Elemental Cats

After letting out a single ear-shattering roar, the Rat King went back down on all fours and started moving. It didn't even look around before it headed in the direction of Yellow Sparks.

An ordinary Rat King's motivation and goal could be hard to determine, but what the Scorched Earth Rat King wanted was apparent from a glance. It wanted death and destruction as it practically covered the sky in bloodlust as it moved its colossal body forward, sending out small tremors with each step.

It didn't rush, and as it walked steadily, the ground moved under it, covering up any cracks and ravines before it put its feet down.

Despite the bloodlust that the King emanated, there was no discernable rage or anger for its kin being slaughtered in droves all over the wasteland. The malice in its gaze stemmed from nothing else but its instinct to devour and leave nothing but its own footsteps in its trail.

The seemingly slow movements of the King's legs still propelled it forward at an unbelievable speed, leaving gusts of wind and the tail pulling up dirt behind it. With its speed, the King soon came upon a small convoy that had been on its way back to the main camp when the earthquake struck.

After the earthquake had passed, they had stopped in place, both to treat the wounded and plot a route past the cracks in the ground. Thanks to the small size of the group, they had easily avoided losing anyone in the earthquake, but the leader of the convoy, an experienced merchant, started regretting bringing his kid with him.

It wasn't his first trip through the wasteland, and with the relative safety, he decided to bring his son with him for some experience. He loved his son and knew he wanted to be a merchant as well in the future. Usually, during jobs that carried some risk, he would leave his kid with a friend he trusted. It didn't happen that often but he still needed to put food on the table for himself and his son, even if it was dangerous sometimes.

When he saw the great pay offered for the job of transporting various materials, he thought it would be dangerous and dropped off his son, but after doing it a few times, he found it was safe as long as he didn't treat his goods poorly, which he never did. Since it was safe, he could bring his son with him and continue teaching him about the ins and outs of being a merchant.

It was during an ordinary conversation about what to do when someone tries to sell an unidentified object to you that the earthquake struck.

The merchant pulled his son off the carriage and hugged him close while they waited out the earthquake. Another merchant had gotten a leg crushed by a box that fell off another wagon, but the merchant leader and his son had been fine, aside from some shock.

They had been busy inspecting their wares while the guides healed the injured merchant and started trying to find a way out of the wasteland as soon as possible. Ever since the earthquake struck, the merchant had gotten a bad feeling that only increased in intensity as time passed. He wanted to do as much as he could, so they could quickly get moving again. Unfortunately, his hopes would be short-lived as the bad feeling he had rapidly approached a peak.

A lookout had noticed the approaching mass and cloud of dust, but from a distance, it kind of looked like a huge carriage blitzing through the cracked wasteland with the help of magic.

The lookout brought it up to the guides, but by the time he convinced them to look, the shadow was close enough for them to determine it was most definitely not a charging carriage.

The ground's shaking grew more intense, and the person trying to add a splinter to the injured merchant's leg slipped and bumped against the injury. But the only one that cared about that was the patient himself. Everyone else was busy looking at the enormous rat approaching them with large strides.

Although the tiny convoy wasn't directly in the ginormous rat's path from the beginning, it was only a short step to the side for the Rat King to reach the humans. The Rat King's movements didn't even seem deliberate as it shifted its direction slightly to pass right through the group of merchants and their guides and guards.

The enormous rat's movements were subtle enough that the humans didn't notice it, but to them, the rat had headed straight toward them from the beginning. But the surreal shock of seeing such a large rat moving around had shocked their legs frozen, and it wasn't until they could see the light reflected in the beady eyes that the thought of running occurred to them.

The merchant leader was one of the first to start running. He grabbed his kid and fled as fast as he could out of the rat's path.

The fractured ground made it hard for anyone to run around, not to mention a not-so-well-trained merchant carrying a young child in his arms, and the merchant was soon outrun by the lookout who had been spurred into action by the merchant.

Almost everyone had left the wagons behind and started fleeing in various directions. But the wagons weren't the only things left behind as the merchant with his injured leg couldn't even walk, much less run.

The injured merchant was the Rat King's first official victim as the Rat King charged through the wagons without sparing even a glance toward the human flattened beneath its foot.

The wagons filled with volatile materials that had miraculously survived the earthquake exploded as the impact with the Rat King's body sent them flying into the air, after which the waves of heat pouring from the Rat King's body ignited them. The red streaks on the King's back weren't just for show. They embodied the 'scorched' part of Scorched Earth Rat King.