The Roach

I stared at my familiar jaws dripping white mess, I was concerned, it had been two whole days since she had fallen unconscious.

I had made sure to keep her fed and watered as best as I could anyway, I'd had to dig around in her small backpack which fortunately had some water and a stale loaf of bread in it.

Feeding it to her was also difficult with my unwieldy claws, I was forced to chew her food for her, she being entirely unable to do so herself.

I swallowed the bread and some water before mashing it up in my mandibles and swirling it around grinding it into a thick paste, holding it in with my second pair of jaws.

When I had finished pasting the bread and water I carefully lifted Lescar upright with a forelimb and tilted her head back, keeping her mouth slightly open with my antennae I pushed my jaw up against Lescars own sealing the connection firmly by carefully clamping down around Lescar open mouth, ensuring the goopy mess I just chewed flowed directly into her ajar lips.

I was careful to make sure I didn't choke Lescar on my homebrew gruel, gradually pushing the slurry in only after Lescar had swallowed the previous amount.

I was feeding her much like how a mother bird fed her young in a sort of impromptu french kiss.

If Lescar was awake I am quite sure she would be horrified with my relatively intimate feeding process.

Too bad for her she isn't awake, otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this.

Even with my diligent tending, Lescar had yet to wake, it was worrying.

Had I broken her when pushed too much power into her? no, that couldn't be right I could still feel her mind it felt... healthy if strangely subdued almost like it was submerged in water.

My familiar connection wasn't giving answers and my menu had yet to offer any solid information either.

I knew that after leveling, I myself, always succumbed to a level dream, so a feasible theory for Lescar's deep slumber would be some sort of condensed leveling dream, one that took longer due to the massive increase in level.

'Or perhaps the level up just isn't the same for humans' I pondered, raising a forelimb to groom my antennae.

It was impossible for me to do any more for Lescar, so I gently placed her on my back again, leaving her passed out in my glade probably wouldn't end well for the unconscious Lescar.

There were plenty of hungry eyes on her still form as it was, the beasts around my den probably thought she was just more food.

'And if she wasn't mine they might be right' I clicked moving toward the small bag I had precariously stripped from her back.

I wasn't interested in the few belongings Lescar had in there, that being a change of clothes, a small book and tattered quill and some sort of harmonica looking thing, no I was interested only in the collars, the slave collars.

Lescar had used two of them up when she tried to use them on me but it turned out she still had three more, hidden away in her little satchel, and I was eager to investigate.

Getting more servants while my first recovered would be a good idea, one could never have to many slavishly loyal peons.

I lifted a single collar up on my right forelimb and used analysis.

Modified beast bind collar

A collar specifically designed to force rodents and insectoids into mental servitude to the holder of the collar, it is extremely ineffective on other creatures, especially sapients, enslavement by this collar being almost impossible.

Slavery has always been a lucrative trade, and even vermin have their uses.

Made by Sterge Plaintis Graftof.

Same description as before, but still interesting, these collars apparently weren't very effective on anything but rats and bugs, even if the description said so this still deserved a test run.

And I knew just the rodent for the job.

I turned my head still holding the collar and peered into a tiny hole in my cave wall.

It was the white blade rat's little home.

It usually spent most of its time in its tiny accommodations, probably flipping or something, and was only certain to come out when scraps were leftover from my meals.

Little leach, it was about time it started earning its meals.

I nudged a dismembered troll hand towards the rat's hole, I had long since devoured all the rest save for the bones which now sat in a heap outside my den, too hard to comfortably eat.

Sensing movement and perhaps smelling a meal the white rats little nose twitched and quivered in the shadows of its burrow, it certainly smelt the food.

Coming out much more cautiously than it normally did, the rat looked up at me almost questionably before gradually slinking towards the hand.

'Had it noticed something? ah well irrelevant it is always distracted when feeding I will wait until then.'

I stood statue-still watching the rat, refusing to move.

The white rat seeing no hostile movement from me stopped slinking low to the ground and rose into a prancing gait, happily skipping over to the dismembered hand, joyously gnawing at the sausage-like fingers.

'Good' I thought 'now just stay there.'

I ever so gradually shifted, bringing the forelimb holding the collar just above the rat, I was in position.

'It's time to make some new friends' I giggled internally.

With this thought, I dropped the collar in a yellow flash of reaching chains.

The white rat

Lying curled up in a comfortable ball, the white rat awoke, something tickling its sharp sense of smell.

It had been asleep for a whole day having fed very well recently, due to its lovely neighbor.

So when it sat up it was well-rested and ready for some fun.

The white rat sniffed at the air, something new was in its home, it was unfamiliar unlike many of the scents of other creatures, it smelt kind of minty.

The rat didn't know what minty was but it found the smell annoying and scratched furiously at its nose, the smell was everywhere.

Sticking its nose out of its hidey-hole the rat observed its surroundings spotting something that made it happy.

Its neighbor was back!

...And with a mountain of food!

The rat's mouth watered and suddenly it was hungry again.

Its neighbor had certainly been busy and that big paw over there looked very tasty, so focused was the rat on the hand that it almost failed to notice that new thing making that minty smell.

The rat blinked, hunger briefly forgotten and looked at its neighbor confused, its neighbor was holding something limp in its front claws upright, jaws creaking.

At first, the rat thought its neighbor was eating something and began to slink out to snag the discarded paw but stopped when it realized something.

No blood covered the large neighbor's jaws and the creature the neighbor was holding was still very much alive and breathing, and it was the source of that strong minty smell the rat disliked.

The rat watched curiously from its hole as its neighbor pumped white slurry into the unconscious creature's mouth, the neighbor was feeding it.

The rat tilted its head, had its neighbor had a baby? it didn't think so, the rat had seen smaller neighbors they were tasty.

So the rat couldn't puzzle together why the neighbor was feeding some weird smelling thing, it never fed the white rat like that?

The rat felt a pang of jealousy but it didn't understand what jealousy was, it just knew it didn't like the minty thing that its neighbor was feeding.

Suddenly the neighbor stopped, jerkily raising its head, uncoupling its mouth from the minty things.

The rat watched as the neighbor ambled over to a brown sack thing that looked like a deflated slime, pulling a round metallic thing out in the process.

What was the neighbor doing? the rat had no idea as it watched the neighbor twirl the round thing on its foreleg.

'Is it a toy?' the rat wondered but shrank back into its hole as the neighbor approached, the rat liked its neighbor very much, but the neighbor never approached something it wasn't going to eat, the rat had learned this by watching it devour more stupid creatures than itself which didn't maintain a safe distance,

The rat wasn't stupid like them, it knew to always be wary of...

The neighbor kicked the meaty paw towards the rat's hole, leaving it only a short distance away from its home.

Was the neighbor giving this to it? the rat was shocked, the neighbor let others eat what it didn't want but never anything this scrumptious.

Uncertainly the rat stepped out and blinked up at the neighbor, the neighbor did not move its eyes merely staring fixedly.

Taking this for an invitation the rat darted over to the meaty paw.

Maybe the neighbor liked having the rat around, the rat thought sunnily.

After all the rat liked its neighbor as well.

The rat clawed at the tough paw working its way into the meat below, this would be delicious.

Locked onto feasting the rat didn't realize its predicament until it was far too late.

So when a bright flash of yellow blinded the rat it was too slow.

"Eeeek!" the white rat squealed something heavy and hard falling on its head.

"Ow! what! is the neighbor hurting me!?" The rat thought in a formless sentence, panicked, trying to desperately escape but was unable to move or flee.

The rat felt something massive that it couldn't comprehend surge through it, feeling like fire on its tiny mind.

Tottering the rat slumped to the floor in a haze of stupor the whole world going dark even to the rats enhanced night vision.

Everything was blurry, formless and for a while, the rat merely existed, its mind reeling.

Then something clicked, and everything fell back into place reality coming back at a higher definition.

{You have been bonded to user #$##%^# you are a contracted familiar - serve your master with zealous desire}

"Master?" the rat thought more clearly than she had ever before, still very confused.

The rat unable to understand the concept of master came up with the closest word she could imagine, the wires in her brain more than a little crossed over.

"Father?" she squeaked internally, rising to her feet and bouncing up and down staring at her new parent. "father!"

Her father cocked his armored head and through her new connection to her parent, she could sense alarm and some confusion.

"Oh this didn't quite turn out as I thought it would," her father said, his deep and powerful voice making her quiver with anxious excitement.

"Father! father!" The rat said running up to her father's frontmost leg and curling around it.

Her parent pulled back but she didn't notice, she was already tightly curled around his foreleg, her tail whipping about in a blissful frenzy.

"Ahhh... I see..." her father said hesitantly shaking his leg a little but failing to dislodge his holder on.

After a few more seconds of shaking, her father finally said sternly, "get off now." his voice carrying a coercive power that utterly failed to dissuade the young rat.

"No! more cuddles!"

Wrapping her tail firmly around the leg, the rat lodged itself in position prompting an exasperated response from her parent.

A sound like whistling wind filling the bond between them, her parent sighed.

"Hmm... well... I should probably give you a name I suppose."

The rat stopped constricting the leg for a moment and looked up

"A name?" the rat had no idea what a name was, but it was probably a good thing, after all, it came from her parent.

"How about..." Her parent said pausing "Yes... how about Roulette?"

"Roulette?" the rat said, that sounded nice but she still didn't get what it was, was it some sort of food...

Suddenly those weird squiggly lines appeared in her vision again but this time She knew they were apparently something called words, she didn't know how she knew this, but she did.

{name accepted you are now a unique being called 'Roulette'}

It all suddenly made sense to her.

"Oh, I get it now! I'm Roulette."

Beaming in a toothy grin, Roulette stood on her hind legs and puffed out her chest in front of her parent, it just felt right.

Her dad was the best!