Jim—Rat #1—waited until the next time the cellar door creaked open.

  He heard boots coming down the stairs first—one set heavy and deliberate, the other light and quick.

  Then they appeared.

  A broad-shouldered man descended empty-handed, heading to fetch a full keg from the racks. Right behind him, a lighter woman came down to collect more empty tankards.

  Their voices drifted down in Common, words suddenly sharp and useful.

  “Just stick the empties near the bar,” the heavier one grumbled. “Dock Ward’s not getting any calmer. Sailors drink more when the Xanathar and the Plague Rats are at each other’s throats.”

  Plague Rats. Jim noted the name with a flicker of interest and a colder flicker of recognition. Wererat gang. Sewer smugglers. Family reunion waiting to go sideways.

  The door stayed open. Lantern light spilled down the stairs. For one heartbeat, no eyes were on the floor.

  He bolted.

  Tiny claws, soft taps. He hugged the wall, slipped under a step, then wriggled between two loose boards that didn’t quite meet. He squeezed upward through the gap behind the stairwell and popped out into light and noise.

  The taproom of the Drowned Roach hit him like a slap.

  The floor was a minefield. Every bootfall sent vibrations up through his paws like distant thunder. A droplet of spilled ale the size of his head splashed down inches away and he froze, heart jack-hammering, while the liquid soaked into sawdust and turned it into sticky muck that clung to his whiskers.

  He darted forward.

  A serving girl’s wooden clog came down like a falling tree. He juked left on pure instinct—rat reflexes faster than his human brain could curse—and felt the wind of it part the fur on his back. The clog landed with a wet smack, spraying grit across his face. He pressed himself into the narrow canyon between two barrels and tried to remember how to breathe. The air down here was thicker—yeast and sweat and the coppery undertone of blood from the night’s bar fights still drying in the cracks of the floorboards. Somewhere above, a tankard slammed down and a man roared with laughter. The sound rolled over him like a physical wave.

  He stayed in the long shadow of the bar, threading behind stacked crates. Every time a boot thumped down nearby, his body tried to press itself into the stone.

  Loud and sloppy Common crashed down from the drinkers leaning on the bar itself.

  “…told you, Zhentarim ain’t gonna keep their noses out of Waterdeep forever. Mark me, there’ll be black cloaks in the Dock Ward by year’s end.”

  “…as long as they pay in dragons, I don’t care whose banner’s on the ship.”

  He darted past their swinging boots and angled toward the darker rear corner. Two dwarves argued there in grumbling, precise Dwarven over tankards.

  “…Lord’s Alliance tariffs… riffraff out of the harbor…”

  “…Dock Ward’ll sink under its own filth before the sewers give.”

  Closer to the warped window the light grew brighter and the boots fewer. A pair of elves nursed good wine and spoke in soft, contemptuous Elven, convinced no one in this dive could understand them.

  “…this ‘City of Splendors’ reeks. The Weave frays around that mountain, and humans build taverns on it.”

  “…and yet every road, every ship, leads here. Gold forgives the stench.”

  Near the half-open door the air moved fresher, carrying fast gutter Goblinoid from a goblin work gang loading crates on a barge outside.

  “…boss says Xanathar’s boys get first cut.”

  “…yeah? Plague Rats don’t agree. Heard they knifed a smuggler last night down by Mistshore.”

  Xanathar. Plague Rats. Zhentarim. Lords’ Alliance. His old GM brain pinned every name to an invisible corkboard. Factions. And he was literally beneath all of them.

  He paused under a table where three dockhands were halfway through a pitcher.

  “—tell you, sewer smell’s worse than usual,” one said, picking at his teeth. “Dungsweepers’ Guild’s slacking off.”

  “Nah,” another answered. “Heard from a cellarer over on Ship Street—something’s driving the rats out of the tunnels. Seen ’em swarming in broad daylight.”

  The third snorted. “Yeah? Maybe the Rat King’s woken up. Old tales say there’s one under Dock Ward somewhere, all tails knotted together, cursed by the gods…”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Under the table, Rat #1 went very still.

  Rat King. He filed it under Things That Are Either Foreshadowing or I Should Run From. Possibly both.

  He edged to the next table, where the gossip had teeth.

  Two hooded figures sat close, not full rogue cosplay but close enough.

  “…our shipment went missing right under their noses,” one murmured in low Common. “Whole crate of wine vanished out of a locked cellar. No broken planks, no smashed locks—just gone. The boss isn't going to be happy, what do we do?"

  Jim resisted the urge to look guilty. The crate in his one-slot extradimensional pocket suddenly felt the size of a wagon.

  “…could be Xanathar’s people,” the other suggested. “Could be the Plague Rats—wererats love the sewers under the Dock Ward.”

  “Could be,” the first agreed.

  Or, Jim thought, it could be a confused isekai rat testing the inventory system. He let them keep their mystery.

  He stared up at the Drowned Roach’s smoke-stained ceiling and thought, very clearly: Fuck me, I’m in D&D.

  The realization landed like a dropped die—panic and glee all at once. Waterdeep. Dock Ward. Factions, guilds, Xanathar, Rat Kings. He had spent years of his old life running games in this place. Now he could smell it. Gods, it smelled awful. The worst part about being here was having a rat nose in the docks.

  I love the Forgotten Realms, he thought. This could be fun.

  Then his whiskers twitched and the rat body reminded him, politely but firmly: You are six inches long, weigh practically nothing, and just watched your sibling die to a broom.

  Right. Fun. With permadeath.

  He flexed his claws and brought up the inventory with a thought.

  [Inventory 1/1] – Crate (Contents: Wine for shady men, probably expensive, currently making a cellarer question reality.)

  The mental icon sat there, smug.

  His human half—the part that hated watching decent NPCs get chewed up by the plot—gave a nudge.

  Okay. Let’s give someone a win.

  He waited until the tavern hit a lull between rushes. Jorgan’s voice rang out sharp and frustrated from behind the bar.

  “…don’t tell me it’s gone, Merra! That was Dragon Coast red, not pisswater from Amn. I’ll have the Guild on my neck if the shipment doesn’t match the ledger.”

  A woman’s voice, tight and tired, answered: “I checked twice, Jorgan. It’s not in the cellar, it’s not in the alley, it’s not—”

  That was his cue.

  He slipped along the base of the wall, using a fresh roar of laughter from a nearby table as cover, and scurried behind the bar. From rat height the space was a dangerous maze of boots, kegs, and sticky puddles. He squeezed into the narrow gap between the wall and the keg rack. From there he had a clean line-of-sight on a bare patch of floor behind a stack of lesser ale casks.

  Jorgan the barkeep—apron, scowl, the kind of man who trusted numbers more than people—was leaning over the bar, glaring at a younger woman: Merra, sleeves rolled up, damp cloth in one hand. She wore the hollow-eyed look of someone on her feet since sunrise and two mistakes away from either crying or punching someone.

  “Look,” Merra was saying, hands spread, “I checked the manifests myself. If there was Dragon Coast red, it’s gone now. Maybe the carters—”

  “Carters don’t walk through walls,” Jorgan snapped. “That crate cost more than you make in two months. I don’t have room for ‘maybe.’”

  Jim focused.

  Here.

  He willed the slot empty.

  Blink.

  The crate of wine appeared on the tavern floor with a soft whump of displaced air and scuffed wood, tucked exactly where a slightly careless worker might have left it half-forgotten behind cheaper stock.

  Merra startled, nearly dropped her cloth.

  “The—” She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. “Jorgan?”

  He scowled. “What now?”

  She pointed wordlessly.

  He turned.

  The silence that followed was beautiful.

  “I… I checked there,” she said, baffled. “I promise you I checked there.”

  Jorgan strode over, ran a hand down the crate’s side, checked the stamp. Same sigil, same markings. He pried the lid up a sliver and sniffed. Genuine.

  His shoulders sagged with visible relief. Some of the hardness left his face.

  “…Guess you missed it,” he said gruffly, not quite meeting her eyes. “Easy mistake. All these crates look the same when you’re tired.”

  Merra stared between him and the crate like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or start worshipping whatever small god of miracles had just smiled on her.

  A smile—small but real—broke through the exhaustion. “I told you I wasn’t drunk.”

  He snorted. “Don’t push it. Get it logged, then take ten. You look like shit.”

  She nodded, almost dazed, and moved for the ledger.

  From his hiding place Jim’s whiskers twitched in quiet satisfaction.

  One good deed, anonymously done, powered by glitchy rat inventory physics. Not a bad start.

  Fun as it was to play tavern fairy god-rat, he had another objective: the sewers.

  The dockhands’ gossip still swirled in his head—rats driven out of the tunnels, smell worse than usual, talk of a Rat King. If something was stirring down there, he needed to know whether it was something he could avoid, ally with, or run screaming from.

  He slipped back down the stairs during a fresh burst of laughter, past the now-less-haunted cellar, and nosed toward the far wall.

  There was a crack between two old stones near the floor where cool air and a much stronger stink seeped in. Not just damp—this was moving air, carrying the distilled bouquet of every street in Dock Ward: rot, filth, old magic, and the sour tang of alchemical waste.

  A rat highway.

  He squeezed through.

  Stone scraped his fur; mortar flakes rained down his back. For a moment he was stuck, ribs compressed, lungs burning. Then he was out—spat into a narrow crawlspace between buildings, barely more than a long gap under the street.

  From there it was simple: follow the slope, the smell, and the faint echo of dripping water.

  He darted through another gap into a side alley—cobblestones, garbage, a sleeping drunk slumped against one wall, a bored and scarred cat on a windowsill watching gulls with half-lidded eyes.

  Jim hugged the wall, shadow to shadow. The cat’s nose twitched once in his direction, but the wind was with him. Its eyes never opened all the way.

  At the end of the alley, between two sagging buildings, sat a stone culvert set into the wall. A rusted iron grate barred the opening at human height, but down at rat level one bar had corroded clean through, leaving a generous hole.

  Beyond: darkness. The muted thunder of the city above. The slow, constant rush of water and everything else Waterdeep flushed away. The air hung wet and thick, every street in the ward distilled and sent downward.

  The entrance to the sewers.

  Jim padded up to the ragged gap and peered in. His whiskers tasted the air. Behind the overwhelming stink rode other scents:

  Old rat trails.

  New rat panic.

  Something else—sharp, metallic, carrying the faintest thread of… magic?

  He swallowed once.

  Welcome to the dungeon.

  He took one last look back at the slice of sky visible between the leaning buildings, the distant cries of gulls and sailors drifting faintly down.

  Then he turned back to the culvert, nose almost touching the darkness, and paused on the threshold.