The Missing Queen

The second book in the Sherlock Clam series made by QueenClam and edited by ZzzSleepyCreeper . See: A Study in Red for the previous book in this series.
==Chapter 1- Captured!==
Lime entered the hut but a strange smell came to her. What was it? She lifted her head and started to sniff. Suddenly a roar split her ears. She jumped onto her hammock, looking around for where the sound came from. 
"It's only me." Clam said from her side of the hut. Lime's fear came into curiosity and she glided off her hammock into Clam's room. As she landed, Lime's talon was stepping into red goo. "What is this?" She asked Clam
"Oh, just some strawberry jam... Well I think it's jam." 
Lime whipped it off her talons and looked up to see what Clam had. Inside Clam's arms was a leopard. "A leopard?" Lime asked, "Aren't they dangerous?" 
"Nah!" 
At the same time, the adult spotted cat bit down on Clam's talon. "Egh! He's just playing!" Clam mumbled between the pain. 
"Why not just have a sloth?"
"Eh, sloths are boring. They can't play with you like a cat can do."
"How do you know it's a he?" 
"Just Look!" Clam shoved the cat's butt into Lime's face.
"OHH OKAY!" Lime exclaimed and Clam placed the cat down. She was busy making a vine leash for him. 
"Did you name him?" 
"Yep, I named him Sherlock."
"Sherlock? What does that mean?"
"I don't know. I saw it on one of the Scavenger's scrolls" 
"You read the Scavenger language?"
"Only read, I can't speak it. My voice is too low." Clam then tried to mimic the Scavenger sounds. To Lime's ears it sounded like "Wooble struckle huyab buiop wo wo"
Once Clam finished tying up Sherlock to a vine as a collar and a leash, there was a shuffling around them. 
"What's that?" Clam said. 
"Probably a RainWing." Lime answered.
"No" Clam took in a deep breath from her nostrils. It then followed with some ear twitching. Even her SeaWIng scales seemed to also twitch. 
"We're being watched by three male SandWing guards. One is a female." 
At the same moment both Lime and Clam were gaged with rope, hit in the head and engulfed in bags which reeked of camel dung. 
==Chapter 2- The Missing Family==
Clam opened her eyes slowly. Where was she? Her head was still throbbing but she recognized that her mouth wasn't gagged anymore, but her talons and body were tied to something, probably a boulder. As her eyesight cleared she can see that she was in a cave with her night vision eyes. A regular sized one which seemed to be made out of sandstone. There were no dragons around, and Clam waited impatiently. After about a minute she got tired and decided to have a little fun. 
She felt at the rope and found that the ones on her hind legs that it was slightly looser. She worked her way through the knot and it became undone. Clam then tried to cut the rope off of her front talons. She was envious of Lime, and though of her slithery RainWing build that is easily being able to do this. 
Clam finally was able to make both of her talons free and easily ripped the string around her body. She then went to the top of the boulder which she was tied to and waited. Ha! Wait till the SandWings see me! She thought proudly. She wanted to know why the SandWings brought her here in the first place. Anyway she was a Consulting Detective. Suddenly talons came to Clam's ears and she made herself comfortable on the boulder by laying on it and adding a dim glow on her photophores. 
The group of SandWings entered the cave and the leader had a flame burning inside his mouth for light. Clam recognized him right away. Since the SandWings had a peace treaty with the SkyWings and SeaWings, she recognized his as Commander Murun, one of Queen Sand-dune's most loyal subjects.
"Ah hello Murun. Glad for you to hit me on the head and tie me up on a ROCK!"
"Sorry Clam, we didn't want you to refuse our offer."
"Why would I? I'm a Consulting Detective. You should consult me next time instead of doing this! Well anyway, what do you want anyway?"
"Queen Sand-dune. She disappeared" 
"Queen Sand-dune? So what! Her daughter will probably take her place." Clam replied, knowing Murun's loyalty to her.
"No, even her daughters and sons disappeared."
"What? But she has about thirty dragonets!"
"And also her cousins and other relatives are all gone."
"Gone? And there's no trace as to where they went?"
"Nothing!"
"What about the nightly guards?"
"I don't know. It seems like an animus's job to me!" 
"Don't make speculations, Murun. I need to see this. Where is Lime? Did you leave her?"
"No, we heard your last story about Dreamattacker, and knew Lime and you are good partners" Clam nodded, "Is she okay?" 
"She's right here." A female said in the group of SandWings, and showed a gagged RainWing.
"Why gag her?" Clam asked. 
"We weren't sure." The female said, and took the rope off of Lime's mouth and she spat out some saliva. 
"So are you going to take me to the scene or should we sit here chatting like flounders?" 
==Chapter 3- Assassins and a Clue==
Clam sniffed around the castle, concentrating hard. She didn't have the most sensitive nose in Pyrriah, but it can sure come in handy. She was in the castle and examined the ground. "And none of your guards saw ANYTHING?" 
"Nothing," Murun said with a shudder. She didn't know Murun was that scared for his Queen's life. Clam couldn't smell any other type of dragon but SandWings. Maybe the dragonnappers were SandWings. As Clam investigated the Queen's room she saw that the bed was neatly folded and the curtains to the window was closed.
"You said you didn't move ANYTHING?"
"Nothing!" Murun exclaimed, getting tired of Clam's questions. 
Clam went to the SandWing Queen's door and looked hard with her eyes. She saw that there were fresh scratches from the top of the door leading to the door knob. As she looked at the hallway she was that dragons cannot spread their wings all the way but a little bit. 
Clam knew what happened. The assassins came into the castle and then glided at the top of the wall. They were trained to fly in places like this. There were no scratches at the top was from their wing talons scraping the side so it showed that they practiced this a lot. When they came to their destination, they landed on the door and opened it quietly and shut it from behind. 
Clam went back to the bed and sniffed it really hard. She can only identify the Queen's smell. The dragons probably disguised their smell with sand. The bed was made, but when Clam took off the sand-colored sheets she can identify on the sandy rock bed what happened. 
Queen Sand-dune likes to sleep on a boulder with a thin layer of sand on top of it. Clam can see what happened now. The dragon came and messed with Sand-dune. Sand-dune fought back but was soon beaten. As Clam looked at the side of the bed facing the window, and she saw that sand was kicked from the dragonnapper as he took the queen away through the window and into the air, where they will leave no tracks...
These weren't normal dragons, but were especially trained assassins. 
Clam then went to another room, which was the Queen's sons' rooms. Suddenly Lime's nose went up. Clam couldn't smell anything but SandWing. "What do you smell?" 
"I don't know... It smells like Dragon Fire Fruit"
"Dragon Fire Fruit?"
"Yes It's a fruit in the RainWing kingdom." 
As Clam inhaled she can now smell the fruit. As she followed the smell she can smell that there was fruit juice on one of the walls." 
Clam smelled and smelled and figured out that they were deliberately put there. Like a dragon was trying to draw something.
"Anything else about Dragon Fire Fruit?"
"Well the reason they call it Dragon Fire is because it's flammable."
"Fire! I need fire!" She said excitedly and went over to a random SandWing, "Blow your fire over here." Clam pointed to the wall with the juice. Clam recognized that it was the female SandWing who was always with Murun. "Fine." She said stubbornly and blew a burst of fire.
The fire seemed to form around letters and all can read, "Sand"
==Chapter 4- Sand?==
"Sand?" The SandWing asked. 
"This can be a code... uh... keyword?" Clam said. Clam hated clues which included words. She remembered when she saw words burned into the words 'REVENGE' by the NightWing Dreamattacker. 
"How do you know that the murderer made this?" The female then loomed over Clam threateningly. "How do you know it's not from the SandWing staying in this room?"
==Characters==
Murun- A SandWing male commander
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)