Funnily enough, out of all those involved, Mia was the least outwardly panicked about this, despite the fact that she was the one with the barrel of the shotgun pointed at her. That did not mean it was even slightly reflective of her internal state, but she hardly wanted to agitate a person with no qualms about pointing guns at strangers before even offering the customary how-do-you-dos. Every impulse screamed at her to pull away, to do everything in her power to flee, to get as much distance from the offending weapon as she could, but it felt oddly like doing so would be more likely to escalate things further than stillness ever could, and so she did nothing more than the bare minimum to get out of harm's way.
"Stop shouting," hissed the figure behind the door, the fear in his voice unmistakeable, "You'll draw the monsters!" In his defence, this was a very valid concern - one that Mia, herself, shared in - considering the fact that they had managed to sneak their way passed the gateway, it was not out of the question to think that the slightly smarter of the Lycans could figure out a way in too. There really was nowhere safe in the village to properly hide, so for a man to be overly cautious was hardly a fault.
"Julian!" Elena exclaimed, her voice thankfully a cautious hush, even if it did prickle with a similar fear to the man's own, which seemed to be the only consistent state in the whole village, "Calm down." For her credit, she did manage to sound genuine in her attempt at pacifying the other.
Evidently this did not go as well as was she hoped it would, as the man let out an indignant snort. That said, he did let the door swing open enough to reveal that it was not disembodied voice speaking to them, but a man in flat-cap and heavy winter coat. There was no steadiness in his disposition, his gaze darting about the area as if he expected they were going to have a swarm of savage, bloodthirsty beasts descending upon them in an instance. Not an entirely incorrect impression, admittedly, as a distant growl floated through the air from somewhere unseen on the other side of the wall. As long as they stayed on the other side of the wall, Mia concluded, there really should be no reason for there to still be a gun being pointed her way, but evidently he wasn't going to be relenting without good cause.
"Who's this?" he barked, talking as if she was not even there, despite the fact he was eyeing her with a great deal of suspicion.
"A friend!" the woman insisted, there being something pleading in her voice, which was only fair since she would quite like to see the shotgun removed from the face of someone who had offered them nothing but kindness in the few moments they had been acquainted, " She helped father and I, she is no threat. Please, Julian, just let us in, he might die out here if you don't."
"That's not my problem," he replied, "They'll smell the blood and it'll put us all in danger!"
"If it isn't safe from them now, it wasn't safe before," Mia spoke up, "It's just selfish of you to send a person out to die because you're too scared to try and do something about it."
"The hell d'you know about this?" Julian snapped back, clearly not the most pleased about being accused of being a coward for his cowardly actions, especially not by a stranger.
"What's going on?" a far more gentle voice from behind the man asked. The speaker showed herself a matter of heartbeats later, revealing a gentle, if not slightly matronly woman clad in black, looking a little like the world was weighing on her shoulders and, all things considered, it might as well have been.
"These people," the man began, sounding horribly accusatory in this, "Want to let a dying man into the house."
"'These people'?" the owner of the house echoed, aghast, "Julian, these people are are our friends. Hurt or not, they have a place in safety. Come come, the others are inside already," she paused, helping the old man the little way inside, this mostly consisting of helping the man up off the porch where he had slumped himself down. Although he grumbled a little, he did not protest nearly as much as he had when others had offered him help, "Julian, rather than threatening our friends, make yourself useful and check the grounds," when the man showed a clear reluctance, she waved a hand, "Go on now." Now, with everyone gone - Juilian having not kicked his reluctance as he skulked off like a scolded child - it was just Mia and Luiza, the latter offering the former a long, slightly prying look, "You aren't from the village, are you?" This was posed as a question, but it was more of an observation than anything.
"Is it that obvious?" Mia asked, offering a slightly clumsy smile, wanting to seem pleasant so she did not run the risk of being turned away, "No, I'm not. My name is Mia."
"Mia," the other echoed, looking conflicted for a moment, "If Elena trusts you, I will just have to trust in her judge of character. Come inside."
The older of the two turned on her heels, moving further into the house. She did not go too far as she turned back to make sure that Mia had shut the door behind her, which, of course, she did, not wanting to risk anything at all. Evidently her being there had been risky enough as it was, so she most certainly did not want to do anything to add to that, not if she could avoid it, and she she could avoid it and so she did. Or at least she hoped she did, not that hoping ever really got her that far.
There were a few framed pictures hanging from the hallway that Mia followed the kindly stranger down, both photographs and paintings of people she assumed were family, places she assumed held some sort of personal significance to the homeowners, and all manner of sentimental things that, for reasons that she could not fully explain, brought a strangely sombre air to the place.
"Wait here, I need to check on the others."
Mia had not realised they had reached a little sitting room until the other spoke this. Her reply was not the most verbose, but the mumbled confirmation had been enough, and so the other bowed her head in acknowledgement before she turned to leave.
Now alone, she took a great big breath, not quite a sign but very close to it. She offered her arm a quick glance, just checking to make sure it really had stopped its bleeding, which it thankfully had, before she shook out her arms to try and shake away some of the nervous tension that was flaring up an old ache in her neck that she had been managing relatively successfully until then. Old injuries did have a way of coming back again when it was the worst possible times for it. Not wanting to dwell too much on this, she took a moment to glance around the room she found herself in. There was nothing particularly exciting in the room, a few comfortable chairs set around a coffee table, a bookcase that had been picked clean from most of its contents when the thoughts of escaping had still been a viable option, and a few other signs that under better circumstances it would have been a happy home.
"This way," Luiza stated, thankfully not commenting on the fact that Mia flinched a little, having not realised that she had returned, "The others are waiting."
"Thank you for letting me stay here," Mia began as she followed the woman off and into a short hallway that lead into the main house rather than the entrance space, "It was very kind of you, really, so I appreciate it."
"It was nothing," the other woman replied, dismissing this, slowing to a stop by a curtain door, "Nobody could send a person back out there in good faith." With a pleasant smile, she held the curtain out for Mia to go through.
She had no sooner entered the room, not even given the time to register the occupants of the room, before she was met with hostility.
"The fuck's this?" a man shouted, his voice slurred from intoxication, evidently having tried to medicate against the horrors of the world, "An outsider? Gonna get us all killed."
"Don't be so inhospitable, Anton," Luiza shushed, "She helped Leonardo and Elena, so she earned her place here."
"Bullshit!" the man, Anton, exclaimed, "She's no good, mark my bloody words, we're fucked now and its because all because of her."
"We can't know what will become of us, but there is a safety in numbers," the woman said with a slightly scathing hiss to her voice before she turned to Mia, offering an apologetic smile, "Make yourself comfortable, don't pay him any mind."
"Thank you," came Mia's reply, settling herself into an unoccupied chair, "I heard your message earlier, about survivors having somewhere to go, surely this isn't everyone left in the Village?" She finally took the time to properly look about the little gathering there, and there really was not all that many people there. Aside from herself and those who had accompanied her in, and the owner of the house, there was the drunkard, a woman caught up in her own private miseries, and a man who really was not in a good physical state as he had been quite thoroughly bandaged up.
"Left? You think there's anybody left out there? There is no one left!" Anton shouted, hauling himself to his feet, staggering thrice but miraculously managed to keep himself upright as he stumbled about the room, using the bottle he was nursing to gesture to the others in the room. "A worthless invalid!" The injured man looked away. "A stupid, wailing bitch!" The weeping woman buried her face in her hands. "And you!" He turned his accusatory attention fully towards Luiza, the hand holding the bottle wagging at her. "You drag a bloody man and some outsider in here like it's nothing and expect to be all safe? There is no safe! Not here, not anywhere! Every sorry bastard out there has been ripped in half, so of course there's nobody fucking left out there! Tomorrow we'll all be dead. Just like her damn husband!" The force of which he gestured towards the woman in question caused his drink to slosh up and spill onto the floor, which did nothing to improve his mood.
"That's enough!" Luiza shouted, seeming to surprise herself with the sheer intensity of the raw pent up emotions that came out with this. "This house has protected my family for generations, and drunk or not, you are all welcome and safe as anyone can be in here."
The drunkard let out an irritated sniff at this, something of a sneer still finding what seemed to be a near permeant home upon his features. At least it seemed he thought it wise to not continue to antagonise the woman who had brought him into her home, and so simply made his way back to his chair, unceremoniously flopping himself down again, making sure he did not waste any more of his drink as he did so.
"What on earth happened here?" Mia asked, "All this destruction and violence, its madness."
"Madness, yes." Luiza said, not bothering to mask the weariness in her voice, "I don't have a satisfactory answer, I am sorry. I thought the village was safe in its quiet devotion, but then the monsters came and attacked us, and they," her voice faltered a little, "They wouldn't stop coming." For all her previous shows of strength, it was obvious in that moment that she was as afeard as all the others were.
"Does that mean your husband was-?" Elena asked, omitting the actual word 'killed', but the implication was all too clear.
"No, no! No, of course not, he went to find help," there was something in this that made it seem like she was trying to convince herself of this more than the others, "That's it, and he'll come back, and with help."
"We should pray for him," Roxane stated through sniffles, "For all of us."
"Yes, I think we should. Come, gather.
All things considered, the coming and gathering was smoother than Mia had expected. They positioned the little circle, one of which she found herself caught up in as well, near the injured parties so that they would not have to move too much. Even Anton relented to being a part of the group, which gave a greater gravitas to the whole event.
"Great ones, hear our voice, together as one in reverence." begun the collective - aside from Mia - with a unity that suggested this was a common prayer, "We call on thee within the endless dark to deliver us into fate's hands. As the midnight moon rises on black wings, so we make our sacrifice and await the light at the end. In life and in death, we give glory, Mother Miranda."
Something about this unsettled her in a way she did not fully understand, and Mia found herself distractedly wiping her hands on her jeans as if she thought this might free her from the lingering discomfort. Evidently this was not a feeling those around her shared, in fact they even seemed to be a little more steady, as if their faith had truly lightened their gloomy states of being.
"Now," Luiza began, clasping her hands together, "The tea should be just about ready. Roxane, would you be able to lend me a hand?" This request was more so that she could distract the woman from her worldly woes.
"I think I've heard that prayer before," Mia began, returning to her chair, "There was someone, an old woman, by the cemetery who was repeating it."
"You mean the hag?" scoffed Leonardo, having to pause for a moment to get out a pained cough, "Dumb bitch is crazy as a bag of rats she is."
"There is wisdom in her devotion." Luiza, who had paused halfway through the door to the little kitchen, stated curtly, "And I hope it protected her as it shall protect us."
The old man was not paying attention as he had fallen into a series of growing coughs, which were interlaced with bouts of laughter that made the whole thing a great deal more unsettling and deeply, deeply wrong. He had managed to knock the lantern off the table, the flame spilling out onto the carpet which, with a profane cry of alarm, Anton was busying himself with trying to stamp out before it spread. Neither of these concurrent occurrences suggested that they were being protected. Somehow things managed to get worse from this, as the moment Luiza had hurried over to try and help, the old man sprung with a sprightliness that his wounds should not have made possible.
It was clear that he planned to cause harm to the woman, if not outright kill her and so, in a moment of panic, Mia reacted before she even fully conceptualised what was happening.
Bang!
The man, or what was left of him dropped to the ground with a thump, the gunshot still ringing in the air, seemingly magnified by the utterly horrified scream of Elena as she flung herself forward, dropping down to the corpse of her father. Mia could thank her reflexes later, once everything had settled down again, but this was not the time for this. Everyone - except Elena - was regarding her with horror, her gun still raised, but shaking a little in her hands as the implications of killing the very same person she had brought there might have.
"I-" Mia began, "I need to go."
Before anyone had the chance to stop her, whether it was in a good or a bad way, she turned on her heels and dashed off the way she had come in. While she did not want to have to deal with the monsters outside, she absolutely did not want to have to face vengeful people either, and she was not sure which she would deem the lesser evil. A monster would simply tear her apart without any particular personal connection, people always seemed to make things horribly personal and so could do absolutely dreadful things to one another.
With shaking hands, she fumbled with the front door when she finally reached it, and evidently this gave the person that she did not realise had followed her the chance to catch up, laying a hand on her shoulder. Mia let out a strangled yelp, flinching away from the touch with wide, staring eyes. For a moment she was about to raise her gun again, but stopped when she caught Luiza's eye.
"You saved me," the older of the two began, a grave seriousness to her disposition, "He was too far gone. Do not blame yourself, I should have seen it, I should have realised there was something worse at play." Luiza paused, needing to take a moment to stop herself before she was lost to her despair. "I cannot stop you from leaving if that is what you wish, but could you follow me before you do leave?"
Not wanting to risk her voice failing her, Mia replied with a simple nod. She wanted to trust the woman, after all, she had been nothing but kind to her from the moment she found herself on the doorstep, but that was before she killed someone that the woman considered a friend, and loyalties ran deeper.
Luiza lead Mia out into the front yard, her purposeful stride faltering for just a moment when a scream from the fields beyond the house rang out with the final moment before Julian's death.
"I do not dare to leave here, not if there is a chance that others might find their way here, but you could help us. It is said that if ever the village falls into darkness a person should gather the crests and call upon Them for help. The second is in the church, bring them both to the gate and you will be granted entrance." she paused in her explanation as she drew a key out from around her neck with one hand, the other resting against a door to what seemed to be a small shrine, "I can offer you the crest that has been given to my family to protect. Mia, can I trust you to do the right thing?"
"You can trust me." promised she, her voice oddly quiet.
With no other option but to believe her promise, Luiza quickly undertook the task of freeing the Demon Crest from its confinement. She paused for a moment, holding the awkwardly weighted stone in her hand for a thoughtful moment before, finally, she offered the crest over. It felt almost wrong for her to do so, but if there was ever a time that called for its necessity, it was this.
"Then travel safe, and may Mother Miranda watch over you." With this said, Luiza offered a bow before she turned and returned to the house.
Mia swallowed nervously, but her nerves were not so great that she regretted leaving. Shifting the crest in her grip to be in a way that was more practical to carry she moved to the gate, paused to listen for anything on the other side, then opened it a crack, paused again to listen, then finally, when a glance around suggested that there were none of the creatures she had previously encountered in the field, she quickly dashed through the wheat. Without the fear of death, this was a rather short journey, really, and one of which was more annoying than anything, but it was not long before she pushed through to the other side.
She hurried through the gate to the church, and dashed inside after travelling along to find the door. Thankfully it wasn't locked, as that would be a bother.
The first thing of substance that she noticed was the Maiden Crest that she was looking for, set with a place of honour on the alter, which she quickly snatched up, but this was not what caused her to fall still.
There was a portrait of a woman in an elaborate golden mask that was reminiscent of a bird hanging above the alter, and gazing upon this portrait a strange flicker of memory tried to make itself known. Ever since her time with the Bakers in Louisiana her memory was patchy and less than reliable, but she could recall heels tapping on linoleum floors, hushed conversations that she was not permitted to share in, a woman speaking of a noble purpose that came above all else. They were not memories that she liked, but she also did not like the implications that came with it.
Did she know this Mother Miranda?
The sound of laughter from just outside the church forced her out of her thoughts before she was able to find an answer to this.