The #Broken_Dagger Forum

.. jagged, broken nail had been hammered into the tavern's front door at some point in the night. Rusted shaft impaled the testament of a fleshy message.

The pointed edge of an elven ear -- moist still, with crusting blood -- had been lodged by the nail in the wood, and below it, painted by a sharp finger, words whispered a tale told in the same gore.

"Bit by bit, she falls apart -- as will Myrken. As will you all. And when it is razed, I will stand above it to laugh."

Myrken Wood had seen a similar art before, on the doors of the Meetinghouse, on the roof of the Edificium.

Somewhere far below, Audmathus was smiling. Thorn had not been seen since the execution .. and black fingers were brushing gently through her hair.

This was his doing -- the soldier or the drow? It no longer mattered, for a scant few days Audmathus' life had been held within his hands. Spared out of a preconception of mercy, now another placed beneath tortures, his face mauled and mutilated, left in ruin. Because he had mercy. There would be no such left now, for Heldenbrand was going to find the drow once again and settle the matter.

Upon it, those many hours later, the soldier gazed -- fingers raveled into taunt fists, fire-scarred digits tremoring with the rage that had coursed through him then. With a snarl contorted across those lips, bandages once pristine begun to stain with crimson renewed, a single droplet flushed beneath the wrap to graze against his jaw and plummet towards the earth. Hand tore downwards, grasping the knife that had been so sheathed at his thigh, stabbed forward to bury itself in the midst of those words. Its serrated edge breaking past the wood that barred it. Regardless of his wounds, he would find him. He'd spared him. This time, he would not.

Unsurprisingly, Heldenbrand was not the only one to come across this message -- with its gruesome punctuation -- and know precisely to whom the ghastly words refer. Remarkably, though, her response is not nearly so violent, so unmistakable in its intent, as Heldenbrand's own.

In her wake, the words remain intact...but the ear is gone.