“Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?”
 
-Jessie Pope
 
 
Marcus tossed and turned in his sleep, his dreams wracked by demons and tormentors.
 
He saw the baying crowd crying out for his blood, jabbing him with imaginary pitchforks like he really was a witch. At their head stood Steven Barenz, the head of the horned demons, shrieking out slogan after slogan about how much of a monster Marcus was – how he’d rot in obscurity. How he was a failure.
 
But above all the vicious taunts, there was one the dream-Marcus simply couldn’t shake off.
 
“Could you look at them?” the mocking voice of Barenz wailed in his ears. “Could you look at all the faces of those who suffered under the yolk of Generals and Tyrants, and tell them that the road to progress would be paved with their blood and broken bones?”
 
His dream-self had no answer, and just before he was thrown into the fiery depths of the abyss, and the whole college of screaming demons finally had their victory, he woke up to the sound of his alarm clock going crazy.
 
“Sh….Lud!”
 
Marcus wiped sweat from his forehead, feeling like a prized moron for having passed out on the couch. He checked the screaming clock and saw that it was around 1am. His hand fumbled in the dark for his glasses, finding that Maria had placed them on the table beside him as he slumbered.
 
“Mari,” he murmured. “You deserve so much better than this fool you shacked up with.”
 
He resolved that he might as well pluck himself up, pour himself some scotch, and work through the rest of the early morning. When it hit 5am he’d order something for Mari and serve her breakfast in bed. That would put her mind at rest. That would-
 
“..ai…alud!”
 
He turned his head towards his screaming alarm clock, wondering at the sound that was shrieking from its face. Was it broken? Again? Honestly, Mari had been right to suggest he get rid of it. But he couldn’t. Even though it was a busted, dust-caked relic, he had always had a soft spot for old, broken things.
 
“Sha…ud!”
 
Then again, that noise was just a little too annoying.
 
He pushed off from the couch and groggily approached the cackling clock, feeling more and more like the sound coming from the thing was not the regular sounds of a clock at all.
 
“Sh…alud!”
 
Now that he got closer, it sounded almost like a voice.
 
“…hai-alu…”
 
No, not one voice, but many.
 
Maybe he’d put that drink on hold…
 
“Shai-Alu-!“
 
It sounded almost like…a chant? A song?
 
Or…
 
“SHAI-ALUD!”
 
A summons.
 
As soon as the two syllables were howled in full, Marcus felt his whole body shift.
 
“What..?”
 
No, he realized. It wasn’t just his body. The room was spinning. The clock face was melting into the ground, each roman numeral on its face slowly slipping down the mantal piece like melting egg-yolks.
 
Around him, he saw the couch sink into the floor, his apartment table disintegrate entirely, and his floor begin to shake like an earthquake was about to tear through the whole college.
 
“I…I better wake Mari,” he told himself, trying to still his beating heart.
 
But the increasing volume of the chant started to gnaw away at his ears, and soon the words sung by a guttural chorus was all he could hear:
 
“SHAI-ALUD! SHAI-ALUD! SHAI-ALUD!”
He gripped his ears as the sound tore through him. The door to his bedroom simply shook like a leaf in the wind and then broke apart, sending splinters flying across his walls.
 
But the shock of all this was nothing compared to what he saw next.
 
His eyes flew to where his manuscript was sitting and saw that every single page was floating in the air. He watched in disbelief as his ink-filled notes began to slip away, sliding off each tatty page like a child had spilled paint over them.
 
“No!” he wailed, lunging at the flying scraps as they fizzled away with the rest of his room. “NO!”
 
He fell to his knees.
 
He had just looked at his hands.
 
His fingers twisted before him like elongated talons, slowly melting into the maelstrom of spinning furniture that his apartment had become.
 
And it was in this state that Mari finally entered the room.
 
“M…Marc…”
 
Her leg had been pierced by splinters from the broken bed. Her face was covered in blood. She limped towards him, falling to the ground and reaching out towards his terrified form.
 
“Mari…”
 
“MARI!”
 
Marc lunged for his girl just as the floor finally gave way, and the last thing he saw before he plummeted into darkness was the sight of Mari’s blood-streaked face.
 
…
 
“SHAI-ALUD!”
 
“SHAI-ALUD!”
 
“SHAI…ALUD!”
 
Skeever-Steelclaw of the Crimson-Eye Clan was running out of options.
 
The Kobolds had cornered his men in a cave off of the Black Gulch caverns, cutting off his supply lines and thinning his numbers by the second.
 
“Sire!” his second-in-command, Redwhiskers, screamed. “They come upon us again!”
 
“Be holding fast!” Skeever snapped back at the Claw-Leader. “Are you a worm or a rat?!”
 
“Be telling his to the others!” Redwhiskers wailed in protest. He only came up to Skeever’s chest. Even for a Ratman he was short. Still, he certainly possessed a voice that would carry.
 
“Be silencing yourself,” Skeever warned. “Or I will be gutting you before the Kobolds do!”
 
The Claw-Leader scurried off to muck in with what remained of Skeever’s meagre force. 30 Ratguard with – at best – decent training, who’s spears had at this point been abandoned in favor of their shields. They pushed together to hold the entrance of the cavern where Skeever and the head-priest conducted their desperate ritual, the arrows and bullets of their enemies flying over their heads.
 
Skeever looked at the beleaguered ratguard as the weathered the storm of the Kobold’s hail of projectiles from the other side of the gulch. Damned cowardly little demons! Even when they outnumbered his forced ten to one they still would rather hurt them from afar rather than kill them quickly.
 
The stalactites of the cave began to yield as more bullets and arrows slammed into them, pushing the ratman shield wall back inch by inch.
 
Even the most putrid, dung-eating ratcub would know that they were dead - that this pitiful holdout was nothing more than buying them what little time they had in the service of the He-Who-Festers.
 
And so, with little other option, Skeever had turned to his Head-Priest.
 
Deekius.
 
The Talon-Commander looked upon the priest with the same derision one would save for an albino-rat. He hated to even look in the aging priest’s direction.
 
But the orders of his King were paramount: every army, every squad – no matter how big or small – had to contain at least one priest so that He-Who-Festers would look upon their exploits with favor.
 
But looking at the ragged-clothed as he shook his staff like a child and spoke a name Skeever did not know to the uncaring walls of their cave, Skeever could not exactly be blamed for thinking that their God had abandoned them.
 
“How much longer will this be taking, priest,” he spat. His distrust in those who claimed to speak to the Gods was no secret.
 
Deekius barely paid him any attention. He simply continued dancing around the bloody Golb they had sacrificed on his makeshift altar (which, for the record, had required four of Skeever’s men to construct). Those same men, the priest insited, had to join him in his ridiculous chant.
 
“SHAI-ALUD! SHAI-ALUD! SHAI-“
 
“Enough with your ‘Shai-Alud!’” Skeever exploded, grabbing the priest’s staff with his gauntleted claw. “We have tried your silly ritual. Now, we will be doing it my way.”
 
Deekius’ beady old eyes gazed at Skeever under his hood. “Your way will see us all dead, Talon-Commander.”
 
The red storm of Skeever’s rage could be seen even through his fur. He grappled with the priest as his men looked on, feeling more hopeless with each passing second.
 
“When – will – you – be – understanding!” Skeever cried. “He-Who-Festers does not listen!”
 
“Your – lack – of -faith – is – being – your – weakness!”
 
“WEAKNESS!?” Skeever shrieked in response. “I – I will be showing you weakness, you water-bather! I will -!”
 
A stab of light bazed in the cavern, interrupting the heated conflict between priest and commander and searing into the thin retinas of every surviving Ratling. Every tail curled up in fear, and apprehension, and those forming the shield wall had to resist the urge to turn around and see what had just befallen their compatriots. Was it an attack from the rear? Had they unearthed a secret stash of dwarven explosives? Those runts did always love to leave booby-traps in these tunnels…
 
But Skeever and Deekius could not resist the urge to drop to their knees before the sight they now saw before them. The light struck the corpse of the Golb, exploding the bulbous body of the creature into a dozen bloodied chunks, and then began to take on form. First – a body shimmering and bright, then two arms and legs stretched out from within the otherworldly light that told the Ratlings exactly what they had just summoned.
 
A human.
 
As the piercing, blazing light finally died, the form of a man stood naked before them – hair disheveled and smelly, eyes rimmed with oddly shaped spectacles, and with eyes that spoke of his experience – eyes that bore into the soul of every Ratling so that those who met his gaze simply had to look away.
 
Even Skeever felt himself awed by the sight. He relinquished his grip on Deekius and dropped to his knees with the rest of the congregation, momentarily forgetting that there was still a battle raging outside.
 
“Praise be He-Who-Festers!” Deekius wailed to the stony sky above them all. “Our savior has come! Let his name be sung from the depths of the Underkingdom: SHAI-ALUD IS COMETH!”
 
Skeever gulped as he locked eyes with the human man and saw him open his mouth. What words he would say would go down in history. Right now, in this moment, Skeever was part of something so far beyond himself that he wished to commit it to his short memory.
 
Shai-Alud opened his mouth, blinked twice, and then opened it again:
 
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?”