“Rat!” Erwin decided.
Finn stroked his chin, “You aren’t just shouting some random animal, right?”
“No!” Erwin said indignantly.
“And what makes them the best hunter?” Finn queried.
“What make best hunter?” Erwin huffed. “Best hunter depend on situation. Clue is trick, Erwin pick weakest animal, beat trick.”
“Fair enough.” Finn sighed.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Time Resumed.
“We should pull the lever to rat.” Charlie said.
“Really, the rat?” Veles asked, skeptical.
“I think we should choose the exact opposite of what the clue says.” Charlie replied. “Think about, who the hell sets up a deathtrap with a clue?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t build the tomb, his jailers did.” Oswin pointed out, the stag rubbing his chin with his hooflets. “Honestly, this is a hard puzzle. Not much of a clue to go on because it’s all about context.”
“True, but if I were him, I would have altered the words. Especially if I was alerted of intruders. The original text could have said anything.” Charlie pointed out.
“Maybe you have to fight whatever picture is above the hole,” Veles pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s true, we might be misinterpreting the meaning of the puzzle.” Oswin nodded.
“Either way, someone’s gonna have to go through the hole.” Charlie shrugged.
“Then check it out,” Oswin shrugged, pulling a lever.
There was a clank as the hole shifted slightly. Above the hole, the image of a rat wavered.
Charlie walked over to the hole.
There was a metal ladder to allow easy access to the hole. When Charlie tried shining his lantern in the entrance, it illuminated a dark, empty hallway. He frowned. There was an infamous trap in DnD that was just like this.
Cautiously, he poked a dagger into the darkness up to the hilt, then withdrew it.
The air around the hole seemed to ripple, but his dagger was still intact, so the hole wasn’t an illusion containing an orb of disintegration. That was a good sign. And as he inspected it, his dagger appeared unmolested. Taking a breath, he did the next test.
The wolf thrust he paw into the dark orifice and held his breath.
It was strange, the movement slower than it should have, like the air inside the hole was made of thick syrup.
His fingers felt as though they were piercing some unseen resistant force. It didn’t slow his movement down, but rather felt like it gave as he pushed through it. A strange warmth passed over his paw, followed by tingling and then an odd popping, like the bones were sliding and shortening.
Panicking, Charlie tried to pull his hand out, but found it was like trying to pull a boot out of thick mud. There was a powerful suction, trying to keep his hand in place - no, pulling him further inside!
Bracing himself against the wall, he yanked…
With a pop, his hand came free.
Heart pounding, Charlie looked down at his paw and saw…
A perfectly normal paw.
He flexed it experimentally. All fingers appeared to be in order. He took a deep, calming breath. Perhaps he’d imagined it?
“What are we dealing with?” Oswin called.
“Looks like a dark hallway, but I think there’s something more. My hand felt weird when I stuck it in there.” Charlie called over his shoulder.
“Dagger passed the test and your paw was unharmed?” Oswin asked.
“Dagger? Yeah, it’s fine. My paw was a different story, like I said. Veles, can you detect magic?” Charlie asked Veles.
“Detect Magic!” Veles intoned and his eyes lit up bright blue.
A minute passed as the cougar inspected the portal. “It’s difficult to tell, but it is magical. Someone placed a False Magic Aura on it.”
“Could it be teleporting me somewhere else?” Charlie asked, “it felt like I was being compressed.”
“Compressed?” Veles wondered, “teleport magic can be extremely disorienting, if it is teleporting you, I’d expect things to feel weird for the first minute or so. You should adjust rather quickly.”
“I’m betting you’ll have to fight whatever image we chose,” Oswin chimed in, “if you’re going to be disoriented, rat is definitely the way to go. Don’t want to get disemboweled before you know where you are.”
Charlie sighed. He wasn’t sure what he had felt when he stuck his arm through the hole, but Veles did seem confident. Plus, like Oswin said, a rat should be easy to deal with.
Charlie dug into his belt and pulled out a rope. He tied it around his waist, cinching it tight, then tossed the rope to Oswin.
“Hold on to that. If I’m not back in fifteen seconds, pull.” Charlie advised. “And you might need the other guys to help. It’s like pulling something out of mud.”
Oswin wrapped the rope around his muscled arm and nodded.
Charlie looked back at the hole and gave it a more thorough inspection. He noticed that there was a small metal bar jutting out from the wall in between the hole and the picture of the rat above it.
"I guess I'm supposed to hold onto that and go through feet first?" he wondered aloud.
"Go for it," Veles shrugged his shoulders before winding the rope taut. “I’ll pull you out in fifteen seconds.”
Grabbing onto the bar, Charlie pulled himself up, planting his legs against the stone wall to either side of the hole he was about to jump through.
Pushing off, Charlie swung back, still holding the bar, then pressed his legs together and headed for the hole. As his feet passed through the wall, everything sort of slowed down. Charlie felt that strange resistance pushing back against them, like they were squeezing through a tight membrane. With a pang of relief, he felt them continue to move through the wall.
That relief was cut short, however, as warmth and tingles engulf his lower body.
His paws were popping, the air growing cooler as though the fur was receding. The membrane gripped them tightly, shaping them and molding them as they passed through. The wolf swore his paws felt smaller.
Charlie's swing carried him forward as his calves passed through the hole, then his knees, then his thighs.
The more of him went through the hole, the more the sensations coming from his body changed, joints popping, muscles shifting. It wasn’t painful, almost pleasant, like a gentle massage. The transition was slow despite of the speed at which he initially passed through.
He tried looking past the hole, to see what was on the other side, but it was just the same, empty hallway from before. Whatever this hole was, the sight of his body vanished as soon as it went through, which meant that it was a portal to somewhere else, and the empty hallway it was showing was an illusion.
Thinking back to his legs, Charlie tried to mentally scan over the nerves inside of them to build a mental picture of what had happened.
Whereas his old legs had felt long, built for walking and stalking, his new legs had joints that felt built for walking on all fours. His thighs felt thicker and plumper, more like haunches. As Charlie’s tail passed through the hole, he swore it was growing longer and cooler, like there was no fur on it. The more he probed his legs, the more he came to realize it felt like they belonged on a much smaller animal.
Rather than legs, they felt like… the hindlegs of a feral animal?
As the momentum carried his stomach through the hole, the tightness forcing the air out of his lungs with a soft wheeze, Charlie eyed the picture of the rat on the wall above him. Its mouth was opened in a snarl, incisors gleaming. The hind end of hit was rounded with fat and muscle, proper haunches and more importantly was a long and hairless tail.
"Guys!" Charlie shouted as his eyes bugged out of his head, "help! I'm not going to fight a rat, I'm going to-"
But it was too late.
Charlie tried to pull back on the bar, but his initial jump had imparted too much momentum into his body, and it now inexorably carried the last parts of his torso through. Unable to maintain his grip on the bar, his hands slipped off and his arms began to enter the hole. Charlie could only watch as his head came closer and closer to the hole, all while the sensations coming from his arms slowly shifted.
It felt like his arms were shrinking, his paws feeling cool against the air, like they lacked fur. His shoulders were pulling together, a joint like a hip limiting their movements as he slipped through the hole.
Charlie closed his eyes in fearful anticipation as he felt the invisible membrane bend and flex against his chin before he slipped through it.
His head snapped and crunched pleasantly, like a million little hands were stroking and massaging his skull. Long, sensitive whiskers grew from his pointy snout and quivered, feeling the space around him. As his head transitioned fully through the wall, his felt like it had dropped into soft cottony warmness.
He landed with a soft thud and an indignant squeak onto the floor of a metal cage, coils of rope falling limply around him.
Charlie tried to get his bearings, mind swimming, struggling to stay afloat veritable sea of instincts. The giant rat he’d clearly become was a prey animal and he could smell predators pacing in cages all around him. An instinctual thought shot through his brain – FLEE.
But there was enough of Charlie left in his head to resist the thought. Although being teleported into a new body was far beyond the minor disorientation that he expected, the fact that he expected to be confused and had planned, in advance, to pause and get his bearings was enough to allow him to keep his cool.
Collecting himself, he realized that the first thing he needed to do was figure out what exactly he was. Looking down he saw a plump body, covered in brown fur, with a long, hairless tail extending out behind him. Rolling onto his back, he took stock of his new limbs – squat legs that ended in digits that vaguely resembled his old fingers, albeit much less dexterous.
He could certainly give a more thorough investigation of his body, but at this point there wasn’t much of a point, since he knew exactly what he was – a rat, just like the image above the hole.
Looking around, he saw that he was in a room full of caged animals. Next to him, looking rather hungrily in his direction, was a tiger, while on the other side was a large yellow bird, fast asleep with its beak tucked under its limb. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear it was one of those riding birds from a certain MMO he used to play.
Which led back to his original line of inquiry – he knew how big a tiger was, and he had a rough idea of how large riding birds were supposed to be, and he didn’t seem to be much smaller in comparison. Or, rather, he was substantially smaller than both of the other animals, though nowhere near as small as a rat should be. By his measure, Charlie was probably about the size of a large dog. Which meant that he wasn’t an ordinary rat – there were certainly a few different kinds of rat he could be: giant or dire being the two most obvious, but without more information he wouldn’t be able to know.
Using his tongue, he could feel the massive, sharp incisors in the front of his mouth. His eyesight was… bad. It was fuzzy beyond about three feet. Charlie’s sense of smell and incredibly sensitive whiskers kinda made up for it, but he could see a big issue with noticing things at a distance.
As he inspected himself, the rat inside his mind calmed as well, his little heart slowing.
Taking a breath, he decided to carefully inspect his cage. There was a lock on the front of his cage, a basic bolt. Charlie managed to control his rat mind long enough to begin undoing the latch.
It was a struggle, but he managed to flip it open and started tugging the bolt locking the door out.
Just as Charlie managed to work the lock free, heavy thuds vibrated the ground. A large golem stomped over to his cage and picked it up. Charlie experienced intense vertigo as he accelerated upwards, the cage swinging. He clung to the wire at the bottom of his cage.
The rat found himself being carried out of the menagerie and into a brightly lit arena.
The floor was made of sand. High above him, maybe thirty feet or so, was a soft chaise lounge. Lying atop the lounge was a huge, well-muscled pitbull, instantly recognizable as the visage carved into the statues in the ruins’ entrance corridor.
“Ah!” The devilish pitbull took a gulp out of a large chalice, then licked his crimson-smeared chops. “The blood of the innocent is always so much sweeter than you horrible adults. And the flesh is so delectable.”
The pitbull leaned over and surveyed the rat.
“You are the adventurer who dared to intrude upon my chambers,” The pitbull’s voice was calm, though there was an undertone of menace to it. “I know you still retain a semblance of your former personality and intellect. That will fade in time. But while I still have you aware, I want you to fight for your life.”
Charlie squeaked at the pitbull, angrily extending his middle digit. “Squeak!”
“Oho?” The pitbull leaned forward. “If you must know, I’d planned for you to fight a cobra. You may have won if you were smart. But now,”
The pitbull gestured.
A golem brought out a massively muscled panther on a leash.
The panther snarled, then its brilliant lime-green eyes focused on Charlie. His rat instincts screamed and he squeaked fearfully. The panther licked its chops.
“I think you should try your hand against this large cat, since you are feeling so feisty. Not fair, I know, but perhaps you will prevail?” The pitbull snorted and raised his arm.
The golem unclipped the leash and the panther sprang at the large rodent.
Charlie squeaked in terror, the rodent yanking control from him instantly, and scrambled across the cool sand of the arena, desperately searching for a hole to wriggle through and escape from.
No! He had incisors like chisels, he could kill that panther! Rats can leap high, he needed to attack the panther square-on. But the rat wouldn’t listen, all it could scream was RUN! PREDATOR!
He tried to push the instincts down, tried to steady himself. But the smell of the panther filled his nose. It was all he could smell, all his could think about. It was too overwhelming, and as Charlie tried to focus on the other information that his body was sending, that panther smell just kept forcing its way back to the forefront.
His mind was like a useless moron, stuck in a body that it couldn’t control. All he could do was watch through feral eyes as his rodent body ran desperately around the arena.
Charlie felt real fear then.
He was going to die here, and the rat was going to be the one who killed them. Not the panther or the evil pitbull, but the stupid instincts. Fear was the mind-killer, after all, and that was what the rat was doing. Blocking him from control.
The panther caught up with them as the rat was desperately trying to dig under the door.
Charlie felt a sudden, crushing pain in his neck, and then he couldn’t feel anything from his chest down.
His body went limp.
He couldn’t even squeak as his body was lifted into the air and head-first down the panther’s pink, slimy gullet.
Charlie felt heat, smelt the panther’s bad breath, then he was sliding into seething, slimy darkness. With a gulp, he was swallowed, mercilessly and rapidly deposited into the big cat’s throat. He felt the muscles squeezed and kneaded him down the mucous-lined throat towards the awaiting belly.
The rat was slung into the stomach of the panther very much alive and aware, his heart beating a mile a minute. That wouldn’t last for long, though, as the snug, oxygen-deprived environment ensured no living thing would survive for a very long time, certainly not one Charlie’s size.
With his fur slicked to his skin from the panther’s saliva and mucous, he fell directly into the waiting pool of acids and digestive enzymes. It was a foul, sludgy pit of ooze that reeked of vomit. His body was attacked immediately, skin stinging as he started sizzling away.
Charlie squeaked in agony as the acids slowly at away at his flesh and bones, burning him in a chemical slurry. The darkness, the heat, and the deafening sounds of his own digestion all combined to make a terrifying and disorienting experience. Then the walls of the stomach began to squish and compress him, his last breaths fire as he breathed acid and scorched his lungs.
The rat was digested in less than an hour, though he died a few minutes after entering the stomach.
He was melted and burned int the chemical bath until nothing but a few bone fragments remained. A few hours later, the panther squatted in his cage and slowly squeezed out a steaming brown lump, the only remains of Charlie left.
The turd steamed in the corner of the cage for a few minutes, starting to cool and attract flies.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
With a *pop*, a pile of steaming brown panther scat appeared on the stone floor of Finn’s lair.
“Oh, yeah, just like that, little one!” Finn groaned, bucking hips into the kobold’s maw.
Finn’s nostrils opened and he caught a whiff of something foul. He turned and saw the pile of crap on the floor. His lips curled in disgust.
“Man, Charlie, you look like shit!” Finn waved a claw in front of his nose, “And smell like it too!”
The dragon glanced down at the kobold nuzzling his cock and back at the former rat-turds steaming on his floor.
“Well, it’s not really your fault. I’m afraid I distracted young Erwin here with my enormous dragon dong.” Finn chuckled drily. “I don’t feel like cleaning you up, so I’ll just send you back. Lucky for you, this isn’t….”
The End
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