Chapter Fourteen: A Cold Day at Cainhurst
The first of the petrified shrieks shot through the open window.
Maria sat up like a bolt of lightning, her heart racing against the confines of her chest. Throwing her covers to the side and leaping off of her mattress, she heard another, a few floors down. Grabbing her Rakuyo, which lay peacefully at the foot of her bed, she pushed out into the corridor and started to descend the long spiral staircase.
At the bottom of her stairs, a group of Cainhurst nobles were gathered around a window.
"What's going on?" she asked.
One of them turned to her, their face twisting into a fearful gasp.
"The Church has come to Cainhurst," they whispered.
"What?" Maria's grasp on her blade tightened as she peered through the snow-capped glass and into the courtyard. The shimmer of the morning sun quickly illuminated a frightening visage. Streaks of fresh blood, still so wet that they glinted in the light, led all the way towards the building. A few corpses, smashed into an unrecognisable pulp, were strewn about.
Maria recoiled, a perfect storm of disgust and fury brewing inside of her.
"Those bastards," she snarled, rending her Rakuyo into two and sprinting towards the door. However, before she could pass through the threshold, she collided with a monstrous figure who was charging in from outside. The man was steeped in the red and sticky coat of his victims' gore, and at first glance, it appeared he actually lacked a head, although closer inspection revealed that the rusted pyramid he wore atop his head was some kind of ancestral helmet.
The beastly figure drew back at the sight of Maria. A deep voice resonated from beneath the metal. "Lady Maria?"
Nausea crept through Maria's body like the ghastly roots of a poisonous plant at the sound of her name. However, her surprise did not hold her in place for long, as she remembered about the bloodstains all across the man's garb.
Shrieking in a blaze of fury, Maria shot forward and stabbed the man through his chest with both blades of her Rakuyo. As his body convulsed, she planted her feet firmly upon the carpeted ground, and slowly lifted him off of the ground. Seeing him struggle wildly in the end of the blades, his life slowly draining away, she allowed the faintest of smiles to pass her lips.
"Who sent you?" she hissed. "Was it Laurence?"
The man spluttered, somehow exerting clear disgust in spite of his grave wounds. "I'll never tell you a thing, you filthy Vileblood."
Maria shook her head, before tossing the man's corpse against the wall with a grotesque amount of force, where it landed with a boom of crashing metal.
The nobles by the window were watching frightfully, many of them fixated by the blood of their brethren which ran down the invader's garb, his own now joining it in an almost serene river across the tiles.
"It's going to be alright," Maria assured them. "Just stay here. You'll be safe."
One of the group nodded quickly. From their rigid stances and petrified expressions, it seemed unlikely that any of them were going to move any time soon.
Satisfied, Maria wiped down her blades on the carpet and headed out the door.
Fortunately for the Executioners, Cainhurst's defensive strategies were particularly underwhelming, and with the strength of brute force alone, the party quickly made it inside the castle grounds, slaughtering every combatant who dared stand in their way. It was clear that these knights were unaccustomed to challenge – there were no cannons, no trebuchets; no anything that could have been used to fend off an offensive from outside forces. They just possessed a rather large army, consisting of armoured soldiers of varying height and stature, all wielding the same armaments.
As Gehrman cut down another of these swordsmen, he started to look frantically around the castle grounds, gaze circling madly in the search for anything that could resemble a keep or gaol. There were many snow-cropped structures, but none of them stood out particularly.
A clank of metal behind him, and he turned, slashing through the jugular of an attacking knight. As their armour crashed into the snow, another came at him. And then another. And another.
And then, there was a resident of the Fishing Hamlet.
They were as dead as dead comes. Their eyes were rotten, set back in their sockets. Their flesh was grey and saggy, and came away in tatters like a snake shedding its skin. There was a gaping hole in the back of their skull, where an axe had been driven through.
Gehrman caught the scream at the back of his throat, where it started to burn away like acid. The phantom villager slashed out at him with their hook, but were suddenly cut down by a passing Executioner. The Chikage they had been wielding hit the ground with a clatter.
Gehrman blinked fiercely, banishing the torturous memories to the recess of his mind, where they belonged. However, that didn't stop him from seeing the Orphan of Kos just a few metres away, standing still and calm, eyes following him lifelessly. Head still upon its shoulders.
The old hunter tore his gaze away from the visage. He was just about to make for one of the smaller buildings when there was a loud roar, and he was sent barrelling to the ground by a blur of black. Crying out in shock, Gehrman rolled away with a mere second to spare as a warrior clad in black, feathered robes stabbed at the snow where his head had just been resting. Rising quickly, he dodged away as the Bloody Crow swiped at him again, before standing rigid and staring coldly at him. Gehrman watched the seething warrior closely, looking for some kind of weakness he could exploit.
He found none. From the corner of his vision, the Orphan continued to watch him.
"Where is Maria?" he shouted. The Bloody Crow tilted his head, and laughed cruelly.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" he sneered, before leaping forwards, slashing horizontally with his Chikage.
Gehrman jumped away, retaliating with a flurry of strikes with his siderite brand. However, the Crow proved too quick to hit, evading each swing with a fluidity comparable to liquid. Before Gehrman could react, he had pulled out a sleek pistol and pointed it straight at Gehrman's head. The old hunter swerved in time to avoid a fatal shot, but felt his shoulder bone explode as a bullet smashed straight through it, showering the ice behind him in a flurry of red.
Gritting his teeth and groaning in pain, Gehrman limped back. He quickly produced a vial of blood from his coat and swallowed it down hungrily, letting its unholy warmth fill him. Instantly, the agony that was gnawing at his injured shoulder was alleviated, and he spun back around to face the Bloody Crow, adrenaline renewed. The Cainhurst knight was visibly unfazed by the recovery of his opponent, and simply reloaded his Evelyn, cocking the barrel in Gehrman's direction once more.
Inhaling deeply, Gehrman felt his whole body flourish with newfound energy, and he disappeared in a haze of white fog, rematerializing several feet forwards in the midst of a swing. The startled Crow choked back a snarl as Gehrman's siderite blade pierced his lower abdomen, a trickle of blood oozing out from the fresh wound. Before his opponent could find the time to recover, Gehrman withdrew the blade, and thrust it forwards again, this time forcefully impaling the Crow in the centre of his chest.
The Crow groaned and fell onto his knees, waiting for the final blow to come. Gehrman stared at his hands in disbelief, completely unsure as to how he had just transcended matter to attack his opponent. The Orphan's eyes bore into the back of his head.
Gehrman couldn't resist the urge to look around. Kos' undead offspring was smiling broadly at him, coarse grey lips pulled apart in a ghoulish expression. The hunter shuddered, pulling away and returning his attention to his fallen foe.
Lifting his brand up high, he readied the strike that would finish them off.
The Executioner brigade burst into the dining hall. As the old wooden doors were thrown violently open, a cold wind from outside flooded in, extinguishing all of the many candelabra that adorned the length of the wall. A few finely-dressed women turned their heads at the sight of the intrusion, their eyes widening and receding in pure terror.
Logarius gazed out over the table, and at the many glass goblets that occupied it.
Glass goblets filled with deep red liquid.
The old hunter steadied himself as his body was wracked by hatred – as frigid and unsympathetic as the blizzard outside the walls. The women at the table started to rise, backing out of their chairs as panic overwhelmed them.
"Kill them," Logarius said, voice a barely audible whisper.
His Executioners didn't need telling twice. They bore down upon the women viciously, drawing out knives and slicing their throats wide open. One of the women tried to pull away at the last minute, and her head fell clean off, the torso falling haplessly across the table and spilling the contents of many of the glasses.
Logarius looked out over the chaos as a familiar scent flooded his nostrils. The smell of red wine was hard to confuse, possessing a musky pungency that comes with a ripe age. The old hunter looked down at his fingers, his withered flesh caked in freshly-dried bloodstains. He could see the beginnings of a wispy red aura starting to surround him, and recalled for the first time the things he had witnessed in the midst of the hamlet massacre.
The crimson tinge clung to his men now the same way it had all those years ago. They were intoxicated with blood, and clung to death's foul form with a tender embrace.
And yet, there was no mistaking the morality of their actions. All those who lived by the vileblood would die by it.
The next room – a wine cellar of sorts, stocked to the gills with enormous wooden barrels – concealed several cowering nobles, who all raised their arms in alarm as they were set upon by a barrage of armoured wheels, and smashed into pulp.
Logarius shut his eyes as the floor ran wild with red. He muttered a silent prayer to himself, pleading for their salvation, as well as his own.
After clearing out the banquet halls, the Executioners swarmed back out into the courtyard, leaving a neat trail of blood from their dripping armaments. Beneath a large archway, the last remnants of the Cainhurst army had attempted to create a road block, lining the stone cobbles with shields, mounted crossbows and a row of cages, all of which contained ravenous, shaggy black hounds. Without warning, the cages were torn wide open, and the canine massing was unleashed upon Logarius and his armada.
Logarius grit his teeth as one of the dogs sunk it's teeth into his leg. With an angry growl, he spun round, slicing the hound's head clean off of it's neck. All around him, a chorus of pained yelps indicated the deaths of the other dogs.
As the last canine fell, their armoured owners charged in, swinging wildly at their adversaries. The Executioners wasted no time in cutting them down, rending their bodies into several pieces before disposing of the waste with a smashing from their wheels. When the carnage cleared, there was but one Cainhurst Knight remaining. The Vileblood, realising with a jolt of panic that he was now alone amidst a blood-soaked field of his dead comrades, fell to his knees, hands outstretched in a desperate plea for life. If he had surrendered like this in a knightly duel, he would have been put to death instantly. Mercy was not the Cainhurst way.
Unfortunately, neither was it the Executioner way.
Logarius himself stepped forward, hoisting the knight off of his feet with inhuman strength, and suspending him out in front of his men's eyes. His grasp on the knight's throat was inescapable, and made it impossible for any further blasphemies to escape his lips.
"Never again will your vile kin slaughter innocent lives," Logarius declared, hands tightening on the man's windpipe. With one sudden movement, the knight's face was illuminated in a red haze, his very bone visible beneath his flesh. As his skeletal mouth opened wide in a scream, Logarius threw the man aside, and the fog that had lit up his flesh was absorbed into Logarius himself, whose eyes fluttered with pleasure.
Ahead was the Royal Keep. There was nothing that could stand in their way now.
Time to end it.
Maria's blades cleaved through another Executioner. The murderous warrior spluttered and fell backwards, his armour clanking like a dustbin as his corpse rolled down the staircase. The young squire he had been attempting to brutalize looked up at Maria hopefully, climbing to his feet with barely-constrained agony.
"Here, take my blood," Maria exclaimed, rolling up her sleeve and cutting a small opening just below her elbow.
The boy's eyes lit up, and he started to limp towards her. However, his stumbling was cut short quickly when another pyramid-clad psychopath rounded the corner, and stabbed the boy straight through his eye socket with the shaft of his Kirkhammer.
Maria tore his eyes away as the squire fell, before her gaze landed vengefully on the Executioner. At the sight of Maria, they slid their blade into the blunt on their back, and hoisted their hammer onto their shoulder.
"I should've known that you would be one of them," they chided. "Even during the old hunts, you had a thirst for blood that verged on sickness."
Maria put one foot forward menacingly. "You have the nerve to label me as sick? Look around you. Look at the people you have murdered!"
The Executioner shook his head. "This is not murder. This is justice. And if you stand in our way, you are perverting that justice."
Maria leapt at the Executioner, who swung his Kirkhammer with both hands. The blunt smashed against the stone wall, showering both combatants with shards that scratched and tore at their clothes. Maria slid beneath the Kirkhammer's path of destruction, ending up behind the Executioner. He tried to turn around, but Maria stabbed him in the back with one of her blades, before kicking him forwards with a sharp push from her ice-coated boot.
The man fell onto his belly, his Kirkhammer falling feebly from his hands. Maria rolled him onto his back, and looked straight into his face, with both blades poised at his neck.
"Who is the real monster?" she asked. "The ones who defend their homes from savage invaders or the ones who savagely invade them?"
The Executioner laughed, heaving up blood all over the front of his garbs.
"That's funny," he spat. "I could ask you the same question."
The heroic defender of their clan and the vile monster who would seek to destroy them looked each other straight in the eyes, neither knowing one from the other.
Then, Maria drew both her blades across the man's jugular, and the life instantly flooded out of him.
Maria collected the man's blood on her fingers, sipping at it with her tongue. Instantly, new energy shot through her like a current, and she burst out of the garrison door and into the blizzard. A glance towards her old lodgings greeted her with an awful sight. The windows were shattered, the wood splintered, and the inhabitants – whom she had seen alive only half an hour ago – were lying in small heaps, features rendered into indistinguishable pulp.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, feeling nothing but the flitting flurry of snow around her head.
She stayed like that for many minutes. The sound of combat across the way finally tore her gaze away, and seizing both blades in her hands, she gave chase.
Victyr started to laugh.
Gehrman's grip on his blade tightened at the very sound; chilling to the bone in a way that even the howl of a blizzard could never replicate.
The Hunter looked over his shoulder. A figure was approaching them through the snowstorm. Even in the low visibility, Gehrman recognized the way they held out their blades in an instant, and he felt a new flame flitter inside his chest.
"Maria!" he cried. "I'm here."
The figure waded in, until they were close enough to see clearly. Close enough for the blood around her lips to be visible.
Close enough for Gehrman's soul to split in half.
His eyes locked on her, his pulse stopping dead. His breath caught in his throat. There were no sounds but the rapid beat of his shrinking heart.
"Hello, old friend," Maria whispered. Her voice was tender, but with a serpentine menace that shot through him like liquid nitrogen. Even from across the way, Maria could see the bloodstains on Gehrman's garb. The blood of her people. Her family.
Gehrman opened his mouth, and let out a long, mournful sob. Maria watched him, eyes flecked with a childish curiosity.
"It's been a long time," she said. "In fact, I had consigned myself to solitude, accepting that I would, and could, never see you again. And yet, here you are, butchering my family."
"These monsters are not your kin. I don't know who you are anymore," Gehrman replied softly, trying desperately to wrench his gaze away, but with no success.
"I'm the same person I've always been," Maria retorted sharply. "You would've understood if you'd tried to talk to me. You know, we all went through the same ordeal that day. The same guilt. But you wouldn't even look at me, would you? So ashamed of your own pupil – your best friend…"
Gehrman's eyes fell towards Maria's leather-coated feet. "You were never just a friend, Maria… You are everything to me…"
"Then how could you abandon me like that?" Maria snarled. "I needed you there! I had done so many awful things; I hated myself for the monster I had let myself become, and you were content to let me suffer alone?"
"No," Gehrman sighed. "I stayed away from you not because I was ashamed of your actions…. I was ashamed of my own."
Maria bunched her fist. "I don't want to hear your excuses. I want to hear your confession!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Gehrman could see Victyr crawling away on his knees. He didn't try to pursue him.
"Then… I confess everything," Gehrman conceded. "I was weak, and selfish, and because of my actions I let you walk that path alone. I should never have done that. But… please, look at yourself. Look at these people! They're monsters, Maria."
The former Lady of the Astral Clocktower smiled sombrely.
"They're my family. And all I have left."
As soon as the last word had left her mouth, both Rakuyo blades appeared at her sides so quickly it was as though they had materialised from thin air. Gehrman watched the twin points glisten in the morning sunlight, already feeling them piercing his flesh and cutting out his heart long before they ever would.
"Do it," Gehrman urged. "I've been dead a long time."
Maria shook her head. "Not as long as I have."
Without so much as another breath to her old friend, Maria turned her blades inward, and plunged them hard through her ribcage. Gehrman screamed silently as a river of red ran from the gaping wounds, coating her Rakuyo in its crimson taint, the sanguine sizzling as it clung to the metal and coated it in an unholy flame that burned brightly even amidst the vortex of snow.
Maria looked over at Gehrman, tears brimming in her eyes. "Give it your all."
Gehrman half-heartedly raised his blade. "I have nothing left to give."
Maria ignored him and swung, her pirouetting blades arcing through the air. Each of her swipes had the full force of her ability behind them; there was no hesitance. Gehrman could see the desperation to spill his blood - the way he had spilled the blood of her kin.
It frightened him.
Despite this, there was very little danger to a veteran hunter like Gehrman. The streaks of flame left in sword's wake were enough to singe Gehrman's coat, but nothing else. Even with his apathy to battle, his exhaustion and his prior wounds (not even to mention his lack of both legs) he was still able to evade each and every one of Maria's strikes, weaving in and out and over and under every blow.
This was the power that love granted him.
As she spun to strike him again with both of her fiery sabers, he pulled out his pistol, and shot her in the left, and then right, arm in quick succession. Maria shrieked as her blood streaked out, her blades spinning away over the ice. As she wailed, Gehrman slowly walked forward, pressing his boot against Maria's chest, and putting her flat on her back in the snow.
"Not today, Maria," he declared. "Not today."
"I'll kill you," she whispered, eyes burning fiercely. "I'll kill you."
But, even as she said it, she knew she couldn't. Not anymore. Even as she lay there, back buried in the frigid earth, she felt the will to destroy flooding away into a cold nothing.
Gehrman could see it too. "You still have a lot to learn," he whispered.
Through a haze of pain, a sad smile crept onto Maria's lips. The hunter-turned Vileblood started to laugh, in spite of the steady blood loss from her elbows. It was clear to her that Gehrman wouldn't – or couldn't – kill her himself, which was a ridiculous notion to her, considering how she had been firm in her conviction to kill him only moments ago.
Something in her felt liberated, chains that had bound her from ever conceivable angle shattering under the brunt. After a quick deliberation, she realized what the sensation was.
It was relief. She was relieved because Gehrman had finally accomplished what she so strongly, yet unknowingly, desired.
He had stopped her.
"Well... you're still a fool," she grinned, moments before she blacked out.
Logarius himself separated from the slaughter in the Throneroom, approaching the Vileblood queen in a slow step that betrayed his reluctance.
Annalise chuckled, amused at the image of the pyramid-headed marauder approaching her feet. "Oh, be serious. Do you really think you can kill me?"
Logarius stared up at her, showing no sign of intimidation.
"Everybody dies," Logarius said calmly. "Today is your day."
Annalise shook her head, a cocksure grin tugging at the corners of her chapped lips.
"I don't think so…" she laughed, before producing a dagger, and slicing her own neck wide open in one clean arc.
Logarius leapt back as a spray of blood lurched outwards across the ground, hissing as it made contact with the earth, and leaving a small cloud of smoke.
Annalise shrugged, the opening in her jugular writhing with the rest of her flesh. Logarius fell to one knee, fighting the urge to vomit with every ounce of his will.
"Foolish humans," Annalise sighed, wincing slightly as her flesh weaved back together like cloth. "You never learn… Your thirst for blood… for violence… it is sickening… What my people do we do out of a necessity to evolve. To survive, and to continue the Cainhurst lineage. What you do is sport – slaughter for the sheer enjoyment of it. But this is one game you can't win…"
Logarius swallowed his repulsion and stood tall again. Both arms outstretched, he reached deep inside of himself, finding the immense power that was churning inside of him.
He felt the aura of death flood through him, each and every corpse – every single drop of blood – and channelled it through his flesh until it reached the surface of his palms, crackling with tension. Then, with a heavy grunt, he volleyed it at Annalise.
The Vileblood Queen shuddered as she was gnawed at by the phantoms of her fallen brethren, their lifeforce inverted into pure malignance. But moments later she raised her head and smiled crookedly. "Is that all you've got?"
Logarius grit his teeth and fell back, panting. A sound like a gust of wind caught his ear, and Logarius turned as a crow-feathered knight lashed out at him from the shadows in the corner of the room, their razor-sharp Chikage missing him by mere inches. The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst lunged again, swiping at Logarius in a fit of uncontrolled rage at the one who would bring devastation to his home, his people and his undying queen.
Logarius was too fast, however. He was swathed in the power granted by hundreds of Cainhurst corpses, and, at this point, his body was barely even constrained by the laws of physics. Phasing in between Victyr's swipes, he brought his scythe down several times against the Bloody Crow, before driving his sword through his side, and sending him sliding backwards along the throneroom floor.
"Wait."
Logarius held fast, quivering under the strain of a huge exertion of energy that seized his muscles in a vicegrip, and stuck him fast. Victyr, who had drunk a blood vial from his pockets, rose sluggishly. Annalise placed a single hand on his shoulder, patting him reassuringly.
"You're not going to die here, Victyr. You still have a mission."
Victyr sheathed his Chikage and nodded silently. With one last spiteful glance in the direction of Logarius, he took off, cleaving through a couple of Executioners on his way out. Logarius didn't bother to give chase.
He turned back to face the immortal Queen of Cainhurst. Annalise slumped back in her throne – clearly, whatever force she had conjured onto Logarius had sapped the last of her strength.
Logarius smiled, in spite of himself.
"Now, what are we going to do with you?" he asked.
In the aftermath, the only living beings beside the Executioners and Annalise were the Vileblood's tiny manservants, who had remained committed to their tasks even in the midst of bloody combat. Now, they had buckets of water and sponges with them, and were passionately dabbing at the rivers of blood that ran all over the tiled floor.
At a glance, it seemed possible that they may complete their task in roughly ten years.
Gehrman, who was still recovering from the shock of seeing Maria, regained his composure quite suddenly at the sight of Logarius, sitting on his own on the middle of the rooftop adjacent to Annalise's throne room. Startled, he ran to his old friend's side.
"We're leaving," he said.
Logarius shook his head. "I can't. Annalise is immortal – and far too dangerous to be left alone."
"This isn't your fight anymore," Gehrman insisted. "Let the Church take care of Annalise."
"You know as well as I do that Laurence is in no state to assist us," Logarius sighed. There's nothing left for me in Yharnam. The least I can do with the last of my years is make certain that nobody can ever serve that beastly woman ever again. At least, not whilst I live…"
"Don't throw your life away over nothing," Gehrman urged. "Let us burn this forsaken castle to the ground!"
"No," Logarius insisted. "People have to know what happened here – the lives lost in vain. But you must destroy the bridge. Nobody can ever return here."
Gehrman locked eyes with the old hunter and finally relented; feeling yet another fraction of his soul break off and dissipate, he stood up, clasping Logarius's shoulder, before turning toward the exit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two Executioners pulling Maria to her feet, one of them placing their sword at her throat.
"No, we bring her back alive!" Gehrman barked, causing the man to drop his blade in alarm.
"But she's a Vileblood!" the man protested. "Her filth must be purged from this eart-"
"She is my friend!" Gehrman roared. "And this time, I'm going to be by her side, no matter what!"
His words seemed to cause something of a stir in the half-conscious Maria. Her head, lopsided and blanched white with blood loss from her now-bandaged hands, seemed to follow Gehrman as he strode past, a new determination in his step.
Outside, the snowfall had come to an abrupt stop, and all that remained in the morning breeze were tiny specks of ice, caught in an updraft from the valley below.
The road ahead was clear - for the first time in days, if not weeks.
And Gehrman's mind, clouded in dark by the sins of his past, was clearer for the first time in years.
He watched them.
He watched them enter the chambers carrying huge flagons of freshly-drained blood.
He watched them leave the chambers some twenty minutes later, empty flagons in tow.
But they didn't see him. From his position on the outside ledge, he could see all the comings and goings of Laurence's chambers, without running the risk of becoming one himself.
There were only five bodyguards outside his quarters that evening. It was considerably less than the previous night, and bode well for what was to come.
Ludwig raised his luminous blade in front of his face, pressing his clammy forehead against its cool steel flesh. He felt its radiance flow through him, power so intense and untamed that it seemed to grasp at him possessively, eager that none else should claim him.
"My guiding moonlight," he whispered. "Guide me one last time."
Ludwig let the blade fall against his side, fingers curling around its hilt.
On his way here he had had so many doubts. So much resilience, in spite of his faith in the knowledge that this needed to happen. But he couldn't wait for Gehrman to finish playing hero – Yharnam would never sleep well whilst its auteur continued to breathe.
He watched two of them step outside to have a cigar break. He watched the remaining three take up new positions, blocking off Laurence's chambers from every angle.
He watched their faces light up with terror as he plunged shoulder-first through the stain glass window, descending onto the carpet in a hail of broken glass.
"One last hunt," he thought, as he drove his blade through the first man, and felt their blood, warm like candlewax, seep across his fingers.
One last hunt.
With a grunt and a hard, well-aimed swing, he carved open another of the guards, their blood spewing across his robes with a simmering splatter. The sight of the gore, holy as his own blade, lit something within him. A darkness, sickly and depraved, coursed through him, warming him from toe to brow, and he started to chuckle. At first, it was but a whisper, barely audible, but with every successive drop of blood he spilt, it grew louder, and more deranged.
As the last guard fell, his chortles were loud like thunder, and twisted away from anything recognisable as human. A more artistic mind may have described the sound as a demented whinny, spewed from the mouth of a nightmare steed.
The accursed hunter pushed open the doors, and swept in, dripping freshly-spilled blood in his wake.
The chambers were plunged in darkness, and a deathly still hung over the place like an ever-watchful eye. As Ludwig crept forwards, a murderous glint in his eyes, a voice beckoned to him from the shadows.
"And a good evening to you, my faithful blade."
Laurence's dulcet tones were unmistakable, but there was a rough edge to them now – a deeper, primal inflection that wiped away all od Ludwig's bravado with a shudder.
A figure was sat beneath the window. In the faint light, Ludwig could see their silhouette, misshapen limbs sprawled out beside them, and a coarse, wispy hair that came out a good inch from their flesh.
"Laurence?" Ludwig called.
The figure made a quiet sound – perhaps a grunt, or a sigh – and rose out of their chair. As the light crossed their body, towering at nearly nine feet tall, Ludwig caught a glimpse of a pair of hideous, gnarled claws, and readied his blade, nausea washing over him in a great surge.
"I fear I may have lost all resemblance to that great man," he said, the vicar's trademark calm giving Ludwig trembling palpitations. "Have you come to slay me, like all your other beasts?"
Ludwig tried to reply, but no words would come off of his tongue, dry and thick like a wad of butter. His whole body stiffened.
"Lost your nerve? Or is it, that after everything I have done, you find yourself unable to cut me down? Ah, no matter. I can hardly blame you. Sickness is a difficult thing to face."
Laurence stepped forward until he was right in front of Ludwig. The sight of him up-close was nearly enough to send Ludwig into a fear-induced fit.
"But we are still holy men," the beast proclaimed, its frayed fur trailing around its bovine-like horns as it spoke. "I have a duty to my people to face sickness without fear. To lead, in times of darkness, where light is a frail thing that scarcely shows its face. It's not all bad, you know? Once you get over the ghastly appearance, you can really marvel at the prowess it gives you. Observe."
The beast that spoke with Laurence's voice shot out both claws, piercing Ludwig through the chest, and lifting him off of the ground without any discernible strain. Ludwig writhed like a beached whale, his own mortality flashing before him in a manner most unholy.
"Please," he gurgled. "I can give you Gehrman. You want Gehrman, yes?"
Laurence stared hard at him for a couple of seconds, his jet black pupils pressed down on Ludwig's struggling form. Then, he broke out in a vile, fanged grin.
"We have no need of Gehrman. Not any more. But, even if we did, we know exactly where he is. Where he has been for the past few months."
The accursed hunter, drunken with blood and sobered by terror, barely felt the pain as his chest was wrenched apart, his bones splintering and breaking, and his own blackened blood spraying over the silk carpet.
"I really wish you could've stood by my side, Ludwig," the beast continued, as it watched the life slowly drain out of it's young protégé. "But you have proven that you are too short-sighted. You lack my vision. My eyes."
Ludwig let out one last enfeebled whimper, before Laurence ripped him clean in half, and threw him aside. With a low growl, the beast sipped at the blood on his claws, eyes fluttering at the potency and wealth of the Holy Blade's life. Upon the floor, the old holy sword glimmered one last time, before Laurence's deformed shadow stepped over it, and eclipsed its bright light once and for all.
The Cleric Beast returned to his seat, letting the rays of starlight bathe his leathery skin once again. Below, his city slept, waiting patiently for his guidance.
"And you shall have it," the beast whispered, cackling softly to himself. "I will make you see as I have seen. I shall grant you eyes."