Chapter Thirty-Four | Meet Your God
The wall that made up the entrance to Byrgenwerth spanned the length of the graveyard. Catherine stood before it, the corpses of the Shadows to her back and a wrought iron gate embedded in the fortress-like stone to her front, looming over her with an almost palpable disdain.
Black was the metal, burnished and scratched from top to bottom, as if the Shadows had doused it in flame before summarily plunging it into an ice-cold pool of liquid silver, staining it bright and dark. The disparity of it was impossible, to be so charred yet shine as it did, if it weren't for the magic that ebbed and flowed along its surface.
Someone had bound this place tight, once upon a time, the spellwork reeking of the Church in the same way that door had atop the tower linked to Oedon Chapel. Blood was spilled, pain was wrought, all of which sewed into the steel that guarded Byrgenwerth.
But, with the death of the Shadows, that magic was splintered. All it would take was a push for it all to come tumbling down. One hundred years of protection gained at the hands of ritual sacrifice torn away with a flick of the wrist.
It seemed poetic to destroy magic fueled with death by the death of its own champions.
Catherine was tempted for but a millisecond to lob the corpse of the headless Shadow at the gate and christen its opening with its master's corpse. Instead, she placed an open palm against the steel (cold, far too cold) and let the cards fall.
She pushed.
And, as if the dying screams of an animal, the gate squealed, hinges rattling as it swung open. Spurs along the bottom churned up gravel and lay grooves in the soil as it carried on its once in a decade journey.
A path met her, choked and winding, burdened by the thick roots of trees and patchy soil, sparse with grass yet where grass stood, it stood tall and proud, unashamed and reaching towards the sky in spite of the need for man to cut and carve its way through nature - to tame it and fashion cities of stone and metal.
She walked it, slowly twisting up the hill the path was etched into, the very faint mark of boot prints reminding her of the snake's warning.
Byrgenwerth had been claimed by the Church, white robed figures who stayed in this place to defend it from those who would seek secrets. Secrets that they had hidden for nigh a century, planted seeds of fear in any curious wanderers through slaughter and torture. The wards spoke of it, and so did the gloom that hung over the campus like a disease.
Catherine was almost lost in thought when she heard a faint buzzing ahead, her steps growing quieter as she skirted off the path and wound round tree and over root, every press of boot to soil silent, her wand filled to the brim with fire, waiting to be unleashed.
Peeking her head out over a parapet, many of the roughly hewn rocks that made up the wall having fallen in disarray at her feet. Her eyes widened to see some sort of massive bug, until she realized it was a person, hideously disfigured.
Wings like that of a mosquito sprouted from their back, flanked by hideous, rail-thin limbs that cradled their body and ended in short, hooked claws. Their head was a bulbous, twisting mass of grayish flesh, great amber orbs poking out of it every which way and blinking slowly, their gelatinous insides bubbling and sloshing with every motion of the creature.
Eyes. It was covered in softly glowing, liquid eyes.
Tentacles hung from the bottom of its fleshy head only to meet with a remarkably human body. From shoulder to foot it was nothing but a normal man, if one ignored the torn and filthy robes that swathed its figure, or how its limbs stretched out just a touch too far, too long to be normal.
Catherine almost swore, if it wasn't for the fact that she knew whatever this beast was, it would try and kill her.
So she killed it instead.
A conjured ball of mercury, laced with her blood, fell on its head at a blistering speed. The mass burst wide, pus and blood painting its cozy little hideaway in horrific shades of green and red. What caught her attention was how eyes, dozens of them, spilled out of the flopping mess of viscera like marbles, rolling wetly across the dirt and stone.
"Fuck," she muttered, jumping over the ledge and letting out another curse as she felt an eye burst beneath her foot, spraying everywhere. "What the-"
They sought to look upon us, these Scholars.
"With what? Those?" she asked, pointing at the eyes, some of them still wavering, their pupils widening and contracting as if the creature she had just slaughtered, the things inside of it were still alive. Were they parasites?
Eyes. They wanted them. Needed them. Eyes for Blood, Blood for Eyes, to look inside and look outward, to see the world as it truly is. What lives among them.
"Was this…"
A student, once. None of Byrgenwerth's tutelage remains, all their young and old taken by Mensis or left to rot in this unseemly place.
"Willem?"
Alive. He is more, yet he is less.
Catherine swore. Fucking riddles.
Your frustration is amusing. I have watched your kind and others like you for millenia, and none have caught my attention quite like you. Little things, wandering uselessly, hoping to understand the cosmos, yet in your hubris you do naught but destroy yourselves. How does it feel, I wonder? To have caught the gaze of something beyond your ken?
"Fuck you."
The things laughter, for it was laughter, came not in sound but in colour. A kaleidoscope of stars bursting bright in her mind's eye, colours never seen by man and so effulgent as to send warmth skittering over her flesh, to bring pinpricks to her temples not of pain, but of comfort.
It reminded her of a mothers laugh, the only one she'd ever heard. Molly Weasley standing over a disgruntled Ron after he'd fallen from his broom and chiding him, but entirely unable to hide her mirth at the boys stubborn excuses when he himself broke out in laughter, realizing that even for him, trying to ride a broom like a skateboard (Arthur and his projects, having found one in the week and interrogating Catherine on its many uses) was a stubborn effort.
Could these creatures be something so mundane as a parent? Birth young and raise their own? The Voice had once mentioned in a dream so terribly, terribly long ago, of how her own had been torn from her. Captured and killed.
I spoke truth.
This time those words brimmed with anger, and Catherine staggered as the rage swept over her and set her blood alight.
God, the power of its speech alone…
She shuddered. It was no wonder these things were worshipped, if simple words could bring about such feeling. Such raw, untempered emotion like she'd never felt before.
It was as if the anger she had felt throughout her life had been nothing but a pale imitation of the real thing. Her love and joy only a drop in the vast, untameable ocean of what passion truly was.
Were humans that much lesser than these things, or were they better for its absence? Was this what it would be like for an ant to look upon her mind, to be granted vision into something so much greater, so much more - more, more, more - than it ever could be?
Catherine didn't know, but a small part of her, that curious fire that had been stoked and fed ever since her clumsy stumble into the world of magic, that part lifted its head and squealed its joy at the mystery of it all.
It didn't hurt that, in some twisted way, she had come to enjoy this place. Freedom, even in the form of a prison of the damned never felt so, so… vindicating. To be let loose in a playground mired in blood and destruction and told to have at it, to fight and search as she saw fit whilst unbound by the chains of mortality and time.
She could spend a hundred years in Yharnam and never grow older. Spend a hundred years learning, searching, wandering, digging up anything and everything that caught her hummingbird-like attention as she danced to and from each new, shining bit of knowledge. Uncovering secrets and history, stories untold for centuries and more, all for the sake of simply knowing what happened.
Stories had dictated her life from a young age, nose buried in books as a way to escape the mundanity and abuse that dogged her every step in the quaint, inescapable nothingness that was Privet Drive.
But, she did escape. Escaped to a world that was so much more than she could have ever believed it to be. Catherine learned who she was and what she wanted, even if those wants sometimes (often) turned the way of the never-ending void that was death, and how sweet its embrace would be once she'd finally walked through that final door and knew, for the first time in her existence, what true comfort was and how it could only be found in the long nothing.
The next great adventure.
Hadn't she stopped aging? Eileen herself had spoken of how the Dream lingered, the way in which it froze her and her being.
Catherine would never die, not unless through violence or sickness. She would not age, time itself unable to lay its soft touch across her skin and usher her into the great dark.
Pained thoughts of where that would leave her with Hermione - whether or not that lasted - any future loves and friends withering away before her eyes… those thoughts were dashed away and replaced with those of the one who had hunted her from birth.
Why would Voldemort go so far as to fracture his soul? If he simply disappeared and left the world untouched he could live on forever. What caused him to fear death so deeply that he would leave all reason behind and destroy his very being? Destroy everything the world held dear if not for the sake of simply seeing it burn before his own eyes?
Always and forever would a question grace Catherine's lips, but it was her brash need to dive into whatever question plagued her, risk life and limb if so required, that had landed her in Gryffindor and not Ravenclaw.
Scraping the heel of her boot off against a stone, Catherine meandered along the path, stepping out into the campus of Byrgenwerth after a short minutes walk. The graveyard must have been for them, placed so close to the school proper.
It was a large building but, at the same time, far smaller than she'd have imagined it to be. The architecture was classical in its rigid form and the dome of an observatory that sat atop its roof, reminding her of a manor or an old college that one would find just skirting about the English countryside. The walls were fashioned of brick and stone, the roof a fine copper that was stained with the milky green of patina, every inch of it stained with age. Another barrier spanned the length of the building, running from end to end of the campus with two gates on either side allowing entrance to the school.
More creatures, their heads a throbbing, pulsing mass of eyes and rotten flesh puttered about the grounds, not yet having noticed her. Catherine walked towards them, dismantling the cursed students of this place with crisp movements from her wand, each and every one of them toppling to the ground with fearful chitters flowing from the mandibles that hid beneath their fleshy chins, heads bursting like overripe fruit.
She meandered around the path, the grounds separated into clear levels in the same way she'd seen mountainous rice fields tiered away in books. Short, simple terraces climbing up along the walls and marked by little bumps of dirt that clung to their edges.
The gate at the far left of the wall lay open, and Catherine happily strode in unhindered, a breathy gasp escaping her as she set eyes on the lake the school bordered.
It was massive, larger than even the Black Lake and surrounded by mountain ranges, sparking some sense of homesickness in her as she looked out upon the still, shimmering expanse. The school itself had a short dock of sorts running out a distance into the lake, jutting out of the building from the second floor. Catherine could faintly hear the sound of rocking, wood creaking back and forth from atop it, glancing up to see the glow of a scepter swinging back and forth just over the lip of the platform.
Someone was up there, on a rocking chair, surrounded by monsters.
Whoever they were, they better answer her questions.
Magic burned at her neck and Catherine ducked away from it, turning to see a twisted amalgamation of a man standing with its open palm facing her, flesh blue and the fingers tipped with claws.
Its face was a crumpled mess, thin tentacles splayed from where its nose and jaw should be and writhing madly, its eyes two empty, blackened sockets that somehow still managed to stare out at her, burning with hunger. Its palm twitched and a ribbon of light whirled towards her, bouncing uselessly off a hastily conjured shield.
"What are you?" she wondered aloud, quickly binding it in rope and grimacing as it hissed loudly, her head spinning back and forth to make sure no other creatures had heard it.
Thankful to not be interrupted, she stepped a bit closer, stooping over the thing to get a look at it.
She'd come across too many things recently that weren't human and never had been in the first place. First the Shadows, and now this. But… this looks like it once was human, judging by the strange magic dancing over its skin.
But it hadn't been turned into a beast, instead it turned into something more. Something different.
It is Kin.
"It's related to you?" she whispered, horrified, wondering for a second if the Voice would once more turn to rage if she executed this creature.
In a manner of speaking. It was once human, and now has become more. This too was a student of Byrgenwerth, a relic of their attempted ascension.
Catherine very suddenly felt sick, realizing what the Voice was saying. The Church and Byrgenwerth weren't attempting to understand their gods, to corral them. They were trying to become them.
"Is that what this place is for? To learn how you work? To- to ascend?"
That is what it's all for. That is what it has always been, since the dawn and forevermore.
"Did they succeed?"
You ask that as if you do not seek to find out for yourself.
Huffing, she lifted her hammer and let it crash down on the Kin's chest, a hideous screech echoing across the lake as the pale yellow of its blood sprayed across the hammer and Catherine's mask, smelling faintly of flowers and something more, something positively ethereal.
Lowering her mask, Catherine ran her finger along the liquid and pressed it to her tongue, humming at how incredibly rich it was. It danced on her tongue, a bright and sweet flavour reminding her of fresh citrus, thick with pulp.
A rare treat. She wondered if the nobles of Yharnam kept these creatures and bled them for their wines.
Deciding to continue in her exploration, she hefted the hammer back over her shoulder and stepped down from the terrace, wanting to check over the exterior of the building before heading inside.
It wouldn't do to walk into the building and find a beast wandering in after her.
Once more, she found herself stammering in shock as she looked around the corner of the building to see some massive, centipedal thing scuttling beneath the lake overlook. Catherine let out a pained grunt as her head throbbed against the very sight of it, the wrongness of it.
A long and spindly white-blue limb bobbed far above it, topped off by an eye from which dangled a shining flower. Its body was like that of a snake, if a snake consisted of an open mass of flesh and teeth that trailed down from the stem of its head (wrong, wrong, wrong) to be flanked on all sides by a hundred, skittering fleshy limbs, all sparkling like the stars themselves.
Her hammer nearly fell as she clutched at her head, staring down the thing with bloodshot eyes. She couldn't, wouldn't tear her eyes away from it, deciding in a heartbeat that whatever it was, it had to die.
Painfully.
Crackling gouts of fire sprayed from her wand, a sharp blue and immediately causing sweat to trail down her body. The thing didn't make a single noise as it spun, far too quickly for such a gigantic beast, limbs flailing as its flower-like head bowed, summoning a meteor (a meteor) out of thin air and blasting it towards her.
Catherine rolled beneath the mass of burning rock, catching sight of a sliver in the sky itself as it winked out of existence.
A doorway. A doorway to the stars, and it used it to try and kill her.
Eyes still burning, head throbbing painfully, Catherine swung her hammer with all her might and let out a silent cheer as it pulverized the side of the creature, teeth spraying and more of that yellowish blood following with it.
Kin of the Gods. Kin of the Cosmos.
Frantic thoughts burrowed their way into Catherine's mind as she looked at the flailing thing and realized that whatever secrets Yharnam held, those secrets were truly beyond her imagination. Ascension, a god speaking into her mind, and this- these things.
It was almost too much.
Roaring, she brought her hammer down again, a slush of invertebrate gore flying through the air as she left the weapon buried in the things back, pinning it to the ground and detaching the short sword from its lock with a sharp whistle.
Flinching, she pulled away as the creature attempted to lunge forward and grab her with its many limbs, to drag her screaming into its maw that for the life of her, could not figure out where it went.
Perhaps to the stars?
Her body shimmered, Catherine disappearing for a moment before reappearing above the things stalk-like head, pushing aside glowing fronds and grabbing onto it with one hand to press her blade against the eye, just barely holding on as it bucked and struggled to throw her off. Hissing with anger and pain, she held tighter, bringing the sharp end of her blade against the stem that hung from the eye and sawing it off, a spray of yellow marking her success.
Facing the sharp of the blade towards her, Catherine carved at the eye itself, hoping against hope that whatever this was, it had a brain, and if she damaged that, well… whatever it was, it bled, and that meant it could die.
More blood sprayed, dripped from the brutalized limb, and Catherine swore as the fronds and legs that trailed along the things sides snatched at her own and dragged her down its body. She grit her teeth, burying her sword in the length of its neck(?) and letting the creature do the work for her, filleting it smoothly as she was pulled downwards.
Covered from head to toe in glistening yellow blood, she hacked at the limbs that tried to wrestle with her, one snatching the sword from her hand and another taking her wand, casting them aside. More wrapped around her legs and she found herself dangling upside down, clawing at the spongy body towards the chunk of stone that still trapped it against the earth.
Catherine swore loudly as her ankle snapped against the tight and winding grip of the beast, a single kick against its body with her good leg propelling her forward enough to wrap her fingers around the edge of the hammer head and lift it.
Raising her arms, she brought the stone down against its body, shouting in triumph as the flesh crumpled beneath it and more blood oozed out of the wound. Again, she brought it down, hacking and mashing at the creature until its grip failed and she fell to the ground alongside it, a stream of angered curses pouring out of her as the stone crushed her hand.
Pushing the stone away from the crushed and splintered mess of her fingers, Catherine stumbled over to her wand and took it up, aiming it at the beast to let out another stream of fire, cremating it in an instant.
Huffing out a tired breath and stumbling on one broken leg, she downed two blood vials as quickly as she could, air whistling through her teeth as her limbs set and flesh grew over her ruined limbs, before being replaced by the rush and numbness that the blood brought with it.
"Christ."
Whatever that was, it was a nightmare on a hundred legs, and if she saw another - god, she hoped she never saw another - she would try and kill it before it even noticed her.
Giving the blackened husk a spiteful kick, she put her hammer back together and wandered around the other side of the building, killing the two bug-eyed monsters chittering and huffing there with extreme prejudice.
So much prejudice, in fact, that there was nothing left of them but twitching heaps of gore and bone.
Sighing, she wandered over to the second gate and unlocked it, pushing it open with her foot before turning around to wander into the school proper.
Her hand pressed against the oaken door, twisting the knob and giving it a quick prod, the hinges squealing as it opened. She winced, looking inside to let out a quiet breath of relief when she saw no beasts or creatures waiting for her in the dingy halls.
She let out another breath as she got her first good look at the interior.
The walls were lined with bookshelves, stacked from top to bottom with tones of all shapes, colours, and sizes. A fireplace roared to her left, flames crackling and logs popping, spitting embers against the grate that protected the stained and muddied carpet that stretched across the centre of the room, the bottom of it trailing beneath a desk packed full of jars.
If it weren't so clearly abandoned, she imagined this place would be comforting.
Catherine wandered inside, brushing grime off one of the jars to reveal its contents. A viscous, translucent liquid and dozens of eyes crammed into the jar so tightly they looked fit to burst, their insides straining against their fleshy prison.
Eyes, eyes, and more eyes.
Every jar, the ones on the desk, the ones propped up against the walls, the ones stuffed into open spots on the bookshelf or strewn about carelessly, all filled with eyes.
Was this where all those harvested in Hemwick went? Catherine wondered, staring at the objects with abject horror. What would they even do with these?
Whoever called this place home, be it a member of the Church or one of the old scholars, she knew them to be upstairs on the balcony. So, she took to the stairs.
Wand drawn and pointed above her, Catherine's eyes skirted to and fro and she made her way up, peeking her head out over the top of the bannister to see a figure in white sitting at a cubby, surrounded by yet more bookshelves and jars.
The two of them paused as they made eye contact. Catherine, awkwardly staring at them from overtop her useless shield of wooden rails, and the Church hunter sitting stock still with a book in their hands.
Around them, the world froze, a curious invader and a cultist with their eyes locked together.
And then, it resumed motion, the desk being kicked away, books and jars thrown in every direction as they whipped out a cane covered from top to bottom with razors.
"Shit, shit, shit," Catherine jumped to the side as the cane opened up, revealing it to be drawn together by a long chain as it unraveled, whipping forward and tearing splinters out of the stair rail.
She didn't have to kill this woman, and would much rather just have her answer her questions and let Catherine be on her way, but she didn't imagine she would be so willing judging by the cold look of murderous intent etched into her every feature.
A spike appeared in mid-air and sailed towards the woman, catching her by surprise. It tore through her gut and rocketed out the other end, but her motions were quick and precise as she took a blood vial and jabbed it into her thigh, the grievous wound disappearing in an instant.
Oh. Was this what it felt like to fight against her?
"So it's you then," the woman shouted, whip lashing out again and just barely missing Catherine's head. "The one who killed the Vicar."
"She turned into a gigantic wolf!"
"You burnt Hemwick, you have wandered into more forbidden places than the Choir can even begin to count. We've been waiting for you."
"Just you?"
"Enough to put you down."
So they don't know I'm a Dreamer, was her only thought, relief washing through her as she realized that if all else failed and she did die in this building, she could possibly take this woman by surprise.
Amelia spoke of her with reverence, though. Was she sacred simply by circumstance?
"You can't put me down," Catherine jibed, raising her hammer to block another blow. "I'm a Dreamer."
"We have ways about that."
A grim thought washed through her mind, and Catherine realized that if she was bound completely and utterly, unable to take her own life as a measure of escape, she could be well and truly trapped.
With that, fear like she had never known trickled down her spine and set cold air rushing through her lungs. To be locked away by these madmen, unable to escape nor put an end to her own life…
Catherine roared, rushing forward and smashing her hammer into the ground where the woman had just been, white robes fluttering as she leapt out of the way. The planks splintered beneath her blow, sending shards of wood flying everywhere as she continued in her charge.
She needed to corner this woman, cripple her, rend her with tooth and nail.
Her wand sparked furiously as her hammer whipped through the air, snakes pouring from the end of it and slithering forward with a muttered 'kill.' The woman's eyes widened in fright and she pushed her empty hand forward, another shimmering gate to nowhere appearing before her fist and spraying lashing tentacles that reached out across the room towards her.
Lashing out, her sword cleaved through the magiced limbs, spraying her face with silvery blood.
Mask clinging wetly to her lips and nose, Catherine pulled it down to her chin, grinning as the woman howled in pain, fangs buried in her legs and snakes wrapping themselves around her limbs, one coiled tight around her neck and sucking the breath right out of her.
"Enough to put me down?" she taunted, kicking the woman's weapon away. Her foot moved, lashing out quickly and stomping on her wrist to reveal a bluish slug in her other hand, presumably whatever allowed her to cast a spell in the first place. Catherine dropped her hammer on the woman's fist, a choked howl bursting from her lips and giving way for the python she wore as a scarf to draw itself tighter, bones creaking beneath its muscled grip. "Are you really that arrogant?"
"You'll- die for this," the woman hissed. "The Choir will come for you."
"Is that what you call your little group?" Catherine kneeled, looking her in the face and watching with glee as it slowly turned blue. "The Choir? You going to sing me a song?"
Fuck.
Reaching up, Catherine wiped away the glob of spit that had been lobbed at her, looking at her wet thumb with disgust. "Alright then."
She punched the woman in the head, hissing at the python to move so she could do this herself.
It complied, letting her wrap her hands around the woman's bruised throat and crushing her windpipe with clenched thumbs. Her eyes were bloodshot and froth bubbled at the corners of her lips as she stared up at Catherine, but the defiance in her gaze never went away, not even when she choked her last breath and went still beneath her.
"Damnit!" Catherine shouted, kicking the corpse in the ribs. "You could have just talked! But no! You had to try and kill me, didn't you?"
Throwing her head back and exhaling tiredly, Catherine picked up her hammer and scraped the sludge and blood off the flat of it, giving the corpse one last tentative nudge (just in case, you never know in Yharnam) before walking to the door she knew would lead her to whatever Scholar still called this place home.
With a whispered alohomora, and a passing thanks to the serpents that helped her kill that damned woman, she kicked the door open and marched over to the frighteningly large man that sat upon an ornate rocking chair, a golden staff wrapped in cloth and clutched in his left fist, his other hand laid across his lap and lost in the sea of his robe sleeves.
Whatever he wore on his face happened to be one of the strangest things Catherine had ever seen, a bug eyed honey-comb mask covered in expensive filigree that offered no hole in which to see through, his nose poking out from beneath and his jowls hanging heavy. A large bearskin hat was planted atop his head, looking like something one of the guards at Buckingham would wear.
"Willem?" Catherine stuttered, recognizing the man.
How was he still alive?
"Provost Willem. I've heard of you… I've come a very long way, killed a lot of people, so- so just tell me what Paleblood is so I can be on my way. I know about you and Laurence and whatever else, I've got all these things running around inside my head." Sucking in a breath, Catherine cast her eyes to the sky. "I need to know what Paleblood is. I need to know. So, please. Can you tell me?"
His only response was a low, animalistic groan, pointing towards the lake with his staff as he rocked back and forth.
All the weight of Yharnam, all the anger and the questions, the burgeoning need to figure out what the hell was going on - all of it came bubbling up at that motion, Catherine's anger reaching a peak and making her feel for a moment that if this carried on for any longer, she'd be able to meet the Voices rage with a fury of her own.
That was it?
She came all this way, mired herself in blood and gore knowing that Willem and Byrgenwerth were one of the only places besides knocking on the door of the Church (and godammit, she'd tried that already) to learn about what Paleblood was and end this farce, and all she gets is a grunt?
Not a single word, not even a drawing or the man pointing her in the direction of a book, but a fucking grunt?
Something in Catherine snapped.
"No! Don't you fucking- don't just point! Tell me what the hell is going on! You're the only person I know of that should have answers to what Paleblood is seeing as I've already killed the leader of the goddamn Church! Gehrman talked about you and said- he said you're the one to talk to, so answer! Tell me where to find it so I can figure out what's going on here and go home." Her fists clenched and she felt tempted to bash the man's head in. "What, am I supposed to find the answer over there?" She snapped, jabbing her wand towards the lake. "Got books and all sorts of things that are going to help me out in a big fucking pond? Is that it?"
Chest heaving, Catherine stared down at him. "Answer me!"
His mind is lost, young one. All that remains are eyes.
"Eyes!? I'll show you fucking eyes."
Dropping the hammer, Catherine tore off his hat to reveal- oh god.
She had to draw off the hat as if she were pulling a sword from a sheath, up, up, up to bare to the world and the watching moon a grotesque cylinder of blinking, starry eyes, Willem's skull a ramrod cone of twisted flesh and more blackened pupils than she could count.
There were massive ones, little ones, eyes the size of the nail on her pinky, all staring sightlessly at the sky above.
With shaking hands, she pulled away the silver mask he wore to reveal yet more, a pulsing cluster of them in each socket throbbing with each heartbeat, glistening with pus.
"What did you do to yourself?"
He had- he had…
Whatever Willem had done, he now suffered for it, covered in eyes like parasites. Catherine knew that if she cracked his head open, more would come spilling out.
He wished to look upon us. Willem feared the Blood, and took to looking inside to look beyond.
"Why?" she croaked, horror so thickly laced into the word that it seemed to drip from her tongue.
Is that not the dream of all mankind? To cling to the stars above and their dreams of godhood, not once wondering the cost of their efforts?
"He pointed- does the lake matter, or is he just mad? Is there even anything left of him in there?"
Ah, did I not say you would go searching on your own? Do you believe the lake to hold your answers?
"Just answer me. Please."
One must look, to see.
Slowly, Catherine turned around to face the lake, the moon high in the sky and shining its light upon the still body, the world perfectly reflected upon its surface and shining far more brilliantly than the mountains, the forests ever could.
It was beautiful.
Wand passing over her lips, a bubble sprouted over Catherine's face, taking her marks from Cedric - god, Cedric, if you could see me now - and his hurried lessons after the second task.
Into the lake she went, wand in one hand and her hammer in the other, and as Catherine's feet met the cold of the water she found there to be none, instead falling, falling, falling into an endless white expanse.
Down and down she went, plummeting into nothing, her mind racing as she tried to figure out just what was going on, until suddenly she stopped, landing noiselessly atop an infinite reflection of the lake, water in every direction and nothing but that same white haze making up the sky above and beyond.
"What…"
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong, and Catherine had just jumped headfirst into it.
She stood within another world, with nothing to keep her company but the great unending sea and a pale moonlight that shone from nowhere, yet everywhere, sending glittering sparks across the ripples at her feet and blinding her if she looked too far ahead.
Catherine froze as she heard a noise come from behind her, wand held tight by sweat-slick fingers as she turned to face-
No, no, no, no-
Everything about the creature was an affront to existence itself.
It was a spider if a spider had been wrought from nightmares itself, dusted in stars and pocked with a hundred million eyes. Pitted with scars, with teeth, with holes in its body that opened up to other worlds and galaxies beyond.
Legs made of crumbling worlds skittered along below it, leaving no splash in the water below. It turned to her, body melting, reforming, pulling together and apart all in single, flickering instants like the death of a solar system. Refulgent, glorious, world shattering, it burst and shattered and came back together with the unending pull of gravity
Lurching, Catherine fell to her knees, nails ripping at her armour and muttering lowly, no, no, nonono no wrong no wrong- no
It could not exist. It should not exist.
It did, and it was staring right at her, every eye, every world trained on the miniscule, worthless nothing that was Catherine.
"Can't be- shouldn't-" she blubbered, tears streaming from her eyes and blood pooling in her ears as it walked towards her on a thousand shimmering legs.
It stared at her, and Catherine wept.
Couldn't be, it's not- not real no, can't be real- not in front all a dream, it's all a d-
ream ju st- a dream can't- w on't just a dream
"You're fake, you're fake, you're fake, you're fake, you're not real, you're not-"
it's not real it's not real it's not-
"All a dream."
wrong it's not can't not "ake fake fake fake fake" you're-
"All a dream."
demon just a nightmare just a demon can't be hallucination all wrong wrong
"All a dream."
just it's all just wrong not it's a nightmare can't be real it's no
wrong just wron g wrong wr ong wrong no please not
wrong wrong no wrong no wrong wro ng
no wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
wrong wrong wrong wrong
kill no wrong wrong wrong kiͥll wrong wrong kill it kill me wrong k not kill
Wrͬoͦng wrRong its not not
not
can't kill me not
right
kill me kill wrong
kill me
kill me
kill me
kill me
kill me kill me
kill me
kill
kill me, please god, kill me