Philomel turned, her breath uneasy. For a long minute she had been staring at this man before her - a man who had died within the few seconds she had known him.

She turned to find someone alive. A drow no less, her hands tightly curled around the edges of a large, leather bound book. White hair framed a lovely face, whose bright eyes were open with concern and what could be fear. This being seemed, with her shock and confusion, to have come across the town in much the same town as Philomel had - by accident, and was likely not a resident. The faun matriarch could only imagine the pain that would have been ridden upon a local's face: ugly; horrible; horrendous. All from seeing their beloved and close ones suffer from this fatiguing, painful death.

"Another one?" she asked quietly, after hearing that there was a dead body found. And with her sword she gestured below her, where the corpse of the man was. "This one just died in front of me."

Spinning, she nodded at the house he had told her of before he passed. "He said that members of his family were in there. I'm not sure of the details but ..."

The door looked firmly shut against the doorposts, and the shutters too. Likely, they were all bordered up, using benches, nails and whatever the family could find. How were they surviving? How long had they been in there? Philomel did not know. All she knew was the thick fog that held this town hostage, and the death that reeked in the air.

"It could be a wife," she let the tip of her sword fall, "and even children, I do not know. Perhaps animals, I am not sure."

She was rigid, full of nerves. Her usual companions were not with her - Veridian, her beloved fox was still in Tylmerande, aiding her army to stay gauged against the horror of the Brotherhood's war. Her best friends were mostly there too. And Shinsou - well. She wasn't going to talk about him.

There was only her dragon, Delath. But she was determined to not risk him. Not yet.

She sighed and fully faced the drow.

"My name is Philomel and it seems you are as new to this town as me. I think we might be at the start of an epidemic."