Chapter 4 Farm

I hid beneath, making sure I remained undetected. The wheat pile was stacked quite large, the wheats were simply stacked over each other, unprocessed and the actual wheats yet to be removed. It was obvious why the rats decided to burrow below it as it was basically an infinite food source.

The rat family would be completely oblivious to the danger there in. As a former human I don't blame the farmers, just imagine what a cat size rat that number in the hundreds could do to this farm. It wouldn't even take a month to make this place a complete barren waste land. A thousand of us would terrorise a town and ten thousand could cause a nation wide famine.

I had no idea what technology they have to destroy us and I understand magic even less. First I need information so I waited until the sun sets, munching on the grains all the while. Looking, listening and smelling anything that was out of place. I couldn't really tell what a human smells like, my sniffers were never this good as a human afterall. Actually I don't know if this was a human farm at all, sure it somewhat resemble the farm humans have but for all I know it could be elf, orcs, goblins or any magical creature. They didn't really get close enough for me to get a good look, but I did smell several scents that were too different to belong to the same species.

So most likely they have farm animals, perhaps even guard animals like a dog or a cat and the farmers could well use magic or see in the dark. I still didn't think it was wrong to wait for sun fall, I just need to be more careful.

My running speed was not quite as good as I want but waiting for another evolution could be too late. The grains stack above the rat cave was under a shabby roof with no walls, the roofs looks like the were made of straw. Well grain kind of looked like straws so it was most likely grains from earlier harvest. I don't want to judge how advance a civilization's is by how they store their unprocessed grains so ran towards another of there structure.

The structure looked like a barn, build of wood another straw made roof. I choose to inspect this one because no light was coming from it, the light that comes from the other structures looks to be flickering but I don't want to assume as my eyes just aren't good enough to confirm. But flickering light would indicate that they use a torch or candle type light. And using fire as a light source would be pretty ancient by the old world standards or these people could be just poor.

Anyway need more investigating, I get a good sniff of the structure and the smell coming from inside was how do I say it old? Yeah that would be the best description for it. Looks.. no smells like no one got in the recently. I went towards the door and found that it was locked, luckily for me I could easily fit in between. I wanted to know what type of lock was use but I can't really climb the door and inspect as I wanted.

I slowly walked inside, making sure to not make any noise or touch anything. It was surprising for me to be this cautious as I never really was much of a careful person in my past life then again I was never in this kind of situation.

Inside there was pretty much nothing, this place had not seen use in quite a while. I was sure it would be some sort of a store house, I ran to the nearest wall and studied the carpentry utilitied on building it. There seems to be on nails use on it no ropes either, most of the wood joints are created by cutting wood in way it would fit together and not easily separated unless force was applied at a certain direction.

I don't know what to make of it. Obviously some sharp tools was use but if metal work can provide those tools why not use nails. It would be much less labour intensive to just nail a wood to another wood than to curve wood in ways it would not fall apart. Maybe nails are expensive here or maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe magic.

Enough about the carpentry I need to see their tools to know what I'm dealing with. So I scurried to the next unlit barn, this time there was a sharp smell inside it. It smells kind of nice, must be something edible. I slowly entered and what was inside was something I always wanted as a human, something that was out of reach, something that was too expensive for me.

It was a brewery, barrels after barrels lined up and I could smell the fermented liquor they contain. I looked around until I found what I looked for, it was a shallow puddle of whatever was inside. A single drop occasionally dripping down, as a rat it not really something that I desire but old habits die hard. And while justifying my decision I took a big sip, the first big the second was also big but the third was too much.

I cursed myself at my lack of control. Just sat near the puddle completely drunk, it was not very strong and it still needs several months but it was more than enough to make a baby rat drunk.

With all the strength and willpower I could muster I drag my body to a place only rats could reach. Barely making it before the last of my logical thoughts left my body, laying down in a corner nothing bigger than a tennis ball could reach. My belly was protruding as if I was pregnant, I could barely make sense of anything anymore as slip into a slumber.