Duel Diligence. Content warnings for  rats, animal death, violence, and death in an elevator.

NARRATOR:

Where is he? Where is he? He should be here by now!

I slap my tail, once, twice, on the metal of the elevator floor. Calling him out, calling him to me. Come to me, come to your doom. Come to Diligence.

My thoughts race. I think of my mother, Cordiality, waiting on the Third Floor. Remaining calm and serene for the clan, but in her heart, fearing for me, certain I have not survived this. And I will not survive, if my opponent does not come soon, because the elevator will reach the bottom of its long, controlled fall, and I will have missed my chance.

I cannot beat him in a battle of strength, I know this. He is Brutality, Lord of the Rats of the Fourth Floor, twice my size, vicious as a cat, scars on his flanks and neck from countless battles. They say he challenged and slew his own father. They say he has made himself immune to the Rotten-Fish Poison and several of the Bleeding Poisons by taking tiny amounts with his food, but they say many things about many things beneath the floors, and what they say is sometimes foolishness.

As my father used to say, before he went to the Deep Beneath, we of the Third Floor prize cunning over brute strength. The Tower provides for all, but it has provided poorly for us of late. Many of the human places have been unoccupied, ever since years back when our whole clan feasted upon the corpse of the man who died in the room at the corner of the Floor. We have learned to be clever and quick and raid what we can, for it is that or we starve. On the Fourth Floor though, pickings are rich. In the centre is the Place of Tables, where food rains from above. They grow large and powerful there, and Brutality their Lord is the largest of them all.

We were foolish to raid their floor. We were foolish to be caught raiding their floor.

And that is why I must fight him. Our raid was an insult to him and his people, his messengers said. He will bring his folk down through the walls and slaughter us all, unless I face him in battle, they said. We must fight with tooth and claw, until one of us is dead. He is wise to invoke his right to challenge me in single combat. If our clans fought, he would lose many and so would I. He fancies he will avoid this by simply tearing me to pieces himself. Perhaps he is right.  

We fight on neutral territory, as is tradition. There are two choices for neutral territory, and the challenged may choose upon which the battle is held: The Stairs, or the Elevator. I chose the Elevator. To fight on the Stairs is to risk the death of not only oneself but one’s entire clan. There is no-where to hide. The combatants will be seen, and when a rat is seen, soon follows the poison, soon follow the traps. I do not want my clan to be slain and his, and all the clans, perhaps even up to the seventh floor where the mad ones live who climb up to the fabled Sky and become strange and wide-eyed under its blue emptiness. If I wanted this would have refused the challenge and gone to war.

And so, I chose the Elevator. Beneath the floor where the humans stand to move up and down in the tower, there is a hollow space. It can be entered through many little cracks and crannies even by one so large as Brutality. It is not without its dangers. Among the dust are cables that carry the Sudden Death, the Death that takes those who chew unwarily. Chew not on the shining copper, mothers tell their ratlings, lest all they find of you be your smoking body. But still, I choose the Elevator, for I love my people too much.

For good or ill, tonight, someone dies in this Elevator.

We each entered the Elevator from our own floors, a dangerous thing in of itself. I waited with my heart pounding for the great thing to ponderously clank its way past. I knew that my opponent would have already boarded on the floor above and would be finding the best place to lie in wait, This I was willing to risk, because I needed the Elevator to be on its way down. And I knew I needed only the time it would take to move between my floor and the lowest.

Yesterday I scouted our battleground out. No doubt my opponent did as well. I leapt this gap then as I did now, bunching myself up against the edge of the Elevator shaft and springing, to catch onto the narrow ledge as it moved swiftly by. It was not a difficult to jump for a strong rat, if the Elevator had paused at one’s floor. The trick was doing it before the Elevator moved again, because one could never quite be certain when that would happen. The observant might watch for the vibrating of the humans entering the Elevator to cease, but it was better to simply jump as soon as it stopped.

It might not pause, though, but simply sweep past, making the jump much more dangerous. Yesterday that was the case, I had had to catch it as it went by. Today I was lucky, and it had stopped to allow humans to get out.

Jump successful, I found again the entrance to the space under the elevator. It was dark, but dark is nothing to a rat, we move as much by smell and sound and feel as we do by the sight of our round black eyes. It was dusty though and that was another matter. A sneeze or a cough would give away my position too soon. I slid quietly among the cables, following the path I had yesterday, the path to the centre of the Elevator. I would need to move quickly. If Brutality found me before I was where I needed to be, before the Elevator reached the bottom of its path, I was done for. He would be lying in wait, until he heard me and then coming for me. He would be expecting me to hunt for him through the dust and cables and… ugh…spider corpses. But that was not my plan.

I rode with the lift as it travelled, up and down, many times yesterday. I went exploring in all the spaces in its underside, and in the centre, I found a gap that leads to a circular indentation. I almost died finding what that indentation was for. When the elevator reaches the end of its journey, there is a pillar, upon which it stops. And when it stops on that pillar, that pillar compresses into itself. My head was almost crushed as I poked it out to watch what happened. I pulled it back just in time, and when I had recovered from the shock of the near-death experience, an idea struck me. A plan.

I hear the absence of noise, the lack of sound of a large rat approaching. My tail thump has alerted him. A cry would have been too obvious, but a thump was not. He has taken the bait, a bait tainted with a secret Bleeding Poison whose nature only I know.

The elevator pauses. It has reached the first floor. I pause also, sniffing the air.

Something heavy lands on the back of my neck and I feel sharp teeth sink into my skin. I cry out in surprise, caught unawares. I must break free, or else I am done for! I have only to wriggle out of his grasp. I writhe with all my might, clawing at him. I feel his teeth tear free of my neck and hear him roar with frustration.

The elevator is moving again. How long has it been moving? I must go now, and hope my luck holds out. I squeeze into the gap, making noise as I go, so he will follow me and poke my head out into the space beneath the elevator. A growl behind me, my adversary is almost upon me. The pillar cannot be far below in the darkness.

I leap.

I fall.

And I land on the flat surface of the pillar, a surface I explored while the elevator was far above. I leap again for the floor I know is beyond.

Behind me I hear the crunch of bones as the elevator comes to its rest.

I am Diligence, Lord of the Third Floor. I am victorious.

CREDITS:

This episode was written by Lou Sutcliffe and recorded and produced by Brad Colbroock.

Lou is the creator of The Pantaloon Society, an audio-novella in twelve parts. It tells the tale of an ancient and clandestine society of clowns with unusual abilities and the eldritch threats they are called to investigate.  It’s made for people who love comedy, horror and clowns, and who enjoy stories about people who live on the edges of things.  You can stay up to date on the show by following on twitter @pantaloonsoc or by searching for the Pantaloon Society wherever you get your podcasts.