“Real amazing you managed to escape,” the guard said, holding Silas by his waist. His arm was slung over her shoulders, which she held onto in order to support him. After introducing herself as Tawny, she had offered, or rather pressed him into accepting her aid in returning to Ratterinks. “From what I heard, the hu-man was a real monster, it was. Shields split cleanly in half and bodies not better off. The rumour is it had a manastone blade. Is it true?”

Silas wondered what to say: from her conspiratorial tone, it sounded like manastone weapons were big deals even to the ratkin, so maybe it made more sense to hide how far Riverside had come with their manastone technology. On the other hand, he couldn’t think of any other ways of explaining how such clean but devastating cuts had been made. “I don’t know, honestly speaking. It had a blue shine to it, but the fighting was so quick I had barely had a glance before I was knocked out.”

Tawny’s nose quivered with thought, her whiskers swaying softly in the wind. She was as tall as Silas with soft tawny fur and large pink ears that immediately caught one’s attention. She wore a dark brigandine and was armed with the typical weapons. Although Silas had nothing but cold hatred for ratkin in general, he found himself somewhat warming to this chipper ratman with time. She had wanted to come with him, not so much to aid him - although she was adequately doing that - but more so to escape her dull sentry duties on the watchtower. Either way, it worked in Silas’s favour as he hoped it meant the guards by the burrow would be less suspicious of him if he had a real ratman to vouch for him.

“What a ruthless animal,” Tawny said, unaware she was aiding the very beast right now. “How did you escape it then? It must have been a nightmare.”

Luckily, Silas had prepared for this question beforehand. “I don’t know. When I woke, a flying beast was carrying me off, and the human was nowhere to be seen. Still, I thought I was done for as it kept flying for hours and hours, never taking a rest. But finally it stopped on the ground for a short time, I think, and I used my spear to stab it right then. Stupid animal hadn’t even disarmed me.”

Cracking up, Tawny paused and raised her hand from his waist to clap him across the back. “Bet it never saw it coming! Now that’s how a proper ratman should be: I had heard you were just a buck, but clearly that’s not the case. You’re a real ratman, you are.”

He laughed with her, his lips opening to reveal his hanging incisors. It hid his wolfish maw underneath.

****

It took them the better part of the day to reach the burrow, their journey punctuated by many encounters with passing ratmen. Through them, Silas learnt how much of an impact his prior foray into ratkin territory had had since there were far more troops patrolling the area than he had anticipated, each group consisting of ten to twelve ratmen, double the number before his stunt. Although the Ratterinks’s leadership had given no public reasons for this change, Tawny told him it was definitely because they feared a large human or mycelia attack soon, potentially both at the same time.

Asking about the topic of humans, he learnt from her that they were well-aware of Riverside and vaguely aware of New Derby. Lyfort’s siege had sent shockwaves through ratkin society, although they hadn’t been able to take advantage of the chaos since that was when the mycelia attacks had really picked up. Either way, they were all waiting eagerly for the two thousand incoming Ratter soldiers, at which time they expected to wipe this area in full.

When Silas and Tawny reached the burrow, the same squat hillside structure that Silas had spied days before, he lowered his head and leaned into Tawny a bit more. He could feel the two dozen guards’ gazes on him, which didn’t worry him nearly as much as the two sorcerers scrutinising him from underneath their cowls.

Tawny waved at the guards, showing no overt response at Silas’s sudden change in behaviour. “I’ve got Retil here. He was carried off by the flying beast from three days ago, but he managed to escape and return.”

A large ratman glared down at him. “What about your troop, Retil? Where’re they?”

Silas gulped and looked dazed for a second. “They died… The human killed them all.”

“Oh, you’re that one,” the ratman said with some surprise, shrugging. “Unlucky what happened to your troop. Well, no point waiting here. Go inside and get yourself treated - you look terrible.”

One of the sorcerers roused then, walking up to them, its robes swaying like a snake slithering ever closer. Clearly this was unusual since all the guards turned to it, making way with curious expressions. Silas felt his heart pounding thunderously, and he furtively shifted his hand closer to his spear, readying to strike.

“Why do you have a mana barrier?” the sorcerer asked with a gritty voice. ”You’re neither of strength nor knowledge to perform such arcane, buck.” Silas could see under its hood from where it stopped a dozen paces from him, puckered folds of discoloured flesh cascading down its face, giving a truly fearsome appearance. However, this appearance was deceiving since he sensed its aura to be nothing worth cowering from. Then again, this made sense - they weren’t exactly going to make their powerhouses work as glorified doormen.

“My granddad did some magic on my clothes before I left. He told me it would help protect me,” Silas replied, putting on a dumb face of ignorance as if he didn’t know what all the fuss was about.

“Who?” the sorcerer asked, curiosity cutting through the grate of its voice.

“Tel’Hier,” Silas said, grateful he had memorised this information before leaving.

Fortunately, it appeared luck was on his side as the sorcerer drew back its head at the name drop, nearly but not quite hiding the tremor in its voice. “That’s understandable, then. You can go.” It was blindingly obvious to Silas that Tel’Hier was more influential than Retil’s notes had suggested since all the surrounding guards inclined their heads too.

While he had passed their test, he immediately had the feeling this incident would come back to bite him later. If that name drop had been enough to make them all cringe, then news of his arrival would spread for sure. It added even more risk to his mission, but he didn’t consider it life-endangering just yet, so he decided to proceed. He urged Tawny forward with a push of his hand around her shoulder, and they entered the squat structure.

It opened to a giant tunnel that sloped down into the hill, softly lit by gems every few hundred metres. It was darker than Silas would have liked, especially because of the tint of his eyes, but he found his vision adapting to the dim soon enough. They carried on for almost two hours before his heart picked up the pace again, the low, tumultuous hum of civilisation in the distance wrapping around him like a shroud and tugging him in.

They came out of the tunnel to a steep staircase that curved down the walls, plunging to the carved floor. Ahead of him was the largest cavern he had ever seen, bigger than he could have even fathomed as it was massive enough to swallow two Riversides whole and still have space to spare. This was Ratterinks, Station 32 - AF3, and he could tell with one glance that Lazzaro had been right from the very start.

The aged Fire Mage had feared the ratkin were collecting humans to imprison them, and here Ratterinks sat as a settlement of two, one half freckled with System buildings and teeming with ratkin going about their day, the other half a harsh, fort-like structure with towering walls. It was a prison through and through with guards stationed all along its length and a mighty gatehouse on the side facing Silas, which no doubt sucked the hopes of escape from all its captives. Although the ratkin had changed their minds some weeks ago from imprisoning humans to outright killing them, it appeared they had spared the ones already in their hold as here they suffered in silence.

The sight forced Silas to stop as he gazed down with beady eyes, his chest growing heavy as he imagined - and equally feared - what he would find within those walls. Tawny looked confused at his pause, glancing over and waving her hand in front of his face. “You okay, Retil?”

“How many?” he asked, his pointed gaze telling her exactly what he was referring to.

“Oh, gosh - I don’t know. No one here knows, other than Talis. Maybe also—”

“How many?” Silas repeated, his voice firmer.

“You need some real good healing, you do. I told you, I don’t know, but if I were to guess, I would say maybe a few thousand.”