Snikrit entered back into the Clan city, lifted high on a dozen shoulders.
‘Frosting! Frosting! Frosting!’ they chanted, ‘Snikrit! Snikrit! Snikrit!’
Snikrit couldn’t believe his luck. That wasn’t too hard at all!? The clan had surrounded the small settlement, and blown them to smithereens. It was glorious! It was insane! And goodness, the cake was so good! Sure, they had barely made it out alive, and his largest machine lay a wreck in the desert. But he had made it out alive?
Suddenly he found himself lifted upon a stage, and the rest of the clan that hadn’t gone with them gathered around. A hush settled as a thousand ears turned toward him. After a little too long of a pause a voice called out in the back ‘speech-speech!’
‘Uh, right. Yes-yes,’ he started, ‘so…we have the frosting!’
The crowd roared in jubilee.
‘We destroyed all of them! Not a single soul was left, and we took all-all of it for ourselves!’nThe crowd roared again, and Snikrit used the chance to glare at those who had survived the fight, silencing their confused looks at his slightly-exaggerated claims.
‘And that is just the beginning!’ he yelled out over the din, ‘we will gets more-more! Enough to feed all of Bloodvermin! We will all eat until we explode!!’
The crowd suddenly stopped it’s cheering, half of them looked petrified, the rest looked to slit the nearest throat.
‘Uh, wait. No, poor choice of words. My bad-bad. I just mean that we will eat until we can’t eat anymore-more. Not actually explode…’
And the crowd cheered again. ‘Snikrit! Snikrit! Snikrit!’
Suddenly, yet again, the crowd stopped mid-cheer, leaving Snikrit shouting one last, lonely ‘Snikriiiuuuh…?’
Snikrit’s hair stood on end. His tail twitched. His eyes went white. A huge hand had appeared across his peripheral vision, but who couldn’t move, every muscle was held tight. And the hand grabbed him, pulling him through the pitch gnaw-hole that had formed behind him.