Rabies.

Death was a morbid thing; cruel and unforgiving, it was an unspoken ghoul, its presence dreadful in the hearts of those hurt by it. It existed without bias, amoral, its ferocity tore at good and bad men alike.

But Lysandre— unsuspecting, yet strange— fell victim to its mystery. He, through years of isolation, succumbed to his intrigue. Enraptured by its every facet, he surrounded himself in finding out everything he could about death— a passive obsession, as much as it was a curse. He desperately sought to see how it affected his comrades, his foes; and, as he’d suspected, he’d found it was the same throughout.

He did not yield to mortal fears. Rarely did the mortician find himself tangled in anxiety like he was in his fascination with death; and those things things that left most men awake at night found no place in his mind. But this..

“so youre telling me youve never been vaccinated” bennett shuffles around in his bag, pulling out a syringe as lysandre wipes the cheeto dust off on his pant leg “Eueuejeksl” lysandre grunts. bennett sighs, murmuring to himself “the rabies got to him...”