King Gilder Ironheart IX looked over a magical map of the city. He could see the blue, Dwarf controlled areas shrinking and the red, Rattan controlled areas growing in real time, and it made him curse aloud. He would not let his kingdom fall, and he would not let the last great wall protecting his kind from the vicious Rat-men be taken. He needed reinforcements, the sooner the better. As it stood, however, he had no expectations of a grand rescue.

The ambassadors from the other Under-Kingdoms had long since fled, promising much but delivering nothing. They had fled months prior, mere days after the hellish scream echoed through the whole of the underground. Anyone with even a lick of common sense could tell that it meant trouble, and any Dwarf worth his ale would know that such a shriek meant that the Rats were going to hit hard.

He had expected that some of his people would come to aid him and his, but not a soul showed up, even at this late stage of the conflict.

“If we somehow manage to endure this, I will have dozens of grudges to settle.” The dwarven king grumbled as he saw another line of defense buckle and cave, a streak of red quickly punching a bulge into a blue zone.

His attention switched from the map to a slip of paper in his hand; a letter from a certain Morgrim Nobeard.

“I certainly hope you can deal with this. We have all our hopes riding on you, so by the grace of the Ancestors and by the power of the Gods, succeed. If you fail, if you fall, then all is truly lost.”

…

Rippa’s attention was focused on the reports coming in. An entire force of her elite troops had been one-sidedly butchered by what seemed to be a beardless Beard-thing. Said Beard-thing had simply appeared from nowhere, bypassing the senses of those around it and then proceeded to effortlessly rip a detachment of her personal army to shreds.

Needless to say, she was livid.

She stopped swinging a armored Beard-thing around and into its own kind like a fleshy flail and tossed the broken being aside. She began to dash towards the sounds of her own personal army in trouble. She knew every one of their voices, and the sounds she heard made it clear that they were in far over their heads.

Just as she arrived, she saw the fading form of a beardless Beard-thing looking back at her with a mix of contempt and satisfaction on its face. As she slammed into the place where the beardless Beard-thing was, she swore she could hear a snicker in a voice that seemed familiar. She couldn’t place where she had heard it before, only that she had heard it a very long time ago.

“SKWIIK!” She bellowed, only for the Rattan in question to appear, locked in battle with the beardless dwarf. The two of them popped in and out of various places, connecting their blows with the blocks of the other. It was, to put it in a way a comic book fan might understand, like seeing two far more murderous copies of Nightcrawler trying desperately to kill each other.

The two of them ‘bamf-ed’ in and out of place through the entire warzone, with neither of them getting the upper hand. Rippa tried to follow the random teleportations, but to no avail, and she ultimately consigned herself to not being able to kill the beardless wonder. She was not wanting revenge for the slain, but merely wanting to vent the frustration and anger she felt over having her pawns killed so easily.

She would have to up the training regimen and work with Snikty to get more powerful pups. It was nothing a bit of selective breeding and copious amounts of magicite-infused steroids couldn’t solve.

…

Grima had managed to get RATBOT working again and he piloted the mech towards the battlefield. She was very late to the party, and this angered her greatly. Sure, she had dealt with the Colossus, but since that point she had been unable to participate as her attention was focused on getting her machine up and running again. She could feel the burning gaze of the Vermin-Queen on her a she worked, which stressed her out and ‘inspired’ her to work faster.

RATBOT was now moving at top speed towards the ruined Dwarven fortress-city, and anything that got in its way was crushed underfoot or smashed aside by the chainsaw-tipped war glaive it carried.

“Must. Reach. Fighting! Can’t risk her rage-wrath! Have to distinguish myself or face destruction, yes-yes!” With every other glance being over her shoulder, Grima pushed RATBOT’s movement abilities to their absolute limits. She knew better than to let other, weaker Rattan outdo her in terms of accomplishments. She could not permit anyone other than another member of the Five-Clawed Paw to outshine her.

“No time! Must move-go FASTER!”

As RATBOT reached the front lines and smashed a bloody swathe through both ally and enemy alike, Grima continued to panic as she drove the massive mechanical Rat-Centaur construct towards the central dwarven keep. Killing the rank and file was not enough to keep her from oblivion, or so she thought. No, she needed to take a bigger prize with much more valuable heads to hope and stave off the wrath of the Vermin-Queen.

…

Snikty stood on the top of a spire that was in less of a destroyed state than the other structures around it. She was at the highest point for miles around, and she could see the fighting raging around her for quite a distance. She giggled to herself and opened a bag made out of ‘leather’ and removed something that she and Grima had worked on. It was a tiara-like piece of headwear that would only be usable by someone or something with the head of a Rattan, and one the size of those of the members of the Five-Clawed Paw.

She placed the device onto her head and felt the pain of needles jabbing into her flesh and connecting to her nerves. She closed her eyes and opened them. Her beady red eyes were now glazed over and she held her hands aloft.

The macabre constructs of flesh, bone and sinew that she had brought to the fight suddenly stopped moving, only to start again as Snikty began to wave her arms like a conductor of an orchestra. He fingers twitched as she swung her arms and hands about and her tail twitched as it too danced in the air, undulating in seemingly random motions.

Snikty was directing the movement of every creature she had brought to the fight. The Wolf Rats, the Rat Trolls, the Abomination and more became nothing more than an extension of her will, utterly subservient and acting as just another limb, eye, ear, mouth or nose. Snikty’s pseudo hive-mind let her control the uncontrollable and steer the mad monsters she had formed into whatever direction she saw fit. With a unified mind and purpose, the savage monsters that had been brought to bear against the Beard-things hit harder, more accurately and with more cunning and brutality than ever before.

…

At the edge of the Dwarven fortress-city a hulking figure strode through the hole in the last wall. With every step it took, the area around it began to twist and reshape. The very air became corrupted and sickening as emerald sparks and flames popped in and out of existence and the very architecture around the creature began to alter itself. As the rag-covered figure with five glowing, sparking and burning crystal horns entered the ruined city, its gaze swept over the destroyed monuments and icons of a once great nation. Under its hood, its emerald-colored flames for eyes were filled with glee as its mouth twisted into a sinister smile.

It pointed its right claw out towards where the fighting was taking place and from behind it strode four 10-meter-tall Rattan warriors that seemed to have come from the smaller one’s shadow. The four massive Rattan colossi sped off towards the fighting as the rag-covered smaller one merely walked forward at a leisurely pace, opening portals along its path to help it traverse the vast distances.

The four towering summoned monsters reached the front line just before the Vermin-Queen did, and as they went about smashing any resistance that the Dwarves could offer with a mix of rogue, mage and warrior abilities, the Vermin-Queen merely walked through the ongoing carnage as if nothing was happening around her.

Any Dwarf that managed to approach her was killed in excruciating agony as emerald flames and electricity danced over their bodies and glowing green cracks ran through their flesh. No one could get close, not even her own subjects. All who tried had fallen, and no one had managed to step foot within 30 feet of her without paying the terrible price.

She had said not a single word as she silently strode through the parting sea of combatants, making her way towards the very edge of the city where the keep stood defiant. That structure was the last thing keeping her and her subjects from overrunning the underground and both slaughtering/ enslaving the savages who had taken her most prized and precious object of her affection from her. She would not let them get away with it. She would hunt their leaders and rulers down, one by one and force them to reveal the location of her precious Husband-King.

And if they could not give her what she wanted, then she would torture them until they did. She and her kind knew both how to prolong life and how to make it unbearable. They knew how to keep someone just shy of breaking irreversibly for decades and even centuries on end. Such torments were too lenient for these bastards, but they would have to suffice until she found her beloved Vaile, the one whom she and the rest of her kind adored so much.

Her flames-for-eyes condensed into the size of a dime as she focused her sight to allow her to see all the way to her goal, and with a single gesture a massive bolt of green entropic lighting flew towards the walls that protected her foe. As it impacted and sent rubble flying, her hideous visage once again contorted into an insidious grin, and she kept walking towards the keep, unfazed by anything happening around her.