<div class="floatright">(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/db/e9/cf/dbe9cf5fe0e93ceb0b2c4707e6679664--character-portraits-character-ideas.jpg)</div>They could do this! They could actually do this! She could feel it in her gut. They had an advantage over these stupid brainless rodents. Magic. Les had her ice and she had her holy spells and together they were unstoppable. They easily managed one large rat and now that they know how to do it, nothing was going to stand between them and victory.<br/><br/>She could see it now, returning to the inn with one hundred tails and slapping them down on the counter. She was really going to savor the smug look being wiped off the grizzled jowls of the innkeeper when they put that sack down in front of him. The impressed look of the patrons that had scoffed and laughed them out of the pub that night and shutting up that superior, useless, pigheaded, ancient, pain in the ass they had hired to help them.<br/><br/>She could practically taste that first meal purchased with their hard earned money. Feel the sheets of that freshly made bed in the room they'd rent. Savor the feeling of that long hot bath they had more than earned. It was going to be glorious. It was going to be the best achievement to date and she couldn’t wait to…<br/><br/>“He…. HEY!”<br/><br/>The visions of victory had been plucked from Sophie as unceremoniously as she now found herself as Cerias threw his arms around her waist and yanked her bodily out of the muck. The loud, sloppy sucking sound as her boots were wrenched from the mud only served to accentuate the angry sputtering that spilled from her lips as he chucked the pair of them over his shoulders like they were sacks of potatoes.<br/><br/>“Put us down!” She demanded, beating her muddy fists against his back and swinging her legs trying to connect with a chest, a testicle or a face.<br/><br/>He spun on the spot, his grip tight and true with his wide hand firmly planted on her meaty and wriggling ass as she flailed uselessly against him. Her hair fell in her face as she desperately tried to find a way down, hearing Les struggling with him on the other shoulder.<br/><br/>“We had it under control!” She demanded, hastily pulling her hair from her face and spotting the gathering horde of rats descending on the spot where they had just been standing as the brute whisked them away from their rightfully earned glory.<br/><br/>“You’re just angry that we could do it without you, huh? That’s gotta be it. You and your delicate masculinity couldn’t handle not being needed by us not so delicate girls. We can take care of ourselves! We had it under control, and you know what?!”<br/><br/>She had just turned to yell at the back of his head when a nudge and a point from her redheaded sibling stopped her rant dead in its tracks.<br/><br/>The den mother rat was sniffing at the body of the one they had managed to kill, opening her great maw and much to Sophia’s disgust, apparently was about to eat the corpse, but what happened turned out to be much, much worse.<br/><br/>Instead of devouring her offspring a deep, sickly olive green smoke seemed to pour from her parted jaws, hitting the ground with a greasy weight that certainly wasn’t natural. It spread rapidly over the mud like a fog, swirling around the broken and blown apart fallen brethren and before their shocked and horrified eyes, it started to decompose.<br/><br/>Well, melt would have been perhaps a more accurate word as the flesh liquified, pooling up around the splintered bones, becoming just more wet brown in a sea of wet brown.<br/><br/>Sophie felt like hurling, realizing that she could be covered in far worse than just rat shit and mud. The sensation was not aided by the thug's broad shoulder heaving into her tummy with every trudge and stomp.<br/><br/>The girls stared at one another in stunned silence. Which, admittedly, didn’t last long as they were suddenly heaved forward and deposited onto the sun-baked dirt with an undignified drop onto their plump round asses.<br/><br/>“Ouch! That hurt!” She complained, the sun in her eyes as she blinked angrily up at him.<br/><br/>The fight had gone out of her, the sting of not only her bottom but her wounded pride keeping her usual simmering rage muffled as she pushed her hands below her, massaging her soon to be bruised backside.<br/><br/>“You know… you don’t have to be so damn rough with us!”<br/><br/>I think we can all agree that yes... yes he did.<br/>