The Abbey

[Shinzon]

Catching his breath as he entered the Abbey, leaning against a wall and breathing heavily, Nicholas looked around, expecting to see a familiar face - not to be disappointed as Maria passed right before him, ignoring him ostentatiously as she adjusted her white and crimson attire, ignoring everyone and everything around her. If Grace was to hold this sermon, she would see if the woman had actually changed with her own eyes. After all, she was no longer under her orders.

[Kidney]

Tod seemed a little excited, "Yes please! I would love to hear a story!" Stories always excited him, but his face drooped, perhaps this was't going to be a fun story.

[twostepsback]

"Two or three years ago, I learned that there are more varieties of undead out there than the ones you commonly hear about.... And that necromantic rituals, foul curses, and traumatic deaths are not the only way the undead can come into existence." Charis intones gravely. "Ever heard of a 'Mohrg'."

[Kidney]

Tod cocked his head to the side, he had never heard of this concept before. The idea of multiple undead was familiar, but the gibberish this cute woman just spat at him sounded like a cultish prayer of some kind. He moved his head and torso a inch backwards, "No, I haven't heard of such a thing."

[twostepsback]

"The Mohrg I had the misfortune of running into wore the vestments of one those plague doctors, even had a belt-full of glass bottles and vials whose clinking would disguise the distinctive clicking noise its bare bones would make when the creature would move. Underneath its rather clever disguise, the Mohrg looked like a human skeleton with grotesque, purple loops of intestine growing within their torsos and winding up and into its skull..." Charis sighs and shakes her head. " The thing had just about everyone in Dunwall fooled for weeks."

[Kidney]

Tod's eyes grew wide, and he coughed out loud for a few moments. He scooted closer to Charis for a second, leaning in. He/ began to lower his voice, "By the Light, sounds like a nightmare." 
He rose his head up, no longer leaning in. "Perhaps we can pray for the mercy of the Light to not send one towards us."

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly gave another cautious look over her shoulder as more people began filing in. It was almost uncanny, that ability to discern mercenary from the average resident: the attendants who arrived wearing armor or robes in place of more citizenly attire were of a different breed, and as such, stuck out. Though, she thought she recognized the man in armor from the tavern, although those who soldiers in armor all started to blend together after a certain point.
Regardless, she didn't see any of them give her and her 'friend' any mind.

The feel of his escaping hand, however, broke her out of her thoughts, and her expression warmed with another smile as she made to ensnare it with her own snakey fingers-- on the side facing the wall of the alcove, naturally, away from the rest of the rabble.

"Does that mean you'll be going to the sermon, too?" She quirked her head as she watched his mouth move,
"You never struck me as a good church-boy, no."

She squinted comically at his next words of Doctor Chandler, then, nodding along and loudly humming along, 'ooo'-ing and 'ah'-ing in thought as he made his detective-esque points. Though, she knew the weight of the words next, and for all of its theatrics, found it to make quite a good deal of sense.

"Ah! You know, that's exactly who I was thinking of, that Whateley..." She pointed her finger upwards at the tall foyer ceiling, although the effect was quite lost when it merely brushed against the bottom of her hat's wide brim. "See, I thought he was odd because he started puffing his chest, acting all threatening, when I said I was heading off to go to the sermon. He told me 'No, actually, you're not excused,' when I was getting all up and ready to leave."

She was in the throes of her story, and her hand swung rapidly back and forth with his in her grasp as she spoke. "He said he wanted to go on the expedition today. I suppose he didn't realize that it's sunset? And as it turns out, he'd been drinking, too." She would glance rapidly back and forth to his expression to gauge his reactions to her admittedly embelished story.

"So I told him, y'know, we ought to rest, and that he's not even sober; I told him that I was hiring him, and that I'd gladly go find someone with better manners if he kept his bitty act up. Courcy went and chewed him out, too, and then he was awful apologetic-- but you can always see a man's true self when he's been drinking, and he strikes me as rather slimy."

She gave a glance to her hand, and consciously stopped its swinging before, quite happily, continuing on with the story,
"But, yes! I was on my way over when I realized he reminded me exactly of Whateley: all jolly and well until he decides to plug a knife into your ribs-- or neck, in your case. And I'm thinking that I'm just about entirely sick of doctors, at this rate."

[twostepsback]

"Yes, let us pray that no one in the Hamlet, past or present, is cruel enough or bloodthirsty enough to return as one of them." Charis replies.

[Kidney]

Tod smiled, content with this woman's piety. He clasped his hands together, linking his fingers in-between each other and bringing his hands to his chin. He looked up at the alter, nodding, as if acknowledging an answer from someone. He reached down now, readjusting his coat and tucking the furred collar against his face. 
It was funny, being inside your own head for a while, it brought his thoughts to his first language, german. Speaking to so many english speakers he nearly forgot he knew his own language. He laughed, shaking his head as leaned back against a pew and waited for the sermon to begin.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

"With you, of course... I'd attend anything." Lekalis shrugged, "Supposing you have no absolutely terrifiying voyeur desires." He chuckled, socking her lightly in the shoulder as he looked at her conspiratorially, as her fingers intertwined with his just moments after relinquishing his grip.

He couldn't resist but to chew on the inside of his lip, to keep himself from smiling too widely; though his teeth flared and a look of absolute entrancement reigned over his lordly features. A smock of playful annoyance danced through his eyes as he lolled his head back, clearly trying to fight the expression, before sighing and giving in as he thumbed Tilly's knuckles gingerly.

"Tch, the bastard... Utterly predictable, though, you know? Never realized how easy it was to enjoy the weirdness of weird folk until someone... Normal comes in. From the Outside, at least." He chuckled, realizing his hypocrisy with a shrug. His features assuming something more dire and focused, his mind strategically running its gears.
"Truth be told... I'd rather not have someone like Whateley on our side, exploring the Cove. But we've need of a doctor, to be sure. Someone of healing quo; there's only so much I can mend. If you get viciously slashed or gored, sure, maybe I can... I can work something out. But poisons and arcane maladies..? I'm not so certain."
He admitted with a quirk of his mouth, looking down at their intertwined hands. The thought of not feeling something so new, so soon, was like jumping off a cliff and seeing the ground rush up before his very eyes.

A self-assuring breath, and he looked back to Tilly's eyes; a hand coming up to tap Tilly's adorabley oblong nose on the side of its tip,
"I'm glad I'm not the only one so sick of doctors... Perhaps we can stock up on antipoisons, antitoxins... Blessed waters and herbs?"
The Ex-Lord shrugged,
"I've enough knowledge to apply those, at least."

//

[twostepsback]

An off-duty hamlet guard and a male hamlet resident sit down in the pew directly in front of Tod and Charis, and begin talking quietly, but not so quietly that Tod and Charis can't hear what the other two are talking about. "... so one of the stage coaches found another headless corpse along the Old Road?" The Hamlet resident asks. "Oui, it is zee zird 'eadless corpse found in two weeks, and none of zee missing 'eads 'ave turned up, eizer." The off-duty guardsman responds with a noticeable French accent. "Sounds like at least one of the brigands is taking trophies..." The guardsman shakes his head "I am not so sure about zat... I was on shift when zee latest corpse was brought in, I peeked under zee sheet zey 'ad covering zee body out of curiosity. Zee wound was rather clean..." The guardsman makes a slicing motion across his neck as he says, " Zoop! One slice, and off wiz zee 'is 'ead, razer like Madame La Guillotine back in my 'ome country."

[Kidney]

Tod ignores the two ahead, shaking his head with a distinct frown. Bounty hunting was not his job, exorcism is. He nestles his head into his coat, resting his eyes for the first time in some time. He grumbles an acknowledgement of the idea, but doesn't respond or comment.

[twostepsback]

"May the Dark Rider never call your name..." Charis mutters absently

[Kidney]

Tod looked sad, his eyes opening. He threw a glance at Charis, "May your way be brightly lit."
He returned to resting, his voices letting him be for a bit, something he was thankful for.

[Vanitypirate]

She felt her chest tighten with joy as he gripped her hand; a strange feeling, amidst all the guilt and malaise from last week's events. She hadn't expected to feel so happy, so soon. Tilly was quite the jubilant desecrator, with her chest swelling with love and joy so soon after Roderick's death; it was nigh disrespectful that she wasn't miserable in grief, as though she hadn't felt the slightest remorse...

Tilly reconsidered: was it truly a crime to steep oneself so deeply with another, so soon? Lekalis had been the hapless victim, all-in-all, with the single virtue of being present while she broke the news to Roderick.
Roderick, her love, tracked Lekalis down while he was in his tavern room. Had Lekalis been sleeping, he'd surely have died. Had his pet shadow not been about, things would have unfolded much more unfortunately than they did.

Had Roderick listened when she begged him to stop, Tilly might not have been about to attend his funeral.

Even still, despite nearly being skewered by the surprise man in armor, Blood still arranged the funeral on Tilly's behalf, preserved the honor of his would-be killer. He held Tilly, herself, when she was certain she'd lose it, housed and fed her, pursued when she'd childishly sulked off to go mope elsewhere. He'd tolerated the abuse of the typically meek companion that defended his life, where Tilly had failed. If anything, he ought to have resented her for allowing this to happen.

This man, that knight's would-be victim, simply made her happy. Ironically, Lekalis, the object of Roderick's madness, was her glimmer, and she would cling to it with a white-knuckled grip just as she had advised Courcy to do with her own little glimmers.

And so she did, albeit presently with much less a desperate grip on his hand.

"...I-I've no idea what it is about a medical academy that drives men mad." She spoke after a moment's hesitation; she hadn't realized that her eyes had watered, in that space in time when her mind had briefly wandered into more painful territories, but she silently cursed them for such a thing when she did.

She'd felt the extremes of every emotion under the sun, it certainly seemed like it lately. It was a rather exhausting process, but surely better than the miserable norm.

Tilly shrugged her own bony shoulders, where her jacket sleeves had bunched up at the mouth of her long gloves, making to save face, "Have you ever met a normal, well-adjusted doctor in this place? Most of the nurses are dandy, but the doctors are all some breed of lunatic."

She wrought a smile. It wasn't difficult; she just had to look at him.

"I'd say we ought to learn some of those doctorly skills, if I weren't so worried we'd turn into..." She gave a theatrical pause for dramatic effect,

"One of them."