He shakes his head and sighs, steeling his will to complete his task at hand. He grabs Mariette by her upper arm and gently coaxes her to stand. "Come now. There is more to be done. Might you please fetch one of the others to bring a mop and buckets?"
Mariette, still rife with shock, doesn't answer. Armen holds her arm and leads her through the hall while she quivers and stares at her blood-soaked palms. The creamy fur on her hands stained crimson and matted. Armen guides her down into the chapel and sits her on a pew in the front. The other nuns littered the floor at the base of the cross that stood at the back wall, fervently praying in hushed and frantic whispers.
Armen looks upon the nuns, scrying for anyone that might be well off enough to aid him in cleaning the room and disposing of mother. Collette seemed to be sensible enough while she prayed. No shaking, few tears, little panic. Armen approaches her and gently taps her shoulder. She finalizes her prayer by motioning her hand across her body as a cross before she looks up to him with eyes weary and brow furrowed in sorrow.
Armen nods at her unspoken ache before asking, "Collette? Might you aid me in cleansing the room? Gather a few buckets and a mop with water. Soak a bundle of rosemary in the water as well, please."
Collette says nothing but nods. Her movements slow and graceful as she rises to her feet and strides away. Leaving Armen and the nuns as she went to procure the cleaning supplies. Armen returns to the tainted room, and rifles through his satchel for a small wooden box inside. He opens it to reveal a set of several small vials; each filled with holy water. He also retrieves a small leather-bound book that contained pages of verses and rites used for cleansing demonic entities and spirits. He flips to a page, skimming through for proper prayers and words of banishment, while he awaits Collette to bring him the buckets, water, and mop.
After several minutes, he hears the timid voice of Mariette. "Sir Armen? Might I have a word?" He looks up from his book and at Mariette, who lingered in the doorway.
"Of course, sister. What is it?"
Mariette begins to step into the room, then hesitates, her foot hovering over the bloody floor, before she steps back outside. "Might you come out here with me? I wish not to be in there yet." Armen nods and joins her in the hallway, inquiring as he stands next to her, "What do you need of me?"
Mariette looks at him with teary eyes and with a shaky voice she asks, "Might... might I help to cleanse the room? And perhaps see to it that mother is given her rites?" Armen bites his lip, unsure of how to tell her honestly: there were no rites to give. Mother was subject to judgment after she had forsaken the Lord, and now, her soul was damned. Yet, how might he say unto Mariette such a cruel truth? He closes his eyes behind his helm as he gives her an answer that was not quite honest, but not a lie either.
"Sister, you needn't worry, for I have the excerpts and prayers necessary to do right by the Lord and by mother. I will take care of it, on my honor." Mariette nods, a tear weaving through the fur of her cheek, damping it to her skin as she asks further, "May I at least help to clean the room?" Armen smiles kindly, though she couldn't tell underneath his helm. "Of course, sister. I only await Collette to return with supplies."
As if on queue, Collette rounds the corner; one hand holding a bucket of water, the other holding a mop and two empty buckets. Armen graciously takes the pales from her and invites her to join he and Mariette in cleaning the physical muck from the room, to which she agrees with a sorrowful voice.
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They all enter the room, gently wading through the acrid smell, almost holding breath, and begin scooping the various masses of flesh and guts into the empty buckets. Collette is tasked with taking full pales from the room and dumping it onto the earth outside, behind the chapel, while Mariette and Armen picked up the tangible pieces from the various puddles. After the solid waste was collected and dumped into a pile outside, they began mopping it up, Mariette would stand nearest the empty buckets to ring the tainted water from the mop, while Collette would dispose of it outside. Armen, in his task of using the clean water with its rosemary bundle floating within, noticed that at about half full, the once-clean water had become dark as wine with the constant dipping of the bloodied mop. "Mariette, I should request of you a new pale of water, with a new and unblemished bundle of rosemary, please."
Mariette nods, yet asks, "Rosemary, Sir Armen? What does that help?" Armen turns his head to speak to her, not quite meeting her face but enough that she was clearly the recipient of his words, "Rosemary, for remembrance of those that are loved and lost. It pays respects to whosoever is taken from us in this world."
Mariette nods in understanding and leaves the room, carrying the bucket of fouled water with her. Armen looks upon the floor and rests his elbow upon the handle of the upright mop, crossing his ankles as he ponders.
"Was Mother so driven by vengeance that she hath consorted with demons? Or was there more to this? She spoke of the Watchers. Doth she speak of the return of the fallen angels divined from Enoch's learnings? Surely, they are still banished, bound in the Lord's chains beneath the Earth, yes?"
Armen sucks his teeth while he loses himself into thoughts further and further; peering through windows of subject within himself to provide conjecture that might lead him into a path to follow. More suspicions and thoughts provoke him into more hypotheticals. Mostly unfounded save for his own knowledge on the matters.
"That beast of the woods... Six days it omened to me. Yet I still breath. So, if not myself, then whom? Did it perhaps speak in metaphor, perhaps of mother's own soul? Nay, she had conjured the monster; she was corrupted before the thing's inception. Surely it could not have meant mine own soul... I stay true to mine virtues. At least. I believe so... Then surely it is another who is endangered..." Armen pries into the depths of his memory, hoping to find something that might reprieve his racing thoughts, but one particular notion comes up recurring... Mariette. Her grace, her poise, her timidity. Armen finds himself thinking of her gentle hands that grazed his skin and recalls his hope that she might have lingered longer with her bandaging whenever she would attend to him.
His mind snaps forth and crashes into the present as he hears the clatter of the wooden pales on the floor behind him; Collette returned with now empty, blood-stained pales. "Where is Mariette?" she asks upon entering. Armen keeps his gaze fixated forth, not turning to meet her, while his cheeks flamed with shame at being caught in his daydreaming. "Mariette went to procure a clean pale of water. She should return at any moment now." Giving his head a brisk shake to clear his mind, he turns to face Collette, "Might you go fetch some lamp oil and douse the pile of refuse that we hath slopped outside? It must be burnt, so that the incense might please the Lord, and make known our triumph in his name."
Collette, with a face plastered in skepticism, nods and leaves to fulfill Armen's request. After she leaves, Armen idly slathers the mop on the floor, keeping his mind occupied with the motions while he waits for Mariette to return with the clean water. After a few minutes of toiling idly, she enters the room, the wooden pale sloshing with clean water and soaked rosemary. Armen says nothing as she sets it down, and they both resume their janitorial duty in silence. The only noise being the gritty scraping of the mop against the floor, and the squeezing of tainted water into the empty refuse buckets.
After the floor is cleaned of its fluids, Armen directs his attention to the walls, covered in runes and sigils. Using the mop, he scrubs the walls same as the floor. After some time, the room itself looked unblemished in its form once again. Now came the time to cleanse the spiritual residue from it.
"Mariette, thank you for yours and Collette's assistance. Ye have made this grueling task more bearable in your aid. Now, mayhap you could assist Collette. I've sent her to burn the remains out back. See if she requires aid in her endeavors. I shall tend to the cleanse of this room's tainted air."
Mariette nods silently as she picks up the two buckets of dirty water and leaves the room. As she leaves, Armen watches her, ensuring that she is beyond the corner of the hallway and away so that she might not hear his banishing prayers. Normally, he would not concern himself with the emotions that might haunt the victims of demons, but Mariette, he felt, could use a last bit of hope in the ordeal. In that mother was saved in the end and is at the side of Jesus and the Lord, instead of suffering in damnation.
