In my life, I am knowing only one thing for certain: I am loving my Queen"

- King Bekblast of Clan Marrow, five minutes before his consumption by Queen Eradeka

While the Queen sniffed Marcus like a voluptuous snake seasoning its meal, Shrykul, who measured up to about one eighth of his Queen's size, shuffled noiselessly into the room.

"This – this is being the Shai-Alud, dear," he said. "The one who is bringing us –"

"I KNOW WHO HE IS!" she screamed at him, throwing a torrent of spittle across his entire body. "I CAN SMELL THE SCENT OF THE UNCLEAN ONE UPON HIM! ARE YOU DOUBTING THE STRENGTH OF MY NOSE?"

"N-no, dear," Shrykul said with another shiver.

Marcus looked up then, much as it pained him, to see the eyes of the Queen for himself. Glazed over, pale as moonlight.

"You're blind…"

The words had left his lips before he'd even pondered if he should voice them. Behind, Shrykul stirred, but the Queen let a greasy smile smear itself across her face.

"I am not needing eyes to tell talent when it is being in front of me!" she howled. "Now, tasty-smelling human. Get on with it."

Marcus blinked up at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Must I be repeating my every thought! Are you males all deaf and dumb? Tell us how we will win this war!"

Shrykul tensed up as Marcus stood slowly, calmly, keeping his eyes on those of the heavily breathing Queen.

Once again, he sucked up his disgust.

"My…lady," he said. "I am bound for my home. Not for your war. Surely you can understand that."

The only female Ratman in Fleapit twitched for a moment, and then stretched around the form of the human like a cobra.

"Are you having children where you come from, Shai-Alud?"

Marcus did not try and escape. He got the sense that fear would kill him more than it would serve him right now.

"I do not. I have ne-"

"WELL, I DO!" she screamed in his face, returning to meet his gaze with such speed that Marcus was off-footed. "All you are seeing around you, every Rat – from smallest to biggest warrior – all of them are coming from this body!"

She indicated her stomach, as though it wasn't obvious.

"And a mother – a good mother – she loves her children. She is giving them life. She is watching them grow. She is nursing them on her own teats. Oh, oh how they bite and scratch. How they gnaw and pummel. How they test us so! Isn't that right, dear?"

"Yes, sweetheart. You are being ri-"

"How they make our kingdom run black with filth!" she continued, practically spitting in Marcus' face. "How they make this underground ours. Ours! It is all ours!"

She rose to her full height again, laughing at the ceiling.

"But – but now!" she screamed after her joy subsided. "How they DIE!"

She raked her claws against the wall, throwing torn pieces of stone and puss across the room while Marcus and Shrykul watched in silence. Marcus – because he was stunned. Shrykul – because this was just another day.

"Slimy, soapsucking toad!" She wailed to the black heavens above her. "SKEGGA! He kills our children. He tears their limbs. He sends his armies in their Kleansing. He is meaning to kill me, then my sisters. Yes! The hubris of a toad – an evil, dumb, postulating toad! He dares to be harming my children. My pretty little things…"

She finally turned back to Marcus.

"You are supposed to be the hero!" she squealed. "The leader of our armies! You are supposed to be winning war. Prophecy says so, oh – oh yes! I do not need eyes to know this. I can hear it. I am hearing whispers of you on the winds of the underworld. Now you are here – you are being ours! And you – yes – you shall be our sword."

"I – understand your position," Marcus said after quickly looking to Shrykul for some help and realizing, almost instantly, that such help was not forthcoming. "But one of your priests pledged to me that I would be brought home if I aided the forces of Skeever in coming here. I am not a human that can help you regardless, your Majesty. Even getting this far, my victories were based largely on luck. You have your enemies on the backfoot now, that should be enough to-"

"PRIESTS!" the Queen shrieked like a banshee. "Priests! Oh, how they are boring me so. How I am detesting their stories and scheming behind my husband's back. Oh, yes – he is so, so busy ruling his kingdom while it falls to pieces. The kingdom that is being sustained by nothing but my life!"

"Now, dear," Shrykul began. "Marcus does not need to know –"

"HE SHALL KNOW WHAT I PLEASE HIM TO!" the worm-wife roared back. "This place is being mine – mine! You are making your fancy speeches while I fester in here. You are wearing the crown, but I am holding the power. The power of life. LIFE! The only power you can never be having."

Shrykul shrunk back, humbled, while Marcus's temper began to flare.

"I did not come here to be privy to a marriage dispute," he said tetchily. "I must go to your Prime Putrefect. If you deliver him to me I make you assurances that I will guide the strategy of your armies before I leave."

The Queen glowered down at him with her vestigial blind eyes and laughed after she understood what he had said.

"HAH!" she wailed to no one in particular. "He is making the same demand of me that I make of him! Oh, dear, sweet-smelling, naïve little human – we are both wanting the Putrefect delivered to us!"

…What?

Movement from Shrykul behind. He was signaling to the doormen to open the gate again. It seemed, finally, that they had arrived at the point.

"My dear, sweet Putrefact," the Queen was wailing like a child, puss-filled tears streaming from her bulbous eyes. "Loving, caring Putrefact…the only one of those detestable little men of the faith that is deserving to bask in my flatulence! A pox most foul upon Skegga – bastard, fat-toad Skegga and his scum-sucking minions! He is taking my precious Putrefact from me! ME! He steals our favorite child and sends his armies after us? I will be having his head on a pike! I will be seeing his entrails coat my lair! I will be plucking out his eyes and serving them to his prisoner – my beautiful, loving Putrefact. My – my SILAS!"

By this point, Marcus was allowing Shrykul to guide him out of the chamber while the Queen thrashed about in the bodies of her dead children.

"SILAS! SILAS! SIIIILLLLLLAAAAAAAAS!"

The doors slammed shut and the bolts were quickly re-done.

And Marcus stood beside Shrykul saying nothing, simply staring at the bars of the gate while they rattled against the Queen's exhortations.

"You," Shrykul finally said. "You are understanding our problem."

Marcus's voice was barely a whisper. "It's a big one."

He turned to the rat suddenly, looking passed the jagged-iron crown to see the weary eyes of the rat beneath.

Suddenly his 'occupational hazard' had been made eminently clear to Marcus.

"Is she…always like that?"

Shrykul shook his head solemnly. "She is suffering for the good of all of us. You must understand – she sees so many of her younglings die in the wake of our copulation. She has birthed generations, and the price of those lives is being many, many deaths and stillbirths. My priests are telling me that such things are affecting the mind in…bad ways."

Marcus shivered as he recalled the image of the bulbous, worm-body that dwelled within the doors before him. Literally nothing more than a wailing, angry baby factory.

And beside Marcus stood her devoted little gigolo. The only rat that was permitted to mate with her in the entire kingdom. Probably, Marcus reflected, this was because such mating attempts posed dangers in themselves. He doubted the Queen was always a willing participant in such unions…

"You are thinking we are a disgusting people once again," Shrykul said as he began walking back up the tunnel to his throne room. "But world is being cruel. Underworld – even more so. It is not caring for sentimentality. What matters is generations and survival of kingdom."

"That," Marcus said. "I can almost understand. But had I been summoned on the other side of your Black Gulch, and I was shown what you just revealed to me, I believe your Fleapit would not stand to see another day."

Shrykul stopped and looked back, both his guards bearing their spears at the heresy spoke by the human.

Slowly, the rat-king raised his hand and coaxed them to lower their weapons.

"An honest human?" Shrykul said. "It is being a rare thing, indeed. You are of course implying that the only reason you remain with us is because we are having a way for you to return home."

Marcus nodded. "No matter how noble your intentions seem, King Shrykul, this is a truth I won't keep from you."

The King of the Red-Eyes smiled thinly in the darkness of the Queen's tunnel.

"Then you know my terms," he said. "Win this war and you will be finding our Putrefact. Only he has the power to send you back to the realm beyond."

Marcus's fists tightened behind his back.

"Be taking the night to think on this," Shrykul said as he turned his back. "Be taking the stairway outside my throne and find your room beside your comrades. Be resting. Be deciding in the morning. I am hoping, for all our sakes, that you will be making the right choice."

Marcus watched him go with barely restrained fury building up in his throat. He wanted to scream. He wanted to beat his bare fists upon the door frame of the vile creature he had just seen and issue a roar to match her own. Instead, he began following the King's path, fists still clenched, as his mind focused on the image of a single person.

Deekius…

His hand inadvertently clenched on the hilt of his dagger.

He was going to pay that rat a little visit.

###

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