@SupremeCripple @Walrusaur_ @Patsie
It's okay ily guys still
Echos of boots on stone reverberated throughout the dreary hallway, being among the only sounds lingering in the dense walls. Morning light forced itself through small and stout windows, worming into the typically lifeless corner of the castle, providing brilliant streaks of orange to wash over the gray, dim area. Percival came to a slow stop about halfway down, his tired and restless eyes pouring over the sight ahead of him. Scrubbing, constant and annoying. It's been over a week, and this hall was still being cleaned. He watched silently as the small task force of Ravenstad maids ran their brushes over the stone floors and walls, the soap doing all it could to wash out the dark crimson splatters and pools of dried blood, from the eventful night weeks past now.
The High Lord's mind wandered back to fighting off the dreaded beasts, and listening to Tristan laughs as he murdered them. Some were just boys, third sons of Hinterlands fishermen, looking for decent pay and honest work. And he tore through them like sacks of flour, slashing through their armour and flesh to let what was inside pour out to onto the floors. They didn't need to die, they shouldn't have. Untrained guards, boys so young they just started sprouting hair on their face. Of course some were older, wiser and more experienced. Though it didn't matter, this was a cushioned job, not supposed to be the hard life. Beurg Eleng was in the Crown Isle. The safest place in the Empire they say. These guards wandered the halls and grounds outside, making sure some lowlife thief didn't try to steal a cow from a townsfolk near the castle. They weren't supposed to ever be in danger, and now their blood streaks the dead and empty halls, dripping down like the tears their mothers will shed once the news would reach them.
He forced himself, the Ravenstad did, to look away. To stop torturing himself more. Men die in service to their liege lord all the time, why is this different. Though it was. Wars and thieves aren't beasts. They aren't some dark magic creature of the night, tearing into your flesh. No, this was a death he wouldn't wish upon anyone, and one he couldn't pass off as typical. His legs were cast iron, not wanting to move from where they were planted, but eventually they would, Percy making himself finish the walk down the hallway he so hated. As he made his way down, their faces and names crawled into his head, punishing him with their memories. Choldowig, Radigis, Hildebald, Goisfrid. Spirit, the oldest couldn't have been more than his mid thirties. He didn't know them all, but some of them stuck out. Some of them spent more time with their High Lord than others, some had been guarding Ravenstads for a long time now, some were household friends, and some welcome at his hearth and hall anytime. Now all of them were gone, not just some, ashes left to the wind, and blown out like fifty little candles that could never be lit again.
Once he finally reached the door at the end of the hallway, the man was relieved, rejoiced even, to nearly be free of the memories. He pushed the heavy oaken thing open, listening to the protesting squeaks of the old wood and rusty metals. So as he let it shut behind him, and the hallway was far behind, Choldowig and Hildebald and all the rest were extinguished once again from his mind, no longer plaguing him like some sickly disease. But one thing would remain. Something that he would keep carrying with him until the day of reckoning would come. How he would take Tristan's head, and mount it on his castle walls. Lawful or not, he will end that treasonous murderer no matter the cost, no matter the risk. Because no matter how twisted and wrong this world can be, no matter how many more boys will die under Raven Red banners, he would do this one, good and wholesome thing. He will do right by them, and bring vengeance to that murderer. When the raven calls into the night, Tristan Lampero will heed it.
