Jeshin reaches the door hanging slightly ajar at the top of the steps, opens it the rest of the way then steps through the portal. The sounds and smells of the seedy tavern take over the smell from the room in the basement. She hated this place. It's name, The Burned Garden, was an accurate depiction of both the inside and outside, having gone unrepaired for years. She could hear Uporin screaming at his staff to her right, then rush out the back of the tavern. She narrowed her eyes. He knew what would happen if she had to come find him tonight, but that didn't mean she trusted him. If his kin saw him like this, a coward and cheat, they would have taken him to a deep cave and beaten him to death when he came of age. Honorless cowards don't deserve life according to the kulam.
She dismisses Uporin from her mind, then steps through a doorway to her left, entering the main room of the tavern. It was half-filled with people either drowning their misery and themselves in terrible beer, or making underhanded deals. Jeshin strides past the bar, making her way toward the front door, pushing a fat human who stumbled in her path out of the way, making him collide with a table and set of chairs where he lay, groaning. The old, weathered waitress screams at the man, eyeing and avoiding her entirely. Jeshin passes by a table as a man with a cowled jacket seated at it flows from the bench and follows her out of the tavern and into the morning light of the city streets. Without breaking her stride, she continues northward toward their inn.
The man follows her, breathing the cold outside air deeply before turning to Jeshin with a large grin, cowl covering the majority of his face.
"Finally, I was getting sick of that place, it smelled like the arsehole of a cow mixed with liquified stinkcap! Granted, a stinkcap is infinitely more enjoyable to smell than that of unwashed fur and skin, but I digress."
Jeshin looks at the man unamused but replies, ears twitching slightly, "Stinkcap is a delicacy in some places. You do it a disservice, Joshua."
Her response makes him grin again. "So captain, what's next?"
She cocks her head as she walked through the throngs of people, before sighing. "We're going to take that slug Uporin and get what's ours back. Tonight," she growls.
Joshua claps once and says, "Sounds like fun! Who's got our shit?"She smiles humorlessly. "The Black Kamber group."
Joshua stops walking for a second before continuing following Jeshin. "Ah. Well, that's interesting," he says contemplatively.
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Jeshin and Joshua enter the door of their inn, the Jaded Gnome. Joshua takes his leave and approaches a table with a well-muscled elf and a thin, floating creature that looked like a mix between a dwarf and a sea-serpent, a di'vash, as Jeshin ordered a meal and drink, then accepts a letter from the tavern keeper. The elf woman, Vara, was laughing at a joke that was told by Kor'lo, both of them in stitches, the mix of gurgling hissing with normal laughter drawing the heads of curious people.
Joshua grabs a chair and turns it around, sitting on it lightly, his long, red hair spilling out of his cowl as he leaned in to listen, his body frame both covered and accentuated by his clothing. He was wearing his cowled jacket and simple, dark blue breeches. Kor'lo was covered in bluish-green scales and wisps of extremely thin seaweed-like hair hanging here and there, a simple, thin robe covering his body. His beard was thick, consisting much of the same seaweed-like follicles. It twitched as he laughed his gurgling hiss. Vara had a diamond patch of hair on her head, spanning from her widow's peak to the nape of her neck, which then left off as an extremely long braid. She wore a loose fitting silk tunic and cotton shorts, one leg of the shorts longer than the other. The rest of her legs were covered in an armored skirt, completely open in the front to provide mobility.
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The inn attendant came back with the requested letter and a tankard of shevim, a drink much like mead but made with berries which had been only partially fermented. Jeshin preferred the sweet taste to the heady taste of beer or the cloying one of mead. Leaving her subordinates behind, she climbed up the stairs to her room. She went to the doors of two other subordinates and pounded on their frames. Norvor, a dwarf woman with short brown hair, opened her door wearing only her underclothes, a handsome, naked young man sleeping soundly in her bed. Cossack, a tall, ebony-skinned man, stepped out of his room, reading glasses on his nose and a book in hand. She notified them of the plan for tonight, then left them as they went back to their own devices.
Jeshin unlocked her own door, slammed it shut and threw the letter on her writing desk with annoyance. She stretches, her back and arms popping with relief. She approached the wash basin in the corner of her room, dunking her head into the deep bowl before throwing her head up, using her hands to smooth back her loose mane of hair. Looking up, she stared into her small mirror, it's sheen reflecting her annoyance back at her. Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths until she was under control, then reopened her eyes and inspected herself more clearly.
While she may be called a nevorin, she was really only half, while her other half was, itself, that of a human-elf mix. Compared side-by-side to a full nevorin, she didn't lose by height or weight, but she was poignantly less bestial by far. Her features weren't delicate by any means, but they were very much more humanoid, covered in scars all across her body. She had even been called beautiful on plenty of occasions. Her irises were of a bright green, ringed on the outside by a golden amber color. Unlike the thick fur of a nevorin, she had an extremely thick, long mane of loose fur-like hair running from her head and neck, which hung loosely down to the bottom of her back by her tail, the rest of her body covered in a light, short bluish-grey colored fur, with white along her underarms, belly and face. Her wolf-like ears were adorned with earrings and studs of gold and silver, her hair itself glittering with moonstones and topaz beads braided in the strands.
Her arms and legs were closer in ratio to a human, but she still had a long length akin to the nevorin, finger tips nearly reaching down to her knees, but instead of humanoid paws of her kin, hers were fur covered human-like hands with long, powerful fingers that ended in short claws, her feet much the same. A simple gold ring adorned both of her middle fingers, each connected to a complex, thin net made of gold on the back of her hands leading to golden bangles on her wrist, the net moving with her hands as if it were like regular skin-tight leather gloves.
Further up along her left arm, a flat, flexible ring of coiled whitegold fit snugly between her shoulder and bicep, moving like a snake as her arm flexed, staying in one place. Her tail hung down, swaying to the sides slowly. More silver wire, this time adorned with the moonstones, threaded through the tail's skin and fur. Her clothing consisted of an unlaced silk shirt and specialized leather corset, with black, scaled leather shorts that reached down to her knees, and custom made boots for her feet that had buckles to replace the normal leather cords. Two scale leather belts hugged her long waist loosely, metal clips riveted on them to hold scabbards or pouches of tools.
She shakes her head lightly, earrings clicking together and her hair glittering in the soft light, then pulls away from the mirror. She strides to her desk, takes up the letter and opens it, reading its unsigned contents.
You asked from Us
We provided the Answer
Remember it
A Child of Will
Eyes a Fiery Embrace
Blades Dipped in Familial Blood
Lo, a Traitor's Head to Roll
Jeshin frowns, clicks her tongue, then throws the letter on the desk. She sits on her bed, unbuckles her boots and kicks them off before laying back. 'What the fuck does that mean...', she thinks to herself before turning to the wall.