![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rodentus_callidus) wrote2009-10-10 02:39 am
Hate the world ...
"The great art of life is sensation, to feel we exist, even in pain."
He ran. He was very good at running. Odd, maybe, for a blind rat, but he'd had a lot of practice. Which he was currently adding to.
Back streets. Too many people on main, too hard to hear pursuit. He'd traced this route many times, at a more sedate pace, and he followed a firmly memorised pattern of uneven zigs and zags. People running in straight lines tended to have their flight terminally interrupted. Line of sight. Hah! Not something that meant much to him, except when it was between him and a crossbow.
He hit something lying across the path, going sprawling, and oh, that hurt! That hurt, but probably not as much as whatever went whistling over his head would have hurt. Alright. Enough streets. Sorka wanted him to let them follow, but Sorka had twisted priorities, and Sorka could go ...
Something burned across his back as he staggered up, and he screamed, a spiked squeal of agony, hunching down instantly, lips peeling back on instinct ... but he couldn't afford instinct. With a howl of pain, he threw himself sideways, scrambling for the alleyway, and the earth wall behind it. He could feel blood seeping along his back, and almost cried with the pain. Doctor, not patient! He wasn't meant to be the patient!
He hit the tunnel wall just as they turned the corner, with a clatter and racket he would have heard even if he wasn't hyped on adrenalin. The noise sent a burst of fear through him, and he scrambled into the waist-high hole in the wall, orienting himself by pure habit to his scent-markers. Back in the walls, it was a labyrinth of small burrows and tunnel-ways, where a disoriented rat could very quickly get lost. If he lost them completely, Sorka would kill him, but he didn't think he had to worry too much about that.
The scent of his blood should lead them on nicely.
In here, though, he had advantages. In the pitch black, his blindness was almost an edge over them, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the tunnels was unmatched. He moved faster here than he did on the open streets, scrambling on all fours like the animals all rats were, at their base. The mud slicked and slithered around him, coating him from head to toe, ruining the waistcoat he'd had on, and making his scent slightly more difficult to track. At the very least, it would slow them down.
He kept his ears stretched to maximum. The tunnels did strange things to sound, absorbing it and bouncing it oddly, and it took most of his concentration to keep track of their movement behind him under the masking sounds of his own movement. At least crossbows would be useless down here. Small comfort, when knives did as good a job.
He caught the dandelion scent of his warning marker about a second before he tumbled out into the vast cavern of the human sewer, squeaking in panic and self-chastisement as he skidded to a stop, mud slithering out the hole between his paws. There was a sound behind him, an eager hack of a laugh, and he jumped in place, almost falling forward before he caught himself and turned to drop down the sewer wall to the floor. He hit bottom just as one of them cleared the exit, and failed to stop. The body landed hard beside him, a splash of mud and a hollow thump. Crackle-snap of bone breaking, too. Hopefully the arm, but he couldn't wait to be sure. Darting forward, he stabbed the injured rat through the throat, aiming towards the gurgle of pained breath. The sound cut off abruptly.
He didn't waste time checking if the rat was dead, spinning and throwing himself to the edge of the wall under the entrance. Something whistled past where he'd been, and he flashed his teeth in memory and triumph, turning even as he did it to run along the wall.
He hated this part of it. The sewer was far, far too open for his liking, the space too large for his whiskers to be much use, and his ears weren't very good for aiming at a distance. Briefly, he wished he had the advanced echo-location of the bats, and then paused a little, mentally, not physically, to wonder at the thought. Not eyes? He wished for better ears instead of eyes? But what did sight mean to him? Dim memories of ... overpowering sensation, like a smell suddenly brought up close, but nothing he could ... nothing he could describe. It had been light, maybe, but he didn't know. He didn't know what light meant.
Something clattered against the stone over his head, and he ducked, scrambling out from the wall for a second before darting back in. Couldn't give them a clear shot. Not that he knew what a clear shot was. He might be lined up for them right now, and he wouldn't know it. Wouldn't know it until it hit, until too late. Why did Sorka ask this of him? Favours owed, but why did she think he could do this! Blind rat-doctor. What good was he in a fight, in a chase?
Then he caught it. Reptilian scent, layered over with a rose-based perfume. Only one person that could be. And oil, too, wood and metal and blood-stink, rat-stink. Sorka. Sorka and her boys. Tunnel ... tunnel to the right, and he sensed the yawning gap of the entrance, dodged inside, in the same instant he felt a light burn over his left shoulder, gentle, almost a caress, and he tumbled to the ground, waiting for the pain, uncaring ...
He heard the battle, of course, what there was of it. Sorka was brutal, vicious and efficient, and her ambushes were perfectly planned. He had no doubt not a single one of his pursuers survived, not a single one of the Polizei rats he'd led to their deaths. But he didn't care. He didn't care. He huddled in the mud, sobbing quietly to himself, feeling blood seep from the wounds on his back and shoulder. Shot. They had shot him. He was shot.
She came to him, when she was done, his lizard-lady with her deadly favours. She squatted easily in the mud at his side, watching him as he sobbed, and ran her long hands in little soothing circles over his back, through the blood and filth.
"Hush, Sebastien." Crooning, like it was a bedroom. "You've done your part, little friend. You did well."
He didn't care. He really didn't care. Never again. No more. Never again. And she knew. He knew she knew. He could sense her little smirk without ever seeing it, without ever having know what it looked like. He knew when she was laughing at him, in her silent, vicious way, even as her hands moved in their soothing circles, petting and calming, and oh, how he hated how much he needed those touches, even now. In all the world, only she, in her calm and cruel way, knew how to touch him where it mattered.
"No more," he whispered, too tired for more. "Not again."
"Yes," she answered, simply. A promise, as much as she ever gave. "Not again."
And with that, he passed out.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
*straightens out, wincing badly, and tries to crawl towards him, not fully awake*
no subject
no subject
Warm ...
no subject
You'll be all right... *realizes he's just muttering, and is quiet*
no subject
Thanks, friend ... *soft*
no subject
no subject
no subject
+plans to have words with this person soon+
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Kth! So skilled in making allies, my Sebastien. *watches the rat as he twitches in his sleep* So skilled at manipulation ...
no subject
The Ratkin is worthy of our friendship...and I intend to reinforce his safety, as does my cub, as does the young one.
no subject
Always worthy. He pays his favours well and fully, and has never refused. *tilts head, looking at the large creatures* What favours would you ask of him, kth?
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
*looks hard at them* You forget something, though. You are useless to him.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject