Taint

9 - El Rata Jefe

'Rodere' was an incantation Kai hadn't thought about since his early schooling, back during the late Middle Ages when the good old Black Death was annihilating Europe. Lord Umbra called those the 'good ol' days,' when death and destruction were but a breath away. All that 'the devil made me do it' worked wonders for his precious ego, and Kai thought fondly of an easier time around the Shadowthorn household - flavoured with the guilt of knowing all those innocent lives lost at his father's hand while Kai learned how to harness unfathomable powers.

Now he was a rat, cowering near something rotten that smelled disturbingly delicious. If the human stomach he would return to wouldn't pay an unspeakable price later, rat Kai would succumb to his 'eat anything that stands still long enough' instincts without a second thought.

So far, his solo shot in Mort had proven anything but successful. Family banished. Dead Chad. Squadron of cops hot on his tail. And he'd been in town for less than an hour. He'd turned himself into a rat and scurried into a storm drain, ducking and dodging deep into Vancouver's subterranean labyrinth.

Kai longed for someone to talk to, air out his problems on a sounding board - someone who wouldn't offer solutions, just let him rant on for a while without interrupting.

Yet another unfortunate habit he'd picked up from dear old dad. Listen to me whine, but don't help me. You'd think an all-powerful demon would have figured out a way to delegate after centuries at the helm.

One of the major downfalls of phenomenal demon power was the limitations of the forms available to the user when venturing beyond the Abyss. At home, Kai could do whatever the Hell he wanted, especially as the Crown Prince of All. Here in Mort, the fleshy, underdeveloped bodies shorted out after just a few years. A rat body trying to contain and channel a demon of Kai's stature would not last very long.

What could he do? The cops would be hunting for him now, searching far and wide for the guy that killed Chad. A new human shell would have to be prepared to avoid suspicion, but those took time to cook up.

The fur on the back of his neck shivered - and he couldn't tell if that was rat sense or demon sense. Either way, he wasn't alone in this sewer. Something stank worse than the rotten food, and rat Kai's heightened sense of stink almost made demon Kai throw up. Around a corner, just close enough to tingle every whisker, skulked the biggest rat in history.

Kai didn't actually have an official ranking of rat sizes throughout history, but this one was god-damned huge. A tiny child might saddle up and ride that pony off into the sunset.

"Shit." Kai froze for a split second. Maybe the giant rat hadn't seen him. If he stayed perfectly still, scrambled back the other way, he'd be able to sneak past the big bastard.

If only he hadn't snuck down into the sewers so far. The pipes were a hell of a lot smaller down here, and the one Kai was in right now was barely big enough for the rat version of him. Anywhere else and he'd just be able to turn into something else and be done with the whole thing. If he tried now, he'd be squashed. Even demons have trouble getting over a hearty squashing quickly.

There was also the matter of lux naturalis - natural light. As with most other things, when he was in the Abyss, he could burn through magic without a care in the world. Everything was in abundant supply, and he could cast away, curse along, and incant his demony little face off without a second thought. Alas, demon magic worked a little differently here in the oh-so-limited world of Mort. One could not just throw spells and curses around all day long, willy-nilly. There was a limit to these things. Not much of one, but it put a damper on what you could and couldn't do if you found yourself a few hundred metres below the surface of the Earth, camped in near darkness down a sewer tunnel.

Lux naturalis - or natural light, as anyone not born during the Roman Empire would actually say, was the source of demon magic when they ventured into the mortal realm - or Mort, as the demons were wont to call it. Moonlight or sunlight would suffice, and it didn't take much exposure to grant the demon in question substantial power.

Way down here, trapped in the sewers, one sniff away from the biggest rat in the history of rodentia, Kai was nowhere near any lux naturalis. He depended entirely on the slightly better-than-blind eyes of this weak form.

'Damn. Stuck as a god-damned rat until I get out of here. And if I move, that big bastard's going to hear me. This blows.'

Life couldn't sink much lower for dear Kai. If he waited out El Rata Jefe, he might starve to death - big fucker didn't look like he was going anywhere, now that he'd sniffed out a snack.

Kai was left with only one option - running for his life. This was not how he'd seen this adventure going when he emancipated himself from the clutches of the Shadowthorn life. A tiny nugget of regret pinged in the back of his mind with annoying clarity, asking him 'what the hell were you thinking?' He told the nugget to shut the hell up and took a deep breath. Regrettable, as he was still crouched right behind the giant hunk of rotten nightmares.

He gagged, which was a unique sensation as a rat. Of course, the gag noise echoed from his hiding spot and El Rata Jefe roared in triumph. Quarry found.

"Shit!" Kai squeaked and sprinted down the nearest tunnel, El Rata Jefe close on his heels.