It’s not intelligent. It’s not a person. It’s mercy. Do it Nick. Do it now! When the creature coughed and turned its head, the opening that he had been waiting for appeared. In a single, smooth motion, he brought the dripping dagger up to the ratman’s neck. The muscles in his arm poised to end its life. A heartbeat before Nick started cutting, the ratman whimpered piteously in its sleep and uttered a single word, shocking him to the core of his being.

“Mother,” the creature begged, as if pleading for help. Nick froze, his resolve vanishing like a dream on waking, just as his blade touched the rat’s throat. The creature’s eyes snapped open, and its hate-filled gaze met Nick’s own. The fleeting moment of humanity was lost as the parasite resumed full control. He willed his arm to strike, but his hands remained frozen in place. He could no longer bring himself to end the ratman’s life.

Nick was about to say, “Wait. We can talk this out instead of killing each other. Find a way to free your people from the parasite together.” But he only got as far as “wait” before the rat’s fangs sank into his shoulder, as its claws tore into the hand that held his dagger. In that moment, Nick didn’t feel the pain. Instead, the intense sensation shocked him into fight or flight mode, all thoughts evaporating except for a single truth. Kill or die.

Nick’s hesitation vanished and he started to struggle, fighting to bury the dagger in the rat’s throat. Muscles filled with a feral strength that he had never known before. He screamed as the creature bit down, sending hot blood pumping out of the open wound, where its fangs had punctured the meat of his shoulder. Nick’s surge of strength caught his opponent by surprise, almost allowing him to land a fatal blow. But Nick was learning how to kill for the first time in his life, whereas the rat had decades of combat experience.

Thus, before the blade could part the soft tissue around its throat, the creature rolled off the cot and fell onto the floor, dragging Nick down to the ground by his wound. The position stripped him of his ability to leverage his body’s weight, and his blood-slicked grasp was quickly losing its strength.

The rat continued to thrash all the while. Claws and jaws shredding Nick’s flesh with ease. It let go of the dagger with one hand and reached out with the other, intending to slit his throat in a total reversal of their starting roles. Just as the rat’s claws began sinking into Nick’s jugular, his body started moving without waiting for his command.

In the blink of an eye, Nick’s left hand shot down, fingers wrapping tight around the hilt of his wand. He pulled it out of the beltloop in a single motion, then raised his arm to point at the center of the rat’s chest, where its heart sat beating beneath the bulk of its padded armor. As naturally as if he had been using it all his life, his thumb pressed a button on the side of the wand’s shaft, sliding it up half an inch before it locked into place. Oh. It’s a safety, a small voice in Nick’s mind commented as his thumb changed positions, coming to rest on top of the glowing gem inlaid along the base.

The instant that he pressed the gem with a soft click, an intense shockwave erupted from the business end of the wand, slamming into the ratman’s chest with incredible force. The part of Nick’s mind that was observing everything with a strange sense of detachment expected the blast to do nearly as much damage to his own torso as it did to the rat’s. Releasing so much force so close to his body should have a kick like a mule on steroids.

However, while Nick could see kinetic energy ripple throughout the creature’s tissue, not so much as a jolt passed back in his direction. His hand didn’t even tremble. Well, more than it was already. He had no time to process this remarkable development, because the rat’s jaws had opened in surprise, freeing Nick from their grasp but causing his wounds to bleed profusely. Pushing past the pain, he prepared to drive the dagger home. That was when he realized that the creature had stopped struggling and its eyes had glazed over. Holy shit, it’s dead. The force must have crushed its heart.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I’m sorry wand, Nick held the weapon in front of his eyes, thoughts muddled by his state of shock. I take back everything I said. I think I love you. In the next heartbeat, the thin shell of dissociation protecting him from his pain burst like a soap bubble pricked with a needle. He began to drown as a red wave of agony broke over him.

The clinical part of Nick knew that although he had defeated his opponent, the fight for his life was far from over. If I want to live, I must stop the bleeding. Then clean and bandage my wound. Half-delirious from the pain, he staggered over to the metal grate, and picked up the bucket beside it, which was filled with clean water. He pulled his shirt over his head and then emptied the pail, screaming as the cold water broke over his wound.

Fighting to control his body, Nick took the roll of bandages out of his belt pouch, then wound a strip under his armpit and over the spot where the ratman’s fangs had sunk deep into his flesh. He didn’t let himself think about his injury. He had to stop the bleeding before he could worry about the damage.

Although the white gauze was soon stained crimson, the bleeding eventually began to slow, and Nick moved on to his other injuries. Fortunately, the scratches on his neck and wrists were not nearly as deep, so he washed them off and let them coagulate on their own.

That was as far as he got before his exhaustion caught up with him. One second, he was struggling with his pain, and the next, Nick was engulfed in a wave of dizziness. Rendered lightheaded and unable to focus. I’m still in shock, the clinical part of his brain reported. I need to recover before I can do anything else. He looked up at the cots that the rats had been sleeping in, but even in his dazed condition, Nick was unwilling to touch fabric that was soaked in the creatures’ blood. He didn’t know what was in the next room, but the one behind him was clear and the sewers beyond had not revealed any obvious threats.

Weaving from side to side like a drunk one shot short of oblivion, Nick forced his body into motion, nearly passing out several times in the process. Although he desperately wanted to lie down, before he left the room, Nick cut the belts free from the corpses and then pushed the bodies into the river.

He could not risk attracting the attention of any scavengers living in the area, especially when he was so weak. He was certain that the bodies would have drawn beasts like a magnet, eager to feast on fresh flesh. Nick left everything else where it lay. He would come back and loot the room after he had recovered from his ordeal.

Although Nick would not become aware of this fact until it was far too late, his actions had shifted the dynamics of the dungeon. As the parasites that had been animating the ratmens’ bodies fell into the river and drowned, the energy they had been harvesting flowed out. Adding their power to the ancient, parasitic egg waiting in the heart of the dungeon, bringing it to the precipice of hatching after decades of near stasis.

By the time that Nick finished lurching his way down the tunnel and stepped into the empty chamber, he had grown dizzy enough that he could no longer think. With a groan, he collapsed into a corner where he could watch both entrances and rest for a few hours. He used his final drop of willpower to finish the water in his canteen to help restore his missing fluids. He would have to wait until he had come out of shock and recovered from his injuries before deciding what to do next.

Nick would never have believed that he could fall asleep in the middle of a dungeon. A foul maze filled with hostile, alien beings, heavy with the putrid stench of rot. But he had underestimated how much energy he had burned over the last two days, as well as the degree that he had begun to adapt to his new reality.

Less than ten minutes later, Nick was fast asleep and began to dream. Not long after, his dreams shifted, transforming into true nightmares.