princess_of_ida | IC Inbox

Very well. I should be there in about five minutes.

--

Jin Guangyao is punctual; it would be discourteous to be anything else. He's dressed for the cold weather as he steps indoors, cheeks flushed and the tip of his nose a somewhat embarrassing shade of red that he knows he can do nothing about, and so tries to put it out of his mind. Hopefully his efficiency at fulfilling Ianthe's request will distract from how obviously he's suffering in this cold.

He follows the muted sounds of what he assumes to be inventory work in progress, and calls out a cautious, polite, "Deathwarden?" as he does so to avoid catching her off-guard.

Ianthe was indeed in the little storeroom, stacks of cloth shrouds in various sizes laid out in groups while she made notes on piece of paper. She fekt his thalergy and registered his voice before she even looked up at him.

"Jin Guangyao," she greeted back, making a final notation before setting the paper aside. "Welcome to my tiny office."

Such cloths likely serve only one purpose, which probably explains the brief, unsettled flicker across Jin Guangyao's face, before he smooths his expression into one that is polite, inoffensive and unremarkable. He smiles a closed-lipped smile and performs a precise little bow out of habit.

"Thank you for making the time," he replies in a voice pitched perfectly to be pleasant and mild. He withdraws a neatly arranged quire of parchment and steps forward to offer it to Ianthe. "Churchwarden Mateus attests to this list's accuracy to the best of his knowledge. We trust it will be a useful resource for you, though we will hope it won't be necessary."

A gentle drawing-together of eyebrows above expressive dark eyes; a silent invitation to speak more, if she's so inclined. He's curious about the murders, of course, and curiouser still to see if Ianthe has knowledge about them that hasn't been shared publicly yet.

Accepting the pages, Ianthe leafed through them briefly before closing it with a sigh. "This will help going forward; there are a number of elderly and some chronically ill that may find themselves moving on within the year."

She set it aside on an empty shelf, making a mental note to share it with Iggy and decide on the best place to store it. Probably there in their store room, but she might make a warded container for it that only the two of them could access. She didn't need anyone making alterations or looking at the list that didn't need to see it.

"This is an unusual amount of deaths for here. It usually requires a monster being on the loose for this amount and no one's transformed, as far as I'm aware. The chastity devices haven't been in effect long enough for that to become a problem."

Jin Guangyao allows a very short spell of silence to fall between them after she speaks, letting himself feel the full weight of her words and their unsettling implications.

He folds his hands neatly behind his back. "You believe there will be more deaths," he supplies quietly. "More murders, or worse."

"Between the murders, deaths, and the people seeing things." Like Alicent and the children, Lottie with the banya.

Ianthe sighed. "Something is going on. It will most assuredly get worse before it's over. I'm concerned about the Void."

The Void. An established and accepted part of everyday life for the townsfolk and the other Void-touched, but something that is so at odds with Jin Guangyao's understanding of how the universe works; he can't help the instinctive dread that wells up inside of him at the thought of it. He drops his gaze to the floor and delicately presses his thumb into his palm behind his back to still his impulse to fidget; he won't betray his fear, even before an ally. (A prospective ally, anyway.)

"Permit me to apologize for my ignorance," he prefaces with carefully performed chagrin, eyes widening a little. "There is still much for me to learn about this place and its mysteries, but... I still don't fully understand." A pause, and he frees a hand for one short, elegant gesture. "What the Void is, or how it works. Or how it is connected to everything else."

There was a long pause before Ianthe sighed. "I wish I had the answer to those questions. It has a sentience of sorts, and those that have been within it spoke of it trapping them in happy hallucinatory lives. I know regular exposure to its proximity will increase our monsterous urges and eventually drive a person insane."

What else? "It surrounds everything, and I have been banned by the village to research it further. Which I'm alright with." For the time being.

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