Chapter Forty-Eight | The Woman in White
It was far too easy to carry Eileen back to the chapel, the woman slung over her shoulders in a fireman's carry, one arm just mobile enough to ward off any curious beasts that came sniffing their way. The woman had cursed her all the while, nattering on about not needing help, and 'gods-damn you girl, I'm not an invalid.'
Catherine ignored her.
"Oi! I found her!" she shouted, shouldering into the warmth and safety of the tall, stone walls, pulling the door shut behind her and putting in the latch. Not that it'd do much to ward off any curious hunters, beasts turned away by the incense, but it would give those inside time to react.
Speaking of those inside, they turned at her proclamation, Adella gasping loudly and dropping a small vial of blood she had been holding as her hands flew to her mouth. "Oh no! Is she alright?" she stuttered, running over to meet them and spending more time glancing over Catherine than Eileen. "Is she-?"
"Auntie!" Emilie shrieked, being held tightly by Arianna, her face stricken.
"She's alright! Arianna?"
The woman nodded, understanding immediately and ushering Emilie upstairs. Meanwhile, Elijah fretted, sniffing at the air and most likely picking up the blood that drenched the two of them.
"I'm just fine, thank you very much, now let me down," Eileen groused, giving Catherine a weak smack on the thigh and cursing lightly when she didn't flinch. She glared at Adella, feebly jerking her head up towards Catherine. "Cunt carried me the whole way back. And I've told you I'm fine, could you just-"
"You couldn't walk. I found you with more blood out of you than in. Shut up, stop complaining, and let's get you in a bed." Catherine turned her head towards Eileen's, close enough to feel her breath on her. "No more of that suicidal, 'leave me behind' tripe. I get enough of it from myself, I don't need you doing it too," she hissed, much too quiet for anyone untouched by the echoes of the Dream to hear.
"Oh ho, she's got fangs!"
All Catherine did was bare her teeth, nearly grinning when Eileen realized she did have fangs, and instead whipping her head back to the fretting, moderately obsessive nun. "Adella, could you help us along? She'll need help to heal."
"Of course, of course. I'll fetch blood, water, some cloths-" she shook out her hands, bug eyed. "I'll be right up."
"Thank you."
Now resigned and knowing escape was but a flight of stairs away, Eileen kept her mouth shut as Catherine trudged to the upper level, ducking into the room next to her own and gently setting Eileen down.
"We're going to need to get you out of your armour to see the rest of the damage."
She didn't give Eileen a chance to argue, wand waving as she vanished her leathers and let them reappear in the corner, thrown into a bloody pile to fester until they found the time to clean them.
Unashamed, she trailed her eyes over the woman's muscled form, her wand dragging over the missed stabs and slices that littered her scarred body. It was a patchwork, deep lines that ran across her every which way, some faint with age and others puckered, far too fresh to be anything but gained within the last month.
Will I look like that one day? Catherine mused as she set to work knitting Eileen back together, the woman glaring at the wall with her jaw set stubbornly. And does she ever take off that armour?
Adella burst into the room in a tizzy, and Catherine simply conjured a chair next to the small night stand, clearing it of dust and sanitizing it with a jerk of her wrist for good measure. "Thank you," she uttered, continuing her work.
"It's no trouble at all. Anything to help, especially- well, anything to help."
Working quickly, Adella wet a cloth and started dabbing at Eileen's face, jerking back when the woman snarled at her.
"Hey! I will bind you, trust me on that. Let her help."
"I'm not dying-"
"You were on deaths door when I found you. Now, that's not much of a problem for me, but you're no Dreamer any more. I'm sure you'll be back up and at it in a day or two, but for the love of Christ let us help. Do you want to be stumbling around like an arse any longer than you need to?" Pausing, Catherine raised her brow, giving Eileen a pointed look. "No? Let her clean you up, no fuss, and no bloody snarling. You're not a dog."
Finally, finally, Eileen relented, and for a second Catherine knew the power that Madam Pomfrey must feel, and the sheer, unadulterated frustration she had caused her throughout the years. Was she this stubborn about her injuries?
Both Catherine and Adella got to work cleaning her up and dressing her wounds, and Catherine wondered where a nun of all people had learned how to nurse someone in a city so dependent on blood for any and all injuries.
Broke a bone? Blood. Scraped knee? Pinch of crimson in your tea. Guts hanging out? Well, blood still might fix that too. Did, her saving of Eileen would have been impossible without it, aided along with magic of course but she was sure that someone like Iosefka - I still need to kill that impostor - would have managed just fine. She did stitch Catherine up after all, and she'd been rent from shoulder to belly, ribs splayed open and her heart beating into the light of a rare Yharnam sunset.
"What's a christ?" Eileen asked after a few minutes, wounds finally patched.
An undignified snort ripped out of Catherine, two fingers coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "A man from my home who lived a very, very long time ago. There's a whole faith dedicated to him, calls him the Son of God."
"And you evoke his name?"
"It's called swearing, Eileen."
Beside her, Adella coughed, and she glanced at the woman to find her mighty uncomfortable. "What?"
"You and all Dreamers are children of the Gods. You cannot possibly believe in something else," she stated emphatically, looking more animated than Catherine had ever seen her, even when she was sobbing in a prison basement.
Rolling her eyes, Catherine shouldered on. "Either of you two know how I could get to Cainhurst?"
"Why? Why would you ever go to such a horrid place?" Standing, Adella looked stricken with confusion and disgust. "Heathens, all of them!"
"And your people committed genocide against them."
"They stole the Blood! Turned it into something wicked and full of spite, an awful, cursed thing. They took that blessing and spat on it, then supped as if it were cheap wine!"
Lip curling with contempt, a sudden spike of rage burrowed its way through Catherine's being. She too stood, a harsh grimace on her face and hands curled into fists. "Let me make myself very, very clear, Adella. I've seen Cainhurst, stole the memories from a dying man not twenty minutes ago. I saw their people, their lives, and as much as Cainhurst disgusted me, Yharnam too makes my blood itch."
Catherine took a step forward, Adella shirking away. "Do you know what happened there? Do you? Everyone slaughtered, every family, every crying babe skewered in their cribs. And do you know who did it? The man who has hunted me down since my birth.
"He came in with the Executioners and tore the very souls out of those people, ripped their essence from their dying lips and did god knows what with them. It didn't matter if they were noble or servant, they were cut down all the same. Now tell me, is that justified, to you? Do you truly believe that the wholesale slaughter of an entire peoples is all well and good because your bloody cult of a church said it was?"
Her ears pricked and she could hear, loudly, the drumbeat patter of Adella's heart, her pupils blown with fear. The woman looked on the verge of a panic attack, breath short and pulse heavy.
One of Catherine's eyes twitched as she caught a glimpse of Archibald, newly added to her roster of spectres, clapping his hands in maddened glee. He flickered in and out of shape, too far gone to be anything but a poltergeist fashioned of the last vestige of his ailing mind. Not enough left to even eke out what made him, him, long before that sickness had the opportunity to lay hands on his soul.
And then Adella squeaked, face contorting as she obviously struggled with something, before she decided to inevitably flee the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
"What happened to you, girl?"
Her jaw set, much like Eileen's had earlier. "Your gods happened."
"So you spoke truth?"
"What?" she scoffed. "Why would I lie about something like that?"
"I've met all sorts in my years. Liars, thieves, scoundrels, most far worse than the beasts we're supposed to hunt. I didn't take up those feathers for nothing." Letting out a grunt of exertion, Eileen pushed herself up to sit. "Tell me about it, while you fetch me a shirt."
Catherine simply waved her wand, conjuring a light t-shirt over Eileen, along with another blanket, vanishing the bloodstained one she had been resting on. She looked mildly impressed, brow quirking in interest.
"Hm. Lot you can do with that stick of yours."
"If you can imagine it, it can be done. Except for the dead." Grabbing a stool, she dragged it over, wood on wood grinding loudly. "They stay that way, except for… well, us, of course."
"Gold?"
"Requires a stone, and a lot of knowledge. Alchemy. Why?"
"I believe my fighting days are over. Vicious bastard that Crow was, but I've gotten lax. Think I've finally gotten tired of this sort of life. Thought you'd be able to give me a head start." Eileen laughed. "But this god, you said," she motioned, waving her hand. "You slew it, truly?"
It felt like entire minutes had dragged by as Catherine slowly drew in a breath, heavy in her lungs, before expelling it through clenched teeth. It whistled quietly as it broke through those thin cracks, a shrill, tiny utterance of absolute and utter exhaustion.
"I went to Byrgenwerth to seek Paleblood. To transcend the Dream. Found it, alright," she said, gesturing to the window. To the stark red moon. "I found Her beneath the lake, swathed in white and blind to all but the branded seals seared into the inside of Her mind. A man made god, crafted by the Church to hide the beings that wandered their city. The…"
Amygdala. Crawling, lurking, mindless afterbirth of the Cosmos. Gods in name, but simple-minded animals nonetheless.
"...Amygdala. The Church knows, you've seen their effigies, had to crawl past them to escape the Cathedral."
"And you killed Her."
"Lost my mind. Blind and blood-soaked, I took my hammer to Her until her flesh stopped shaking and the stars no longer poured from her eyes."
Eileen grunted. "Well, I'm glad to hear that you're not much worse for wear. You can speak and you can think, and in Yharnam that makes for a very sound mind."
She couldn't help but chuckle, enjoying Eileen's ridiculous pragmatism. "Yeah. I think I'm beginning to see that. So…"
"Cainhurst, aye?" A sharp click marked Eileen's tut. "I'm afraid I'm of no use to you there, but there's one who is, and close by."
Fighting the sudden urge to smack herself, Catherine instead shook her head. "I can't believe I'd already forgot. Thanks for the reminder."
"No trouble at all."
Catherine got up, nudging her stool aside and making for the door. "I'll be seeing you Eileen."
"You as well, and Catherine?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
-::-
It was to Iosefka's clinic she went, after speaking with Arianna, who had simply smirked and said, 'Ah, you've found me out then, have you?' when Catherine asked her how to get to Cainhurst. There was fear in her words, hidden well, but evident to Catherine. Strange fear, for someone who wore the red of her slaughtered countrymen, but a rape goes hand in hand with pillaging, and the Executioners were sure to have taken all the jewels and finery they could grab after their crushing of the castle.
She didn't explain how she knew her, only that it had to do with her mystery career, but Arianna knew Iosefka and had left a missive granting entry to Cainhurst in her possession. Catherine could only hope that whoever had come and killed the woman still had it somewhere in the clinic.
A missive was necessary, she said, deep magic warding away the castle and only allowing entrance by invitation, to catch a carriage fueled by some manner of ritual and be taken away.
It sounded to her like Cainhurst was unplottable, perhaps some bastardized form of the Fidelius only known in this world.
But Catherine had left through the sewers, able to cut through them towards the clinic far faster than she could the streets above. What she found there haunted her.
Another pig, six feet tall and a dozen round, massive and hulking and spotted with sores, crunching down on the corpse of a girl.
Somehow, she knew.
She blew open its skull, spattering herself in viscera and wrenching the body away from its crumpled maw to see a note clenched in the corpse's fist, alongside a white ribbon stitched the same as young Emilie's.
"Oh no," Catherine uttered, taking the sopping note and unraveling it, a spell stealing the filth from the page and restoring the ink to see the childlike scrawl of the little girl she had come to love as if a sister. "Oh no."
The girl's name escaped her, and she couldn't even remember if she'd been told it or not, but the body laying beneath her was the last of the Gascoigne family, and she'd come searching for her sister in the night.
Thoughts came unbidden. If she hadn't asked Emilie to write a note, would her sister still be alive? Would she have come home and stayed home? Not ventured out into the night to meet her death?
Sighing deeply, Catherine decided it best to take care of the body now. To not break the news to Emilie, at least not until the night was done.
Throwing a flame freezing charm on the shit-strewn waters around the girl, she doused the corpse in flame. Bright, crackling blue, so hot to near white, immediately bringing sweat to her brow as she incinerated flesh and bone and gave the young girl (her age, she realized. Not young - yes young - maybe older) the most dignified funeral one could gain in this damnable city.
Cremation felt like rebirth in that moment. A cleansing flame to burn away all that is and was and shepherd one into whatever waited behind a door that was locked tight until your final breath was dragged out of you, a key of soul and air ushering in the unending dark.
But now was not the time for mourning, nor could she find it in her to mourn Emilie's sister, but instead the sheer innocence lost by this place. The pain and horror wrought at the hands of man's own hubris.
This city was a graveyard, not a prison. It was free, yet in that it entrapped its people through Blood and faith. Lackadaisical platitudes used to justify the wrongs they committed - Adella, sure as sure could be that the massacre of man, woman, and child was a justified response to hedonism unhindered.
Catherine couldn't wait to take every member of the Choir and make them watch as she killed their friends and compatriots one by one.
Staring at the embers as they sputtered in the water, she let out an exhausted sigh, every ounce of her being contained in that breath.
Then she turned around and continued on.
Those streets and sewers felt ancient to her now, after all she had seen and done. The beasts barely a hindrance to her path, so familiar with them that they seemed naught but insects before the swing of her hammer and the spark of her wand.
Some would say she'd come far. Catherine would say she'd sunk, deeper and deeper until the roots of Yharnam wrapped her in their steely embrace and sunk feelers into her soul. Even if she wrenched herself free of it, that poison would always remain.
Maybe she should become a monster hunter. Spend her time killing strange and unearthly things scattered around the globe. Would a Nundu leave her breathless, or if she cloaked herself in magic would even its breath recoil as she plunged her blade into its hide? Could it stand against the lightning she now wielded as if a spear, to rain down on her enemies from not the heavens but instead a sliver in the fabric of the sky, conjured from nothing but the blood and sheer will?
Sometimes she could feel that magic of the old ones, whatever blessing Oedon had passed on to humanity thrumming inside her. It was bottled light and the deafening scrape of clouds as they grated against each other, condensed and concentrated until a marble of the stuff poured like liquid fire through her veins.
Even the Amygdala took notice of her as she walked the streets, slowly closing in on the clinic.
No beast nor man captured their many hidden eyes, but something about her sparked their unfeeling interest. Would she too take notice of an ant if it shimmered as she did? Blind to the ailing eyes of mortals but she made no question that these beings could see far more than she herself was capable of. Perhaps even magic itself was but another form of light to them, ultraviolet rays that cast not a cancer upon those basking in their glow, but life incarnate.
A sudden temptation struck her to try her hand at killing one of them, but she'd basked in the blood of gods and it had already found her wanting.
Before she knew it, soaked in red, Catherine stood before a building that looked a ghost to her. Incense wafted from an open window, and the building looked far larger than she remembered.
Maybe it was because she never looked back.
Bones lay in the courtyard before the clinic proper. The first beast she had ever slain now picked clean, even those white ribs cracked open so that the marrow could be sucked out. She could still see the scratches on the bars where she had tried to escape, before it wrapped its claws around her throat and tore out her spine.
Catherine looked past it to the clinic itself, unearthly quiet with only the faint rattle of shutters in the distance and the occasional howl to lend the night an air of reminder, to never let her forget the horrors that waited.
She entered the clinic, striding long and proud over creaking floorboards, past gurneys and a thousand jars of offal to ascend the stairs. Her hammer left the door to the clinic interior in shambles, Catherine blinking at the sight of one of those little blue creatures she had seen in her visions.
The air around it wavered as it tottered about aimlessly, short and squat and its head one large globe of burbling liquid. Tiny glowing eyes poked out from beneath the mushroom cap of glowing flesh that swayed with its every movement, sunken beneath a knotted mess of blue flesh with no end or beginning. Above all else it looked like a hideous child, wrinkled and hunched and lurching as it knocked about the room.
But it smelled so familiar.
"Oh, whatever has happened to you Iosefka?" Catherine asked aloud, horrid realization washing over her. "What did she do to you?"
How did she turn into this, this… thing?
The creature that once was Iosefka didn't even notice her, deciding to plant itself down in the corner of the room and stare at the wall, more burbles echoing out of it as it ran one crooked finger along the wooden paneling.
Should she kill it? Put the woman who saved her (who cursed her) out of her misery?
If that were her, she'd want the same done. She'd get her answers anyway once she stole the blood out of that impostor.
Catherine detached the blade from her hammer and let out another heavy breath as she loomed over Iosefka, an executioner waiting in the wings. The tip of the blade pressed gently against the back of her head, lifting the bobbing mass of flesh so that it may be placed - she hoped - where its brainstem rested.
Iosefka did not move.
It was quick. A single thrust and an ethereal noise of surprise before pale gold poured over her blade, the thing's body giving a single shudder before its weight collapsed against her weapon, the length of blood infused steel the only thing keeping it up.
Whoever had come here had made her Kin. A woman of the Choir most likely, and Catherine prayed that once she found her she had the sense of mind to keep the wretch alive long enough for her to enjoy every scream she'd pull from her lips.
Her body quivered as Catherine turned her head, quirking it until her ear touched her shoulder and her neck popped, sending another shiver through her. That lightning burned, sparks cracking at her fingertips and scattering a sharp red across the floorboards and the yellowed blood that sank into the thin gaps between them.
You could have saved her, something inside her whispered. If only you'd broken down the door as soon as you'd known that it was not her that answered your knocks.
Too little too late.
You could have saved all of them. Why didn't you return to that girl? Left her for hog-feed and sewage. Not even a speck of her remains. Your sins cannot be burnt away, not with fire, not with ice, no water to cleanse you of your wrongs.
Oh. That was her own voice.
Her sword pulled out of Iosefka's body with a drawn out slurp, the beaten blue flesh trying desperately to cling to the steel it housed. As soon as the sword was drawn, the body crumpled, slapping against the ground and letting out another, involuntary burble as whatever organs inside it contracted. If it even had something so mundane beyond flesh, not just stars and bright lights wrapped in sparkling skin.
She cast one last glance at the corpse before leaving, offering a silent prayer that if there was any afterlife, it would be kind to Iosefka.
Throwing open the next door, she found herself in a long winding hallway that curled around the grounds of the clinic. Chairs and gurneys had been thrown about, the floorboards splintering and walls stripped of varnish from nights of rain pouring in through open holes in the ceiling and un-battened shutters. But, deeper inside she could hear faint moans of pain and curious muttering, lilting up and down in an almost fascinated fashion.
The impostor.
Silently she stepped towards the noise, the muttering growing louder and louder, leading her to yet another set of doors and a large two-tiered office. Vengeance brimmed inside her as she looked up the stairs, past yet more jars of so many organs and the corpse of a stranger tossed into the corner, organs spilling out across her lap and eyes missing. The noise was coming from right there.
Marching up, she stood before a woman dressed in Iosefka's clothes and hunched across an operating table, spasms coursing through her body, resonating from her gut and coursing from head to toe. The woman turned her head, staring glassy-eyed. Not all there, and looking remarkably like the woman who had once saved her life.
"Ah, what a queer scent you carry. Moonlit… I- oh!" She shuddered again, mouth dropping open. "Have you ever felt this?" she breathed, eyes rolling back in either pain or pleasure, Catherine did not know, nor did she care to. "I'm different, you see? Not a beast, but- oh dear, it feels awful. But I'm chosen, I'm chosen. You see it? How they writhe inside my head? It's rather… rapturous."
Catherine studied her, the woman posing no danger, frail as she was. "What did you do to yourself?"
A groan of pain escaped her, fingers curling around the edge of the surgical table. "Eyes, eyes and blood. I put them in, stuffed inside and curdled with magic. I'm chosen, chosen and blessed. They'll thank me, you know? Oh, they'll thank me for this."
"You're going to die, and no one will ever remember your name. No one but me."
"No! You don't understand! They sent you, didn't they? My sisters, my brothers, they sent you- you've come to aid me."
A smile worked its way across Catherine's face as she stepped towards the woman, lifting her chin with one finger. "You killed the woman that saved me. Don't you remember me coming back to speak with her? To see if she could house anyone? You'd taken her by then. Tell me, did you even know her name, or simply that she owned a clinic and you'd taken interest?"
"What? No- not- just a hunter?"
"Not just a hunter. A Dreamer."
Delirious, the woman tried to push herself away, arms crumpling beneath her and her jaw thudding loudly as it smacked against the table. A dribble of blood leaked out from between her lips, tongue cut from her fall.
"Where did you put this magic? The eyes? Here?" Catherine asked, pressing her hand to the impostor's belly. "I could take it from you. I've stolen hearts, why not whatever is hurting you? It's hurting you, isn't it? You look nauseous. Let me help. Oh, and before I forget." Wand out, she pointed it aimlessly behind her. "Accio invitation."
A flapping on the wind and within moments a thick envelope was in her hand, Catherine taking it and putting it into one of her many pockets. "I've got an invitation to Cainhurst, you see. After I take care of you, I'm going to dig up some more secrets. By the way, if you could answer me that would save me a lot of trouble. The Choir is at the top of the clock tower, correct? Behind the doors of the old workshop tower?"
"No, don't go there- don't- it's not for you. It's ours! You have-" the woman retched, bile mixing with the blood on her chin. "You have no idea what's there. You'd destroy your Church? Your Vicar?"
"The Vicar? Funny you mention her. I'm the one who killed her, along with your friend at Byrgenwerth."
The impostor only had a moment for the horror to twist her face into a grimace before Catherine thrust her hand into her belly, puncturing the flesh with a harsh pop. Shrieking, the woman flailed as Catherine dug around, searching for eyes or whatever magic she felt ebbing off her, until her hands wrapped around something she immediately knew to be far more powerful than anything this wretched pretender should have ever dabbled with.
She dragged the coil of blackened flesh from the mess of intestine and other pulsing, throbbing things in her belly, looking at it in a new light. It burned her mind so, but Catherine had looked upon a god until her eyes threatened to burst in their sockets. The afterbirth of one was a small thing in comparison.
Yet another snakestone covered in eyes rested in her palm, inky tar dripping from its surface and staining her fingers.
"No! Don't take it, it's mine! I'll be so much more! Put it back!"
"Hmm?" She looked down at the woman as she stuffed it next to its brother in her breast pocket. "You have no idea what you're asking for, do you? You worship these things blindly, but you have no idea what they really are. I've got one, up here," she said, tapping the side of her head. "She whispers to me. Have you ever heard of Kos?"
Something about her words made the woman falter, made her look almost recalcitrant, hopeful now that Catherine held that coil for herself.
"What?"
"Better you than me," the impostor hacked, spitting blood, the faint sound of it bubbling in her lungs. "A Dreamer, and... and- a prophet. A prophet, you are, maybe-" another cough, rattling as it was forced out of her. "A Messiah."
"I'm no such thing. I've been offered godhood, you know? I wonder what your Church will think when I deny that offer."
"You can't!"
"I think I will."
Taking her sword, Catherine drew long lines across the woman's arms, hastening the flow of blood and ushering her closer to death. She stepped back, conjuring a chair, and sat down, taking cruel enjoyment out of every whimper and complaint as the woman tried, through blood and vomit, to convince her to take her chance. To ascend.
She sat there, watching, waiting, until the light left the impostor's eyes. No expression was worn upon her face when she got up to run a finger along the pool of blood collecting beneath the still warm corpse, bringing it to her lips so that she may bask in her memories.