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Eryn died. His body sat there for a moment, then tumbled over like an old sack of potatoes.
Sometime later that evening, Eryn's younger brother and only surviving family, wept.
The last living brother awoke screaming, cold and sweaty. The dream was back and always the same. A lady cloaked & hidden in shadow, no lady is the wrong word. Female yes but not a lady. She probably is not even human more evil nymph or hag than anything else. Evil sickness and pain hidden behind a false mask and shrouded by a vile clinging shadowy darkness was what the soul knows is truly there.
She stood offering relief from the loneliness and the pain. The loneliness caused by the murder of the Eryn the elder brother. The pain, well just the pain of life.
Behind the hag a deeper darkness hovering filled with cold hate.
He walked as if in a dream, but this was no dream. The nightmares and the hags calling had worn him down and won him over after weeks of broken sleep. His few friends would not recognize the husk of a man hed became nor would they look for him in this thief haunted ally. A crooked broken door in an old rundown house lead to a hidden room occupied by the plague dead body of a greedy thief and murder. A thief that should have known better. A pilfer of a body that should have been murdered and burned. A body that was striped and sickness infected cloths taken. The death that came with the pilfered cloths over shadowed all the gold found that night.
The crowds cheered the tilting, and the following fire works. Money changed hands as bets were won and lost. Smoked turkey and pork greased the chins of all that could afford and many that could not. Beer, wine & cider filled the bellies and numbed all from the bone biting cold. Laughter and cheer marked all as any proper Yule should be celebrated. Among the poor a broken man walked, sent to spread sickness and death.
The walk, blessedly, was cut short. A shadow protected sword man cutting down the poor pawn of a man before he could stumble amongst the dancers and revelers of the nobles ball.
The hag of sickness hisses in hate as one last plan fails. All that could afford coat cloak or face scarf ware them to blunt the colds bite. This limits the sickness to the poorest. Also the cold its self blunt the sickness spread. Some good number of the poort suffer and die of the wasting sickness, but few others. The loss will be felt in the coming war for poor hands hold spear as good as any but the free city is in no large danger from plague this season.
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain
Forgive all spelling errors.
Knight Errant & Humble C&C Society Contributor
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