Chapter Twenty-Five | I Am but Dust and Ashes
Lost. Again.
Catherine rapped her knuckles against her temple, wondering how in god's name she always found herself lost?
Was there some part of her deficient? Unable to find her way through simple streets to wherever this bloody Hemwick was?
She assumed it was, as the name said, a lane. Some street in this city known for housing hags and other beings considered repugnant by the Yharnamites. Yet still she found no mention of it. No street sign, no nothing.
So she found herself asking for directions, walking up to a window that leaked a soft light, warm and welcoming, with the pleasant burn of incense tickling at her nose.
"Hello? Catherine called out, knocking on the grate that sheltered the window. "Is anyone there?"
"Hmm?" A woman's voice spoke up from within. "I'm not working, never during hunts."
"Working? I just need directions."
The window opened, a blonde woman with sharp features peering out at her. "Directions?" She frowned at Catherine, her nose flaring. "Oh. What a queer scent-"
"Excuse me?"
The woman blinked. "You smell odd." Her nose flared again, eyes raking over Catherine's body. "A hunter, are you? I would say this is no place for ladies, but you're no lady, are you?"
Catherine's mouth opened and closed, flabbergasted and all of a sudden completely off balance. "Are you trying to be an ass?"
"I meant no disrespect, hunter. You're not a royal, are you?"
"No."
"Then you are no lady."
"Oh. Oh. I thought you were insulting me."
Laughing, the woman shook her head. "My apologies. You're not from here, then? An outsider?"
"Yeah. Look- I just need to find a place called Hemwick-"
"Hemwick? What ever could you need in a place like that?"
"To kill witches, obviously."
"Oh my. Well, you'd have to go north of the Great Cathedral. There's a path branching off that leads out into the countryside, where you can find Hemwick."
Catherine felt like slapping herself. Of course it wasn't just a bloody street.
"By chance, would you know of a safe place to spend the night? I've little incense left, and I fear the moon may hang quite a while longer."
She hesitated, frowning at the woman. Catherine didn't know her, whether she would be a danger to Emilie or Elijah, but the cheery mood the Doll had put her in still lingered.
"Oedon Chapel is safe," Catherine offered. "There's a man there, Elijah. Tell him Catherine sent you. Do you… need me to escort you there?"
"I've no need of an escort, but that's very kind of you, hunter. Though…" she trailed off, eyes running over Catherine again, causing her to frown. "If you do return to the chapel, I would be quite happy to see you. Perhaps I could thank you. Properly."
"Really, it's fine. You gave me directions, I gave you directions. I'm used to Yharnamites spitting on me, or trying to cut my head off."
"I insist." And the woman very nearly purred, thin fingers curling over the windowsill and a wry smirk on her face. "I've never seen a lady hunter before. It's… exciting. And so small, too."
Blinking, Catherine nodded slowly. "Alright. Do you need me for anything?" The woman shook her head, still wearing that knowing smile. "I'm going to…" she pointed in the general direction of the Cathedral. "Go kill witches."
Not giving the woman a moment to speak, Catherine walked away, feeling terribly confused and more than a little flustered.
What a strange woman.
Not rude, by any means, not like-
"You!" Another voice shouted, rough and full of smoke. "Think we're all easy marks, do you? Telling her of safe havens n' all? Well I ain't having it!"
She whirled at the noise, spear drawn and facing another softly lit window, the vague silhouette of a man peering through the foggy glass. The shadowy blob of his fist raised to his face, a loud, hacking cough echoing out into the street.
"Well? Give me your best shot!"
"You heard everything I said. Go to the Chapel."
"Think you can fool me? No, I'm far too clever for you, outsider."
A sudden spark of maliciousness reared its head in Catherine. "Know what? You know Iosefka's clinic, near the city centre? Go there. Plenty safe."
Hopefully the vicious old bastard would get brutalized by whatever creature took Iosefka's place.
Mood flipping fast enough to give her whiplash, Catherine did her best not to think about how quick she was to shift to bloodlust, instead making the trek back to the Grand Cathedral.
She had to lurk in the shadows more often than not, of no interest to find herself going head to head with the axe-wielding preachers that stood fifteen feet tall, the wicked steel they held shrieking against stone as it dragged behind them.
Oh, she had no doubt in her mind that she could kill them with ease, but they were sure to make a noise, a very loud one at that, and attract all manner of beast that she would then have to fight off. Pushing her way through a gauntlet of werewolves and broken minded Yharnamites wasn't how she planned to spend her time, instead hellbent on getting to Hemwick and putting those witches to rest.
If she happened to learn a bit more about how magic functioned in Yharnam, perhaps enough to break her way through that enchanted door above the workshop, then that was simply an added bonus.
Her thoughts turned to Hermione, and she wondered how that was going to work out.
Catherine was ecstatic to have finally told Hermione of her feelings, and to find them reciprocated (even with Hermione's evident confusion and shyness around the whole thing) was a dream come true. But Catherine didn't trust dreams, not anymore, and a part of her wondered if this would end with her corrupting Hermione with the filth that had rotted her own brain.
She didn't want to be the broken one, saved by romance. It didn't sit well with her, to be an emotional damsel who only finds freedom in the arms of another.
Still, though, the loudest part of her rejoiced every time the memory of Hermione's lips flitted across her frail mind. How soft they were, how warm her fingers as they cupped her cheeks and lay burning trails across her scars.
Not even Djura's cannon had burnt that hot, not enough to sink into her psyche itself and brand his mark upon her, not as Hermione's touch had.
Her soul was an exception, that twisted magic of the Dream leaving the flesh of her throat half melted and tight as she rolled her head, the tug a reminder of how far she could fall.
Catherine knew, now, that she couldn't make the decision for Hermione, and that by the time she made it back to Hogwarts her mood would once more shift and she'd find herself belligerently optimistic no matter the slog and trial that awaited her in Yharnam.
It was as if she was two different people entirely. The Catherine that existed back home, starry-eyed and more than a little troubled - and the Catherine of Yharnam, bloodthirsty and sharp all over.
Could the two co-exist, she wondered? They were inseparable, but lived in the same manner that one acted around their peers, versus their elders. A different face for every occasion, words chosen carefully or spewed with reckless abandon, haphazard curses and the familiar banter of a friend long known.
Was that the same? Or was there something more. A sliver of herself that existed only in this dire place?
She didn't rightly know, and wasn't particularly eager to find out when all this was over - whether that violence that thrummed within her veins was now forever a part of what made Catherine Potter unique.
It wasn't as if she didn't want to see the end of all this. Not at all. Catherine yearned for it with every fibre of her being, screaming into the void and begging for release from the iron shackles that bound her to this wicked city. But she was also afraid. Of herself, most of all. What she could, and would do to see an end to Voldemort. The lengths she knew she would travel to put him in the dirt once and for all.
Her eyes had been opened by Yharnam. Her naivety crushed under hand and foot, rubbed in her face until she was forced to put voice to what she had become.
A hunter, and a damn good one at that.
Becoming an auror was no longer in the running for her future career choices. Maybe she would make a life out of tracking dangerous beasts, either capturing them or mounting their disembodied heads on her wall.
Hunting was now a part of her, whether she liked it or not, and Catherine found herself leaning towards embracing it rather than deny this new part of her.
Denial had only gotten her so far in life, and never any place good.
Slowly but surely as she rounded the bend of the Cathedral, the well-fashioned steps and dusty, blood-stained path began to morph into the gravel mulch of a country road. No wrought iron bannisters to stand upon the side of the alley, but instead haphazard fences that had seen far better days.
It lead to what looked to her a hamlet, perhaps twenty minutes out from the city proper and guarded only by a few errant mutts, these ones naked of fur and impaled in all directions by wicked lengths of jagged steel.
Whether to punish the creatures or make them walking swords, all snarls and gnashing teeth, Catherine didn't know, but she ended their suffering all the same - the things dripping blood from every open wound and emitting a stench of rot so foul she knew their insides to be a muddy soup of gangrene and bile, even without opening their bellies and letting the ropes of their intestine spill out across the ground.
Trees were an unfamiliar hallmark of Yharnam, the only ones seen within the city planted with purpose, and close to death. These ones reminded her of home, if Britain happened to be a picture out of the Brothers Grimm, with gnarled trunks and thick patches of bramble snaking their way around the knotted bark.
There were still statues here, but far different from the ones seen back in the Cathedral Ward. Still cruel in their imagery, but far more crude, fashioned by the hand of one unskilled, especially when compared to the flourish and detail of those morbid pillars of iron that dotted the city centre.
Hunchbacked women swathed in patchy cloth were what were put into figure, holding large scythes or other farming tools littered with spikes and looking far too cruel to have ever been used to bring life into this world.
Were these the witches? If so, she was glad to have made the trek here, if only to slit their throats.
Pyres burned in the distance, what looked to be a manor sprawling over the mountainside above, although she could tell how run down it was even looking upon it from here.
This must have once been a proper village, before whatever fel magic that had twisted Yharnam made its trip over here, to corrupt even the outliers of that city.
She could see what had once been beautiful, before the rot and decay the blood brought with it. A forest, once tall and proud now bowed with the shame of its people. Homes left to crumble, weeds and ivy turning over the floorboards and reclaiming what man had built.
And the sound of worshipful chanting grew louder and louder as Catherine stepped into the valley of Hemwick Charnel Lane, a lantern to her right awaiting the snap of her fingers, and in front a small coterie of what may be witches - hands raised to a massive statue, lit at its feet by a ramshackle array of torches and the host below crooning and wailing as they spoke their prayer.
So Catherine snapped her fingers, a begrudging thanks offered to whatever magic made up the things that ferried her to and from the Dream.
They were invisible to all but her. Even moreso, they did not exist unless for her. Catherine had seen Elijah crawling through the Chapel, and how he'd passed through the lantern embedded in its floor as if it were smoke. Only to her, were they visible, and only to her were they tangible.
It should have been impossible, but then again, she should be dead.
The women that worshipped at the base of the statue, one she realized to be lined with headstones (tombs and yet more tombs to find in this barren place) were more than easy to slaughter. They fought wildly, swinging farming tools bent and twisted into something even more insidious than the pitchforks the men of Yharnam wielded, these ones barbed and made to not just cut but instead rend the flesh of their victims. These were tools built for pain.
They hollered loud and manic, whoops and shrieks more like that of a celebration than a recognition of their impending demise. Perhaps they were courageous. Perhaps they were just insane. Catherine didn't care either way, as long as they were dead.
And die they did, cut down by her spear or executed with military precision by the crush and tear of levitated stone - Catherine taking the rubble that seemed to be plentiful everywhere in this city and its outskirts and putting it to good use.
It was messy to be sure, smashing a woman's head beneath a flying boulder, but it was a far shot more efficient than trying to chase every single one of them down.
She pushed through the unkempt farmland and half-mined stone that made up the village, a strange blend of masonry and overgrown soil marking the past trade of this place - what was once its lifeblood before it had been taken over by the ichor of the Church.
The sight of it brought no emotion to her breast, only the coldly detached sense of danger she always felt tickling at the back of her mind. Pity, maybe, to see what once was a flourishing town reduced to ashes - but no more than she felt trekking through the city proper.
Anger, on the other hand, was quite familiar to her. To see these people not reduced by beasthood but… some measure of insanity that had infected this place long before the blood ever had.
And she could tell from the pinprick black that marked the eyes of the women she had cut down. Not muddied by the scourge, but bloodshot from the headaches and frantic delusions that came with no sleep, no rest for days or weeks on end. They were frail as well, skin and bones swathed in rags that reeked of blood and the sharp sting of urine.
Catherine wondered if that was how she looked now, all wiry muscle and sallow skin - untouched by sun for weeks at a time and marked forevermore by her mistakes. She had avoided mirrors in her time at Hogwarts, and had no time or interest to find one here, even if only to sate her curiosity.
No ounce of her wished to look upon the damage Yharnam had wrought, and wonder how Ron and Hermione could bear to lay eyes on such a broken thing.
Not that she felt broken. Not anymore. Maybe a touch, in the way she so casually encouraged that man to his doom, but that was more an interdimensional conflict or morals. Dumbledore was right that the rules of Britain did not apply to here, and she was more than glad to have embraced that fact.
A strange red glow burned beneath a tree far ahead, and she squinted against it, weapon raised to block her throat and shield her eyes, her head hunkered down somewhat to peek underneath the ragged tines that ran along its side.
Some sort of creature crawled out of the dirt, swathed in awful red light - electricity spiking off its body in the same way it had off that snatcher a ways back, running lines through the dirt and hissing loudly as it cracked at the air.
It was tall, long shocks of ragged hair hanging off its head in spikes, pooling around its waist and covering most of its face sans the bright red that shone from its eye sockets. It was naked, bar a bloodsoaked loincloth and the sickle it bore in its hand. The thing was inhuman, limbs far too thin and fingers far too long, like spindles made of bone and wrapped tight with oily flesh. The skin of it was covered in rot, bare patches of pale white shining through the blackened meat that made up its body, and it hissed at her as it lumbered forward.
She blew a hole in its gut, a flower of pulped red spraying out of its back and scattering viscera across the tree behind it. It still walked, the shards of its spine crooked and easily visible through the gaping maw that made up its belly.
"Jesus Christ."
Sprinting forward, she took off its arm before it could swing its weapon, the scythe clattering to the ground. Still, it hissed, not a flicker of pain in its glowing red eyes.
So she cut off its head, grinning in satisfaction as the beast fell over and… scattered into mist, the blade going with it.
"What the…" Catherine looked over where its body would have been, should have been, to see not even the blood and meat that she had scattered from its body laying thick along the tree. "How?"
The Voice did not deign to answer, though she felt its anger through their connection. Something about this creature made it furious, a sense of palpable wrong being the only glimmer of thought that trickled through.
"What are you, I wonder, to anger her like this?" Catherine ran her hand through the dirt, pinching it between two fingers. "You're magic, but… oh."
This was close to what happened to her, wasn't it? Disappearing once she'd died only to reappear in the Dream.
But how? Was this the magic that these witches had become capable of? Immortality? Or, judging by the state of the beast, some bastard attempt at such. It was a poor imitation, that she could tell from the still ebbing anger that pulsed at the corners of her mind. The Voice saw wrong in this, saw something stolen.
Stolen, but not quite the same.
She clicked her tongue, continuing on her journey, and learning quite quickly as she climbed the mountain, ducking through homes with creaking walls and beastmen hiding beneath the floorboards, that Hemwick had found a new trade beyond stone and maize.
Corpse disposal.
Piles upon piles of bodies littered the basements of the houses she wandered through. Corpse pyres stacked against the mountain face burning bright and glorious beneath the starless sky.
The mass graves that lined her path made Catherine stop and stare. Naked bodies left in muddied heaps, stripped of not just their clothing but their very identities and left to rot in the trenches. The stench of it rankled her nose, and the sight sparked a small amount of distress in a worryingly over-exposed mind, even Catherine unaccustomed to such unfettered rot.
But their empty gazes were what made her gut churn, the eyes removed from the corpses and taken to god knows where. They were all butchered in some way, but one thing that stuck out was the black pits buried in their skulls.
"Why the eyes?" she found herself asking, levitating one of the corpses out of the hole and looking her over.
Throat slit, bruising over the arms and chest, and-
Catherine retched, pushing the corpse back into the pit. Her mouth felt gummy, throat thick with nausea and the most tangible disgust she had ever felt in her life building in her gut.
The woman's belly had been carved open, still stretched from the life that had been growing inside her, only to be quite literally torn out - the umbilical cord coiled across her naked chest, poking out from the distended mess of fat and organs that hung jumbled up and bulging from her waist.
Someone had torn a baby out of her, and Catherine knew it had to be these witches.
Mentally, she scratched out corpse disposal, now realizing that Hemwick was still farmland, in a way. Organ harvesting was their trade, and they seemed to be quite efficient at it.
The Church must know this was going on. Endorse it in some way, shape, or form - because the number of bodies here must have been in the hundreds, if not thousands, judging by the depth of the pits and the mounds of fresh dirt she could see piled up along the mountainside - and Catherine wondered for a moment if she'd wandered into fourteenth century Florence to see the graves dug for victims of the Black Death.
Wiping the bile from her lips, Catherine marched hard and heavy, hiking to the manor she could see overlooking the entire village. It occasionally slipped out of view as she walked over rickety bridges connecting the thin ravines of the mountain path, or as she pulled back into the shelter of a rotting home.
If Catherine took her time with the men and women of the village, a cruel smirk on her face as they wailed frightful shrieks and the serrated teeth of her spear slowly tugging at their muscle and bone, then she could only blame it on what she had seen but a hundred metres below.
Hemwick would only be a ghost story in the minds of children once she was through with it. Maybe, just maybe, they would tell tales of her.
She was glad she came, if only to put these monsters in the dirt where they belong.
Through dogs and madmen she pushed, the leather she wore growing more red with every body she added to her collection, dripping from her gloves and soaking into her mask. She breathed it in, hot copper and the sweet scent of Yharnam that always lingered in those the blood had touched.
Two hulking beasts gave her trouble along the way, men that seemed like the giants she had come across - but not the other giants - and Catherine's head span as she tried to work that out, deciding then and there to call the wide things that stomped about near Gascoigne's home trolls, and the thin but so very, very tall churchmen of the Cathedral Ward giants.
These were like trolls, but stockier, shorter, not looming two heads taller than Catherine and swinging corpses at her - instead cloaked in black and wielding axes the size of a man, broad bearded and hooked at the tail.
They were surprisingly quick, but all Catherine noticed was how their garb resembled that of the Church just closely enough for her to think them the same, or at least related.
She would have to find out from the witches here why they had mountains of bodies tucked beneath mountains of stone, tear open their throats so that she could taste their memories still warm and fresh.
Why eyes? Why fetuses? Why these hulking beasts that she knew to be a part of the Church?
Catherine stood at a crossroads as she pondered the various why's littered about in her head, and quite literally, the uneven mess of cobblestone beneath her feet leading forward and back, left and right. One lane led back from where she had come, another looping around to meet it. The way forward tumbled off a bridge that had seen far better days, the majority of it having fallen into the mists below, and lastly the road she seeked, leading to the manor above.
There stood an obelisk in the centre of it all, and she leaned against it, leaving the bloody mark of her shoulders and side pressed against the polished rock like a thumbprint.
It was quaint, in a way, what this place could have been. She saw a bit of home in it, if she looked past the corpses at her feet and how rotten the whole thing was.
Stretching her shoulders, Catherine pulled away from the standing stone, stomping up the hill to what she knew to be the witches home. It was the only building that wasn't crumbling… too much, at least, the roof for the most part intact and the walls free of the masses of ivy that clung to the other homes nearby.
A few mad women ran toward her, and another of those strange walking corpses summoned within crimson lightning, and she cut them all down.
The women were of no trouble, but the twisted thing with the sickle tore a chunk out of her arm, no sign on its hair-hidden face of any glee or recognition that it had done such, only jagged movements like that of a marionette - pulled this way and that to draw blood at its masters whim.
Slaves, these things must be. One of those poor, poor souls down below, repurposed into something far more sinister than any common beast.
Her blood boiled.
Catherine pinched a blood vial at her waist, hating how her muddied eye had caused her to be wounded by that foul thing. She had barely seen it coming out of the corner of her vision, only a gray blur within the greater fog that was the world when seen through that broken eye.
She quaffed the blood, letting out a calm breath as it ran lukewarm down her gullet.
Time to kill this damned witch.
Walking into the manor, she saw immediately that somehow, the inside of the place was far worse off than the outside. The stairs had fallen in on themselves, the foyer of the place filled with rubble and another stairwell carved in the middle of it that led down into a cellar, harsh torchlight shining through the doorway at the bottom.
Quietly, she tip-toed down the steps to find herself in a large open room that looked like it had once been a place of worship. Not to any of the Yharnam gods, but themselves. Statues of women lined the walls, regal and imposing, standing over a dying man left atop an altar with their hands hovering above his frail ribs. She looked up and gasped, bodies hung from the ceiling wrapped in cloth and chain. Blood soaked their swaddling, dripping onto the floor below.
In the corner, she saw a woman look up, hunchbacked and holding a staff in one hand. Her robes were dirty, black, and lined from top to bottom with eyes - pale white and staring every which way, stitched into the fabric itself.
Why?
"You!" Catherine's feet pounded heavily as she strode forward. "Why? Why all this? The torture! The deaths!?"
The witch cackled, head twisting. "Ooh, a hunter come to my abode. You think you frighten me? You dare to tread in my home?" She crooked a single finger, beckoning Catherine. "Come then, ye of the Church. Come and meet your death."
Her spear flashed, lip curled in anger. "You think yourself a witch, don't you?"
Another laugh, thick with condescension. "I am more than human, more than you petty hunters." She spat the word, disgust on every syllable. "I see all. I see everything. That pale sky... it sings so loud, smells so sweet. And you, you reek of it, but… not just Her, no- you smell of brine and the deep lonesome dark that waits for us all."
"So you know of the Dream."
"I took it for myself! Took what was rightfully ours!"
"You're mad."
The witch shrieked, red sparks spraying from her fingertips and coursing along the ground. Mist whirled where it touched, and Catherine could see and hear that thing crawling out of it - just like the messengers. Not just one, but a small horde of the things.
Ignoring them, she lunged, just barely missing the witch as she disappeared out of thin air, Catherine's spear waving through the spot she had just occupied.
Apparition?
She didn't hear a snap, and Catherine turned to catch just a glimpse of that robe of milky eyes as it shimmered out of view.
Apparition and invisibility.
Her feet cracked against the stone as she leapt forward, ducking beneath a scythe and her hips twisting as a red light shot at her from where the witch hid, barely missing. It clipped one of the monsters behind her, shackling it to the spot and leaving it to topple over with a muted thud.
"You call that magic?" Catherine shouted, grinning wildly. "This is magic."
Twirling her wand above her head, she called down lightning on the spot, not bothering to stop and wonder how in god's name did she summon lightning - instead continuing her charge, whooping with laughter as she heard the witch shriek in pain, whatever magic that hid her from view disappearing to reveal the stocky woman smoking at the shoulders and bowed even more at the waist.
"How? How can you-"
She didn't answer the question, fire spraying from her wand and sticking to the witches robes. The eyes that covered her popped against the heat, spraying hot jelly across the room in rotten, yellowy spurts. Still, the witch screamed, batting at her body and only mustering a strange bit of magic that missed Catherine by a wide margin, exploding against the far wall.
A blade tore through her shoulder, and Catherine let out her own pained howl, rolling away to see one of the beasts having snuck up on her, Catherine far too focused on the lonesome witch to have remembered them.
She hissed as she dropped her spear, shoulder useless. Her other arm raised, blowing off the creature's head with an exploding hex, just as another ribbon of light hurled out from the darkness and caught her by the waist, shackling her arms together behind her back and pinning them to her tailbone.
Cursing, she turned her head as far as it would go to see another witch make herself known.
The other, thankfully, was nothing but a smouldering corpse, though Catherine swore loudly as that corpse shuddered, lightning crackling off its body and the witch returning to life before her very eyes.
"You, hunter, tried to kill my sister," the second witch crooned, hate in her voice. "I'll take your eyes for that."
Struggling, Catherine pulled against her bonds, her shoulder sending hot shocks of pain across the rest of her torso and causing her to wheeze loudly through gritted teeth. "You can't kill me."
"Oh, I know that full well, outsider. But we have ways of making you docile."
"Torture?"
"We take your mind," she gloated, slowly growing closer. She raised her hand as one of the monsters made to swing at Catherine, halting it. "No! No, we can use you. With the Great Ones words etched into your pretty little skull, you'll be nothing but a lamb."
"Kill the hunter," the other witch, her throat grated and stony from the fire that had stricken her lungs. "We've no need of her."
"We can learn from her, sister. Did you not see her magic? It was as if-"
"As if he was in this room with us."
They knew Tom, Catherine realized. Maybe he was what had set them off, maybe he had worked with them.
She had to know.
Catherine strained as the two maddened witches argued, spitting and cursing at one another over what to do with her.
It couldn't be so simple, could it?
"Finite incantatem," she whispered, face splitting into an hysterical smile as the bonds disappeared, Catherine whipping her wand forward and cutting the head off the burned witch above with a single flick of her wand, sending it toppling over to thud wetly against the ground in front of her sister.
"How!?"
She jumped forward, snatching the witches head and smashing it face first into her knee, the loud crack of her nose ringing through the room as it was smashed to pieces. Catherine yanked back the witch's cowl, grabbing her by the hair and bringing her face down to her knee again, another crack, this one thicker, as her jaw broke.
Ignoring the witches' moans and pleas, uttered shrilly through crumbling teeth, she drove her head into the stone. Once, twice, three times - over and over until nothing remained but a pulped mess of flesh and bone dripping onto the floor in heavy clumps.
Panting, Catherine looked around to see the summoned monsters having disappeared with the death of the final witch, a triumphant grin tearing across her face as she finished off another blood vial, sighing in pleasure as the feeling returned to her shoulder.
Wandering over to take up her spear, Catherine turned back to the witches corpse and hoisted it up like a doll, slitting the wrinkled flesh of her throat and pressing her lips to the cut.
Suckling at the blood, Catherine's mind swam with images of a young Tom Riddle, pale faced and looking well and truly frightened. He had been taken to this place for harvesting, even decades ago the trade still moving strong in Hemwick. Tom had sweet-talked his way out of having his eyes plucked and his throat carved, offering to teach the two women responsible for his execution magic.
And he did, in a way.
These were no true witches, not like her. Only bearing such through the power of the blood that ran through their veins. He had asked them why the eyes, just as she had, and they had told him of the rituals practiced in a place that even they knew very little about.
Yahar'gul they called it. And it was there where the flesh they farmed was sent.
So he taught them rudimentary spells, twisted and broken in the Yharmit language into something that could be used by them. Only smoke and mirrors compared to the magic of her world, but it made them lords of this backwater place.
Catherine dredged deeper into the blood memory, gagging as she saw in brief flashes all manner of ritual conducted in this very room. Sacrifices, man, woman, and child - even the unborn and long dead run through with steel and chanted over in hushed whispers. These witches had learned through their own capture of another Dreamer just how to imitate the magic of the Dream. But the bodies needed to fuel such a thing, just for one fighting slave… it made her gut roil with anguish to imagine the hundreds experimented on for the sake of these monsters' hubris.
The eyes, it seemed, were to see beyond. Catherine saw nothing but darkness.
All this for eyes that don't even work.
And she ate her words, as Catherine saw, for but a flickering moment, runes. Symbols, jagged and burning with a dim light that spoke of something far, far more. Was this what they had spoken of? The language of the Great Ones, as they called them? These gods of Yharnam?
Even glancing upon them, Catherine could glean their meaning. Lake, one spoke, not in words but in feeling. The cold empty, captured in a glimmering bowl and left stock still to look up at the world beyond. Another flitted before her. Oedon. A god's name, but not, it's essence diluted until man could look upon it without fear, placed into the simple curve of a brush. It seemed to drip the blood of Yharnam, harsh lines running down, down into the unknown.
Shuddering, she tried to pull away from the memories, throwing up any measure of shield she could to hide her mind from the images the symbol conjured up. An endless dark, marked by the shine of stars that were the playground of-
Catherine gasped, shaking her head and stumbling away from the still bleeding corpse, leaving it to rot on the floor. Her lungs rattled as she drank in the air.
In. Out. In. Out.
Crawling, she slowly pulled herself to her feet, feeling no more learned on the intricacies of Yharnam than she had before.
But those symbols… half a dozen still floated in her head, evoking strange feelings of loss, change, learning, all intertwined and as hazardous to snatch at as a coil of barbed wire. Carved into her head, they had said, and a remnant of the blood called up the image of a corpse strapped to a chair even further below, a hooked mess of iron and screws still strapped to his empty skull.
It could be useful.
So she wandered down to the basement and took it, yanking the tool out of the rotten corpse and strapping it to her back.
Catherine left Hemwick without any hurry in her step, and instead of throwing herself off a ledge to make her way back to the Dream Catherine instead walked carefully through the rotting village back to Yharnam with fire at her heel. It burned at her back like the touch of a lover, soft and comforting as the world behind her burned to cinders.
Djura, she imagined, would have been proud.
Thanks for reading so far, everyone.
I want to explain a bit in terms of how I'm approaching the extremely convoluted mess that is the Bloodborne story, now that we're getting into the meat of things. There are dozens and dozens of different interpretations of the games story and lore based on the canon English translations, item descriptions, or even the original Japanese re-translated more literally - all of which differ little and greatly from one another depending on the topic at hand. I'm taking piecemeal from a lot of these different interpretations to try and fit everything together in a way that's cohesive and works best for the crossover itself, particularly in how Yharnam and Hogwarts are tied together.
I'm going to do my best, but I will say that I've already made some mistakes with the lore that I will not retcon and simply roll with as best I can (because holy shit, there's got to be at least a thousand things to keep track of in both universes).
Thank you, again, and I hope you all continue to enjoy the story.