Tunnel Rat

Below Milo, the snake stirred. Something tickled her tongue, a familiar scent. The bone-rat-thief...Salasha smelled him again. He was somewhere nearby. His scent was all through the dwarf caves, but for an instant, she had smelled him close by. It was much stronger now. The stench of the ancient enemy was all about him. Was he stealing from them too? Pilfering the long-dead bones of her foes? It didn't matter. She would kill him for being a thief.

He had dared to attack her as she built her nest! And the thief had been stealing the ore infused with her own blood. Worse, he took it away to somewhere beyond her reach. She had delighted in killing him. Moreso when she found he was somehow connected to her ancient enemies.

He thought he was clever, returning from death so quickly. She envied him that. But it was only because he was such a little rat. No one cared if little rats fled the dark realms, and no one watched. For her, though, it had taken long ages, one painful incarnation at a time.

She had killed him again and again. Each time gaining power from his death.

He had tried to hide in the lair of the metal dwarves. She found his scent and tracked him there. The doors were thick, and the dwarves would put up a fight, but it would be worth it. She needed the metals they hoarded in their lair. Needed the Deep Copper he had stolen. She smelled the sweet scent of pure metal coming from the dwarf lair. If she had known just how much they hid, she would have raided them long ago. The metals without her blood were still nourishing. They would help her daughter grow after her she hatched.

The time for that was close now. She could feel her thoughts moving more and more to the egg. This form, strong as it was, was just a guardian now. Its thoughts moved slower and slower, with instinct guiding her, not intellect. Soon her daughter would be out of her egg. In a great flash of heat and energy, she would consume the guardian’s body and all of the nest, reborn stronger than ever. And then this place would become her food. The thought made her happy. So much food, so tasty.

***

Milo looked at his supply of cheese and selected a smaller chunk. Stopping himself as he reached for a large wedge. He was running out! That bothered him. He needed his tasty little treats. They helped when he was stressed, and he always seemed to be stressed. Too much was happening.

Squint wanted him back for some job...

The dwarves were about to be snake food but couldn't leave...

The pudding was going to be coming back...

Harry was worried about the yellow creeper...

And he was running out of cheese!!!

Deciding that he couldn't be expected to solve all those problems while depriving himself of cheese, he grabbed a sizeable chunk of "tasty new cheese" that Jethro had sold him. It was horrible compared to his aged gouda. But it filled him up and helped him relax.

"What do you guys think?" Clustered around him were his brother engineers. Most of them shrugged. A couple had ideas.

"Kill Snake! Then Kill pudding!"

"Feed Pudding to Snake?"

"Put Snake into Subragator?"

The dwarf whom the others called Two-Screws, was the most verbal today. He spoke in a voice that mimicked the Chief. "Dammit, you ninnies! I don't see problems! I just see solutions to other problems we don't know about yet. Use your noggins."

His assistant was his usual helpful self. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!"

Milo sighed. "I need a bit more than that, guys." Boom-Boom looked thoughtful. Then he smiled. "FIRE!"

The others all agreed and started talking to each other faster than Milo could follow. Then they all raced to a bare wall and started scribbling on it, devising fanciful and highly detailed snake traps, all of which ended with the snake having fire dumped on it. The only dissenter was Boom-Boom, who drew a snake being blown in two by a hidden trap.

Milo looked at his list. Squint had to wait; that was obvious. And he had to finish the rest of the things fast, so he could get cheese. He stared at the huge wall of ideas, evaluating each crazy plan and searching for useful pieces. He had a crew of crazed helpers, plenty of resources, and several enemies to deal with. He stared at the wall for an hour, creating plans and parts of plans until they all came together in one horrible mess.

"Great job, guys! Now listen up. I have jobs for all of you."

***

It took two days of furious work to get everything he needed assembled. He had taken two breaks to log out while his tired body napped in the game. This let him check on Section E, which for once, had no emergencies. He set up new routes for the clog eaters, routed water flow around a suspected leak, and sent off orders for new parts.

He set up a three-dimensional mock-up of the dwarven facility, adding the details that affected his plan, and carefully looked at distances. He’d be running around a lot, and estimating his travel time was tricky.

Then he used his computer to double-check his calculations. He was guessing at some of the strengths of his materials. The real world didn't have Dark Iron and Deep Copper. But he had worked with the metals and had a good idea of their properties.

The snake was a problem. It was obviously more powerful, but how strong was it? He assumed VERY strong and went with a more robust set of traps. Better to over-estimate the thing and kill it easily. He had enthusiastic help, lots of raw materials, and no budget. The only thing he didn't have was time.

He also took advantage of his cheese horde in the real world. He ate quite a bit more than he normally did. Was he imagining the itchiness he'd felt in the game was following him out of it? He felt much better after a good meal. Of course, compared to food cubes, anything was a good meal. He should really test some other types of real-world food. He tossed that thought into a reminder in his system for later. Then, calculations memorized, he went back into his pod and went snake hunting.

***

Salasha the Guardian came out of her stupor when a sound reached her. Something was moving; she could feel the vibrations through the floor. What were the little scurrying things up to?! She needed to plug holes better; it was almost time for the hatching.

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Sluggishly she unwound her top coils and moved debris to plug the openings into her new lair. It was difficult to remember...so much of her had moved to the egg. A sound got her attention, a thumping from the wall where there was no opening. As she looked to the wall, a blob of something unpleasant landed on her head and ignited. She was attacked!

The sticky, flaming tar barely didn’t do any real damage to her, but it stung and enraged her. She saw that a new hole had been opened, and a dwarf was standing there, laughing and holding a smoking tube. She lunged at it, but mechanical claws grabbed the creature and pulled it back. She hammered three times at the opening, breaking through into a small room.

Another small tunnel led away from the room, filled with scurrying dwarves. Two turned and with a twang! hurled something at her faster than she could see or dodge. The dwarves dropped the two-man arbalest and were racing away as the projectile struck the snake just below the left eye. She felt PAIN!

A dark steel projectile from a much larger dwarven bolt-thrower couldn't have penetrated her hide. But dark steel wasn't as strong as the ancient bone that Milo had carved this weapon from. Only his new claws could cut and shape the bone of the gigantic ribs. It had taken him three tries, but the result was worth it. The barbed spear of bone had been enchanted with the Rune of Velocity. That had been difficult. The ancient rune was complex. Most of the arbalest was likewise carved of bone, making it a one-use construct with a simple lever that triggered the spell.

The runed barb sunk deep into Salasha, causing both physical and mental pain as she realized where the bone had come from. Rage enveloped what was left of her mind, and she lunged forward, only to slam into a metal door that just barely resisted her power. She lunged forward again, and she slammed into the door, revealing two very scared dwarves. Somewhere, she heard the sound of machinery.

Two stories underneath Salasha, a 16-ton subragator fell as the supports holding it in the vertical shaft were removed. Strong Dark Steel cables led from it up to a connecting rod. The slack in the cables lasted for the first 300 feet of its fall down the shaft leading to the deeper storage areas. The cables snapped tight and pulled on the supporting rod with incredible force. The top of the supporting rod connected to a very thick cable, just long enough to encircle the room the snake had last entered.

With a sickening crunch, the cable tightened and dragged the snake to the floor, crushing her body and nearly bisecting the elemental. The huge head snapped back, and the dwarfs breathed in a sigh of relief before hastily retreating.

Trapped! The little things had trapped her!Tried to kill her, but they had failed! She was too mighty.

Salasha thinned her neck, giving her more room to move, and began to gnaw at the tightened cable and the twisted metal of the tunnel. The subragator below bounced up and down several times, causing her more pain. Now, several of the dwarves jumped onto it, swinging back and forth and having a wonderful time. The cable holding the snake sawed back and forth, cutting into her and hampering her efforts to get free.

Other dwarves took advantage of the situation. From vents in the rooms she had slithered through, buckets of caustic substances dropped onto her. Acids to dissolve her body, clingfire to burn and melt her. Spikes jabbed at her from the walls. Every crazy idea the dwarves had come up with to hurt her was used. Her body bucked and slammed into the walls, sometimes destroying a trap, other times only damaging herself. She screamed, and her thoughts were on the rat. This was his doing!

A hundred feet away from the trapped part of the snake, Milo was not having a wonderful time. Too much of the next part of the plan depended on luck. The brotherhood needed time to finish their traps and set everything up. It would have been so much easier if the cable trap had been enough. But it wasn't, so now Milo opened a hatch several stories above a glowing egg.

He dropped straight down, slowed barely by a 10ft bone tail attached to a longer cable. He cursed inwardly as he landed on the egg, and some of his breath was knocked out of him. Hopefully, the damned snake didn't have ears except in its head. He didn't doubt, though, that it felt vibrations. His hope was it was too busy trying not to be sawed in half.

He'd expected the egg to be solid copper. But it wasn't. It glowed softly, shiny and beautiful. A foot-high jewel with light streaming from it. And inside, Salasha’s next incarnation stared out at him and tried to hiss within its metal shell. The eyes bored into Milo. Great hatred was there. It promised vengeance and death and worse.

The problem for the snake was that Milo had spent his entire life putting himself in danger. He worked on dangerous machinery, close to electrical wires that would fry an elephant. He dove down two-hundred-foot shafts on a day-to-day basis. And stole the money and belongings of very dangerous men. A fancy easter egg, even if inhabited by an aberrant elemental eel, didn't bother him at all. He grabbed the egg and prepared to climb back up.

The egg didn't move. The little snake in the egg banged her head on the shell. The huge coils all around him tensed and began to move. With one arm Milo held the egg to his chest; with the other, he dragged his claws through the Deep Copper pedestal. His claws couldn't crack tectonic plates like those of Alta-Viator, but they easily cut off the top foot of the pedestal.

"HEY RUBE!" Milo screamed at the ceiling and prayed his helpers hadn't gone off to play on the subragator. They must have stayed because a torsion spring was released, and the cable holding Milo's tail was drawn back up hard enough that he slammed into the ceiling of the crawl space and nearly dropped the egg.

There was a loud ripping sound as nearby, a heavy cable was snapped apart by a gigantic copper snake that suddenly realized it had been tricked. The dwarves waved goodbye to the subragator as it fell further into the shaft. Milo had insisted they all attach safety cables since he didn’t think they’d remember to stop playing on the swinging machinery. This just meant they started a new game, swinging back and forth and bumping into each other. Eventually, Two-Screws yelled, and they ran to start working on the next part of their plan.

Salasha the Guardian screamed in rage and broke out of her nest, using the widest tunnels to get to her egg quickly. The rat had it! Had part of her!

But she knew where the egg was; she would always know. They were linked. She raced after the thief as he ran out of the dwarf’s lair and into the maze of mine tunnels.

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