Chapter Twenty-Three | Praise Your God, Oh Vicar
"Another world, eh?"
"As far as I can gather, yeah."
Catherine and Eileen were sat in one of the rooms above the chapel, the wails of beasts in the night emanating through the stone and breaking the tranquil quiet the place seemed to bring.
"So he was from there then?"
"Who?"
"A boy I met decades ago. Tom, he said his name was. Carried around one of those little sticks you've got. Did things with it I'd never seen before then, nor since. I'd thought it a mirage my whole life until you made rope from air and shot fire from a bit of wood."
"Tom, you said?"
"Aye. That'd be his name."
"Fuck." Catherine ran her fingers through her hair. "I knew he'd been here, once, but to hear it from someone else…"
"You know the lad?"
"He's not a boy in my time. He's an old man. Seventy, eighty years old I think, and a monster through and through." She looked out the window at the starless sky, hankered by thick clouds and the stifling moonlight that ran along their pillowy curves. "I think Yharnam may have helped turn him into that."
"If anything can turn man to monster it'd be this city. A special breed, Yharnam makes. Sometimes soft things are born of it, kind like young Emilie, or harsh ones like her father."
"Will she be okay?"
"None of us will if the night doesn't end within the year."
"The year?"
"Never been a night that long since Old Yharnam burned. It nearly took the city with it."
"That's a siege, within your own walls."
"Yet people still flock to Yharnam. Travelers sick and hale, looking for life or fortune. How famous we are, to be of death yet still have travelers walk happily into our drooling maw."
"A year long night…" her voice was thin, wondering if the entirety of it truly did rest on her shoulders. A plaything of gods. "They don't work like that, where I'm from."
"They don't work like that anywhere but Yharnam. The sun stops shining on us and us alone." Eileen sighed. "You should see it some time. Stark darkness next to light, like two rivers mixing."
"Maybe one day."
"So, you're not a Hemwick witch then, aye? Too soft to be one anyways. Not got enough sores or pocks on your pretty skin to be one of them."
"No, but I may have to find these Hemwick witches."
"Why? You're seeking blood, not magic."
Catherine pondered Eileen's statement, about to argue when she realized she was right.
"I'm curious. I want to know how magic works here. If I can learn anything from it."
"That's something you should steer far away from. Mark my words, no good can ever come of Yharnam magic. It always comes with a price."
A questioning hum bubbled out of Catherine, her features pinched.
"There's a part of the Church, the Choir they're called - and you'll find they all use it in some way. But it's not like you, where the magic… it comes from inside you, aye girl?"
"It's mine, yeah."
"That's what I thought. It… they take their magic from the gods, and it changes them. Makes them manic. Hemwick, and witches like them, they get it from the blood - which turns them into beasts far more fearsome than most you'd see in this city." She crossed her arms, a muffled huff trapped beneath her mask. "They keep their minds, but grow twisted. No better than beasts, but at least beasts can't think."
"How do you know all this?"
"I'm old, girl. Might be the oldest hunter there is in this city." She tapped her mask, next to her temple. "I've seen a lot over the years, and almost none of it surprises me anymore. Except for you."
"What, because I'm a Dreamer?"
"Because you're not from here. You helped Emilie, even after putting down her maddened father. How soft must your home be, for that to be your reflex?"
"How cruel must yours be to not save her? A helpless girl, hardly ten - if that - and to leave her behind?"
Eileen cackled, throwing her head back. "Oh, she's got teeth now! No shaking in your precious little boots. No more questions, just action. You're a hunter now, girl, but don't think I didn't notice your anger in the tomb. Dreamer you may be, but if you lose that fragile hold you have on that meat stirring up inside your head know that I'll be the one to put you down."
"I'd sooner kill myself than turn into something like Gascoigne."
"And that you should. No one should have to suffer like that. To watch as they slaughter friend and family."
"Already tried to," Catherine admitted softly. "I wake up back home sometimes, and I threw myself off a tower. Thought it'd work there, that there was something here, specifically, keeping me alive. Learned the hard way, didn't I?"
"What a curse it is, to not die."
"Tom… Voldemort, he calls himself now, that's all he wants. He's immortal, in a way. Split his very soul so that he can't be taken to whatever world waits for us after death." Her voice took a somber tone, disgust dripping from every word. "Who could ever want that? To never die?"
"A broken man, I'd say. Death comes for us all, most often at the end of a blade, and all we can do is accept it when it arrives."
"You've had a long time to think on it, I imagine."
Nodding her head, Eileen chuckled. "I should have been dead long ago, yet here I am," she said, spreading her arms wide. "Still just as ready as I was fifty years ago to put down the members of our flock that stray too close to the darkness."
"Fifty years… fifty years of fighting." Catherine whistled. "And you're…?"
"Sixties, I suppose. Lost count a few years back and I haven't given it much thought since. Once a Dreamer, always a Dreamer, in a way."
"What do you mean?"
"Until someone takes my pretty head off, there's nothing in this world - no sickness, no disease - that will take me from it."
"So we're…"
"Immortal? In a way, aye."
"God…"
"Oh, chin up. Once you've finished finding coldblood or whatever it is, the night will be done and you'll be free to throw yourself off another tower if you wish. Just need a little patience until then."
"I look dearly forward to my inevitable suicide," Catherine muttered, dread roiling in her gut.
"At least you've still got your humour. It's the dry ones you have to watch. Madmen, the lot of them."
For a second, Catherine pictured… Alfred? Alvin? The gray man who stopped her at the entrance to Old Yharnam. She frowned, something about him still niggling at her mind.
Too cheery, not in the way Gascoigne was. A man broken and yet still so eager to fulfill his duty. No, Alfred was someone who struck her as broken long before he'd come into the ignoble profession of hunting.
"I guess you see a lot of those in your line of work."
"Far too many."
Tapping her fingers against the table, Catherine huffed. "How much do you know about the Church?"
"Only that they pay me, and that they own this city."
"Really?" Her eyebrows raised. "Five decades of hunting, you said, and you don't know a thing about them? I see this place, and I know what I'm looking at is just the tip of the iceberg of their crimes committed."
"They're secretive, keep everything close to their chest. I'm given a mark, and I bring them a head. They give me money, blood, and a place to live. If you want to know more, go knocking down the doors of the Grand Cathedral and interrogate the Vicar. I've little to no knowledge of their goings-on, and I'd rather never learn."
"Whispers, at the least."
"Of what? You've a lot to learn, girl, but it isn't from me."
"Then this Grand Cathedral, where can I find it?"
Eileen laughed, her shoulders shaking. "Can't miss it. That tower, looming over the city? Cathedrals below it, 'bout a fifteen minute walk that-a-way," she said, jabbing her thumb over her back. "Not counting the beasts, however quickly you can carve through the vile things."
"Then I'd best meet this Amelia."
A gloved hand raised, the feathers along Eileen's coat ruffling silently. "Tread carefully. Angering the Church is not a wise thing to do."
"What are they going to do? Kill me?"
"Worse things out there than death, Dreamer. You'd best remember that."
"Torture?" She shook her head. "Far worse torture where I come from."
"Suit yourself, but don't say I didn't warn you. Even immortals like us have something to fear."
"I'll keep that in mind. And Eileen?"
The woman looked up, peering at Catherine through her mask.
"Thank you, for helping me with Emilie. I'm going to do what I can to see that she makes it through the night unscathed."
"And you as well."
-::-
More old men with pistols, a host of beasts, and a lumbering giant were what she found in the little tower Elijah had sent her to.
What made her curious was the locked and warded door at the top of it, or the hollow centre of the tower that led down into a bottomless dark.
The door itself was something she swore to come back to later, after a few hurried alohomora's and a useless blasting hex did nothing but burnish the surface of it, the steel and petrified wood that made up its face practically glowing with a magic that left her feeling oily and unclean.
It did tell her something.
Magic was known to Yharnamites, as Eileen had told her, but a kind unlike she had ever encountered in her few short years as a witch. A price indeed, judging by the shimmer across the metal that spoke of blood and nothing else. Did they take a life to make that door and the room it rested in unbreakable? Slit a man's throat and let it pour over the steel, coating it in his life and the essence that lay deep, deep within?
Catherine didn't know, but she was damned if she wasn't going to find out.
What left her reeling though, was how alien it seemed, yet how alike it was to the abominable ritual she had been forced to witness a year before in that moonlit graveyard.
Somehow close, yet entirely different, and it curdled her blood all the same.
So that left down, and down she went, slowing her fall as she went from platform to platform, a series of construction bridges and scaffolding lining the inside of the tower from top to bottom.
The damage seemed intentional, almost. Bits of wood smashed to pieces and burnt at the edges, as if someone had walked down the tower scrapping everything they came across.
That, of course, sparked her interest.
What were they hiding?
And she happened across the little secret halfway down. A door that almost floated in the empty space of the wall, like a window, a few scraps of wood at its front marking the entrance it once was. With some maneuvering, she managed to make it over, but not without dying once on the way - her spell failing her as she attempted to leap towards the tiny platform and sending her reeling down to strike the floor below, scattering her brains across the stone.
Catherine had never minded heights, and falling to her death for the dozenth time only served to make them that much less fearsome. She almost laughed aloud, realizing how terribly boring quidditch would be if she were to play it now.
Standing awkwardly, her weight pressed against the door in front her and open space to her back, Catherine fiddled with the handle, falling forward as it swung open.
She spluttered, dusting herself off and plucking a sharp rock from her palm as she looked up to find herself…
In the Dream?
"What?"
Catherine frowned, finding no spires, but instead the claustrophobic skyline of Yharnam clustered around her - sharp filigree and crooked spikes poking out of the buildings that flanked the tower.
Oh.
The Dream had to come from somewhere, didn't it?
Walking up the path, she did not spy the massive tree, nor the hundreds of graves that called that place home. Instead, this little hideaway only harboured the small garden that lay out front, the workshop itself miniscule next to the buildings that loomed above.
She opened the door to the workshop to find it empty inside. Different from the one she'd seen in the Dream.
Papers were scattered across the singular room, a thick layer of dust covering the floor and every half-built weapon that hung from the walls, an array of wicked steel propped up on hooks and left on display for no one but herself.
And then there was the Doll, and for a brief moment Catherine thought her asleep, before she realized this Doll was simply that.
A doll.
Carefully, she kneeled before the thing, gaze running over the immaculate porcelain.
There was no subtle movement of the face, no rise and fall of the chest. Its hands were simply splayed out, one in its lap and the other laying upon the floor, unposed and very much not alive.
Ah, you see it for what it is.
"And what's that, exactly?"
A creation. This is his workshop, do you not see it? The Dream is an echo of this place, yet so much more.
"So… it wasn't- wasn't torn out of the world?"
Nothing so frightful. No. This workshop and that, they are one and the same. Only, one is long dead - the other undying.
Humming at the novelty of it, she turned, before squinting and shaking her head, as if to clear it of dust. There was something on the altar beside the doll, and Catherine's eyes burned to look at it.
A coil of flesh, if it could even be called that. Blackened and weeping an ichor like pitch, it lay still but writhed beneath her very eyes. And eyes it had, dark, marbled things that dotted its surface like sores, staring into the ether unblinkingly.
Catherine shuddered, turning away from it. "What the hell is that?"
Life given life. Such a rare, precious thing. Do not leave it, not unless you wish your journey to end in ruination.
Fingers twitching, Catherine reached out and snatched the thing, nauseated by the warmth of it - as if it was alive. She fumbled about the workshop, snatching up a bit of cloth and wrapping the thing in it, tucking it into her pocket and doing her best to ignore the heat that emanated across her breast
It was powerful, whatever it was, making the flesh behind her eyes itch and her spine turn to ice just looking at it.
And power she felt, still, tickling at her mind from just outside the door.
Curious, Catherine put… whatever that vile thing was out of her mind, walking outside the workshop to find a tombstone. The only tombstone that lay both in the Dream and here, it seemed, weathered beyond recognition and crooked from churning soil.
Her foot tapped at the earth above it, and she knew there to be something below. Was grave desecration to be her next endeavour? Not even the dead safe from her prying hands?
Of course it was, she told herself. Any advantage she could find in this city something worth taking.
Wand raised, she began digging through the earth, heavy piles of soil lifted by an unseen spade and left in an unceremonious heap beside the crooked headstone. Quickly, far sooner than she thought, she brought up bone - whoever was buried here evidently not worth the treatment of a deep grave, nor a coffin in which to rest.
But the bone, it almost sang. Not blood, but raw, untempered magic pouring from it like wine from a glass. It felt of her, of the magic she knew ran through the veins of man and not any beast brought low by the fel scourge of the Church.
It mystified her, to be so familiar yet so foreign, and here of all places - a world away and in a city that defied everything she knew to be real and good.
This wasn't twisted, not like the warding upon the door. It was… pure.
She reached out to the floating soil, to pull the bone from the dirt and study it, yet as her fingers touched the aged brown of marrow she felt her mind burn, the muscles in her legs spasming as she fell to the ground in a heap.
The bone held fast to her touch like glue, the power it held pouring into her and rewriting her very being as the blood had. But this, it hurt - not the pleasant rush that the Doll brought with her gentle touch, but an indomitable presence - hot white and beyond eager to be reunited with a being that knew the pull of magic, not the twisted imitation, full of nightmares and plague that the Yharnamites used, but that of its-
Catherine gasped, wide, harrowing things as she drank in the air, throwing the bone away as if it was cursed. Hacking and wheezing, she rolled onto her side, spitting a glob of blood on the ground.
Bit my tongue.
She swore, pushing herself up with shaking arms.
"What the fuck." Her mind rang like a struck bell, echoing around in her head endlessly, blood pounding in her ears and her mouth going dry. "What the fuck."
Whatever was in that, it was… not alive, per se, but something close to it.
She spat again. Or tried, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. Panting, she snatched a vial and used it to wet her throat, the soothing warmth of the blood bringing the sight back to her eyes.
"Not from inside, eh?" Catherine spoke aloud. "Seemed pretty similar to me."
And it was. Like a… sibling, one could say, of the magic she felt in her veins, the magic she had been born with and wielded unwittingly until the tender age of eleven. Eileen was either a liar or misinformed, and she didn't know which was concerning, because whatever this magic was - not the sickening aura she had felt rolling off the door like the stench of a corpse - was familiar.
It wasn't quite the same. No artifact she had heard of, even the Goblet of Fire or the Philosopher's Stone, had been so close to being alive. And she had felt the Goblet's magic as it wrapped around her heart and forced her into that damned tournament, lay hands on the Stone and knew that a form of life lay trapped beneath its glassy surface.
This was different, yet the same, and Catherine could feel the need to know why growing.
How was it possible to find magic so like her own in a different world entirely. Was magic, some of it at the very least, the same no matter where you found yourself? If so, why? Why, why, why?
Catherine stared down at the bone, forgotten upon the ground and empty of the stifling vigor that had been trapped in its crumbling marrow. "Who were you?" she whispered, finger stirring through the dirt towards a glint of silver, pulling up a small comb - not to brush one's hair but to wear proudly. A noblewoman, or perhaps her suitor. "And were you like me?"
Did Yharnam know true witches, like her? Not these… borrowers that Eileen made them out to be?
If anyone would have answers, it would be the Vicar.
Blinking, Catherine realized that she had no idea what the bone had done to her.
She felt sprightly, fast on her feet, and… as if she was the air itself.
Rolling on the balls of her feet, Catherine tried to remember the feeling it brought. The rush of it, pouring through her veins like a hot desert wind.
And then she swore, having disappeared in a flash only to slam herself into the wall in front of her, taking the skin off her forehead and leaving a mark in the stone.
"Shit."
She could have sworn the Voice, whatever it was, was laughing at her. Or, at the least, felt amusement at her idiocy.
So she could… move quickly, through the air itself. Or maybe she was just so fast that it seemed so. Catherine could feel a slight twinge in her knees, and knew immediately this was something that would take some getting used to.
Magic of the body.
It was something she'd never thought of before, but it made perfect sense. To use magic to move past what one was physically capable of… well, in all likelihood it hadn't been used for good reason. Even after a single dash, it wasn't just her head that hurt, but the pull at her knees spoke of a damage to the body irreversible.
Unless one happened to have Yharnam blood at the ready to counteract such a thing.
Picking up both herself and her pride Catherine left behind what she knew to be - at least in mind - Gehrman's tomb, leaping down the tower with her magic at her feet, to land on the stone below as softly as a bird.
She was surrounded by debris, a pile of it pushed up against one wall that rose up a good twenty feet. The remnants of, she could only imagine, the Churches purge of this lonesome tower.
And there was a beast down there with her, tall and cruel and bearing horns that curled over its face - a wolf's snout matted with blood. It stood on two legs, its arms drooping down to its knees and far too human.
It smiled at her, no words stuttering from between its jagged teeth but instead a cruel chuckle. What caught Catherine's attention was the ball of fire it conjured up, spinning above its hand.
She couldn't even utter a word before the fire was tossed at her, the beast immediately stampeding forward with its head lowered, ready to gore her and smash her body into the wall behind.
But while the creature was fast, whatever had been done to her by that old bone made her faster.
Disappearing, she dashed behind it and cut its knees out with a single swipe of her blade, the beast keening loudly as it buckled under its own weight and crashed to the ground in a bloodied heap. It whined, but the look in its eyes spoke of anger as she knelt in front of it.
"You're different," Catherine murmured, looking the beast in the eyes. "You've still got your mind about you. A bit of it, at least," she added, noting the muddied pupils. "Can't speak?"
It growled, flames tickling at its claws once more, and Catherine blew open its chest with an explosive hex, painting herself in viscera.
She wasn't going to get answers out of it even if she tried.
Opening the door the beast had been sitting behind, Catherine found herself looking out into what looked to be a blend of the Yharnam she had first come across and the burnt husk that lay beneath the greater city. Not quite forgotten, but more that of a slum.
Steam poured from a manhole, the heat of the sewers below bringing with it the stench of rot and shit, permeating everything in the sodden alley. There were a few crows in her path, as well as beastmen wandering the streets. They were cut down in an instant, Catherine far too used to bloodshed at this point to pay them any mind.
Though one creature down there took her notice. A tall, wretched looking man, not beastly but corpse-like in his grayish skin and crooked fingers. He was covered in a rotten, draping cloth, like a potato bag refashioned into a hooded tunic, and it held over his shoulder what could be nothing else but a corpse in a sack, blood dripping from the patchy fabric.
There was an aura about him, and as the man raised his hands Catherine felt herself pulled towards the thing on a magical wind, like a magnet drawing her in no matter how hard she dug her feet into the earth.
He did not grunt, nor did he - it - whine as she chopped at its flank with spear thrusts, only a low growl pouring from its throat as it threw around the corpse sack as easily as one would a knife. Not even fire seemed to hinder its movements, its robes catching flame like grease, burning wildly as it lumbered towards her.
"What the hell," she muttered, dodging away from another swipe. Hear talk of magic once and it's like the whole city becomes flooded in it.
The creature's punches were like lightning, and one caught her on the chin, bringing stars to Catherine's eyes and breaking her jaw the instant it made contact. She hissed through crumbling teeth, spitting a few out as she drew up her wand and cut off one of the things feet just above the ankle.
It kept walking, bloodied stump dragging a crimson trail across the stone and making a sickening crunching noise as it staggered forward.
"What the hell."
She took off its other foot, and it fell face first to the ground, Catherine plunging her blade into its spine and wincing as it let out a warbling scream, reddish bolts of lightning crackling across its body and spiking into the earth.
A snatcher come to take you away, the Voice whispered as she supped at another vial, hissing as her jaw put itself back together. The shackled remnant of Pthumeru.
"The what?" Catherine muttered, eyeing the corpse with distaste.
Old Yharnam herself named Pthumeru her home. The predecessor of all.
Lip curling, Catherine bit her tongue. "Fucking riddles."
Stepping over the body, she walked into a lift just around the corner. It shuddered as it took her up, wobbling this way and that, Catherine letting her hand hover over the chains that hoisted the thing back towards the waiting moon just in case it fell out from beneath her feet and she had to climb her way up.
Perhaps one day, she thought, sighing with relief as the lift made it to its destination, letting her off in what she knew immediately to be the proper Cathedral Ward.
It looked like the homes surrounding Oedon Chapel, but far more clean than their lesser counterpart. Intricate statues dotted the footpaths that wound up and down the way, all equally hideous in their design.
That same slatted skull, like a rotten fruit speckled with thick hairs - or the twisted amalgamations of far too many people crammed into each other to form a wailing, screaming host that looked skyward to their faceless gods.
What a cruel place, for these to be their symbols of worship.
She pushed her way past church-garbed men who screamed silently at her, beckoning and gesturing with lanterns and thin tree trunks held in their meaty grasp. Some took shots at her with blunderbusses, or held little torches that spewed fire just as she had grown so fond of. Catherine cut them down without effort, although her jaw dropped as she spied a giant shuffling about a large square, fifteen feet tall and carrying an axe the size of two men as it walked on thin legs that bowed with every cacophonous step.
These too wore the wide hats and elegant robes of the Church, though tattered and stained in the muck and blood of the beasts they had so obviously slain - the mulched corpses of them scattered across the square and placed in messy piles, awaiting their consecration by flame.
But it was obvious where she needed to go. A tall tower looking out over the entire city, a massive clock face in its centre making it seem as if Big Ben had been plucked out of London and placed here to rot.
The pathway to the Grand Cathedral was just that. Grand. Wide open steps with finely fashioned handrails lining the sides of them, filled with intricate spirals of burnished iron and marked by the occasional lamppost, not the tiny magical things that took her to and from the Dream, but imperial looking constructions, like something she would see in a museum to show off the old city lanterns filled up with whale oil that once dotted the streets of her home.
This was certainly the home of the Yharnam upper crust, and it showed through the gaudiness of it all.
And Catherine found herself standing in awe of the Grand Cathedral as it came into the sight. A mighty thing, and though the spire that towered over the city was one thing to see, to behold the Cathedral in its entirety was magnificent no matter how macabre the statues that lined its finely carved surface were.
Like guardians, a line of the open skulled statues knelt on either side of the stairway, spears in their hands and used to prop the things up, their backs bowed and faces (if there was a face upon the pocked things, more a collection of wounds than anything) lowered in reverence to what she knew could only be the Church.
The doors were wide, terribly so, stretching up far too high to be pushed by the hands of mortal men - though, thankfully, they were already open - just a hair, enough for her to squeeze through and walk up yet more damned steps to see a woman prostrated before a massive altar in the centre of an empty room.
Marble floors patterned with immaculate mosaics depicting the city and their gods, and stained glass windows rising up, up, up, toward a ceiling that Catherine could hardly see, only the faint glow of candlelight on rafters held higher than Notre-Dame itself. And how incredible the altar was, a series of daises each flanked by statues of people, not bowed and broken but reaching upward to a singular carving of a woman pouring blood upon the teeming masses. It spoke of their worship of the blood, an almost Christian propheticism - the wine of Christ to be granted to his saintly flock.
At the lowest, a skull, horse-like and laid to rest upon a cloth as old as itself - perhaps the clothes the beastman had been slain in.
"Amelia."
The woman's head raised, though she did not turn away from the altar, still lowered in prostration. "Yes?"
"I have some questions for you."
Slowly, the woman turned, limp blonde hair falling out from beneath her cowl. She wore robes of white, finely decorated with golden thread, and her eyes peered out at Catherine, just barely, a startling green that reminded herself of her own reflection.
"Speak, Outlander."
"I'm looking for Paleblood, and a way out of this city. Although, I am curious. What is it you're hiding above the Old Workshop?" Her fingers trailed across the handle of her spear as she stepped closer, allowing each footstep to ring out across the Cathedral. "I felt its magic. Vile, vile stuff. I can't imagine what's so valuable that you murdered to christen that door."
"Ah, you must be blessed. A Dreamer." Amelia's words were spoken with a reverent hush, almost breathy as they poured from her lips. "I'm afraid I cannot say. It is my time to join Laurence, you see. I can feel it, burning inside me." She clutched a pendant, holding it to her heart and murmuring something so softly that Catherine could not hear. "As is the rite of all of the Church, to become one with the Good Blood."
"Speak sense, woman. Your people have cursed this place, and I need to find Paleblood to put an end to it."
"You do not see it? Look to the sky, Dreamer. Look to the sky and see that which you seek has already revealed itself, unless you find yourself far too small to look upon what hides before your very eyes."
"Tell me!" Catherine shouted, her voice filling the room.
"I cannot tell you, for you are too blind to see no matter the words I may speak."
And Amelia screamed, spitting blood, her back twisting and crunching as she bent over - crimson spraying like wings from her tattered dress and tainting the statues that looked over the Cathedral, the skull atop its altar staring at Catherine from afar.
Her arms stuttered, shaking and pulling and growing in sharp jerks, fur sprouting across what was pale flesh and laying out in thick ruffles of white. Amelia grew before her very eyes, large, far larger than any beast she had come across, not wolfish but truly dog-like and her face still covered by the torn dress that once cloaked her, wraps of the cloth clinging to her arms and legs like the bandages worn by the beasts of Old Yharnam. Still, she clutched the pendant to her heart, letting out an earth shattering scream that burst Catherine's eardrums and stained her cheeks in red, and the antlers that now stood atop her lupine head jutted tall and proud, reminding her of that Cleric upon the bridge.
What mighty blood Amelia must have had, to turn into a creature such as this.
Drawing her spear, Catherine lunged.