Estalia had changed much under Myrmidia's leadership. Gone was the constant swaggering and duelling of bravos in the streets. The duchies and kingdoms that had made up the region no longer kept patrols around their own borders, watching for signs of aggression from their rivals. Instead their troops were set to drilling in complex formations overseen by the priests of their war goddess, their eyes shining bright with the knowledge that their patron expected only the best from them. Key cities and sites were reinforced by seige engineers, including any exiled dwarf engineers that happened to be in the country. Everywhere there were sentries, fleet-footed and bearing Myrmidia's eagle upon their shoes to aid their speed in delivering messages. The sewers and tunnels throughout the whole of the country swarmed with activity, clever-eyed men setting feindish traps for the inevitable incursion of the ratmen. Myrmidia herself was rarely in any one place for long; she was always on the move, travelling to places that her peerless mind knew required her presence. Under her guidance Estalia was transforming from the ineffectual bunch of squabbling peacocks it was seen as on the world stage into something more streamlined and deadly, a realm of steel and strategy, of unmatched duelists and undefeatable phalanxes.
It was doomed, wholly and irrevocably.
The city of Bilbali had been one of the ones most changed by Myrmidia's arrival. Formerly its great fleets had been owned by a large collection of nobles, each competing with the others to display their individual prowess. Their glory hunting resulted in their coordination being subpar, and while each captain was still a superb architect of naval warfare, internal conflict could not be brooked against the war that was to come. Myrmidia broke up their former organization and reorganized them under a unified Estalian navy, and passed her wisdom onto her admirals as she reshaped their port city. Defenses that had long been neglected in favor of gathering information on rival nobles were shored up, storehouses were filled with piles of grain and salted fish, and great vats of bubbling tar and oil were prepared. Bilbali prepared for war, and whether the enemy hailed from the unreality of the north or the vile city of Skavenblight, they would be turned back.
Deep underneath the central keep of Bilbali was a secretive network of dungeons. They were mostly emptied compared to the days before Myrmidia's arrival, for a prisoner kept locked up in a cell was a prisoner that was not being productive towards the nation. Only a few resided in these cells now - the most severe traitors and seditionists, vampire thralls, and the like. They were typically kept only for as long as the information they provided was useful, before they were disposed of.
There was a level below this. None knew of it beyond the war goddess herself and her closest confidantes. It lay deep within the bedrock, behind twenty layers of bolted and enchanted doors, hidden from the sight of all except those who knew it was there by dwarfen runework. It consisted of one sole cell, and only had one occupant that it had been specifically designed for.
Deathmaster Snikch hung suspended midair in the cell from a plethora of ropes and heavy chains buried deep into the walls. Internally spiked collars wrapped tightly around his neck, arms, legs, wrists, and ankles, preventing him from moving without being skewered. His arms, legs, and tail were all jagged masses of pulped bone and swollen flesh, and his form was covered in burn marks, welts, and glistening wounds inflicted upon him by his captors. His lower body hung limp, paralyzed by his severed spinal cord. Dozens of torches burned bright around the outskirts of the room, banishing all shadow from the cell and depriving Snikch of sleep. The floor beneath him was festooned with cruel barbed spikes three feet long, ensuring that even if he slipped free he would be impaled. The sole entrance was emblazoned with a verminfate rune commissioned by Myrmidia during her previous incarnation, and the exterior of the cell was trapped with all the vicious ingenuity the war goddess could muster. Her most heartless interrogators, hard-bitten men intimately familiar with skaven anatomy, descended irregularly into the cell to inflict the greatest tortures on him that their feindish minds could devise.
They sought information on the state of the Under-Empire, but every time they entered his cell they were greeted by the same grimly resigned expression, and the following hours were inevitably filled with screeches and wailing, but never did Snikch speak a word save for promises to kill every last one of them. Even as the weeks dragged on and Snikch's eyes grew more and more hollowed from lack of sleep, as his frame thinned to little more than skin hanging over his mangled skeleton, as his fingers and toes turned black and gangrenous, the Deathmaster spoke not. It seemed to both him and his tormentors that he would die before too much longer, but neither deviated from their horrible routine.
---
There was no day or night in Snikch's cell. The torches that lit up his enclosure shone endlessly and were immediately replaced if any began to dim. The only variance in the light came in the form of the ripple of the air from the sheer heat. It was impossible to tell time within the enclosure; one hour and one day felt much the same. Nevertheless, when it happened Snikch knew it was the stroke of midnight.
All the torches went out simultaneously, plunging the chamber into sudden darkness. Snikch could feel the air coiling over his skin as air was sucked into the sudden absences. He was half-dead from starvation and only force of will kept the Black Hunger from taking hold, but all his senses were still sharp. He could see in the pitch blackness like it was plainest day and hear the smallest whisper.
It failed utterly to surprise him when a voice suddenly spoke directly into his ear, though he could not sense anything. Sneek was the only living being more skilled at stealth than he, after all.
"Ah, Snikch," the hidden Nightlord spoke in a voice of silk, "Captivity unbecomes you. What-what transpired to allow-force you to become imprisoned in such-such a way?"
Snikch attempted to speak, but was suddenly very aware of several very sharp blades present inside his mouth, preventing him from moving his jaw at all without becoming lacerated. "Your answer-excuse is not needed," Sneek's voice informed him. "You were arrogant, Snikch."
"You have been listening-observing the younglings of the world too much-much. They whisper your name-name, Deathmaster Snikch, for fear-terror of what you can do, and when you hear it you grow-become more and more sure-certain that you are what they say."
The chain around Snikch's right ankle abruptly was no longer there, and the increased pressure his now-hanging limb put on the other three drew a muffled groan out of the Deathmaster.
"You believed their stories about you," the voice said,"And here-here is the result of your delusions."
Snikch's left arm was freed, and the Deathmaster could scarcely hold himself still enough that the blades Sneek had now placed all over his body would not split him into wet chunks.
"You faced-confronted someone who did not fear-fear you and you were beaten-thrashed like a pup. I should flay-flay your skin and flesh from your body and leave-abandon you to die as a sack of corroded nerves and bones," the Nightlord rasped in a terrible tone. Snikch could feel the shadows of the room itself coil around him, tightening around his eyes, his nostrils, sinking into every pore of his body with jagged barbs. It was agony.
"But," the master of Eshin continued, "I am not-not bereft of benevolence."
Snikch's remaining chains abruptly vanished, leaving the assassin only a split second to react before gravity took hold. Wrenching his body into desperate motion, ignoring all the bone-searing agony it caused, he deftly landed on the very tips of the floor spikes on all fours without being impaled. His mouth dripped blood as he raggedly breathed in the absolute shadow of the cell.
"Make-make your way to Shadowfang," Sneek instructed. "If you survive, unaided, I will re-accept you as the Deathmaster of Eshin." Then the Nightlord's presence was gone, and the torches flared to hateful life once more. Snikch's eyes narrowed, both from the light and from renewed, hateful, determination.
He was a hairs breadth from dying of starvation and thirst. All of his limbs were broken and his spinal cord was severed, rendering his lower body useless. His skin was rotting off in places, and it was agony to even breathe, let alone move. He had no weapons, for even the knives sewn into his skin had been taken. He was trapped in a prison guarded by Myrmidia's elite, men who had fought skaven every day of their lives and knew his vulnerabilities more intimately than they knew their own children. If he managed to escape that, he would have to contend with the entire weight of a country headed by a goddess bearing down on him.
The Deathmaster grinned, his splintered teeth glinting in the light. It had been a while since he'd had a good training session.
---
The prison underneath Bilbali was assailed that night by an unseen menace. Men patrolling the dungeons in pairs vanished, only to later turn up mauled almost beyond recognition. The despicable prisoners in the level above suddenly found themselves all freed and took the opportunity to attempt to seize their freedom. Amidst the chaos of the impromptu riot, some of the more hallucination-prone prisoners saw something out of the corners of their eyes - the shadow of a man, but hunched and small, with a distended face and black-furred body and glowing red eyes. It was only ever seen for a split second, and many of those who did were later found dead in the most improbable situations. Throats were slit, backs were stabbed, and many an unfortunate victim was strangled by the shadows they tried to hide in. Such chaos was created that it was several hours before relief forces managed to piece together the story of a gleefully capering ratman with legs of shadows scampering away from the keep, out into the city.
A manhunt was organized, but nothing was ever found, save for the shattered corpses of the inquisitors who had questioned Snikch, strung up in that very chamber and meticulously taken apart with their own tools.
Hero intervention - Nightlord Sneek being unassigned enabled him to assist Deathmaster Snikch in escaping. Resources assigned to freeing Snikch in the plan will be redistributed elsewhere.
