Chapter Twelve | Down, Down We Go
Through sewers and broken homes Catherine shuffled, limbs aching and the sweetness of Gascoigne's blood upon her tongue.
She could taste his memories within those plague-stricken drops, and it took everything in her to focus on blocking them out. Occlumency, it seemed, had uses beyond keeping the living out of your mind. Snippets still slipped through, brief flashes of a better time and a life she never lived, catching glances in her mind's eye of towers that did not stand crooked, instead tall and proud - as if a modern babel built to affront the gods themselves.
If anything could convince her of the Yharnamites' success, it was the scourge they had brought upon themselves.
Only a furious god could bring down such cataclysmic horror. Only something beyond the mind of man could craft and temper nightmares that could eviscerate humans in droves, to destroy them for such hubris.
The house she crept through was quiet, so quiet she could hear the blood thundering in her ears, could practically feel the air shift with every broken step. Even the floorboards didn't do so much as creak, the building largely untouched by the horrors beyond its walls.
It was a haven, of sorts. A brief respite from the cold beyond, from the torches and wailing that plagued the outside world. Catherine's fingers trailed lightly over tables and chairs as she trudged ever upward, wrapped round ladder rungs and rough steel.
Her mind ached with each step, her very soul whimpering at the singed memories that lapped at its shores.
Gascoigne was a pained man, she felt. In the dull ache that clung to her ankles, or the ringing that was just barely out of reach - but a whisper on the wind, yet, loud as any bellow or roar to be heard on those muddied streets.
His claws, dead and still, yet clung to her.
So she instead closed her eyes as she wandered off to the Cathedral Ward, bloodied footsteps in her wake and the stench of rot clinging to all that she passed.
Catherine was not idle, though. Picking through trunks and cupboards in her steady climb, she happened across a tool that screamed of Gehrman's handiwork. It looked somewhat like a torture device, the nightmarish offspring of a set of pliers and a trepanation screw.
Something about it told her it was useful all the same. Or, perhaps it was the ghostly ramblings of the man she had just painted a tomb with, adorning its methodical stonework with ropes of gore, most likely still steaming in the cold night's air. Either way, she took it into her arms, weapons strapped to her back and the contraption hanging loosely from tired fingers.
Practically heaving herself up yet another ornate set of stairs - for some odd reason these ones fashioned of stone, rather than fine hardwood flanked by carved handrails - Catherine pressed her shoulder to a wide door, sighing in relief as it swung open.
She staggered as she found herself in a church, having expected to walk out to another bloc of town homes, or even the bloodied streets she'd grown so familiar with. Instead, the walls reached ever upward, false arcades crafted with painstaking detail and the expanse of the chapel dotted by urns filled to the brim with smoldering incense - the sharp, fragrant tinge of which stung her nostrils and wafted across the floor in curling waves.
Her heart soared at the very sight of the place, realizing this was somewhere that could be considered the closest thing to safe, at least, that she'd seen so far in this damnable city.
"Oh my! Hello? Is that a visitor?" A voice called to her right, causing her to jump and turn to what she'd passed off as a lump of dirtied rags.
Long, crooked arms pushed the figure to a cross legged sit, the rusty cloth that was draped across it forming a pool around its twisted body.
It was a man, she thought, eyes clouded like rancid milk and the skin upon his face clinging tight, forming deep hollows and turning his already frightening mask into one that more resembled an image of death than anything human.
He looked almost regretful, head tilting as Catherine's boots skidded against the floor. "My, did I startle you? Terribly sorry, the incense must have masked your scent." The man sniffed at the air, eyes unseeing as he tasted at it as though a snake. "A hunter? I've been waiting for one of your ilk."
"Waiting?" Catherine managed, tongue heavy in her mouth.
"It's been an awful long night," he said, tapping his ear. "Can hear 'em all out there screaming. Even some of the people locked up are going bad."
"That's… not normal?"
"No! Gods, no. Never heard a hunt like this, it's something frightening I'd say."
"Frightening…" she scoffed, a light huff escaping her as she readjusted her grip on the odd tool she'd found, fingers slick against the cold metal. "That could describe this whole city."
The man laughed, head bobbing to and fro. "Could be, could be. Y'know, you're welcome to stay here… if you'd like? Or anyone, really. I've... I've got enough incense to last the night and many more, just- it seems awful out there, and I know you're a hunter 'n all… I don't want to see anyone in danger."
"I…"
She studied him, his pinched expression and frail arms, bundled up in ragged cloth and left to rot upon the floor as if some long-forgotten rug.
"I'll think about it."
"Right. Yes, right." He nodded a few times, sightless gaze cast across the floor. "I understand."
Catherine glanced away from him, spying a familiar lantern that jutted from the floor of the church.
A way away from all this.
"I'll be back, I think." Pausing, she looked him over again. Although wretched and altogether distasteful to so much as glance at, she couldn't spy a lick of beasthood upon his pallid skin.
But, that wasn't enough to even begin trusting him. She'd seen Gascoigne turn in the blink of an eye, even though the only thing that was truly bestial about him had been his fangs.
Her tongue ran across her teeth, flinching at the slight jab of pain as she was reminded of her own.
Damn this city.
"Do you know anything about the Church? I've come looking for them."
Humming quietly, his fingers flexed in odd motions as if pulled by strings. "They come to visit, sometimes. Bring incense, food, collection baskets…" he pursed his lips. "Ain't heard much from 'em during this night, what with how bad it is and all. You'd want to find Missus Amelia, the Vicar." He raised his head, smiling at nothing. "A very nice lady, she is. Terribly kind. Hard to find one so nice in the Church, and she's the top of it all! Or… so the neighbours say."
Gritting her teeth, Catherine nodded to herself. "And you haven't heard from her?"
"No, not at all Miss Hunter. Not for a week or so. If you do find her, would you be able to tell me if she's alright? She brings the nicest wine sometimes, and- I couldn't bear it if something had happened to her."
"I'll do just that," she lied, palms already itching at the thought of running that woman through with her blade.
As long as she got the answers she needed from her first.
"It was nice meeting you, though, I never got your name."
"Oh!" He chuckled shyly, turning away. "They call me Elijah, miss."
"Catherine."
"Miss Catherine, then. You… don't get hurt out there, okay? And if you find anyone, tell 'em it's safe at Oedon Chapel. Got plenty o' food in the basement," he said, patting the ground next to him.
"I'll… keep that in mind."
She turned briskly, a quiet snap from her fingers trickling across the church and garnering a quiet tinkle from the lantern as it lit up, a soft blue shine cast out around it.
Aching, she kneeled before the lantern, letting it take her back to the workshop.
-::-
It turned out that the contraption was useful, according to Gehrman.
His own handiwork he had said, something meant to fit the crystalline blood (because apparently that was the only worthwhile tool in this horrid city) to a weapon.
Magic could be found in those things - gems, he had stated excitedly - more precious than gold and shining diamonds.
It seemed like enchanting to Catherine, or at least, as much as she knew about the process. To force magic into an object, hammering the metaphysical into something more. Like Godric's sword, drinking up the venom of the Basilisk and wielding that power as if it were its own.
All she cared was that it was useful, and would make her undeath significantly less awful if her weapons could more easily cut through her foes.
And undeath was what Catherine came to name her predicament. Caught somewhere between the two worlds and tossed about as some invisible gods plaything. How it (she) whispered in her ear. Words of comfort, words of anger - always cheering, taunting - leading, to the next blood soaked step.
She wondered if the Yharnamites worshipped the god that plagued her, peering up at the grotesque statues that littered the courtyard beyond the chapel, a small part of her looking for even a sliver of familiarity in the ghastly shapes.
It was not only gargoyles that flanked the sprawling, gothic lanes, but hideous caricatures of people, draped in cloth and prostrated - their arms held high in reverence to their deities above. Some were fashioned as lampposts, burdened by thick bars of steel and shattered glass, the stem planted into the pillar they rested on and kept aloft as though the weight of atlas himself.
But some statues were unrecognizable. Arms that split halfway like bone, ending in too many (or too little) fingers, and in the place of a head instead a lattice of thorns, a vague suggestion of eyes peeking out from between them.
Perhaps this was one of their gods, or how the people here saw them. Believed them to be. Something spiderlike and hideous.
But, the only thing to touch on her mind was anger. Anger at the city. Anger at the church. Anger at the waking nightmare she would be sent to after every inevitable death, one that she had learned could not bear any more guests.
So that left the question of the girl, and what to do with her.
Gascoigne's daughter was sure to starve if left alone, tired and frightened, too young to survive such a horrid place as Yharnam. But Catherine could not bring her to the Dream, no matter how much she wished otherwise.
While the Chapel seemed safe… she had no trust for anyone here. The only people she had met had been mad, murderous, or plague-ridden and soon to shift.
Not quite babysitting material, she thought, stifling a macabre chuckle.
Wherever, and whoever it was, though, Catherine would have to decide quickly, lest the girl - and god, she didn't even know her name - be devoured by some unsightly beast.
Thus Catherine walked. Walked and carved a path through the city, fighting off pale men bearing purple lanterns and broken staves, shouting hoarsely as they lumbered murderously towards her.
They were dressed almost as parishioners, something vaguely familiar to her, with their flat caps and open hoods. Some even wielded crosses as weapons, thick slabs of wood stained in red and dotted with a patchwork of rusted nails, their pointed ends sticking from the crucifix this way and that.
She found that being bludgeoned with one was more awful than she could have imagined it to be, the scrape of steel dragging down her skull and raking up chunks of her brain with it.
And so again and again she returned to the Chapel to once more set out and find her way to the home of the Church, having no luck navigating the crowded and winding streets of Yharnam.
Elijah, the keeper, seemed to hardly notice her coming and going, only occasionally pausing to look up from his little perch and offer a small kindness, or some words of thanks for her 'work.'
Her only response to those paltry niceties were a curled lip and a nod, sometimes accompanied by a grunt of recognition, feeling beyond the need to treat anyone dwelling within the mire of Yharnam with even a speck of friendliness.
The only one deserving of that was the girl, one of only a handful in the city to be untouched by the stain that now shone so bright on Catherine's leathers.
Therefore she planned, deciding that she had about a day to figure out where to bring the girl. She couldn't leave her home alone for much longer, not without risking her running off on her own. Fear can do stupid things to a person, and that was something she knew intimately. Chasing after a damned Basilisk, taunting Voldemort, Voldemort, in front of his own men…
Catherine was a bit of an idiot when it came to fear.
Her feet, unlike her mind, were not focused on the girl and her predicament, and though she continued to hack through man and beast, shearing them with steel and spellfire, her legs led her downwards.
Down past the stacks of houses all piled atop each other as if a children's building set. Down past wolves with poison dripping from their open mouths. Down past the roots of a city that had grown too large for itself.
She found herself walking on streets paved with dust and grime, an ichor clinging to the cracks between the stones and emanating a vile, rotten stench. It stung her nose like flames, acrid and sulfurous, seeming to permeate the abandoned homes that lined the street. Above that she could still detect that faint, everpresent tinge of beasthood floating through the air, as if one of the many creatures in this city was waiting behind each and every corner.
So she continued on, dodging gunshots and rusted blades as she dredged through the depths, until she came across an old, standing tomb.
Catherine slunk into it carefully, having just dispatched a man and two maggot-ridden dogs that answered to his beastial shouts. Her side stung, knitting back together after having sipped at the vial she had stolen from his still warm corpse.
The interior was cold, reminding her somewhat of the Chapel, with its painstakingly carved walls and ornate decorations which, though many were smashed beyond recognition, still reflected on their surface the maddened forms of Yharnam art. And, for some odd reason, there was a lever tucked into the corner of the room - hidden off to the side of a massive sarcophagus.
What was it with Yharnamites and levers?
Just as Catherine went to grasp it, she let out a hurried shout, some instinctual part of her pulling her body aside and out of the way of a hatchet, a man having come screaming out of the shadows. He tried to turn on his heel, bare feet slipping against the marble as he whirled about, but Catherine had already raised her arm and fired off a spell, his face splitting in two and spraying thick chunks of gore across the wall behind him.
And the lever, Catherine noted blandly, pushing aside his steaming corpse and gripping the steel with both hands. She yanked with her whole body, the steady crunch of machinery beneath her feet rumbling through the tomb. Stamping her feet and wiping the brains off her hands, her jaw dropped as she saw the sarcophagus grind open at the same moment a man peek his head into the tomb from above, goggling at her through a broken window.
"Ah! Hello there!" he called. "What's all this noise?"
She pointed awkwardly at the sarcophagus, but kept one hand on her spear. "I pulled the lever and… it looks like it's opened up a passage. Who are you?"
"I beg your pardon, but would it offend you if I came down to introduce myself? I was just resting beside the tomb here when you startled me something terrible."
"By all means."
The man's face lit up, though he could be considered more boyish than anything. Slight and soft, with blonde curls tumbling to his cheeks, cheeks of which were dusted in patchy mutton chops. He nodded quickly, his head disappearing for a moment before she saw his foot in its old place, kicking out the rest of the glass as he jumped down into the tomb itself.
"A pleasure to meet you! My name is Alfred!" he said, offering a strange bow and salute, his elbow pulled across his waist as he bent harshly, almost parallel with the ground. All she could really notice was the massive carriage wheel strapped to his back. "And you?"
"Catherine," she replied, giving him a short nod. "You were resting outside?"
"More… pondering the night, you could say. And quite a long one it is, is it not?"
"I wouldn't know. I'm not from here."
His eyebrows knitted together, head tilting curiously. "An outsider and a hunter, eh? Well, that's exciting indeed! How have you taken to Yharnam thus far?"
Catherine laughed. "Are you kidding me? It's a fucking nightmare here. I'm trying to get out."
"Through Old Yharnam?" he asked, the cheer still not leaving his voice.
"What?"
"There," he pointed at the steps the sarcophagus had revealed. "The path to Old Yharnam, burnt and blighted. It's not quite a way out, and more a way deeper in. The history of the city, you see."
"I'm trying to get to the Cathedral Ward. I was at the entrance to it, but… it seemed my feet took me here."
"Curious and curiouser, I must say," Alfred mused, pushing himself up on top of the sarcophagus, his boots brushing the floor as he sat atop it. "What brought you to Yharnam?"
"Listen," she interrupted, raising her hand. "I'm not really the chatting type, and I'd just like to get to the Cathedral Ward. I need to learn more about the Church and- and what happened here, so unless you can help me with that I'll be on my way."
Frowning childishly, he crossed his arms, letting out a windy sigh. "So impolite, you outsiders are. All I wanted to do was offer a token of my friendship, or acquaintance, if you'd like it."
"Do you know anything, or no?" Catherine stared at him, eyes flitting over his oddly formal - even for Yharnam - clothing, solid gray from top to bottom and covered in tight lapels and shining buttons. It was adorned with the faint white stitch of a rune marking the chest of his coat and a cloak hanging from his shoulders that looked better suited to winter living than the occasional rain she had come to expect from her time here.
She flinched as she realized he could be a member of the Church.
"No, I'm afraid not. I'm a protege of the old Master Logarius, but all that means of me is that I am simply a different breed of hunter." His words brought her momentary respite from her thumping heart, though she didn't remove her hand from the hilt of her blade as Alfred tapped his fingers on his knees, leaning back against his wheel. "Are you looking for blood healing? Because if that's the case, then you very well should pay them a visit. If you're looking to wonder about the hunt, though, the Church is oft reclusive, especially as of late."
"That's what I've heard from everyone so far." Catherine let out a sigh herself, long and strained. "Thank you, regardless. If you happen to hear anything about them, bring the news to Elijah at Oedon Chapel. I plan to visit there in the future and any information helps."
"If I happen to be off that way, I will be sure to let the good man know. Although, I am still quite curious… would you tell me of your travels?"
"Why?"
Aghast, he pressed his hand to his chest. "Why? Why, I've told you all I know, yet you share no stories yourself? For all I know you could be a Vileblood, here to curse our blessed city."
"You mean from Cainhurst? They're all dead."
"You can never be too safe regarding Vilebloods. Why, it's even in their name!" Alfred slapped his knee, chuckling. "Well, if you've not got a story to tell, I'm afraid to say there will be no friendship to be found between you and I. Do not visit your Elijah looking for tales of mine." He hopped off the sarcophagus and bowed yet again. "I wish you the best of luck in your journey, Hunter, and may the good blood guide your way. I pray, if we happen across each other again, that you may yet find your manners."
Like a peacock, he strutted off into the city, his cheer so alien to Catherine that she found her eye twitching at the very sight. The beasts of this city she could detest without prejudice, but this man seemed to irk her in a way none had since Snape. They were nothing alike, yet his words stung her ears all the same. Somehow too kind, too fake, too bright for a place so tainted.
Glancing at her feet, she studied the stairwell, a line of steps quickly disappearing into the darkness deep beneath the tomb.
To Old Yharnam it was, then. Locked away behind a stony coffin and begging for its secrets to be bared to the world.