I knocked on the door to Iosefka's clinic. She was more prompt in her response this time, yet more cautious. The reaction was appropriate. I hadn't exactly been a peaceful visitor last time, but I wanted to say thanks for the blood vial.

"Oh, well, hello…" Iosefka said, causing confusion to flicker across my expression. There was something different about her.

"Hello." I responded.

"... Splendid." Iosefka commented. "Let me ask you a small kindness. You're off to hunt, I presume?"

Irritation replaced the confusion. She was reminding me of my talk with Gehrman.

Iosefka continued, "Then, if you find any survivors, tell them to seek Iosefka's Clinic. Upon my Hippocratic oath, if they are yet human, I will look after them, perhaps even cure them. This sickness, these beasts, they are not to be feared."

Now she was deviating away from Gehrman, and sounding more like a crazy person. "What changed?"

"This time the night is long. I might be trapped here, but I should do something to help. I'll even offer a reward for your co-operation. Tempted?" I wasn't. "Well, off you go then."

"I'm not doing anything until you explain yourself."

"If you find anyone who's still human, send them straight to Iosefka clinic. You can assure them, there's no place safer."

"Can you understand me?"

"Please do me this service."

She couldn't understand me. "Iosefka…"

"Yes?" She asked.

My alarm bells were ringing, I needed to take stock. For some reason Gerhman and Doll could comprehend me perfectly, while Iosefka and Gilbert couldn't. I could understand each person just fine, and even read. There was something different there, a reason why that was how things were. I just couldn't place a finger on why.

Before, when I had been falling apart. When I was one with my passenger and my passenger was one with me, I had been unable to comprehend language, or even faces. After… Scion, I had been talking to a woman holding a small gun. She had told me to talk, and had understood me. We had a conversation while the borders between my passenger and myself were breaking down more and more. Then she shot me in the head, twice.

When I came to, my power had been neutered. The bleed between me and my passenger had stopped, but my brain had still been scrambled until I had taken Iosefka's blood vial. But even that hadn't fixed everything.

Nine millimetre brain surgery. I realised. Scary.

The blood repaired the damage to my body, restored my vitality, and cleared me of any exhaustion. Yet it didn't seem to restore things that were lost. If it did, I would have both arms. The bullets had taken whatever let me speak when it severed my connection to my passenger.

Except that wasn't it. It couldn't be it. How could Doll or Gehrman understand me if it was? Iosefka had recognized when I said her name.

This wasn't getting me anywhere.

I looked at Iosefka, recalling the reason I walked up the stairs in the first place. "The blood vial you gave me before, it was helpful. Thank you for it. Do you have any more?"

"I do apologise, that wasn't clear." Iosefka leaned closer to the door "Did you say you wanted a blood vial?"

I closed my eyes, hating what I was about to say. "Yes."

"A moment please, Hunter." Iosefka stepped away from the door for a moment. When she returned she was holding another orange blood vial. "Consider this incentive for us working together."

I paused, then accepted the vial. Had Iosefka been mastered? She was acting like she was. The way she spoke, how she was negotiating with me, and even the way she met my eye through the gaps in the door, it all felt like a different person.

The Master Stranger protocols echoed in my head. Going by eyes-on, Iosefka was compromised. Everyone was, really. But how? A body puppet? Iosefka's posture and way of moving hadn't changed, while the way she spoke had. A suggestion power then? Was it some Yharnam madness getting to her?

It said something that I was considering that a likely cause for this change.

"Thanks." I told her. "Stay sane."

"Find those souls, Hunter." Iosefka requested. "Tell them of Iosefka clinic. They're in your hands, and soon, mine…"

With that haunting anecdote, I fixed the blood vial into an administration device and slotted it into my belt. I wanted to use it right away, but that would have been as much of a waste as it was a horrifying sign.

The blood was addicting.

Worse, I was already addicted to it.

It reminded me of the speech I gave to those kids just after becoming a Ward. How drugs weren't bad, but so, so good that it would make you destroy everything in an attempt to get more. With that in mind and given how widespread these blood vials seemed to be, I wouldn't have been surprised if fights had broken out over the small vials.

There was cancer in Yharnam. I couldn't be sure if the healing blood was a symptom or a cause. Every time I thought about it I remembered the experience of the blood taking over me as I tumbled down the stairs, giggling. A chortle escaped me the memory was so vivid.

I passed the lantern at the bottom of the staircase leading up to Iosefka's door. I touched the side of the lantern and a pale energy shimmered from where my finger touched the glass. It spread across the surface in an instant, then converged on the wick in the lantern, lighting it with a soft ignition sound.

Four little ones promptly climbed up from the floor. One turned to face me and reached up with it's tiny hands. The other three paid their attention to the lantern. One reached up with both hands, while the other two clasped their hands in silent prayer.

Yeah, these guys creeped me out.

I walked away and started putting conscious effort into gathering my swarm.

~Drip~Drip~

There was another lantern by Gilbert's that I lit to a very similar effect. I did stop by his window and try to communicate with him, but found he was less capable of comprehending me than Iosefka was. Nothing new was communicated, but I think he enjoyed the company.

From that elevated position I could see the bridge to Cathedral Ward, and the Bridge Beast on top of it. I watched purple mist drift from its eyes as it stalked around the space. The brevity of the time it took for it to kill me meant I didn't have a good handle on how big it had been. That being said, it looked bigger. With that terrifying observation to haunt me, I set to exploring.

The plan was to use Doll's power in preparation of fighting the Bridge Beast. Doing so would involve killing as many creatures as possible, which was the problem. I didn't want to kill anyone. They wanted to kill me. Which, fine, they could try. But I just wasn't ready to start killing people in the street. I wasn't Jack Slash, I didn't want to be.

That meant I was limited to rabid dogs and beasts. If I ever saw Rachel again, I could only hope she understood.

I traveled the same route as I did before, but dedicated more time to exploring. There was a surprising number of blood vials and quicksilver bullets discarded on out of the way corpses that I quickly reappropriated. Soon enough, I was crouched behind a pole surveying the mob surrounding the beast pyre.

There were people coming and going like before, and everything seemed fine. Which was odd.

I looked at each of them in turn. There. That one with the shield. I shot that guy in the foot, how was he walking around still? It wasn't just him, I figured out the two other people I shot who were still walking around, unconcerned with the major wounds I inflicted upon them not hours before.

They must have healed with blood. There was too much of that stuff around here.

I prepared to make a break for it the same way I did before, putting bugs into better positions this time and having them start biting before I revealed myself. It worked like a charm and I was able to make my way across the street unmolested.

Then fleas entered my range as a dog started barreling towards me, completely ignoring the tide of bugs. Hadn't I killed the dog? They must have found a replacement.

Not wanting a repeat of last time, I waited for it to get close and when the rabid thing pounced I gave it a bullet for its trouble. The bullet pushed the dog back with a sharp whine, redirecting its trajectory like the bullet was more of a cannon ball. It hit the ground and didn't get back up.

The dog dealt with, it was a matter of pistolwhipping the two guys with guns and confiscating their bullets before moving on to the next area. From there I deviated from the route I traveled before, dropping down a ledge hidden by barrels instead of passing by the fountain and brute that I didn't want to deal with, gathering new bugs for my swarm as I walked.

Dogs in cages surrounded me, harkening back to the inhumane mistreatment of dogs by the Empire Eighty-Eight. I wanted to set these things free. But given how they were snapping and barking, they were just as rabid as the one that bit me. It took most of my bullets to put them all down.

Two were out of their cages and tried to ambush me. There were intelligent things despite the bloodlust, only moving when my back was turned and going for the kill once they were close enough. I shot both as they leaped at me, easily turning and aiming in a swift movement. The fact that I didn't have any spiders to help my aim didn't mean much when I was jamming the barrel of the gun against whatever I was shooting.

Another dog was barking at someone's door. After shooting it I only had four bullets left.

The inhabitant broke the silence as I let my bugs reload the gun. "Oh, you're a hunter, aren't ya?" It was an older voice. Female, reminding me of Gehrman. I'd heard that tone before, entitlement. "Then, well, do you know of safe places?"

It felt too perfect. Iosefka telling me to look for survivors seeking refuge, then almost immediately coming upon someone looking for exactly that. I wasn't totally comfortable with the fact that Iosefka's was the safest place either. Her change was… unsettling.

"You should stay inside." I told the old woman through the door.

She was speaking over me, "I've heard, I have. Shutting up indoors isn't always enough."

My thumb fiddled with the hammer of my gun and I forced myself to put it away. People like her were always difficult.

"If you hunters got off your arses, we wouldn't be in this mess." The old lady told me, accusatory in the way only the most arrogant people could manage. "You're obligated to help me, you hear? So what'll it be? Are you gonna tell me, or not?"

"You're making me not want to help you." I told her back.

"Never heard of that spot. Are you a hunter from outta town? Then get away from my door. I'll have nothing to do with outsiders!"

I blinked. That had been a quick one-eighty. The fact that there was nothing to do but move on without helping was going to weigh on me, but I wasn't sure helping was the best thing to do in this case. Whatever I said was going to be ignored, and unwanted help could be worse than doing nothing.

I could tell her about Iosefka's clinic. But then there were the eyes-on protocols again, telling me that Iosefka was compromised. But on the other hand, this old lady's house was also compromised if there were dogs scratching at her door.

Conflict persisted within me as I moved on from the old lady's door. It felt wrong, leaving someone like that, but what was there to do? Leave a note, is what.

I quickly found a house that had been vacated and looked inside for some paper and pen. Instead of a pen, I found ink, and eventually a quill. Thankfully the vacated house's office room hadn't been ransacked yet. I wrote 'Seek Iosefka's clinic.' on the paper and slid it under the door. I had no idea how she would get there or if she would go, but she wasn't about to accept my help, that was for sure.

I rationalised it by thinking if she went to Iosefka's, then at least the old woman would have someone around who was able bodied. If she was left here, worse things would inevitably happen.

As an afterthought, I had some bugs capable of hibernation crawl into various parts of her attire and start their slumber. That way, if I encountered her again, I could identify her from afar. My reduced range would make that a chore, but I could make sure she made it to Iosefka's that way.

Thankfully, I was soon given a distraction by my bugs alerting me to the presence of another person standing just at the fringe of my range. They were clearly different from the ones I had encountered up until now. They were standing still with their arms crossed, rather than staggering around with a weapon in hand, or faking death like all the others. It made me curious.

I stopped moving as well and had flies gather around the person. It took a moment, but I was soon parsing an image of them in my head. It was difficult to tell if they were male or female through my bugs. What was easy to make out was their garb, loose and feathered as it was. They were dressed entirely in black, save for the stark white bird mask reminding me of the ones plague doctors wore in the dark ages.

A cape?

Possibly, I had met or heard of several so far. Doll, Paleblood, Iosefka the tinker, the one that made the Healing Church. Their costume concealed their arms and I couldn't see any weapons of them. Making contact could be a bad decision if they shared the deposition of everyone else around here, but that was a chance I was leaning towards taking.

Hopefully they would understand me.

I used bugs to map out a route to the cape, which took me through a rickety attic with some bodies strung up with chains and a lethal drop underneath. There were a few more men downstairs, some of which had been malformed to the point that I wasn't sure if they classified as human anymore. The notion to ponder on the implications came second to making contact with the cape, I stepped onto the roof behind them.

I was ignored, but I was noticed. Small bugs that I had landed on their costume noticed how they stiffened ever so slightly and how their head twitched in my direction. They were facing away, so the movement in the mask wasn't noticed by my eyes.

It was harder to keep that from my bugs though.

When they noticed me I paused, unsure if it was indicative of hostile intent. They didn't reach for a weapon, so I resumed my approach and stopped when I was standing next to them. The cape was looking out over Yharnam, or what little of it could be seen from this vantage point. They weren't saying anything. I wondered if I should initiate conversation and hesitated.

I opened my mouth.

"Oh, a hunter, are ya?" She said, saying 'hoonter' more than 'hunter' and cutting me off without looking at me.

"Yes." I said after some hesitation. With what Gehrman and Doll had been telling me, coupled with the clothes the little ones had given me, it seemed pointless to argue the point.

"And an outsider." She observed. "What a mess you've been caught up in. And tonight, of all nights." She turned her head towards mine. "Here, to welcome the new hunter."

Her clothes ruffled as she extended an arm towards me, not raising it higher than her waist.

"So you're a hunter as well?" I asked, glancing down at her hand but not making out what she was holding.

"Take it." She insisted. "You'll find great use for this, I fear."

I grumbled to myself. She wasn't understanding me. The hope that had risen from recognising a cape was dashed, taking part of what was left of me with it. I took what was offered, trying to reach with my stump before realising that was fruitless, then accepting it with the hand that remained.

She was eyeing my stump. "You're in quite the predicament. Recent, is that one?" She looked back to Yharnam, taking a moment to herself.

"It is." I answered, inspecting the scraps of parchment she'd given me. They were frayed and there was a symbol burned onto each of the pieces of parchment. A vertical line with a dot at the bottom, and with two lines extending down from a third of the way up the line, then bending at a right angle to point at the dot as well.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen this symbol, except it was.

How?

When?

Why did I know what to do with it?

I opened my mouth to give voice to my questions.

"Prepare yourself for the worst." The woman wearing feathers told me gravely, cutting me off again. I shut my mouth indignantly. "There are no humans left. They're all flesh hungry beasts, now."

That just gave me more questions. No humans? What about the mob by the beast pyre? They could speak, they accused me of being a beast and yelled that it was all my fault every chance they got. They walked, breathed, communicated with one another. They had one hell of an 'us vs Taylor' mentality, but that didn't degrade them to the level of beasts.

What about the people hiding indoors?

Was the Yharnam madness literally turning people into beasts? Was it the blood?

"That's not right." I told them. "I admit that there are malformed people, but not everyone is a beast."

"Still lingering about?" She turned her head back to me, making the movement in such a way that she might have actually been a bird.

"Until you answer my questions, yeah."

"What's wrong?" She asked, making me sigh. "A hunter, unnerved by a few beasts? Heh heh… no matter." She swept her arms back, making her feathered cloak billow dramatically. "Without fear in our hearts, we're little different from the beasts themselves."

This was so damn frustrating, not being able to communicate. I needed to make a connection with someone, and it was crazy to think that this person was the one I had felt the strongest connection to.

Iosefka was altruistic like I tried to be, and kind of understood me when I talked, but now she unnerved the crap out of me. Gilbert was sick and barely understood me even when I was playing charades. I disagreed with Gherman at a fundamental level, and Doll was… There was something off about her. I had classified her as a Case 53, but that depended on Cauldron being involved.

Yharnam seemed a bit too messed up for even them.

This person was experienced, someone who had risen to the call to help those in need. Where we differed was that I had risen to the call by rescuing a drugged little girl who had been cursed with a valuable power, while they had taken to killing beasts. Even if our perspectives on the matter differed, I could respect that she had taken action. That she did what she had to even if it wasn't necessarily the right thing.

It clearly weighed on her as much as it did on me.

I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at myself. "Taylor Hebert."

She gave me a long and calculating look. After a few moments she turned bodily to face me and placed a hand over her breast. "Call me Eileen, Taylor. Eileen the Crow."

"Eileen," I repeated, making her shudder. "The Crow." I let it roll off my tongue, feeling a degree of nostalgia from speaking the title. It was a cape name. Should I have given her mine?

"As I once dreamed…" She uttered under her breath. I only heard her say it because I had bugs being nosy from her costume.

I opened my mouth to tell her my cape name.

She cut me off again. "What are you still doing here? Enough trembling in your boots. A hunter must hunt."

My mouth clicked shut. That was a very annoying habit Eileen had.