A Package for a Jackal

[wangxiuming]

A courier delivers a package to Jimmy's, addressed to a certain Jackal. No magic is detectable upon it and there are no signs that the package has been tampered with, only that it has been wrapped with extreme care.

Its only contents: a severed hand, one whose contours would be unquestionably familiar to its recipient.

The only message that accompanies the sundered appendage is a short note. Blood has stained much of the vellum, but the handwriting is as elegant and carefully scribed as any written by the sender.

My life is in his hands, is it? Shall I offer the other then?

[Nyssis]

To say that the etriel is caught by surprise would be putting it lightly, for it isn't oft that someone feels the need to send her much beyond the comfort of words on emotionless paper. In fact, she never gets anything. The she-elf's jaded personality demands that she leave the parcel untouched, sending all manner of signals down her spine to hold her at bay, but it's all for naught as her trembling hands ignore the warning.

No sender? No means to return it? Delivered for her call sign rather than her name? Lasvi shoots Jimmy a telling glance as she steps out the back in favor of the dilapidated yard behind the establishment, though she doesn't voice her concerns.

In the intimacy of this empty lot, she precariously sets the box to one pointed ear. A lapse of judgement predates her giving it a shake, and then something loose rumbles on the inside. What is this gift? The hollowness of the echo means it is quite small compared to the container, but the abrupt klunk that ricochets off the wall means it has some length.

Her slender eladrin ears flick once, twice; three times as she returns the package to eye level. She's ill at ease... Deep in the confines of her chest thumps an anxious heart powered by her instinct to let sleeping bears lie --- the instinct that the Lone Wolf has demanded she listen to --- yet she fights against the cold sweat percolating on her neck and rolling down her breast.

Curiosity was Avistolis' undoing. It must run in the family.

The first thing to hit her is the smell of oxidized copper that wafts up under the parted lid, but it doesn't hit her as hard as the sight. It's--- Twelve be good, it's a hand. It's his hand! Her heartbeat rumbles harder and she cannot avert her gaze, not even to consider the note that had tipped off the appendage and drifted aside after she shook the box. This exceeded her expectations by a long shot.

"Labelas..." is the only religious inflection she can make before nausea claims her senses, and the maiden is forced to double over elsewhere to empty her retching insides all over the dead grass. Her heaving quickly grows futile considering there wasn't much spittle to spill in the first place, though her fasting is hardly cause for celebration.

"...I have made a mistake in Your moment of choice," she finishes her statement when the voice finds her, the stale city air a far more pleasurable taste than this unholy slaugh. Despite her reaction to the delivered gift, Lasvi is remarkably composed and made more resolute in her desire to oppose the fiend. Vulnerability in this situation is hardly inspiring.

Lasvi knows she must remain strong for Alyrian's sake.

She gathers her saliva and spits the nauseating residue on the ground with finality before returning to the lair with her package in tow. If a fiend thinks he can dissuade the daughter of a survivor of Myth Drannor's destruction, he thinks poorly indeed.

[wangxiuming]

Another package arrives not long after, once again addressed to Jackal. Its contents ...

A message accompanies the package:

How much more will your beloved have to lose to this selfish quest of yours? How much more before his love for you turns to fear ... loathing ... hate?

[Nyssis]

When the avariel returns to the gambling joint, that sight is everything she'd hope to deny and pray not to remember. The telling look she gave the barkeep yesterday is returned in rotary with her opening of the door, every subtlety painted on his orcish countenance like an artist well at work, and her heart struggles to support at least half her weight in reply.

Another one, he tells her with his coarse and experienced gaze, or perhaps that's just what her mind tricks her into perceiving. Because without looking at him, without even noticing if he told her anything at all, there it is sitting on the furthest corner of the countertop in all its featureless, dreadful glory. No inflection or greeting threatens to betray her feelings aloud, but the angles of her elven face are noticeably losing their color even as she claims the box and disappears out the back.

Something loose inside reflexively stirs halfway to her destination and its discomfort scares her into steadying the parcel. She pauses to concentrate on the tilting that cows the thing into submission, but every lurch better knots the sundered heart now in her stomach. It's another dismembered part of him? Something--- Someth--- Lasvi blots the cold sweat wetting her neck.

This is but a pitiable attempt to give her the strength to endure, however. Her hands are shaking too much to keep it steady, so she sets the box atop a tree stump blemishing the yard for a quick reprieve to compose herself. The delivery rolls around and tips the weight of the parcel as if trying to refute this desire the moment she leaves it unattended, but the she-elf is admittedly quick to scoop it up before it plummets to the grass.

This thing most assuredly has a mind of its own. Pay attention to me, it begs her when she tilts it back to alignment. It makes another sickening rumble as the balance of the contents shifts. Wait for my gift, love. It will be beautiful to behold. Those words, whether imagined or real, eat holes in her resolve with incredible accuracy and before long she succumbs to their vicious urging.

The smell isn't as horrifying, but it's a gentle buffer for the sight that now unerringly locks with hers. Alyrian's --- her throat constricts the breath sustaining her --- eye is her gift this time. Her weak gaze levels on him, lost somewhere in a pile of crumpled parchment made soggy by the ichor it was packed with, and his vibrant iris stares back. His pupil is dilated in fear or grief.

A sudden jolt tempts her gag reflex, but she chokes down anything that otherwise would've come up. The resulting fit of coughs breaks any concentration she once had, for better or for worse, and beyond these echoing eruptions the maiden doesn't make a sound as she stumbles to her sanctuary with her present not far behind.

In retrospect, she is partially responsible, but rather than wallow in self-loathing it'd be more constructive to actually do something about it. And she can. The Lifegiver willing, she will have plenty of time to attempt to apologize to her beloved aleirin once the fiend is dead and gone.

[wangxiuming]

The third gift is different than the first two, though it is nonetheless offered to Jackal at Jimmy's. It is larger than any before, and heavy. Any disturbance - picking the box up, shaking it, even the slightest jostling - causes the neatly-wrapped package to jingle with the sound of clinking glass. Upon tearing apart the parcel paper and prying open the top, a crate of what appears to be wine is unveiled. Columns of bottles are lined neatly next to each other, though none of them are labeled in any fashion.

An examination of any of the dozens of bottles might reveal that the fluid within the glass is much thicker, much more viscous, and a far deeper shade of red than any wine could be.

Much like the other gifts, a message accompanies the package:

Is it human women who enjoy it when their men bleed for them? I'm afraid I've forgotten. Your beloved has probably forgotten as well ... I assume being gutted over and over is not an experience one wishes to retain.

Have you gotten the message yet, love? Has your professed aleirin suffered enough for you? Or has his pain only begun?

[Nyssis]

Days later, the recipient is soaked to the bone and far worse for wear. Her body's weighed down by the rainwater that has patterned the streets of the capitol when she walked them in haste to deliver the Myrios of the 10th's official documents, and thoroughly drenched by the deluge at the gate's thoroughfare way before then. And yet despite her ailing, her gaze is as heavy as her heart when her eyes skim the room and confirm their fears within seconds of setting foot in the tavern's foyer.

It's another delivery. Araushnee be damned, another one.

The elven maiden's every creaking step cuts through the din of the tavern with trepidation to approach the gift left in her moniker, wed to the wet sound of her black cloak just as ineagerly lumbering astride her footprints. The sheer girth of the package is enough to knock her clock deeper into her chest, but bending down for a closer inspection thankfully allays a few worries.

A delicate finger catches a corner of the box and attempts to tilt it up, but she can only manage to send it skidding a knuckle to the side due to the overwhelming opposed weight. It jingles its displeasure when it settles and there's a ... trail of dust? Twelve be good, it must have been here for a while now. This alone reflexively softens her scrutinizing glare.

Perhaps the fiend suspects the lapse in argument to equate to successful coercion? Or maybe there just haven't been any developments in Alyrian's status since the last time she was in the capitol. These thoughts among many are as easily conjured as they are drawn on the ground, for the mithral nails of her gauntlets have been carving all manner of web into the sand since the moment she leaned down.

Aleirin, what did that creature take from you this time? is the first question that pops into her head.

Loose water from her hood drips onto the packing paper as if to answer. A second one follows suit, then a third. Lasvi eyes flick to the spots that are now bleeding into the brown exterior, and although a little much her diminutive stature can effectively hoist the crate for a disjointed trip to the back room. The stairwell gives her ample room to debate in privacy, if anything at all.

The cacophony of glittering glass that shadows her steps evokes more intense thoughts than what outwardly appears to be a mere wine delivery. Strange. The ringing is dimmer than a typical bottle's. Less viscid wines can take to noise a lot easier than this --- she has spent plenty of time curiously tapping bottles since the ex-Elite Magus introduced her to liquor --- and unless the glass is particularly thick, the liquid must be heavy.

In the dampened isolation of the escalier, the package is subsequently defaced now that prying and judging eyes are off its recipient. Its wooden lid proves no worthy aegis against the haste of her attack, much to the audible dismay of its contents which frenzy as the cover is bent away. Twenty-four bottles altogether, two for each of the twelve gods she worships.

A note rests atop the now misaligned cork toppers, flipped over by the suction of stale air that wresting the lid vacuumed with it. For once, Lasvi actually takes the note in hand to read its scribed message. And for once, she grows weak without needing the shock of gore to turn her stomach.