As the sun finally set upon the world of Erebor, the people began to celebrate the pagan ritual of Devil's Night. Men and women were out in the streets, beating drums and slurring drunken half-baked incantations to ward off the evil spirits. The Citadel of the Covenant however, was somber. Its power was broken and many followers had already abandoned it. Only a few die-hard apostles remained.
In the dining room, the Deacon ate sparingly. Normally he would swallow great amounts of food because his enormously grotesque body demanded it, but this night, he was drowning in his last cup of sorrow. His son and heir was dead, his forces destroyed. How he wanted to swear revenge against the accursed Black Widow. But as he raised his cup for another draught of wine, all the hatred and frustration within him had left. And he felt all the richer because of it.
As the fat Deacon put down his cup, the cloaked figure sitting opposite him leaned over. The man was attired in the accruements of a tomb; his black cloak covered his body like a giant bat. A brown leathery mask shaped like a skull seemingly covered the man's face.
"I must say Deacon, I am quite disappointed in you." The cloaked man said.
"I'm sorry my Lord." The Deacon replied.
"I had provided you with money and battlemechs and now it is all gone." The strangely accented voice explained.
"It shall not happen again my Lord." The Deacon said.
"I'm quite sure it won't." The cloaked man said as a matter of fact.
At that instant, a young, dark-haired man slipped behind the Deacon's chair and in a blur, wrapped a garotte around his throat. The garotte was essentially a wire used by assassins, made up of industrial strands with diamonds imbedded among them. If the victim managed to raise a hand to stop the garotte from touching his throat, the assailant can use the edge of the diamonds to cut through the target's fingers. But in this case, it wasn't necessary.
The Deacon gagged as the man behind him applied enormous pressure in wrapping the garotte tighter around his plump neckline. The deacon's eyes bulged out like that of a goldfish. A few moments later, the Deacon slumped onto his chair; drops of bile began to ooze out from the dead man's throat.
"Well done, Joshua. That was excellent, he never even saw you coming." The cloaked man intoned.
"Thank you, my Lord." The man named Joshua replied.
"You shall be my most powerful creation yet, Joshua."
"I am humbled by your faith in me, Lord." Joshua responded as his communicator rang. He pulled it out and answered it.
"Well?" The cloaked man asked Joshua after the younger man finished answering his communicator.
"A message from Precentor Blane thanking us for the latest shipment of nuclear weapons." Joshua answered.
"Ah yes. I think we will need to accelerate our future shipments to the Word of Blake. All the time I was expecting to grow the cult of the Covenant into something that would destroy the Inner-Sphere and instead my answer is staring right back at me."
"You mean the Blakists?" Joshua asked.
"Yes, the Word of Blake will do our job for us." The cloaked man laughed out loud.
Some of the servants in the Covenant who heard that laugh would later tell their descendants that it was the laugh of the devil that night. And in many ways it later turned out to be true.
