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Pillars of green shot up and swallowed Bayern whole. They were not simple fumes but thick, layered poison, venom that stained flesh and gnawed at the soul. Anyone caught inside would rot from the marrow out and rise again as a slave to the rat’s command.
Kwoom!
A single, crushing shock sent the rat skidding back. Its eyes went wide.
“Mm,” Bayern muttered. He stepped out of the pillar. Poison slicked his skin in a greasy film, yet none of it had entered him. Myst clung to him like glass and kept the taint at bay.
“So that is the shallow trick you fragile creatures Outside have been given. It saves the body, perhaps, but you did not protect the arm,” the rat said.
The rat was not wrong. The forearm its claws had pierced was still under assault. Myst held the venom in check and stopped the spread, but it did not clear the poison. It pulsed there, stubborn and alive.
Monster, Bayern thought, narrowing his eyes. It was an alien thing, troublesome even for him.
Which was why his certainty finally settled. Long ago, in the Emperor’s legends, there was a horror spoken of in low voices, the Ugly rat that polluted the sea. He was looking at it.
“Then I’ll ask one thing,” Bayern said.
“Your resolve pleases me. Ask, and I will answer.”
“What is your relation to the White Bear?”
“You mean the bear in the White Snowfield?” Puzzlement flickered across the rat’s face. It looked almost amused...
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