officer-emissary

Updated: May 25, 2025

Dam had passed through a most disturbing night; he had kept guard in the lonely Snake-haunted darkness, guard over a mortuary in which lay a corpse; he had had to keep knocking at the corpse's door, his mind had run on funerals, he had thought he heard the dead man groan, he believed he had seen the dead man moving, he had wrestled with thick intelligences who held him drunk or mad while precious moments passed, and he had had the Snake before his mental vision throughout this terrible time and here was another of its emissaries wearing its badge, an emissary of high rank, an Officer-Emissary!... Well, he was in the open air, thank God, and could put up a fight as before.

Percival Christopher Wren - Snake and Sword: A Novel