Chapter 7 - Secrets of the Clinic
Up and up and she went. Monotonously grabbing the next rung and pulling herself up. The cave walls became a hewn stone shaft after a while, seemingly still under construction when it was abandoned. Then she was finally out in the open again.
Tanya curiously took in her surroundings, her finger on the trigger of her pistol in case of an ambush. The pale moon illuminated the familiar gothic silhouettes of Central Yharnam. Gravestones and rubble were strewn all over the place indicating that death and destruction had also not spared this small corner of the city. She went over to a nearby scourge gate (built to lock in beasts and hinder their movement through the streets) and pulled the lever to open it.
Its rusty mechanism screeching forced the steel gate open, allowing her access to a recognizable courtyard. Those twisted trees and withered statues...
This was Iosefka´s clinic! How delightful! A shortcut to the place where her journey through this hellhole had begun all this time ago.
Turning back she discovered another already opened gate which led her through a dark alley full of coffins to the remains of a small garden. (Why these coffins had to be locked with chains multiple times remained a mystery that she had no intentions to solve.) Carefully sliding around shadowed corners she instantly detected the lanky silhouette of one of Yharnam´s more bizarre creatures skulking around a tree.
The "brainsuckers" as she had nicknamed the deformed, tentacle-faced humanoids had the unnatural ability to actually deplete knowledge from her head. Regardless of if she died and reset time or she continued on and slew the abomination the memories it stole remained lost to her. Luckily these creatures had managed to grab and violate her mind only two times. This had cost her the faces of some of her comrades and many magical formulae which had been a huge loss. Much other information had been relearned by scouring her notes and Gehrman's small library, but it still had been a horrible experience.
Because of this they were much more feared by Tanya then even a mighty cleric beast. Death was merely an unpleasant obstacle for her. It was to be avoided, but could also be used as a tool to gather information and test foes for weaknesses so that every try made her stronger. These monsters on the other hand had the power to actually weaken her over time and rob her of the only precious thing that she had left: her memories. They were an existential threat to her sense of self and sanity.
Accordingly, Tanya hunted them down and eradicated them with extreme prejudice wherever she found them. Their eradication was a top priority.
Now she silently readied her pistol in one hand and checked the Flamesprayer with the other. She stretched her legs a bit to warm up the muscles and ensure that she could properly dodge the mutant when it lunged at her. Then she did what had become her "special move" for difficult assassinations like this.
From her pouch she produced a handful of salty, white ash that she swallowed quickly, long used to the bitter taste of burned bone marrow. After a few seconds of waiting for the substance to reach her blood stream a carefully cleaned syringe was jammed into her arm and drew her blood which was promptly injected into the magazine of her pistol. Her own blood would miraculously strengthen her quicksilver bullets and clog the veins of her target. This effect would further be enhanced by ash she had just consumed.
As the final trump card she began to weave an explosive spell around the first bullet in the chamber. Tanya would take no chances in killing this creature. It was hard work to enchant a projectile without a computation jewel to speed up the process and so it took her a solid minute to accomplish her task compared to the seconds she would have needed back in the Empire. Fortunately the brainsucker did not catch scent of her during the energy intensive process. When she had finally finished her work she couldn´t help but to sadistically grin as she lined up the barrel with her prey.
"Booom!" bellowed the magically enhanced bullet as it struck the head of the beast and turned it and the surrounding tentacles into chunky, red mist. Its body flopped lifelessly to the ground, but she nonetheless activated her Flamesprayer and torched its flesh until it dissolved into cinders.
"That was for what your kind took from me." she whispered as she stared down at the monster´s smouldering remains. The knowledge its kind had stolen from her mind could never be replaced and she deeply hated it for it.
Afterwards she made her way over to yet another ladder which led her on top of a decrepit roof. As usual it was infested by monstrous crows, but slaying them proved no challenge. She honestly was more concerned about breaking through the rotten clapboards then their frenzied attacks. Behind the crows an open balcony door allowed her entry into the higher floors of Iosefka´s Clinic.
Tanya hesitated. Should she enter? At the beginning of her hunt Iosefka had made it quite clear that she did not want to let her inside her hospital. If she ignored her wishes now then that could put a serious strain on their relationship. On the flip side this floor of the gigantic building was probably not used or else the door to the outside would not have been open. (Most patients would not have survived a swarm of killer crows nesting directly next to their room after all.)
In the end she decided to venture inside, but asked as loud as she dared for permission beforehand:
"Hello? Anybody there? Iosefka? I'm coming in!" she whisper-shouted.
As expected no answer came, but this act of curtesy gave her plausible deniability to excuse her behaviour later should she get caught. A scenario that seemed more and more likely the further she tried to sneak over obnoxiously creaking floorboards at the doorway.
Due to the suffocating darkness spreading through the corridor she ignited her hand lantern and held it high to take in her surroundings. Its shine was far dimmer then that of a torch, but Tanya liked it that way. The brightness of the small lantern became near invisible from a distance and as a result its absence did not create temporary "night blindness" when her eyes had to adjust to lower light levels again after she put it away.
At first all she could make out were scattered books on the parquet before her wandering gaze found... it.
In the near pitch-blackness of the hallway side stood a blue, bulbous thing. Its limbs were gangly and inhumanly elongated, but the bulk of its body seemed to be concentrated in its massive, squishy looking head. Small, bioluminescent dots littered the sack-like organ which somehow reminded Tanya of stars in the night sky. Glittering like far away suns in the endless void...
She pushed those unbidden and unproductive thoughts away to analyze its appearance. The lack of fur, huge claws, and a salivating maw indicated that the creature was not a beast in the traditional sense. With as much soft, exposed skin as the being possessed it would be child´s play to open it up like an overripe fruit. Nothing except maybe the enlarged hands screamed obvious danger, but regardless of how nonthreatening it looked she knew better than to assume anything to be peaceful at first glance.
Then the soft whispering of a distorted voice began to echo through her mind and she swore she could make out the faint sounds of the ocean breaking against the shore. Had it always been there? Murmuring in the back of her brain? Why was she feeling so tiny under the watchful gaze of the sky? Why were the shadows dancing to the harmonies of twirling planets? Why were there eyes-
"Ahhhh..." Tanya groaned as she clutched her head, shaking in pain as she tried to push the eldritch madness back to the deepest pits of her subconscious.
This feeling was familiar to her, but it never got easier to stifle the madness that tried to claw its way into her skull. Witnessing extraordinary sites where the fabric of the universe had been pushed a little too far to remain coherent, where dimensions intersected and the arcane pulsed forth always brought unintended side effects with it. Humans were fragile creatures with frail psyches that could be ripped apart by cosmic phenomena as effortlessly as one would tear paper.
Only the trained mind of hunter could withstand the onslaught of knowledge which was never intended to be accessible to their species in the first place. Rigorous discipline and an absolute focus on rational reasoning kept Tanya sane and quickly reduced the literally mind-shattering event to a mere wriggling sensation behind her eyes. Gehrman´s books had called this paranormal knowledge "insight" and she agreed with the description. Her sight had remained the same, yet the world seemed clearer to her as if a undetectable veil had been lifted.
She shuddered one last time as she regained her bearings. It was one thing to theoretically know that the thought and processing capabilities of humans were limited, but it was a whole different story to actually experience surpassing those limits.
What about this blue, soft creature could have triggered such a burst of supernatural realization within her?
Despite all her noises the creature had made no hostile movements so far, so she decided to get closer. Step after step she took towards it and dread pooled in her stomach. Why? Why was the fading voice so familiar?
Suddenly it jerked its naked body to the side and the hunter acted on instinct. Her cane lashed out and pierced the leathery skull like butter. The pointed tip was stuck deep within it before she could think and greyish-blue blood spurted from the wound when she wrenched it out. Pathetically the being tried to remain standing, but the hunter granted it mercy and stabbed it again.
With the tip of her boot she turned the corpse around to examine its face. To describe it as "disgusting" was putting it mildly. It boggled the mind how the Yharnamites had managed to twist themselves into the most abhorrent of abominations or unearth even greater terrors to satisfy their insatiable curiosity. They never failed to negatively surprise her.
Turning around she hastily retreated to get rid of that foreboding feeling emanating from the dead body. In the corridor she passed a similar creature which stared unflinching through the sooty window. Normally she would not have ignored a potential danger that could come from behind and catch her off guard, but like the first one it seemed totally unresponsive without direct provocation.
(Killing it felt wrong.)
A door led to a small operating room cramped full of cabinets and cupboards loaded with vials and bottles of every kind. Catheters had been set up for blood transfusions in typical Yharnam fashion. Another blue figure leaned his enormous head against the shelves, appearing indifferent to the world around it.
What were these things? Why was the clinic crawling with them? Where were they coming from?
Something was not right here. Tanya could feel it in her bones.
To distract herself she grabbed a fancy looking envelope from a nearby operating table and broke the red wax seal. She told herself that the owner of this letter was probably long dead and thus it was not a breach of privacy, but more akin to archaeology. The paper had been yellowed by time as well as reddened by blood and the text was unnecessarily ornate, but she managed to read the first few lines despite the subpar lighting:
"Dear Tanya von Degurechaff, ..."
Wait.
How was it possible that her name was written on the letter?
If this ancient text was indeed addressed at her then that could mean nothing good. Reading further revealed it to be an official invitation to a place called "Castle Cainhurst". Alfred had ranted to her in detail about how he intended to storm the place and avenge his idol. Some misguided zealot had allegedly "martyred" himself in his quest to eradicate the "Vilebloods" living there. What the Vilebloods really were had not been elaborated upon by him beyond some cryptic, religious propaganda.
An address from where she would be picked up by a stagecoach was also given. Should she accept the obvious trap?
