, laugh at him and dump something edible on top of the cross-shaped wedge. When he was awake, he would crawl there and eat from the floor. When he was asleep, he didn't eat. In any case, rats would come to fight him for his food. To steal.

The man was in pain. His skin prickled. He had thousands of scratches from crawling on the ground, the feeble scraps of cloth he had torn, frayed and rotten from too long in there. And when food was scarce, the bravest among the rats tried to take a bite out of him. He killed one of the critters and ate it. It was warm and juicy even though furry. But every instant he stayed there was an instant he felt weaker. The rats bit him once, twice, thrice.

The man was in pain. His mind was afraid. At the edges of the room, he could see bones. The former occupants of this room. All of them picked clean by the rats, all of them with broken legs. He feared he was going to become one of them. He would die without fulfilling his purpose, without protecting her. That gave him the shivers.

He was thirsty even though he had water. A rusted pipe constantly dumped filthy water into a corner of the room, underneath a pile of bones. It looked like one of the former guests of that room's favorite place to die. The filthy water tasted like sewage and gathered in a slimy pool before running out through a drain. He had to crawl there to drink and then back to the cross-shaped wedge to be ready when the food arrived. He never knew when food would come.

Time went by. Food came twice when he was asleep. He never slept enough as the rats would come, bite him and wake him up. He felt he could barely open his eyes. He was hungry, thirsty, and just didn't care. He groaned and found that his arm didn't obey him. The rats came and ate his food.

More time went by. He woke up with a big rat biting him. He half-opened an eye but couldn't move. Too tired. Too hungry. Too thirsty. The rat bit his ankle and he bled. Other rats came when the first one squeaked in pleasure at the taste of the man's flesh. And they feasted, just like they should've done with the other guests of this room where people were thrown in to break legs and vanish in oblivion. The man felt sharp pain. More rats came, eating his thighs, belly, arms. Soon the big one was biting his neck.

And the man died.

The pain vanished.

He blinked and saw a huge chunk of fresh meat in front of him. It smelled delicious. Was he dreaming? He had no dreams ever since he remembered because he didn't have anything to dream of. But he heard others chewing and eating next to him and he decided to have his fill. He ate his fill until he felt his belly couldn't hold more. Then a grinding sound came and he saw everyone running away in the shadows. He sprung and his body moved as he wanted. He felt like he should move away from the light and hide. He did as his instinct told him but looked back. He saw a dead person he didn't know. It was a gaunt human, skinny and full of bite marks.

He thought how he could've missed another person in the same room as he was but he noticed that that was not a man, it was a giant. Even lying on his side, his unmoving body was twice as tall as he was. And very long. The light from above became blinding and he saw some other men with a pot. They tilted the pot and something splashed down on a giant cross-shaped wedge.

That hateful wedge.

He heard the grate going back in place, the light setting back into a comfortable level. Then he felt movement behind him. Several giant rats the same size as he ran past to eat whatever fell on the giant wedge. He felt something odd. Giant man, giant rats...

He looked at his hands and saw filthy rat paws, covered by grey fur. He touched himself and found a filthy gray rat fur. He looked around and found giant bones. Below him, giant flakes of grit, mold, chipped bone and broken glass. He was a rat. A healthy, fat rat. He cared little for what he was. The pain was gone. He could jump, he could run. He could squeak. Other rats gave him a weird look as if he was a crazy rat but he didn't care a bit. He could do anything he wanted.

He could search for her. The one he had to protect.

He followed some rats and found a hole, a tunnel leading out of the damn room. He paused when he heard the grate opening. Curious, he turned around and backtracked out of the tunnel. The grate was open, a lot of light coming. And that light was coming near and near. He strained his rat eyes and looked. A lantern tied to a rope was being brought down. It dispelled the shadows of the room and allowed the men up there to see everything.

"He is dead, finally. Stubborn fellow. To think he would survive three weeks in there."

"You owe me two ducats, Peter."

"Shut up. I'll pay when I get my wages next week."

"Suit yourself. We can finally stop coming down this filthy damp tunnel. Praise the One God."

No more visits from the guards meant no more food. He had to find somewhere else to eat. The other rats would feast on the body but after a couple days all of them would starve and probably eat each other. As a big rat he maybe could get out on top but he had no desire to do that. He went for the tunnels and walked around them for a long time.

He was tired when he figured out where to go in the tunnels. He just had to follow the path where the air was fresher. Or coincidentally, go up. He climbed and walked, sometimes crossing corridors where doors like the one that led to the straw-covered filthy damp room where he stood before going to the filthy damp room with the grate and the cross-shaped wedge. He knew how to smell the other rats and find their paths.

Soon he came to a tunnel that ended in a blinding light. Afraid of the light as every rat was, he forced himself forward. He moved slowly and his eyes got used to the light. Soon he heard a blurb of people and animals. He moved out of the tunnel and into the crawl space underneath a house. There were some rats there, smaller than him so they didn't challenge him. They just clutched the piece of moldy fruit they were eating and ignored him when they saw he wasn't going for it.

He walked out into an alley and gasped at the size of everything. He was a rat, of course, everything would be big. He moved near the crowd of people going back and forth and stumbled out in the open, his amazement numbing his senses.

A sharp voice screeched, "Eeeeek! A rat!"

He heard a whistle and turned to see a huge throwing dagger hitting him and impaling his tiny rat body.

The rat died.

He blinked and felt he was back to a human-sized body. Funny thing. His body felt different. Strange. Someone tugged his arm.

"Deborah, what are you doing? You killed a rat, great! Did you level? I bet not," Some man told him? Her? "Retrieve your dagger already, girl. Come on, we are going to the dungeon!"

He... Deborah walked, crouched and retrieved her dagger. She returned to the group of people that were waiting for her and tried to smile.

"I'm good to go. Shall we go?"

Deborah went with her delver party into the dungeon that was in the middle of town. She felt she had a new set of objectives. Learn what she could about the world and how it worked, how to avoid being found out by whoever trapped her former self in that prison, and then set out to find her.

Deborah knew she had to find her, the person she had to protect at any cost. The important person that cared for her.

It was the only thing she was certain of.