Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 954 - 954: Written Exchanges

The tall woman's room was a bit odd, or so Griar believed, it simultaneously felt like this room belonged to an old lady due the decoration and general ambience it emitted, but also, found things that seemed like they would be more at place in a teenage girl's room, he decided not to focus too much on those aspects and instead approached a table bearing the weight of several piles of notebooks and pieces of paper.

The paper was written upon as much as was physically possible, every amount of space available on it was used to write or draw something down, a lot of it looked like architectural projects or general ideas concerning the town and village, as well as other places Griar had not been to, a festival of sorts, a new well, a renovation of one of the farms…

There were also piles of letters which had clearly been written by a variety of different people, which fell into two categories, letters addressed to the 'Chief' and letters addressed to the 'Doctor', at least, that's what Griar believed he was managing to read, in any case, both titles always came with the same name- Isabela.

So from the looks of it, the tall woman was simultaneously the leader around these parts, and also a medical professional, for the latter, she was probably the only one anywhere nearby considering the sheer amount of letters asking for help with sickness, be it with people and farm animals, as well injuries.

All of those letters were marked with a green stamp that said 'Solved', so it seemed like she performed her job admirably, same went for the role of chief, the notebooks were likewise filled with dates and appointments to take care of said problems, though, Griar quickly noticed a change in how things went.

He unfortunately had very little understanding in how dates and numbers in this language functioned, so he wasn't certain exactly when this had begun, but some time ago, the letters from the people had come to a grinding halt, and had instead been replaced with correspondence with two other people which Griar assumed were also women considering their names.

A certain 'High Priestess' that had been issuing commands to place so-called water into the wells of the town and village, but also said to ensure that it did not spread to any natural body of water, it seemed like that high priestess was worried about what was happening here being discovered by others.

Despite the clear power dynamic between the two, that priestess woman, whose name was never mentioned and was only referred to by her title, was oddly polite in her letters, and likewise, Isabela was too.

The difference in status was obvious and acknowledged by both parties, but neither really pulled attention to it, and their exchanges read in a friendly tone, this made Griar scratch his head a bit.

The same thing was true for the third person that was sending letters to the tall woman, a certain 'Countess Ada', whose handwriting looked more refined than the other two, not to say that anything was wrong or bad about the chief's and priestess's way of handling a quill, but the countess's was so awfully over the top that it made it actually hard for him to even know which letters were being used in the words.

With his rather basic understanding of the language, he had to give up trying to decipher what the Ada was trying to say, but judging from a letter written by the tall woman that had yet to be sent, it seemed like they were discussing people who showed different reactions to exposure to the water.

Ada seemed to be in charge of observing such a phenomenon, and was thus regularly asking Isabela if she noticed any strange occurrences on her own end.

Overall, although Griar learned that what was happening here was the deliberate work of at least three people, the way they communicated was awfully cryptic, and they always ended their letters with : 'May the stagnancy bless you' or some variation of that.

'Mmh?' the young man's gaze fell upon a pile that was kept away from the rest, and with just a glance at the first paper in sight, he understood that this was the pile were the tall woman had put the letters she had written, but ultimately discarded due to an ink stain, or mistake in the writing, that Isabela certainly was a perfectionist, the smallest of error was enough to discard a letter entirely.

Searching through the pile, Griar discovered a mention of Flor.

'Countess Ada,

Concerning the girl called 'Flor', despite having received great amount of water both through consumption and being submerged, she shows no signs of loss in intelligence, neither had any of the water taken root within her, even after countless tests of the years, nothing has changed, the High Priestess has finished the preparations for a more condensed pool for the girl to soak in, the High Priestess holds hope that Flor can become a priestess, please be patient with her when she arrives to your castle.

The girl is easily impressed and holds some divergent thoughts concerning us and the water, keep a close eye on her or she might attempt to run.'

The letter stopped there, and was partly covered in ink, seemingly from the container holding it having been knocked down.

'A castle? Where would a castle be?' Griar felt that he probably should have seen such a thing in the distance, unless it was very far away, but considering the sheer numbers of letters those two exchanged, that surely wasn't the case, the castle had to be fairly close…

The youth looked around the room for a few more moments, but unfortunately found absolutely nothing else of interest, and honestly, was feeling quite weird about being in here in the first place, reading through someone else's private letters made him feel very off.

So he quietly approached the door to leave, pulling it open as quietly as he could but his hand was flung off of it as was pushed from the other side, a hand lunging forward and wrapped around his neck and throat, lifting him off the ground as a tall figure crouched to step into the room.

"Well, what do we have here? Another one of those foreign rats? You people can try as much as you want, but no matter what, you can not control the water without being blessed" the tall woman pulled Griar closer to her face, looking at him with a raised eyebrow, her dark brown eyes sparking with a hint of confusion.

"You do not look like a bastard from the Republic, neither do you look like a filthy collectivist…"

"...Who are you?"