Chapter Fifty-Two | Mother, O' Mother
The Orphanage was in shambles, papers strewn about, jars of ritual ingredients shattered, the offal contained within laying in gelatinous puddles on the floor. Some jars contained strange, shimmering things, reeking of magic and something so much more. They glittered even in the deepest shadow, writhed in the corner of her vision.
She ground them into paste, and around them small fires burned, collecting in the corners of the room where Catherine had allowed her rage to come unbound, magic lashing out at the books nearby and setting them ablaze.
Catherine had dragged the werewolf in with her, suspending it in the air and forcing it to watch as she tore through the back rooms.
All she had found within were research notes, bloody instruments, and miniature operating tables, fit only for children. Catherine had put down one or two of those same creatures that Iosefka had been turned into, the tiny puttering blue men with their shining heads and the magic that sparked off their hands, little stars erupting from their skin.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing!" she shrieked, snatching up a heart and hurling it at the beastman watching her. It exploded over its face, garnering a whine out of the mutated researcher. "This is it? This is the entirety of your work? No, no." Catherine took off her cap and ran her fingers through her hair, head shaking furiously. "There has to be more."
"You, you. Over here, now." Jabbing her finger at the werewolf, she crooked it once, summoning it towards her. If it could sweat, it would, whites of its eyes showing and a faint tremble coursing through it as she placed her palms over the sides of its face. "What secrets have you got locked up in there?" Catherine crooned, tilting her head this way and that as she looked it over. "Let's find out."
Her fingers dug into its fur, its flesh, as she smashed across its mind like a tidal wave, her anger encompassed by the Truth as it flooded into the beast.
Just as quickly, its memories poured into her, the cursed researcher's entire life flashing before her eyes, an endless cavalcade of tastes and smells and obsession all culminating into a singular, fragile existence.
Her name was Janette, Choir faithful and of ill repute. Even among her brethren she lacked scruples, the first to volunteer when it came to studying the children they captured from the city below. Bribes and bait, urchins and the destitute alike, tricking families into selling off their own flesh and blood for the sake of some church-wine and plentiful coin. Conniving with scholars south of Yharnam - the School of Mensis - born after the death of Byrgenwerth and the home of all rituals, the purveyors of Hemwick and their illicit trade.
Catherines hand shook as if she herself held the scalpel, taking bits and pieces - eyes, blood, eyes, blood, eyes, blood - cramming them in wherever they'd fit, the children more sutures and tubes than untarnished skin. Studying them as they shrieked, calling out for a mother who was either dead or put them there in the first place.
Janette loved her work. Loved her Church. Loved the power at her fingertips as she witnessed the children's flesh turn blue, stars in their veins and light pouring from their eyes as the change took over them. Low chants and magic circles drawn beneath their flailing bodies with pens inked by their own friends' blood.
But it was the phantasms that made them, the afterbirth of gods - little, slime-soaked things that glowed even in the light of day, that made your eyes itch and your mind tremble. They'd place one, delicately, over their heart, or open up their skull and drape the slug across their brain before sealing it back up so that those godly secrets might suffuse their being.
It was here they made Rom, and it was here that they made a bridge so that they may commune with beings far greater than themselves.
That bridge, up above, around corners and across stairs the Choir held a garden, almost on top of the Cathedral itself. Lumenflowers, for the Moon - for Flora - and for Great Oedon in His endless sky. Flowers not of the earth but of the cosmos itself, the only sustenance a phantasm may require.
That bridge was an experiment, a Celestial Child, an emissary fashioned of the Church so they could-
A God below, forgotten, Ebrietas - Daughter of the Cosmos. How their minds churned so sweet, so delicate, like the stirring of the tides as they looked upon Her regal form.
Janette, but young and newly inducted to the Choir, oh how her tears fell, how her soul ached to witness such divine beauty. Here She mourned, here She walked - slithered - flew amongst humanity.
A burst, a flash, and Catherine was showered in gore, the beast that once was Janette's head exploding with such violence that her glasses cracked and porcelain-like flecks of bone dragged lines through her forehead.
Shaking, she vanished the mess from her body and stumbled away from the twitching corpse. Heavy breaths wracked her shoulders, fingers inching forward as if to strangle the life out of the already cooling beast at her feet.
With a roar, Catherine stomped on the corpse, grinding her foot against the sopping heap of flesh, teeth bared as bone cracked underneath her, slivers of it flying out from beneath her boot as ribs splintered, fissures ripping across their length and spraying shrapnel across the floor. She stomped again, again, not stopping until the floor began to bow beneath her and her trousers were splattered with blood.
"Fuck. Fuck." She put her face in her hands, fingernails scraping down her cheeks as she drew them away.
It was too much, too much all at once. Mensis, rituals, gods above the church, a God below the church-
Gods that must die.
This couldn't continue, they couldn't rebuild. And they could, far too easily if anything was left alive. If anything was left intact.
With murder on her mind (and when was it not?) Catherine twisted her wand, immediately dousing the rest of the room in flames. She looked on, stone faced, as they drank up the sin that seemed to soak every inch of this cursed place. The flames danced, almost overjoyed to be offered their chance at consecrating something so deeply unholy, such an aberration in the face of all that is good and right.
It only made her heart beat all the faster for it, a tick tock of gears planted at the root of her spine, of her brain, whirring along in knowing that this was just the beginning of her destruction.
Hemwick had burned. The Church would crumble. It would be torn out, root and stem - salted and covered in pitch before she would once more lay her flame across its shining, tarry surface and let the bonfire feast on their wrongs.
Wreathed in shining red, Catherine marched from the building, another wave of her wand bombarding it with hexes and throwing in the walls. It collapsed behind her, great heaps of rubble crumbling to the ground with a deafening echo that reverberated through the rest of the city. Everyone had heard her, and they would hear the rest of her deeds. Watch, as it all came down before them.
First, the God.
She whirled up the stairs, hammer dragging behind her and chewing through stone as it slammed against each step along the way. They took her above the orphanage, towards the Great Cathedral and the roof overtop its entrance.
Had she fought Amelia without knowing what was above her? What was below this very building, the floor upon which she had been slain?
And how, how, did they hide such a thing from their Vicar, puppet though she was?
Catherine could hear Amelia's distraught voice whipping at her ears as she entered into a corridor. "Below me, the whole while!" She cried. "My Lady! My Lady fair!"
Turning round corners and over yet more stairs, eventually Catherine stood facing a massive garden courtyard that reminded her awfully of the one before the entrance to Hogwarts.
It was a simple square with the middle of it bottomed out, tiers of stonework and stairs leading down into the garden itself, of which was marked by pillars rising up only to meet no roof, cut off at the head and ending in Romanesque curls. They stood among soil, grass, and the tall, luminescent flowers of which held their namesake. But, between those flowers bobbed the once children who had met the Church's grand expectations.
Cerulean, shining, bobbing, twinkling, they tottered between the thick stalks of the Lumenflowers. Even from where she stood Catherine could hear the burble from inside their wobbling heads, a gateway to the sea of the cosmos tossed around inside them.
The first two died before the rest had noticed what was happening, thin spikes popping their star-filled skulls and spraying their friends in golden blood. A few others warbled, turning to face her before they too had their heads staved in, dozens of the things rising to their feet among the flowers and charging towards her at the death knell of their brethren.
Catherine went to crush the next when it suddenly exploded, knocking her a few feet away. She stumbled to her feet to see it standing ten feet taller than the rest, tentacles bursting from the bubble atop its head and lashing out in every direction. It swiped at her clumsily, and she cursed at the frailty of the thing.
This was once a child. A child. Even Great as it was, it was nothing but a doddering sack of meat.
Pity began to overtake her anger, the tempestuous fury that flagged at her bones and left her reeling. Stepping back, she watched in horror as the thing continued flailing at her, accidentally crushing the smaller Kin around it.
It is afraid, Kos spoke. It has known nothing but these gardens and the whispering voice of its foster mother, whose augur once wrapped around its shivering mind.
She wanted to retch, to cry, to find the rest of those who did this and pry out their fingernails one by one before scooping out their eyes with a rusted knife.
A child.
Taking another few steps back, Catherine raised her wand and pointed it at a spot between its eyes. Her lungs filled, before releasing in a single, powerful rush.
If she were wielding a firearm, her wrist would have bucked, hand thrown back and weapon flying off behind her. Instead, an effervescent orb of electric crimson rocketed forward to meet the Emissary, colliding with its face and exploding with such ferocity that the ground shook. It was only a shield cast after the hex that kept her from having the skin of her face burned away and her insides turned to liquid.
The Emissary unfolded, its head crumpling inward and spraying out its back, ribs flaying open and arms blasted away in both directions, while its legs shot down and backwards, grating against the floor and scattering teal flesh and white bone every which way. Pulped chunks of it smashed against her shield, running down the immaterial surface to land wetly on the ground.
Letting the spell fall, Catherine watched as the rest of the celestial children scattered to ash, bound to the Emissary until the moment of its death. She felt no satisfaction, no taste of victory on her lips, instead the cold, dry dust of ash and that impossible sweetness still lingering and alighting upon her nose, its blood turned to mist and scattered in the still air.
It was with heavy steps that she trudged through the meat and slop that stained the courtyard, following the steps in her mind of where the God below lay hidden. There was no door for her to take, not right here at least, but Catherine didn't need a door. She walked past the garden to a tall, plain window that lay facing the centre of the courtyard, and looking into it she could see the interior of the Great Cathedral far below - the corpse of Archibald now stripped of its meat and only the bones left, laying scattered near the faint light of the altar.
Her hammer took care of the window, Catherine stepping through the hole and resting her elbows on the bannister of the upper level, a few dozen feet above the main floor. She rested there for a moment, simply breathing in the air, studying the distant form of Laurence's skull resting atop the altar.
A faint humming caught her attention, and Catherine looked down to see a pearlescent slug prodding at her greaves.
A phantasm. One of the same that the Choir-hunter at Byrgenwerth held.
Curious, Catherine put her wand away to reach down, picking the thing up and wincing as static ran down her fingers, her arm, as she made contact with its dripping flesh. It seemed to shimmer and shake before her eyes, making them burn fiercely as the air wavered around its undulating form. Two eye-stalks tilted towards her, waving up and down as if in greeting.
"If I hold you, can I summon a portal to the stars as well?" she wondered aloud, running a knuckle along its back(?) and watching as it quivered in delight.
The phantasm coiled around her armoured palm, before snaking its way beneath her sleeve and wrapping around her wrist, body morphing as it flattened itself out against her flesh. It was warm, surprisingly, and Catherine shook her arm a few times before deciding that, at worst, it would kill her. She'd already gone mad, and after witnessing Rom, the gelatinous afterbirth of the next God she was soon to lay eyes on was hardly an issue at all.
At least she was somewhat prepared this time.
She tapped her wrist gently, feeling the phantasm shudder again, and very suddenly wondering if Hedwig would be jealous of her new… pet?
Pushing the thought away, Catherine walked along the upper gallery, making her way across the length of the Cathedral towards a back room which, from Janette's soiled mind, she knew to hold a lift. A lift which would take her deep beneath the Cathedral to where the God they called Ebrietas rested - not asleep - but isolated. Captured, with nothing else to do but stare at the walls until the world passed Her by.
A celestial child tried to take her by surprise as she stepped into the room harbouring the lift, Catherine's hand reaching out to punch it reflexively when power sparked off her knuckles, a sliver opening in the air and a great tentacle lashing out of it, wrapping around the things neck and ripping it in twain.
The power of it made her grit her teeth, the horrible nothingness that encompassed her fist as she punched through reality itself, the tentacle that burst from that sliver in existence undoubtedly one that belonged to the God beneath her feet.
For a few seconds, Catherine stared at her fist, blinking dumbly.
"Interesting," she muttered, raising her arm up to inspect it, before tapping once more where she knew the phantasm rested. "Clever thing, you are."
It shook with what she assumed to be glee at her praise, and she found herself thankful for not immediately killing the thing once she'd seen it. A tool was a tool, alive though it was, and Catherine wasn't one to spit in the face of something so useful.
Her feet carried her to the lift and she stomped once on the raised block in the centre, kicking the machinery into action and steeling herself as it began to sink deeper into the Cathedral, into the earth itself, far, far below the church.
The air began to grow cooler, smooth walls turning rougher until they slowly shifted into the pitted, moss covered stone of a subterranean cave.
Janette's thoughts still shook her, bits of information prodding at her eyes as she looked upon the familiar, the familiar that which Catherine had never seen.
This was where the Church took their vaunted blood. Blood of the Gods, distilled in the Orphanage and other Choir hideaways, used to breed their blood-maidens so that they may harvest more, more, until the city they had shackled - the people within - would slaughter friend and family for the sake of a single, perfect drop to be set upon their tongue. They had found Her in the crypts beneath Yharnam, a relict of civilizations long past uncovered by their explorers - by Byrgenwerth - far before the Church was even a dream in Laurence's mind.
The lift stopped, and Catherine stepped off of it into a magnificent cavern, filled with a pool of water that flowed around her ankles. She looked up, the walls reaching far into the mountainside which Yharnam was built upon. A crack in the ceiling of the cave hundreds of feet above allowed the pale light of the moon to trickle in - carving a line through the sky and marking the divine that rested in its cradle.
Lit by that sliver of the moon, by the softly glowing caps of mushrooms that littered the cave, by the broken husk of Rom that rested atop an altar hewn of stone, shining white flowers sprouting from Her corpse - grieved Ebrietas.
Needles pricked at Catherine's eyes, her breaths growing heavy as she stumbled through the ankle deep pool towards the massive, hulking form of Her - Her, Her, Her-
Great and wondrous She was. Tall as any manor, thin, bat-like - angelic, glorious - wings sprouting from her back, bare of feathers or flesh, only tendrils that hung so low as to scrape the pool- lake, a lake, another lake- the Lake-
Ebrietas bowed over the broken corpse of Rom, somehow taken from Byrgenwerth (had she ever been there? Was it all a dream? A horrible dream?) to this altar, to be laid across its surface and mourned. Tentacles, not tentacles, arms, ribbons of flesh with no end nor beginning flanked Her wings, curled around Herself in soft embrace. She was horrid, wonderful, deviant- a great slug, a wyrm dredged from the sea, Her enormous, forked tail stirring the water and sending ripples to meet Catherine's waiting form.
Bile left her throat cloyingly thick and she tongued at the back of her teeth, nipping at the muscle, trying desperately to hold onto her sanity. In the back of Catherine's mind Amelia wailed, her song turned to chorus by the husked, fervent mutterings of Beatrice.
Her foot raised, then lowered, every movement tremulous. Soon, the other followed suit with strange, staccato motions - robotic. Catherine's shoulders shook, eyes vibrating in their sockets as she kept her gaze locked upon the God that lay hunkered over the chaff that remained of Rom.
Another step and Catherine fell face first into the pool, hands pushing clumsily at the rough stone beneath, the faint noise of clicking metal emanating from the water as she tried to push herself to her feet, only barely succeeding in propping herself up on her knees.
A God, a God, her mind screamed, yet again, tears pouring down her face.
Praise Her- O' Ebrietas, O' Great Forgotten, Lost One - left by Her kin, the Cosmos above-
"Love me, please, praise me- love me - Mother, sweet Blood Mother-"
On hand and knee, Catherine crept forward, adulations and reverence pouring from her lips as she splashed through the muck. She fell again with a splash, animalistic as she pushed herself back up and crawled towards the God. Her God.
Frantic, she rushed, too fervent to notice how the sharp rocks dug into the leather at her knees, how she'd torn holes in her gloves - no metal to shield her palms - blood lingering in the water as she pawed at the ground. "Mother, oh please, Blood Mother- Ebrietas, please- look, just look, oh please just look-"
Suddenly, pain, more than Catherine had ever felt, more than the cruciatus could muster - more than her skull being crushed, drowned in acid, hands dug into her ribs, teeth gnawing at her spine - crashed over her. She collapsed, screaming, as untempered fury - fury of the Gods broke across her body and her soul.
It felt like she had been tossed into the sun, crackling, a storm of fire and lightning to be struck over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over-
Magic lashed off her body, slamming into the water and sending waves crashing against the rocky walls. Her heart thundered, beating faster and faster until it felt like it would burst inside her chest. Catherine wailed, burbling, as she drowned in the shallow pool, the claws of her gauntlets sunk deep into the flesh of her arms, blood trickling from the wounds to form billowing clouds around her.
"No, please, don't- don't please, don't-"
Great, shuddering coughs wracked her body, flecks of crimson spraying from her lips. Rolling onto her side, Catherine raised one hand to the sky, pleading silently for release.
And then it stopped.
Heaving, she let out another, raspy cough, her voice torn to shreds and blood lingering in her throat. A glob of it, mingled with sick, leapt from her mouth to land across her cheek.
"Why?"
Anger, possessiveness that which she could not comprehend washed over her, Kos' righteous fury pouring through their connection and setting her soul alight.
You are mine.
"Why?"
My child, borne of ash and blood, My blood.
She nodded shakily, lungs empty, unable to be filled.
You
Are
Mine
Clawing at her chest, Catherine rolled onto her side, mouth half full with water - mask lost in her madness - staring with wide eyes at a God that no longer tore at her mind, no longer filled her with an unending, delirious want for praise and adoration.
That God stared back. Face unfurled, flaps of sodden flesh opened to reveal two, impossible, pulsing eyes, surrounded by a thousand stalks of liquid coral that flowed this way and that, following the heartbeat of the universe.
Ebrietas gazed into her, and Catherine shuddered beneath it.
They stayed there for what seemed years, as Catherine struggled to breathe beneath the power that just her curious look brought, until finally, Ebrietas turned away.
Her body returned to her, and her gasps echoed out into the cave, slowly reverberating through the mountainside. With trembling limbs Catherine got to her feet, nearly falling over in the process, skidding to her left and only managing to prop herself up with the help of the Messengers as they appeared to grab at her ankles, pushing the long handle of her hammer against her side. Her wand, lost somewhere in the water, flew to her hand with a turn of her wrist.
Panting, she raised her arm and pointed her wand at Ebrietas, mouth hanging open and tears mixing with the blood that stained her face. As magic began to course through her arm the phantasm at her wrist started to burn, shake, as if screaming out for her to stop. She gasped at it, letting go of her hammer to grasp at her wrist.
"She has to die, they can't keep doing this, they can't," she whispered hoarsely, clutching at the phantasm. "She has to die."
Her arm quivered as it pointed to the side of its own accord - of the phantasm's accord - and Catherine began to regret her decision to carry it along until she found her wand pointing at not just the rock-face, but ruins. Desiccated pillars, strange statues among them, and a cavernous entrance to the mountain deep covered by rubble.
"What?"
Slowly, she stumbled through the pool toward the ruins, stepping past Ebrietas - who had returned to mourn (would She kill her if She knew it was Catherine who had slain Rom?) - to peek at the hill of rubble.
The shapes of the architecture were odd, angular yet curving in places unnatural, and very distinctly not of Yharnam make.
This was the entrance. This was where they had found her, in the ruins of- of-
Pthumeru. Loran. Ihyll.
The civilizations lost, naught but Kin, ghosts, mindless protectors lingering in the resting place of long-forgotten Gods like that of Ebrietas, left behind when her kind ascended to the Great Cosmos.
Catherine stared and wondered at it, a thought taking her.
Would she return?
Her arm lowered, but Catherine still clutched at the phantasm, head turning to look back at Ebrietas. She flinched, but let out a sigh of relief when no pain struck her, no shadows clawing at the edges of her vision nor stars bursting within her mind's eye.
With Dumbledore in her mind, how he took the students from the Great Hall with but a wave of his wand, Catherine set to work doing the same. Motions careful, precise, she began levitating the rubble away, starting with smaller chunks - still massive in size yet nothing in comparison to the sheet of mountain rock that covered the main entrance to the ruins below.
Sweat dripped from her brow as she pulled more aside, before setting to work on the main piece, two dozen feet tall, just as wide, and who knows how thick. Her arm shook as it slowly began to raise, first a few inches at a time, and then a few feet - slowly, slowly - until it hung high in the air.
Her first instinct was to throw it away, to toss it at the thing that lay bowed perhaps twenty paces to her right, but she pushed that instinct away with as much violence as she could normally muster.
Patiently, slowly, she levitated the gigantic sheet of stone aside, tens of thousands of tons of it dragged haphazardly away from the door to the catacombs.
Catherine dropped it without fanfare, the sound of it so deep, so heavy, that she was sure the ripples of it stretched out across Yharnam. It made her knees tremble, more waves pushing at her thighs as they pushed across the length of the cavern.
But Ebrietas turned once more, stopping to study the suddenly re-opened entrance to, what Catherine assumed to be, her once home. The God sat there, staring, for nearly a minute before She slowly shifted, slithering towards the great entry-way.
All Catherine could do was watch as She wrapped the corpse of Rom in her embrace and dragged it with her, disappearing behind a haze of faintly glowing bluish lights, emanating from the moss and fungi lining the ruin walls. She watched, remembering that behind that haze lay Pthumeru.
Curiosity - secrets - would be the death of her.
"What can I find down there?" she rasped.
Yharnam, Queen of Pthumeru, Kos replied.
And that was all she needed to know.
Catherine followed, but not before taking the rock that had once blocked the entrance and bringing it back to its rightful place.