Chapter Fifty-Three | London Bridge
Two weeks… three? Three weeks, Catherine decided, had been spent deep below the earth.
At first it was twisting corridors of shining cerulean moss, each corner marked by Kin of some sort crawling about, eager to have their yellowed blood spilled alongside the rest of their ilk.
Ihyll, Kos had told her it was, and her visions from Rom were a stark reminder. She'd seen these halls once upon a time, in a memory not her own.
Or maybe it was the Truth? Those dark whispers spoken unto her by a voice that lacked tongue or lips, only the ethereal concept of knowledge itself drifting along the flow of reality to touch upon her mind with a softness (or veracity) that would leave her quaking from the aberration that it was.
That had gotten easier, after Ebrietas.
The God had disappeared somewhere in these spider-like ruins soon after Catherine had granted Her entry, and whilst she hoped to never witness Her again, a part of her wondered if she would crumble the next time she lay eyes on another being such as Her. Curiosity, a temptation to test herself knowing full well the consequences of failure - pain beyond imagining and the untempered anger of a jilted God.
It seemed Catherine's connection with Kos ran far deeper than first assumed.
Was it the mark upon her brow? Or was it simply a curse of fate, that the Goddess of the Sea had so happened to have Her ear caught by a babe, screaming into a whirlpool beyond death and reality with a voice magnified by the eldritch script etched into her flesh.
So much time left to herself, with only mindless beasts - the things all but zombies - made Catherine wonder on the intricacies of existence.
Actually, she always pondered such things. That she'd confess. But, it certainly made it no more difficult to get lost in her own thoughts.
But Ihyll was long behind her, and so was Loran.
Loran, somehow windswept even millennia after their people had gone to rot and the earth had shifted, buried beneath the sediment and uncounted layers of fossils that came after them.
It was impossible, of course, for the dirt to pack and press and take a land that once stood beneath the waking sun. For all that to happen in the space of a thousand years, of two, but this world wasn't one that consigned itself to her metric of proper geological conduct and the laws that define the universe, so she made no attempt to question how something that once lived above ground had so quickly found itself buried beneath even the deepest lakes.
But the caves, the crypts, filled with creatures sustained by the blood and fel magic that had seeped into every stone after hundreds of years of ritual, were stricken with the scars of history.
Remnants of battle, of living quarters and prayer sites, privies and other things mundane - all of them were noticeable, preserved in death for Catherine and the excavation teams that came before her to unfurl the scroll of secrets that these civilizations had kept folded and tidy, simply awaiting their arrival.
If Ihyll was alive - with moss and fungi and all manner of bubbling, shining creatures - then Loran was the husk found deep below a pyramid, a bottle of sand left out to rot so that even the grains of stone that rattled inside it had lost all soul and purpose, divorced from the hold of mother earth and all the life she offered to even the most foul sludge.
In Loran she had found remnants of their ritual sites, and Catherine learned of where the Yharnamites had gained their curiosity of the magic held within the body of an unborn babe. Reddened and blistering even millennia after its death, it was a leathery, dripping husk of liquid afterbirth and the fel sting of Loran's magic. Deep below that flesh she could feel lightning crackle, had seen it in the Darkbeasts she had fought to get to that place - like the one made of bone and fur she had fought in the gaol, and whose mark had been burned into her own scarred hide.
If Ihyll was of the stars, and Loran was of the sun, then Pthumeru was blood.
Blood and fire, often hand in hand, her first lingering steps in those grand subterranean halls met by a hound who bellowed flame, licking at the holes in its ribs and spitting beneath its glowing claws. The Hound, as all things she had seen in this place, was far too large.
It bled. Fire, that is, but it bled all the same. And that was how she knew she could kill it.
So she did.
Her life was becoming one long road marked by an unending string of bodies, as if it were not paved by gravel but by the crumbling bones of her enemies and all else unfortunate enough to cross her path.
Catherine stole a mask from one of those she killed, a Pthumerian protector who wielded flame with enough finesse that Dumbledore himself would perhaps raise an eyebrow in recognition, before cutting the thing down. But the mask itself called to her, perhaps the irony of the wide brimmed hat attached to it and the pointed top above that - a witches hat, sewn into a six-eyed skull that fit round her head like it was cloth. A hood draped around that, shielding the neck, throat, and ears.
Once she'd seen it she had to have it, and it was only convenient that she had to butcher its wearer along the way. And oh, how it glowed, the eyes of the mask burning a deep red as she fought the one who wore it, only for her heart to sink when those lights flickered away with their dying gasps.
The mask was taken anyways, whether it glowed or not she knew it would make her feel - look - as powerful as she truly was. But, she couldn't stop her heart from skipping a beat when she pried it off the blue-skinned corpse and the coals roared back to life from the touch of her magic.
Fire. Lord, she was beginning to love fire.
Made of magic the mask was, fitting snug around even her glasses, moulding to them with whatever enchantment the Pthumerians had etched into the bone that made it. Even the burning coals that, by all accounts should have barred her view, did nothing to hinder her sight.
But that was a week ago, and Catherine had no idea how deep she had ventured. The earth was nothing but clay to the Pthumerians, and she knew that these twisted corridors had never existed above ground.
Great halls with intricate designs, carvings, pillars were what made up the city - and city it was. Spacious, massive, a system of corridors and rooms so large that she could hardly make out the ceiling and the cracked paintings and mosaics of forgotten gods that decorated them. It seemed to spiral down, somehow further and further into the earth until she wondered if she would simply fall out the other side and find herself in another world entirely.
Pthumerians still lived down there, if you could call it living. They were mindless, most of them, only a few retaining their murderous conscience and the curse of free thought.
She fed off them when she grew thirsty. Or the rats, larger than dogs. As long as it bled and Catherine found herself stuttering in her journey, she would drain it dry.
Their blood was potent, far more so than the average swill that could be found in Yharnam. Not the rats, of course, but the Pthumerians that lingered in their rotting halls. Not quite as sweet, not quite as rich as the Kin above, but no less delicious. It was grounded in a way, some relict of mundanity in each drop, just strong enough to wag her tongue but not as to be overwhelming.
If Catherine had been told at the start of this that she'd develop a refined palate for blood, she would have scoffed before bursting into tears. Now…
Now she just felt numb.
Curiosity drove her, that and the flames of vengeance she carried with her, unchained and more than happy to lay ruin to the greedy fingers that had cursed Yharnam so.
But she wasn't two miles beneath the surface solely for the sake of curiosity or vengeance. No, she was here because Queen Yharnam was, and what Kos had told her of her circumstances only made Catherine wish to save her more.
She is torn between worlds, She had said. A ritual meant to bind her unborn child to the nobility of Pthumeru.
"And what went wrong?" Catherine remembered herself asking, the bloody gash upon Yharnam's belly lingering in her mind.
It killed her, and her child. Catapulted their minds and souls to a plane between. Their Nightmare, borne of the cries of Mergo. But her body yet remains, tortured and bound in the deepest pits of Pthumeru. And until she is slain she shall never find peace.
So here she stood, waiting in front of a set of massive, armored doors. Chains lay at her feet, once shackled to the door but easily subverted with spellwork.
Three weeks she had been down here, so deep into the earth that the chill of stone soon changed to a sweltering, claustrophobic haze. So many beasts, Catherine had slain, if only for the sake of this one last death.
A mercy killing.
The path had already been paved for her by the Church hunters - the Byrgenwerth scholars - long ago, and they had left with their spoils of blood and a waylaid God unable, or unwilling to follow Her brothers and sisters to the stars and inbetween. It was only this last door that had been left unmolested.
Who knew how many thousands of years later, Catherine had come to answer Yharnam's plea for aid.
She wrapped her hand around her wrist, hammer left against the wall beside her.
"You ready?" she asked, smiling softly when the phantasm sent a pleasant warmth through her body.
It couldn't talk and she hadn't actually looked at the thing since she had taken it from the bannisters of the Great Cathedral, but somehow it made good company. Quiet, often jovial, and more than useful in a fight.
"Alright then. Here we go."
Taking her hammer, Catherine pushed open the doors with it, revealing a circular room she had seen the likes of plenty of times in her venture through the catacombs.
A ritual room, both for worship and sacrifice, with an altar in the centre alongside pillars and false arcades that circled the exterior of the room. This one was ostentatious, and looked to be in its prime even after thousands of years untouched.
Perhaps that was why. Locked away from the elements, locked away from even the dust and grime of curious fingers, the stone still shone as if it were polished just yesterday. It was pristine, if not for the deep ochre stains that marred nearly the entire floor, thick ribbons of it crusted over the altar in the middle of the room and fossilized as if trapped in amber.
Yharnam herself stood at the forefront of it, back hunched and belly swollen, caked in blood still shining and wet. Her wedding gown trailed far behind her, veil shadowing her eyes, and her hands were bound before her chest - shackled with rope and wooden stocks.
"Good god, what did they do to you?"
With dead eyes, the woman looked up, face sallow and the bags beneath her eyes so dark they looked like bruises. Yharnam did not answer, instead pointing her shackled hands towards Catherine and grunting lowly.
She ducked beneath a cannon-shot of blood, gelatinous and sharp all at the same time, jaw slamming shut as it careened over her head and reduced a pillar behind her to rubble.
Blood and fire.
Tentacles burst out of open air as she thrust her wand arm forward, the massive things whipping towards Yharnam and knocking her aside, a great crack and a pained shout echoing across the room as her arm was crushed beneath the heavy limbs.
But Catherine had already miscalculated, the stocks around Yharnam's wrists shattering and allowing her to draw them apart, taking a short ritual sword out from at her waist and brandishing it with both hands. It was dappled steel, patterning running across the length of it, and the edge of the blade curled and wavered as if made of flames.
And then she stabbed herself with it.
It ran up to the hilt, buried in her belly and sticking out her back if Catherine were to see around her. She drew it out without any hindrance nor display of pain, and though Catherine knew her to be all but dead, only a soulless remnant shackled to this place, it still made her wince.
She knew, intimately, what it felt like to have a blade run through your gut, not to mention dragged back out, stirring up everything with it.
The blade was coated thick with blood, the liquid running over it and lengthening the blade, undulating as it coursed up and down, forming a saw that jittered back and forth.
More blood, this time from her gut, burst outward in a shower of sharp spikes, Catherine leaping away from it and cursing loudly as more shot out of the floor beneath her, one carving through her ankle and nearly crippling her in an instant.
Understanding was washing over her quickly, a very dangerous kind. What Catherine had done with blood magic could hardly be considered dabbling next to this.
Crimson continued to shower down from above as she rolled away from another line of spikes bursting out of the ground, rolling towards her in a straight line before exploding in a massive throng, guaranteed to leave her dead if she was caught anywhere near them.
Her wand sparked as she fired curse after curse, only for them to be deflected with great shields dripping red, or nimbly dodged as Yharnam ducked this way and that.
For the first time in an age, Catherine jabbed a vial into her thigh instead of drinking straight from it, just barely missing another swirling burst of red as it rocketed over her shoulder.
She nearly slipped as she tried to close the distance, rivers of blood running along the floor and collecting back at Yharnam's feet, running up her legs to sink back into her swollen gut. Catherine lashed out with her hammer as she drove forward, hissing in frustration as it barely clipped the undead queen, the corner of it tearing through the sleeve of her dress and carving a shallow line through her arm.
Yharnam swung her blade, and Catherine's shoulders screamed with effort as she blocked it, the blood lapping at the handle of her hammer and clinging to it, trying to drag it away from her as Yharnam yanked the blade backwards.
She held on but was pulled forwards, roaring as a hand plunged into her guts, gripping her intestines and dragging them out as she was kicked away.
Catherine cut off the length of them, not allowing herself to be dragged in by the rope tied to her dripping belly, almost laughing at how her and Yharnam now matched.
Kicking the hammer head forward, she dashed again, catching Yharnam by surprise and dragging the length of her blade through her dress, thigh, and back out the other end.
Wails erupted throughout the room, that of Yharnam and a screaming infant as she fell to the ground, leg toppling out from underneath her. It did nothing to stop her, sword plunging into the stone as if it was naught but dirt, magic showering over Catherine from above and below as she was knocked off her feet by a ruby geyser.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Yharnam disappearing behind yet more blood, winking out of existence - as if she had apparated.
Her sudden question was answered as a sword, wreathed in crimson, exploded out of her chest. Catherine looked down dumbly, wondering whether Yharnam was that fast, or if she had truly apparated by the power of the Blood.
Jaw clenched, Catherine drew herself off the blade, stumbling forward and drawing on every ounce of the Dream's magic to knit her heart back together, to drag the steady river that poured from her chest back into her veins.
Ferocious, she lashed out, arm whipping behind her and the phantasm at her wrist responding. More tentacles burst forth, wrapping around the Queen at her rear and throwing her overhead. She hung in the air for a moment before being slammed viciously against the floor. Dragged up again, and crushed once more.
Taking advantage of Yharnam's crumbling bones - moving too quickly for her to grow them back, or whatever she had done to ignore the leg that still sat a few feet to her side - Catherine plunged her clawed fist into her chest, grabbing her heart and crushing it.
Yharnam shrieked, and for the brief, flickering moment that Catherine had thought she'd won, she felt grief flood her veins to see what this proud woman had been reduced to.
Then, Yharnam dropped her blade and wrapped her hands around Catherine's forearm, pulling her limb deeper into her guts and baring her teeth in a hideous snarl. With a sickening crack, Catherine's arm was broken, Yharnam's elbow driven into her arm with such speed that she took a second to notice.
With snapping teeth, she tried to tear at Catherine's throat. Rearing back, she dodged it by a hair, more tentacles erupting from her fist, accompanied by flames sparking into existence without the aid of her wand.
The fist buried in Yharnam's chest.
The Queen's chest exploded in a shower of blood and bone, flames licking at the ragged clumps of flesh that soared away like the shot from a cannon blast. Catherine's mask was painted in it, some blood even getting through the eyeholes and trickling down the back of it.
Reflexively, she licked her lips, horror coursing through her as the blood touched her tongue and Catherine realized that she just may be shackling Yharnam to another sort of un-existence, even as the woman's mouth opened and closed, trying to breathe with lungs splashed against the walls across the room.
She shuddered, somehow still hanging on with her chest a ruin and blood pouring from her mouth. Her arms gripped Catherine's tight, and a brief flash of recognition lit in Yharnam's eyes, some measure of sanity - of her soul - returned to her as she stuttered out wet pop, the noise dragging from her throat and whistling as her throat constricted.
Yharnam's grip relaxed, but still hung steady, jaw working this way and that as she gazed through Catherine's mask, past the burning embers and into her eyes. A tear flitted out across her cheek, and slowly, her grimace turned into a smile.
With that she fell limp, Catherine gently lowering her corpse to the floor and dragging her arm out of the cavernous web of gore it had been nestled in. Her wand fell from her sleeve, from the gelatinous grip of the phantasm and back into her hand.
Slowly, she took a few steps back, before raising her arm and dousing Yharnam's corpse in fire, offering her cremation - and absolution - in the crackling, languid, bristling white that poured from her wand.
Her head lowered, and she stood vigil, silent, offering her thanks and sympathy for the woman who had saved her but a few months prior.
Catherine uttered a noiseless prayer to a God she did not believe in, to ferry Yharnam to somewhere true and tranquil if it so existed.
Then she took up her sword with her arm, bent and broken, and dragged it across her own throat.
-::-
Melodie was more than pleased to see her upon her return, some part fearful and another ecstatic to hear more of her journey through the city, through the underbog, through the catacombs that built its foundations and laid the groundwork for the ruin that had befallen it.
But as much as she wished to spend time with her, even with the strange way in which Melodie was acting, all touch and overly-kind words - even for her - Catherine knew her time in Yharnam was waning, quickly, and she had one thing she wanted to do before she fell asleep, before she lost her conviction.
So Catherine left the Dream and alighted in Oedon Chapel after a short goodbye to Melodie, nimbly avoiding what looked to be an oncoming embrace.
As soon as she stepped foot in the chapel she was assaulted by a small, child-sized missile - courtesy of Emilie.
"Oh, you're back, you're back!" she cried, gripping Catherine around the thigh, before raising her head and squealing in fright at the mask she wore.
"Hey, sorry, it's me," Catherine said, taking off the mask and smiling at her. "Found this deep, deep below the city. I thought it looked interesting."
"It's… scary."
"Am I scary?"
"No."
"Well, if I'm the one wearing it, is it scary?"
Emilie's brow pinched together, until after a few seconds, she shook her head. "No, but- isn't it hard to breathe in that? It looks like metal."
"Magic," she uttered, waving her fingers.
Raising her head, Catherine looked over to see Arianna smiling weakly at her, holding her belly and hunched in her usual chair. She frowned, but not before she breathed in and noticed a thick scent, musky, and undeniably that of a hunter.
Two scents, actually, one lying beneath the other - stale - and oddly sweet.
"Has a hunter been by lately?"
Arianna nodded. "About a week or so ago, one came through. They had a few questions, but went on their way quickly. Elijah tried to make them stay, but…" she shook her head, humoured by the memory of the man. "I think he scared them off with his excitement."
"I smell two."
"Two?" Arianna raised her chin, nostrils flaring. "I can't pick out anything above the incense."
Frowning, Catherine ushered Emilie back. "Someone is lurking, get upstairs, the both of you."
Quickly, Arianna hummed her affirmation and dragged Emilie up the steps, the girl casting a startled look Catherine's way before she disappeared behind the corner.
Wand out, hammer raised, Catherine uttered, "Accio hunter," before readying herself for a possible fight.
A startle shout met her ears near the entrance, and she whirled around to see Alfred whizzing through the door - cracked open, at his hand she presumed - to land at her feet.
"What are you doing here?"
"Always so terribly, terribly rude," the man uttered, trying to brush himself off and stand up, but pausing when he saw Catherine's wand still pointed at him. "Whatever are you doing that for? Have I wronged you, somehow?"
"Why, exactly, were you hiding outside the chapel?" she ground out, mind already flashing with images of Emilie, laying in a bloody heap at the foot of her bed. Arianna, choking through a river of red as she grasped at nothing but air. Eileen, placing herself before a blade for the sake of the girl she was coming to call her own.
"Ah, why, I thought this was a haven for all, is it not? A place of respite for the weary, hunters like myself included. Alas, I fear you've shattered that assumption quite handily."
In no mood for his games, Catherine reached out and grasped at his mind, blood running cold as she realized why he truly was here.
Arianna, wearing Cainhurst red, glimpsed through the glass one day.
"You dare… dare come here and try to kill those I name friend?"
"I've no idea-"
Catherine kicked him in the gut, wrist jumping as thick iron shackles burst from her wand and wrapped around Alfred, binding him hand and foot, crushing the wheel strapped to his back against his spine. The man grunted in surprise, trying and failing to strain against his fetters. "What are you doing? Have you gone mad?"
Kicking him again, Catherine kneeled, staring him in the eyes. "Do not lie to me, Alfred. Do not dare to lie to me."
"I'm not! A gentleman's promise!" He looked entirely unbothered by his situation, sitting plum and comfortable whilst wrapped in chains. "Are you going blood drunk, my dear? The Church has remedies for such a thing, why-"
She grabbed him by the hair, dragging him out of the Chapel and ignoring the way he fretted as he was dragged down each step, foot reaching back and kicking the door shut behind her.
"I can see into your mind, Alfred," she snarled, glancing backward to see his eyes widen. "You've come to kill her, a friend of mine. Sneaking in during the dead of night with your great wheel, ready to pulp and smash and kill my friend."
"You think to defend a beast like her? I thought you understood! One of your kind marched with us, decades ago, I-" he coughed as his tailbone knocked against a step, Catherine dragging him up the stairs towards the Great Cathedral. "-I thought you were one of us! Noble! An Executioner!"
Barking out a laugh, Catherine leered at him as she continued on her journey, deciding that Alfred could witness the task she had assigned herself. "I went to Cainhurst, know what I did there?"
The man stared at her, wide eyed, shaking his head.
"I killed your Martyr, slaughtered him where he stood. He was nothing but a shell, after what Tom had done to him. How would it make you feel to know he was happy to die?"
"No!" Alfred roared, straining against his bindings with renewed fervor. "Lies! All of it, lies! Nothing good ever comes from you, unclean wench!"
"Do you really think so? Would I lie about that? I took him, with his scythe, and I bashed in his skull. I bathed in his blood barely three weeks ago, and you never knew a thing. Want to know something else?" she asked, every word brimming with vindication, and more than thankful to have taken him unawares.
Now he was nothing but her plaything, unable to fight back, to run, to hide, to spread his maniacal drabble. No, Alfred would watch as she took everything he loved and crushed it beneath her heel.
"Oh? Quiet now are you? Angry? I hope you are," she said, throwing him in front of their destination, the Great Cathedral, right where Eileen had once lay, soaked in her own blood. His head cracked against the stone and Alfred let out a whimper, staring at her with fury. "I spoke with Annalise. Lovely woman, we're on a first name basis now. And know what she said? She gave me her blessing-"
"Wretched! Foul monstrosity! Master, Master! She lies! All of it, lies! Master Logarius!"
Conjuring a spear, Catherine drove it through his gut and into the stone beneath, anchoring him there. "Shut your mouth, and watch."
Eyeing him proudly, her arm slowly rose, the other following suit, hammer left by the wayside. Like a conductor, she perched them on high, wand cast towards the sky.
The first explosion blew open the roof above them, raining dirt and soot and a thousand tonnes of stone down on top of a shield that scattered it left and right. Her view was opened, past where the Lumenflower garden once stood towards the great clocktower, its arms slowly ticking along and echoing down to the city below.
"Sit there, and watch, like the good little dog you are."
Like fireworks, the clock face burst wide, brass bursting forth in a downpour of glittering, shining gold, lit by the moon as it poured down onto the city. Next, the interior of the clocktower, great steel balls launched with such speed and precision that they cracked it along its length, the supports splintering beneath the weight of the things - propelled by magic - and leaving the clocktower tottering on its side precariously.
Cackling, her few shots turned into a barrage, an endless onslaught of explosions, radiant bursts of light, burning white flame, and an impossible number of stones and steel boulders careening into the seat of the Church's power.
Alfred wailed all the while, unable to tear his gaze away as Catherine systematically dismantled the home of the Church, the clocktower finally collapsing on itself and falling backwards, crashing into the body of the cathedral and shooting up a tidal wave of dust and rubble. The sound of it was a force unto itself, the shockwave coursing along the ground and rattling the armour that lined her boots. All of it rushed towards her, shattering across an impermeable wall of light, crackling with energy.
She looked down to grin at him, wand twisting as a dragon made of searing rusty flame soared from the tip of her wand and crashed against the rubble, expanding in an instant and cloaking the cathedral in all its glory.
The thing roared, pure, effervescent magic - power made manifest - turning stone to ash and ash to naught but scattered motes of dust, dashed away on the wind in great clouds. The second turret, behind the clocktower, soon followed suit, buckling and bowing beneath so much weight before crashing down and taking the rest of the cathedral with it. She twisted her wand up, the fiendfyre leashed, letting out a furious clamour before disappearing from existence with a thunderclap.
And with thunder, came the lightning.
Empty hand raised, she clenched it into a fist and brought it down like a hammer, bolts of crackling, scintillating teal crashing down from above and rocking the foundations of the place.
Again, again, again, again, she chanted in her head, watching with glee as the whole of it began to shudder, before inevitably, the whole thing caved in on itself. Fifty, sixty feet of rubble quaking before pouring down into the home that Ebrietas once mourned within, covering the catacombs below in the might and majesty of the Church and leaving it forever hidden - forever closed off from the greed and malice that its first adventurers had wrought.
Rocking back and forth, blood tickling at her teeth and her lungs bursting, Catherine once more directed her attention to Alfred, pointing her wand at his head and smiling all the while. "Did you enjoy my show?" she rasped, nearly stumbling as she turned to face him.
The man simply gaped, floundering, unable to tear his eyes away from the ruin that was his worship.
"Pity, I thought you'd have something to say."
His gaze turned, alighting on her for a fleeting second - one, glorious moment - real, true fear in his eyes. Then his head burst open, so close that the shards of his skull lanced through her body like shrapnel.
Laughter began to pour out of her, wild and free, as she surveyed her work.
"Perfect," Catherine whispered, before she tumbled over and passed out, her heart just an instant away from bursting in her chest.