The near-perfect silence of his vigil, poring yet once more over the delirious, tortured scrawlings of the grimoire, is disturbed by a high-pitched yawn from the other side of the room. The shifting of considerable canine weight.
"Oh, hmmhmmm ymmymmymm, I dare say it's time for dinner. What's on the menu tonight?"
But his concentration is not so easily broken. Laurent feels on the cusp, upon the very precipice of the abyss hidden within the eldritch language of the text. As if by staring at the tumescent runes for long enough, under the right circumstances, he could somehow learn to unsee them, and from thence descend into the mysteries between. Invisible fires burning up the channels of his brain, leaving the ashes of thought behind, phoenix-like, to transcend the strictures time and consequence...
"Aw come on, Sic, I haven't eaten since yestereve and it's already dark out! I don't think you're going to break the seals of the cosmos in the next 10 minutes, be a dear, won't you?"
He wasn't entirely sure why he did this, any of it. The concept of a goal seemed antithetical to the nature of his research. Perhaps he merely assumed the end he sought would reveal itself when the time came -- the question was not germane.
Marking his page, Laurentian carefully closes the grimoire, pausing to retrieve the ventilated blown-glass jar to his left, carefully unscrewing the lid. The pestis populi frog hops obliviously out into his gloved palm, over which he promptly cups his other hand, slowly applying pressure to coax the creature into a state panic, eliciting the toxic mucus the black-and-yellow creature is known for. That accomplished, the assassin braces his body and takes a practiced lick of the creature's back, reflexively slapping it back into its jar before the convulsions strike him. Even with his built-up immunity, the initial effects of the paralytic are... animated.
He comes to his senses a moment later, his nerves sufficiently calmed.
"Are you quite finished? I've half a mind to eat your little pet there if you keep me waiting much longer. Gods know, one day I might not be able to help myself, take a nibble out of your thigh while you're delighting in your spasms. Dogs have been known to do such things, what would the constable do, hang me on the gallows? Not bloody likely, and you know it!"
A slithering breath, and a crawling sigh. "We will dine, Mansfield."
Laurent rises, gathering his things, only to be stopped by the sound of an unearthly roar breaking across the city. The cause for great consideration on his part.
"Aw, now what the Devil's that all about? Oh! Oh no you don't, Sic! You are not going to run off on me when it's past time for dinner!"
Putting on his armor, his coat, his weapon belts and drug pouches. "Eat the dead, they are sure to be in abundance. We're leaving."
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.