Lab Rats

[Slorbin 2932]

 

A dialogue is quietly shelved in Urguan’s library. An unwelcome guest. It was never checked in. It was never checked out.

 

---

 

The two alchemists sat in silence. A Musin, and an elf. Their work for the day was done. No science had been practiced. No great gain of knowledge. Only armaments crafted to fund a dismal lifestyle.

Three rats burrowed in the bedding of a cage on the Musin’s desk. All the bounties of the earth have been provided for them. Toys. Treats. Hammocks A wheel.

 

After a while, the Musin spoke up.

 

“...Do you know, ██████, where we come from? Musinkind?”

 

Silence returned to the room. The elf continued to look at his hands. They were no longer his own. He could no longer recognize them - taken and warped by necromantic processes out of his control. It was a horrid sensation. This life, these associations - they had taken things from him. Things he did not believe could be taken. Things that should never be taken.

 

“...No. No, I do not.”

 

The Musin sat upright in his miniscule chair. His attention turned to the rodents in the cage. Squabbling over a singular dried food pellet - while plenty of excess still remained in their bowl.

 

“Neither do I, ██████. Neither do any of us.” 

 

The Musin stood upon his two hind paws - slowly approaching the cage of test subjects. The black one had become the victor. He waved his head around side to side - as if to show off his trophy, lodged within his tiny mouth. The other two rats had found their own food - and were not the least bit interested in the black one’s meal.

 

“But I have a theory.” The Musin reached his clawed, furless hand into the cage - gently scratching the black beast behind the ears. “It has been said that we hold no great attachment to any Aengudaemon. The Kha and Hou-zi are bound to Metzli’s dead will. But we are free.” He retracts his paw. “...But it has been proven that we rose from the Ratiki. …Do you see any similarities between the Ratiki, and these creatures here?” All three rodents had returned to their hammock, by now. They were nestled together, each enjoying their meal as a family. Taking breaks to boggle and brux, overjoyed by the company of their brethren.

 

The scholarly undead looked away from his rotting palms. Beasts full of life and mirth sit before him. “...A similar appearance, I suppose.”

 

The musin stepped back, giving the once-elf a clear view of the test subjects. “And their personalities?”

 

The white rat finishes its meal - and immediately begins to groom his black brethren, despite having so recently lost a battle for a tasty treat.

 

“...I confess. I do not.” The elf was unaware if this was a trick question - or if he was losing his sense of emotion to undeath.

 

“Exactly. You do not.” The mousefolk stomped away from the cage, rattling the delicate potion bottles upon the nearby countertops. “There is none. Not anymore. Not after the taint.”

“We evolved from these creatures. We are not harmed by Aurum. We are a natural being of this world. Not outright demons. …Who removed our empathy, when we were still Ratiki?”

 

The elf returned his steel gauntlet to his hand, pushing thoughts of his state away. He may as well amuse his employer. He remembered a theory - one he read in his creators’ grand library... 

 

“...I remember reading a tome, from the days of Luciensburg. Theories of Iblees creating the Ratiki. Daemon-spawn, all of you, they state.”

 

A sneer overtakes the charcoal Musin’s snout. “Such a thing would be easily provable. Even Iblees has to abide by the laws of the natural world.” The rodent flicked a stray fur off his coat. “He could not create us from nothing, without there being obvious signs. And Musin would never have appeared before you bearing the slightest of kindness, if he was our original creator. No. He did not create us. We originate from nature. Sapient, and whole.”

 

A pause. His beady black pupils gaze over the black rat. Stuck to its ear was a tag, a lab identification - a singular ‘I’.

 

“...But he did change us.” 

 

The white rat accidentally nips his brother a bit too hard - nothing purposeful, just a matt in the fur being pulled clean. The black rat immediately lets out an angry squeak - entering a defensive position as it pins down his brother. 

 

“No one can say what we were before with certainty. But by observing our ancestors… We were changed. Only in subtle ways, easy modifications. No great uplifting or experimentation like the Hou-Zi. An already-complex base must have existed. He left us, after all - immediately after ruining us.” A pause. “A Daemon does not throw away great achievements, such as a new race, so quickly.”
 

Indignant power-grooming ensues, ensuring the black rat’s dominance over his albino brother. Pitiful, drawn-out squinks escape from the submitting rodent as his belly is furiously nibbled.

“Our aggressive characteristics, amplified. Instincts to love and nurture - destroyed.”  He turns to the elf. “An irrational hatred towards the descendants - whom we had no idea existed - spurned into being. This was the work of Iblees.”

 

The squeaking from the white rodent grows to a crescendo. At the apex of the noise the rat jerks wildly - forcing the black rat off his belly. No harm had been done, aside from some ruffled hairs and wounded pride.

 

“...What of your current forms? You…” A pause. “...Well, Musin in general do not hate descendants. They adore them. You are peaceful beasts, overflowing with joviality.”

 

The Musin’s eyes shifted towards the white rat, who was now burrowing in the wooden shavings that filled the floor. 

 

“...An overcorrection, brought forth by who came next.”

 

Upon the white mouse’s ear lay a different tag. ‘A’.

 

“We did not become this way of our own accord. We know this to be true. The ‘Giant’... Do you think a single descendant can change a whole tainted race, lesser or not?” The scowl returns to his visage. “Random descendants do not simply arrive, knowing the language of an unknown species. They cannot change the biology of an entire species at once. They cannot turn into light and promise to return after death.”

 

The elf responds, having remained silent through the rant. Being transformed into something different, devoid of one’s original form - this was something he knew too well, given recent events. “...I can presume your conclusion.”

 

The Musin nodded. “This was the work of an Aengul. In the guise of a man, perhaps - maybe the original story was true. Maybe the Aengul possessed this poor soul, forcing him to do his bidding. But only an Aengul could do such things.”

 

“Which one?”
 

“...It does not matter which Aengul committed the crime. Yeu-Rthulhu or Aeriel are my best guesses… But the truth is that, as before, the Aengudaemonic came, and meddled with our existence. Warping us from rats to mice. Tampering with our biology. Leaving us meek and defenseless. Changing our minds.”

 

The Musin looked upon the white rat. His back was turned to the world. The glass bottom of the cage revealed the burrow it had dug for itself, supported by a loose lattice of wood shavings. Sulking in the corner, alone.

 

“...And leaving us. To face the world, to fight and struggle against the races of men. Without a home. Without a God. Without guidance. Without a leader.”

 

The precarious arch of woodchips fall upon the rat, burying it in a soft layer of bedding.

 

“...Nothing but a dilapidated stone hut.”

 

…

 

Some time passes. The white rat digs itself out of its hole, and returns to a peaceful slumber. One rat remains awake. Covered in gray fur, and a bit slower and fatter than the other two.

 

“...Their meddling never ends, █████.”

 

The undead elf could not truly rest. But he was trying. A vain attempt to experience peace in slumber, a luxury no longer afforded to him.

“Pardon?” He spoke up.

 

“More Ratiki have been found, you know. Brought to this land. Changed yet again - disease, pustules bursting from every pore. Sparse fur, protruding bones… Unholy pestilence changing their forms. Permanently.”

The gray rat sneezes, agonal wheezing escaping its lungs. It had been caught in poor shape, and would have died in a matter of days in the wild. Perhaps even hours.

“The Ratiki have always been prone to plague. Dense populations, rot-steel and azhl abound. This is nothing new.” The elf dismisses his employer’s concerns with a wave of a skeletal hand.

 

The Musin reaches his hand into the cage, grasping at the poor rodent. Upon its ear is tagged a single letter - ‘K’. Holding him around the back, belly facing the sky. It gasps for air as the Musin procures a filled syringe.

“This is more. This is change. A plague beyond minor pestilence. The work of the Crow-Lord. It occurs. Again. And again. Experimentation upon our kind. Meddling from higher powers. Infecting and changing the makeup of sapient beings. Emotive beings. Ruining them, then ignoring them once destroyed.”

 

The syringe grows near the sickly rodent, struggling to breath. Right up against the lab rat’s neck… Before the needle gently positions itself over the rodent’s mouth, a steady squirt of St. Amyas’ Draught poured down its gullet. The creature will be fine in a few moments, and could flop and frolick with his brethren.

 

They will not be experimented on. They will not be harmed. They are free to live their lives.
 

“...It is said that the Descendants’ minds take after the Creator’s. The same as the Aenguls. Is this why they both experiment on rodents? Is it something about us? Are we this detestable?”

 

The elf looked upon the cage once more. The three pet rats were asleep in their hammock, flopped over one another in a massive, tri-coloured pile of fluff and fat.

“I am not sure.”

 

A moment of silence.

 

“I will not be changed again, █████.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

…

 

“██████?”

 

… The musin is staring at a painting. A strange series of mineshaft supports run the length of the canvas, with two figures standing inside. A great skeletal beast, long-extinct, standing rampant on the left. A man made of bone gesturing further down the passage, standing idle on the right. A monochrome foreground against a coloured background - a falsehood, shadows of the skeletal figures cast flat along the painted scene.

“...I must return to what I once was. Free of their incursion. Free of their meddling.”

 

…

 

“...Come, █████. We have work to do.”

[Two2the 365]

[ArgentEra 459]

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We love seeing IC  posts of such epic quality! Nice work!

Elsewhere, a musin king tucks his young niece into bed, the library's copy of "The Tale of Musin the Brave" on the nearby table, his favorite story to tell the young mice. "Rest well, wee one. We 'ave so much ahead of us."

[Ardory 2978]

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