Thread: A Cold-Blooded Business (Elvish and TwistedParadox)

Tap . Tap . Tap . Tap . The ambassador's fingers beat an unsteady rhythm against the arms of the chair around which he's coiled, angrily and impatiently doing his best to irritate the young clerk who had the sheer gal to make him wait here in this dingy office. 'No appointment'. Bah! Tap. Tap. An appointment, him? Did they not know who he was? Was he not ambassador for the entire low kingdom to this second-rate city, Serleker De Locquis, a mere fourteen older siblings away from reigning over that noble house of immaculate pedigree. Well he was, not some petty official to be sassed and delayed from his business by a mere bean-counter who looks to be barely out of school, not someone who needs a bloody appointment! Serlek hisses angrily, a sudden outburst that makes the poor clerk nearly jump with fright and splatter ink all across the accounts he had been diligently copying, nerves already worn raw by the constant and unblinking glare of pure venomous hatred that the ambassador had held upon him for the last half-hour, like tormenting an ant with a magnifying glass. Is she ready to see me yet? The serpentine creature snaps. No sir, n-not for- When then!? The clerk is barely even given a chance to speak, Serlek cutting him off mid-sentence to demand yet another answer. Another, another ten minutes, sir, that's all. Hmmph. Snorting dismissively, Serlek leans back in his seat. Or at least his upper body does, his lower half not having the proper anatomy for such an action. From head to just above his waist Serleker is at least close to humanoid, skin smooth, hairless, slicked lightly with some natural oily sheen akin to a human's sweat but without scent, lean strength running down his chest in well-defined abdominal and pectoral muscles... All well visible, seeing as the only 'clothing' the ambassador sees fit to wear is a small, many-pocketed belt around his waist and the intricate, curling blue-grey patterns inscribed upon his flesh in body-paint and tattoos. The lower half of his body, however, is far from so anatomically similar to a mere human's. Starting just about where his navel might be had he been born rather than hatched, skin is replaced by small and lusterless scales, intricately fitted together into an overlapping layer of dull green armor that runs all the way down his slowly tapering, legless lower body, all the way to the very tip of his reptilian tail. Tap. Tap. Tap. Serlek starts up the beat once more, taking satisfaction in the clerk's obvious annoyance at the incessant noise as the put upon pen-pusher desperately tries to smudge away the ink blots before they set and render the ledgers unreadable. Stupid little man. But he had waited this long, so he was hardly about to ruin it all by losing his patience now . Not when he was finally so close to having his vengeance. It had been two months since the incident, two long months in which any other man's anger might have cooled... But not Serlek. His rage, hateful and festering, had only intensified. She must have thought herself so clever, stealing from him while hiding behind her little friends. Well, he had friends of his own. Tap. Tap. Two months it had taken him to assemble the collection of evidence confessions and shady contracts, but now he held it all in his hands, another copy of it all safe in his vault, a thick ream of paper containing enough proof of her guilt to damn her in any court. Two months . The profits her endeavor had cost his embassy would have been reason enough to see her dead, but no, the loss had been personal as well... A scar upon his pride. For two months he'd had to endure scathing letters from his superiors in the low kingdom, the continued hassling merchant guild who had owned the caravan, the thought that everyone in the city knew he had been tricked somehow, that someone had outwitted him and stolen his property without so much as a fight. Tap. No, no mere public execution would do. He would have his pound of flesh in a more private way, so that he could oversee every last second of the bitch's humiliation.