The purple mist drifting from the Bridge Beast's eyes lingered for a few moments longer than I would have liked, given that it should have been dead with most of its brain located outside of the skull. After a few scary moments, the light in the orbs winked out and I felt something resound throughout my veins. That wasn't what weirded me out, though.

A pale ray of light caught my attention. It was coming from the body of the Bridge Beast. Another pale ray joined the first, then another, and then two more. The light quickly became blinding and I shielded my eyes and I felt the bugs that were on the body start to fall one by one as it vanished.

After a few moments I looked again to see that while the body had completely disappeared, but the light still lingered and was coalescing in the centre of the bridge. I approached, which is something I would never have done if a serenity like Doll's hadn't overtaken me in the moment. When I got close to the light it turned into its final shape and solidified into a lantern.

It also solidified into a second something just above the lantern, which dropped once the light had properly vanished into it. It bounced off the top of the lantern and skidded over the bloodstained ground to my feet. The stranger effect vanished in that moment and I jumped back, sending flies to look at it instead of looking myself.

The object was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and looked like the hilt of a sword. It had no blade, and would have been too tiny to properly grip, anyway. Instead of functional, it was ornate. Carvings covered the handle and guard, with lines focusing on a blue gem in the centre of the trinket.

Having flies headbut the thing didn't elicit any reactions, like it blowing up or something, so I stepped forward myself and picked it up. It was cool to the touch and gave no indication that it had any supernatural function beyond what I had seen. I didn't fiddle with it, but I did keep it. With the body of the Cleric Beast gone, it was the only proof that I had killed it.

It was something to ask Doll about, that was for sure.

I made my way towards the gate to Cathedral Ward, stopping briefly to touch the lantern and welcome the little ones to the bridge. There were a large set of double doors, as well as a smaller door off to the side. Both were currently closed. The notion that things weren't going to go to plan played at the back of my mind before my power started taking control of bugs on the other side of the gate.

The gate looked fine from where I was standing, but the bugs on the other side told me that the structures on the other side of the gate had collapsed. They weren't currently operable, nor was there anyone to operate them. I still searched for a half minute, but it was easy to see there wasn't anything that I could do using bugs. To open the door, I would need to move a lot of heavy rubble, then lift a wooden bar on the other side that had been placed specifically so that people from Yharnam couldn't enter Cathedral Ward.

I turned to the smaller door and tested it. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. My shortened range didn't detect the presence of anyone on the other side. I kicked the door where the lock should have been and it didn't budge. The wood was unreasonably durable. So much so that even my enhanced strength couldn't do anything about it.

This was a dead end. I'd killed the Cleric Beast for nothing.

~Drip~Drip~

Gilbert rolled on over to the window with a tray of tea in his lap. The aroma pierced through the haze of blood that seemed to hang around me. Bugs, and therefore me, watched as he peered closer to the parchment I had pressed against his window. It had a simple message written on it.

Bridge is closed. Need another way into Cathedral Ward.

"Is that so?" He asked, leaning back into his chair.

I pulled the parchment away and tapped on his window once, punctuating it with a nod.

"I see…" He thought for a moment, then. "Would you like some tea?"

After a moment's consideration, I nodded and tapped his window once more. He wheeled so he was facing the window sideways and poured a mug of steaming aromatic liquid. He unlatched the window and, with a quivering hand, extended a mug through the bars. I pocketed the parchment and accepted the mug with my remaining hand.

It felt hot, so I started waiting for it to cool and waited for Gilbert to speak.

"I thought that the great bridge would be the only way to the Cathedral Ward." He spoke, thinking out loud. With me silenced, it was for the best. "And during the hunt, the bridge is closed… Hmm..."

I decided to take a sip of the tea and scalded my tongue. It took a force of will not to immediately take a blood vial. The Cleric Beast had made me use more than half my stock in the end. The strong urge to take blood was worrying. I quenched it and waited for the tea to cool.

Gilbert chuckled seeing my reaction. "You could try the aqueduct? There's a rather, how shall I put it, colourful area south of the Great Bridge. From there, an aqueduct leads to the Cathedral Ward." He paused to cough up his lungs, then eventually took a moment to calm down. "It's not a place you'd normally want to visit, but I don't imagine you have much of a choice. Do you?"

I laughed quietly, making a conscious effort not to giggle, and shook my head. I tapped the mug against a bar twice.

"How do you like the tea?" Gilbert asked.

I raised my free arm to gesture, then realised the hand wasn't there. The arm dropped and I looked at Gilbert like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Go on, try it." He prompted.

I frowned, since I had. To communicate that, I lifted the mug near my face and hissed through my teeth. Hopefully that would get across.

Gilbert laughed. "Oh, it's still too hot." He realised, then took a long and slow draught of his own tea, which should have been the same temperature. Gilbert let out a satisfied breath. "No it's abou-" He coughed. "Right for me."

I put the mug to my lips and sipped again, then hissed. It was still too hot. Gilbert was some kind of monster that enjoyed near boiling tea. He started laughing even harder.

I kept my eyes hard as I judged him, which made him laugh more. He looked pathetic in his chair, and he was horrendously thin, but it was reassuring seeing him so alive. My eyes softened.

After letting the tea cool down to a more reasonable temperature, I made sure to savour it, seeing as this was the first time I was having any kind of blend since coming to Earth Yharm. It was alright, but nothing to write home about. Then I tapped the bars in front of his window once more, gave Gilbert back his mug, nodded, and made to leave.

"Farewell, Hunter." Gilbert said, pulling his window closed.

"Farewell, Gilbert." I muttered to myself. I knew the area that he had referred to, even unlocked an elevator that worked as a shortcut to the aqueduct he was referring to. The only reason I hadn't crossed it was because there were a shit tonne of Yharnamites in the way, there was no cover, and I'm pretty sure that the big ball at the end of the bridge wasn't there as decoration.

It wasn't ideal, but it would work. The only issue I had with it was that even with the elevator making the route easier to travel, I still had to get past two brutes and several Yharnam crazies. The walk took about fifteen minutes.

Upon arrival I took stock to see if anything had changed. There were mobsters walking up and down the bridge on a patrol that never seemed to actually leave the bridge. Far away on the other side, there was that big ball that was wide enough to cover most of the width of the path. Fire light flickered on the ball from somewhere I couldn't see.

There was a young Taylor, somehow not yet dead, who took one look at the situation and declared it was a boulder trap, like the one from that archaeological cowboy Aleph movie. A more cynical Taylor didn't think it would be that simple. In crossing the aqueduct bridge, the cynical Taylor was proven right once again.

I was walking at a comfortable pace across the bridge. Whenever I was moving through Yharnam, I moved at a similar pace. It was a little slower than my body naturally wanted to walk, and I had to consciously slow my walking speed most of the time. If I didn't move at that slow pace, then my swarm would slowly dissipate as bugs would get left behind and return to whatever lives they lived before being my minions.

It wasn't a problem I had ever needed to face on Bet, since my range had never been less than three whole blocks in any direction. Unless fleeing in a straight line, I could be lenient and have bugs take a more direct route to wherever I was going. If I was fleeing in a straight line, bugs probably would be busy, or not that much help anyway.

Now that I was on Earth Yharm and my range only seemed to extend twenty feet, I had to stay aware of bugs leaving my power. Lest I be caught off guard with only a few minions. So I strolled along a little slower than I would have liked across the bridge, having my swarm flood over the Yharnam mob as they attacked and incapacitate them. It was when I was halfway across the aqueduct that the cynical Taylor's prediction came to pass.

I spied a torch being pressed to the side of the ball. It must have been covered in oil, because the entire thing lit up in an instant. In that same instant, the fiery thing was pushed hard down a set of stairs that led down to the very gentle incline of the bridge. Or the decline, if you were approaching from the direction that the ball was. Point was, it wasn't slowing.

I turned and ran, pulling my swarm with me and pushing it to the side of the bridge so that the ball wouldn't roll over them. The bugs that could cling to wall or fly were pushed over the walls of the bridge to move safely where the ball couldn't possibly reach, while those that could not moved to where the ball physically could not get because of its shape. My swarm was safe from this trap.

But I was not. The ball on fire was gaining on me. It was halfway down the bridge while I hadn't even made it halfway back to safety. I spun, looking at the ball of fiery crushing, and made a snap decision. Muscles tensed, then I changed my mind and tensed in a different way. I dove to my right and rolled into the corner of the bridge, pressing myself against the wall to make myself as small as possible.

In an instant the ball rolled past me. I was lit on fire a bit, but patted that out. It only killed a few of my bugs, which made me click my tongue in disappointment. I had been trying to save those ones, but they hadn't moved out of the way in time. Before, I would have had each of them out of the way without even really thinking about it. Now… it was a reminder.

I ignored it and looked to the far end of the bridge. There were two Yharnamites, one being a brute, still standing. All the others on the bridge had been killed by the boulder of fire. When I made it to their end and had them swarmed with bugs, it took a conscious effort not to kill them. I had to dodge the brute once or twice as he charged around with murder on his mind.

After hiding for a bit and calling away my bugs, he calmed down and I moved on. The area after that was different. In Yharnam, there were dozens of coffins in every street. Sometimes, in every house. Here, there were still coffins, but the number of statues increased immensely.

I wasn't that far in, but I had already encountered several clusters of humanoid figures wrapped in cloth in various poses. They were lined up in the street, or built into the corners where there weren't any windows.

There were two beast-men that I killed who were enraptured by four such statues built in a corner. They were staring at the statues, unmoving, letting me wonder what was going through their minds as I prepared for a sneak attack. I disabled one permanently from the get-go, then made quick work of the other. Later I had to pass some Yharnamites who I briefly blinded and let go on their way.

Eventually I found myself walking into a cemetary. There was a huge obelisk in the centre of the cluttered space that towered up thirty or more feet. It almost reminded me of the monuments that had popped up after Endbringer attacks. The only real differences being the statue on top, and the state of decay in this place that made it list to the side.

Dead or dying trees grew or remained around clusters of gravestones. They weren't lined up or anything, but clustered together with wide spaces between the groups of many headstones. It made me think that they were for mass graves rather than individual resting places. With the body count, it made sense.

A thunk caught my attention.

The sound had come from where a man had just sunk his weapon into something in a far corner of the cemetery. He was just outside my range, so I couldn't get a good look at him yet. But I did see as he raised a big axe over his head and sunk it into whatever he was attacking again. I stepped closer cautiously and saw via bugs what it was. A human yharnamite. Long dead with his chest more paste than solid.

The man raised his axe again. "Beasts all over the shop." He grunted, then swung his axe into the dead man's chest again.

I was closer now, and could see his features better. He was tall and strongly built, and he was swinging that axe around with one hand like it was nothing. He had long hair that had turned white with either stress or age. He seemed the sort to whiten early, because he didn't have many wrinkles on his face.

"You'll be one of them, sooner or… Later..." The man had stopped assaulting the dead body and was standing up straight, turning to face me. His mouth was wide and he let his jaw hang open, showing his sharp canines as he breathed mist at me.

I already had the gun in my hand. That wonderful thing that people get after years of experience, where they just get a bad feeling, it was happening to me. If this guy was going to attack me, I needed every advantage I could get. He was just talking, breathing, and standing with his muscles tensed. Yet he was making me feel more afraid than the Cleric Beast ever had.

"Heh… Heh heh… Heh..." The man let his posture slip, letting his body slump forwards, then leaning to the side and then backwards as he let his head flop back. He came to a stop looking at the night sky, with a wide and crazed open mouth smile on his face. "Heh heh heh… Ha Ha!"

"What's so funny?" I demanded.

"Heh. Hah! HA!" He barked out, then snapped back to his tense stance. It happened in the blink of an eye and nearly made me flinch. "I had a feeling this night was different… but this… Oh, this… Tonight is a sickened hunt unlike any other..."

"Why's that?" I shot at him.

"Heh… Don't worry." The hunter told me. "I'll put you back in your grave." Then he was three feet in front of me with his axe raised over his head.

Years of finding myself in similar scenarios was the only thing that saved me. My select interactions with Jack Slash was the only reason I managed to get away from his opening attack with nothing less than a bleeding stump. Jack had gone from idle conversation to full out assault multiple times with me present and this wasn't too different.

I shot him, this time with a bullet, and dodged back in an attempt to find some time to heal. The hunter walked off the gunshot and pursued me for several feet before stopping and raising the weapon in his left hand. It was a big gun. I tried to evade to the side but found myself tripping on a cluster of graves.

He pulled the trigger the moment I got trapped and shrapnel ripped into my body. I could feel where some of the pieces were digging against my nerves. I disentangled myself from the graves, dropping the gun because it was useless against this guy, and started scrambling for a blood vial as I continued my retreat.

The hunter didn't want to give me any time to let up. He charged around the way I was heading, intending to cut me off. It would have worked if I hadn't tagged him with bugs and altered my course the moment he changed direction. The blood vial went in and a rustic taste appeared in the back of my mouth as my body knitted itself together. The shrapnel was ejected before the skin closed in most cases.

In the cases where it did not, the skin was closed a second time.

I pulled my saw cleaver out of its holster and crouched by a gravestone. I was keeping track of where the hunter was and was looking using my bugs. There were several flies surrounding him that he didn't seem aware of yet. Good. But I would have to keep him focused on me to keep it that way. The hunter wasn't looking my way, but was close. I tensed.

The hunter spun to face me the moment me and my swarm moved, but he wasn't fast enough to stop me from digging my saw cleaver into his shoulder and ripping down. I had barely finished the action when I got an axe in my chest for my trouble, threatening to push me off balance. Viciously determined, I dodged to my left as he hefted his big gun in preparation to shoot, making him miss. Then I closed the distance, cut up his body with the cleaver and dodged back before really completing the attack.

I backed off without taking a hit that time, but overall I'd come out worse. The shot from his gun had taken out a big part of my swarm. I spread them out as best I could so I couldn't take a loss like that again, but that gun put a lot of shrapnel in a fucking huge area.

Some flies were buzzing around at the fringe of my range. I almost called them to me as I tried to find some time to administer another blood vial, but paused when I realised they were hanging around another body. A woman in a dark dress.

While I tried to keep a cluster of graves between me and the hunter, I sent more bugs over to investigate and build a clearer picture in my head. She was lying face down, with a pool of blood surrounding her, dripping down the structure. It was strange because the body was on the top of a tomb. There was no access from below. She must have been stabbed from behind, going by the wound, then dropped from above.

Regardless, I explored the body and paused when I found something. The hunter got too close and I had to give up on using a blood vial because of the moment's hesitation. I was forced to move far enough away from the body that my power left the bugs there, but was able to eventually circle back.

The bugs that had started to wander were pulled back to their previous task the moment they were back under my control. I knew what they would find, but I had to be certain. When I saw the beautiful red brooch through the eyes of my bugs, a chill swept through my body.

The little girl's mother was dead.

"You killed Viola!" I yelled at the hunter.

"No!" The hunter swung with fury, smashing through a gravestone I had just been using as cover. He pointed off to the side with his gun, towards the dead Yharnamites. "They killed her. I found her, dead, with those crows congratulating themselves for killing an outsider. She's Yharnam born! They killed my wife, so I killed them!"

He stopped, staring at me.

"It's enough to drive a man mad…" All the anger in his voice was gone. "Yes… I suppose this night is a mad one… I'm talking to you… aren't I?"

I decided he wasn't about to attack at that moment and jabbed the blood vial in. My supply was starting to run really low. The healing blood spread throughout my body, forcing me to giggle as my chest billowed out to it's normal shape.

"Hi hi ha." Escaped my lips.

"Heh ha. Haa…" He laughed like a dying man. His age seemed to fall from his shoulders and he looked me in the eyes. "Sing to me, Taylor." Then he leaped towards me with his axe raised to strike.