Albert sat at a table by himself at a local inn in the Westmark city of Eventide. A loyal knight in service to the Emperor to whom the king nominally owed his fealty, he had the luxury of being out of the jurisdiction of the kingdom itself, though Westmark typically served the Empire in name only, operating with autonomy in its own right. The Empire didn't mind, so long as they paid their taxes, and Westmark didn't seem to mind the presence of occasional Imperial troops in its territory, either.
For the time being, the knight simply waited. He had come at the request of the king, who feared sending his own army against the necroplague that had turned the nearby city of Midnacht into a necropolis of walking corpses, as the Necroplague was, in fact, highly contagious, and a single bite or scratch was said to be able to infect a living soldier and slowly kill him, only to raise him again as an undead servant of the archlich Abdulmalik, an powerful wizard and high priest to the god of death said to be behind the necroplague.
He did carry a flask with him, however. A potent potion, said to imbue whoever drank from it with immunity to the Necroplague. However, due to the rarity of ingredients, he only had one potion, to give to a single individual. He himself was, for whatever reason, immune to the necroplague, but the companion who had been chosen to accompany on this mission would need to drink the potion in advance, to prevent him from having to put down his only ally in order to prevent her from becoming a zombie.
And so, he simply waited, sipping at a strong stout, unsure who exactly had been chosen to accompany him, yet confident that his companion would have no difficulty finding him, as he was the only man in the tavern wearing a full suit of armor.
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