After helping to bandage up the dog, william takes a step back and watches Syed. "Please Syed, let me help you in any way that I can." the undertaker says as he moves to assist him in any way that he can.

Syed flicks two fingers, beckoning. “Yes—here.” He slides aside to make space at the table, chin indicating a scatter of blades and glassware. “If Haley consents, take the syringes and watertight vials—line them there." He palms a scalpel, then pauses, eyeing William’s bandaged hands. A quick, grateful nod—rare, but unmistakable. “Good. With me, then.”

Eren looks slighted when Sparkles pass them on by with nothing more than a shrug. They don't hold it against you though, by the look of it, when they slouch their shoulders a bit and step aside.

A big sigh. Haley sits up from a kneel in the viscera of the gibberer. She stares down at her hands and hooves before bringing them up to her face and setting her chin upon it. Tear mark stain her face as she looks forward. Shifting her weight to one side before letting out a groan, realizing a flying piece of shrapnel must have greatly bruised her abdomen, she then sits back down again. Her hands mix in the goop of the monsters bowels- flesh- whatever. It (dark red blood; "sticky," she notes in a small whisper) doesn't slide off down the sides of her hands when she lifts it up again to inspect it, moving her hand side to side like a seesaw, then setting her hand back down again into the sludgy mess. 

When Sparkles comes to her side, she doesn't flinch, doesn't move, doesn't say anything for a good 30 seconds. Instead, she lies down into the darkening puddle, running a blood-covered finger through her hair, pushing a stray strand to the side. It leaves a long looking trail of red across her face. Despite the apparent sloppiness of the motion, you notice she is careful not to bring her hands near her mouth or any other orifice. 

"I-" Haley starts after a minute of solitude in the puddle. "I don't know." She grimaces, showing (surprisingly sharp) teeth. It's the first time she looks at you since lying there. Sighing, recognizing her misplaced anger, she settles for staring at the walls again. 

"Clearly, it didn't work," she says bitingly. Her eyes squint forward; her hand claws at the viscera, blood oozes from the pierced marks she made. She sighs again. Her tone mellows down after. "Look at you." She waves flippantly in your direction. "It didn't... work."

At the tail end of the word, she slightly sits up. The wereraven to the left of her stirs in his 'sleep'. "Okay," she says to no one in particular. Sighing once more, she slowly lifts herself up from the floor.

"The tools," Haley murmurs, only halfway through getting up, "are in the basement." She repeats the information, of which the revelation of it leaves little to guess that it would take her quite some time to get down those steps into the basement. She looks up at Sparkles, goat ears folded down the side of her head. "Yes, mo- ma'm." She addresses to Sparkles despite it clearly being Syed who ordered it.

Whoever is willing to go to the basement to get the supplies, Haley is the one leading it. She is determined to go with you despite the pain it would cause herself. Unfortunately for you, it takes her 2 and half minutes to go down the short ladder. This wastes a total of 6 minutes (from all the healing and everything else you did above ground) out of your 10 to collect the animus before it disappears. 

Once you reach the cellar, Haley sighs as she shuffles around in the dark, hooves crunching under mulch and broken wood. The sound of scuttling has her turning her head towards the corner of the shelf formerly filled with the jars of pickles.

A centipede, much like the ones you fought earlier, crouches low, back up like a cat arching. It hasn't seemed to want to fight yet, but as Haley points out, it's right next to the place where she kept all the tools. You don't know how many might be nearby it. As they always say: when you see one roach, there are hundreds more you don't.

"I- I'm going to sit down," Haley tells you, hand on the wall as she moves towards the opposite corner, "I would like to be with my brother." She looks down at the disturbed dirt and scowls before leaning against the sacks of flour right behind her.

You either have to be really careful with the shelf (DEXTERITY CHECK) or good with animals (ANIMAL HANDLING) to not start a fight with those things. 

"To think wes was just eating cupcakes," Eren drawls, sighing. They shuffle over to where the wereraven is laying. "I have a potion if anybod needs it," they announce, holding one up. From their pocket, they take out another one and down it. "****," they curse at the pain from healing, muttering it under their breath as they clutch their leg. 

Kolette spies the centipede and shivers a little. Those things can pack a wallop if there are more of them.

She starts to make calming sounds and moves to get the supplies.

Animal Handling 22 

((WOW THAT IS A GREAT ROLL!))

The centipede as if anticipating your movements goes to clack with its mandibles, a warning. Yet when you continue with your calming sounds, its clicks grow softer and soon scuttle out the way as you move to reach for supplies. You hear the scuttling of a thousand legs or more between the walls. You truly dodged one there.

Inside the shelf as you scour through things, you find the tools you need: skinning knives, a cleaver, syringes, a hammer, scissors, scalpels, a bone saw, hooks, as well as a vials, watertight containers (the jars), binding reagents, and wrappings.

Some were hanging behind the shelf (a precarious position), others packed into a box that at first glance seemed filled with centipede droppings, which you just come to realize were eggs. Surprisingly, they were not from the centipedes, but you now recognize as coming from silverfish. Most likely they had been eating them just before you came in based on the yellowish ooze leaking out of them. 

Haley murmurs something you can't quite hear before shifting her position beside the sack. 

You currently have 2 minutes and 26 seconds left before the animus runs out of the creature.

Kolette takes her leave of centipede hotel and carries the supplies upstairs to the party.

Sparkles isn't quite sure what to say to Haley when she says 'Clearly it didn't work...look at you'. Perhaps she's mistaking her avian features for corruption, or there really is still some lingering evil inside of her. For now, Sparkles opts to believe the former, and won't consider the alternative unless/until concerning symptoms start to show themselves. Worry wouldn't be a particularly useful companion in Drakkenheim. Instead, she simply steps aside silently to let Haley process all of the events by herself, and scans the room. Her eyes linger on the body of the raven-man sprawled out on the floor. She's half inclined to poke him with her foot to wake him, until she remembers the moan that she heard outside by the door. In her daze, she forgot about Starry. Moving to the door, she puts a hand to the doorknob, but then stops herself from opening. Answering the first sound outside lead to Ludwig's arrival, then after that the Mouther burst in, so she really isn't sure if she can trust what's outside anymore. However, she doesn't want to leave Starry out there in the cold, probably shivering away in fear. She turns her head to Syed, who she sees as a good leader, and then gives a nod of acknowledgement to the door and the whining to see what his verdict on the matter is.

(Apologies, I had to meet a deadline for work and couldn't keep up posting for a few days.)

Syed folds into the work, the world narrowing to lantern light and laid-out corpse. He clears a board with one sweep of his forearm, making space for vials, a syringe, and starts to chalk two swift cut-lines over cooling flesh. At steady intervals he pulses terse thoughts toward the ladder: “Hurry. Two minutes… ninety seconds… bring the watertight jars first.” A gloved thumb tests tissue give; the other hand taps a glass ampoule against his wrist to keep count—tick, tick—a metronome against panic.

Sparkles’ nod at the door tugs his gaze up. A thin sigh fogs his mask. “Bad timing,” he sends, dry as flint. “Animus window is closing.” A beat, then concession edged with caution: “All right—crack the door, slow. Do not leave earshot. If anything breathes wrong, you step back and bar it. Call once.”

He angles his body to keep both the corpse and the threshold in view, tail curling tight around a forceps. Another crisp ping of thought rolls downstairs—gentler this time, but urgent all the same: “Tools to my hand, now. We’re down to moments.”

Sparkles nods silently; clearly her attention had been misplaced at this moment, but her curiosity and love for Starry had overridden her patience and rational thinking. Slowly, she cracks open the door as Syed instructed and peeks through see what’s there, a hand still on the knob to slam it shut quickly if need be.