All Our Rat Problems are Ogre

The first thing that John could easily say about this rat ogre’s appearance was just how… wrong it was.

It was like the uncanny valley of looking at a robot’s face that was trying to be human but wasn’t hitting the correct marks. Sure, the robot had lips, eyes, skin, teeth, and so on. But it all just didn’t come together quite right. It was just wrong enough to scream “this is wrong and should make you feel gross.”

Looking at the rat ogre brought on the same thoughts. Sure, it had fur, but the fur was more grey than brown but not in a “this rat is old” kind of way. More like it was forcibly turned grey. Like a dye job gone wrong. Its tail moved in ways that were less fluid and more… segmented. Like some of the bones of its tail were just stuck together and thus could no longer move. And then there was its head. Sure, it had the same general things that skaven had: beady red eyes, a mouth full of sharpened teeth, a nose that seemed to twitch every few seconds. But they weren’t… they were just wrong. The head itself was a bit too small for the rest of the body, like it was the only part that refused to grow. The teeth, however, seemed a bit too big for the rat’s maw and jutted out like tusks on a boar. The eyes were sized to the rest of the head, but for some reason they were sunken into the skull. As if the rest of the head tried to grow, the eyes stayed small and in place, and in response the head then shrunk to match the eyes but moved them while shrinking.

In short, the thing was big and terrifying and wrong and probably going to try to kill all of them.

Oh, good. The Observe sheet agreed with him. The thing was a severe threat level and wanted to do nothing more than kill him.

Ignoring the bit of Mavis’ Advice (no, he did not want to talk about it; his dad was gone and Brett was dead and he wasn’t a bad person even if he killed someone), the rest was clearly info for him to use to try and figure out how to kill this rat ogre. This would be easy! After all, John had done several dozen challenge runs through the various Dark Souls games! Battling bosses was his specialty.

Granted, he didn’t have to actually do any of the moves physically when fighting those bosses but details, details!

‘Okay. So, let’s look at those stats,’ John thought to himself, ignoring the fact that Mourntail was monologuing about his giant rat creation. ‘High strength and endurance, but low agility and bottom of the barrel wisdom and intellect. This thing clearly isn’t a thinker, and probably isn’t that mobile in terms of turns. More like a battering ram than a car or something.’ He looked over the mutations, and then back at the actual rat ogre. ‘It has self healing due to the crystals. So those should probably be our first target. Naoto and Talia said that warp stone is explosive so maybe a well placed Kenaz would-‘ John shook his head as he thought more about it. ‘No. Those crystals are huge and might be super explosive. Doing that in a cave is probably top ten on “Quickest Ways to get a Darwin Award.’

“So, got any ideas?” Moira asked, having backed up to be at John’s side. Impressively, Mourntail was still monologuing!

“Well it’s too strong and large for a frontal ****. The character sheet it has says that the crystals give it regen but they are also explosive so destroying those might be terrible for us. It’s super angry but has a low intelligence and wisdom so it’s angry and stupid. But it also has a low agility so we might be able to outmaneuver it if we can get somewhere that isn’t infested with smaller skaven.”

Moira gave him a disbelieving glance before shaking her head, chuckling a bit. “I forgot how overpowered you are. But all that info is good.” She looked around at the rats, who were divided in terms of attention. Some were watching their dear leader with awe, while others were keen on keeping an eye on John and the crew. “I don’t like our chances even if we can manage to kill the ogre. It will wear us out too much to deal with the rest of the rats.”

John nodded, and thought back to when he, Mavis, and Talia had all encountered the rats in Beowulf’s barrow. Sure, they didn’t have to fight a lot of them mostly due to the fact that they were fast and able to…

To…

John suddenly got a brilliant idea. The rat ogre had a low agility, meaning that he probably had a low run speed as well. Especially if he had to rely on running at things gorilla style due to how top heavy he clearly was. As for the other rats… well, John and the rest could probably keep pace with most of them, and any that caught up would be easy as hell to pick off.

He looked over to Moira, saying, “You know… this place isn’t the best area to fight a bunch of rats in. Why don’t we all go back to the main area and fight there instead?”

Moira looked confused for a moment before it clicked in her head. She gave him a smile, nodding and heading over towards Talia and Sigmund to tell them the plan. John gave a quick update via their mind link to Mavis, who had moved to go stand by Naoto and keep her protected while Mourntail talked.

Speaking of, it was time for John to do what he did best back in prison. When you can’t pulverize him with punches, baffle him with bullshit.

“SO! Fantastic speech there, Mourntail. Really, captivating and one helluva speaker,” John interrupted, earning shocked looks from the cacophony of skaven in the tunnel. Especially Mourntail. “However, I just checked the time and, aw geez,” John looked at his wrist, even though it was without a watch, “it looks like if I don’t head out now, I am gonna be super late to this big thing I had planned… You know how it is. After all, you’re a big important chief of a clan, I’m sure you’ve had a battle run too long before and make you late to something important, right?”

“Well, uh, once or twice bu-“

“So you understand!” John interrupted again, backing up towards the entrance of the cave. The rest of his group were following suit, keeping a close eye on the rats around them to ensure none of them decided to attack them out of nowhere. Although, the skaven seemed to be rather locked in on John’s rambling speech, seemingly more confused than anything else. “I’ve got this whole thing with the gods, and dealing with some Order business and then there’s Mother’s Day that I gotta plan for and… You know what, let’s just reschedule for later. Does tomorrow work for you?”

“Reschedule?! We are fig-“

“Yeah, actually me too. Tomorrow doesn’t work for me. But… aw, I can’t do the day after that or the weekend… got a lot of things going on.” John could feel the slight lip of the cave entrance against the back of his heel. Just a few more steps and he could turn tail and run. “Tell you what, I’ll pencil our fight to the **** in for… next week! Does Tuesday work for you?”

“Next… pencil… Tuesday?” Mourntail said, utterly baffled.

“Oh, busy Tuesday?” John asked, fake concern in his voice. “Makes sense, makes sense. After all, you are a big important chief with a war to plan. How about I will have my people call your people, we’ll do lunch and you can kill me then with your big guy there?” The rat ogre looked at John and Mourntail, confused as to what the hell was going on. John, meanwhile, took a quick glance to see that the rest of his group was already behind him and ready to run. He was the last one, and already he was shifting his legs to begin the mad dash. “So until then, my dear Mourntail… Ciao!”

And with that, John turned and ran like hell.

Now to be fair, John managed to make it quite a ways farther than he expected to without the skaven chasing after him. He figured the second that he started running, the skaven would be on him like butter on toast. But no, he actually managed to make it around the first bend, which was about 30 feet away, before he could hear the loud screech of Mourntail and the war cry of skaven chasing after him like an endless furry wave of teeth and bad odor.

Plus, he even managed to catch up with the rest of his group who were also running like hell for the way they came.

“THIS was your big plan?” Mavis asked, her magical body not really feeling the exhaustion of running and talking. “Talking up a bunch of bullshit and then running away?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” John asked, and though his Gamer’s Body made him less **** to fatigue than he used to be, he did have to admit that he felt a bit winded trying to talk and run after giving such a long rambling speech.

“Barely! We are now running for our lives and will probably be turned into rat stew in a few minutes! All we’ve done is tire ourselves out and delay our **** by a few minutes,” Mavis yelled. “Unless there is some masterful second part that you didn’t clue us in on.”

“I… um… am thinking on that,” John said, his eyes quickly darting around the cave system to see if there was anything he could use to help keep them more alive. But aside from the random small veins of warpstone that dotted the blackened rock, there was nothing out of the ordinary in this-

‘Wait… the warpstone. Naoto said it’s extremely volatile and… but how do I set it off without blowing myself up. I could set a single use rune but someone would have to activate it with mana… unless…’

However this plan that was beginning to form in his brain were to work, he would need a bit of time; something that they were sorely lacking in. He quickly yelled out to the rest of his group, “Does anyone have anything that can buy us a few minutes more? Something defensive or something that will slow the skaven for a moment?”

“I could try fighting them for a while, but if they chew through me, I don’t think I will return to Valhalla,” Sigmund said.

“I have a weak barrier spell,” Moira added. “But it only lasts a minute.”

“That will work!” John yelled. “Cast it, NOW!”

Moira turned on her heel, facing the oncoming threat of rats with her hands clasped in prayer. John quickly made it to her side, and could hear faint mutterings of some language that sounded like English, but John couldn’t be quite sure. He could feel his heart racing as the rats drew closer and closer, their beady red eyes practically aglow with hatred, spittle from their maws staining the ground and their own matted fur, the stench of them growing ever closer as their scrabbling claws joined the cacophony of sound born of their screams of hatred.

Then, just as it felt like the rats were about to take a chunk out of John’s face, Moira shot her hands forward and shouted, “I REPEL YOU IN THE NAME OF THE LADY! BARRIER OF FAITH!”

As she did so, golden light spilled from her hands, forming a wall that divided them from the oncoming vermintide. The rats slammed up against it. Several of them got rather injured from blunt **** trauma or from their fellow rats accidentally sticking them with their weapons due to the sudden stop. John could see a slight tremble in Moira’s hands as the rats impacted the barrier, but it stood strong against them.

“If… you’re gonna… do something… do it now…” Moira grunted, sweat beading on her forehead. “I haven’t… made one…. this big before…. Can’t… can’t…. for long…”

John nodded, quickly getting down to one knee and brushing away some of the dust and dirt on the floor. There, not too far away from his left foot, was a small sliver of green peeking out from the rockface. While it in itself wasn’t a lot of warpstone, he figured that if it was as volatile as Naoto claimed, it would be the catalyst to set off the other much larger veins of warpstone in the cave.

“John, what in Helheim are you doing?” Talia asked, her blades drawn as she walked up to his side. “We need to… I dunno. Prepare a defence or something. Not play in the fucking dirt.”

“I’m not playing in the dirt,” John muttered as he concentrated his mana into his hand. “I’m seeing if my knowledge of how runes work will allow me to manipulate them slightly.”

“What do you mean?”

John slowly began to trace out the very first rune he ever learned, Kenaz, onto the floor, being very careful to control how much mana was flowing into the rune while he slowly traced it out. “When I first started casting runes, I was told about three states that a rune can be cast in: single use, stored for later single use, or stored for later infinite use.”

“Right. And you tried to enchant Mavis, but learned you needed enchanting materials if you were to do so for an infinite rune,” Talia said. “That’s why you asked if I could ask my dad if he knew where to get some of the rarer stuff you needed.”

“Right,” John said, his finger tracing the second line in the rune. “But I did figure out that tracing a single use stored for later rune just requires a lot of mana when you first cast it, and then a very little amount later to reactivate it.” John smiled as his finger finished the final stroke, the rune glowing brightly and absolutely teeming with mana. “But I also learned when I first tried to cast magic that you can control your mana flow. So what if I poured enough mana into a rune that it would be ready for a single use later… but also the 99% that it needed to activate.”

Talia looked down at the rune, to John, and then to the skaven hurling themselves against the barrier. “Did… did you just cast a runic trap?”

“Well, Gaia herself just confirmed it, so yeah. I guess I did.” John stood up and pointed down the tunnel. “Everyone! Let’s get back to the entrance and away from the blast zone! I have no idea how much of the warpstone will get blown up but I don’t wanna take the risk.” He then turned to Moira, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Can you drop the shield and run?”

She gave him a small nod, sweat still pouring down her features. “Okay then.” John turned to look back at the others who had already started making their way back to the entrance. “When I count to three, drop the shield and start running. I’ll keep a hold of you to help you keep pace, okay?”

Moira gave a short nod before turning back to the barrier, and John’s gaze followed suit. He could see a bit further down the cavern, currently pushing his way past his tiny brothers was the Rat Ogre, with Mourntail riding atop him. Both had fury in their eyes as they pushed closer and closer to the barrier.

“One…” The ogre drew closer, squishing a few of the rats in his wake.

“Two…” He managed to get to the barrier, raising his fists to slam against it.

“THREE!” John yelled, pulling on Moira’s shoulder just as she dropped the barrier. At the same time, the ogre attempted to slam his weight against a non-existent barrier, instead just toppling forward and crushing even more rats. Thankfully, his warpstone covered hand missed the rune by a few centimeters, giving both John and Moira time to run like hell away from the soon-to-be explosion. And sure enough, just as they managed to turn a corner and run a few feet down a tunnel, John could hear the soft sparking noise of his rune going off.

And then a deafening roar followed by Moira shouting… something.