Chapter Thirteen | Into the Fire
There was a note she had found near Gilbert's house, left atop a cabinet near that damnable, wheelchair ridden man who had attempted to fill her gut with buckshot. It had said Old Yharnam was burned upon a night long past, and here she now stood to lay witness to it.
Burned it was, an aging relic tainted by its history. The gothic facades were cracked and crumbling, or outright reduced to a pile of soot soaked rubble, the flames that had passed through this place scarring every inch of its shadowy walls. Something horrid had happened here, something beyond this city's imagination, and the miasma it had inflicted still clung to every charred stone.
She could taste the sorrow on the air, feel it in her steps as she slowly trotted down the stairs leading to the venitian bridges that lay out before her. These were the roots of Yharnam, its old lifeblood planted deep in the soil and laying a foundation for the hideous thing it had grown into. Yet, she could still hardly see the ground below, hundreds of feet above any semblance of soil, as though the city had grown from the mountains that surrounded it like a cancer.
It was almost silent down here, save for the occasional wails that echoed out from the city above or the muted crackle of fire that somehow still burned along the crumbling rooftops. If she listened hard enough, Catherine could pick up on the scratches and keening groans of the creatures that called this waking hell home, hidden in the rooms below and scavenging through rotten floorboards for their pound of flesh.
Stooping down, she pressed her ear against the rooftop, their scratches and skittering creeping up to meet her. They were the sounds of something much smaller than the beasts she had come across so far, not that of a wolf larger than the man it once was - but instead something horrid and crippled.
There were small workstations dotting her path, mostly reduced to cinders, but some still stood, crooked yet proud. She reached out and ghosted her palm over one of them, snatching a wrap of paper that held a few pills within its waxy grip.
"The scourge?" she wondered, stuffing them in one of her pockets.
Whatever they were, they were probably useful. She'd only have Gehrman to ask.
Her mind pulled back and thought on the note she had ripped in two to pass into this smouldering mausoleum.
This town is long abandoned. Hunters not wanted here.
What could have possibly happened here for them to abandon the city in its entirety? From what she could guess, the beginning of the Yharnamites reign over this land? How bad had it gotten here, for them to condemn it wholly, to set fire loose upon the city and - to her mind - wipe it from the annals of time?
Though it still burned, it looked as if all had left in a hurry. Belongings scattered. Benches toppled. Something had happened, so quickly that a broken image of it yet remained, like a photo taken the moment after a disaster.
A tiny microcosm of time. A sliver of what once was.
Catherine pushed through the smoke, wand waving to and fro to clear the path before her, not keen on having something come lunging out from it and tear her limb from limb.
Staying alive for an hour was hard enough being able to see more than four feet in front of her, and giving the creatures of Yharnam a handicap, nor choking herself on the smog were sure to make her plan of staying alive any easier.
Just as that thought struck her, she happened across one of those beasts she had heard slinking about. It almost looked like a man, except for the fur that dotted every inch of its body, or the way it's mouth split open to reveal a much too wide maw of pointed teeth. It was wrapped in bandages from head to toe, and made to lunge before it noticed the burning pile between them.
The creature shirked around the flames, hissing furiously, yet unwillingly to dive straight through the fire to reach towards her. Eyeing it, Catherine smirked as she pointed her wand at the thing and doused it in flames, a hideous shriek tearing from the creature's throat and echoing shrilly into the distance.
Satisfied, she strode forward and plunged her spear through its chest, putting the beast out of its misery.
And from its dying cry, the screams of its kin erupted from the city below.
They echoed off the walls, high and furious, a singular chorus bursting from invisible beasts mouths and fierce enough to curdle the blood that ran through her veins. Catherine's whole body tensed, terrible shivers running up her spine and the sharp pang of brittle noise hammering against her ears. Almost on reflex, she hunched into herself, back twisting as if to pull away from the cacophony and hide from such awful sounds.
A voice rang out from beyond, carrying across the screeching and meeting her ears plainly.
"Hunter! Did you not see the warning? Turn back, at once, lest I force you back."
She looked up and down, scanning the many rooftops until her gaze alighted upon the single, tallest tower of the burned quarter, the silhouette of a man standing atop next to what looked to be a cannon, a cone lifted to his lips and sending his voice clear across the city.
Tentative, she pressed her wand against her throat, ears trained on the steady footsteps below. She had but a moment to speak with this man, this hunter, and pray that he didn't attack her.
"I've only come for answers!" Catherine roared, the sound of her voice almost earsplitting. "I don't want to fight you!"
Even from this distance, she could see whoever it was hesitate, the brassy megaphone he held floating awkwardly before him. He took it up, shoulders squared. "This is a home to beasts, and beasts alone. If you do not leave, you will face the hunt."
Damnit.
"Shit, shit, shit." Catherine cursed up and down, teeth set into a harsh grimace as the footfall of beasts grew more frantic. She had to move.
In a blistering rush, she tore ahead, hoping desperately to make it to this man and just explain herself. Make him see that she was no danger.
But he spoke of the beasts as though they were companions.
She didn't know how long this man had been here. Whether he was witness to Old Yharnam's consecration, partook in it, or just happened across it as she had. But, he called this place home and because of that, he was another person who could answer her questions.
Catherine could only hope he wasn't as mad as Alfred.
Her feet crashed against the stone, each thundering step sending shocks up her legs. The reverberations seemed to clash against the pounding of her heart, the two meeting in a frenzy and bursting across her body like waves.
Ducking and leaping across the rooftops, she dashed into one of the buildings just as a staccato burst of gunfire tore holes through the stonework behind her.
The man had a gun. A giant, automatic gun.
At least it wasn't a cannon, like she first suspected. Catherine wasn't entirely keen on experiencing what it would be like to be reduced to a spongy paste.
It took only a few steps beyond the building for Catherine to taste the guns bite, a bullet ripping through her ankle and leaving half her boot and the foot within on the ground behind her. She toppled, stump dragging a bloodied line across the stone as her hands caught at the rising earth, narrowly avoiding knocking her jaw closed across the tip of her tongue.
Shit.
She turned to grab at her fallen limb, snatching it up and dragging herself back into cover just before another rattling burst of gunfire chewed up the stone where she had just sat, one of the bullets taking out the toe of the boot and spraying a fine mist in its wake.
Clutching the ragged chunk of bone and flesh, Catherine awkwardly pressed it against the stump, cursing loudly at the uselessness of it.
Now furious, she hauled herself back into vision, shouting her anger at the man. He ignored the litany of curses thrown his way, his less-distant form pushing forward on the crank of the gun.
With another rattle and blistering crack, Catherine's torso was turned to mince beneath the spray of infused quicksilver, misted red painting the flagstones behind her.
Swearing loudly as she re-surfaced in the Dream, Catherine ignored the vaguely shocked look on the Doll as she pushed towards the headstone.
"Are you alright, Catherine?"
"Fine," she sniped, fingers rolling over her wand. "Just thinking."
"About what, may I ask?"
Catherine paused for a moment, her fingers still and breaths heavy. "How to sneak past a man with a gatling gun, and get close enough to speak with him." She sighed, massaging her forehead. "If I only knew how to apparate."
"Apparate?" the Doll asked, sidling up next to her.
Neck aching as she peered up at the Doll, she bit her lip. "Teleport. Move instantly from one place to another. It's something… my kind can do, but I haven't learned how to. Not yet."
A quaint smile seemed to pass over the Dolls face, childlike and full of awe. "How incredible! Your magic seems beyond imagination."
"That's one of the simplest things we do." Catherine snorted at the thought. "A whole culture. An entire peoples spanning the world that teleports to get to and from work without even a second thought."
"If you would be willing, I would enjoy hearing more of your world. I… know I have asked you this before, but it truly does seem fanciful."
"Compared to this hellscape? Yeah, I guess so. Haven't really seen it that way for a few years though."
"Why?"
Venting to some… inanimate object? Is this really my life? Catherine mused, leaning against the headstone. I must be losing it.
"My life hasn't been good. Orphaned by a madman, a madman who for some damned reason just won't stay dead…" she kicked at the dirt, clumps clinging stubbornly to the toe of her boot. "A madman who, my entire life, has dedicated himself to trying to kill me. Not to mention the prejudice. What I've seen here is horrible, nightmarish, but it's- it's different, somehow, frightening in its own way. The beasts aren't what frighten me, it's that people caused this. Humans. That's what horrifies me the most."
The Doll simply nodded, silently listening.
"The man who's after me, the people who follow him, the things they believe and are capable of doing… there was this dictator, fifty years ago, who almost brought the world - our entire planet - to its knees. He and his regime killed millions not just because they opposed him, but because he considered them less than human."
"Men, women, children, all because of what they worshipped, or who they were or loved. All of them were rounded up and systematically executed. They dumped them, naked and stripped of everything valuable, even their teeth, in mass graves. That, or they simply incinerated the bodies," Catherine continued, her finger trailing atop the gravestone in a shaky line. "How many people lived in Yharnam at its height, do you think?"
"Near two hundred thousand, perhaps more."
"Seventy five million people died in that war. Twelve million were executed in camps. That is what my people are capable of. That is what my world can, has, and will do. They're trying to do it now, Voldemort, in some sort of quest for…" she laughed, shaking her head. "Honestly, I don't even know. I can't get inside his head - any of their heads. I don't want to understand, yet some part of me needs to know how they can do and believe such things."
"That is… horrifying."
Humming her agreement, Catherine shrugged. "A different kind of horror. What I can see here, it's… it's what I imagine the soldiers saw storming Auschwitz. The extent to which we can destroy. So, yes, my world can seem fanciful, but we're just as capable of inflicting the same kind of horror I see here." She paused again. "Maybe even better at it."
"I see."
"Well, thank you for that… incredibly cheery conversation. I have a mad man with a gatling gun to speak to."
The Doll nodded serenely. "Have you thought of how to get to him?"
"Nothing like turning invisible. If he can't see me, he can't shoot me, right?"
If the Doll were capable of it, her eyebrows would have shot to the top of her head. Instead, her mouth dropped open, surprise stealing away her passive mask. "Astonishing."
"Very." Catherine's hand dropped to the face of the headstone, picturing the ruins of Old Yharnam. "Off I go," she said, disappearing in a pale blue mist.
That war you speak of, the Voice spoke as she passed through the ether, back to the burned ruins. Terrors such as that have not yet been unleashed upon this world. Perchance you may bring down your hammer upon Yharnam? Cleanse it of its filth.
The scowl that forced its way across her face was mighty, wand dancing from her scalp to her waist accompanied by the sensation of chilled water trickling down her body as it was hidden from view.
Not on your life, Catherine retorted viciously.
My life is already at an end, dear child, and I will not yet return for many a century. But, does your work not resemble that of the despots that you revile, so? These beasts were once men, though tainted by blood their minds would once dance alike your own. The invalid and desperate, journeying from faraway lands for a taste of sanctified blood.
She refused to amuse the god, spear quick as she danced her way through the ruins, ripping through beasts throats before they could detect her - apart from her scent - the stink of blood heavy upon her and sending the beasts sniping and growling as their nostrils flared.
Stubbornness does not become you, child.
Her lip curled, a quiet huff creeping from her lips as Catherine transfigured a rock into a quicksilver spike, launching it with a flick of her wand at another creature, the spike burying itself in its skull and killing it with nothing but a dull crunch.
Fuck you, Catherine snarled.
With deft hands and feet she pushed closer and closer to the tower, a slew of bodies in her wake. It was only once (or twice, she would admit) that Catherine found herself noticed, clawed across the face by some red eyed beast in rags, claws that she was quickly learning to be coated in some sort of poison.
Stumbling, Catherine spat at the ground, a faint spot of crimson staining the path before her. Internal bleeding, she guessed, judging by how it felt like thorns were wrapped round her guts.
Clutching at her bleeding nose and doing her best to ignore the stabbing pain in her abdomen, she stopped to catch her breath before a rickety, half-built wooden frame of a tower, housing piles of smoking ash and rotting corpses, teeming with maggots. Catherine was choking on her own throat, limbs heavy and eyes weak as she tried to hold back the coughs that threatened to wrack her body.
Fumbling at her waist for an invisible blood vial, she pulled away the stopper and brought it to her lips, choking down the ambrosia.
Too much, she thought, a blistering cough working its way from her throat and sending phlegm and blood flying across the rooftop, the vial slipping from her hand and shattering at her feet.
Beasts ahead snarled at the noise, turning directly to her, faces raised and scenting at the air. A man cloaked in black hunters garb, the edges singed and fabric stained with smoke, lurched out of the shadows at their growls. His shoulders were stooped, gait awkward, erratic as he shuffled forward.
Blood drunk, she realized, praying that he was not like Gascoigne.
"Someone new? A Dreamer?" The man suddenly shouted from above, peering across the city blindly. "Come, then, and I'll send you back to that Doll."
Catherine's need to speak with the man spiked tenfold, hearing him speak so clearly of the Dream. Blood pumping, she dashed out of sight, the disillusionment charm around her flickering as she leapt past the beasts and attempted to plunge her spear into the hunters chest.
He growled, features twisted and animalistic as he tried to twist away from the thrust, one arm raised in reflex. The blade carved through it, severing the limb at the elbow and spraying Catherine in blood.
Ducking beneath his swing, she pushed him away and whirled around to face the beasts, spear raised to catch them should they charge. Three of them, spitting furious as they crept forward, claws sharp and glinting in the moonlight.
A quick spray of flame caught one, the creature throwing itself off the tower in its frantic rush to escape the fire, the other dodging out of its path as it careened over the wall. Startled, the last ran right for her, impaling itself on her spear in its maddened rush.
Catherine cursed, stumbling against the weight as her arm was pushed backwards, attempting to kick the thing off her spear as it screeched, the barbs caught snug on its flesh as it struggled to press forward.
A scream left her lips, dropping the blade and ducking away as she felt steel cut through her shoulder, leaving the beast keening on the ground as she looked up to see the hunter with a cleaver in hand. "Shit." Catherine rolled backwards, wand flicking and sending a pile of rubble towards the man as if a mudslide, burying him beneath it.
She howled again as the remaining beast leapt onto her, claws tearing at her chest. Her wand fell as she grappled with it, her own screams echoing shrilly as she grabbed at the creatures throat with one hand, the other smashed against its face, thumb buried in its eye socket.
Roaring in pain, the beast scratched at her arms as its eye popped, warm viscera soaking her wrist. In a flash, her hand moved down to its throat to join the other. She tightened her grip, pressing with all her might and ignoring the grease and blood that stained her arms, the claws tearing furrows through them.
In chorus, her knuckles popped as the creature's throat gave a sickening crunch, coughing blood in her face and crumpling atop her. Growling, she pushed the corpse away, scrambling to her feet while scanning for her wand.
A shout burst from Catherine's lips as the previously buried hunter barrelled into her, cleaver swinging down from above. She almost let out a laugh as it took off her raised arm, mirroring his own stump, ragged and drooling blood.
She lashed out as she hit the floor, her boot heel smashing into his groin and garnering a muted shriek as he flinched away. Scrabbling at the ground beside her, Catherine drew up her wand, a hoarse 'Expelliarmus,' falling from her lips, quickly replaced by a grin as the cleaver flew from his hand and sailed over the rooftops, the ring of it echoing off the walls below.
Wand still trained on the hunter, Catherine let loose a cannon shot of flame - a small meteor bursting into life and shearing through the hunters torso, melting leather to flesh and leaving a gaping knot of cauterized gore in its wake.
A single rattling gasp was all the hunter could muster as he collapsed, dead like the rest of the beasts.
Chest tight, Catherine stumbled to her feet and over to her fallen arm, pressing the limb against her bleeding stump and holding it there with a whispered spell. Flicking the cap off a blood vial, she drank it in seconds, before taking another one and pouring it over the wound. To her relief, it worked, the skin stitching shut and feeling coming to her fingers as the wound seemed to drink up the blood that was poured across it.
If it hadn't… well, tossing herself off a building to get her arm back was hardly the craziest thing she had done so far.
Eyes locking onto the ladder ahead, Catherine gathered her spear and began to climb, both a silencing and disillusionment charm cloaking her from the hunter above. Her feet ached, the line of her arm throbbing horribly as the nerves rapidly stitched themselves back together, and she could feel a broken rib pressing sharply against her lungs.
The normalcy of the sensation struck her painfully, having become so accustomed to fighting on the verge of death that the idea of stopping for something so plain as a set of broken ribs and amputation seemed almost a show of weakness.
At least it would serve her well in killing Voldemort, she thought, almost eager to have the chance to spill his guts.
Her hand brushed against the top rung of the ladder, silently hoisting herself to the top of the tower and finally able to lay eyes on the man who had slowed her path. Not stopped, because she didn't think anything at this point could truly stop her. Not if she kept coming back.
A death by a thousand cuts. Not the most efficient use of immortality, but it works.
"I can smell the moon on you, hunter," the man growled, turning to face her. His armor, if it could even be called such a thing, was tattered and marked by more burns than fresh leather, as if it had been dropped directly into a furnace only to be fished out once the fire had been choked out. Upon his left arm was a contraption, some sort of maddened mishmash of a piston and spearhead, the quiet hum of a motor chugging away as it occasionally spat out whiffs of smoke.
He was old, very old to be a hunter, face lined with age and his beard not white due to whatever affliction seemed to turn Yharnamites to albinism, but instead wiry and ragged - the kind of white that came with years, not trauma.
"Were you once a Dreamer?" Catherine asked, letting the charms drop and revealing herself to him.
"I've no interest in answering your questions. Have you just come to die, girl? Because I can offer you that, though, I fear it won't stick."
She growled, fingers ghosting at the handle of her spear. "Just tell me what happened here, about the Dream, and I'll be gone. That's all I want."
"You make demands of me?" he boomed, fury lacing his words. "You kill these people. Sick, innocent people who have no one to blame but the Church. You slaughter them and then you want to speak?" He pushed the spearhead on his arm back, locking it into place. "Come as many times as you wish, murder the sick and dying, but you will have no answers from me."
They stood there a moment, staring each other down. Catherine could scarcely hear her own breathing over the thunderous drum strikes of her heart, the blood pounding in her ears and her teeth set in a hideous scowl.
The man launched towards her, Catherine's wand raised in a heartbeat. "Legilimens."
Nothing met her. Nothing except for fury and grief, and the man - Djura's - need to see her bloodied and dying.
A curse upon her lips, she ducked beneath his swing, howling in pain as the strange weapon exploded violently as it passed by her head, deafening her and leaving her throat scorched as she inhaled the flames.
Magic brimming deep inside her, Catherine spat out the flames she had swallowed, wand twisting as she directed them from her mouth over his own blackened features. He screamed, lashing out blindly with his arm and carving through her chest.
She could smell her blood, taste the fire on the air and the sharp sting of burning flesh as he attempted to roll away from her.
But he was old, and even if he had been a Dreamer, that was long ago.
Fury coursing through her veins, Catherine dropped her weapons and leapt atop the man, smashing his head against the ground. She needed his blood, a taste, to get his memories. So she dove, sharp teeth tearing through his throat.
The blood that splashed across her face was as hot as the fires that still smouldered across the ruined city, sweet upon her tongue as she latched onto his throat and began to drink him dry. Djura gurgled, frightened murmurs slipping from his dying lips as he feebly attempted to push her away, but Catherine's harsh grip kept his weapon arm pressed to the ground, the other held against his head and grinding his cheek against the stones.
She drank from him, throat bobbing and wet gasps escaping her as she sucked at his throat, his blood striking her mind with visions, shapes, utterances of the man that now lay cold and dying beneath her shaking body.
The thought of Catherine and Djura - their very being - for a moment, became one, two minds blending seamlessly as to lay witness, through his eyes, as he put this ailing city to the torch.
The plague had spread in the night, and with Gehrman's Workshop long disbanded and placed under the purview of the Church, it was tasked to mercenaries to cleanse it.
The Powderkegs had been chosen, not a battalion of hunters but instead a gang of pyromaniacs who had bastardized the Workshops weapons, finding ways to lace them with fire, or burst upon impact. And thus, Djura had been chosen.
Catherine watched, felt as he slaughtered the people of Old Yharnam. She could taste their blood, could hear their dying screams as homes were set aflame, as the cursed beasts, swaddled in rags were chased into their warrens and routed out with bombs and gunfire. They had been sick, taken with the scourge long before the scourge had been known.
And then they had locked the doors, leaving him and his men to fend for themselves.
It was a coverup, she realized, just as he did, the insurmountable horror of it, quickly overtaken by unbridled rage. He had stopped, then, leaving the beasts alone and deciding from then on to wage his own, petty war against the Church, with nothing but a gun and a tower.
For years he stayed here, the beasts learning to trust him, to leave him to his own devices. It was then that he had been cut off from the Dream itself, the only memories he had left of the realm being a fading vision of the Doll and a hill, dotted in flowers.
But, he had seen something in the Churches crusade, a goblet locked away in a chapel far below, beneath the crooked towers and in a place that bore true life, not lined with stone but instead soil and grass. Communion, his voice spoke, an echo of realization as he happened across the sacred object. A way to speak with the gods, to worship them as the hunters of old once had.
"Shit."
Catherine rolled off his body, eyes screwed shut as she tried to force away the visions, to not see herself leaping at the man, soaked in blood and with fury in her eyes. But his ghost held tight, immaterial hands wrapped around her throat and forcing her to gaze on what she had done - who she had become.
She could hardly recognize herself, hair matted against her face and wet with blood, lips pulled into an animalistic snarl to reveal sharp, glinting teeth. Her eyes, though, seemed to shine too brightly, a hint of crimson to be found within the verdant green.
If it weren't for her pupils not being a blotted mess, like spilled ink carelessly splashed upon the forest floor, she would think herself blood drunk.
It didn't stop her from wondering.
So Catherine got to her feet, only offering a passing glance to Djura's corpse as she threw herself off the tower to be crushed against the pavestones below, hoping it would quiet her shrieking mind.