Chapter 23:

The Lunatic and Her Loyal Rat

The Wolf Among Rats (Old)


I wake up in the middle of the night because I hear my name being called. I look at
the entrance to the house and see a dark silhouette standing there, beckoning me to
follow her. “Aroura?”

She disappears behind the wall. Is this the only time she can perform her
experiments? I get up to follow her, being careful not to wake anyone else up. When I exit the house, I see her down towards the eastern gate waiting. When I start
walking towards her she begins to run. What is she doing? I run after her until we
arrive at the eastern gatehouse.

“Aroura, what are you doing? Why did you call me here?”

“I want to show you something.” I can’t clearly see her face, but there’s no doubt its
her. She walks along the wall until she finds the brick that she pushes in. A very
narrow passage opens up all the way through the wall.

“Aroura, what are you trying to show me?”

She turns around, but I still can’t see her face. “Something beautiful. I want you to
see it. Come on, follow me.”
She drags me through the passage and outside the wall.

“Did you forget that there is an army out here? What are you doing?”

“Fret not, they’ll not notice two people under the veil of night.”
Then she bolts straight for the forest. For Lunatic’s Spires. They were called that
because all forms of monsters roamed those gigantic trees and some of the trees
further back in the forest towered higher than the top of the castle. The monsters
didn’t leave the forest, so it was safe to live right next to it but entering it meant
death! And she was running straight for it! I don’t trust her, but I can’t just let her die
out there alone! I need to pull her back! As I run after her, I hear the passage behind
us close. Is she trying to get killed!?

I try to shout quietly enough so that only she hears me. “Aroura, stop!”
But she keeps running. How is she so fast? She reaches the forest’s edge and slows
down enough for me to follow her through the brush. I’m slowly catching up to her
but not fast enough. We need out of here now! Trees blur as I pass by and random
branches keep smacking me in the face. Thorns grab my legs and I can hear
something large walking in the distance. Make that lots of large things.

I find her standing in a narrow clearing and take her hand. “We need to leave now!”
A spider the size of a house appeared at the edge of the clearing where we came
from. That was the many large things I heard. It was struggling to maneuver through the trees but when it spotted us it stopped. Its fuzzy mandibles twitched and its
many pitch-black eyes gleamed in the pale moonlight. It just found snacks! I
practically tear Aroura’s arm off as I drag her in the other direction through a thick
patch of trees.

“What were you thinking!?” She doesn’t say anything. I hear the spider running after us as it struggles to weave through the trees, its thunderous footsteps overtaking
the sound of breaking trees. What can we do in this situation? We’re bound to run
into more if we keep running, but we can’t-
Something grabs my legs and pulls me through the underbrush. Then I roll down a
rocky slope and onto a smooth stone floor.

I slowly get up and call out “Aroura!”
But no response. I can’t see anything anymore, but I can hear strange voices calling
out to me. None of them are Aroura’s. I can’t hear the spider or anything above me, but I drew my sword anyway. I feel the rocky slope I slid down. There’s no way I’m
getting back up that way. I continue to feel along the walls for anything, but to no
avail. There’s nothing here but moss and stone walls. Then an old wooden door
slowly creaks opens. A light barely pours into whatever room I’m standing in. I walk towards the door and peer inside.

Within, I find a cathedral. Moonlight floods in from the windows revealing an ornate podium, large destroyed benches, vegetation that covered most of the surfaces in
the room that renders ancient decorations unrecognizable. In the middle of swirling shadows stood a vase. A singular vase sitting on a large bed of flowers. They’re all a vibrant purple with the pedals growing all over the upper half of their stalks. I walk
into the room and the door slams behind me. I try to open it, but it won’t budge. I
try again and again, and even end up slamming it with the hilt of my sword. The
door remains unfazed, as though someone was keeping it shut.

I pick up some of the benches so I can escape through the windows, but they fall
apart from the moss eating away at them for countless years. I slowly march forward against every survival instinct I have. The voices and shadows push me towards this vase. They intensify as I get closer and closer. I pick up a rock. I’m going to destroy
this vase. I huck the stone as hard as I can at the vase and it flies through it. The
decoration shatters and falls apart and the shadows and voices disperse. The door
might open now.

I turn back to the door, when I hear something move behind me. I quickly turn
around and am pounced by an impossibly large shadow. It pins my arms to the

ground and shoves itself into my chest. The pain is unbearable. It feels as though
fire rages through my veins while I’m getting torn in half! Horrific images pass
through my head of death and destruction! My screams echo off the cathedral!










I failed. I failed I failed I failed I… Failed? What? Failed what? Where even am I? I’m
sitting on a stone wall and there’s buildings and lots of wooden spikes beneath me. A light rain barely pats my head. I’m on the city’s walls? I look down to analyze myself and find blood. Dried blood covering my hands and forearms, but I don’t think any
of it is mine. I don’t feel injured. But there’s tears and holes in my clothes with more
dried blood staining the edges of the tears. And my armour is falling apart. My
sword’s gone? Where’d it go?

The last thing I remember from last night. I was chasing after Aroura! Where’d she
go? Is she fine? Where would she be if she was fine? Last time, a knight just took her back. I stand to look out to Lunatic’s Spires, but my eyes were caught by something
different. The Karvithian army… Was lying in ruins. At least the section from the
forest to the main gate was. Siege machines they were constructing had fallen to
splinters, corpses litter the ground, and any tents had been torn to ribbons. The
path of destruction leads straight into the forest. Did they anger something from
within? Something that was able to kill an entire army and escape unharmed? I can
only imagine something so terrifying.

As I stare in awe of the destruction it occurred to me. Their army was only
concentrated on the western gate. But the forest was to the east. Now that I look
closer, I can see goblin corpses along with all the humans. The illusion was lifted.
This is how much was hiding? We wouldn’t have stood a chance. They would have
easily overpowered us with pure numbers, even if they didn’t construct the
trebuchets to tear down our walls. Even with so many of them destroyed by some
monster, I can’t see us winning this. Unless the King has something big up his sleeve
we might be doomed.

“Where were you last night?” Toross was standing behind me, nose tilted upward. I
answer him honestly.

“I’m not sure. Last I remember I was chasing Aroura into Lunatic’s Spires, but that
can’t be right.”

“It would explain the blood on your hands and your ragged state.” That makes some sense, but why would Aroura be running into the forest? And how could I forget
about something as dangerous as running into the forest at night? I doubt he knows, but I decided to ask anyway.

“You wouldn’t happen to know if Aroura is safe, would you?”

He looks at me with a face of disgust. “I thought you didn’t trust the Princess?”

While that was true, I don’t wish death upon her. She’s been a friend through all this, even if it was false. If possible, I wanted to keep her alive before we took down the
King and maybe even get her to join my side. “I don’t. But it would spill out bad for us if she ended up dead.”

He sighed. “No. I don’t. We sent Maheed back to the generals to inform them the
Karvithian army was falling apart. When he returns, he can tell us.”

I suppose there isn’t any point worrying about it for now then. Although I doubt I can shake it from my mind. “Do you have one of those viewing glasses? We should scout the Karvithians.”

He looks at my hands, which I forgot were covered in blood. “I’d rather avoid getting my glass dirty.”

There’s no way that his hands are clean too. We’ve all been fighting to the death in
the mud. “Don’t act like your hands are… Why are your hands spotless?”
Now that I look at him… He’s completely clean. As though he’s never even touched
the mud. At all. We don’t have chances to bathe so… When?

He proudly smiles and raises his chin at me. “I happen to take cleanliness very
seriously. I’ve told you that you may join me whenever you wish, have I not?”

He’s never… I look to the ground in contemplation. I have to search through the
memories of him rambling in the background. Its taking everything I have to
remember Toross during my conversations with the other captains and in the end I
come up empty. “As… Flattering. As that would be, no you haven’t.”
I’m sure he hasn’t.

Now he just looks offended. So, I guess he looks normal. “Have all my words simply flown into your head and left the other side?”

“No, it’s more like they knocked, but I never let them in. So, can I have that glass
now?”

Now he’s going on one of his rants. He paces back and forth explaining that his
words are more than rabble to simply ignore. He doesn’t even notice when I snatch
the glass from its holster on his waist. And he’s going on about how I don’t pay
attention?
Looking at the carnage from so far, makes the destruction feel fake. It’s an
uncomfortable feeling. None of the bodies are crushed so I don’t think it was
something big that got them. It looks more like they were killed with blunt blades.
Like they were ripped open by swords, but also like it just smacked them with such
force that the area blew off.
As I surveyed the area, I noticed, no one was cleaning up. The corpses would no
doubt spread disease if not taken care of soon.

My attention panned over to the living side. Most of them wore mortified
expressions openly, like they had watched the massacre from last night and
survived. Or like they were next? Could they be attacking soon? What worried me
just as much was the ogres. Two giant monsters as tall as a house wore armour that looked like it was made of scraps. It covered most of their greyish-green skin, save
for the face and spots where they couldn’t put it, like the back of the knees and
inner elbows. Two large tusks protruded out of their faces like a boar with scraggly
white beards hanging from their chins. I couldn’t find the wizards.

My attention turned back towards the dead side at the biggest concentration of
death. There I found yet another ogre, or… What was left. And a familiar object. A
wizard mask. It was blood stained and its owner was turned to mincemeat a short
distance away.
The depiction of the Sun and Moon were smiling. It made for an unnerving sight
amongst all the corpses. They almost looked like they were smiling at me.

I shook my head and handed the glass back to Toross. I didn’t want to think about
that either. When the glass smacked Toross in the chest he was startled. As though
he were dreaming and me hitting him brought him back to reality. “You! You thief!”

“Calm down, I cleaned my hands in the rain before taking it. More importantly, have you looked at the carnage? The wizard with the Sun and Moon mask and an ogre are among the dead.”

He calmed down at the sound of a dead mage. “Truly? I had seen the ogre, but not
the mage. Whatever came out of that forest did us a greater service than originally
thought. That still leaves three however.”

“And I think they may be attacking today.” He was skeptical, but I explained my
reasoning and he agreed. They looked like us when we were marching from training
to the front. As we prepared various strategies against the army and their ogres a
jarcoban courier approached.

“Captain Kar. Come with me. The King has summoned you.” That made my heart
sink like a stone in a lake.

“Why just me?”

“I don’t ask. Now hurry, I’m already late.” How could I refuse the King? Besides, I
could figure out whether or not Aroura survived. Maybe if my head was on the line,
she could get it off? I can only hope, as I sprint in the light rain with the courier.