Andrew Kerr slapped irritatedly at a fly that landed on his neck, crushing the pest. That's all there was out here, he thought, flies and heat, and he could do without both. He missed the south, missed the soft summers and gentle winters, and most of all missed not being in the army. He looked down at the black tunic with its golden lion, and curled his lip in disgust. He was a Adelunan after a fashion, the son of what he had been told as a Northern mercenary and his Adelunan mother, a practitioner of the oldest profession, and wanted nothing to do with Mamlak. He had never known either of his parents. His father probably never knew that he had whelped a son on an Adelunan whore and his mother died of the pox a few years after Andrew was born. An upbringing in the rookeries of Adeluna's capital was not the sort of childhood that inclined Andrew toward peaceful, law-abiding employment. Instead, his small frame and quick hands saw him groomed by one of the street crews as a pickpocket, a profession that saw him graduate to picking locks and strong arm robbery. It was that predilection for unsavory work that landed him in the army and saw him shipped north to Mamlak. His crew had been entering the townhouse of one of Adeluna's nobles who they had been told was away at his country property for the weekend. Unfortunately, their intelligence was faulty and the lord was there with his mistress, both of whom resisted when the crew tried to subdue them. By the time the Watch arrived, the lord was bloodied and his mistress had died from a blow to her head. None of the crew would admit who struck the fatal blow and were all charged with the crime. Rather than face the gallows for the mistress' death, Kerr and his closest friend Adan were allowed to join the Adelunan army for detached service in Mamlak, where the Queen had established an Adelunan presence to support her homeland. And, like every day since the ship left the harbor and sailed north, he wished he had chosen the rope.

His company commander was a squat, slobbering mess of a man who, rumor had it, had a problem with the drink. He was never around his men long enough for Kerr to confirm that rumor but that meant that Senhor Joao Vincente, his second, oversaw the company day to day. Vincente was every inch the immaculate figure of a noble, with his hair well-trimmed and his uniforms fitted by the best tailors in Mamlak. Appearances, however, hid his mean streak. Vincente was martinet and took pleasure in inflicting punishments for the smallest infractions of the company’s regulations, from rusted arrowheads in the skirmishers’ quivers to poorly shined mail to anything else his twisted mind could think up. He was particularly fond of flogging and Kerr shifted his back, feeling the welts and gashes from his last punishment more acutely when he thought of his commander. “Rusty mail” he said, “you want me to lead you to fight an orc with rusty mail? That may be good enough for these pretoes but you’re a proper son of Adeluna, even if you are a bastard!” Still, Kerr thought, he had been lucky to only get ten stripes. Adan had been late to return after a night on the town and took thirty and he was still in hospital at the barracks as a result.

Further down the wall, a company of Mamlak soldiers were changing posts, relieving one company with another for the evening. Kerr looked at them with barely disguised disdain. Like most of the men he served with, Kerr had little respect for the Mamlaks or their army. They had once been fearsome, folk said, but now they were just a bunch of savages that thought numbers and courage would defeat a well drilled army and Kerr thought they were closer to the orcs they skirmished with than real men. “Bloody pretoes, acting like proper soldiers, but let’s see them hold a line and keep their arrows on the enemy when the world’s come down around ‘em,” he growled to the other soldier at his post then spat in the Mamlaks’ direction
“Aye,” the other man replied, a grizzled campaigner who had left Adeluna ten years before and made a new life in Mamlak with the Queen’s Company, “and they ain’t got a lick of discipline. Run as soon as it ain’t an easy fight no more. Seen it happen my own self. That’s how I got this,” he said, tracing a scar down the side of his face. “Ain’t sure how Her Royal Darkness got on the throne but the sooner she’s gone and we ain’t needing to be here to prop up her brother, the better, by all the gods.” He was about to continue but the stamp of boots on the winding staircase to the fighting tower made him think better of it. Instead, he grabbed his pike and stood at the battlements, hissing for Kerr to do the same.

“You may consider yourselves relieved, gentlemen.” Both soldiers turned about smartly and gave a salute to Senhor Vincente who sketched a salute in return. “And both of you are given leave until we muster in the morning, so you are free to go about town. But if you make a mess, gods help me, but I’ll strip your backs until the bones glisten. Do I make myself perfectly clear, Kerr?” “Aye senhor, perfectly clear. By your leave?” Vincente nodded and Kerr and his friend stacked the pikes in the tower’s rack and headed for the town’s taverns that were clustered in the lower city, nearest the barracks.

“So, the whole night and all we have to do is show up for the morning parade? Hell, Andy, we’ve got ourselves a genuine, gold plated, unblemished permission to get staggering, stinking, falling down drunk like the bloody senhores tonight and we’d best get started!” Kerr grinned at Paolo and together they stepped through the door of a wine shop set up by an Adelunan soldier who had left the Queen’s Company after his term was over and began to import wine for the garrison troops. As the men expected, the place was jammed to the rafters with Adelunans and a few of the Highland mercenaries that crossed the Valley to earn their keep with under the Golden Lion. While it was not a hard and fast policy, the native troops had the good sense to steer clear of the Adelunan shops and the foreign troops kept to their own part of the city in return.

Kerr settled at a small table with a jug of heavy red wine and a plate of bread and cheese from the fertile plateaus in Adeulna, sinking his first cup quickly as Paolo joined him, pushing a wooden platter of roast pork onto the table as well before adding his own jug. “We will eat like bloody Vincente tonight, eh Paolo?” His companion grinned and patted his coin purse. “That we will, my lad, that we will. The pretoes ain’t good for much, but a good wage almost makes working for these orc turds worth it.” That earned a laugh from the tables around them and soon the air was buzzing with conversation as the wine flowed. Kerr and Paolo finished their jugs in record time and, cheeks flushed and grinning, they called over one of the girls that served the main room for more wine. She was the daughter of the wine shop’s owner, just turned seventeen and the darling of all the men in the Queen’s Company. “Rosa, my love, two more of that red, dear. And have you considered my heartfelt proposal, my dearest?”

“Oh Andy, you never learn,” she giggled and headed off to pour the wine. “Oh, how could I learn with a face like that looking at me, Paolo, answer me that.” Instead of trying to reason with his wine-soaked friend, Paolo just punched him playfully in the shoulder and drank the last of his wine. He was about to ask what Kerr planned to do when he had finished his service in a year, but the words died in his throat when two Mamlak soldiers pushed their way into the room and forced their way to where Rosa was topping off the wine. “Two jugs, meretriz,” they growled in their heavily accented Adelunan. “Quickly.”

Kerr, already flush with drink and ready for a fight, stood up when he heard the Mamlak. “What in the name of the gods do you think you pretoes bastards are doing fouling up a proper man’s bar and calling a proper lady a whore? Only whore I can think of is Qendresa, and she’s one of your black lot. Must have spread her legs to a proper Adelunan to get the throne, but I’ll bet you it wasn’t just the one, right lads?” The crowd growled in approval and Rosa’s father pushed her into the buttery, knowing that tempers were flaring and about to erupt into violence. The Mamlak soldier stood a good four inches taller than Kerr, who had grown into a decently tall man himself and he loomed over the Adelunan, tapping his fingers on the hilt of his long stabbing knife. “I think you need to learn manners, little man.”

“Manners, he says… I’ll teach this great black bugger some manners,” Kerr growled as he grabbed the Mamlak’s shoulders and slammed his head forward to headbutt the man in the nose. He felt it break under his forehead and followed up by slamming his knee into the man’s groin before he could recover. Kerr was not a gentleman, looking to duel with swords or knives for Rosa’s honor. He was a bastard orphan who grew up in the gutter and knew before he could shave how to fight a man twice his size and win. The big man sagged, bending over double and Kerr drove his elbow down into the base of the man’s spine. The Mamlak gave a grunt and doubled up on the floor, unconscious, and Kerr turned to see the man’s companion ready with his long knife drawn.

“Knives is it, you preto son of a whore? Let’s get to it,” he said, almost affably and grinned as he dragged his dagger from its scabbard. The Mamlak soldier closed the distance to Kerr, stepping over his stunned comrade, and growled that he would kill the scrawny Adelunan like a dog. “First you call the lovely lass a whore, now you call me a dog… For a country of orc shit that can’t do its own fighting, you’re a real brave man,” he quipped back, slashing out with his dagger at the man’s eyes. A man would check his advance to save his eyes every time and it bought Kerr a second to put a low bench between himself and his attacker. Paolo stepped to the side, clearing room for Kerr, trusting him to have matters well in hand, but he had his own dagger drawn, just in case. “Come on then, come and learn how to fight!”

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.

Kerr was focused on the Mamlak in front of him, watching as the man tossed his fighting knife from hand to hand with increasing trepidation.  He, like most men, was better fighting a right handed fighter and if the Mamlak could use both hands, Kerr would find himself at a disadvantage.  Before the Mamlak, blade in his left hand, crossed the bench, a figure moved behind him.  His eyes darted over toward her for a split second but he could not afford to take his eyes off his opponent.  With his left hand, he reached onto the table next to him and gripped the edge of a heavy clay platter, ready to hurl it at the advancing soldier as a distraction so he could slip past the man's knife and slit his throat before the cocky bastard even knew what hit him.  The Mamlak raised his arms and slashed the blade toward Kerr and he instinctively raised his own blade and stepped forward to deflect the strike and step inside the blade's range, but the Mamlak's strike never landed.  Instead, the man crumpled to his knees and them collapsed with a gasping sigh to bleed out on the sandy tavern floor.  The figure he had seen, a woman, upon further inspection, was holding the Mamlak's still beating heart, torn directly out of his chest for a split second before it bounded on the ground beside his corpse.  Her eyes, when she opened them, were inky black for a moment and then faded to a dark brown, and something about them was deeply unsettling, so Kerr kept his knife held low in front of him until the woman spoke.  "Aye, you could say that," Kerr grumbled, noticing that when he had glanced at her again, her dagger was drawn and bloodied.  Maybe she had struck with her left… But that seemed unlikely.  

"Well…"  Kerr knelt down and slit the throat of the half conscious Mamlak, "I prefer to take my time and let the idiots make a mess of things before I gut 'em.  Makes things a lot easier and I don't end up with more holes in me than how I started the day, ye know what I mean?"  He rifled through the corpse's pockets, coming up with a handful of silver and few pieces of good Mamlak gold that quickly disappeared into his own pouch, as well as a thick gold bracelet on one of the corpse's wrist that he tossed to Rosa.  "For the insult, Rosa, and for having to witness that."  Smiling crookedly, he joined the blood-stained woman at the bar, laying one of the Mamlak's coins out for another jug of the strong Adelunan wine.  Paolo sat at his side, saying nothing as he mouthed a silent prayer to whatever god would listen that Vincente did not hear about this and put them on the punishment list in the morning.  Kerr was a good man in a fight, few better, but he saw the whole world as a battle to be fought and all people as enemies to be outsmarted, and it left Paolo almost sad for the man, who it seemed could not enjoy anything outside of war.

Kerr poured a cup for himself and Paolo and, seeing as the woman had a drink, declined to offer her any.  Instead, he raised his cup in a toast.  "Your health, miss, and the speed of your arm, however you used it," he toasted her with a smirk, then drank the heavy red wine down quickly to steady his nerves.  "Now miss, if you don't mind my saying, you moved quick there, real quick.  Quicker than any human I've met, if you catch my drift.  Then there's those eyes, black as the preto you gutted with your hands back there, that ain't natural either.  That isn't to say I'm ungrateful for the help, but I do like to know who or what did the helping.  So, this is my comrade, Paolo," he said, gesturing to the other soldier with his nearly empty cup, "and they call my Kerr, Andrew Kerr.  Both unfortunates in the Queen's Company up here among the heathens, we are.  And who, then, might you be?"

As the two men joined her at the bar, Jazrael did not immediately turn her attention to them. She contemplated how to go about the situation. Just as easily as she had with the now-very-dead Mamlak, she could have quickly dispatched the pair and high-tailed it out of the tavern, but without her magic there were too many variables that could come into play. Her exit path could easily be blocked for any number of reasons, which would only result in further bloodshed. Since she was fairly certain that Dalanesca had taken her magic as a form of punishment, the likelihood that masses of unnecessary murder would help her get it back was quite low. Resigned to the fact that she was about to have to make conversation, Jazrael set down the rag she had been wiping the blood off of her hands with turned towards the two Adelunans and raised her own drink at his toast, albeit a bit unenthused. She took a sip before setting it back on the counter, her hand lingering around it as she tapped her nails against the sides for a moment.

“Aren’t you ever the intuitive one,” she responded, flashing the Adelunan soldier a smirk of her own. She listened to his explanation, of course, of what he witnessed and what he thought, and she let out a chuckle, her smirk broadening slightly as he went on. When he had finished, she reached for her whiskey, taking another long drink before answering him. “And they say the handsome ones are the dumbest,” she said, though there was a hint of sarcasm to her tone. “A pleasure to meet the both of you,” she said, gesturing towards them. “I’m called Jazrael, myself,” she said - a name that would mean nothing unless the two were avid followers of the Reaper. “That answers the who - and the what, as you so choicely added to that question… What I am is pissed off, frankly,” she replied. She had herself a bit of a laugh after that, before draining the rest of her whiskey from her cup. Pausing a moment, she signalled for the barkeep to return, which he did, freshening her drink.

“Suppose I could offer a bit more detail, since you asked so nicely,” she continued. “I’m a messorem,” she began. “It’s where the black eyes come from.” She took pause as she realized that the term she had chosen to use seemed to mean nothing to the two men, and she let out an exasperated sigh. “Messorem are the agents, I suppose, of the Reaper - Lady Dalanesca,” she said. If the men were in the Adelunan army, then there was no doubt they would at least be familiar with the gods, even if they did not follow them. When it did not seem that this had jarred them much, she continued on. “Normally, after something like that, I would have jumped ship from this body and been on my merry way” she continued, jabbing her thumb back towards the mess she had created, which was now being cleaned up by some of the tavern staff. “However, I seem to have pissed Dalanesca off enough times that she’s just downright taken away any magic I had. My strength and speed remain, but that’s damn near it, as far as I can tell,” she said, her annoyance quite clear in her voice. She drained her fresh cup of whiskey in one long pull, dropping the cup back to the counter.

“Enough of that, though,” she said. She had already offered enough information to the two strangers that she didn’t need to go into the finer details about just what she had done to anger a god. “What’s got your lot so upset with the Mamlaks? I can’t say I’m a fan of them myself, but your hatred seems a bit more deeply seeded,” she said, flagging the barkeep down once again. This time, the barman just left the decanter that the whiskey had been coming out of. Jazrael poured herself half a cup, downed it, and filled the cup once more.