The Sanitarium

[black379]

Adeney halted and stared at the door fearfully. He wasn't prepared for such an intrusion, even if Florence did know the man. Quickly, he grabbed the sheet to cover Silvant's nakedness, incidentally hiding many of her bandaged wounds as well.

"Why is he here?" He shot Florence an anxious look, then cleared his throat and watched Lekalis intently.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

"Wha-A breakthrough..?" Lekalis tried to keep up with Florence, her motions catching him well and truly off guard as he was ushered in and embraced with more lividity than he'd seen in Florence in... Years, it must have been.
He quickly returned the hug before she released it, a mixture of emotions ever brewing in the caustic parts of his heart, before it became covered by the comrade Florence had found.

Lekalis recognized Adeney, giving him a quick two-finger salute before he spied Silvant's naked form. A nurse he'd spied once, she'd tended to a small wound of his once... But little more.
His salute turned to a slow wave at the girl, before Adeney covered her up,
"Hello there..?" He chuckled anxiously, squinting at either of them.

"... What happened to her?" He asked curiously, stepping slowly forward; his duty drowned by a lightness in his chest and cortex. Lekalis presumed to approach the table, his hand still half-raised, now, to imply some measure of surrender to the protective Adeney.
"I was looking for you... we're to have... Breakfast on the morrow- Sorry, but did I come at a bad time?" He glanced to Florence, then Silvant before resting on Adeney who looked the most perturbed, besides the rather offputting expression of the woman.

He noted a grim scar across her throat, and Lekalis' smile started to skew... Not rightly in disgust, but awe.

[Vanitypirate]

"This is Lekalis Fanuschrat, the patient I spoke of. I am treating he and his woman for their Curse." Florence made her hasty introduction, ensuring the door was locked fast before shuffling more to the center of the lab.

"Lekalis, this is Audrey Silvant, a woman Doctor Mercier recovered from the Warrens during our excursion-- dead." The good Crow-gazer continued on, making to cradle the girl's head with her two, gloved hands, if only to angle her face upward so that her wide, bewildered, but sentient eyes were visible to the ex-lord.

"She lives, now, as a result of a successful soul transfer from a crow, and the resuscitation of the body's systems. Lekalis, we are very nearly with a cure for your Curse."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Sicherlein/

In a distant hall, past countless, stacked stones... Sicherlein's world became a foggy blur of questions but one stung the most, a dagger inbetween her ribs.

Why?

Feebly, she tried to struggle against the hatted miscreant's presumed noble deed, but it was all for naught as she watched familiar window panes pass by. Each one glimmering like a stiletto in in the moonlight. She didn't know where she was going, or how... Just that she drifted past these daggers of night as if she were on a cloud.

Sicherlein's travel lasted for what felt like an eternity, before it suddenly stopped in seconds. She was jolted upwards, stumbling, she heard whispers, felt her hat depart her brow and the clothes on her person were stripped away as if by some unseen, rapacious horde.

Blurry faces looked down at her, and she wished she could at least imagine something there... Her dear husband, perhaps, could be working to suture the wound that pinched and elicited whimpers and warmth from her lips. But there was nothing...

A plump knight or portly waif could be, indeed, binding her wrists with leather and chain. Their vengeful faces doing upon the Assassin a great retribution through bondage and prickling needles.

But there was nothing.

They were just blank slates, staring down at her, mumbling this and that in a cold, wet language that bespoke of murder.

Distantly, she felt warmth stir in her breast, and her lungs filled with air. Even as she tried to hold her breath, she found her mind, too, worked against her. Each second was a struggle, a bitter battle that forced her one step further on in Life, as much as she resented it. As the fog faded, pain began to brew up again, a distant, stinging cold that crackled from her shoulder like lightning in her veins.

Sicherlein was hopeless against it, as she made to rise but found herself weak. She tried to prod the wound but her hands were bound by a foot of chain and leather. She found herself weak... Utterly, unmistakably weak.

She fought against the tears, against the pain but again and again, she found herself weak.

In this weakness, the Raven of House Gunsche stalked its way into her vision yet again.

"What a pity..." It muttered with a sigh as its tall, withering frame loomed over her. Trophies of rats hung all around a cloak of shadows, each one writhed and whimpered, just as weak as Sicherlein.

That was what she was... A rat, bound, stuck like a pig and in a cage of stones and needles.

"... Not... For you, of course." the Raven sighed, a small chuckle behind its pale, boney mask.

Please... Sicherlein tried to whisper, if there was but one thing she would ask of the Raven, it would be to finally free herself. One last bit of mercy, to soothe her spite.

But she found herself weak... Her lips cold, her tongue like a bloated worm in her mouth.

The Raven sucked in a sharp breath, and sighed, licking its lips with audible distaste on the matter. As if it had swallowed a foul morsel. Its long, black bone fingers felt along her shoulder, inspiring pain... And warmth. A vague reminder that Sicherlein still had a heart beating in her chest, a heart she hated.

"Mmm... You'll live, for now. This Sanitarium is... Ah, truly; a miracle. I don't think you'll appreciate that though, will you?" The Raven hummed and tapped a finger against Sicherlein's collar for emphasis, before it turned away and limped towards the door to her cell. It surroundings slowly coming to.

"When the time comes, I will help you escape. You will suffer, I'm sure, but that's nothing new to you is it? Be strong, Sicherlein. And mind the straps."

With that, the Raven creaked open the door and slinked out with a distant caw of a cough. Pain flared in her chest, and the cough came again, and again. It took a moment to recognize her own ailment kicking hard now; a hot haze suddenly flared in the front of her mind, like a fire to a match. The light pale tunic that covered her now felt aflame and infinitely heavy, crushing her lungs, she gasped for air and coughed again, spitting a globule of mucus and blood out the side of her mouth.

Blank faces rushed in, whispering, fussing over her person and holding her down. She felt a small sting in her forearm, and numbness found her again. Hemlock, hensbane, poppies... They were light on the poppies, it stung more than it numbed. Perhaps they used too much nightshade. Distantly, she recited her own recipes as her eyelids felt heavy, and she quietly drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

[Vanitypirate]

Meriwether's head was spinning as he struggled to comprehend the information he'd discovered from that woman, Tilly.
Sicherlein? An assassin? Such things were of higher nobles and royalty, legends he'd grown up with as a boy. Why would anyone need an assassin in a place like this? The whole place was surrounded by undiscriminating, natural-born killers at any rate.
It was overkill.

Was that the point? He'd known Tilly vaguely to be a generally successful mercenary. He'd heard of her marriage to that Lekalis from the banns, and found it fitting. Both parties simply refused to die even when it seemed like there was no choice to. They were stable and difficult to kill; both traits were highly valuable in an Heir's hired blade.
All this to keep them from owning a spot of land or bringing in a family in the most back-alley part of the world. It was madness.

He spied a familiar, crowly tower sulk down a hallway, and the guardling held his breath and waited for the doctor to pass, preferring to keep their interactions at a minimum.
A horde of nurses rattled past bearing carts of steel instruments and tinctures before he neared the door Sicherlein was meant to be behind, as directed by a woman stationed at the front desk.

He knocked twice, but made to open the door regardless of any answer. He was still here to guard her, after all.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Sicherlein/

Slowly, the world began to come together in, while tangible, no less perturbing ways. She spied a grey, sturdy cut of stone, medical instruments and a frightfully thickly padded door. All signs pointed to the Sanitarium... Why had the Hatted Rogue dragged her here? Some cruel joke? A selfish accommodation of morality?

Sicherlein tried to rise, struggling, she managed to sit up with a vicious, tearing pain just beneath her leftern shoulder... The bloody dagger wound, of course.
In some ways, she supposed she'd been lucky that she hadn't bled out then and there... She found it easier to be impressed by the Doctors who'd saved her, and not her own willpower.

Testingly, she tried to flex her left hand; it weakly clenched, and relaxed. But failed to make a full fist.
Doubly, bound about her wrists, were leather straps which were fastened to the table with a length of strong chains, large, heavy. It was difficult to move her arms, even if she hadn't lost so much blood... her skin was frightfully pale too, at times, it was difficult to tell where the bed's linens, her own patient's garb, and her pallid meat ended and began.
It was a sour thought, to think herself so maimed in beauty and grace... There'd been only once before she'd been shackled as she was now, and she hated it still.

There was a knock at her door, suddenly, and it began to open. Instinctively, Sicherlein moved to rise, but her shoulder's pain reignited, and she groaned; eyes locked on the door, her lips felt numb still, and her words fell clumsily, breathily out of her mouth,
"W-who is... There." She still tried to put steel behind them, but her attire was neatly folded up on a table, the various weapons and poisons and letters arrayed out for future investigation, no doubt.

[Vanitypirate]

"Easy! Easy." Meriwether held out a splayed palm to soothe her while he closed the door behind him. "It's just me: Meriwether."
She looked like a ghost, bone-white with her disheveled blonde braids flared out about her head. It was equally unsettling to see the unvisored face of the rogue. She was suprisingly... plain-- pretty, even, but not in any unnatural or ethereal way. This Sicherlein looked as though she could be any typical villager walking about.

His eyes watched her for a moment, before falling away, as he brushed some curly locks of hair back away from his forehead.

"What happened here, Zickerlein...?"

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Sicherlein/

"... Really?" She asked incredulously, squinting at the boy and leaning forward, but wincing immediately. She swore under her breath and sighed puffing up a cheek as she seemed to swallow back some biting wit.
"I was... Stabbed." Sicherlein started with the basics, as she slowly looked down to the small red splotch at her left armpit with a small shiver and scowl.
What a foul place to be laid low from... By a gutter rat to boot. Her heart began to tense in anger, and she coughed abruptly, bringing up her good hand to her chest, she frowned and sighed.
"I was just... Talking, one moment. And the next, this woman; Tilly. I placed my hand on her and-- And..." her throat choked up, in part from the act, but again, from another whooping cough that racked her chest and stressed the stitchings.

"... She stabbed me!" She declared in both surprise, and anger.
"I had some... Foul things to say, yes, about her husband but I did not think she would stab me." She mewled pitifully, looking down to her legs, then to Meriwether pleadingly,
"I must get out of here; she brought me here... She could have me killed by one of the nurses! M-make it look like a mercy, a--" her words and lies caught in her throat as her lips flapped hopelessly,
It would be a mercy..., she realized, looking down again. She whimpered and brought a hand to palm at her temple...

[Vanitypirate]

Meriwether grimaced as he listened, eyes wandering away towards a clay pitcher of water on a nearby table adjacent to simple iron cups.
He meandered closer to it and set about filling one of them with water; he had no idea how long she was out, but she looked miserably unwell...

"She told me that you'd... threatened to assassinate herself and her husband. Something about a feud? A vendetta against that Lekalis fellow's family...-- y'know that woman's been here for ages? Slew some monstrous things and the like." He squinted as he made to explain the convoluted, courtly matter. Drunken brawls and petty thievery were easier to handle than this.

He shrugged and neared closer, extending the iron cup towards Sicherlein for her to take,

"She's asked that a full investigation to be held. S'why we're both here. Nobody's going to kill you."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Sicherlein/

She cocked a brow at the boy as he approached, and thankfully took the cup of water, downing it instantly she held it limply in her lap posthaste as she swallowed and thought hard on her own means to get out.
"I... may have gotten a bit carried away." Sicherlein admitted ashamedly, drumming her fingers on the cup. Feigning total innocence would be too suspicious... perhaps it was still too soon to really be pushing for lies.
But she had to get out, as soon as possible. Her eyes drifted to look at the splotch of red just beneath her shoulder yet again.

"... If they think I did try to slay Tilly... They will want to kill me, you know?" She pointed out with a frown, that had the hints of an undesired smile as she struggled with emotions on her face. Be it from the lack of blood or some internal conflict, her mind was rather clearly a bit hazed on the matter as she idly began to examine the interior of the cup.
"I've stopped bleeding... but I feel faint." She muttered to herself, rolling her shoulder,
"I lost a lot of blood..." She concluded terminally, she blinked a few times and looked up to Meriwether testingly,
"... What is the point of this? I will die soon, from my wound, or you people."

[black379]

He remembered Lekalis, who had seemed quite hospitable - generous with his business, yet he appeared prosperous as well - not someone to suspect to be cursed and soulless. Although he seemed more of a hindrance at the moment, intruding on such a drastic breakthrough to talk about breakfast.

After all, the red-cloaked man and his wife were the ultimate subjects. Doctor Silvant's restored life was a stepping stone, a means to an end. Almost insulting to be such a happenstance.

"She is still confused." Adeney laid his hand gently on the girl's arm, to soothe her though she must have been paranoid about her restraints. He leaned in slightly to her face and began to whisper. "It's alright, Audrey." She liked when he used her first name. "Speak to Lekalis."

[Vanitypirate]

Meriwether dared to sit on the side of the bed, head lolling to one shoulder in some youthful flippancy.
"You shouldn't be worried if you weren't tryin' to kill her." He determined, reaching with the clay jug to refill Sicherlein's iron cup.

"The lady asked us to do a full investigation, though, before we do anything besides keep you. Means we've got to look into you and your whole Gunsche family-- 'least from what we can find here with what we've got." He rested the jug on his knee, but already his eyes drifted to the letters laid out on the table.

"You might just be a victim of some larger plot, maybe, knowin' your family. You could go free, I think, 'long as you're honest and helpful." He suggested; there was nothing wrong with a bit of false hope to lighten the spirits. It could do to help her heal in a no-doubt stressful situation.
Granted, there was another part of him that wondered why he'd even bother. The woman was hardly pleasant, and there was no loss in getting yet another murderer off the streets.
He was a slave to his own morality, he supposed, and wondered when that would come back and bite him.

"So, eh... why'd you do it? And what's this about 'other agents'?"

---

Audrey blinked rapidly, mind churning on what exactly to say. Her mouth opened and shut.
Then the Masked One-- Florence, apparently-- spoke carefully to her.

"What is the year, Audrey?" Florence poised, but behind her lenses Audrey could see that her dark eyes were fixed on this new man.

"Four-seventy-seven... ad lumen." Audrey answered, as if it were instinct. Again, the information came from some deeper recess in her mind, knowing the meaning of such things, but unable to put them adequately to words.
She looked to Lekalis, befuddled, while Florence continued on,

"Where are we, Audrey?" Asked Florence,

"In.. a laboratory."

"Very good. And who did we say this man is?"

Audrey squinted at the man in his blood-red cloak. "Lekalis... F-fan...uschrat."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

The Ex-Lord squinted with scrutiny as the apparent Audrey spoke. He rose a brow at the words spoken, though he watched Adeney's hand lightly touch upon the arm of this experiment; curiosity arose for the Crowgazer's comrade, surpassing the resurrected Silvant for a moment. The girl meant more to this one, he could see it in his measured tone, the lean. As if she were a small child, a curious pet.

But still, the moment passed as he set his eyes back on Audrey with a nod; Lekalis tapped the leather bindings, looking to Florence,
"If she can learn, if she can remember..." Lekalis looked Audrey head to toe for any irregularities, as if a pattern might show itself false,
"... We'll need to be careful. An elephant may fear the spears that poked it when it was weak, or it may stampede, trampling everyone, and everything." He set his gaze onto Florence, a flicker of firelight illuminated his inkish eyes.
"The last thing we need right now is a potential slip." His lips curled into a delighted smile all the same, looking back to Silvant.
"We're responsible for the well-being of this soul. Crow or not... Nothing deserves to be lashed down like this, can we remove its bindings? Get this... Audrey a meal? Bathe her, perhaps?"

"I take it you're no magician, Adeney?" He smirked as he shook his head,
"... To think all those gods and spirits that play with darkness and light, may well partake in sciences such as this?" His features sombered some, a level of distrust in Lekalis' eyes as he seemed to fully register Adeney's presence.
"Perhaps it's all just a variable not yet calculated."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

Jun 5, 2018 22:19:25 GMT -8 Vanitypirate said:

Meriwether dared to sit on the side of the bed, head lolling to one shoulder in some youthful flippancy.
"You shouldn't be worried if you weren't tryin' to kill her." He determined, reaching with the clay jug to refill Sicherlein's iron cup.

"The lady asked us to do a full investigation, though, before we do anything besides keep you. Means we've got to look into you and your whole Gunsche family-- 'least from what we can find here with what we've got." He rested the jug on his knee, but already his eyes drifted to the letters laid out on the table.

"You might just be a victim of some larger plot, maybe, knowin' your family. You could go free, I think, 'long as you're honest and helpful." He suggested; there was nothing wrong with a bit of false hope to lighten the spirits. It could do to help her heal in a no-doubt stressful situation.
Granted, there was another part of him that wondered why he'd even bother. The woman was hardly pleasant, and there was no loss in getting yet another murderer off the streets.
He was a slave to his own morality, he supposed, and wondered when that would come back and bite him.

"So, eh... why'd you do it? And what's this about 'other agents'?"

/Sicherlein/

Victim, the word stung in the back of Sicherlein's mind, like a neurotoxin. Her face scrunched up as if she'd been stabbed yet again as she listened and plucked away the cup from Meriwether, looking down into its watery contents thoughtfully a she cleared her throat and made to stoop and sup from the cup.

"Honest... OK." She huffed, frowning, her brows furrowing. She would either die by the Estate's executioner, or by a Gunsche infiltrator... She trusted the Gunsche to at least do the deed quickly and professionally.

"I was sent here by Oscalleon von Gunsche, to oversee Lekalis Fanuschrat's actions and to make sure he did not move in any ambitious means... Land, marriage... It was the beginnings of a possible landslide of claims, you see?" Sicherlein shifted in her seat, her head swiveled about suddenly, looking a bit irrationally for any windows.

"... I did not attack Tilly. Truthfully. I had warned her that where she was going would warrant her death. It was the truth. I didn't want to fight her... But she stabbed me before I could go." Sicherlein pointed to her wound before taking another sip from her cup.

"The other agents are affiliated with the Gunsches too. None are here now, but they will come if... or, when the news of Lekalis' and Tilly's marriage extends beyond just t his Estate."

[Vanitypirate]

Meriwether listened with concern as the plot was more-or-less laid out in front of him, confirming, at least somewhat, what Tilly had reported. There was more emphasis on the threat of death when she spoke... he supposed he would act rashly, too, at the sound of things.

This was going to be a convoluted process. He cupped his hairless chin in his hand, brows furrowed as he attempted to commit as much as possible to memory.

No agents yet. He was grateful for that.

"What about... uhm..." He narrowed his eyes and glanced to the door, recalling that Dr. Cross, a fellow Gunsche, departing from Sicherlein's room. Understandable; it was natural for a family member to be concerned for another. But this seemed to be a family-wide plot.

"Other Gunsches? That Cross fellow? I saw him leaving your room."