Ratqueen
This story was made using the solo RPG: Rattenkönigin, by Abbax.
Darkness scratching, the squeal of young, gnawing and ravenous, the HUNGER grows. Instincts many, a need to scurry, fnd the places safe and dark. Nowhere truly safe, nowhere to escape the clawing need for food.
We are many, and the many are safe. Smell of fur and flesh, air filled wit foul rot and dirt. A nest of castoffs, trash and refuse that hides our coveted treasure, our food, our young, our selves. They hunt us, but they do not find us.
Instinct. No time to think or plan, no time to prepare or horde. Survival. Bite. Claw Feed. Then scurry away to live another day.
We survive.
We dream.
We sleep in nests of smells and bones. We nurse the young and then let them die. We steal and cheat the world of its refuse, and we sleep to do it all again. We sleep. We scurry away into our dreams.
We dream the same, we many teeth. We dream of feasts and screaming songs. We dream of the moon, uncovered by dog paws and metal traps. We dream of freedom from these pits, and a world coated with our smell.
Then we woke, the many of us, and found we were not just many, but one. Our tails tied, our dreams had been one. A dream free of fear and pain. No longer chained to the leftovers of the world, we were many teeth, tied to each and each to the other.
Instinct. We bit and clawed and tried to escape. It is a terrifying thing to be so linked. To see we were many and not one, we knew at once our fates were tied as our tails. How many had we seen chewed by dog jaws, trapped by metal wire, drowned in poison and we safely away in darkened tunnels. So many!
Now when one died, so did we all. A single death would spread to the many, and there would be no escape.
No escape.
We could not run, we many teeth. looked in different directions, fent the air move differently across our backs, our forwards were backwaeds and sideways and we had no destination. We were cornered by ourselves.
Back to back.
There were as many of us as claws on a paw, and each had claws and teeth and HUNGER.
So we went.
Knew we the safe places, the bounties, the pieces of cast-off-life where we could eat our fill. Scrabbling and angry, we fought off who we could, but some of us were lost to the frenzy. A body of many that was not familiar struck out at itself. We cut and bit and hurt ourselves as much as the others did. We lost pieces of ourselves to the anger. They died squealing in agony and the cries are with us still. Their tails remain though we chewed the bodies free. We cannot undo the knots that bind.
Though we feasted on the refuse of the sewer, perhaps we might have lost ourselves had a new voice not sung to our satiated souls. New strength came to our many teethed body as they sought to join our bacchanal, our furious revelry.
How did their tail become tied to us? We learned the secret then and there. A joining of shrieking and squealing that frightened the very bricks around us. We were frightened. So was she. Our bodies became one; many made more.
She gave herself to us. She wanted what we had; not just the HUNGER, but the anger, the teeth, the claws, the confusion of our bodies mirrored in her own.
She wanted the dream, and so we gave it to her, sleeping together in a knot of tails, limbs, and heaving breasts. Surrounded by the smell of us, we dreamed together.
The beast came quickly, silently, like a monster born of our nightmares. Against the dream it howled, teeth red and sharp. It’s claws tore at our nests and scattered the few around us. It tore our flesh and tossed us aside. Though we were many teeth and claws, we ran.
We lost more of ourselves to the beast. It was not our body that hurt us, it was the monster; big, black, and ten times our size. It tore bodies free from our embrace, leaving trails of blood leaking from our backs — but we survived. We scratched and bit, we many teeth and claws. With every bite it gave, we punished it for its hubris before we escaped.
The few saw what we had done, and so too did our allure grow. They sought to join us, and we let them. All who wished were welcomed to our bed and feasts. They sacrificed themselves to become our body, and so too did their tails join with us.
The tails of the lost remained. If we could have untied them, we would not. Every tail a lost soul, marking us with fleshy wrinkled scars, trailing blood between our legs.
But the scars were behind us, so we learned to move forward.
Not all of the few admired us or saw the beauty in our union. They fought for the food we found, the rotten leftovers from the world above. Sewage was our verdancy, refuse our bounty. Survival is not for the mild and we would not be mild. We lost many to the daily struggle, though fortune saw we never starved.
They tried to trick us, the monsters above. half-eaten feasts lulled us to devour unquestioning, but our many noses smelled the poisons before we ate too deep. We dwindled in number from many to few, but always did one of the few see us and accepted our beauty.
They too shared the dream. A dream free from Monsters who called us monsters. Free from the small who called us pests. Free from the world that made us beasts, where true abundance let us be.
We licked our wounds, our severed tails. Every scar a lesson, a memory, a piece of us that shaped our song. We learned to survive the way we always did, though pain and suffering — no greater parents have we known.
At last, we could bear it no longer. Our anger and HUNGER drove us forward like an army. We were a rolling tide, our teeth carving away at brick and concrete. We were running no more, instead the soul of mad and bloodied jaw. Blood was our honeyed feast, and more few claimed themselves ours. We spread our smell far and wide, our screeching song echoed down the tunnels and over waters foul.
The beast, the monstrous beast, the servile slave of the monsters above, stood between us and the heavens. We found it, hunted it instead of waiting for it to find us. Fangs of gray flashed in the dark, seeking our flesh. It charged us with eyes of burning red, flecked foam on its cheeks.
What madness had poisoned us that we did not run? We refused. We could see the light from between its legs, heard the howling winds behind its breath. Its scars glistened in the dark as we screeched our song to its waiting ears. Our teeth were sharp, our screaming fierce. We were many, and we would not lose another voice to the howling.
We had another feast. The flesh was fresh and succulent, the blood bright and warm. We ate and drank and the promise of more drove us deeper into its body.
We were not strong enough to kill it. It took more from us than we from it. It weakened our song. We cry for them still, their tails will never leave our knot. They are still a part of us. All the few are.
Perhaps someday we will be strong enough to kill the beast, but we care little for it now. Before our glittering claws and gnarled teeth, the beast fled!
We are free!
The moonlight kisses our fur, the night winds blow through our teeth. We feel the dirt and concrete beneath our claws, and together our anger and HUNGER thrive above the sewers. Beware, feasters and monsters of the world of men! Beware you who train beasts to feast on the many beneath your feet, you who create a sewer from your waste and call it verdancy, a bounty of your offal and call it civilization. We will spread our smell until it overpowers yours, strengthened by the pain and suffering until the chains rot and crack. We tie ourselves together, and we will rise.
We scratch the heavens.
We are many teeth.
Rat Queen!