Beckyann dismounted from her skeletal gryphon, tossing the
reins to one of the Initiates manning the observation platform. She stepped
away from it quickly, deftly avoiding a snapping beak and grinning at the
Initiate as he begrudgingly started to approach the volatile creature to stable
it. Beckyann didn’t really envy him his task; the beast was in a particularly
foul mood this evening.
The patrol that had been rough, with Scourge moving about in
the Plaguelands more than they had in recent weeks. Beckyann neither knew nor
cared why this would be the case; she just assumed it had something to do with
the time of year and the way the foliage would die off as winter approached.
Maybe it drew them out or increased their aggression, but whatever the reason
it had given her patrol extra work as they’d had to land multiple times to deal
with the roaming undead.
As she made her way towards her quarters, Beckyann saw
movement further down the corridor. At first she thought nothing of it, for
many other Knights maintained quarters in this portion of the Hold, but as she
pressed her hand against the wards on her door and opened it, the figure she’d
seen shambled towards her, pausing nearby.
It was a ghoul, likely the minion of one of the Knights of
the hold, and it stood before her, staring at her with its rotting yellow eyes.
In its hand it clutched a crumpled letter against its oozing ribcage, and
Beckyann rolled her eyes as she realized it was probably a missive for her and
that it was also probably being destroyed as she watched.
“Yes? Is that for me?” she demanded coldly. The creature
mewled once, holding out the letter in its claws.
Beckyann snatched the letter from its claws, opening the
somewhat soggy envelope while shooting murderous glares at the ghoul. For its
part, the creature turned and began to shuffle away slowly, its mission
complete.
Within the envelope Beckyann only found some dried leaves,
their color the faded color of autumn. Amongst the leaves a small bit of
parchment was rolled up, and she took it out and unrolled it, reading the
message written on it.
“Light and shadow take
their turns, but ___ is constant.”
The key word of the sentence was smudged with ghoul goo,
completely illegible now. Something nagged at Beckyann’s mind as she read it
though, and she pointed at the retreating creature, annoyance in her tone, “Halt!
Return here at once.”
The creature paused, then seemed like it would continue to
walk away, ignoring her commands. Beckyann immediately grew furious, her eyes
blazing with power. She snarled out a few words of necromancy, the spell
snapping into place around the ghoul and controlling it. She forced it to march
back towards her, staring daggers at it.
“The missing word is ‘death’, I know it is,” she said to the
now motionless ghoul. “I am not so stupid that I cannot recognize a threat when
I see it. Your mistress wishes to remind me at all times that she wants to see
me dead. I recall well her lesson of just a few days ago when she ‘helped’ my
patrol run into trouble.”
Predictably, the ghoul she was commanding made no comment,
merely standing in place before her like a good servitor. Beckyann rolled her
eyes, storming into her quarters and then marching back out to stand before the
creature again. “Hold out your hands.”
The ghoul did as it was commanded, holding each hand out
palm upward. Beckyann reached out and placed an object in one of its hands,
staring at it. Resting there was a rank pin of the 1113th that would
have belonged to a Private.
“This is where I began,” Beckyann said coldly to the ghoul.
She reached out and placed a second object in the ghoul’s
other palm, this time the pin being the rank of Corporal. “This is how I
progressed. You will take these back to your Mistress to remind her that there
is a reason that I am succeeding amongst the Ebon Blade. It is not because I am
weak, foolish, or incompetent. If she wishes to test her mettle against me, if
she wishes to take actions that will threaten the safety of my brothers and
sisters, I will be there to put her
down personally.”
The ghoul nodded once, turning to go. Beckyann halted it
with her spell, grinning at its back, “Oh and one more thing. Do tell her that
the next pin that she’ll get will be the one that separates us in rank. Tell
her to pray for that day to never come, because I will go to her office
personally, drag her from behind her desk, and toss her from the Hold myself.”
With that she released her spell, watching the creature
shamble off towards its mistress, a certain Captain Pendagast of the Central
Requisition Office. Although Beckyann rarely gave her rank much thought, when
dealing with Central it was all important; she could not simply execute a
Captain, despite what she might think of the woman. Not yet anyway, not until
she had the evidence she needed.
Or manufactured some.
As a grin spread across her painted lips, Beckyann turned
and entered her quarters, closing the door behind her and warding it against
intrusion. She had much work to do if she was going to put a stop to this once
and for all.
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