Chapter 3. Alone

The next day, after a bit of moping in despair and he got over himself, Quint quickly discovered that he was not alone.

As the novelty of his expanded consciousness faded, he began to notice what felt like small lights to his mind, and found that they belonged to small rodents and bugs that had survived the catastrophe.

The bugs were everywhere, small ants and flying things that dotted the expanse of his consciousness like pinpricks of light. Their minds were simple yet extremely strange, and Quint could barely make sense of how they processed information even after an hour of observing them.

They seemed to understand light, dark, and food, and while they seemed to respond to his general mental nudges to move in this direction and that, they began wandering about as soon as he let his attention slip away.

The rodents, on the other hand, Quint did understand.

Though they did not speak in words, the mice sought warmth from their parents and siblings, fretted over the terrified pups (one pup seemed especially prone to soiling itself), groomed and cleaned each other, and worried about what had caused that terrible trembling.

He ‘watched’ in wonder as he felt their candles of rudimentary minds flail in confusion as he made himself known, then gradually accept him. From the connection, Quint understood that the rodents viewed him as some sort of god. Which, in their perspective, was probably true.

He spent what must’ve been hours fascinated, learning how to communicate with them in flashes of images and impressions of scents. They had an incredible sense of smell, though he could tell that they couldn’t distinguish between colors.

The mice, and one rat, had been terrified by what they thought had been a great cataclysm and seemed to find comfort in his presence. Soon enough the mice had begun squeaking and chirping about the rodent equivalent of gossip. They seemed to have had a pretty good life in the tower. Woggins the Wise had been allergic to a cat, after all.

The rat’s mind was… heavier than that of the mice, a bit more calm and thoughtful, though it was still a rodent. It sat calmly in a little lair on the third floor and watched his own mind in equal parts reverence and interest.

Strangely, the core itself also seemed to have more of an affinity for the rodents than the insects, dousing their tiny little bodies in a slightly higher concentration of mana.

As he observed the rodents with significantly more interest than the insects, an idea came over him.

Massaging legs that were sore from sitting in a lotus pose for so long, Quint walked down to the second floor of the tower. This was where his master had kept the supplies, which had survived the terrible tremors. He took out a few loaves of bread and some cheese, then called the rodents with his mind.

They came curiously one by one, and soon, there were around two dozen brown mice of varying size and a gray rat sniffing curiously before them.

“It seems I’m going to need your help in the very near future, little ones.” Quint murmured as he broke up the bread and cheese into smaller pieces.

The sniffing intensified.

Quint reached out with his mind, and made them understand that he meant them no harm, and that he would help keep them safe and fed if they would help and protect him. He knew instinctively that the mice and rat would have obeyed him anyways, but his early years in the slums had taught him that loyalty could always be strengthened with food.

Besides, he had plenty of food left, and first impressions were really important.

He put all of the food on a large tray on the floor and nudged the little mammals with his mind.

The rodents, disbelieving at first, began scampering forward cautiously. When the first one cautiously began nibbling on a piece of cheese and didn’t die, it was as though a dam had broken and the little fur balls all scurried forward and began to feast.

Their thoughts dissolved against the excited, perhaps even frenzied, chirps and squeaks.

Quint imagined that they were squeaking something like: Our lord! Savior! God! All hail the Cheese lord!

Quint chuckled despite himself. Silly him. Mice couldn’t talk like that.

But Quint still thought highly of the rodents more than most. Unlike some of the farmers he had known before, he had never really disliked mice or rats.

He knew that they were fastidiously clean and surprisingly intelligent creatures that simply got a very bad reputation. He had really gotten to know the creatures very well indeed as an orphan on the streets.

Huh. Maybe he had more in common with the little things than he had been bothered to think about before all this.

Quint was startled out of his reverie by a knock on the door of his tower.

What? Intruders already?

Quint instinctively reached out with his consciousness, and surprised himself by feeling the visitors with a wave of mana that swelled out from the tower, and sighed in relief when he noticed only three unarmed visitors.

Whoever they were, it didn’t seem like they were here for a fight, much less to attack a dungeon, no matter that its current guardians were an apprentice in over his head and a bunch of mice.

“Hello? Master Woggins? Quint?” a tentative voice called.

That is, of course, unless they somehow knew that master Woggins was in no state to defend anything and it was only him.

Quint risked a glance out of the window, and recognized one of them by the bald spot on top of the brown tuft of hair as Arthur’s, a townsman that made deliveries of food and other supplies to them for gold.

The villagers seemed a bit surprised when they saw an obviously flustered boy open the door. It seemed like they had half expected nobody to answer.

What do I tell them?

“Ah! Hello, Quint. We were just wanting to make sure that you and master Woggins were all right, we were. There was a rather terrible shake, and… well.” Arthur began as the two other villagers looked guiltily at their feet.

“Ah, yes. We are quite all right.” Quint replied with the stoic air of an academic, patting down his ruffled garbs. He had decided against telling anyone that his master now existed in the incorporeal and probably powerless form of a spirit.

“Terribly sorry about the surprise, we had an experiment spin out of control and take us by surprise, but everything is under control now.”

“Ah, that’s good to hear, good to hear indeed.” said Arthur. After a moment, he added "Ah, we were wondering when master Woggins would be coming into town again, there are a few things that might require a wizard’s attention…”

Quint stuttered as he tried to concentrate on the conversation and not what the mice were doing after eating their fill.

“He’s, ah… quite indisposed at the moment… with….. business… you know…” he shrugged helplessly, a blush creeping up his cheeks as he pushed his awareness of the mice to the back of his mind.

Arthur’s brow crept higher as the villagers behind him exchanged glances.

“But of course. Well then, we’ll be going now. You’ll still be wanting me to come by in a few days to make the weekly delivery, then?” Arturo said.

“Yes, thank you very much,” Quint squeaked, “now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be seeing to something.” He added a forced smile as the villagers looked at him weirdly and closed the door in a hurry.

The three villagers stood there in silence and exchanged looks.

“Well, that was strange.”

“Yeah. Why was he blushing?”

“Well, who knows what that old wizard is doing to that poor kid, locked up in that tower…”

“You don’t think…”

“Good gods, no! Not Master Woggins!”

“You never know with these wizard types. I hear some are worse than even the priests. And you know what they say about the priests.”

“Shouldn’t we… do something?”

“Nay, best to leave wizards to their own. Who knows what they’re doing in there.”

With a final, pitiful glance at the tower, the villagers turned and began their trek back to the town.

And that was how rumors of a depraved wizard called Woggins and his sex dungeon came to spread across the land, but that’s a story for another time.