I sat bolt upright, in pain and reaching out with my swarm.

Things were very wrong, that was the first thought to cross my mind. For one, I couldn't see the sky. When I died, I normally dissipated in black smoke, was forced to endure the pain, and then awoke by the workshop. The place I had awoken was a prison.

The only way that made sense was if I hadn't actually died. As I moved again, my pains made themselves known. For some reason, whoever dragged me here hadn't confiscated any of my equipment. I still had my axe and my blood vials, and I quickly used one to touch up my wounds.

It ran out of juice before all the aches went away, so I used another and pushed myself to my feet, a giggle escaping my mouth. Reminding me that that was still a problem. I started mapping out the room I was in using my bugs as I buried the thought with other information. The room was filled with creepy statues, the tiles really needed some maintenance, and there was no one in my range.

I put my hand to my head in an attempt to massage away the ache that the blood had failed to shift. The last things I remembered were fighting a crowd of Yharnamites after… dropping down the rest of the tower I found the hunter's workshop in. There had been a… unique beast down there, but nothing I couldn't overcome.

That one had been alone. Not with a crowd. It hadn't been the one to bring me here. Something had... happened when I killed it, but when I tried to remember what it was, the memory came with pain that blotted out my minds eye. I moved past it. That wasn't the last of my memory.

I had definitely been fighting. Of that much I was certain. There had been… a tall Yharnamite. I hadn't seen him up close, not with my eyes, anyway. The fight had been going much the way of the ones from before. I was incapacitating the men long before stepping close. Biding my time so they fell to my bugs and then fell the rest of the way to me. Then…

I remembered a lot of bugs disappearing at once. It had… distracted me. It let a pitchfork graze at my side. I… retaliated. Then nothing. There were flashes of my bugs crawling all over strange people in unfamiliar locations. Then… here.

The overwhelming question in my head was why?

I went over to the door and tested it, fully prepared to use my enhanced strength to wrench the bars, but it was unlocked. It slid open with a screech at barely a touch, leaving me standing in the open doorway with my arm outstretched.

Why?

Why bring me to near death and bring me here? Why save me from those other Yharnamites who would absolutely have jumped at the chance to kill me? Why go to all that effort just to leave me alone in an unlocked cell?

I tentatively stepped out, waiting for a shoe to drop but it never came. I was free to do as I pleased. With a strange feeling in my gut, I started to explore. Upstairs were more flights of stairs leading up and down. I almost went up, since I could sense earthworms around me and used that to figure I was underground still.

Crying coming from below made me pause. After a brief mental debate on whether crying was something that could be trusted in this place, I made for the room below. Many more creepy statues were here, as well as many creepy crawlies that I added to my swarm, and there was crying coming from a woman huddled in a corner.

First, I became really fucking cautious. Mentally stable people in Yharnam were less of a dime in a dozen and closer to being a needle in a haystack. That being said, I'd prefer not to push someone over the edge with sudden bugs, so I had them hide behind the myriad sculpted marble columns.

"Hello?" I tried.

There was no response, which was to be expected.

Regardless of my previous decision, I had my strongest bugs gather beneath me and dropped my axe into their waiting mandibles. They followed me closely, and maneuvered the axe so the handle was never far from my hand. Then I shook the woman's shoulders.

She was dressed similarly to how Gascoigne had been, kind of, they had the same cape, and had dark hair that curled just enough to be called wavy. Her skin was pale and clammy, and while that was difficult to make out in the current lighting, the whites of her eyes gave away a wild gaze as she reacted to my touch. One eye stared at me for a full second, then she pulled away from my hand and returned to rocking.

"The blood guides us," She was whispering to herself in fervent prayer, "Sees us through to the morning, always. The beasts come, ye of little faith. You who are the beast. The blood protects the faithful."

There was more, but I dismissed it for the misguided prayer that it was. I didn't really see how a god like what had been popular before Scion could fit into what I knew of reality, but that didn't matter here. She was praying to the blood. There would be no answers for her.

"I'm Taylor." I tried again.

If there was ever a way to scream as a whisper, I heard it here. It was as if my words brought this woman physical pain.

"Are you okay?" I said. No response. "Help?" I tried simply. Shorter phrases got through more often. This phrase did get through, but not in the way I expected. Blood spattered in front of the woman. She looked at me with a more wild expression than before.

"The blood protects the body. The blood protects the mind." Her mouth kept going, but her eyes were locked on me. "Yet the beastly plague remains. Insanity is its vision." She stood, but stayed hunched, and I really wasn't comfortable with how she was standing.

"Stop." I said.

Whoever this woman was, she could hear me and understand me. She stopped moving, and I let myself relax somewhat. It was short lived, because her eyes started crying blood moments later. She let out a horrible moan that spoke of mental torture she could not escape.

She was too pale. I extracted one of my blood vials from my belt and offered it. "Help?" I repeated. Though I said that and offered the vial, the handle of my axe was not far away. This whole situation was fucked. This person had gone rock still, and I couldn't help but think it was my words that did it to her. She started bleeding from her left ear at that point.

Why? Teilgean and I could hold conversation just fine and no one exploded. Not even the chapel dweller after listening to a ten minute discussion. Taylor and I held long conversations and she'd never started reacting like this.

"Our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears. Seek the old blood, but beware the frailty of men." The woman's words were even more breathy than before. "Frailty brings loss, and loss brings tears. But baptised in blood do we live again." She did not look sane.

The only thing I could figure as different here was this woman. Something in her was reacting to me. I should back off. I handed her the blood vial, but I backed off. She watched me go, and I watched her long after I was behind a barrier. The whites of her eyes stood out unnaturally against the darkness. Was that an effect of madness? Or was she just special in some way?

In any case, I made sure not to say another word as I ascended. The events from before weighing heavy on my mind. Those parting words in particular. Soon I reached the surface, and had to put all that behind me. It pained me, but I had a sneaking suspicion that this was a case of helping more by not helping at all.

The room I found myself arriving in was reminiscent of a cathedral, but it was in a similar state of disrepair to the room I woke up in, if not worse. It was clear I was in new territory, and I had new foes to deal with. There were two men just like the one that knocked me out wandering up and down the large and empty room.

I recognised them through my bugs more than my eyes. I'd never really looked at the guy who had jumped me, but I was familiar with how my bugs perceived him. He was taller than the Yharnamites I'd become used to killing, and he failed to care when the extensions of my will started biting. That alone set off alarm bells, and I directed more of my swarm to deal with him while maintaining distance myself. That let me get a better look.

He had a hood draped over his face to the point that it would have obscured his vision, and his shirt had a v-cut so deep I couldn't help but wonder if he was trying to show off. I used that deep v to better access his admittedly leathery skin with my bugs and get them biting all across his body. Through all of that, he seemed rather unconcerned. I eyed the bag he was carrying over his shoulder warily. The bag was big enough to fit a body.

The flashes I remembered of being dragged through mysterious places suddenly made more sense. I doubted they would ever make complete sense. Thought, I noted that the two I was currently backing away from were almost completely identical.

It was similar to how there were so many Brutes with similar Case 53 characteristics in Yharnam. I was beginning to think that these people had been tinkered on in an attempt to make a better soldier. Looking at the bags now, my memories of being kidnapped sprung to mind.

Body snatchers. There were too many Brutes for all of them to have all volunteered.

But who made them? I had the suspicion that it was the Healing Church, which made the name ironic. Still, I was ready to be proven wrong if another likely party showed up. The only other candidate was tentatively Byrgenwerth, but if my visions were to be believed that place was closed off and had been for years.

There was a landing on the side I had entered the room on that my bugs were telling me was home to another lantern. I made a mental note to light it after facing the bag men.

It ended up not being too dissimilar to the fight I had with the two beasts on the bridge. One was much closer than the other and I did my best to keep the same one between me and the other at all times. Unlike the fight on the bridge, however, I hadn't had the time to gather a proper swarm yet.

Still, I put half of my bugs on him and had them gnaw away at vital areas. As my bugs did that, I repeatedly backed away and made sure he and his friend weren't about to jump me. Before my bugs could break something vital he got tired of my antics and extended his palm flat towards me. There was a shimmer of pale blue in the air as me and the bodies of my bugs were suddenly pulled towards him.

It was a violent pull, but it did superficial damage to me. The problem with that was that the damage I considered superficial was enough to kill even my hardiest cockroaches that got caught in it. That was about a third of my swarm in all. With that, he swung his bag around and I jumped back, dodging the blow that came down and flung splinters everywhere.

That would have killed me if it hit. Or it would've put me so close to death I wouldn't have been able to react to whatever he did next. As it stood, the bag man put his bag back over his shoulder and started advancing on me again. Then he paused and tensed. Then a mist of blood billowed out of his skin and he kept coming.

I had no idea what he had just done, but I had no intention to find out. Fortunately, at about that time my good biting bugs managed to rupture his eyeballs and he was blinded. The bag man didn't howl, but he did jump at where he thought I was, which was off to my right. His fist came down with even more force than the bag had, and left a hole in the ground that went through the wooden floorboards and into the stone below.

Yeah. I didn't want to get caught by that.

As he raised his hand in that gesture that had preceded the pull that caught me off guard the first time, I retreated with my bugs and advanced as myself. Before he could finish the act my axe was buried in his back.

It wasn't much of a fight after that. I killed the second bag man much the same way and lit the lamp. In my mind I pegged the bag men, who all seemed to have the same powerset, as brute/brute/shakers. The exact numbers eluded me, but I had a decent enough gauge on their abilities to know how to react now. The two brute ratings came from how its case 53 nature gave it that pale, leathery skin that was effectively more sturdy than leather, as well as that blood mist thing it did that enhanced its strength and allowed it to make a small crater in the stone below the wood.

The shaker rating was obvious. The fact that it could use the same power in two different ways did not warrant a separate rating. That did nothing to quench the fact that the bag men had a way to clear my swarm en mass, and I wasn't happy with that. Still, I was turning these thoughts over in my head as I moved. There was a lot to figure out, and I wasn't going to figure that out in here. I did note the creepy statue of a many armed creature above the lamp, but since no one was around to explain it I kept moving.

There was a crazy old woman who screamed something about eyes while I was on my way out, but I stopped her before she could get close to me. She was killed when I determined she was both inconsolable and aggressive.

After that I left the building and was subsequently run over by an oversized pig.

~drip~drip~drip~

r**ur**ct **

There had been a little one of the dream in the middle of the street worshipping something. When I found that he didn't have anything to give me, I looked in the direction he was, and that was the moment I died. When I awoke in the dream, I was cursing my lack of range. That would never have happened back on earth Bet. Then Doll wished me fortune in the waking world and I was back at it.

The two bag men were dispatched better than I had the first time, and that damn pig with my echoes turned out to be a crafty thing. Especially now that it had a fraction of my cunning. Still, I was good at dodging, and it eventually charged into a wall and got stuck there, halfway in and halfway out of the cathedral with the lamp. From there I gave it botched brain surgery and moved on.

I made sure the purple mist faded from its eyes before I did. The echoes returning to me wasn't something I could feel, so I was making damn sure I wasn't about to miss any I dropped.

That was the last big challenge I faced on that street. There were more yharnamites, oversized pigs, ferocious dogs, and bag men, but I'd already figured out methods of dealing with each of them. Still, there were questions raised by what I found there.

When I checked up on the little one, I approached from the direction of its worship and blocked its view, which made it react.

It pulled a strip of paper out of the ground and presented it to me with its tiny little arms. I accepted it, but this one didn't go away. Content to worship… the sky? I checked, the sky was overcast. No moon right now.

I turned my attention to the paper. I didn't recognise the handwriting.

Behold! A Paleblood sky.

I lowered the paper and looked at the little one again. I looked to the sky and saw that nothing had changed. I looked back to the little one. Was he trying to communicate with me? I stepped to the side to see if he changed his direction of worship.

No. He was just worshipping the sky. There was nothing of interest in the spot he was looking. In the end I left him to it.

At one end of the street were a number of corpses that died worshipping a closed door. I had to assume they died worshipping the door when it was open, with something important on the other side. But it was barred, so I had no way of knowing for sure. What I saw through the bugs beyond was just more street, but that wasn't what made me pause. Each of the men who had perished in worship had their heads split open.

I could not divert my gaze soon enough to prevent myself from dwelling on what lay within, which further delayed my looking away when I realised there wasn't a brain in any of them. Instead, each skull held a white and slightly glowing shape. Each one was subtly different, but they were similar enough I grouped them as different examples of the same thing.

As an experiment, I had a single bug eat one. It took a while, and the bug perceived the object as tasteless. But it confirmed that whatever the potentially radioactive thing was, it was made up of something edible. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was some variation of pickled brain. Regardless, the cockroach finished eating it to no adverse effects. I didn't take that as incentive to eat the rest and left the rest there.

The only other things of note were a busted up elevator that didn't work and a weapon that I found on a corpse a bag man had been dragging around. The body was curiously out of the bag, but by the time I was able to inspect anything it was too late to figure out why. The weapon was a metal ball on a pole that had rubber for a grip.

There was a button that could be pressed, but when I did, nothing happened. It didn't make sense, so I gave it another look. There was a mechanism inside the weapon that was moving when I pressed the button. I could faintly hear it if I put my ear close. As an experiment, I pressed it and swung the weapon.

The hairs on my arm rose mid swing as the ball lit up with blue electricity. I nearly dropped it, but stopped when I realised I wasn't being electrocuted. Then, after a few seconds, the visible lightning stopped, leaving behind a faint smell like ozone.

It was a ball taser on a metal stick that was roughly the same length as my old baton. I liked tasers. I liked my old baton. I told the body I took it from 'thanks' and went to go try it on the next thing I could find that wanted to kill me. It turned out a ball on a stick with lightning running through it can be a very effective weapon. But in the end I returned to using the axe. I was just better with it at the moment.

Then, with nothing above ground to explore but dead ends, I started exploring down. One antechamber filled with two more bag men that gave me a challenge by coming at me together, as well as more murderous Yharnamites later, I found myself emerging above ground once more.

The place I emerged to was built into a steep mountainside. Looking up, I saw a tall stone wall and no landmarks I recognised. But across the field from where I was was a tall double door that lead back into civilisation and looked like it was barred from my side.

That took a moment to tick over in my head. Then I realised that with the way things were in Yharnam, it made sense for some places to have been quarantined. This would be one such place. Though, if they were quarantining this place, they'd done a terrible job. There was a huge corpse of a beast, decayed to the point that it was just bones, laying just in front of the doors.

I moved to step around it, but stopped the moment the bugs under my control felt the hot air of breath escaping the corpse's mouth. As I stopped, the beast reacted, like it realised it had been caught. It raised its head up ahead of the rest of its body, lifting itself in an almost snake like fashion until it was standing on all four legs with his head, which happened to be the size of my body, hanging just above mine.

As it took its time doing that, I was ordering bugs onto it to try… something. To eat whatever was left on it's bones at the very least.

The beast howled like a wolf, though the sound was different, and for the second time in a short time I watched something light up with blue electricity. The breezy strands of hair still somehow attached to the beast defied gravity to stand on end as the beast started crackling and jettisoning electricity off of it in every which direction.

And, of course, every single bug of mine that was on the beast died.