Beckyann's finger traced the last line
in the necromantic tome, her glowing eyes pouring over every syllable
and symbol written on the page. Laying on her stomach on her bed, she
had a second book open beside her with a pencil holding the pages
open. Every now and then she would reread a portion of the spell
written in the book she was studying before picking up the pencil and
jotting some notes down in the notebook she was using. Her feet
kicked in the air behind her idly as she prepared herself for the
spell she wanted to try.
One could not learn the deeper
mysteries of necromancy without trying them out first hand after all.
With a satisfied smile on her black
painted lips, Beckyann closed the spellbook in front of her and
snatched up her notebook, jotting down a few more things before
closing it and sitting up. She clutched the notebook against the
black silk of her dress, calming her mind and silencing any
distracting thoughts that might pop up while she was in the midst of
spellcasting. She leaned down, grabbing some grave dust from a pouch
that sat on the stone floor of her quarters before throwing it into
the air and beginning to chant.
The spell was complex, the objective of
the magic being to conjure a spirit of some power and chain it to the
will of the caster. Beckyann had previously only summoned beasts, and
never before had she tried to anchor the full echo of a sentient
being's spirit. Her minions were dull-witted and slow normally, and
nothing of the order of what she was trying to summon now. She
chanted loudly, her voice echoing throughout the stone chambers as
she confidently repeated the words of the spell she had memorized. As
the spell reached its climax, her voice rose in volume, the horrific
words of necromancy perfectly pronounced.
Feeling somewhat triumphant, Beckyann
shouted the last word of the spell, hurling another handful of the
dust into the air. A cold wind blew through her chambers, snuffing
every single candle in the room and plunging her into darkness that
was illuminated only by the baleful glow of her own eyes.
There was utter stillness in the room.
Beckyann blinked, biting her lip and
looking around. Not a thing moved in the chambers, and nothing
stirred in the gloomy darkness. Despite all of her studying and hard
work, it seemed that she had failed once again to properly summon the
spirit she had planned on chaining. She sighed to herself, murmuring
the words of another spell and reigniting the candles in the room. As
they flared to life, she thought she saw something out of the corner
of her eye.
She turned her head quickly, but there
was nothing to be seen other than the far corner of her room. Piles
of clothes lay between her and the far wall, and a suit of plate
armor was stacked haphazardly on an armor stand in one corner.
Beckyann glared for a moment and then shrugged, only to find her eyes
darting back across to the other side of the room as she again
detected movement. One of her eyebrows rose as she noted one of the
banners of the 1113th she had hanging in the room moving
slightly, as if an errant breeze had gusted and set it aflutter. And
yet, there were no breezes in the heart of Acherus.
“Ah ha, I've got you now,” Beckyann
murmured. She tilted her head, concentrating hard to try to find the
source of the movement. For her efforts, she was rewarded with the
faint sound of something dragging softly across stone, followed by
the flutter of cloth. She darted her head again, only to see one of
her stockings fall from the back of a chair where another seemingly
improbable gust of wind had knocked it down.
She rose from her place on the bed,
bare feet making no sounds on the stone floor of her quarters as she
stood in the center of the room. Beckyann closed her eyes, using her
unnatural senses to try and detect the creature that she suspected
now shared the room with her. At first her efforts were again
thwarted, until she heard the faintest sound coming from an armoire
on the far side of the room. She turned towards it, cautiously
walking towards it, one foot placed in front of the other as she
tried to make no noise in her approach.
Within the furniture came a faint
sound, almost like a soft moan followed by the sound of fluttering
cloth. As Beckyann drew nearer, the strange noises grew louder, the
soft sounds replaced with the flapping of many pieces of cloth and a
loud moan of anguish. Beckyann's face immediately drew into a frown
as she imagined what was happening to her clothes within, and she
dashed across the room and yanked open the doors of the armoire,
prepared to ensnare the creature once it was exposed.
She was definitely not expecting to be
bombarded in the face with a pile of clothing that nearly bowled her
over as the wailing banshee burst from amongst her outfits. Fabric
flew left and right and Beckyann furiously clawed at the pair of
riding pants that had landed on her face as she backpedaled away from
the source of the attack. In her haste she tripped over another mound
of clothes she hadn't bothered to wash yet, falling backwards as the
banshee flew up over her, wearing one of her dresses
on top of it all!
“Are
you serious right
now?!” Beckyann growled. The wailing banshee immediately turned in
midair, affixing a baleful gaze on the Death Knight before opening
its mouth and issuing a haunting wail that shattered one of the
mirrors in Beckyann's vanity and cracked a few of the floor tiles
near her head. Beckyann rolled her eyes, chanting and pointing at the
undead creature that hovered in the air above her.
A bolt
of dark black magic flew from Beckyann's hand, passing harmlessly
through the banshee and slamming into the ceiling of Beckyann's
quarters. Beckyann was forced to roll as bits of masonry rained down
on her, her own clothes entangling her as the banshee actually had
the gall to laugh at her before it began wailing again. To top it all
off, someone began pounding on the door to Beckyann's quarters,
whoever it was shouting away in the corridor beyond. Rolling her
eyes, Beckyann managed to free herself from the bulk of her clothing
before she stormed over to the door and yanked it open.
An
initiate Death Knight stood comically in the doorway, hand raised as
if he were about to knock on the suddenly vanished barrier. He
grunted, straightening up as he looked at Beckyann. For her part,
Beckyann planted both fists on her hips, glaring at the other Knight
as the banshee wailed behind her again, shattering one of her makeup
pots on her dresser. “Yes, can I help
you?!”
“U-uh...sorry
to disturb you, Ma'am, but I heard a disturbance and I
just....um...w-why do you have underwear on your head...?” the
initiate trailed off.
Beckyann's
eyebrows shot up so quickly that the initiate Knight speculated they
might launch off of her forehead. She reached up and snatched the
undergarments from her blonde hair before furiously slamming the door
in his face. From behind the barrier, the initiate could hear her
raging overshadowed by the continued wailing of a very very angry
banshee.
With a
shrug, he turned and walked back towards his duty post; the one he
had been forced to take after loosing a round of poker. As he resumed
his watch over the gloomy little part of Acherus, he speculated who
really had it the worst in the room down the hall, Beckyann or the
banshee.
After
a while, he decided he didn't want to know, particularly when the
shrieking grew loud enough to be heard clearly from where he was
standing.
No comments:
Post a Comment