Spineless Spawn
Toggs, Punch
Location: Isle of the Unforgiven: Arena Dungeons
Toggs is truly a rebel at heart: Several days in a dungeon and he's still blazingly defiant. In his cell he constantly mocks his captors, and fluently curses them, the dungeons, the fortress, the island, even the Empire itself--And Punch, who got him here in the first place. "Lemme get me paws on 'im an' 'e won't walk away on his own two feet, chains'r'no chains," he mutters.
As if summoned by the calumnies heaped by the indignant ferret upon his good name, Punch appears, almost ghostly in his thin, puckered cloak and with his strange coloration. "Without m-me," he says in a voice as unruffled by emotion as it is unsteady from the stutter, "a-and wi-without my instruction, you w-would have neither the t-to-tongue to c-curse my name nor the p-paws to lay upon me." The builder is evidently familiar to the dungeon guards as an advisor to the king, for they cease their violent ministrations to the other prisoners and retreat to a short distance.
Toggs smashes against the bars of the cell, rattling them in a hellish fury. "An' yew're sayin' tha's /better?/ Oi'm be'ter off dead any'ow. Yew just let me live 'cos yew don' have th' guts t'kill me."
Punch laughs. The sound of it is high-pitched and shrill and utterly without humor. "A-and that's what you think, i-is it? P-perhaps you are less c-clever than I had im-magined." He laughs again and summons the guards with a wave.
Toggs snarls. His eye blaze as he speaks, spittle flying out of his mouth with every syllable (and soaking his captor whenever possible.) "Yew don't 'ave th'guts t'do /nuthin'/ widout an 'ole gang about yew. Yew spineless spawn of a slime-devil," he says contemptously.
Punch looks superciliously down at his claws, letting them catch the light that filters in from outside. "Mm," he says in bored acknowledgment, then turns to face the guards. "Move him t-to a vacant cell. Leave him unt-touched." He drops his paw to his side, where it scratches idly at his fur. "For now." He turns to face the door.
"Wot tha 'ell are yew tryin' t'do? BORE me t'death?" Toggs growls. " 'M Oi surpossed ter be SCARED o'dis'r'summat?"
Punch half-turns to regard Toggs askance. "You are t-too foolish to be scared, child. No, I simply have not dec-decided what to do with you." He appraises the young ferret for another moment before turning again.
Toggs snarls. "Jus' closin' yer eyes won't make dis go away, and Oi ain't gonna disappear either. Cuz Oi'm gonna hunt yew t' 'ellgates an'choke d'loife outa yew wid dese same chains."
"I th-I think not," comes the rat's response. The sound of his voice is fringed with a smile, though his back is turned away. "But if you d-do, you will be too st-/stu/pid to know how gravely you've misc-calculated."
"Calculatin' and figgerin' ain't got naught ter do wid dis," Toggs snaps as the guards open up the cell door, quickly grabbing him and pinning his arms before he can move.
Punch does not even glance back before leaving. "See th-that it's done," he says to the guards as he goes.
Toggs spits one more time after the departing rat. "Yah, yew'd /better/ run."
The guards, struggling against the feisty young ferret, subdue Toggs and shove him in another cell.
