First appearance: S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack · watch it on YouTube
Sila was a talking rat in a billowing blue scarf who entered the arena with one goal: to find “the cheese,” whether it killed her or not. She fought Ol’ Pumpernicklejack in the Season of Vigilance and spent most of the match digging up graves instead of attacking him. Along the way she uncovered her missing best friend, turned his coffin into a lava raft, and invited her own opponent aboard. She lost, but she got her last wish, and few champions have died so thoroughly coated in poop and in their life’s purpose.
Story
The Arbiter summoned Sila to face Ol’ Pumpernicklejack in S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack. She stood about an inch shorter than her tiny opponent, and her scarf kept slapping him in the chin. Asked whether she had brought note cards, she replied, “No, I have my nose.” The Grandmaster had never seen a talking rat and admitted she still had all her fingers. Sila promised to change her mind: “Just you wait. I will get the cheese.” The Arbiter announced that he was already pulling for Jack.
In The Midnight Mausoleum, a moonlit graveyard ringed by The Acolytes, Sila struck first. She threw a dull dagger that sliced into Jack “like cutting through cheese” and trimmed his beard, then got down to her real business. Scurrying on all fours with her nose to the dirt, she robbed graves so deftly that the Grandmaster dubbed her “Sila Fast Hands.” The first grave held the bones of the minotaur Tormiir (“Not the cheese, not the cheese, not the cheese”). She dodged Jack’s giant iron sickle well enough to soften the blow, and she shrugged off an exploding minotaur spirit and the swarm of minitaurs that tried to drag her into a grave. When the Acolytes gave her a boost for her next strike, she spent it on grave robbing instead. The unmarked grave she opened held her best friend, Chuck the Cheese, who had vanished years earlier during a game of hide and go seek. She had been searching for him ever since. Then she stabbed his body, coated her blade in his oozing remains, and hurled it at Jack. Chuck’s bewildered spirit rose briefly (“Hey, buddy, why are you stabbing me?”), his animated corpse copied her throw, and his spirit burst beside her.
When the graveyard floor turned to lava, Sila hopped to safety and wiggled a tombstone loose. On the Acolytes’ advice she then rode Chuck’s cheap plastic coffin across the lava, the inside of its lid inscribed “You can’t keep a good cheese down.” Then she shouted to Jack: “Come on! Do you wanna die?!” He jumped aboard, and she rowed them both along. When the Arbiter asked why she was rescuing the enemy she was supposed to kill, she said simply, “I never promised I was trying to kill him.” She smelled a platter of aged cheese in the Grandmaster’s booth, the prized cheese of Doug the Pug, and the Grandmaster offered it to whoever killed the other. Before Sila could make up her mind, Jack gave in to his bloodlust. He tackled her into the lava and his scalding boots launched them both like a rocket, straight into the cheese platter on the Grandmaster’s balcony. The Arbiter picked them both up by the scruff (“We don’t have a lot of rules, but there are some rules”) and punched them like meteors across The Void and through the roof of Emmery’s Tavern.
The tavern was a letdown. Its barrels held only processed cheese product that smelled “like feet and burritos,” and the insult drove Sila feral. She rolled on the sticky floor until grit and pebbles clung to her fur, then made jagged rock daggers from them and stabbed Jack. His wild magic teleported them both into the chimney, and Sila landed in the fire with Jack on top of her. She put out the flames with her butt. Jack’s next teleport dropped him into the tavern’s overflowing toilet, and he burst back out through the door dripping with brown toilet sludge, a reeking “fecal monster.” Sila declared it “the crappiest attack you’ve ever done to me,” and he hit her hard enough to finish her: the blade cut through flesh and fur, and her blood spurted like a fountain, covering Jack in a wave of red. Her final words were “Cover me in cheese.” She sank into the brown muck, which matted her fur. The bartender, Emery, came out half-dressed with a pot of fondue and poured it over her, sealing her in gold, “prepared to be buried.”
Personality and Abilities
Sila was a small, scarf-wearing rat in britches and a jacket. She ran firmly on four legs, “nose dipping right down to that ground, sniffing all the way through.” She came from a guild of rats who love disguises, and she treated thievery as a way of uncovering who is behind what. All of it served her search for the cheese. She was upbeat, single-minded and oddly friendly toward the man trying to kill her. Even encased in poop and cheese, she remained “not a rat of many words these days.”
She fought like a rogue. She threw dull daggers, ducked behind tombstones, dodged blows at the last moment and had remarkably fast hands for robbing graves. Her nose was her greatest asset, and she was the first to smell Doug’s cheese. At the table, her player revealed that her very first job had been working as the Chuck E. Cheese mascot: “I was born to do this match.”
Relationships
- Ol’ Pumpernicklejack: her opponent, whom she wounded, then rescued on a coffin raft, and who killed her in the tavern.
- Chuck the Cheese: her long-lost best friend, found dead in the grave where he hid during their game; she used his body as a weapon and his coffin as a boat. After the match, he called her end “kind of living the dream.”
- The Grandmaster: was skeptical of rats, cheered her cheese quest, and offered her Doug’s prized cheese for a kill.
- The Arbiter: openly rooted for Jack, and hauled her off the Grandmaster’s balcony by the scruff.
- Doug the Pug: owner of the cheese she coveted, who backed the bloodshed over keeping his snack.
Memorable Quotes
- “I’m gonna change your mind today. Just you wait. I will get the cheese.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “Not the cheese, not the cheese, not the cheese.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “I never promised I was trying to kill him.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “It is exquisite. It is aged. It is cheese.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “Cover me in cheese.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “I’m not a rat of many words these days, you know?” (S7E4 — The Cheese)