[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]

[@Crimson Paladin][@VitaVitaAR]

[color=goldenrod]"The Silver Stone, huh?"[/color] Gerard murmured, pensive furrow to the brow only deepening as hints beget yet more questions. It colored his tone, lending a thick smoke of contemplation to his voice. He mulled over the loose scrawling of the note, flipping the scrap of parchment between his fingers multiple times, as if each about-face would reveal a key to the deeper meaning. He wasn't getting far, and found his eyes wandering back towards the body of the guardsman, now laid fully upon the floor instead of slumped along the doorframe.

Abigail's eyes were keen not only to inflict wounds, as any in their her line of work would need to be, but also to analyze them post-mortem. By his eye, none of what she'd extracted from the single red line in the man's windpipe was incorrect, reaching the same conclusions he had in about the same time, give or take— in all honesty, probably a little more extensively than his evaluation. But nonetheless, every word was true. One clean cut, no signs of struggle or prolonged contact. He'd sooner expect this from an assassin taking a man in his sleep, or...

[color=goldenrod][i]Suicide?

Seems unlikely, given the wider context. Then again, the Boars...[/i][/color]

Having found no trace of the offending weapon left behind in the wound (a stretch to begin with), Gerard had rummaged through the man's uniform, seeking out a weapon, perhaps a well-hidden tattoo of the selfsame group of mercenaries— to no avail. In the place of things that would link back to what they'd already learned, was the cryptic note he now beheld. Why the Silver Stone? Was the shard headed there, or had it come? Was the perpetrator? Was there some deeper significance, beyond the first site of worship of the Moonlit Goddess Mayon? Perhaps built to honor the moment mankind knew of her deification, all he had known of the Hallowed Ground was passed on through legend and folk tale.

[color=goldenrod]"Either of you ever been?"[/color] he asked aloud, holding the note up behind him to Sir Fleuri as he stared a flummoxed hole into the corpse. If he were a betting man? Surely his fellow knight, a man that had grown to strength beneath the tutelage of an honored Paladin, was the more likely of his current band to have visited personally. [color=goldenrod]"I'm at a loss. My home is far, far closer to the Golden, as were most of my battles in the prior line of work. Never seen Lady Mayon's shrine with my own eyes."[/color]

As it stood, he had no working guesses how this incident and the Stone interlinked. While he was certain they'd end up investigating the eldest of shrines, he still felt they ought to have an idea of what they were looking for.