Lantur was not fond of sewing, and nor was she very used to it: Castle Marl had servants for that kind of tedious work, and her own maid Wilce usually handled any work she didn't wish to dirty her paws with. Marlfoxes were not fond of labor beneath them.

But Marlfoxes were fond of the thrill of victory, and as Lantur and any decent Marlfox knew, if one wanted to keep a secret and get a job done well, one had to do it themselves.

So close, Lantur thought, tying off the final thread and clipping it. She held up the stitched white sheet in front of her with aching paws, excitement bristling her fur. It had taken two filched spools of thread and four whole nights of sewing and tolerating pricks of the needle while her siblings were running about, but now her creation was almost complete.

Now if Wilce could be ordered into helping with the main rope and the charade, Lantur thought, her heart pounding, everything would be complete, and as for her mother Queen Silth—

"Not up to anything, are you?"

Lantur almost flew out of her chair, but she had the grace to swiftly fold up the specter's robes in her paws and pull them into her lap, hidden from sight of the door by her back. She remained in place as she heard Mokkan saunter through the door, his axe slung over his shoulder. Lantur took the opportunity to drop her project to the floor and shove it beneath her chair with her feet.

"Not really," she said, her voice filled with lofty boredom and face stoic. She ignored the glint of amusement in Mokkan's eyes as he strolled through her quarters, knowing it meant he had seen her stiffen up and her fur bristle. "Aren't you in the wrong quarters, brother?" she said, pushing forth when Mokkan didn't leave the room and contained to browse around her belongings, observing each locked and sealed chest. "I believe your and Ascrod's rooms are in the hall much closer to the ground, unless you've forgotten your way."

"I wasn't intending to go to my quarters, Lantur," Mokkan said, giving her a smile with a hint of malice in the flashed teeth as he rolled over the axe in his paws. "I just wanted to visit my sweet, sweet youngest sister before we headed off to Mossflower on another one of mother's asinine treasure hunts and left you all alone with her."

The sharpened edge of steel made Lantur suddenly want her axe. She turned in her chair to look at Mokkan, trying to hide the nervousness bolting through her veins.

"Shove off, Mokkan," she said, her patience ending. Her voice had become higher with stress as Mokkan came closer instead of leaving, and it came out a high-pitched shrill of anger. "This isn't your room; get out!"

"You're an unsympathetic little furball to someone who's trying to look after you," Mokkan said, snorting as he passed by her sewing desk. He tapped the edge of her table with his poleaxe staff and made it quiver for good measure. "Fine, I'll leave. You can continue practicing to be a shrieking harpy by yourself."

Lantur's face flushed beneath her fur, and she growled. "And you can go trek up to Mossflower to practice being mother's pathetic, crownless little errand pup!"

Mokkan didn't bother to look back at her, clapping his paw open and shut like a jabbering puppet's mouth, and he strolled back to the door. Just as he was almost there and Lantur had picked up her lumpy pincushion borrowed from Wilce, he paused.

In one movement, Mokkan whirled around and brought his poleaxe down on Lantur's sewing desk. The aged, delicate wood shattered with the force of a rotten tree snapping, and splinters flew everywhere, sticking in Lantur's fur and scattering across the floor.

"OUT!" Lantur howled, leaping to her feet away from the desk and quivering with rage as Mokkan brought down the axe again, destroying two sets of drawers. Cloth and trinkets poured from the material wound. "STOP! I'M GOING TO CALL ZIRAL IF YOU DON'T LEAVE; OUT, MOKKAN, GET OUT!"

"I'm just doing an inspection here. I have to be sure my little sister isn't hiding anything," Mokkan said, but his satisfied smirk at Lantur's outrage was instantly wiped off his face when a poker almost nailed him in the eye.

Lantur grabbed a nearby handful of decorative stones and candlesticks and began heaving them at her brother. One of the silver candlestick holders shattered as she barely missed Mokkan's ducking head and it hit the wall behind him.

"I SAID OUT OF MY ROOM!" Lantur screamed, and her brother made a hastily undignified retreat with his tail between his legs as he was pursued out by a shower of glitzy debris.

Mokkan slammed the door shut behind him just in time for a glass ball to thud into it with a whump and bounce off, and when he was gone, Lantur stopped her heaving and put down her arsenal. She flopped down at her chair, straightening her dress sleeves and grumbling. Half of her desk was entirely destroyed, and now her room was in shambles. So much for Mokkan departing peacefully.

Lantur felt the barest sting of content when she pulled out the specter puppet she had been working on, and the sting turned into a full blown shudder of relief when she considered what Mokkan would have done if he had found it. She looked at her ruined desk, her possessions spilling out onto the floor. But he was on to her. He had noticed her occupation during the evening and likely hadn't bought the lies about her entertaining herself with scrolls or her baubles. He had been looking for something. And unlike Predak, Ziral, Gelltor, Vannan or Ascrod, Mokkan knew how to finish what he started.

Lantur took a deep breath to compose herself. She lifted the robe up to her face, staring at the gaping eye sockets she had created.

It didn't matter, she thought, pushing her thumb along the hole. First, she would take care of the Queen. And then, she would take care of the firstborn, and keep moving her way down from there.

It took some work in a line of succession to make sure the youngest got their due.

Short fic requests open, one request per reader. Prompt taken from tumblr:

Whump fic; send me two of the Marlfox brood and one of the following sentences, and I'll write you a whump or hurt comfort ficlet about them:

"Ah, that hurt!"/ "Are you sure you're alright?" / "Can you walk?" / "Do that and you'll only worsen things." / "Does that hurt?" / "How do you expect to _ with a sprained _?" / "I'll carry you, hold still or it'll hurt more." / "I can't bend my arm." / "I can't walk." / "I think I hurt my ankle." / "Stop!" / "Stop crying and listen to me." / "That's not supposed to bend like that." / "You hurt your leg?" / "You look like you're in pain."