Chapter Fifty-Seven | Oedon's Finest
With quick, easy steps, near light as a feather, Catherine almost flounced her way through the forest bordering Little Hangleton.
Somewhere in here was Voldemort's mother's home, and within it a horcrux. Bound to be, with the man's fixation on symbology and housing the most precious parts of himself - all shredded and slick with filth - in places that made great effect on his life.
But the task at hand was hardly ticking at her mind.
No, she felt free, and with it came an elation she couldn't ever remember gracing her. All her burdens unbound, torn from her shoulders and left to gather dust in some forgotten place. It was strange, she would say, to have the sudden revelation that if she were to truly meet her end then she might as well live each day like her last.
The gloom and misery, the palpable confusion that had always hung over her was scattered like a cloud from the burning rays of the sun, cutting deep swathes through its murky surface and shining down on the lands below.
It was a poetic way to describe it, she'd admit, but she couldn't really help it. There was something so terribly exciting about having something final to work towards. A proper ending, not in her demise but instead an end to the road that seemed so foggy for so long, the haze now lifted and allowing her to see the shining banner awaiting her at the finish line. Even the concept of such a thing, even a few weeks ago, would have been laughable, but now here it was.
The Nightmare, Voldemort, and whatever paltry task it was that the Moon required of her. Oh, she'd do it all, and then she could finally tuck herself in and enjoy her rest.
Most of all Catherine wanted to make sure there was something better for those that would come after her, both here and in Yharnam. A life for Emilie, Arianna, and Eileen. Something safe and far away from the nightmare of that ruined city. For Hermione, Ron, Albus, and Sirius - though it still pained her to see the horror on his face even in the guise of a memory - she wanted somewhere free of the constant battle against centuries of prejudice. And Melodie… she didn't rightly know what she could do to make the woman's life easier, bar slaughtering Gehrman - but indefinite servitude was not a sacrifice she was willing to make.
She couldn't hope to accomplish all those things on her own, no, but she could certainly provide the building blocks with which to work.
Fighter she was, and she could use it for some measure of good to hopefully iron out the sheer gravity of the wrong she had committed thus far. Not in Britain, Rabastan and Umbridge were something she couldn't ever find herself truly being ashamed of, but the impact of it on the ones she had assured herself she cared about… it twisted her up inside.
It was selfish.
Her feelings of guilt only stemmed from the horror on Albus and Sirius' faces, and were they not to have dragged her aside, staged the intervention that they had, she would never have batted an eye at the chaos she had wrought. The consequences stung, and while one part of her - that far older part of herself, the one that always looked for praise, to fall quietly in line with a yes miss, no miss - spoke so loudly, the newest was louder still.
Sure, there was that part of her, be it infinitesimally small, that was still revolted by her actions, but it was drowned out by the deep satisfaction of slaying a beast. For that was what Rabastan was, the glimpses the Truth offered enough to make her feel ill, even now and after all she had seen and done.
But never had she dismembered someone, or something, in so brutal a fashion.
Catherine tutted as she strolled over moss and broken twigs, trying to find the exact moment in her life when her feelings would have matched that of those more sane in her life.
It wasn't as if she could point at a date, an hour and minute and say 'Yes, this is when it all went wrong,' but in the same moment she knew there was some reality to that.
Rom had changed her, shaken her morals and her very perception of the living world. Even now, though, feeling clear and focused for the first time in what must be months, she couldn't find it in her to regret what she'd done.
The hurt she caused along the way, yes. That chewed at her, but once more, Catherine only wanted for them to be safe. Again, it was selfish. Because she couldn't bear the idea of them being hurt, and as she was now, if someone pried her chest apart with their bare hands, snapping bones like twigs, she wouldn't even cry out in pain. Like a skinned knee, she'd curse and grumble, but nothing could compare to the agony of an angered god pouring their rage into her very being.
Pain was less pain, and more an itch. It wasn't pleasant of course, but it wasn't as if she couldn't ignore it, not after whatever happened below the Cathedral with Ebrietas staring her down and Kos shrieking Her fury.
But the pain of others? That still scraped at her like rusted knives, cursed things that would leave her pallid and shaking and wondering whether there was more she could do to avoid such a thing.
She'd always seeked approval.
Kicking a rock and trying to focus on the here and now, Catherine noticed as the brush began to make way to what looked to be an overgrown trail, a subtle wind to the forest floor. She was getting close to wherever this hovel was, and wasn't terribly mindful of whatever traps awaited her.
They could melt her, cut her head from her shoulders, blow her chest open and turn it into a flower of gore, and she would still find herself walking.
Gascoigne lingered by her side as she walked, fading in and out of few and studying her lands with a curious eye. He wasn't alone in that, and Catherine had often been pestered by the ghosts in her blood of how staggering the differences were between here and there.
A plane had flown overhead when she was leaving the graveyard and even Djura had been reduced to speechlessness, slowly raising his hand to point at it as it whizzed overhead, his usual vitriol forgotten as he witnessed man made flight on a planet not his own.
Hogwarts had been somewhat familiar to the lot of them. The same with Grimmauld place. But here, even in the countryside, they couldn't stop themselves from chittering excitedly over the ways in which their own home - the home in which they were dead and buried - would possibly come to resemble.
"Your world is so… peaceful. No beasts, even in the woods?" Gascoigne asked, his voice low. "None in the city, with those strange lights and… the stars were so faint," he pondered, glancing up through the canopy overhead. "Why?"
"Light pollution," Catherine replied, pushing a branch away from her face. "Too much light means it drowns out everything else, makes it hard to see."
"Is there no true darkness?"
"Here, maybe. But, it's not like these," she tapped just below her eyes. "Don't see well in the dark either. I've got the blood to thank for that."
He nodded slowly, jaw working forward. "Those metal carriages I saw? Lining the roads."
"Those are cars. No horse necessary, just an engine - a very complicated machine. Like trains, but, I suppose Yharnam didn't have those either."
"Trains?"
"Think of them like bigger cars that run on tracks. They carry people, or goods."
"And the flying things? The red lights we saw in the sky earlier, like a comet?"
"Aeroplanes." She grinned. "Flying cars."
The man returned her smile. "I never thought I'd be thankful for being carried along with you. Not that it was a curse, mind you, but not ideal. But to see all this…"
"Makes it a bit easier?"
"Aye, that it does. Not that… the rest of our companions are good company. Not him especially."
"If I could kick Djura out of my head I would in a heartbeat, the bastard."
"I'm sure he shares the sentiment."
"At least there's one thing he and I agree on."
Pushing aside another branch, Catherine clicked her tongue as the shack she was looking for came into view, nestled among ivy and twisted trees, somehow even the foliage taking on a sinister air.
It was rotting, and would have been long gone were it not for the threads of magic woven between its joints. The door, shut, and still with a snake nailed to its face - the same as Dumbledore's memories, not his own but taken from a now deceased ministry official.
Catherine all but ignored the wards on the place as she walked up to the door, an invisible blade slipping over her throat and casting a river of blood down the front of her jacket. She only grimaced, holding tight to the leash on the Dream and using it to knit her wound, thumbing with annoyance at the mess that stained her chest.
"Arsehole."
The snake, all but a dessicated husk, lifted itself up and hissed at her. "Speak, or die."
"Open up. I've got more of you to kill after this one."
All it required was parseltongue, proper parseltongue, tinged with the magic of a true speaker and not an imitation. Thus, the magic recognized her words and the door slowly creaked open, revealing sunken floorboards and mossy stone walls.
So this was where it all started.
Never would Catherine have pictured Voldemort having been sired of this destitute hovel, the wood spongy beneath her feet and furniture pocked with holes where rats and other, scuttling things named home. Some poked their heads out of the tattered folds in a nearby couch, chittering quietly enough that someone without her particular curse would never have heard them. Centipedes skittered into cracks in the floor as she conjured a light, glancing this way and that to immediately lay eyes on a remarkably put together section of the floorboards, not marked by mildew nor rot but the simply varnish the rest of this place must have once been washed with.
It was quickly pried open to reveal a small box, but not without trying to take her hand first, mild annoyance streaming from her lips as she picked the limb up with the other and mashed it against her stump wrist, a blood vial quickly reattaching it and leaving her no worse for wear.
The box itself was innocuous, a simple wooden thing with brass latches and an engraving on its face in the shape of the Slytherin crest. Within it held a horcrux, that she could tell without even opening the thing, covered in some manner of ward to disguise the treasure held within, or whatever other traps laid in wait.
But these were traps made to kill, not ensnare, and an immortal woman like her was none too bothered by something so quaint as death. So she reached down and opened it up, grimacing immediately at the onslaught of compulsions so thick as to be a stationary imperius, daring her, begging her to pick up the ring inside and place it on her finger. The layering of magic was done with finesse, and was just as ferocious as the man who had laid the spellwork, Catherine's hand trembling as she fought against the barrage of 'pick it up, take it, take the ring, its power is yours to wield' pounding inside her skull, amplified by the sickly sweet scent that tore at her senses, whatever magic made up the horrid thing stinking like decay.
With a vicious snarl flames poured from her open palm, a torrent of blinding white that immediately set to devouring the horcrux beneath her and even the soil itself - the rock beneath - pushing down, down, down into the earth and melting all it touched. A strained gasp escaped her as she tugged at the reflexive fiendfyre, dragging it kicking and screaming out of existence with a hideous snap, the magic roaring in protest, wanting to burn, to rend, to devour all it could until the very world was naught but a hellscape of living flame.
Smoke poured from the pit, wafting up and stinging her eyes. She scattered it with a wave of her hand, billowing clouds of the stuff swallowed up and thrown skyward, pouring out of a hole in the roof and spilling out across the sides of the shack like running water.
Nestled atop a pool of molten rock was the stone that had been embedded in the ring, somehow untouched by the conflagration that had destroyed the horcrux and looking no worse for wear. Her head tilted in confusion, wondering what on earth could have been left untouched by that sort of magic, until her gaze focused on the mark on its surface and a torrent of memories flooded into her.
Three artefacts - the wand, the cloak, and the stone - Master of Death and all things unhallowed, made of His sordid hands.
She nearly stumbled against the onslaught, glaring at the stone as if it had somehow offended her.
Three turns. Three turns is all it takes to speak with those lost.
Dumbledore, it seemed, had wanted to get his hands on this particular relic very, very badly. Catherine's eyes fogged over as she pictured his wand, one of the three Hallows - as they were called - along with his suspicions regarding her cloak, a remarkable thing to have lasted the centuries and still hold its magic.
"Death made you, eh?" she mused, moving to levitate the stone out of the pit and pursing her lips as it ignored all manner of magic cast upon it. Sighing, she blasted the molten rock with a gust of icy wind, cooling it down enough for her to jump down the three or so feet and pick the thing up.
Just like the case that held it, the stone was relatively… unremarkable. Plain, and all but a chunk of onyx were it not for the engraving visible from within its glassy surface, and the absolute lack of anything that emanated off of it made her feel uneasy. It was as if it didn't exist, simply a gap in the fabric of the universe resting in her palm.
Oedon's, Kos said, curiosity in Her voice. Long ago he granted three boons to your ilk, cursed things meant for their destruction.
"And this is His?"
One of three.
"Oedon of the Cosmos," she whispered. Fitting, for His stone to feel so empty, so vast and cold. "And… does it work?"
A glimpse into the afterlife, perhaps a spectre of what was, I do not know. Oedon is above even I and the rest of my kin. Three turns should suffice, and the names of those you wish to see.
Just like that, Catherine was struck with dread unlike she had ever felt before.
Would she? Dare she spin the stone and look upon her parents' faces?
It was a somber hunter that climbed from the pit and left the sullen shack, staring dumbly at the simple rock in her hand as if it held an answer to all the questions in the universe. It might as well have, with how heavy it felt in her palm, how piercingly frigid it was, the cold sinking through the leather and thin-plated steel that guarded it and burrowing deep into her flesh.
Her fingers began to shake as she studied it, shallow breaths trickling through her mask.
All her life she'd wanted to talk to them. To know them, to hear their voices and have them speak her name with the love that she'd seen in other parents' eyes - off near the trains when leaving her one sanctuary to be taken by the rough hands of a man who shared no blood with her, nor conscience. Of a man who never knew kindness when looking at the girl who bore a striking resemblance to the strange folk he'd heard his wife whisper about on cold, angry nights, liquor on her breath and envy in her veins.
Last year… or was it two years ago? She'd spoken to them. Briefly, pumped full of fear and the knowledge that were she to not make it to that cup, glimmering softly beneath the moon, she'd meet her end at the hands of the madman who was aching to finish the slaughter of her family line.
Beside her stood Gascoigne, a gentle expression on his face as he watched her. "An awful decision," he whispered, and if she were to see his eyes she imagined there'd be patience in them. "You don't need to make it now."
"Don't I?"
"Knowing you… I suppose you do have to choose now."
Her breath caught in her throat, the faint sensation of nausea scratching just beneath it like a beast, waiting to be uncaged.
"All I've done the last year is look for knowledge. Try to uncover as many secrets as I can so I could… I don't know, feel like there was a purpose to all of this? To try and convince myself that there was something waiting for me on the other side, or that mapping Yharnam's history would give me some sense of closure when it was all said and done." Her other hand rose, the pad of her finger slowly tracing over the stones edges, just barely close enough to touch. "But where did that get me?"
Her gaze flicked over to him, the man's lips drawn into a thin line.
"All I did was follow in Byrgenwerth's… in the Church's footsteps. I looked for knowledge for the sake of slating my own thirst, and all it's done is make my eyes bleed and turn me into whatever I am today. Not Catherine. Not anymore." Slowly, her fingers wrapped over the stone, clenching it tightly. "Am I no better than them, even if I deny Godhood? The end doesn't justify the means, but… does a different end's reflection look like something else entirely?"
Weighing it in her palm, Catherine pulled her hand back and flung the stone as far as she could into the forest, watching as it whistled out of sight and plinked against another rock, rolling off into the brush hopefully to be buried beneath the dirt-stirred roots and the footfall of beasts of eons to come.
"I don't want that knowledge. Not right now. I want to ask them, face to face, if I did what was best with what was given to me. If… if there's any hope of redemption in the eyes of those I've killed." Her chest slowly filled, before a long-winded breath left her, emptying Catherine of her composure and the weight that still lingered against the crook of her thumb. "I don't think I want anymore knowledge. I've seen enough horror to last a lifetime, dug up enough secrets that… any others should just be happenstance. I don't want to look for them, I don't want to search them out. I just want to be surprised without scraping at the flesh until bone shines beneath. And… I'd rather not follow any further in Willem or Laurence's footsteps, even if it took until now to notice."
"The Nightmare? What of the rest of it, what yet waits for you?"
"I go there for Kos' sake. For my own. Not because I need to know, but because I already do."
A whistling hum spilled from Gascoigne's throat as he slowly nodded. "Aye. That, I think they could be proud of. Dead I may be, but take it from a Father. For the sake of a God, or even us little folk, kindness is kindness."
"And the killing? I enjoy it, Gascoigne."
"Tweren't a hunter that never found joy in their work, lest they die on their first night out. Your world is different, that I can see. Kind, polite in a way that mine isn't. But Yharnam? Yharnam brokers no fools, nor gentle hearts. Do not treat Yharnam as if your own, and do not treat your own as if the same beasts walk these forests."
"Just like that? It's that simple?"
"Just like that."
A tender smile made its way across her face, hidden behind bone-ash and darkened cloth. "I'll see them someday, and when I do, I hope I can keep my chin up and my shoulders square."
"That's all we can do." Gascoigne made as if to clap her on the shoulder, before pulling his hand back. The first of her spectres, and the first to accept his fate as a passenger.
She let herself fall to the ground with a quiet thud, leaves billowing out from under her as she struck the forest floor. Catherine crossed her legs, picking up a stick and poking at the earth with it, stirring up soil and worms, watching as they squirmed and tunneled back into the dirt. "All I do now, I do it for them. For the living. For Emilie. For Hermione. I may not be able to bring them a kind world, but I can make their homes that much safer."
"And for yourself?"
"I'm living my best until I don't. Isn't that all we can do? Make the most of the days given to us until we can no longer?"
"Yet you wish to throw it all away."
"You know where I stand, Gascoigne. Please, I'd rather not have this conversation."
The man mimed turning a key over his lips. "Understood."
"Thank you."
"Better a dead man to understand your troubles than one who hasn't known the feeling of slipping past the veil."
At that, she grinned, turning her head up to look at him. "Is that so?"
"The ghosts at your academy would speak much the same. Ah, what an interesting world you come from."
"It is, isn't it? Guess I got used to it after a while, which is funny, because it's right out of a storybook."
"That it is."
The two fell into companionable silence, staying for a while and listening as creatures returned to the forest. The chirping of crickets, and the distant scuff across the leaves of some manner of animal prowling along. With the horcrux gone, maybe life could return to this place, without the curse hanging overhead like storm clouds.
"Onto the next, then," Catherine said after a few minutes, jumping to her feet and brushing the detritus off the back of her legs, picking a leaf or two out of the cloth feathers that lined her cloak. "Didn't imagine this one would be so easy though. Not that I'm complaining, but… wards meant to kill aren't much worry to me. It feels very anticlimactic."
"Sometimes that's how things are." Gascoigne shrugged lazily. "Think of it like… a time of rest."
That managed to make her laugh, Catherine chuckling as she stretched her legs. "A vacation then? That works for me."
"Where to next?"
"Gringotts." She said, readjusting her gloves and nodding at their fit. "Might as well kill two birds with one stone. I need to get my affairs in order."