RP: Here's My Number, Call Me Maybe

Synopsis: While studying her less savory tomes of dark magic, the necromancer Larewen is interrupted by the corpse of a bird falling into her lap. The culprit is Orikahn, and the two strike up an interesting exchange, prompting Larewen to create a new toy: talking skulls.

Somewhere in Southern Sage

Orikahn is noisily hacking the limbs off of a drow scout. Already, the disembodied head hangs beside him from a low-hanging bough, tied up by its silver hair to let gravity do all the slow work of exsanguination. An arm hangs likewise, tied with torn strips of the drow's clothing and left to hang by its fingers, dripping much like the head. An improvised bowl has been dug out of the grassy loam to catch the drippings. Kahn has not yet shed his armor. With copper hatchet in hand, he chops industriously away, eventually breaking through the shoulder with a sickening snap. He sets the axe down, grabs the body and the limb, and tears the latter free with alarming ease. "Rum bum deee," he aimlessly sings to himself, "a'rum bum deee..."

Larewen was not an infrequent visitor to Sage Forest; she fought on the side of the drow, after all. It had only made sense, given her guild affiliations and mutual hatred of her own kind - what she'd been in life, anyway. The smell of the slain drow's blood preceded the auditory invasion of Orikahn's song, inciting a flare of the elf's nostrils as she drew closer to the other predator. She was a leech and he an honorable warrior, as they'd surmised their last meeting. Undoubtedly, his trained feline ears would hear her approach, for the necromancer made no attempts at stealth. Her eldritch magic was enough to fend undesirables off. As dark eyes fell upon Orikahn, her lips curled upward. "Kahn," came the greeting, sweet as silver bells upon the field of carnage he'd created.

Orikahn pulls a fresh strip free from the scout's garments and has the other arm tied up to drain in no time. Just as he is about to grab the hatchet again, the cat pauses. His ears perk, pressing against the fabric of his hood, and he throws it back to hear more clearly. Green eyes sweep around to strike Larewen with their bright gaze. "Oh, it's you," his words are low and rough, but Kahn grins a sabertoothed grin, "the bad juju lady." Kahn wipes his hands on his leg guards, smearing them with a fresh bit of blood. "You're caught me at the *end* of a hunt this time." His brow furrows in concern. "Did you ever get that book clean?" Kahn pronounced book awkwardly, to rhyme with "spook."

Larewen appeared bemused by his query regarding her the tome he'd soiled with his ill timed hunt their last meeting and as such, her head tilted to the side. Her grin remained in place. "Why for would I seek to clean it?" she asked. There was mirth in the vocals of her words, likely inspired by his nickname for her. Clearly, the necromancer was not bothered by the idea of being referred to as "the bad juju lady." A few steps brought her nearer to Orikahn; near enough that lesser creatures might find it uncomfortable. She was dead, after all. "You have sided with the elves, I take it?" She craned her neck toward the dismembered drow.

Orikahn purses his lips, humbled again by how little he seems to know about the use and care of books. Dismissing the budding questions in his mind, he shakes his head gently by clear it and returns his focus to the situation at hand. "With..." The cat mutters after her, sending a look to the slain drow, its slender frame, its distinct ears. He looks back to Larewen and points over his shoulder at the dismembered corpse, surprise in his tone. "...the elves?" Feeling distinctly like he is missing something, he narrows narrows his eyes and lets his expression ask all the unspoken questions for him. A clot drops free from one of the arms, splashing into the slowly filling basin with a musical "plip."

Larewen flicked her gaze toward the basin, mildly intrigued by its contents. "Not the dark elves, but the surface elves. The ones that once called this place home," Larewen clarified. Her eyes swept back toward the feline, curiously.

Orikahn nods like he might understand, then seems to catch himself and quickly shakes his head. "No, no sides." He furrows his brow and stoops to lift his hatchet again, kneeling beside the mutilated body, thinking to himself and speaking aloud as he does. "They do seem to have been fighting a lot, though, haven't they? The light ones and the dark ones, I mean. No, no," he laughs now, amused by the thought, "couldn't pick a side. Petty morsels." With a grunt, he sets back to hacking. "Help yourself," Kahn calls over the axeblows, "to one of those arms. Or," he grunts in exertion, "you can have a leg here in a minute. Rrrah!" He breaks the leg free from its joint.

Larewen allowed an amused expression to steal over her features as she watched him. It amused her how little the politics of the elves affected most, and yet simultaneously involved much of the realm when it came to their battles. Her own guildmasters were drow, and fighting against them didn't seem like her cup of tea anymore than fighting with the kindred she loathed so. Her eyes moved to the arms, a chuckle falling from her lips. "Ah, I have no use for the blood or meat of the dead, esepecially dismembered. There is not much there to raise, after all."

Orikahn grips and tears the leg just as done to the arm some moments ago, and with a few more strips of torn fabric, its steadily draining with the other limbs. "Suit yourself. You can have your pick of the organs too," he goes on, "after I've gone through and gotten the ones I need." He sends her a sidelong glance, certain that his offer would tempt even the most noncommittal bad juju artists. "I could even be convinced," Kahn sets back to hacking, working on the fifth and final limb, "to give away the heart, should you ask for it." Oily with the balm of proud benevolence, he keeps his eyes on his work, waiting with a smile for Larewen's eager, grateful reply.

Larewen couldn't turn that temptation down, and it was clear in the way light suddenly flickered into those cold, dark eyes of hers. She watched with delight as Orikahn tore the body limb from limb, finding a sort of sick satisfaction in seeing another creature pulled apart. "The heart, you say?" she echoed, a sing-song lilt taking control of her voice as she sidled even closer to the feline. "I imagine your price would be a bit more than a simple query, no? Many things can be done with the hearts of others. It's a key ingredient in many of the dark arts, after all."

Orikahn swells with smug satisfaction. He could almost purr. "Price? No one said anything about price." He echoes her sing-song tone. "We'll just call it a token," the last leg is pulled and hung as he speaks, "of our mutual respect and interests. Here, please," Kahn holds up a hand with palm outward, "allow me." Stooping beside the abandoned torso, the hunter produces a flint knife and, after few cuts and some squishy, blind groping, he lifts out the heart of a drow. It oozes heavily on his grasp. "I'm sure," he winks and offers it, "you'll find a more clever use for it than I will."

Larewen first removed her gloves in order to spare the cloth before taking the bloodied heart from him with her bare hands. The blood was still warm from the kill, but because it smelled of death, it did not stoke her appetite at all. Besides, she'd fed recently enough. "That I will," she murmured softly, turning it over in her hand. A moment later, magic came to life at her finger tips and the heart was suspended in the air. She warded it with preservation spells to keep it from decaying. The necromancer would find a use for it, eventually. Another spell, uttered faintly upon her tongue, sent it into another dimension for storage. "You certainly know how to win a girl's heart, Kahn," she replied shortly after, flashing him a grin.

Orikahn dug around, dropping out the rest of the organs and setting them in the bloody earthen basin for now. The hollow body cavity makes a variety of delightfully sickening, sucking, squelching sounds as he works. "Oh goosefeathers," he overturns her compliment with ease, smile still set on his lips, eyes lowered to his work, "I've had my fill of hearts, and there will be plenty more where that came from." Finally, taking a heavy pin and thin cord of hemp rope, he laces a few holes by which to hang the body, tying it up it place. At last, with a with of satisfaction, he sits back in his haunches and admires his catch. While he looks on, he idly, thoughtlessly dips his hand on the pooling blood and smears some down each of his cheeks.

Larewen chuckled, content to watch as the blood stickied her hands. It was beginning to dry. A sideways glance toward Orikahn heralded speech once more. "If you wouldn't mind, I'm sure I could find uses for them. Though, I would need them rather quickly, if I intended to put them to good use - before they start to rot. Rotten hearts aren't quite as good, when it comes to magic. Fresh ones are prime." The smearing of blood upon his face bothered her as much as the crimson upon her hands.

Orikahn glances back over his shoulder at the sorceress. "Oh? Well," he nods, "I make my rounds around these woods. You've managed to find me once now." He scoots, turning to face her a little more directly. "And something tells me you'll have little trouble finding me again. How shall I let you know when a heart is fresh and warm, hmm?" The massive cat raises both brows. "How will you know when to come?" Involuntarily, he unsheathes a claw to scratch at the mossy ground. If Larewen didn't know better, and would say that Kahn's pupils had widened just now.

Larewen watched him curiously, dark eyes meeting his when he turned to face her. For a moment, her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth as she considered a way for him to communicate with her. Enchantment would work. As his claw dug into the ground, a bloodied hand was extended toward the feline. "Let me see one of your skulls, Kahn," she said, rather than asked. Again, that wicked grin of hers had twisted into being.

Orikahn slyly narrows his eyes in suspicion, as though he already has an inkling of what Larewen might be up to. "One of my sculls?" He hesitates, then reaches down to pluck one from his sash with a snap; he offers it to her. Already, the game on the back of his neck was prickling. Bad juju was soon to be afoot…

Larewen took the trophy tenderly into her hand, the drying blood that caked her fingers smearing the bleached braincase. He was right, in the assumption that bad juju was to come, for as soon as it was firmly in her grasp, the necromancer was casting. Darkness formed upon her fingertips, sliding over the skull and staining it with her magic. The shadows crept over every crack and crevice of the cranium as she shifted it into her palm of her left hand. A moment later, her right palm was raised and turned upward, held a few inches away. First, she was manipulating the trophy, for it expanded to twice its with while simultaneously shrinking to half its height. Then, the darkened skull split into two small ones, both as black as pitch. In her right hand, she conjured fourth four small, round verdant gems, all of which flickered with an eldritch glow. From her hand they rose to settle into the eye sockets of the twin skulls. With a final breath of dark magic cast upon them, the skulls became miniature constructs. Their jaws began to chatter, as if they'd come back to life. "Like this," she said at last, extending one of the talking skulls back toward Orikahn. The emerald of its eyes contrasted the blackness of its bone. "Speak into it, and the magic that binds them together will project your words to me, from the one I will carry."

Orikahn watches in fascination and definite unease as Larewen works her otherworldly witchery. As the scull contorts, Kahn comes close to finding protest, but he holds himself back, either unable or unwilling to stop that which has already begun. At long last, with the glint of gems shining in his gaze, he accepts the scull and carefully raises it to his lips.

Orikahn told Larewen, "You mean... like this?"

Larewen whatever words Orikahn uttered would be received by his skull and, so that he could see it, her own was raised upon her palm and turned toward him. For every syllable, the mandible of the blackened skull would jitter open and from it, his words would be echoed. The voice would be his own, only distorted and otherworldly upon the ears of those listening. It was an abominable magic.

Larewen told Orikahn, "Precisely."

Larewen's reply was met in the same way, only it was Orikahn's skull that would project her voice, detached in sound.

Orikahn jumps and bristles, startled and disturbed by the sound. Great and frightful magics were clearly at work here. "I..." Kahn quickly pulls the scull away before it can pick up his voice, and he clears his throat, retaining some of his decorum. "I see. That will do well then." His time is pleased, but his eyes are uncertain as he turns the unhallowed object over in his grasp.

Larewen responded with a dip of her head to the feline's words. "Try not to lose it, please. I've crafted it just for you, and would prefer to keep it that way," she said and then, she dipped her head with a glance to the northeast. "I ought to return to my studies. It was a pleasure, as always, Kahn." And with that, the necromancer was departing, murmuring her amusement as she looked at the creation she held in her hand. Yes, it was wonderful.