Jazrael smirked as she sauntered slowly forward. Approximately twenty paces ahead of her, a man who appeared to be just into the early years of his thirties moved slowly across the cold stone floor of a dark and damp cellar. The man was clearly injured, made obvious by the fact that he was dragging himself across the ground by only his arms, his feet dragging motionless and sickly at the ends of his legs. “Going to have to move faster than that, love,” she said, picking up her pace a bit. The man let out a pained groan, his arms moving faster in an attempt to distance himself from the woman now gaining ground on him. Jazrael let out a laugh, moving more quickly now until she was just behind him. Without pause, she brought her booted foot to rest on his clearly shattered ankle, which elicited a shriek of absolutely undeniable pain from him. “Both ankles, a knee… stop trying to get away from me, darling! I don’t want to break your other knee,” she said, the tone of her voice a mixture of murderous malice and excitement. With a swift movement, ethereal in speed, she now stood in front of her victim, smiling at him in a sick grin of enjoyment. She knelt down, taking his blood and tear streaked face by the chin, holding him steady and locking her eyes with his.
The man let out a shriek again, beginning to plead with her. “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me, why?” he begged, though it was clear by the look of dismay and sadness coupled with terror in his eyes that he did not expect to survive long enough for his question to be answered. Jazrael tilted her head at him slightly, blinking a few times as she contemplated how to proceed.
“See, here’s the thing, Craden,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper, now sounding much less playful and much more angry. “Just over two years ago. You were at the bar, full of sob story after sob story about how you and your wife wanted to bear children but she hadn’t been able to carry a child to live birth. I told you there was a way,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him a bit.
“No, that can’t be,” the man sputtered rather incredulously. “That woman looked nothing like you,” he said, which solicited a rather amused laugh from Jazrael.
“But there’s where you’re wrong, Craden,” she began. “That was me,” she whispered, the laugh fading into a serious tone. She offered no further explanation. The man opened his mouth to protest once more and Jazrael tightened the grip she held on his chin and jaw, pulling another pained sound from him. “No, it’s time for you to listen. See, I made it possible for your wife to bear children, and lo and behold, nine months after that fateful night at the Winking Mermaid, your wife gave birth to a beautiful son… Darius, I believe you named him? You and Celya were rather ecstatic that your miracle had finally happened,” she said. The man’s eyes flashed with terror as he realized that she knew the name of his wife and the name of his child. Jazrael let out a sigh and continued. “You see, five months after your bouncing baby girl was born, you went and stuck your cock in the same tavernmaid that had been serving us the first time we met, unbeknownst to your wife. Do you know what that tells me, Craden?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him - eyes which had fleshed to a deep jet black.
Suddenly, she gripped his chin even more tightly, her fingernails digging into the man’s flesh to the point of drawing blood. “You don’t care about Celya. You don’t care about Darius,” she said, her voice merely a hiss now. “But that’s okay, because it’s time to pay for the service I’ve done for you. See, I would have just killed you, and only you, but you have forsaken all that I have given to you!” She shook her head as one would do to a child they were disappointed in. “That would have been the payment. But you couldn’t be a proper husband, a proper father… so now, Celya's in sixty-eight pieces scattered throughout Adeluna, and Darius has rocks harnessed to his swaddle… Must be at the bottom of the Nyella by now…” She trailed off, her words being drowned out by the sobs of the man before her.
Before anything else could be said by the man, Jazrael snapped his neck with a swift movement and got up, brushing dirt from the front of her skirts. “Enough of that,” she said, and turned to head up the stairs of the cellar, the lifeless body of her most recent victim motionless on the floor.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was stopped rather abruptly as though she had walked into a wall, but there was nothing there. She let out an exasperated sigh rather than looking confused, and turned about on her heels, facing none other than Dalanesca, her employer so to speak.
“Jazrael.” The Reaper addressed her in a cold tone. “Care to explain what you’ve been doing here?” she asked, eyeing her procurer with disdain. The demon opened her mouth to answer Dalanesca, but was cut off before she could even begin to speak. “I’ll tell you exactly what you’re doing. You’re doing things without clearing them with me, Jazrael, and I’ve told you time and time again that we absolutely cannot have that. There is a delicate balance in the world, a delicate ratio of souls that we need to claim, and you’re going rogue,” she said, and it was rather clear that she was not pleased. Jazrael began to protest but was silenced once more. “Enough is enough, and it will not happen again.” With no further explanation, the Reaper vanished, leaving Jazrael wondering what exactly had come of that meeting.
-
Emerging to the street level, Jazrael glanced about. Mamlak was not on the top of her list of places to find a good time, by any means, but it was far from the bottom. She made it her mission to find the nearest tavern, which was only a few meters from the building she had just committed her crime in. Without an ounce of guilt on her conscience, she pushed her way into the tavern and made her way to the bartop, pulling out a stool and sitting down. When the barkeep came over, she ordered a glass of Highland whiskey, wanting to wash down the meeting she had just had with her would-be employer with something a bit stronger than average. “Two silver, miss,” the barkeep informed her. She gave him a crooked smile, tilting her head slightly as she fixated her eyes on his. She smiled at him coyly, to which the dark skinned, bearded older man scratched at his chin. “You feelin’ okay, miss? I said it be two silver,” he repeated.
With a bit of annoyance and confusion, Jazrael fished into the belt pouch she wore, fishing out two coins and placing them on the bar before quickly taking a deep drink of the liquor. She had compelled that barkeep to serve her for free, yet it hadn’t worked. That particular trick had never failed her before, and it was rather disconcerting that it had this time around. She assumed that it was just Dalanesca messing with her, of course, temporarily fiddling with her powers as a warning. She didn’t dwell too long on it, however, sipping at her whiskey and revelling in her accomplishment from earlier. Another soul to the underworld was a win in her book, even if Dalanesca didn’t see it as now. She wasn’t exactly following the Reaper’s rules, but she knew that sooner or later, it would be understood.
Not long after she had made herself comfortable, a commotion seemed to have broken out between some of the Mamlak people and what seemed to be a group of soldiers from near Adeluna. Listening intently, she made out slurs being flung towards the Mamlak - seemed that this particular group of Adelunans were not ecstatic about their queen, Qendresa, being of Mamlak descent, among other things. As she turned around, she caught sight of the scene just in time to see one of the Adelunan men headbutting one of the Mamlak men, followed by a series of martial assaults that brought the Mamlak to the floor, unconscious. She raised her eyebrows slightly, a smirk forming on her lips as she found slight amusement in the situation.
It seemed that the assaulted man’s companion had already drawn his weapon, ready to strike at the Adelunan, who was now drawing his weapon as well. Jazrael found that she was rather enthused to witness a bloody battle, and twisted on her barstool, glass in hand. She sipped on her whiskey, watching with anticipation, though she quickly grew bored as she watched the Adelunan take a swipe at the Mamlak’s eyes, wishing for a more violent confrontation. The Adelunan wasn’t bad looking, and truth be told the Mamlak man was a bit beyond her tastes. I can make this more interesting, she thought to herself as the Mamlak’s back was turned to her. She downed the still quite full glass of whiskey in one gulp and set the cup on the bar behind her. Holding out her hand rather subtly, she cast with the intention of causing the dark-skinned man’s skin to rot and fall from his bones - but nothing happened.
Jazrael tried again, and nothing happened. Suddenly, it hit her - she had been unable to compel the barkeep. She couldn’t cast her magic - it had to be Dalanesca. The Reaper had clearly found the only way to punish Jazrael that would give her actual consequences - she had taken her magic. Beyond frustrated, Jazrael let out an enraged shriek, and instantaneously launched herself from her barstool. She moved with ethereal speed, and just as the Mamlak lifted his knife to make a lunge at the Adelunan, Jazrael appeared behind, unbeknownst to him. Her eyes were pitch black, no white remaining, and her mouth was twisted into an angry snarl. Though the man towered over her, he was but a human - and she was a disempowered demon filled with rage. With a swift motion she plunged her hand forward into the man’s back, pulling it out shortly thereafter with the Mamlak’s heart clenched in her fist, her shoulders heaving from the heavy breaths she took through her anger. It certainly seemed that although Dalanesca had taken her magic, her speed and strength still remained.
At that moment, from within the body of her human host, Jazrael made an attempt to jump ship, to expel her essence from the body and make it into one closer to the door so she could leave without questions - but that didn’t work, either. She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as the now-dead man in front of her collapsed to the floor with a thud. She hesitated for a moment, dropping the heart to the floor where it bounced off of the corpse, her eyes shifting back to their normal deep chocolate hue before looking up at the Adelunan men in front of her - the one who had been fighting at the one that stood at the ready.
She was silent for a good minute before speaking, making a feeble attempt to explain her actions - she had never had to do such a thing before. “Different vantage point from the bar, I suspect, and from what I saw it looked as though this preto was about to take a cheap shot at you,” she said, nodding her head towards the man that had been fighting, and using the slur she had heard them tossing about earlier to make her story seem more believable - if the men had drunk enough wine to make them that thick. She brandished a dagger in her hand, having hastily smeared blood on it to make it look as though she had used it to cause the injury - she had moved rather fast, so there was a chance that it would be believable.
She paused for a moment, before laughing almost inexplicably. “Oh, hell, who am I kidding? You were taking far too long to take that one down, and watching was getting rather boring,” she said, her voice carrying what would be a familiar cadence to the men as the body she inhabited happened to be Adelunan in nationality, her accent giving it away along with her appearance. With that, she stepped over the corpse on the floor and made her way to the bartop again, where she proceeded to pour out a hefty pile of silver coins onto the counter, essentially paying of the barkeep to not call the town guards and to get the mess cleaned up. He also brought her a rag with a bowl of warm water and another cup of whiskey. She dipped the rag into the water in the bowl in front of her, wiping at the excess blood on her skin, alternating between that and taking a drink of whiskey, half expecting the men to follow her over and question her.