Yvette tried to dismiss the unsettling noise as imagination. For nearly an hour, only their footsteps echoed through the winding cave.

  As they descended deeper, the chill gave way to unnatural warmth. The scattered bones increased until Ulysses stopped at every crevice, nostrils flaring like a hound on scent.

  "Find anything?" she ventured.

  "A partial signature..." His brow furrowed. "Rodent, but warped."

  She didn't press further. Rounding a bend, they found the sailors' remains – bones scattered wildly, leathers shredded by teeth marks matching those in fossilized beasts upslope.

  "Size says ratkin," Ulysses crouched by a gnawed boot. "Yet atypical."

  Yvette pried a gutted pouch from debris. Gold nuggets and uncut gems rained out. Her blade tested one crystal's edge against stone – flawless scratch. "The temple robbers," she concluded, holding up jeweled proof.

  That's when the scraping chorus resumed. Both froze as the wave hit – monstrous rats flowing like furred magma. Their naked tails lashed whip-like behind distended bellies and oozing eyes burning crimson.

  Yvette's sword became a fiery brand as she channeled lamp heat through steel. Sizzling corpses piled around her, yet their onslaught focused solely on the gem-bearer until Ulysses' shout cut through chaos: "The stones! Shed them!"

  The flung treasure galvanized the swarm. Lamp extended like talisman, Yvette fought toward her embattled ally. Rodents recoiled from amber light – save one kamikaze attacker skewered mid-leap.

  Their merged lantern-light carved sanctuary in verminous darkness. Ulysses lifted a twitching specimen by its wormlike tail. Blade-like nails parted swollen viscera. "Gastric capacity exceeds functional need," he diagnosed. "But observe – no musk glands. No reproductive organs. Asexually replicant."

  Yvette's mind raced – the fertility idol, these engineered brood... Then came the cranial crack revealing embryonic brain matter. "Instinct-drone. Collective-controlled via pheromones."

  When Ulysses abruptly withdrew, she thought fast: "Hymenopteran model. Queen specialization." The revelation chilled more than cave drafts.

  His sudden command surprised her: "Turn. What follows isn't for your eyes."

  Memories of ballroom teasing surfaced. "Still smarting over the gavotte?"

  "Merely preventing future mockery." The wet gulp of rodent flesh consumption confirmed his warning. The sounds – too fluid, too effortless – conjured serpentine imagery. When permitted to turn, Ulysses' blood-daubed silhouette raised primal doubts: Had the true Ulysses ever resurfaced after diving alone?

  He met her gaze while cleaning claws with fastidious tongue-swipes, the crimson streaks disappearing unnaturally. The unsaid question hung like cave moisture between them.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  The sound alone was enough to freeze one’s blood, yet when Yvette witnessed Ulysses calmly wiping his hands, doubt crept in—had she imagined it all?

  For those touched by the Extraordinary, strangeness came with the territory. Her own secrets were no exception: visions of a slumbering deity so vast it frayed the edges of reason, stolen memories of the dead… She wandered these alien recollections like a phantom adrift in an endless mansion, its rooms shifting from one uncanny configuration to another.

  The neon-bright dreams had taught her the truth long ago—she inhabited a realm of exquisite madness, herself included.

  I am the Anomaly. The Aberration.

  “Something on my face?” Ulysses licked a speck from his thumb.

  Yvette jerked her gaze to the rat carcasses. He’d told her to turn away earlier, yet she’d somehow pivoted back too soon. Though she’d missed the actual swallowing, the grotesque remains told their own tale—bodies the length of cats, though starved sleek as ferrets. How did any throat accommodate them?

  She wrestled the image down.

  “Sir, why… eat them raw? If you’re hungry, I could roast—”

  “That would defeat the purpose. Their fresh tissue carries clues.” He held up a mangled paw. “In this lightless hive, they navigate by scent. If I smell like kin, I become kin.”

  Understanding dawned. The tunnels, honeycombed by generations of digging, sprawled into a nightmare maze. Fighting through endless rodent hordes in claustrophobic passages? They’d collapse from thirst before escaping.

  “We’ve time,” Ulysses added, reading her face. “The rats sustain me. Their plagues mean nothing to this flesh. And should provisions run low…” He smiled faintly. “I can always spare some meat.”

  Her mind painted the scene—her teeth sinking into his palm. Human flesh. Abruptly, she felt intensely motivated to hasten their escape.

  “Then why delay?”

  “First, a field test.”

  Ulysses stepped beyond the lantern’s glow. Blind rats scented the air, naked snouts quivering. No alarm spread. Soon he walked among them freely, giant rodents scampering from his boots like wary children avoiding a parent’s tread.

  “As predicted.” Returning, he rolled up his sleeves. “Their scent glands secrete recognition markers. A little sweat, and we become ghosts in their midst.”

  Better than the alternative, Yvette thought, eyeing the glistening droplets on his arms. But he frowned at her bloodstained hand.

  “The right one. Now.”

  She obeyed. “It’s just rat blood—”

  “Starving colonies cannibalize the weak. Blood draws scavengers.” Before she could protest, his tongue rasped over her knuckles—rough as a cat’s, stripping away every crimson fleck.

  The alien sensation lingered. Ulysses wore a human mask, yes, but this small imperfection betrayed him. Like the Spindle’s mockery of flesh, it whispered of truths better left unacknowledged.

  How much humanity do we shed with each Ascension? What remains at the summit? The question chilled her more than any crypt.

  ...

  Cloaked in rodent musk, they traveled undisturbed. Rats still recoiled from their lantern—light being the last relic of vision their shrunken eyes retained—but numbers swelled as they penetrated deeper. Soon Yvette’s boots crunched through carpets of whiskered bodies, their hibernating forms rising and falling like a fungal sea.

  Here lay the island’s grim conclusion. Dog-sized monstrosities slept in heaps, their ancestors having devoured pygmy settlements long ago. Shattered skulls littered alcoves, bite marks telling their own history.

  Only sea turtles had escaped the rats’ hunger—until man completed nature’s extinctions.

  Their biology now made sense. She recalled studies: lifespan traded for fertility. Trout in lean streams lived decades without spawning; starved mice outlived glutted kin. These rats had weaponized pseudo-hibernation, trading individual survival for eternal proliferation.

  A sound prickled her awareness—the whispering of countless legs, louder now. Not hallucination, but compass. The rage accompanying it held no human concern, only loathing for the rats’ polluted existence.

  For they were perversions. Blasphemies against Creation’s symmetry. How dare the Polygalous Matriarch graft termite hierarchy onto mammals? Thieves! Parodies!

  They will burn. Every last one.