Awfully
Furmiliar
Michael J. Tresca
Mal and Tal Enterprises, LLC
Fairfield, Connecticut
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Introducing Scrap
Chapter 2: Scrap and the Bloodthirsty Thief
Chapter 3: Scrap and the Rat Royalty
Chapter 4: Scrap and the Ogre Margrave
Chapter 5: Scrap and the Wiley Well-Troll
Chapter 6: Scrap and the Wicked Witch
Chapter 7: Scrap and the End of it All
Conclusion
PUBLISHED BY
Mal and Tal Enterprises, LLC
Michael Tresca, Publisher
PMB #347
2490 Black Rock Turnpike
Fairfield, CT 06825-2400
Copyright © 2019 Michael J. Tresca
All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
All persons, places, and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.
Cover Art: Joseph Tresca
Based on the Original Cover by Chris Quilliams
Copyediting: Amber J. Tresca
For my children.
Be true to yourself, take care of each other, and you might just end up ruling the kingdom.
Chapter 1: Introducing Scrap
All I could do was focus on the fangs. Judging by their size and the speed they were coming at me, I was going to have a Very Bad Day.
I don’t mean bad days where you trip over the curb or a gnat flies into your mouth or you step on a nail That’s all mild stuff compared to my first bad day. And unfortunately for me, my first bad day was also my very FIRST day. The first I can remember anyway.
I don’t remember when I came to sentience, exactly—the details are foggy, but that’s to be expected in a time of crisis. What I do remember is one, overwhelming emotion: fear, with a capital GAAAAAH!
I was surrounded by a roaring sound, but it was blurred and muffled, drowned out by the THUMP-THUMP of blood rushing through my veins.
About those fangs. I’ll never forget them: big, white, and long like scimitars or elephant tusks. And they were unnaturally clean. I had a moment of insane clarity where I wondered how the heck a snake got its teeth so clean.
Then it hit me. From eating prey. Prey like me.
All the muscles in my body sprang into action, without me telling them to do it.
The snake’s head was moving so fast it was a blur, even to my hyperactive senses. The teeth snapped forward, the extended jaw yawning at me, the eyes disappearing for a moment as the snake became nothing but a big mouth.
It hit a corner of the room with a thud.
As I dove to the side, wall after wall of undulating scales rolled towards me.
Oh that’s just great, I realized, I’m dodging a giant snake.
I'm not really an expert on snake biology, but I remembered something about this one in particular—he, or she, or whatever it was—was a hybrid: a part-python, part-viper known as a guivre. It was a terrifying package of two kinds of snakey goodness, rolled into one. It had the most distinctive smell, and as long as I lived, I’d never forget it. It was also now trying to crush me to death with its coils. I dove through one of the loops, just barely avoiding the guivre's grip as it closed in on me. Between the coils and the head, it was like fighting two snakes at once.
I looked around, my heart beating so fast that I thought it might explode.
I didn’t have any weapons handy, like a sword or an axe or a wizard with a bad attitude.
A twisted piece of wood, jutted at odd angles in the center of the room, like a broken bone. One end branched, looking uncomfortably like a snake’s forked tongue. Other than the branch, the room was just four walls and the snake.
Four walls…that was it! The walls weren’t walls at all; I was in a very large cage. There were shadows on the other side of the bars, flickering just beyond my vision. The source of the roaring was beyond the cage’s confines, but I was too preoccupied to investigate.
I dove to the side again as the guivre snapped at the space where my body had just been.
The thing moved fast, but I moved even faster. Blood pounded in my ears like a thunderstorm.
The giant snake coiled again, its cold, deadly eyes tracking me as I darted to the far corner of the cage.
Wait for it…
The head swiveled. I stood still, which is unusual for prey. He was thinking over his next move.
Wait for it…
The guivre unfurled, rising backwards. Its eyes wedged shut as the fangs snapped outwards.
I ducked, moving just low enough to duck the trajectory of the guivre's strike.
It smashed into the cage, its fangs caught in the corner. The guivre was held fast. The wall of coils struck a second later.
I dodged and weaved, twisting and contorting my body before any of the serpentine loops could smash me to a pulp.
And then suddenly I was on the other side of the guivre.
It yanked and the entire cage shuddered. The thing was that powerful.
An "ooooh" resonated from beyond the cage.
Those shadows were a crowd…a crowd of giants. As if I didn’t have enough problems! But there was no time to think about that.
Every fiber of my being told me to run for my life. But I was in a cage with a big, angry snake. There was no escape. I had to go for the jugular.
I didn’t even know if guivres had jugulars.
I ran up its coils instead, straight to the flattened head. Its eyes were still shut, its fangs tangled in the cage. If it jerked its head up, the guivre would be free and I’d be snake food.
The guivre jerked, flinging me off its head and onto the twisted piece of wood at the center of the room. The thick branch ended in a y-shaped fork at one end. It teetered back from my impact—the branch was top-heavy. Rocking with the momentum as the branch wobbled backwards and then forward again, I dug into the wood with my claws and threw my weight toward the guivre.
Gravity took over as the branch lurched forward with the momentum of my jump. The wooden fork speared downward as it rocked, pinning the guivre's head down into the corner. The snake’s fangs were still caught, unable to free itself.
It was enough. I hopped down to the fork to keep the branch from rocking back into its former position. The long sinuous body shuddered once and was still.
The reaction from the giants beyond the cage was one of momentary shock, followed by a roar of outrage or excitement, depending on whether they were on the left or the right side of the cage.
"Cor!" shouted one of them.
"Did that rat just kill Big Bertha?"
"Aye," shouted another.
There was the clink of a coin purse, out of my sight. "He’s a scrapper, innit he?"
And that was the first day of my life as a rat.
* * *
Corwin and Spindle were, for lack of a better word, thieves.
Oh sure, they seemed like apprentices attending Calximus’ wizard's school, Venefigrex. But truth be told they were lying curs, swindling and gambling their comrades for a quick buck.
And these were wizards! Weren’t wizards supposed to pour over tomes, unlocking ancient secrets for the betterment of humanity? Or maybe for its utter destruction?
No, it was something rather mundane. Gambling, I thought to myself as the much smaller, cramped cage I was now trapped in swung to and fro at Spindle’s side. I held onto the bars to try to steady myself.
The gaunt
Spindle looked around conspiratorially. "Awright, I think we’re outta earshot."
We were in a side alley, somewhere dark and dank. It smelled like sweat and other unpleasant stuff. And my rat senses smelled a lot, let me tell you. Unfortunately, I wasn’t blessed with a rat’s appreciation for those more unsavory aromas.
"Shh!" Corwin wasn’t as confident as his companion. He had nearly pitch-black eyes with feathery brows that arched upwards in a perpetual look of surprise. "Do you know what they’ll do if they find out?"
Spindle guffawed. "Let ‘em." He patted the wand that dangled from his belt. "If’n any of those buggers think they can take me, I’ll show ‘em what for, eh?"
I could see the wand from where I swung suspended on the other side of his sweaty stick body. I decided right then and there that I didn’t like Spindle.
Corwin shook his head. "I don’t need to remind you th’ reason we’re broke in the first place is that we didn’t finish this year’s exams."
Spindle sniffed. "Yah?" He looked offended. "I could’ve passed. They changed the—"
"Oh, here we go again!" Corwin slapped his forehead. "They changed the questions, right? And if it hadn’t been that they made us take the Black Sash test for the Green Sash test, you’d ‘ave passed, right?"
Spindle’s eyes, of which he barely had any, narrowed to almost imperceptible slits.
"You been usin’ Blue on me, mate?"
His hand slid toward the knife at his belt, a gesture only I could see. Apparently, Spindle’s penchant for beating up his fellow classmates with his wand didn’t extend to personal duels with trusted friends. He reserved knives for that kind of ugly work.
"No, you dumb git!" snapped Corwin. "You say th’ same story all th’ time! And you forget that you told me."
Corwin held out a bag of something. It was white and, judging from the little puffs that descended from his hand, it contained a powder.
"You been samplin’ th’ Modav, eh?"
"Bah!" Spindle slapped Corwin’s hand aside.
"Hey!" Corwin juggled the pouch before gently returning it to his belt. "Careful, this stuff’s rare!"
"Sure it is, since we’re the only ones who know how to make it. I seen what Modav done to the other thirty rats that come before Scrap." He pointed a long finger at me. It was like being poked at by a dead branch. "I may be forgetful but I’m no fool."
"Scrap?" Corwin snickered. "You named ‘im then?"
"Aye," said Spindle indignantly. "He’s a scrapper, he is. I thought it appropriate."
"To name ‘im?"
"Well we’ve got t’ give ‘im a name if we’re gonna enter him in another contest."
"What?" Corwin took a step forward towards Spindle. "Are you daft?"
"I’m not daft," said Spindle. "I’m smart. Maybe not smart enough t’ beat that exam, but smart enough to take those high-flyin’ blokes’ guilders, with their good families and their silk shirts."
"That was a fluke!" Corwin said, practically shouting.
Spindle shushed him.
"A fluke," Corwin repeated, quieter.
"You just said yourself about how many rats we went through. And I don’t think I have to remind you that I lost a lot of guilders on ‘em too."
"WE lost a lot of guilders," interjected Spindle.
"Aye. And with that hole burnin’ in yer pocket I’d think you’d be a bit more stung by it all."
Spindle took out a small bag from his belt pouch. The man fairly bristled with all the items hanging from his belt.
"Not anymore." He handed Corwin the lumpy bag. "We just made it all back and then some."
Corwin opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. He looked in the bag. As he did so, his eyebrows knitted, making his nose look like a bird about to take flight.
"People lost a lot of money. And a rat beat Big Bertha. Wouldn’t be surprised if they want to check into ‘em." He pointed at me. I recoiled just a little.
"Aye, we’ll have to keep him under lock and key. But I think he’s our ticket to success, mate. Maybe we buy a round o’ drinks at th’ Dirty Scroll. The other students’ll come around."
"And what of the Headmaster?" asked Corwin. "Big Bertha was a dragon analogue. He bred the guivre 'imself. The Headmaster tested all his spells on her…"
"She died eatin’ a bad rat. It happens."
"He’s gonna be suspicious."
"Of course he is," said Spindle. "And we’re gonna be calm and collected, but let ‘im think that maybe we poisoned his pet snake. So long as he don’t suspect the truth."
"That th’ two students he flunked made some super rat juice?"
"Aye," grinned Spindle. "And that we’re gonna make a pile of gold off Scrap here."
"What you have in mind, then?" asked Corwin.
"Three words," said Spindle, ticking them off the skinny stubs of his fingers, "Rat. Baitin'. Dog."
They both looked at me. And that’s when I discovered that rats have no control over their bowels.
* * *
The rat pit was a small, dirty place in the middle of Stromgate. Stromgate was a border town on the northernmost terrtitory of the Calximus Kingdom, and thanks to a healthy influx of merchants from the surrounding territories, it was burgeoning into a full-fledged city. I wasn’t able to appreciate any of that though, because Corwin was going to show me the worst Stromgate had to offer.
Corwin carried me down a rotten wooden stair into a large underground cellar. From the looks of it, it was actually two cellars from adjacent houses, with the wall knocked out between them. Corwin and Spindle stood near the stairs, huddling together to discuss their strategy.
"Right, so it’s like this," said Spindle. "There’s two dogs competing tonight, Billy and Jacko. Billy's the favorite, so we’re gonna bet against Jacko. All of it."
"All of it?" asked Corwin skeptically.
"All of it. We want to turn this little bag ‘o gold into something larger, right?" Spindle jingled a purse. "So we gotta think big."
"And in between Billy and Jacko, we give Scrap here a bit of the Modav spell."
"You sure he can handle it?" asked Spindle, concern tingeing his drawn features. "Don't want to waste our best rat right out of the gate."
Corwin barked out a laugh. Spindle didn't join in. "Oh wait, you're serious? I don't think we can keep 'em around, honestly. They'll catch on."
"Well, no use in wasting a good rat…"
"All he's got to do is survive," said Corwin. "If he can do it for long enough we'll be golden."
"But he's just one rat…" began Spindle.
"Nah. We'll tag 'im," Corwin said with a note of finality.
I didn't know what "tagging" meant, but I suspected I wouldn't like it.
"But that'll draw attention to 'im!" exclaimed Spindle.
"That's the point. Otherwise he'll just get lost in a sea of rats. Besides, I can't tell him apart from the rest of 'em, can you?"
It was a good point. I took a look at myself, as much as I could, anyway. And I discovered…that I was pretty much your average rat. Brown fur. Pink tail. No revelations there. I was secretly hoping that I was all black, or maybe all white, or black with a white streak, or flaming pink or something. But no. Just me. Scrap the brown rat.
So much for being different. Not that it mattered—I wasn't long for this world anyway. And yet, as the two idiots who had given me sentience continued to haggle over how much gold they were willing to wager on me, I couldn't help but realize that in a lot of ways, they were my parents.
Whatever that Modav spell was, it made me smart—smart enough to realize who I was and what I was doing. Or maybe I had always been that way, but never really found the words to verbalize it. Point being, I knew who I was.
One of the unfortunate consequences of having a sense of self is being intensely attached to said sense of self. And that made me really, really not want to die in the drooling mouth of some rabid dog.
Having finally agreed on an amount, my two keepers mo
ved further into the cellar. It reeked of smoke, dogs, and people. Over all of that, the stale smell of beer nearly overpowered my rat senses. Or maybe that was the sheer terror I was feeling.
Torches illuminated the center of the cellar, where a ring enclosed by wood barriers stood. It was an arena of sorts, complete with wooden bleachers rising nearly to the ceiling. The floor of the pit was stained. I tried not to think about what it might be stained with.
A horde of sweaty, smelly giants was here, shouting and hooting, just like they had when I was fighting Big Bertha. Only these weren't Venefigrex students, but peasant rabble. They all looked pretty much the same to my rat eyes.
The master of ceremonies strode into the ring. The man's attire mimicked a ringmaster from a circus. Only it was a very different kind of circus. And he was incredibly dirty and disgustingly fat.
"The first match today is Billy versus Jacko!"
Instead of a whip, he lifted the token of his office, which was apparently a wineskin. The wine sloshed out, spattering the audience, but they didn't seem to notice. Probably because they were drunk, too.
"Billy, at twenty-four pounds, comes all the way from Laneutia to compete in today's fight!" The owner brought into the arena the most disturbing beast I'd ever laid eyes on, worse even than Big Bertha.
At least Bertha was clean and deadly. Billy was a slavering mass of fangs and drool. He had folded, crumpled ears; short legs; and a bug-eyed look of perpetual ferocity. His bark was cut off by a strangled whine as his handler, a stubby little man, jerked on Billy's chain.
"Gonna kill me some rats!" Billy shouted.
I looked around. Did anyone else hear that?
Spindle looked on while Corwin put in his bid with the ringmaster. But it wasn't time yet, so Corwin got brushed aside when the next dog came out.
"Weighing in at twenty-six pounds, our reigning Calximus champion…" the ringmaster took a deep breath. "Jackoooooo!"
This new dog made Billy look like a tame poodle. Jacko was bigger, stronger, and meaner.
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