|
|
Post by EloHim on Jul 11, 2020 16:36:10 GMT -8
[Volundr]
“Because if gods could've taken our sorrows and pains of a soul away...world would've been a much better, much kinder place. But it isn't...because they cant."- he hugs her as gently as he can. Poor girl. First time handling such a loss was obviously throwing her in for a loop to Hel. But maybe...just maybe, now that they’ve talked, she wouldn't do things the way they turned out for him.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosallora on Jul 11, 2020 17:05:12 GMT -8
[The Heir]
A man opens it. He was... startling in his unremarkable nature. He was in every sense a young and upstart looking thing, and aside from the bags under his eyes, which told of many sleepless nights. He wears a nightcap, a robe, he squints at the dark.
At the sight of the hand, he recoils slightly, then looks tired. More tired, rather. Moonlight streams into the room behind him, but the man himself keeps in the doorway. "And what... may I do for you?"
|
|
|
|
Post by rosallora on Jul 11, 2020 17:08:27 GMT -8
[Toustain]
She cries. Loudly, then quieting, her tears running down his skin. She is silent, for a long time. Her breathing steadies, her form curled against Volundr as she finds herself again. The sniffles, then coughs, phlegm caught up in her throat. She... rests her head there. Her brow presses against his shoulder.
"...I don't want to feel, this way..." She rubs a hand against her chest. "I feel... awful. I can't... I can't think, I can barely breathe. I want to be alone, but I want to be around everyone I can. And I don't... I just don't want to hurt." She lifts her head away from his shoulder just to hit it against it again, almost stubborn. "I want.." her lip trembles, her eyes burn. "I want him back."
|
|
|
|
Post by speakeroftruths on Jul 11, 2020 18:38:05 GMT -8
"Ah." He knew too well this sort of mercy. Cutting short a life, if it was only to be suffered through. He wished there was another way. Talea spoke of spirits and souls, warned him against taking matters of life and death into his own hands. Audrey, his once cherished student, was a shell of her former self after he gave her such "mercy" and desperately grasped to save her beyond death. The doctor shook his head, flustered as he followed Andy. A disease that claimed its victim in a handful of days was concerning, though unsurprising to hear of in this wretched town. He only hoped burning the body would be the end of it. "I should like to speak to this vestal as well. You were good to find me promptly. My name is Adeney." He added.
[Andy] "Yes... I am Andy. Inquisitor," They seem still to be walking in that same drained daze. Responding is... hard. "The body first. Then ask for Sister Toustain at the Abbey. But you will be turned away. Likely. She..." Was good friends with the deceased? Is in a state of denial? Will be buried in scripture? Blames herself? Did something horrible? Might be completely fine? Went to get drunk? "...Was deeply affected. By what happened." They step out of the town proper, and begin making their way down the winding dirt road that leads to the riverside. |
|
|
|
Post by EloHim on Jul 11, 2020 18:52:50 GMT -8
[Volundr]
He allows her to cry herself out. She needs it, now more than ever.
"It will go away, trust me, it will.”- words of assurance is all that he’s capable of now. He wants to make her feel better, but besides all that he did already...he doesn't know what else could be done.-"I know, I know. He’s in a better place than this, right now, no doubt. He’s home, wherever it is. But at the same time...he’s still with you. They are always with us… even after they seem to leave forever.”
|
|
|
|
Post by black379 on Jul 11, 2020 18:53:49 GMT -8
Adeney hummed and nodded curtly. He understood too, the shock and grief of losing someone close. As a doctor, he detached himself from his patients, more often than not they succumbed to gruesome wounds or terrible disease. He had seen much death, but it could not numb him to the loss of someone he cared for.
"Perhaps I will seek her, once she has had time." Tucking the bundle of sheets under one arm once more, he detached the beaked mask from his belt. The more shielding he had from the cursed corpse, the better.
|
|
|
|
Post by speakeroftruths on Jul 11, 2020 18:59:38 GMT -8
[Andy]
"Mmm."
Unless interrupted, the Inquisitor does not speak the rest of the way to the waterwheel. Though they will not say so, it is clear that Toustain was not the only one affected by the actions that took place there. They walk as though they had gone many a day without sleep, one foot in front of the other, as though the simple act of doing so required all the concentration they could muster.
|
|
|
|
Post by black379 on Jul 11, 2020 19:16:47 GMT -8
The doctor hardly noticed Andy's state, almost absent as they guided him. Adeney had a quiet nature himself, and was single-minded in ridding the town of a potential contagion. Even so, as they approached their destination he spoke up again.
"Did you know him?" His voice was slightly muffled now, by the plague mask. And his expression hidden behind dark, round lenses.
|
|
|
|
Post by speakeroftruths on Jul 11, 2020 19:23:42 GMT -8
[Andy]
"Not in the slightest."
Curious, how the connections of others could make the death of a stranger so painful.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosallora on Jul 11, 2020 19:27:59 GMT -8
[Toustain]
"...He promised he'd be here," she says softly, her voice still a tremor. "I don't... I don't want to see ungrateful but he said... he said he'd be here. That he'd protect me. That..." new tears streak down her face. That he'd be like a knight. That somehow, she was more than what they'd told her. More than a vestal. More than some twigs to be consumed by the holy flame. A Lady.
She was no one's Lady. And she never would be.
"I thought it'd be longer. I thought I would learn from him. We were going..." she sniffles. She can't look at him still, the bridge of her nose still resting against his skin. "We were going to make a book about planting crops to help me in the coming years, knowing he would be gone. The garden is dead. I've written nothing. It will never be done. It will n-never be done."
|
|
|
|
Post by Bloodtrailkiller on Jul 12, 2020 21:44:36 GMT -8
[CIVILIAN HOUSING] /Lekalis/ Blood scattered through the air, like a redshift rainbow through the night sky; if but for Lekalis' high collared cloak, it would have caught his cheek. Though even if it did, the killer's falconer stare didn't seem like to shift. He had seen too much bloodshed to be swayed by it now. Instead, there was an undeniable, primordial, satisfaction in the violence of an enemy slain. Of Prey Slaughtered. "Are you alright?" The Ex-Lord almost seemed to ask the man with a poleax in his head, before he straightened his posture and gently balanced the trident in his hand before giving it a twirl to free it of blood. His Falchion and buckler found their place at his hip in the same motion of him turning to face Courcy with a tired gaze. Torchlight did not reach the sallowed and dark pools there, that looked over Courcy with a worried frown, "I should have helped sooner..." he muttered on, before looking to the quieted sounds of combat, "... my condolences."
After wrenching her axe from Raleigh's skull, Courcy watched his dying twitches. Watched his richly red blood ebb into a pool in the mud. Her eyes fixed on her cousin's destroyed face. Her halberd dropped to the ground with a metallic clang.
"I'm not." Her voice was small and quivering. Hugging her arms to her chest, Courcy stumbled up beside Lekalis to lean on him. She hid her face against his shoulder.
"You didn't know. 'Not your fault..."
[In-front of Fanuschrat Manor] /Lekalis/
There was a hesitation, out of habit of years from rejecting intimacy from Courcy, as he stiffened and his grip on his weapons tightened. Before he exhaled, feeling the feeble warmth of the aged friend and veteran of the Hamlet; muscles taut, eased and he deftly reversed his Falchion to not cut the Hellion and brought his arm about Courcy to pull her into a humbled embrace.
"... And not yours." Lekalis soothed quietly as he brought his thumb up to idly caress her neck and shoulders. He kept her azure eyes buried in his shoulder as he rested his chin on hers and looked at the corpse of the apparent family.
The man had spat vile words, which Lekalis could easily piece together a story... implications of dark deeds. His blood pumped warm but his heart felt cold and numb to the attrocities; the Hamlet was filled with such woe, and he was all too familiar with the abuses those in power enact. "Would you care for a bath?" He inquired in a sweet tone that still held some command in it...
|
|
|
|
Post by black379 on Jul 12, 2020 22:14:29 GMT -8
It felt wrong, to be held so close by Lekalis, after all his spurning. But Courcy didn’t lust for him then - it didn’t even come to mind, standing above her slain cousin.
She thought she might burst with tears, or fury. Might tantrum, or collapse. But she was simply still, shielded by the man’s embrace. All of her pent up feeling eased out of her as Lekalis soothed her back.
She answered quietly, uncharacteristically mouse-like, and nodded her head into his shoulder. Raleigh’s blood stained her skin - she felt it etching into her palms.
Her first lover laid in a heap at her feet. There was no semblance of satisfaction for surviving him. Courcy clutched Lekalis in a hard hug, then released him.
“What of his body?”
|
|
|
|
Post by Bloodtrailkiller on Jul 12, 2020 22:23:30 GMT -8
/Lekalis/
The Red Lord politely let go, his hand lingering only insofar to make sure Courcy didn't fall over as she made her space and looked over the corpse that he held in a Falcon's glare, a part of him wondering if there was some greater curse at play that he might rise from the grave with malice. But he was still, and cold; blood spilling from him as it would from any man.
"I'll burn it." He stated flatly with a slow exhale through his nostrils as he shut his eyes and wearily sheathed his blade, and brought his spear to rest in its loop at his lower back.
"It's a greater mercy than he deserves... but we must be better." Lekalis looked to his hands, not a speck of blood or remorse in them as he swiped his palms across eachother for another slaying well done.
"I'll send for the Schwarz and an Undertaker to take the body. They'll tell us when the pyre is up, if you wish to watch." He spoke the last with a quirked brow to Courcy, he reached out and touched her elbow; a small reminder that he was still there as she stared down at the corpse.
|
|
|
|
Post by black379 on Jul 12, 2020 22:40:36 GMT -8
Courcy was fixed on the mess of her cousin’s caved skull, until Lekalis touched her. She looked up to him, but her gaze was shallow.
“I want to say he should be dragged through the street, or trampled, or food for the rats... Why don’t I hate him?” She asked defeatedly. Exhaustion was plain in her face, and the way she held herself.
“Thank you. I would like to see him buried properly.” Without sparing Raleigh another glance, she turned inward to Lekalis’s front doorway.
“Will you stay with me? While I bathe?”
|
|
|
|
Post by Bloodtrailkiller on Jul 12, 2020 22:52:39 GMT -8
/Lekalis/
"Of course." He answered with a tame bow, he took three easy strides to the door; stepping over Raleigh with the indifference of a large puddle, and pushed open the door.
"... You don't hate him, because you are better. You're a gentle soul." Lekalis recited his words from a time that felt like another life.
"You don't belong here." The words came sincerely, sweetly, and in a forlorn measure that no longer lingered on the Darkest Estate, but to the greater expanse of the world.
Though he could not summon a similar woe to Courcy's, it was easy to settle into a familiar exhaustion, made from familiar scars on mind and body.
He pushed open the Bath house door and entered it quickly; holding the door open as he set his spear aside the door with due diligence and prepared to shut the door the moment his friend past the threshold.
Lekalis vaguely gestured to the rooms off to the side of the home, "You remember where the baths are?"
|
|
