Underkeeper Short Story 1.1 : Familiar

Hi all, I'm going to be posting the short story that I wrote for the release of book 1 over the next week. It is, as the title suggests, the story of how Bernt found Jori.

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“Don’t let them rat men see you, alright?” Dayle said. “They’re clever little shits, and fast. Don’t want ‘em clearing the nest before we torch it.”

Bernt nodded dumbly, following the older Underkeeper down the street toward the southern edge of the Lower District. They didn’t work here often, mostly because people here didn’t file a lot of complaints with City Maintenance. One look around the streets here was enough to see why. Pedestrians hurried by, eager to be elsewhere. Most of them weren’t human. There were goblins here and even the occasional gnoll. Rats and malnourished children skittered from one pile of garbage to the next, looking for morsels.

Technically, people here were just as entitled to a well-managed sewer system as everyone else. Technically, those children could also have been sent to live at Halfbridge’s orphanage. But technicalities didn’t matter here. Those kids most likely had parents – they just couldn’t feed them. And the condition of the sewer system didn’t really matter when the streets reeked of rotting filth regardless.

The neighborhood was referred to as the Old Tanner’s District, where all the city’s most malodorous professions had conducted their trades before they’d been banished just beyond the walls a few decades before. Now, it was a slum.

The fact that they were here now meant that the situation had gotten out of control. There was too much waste lying in the street and getting washed down into the sewers. Once the grates started to get clogged, the flow slowed down, and garbage started to build up. From there, rats had started to breed in earnest – and where rats flourished, rat men would inevitably follow.

Rat men were, according to Dayle, an unholy plague on civilization itself. Unlike the name suggested, rat men were not any more intelligent than normal rats. As it turned out, though, they didn’t really need to be any smarter than they already were. No, the only thing they’d actually been missing was opposable thumbs. At least until a particular egregious alchemical spill nearly two centuries earlier had solved that little problem for them.

“How do we find the nest without them noticing us?” Bernt wondered.

Dayle grinned. “Easy. Just follow your nose. Come here, I’ll show you.” He grabbed Bernt by the elbow and pulled him over to the nearest access shaft. “Stick your face in there and tell me what you smell.”

Bernt stared at the older man for a moment, trying to decide if he was playing a practical joke on him. Dayle had an odd sense of humor, and you couldn’t always take him at his word. Also, what Bernt could smell from here was bad enough. Sensing his reluctance, Dayle leaned over the shaft and wafted his hand at his nose, closing his eyes in feigned bliss. “Essence of Halfbridge sewer. You’ll be a connoisseur a couple of months from now. Go on!”

Reluctantly, Bernt leaned over the opening for a moment and shrank back with a grimace. It was even worse than he’d been expecting. It wasn’t just sewage, it was a horrific combination of rotting food, mold, shit and some unidentifiable chemical stench.

“It smells like death.”

Dayle grinned and nodded. “Death, right. Normal death though, mostly. This isn’t it. Let’s try the next one.”

Bernt dug in a small pouch at his belt for a bit of spicy jerky, and slipped some into his mouth, chewing quickly and bracing himself for the burn. He made it himself, and liked to keep some on him for a snack while he was working. Proper jerky was expensive to buy, but rat meat was free to those who were willing to go and get it. Bernt wasn’t picky. He’d spent some time in an orphanage growing up, and there wasn’t always enough to eat. One of the other children had taught him, and he’d never really stopped, even after the mage finders had brought him to the academy.

Rat meat wasn’t objectively delicious, but it was free and it gave your mouth something to do. To his delight, he’d discovered after starting his new job that the spices deadened his sense of smell somewhat, making it an essential asset for the nastier parts of his day.

The older Underkeeper led him to four more shafts and storm drains, checking the smell of each one. He was just starting to wonder again whether Dayle was messing with him when he leaned over another storm drain for a second and immediately backed up, rubbing at his nose.

“Ugh!” He shook his head, eyes watering. He coughed, and then straightened with a smile. “There we go. Give that a quick whiff. Not too much, though, it’s pretty pungent.”

Bernt didn’t want to. He really didn’t want to. But… this was the job. He had to learn to do it right. Besides, he liked Dayle. He was easy to work with, pragmatic, and an excellent teacher despite his unusual methods.

So, against his better judgment, Bernt did as requested.

He regretted it immediately. The smell didn’t just invade his nostrils, it burned his eyes. He reeled back, coughing violently and trying to get the awful caustic sensation out of his nose.

“Agh! What is that?!”

“Ammonia.” Dayle explained as Bernt got a hold of himself. “Rat nests always stink to high heaven, but it’s a lot worse with rat men.” He pointed to their left, back to the last normal-reeking access shaft. “It’s between here and that one over there.”

At Bernt’s blank look, he elaborated. “The sewers slope down a bit, toward the river. But all the bad air and stink goes up, right? If you check the shafts, it always comes up a bit upstream from the source, because the ceiling slopes along with the sewer. It’s like a reverse stream, but made of stink. You get it?”

“Sure. Yeah, okay. Stink goes uphill.”

“Good!” Dayle said, levering the heavy grate of the storm drain out with his small shovel. “Now, you’re gonna go and climb down over there while I make sure nothing comes up past this storm drain over here. You’ll have to move quick, but it shouldn’t be hard to do. Can’t really miss in a tight space like this here. Torch the entire thing and don’t hold back. I want to be able to toast my lunch over here, alright?”

Nodding dumbly, Bernt made his way back to the last access shaft, digging his wand out of a pocket as he did. The focus had been a lucky find in his first month on the job. Good magical focuses were made from exotic magical materials and inscribed with a complex network of runes that empowered specific kinds of spells or even took over some parts of shaping the spellform.

Bernt’s wand looked like garbage – as if an apprentice enchanter had been practicing their carving on a random stick and then dumped it. It couldn’t measure up to the real thing, but it still allowed him to cast more quickly and easily.

Opening the shaft, he climbed down into it, making as little noise as possible. The smell was incredible, even if it was nothing like what Dayle would be dealing with right now. Doing his best to ignore it, Bernt peered into the gloom and waited for his eyes to adjust. He’d expected there to be noise, but it was so quiet. Wouldn’t a huge nest of rat creatures be loud?

He looked closer. After a few seconds, a shapes finally began to form in the darkness – a massive mound of garbage. It was taller than he was and blocked nearly the entire tunnel. That was it. Focusing, Bernt immediately raised his wand and traced a rune in the air in front of him. He visualized the rest in his mind, guiding his mana as he activated the spellform. The whole process only took him about three seconds – pretty good for a fireball.

The roiling missile of yellow flame condensed at the tip of Bernt’s wand and shot out, impacting the mound a split second later. The incredible heat of the spell melted its way deep inside, leaving a gaping, glowing hole. The top of the mound collapsed down into the center as the entire thing caught on fire. Bernt wasn’t watching, though, he was casting again. Dayle had told him not to hold back, and he didn’t really get the chance to practice his pyromancy in the field very often.

The second fireball raised the temperature around the mount enough that even the smaller scraps of nearby garbage blackened and caught. The hot air rising off the flames was beginning to create a draft, but the radiant heat was so much that Bernt could feel the heat on his face despite the cool air coming up from behind him. Dayle would have his toasting temperatures over by the storm drain now. Bernt just needed to make sure nothing escaped down in his direction.

Still, he heard nothing but the crackle of the fire. Where were the rat men? Looking more closely at the garbage, Bernt caught sight of something strange, barely two steps in front of him on the ground. It was a rat. Sort of.

The thing was gigantic, as big as most cats, and its limbs were too long. Something had slit its stomach open from top to bottom and its head was missing. There was another one to his left, half buried in the garbage. And more, toward the burning mound. A lot more, now that he was looking for them. What in all the hells?

Disturbed, Bernt backed up. He climbed up the ladder and poked his head out of the shaft.

“Dayle? You might want to come and take a look at this…”