Chapter 289: The Ugly Rat that Polluted the Sea (6)

“You already know this much,” Bayern said, letting his voice carry across the square until it reached the edges of the city. “Our land is under invasion by demons.”

In the North the demons had descended in force. They were trampling the borders, raising their lines, and pushing forward to stain the earth and claim the surface.

“But there are no demons on the front I am sending you to,” he continued, tone dropping just enough to make every ear lean closer. “Something else has come, and it is fouling the land.”

He chose his words with care. “It is dangerous. It is powerful.”

A ripple ran through the gathered barbarians. They could not yet name the thing, yet the fact that their king himself acknowledged both danger and might made the crowd mutter. There was something on that front that even Bayern marked as worthy. In more than a few eyes, a bright, reckless hunger stirred.

“That creature is defiling the North,” Bayern said. “Piece by piece, the North is becoming something that is not ours. If you cannot defend the ground under your feet, do you truly believe you can conquer the continent? It is impossible.”

Only then did many of them understand what he wanted from them. He raised his hand and declared, “Here is my condition. I will give you one week. Cleanse the stain that is spreading over the North. If you can purify even a speck, I will lead you to the continent and we will carry our banners to war.”

A roar climbed the city walls.

“Waaaa!”

“Finally!”

One task lay between them and the campaign they had dreamed of. The crowd broke apart into squads and streams and ran for the front with faces set. Bayern watched them go and smiled in a way that showed no teeth.

“You will have a very hard week,” he said under his breath.

They reached the front sooner than anyone outside would have believed. There they saw the ground they meant to win. The earth was green. Not the color of grass or spring growth, but a smeared, glassy green that came from fumes so dense they were almost visible. It was a field filled with venom.

“

Ugh

.”

“What is this?”

Even barbarians, people who moved by the call of the body rather than the caution of thought, stopped short. Perhaps that was exactly why they hesitated, for instinct often spoke faster than reason. The green plain carried a weight their senses could not resolve. They held their distance and watched.

“What kind of thing is this?” someone shouted.

Not all were willing to wait. One barbarian who trusted too much in his own endurance stepped forward and planted his boot on the green soil.

“Hahaha. Against our bodies, poison is nothing. Come on in, all of you!”

He called out with confidence. Poison slid up his leg like oil, and his expression froze.

“H—hey. Wait!”

He tried to jump back, but he had already missed the moment. The venom had already run up his thighs and into his belly, and from there into his head. His body began to sink as if the earth were swallowing him.

“S-stop—!”

The ground took him. Silence held for a breath. Then a hand burst up out of the green.

“

Urrrgh...

”

It was the same barbarian who was swallowed by the green earth, stained and ruined. He rose like a corpse from a tale, skin bubbling with corruption, eyes blank and wet with sickly light, and hurled himself at his former comrades.

“What—what is that?”

“Hold together!”

Axes came up in frantic lines. Steel bit, yet the changed barbarian did not fall easily. He took three more down with him, and only after the others hacked away his arms and legs did he slow. The head, separated from the ribs, clicked its teeth and rolled. Fingers on the cut wrists curled and uncurled like separate creatures.

“What is this?”

Every glance found the same answer. It was wrong. It was alien. Instinct and sense agreed that stepping onto that earth would be a mistake. The barbarians drew back a few steps without needing to speak.

“How do we do this?”

“We cannot even set foot on it!”

They could not retreat either. If they found a way to scrub this stain clean, the king would open the way to the continent. They frowned and glowered and tried to think, which for many of them was not a comfortable posture.

At last, one of them found an idea.

“Let’s turn the ground!”

“That is it!!”

“Clever!”

“Do it now!”

They piled forward and began to swing. Axes, shovels, and picks went to work like a line of moles. However, it did not go as they had hoped. The instant iron or wood touched the green soil, the tool fouled. In a single hour, dozens of barbarians lost weapons they valued like their own hands.

A few Advanced barbarians wrapped Myst around their blades and managed to bite into the earth and flip furrows of soil. It did nothing worth the breath it took. The rat’s stain ran to the roots. Turning the surface only lifted the deeper corruption up to the wind.

“Mm...”

“Nothing’s working...”

They fell quiet again.

“Then should we bring clean earth and cover it?”

“That could work.”

“Smart!”

“Get to it!!”

They carried untainted soil in baskets and under shields and dumped it on the green field. The moment the fresh earth touched the stain, it went green as well, and the line of ugliness crawled forward like a tide.

They tried more ideas. The ideas failed. They tried again. The failures stacked up like broken shields, but their will did not fold.

“We can do it!”

“It’s okay!”

Just this once, if they did their part, they would step out and march on the continent. Under that hope they threw their whole bodies into effort and tried every method their minds could make. None of it held. A week passed as uselessly as a handful of sand.

Bayern stood before the disappointed host and clicked his tongue.

“In the end, you could not answer the filth. You could not defend the ground under your feet,” he said, voice mild and even more cutting for it. “I’ll ask you again. What is their strength worth, if you cannot do this? Do we truly have the right to conquer the continent?”

They bowed their heads. No one found a reply. When he saw their faces, he let a small, quiet smile touch his mouth.

“I gave you your chance,” he said. “You failed. You could not clear the stain. Close your mouths and follow me.”

He led them to the tainted ground. A little later an old man came into view. The barbarians who recognized his face widened their eyes.

“A follower of a god...!”

There were still churches in the North, though not many. They had survived insult and scorn and were breath away from collapse. The old man was a Saint, the head of the Church of the God of Rectitude, which clung to life in the North by a thread.

“My king,” he said, bowing. “Why have you—”

Several barbarians made unhappy faces. They did not step forward. They had failed, and losers held their tongues.

“How strange,” the Saint said, stroking his beard. “To see you without an axe in your hands.”

“I have spent a week preparing for exactly this,” Bayern answered. “I am asking a favor.”

“You need not call it that. You have protected us,” the Saint said. “Say what you need.”

He went to the edge of the stained ground and began to pray. Bayern turned and spoke so all could hear.

“Not one of you could defend our land!” he said. “Not one of you proved any use!”

Divinity rose like light through clear water. It touched the earth and shone. The barbarians’ eyes went wide. For seven days they had tried everything they could think of and had changed nothing at all. Under that light the stain began to thin.

“Yet the power of the gods, the very thing you have mocked and crushed, is now defending our land,” Bayern said, and raised his voice so that it carried as far as it needed to. “The churches that remain in the North will move to protect the ground. You will stand with them and watch.”

***

What began with the Saint of the God of Rectitude spread outward. Every order that had not left the North set out from its holy lands and joined the work. They started at the rim where the rat did not walk and laid divinity over the earth like a veil, and the green drew back.

The barbarians stood and watched with their jaws set and their eyes unreadable. They had hated the faithful, called them useless and weak, and now the people they scorned were keeping their land from rotting under their feet. The taste of it was strange, and perhaps a little bitter. However, the taste changed quickly.

“Hahaha. Magnificent! They are protecting our land!”

“We despised them because they leaned too hard on the gods, yet it seems they have their own worth.”

Barbarians were quick to admit what their eyes told them. The hardest root of their hatred toward the faithful had always been the same. In their minds, weak people hid behind the gods’ names and swung weight they had not earned. They did not trust their own hands and pushed the cost of every choice onto something called divine will.

The stain in the earth could not be handled with force. It was a problem their strength could not meet with just physical force. The faithful were meeting it in the gods’ name and were winning ground inch by inch. It was hard to look down on that.

Barbarians were crude, narrow, and untaught. One could also say they did not mind shame and could turn their palms over as quickly as the wind. The front line softened. The heat in the eyes changed flavor. The warriors who, days ago, would have spat on a priest began to stand near them and bring them water and hold back monsters with quiet hands.

The faithful did not know what to do with the sudden friendliness. They had expected to be tolerated at best and endured at worst. To be welcomed by men who had once threatened their lives struck them dumb.

“Good,” Bayern said. He watched the change and smiled the way a craftsman smiles when a line falls true.

The North had kept the gods at a distance and driven out their followers. That had left the churches weak here. Bayern had never liked that arrangement. The gods watched from above. When something stirred in the world, they were often the first to know, and the first to move. Without them, the North would always hear late and stand alone.

He had already been thinking about how to plant the churches in the North without making the barbarians feel trampled. Now the ground had opened under his feet of its own accord. He gave a pleased little laugh.

“From now on, the barbarians will not be able to cast the churches out,” he said to Ketal. “I will have cause to hold them steady. I owe you.”

“I only relayed a thought,” Ketal said. “The help came from this.”

He tapped the Holy Sword at his hip.

“See? I told you I have my uses. Bringing me was an excellent choice,” the Holy Sword said, humming.

The sword crowed, and Ketal made a sound in his throat that might have been a laugh. Bayern watched the ring of light crawl outward over the soil and nodded.

“The purification itself is proceeding. It is the outer ring, so even the weaker faithful can manage. Any monsters that pop out of the ground are being dealt with,” he said. “Soon enough, though...”

𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

“It will come,” Ketal finished. “It will not sit still while its ground shrinks.”

“Then I leave it to you.”

“Gladly.” Ketal bared his teeth in a grin.

***

Priests walked with the barbarians and laid down light. The stain retreated in visible lines. They could have sketched the new border in the dirt with a stick. Then, the master of the domain felt it.

Rumble.

“Uh...”

“What is that?”

The ground shook, and people looked at one another with hands that did not know whether to reach for weapons or for each other’s shoulders. The source of the quake lifted its head. The Ugly Rat tore up through its own soil and stood on the surface. It was ruin on four limbs, a heap of rot with teeth. It was ugly in a way that was hard to name.

“How distasteful,” the rat commented, its voice carrying a peel of loathing. “Children, all of you. How dare you befoul my ground when you do not even understand what you face?”

“Ah...”

“Gods above...”

Faces went white. The barbarians, who were supposed to roar in the face of death, took steps backward they did not remember taking. The recognition came to all of them together. This was not a beast they could measure. It was not something they could fold into the world as they knew it.

Men without Myst clutched at their heads. Those with Myst did not fare much better. Just by being there, the rat’s venom slid across their senses and tried to muddy them into something else.

“I will not let you die,” it said. “You will live in the poison and regret forever.”

It shifted, and the crowd knew with a certainty as clean as ice that they were about to be erased. The faithful froze mid-prayer. The warriors tensed in place because they knew that running would not carry them far enough.

Then, a small figure dropped out of the sky. It fell straight and sure, directly above the rat’s skull. The creature had not noticed. It opened its jaws to spill venom and make an end.

“Whoops.”

“

Kiiik!

”

Ketal’s fist landed. The sound of it ripped the air, and the rat’s head deformed under the blow.