Chapter Thirty-Three | We Three Kings
All around her was rubble. Shacks reduced to kindling and ash. Hound pens crushed with their charges inside them, gore seeping out of the cracks like meat from a grinder. Blood soaked every inch of the hamlet, Catherine's tattered jacket drenched in the stuff from collar to hem, her glasses flecked with red and the smoky puff of her breath lingering in the air.
They tried to ambush her, Catherine falling for another trap - this one intended to bait, to corner. Not to kill. Not immediately, at least.
She had come tumbling down a platform overlooking the hamlet, the supports crumbling beneath her and only her reflexes trained over years of running for her life had saved Catherine the fate of having her head carved off by a rusted saw.
The beastman that tried to take her unawares found himself with powdered bones, crushed so thoroughly that a paste had formed, mixed with the blood seeping from his broken hands and turning it an odd, brackish gray.
So she slaughtered them all, the rage she had felt at the Doll's confession still boiling in her veins.
After creeping through creaking shacks, Catherine had found herself wading through pools of oil and water, only to realize they were filled with screaming corpses, gunmen from above lobbing firebombs and other explosives at their call.
They stopped cheering after they saw the woman they had burnt alive slit their friend's throat, before turning another into a mess of gore, his ribs splayed out of his chest as if a spider had been trapped inside him, legs bursting free.
Catherine only died once more after that. A gunshot to the back of the head, far too quick for her to react, nor even realize she had been killed until she blinked one moment in the forest and opened her eyes to the Dream.
Panting, she kneeled down next to the last resident of this place still breathing, a crooked cigarette hanging from his lips and his bloodshot eyes trained on her.
He didn't seem to notice the ropes of his intestines spilled out across the earth, or how one of his hands, every finger broken, still tried to cram them back in.
"Smoking kills, you know," Catherine murmured, looking him over. "It must feel good. Very good, if it means it's worth dying over."
The man did not respond, eyes glazed over.
Ah. He finally died.
"Or maybe you just didn't care, because you knew that any day someone like me could come wandering down here. Unless you turned first, or the blood makes a fool of cancer and your mind alike."
Gently, she plucked the still burning cigarette from the dead man's lips, watching as the waxy paper frayed and embers crept along its length. Smoke slowly trickling upward, she considered it for a moment, before telling herself that while Hermione could get past dating what amounted to a teenage serial killer, she'd find a way to get hung up about smoking.
Stubbing it out on the dead man's cheek and admiring the sizzle of his still warm flesh, Catherine stood, ready to trek deeper into the woods.
The oil that ran along the top of the creek cutting through the middle of the hamlet had finally burnt itself out after her hour of slaughter, only the stink of it still clinging to the air.
Catherine once more waded through the muck, now thick with viscera and bobbing chunks of blackened flesh, her pant legs soaked through and clinging to her ankles as she stepped out to look upon a forest that was as much a home to trees as it was to gravestones.
Blocks of lichen-painted gray that looked as if they had been carved out of the very mountainside towered above all but the highest trees, great jagged letters hacked into their surface and marking the death of some great and noble member of the Churches long-dead aristocracy.
Her gaze flitted past them only after giving the headstones a moment of awe. This place had long stopped surprising her.
With a wave of her arm her clothes had dried, stripped of every tacky rivulet of blood and the stinking dregs of stagnant corpse water. She kept her arm raised as a man shambled along the path ahead, headed her way, every movement jerky and his head lilting at an angle that belied a broken neck.
But as he approached he did not attack, listless gaze pointed towards the ground and a long and crooked sword trailing in the mud behind him. Mouth still lolling open, the tip of a purpled tongue poking out from between rotten teeth, he spoke without moving a muscle.
"Who are you that bears the scent of a great serpent?"
Catherine reared back at the familiar lisp of parseltongue, watching in ill-disguised horror as snakes burst from every orifice - eyes sliding out of place as vipers poked their head out of the empty skull. His tongue pushed aside, jaw creaking wider and wider until the hinge of it snapped with a low and heady crack, another snake, thick as her wrist, rearing back above the mottled and grayish mass of flesh that once was a head.
They nest of parasites bobbed to and fro, eyeing her dangerously.
"She's meat, bite her already!"
"Intruder!"
"Moon-scented man thing!"
"Fill it with venom! Make it burst!"
"Quiet!" The largest roared, hissing furiously. "She smells of us. She may speak our tongue."
"I do. I can- I can hear you. The great serpent… I was blessed by her, years ago," Catherine blurted, mind running a mile a minute as she crafted her lie, hands raised plaintively. "She gave me a bite on this wrist-" she bared her arm, revealing the bottle-thick scar, white with age. "-and bestowed to me her venom."
"You speak it!"
"She speaks, she speaks!" The rest chorused, tangling up with one another in their excitement.
"Kill it!"
Hoping against all hope that she didn't have to experience a death by snake venom, Catherine eyed the collection of beasts warily. "I'd rather you didn't kill me. The walk back is muddy."
A few of the snakes laughed at that, others still hissing their anger. The largest seemed to frown (which was impossible, it was a snake), before the body jerked around, one arm waving her over.
Catherine didn't particularly want to know how they made the corpse move, so she did her best to stop thinking about it.
Following behind the beast and gripping her wand tightly, Catherine let her eyes wander as they worked their way further into the forest. More creatures stood in the shadows, nests of snakes hidden behind bushes and tombs, and the deep, unsettling rattle of a far larger beast, its shadow casting dangerously across the trees as it slithered through the woods all met her eyes and ears.
Snakes owned this forest, and had turned its denizens into puppets to suit their needs. Never in her life had she been so thankful to be a parselmouth.
Soon enough, they came before a massive, writhing mass, another coil of snakes - this one free of any corpse. Instead, they were nestled against the hillside, tangled up in one another beneath the hanging roots of a giant tree, its naked boughs laid across the night sky like the web of a spider, bursting into fractals as each branch turned to twigs, and those yet smaller.
"You bring us meat?" The nest spoke, the largest of which not quite as large as the basilisk, but certainly unnatural in its size, as thick around as the trunk of a young oak and just as spotted with moss, its scales a patchwork of old wounds and silvered scars.
"She speaks our tongue. Tastes of the venom of an old one."
Their tongues flitted out, heads bobbing and bellies twisting in their knots as they quietly spoke to one another. The snakes turned to her, a smaller one to the left hissing quietly. "You speak?"
"Yes. I do."
"Not since Pthumeru have our kind heard the call of one like you. Though, there was one…"
"Young man?" Catherine asked, showing them her wand. "Black hair, carried something like this?"
"Yes. Many years ago he came through here, but he did not smell as you do." Its tongue flitted through the air, the other snakes nodding their agreement. "You are of venom and blood. It is the only reason you are not dead."
Thank god for that, then. Catherine never imagined that she'd be happy to have fought that damned snake at the age of twelve.
"I need to get to Byrgenwerth. Do you know the way?"
"We do. But, you'll find the passage blocked."
"I can fight."
A strange, strangled noise echoed through the clearing, something she realized to be laughter.
"The old guards of Pthumeru are not kind, nor simple. Even we, centuries living at their doorstep, are not kin nor friend."
"You keep saying that. Pthumeru. Like the old civilization?"
"Just the same. You'll find, warm one, that Yharnam still has her fingers in the world today, not just in the name of a city."
A laugh bubbled at her lips, but she quashed down the feeling of amusement. Months she had been in this city, and the only people to offer her true kindness and conversation were a disfigured churchman, a woman of unknown repute, a black-clad executioner, and now, a nest of serpents. Emilie counted among them of course, bringing it up higher, but the kindness of a child was far different from that of an adult with open eyes and full understanding of the horrors to be found here.
"I only wish to learn."
"Then you'll find the scholars to be helpful. We offer warning, that the white ones have laid their claim to the building as well."
"White ones?"
"Robes of white. Strange magics. They struck a bargain with the Shadows and have made camp of Byrgenwerth." Sagely, the snakes twisted their heads, a motion that seemed pondering to her, as if a dog looking up at their owner. "They seek to hide the Truth."
"The Truth," they chorused, broken hisses echoing quietly into the night.
"The Truth… and these- Shadows?" Catherine asked, hardly stuttering no matter how strange it was to be whisked away by a bunch of snakes inhabiting a villagers corpse to go speak to their… overlords? Parents?
Christ, Yharnam was strange.
"Where do I find them?"
"You wish to die, warm one?"
"Already have. More times than I can count."
Tasting at the air, the snakes nodded. "Touched by the Arcane… a Great One is it? No, you will not die so easily, nor shall you stay dead."
"Been a little while since I had a good fight anyways. Everything here is…"
Oh. That's what she was feeling. She was bored.
Bored, in a place like this? Unthinkable.
Over the last few months Catherine had begun to yearn for the adrenaline of battle, to soak in the joy and beatific lust for blood it carried with it, but she never would have thought that she'd start looking for more. But, all the same, she did. Down in her bones, in her very soul, she wished nothing more than to test herself against something these beasts regarded as powerful.
The snakes would be no trouble, that she knew, if they had chosen to fight her and not follow the taste of basilisk venom that somehow still clung to her after so many years. Spellcraft and all that came along with it evened the playing field in Yharnam where guns could not, too small or impractical to fight off the hordes of furious dead and dying that the city and forests harboured. Either that, or they were stationary, or far too clumsy to use without putting yourself at a severe disadvantage.
Djura had fallen to her teeth and teeth alone, after all.
What was a beast when one could conjure a spike of blood and mercury, fashioned as the bullets of this city were, and drive it into their skull at speeds that would make even Moody shudder?
And that was another thing she hadn't quite put mind to. Blood magic.
Revered and feared across the magical world, blood magic was something that had something of a tetchy history within European circles, let alone South American - what with Aztec ritualists being put to the stake by the colonialist invaders, magical and muggle alike, that came to pillage their shores. Mainly, it had to do with their ability to reduce not so insignificant chunks of the Spanish armada into nothing but fire, wood, and a shimmering pool of gore that spread out across the gulf like a glorious crimson oil spill.
She didn't know if dabbling in magics quite like that was something she felt comfortable with, rather leaning towards standard spellfire and the crush of steel into bone.
Blood magic was unpredictable, powerful, and above all else exceedingly dangerous. She'd read on it during her fourth year under the tutelage of Crouch Jr. (though, she and the rest of her classmates were entirely unaware of that awful little fact) and learned far too much during his course about how easy it was to exsanguinate ones self in an attempt to fuel far greater magic than would normally be possible.
But, as all things went in Yharnam, blood was currency and in that, it was the power of this place. Not to mention how upon first slaying that Cleric on the bridge, she had somehow drawn in something vital once belonging to it (him?). His soul? An echo of what he once was?
Catherine didn't know, but even now if she so wished she could go dredging through her magic to look up snippets of the man's life - and others that she had slaughtered - to glean a little more information about what made the Church tick, or what led to his unfortunate change and ultimate demise.
Whether she liked it or not, blood magic was now an intrinsic part of her being. It fueled her, gave her sustenance, life, and was what allowed her the ability to accomplish all that she had thus far. Most of it was carnage, she'd readily admit, painting the walls of the city with the innards of its inhabitants, but all the same it was a testament to her survival and by god, she wouldn't deny herself the chance to take pride in her ability to push through any obstacle placed in her way.
So she embraced it, fashioning spikes and blades and all other manner of slashing, stabbing, and crushing implements from her blood and used them to decimate the local populace, unthinking or otherwise. If they raised a hand against her, they met their death. Be it a few short minutes after they had slit her throat or not, they would die all the same.
"If you would, please, show me the way. I wish to meet these Shadows myself."
Another strangled hiss, laughter, and the massive knot of snakes hummed their assent. "You, take her to the Shadows. Do not be startled if her corpse comes walking back through these woods."
The corpse-thing let out a snarl, beckoning for Catherine to once more follow it through the forest with a jerky twitch of its arm.
Was there a tail in there? How did what looked to be half a dozen snakes pilot a body?
Catherine shook her head, offering a single wave and a muttered, 'thank you,' to the larger nest before leaving in the corpse-things wake, the two - or seven of them - silent as they trudged over root and grave.
The forest opened up as they walked deeper into its embrace, greater and greater trees still to be found within, tombs the size of houses leaning their weight against the trunks and leaving nary a mark nor scratch on the ancient things, instead being claimed by the woods with moss and vine, brambles scattered at their feet.
On their travels, Catherine had to put down a pig or two, and the occasional straggler untouched by the snakes that lorded over the woods, her guides lending her a wary, yet appreciative look.
"You are magic," one spoke, resting its head on one of its nestmates, who sputtered angrily at being used as a pillow. "How?"
"I was born with it."
"There's more…" it seemed to ponder her, eyes glancing over Catherine's blood soaked figure as if it were trying to sort out a particularly onerous puzzle. "But, we've never looked at a manthing without eating it."
"I suppose that answers your question."
It huffed, the snake that had been used as a pillow butting its head against the other as if to taunt it. They snapped and hissed at each other before facing the road ahead - if a shallow swamp full of stagnant, algae-ridden water could be called a road.
Not that it bothered Catherine. She'd waded through corpse filled sewers after all.
Thankfully, their watery journey was short, a gravel path leading them up to a small clearing that branched into two other roads, one leading down into a small copse of trees and what looked to be a graveyard, the other path, to the right, trailing (north?) towards the sea.
"Go to your left. If you die, be glad that we will only take you for food and not shelter."
"I'm flattered."
The graveyard it was.
With a jaunty wave, Catherine puttered down the path, eyeing the ravine she was walking through with some small amount of wonder.
Yharnam the city was just as much an architectural wonder as the lands surrounding it were natural. They were macabre, littered with filth, but nowhere on earth would one find so many unique places all clustered together.
She wondered if the rest of this world was like that, or if it was just this single, lonesome valley. One little blemish of insanity splashed across the map like spilled ink, some god fussing over the madness it had wrought with a single brush stroke.
Three figures stood in the graveyard, presumably waiting for her. Whatever magic bound the tower door and the corpse that guarded it a kind of warning signal for these protectors.
Shadows, the snakes had called them, and they didn't lie.
They were cloaked in black from head to toe, faces hidden in the darkness of their hoods. Simple robes, tattered and frayed, hung from their bones, each of the Shadows holding a weapon. One bore a blade, the other the same, though it held a candle in its other hand. The third held open palms over a naked flame, cradling it gently and using some strange magic to bind it together - almost like the beast she had found beneath the workshop tower.
"You wouldn't be able to let me pass, would you?"
A burst of flame was her answer, the fire held in the third Shadow's hands scattering against the thin, muddy pond that sat along the floor of the tiny graveyard and leaving a patch of steam floating in the air.
Like a gunshot, Catherine fired off a conjured spear that left an almost invisible spray of blood in its wake,rocketing towards Shadow that dared to mock her. It hissed loudly as the spear blasted through its shoulder and buried itself in a tombstone behind it, quivering against the stone and letting off a low and steady hum as the mercury wobbled from top to bottom.
There wouldn't be enough blood to sate her if she killed them too quickly.
As the echo reverberated through the tomb, the first of the Shadows leapt towards her with silent malice, the scimitar it held whistling through the air. Catherine just barely dodged away from the swing, the metal bouncing off her shoulder and smarting something terrible as it skirted through the air. She was quick to react, hammer already screaming against the wind as it knocked into the Shadows side and threw it across the graveyard with a muted thud.
No bones broken?
Her tongue pressed against her teeth in a furious hiss as more flames, a large gout of them thundered across the makeshift arena, only a hastily cast shield dispersing them but doing little to stop the sweat from ebbing across her brow.
Those ones need to die first.
Kicking at the ground, Catherine burst forward, hammer dragging behind her as she shouldered aside the one wielding what she now knew to be some sort of enchanted candle, a stuttered breath leaving its throat and another short burst of flame licking across her armour as it was knocked over.
Hammer lifted high above her head, it hung for the briefest of moments before being driven down in the space that the pyromantic Shadow had occupied, a splash of water accompanying its mad dash as it leapt out of the way of her swing. Mud, smelling of rank and rot tickled at her nose, along with the stench of brimstone and something more - something rancid that wasn't just the molasses thick swamp that tried to grasp at her boots with every step.
With a grin on her face Catherine continued to hunt the slippery thing, hammer whizzing through the air as it jumped to and fro, unable to let off even a puff of fire for fear of scorching itself alongside her. She wouldn't mind terribly much if it did decide to torch her, as long as it took itself with it.
God. This, this right here was what she had been missing. This rush, this- this incredible, unattainable euphoria that came with a fight for her life.
No. Catherine knew now of all times that even after Yharnam was said and done with, she'd still go chasing that high.
A joyous whoop burst across the clearing as she made contact, crushing the Shadows shoulder with a single swing - the one she had earlier speared - a thick spray of blood marking her hammer and pouring down its arm, splinters of bone poking out of the ruined limb like the quills of a porcupine, all jagged and blistered.
That whoop was quickly replaced by a fearful grunt as the first, finally having recovered, swung its arm across the clearing and made to take off her head.
Catherine just barely ducked beneath the swing, vulgar nothings slipping from her lips as she felt her eye twitch at its lid from the whiplash of her movement, just barely prevented from falling out of her skull and once more getting crushed between her glasses and cheekbone, only saved by the steady pressure of thin steel frames and the sorely required sticking charm she always plastered the things with.
"Fuck."
With a single movement she detached the sword from the unwieldy cinder block that rested against the hilt, raising the blade to block the next twenty foot swing and letting off a blasting curse at the hammer head as it fell. She couldn't help baring her teeth in sharklike malice as, within the blink of an eye, the block rocketed forward and smashed against the face of the pyromancer, completely taking it by surprise.
Her face was splattered with gore and ceramic-like flecks of skull as its head erupted into a glistening, pulpy shower of viscera, the fire in its hands flickering into nothing as its lifeless body ragdolled backwards at the force of the strike, arms and legs spinning through the air before the things corpse landed in the pond with a splash.
"Yes!" Catherine howled, tongue flicking out to taste at the sweet blood that clung to her lips.
Distracted, she barely noticed another swinging blade, this one coming at her from behind. The steel cut through her armour like it was nothing but paper, a deep, clean slice that all but slid from shoulder to spine, barely avoiding her spine as she rolled out of the way. A vial was already at her lips as she got back to her feet, waist burning with effort as she leaned away from another swipe, blood dribbling from her lips as she hastily cast away the glass bottle, letting it smash uselessly against a nearby headstone.
Heartbeat thrumming in her ears, she kept on the move. Another dive, another roll, splashing up thick brown sludge with every twitch of the muscle, Catherine slowly pushed her way towards the Shadow pressed against the far wall of the clearing. Its motions grew more desperate with every step that brought her closer, limbs reaching and twisting in horrific, mind bending ways, the sheer silver shine of moonlit steel blurring even against her own eyes as its swings whistled back and forth, clanging loudly against her own blade.
Just as she heard the crackle of flame, she conjured a barrage of arrows with a flick of her wand, letting them soar from behind her and buying her the moment she needed to take another maddened dash and impale the Shadow still plastered against the wall. Her sword cut true, easily spearing through tightly wound muscle and the ramshackle mess of ribs shielding its heart - even chipping at the stone behind it as it drove through the beast in a single fluid motion.
Blood poured from the wound as it feebly scrabbled against the blade with one sickly hand, the flesh mottled a pale bluish gray, fingers eerily long as it clumsily grasped at the shortsword buried in its chest. Curious, she flipped back the Shadows hood to reveal what she imagined a Dementor would look like beneath its robes - empty eye sockets plastered over with a thin veil of translucent flesh, a barren hole where its nose should be and a lipless grimace spread from ear to ear - if it had any ears to speak of, only holes below its temples that fluttered with every hoarse breath it tried to drag into its ailing body.
Grimacing at the sight of the creature, she tore her blade from its chest and relished in the spray of blood that accompanied it, the warmth a comfort as it trickled down her face.
That wasn't human. It never had been.
Her heart stuttered once as the ground next to her erupted in a spray of soil and sharp rock, peppering her face and leaving thin furrows along the skin of her cheek.
Catherine gaped as an enormous serpent soared through the air above her, hardly cognizant of the shrill whistle she had heard a moment before its arrival, focused solely on the great beast - god, it was the size of the basilisk - as it flew overhead, plunging back into the earth like a fish through water.
"Shit, shit, shit," she cursed as she jumped out of the way just as the soil beneath her rumbled, just barely avoiding the serrated fangs that attempted to clamp down around her thigh.
Whirling around, she focused on the last remaining Shadow to see it spinning a whistle between its fingers.
It had to die.
Just as she went to move, the serpent - wyrm - came down on top of her, Catherine just barely registering the horrific burn of its venom as the thing swallowed her hole, armour, underthings, flesh and bone all scraped away by the needle sharp teeth that lined its mouth and throat as she was forced into its gullet. She screamed against her sudden prison as it clamped down around her, her piercing shout echoing against muscle and bone, trapped just as she was. A sickening hiss joined her pained shriek as her flesh began to melt against the venom, the thick, viridescent sludge ebbing into her open wounds and scorching her from the inside out.
Once more its muscles contracted, turning bone to splinter, and splinter to powder, her lungs bursting in her chest as every scrap of air was forced out of her. Finally, blissfully, Catherine's skull was reduced to a nothing but a crumbling mess as it crushed her once more, brains mashed, scrambled to bits, the shards of her teeth ground together as she gargled her last, choking breath.
It only took her a few seconds to regain awareness as she woke in the Dream, flitting past Gehrman with a venomous stare and pressing her hand against the headstone that somehow, she knew would take her back to the woods.
In the instant she set down her wand was ready and a hole was blown through the side of the little farmhouse next to the lantern, Catherine ignoring the man with a - was that a bucket on his head? - cane in hand, shouting madly as she strode past him and leapt down the open hole at the back of the building.
Magic roaring, she slowed her fall with a gust of wind. Though she landed heavily, it slowed her none, boots already tearing grooves through the muddied ground as she sprinted headlong through the woods, another deranged jump leading her closer and closer to the graveyard, the snakes below hissing in fright as she soared over them.
The creatures of the forest kept their distance as she thundered through the woods, crushing roots with heavy steps and leaving her mark on both wet land and dry, furious imprints of her warpath etched into the earth itself.
Inside the graveyard she could see the silhouette of the Shadow standing over its brethren, dragging the corpse of its beheaded brother to a hill that sat off-centre in the midst of the gravestones. All she cared about was the fact that the serpent was missing, whatever fel magics that summoned it no longer in play.
Sparks flew from her wand, hammer resting on her shoulder as she slid down the hill, every step a cacophony as she sprinted, flung herself towards the thing and bashed her knee against the side of its head.
It let out a wounded shriek as it collapsed beneath her, Catherine's hands already wrapped around its throat as she pressed its toothy maw into the muck below, shrieks being replaced by burbles and gasps as it scratched uselessly at her arms. Her jaw clenched, brow drawn into a scowl of both anger and supreme effort as the beast tried to contort itself, the bones in its neck and arms grinding together as it pushed against her chest, tried to wrench itself away from her.
Something popped beneath her thumbs, the dying gurgles of the creature whistling through the water and pushing gelatinous bubbles across its surface. Desperately, mind running a mile a minute, it tried to breathe, sucking the muddy filth into its crushed throat and choking on it.
Keeping one hand wrapped tight around its ruined windpipe, fingers digging into the muscled flesh, Catherine drew her other hand up and clenched it into a fist. With a shout, she brought it down, a hammerblow against the Shadow's temple. Bone crunched beneath her knuckles with a wet squelch, and its struggles drew weaker.
So she did it again. Again. Again.
Again.
Her knuckles cracked with each blow, skin torn from her fist and blood pattering against the pool like raindrops.
It reminded her of Umbridge.
One final blow and the thing stilled, Catherine's chest heaving with effort as she threw herself off the warm and broken corpse to splash into the mud. She spread her arms and legs out across the pond in an attempt to float across the calf deep water, or perhaps just to cool herself down.
Another deep breath, lungs filled, and her laughs echoed across the graveyard, an exuberant smile splitting her face in two, ridden with malice from the way the blood and filth clung to every inch of her. She clumsily pushed herself backwards onto the hill, rolling onto her side to admire the corpse of the first Shadow, its throat a pulpy mess, ropes of sinew trailed out across the grass and wrapped around the broken length of its spine.
"That-" she let out a broken wheeze, another bout of laughter trickling from her throat. "That was fun."