The Abbey

[black379]

"Hah!" Adeney did not laugh often, even sarcastically. "You are wrong. One cannot 'trap' a soul. Nor, by any means, become like a god." He did not mean solely to insult the roguish man, but one must know they are ignorant before they can learn.

"I studied in Daventry. And was apprentice to a Doctor Parish." He answered shortly, as though, to Florence, the name's would inherently have merit.

"I will say, you may ascertain some knowledge of the creatures living in the cove from these organs. But you are already a master of everything there is to know of 'undeath'. Nothing."

[Vanitypirate]

"Ah, Daventry..." Florence's shoulders relaxed, and she nodded. "This explains much. You were very isolated in the middle of your island."

Tearing her eyes away from the organs, she looked to Adeney,
"I once thought the same as you when I was younger. But we are in the midst of a flood of arcane phenomena. It surprises me that you are unaware of this."

She waggled a finger at Adeney before starting off to locate the rest of her belongings: Mask, gloves, and boots.

"It is unbecoming of a scholar to be close-minded, Doctor Mercier. You have much to learn."

[relentless]

"Yeah, what she said!"
Duval said offhandedly, scratching his facial hair as he failed to comprehend the unknown terms that were said. He took a couple steps back from the group, shrugging toward Adeney.
"The undead rise from the graves, pigs stand on two legs and you're saying Undeath isn't possible? Pah."
Duval waved him away, though it wasn't in malicious spite. More a friendly retort.

[black379]

"I am not unaware!" He huffed with offense. Florence and Duval both seemed to think he was ignorant, while Adeney believed both of them to be fanciful. Exchanging a frown between them, he sighed and carried on.

"There is some... unnatural force at work. I will not pretend to be enlightened about its origins or machinations. But I will not disillusion myself with theories either." He crossed his arms, watching Florence pace about for her effects as though she weren't actually listening.

"The so-called swinefolk are the vile result of abhorrent experimentation. The animated bones in the ruins are mindless, without will. Something may be commanding them, but it is not a soul. So where are these spirits?"

[Vanitypirate]

"You are unaware of those that live beyond death? Necromancers whose souls are contained in phylacteries?" Florence queried, though she found her interest waning with every moment the other man argued.
Truthfully, her research was an independent manner that she would prefer remained unknown to the rest of the world.

They couldn't be trusted with such a thing.
"You cannot learn a thing you think you know."

[relentless]

Duval chuckled at the argument they would having, a curious one at that. Still, it's not like he understood any of it.
"Well, I think when such things exist like pigmen, ghouls and magic cultists, perhaps such things exist after all! 'Sides, the walking dead can't truly be dead, right? Like... maybe the dead folk souls are enslaved to their bones! Some weird shite like that."
Duval proposed, before he shrugged again.

"Who knows! Don't think it's possible to see one of those wee things in our hearts."

[black379]

Adeney pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. It had never really been his intent to study the creatures in every seam and every depth of the estate. He rather had made an effort to avoid confrontation with the menaces when he could, and especially given a wide berth to such forces that manipulated the evils.

"I don't... Perhaps you are right." The doctor conceded with some hesitance. His hands raised with his palms out in a sort of surrender, mostly directed toward Duval and his spouting.

"But..?" The thin man chewed on his lip, swiveling to fave Florence once more. Were the notion to be true, that a soul was the sustenance of a body and that it could somehow perpetuate life beyond death, there were too many questions to be answered. He couldn't even know where to begin. "Do you have any findings then?"

[Vanitypirate]

Mask secured to her head, Florence suitably found herself returning to a sense of normalcy.
She was quiet for a moment; on one hand, it was a moral responsibility of a scholar to share knowledge. But on the other hand,

"My findings are very taboo. I shall be hanged if this information is spread too carelessly, especially by the Church." Her voice was muffled, some, to her usual degree. It was comfortable.
She drew her hood up and went about donning her gloves. "And in the wrong hands, it may cause many to suffer."

Her beak looked on over her shoulder before she turned entirely.

"But you may prove useful. Perhaps I shall invite you to join me in research..." She tapped the ends of her fingers together thoughtfully, "...after I interview you to ensure you shall not hang me, or become a tyrant."

[black379]

Unabashedly bare only moments before, the woman doctor was was no less an enigma as her face was veiled behind the corvine visage. Adeney watched her with a billowing mixture of curiosity and concern. If Florence had such wicked knowledge, she certainly was inconspicuous enough.

"I'm not sure what to say." His voice hushed and he turned his shoulder toward Duval. "This isn't the place to talk of such things."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

With some huff, he ran his hands through his hair, his eyes shut as he strode on past pews and columns towards the Bath-house door. The braid Tilly'd done for him held together nicely enough, he supposed, though he childishly tugged at the interwoven strands to loosen them up even more. He would have much prefered something simpler, though she wasn't exactly his personal hair-dresser.

She was, however, soon to be his Wife... A singular person he'd have to be utterly devoted to. The prospect frightened him... To put it lightly. Even now he anxiously rubbed the finger a ring would lock onto, as though worried it would be lopped off like some thieves' hand.

His shoulder bumped into a column, and he was forced to open his eyes and readjust. Zero'ing in on the door to the Bath-house.

She was a good partner, he knew. Active, loyal, and a morality none could really judge lest they wanted to be utter hypocrites. By all means she was perfect.
Yet he still had his doubts... Not wholly of her, but of himself.
Was this boundless loyalty and love really what he deserved? Beneath the Abbey's roof, he wanted the thought to punitive, yet it was a sincere inquiry.
What had he done for her to be so invested..?

With a sigh, he found himself at the threshold of the Bath-house door. Procrastinating, he examined the door-frame before taking a breath and sealing the thoughts away. 
He took a step forward and opened the door, he noticed Florence and Adeney and Duval all huddled around the crate he'd left and sighed with some amusement, shaking his head as he stepped in and shut the door behind him.

The Ex-Lord rapped his hand on the door behind him before raising his other by means of greeting,
"You lot are going to start growing mold at this rate." He called out with a small smirk, he beckoned Florence over now, though. His tone flat and commanding.
"Florence, I've need of you."

[Vanitypirate]

"Then," Florence's mask snapped momentarily to Lekalis as he leaned in, and she greeted him with a sporty, if not in her typical stiffness, wave. Then it turned back to face Adeney as she continued, "In this place, I have no findings. Seek me out only if your intentions are purely academic. I would like not to be hanged."

She nodded, "I wish you well, Doctor Mercier," and then hurried off, with as much hurry as she was capable of, to attend to Lekalis, doctor's bag in tow.

Immediately, her mask pivoted up and down as she visually scanned the silk-clad man for maladies. "Are you injured or ill?"

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

Florence's peculiar enthusiasm was particularly refreshing. He couldn't hold back a small smile as she shuffled forward with her doctor's bag, her worry doubly making him chuckle as he waved away her fretting.
"Injured in heart alone, Florence!" He scoffed, his playfulness was subdued some,
"That you would only now ask me if I'm injured? Not when I'd been here but a few hours prior, all bloody and dismayed." He sighed shaking his head as he tutted her, tapping the nose of her mask poignantly.

He sighed as his tone fell to a more serious tenor,
"No, I'm fine Florence. Thank you." He nodded over to the shoebox of meatly samples, pointing over to it lazily by means of reminding her at the least,
"I just want to talk about my... Affliction, the Amulet." He added the last in a bit more dire, hushed tone.
"I want to rid myself of this curse as soon as possible. I'd like to talk about our plans... We need to do something."

[Vanitypirate]

Florence turned her beaked head at a severe angle to follow his pointing finger to the meatly treasures behind her, in the bathhouse.
She squinted, and then concluded that no one would wish to steal them, and that she would much rather tend to Lekalis.

So she followed suit in the latter, and looked straight ahead to him, a more merciful position to her neck.

"Yes, we do." Florence planted a gloved palm on his shoulder and made to direct him to walk further from the bathhouse and potentially prying ears...

"What do you wish to talk about?"

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

He rose a brow as Florence place a hand on his shoulder, looking to it with unveiled surprise. Granted, he held all the enthusiasm of a bored cat in the matter.
He placed his own hand on Florence's wrist and leant into her so as to whisper to her.
"There's a blue tendril in the box that was moving with hundreds of others like it to make a corpus like a human."
Lekalis shifted from one foot to the other, both excited and a bit frightened by the recollection,
"It was utterly alien in function. Tilly slew it by stabbing at something in the core of it but I found nothing but more of the same... Many meaty parts working as one soul; it's the very opposite of what we're trying to do."

The Ex-Lord spilled his speculation, making to move past Florence, into the Bath-house; though he held onto her arm before he pulled away.
"Studying it may yield us... Something." He proposed with a flash of a smile as he dove away to steal away the box and report back to Florence in a jiffy.

He held the box in the crutch of his arm again, intentionally veiling the box with his cloak as he nudged Florence on,
"Where should we go..?"
\\

[Vanitypirate]

Florence watched him scurry about with a look of mild surprise, unfortunately obscured by her thick lenses, which ultimately conveyed a more neutral expression.
Still, she waited as patient as a shadow outside the door.

Truthfully, she only found the tendrils and organs somewhat interesting. Her focus as of yet was to be on lifting the amulet-curse, which she could never hope to accomplish if her attentions were constantly diverted to the numerous, alien phenomena of the Estate.

"Perhaps... it may be unwise to discuss this inside the abbey." She trailed off as she though on.
"Where would you find yourself most comfortable?"