Holy Funk Hunk! This entry had a little bit of everything, and all lovely 

So I'm going to disagree with all my learned colleagues downthread and suggest that the humour - more precisely, the way the humour was executed - clashed with the tone of the rest of the work. It's not that you can't make something funny and very serious as well: see Sir Terry Pratchett. What didn't work for me here was that there were two different tones being taken. The work opens in a relatively serious voice. The introduction of the monks breaks that voice sharply. The monks are exaggerations - overdrawn and ridiculous to the point of cartoonishness. Meanwhile the other characters are not. Both Choth and the narrator are more down-to-earth, realistically drawn characters. There's also nothing exaggerated or larger than life about the Copperclaw kingdom or the people of Cornwell (and do I understand there's a word count limit in play here). So the rat monks are silly bordering on slapstick, but there's not even a hint of the same comic tone in the other characters, the broader outlines of the world, or any of the prose unrelated to the monks. That's why I found the humour jarring.

Phew! That was a lot of words. I hope you understand what I'm trying to express here. And for clarity, I *liked* the humour. It was funny and well-done! If the rest of the work had struck a more lighthearted, exaggerated tone it would have landed perfectly for me.

On the whole, I did like the work. Everything flowed along nicely, the prose was sharp and enjoyable, and the worldbuilding was solid. I enjoyed the use of moons rather than years as a measurement of age as a way of illustrating the different pace of life among the much shorter-lived ratmen. I really liked that the major conflict was between ratmen factions - there's a lot of lip service paid in legacy to the rats being riven with inner conflict but they always seemed to unite without problems when it came to waging war on the "good" races, and I liked that you used real conflict between ratmen factions as a plot driver here.

Elegant worldbuilding, and great contrast between the silly (holy funk hunk! holy funk hunk!) and the sublime (the ways of elders). You should be proud of this.

I think the humor of the 'Funk Hunk' and the seriousness of the message were balanced well in this piece, your sacrificed will be remembered Skittle.

nicely written, concur with the comments below. Possibly the humor reduced the impact some (for me I kept thinking some 70’s music should go with the chant), but then again it’s not unbalanced silliness to the message which is solid. 

The worldbuilding at the front conveys a lot of texture to help flesh out the narrator and the Copperclaws in a quick, focused set of words.  The meat of the story does a wonderful job oscillating between the grimness of the situation Skittles is trying to undermine and the absurd humor of the monastic order.  I think it works especially well that the humor is non-diegetic, and that the silliness of monastic rats chanting "Holy Funk Hunk" is treated deadly serious within the universe.  These monks are zealots and the Copperclaws have struck a deal with a ratty devil.

Skittles' attempt to argue against the use of what is essentially a WMD manages an interesting complexity as it encompasses a broad-morality ("killing civilians is wrong") and a personal grievance ("these rats are our enemies").  Our little hero's noble sacrifice was well foreshadowed and the closing is very sweet.  

Rat-tastic. The chanting made me think of The Secret of Nimh style storytelling, with a bite of Grimdark but a lot of just likeable characters (even the villains).