The Fall Gauntlet: Rat: The Fall Gauntlet, #2

By J. A. Merkel

The Fall Gauntlet has ended, but the Crown still wants their champion, and they won't stop until they get it.

 

Against all odds, Benji and Soren have escaped the Fall Gauntlet finals—together. Benji should consider himself lucky, blessed by the gods and goddesses, even. After all, he's broken free from the Crown's clutches and given people a reason to stand up and fight again. But Benji and Soren's actions have consequences.

Without a champion, the Harvest cycle has ended. The brother's parents are still being held prisoner by the Crown. And whispers that rebel totem groups are forming to bring the Crown down grow ever louder. Benji and Soren may have escaped the stadium, but getting out of the capital is a whole other beast.

 

Much to his horror, Benji has created a living nightmare in which the Fall Gauntlet does not end. And what shocks him even more is that his list of enemies seems to grow with every step. When a strange man and his "rat" followers offer to help the brothers leave the capital by sewer, the brother's escape plan takes a dark turn. If they can't rise above their own past hurts, and the lies that continue to haunt their family, Soren and Benji may indeed die at each other's hands.

 

The Fall Gauntlet continues ...

 

J. A. Merkel's RAT is part of The Fall Gauntlet, a sci-fi dystopian short story collection about Benji and Soren outsmarting the Crown, saving a family lost to them, and learning how to be brothers again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. A. Merkel
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224418497

Book preview

The Fall Gauntlet: RAT

Book Two

J. A. Merkel

Table of Contents

Title Page

Also by J. A. Merkel

RAT

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

Also by J. A. Merkel

The Fall Gauntlet: BEAR

The Fall Gauntlet: CHRYSIX

A fox face made out of small circles Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Copyright © 2023 J. A. Merkel

Edited by Jean McConnell

Cover design by Roderick Brydon

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Reviewers may quote brief passages for the purpose of a review.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to others. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

This book is dedicated to anyone who wears a scar left by family. It is this pain that makes you precisely who you are.

RAT

It is said that the rat was not seen on Calypso for many millennia; some even believed it had gone extinct, crushed underfoot by any creature that walked its path.

Would it be unreasonable to think that not every first animal wanted to be seen? That perhaps not every creature walks in the light with brawn and might?

Totem scholars believe that the rat was one of the last Originals to leave the planet, that it had been watching from the shadows, waiting for a human champion to call its name and bring evolution to all living things.

When the rat’s shadow passes on the wall at your feet, listen to its tiny, purposeful steps. Smell the fear it lives with every day. Learn how it turns the world on its axis to its advantage.

That is when the rat will act. That is when the rat becomes you.

From the Book of Totems, Rat

ONE

Soren and I knock out the metalmen standing between us and freedom, and we flee like animals from a thunderstorm, frantic and determined to find safety. 

In those early moments of escape from the Fall Gauntlet and the Crown itself, it’s all we can do. The iron-toed boots of so many youthguard clattering across the cobblestones toward us is a warning song for the judgment that awaits us. Soren and I will pay for escaping the Fall Gauntlet together, not murdering each other, and therefore, not giving the Crown a champion. But we’ve been paying all our lives for the sins of our parents—why would now be any different?

Marketplaces I’ve frequented whiz by in my periphery as we sprint through another narrow street. I’m not exactly sure where we are going, but I know these cramped streets well enough from my time apprenticing under Master Gherus to get us to the edge of town by nightfall.

Not that I’m about to stop and ask for directions.

For the first time ever, New Phasia looks beautiful to me in the afternoon light of that first fateful day. A cacophony of chaotic noises rings through the capital as people shriek, swords and shields clash in combat, and fireworks paint the gray, clouded sky with bursting strokes of magenta and cyan blue—colors representing both the lynx and the bear, and the revolution that we’ve started.

The stunt I pulled back in the gauntlet, calling upon the bear and lynx totem leaders to start a riot, would have its consequences.

More of the capital’s metalmen follow us, emerging from bustling alleys and striding down steps to greet us in battle wearing their old-fashioned breastplates. Soren seems distracted as he strikes them down, one after another, as though breaking porcelain pots for a prize. His spiked club connects with flesh and fresh blood spritzes my face like the first drops of rain. Soren looks around, sniffing the air.

Soren, we have to go! I grab his massive, gauntleted hand, yanking him toward me, and we sprint down another branching path.

I can’t leave, Soren says, his breathing heavy and his face flecked with blood. His broken bear mask is off. Not yet, he says.

Because of Dad? I ask.

No, he says. We have to go back for my girlfriend.

Girlfriend? If I’m expecting Soren to say anything, ‘girlfriend’ is my last guess on the list. I still don’t know my brother at all.

We’re both exhausted, hungry, and sleep-deprived, and now we have romance to deal with? I look at the lumbering beast that is my brother and try to make peace with the fact that he is no longer an innocent eight-year-old boy. So much can change in seven years.

Where is she? I ask as we choose a new direction and bound down a set of stairs, then