So there was good and bad news. The good news was that, in the thirty-two years since Geela last created a lifelike mimic to relay information back to her, she had definitely gotten stronger, which meant her illusion was giving her a reasonably clear picture.

The bad news was that there wasn’t anything to see. As the illusion meandered through the cavern, it became clearer (or less clear) as she walked that the entire region may very well just be a big massive cloud of darkness. Was Hari really the only one who gave a damn about his region? Given Hari seemed just as powerful and competent as his siblings, Geela really couldn’t imagine that it took that much extra work to make your region at least semi-liveable. Were the others just so lazy?

These were the thoughts that grumped through Geela’s head as her spectre wandered around the region, occasionally sending back a snarky non-comment about the nothing she was wandering through.

“Mmm, still not much to see. Are you enjoying this as much as I am? I’m having a blast in here, personally. You know, you probably could have done this yourself.” The thoughts were almost loud enough that it was as though Geela were audibly hearing it. “This was a lot of work for very little reward.”

“Why don’t you shut up and listen then. I gave you more than one sense for a reason.” The snark was fine when addressed at others, but Geela was getting tired of receiving it.

“I don’t think I need to be hearing this from you,” the illusion said.

“I definitely don’t need to hear it from you. I only want to hear one thing, and that’s whatever is in this cavern.” Really very unpleasant, which Geela normally was very okay with. Just… not now.

As the illusion’s mental chatter subsided, Geela first picked up nothing but the sound of water dripping and the occasional splash. Not a particularly interesting start, and Geela could all but feel Hari and Darkos’s winding further and further away from her. But then, after another few seconds, she started picking up a new sound. Her shoulders relaxed with relief. So this wasn’t all a total waste of time. There was a shifting, brushy noise, maybe the sound a fur cloak made while sliding across carpet. Also a squeaking noise. At first Geela thought maybe it was the sound of something eeking across a polished floor, but no. It was far too animalistic. So fur and squeaking, that said some kind of rodent, but there was a sound that was unnervingly missing.

Any kind of pattering indicating claws or paws or feet or anything. No sound of wings buzzing or fluttering or flapping, no sound of jumping or hopping. It was as if whatever creatures existed in the region couldn’t move. Except their noises moved. The squeaking moved. A single, extended squeak might make it several inches. These things were moving.

“Bend down,” Geela projected to the illusion. “Get your head as low to the ground as possible.”

As the illusion bent over, Geela heard the shuffling noise increase, but again, there was no clear sound of limbs treading over rock. Instead there was a newer, quieter, oozing noise. It was contained, as if someone were shaking a filmy bag of organs.

“I don’t like this.” Geela wasn’t even really sure who that thought had come from, her or the illusion. Both were definitely thinking it.

The illusion continued her walking for another ten minutes as Geela formulated a plan B. Either she could try to introduce another sense, perhaps let her spectre feel or smell, or she could introduce a new element into the room. The former would be safer, but the latter would be more exciting and educational. And quicker, which was definitely something Geela had to consider.

“Alright, listen up. I’m going to send out a burst of light. Just an illusion, so it’ll probably die quick, but I want you to send back as clear a snapshot of what you see as possible.” Geela dredged deep within her inventory of illusions. She needed this to work. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I assume I’ll be ready whenever you decide you are,” the illusion said back. “What happens to me after this, anyway?”

Geela contemplated this. “I could dissolve you but I could also keep you there to record the audio of what happens after. They’ll probably try to attack you and get confused when they can’t touch you, and that might be interesting.” She barely gave it another thought. “Let’s try that.”

“Wonderful.”

“Just delightful.”

“Dreadful idea.”

“Shut up Bugsqutio.” This time both Geela and her illusion were in sync, with the illusion thinking this as the order left Geela’s mouth. Geela wasn’t sure if she loved or hated how similar she and herself were.

“Alright, on the count of three,” Geela said.

“You know, you really don’t need to give a warning,” the illusion said. “I can’t possibly be taken off guard by you.”

Geela wrinkled her nose. She never ordinarily gave signals but Darkos made so much fun of her for forgetting. Of course it would be that the first time she actually remembered,that  she got sass for it.

“Enough from you,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”

With that, she triggered a warm, yellow light that grew brighter and brighter over the course of three seconds before going out. Anything too sudden or bright would just cause blindspots in her eyes but too dim and it wouldn’t permeate the illusion of blackness.

The long exposure trick certainly worked in capturing some images. They were just, perhaps, not images Geela ever wanted to see again.

“Eurgh! Yuck yuck yuck. Did you see that? Did you see those? Get me out of here, they’re coming for me!”

Geela didn’t blame her illusion for panicking. Geela would have panicked. Geela was very much grateful it was an illusion in there and not her dealing with those rat… things.

‘Rat’ described them reasonably well but ‘thing’ was an important addition because they looked like rats if someone got rats very wrong. Picture a rat. Then expand its body to about a hundred and fifty percent. Remove its limbs. Liquify its internal bones and organs, keeping the head in one piece and skin still encompassing its body. Give the rat the ability to ooze about on the ground like a slug, just much faster. Then heap hundreds on top of each other in a catacombs style network of crumbling archways and broken stone walls.

They all surged away, a barely morphous collective as the light spread among them. As the light began to fade, however, they turned their leaking red eyes on Geela’s illusion and began swarming her.

“Rats,” she hissed under her breath. “Rats rats rats.” Rats in a dilapidated city? This was the work of Nefaria, the queen plague rat herself, scourge of the Celestial City for decades. Nefaria had been almost entirely responsible for the dissolution of the largest church in the city. Almost because Geela had polished it off and taken Celeste’s followers as her own. She’d felt pretty proud back then, watching Nefaria get eaten alive by Geela’s old colleague, Berta the Blood Witch, but now she was feeling nothing but icky phantom trails of giant rat slugs oozing over her.

Rats and ooze shouldn’t belong together, yet here Geela was, using ‘ooze’ and ‘rat’ in the same sentence twice. Three times, technically.

“I can’t see but I can hear them squirming all over me.” The moan of the illusion punctuated Geela’s thoughts. “Get me out of here.”

“Can they see in the dark?” Geela asked. “If you move, do they follow?”

“Urgh.” This small grumble was followed by a brief pause, during which the sound of rats on rats on rats grew quieter. “Doesn’t seem like it. So gross and stupid.”

“Just means they can’t see through the illusion. They’re not blind, but they still probably get by using a different sense.” Geela could test only one other sense though: sound. Every other sense would require giving the illusion a scent or physicality. One was out of Geela’s abilities for the time being, the other was impossible.

“You want me to make a noise?” The illusion sounded rather put out at this.

“You won’t even see them on you. Just yowl or something.”

“Mortals yowl,” the illusion said, voice dripping with scorn.

“Sing an aria then.” Geela was running out of patience. “Just pick something we used to sing a lot and get moving.”

“Ninety nine tankards of mead on the wall. Ninety nine tankards of mead.”

Geela bristled at the monotonous tone, suddenly transported way back to being stuck in a crate with Darkos, stowing away in the cart of two traders (technically drug dealers), while he passed the time.

“It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it,” he says. “I’ll sing a few verses by myself to get you an idea of how it goes.”

Gods, Geela wondered just how miserable Hari must be right now. The mental image made her smile.

“They’re moving!” The rats had, thank the heavens, interrupted the illusion before she could get past verse one. “They heard me for sure.”

“Keep singing and keep moving around,” Geela instructed. “I’m gonna hop out of mental contact with you real quick and see if I can hear anything myself.”

As she severed connection with the spectre, she craned her own ears.

“Come on,” she muttered under her breath, “anyone nearby?”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, you ought to be more quiet.”

It was all Geela could do to stop herself from screaming. She clasped both hands over her mouth as her eyelids flipped open to reveal the stern, scolding face of VoidCrusherXX.

“The rattish are rather keen listeners.”

Geela’s face screwed up in an expression of rage so intense that she knew it didn’t look good and still didn’t care. She wanted to ask why she hadn’t heard him sneak up, but there was the very real possibility he hadn’t been thinking enough to trigger her psychic wards. Bugsquito had. VoidCrusherXX had not. Her chest began to rise and fall increasingly quickly as she contemplated briefly whether she had enough energy to keep up her illusion and also smite him. But all she had in terms of smiting was the electricity from the static trapper, and she’d need that if the rattish managed to find her.

When the rattish managed to find her. It was only a matter of time, given she’d somehow been snuck up upon by the loudest entity in the Void Realm.

“Does your mouth come with volume control?” Geela asked, voice tight enough to strangle the man. “I’m trying to listen.”

A look crossed his face, something with a furrowed brow and pursed lips, something that might have been thinking on a person who could think. “Hmm. Well, not much to listen to, luckily.” He grinned then, punching her on the shoulder. “Good thing too. Those rat monsters are as hideous as they are sneaky.”

Geela turned back to the entrance of the cave, but VoidCrusherXX was now stomping over to the mouth, steel toed boots clanging with each step.

“I can, of course, keep lookout for you if you’re at all interested.” He put a hand over his brow and peered within. “I’m not sure what your intent here is, though.”

Maybe the Void Realm leeched intelligence. Maybe that’s how Noire was so smart. It fed from the brain cells of those within until they were rendered down to a moss-like level of common sense. This would explain Bugsquito and even Scout who, for all its trying, really wasn't much better. On the other hand, Darkos had been, at least from what she’d gathered in his letter, really kicking it up a notch. He’d escaped Hari, resurrected Geela, and managed to throw Hari off the scent, all while gathering intel about Noire. On a proverbial third hand, however, he was a creature of the void, so maybe the effects were reversed, and he got smarter. Then again, on the fourth hand, Bugsquito and Scout were also of the void, and they were blithering idiots.

So maybe they were all just idiots.

“I’m not seeing much,” VoidCrusherXX reported. “Miss, if your intent is to run, I do suggest you get started. These monsters are rather slippery.”

“I’m not a Miss.” God how did he manage so well to get on her last nerve? “You’re looking directly into an illusion of shadow, you won’t be able to see anything—” She stopped as she felt something rather unexpected. An odd tug. Then the unmistakable sound of electricity, small scale, like a little static shock, pulsing arithmetically.

Geela looked down at her side in a heartbeat to see something long and dark stretched up from the ground to her hip. Shadows crept into Bugsquito’s cage hanging there, causing the lightning bars to flicker, and a wormlike tail probed around the pouch on her belt.

A small clap of thunder sounded as Geela discharged a sizable chunk of electricity from her trapper into the horrific monster that was trying to free her prisoners. She winced as it went off, but didn’t have time for second thoughts or regrets as the shadowy rat monster flew across the hall and slammed into the wall. It slid down like a ratskin bag of organs, landing on the ground with a squelch that reminded Geela of a rotten stick of salami.

“Miss. That was unwise. You’ve given our position away!” VoidCrusherXX all but bellowed the words.

Geela didn’t waste her breath informing him that he’d already done it. Nor did she waste her breath informing him that obviously the rats already knew where they were since she’d just blasted one off her.

Instead she crouched down besides the lumpy bag of bones and viscera that was the rat monster. She couldn’t tell if it was alive, but given the monstersquitos had vanished when dead, Geela theorized that it was. It also looked like it could shift its form pretty easily. Did she just kill it here or think of a way to add it to her growing prison?

She had to try. Just try. The only part of the monster that appeared to keep an actual form was its head and tail. The tail was greasy and slippery, though, and she wasn’t eager to touch it. So instead she moved to its head. The thing had rather large ears and its mouth hung open, slack and limp. An idea crawled into her head and she tore off a length of her cloak, a long strip of fabric about six feet. She fashioned a needle out of the darkness on the walls and pierced it through each ear and then through the cheeks on both side of the rat’s mouth. Then she threaded the cloth through the holes, starting with its ear, going through the mouth, tying it tight so that it was stuck shut. Then she fished it through the second ear. Finally she threw the rat on the remainder of her cloak and balled it up, tying it tight with the last of the length of rope.

That would have to do for now.

The whole thing only took about ten seconds. Her hands shook just a tad, but it was good handiwork, and she slung the bag over her shoulder before verifying that Bugsquito and Scout were secured. Bugsquito sighed as Geela held up its cage.

“I was hoping it’d get us out.” It scowled fiercely. “It almost did. It almost did!”

“Why is everything here so loud?” Geela said, voice a hiss. She wheeled on her heel to face VoidCrusherXX, and her heart sank fast.

The man still had his hands clamped around his eyes, starting out into the blackness of the cavern. All around his feet, a sea of filth flowed into the hallway. They weren’t moving fast, but they were moving, and they were completely ignoring VoidCrusherXX and instead swarmed towards Geela, a rising tide of matted fur and greyish pink tails.

Geela opened her mouth to shout at the man to run, but thought better of it and instead began backing off slowly, trying hard to keep her footfalls quiet. They could see her, so it was kinda a moot point, but they were going slow enough that Geela had time to think. To plan.

But weren’t they also doing the same? The rats moved inaudibly, no squeaking, no slithering, no scampering, so Geela had to constantly keep on watch, eyes running big circles of the hallway to make sure none were getting on top of her or to her side or anything like that. Every time she looked away from a spot, they’d surge to fill it. It was getting to a point where they had almost reached her on all sides.

Time to run.

She turned and ran, but it only took about fifteen seconds of this for her to realize it wasn’t working. The rattish moved faster than she did, no matter how fast she ran. Or how slow. Whatever her speed, they were always just a little faster than her, and they were starting to encroach around her. They were on the ceiling on top of her, on the floor behind her, on the walls, all around her. Geela clasped her hands to her chest, pulling all the electricity she had left, heart pounding, palms sweaty, nauseous. What could these monsters do? Even if they had half the power of the medusas, she was dead. No Darkos, no allies, nothing but prisoners and a malicious do-gooder.

The first one had just touched her foot, causing her whole body to tense, when in the distance, she heard a noise. It sounded like a scream, and it was getting closer.

It wasn’t just any scream, however. It was her scream.

“Miss!” VoidCrusherXX, who still stood in the mouthway to the cavern, took several steps back in shock. “I’m not sure how you got in there, but I must recommend you stop screaming.”

But Geela’s illusion paid him no mind, naturally. She didn’t even pay actual Geela any mind. But all the rats did pay her mind as they shifted their gaze from quiet, still Geela to screaming, running Geela.

The illusion was seconds away from reaching where Geela stood, stock still in the middle of the tunnel, and Geela saw her chance.

As the illusion bolted through her, she stomped her foot hard into the ground and slammed through the floor into the tunnel below it. The illusion was still active, but with the space between them growing and Geela’s focus lessening, it wasn’t going to last long.

But that was fine by Geela. Hopefully with the illusion gone and Geela gone, the rats would out VoidCrusherXX and do her a favor. For now, she was considering this a win. She had a new hostage that could hopefully confirm that the rat region, the dilapidated city, was as crumbling as it looked. By Geela’s estimation, that place had likely started downhill as soon as Nefaria had been consumed by Berta.

That just left either Sinistrina or Terha. Geela would put a bit more distance between herself and the rat region, but once her new prisoner woke up, she’d settle down with her map and a purely cosmetic cup of tea, and prepare for another interrogation.