I.
His mother had called him Jacob, but that was in another life - when he had use for such concepts as names. Gabrielle’s little boy was long gone, not even the eyes he looked through were entirely his own now. All that remains of that willful youth is his ambition, a great hunger. Seldom is it when he is even addressed, and when they dare to call out to him, it is the fear talking. Just as their blood had reshaped him, their fear had renamed him after the carrion canine - Jackal.
Jackal detached himself from the shadow of the ancient tower overlooking the city gate. Jackal fell upon the lone guard, drawn by her heartbeat, and ate her scream as his teeth shredded her throat. Jackal drank deep of her blood and dying terror in unison, the warm metallic taste sweetened by the mixing of adrenaline. Jackal drooled in adulation as the blood and meat slid down his throat and covered his body. Jackal’s eyes glowed with every crunch as her soul marrow was released.
Jackal slowly crawled to the gate’s counterweight release, listening for any sign that anyone still alive had noticed his entrance. He chirruped a low, clicking noise, that was quietly answered in kind from outside the gate as well as the wall above. Releasing the counterweight, the gate opened up to the growing horde of wights that were being summoned by the liche who had commissioned him. Jackal observed the powerful essence within the wights as they were pieced together and delighted in the knowledge that he would be following in the wake of these beasts.
II.
It wasn’t long before the screaming started as the town awoke to find itself under siege from within - but it was long after the sun rose the next day before the screaming ended. The guard barracks were hit first, with the second watch already dispatched, the waking town guards had access only to their personal weapons, but had no time to armor themselves. Little protection it would have awarded them from the fire that consumed the barracks while the wights continued to come.
The sheriff woke up just long enough to feel Jackal’s teeth and hear the screams of his wife next to him. Their bed became a serving platter as their children fled their imagined monsters into the welcoming embrace of something far more terrible. The horror was almost played out a second time as the last surviving guard, who had valiantly battled his way this far, could not find within himself the nerve to enter the house filled with such horrid noises - rather than face this nightmare further, he took his own life so that it would end.
The chapel was the only building that was quiet, as the lone surviving priest fought his muscles in futility as they used his sacred ornaments to open the door to the vault that had long been hidden underneath the bed in his quarters. It seemed ludicrous that an entire town would be destroyed just for a book, but as his trembling hands undid the last of the sacred wards he knew that the atrocities committed here would pale in comparison to what would come. As his hands released the book from his grip, the spell marionetting his body dissolved. He was left alone and alive, insignificant as he now was - left alone to pray, and listen to the sounds of the fate that would come to him in due time.
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