Fear, Hunger and Cosmic Horrors

Chapter 6 - Next Stop, Le'garde! Unfortunately...

Chapter 6 - Next Stop, Le'garde! Unfortunately...

There's nothing so bad that it can't get worse. Initially I thought that whoever invented this saying was extremely pessimistic, until I felt how true this was.

"Will you take too long? We need to reach Le'garde!" D'arce exclaimed, at the entrance of the room.

"I know! What I'm looking for will help us take a shortcut to him!" I replied as I stopped rummaging through the bookshelf for a moment.

But upon seeing D'arce smiling disturbingly at me as she patted the pommel of her sheathed sword, I returned to my work at once.

Taking a quick look to the side, I saw the girl leaning against the wall next to me; looking at me worriedly. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but I don't think it helped much as I'm nervous too.

After some time pondering my situation, I determined that the best route to Le'garde would be using the secret passageway behind the bookcase, but for that I would need the mockup book that triggers the bookcase's mechanism.

Now I was scouring the library shelves for this book, but despite being unsteady, D'arce wasn't stupid, the room only had one way in and out, and D'arce stood guard in the way, to stop us from running away and also to deal with monsters.

Fortunately, the girl and I were out of sight, at the back of the room and completely covered by a large old wooden bookcase containing dozens of old, worn and dusty books.

Time to test my new spell, with one hand, I pretended to look for the fake book, meanwhile, I lowered the hand that was holding Kitab, but kept it open next to the floor.

Then whispering my spell, I used The Rats in the Walls.

I felt the pressure in my head again, my mind being used to cast the spell. Glancing at Kitab, I saw a faint green glow emanating from its pages as they moved.

Then small green creatures burst out of the book's pages as they let out a series of high-pitched squeaks. There were six ghostly rats, they were a green hue but transparent, I could see the ground through them, the rats had completely white and glowing eyes, and big teeth that looked like they could gnaw anything.

The girl looked at the rats and me in a mixture of fear and surprise, I smiled at her while putting a finger to her lips, the girl nodded as she repeated the gesture, but without the smile.

Now how do I get these rats to take the vial to Cahara? As if it had read my thoughts, one of the rats advanced towards me and entered my pants, climbing up my leg.

I shivered at the icy feel of the rat against my skin and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at the tickling of its paws on my body.

Eventually the rat climbed under my shirt until it came out through the collar and jumped on my shoulder, from my shoulder it crawled into my backpack, I felt the addition of weight on my back accompanied by the noise of the rat going through my things.

Soon after, the rat jumped out of my backpack towards the floor next to me. For a moment the rat stopped and turned towards me and I saw it holding the red vial in its mouth by means of a small rope tied around the neck of the vial.

With a final screech, the rat ran towards the wall beside me, for a moment I thought it was going to head-butt the wall, but as soon as its body touched down, the stonewall rippled like the surface of a lake after being hit by a stone and the rat disappeared.

The girl and I looked in surprise at the spot where the rat disappeared, but our surprise was broken by D'arce's scream.

"Did you find the book yet?!?"