[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5022268][img]https://i.imgur.com/yW2VDaL.png[/img][/url]
[h3]Eastern Yharnam, outside the Hunter's clinic[/h3]
[I]I swear,[/I] Victor thought, making a concerted effort not to groan at Adelicia's words, [I]she is [/I]trying[I] to make me angry. She must have a death wish of some kind.[/I]
He was not sure what kind of a past the saint had, what training – if any – she had gone through, or whether the church had intentionally raised her without even a shred of independence. It might not be entirely her fault – he would not put it past the Healing Church to intentionally render their Blood Saints useless – but it still enraged him to a dangerous degree, perhaps even more so because her unwillingness to make decisions for herself put his own lack of expertise on display. He told her that he would follow her lead, and she reacts by saying that she would follow his? As if he was much better suited for the responsibility than her? As if he was not terrified by what was going on?
The way she had said it was concerning, too; it reminded Victor far too much of how she had reacted after their fight with the Mad One back at the elevator. How she had offered up her life and well-being out of fear that Raine might kill her, as if she had been entirely at his mercy... only, this felt even worse. This was not a plea for “anything but death”, but rather “you are my only chance at survival”. She gave herself over to him completely out of belief that she could not possibly survive on her own, and that any choice she made was going to get her killed.
Now, he was the last person who would argue that Adelicia had the prowess to defend herself from... practically anything, really, but that kind of helplessness rubbed him the wrong way. Made him angry at her [I]and[/I] for her, for being so weak. Made his teeth itch.

“Inside it is, then,” he grumbled more tartly than he had intended, gesturing for her to follow him and quickly walking to the doorway, eager to get away from the invisible thing that had taken Raine. But when he crossed the threshold of the clinic, he was rooted in place by what he saw.
The room inside seemed like it had been a typical treatment area of a Yharnam blood ministration clinic, furnished with beds and chairs for patients and doctors, numerous cabinets for various medicaments, most of which were blood-based, and the various tools for examining and operating on the ill and injured. Most of this furniture had been destroyed, however; mostly solid objects seemed to have been smashed against the ground and, if that had not been sufficiently effective, subsequently chopped to pieces. Cabinets had been toppled, their contents shattered and scattered on the floor. Vials, jars and beakers had been thrown against the walls and floor, showering the area with broken glass and vile liquids.
And past the devastation left in their wake, at the opposite end of the room, maybe ten meters (thirty-three feet) away, was another door that had been forcibly opened, and by the doorway was the cause of this mindless destruction. A group of six mostly human-looking men stood over there, two of them glancing through the far doorway at whatever was on the other side, while the other four stood off to the right, looking in his direction.
Victor had expected Yharnamite rioters, but they were not alone. Among the group to the right was a seventh figure, who was decidedly [I]not[/I] a normal Yharnamite. Clad in a dusty brown hooded monk's robe and carrying a cane in his right hand and a bell in the other – both, Victor realized confusedly, items that had been missing from the dead church servant they had found earlier – this [I]man[/I], if one could call it that, had sickly gray, almost white skin and was unnaturally gaunt, with bony limbs and a face so sunken that it seemed to stick directly to the skull, and eyes that were either missing or sat so deep in their sockets that they were lost in shadow. He looked almost like a mummified corpse more than a man. Though he had never encountered one before, Victor knew that this had to be a Pthumerian from the labyrinth.

Though surprising and worrying, none of this was what brought Victor to a halt, however. One of the four Yharnamites crowding around the Pthumerian had a rifle already aimed at the door he had just entered through – and thus at him – at chest-level, clearly expecting someone to come. They had probably heard the commotion before, when Raine had been taken by the entity.