*Late last evening*
Beckyann pulled the door to her
chambers closed with a small sigh, putting the bolt in place and
whispering words of magic to ward the door. She'd just come back from
Blackrock Mountain, and the adventure she and the other Knights had
had there was still fresh in her mind.
As her thoughts went over the details
of the evening, she strolled casually to one side of her room, her
hands reaching down to grasp her tabard. She pulled it up over her
head, removing it from her armor and folding it neatly before placing
it on the edge of a dresser. Her hands went back to work, beginning
to find and loosen straps and buckles that kept the various pieces of
her purple armor strapped to her body.
Bit by bit she removed each piece,
casually dropping them with a metallic clank into a pile near the
door. As the pile of armor grew, she became lighter and the
under-armor she wore beneath the metal could be seen. Sheer and
black, the bodysuit was not as padded as a living person might have
preferred, but then Beckyann didn't feel blows as a living person
would, so it was not as necessary. She reached down, beginning to
undo the buttons that kept it in place.
Beckyann was no longer living, and
didn't sweat. This meant that it was not as necessary to launder her
clothing since they tended to simply smell like whatever environment
she was in or her perfume. She herself could barely smell at all, but
even so she took care to keep herself presentable. The bodysuit had a
faint tinge of sulfur and dragon's breath and a hint of stale, old
necromancy about it which wouldn't do at all. She casually peeled it
off and tossed each piece across the room to a hamper that a geist
would be ordered to take down to the ocean to scrub later on. Her top
and socks managed to land in the hamper, and her leggings missed
entirely and ended up in a pile on the floor, joining the many other
pieces of clothing she had tossed and missed with. Between the
disorganized stack of armor and the clothing strewn about, a few more
pieces would hardly make much of a difference.
Stripped to her underthings, Beckyann
smiled and walked slowly towards her vanity, sinking down onto the
seat there. She reached up, undoing her tightly clasped hair and
letting it hang down. Humming to herself, she reached out and picked
up a bone-handled brush, running the bristles through her hair as she
watched herself in the mirror critically. Her hair didn't grow like a
living person's did, and each strand was brittle and dead. It
required quite a bit of hair products to keep it looking even
remotely presentable, and also much necromancy to replace strands
that fell out. Each night she would brush her hair and consider
carefully how much had fallen out, ensuring that she regrew an
appropriate amount with necromancy on a regular basis.
The others wouldn't understand her
desire to look as natural as possible, but to Beckyann it was a
simple matter of survival. The living did not want her kind to exist,
they didn't want to think about what she represented and the less she
gave them reason to notice her, the better off she would be. It also
served many other purposes, allowing her to act as a spy or obtain
materials that a much more rotten looking death knight might have
issue with. She prided herself on the way she maintained the shell
that she would reside in for all eternity; it was part of her daily
routine to perform such maintenance.
As this thought passed through her
mind, she looked at her reflection in the mirror critically. She
rose, walking across the room and pushing aside a 1113th
battle standard to reveal a full length mirror. Standing in her
undergarments, Beckyann slowly turned in front of it, noting
imperfections on her body. As she found them, she traced necromantic
runes across them with her fingertips, murmuring the words to spells.
Her right cheek had a faint light-burn
from the healing spells of their living ally on the venture. She
placed a rune across that side of her face before checking further
downwards. Below her left breast and beneath her heart a weapon had
pierced her armor and exposed one of her ribs. She traced another
mark over the wound, her finger spreading the congealed, black blood
that had seeped from it as it moved across her flesh. On her leg she
had a long mark up one side where her armor had absorbed the blow
from a blunt object and pinched her flesh. On a living person such a
wound would have just bruised up, but on Beckyann it made her flesh
turn black and diseased looking; another rune was traced over that
area.
Spinning one last time, Beckyann nodded
at her reflection, satisfied that she had marked all of the trouble
areas. She smiled and turned, heading towards the bed in her
quarters. While she did not sleep, she DID regenerate there each
evening, and the act of sliding into bed felt natural since it was a
piece of her former life. She lay beneath the covers, her eyes
glowing as she began to murmur the first words of the spells she
used.
It had taken her years to perfect the
spells. Years spent in the frozen north hunting down the creatures of
the Lich King and studying them. Of learning how each was preserved
and what methods worked best. Of determining how undead flesh could
be repaired and regenerated, and developing the necessary
incantations. Beckyann prided herself on her daily regeneration; she
was an expert in such things and nowhere else was her skill with
necromancy more apparent than in her flawless, dead skin.
As she finished the spell, magic began
to pulse in the air around her. Beckyann smiled, whispering another
quick incantation. A small gust of freezing cold wind snuffed out all
of the candles in the room, plunging it into darkness. While she
could regenerate anywhere, it worked best in the inky blackness, with
only the magic's own unnatural glow present.
Green runes began to dance in the air
around Beckyann's bed as she lay perfectly still. Not a muscle
twitched, not an eyelash fluttered, and her chest did not rise and
fall with breath. The spells she summoned to regenerate her were made
up of the most powerful negative energies, of pure necromantic force
that would slay the living in a second. An orb of eerie green energy
formed around her, tendrils of blue-black magic stretching from it to
begin touching her flesh beneath the covers. Where she had marked
herself with runes, the sigils glowed brightly, attracting even more
of the energies, knitting dead flesh back together slowly.
Beckyann restored this magic each day,
keeping herself fresh and functional. Even if she were killed again,
unless her body was hacked to pieces, her head removed and her heart
severed, it was likely that such energies would slowly knit her flesh
back together over time. When applied in such a strong dose, it would
make remake her each night, preserving her forever.
As the tendrils caressed her body,
Beckyann sighed, her own magic fluttering into its lowest state. Her
eyes lost their glow, and in the darkened room the green-eyed corpse
of a girl from Corin's Crossing rested as near to true death as it
ever did, her beauty kept eternal by the darkness she commanded with
ease.
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