"Is something the matter, hunter?" Iosefka questioned, a note of irritation pervading her voice.
I made sure that little Taylor was close and behind me. "Those things in there. Tell me what they are."
"What things?" Iosefka asked, then clicked her tongue. "Sometimes it's like you're almost making sense when you speak, but it's difficult to pick out the words from the nonsense."
I decided to keep it simple. Little Taylor had heard me when I was just saying letters, maybe single words would work here. "Blue." I bit my mouth shut. "Creatures."
"Ah." Iosefka straightened her posture. "I thought I recognised the moonlit scents. How did you figure that out?"
"Bugs." As I told her my not so secret secret, several of my minions were landing on Iosefka or crawling up her clothes.
"And this phenomenon would be you as well, then…" Iosefka stepped backwards, but I didn't relax. Nor did I stop putting bugs on her. She met my eyes. "Things need not change. They have been saved. I did the saving. I could continue to do the saving. You could continue doing the rescuing." Her eyes darted to the tiny girl hiding behind me.
Fuck that. "Fuck you."
There was a beat of quiet.
"I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."
Without taking my eyes off of Iosefka, I leaned my head towards little Taylor and whispered, "Run."
Little Taylor's hand gripped my own tightly. "Auntie?"
"Run. Home. Now."
Taylor frowned. "Auntie?"
"Go!" I stage whispered urgently, but she still held on.
"Moon scented hunter," Iosefka said. "You have brought that little child here to be saved. Please let me save her."
I pushed little Taylor back and stepped away from Iosefka. "No."
"You will leave, then? I could continue my work here without your assistance. It is unfortunate, but I can make the necessary ends meet."
"No." I didn't want to leave until I discovered the fate of the old woman. The fate that I sent her to.
Iosefka sighed and reached for something concealed in her clothes. I caught on to the tells quickly and turned to hug little Taylor, shielding her with my body. Two back to back cracks sounded behind me, and I was thrown down the stairs. The first impact hit my square in the back and the second hit me in the shoulder as I tumbled down the stairs.
My bugs started biting the moment before Iosefka pulled the trigger. I rolled halfway down the stairs with a frightened child in my arm, and when we finally stopped I adjusted my hold on little Taylor, picked her up, and hastened down the staircase. The bullets in my back slowed me down some, and the unresponsive child in my arms worried me.
Iosefka was nearing the edge of my range when she finished reloading. "It didn't have to be this way."
My bugs tracked her as she aimed and I dodged when she pulled the trigger of her double barrelled rifle. A fly got in the way of the first hammer and perished, but she corrected her aim when I dodged and the second fly missed the hammer.
It hit the shoulder of my stump, but it still sent me sprawling at the bottom of the stairs. I sprawled sideways, so little Taylor wouldn't get crushed under me. My hand fumbled for a blood vial as me and my bugs gave the child I just shielded from three gunshots a once over. None of her arms were bending ways they shouldn't, and there wasn't any blood spilling out of her.
That was good, at least. I jammed the blood vial into my own leg and fought to hold back the giggles. As it was still draining, I wrapped Taylor back in my grip and rolled out of Iosefka's line of sight.
"I've never worked on a hunter before, I realise." Iosefka spoke as she advanced down the staircase. Her slow and measured footsteps made little Taylor shiver.
"Taylor." I said, holding her face the best I could.
"I'm s-scared, auntie."
I tugged on her ear. "Run." Then I gently pushed her away. "Home." I retrieved a blood vial and pushed it into her hands. "Run."
"But auntie, she's going to kill you."
"No."
"I must admit, I feel a little excited." Iosefka confessed, shaking my confidence. "Gods know I haven't worked on a moon scented hunter."
Little Taylor tugged on my sleeve. "Don't leave me too."
I handled my axe with familiar ease. I tapped my chest like I had before. "Alive." Really, I was trying to say that I would come back to life if I died. But that was difficult to say in single word sentences that I wasn't sure was even getting across properly. Then I strode around the corner and started walking up the staircase towards Iosefka.
If I died here, then I would return to the dream. If little Taylor died… I wouldn't let that happen.
Facing an opponent head on like this was stupid. Especially since Iosefka seemed to have that incessant vitality that permeated Yharnam and let things ignore how I was making a literal swarm eat her. But my aim was not to win a fight with Iosefka, it was to make time for little Taylor to run away. If I died, then little was lost on my end because I'd simply return to finish the job.
When I walked to meet Iosefka in what was one of the stupidest maneuvers I'd ever pulled, I saw that my swarm was not acting as it should. They attacked as I ordered them to, but they did so a good half foot away from Iosefka, and they attacked each other instead of the insane woman.
I made them stop and simply approach the white haired woman. They got close enough that they almost made contact with her skin, then turned around and kept moving. The ones that were acting strangely didn't perceive themselves doing it, which was why I hadn't clued into this sooner. There was a shroud around Iosefka similar to the one in her clinic.
"Fucking tinkers."
"I wonder…" Iosefka stopped walking and stared at me. She had a cane in her hands that she was holding like a sword. I had bugs inspect it and found it to be bladed and segmented. It was a weapon. When she stopped, I did as well and stared her down.
This wasn't to win or to kill. This was to delay the fight for as long as possible to let Taylor get away. If Iosefka wanted to talk, that was perfect.
"Have you been touched by the great ones?" Iosefka asked.
I didn't respond straight away. In part because of the neutered alien in my head, but really because it was a delaying tactic.
"Yes." I spoke as I watched little Taylor start to run through the eyes of my bugs. That was good, but I didn't let myself relax just yet.
"Really?" Iosefka leaned forwards, very interested. "And tell me, what was that like?"
I purposefully waited until she started getting impatient. "Terrible. I killed it." Little Taylor was out of my range now.
"And there you go, back into the shroud of nonsense." Iosefka sighed. "I thought perhaps you had been given a gift beyond even what I possess. Now I see that you would not know what to do if you received any such blessing."
I tensed, but her finger wasn't moving to her trigger yet. While her aura might redirect bugs away from her, I could still have flies hover around her and give me an alternate perspective. Bugs could still crawl all over her clothes and weigh her down, so I was having them do just that. If I was lucky, she would at least get creeped out by it.
"I know you understand me. But that doesn't change the fact that you're an oblivious fool."
"I don't care."
"Your standoffishness gives me the impression that you will not depart until you exact some form of misguided justice. Fulfilling the purpose of the hunt, then?" Iosefka waited for me to speak.
I only spoke to cut her off. Give little Taylor as much time as possible. "Fuck the hunt."
"And you praise the hunt like all the other blood addled oafs." Iosefka sighed and walked backwards up one step. She stared at me with caution. "I do wish I could understand your words. And I do mean understand them."
"Me too."
"For you see. There is a chance, a very small chance, that you are imparting gifts with every word."
"I'm not."
"But I'll never know for sure, hunter." She hummed. "A shame."
"Blue." I bit out.
Iosefka clicked her tongue again. "Of course, we didn't finish discussing that. Though, it occurs to me that you have refused to continue giving me your assistance and therefore there is no reason for us to continue this discourse."
I stared at her. "Talk."
"Hmm…" The tip of Iosefka's bladed cane bounced between two invisible points in the air. "I think not."
The hammers of her rifle fell on two flies that became corpses. She looked down in surprise at her weapon as I closed the distance between us, leaping forward with my arm raised to deliver an overhead swing. The axe sunk into her shoulder and sprayed blood on the side of her head and onto mine as well.
I ripped it out and followed up by slashing her across the waist, drawing blood for a second time. Iosefka stumbled up the stairs at just the right moment to avoid losing blood for the third time. Her gun arm was useless now, being the one I had nearly severed. As I approached to make a third slash on Iosefka, her cane whipped out of nowhere and slashed through my upper body. Part of it going through my breast.
I growled as I pressed the assault, raising my stump to get in the way of Iosefka's next slash. More of my blood splashed as I dragged the axe through the floorboards and harnessed unnatural strength, then it hit Iosefka square in the chest and the force of the blow threw her up the stairs. She landed painfully and rolled down a half turn with a soft moan.
Not a painful moan. A moan of pleasure.
"Crazy woman." I dropped the axe and let the bugs underneath me lift it so I could easily pick it back up. Meanwhile, I retrieved a blood vial and jabbed it in without ceremony. My eyes were on Iosefka the entire time, watching as she found her feet with far too much ease for someone who had just taken three wounds that were meant to be lethal.
"You fool!" She hissed as she picked her cane and rifle back up and darted away and into the clinic.
I made a split second decision and ran after her. This had started out as a delaying tactic to give little Taylor enough time to run away. She was away, now I wanted to figure out what the deal was with the blue creatures. I had suspicions about that.
And maybe I wanted to kill Iosefka as well. She sounded like she wanted to 'save' little Taylor in the worst way, which big Taylor just wasn't going to let fly.
Iosefka tried to close the doors, but I had bugs blocking the door by sacrificing their bodies. It let me get there before she could close it properly and I ripped the doors open again. Iosefka cursed as she tried to shoot me again, only to find that more flies were suiciding to stop her from firing.
I swung at her from the door but Iosefka was slippery. She danced backwards and threw the gun to the ground. That was fine by me, I lunged forward to get as close as I could before swinging again, not wanting for her to just dance away again. I got lacerated up my axe arm for my trouble by the cane, and she moved to her side just soon enough to avoid my first swing.
That gave her enough time to start running further into the clinic. I went after her, but at a walking pace. The axe got dropped and I drew my pistol. I drew a shot, breathed out, and fired. Iosefka wasn't looking, so she didn't know to evade. The bullet hit her square between the shoulders and she fell forwards. Then she showed her inhuman vitality as she staggered without falling and made it to the next room.
I swore and dropped the gun so my bugs could reload it. My axe back in hand, I raced after Iosefka. The bugs that had infested her clothes hadn't been removed, and the veil over this place hadn't returned, which let me track her as she ran past the two blue creatures I had sensed. I followed, but slowed to inspect the creatures as I passed.
They were shorter than I was, with heads that were disproportionately sized to their bodies. Their shoulders came up to my waist, but the tops of their heads came all the way up to my neck. The eyes were where they would have been if the head was normal sized, the scalp was swollen and enlarged, and shifted as they moved.
The blue creatures had lighter blue spots spattered throughout their skin. When I glanced their way, they looked back at me, turning their heads and padding their small feet in place as I passed.
"I'm here to help you." I told them.
One turned away, spurning me. The other stepped forward with their arms held out in front of them. I stopped and put the axe between me and them. They didn't seem to register its existence and continued to approach. I was tense, but I didn't get the sense of hostility from this thing.
I kept the axe between it and me as it approached. It walked until it was against the blade, then continued reaching forwards until its abnormally long fingertips brushed against my shirt. Nothing happened. The blue creature dropped its arms and turned away.
I could tell it was sad.
"Iosefka?" I tested. It turned back to me and my stomach dropped. I couldn't kill the fake Iosefka now, which was a fucking shame. First I needed some answers as to what exactly that insane tinker had been getting up to. The creature that was Iosefka turned away when I didn't have anything else to say. I hefted my axe and got going.
Iosefka, the fake one, had fled up a staircase that lead to another operating room. Her clinic had several more that were empty, but the one she was rummaging around in was a dead end. My bugs were trying to get in her way and block her eyesight, but the woman still had that aura around her, and she seemed to have an innate knowledge of where everything she was looking for was.
I didn't bother being quiet. Instead of taking things slow and trying to get the drop on the white haired woman, I had my bugs make as much of a racket as they could and placed a good portion of them so they were obscuring the entrance. There was a bug I hadn't encountered before in the roof with Iosefka, which I almost glossed over before I remembered that Iosefka was a wet tinker. They nearly blended in with the swarm, but were different enough for me to pick them out.
It didn't have any senses I could make out, so I couldn't observe anything through it. I was only aware of its position by virtue of being aware of its biology. It had a strange shape, almost like a centipede, but it didn't have proper legs, and on the end that seemed like its head were six short tendrils that flexed subtly against nothing. Through its placement in relation to the rest of my swarm, I could tell that it was near where Iosefka was rummaging. When I tried to make it move, nothing happened.
Worrying.
I stepped through my swarm, watchful of any reaction from Iosefka. She finished looking through a drawer, a process that my bugs were interrupting, and moved on to another. Without hesitation, I walked up and confiscated her cane, which she had moved to her belt to free up a hand.
I threw the cane to the floor behind me, where my swarm was waiting to usher it out of her reach. Then I drew my gun and, because she seemed like she could survive mortal wounds like they were nothing, in addition to the fact that I no longer had any goodwill for her, shot Iosefka where her heart was when she turned to face me.
Then I dropped the gun too and pulled my axe out. Before I could swing, there was a buzzing at the edge of my consciousness and I saw Iosefka holding a slug out towards me. It wasn't the new bug I had sensed, this was something new. The slug was partially covered by the shroud, which was why I hadn't sensed it before, and it was different in a way that was similar to the other new bug.
It didn't feel anything. It just existed. Nothing, not even Iosefka's hand, registered on its sensorium. Yet, it was buzzing.
In an instant, the buzzing elevated to a level that would have been deafening if I was listening to it, and the air in front of the slug rippled. From where the air rippled, tentacles burst forth and slammed into me. The sheer strength of the impact threw me back to the other wall. I hit an operating table that my body snapped around, with half over and half under.
Then I fell to the ground where I found I couldn't move my legs. I pushed at the ground to roll myself and get a blood vial. My hands were trembling from injury, and my stomach was just a pit of nothing. I'd felt this before, it was just my body recognising that death was approaching, which counterintuitively slowed me down jabbing a blood vial into my leg.
I was so slow that the vial was kicked out of my hand the moment before I would have jabbed. Iosefka knelt next to me, taking her sweet time to get situated. It was irritating, and I was having bugs fly at her face, only to redirect the instant before impact. That just irritated me more, but I kept doing it because it might be irritating Iosefka.
"Moon scented hunter," Iosefka said, murmuring the words. She was talking to herself, not me. "Let us obtain a higher purpose. Let us leave behind the rabble of the streets and become… significant."
"I am significant you bitch." I grabbed at her sleeve, which was all I could reach.
"Now now, none of that." Iosefka waggled the slug that was still in her hand. It was then that I realised the tentacles had vanished. A temporary projection? It had beaten me down about as quickly as the Siberian would have.
I didn't care. "You're a twisted madwoman. You're insane and I've spent years hunting someone much, much worse than you. Make no mistake Iosefka, I'm going to kill you."
Iosefka made to stand but I held her down. "Please don't make me use it again. I might damage your body."
"Do it." I told her.
Iosefka's expression set. I knew she heard that.
"Fucking do it. I'll come back and I'll kill you. That's my fucking curse. You better leave the girl alone, because then I'll have to vindicate what I'm going to do to you. It doesn't matter if you only kill me a little dead, or a lot dead, because I will come back and I will kill you. That's not a promise. That's not a curse, not on you. It's not an oath, either. It's simple. I. Will. Kill. You." I purposefully spaced out the final words, since that seemed to help communication. I really wanted Iosefka to know what I was promising.
I'm not sure why Alexandria's speech came to mind in the moment. But it fit.
"There's no need to be so crass." Iosefka told me with a disappointed expression. The air around the slug rippled again, and moments later darkness welcomed me.
I was treated to Iosefka panicking as I disappeared in the dark mist. My last thought was of Taylor. I could only hope that it had been enough for her to get back home.
~drip~drip~drip~
o**h
