The thick heels of her boots clumped along on the cobblestones of Stormwind as Beckyann made her way through the Cathedral District, her path taking her along the outskirts and as far from the holy edifice as possible. She often came this way, past the Canals that lead to the harbor and towards the cemetery behind the Cathedral itself, always making sure to stay far clear of any Light worshippers in the area. She had redoubled her efforts at avoiding them after her recent contact with a potential Scarlet right within the city itself.
Dressed in a long, flowing black dress with silver stitching and a matching black cape, Beckyann looked the part of a noble or lady of some wealth. If one were to inspect her closely, it would become obvious that the dress she wore, while very expensive, was several years out of style. The death knight was aware that many of the clothes she recovered from tombs and crypts would not be the latest fashion, but none could deny the beauty and stitch-work that had gone into the making of the garment. While some might consider the theft of such articles from the resting places of the dead to be a sacrilege, to Beckyann's mind the items were left to honor the deceased and to ease their passage into the hereafter. Since she was one of the deceased, clearly these items were intended to ease her comfort. It was plainly obvious.
With a smile on her face, Beckyann passed the Cathedral itself, heading towards the gazebos and pathways that lead amongst the headstones of the graveyard. The exercise of walking through the city gave her a chance to test her looks to see how disturbed the living would get, and also provided her with the opportunity to spy on them as needed to keep a handle on what the various organizations in Stormwind were up to.
As she neared the first pathway into the cemetery, she passed an old man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. When she was within a few paces of him, he muttered to her over the pages, not bothering to look up for more than an instant, "Good morning young lady."
Beckyann nearly squealed with glee! The man had assumed she was a living girl, not even paying her much mind. She turned, her smile widening as she dipped her head politely and replied in her echoing, otherworldly voice, "And good morning to you good sir."
It was like night and day. One instant the old man was sitting behind the wall of his newspaper, and the next he had brought the obstruction down, loathing suddenly written across his features. He half-rose, sputtering almost inarticulately at first, "You! You do not belong here! How DARE you set foot in this part of the city? My son, my daughter-in-law, and their children were wiped out by your kind! Filth like you should not be anywhere NEAR their graves! Begone you rotting corpse, go back to whatever grave you arose from!"
The smile on Beckyann's face became a cynical sneer for a moment before she managed to recover her composure, "I am an ally of this city sir, and I will go where I please."
The man rose completely now, shaking an angry fist at her, "Do you mock me? Look at you, all dressed up like you belong here. Like you deserve to walk amongst us! Are you wearing makeup? You're a filthy, disease ridden corpse and if I had a shovel you'd be back in the ground where you should have stayed! Don't you have some animals to torture somewhere so that I don't have to look at your hideous glowing eyes!" He ended his tirade by spitting on the ground and then throwing his paper at her. The pages fluttered to the ground around her boots.
Beckyann's composure neared the breaking point as he hurled words at her, until finally she stepped forward, walking across his fallen paper, coming within inches of his face, her voice almost a cold, deadly hiss, "Yes, I kill animals. And I've killed men and women and children. Even old men who couldn't defend themselves. And I will do so again, so that the Alliance can triumph in war. Not because of the thanks I SHOULD be receiving from the likes of you, and not because I want to kill, but because I want to dedicate the shallow pale shadow of this LIFE to something that will let me live in peace, away from bastards like you that want to interfere with that."
By now, the man had started to pull back, and Beckyann's rage made her chest actually rise and fall as she took in deep breaths to spit out more words, "Do you think I wanted to be this way? Do you think I enjoy having to scurry along in the shadows so that I don't OFFEND you with my existence? Do you know that I WAS dead, that for a brief moment, I knew what bliss awaited me after life ends only to see that snatched away from me FOREVER? Do you think I want to exist like this, with my hereafter forever bereft of me, never to be reunited with my lost loved ones? DO YOU?!"
The man had stopped his angry tirade by now, his eyes wide. Several other people had paused, watching the exchange, a few of them clergy from the nearby Cathedral. One of the priests actually made a holy gesture over himself, as if to ward off evil. Beckyann saw all of this out of the corner of her eye, and shook her head in irritation.
"No. You don't understand," she said, her voice low now. "And you don't need to. Pray that your own rest, when it comes, is eternal."
With that she pushed her way past the man, her hands coming down to grasp at her skirts so she could move faster away from the onlookers, heading into the silent comfort of the empty graveyard and it's welcoming crypts beyond. Behind her, the onlookers came and helped the man gather up his paper and calmed him down, helping him back to his seat. Several of them glared in the direction the woman in the dress had gone, spitting out curses under their breaths.
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