Chapter 293: The Ugly Rat that Polluted the Sea (10)

Ketal’s blow landed full upon the Ugly Rat. It was a stroke that carved the world, a cut that left a scar nature itself could not mend. The creature struck the wall so hard that the glassy surface crazed, then began to fail in uneven sheets. The rat crumpled with a hoarse groan.

It tried to rise and could not. It managed to turn its head, bared its teeth in a sound like laughter, and looked down at its own shoulder. Its right foreleg was gone from the socket.

If the rat had still possessed the recovery it wielded in its prime, the loss would not have mattered; even a severed limb would have grown back within a few hours. That was how it had always been since the age when it first learned what it meant to be alive. However, now, that was not the case.

The stump did not bud and did not knit. No energy gathered in the torn bones. For the first time since its birth, the rat wore a wound that would not heal. A hand clamped over its skull and slammed it back into the wall. The already fractured surface yielded with a brittle groan and collapsed into shards and dust.

“

Kaaaakh!

” the rat shouted.

Ketal kept the creature pinned and clicked his tongue. “You really are a rat. Strong, at least.”

If the cut had landed where he intended, the rat would have been split to the spine. It had twisted at the last possible instant, cheating death by the width of a breath. Losing a foreleg was the price of that luck.

“Well. It is still only that,” Ketal muttered.

The adjustment had been impressive, but it did not change the field. The rat had survived, yet its power was spent. The rancid carapace of decay that had armored it from muzzle to hock had sloughed away entirely.

“Not since the great war in the past have I spent this much energy... You truly have become a monster. I didn’t expect you to learn something that powerful from the Outside to fill your lack. Even the three Primarchs from the Inside would not be beyond your reach,” the rat muttered, its head caught in his grip. Its tone held no theater, only a weary fact. “I concede. I didn’t think the idea of death would come to me. Kill me, monster.”

It went still and waited for the end. However, Ketal did not strike. The look on his face was not pity, but it was not simple hunger either. He exhaled once. He had wanted this for a long time. The chance to end one of the White Snowfield’s true abominations lay beneath his hand. Yet he stayed his fist.

He did not because, at this moment, it was not possible. To sever that leg and hurl the rat like a doll, he had pulled the beast of Myst fully to the surface and driven it. He could not meter that force. The blow was absolute, and so was its cost.

His reservoir stood empty. Even if he began to draw now, a day would pass before he could gather enough Myst to repeat any part of it. The rat, left to itself, would regain much in far less time and could flee the pit whenever it chose.

Ketal thought a heartbeat longer and came to a decision. He opened his hand and let the creature’s head slip free. The rat blinked up at him in confusion.

“What are you doing? Do not toy with me; finish me!” the rat said, confused.

“I would be happy to finish you,” Ketal said, “but something more important comes first.”

He could not kill it now. If that path was closed, he would seize what remained. Information carried its own edge, and he fixed the rat with a steady gaze.

“I will let you live. In exchange, you will tell me what you know,” Ketal demanded.

***

“You will spare me?” the rat asked him, its eyes wide.

“It is unfortunate, but ending you changes little,” Ketal answered. “The White Snowfield holds a multitude of things like you. Some are your equals. Some are worse.”

The rat had walked out of the White Snowfield, which meant the barrier had cracked. If that was so, others might find a seam as well. Killing one rat would not mend a broken world. It was more sensible to gain more information from the rat.

Even if he could have crushed the life out of it here, he would have had to weigh that choice. However, since killing it was impossible, there was no reason for hesitation. Ketal set the terms.

“Swear by your name and your rank. Tell me everything you know. Then swear that you will never come out again. Bury yourself in the White Snowfield, in that prison, and stay there. If you do that, I will let you go,” Ketal demanded.

“How humiliating.” The rat’s mouth twisted. It did not imagine that Ketal lacked the edge to kill it. It had seen enough to know he did not. On this ground, at this time, he would have taken its head. It answered without much delay. “I am the one who lost. I will follow the winner’s condition. Moreover, I do not wish to die.”

It began to swear.

“I am the second-born of the Mire of Filth. Upon my honor and my rank, I vow the following. I will not ever come out into this world again. Even if the barrier breaks entirely, I will live with the White Snowfield as my den.”

The Ugly Rat’s oath set its own status as the stake. If it broke that word, its rank would rot. It would weaken so drastically that even Bayern could beat it without much cost. Among the old monsters, this was the only leash that held with any reliability.

“Good.” Ketal nodded and began to ask. “You are monsters, yes. The Oldest Ones... Beings not of the world as it is.”

“A strange way to put it. You are the same yourself.”

“I am not.”

“Do not talk nonsense. You may have damaged yourself, but you are still one of us.”

Puzzlement crept under the rat’s words, as if it truly could not see the line Ketal drew. He weighed how much effort to spend on that argument, shook his head once, and came at the question from a different angle.

“Then I will be exact. You, and most of the White Snowfield’s denizens, are existences from before the universe became the universe we know, from before order had shape. Is that so?”

“Ah. That is what you meant.” The look in the rat’s eyes shifted. “How do you know that? No—now I understand.”

Its gaze dropped to Ketal’s belt. The broken Holy Sword gave a tiny shiver, as if it had felt itself noticed.

“A tool of the children. That must have told you. You collect strange things,” the rat said, narrowing its eyes.

“Answer,” Ketal said.

“Yes.” The rat did not dodge the question. “We are the oldest. We were among the first to be born after the universe began.”

“I see.”

He had heard as much already from the sword, but hearing it from the mouth of one who had been there had a different weight. The things that had tested him and hunted him in the White Snowfield truly were ancient. He followed the line of thought.

“I heard that you lost,” Ketal continued.

“We fought a war with the ones who own that tool you carry. The ones born after us struck us while we were at each other’s throats. We lost and were locked away.” The rat’s face folded with disgust. “The timing was exquisite. We were fighting among ourselves, and they chose that hour. What a cunning move. And you stand with them, traitor.”

“I told you I am not like you,” Ketal said, clicking his tongue. He could refute it a hundred times and it would not matter.

“Perhaps in some essential sense you are different. In the end, you are the same as we are. Your substance is not like the things out there,” the rat replied, looking amused. The phrasing was odd, almost biological, as if it meant a gap at the species level. “Well... it seems you’ve changed quite a bit. To damage your own essence—what a bizarre creature you are. How could such a thing even be possible?”

“Enough.” Ketal had no patience for a point that would never converge. He moved to what he actually wanted to know. “You always call yourself the second-born of the Mire of Filth.”

In the White Snowfield, he had dismissed that as posturing. Now he understood the frame. It raised a clearer question.

“If you are second, do you mean you were the second being in the world?” Ketal asked it.

[No. The Mire of Filth was indeed the first to be born in that age. But there were many others as well. I was among the earliest to appear, but I was not the second.]

“Then another thing,” Ketal said, eyes narrowing. “If you are second born of the Mire of Filth, what was first?”

“I think you know,” the rat replied.

“So it’s one of the beings from the Insdie...,” he said as he clicked his tongue.

It was something hideous, something warped, something obscene—one of those.

“Those Primarchs... You would think the world would have bored them by now, yet they are still spry,” the rat said.

“Fine,” Ketal replied. The small curiosities were satisfied. He laid his hands across his knees and stepped into the deeper matter.

“You came outside. After Whitie, you are the second,” Ketal said, looking the rat in the eye. “Has the barrier broken? Can the others come as you did?”

“The seal that lies between us and the world has certainly weakened, but it has not shattered.”

“Not fully, then.”

“The weaker ones who crave a gap may find one. For those at my level, it is not simple. Even I had to strain myself to come out. If they force it, they might. But few of us care enough about the Outside to pay that price.”

“I’m sure the Primarchs would be very interested,” Ketal said.

Of the White Snowfield’s powers, the three Primarchs were the most terrible. He had always known they looked outward.

“True. But they are too busy eating each other. They have no leisure to angle for the outside.”

“The fighting is still not done?” Ketal asked the rat.

“They have been fighting since they were born. It will not end quickly.”

“I see.” Ketal rubbed his chin. If, for the moment, the ones most likely to crush a continent were occupied with their own feud, that counted as a blessing. One last root to test. He placed it on the table.

“The White Snowfield’s seal,” he said softly. It had weakened. It had cracked and crazed and split until a rat could force its way through. He asked the next question without ornament. “Is that happening because of me?”

***

“So that’s what you meant.” The rat let out a short, derisive laugh. “It is true that the seal weakened because of what you did, and thanks to that, I was able to emerge into the Outside. But nothing in this world lasts forever. Every being that came after us has, in the end, rotted away to nothing.”

The same held true for the seal itself, no matter how overwhelmingly powerful it had been.

“From the very start, the reason those Primarchs from the Inside have been fighting is to prepare for what comes after the day the seal inevitably breaks. Do you really think you’re the sole cause of all this? That’s some impressive confidence.” The rat mocked Ketal. Oddly enough, that mockery was a relief to Ketal.

“Then it’s not all because of me...,” Ketal muttered.

It was true that he had been the one to hasten the seal’s collapse. However, he had not shattered an unbreakable seal. It had already been slowly weakening over time. The situation itself had not truly changed, but even that small bit of comfort was something he could hold onto.

On the other hand, the rat seemed genuinely intrigued. “But you... just what did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” Ketal said.

“The seal that bound us was forged when the children expended every last drop of their strength to create it. Even the Primarchs once did something unprecedented and joined forces to try and destroy it.”

Those powerful beings had not simply remained imprisoned in silence. Even the monsters of the White Snowfield had spent a very long time attempting to break the seal and return to the Outside. However, they had failed.

In the end, they chose to wait. Nothing in this world lasted forever, so they decided to simply endure and let time do the work for them. That was the judgement they reached.

And yet, Ketal had shattered that very seal and stepped outside.

“You. Just what did you do? How could you break the seal and leave that place?” the rat asked him, eyes narrowing.