Piticulano, sea prince of the southern oceans and Tilean explorer, looked over the edge of his galleon.
"What was that noise?" he wondered aloud.
In an instant, the lizardmen were upon him and his crew. The once calm waters that lapped at the sides of the ship exploded in a spray of water. The amphibious warriors leaped over the sides of the ship, dripping wet and glistening. Piticulano fell backwards in fright, cursing in the Tilean tongue. Crewmembers around him shouted out in surprise, backing away from the reptilian warriors. Shouts went up as the whole ship was alerted of the danger, "Attack! Attack at starboard! We've been boarded!" Below deck, cabinets we're being broken open as the taskmaster frantically handed out cutlasses and rifles. Sailors stamped their way up wooden steps into the fray. Many rushed into the clash of swords and obsidian tipped spears expecting to face pirates, or freebooters, and got a nasty surprise from what they saw. A band of about ten…monsters…were hacking their way into their fellow mariners, monsters stranger than anything they had seen onshore. They seemed to stand like men, but stooped over, with thick leathery tails. Their heads were like giant skinks', but with a leathery sail on their heads. Their skin was moist and turquoise, like a lagoon. They wore no clothing on their backs, only golden trinkets around their necks and wrists.
The mariners soon discovered that they also bled. One had been felled by a well-aimed shot of the black-powder rifle, another merely wounded by the cutlass. That was all Piticulano knew of before he 'retired' to his cabin. Having locked the doors and windows, twice, he opened up the heavily-laden chests to rifle through the contents. They creaked under the weight of glittering jewels, milky-white pearls and lots of gold. Beautiful, intricate gold, thought Piticulano. His hands were shaking as he stuffed the more exquisite ones into the sack, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, dripping down his curly, auburn hair. He had heard the stories, everyone had heard them, stories of giant lizards and wrathful barbarians that inhabited the new world, but nobody had actually taken it seriously. Piticulano recognised the trinkets that the jungle-dwelling natives wore. It was almost exactly the same design of the treasure they had taken. The gold that he had in his hands was stolen. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the lizardmen were here for. Piticulano remembered the horrible trek through the jungle from the shore; sweat sticking his heavy silk wrapping to his skin, flies, mosquitos and all manner of biting bugs circling his head, and the heads of his crew, not to mention the occasional, terrifying growl from the bushes. They had all felt like giving up and turning back in fear, but the swabbing boy had seen something through the trees. After clearing a path, the party had beheld the promised prize; a deserted a ruin stuffed with riches. The men had gone into a frenzy; picking up all the gold they could carry, plucking jewels from crumbling statues and adorning themselves with the numberless necklaces and rings, laughing and cheering as they did so. They had taken it all, for it belonged to no one alive, only dry bones in the ground or ashes on the wind…or so they thought.
Piticulano had granted it all to the men, all but one thing. It had been sitting atop a stone pedestal, a hole in the ceiling casting a shaft of light onto its untarnished surface. It was the thing he held in his hands right now. He lightly touched it, gazing at it in serene wonder. It was vaguely cylinder shaped, like a thick rod, and had patterns deeply carved into its surface. It was made of white marble, brass worked into its body and adorned with blood red rubies. Perhaps this was what the lizards were here for, Piticulano thought; perhaps all they were here for was this thing. He clutched it tightly to his chest. He must not let them have it.
Piticulano opened up the cabin's window facing the sea, dropping the heavy sack on the edge of the wooden parapets. Poking his head out the window, he could see (and hear) the fight going on. He could also see the lifeboat, still dangling on its ropes over the edge of the ship; still untied hours after his men had left the shore. It was, as far as Piticulano could see, his only hope of escape. He pulled the rest of his body through the window and slid himself, as quietly as possible, out of the cabin and onto the narrow ledge. Picking up the bag, he slowly crawled his way past the cabin towards the boat, getting closer and closer to safety…
A fighting mercenary that was blocking Piticulano from a lizard's view was ruthlessly cut down, thus exposing the escapee. Piticulano scrambled away in panic, looking for something to protect himself. He looked around him and whimpered, for where once there had been twenty of his men fighting the lizardmen, there now was only four; the rest now mutilated corpses lying in pools of red. Piticulano recognised two surviving mercenaries not too far from the approaching lizard, who was now looking at him intensely.
"Groater, Sickboot, over here!" Piticulano called. The two seemed to take no notice of him. "Help me, please, I'll pay you extra!" He did not know what got their attention, the plea for help or the promise of more riches, but in an instant the mariners were running up to the lizard, cutlasses raised to strike. It was then that Piticulano saw that this particular barbarian did not look like the others. Its leathery crest was not turquoise like the rest of its skin, but a fiery hot red. The way it stood was different too, not stooped but tall and menacing. The weapon it held in its hand was not a stabbing spear, but a swinging club, a swinging club that was now swinging its way into Sickboot's skull…
Tenclaquol Star-Pond, Chosen of Sotek by the blood on his crest and Brave of his people by the blood on his hands, approached the quivering warm-blood. The sea prince held a thatched pouch in his pale fingers, and Tenclaquol could see the glint of gold poking out from it. His suspicions were confirmed when he swiftly bought his black-glass club down onto the sack, knocking it out of the warm-blood's hands, and its contents spilled onto the deck. Looking into the face of the trespasser, he said in the warm-blood's own tongue, "You, one who rides the waves of the World Pond, have taken sacred items from their resting places, and thought to have them as your own, thus insulting their creators and insulting me. These crimes cannot be tolerated." The petrified human gave out a whimper of despair. Tenclaquol lifted his bloody weapon with two hands above his head, and with a voice like cold stone he said, "Let justice be done."
Tenclaquol heard flesh splatter and ribs crack as he bought down the club onto the warm-blood's chest. It let out the beginnings of a scream, but faded off into a soundless breath. He tasted the fine red mist that sprayed from flesh hitting bronze. It was a bitter sweet taste that could only come from the veins of warm-bloods. Then, the moment was gone, and the taste in his mouth no longer filled him with vigour. Tenclaquol stooped down to the treasures scattered on the floor, passing his fingers over them, searching for the thing he had come all this way for. He clicked his teeth in satisfaction as his hand clasped the cool marble of the ancient relic. Standing straight again, he turned to his warriors and held the artefact up on high. "Behold," he bellowed in his own tongue, "The taken thing has been taken back!" A shrill cheer went up from his fighters, raising their weapons in triumph.
"We have beaten the Sauruses to the prize!" one warrior exclaimed.
"The scouts have beaten the braves! The halls will echo in our glory!" Another great cheer, louder than the last.
"No, no, the halls will echo in the glory of Tenclaquol!" another proclaimed. The high pitched screeching of bravo was deafening.
"Tenclaquol!"
"Tenclaquol!"
"TENCLAQUOL!"
The blood-crested skink raised his hand for silence. The noise took a while to die down, but soon they were silent. "We are not finished yet, brothers-of-scale. This floating house still spoils our domain with its presence, and so must be burned, and we have yet to deliver the relic back to Tlaxtlan, where the Mage-Priests will decide its fate—"
With suddenness that almost made Tenclaquol jump, a loud splutter came from behind him, making him spin on the spot, weapon in hand. It was the apparently alive Piticulano, heaving up bloody coughs, his body broken and in pain. The lizardmen jumped to Tenclaquol's side, cursing and shouting at the dying man. "Kill it!" they spat, "Kill the ugly thing; it resisted our leader's strike! Let it feel justice again! Kill it!"
Piticulano felt as if he had just woken up from a very nice sleep and fallen out of bed onto a floor of spikes covered with fire-ants. Pain clouded around his sight like a red veil, his breathing was choked with blood as his punctured lungs tried, in vain, to function. He vaguely heard the incomprehensible jabbering of the lizards around him, circling his head like hundreds of flies and mosquitos. He felt dead. He knew he should be dead. A blow like that should have finished himself off; and yet he lived, albeit painfully. He moved his hands around his bloodied cloths and leathers, feeling the broken bones under his skin. His hands grasped something in his jacket pocket. Pulling it out, he could vaguely see the silhouette a twin-tailed comet, the Symbol of Sigmar, against the sun's light. His eyes widened. He stretched his dry lips and tried to speak.
"He…h-he saved m-me…"
"What does it say?" the skinks asked Tenclaquol, "It babbles the tongue of mud. What does it say?"
Tenclaquol ignored them, and knelt down close to the warm-blood's broken form. "Who?" he asked in its tongue, "Who saved you?"
Piticulano waved the pendant in front of the lizard's face. "Sigmar saved me." he croaked, "He saw me as a true Sigmarite and used his divine power…to save me, of all people!"
The barbarian said nothing. Then, with such viciousness that it made Piticulano flinch, the red-crested lizard spat a goblet of spittle directly into the man's eye. The group of skinks croaked audibly in amusement. Tenclaquol gave them a hard look, and they fell silent.
"The warm-blood thinks that its…deity…spared its life." Tenclaquol's voice was thick with venom. "I will show it that the only being worthy of judging this worm's life is the almighty Sotek." He gestured to one of his warriors to come forward. "Find me a serpent of Sotek to conduct the judgement." The beast master nodded, and walked over to the edge of the ship and dived into the waters. Only a few moments later had the skink returned, a small sea snake writhing in his hands.
"I could not find a twin-tailed serpent, brother-of-scale. But we can make do with this one…" and the lizardman pulled a black-glass knife from his belt, and laying the snake across the deck, sliced the animal's tail through the middle. Infuriated by the agony, the serpent writhed and rolled and snapped its maw, blood trickling from its long cut down its twin tails. The beast master handed the hurting creature to Tenclaquol, who turned to the warm-blood.
"Sotek, the one true god, will now pass judgement. Then we will see if you are truly…worthy…of this new life given to you." Tenclaquol said in the warm-blood's tongue, "If the serpent of Sotek does not bite your flesh, then Sotek has deemed you worthy. If it does bite…" He looked directly into Piticulano's eyes,"…then it will continue to bite. Over and over again, until your death and beyond." and then Tenclaquol started to walk towards him, enraged snake in hand.
Piticulano, as he reflected the last few moments of his life, noticed the peculiar similarities between his god and the god of the lizardman. The symbol of Sigmar was the twin-tailed comet, and the symbol of this Sotek a twin-tailed snake. He mused that thought almost pleasantly before everything came to an end.
Not so different after all…
As Tenclaquol bought the serpent to the blasphemer's face, he smiled as it started to scream, and scream, and scream over and over again, each one more heartfelt than the last.
When it had all ended, the beast master glanced at his many small cases that were tied to his belt. He took one off and inspected its contents. "Oh, look!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised, "I had a serpent of Sotek in my belt all along!"