Slann
Lizards of Renown
Herald of Creation
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My next story entry:
Murder Under the Nile
Snikkit hurried down the narrow tunnels. The close walls brushed at his fur as he scurried forwards, giving him a sense of protection and reminding him of his burrow back at Skavenblight.
The Warlord was not going to be pleased. Their tunnelling had had to stop due to a cave-in killing most of the Skaven slaves doing the digging. This meant that work would stop while they were dug out and put back to work or the bodies removed as obstables. Either way, they would need more slaves shipped in before they could continue moving forwards through the underway now being carved into the jungle lands.
Snikkit reached a crossroads and took a left, immediately coming to a wooden door set into the tunnel. He banged the prescribed three times and, doubled almost completely over, entered the room with his most servile face on. The warlord had been known to execute and/or eat anyone disturbing him… but equally he had been known to do the same to those who didn’t tell him what was happening.
Snikkit’s nose twitched. That metallic smell… Fully entering the room, he stopped cold. Warlord Grashik lay on his bed, face and body bloated beyond recognition. Knife wounds across his body could only mean one thing. Assassins! He crouched and looked around furtively. Nothing. Well, he could still leave before…
Loud arguing approached the half-open door behind him. He span and froze in fear as the two other lieutenants scrambled in mid argument. “-speak-speak that you are to blame-blame, Niffit!” Just as the other shouted “-Warlord, I have brought this traitor-thing to you directly for eating so save-save you time-time!”
Both speakers froze. Snikkit scrambled as far from the body as he could. “No-no, Snikkit just found-found Warlord like this. No sneaky stab-stab.” He could tell that they were having none of it.
Niffit, the bigger of the two, smiled evilly revealing yellowed-fangs. “Well-well, sneaky-stab-stab... Big plan-plan for Snikkit, being big rat..."
Snikkit squirted the musk of fear. As he backed away from the pair, the door behind them opened again and Warlord Grashik's trusted advisor stalked in, flanked by two burly Stormvermin.
"Well, well. Ze sneaky-sneakers ‘ave gone to far-far zis time.”
Snikkit grimaced. He wasn’t sure what part of the Underway or Skavenblight the advisor was from but his accent was almost incomprehensible. “I was just…” but the advisor cut him off.
“No-no. All suspects you are-are. I will ‘ave-‘ave to look-squint at all evidence before slow kill-kill.”
The other Lieutenants had been smirking to themselves at his misfortune and only now realized that they were included in this remark. “I just found-spotted him here. How I guilty-thing…” just as the other spluttered “He was here-here, nasty guilty…” but the advisor cut them both off.
“No-no, guilty stench-smell, it is ‘ere.” The rat sniffed the air, its small set of whiskers carefully curled. “And I will not stop-cease, until all ze guilt is found.” The rat swirled dramatically so that his cloak flared out behind him. “For zat is ‘ow Poirat always gets-finds ze guilty.” Leaving the bulky Stormvermin guarding the door, Poirat took the first lieutenant to a separate room for interrogation.
“Let no-one enter-leave.”
-
Snikkit had never seen Poirat at work, but he was morbidly fascinated with the investigation process. The other two lieutenants were each taken individually for several hours at a time, leaving the other two in silence as the two hulking Stormvermin glared down at them. Between each interview, Poirat stomped around the warlord’s room huffing and puffing through his snout watched by the bewildered Skaven.
When it came to his turn for questioning, Snikkit followed the rat down a tunnel into a dimly lit room. Poirat peppered him with questions: When had he arrived in the room, when was the last time he had used the privvy, just how attracted he was to grubs and worms as foodstufffs… The questions went on and on. Some he could see the relevance of, some seemed whimsically chosen and some were just downright strange.
“You ask-speak how many steps into room-burrow, before I sniff-smelt Warlord’s body?”
“Last snack-eating was four hours ago…”
“Stretch-open my muzzle? Why would you-AAAAARGH”
“Um… I can fetch-carry some of my droppings…”
Leaving Poirat sifting through large masses of his droppings, Snikkit began to wonder if the advisor had a secret stash of warpstone. He seemed a couple of rats short of a swarm…
-
“You may be think-pondering why I ‘ave called-summoned you all ‘ere today.”
The advisor stalked up and down the room in front of the three lieutenants. The two hulking Stormvermin still stood either side of the door. Snikkit exchanged looks with the others, for once there was no bickering between them. The surreal experience had created a temporary ceasefire and they sat together just as bemused as each other. Poirat paused, striking a dramatic pose. The moment stretched out.
Snikkit couldn’t take it any longer. “Haven’t been able to leave-flee-“
“Exactly!” A feverish light had kindled inside the eyes of the advisor. “You ‘aven’t been able to leave-flee. None of you…”
He started pacing again. “The killer is in ‘zis room-burrow.”
The silence following this proclamation was profound. Broken only by the slight hissing sound as Snikkit, and possibly some others, squirted the musk of fear.
“From the moment-time I entered zis room, I ‘ave kept it secure. I ‘ave taken-grabbed each of you for question-talk. Each time-moment I came back, the room-scene ‘ad change-moved. The killer ‘ides ‘is track-scent.”
The three lieuntenants looked at each other. The silence returned, but this time there was a greater pressure as the nervous Skaven eyed each other.
Poirat’s tail lashed behind him as he preened his curled whiskers again. “When I first entered ze room-burrow, I could tell-see by ze warlord’s bloating zat the killer ‘ad struck long before. Knife wound-gashes were for show-show, no sign of struggle-fight. The bag of grub-worms warlord ‘ad been eat-snacking would ‘ave long-since come out ozzer end-bottom of the killer-stabber…”
Snikkit was not following at all. Glancing at the others he could see that he was not the only one.
“Check-smell of your mouths-muzzle showed no recent food-snack, but on each look-glance ze bag of grub-worms was smaller and smaller.” He leaned closer to them. “The killer-stabber is still in zis room.”
Snikkit nervously glanced around the room. There were no obvious hiding places in sight, but it wouldn’t be the first time a paranoid leader had commissioned a false wall, floor or ceiling in the event of a mutiny.
“But where, I ask-question myself, could ze killer be ‘iding? I look-searched all tunnels surrounding zis one and found nothzing. Then I realized my mistake-folly…”
Pulling a throwing knife from his belt, he spun and threw the knife into a section of the wall near the warlord’s body except that it stopped about a foot away. Poirat stepped closer as a body fell to the floor with the knife embedded in its shoulder. With the wound, the natural camouflage from the Chameleon Skink slowly reverted back to it’s natural green colour.
“Only by process-check of elimination, could I work-find where ze killer was ‘iding through its musk-scent.” He grabbed hold of the lizard and pulled it to its feet. “To kill-maim immediately is waste, we must find-question about what ozzer Lizard things are in ze tunnels.” He signalled the Stormvermin and then hustled the wounded lizard out of the room.
The other lieutenants sighed a collective sigh of relief and filed out of the room, resuming their bantering argument but now about who would be the warlord now.
Snikkit remained in the room. Something about the set-up niggled at him like a piece of gristle stuck in his back teeth. Something just didn’t add up.
He walked over to the body of the warlord. The poison-bloated body was covered in knife wounds and the stench was now almost too much to be able to stand close to the body for any length of time. He realized what it was. He had seen the warlord fight on despite several wounds from weeping-blades and it made no sense that he would have been senseless after a couple of darts. A feeling of panic slowly blossomed in his stomach as he backed away from the body. The only way there could have been no struggle is due to too much poison. Too many darts simultaneously.
There wasn’t a killer. There were SEVERAL killers.
He scrambled towards the door, he had to get away. What if the other lizards were still here. He had to-
He skidded to a stop. The hallway was filled with the lifeless bodies of hulking Stormvermin and the lieutenants, resembling spiny sea creatures with blowdarts sticking out of them all over their flesh. Pressing himself to the wall and trying to watch all directions at once, he inched past the bodies. Lying on the floor beyond was the still form of Poirat, for once his features frozen into a look of shock.
Snikkit didn’t spend any more time looking, he frantically scrabbled his way past and ran for the nearest exit.
-
La’Xiu berated Ka-Liq as they climbed through the foilage of the jungle with the rest of the pack of Chameleon Skinks. “You just couldn’t hold on til lunch, could you?! You just HAD to keep eating the forsaken things and give us away.” He shook his head. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?!”
Ka-Liq hung his head low and muttered something unintelligible.
“What?”
“And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those pesky rats.”
Murder Under the Nile
Snikkit hurried down the narrow tunnels. The close walls brushed at his fur as he scurried forwards, giving him a sense of protection and reminding him of his burrow back at Skavenblight.
The Warlord was not going to be pleased. Their tunnelling had had to stop due to a cave-in killing most of the Skaven slaves doing the digging. This meant that work would stop while they were dug out and put back to work or the bodies removed as obstables. Either way, they would need more slaves shipped in before they could continue moving forwards through the underway now being carved into the jungle lands.
Snikkit reached a crossroads and took a left, immediately coming to a wooden door set into the tunnel. He banged the prescribed three times and, doubled almost completely over, entered the room with his most servile face on. The warlord had been known to execute and/or eat anyone disturbing him… but equally he had been known to do the same to those who didn’t tell him what was happening.
Snikkit’s nose twitched. That metallic smell… Fully entering the room, he stopped cold. Warlord Grashik lay on his bed, face and body bloated beyond recognition. Knife wounds across his body could only mean one thing. Assassins! He crouched and looked around furtively. Nothing. Well, he could still leave before…
Loud arguing approached the half-open door behind him. He span and froze in fear as the two other lieutenants scrambled in mid argument. “-speak-speak that you are to blame-blame, Niffit!” Just as the other shouted “-Warlord, I have brought this traitor-thing to you directly for eating so save-save you time-time!”
Both speakers froze. Snikkit scrambled as far from the body as he could. “No-no, Snikkit just found-found Warlord like this. No sneaky stab-stab.” He could tell that they were having none of it.
Niffit, the bigger of the two, smiled evilly revealing yellowed-fangs. “Well-well, sneaky-stab-stab... Big plan-plan for Snikkit, being big rat..."
Snikkit squirted the musk of fear. As he backed away from the pair, the door behind them opened again and Warlord Grashik's trusted advisor stalked in, flanked by two burly Stormvermin.
"Well, well. Ze sneaky-sneakers ‘ave gone to far-far zis time.”
Snikkit grimaced. He wasn’t sure what part of the Underway or Skavenblight the advisor was from but his accent was almost incomprehensible. “I was just…” but the advisor cut him off.
“No-no. All suspects you are-are. I will ‘ave-‘ave to look-squint at all evidence before slow kill-kill.”
The other Lieutenants had been smirking to themselves at his misfortune and only now realized that they were included in this remark. “I just found-spotted him here. How I guilty-thing…” just as the other spluttered “He was here-here, nasty guilty…” but the advisor cut them both off.
“No-no, guilty stench-smell, it is ‘ere.” The rat sniffed the air, its small set of whiskers carefully curled. “And I will not stop-cease, until all ze guilt is found.” The rat swirled dramatically so that his cloak flared out behind him. “For zat is ‘ow Poirat always gets-finds ze guilty.” Leaving the bulky Stormvermin guarding the door, Poirat took the first lieutenant to a separate room for interrogation.
“Let no-one enter-leave.”
-
Snikkit had never seen Poirat at work, but he was morbidly fascinated with the investigation process. The other two lieutenants were each taken individually for several hours at a time, leaving the other two in silence as the two hulking Stormvermin glared down at them. Between each interview, Poirat stomped around the warlord’s room huffing and puffing through his snout watched by the bewildered Skaven.
When it came to his turn for questioning, Snikkit followed the rat down a tunnel into a dimly lit room. Poirat peppered him with questions: When had he arrived in the room, when was the last time he had used the privvy, just how attracted he was to grubs and worms as foodstufffs… The questions went on and on. Some he could see the relevance of, some seemed whimsically chosen and some were just downright strange.
“You ask-speak how many steps into room-burrow, before I sniff-smelt Warlord’s body?”
“Last snack-eating was four hours ago…”
“Stretch-open my muzzle? Why would you-AAAAARGH”
“Um… I can fetch-carry some of my droppings…”
Leaving Poirat sifting through large masses of his droppings, Snikkit began to wonder if the advisor had a secret stash of warpstone. He seemed a couple of rats short of a swarm…
-
“You may be think-pondering why I ‘ave called-summoned you all ‘ere today.”
The advisor stalked up and down the room in front of the three lieutenants. The two hulking Stormvermin still stood either side of the door. Snikkit exchanged looks with the others, for once there was no bickering between them. The surreal experience had created a temporary ceasefire and they sat together just as bemused as each other. Poirat paused, striking a dramatic pose. The moment stretched out.
Snikkit couldn’t take it any longer. “Haven’t been able to leave-flee-“
“Exactly!” A feverish light had kindled inside the eyes of the advisor. “You ‘aven’t been able to leave-flee. None of you…”
He started pacing again. “The killer is in ‘zis room-burrow.”
The silence following this proclamation was profound. Broken only by the slight hissing sound as Snikkit, and possibly some others, squirted the musk of fear.
“From the moment-time I entered zis room, I ‘ave kept it secure. I ‘ave taken-grabbed each of you for question-talk. Each time-moment I came back, the room-scene ‘ad change-moved. The killer ‘ides ‘is track-scent.”
The three lieuntenants looked at each other. The silence returned, but this time there was a greater pressure as the nervous Skaven eyed each other.
Poirat’s tail lashed behind him as he preened his curled whiskers again. “When I first entered ze room-burrow, I could tell-see by ze warlord’s bloating zat the killer ‘ad struck long before. Knife wound-gashes were for show-show, no sign of struggle-fight. The bag of grub-worms warlord ‘ad been eat-snacking would ‘ave long-since come out ozzer end-bottom of the killer-stabber…”
Snikkit was not following at all. Glancing at the others he could see that he was not the only one.
“Check-smell of your mouths-muzzle showed no recent food-snack, but on each look-glance ze bag of grub-worms was smaller and smaller.” He leaned closer to them. “The killer-stabber is still in zis room.”
Snikkit nervously glanced around the room. There were no obvious hiding places in sight, but it wouldn’t be the first time a paranoid leader had commissioned a false wall, floor or ceiling in the event of a mutiny.
“But where, I ask-question myself, could ze killer be ‘iding? I look-searched all tunnels surrounding zis one and found nothzing. Then I realized my mistake-folly…”
Pulling a throwing knife from his belt, he spun and threw the knife into a section of the wall near the warlord’s body except that it stopped about a foot away. Poirat stepped closer as a body fell to the floor with the knife embedded in its shoulder. With the wound, the natural camouflage from the Chameleon Skink slowly reverted back to it’s natural green colour.
“Only by process-check of elimination, could I work-find where ze killer was ‘iding through its musk-scent.” He grabbed hold of the lizard and pulled it to its feet. “To kill-maim immediately is waste, we must find-question about what ozzer Lizard things are in ze tunnels.” He signalled the Stormvermin and then hustled the wounded lizard out of the room.
The other lieutenants sighed a collective sigh of relief and filed out of the room, resuming their bantering argument but now about who would be the warlord now.
Snikkit remained in the room. Something about the set-up niggled at him like a piece of gristle stuck in his back teeth. Something just didn’t add up.
He walked over to the body of the warlord. The poison-bloated body was covered in knife wounds and the stench was now almost too much to be able to stand close to the body for any length of time. He realized what it was. He had seen the warlord fight on despite several wounds from weeping-blades and it made no sense that he would have been senseless after a couple of darts. A feeling of panic slowly blossomed in his stomach as he backed away from the body. The only way there could have been no struggle is due to too much poison. Too many darts simultaneously.
There wasn’t a killer. There were SEVERAL killers.
He scrambled towards the door, he had to get away. What if the other lizards were still here. He had to-
He skidded to a stop. The hallway was filled with the lifeless bodies of hulking Stormvermin and the lieutenants, resembling spiny sea creatures with blowdarts sticking out of them all over their flesh. Pressing himself to the wall and trying to watch all directions at once, he inched past the bodies. Lying on the floor beyond was the still form of Poirat, for once his features frozen into a look of shock.
Snikkit didn’t spend any more time looking, he frantically scrabbled his way past and ran for the nearest exit.
-
La’Xiu berated Ka-Liq as they climbed through the foilage of the jungle with the rest of the pack of Chameleon Skinks. “You just couldn’t hold on til lunch, could you?! You just HAD to keep eating the forsaken things and give us away.” He shook his head. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?!”
Ka-Liq hung his head low and muttered something unintelligible.
“What?”
“And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those pesky rats.”
