Dark Water

The creeping mist from the ocean spray had muffled the warm rays of the sunset. A young monk made a sound in the back of her throat as the wraith of a being stumbled drunken-like into the hallway. The cleric held some small memory among the older adherents, and rumours to their role were circulating among the clergy after the temple knights had arrived from their mission. He had been hauled from some swamp among the cursed timber, and had been a babbling mess for the better part of the week. Watching the patient croon a foreign song through confused tears, the apothecary swore it was severe exposure to obliviax, but as far as Sister Charmaine was concerned it was likely too many axes to the face. The Empress only bestowed so much when it came to stitching the flesh, and there was a reason the aging knights eventually sought divine purpose with retirement within the cloister—or at least an purposeful death.

"Father Lavandul," she floated, keeping a wide berth from the leaning figure smoothing silvery hair from his face. "Could you please return to your bed?"

She'd rather not clean up another slop of vomit from the vertigo.

The eyes that blinked back had anisocoria, and she swallowed, "Are you certain that you wouldn't want to see to yourself? There's nothing in the creed of the Divine Mother that preaches needless suffering, Dominé." Sick as he was, she didn't want a supposed veteran of holy vigil to die of an aneurysm.

"No, no that's unnecessary," the cleric explained in a soft tone, straightening and overcorrecting the sway to prop himself against the wall. Charmaine had no explanation for the hoarfrost and chill, other than the fact that Lavender's androgynous mien was best appreciated at a safe distance. Thumbing the prayer beads around her wrist, she started speaking before the clergyman cut her off with a loud sniff. "Where is my armour?"

"Please, Dominé, you've been told that if you are going to be insistent on-"

The reliquary around the cleric's neck clinked as he held it aloft, as if the gesture spoke for itself. "I'm up and moving. Sir Guelfo Duomo dela Vynne was boundlessly kind in offering a donation for lodgings-"

"You are welcome to stay here, Dominé-"

"-And you all have been very helpful. I will repay such a service in time, I'm sure." His pained smile had a razor's edge to it, or maybe it was a stitching; the cleric had enough opium, mandrake, and hemlock in his system to knock out a small horse. The politics were beyond Sister Charmaine, with more than a few Important People popping in that last few evenings; but the idea of Lavender leaving brought both relief and guilt. "If you're interrogated, I'll be taken in by the Last Refuge."

The lack of thanks might have been a cultural thing.

Rather than continuing to argue, the monk lead the pale entity through the stone architecture to allow them to arrange their belongings and vacate before evening vigil. Taking in the way the twilight wove through the dying sun and leaving the sea to its secrets, Charmaine nearly leapt out of her skin as the masked clergyman returned from the mist with no warning.

"Um. You see, I may have forgotten where the Last Refuge is."