Sophia's room contained an expansive lavishness typical of the castle, but one alcove reeked of gun oil and contained a desk piled with containers and tools that may have seen better use on the fragile innards of a watch. She really did do fine work— beneath a draping of silk, the hunter found the most beautiful pistol they had ever seen. The delicacy of the tools used was wholly justified here; the way that deeply gleaming blood gems were worked into every minutely carved whorl was a wonder. It was incomplete, though. No flint hammers had been attached, and the space saved for their attachment was conspicuously ungilded. The hunter briefly searched the desk in the hopes that they could attempt their own hack job of putting the thing together. There were so many containers that a suitable part had to be there somewhere, but their search was fruitless. These boxes stacked on verge of landslide probably were organized, but the map of their importance was known only to—
A woman long dead.
It was tempting to set their arm flat against the desk and sweep it all to the floor. Instead, the hunter took a step back. They forced their eyes to lose focus. The workspace before them became a muddle of steel grays and wooden browns.
Gods, they wanted their cleaver. Their other gear wouldn't be missed; most of the additions made to the hunter's wardrobe had been peeled from bodies still stiff enough to avoid the staining left by the softness of decay. But their blade— it had been a gift from the little ones, the messengers, and to have it taken was to have yet more of the Dream lost to them.
They would have to make do. The hunter squinted, and the pile of finicky details in front of them resolved into something simpler. There, half-hidden behind the desk, as if unwanted, was a saw on a hinge. It seemed like the simplest rendition of the saw spears favored by some hunters in the city, but Sophia apparently hadn't taken a liking to it. The weapon had been popular, but it was only in vogue because it was easy to make; when the city workshops didn't forge the jagged blades themselves, it was obvious that the design came from repurposed lumberyard tools. The shorter form of the saw cleaver shared the same humble origins. The careful engineering done in the workshops offered more stability to the improvised blades, and better fluidity of movement, but when considered from the discerning view of castle nobility, the hunter wondered if it prompted comparison to a pitchfork pulled straight from a hay bale.
There was also no good way to decorate it in the ways Sophia enjoyed, the hunter supposed. The handle had a few abandoned attempts at carving, but it was obvious that the intricacy of the work would be worn down by the user's own grip.
The hunter pulled the weapon out from the cramped space, knocking over a handful of musket-length ramrods in the process. The blade was longer than they were used to, the hinge squeaked out a desperate request for oil, and the balance was alien to their hand, but as it settled in the curve of their palm they felt…
Fear and frustration, potent, acidic. They gripped the saw spear tightly. It was merely the tool available to them, and it would have to do. A daubing of oil eased the hinge. After another look over the desk, they took a few knives meant for whittling; the sharpness of the steel was appealing, but shortness of the blade was not. There were better knives back in the banquet hall, but they weren't about to fight the feasting fleas for them.
A rustbucket of a blunderbuss had been tossed into the topmost desk drawer. A gouge marred the cherry wood stock, and the trumpet of a muzzle was spotted with oxidation. The hunter ran a thumb over the frizzen, half-cocked, and then uncocked the gun. That, at least, was in good repair, and the flint in the hammer looked functional. A plunge of a cloth-wrapped ramrod revealed the barrel to be free of black powder fouling. It must have been some project Sophia had grown bored of, made functional but not beautiful.
A hook on the wall held a pan flask attached to a woven lanyard; an exploratory press of the nozzle released a spot of gunpowder. A touch of grease to the pan would prevent snow from dampening the deposited powder and reduce the risk of a misfire. Bullets were in scant supply— the hunter hadn't seen even a glimmer of quicksilver— but then they paused, shook their head; it was less a question of what a blunderbuss could shoot than what it couldn't shoot. This gun, though they were grateful for it, was a short term engagement, and damage to the barrel caused by an improvised bullet was none of their concern. They shoved scrap into their pockets: nails, filings, and wadding to lodge it all in.
After a moment of thought, they poured gunpowder down the muzzle, stuffed in the clump of a bullet, and then primed the pan with a few presses of the flask. It would be better to face the consequences of a non-functional weapon or even an exploding one here, and not when facing the crow. They aimed the barrel at the quilting atop the bed and fired.
The recoil bucked against the steadiness of their hold, their ears rang, and a constellation of black spots smoldered across the blanket. Good. There was always the risk of a misfire, and the range would be pitiful compared to the quicksilver pistol, but it was better than nothing.
They left the desk and gave a cursory search through Sophia's own wardrobes. As they threw open the door, a length of white hair fastened to a black ribbon swung from a hook; it was a wig granted to castle knights of noble lineage. Sophia's husband had been a hunter, and perhaps some of his gear remained. They saw no sturdy leathers, but there was a red velvet monstrosity lined with ruffles and lace. It was tailored for a man easily a foot above their own height, and the shoulders were broad. Surely with this level of ostentation it hadn't been worn into battle— but, incredibly, it had; a dull bloodstain splashed up the pale gold stitching of the trousers and ended beneath the crumpled stuffing of a codpiece. As they turned the overcoat, they saw a rip running up the tails. For whatever reason, it hadn't been repaired, and the velvet had gray crests of dust. Either it had gone out of style, or it had been abandoned for something even more flamboyant.
They weren't there to pass judgment on the man's fashion. They disentangled the overcoat from the rest of the rich fabric and tried it on. It was baggy and the sleeves ran far past their wrists. They could take the whittling knife and hack off the excess fabric— no, they had wasted enough time here already, and firing the blunderbuss had certainly alerted the crow to the fact that they had found weapons. They shrugged the coat off their shoulders and let it fall to the floor. The undervest, at least, was salvageable; it hung on them loosely, but it would guard the damp mess of Elaine's blood on their back against the wind. Beyond that, they would just have to withstand the cold. The comparably balmy climate of the city was yet another thing to yearn for.
They did take the time, though, to slice up the sheet they had taken from Elaine's room, and then knot the long strips together. It wouldn't be enough to let them descend all the way to the ground from the top of the entrance parapet, but it might get them to the topmost portion of the portcullis. Climbing down the lattice afterward would be easy enough.
Knowing that their fingers would only get lost in the man's massive, ruby-toned gloves, they instead took one of Sophia's ribbons and wrapped it firmly around their hand. It would keep their palms from blistering against the grip of the saw spear.
There was a mirror gleaming silver not far from the wardrobe. They refused to meet eyes with the frightened animal reflected there and instead took inventory by looking down. There were scrap-bullets in their pockets, enough for six shots. A corresponding amount of gunpowder. Saw spear in their right hand, blunderbuss in their left. Whittling knives hooked into their belt. The weak but reassuring light of their hand lantern, fastened to the same. The rope fashioned out of Elaine's sheet. A half-vial of healing blood feeling far too light in their pocket.
It had to be enough to get them to the bridge.
Fearful of getting lost within the labyrinthine corridors of the castle, the hunter decided to take a ruler's approach: they would cut a straight line from the entrance hall across the main courtyard and into the exterior wall, re-entering the castle there and finding a way to ascend to the barbican parapet above the portcullis. Then, they would climb down to the bridge to the mainland and make their escape.
The only thing they were willing to cross blades with was the crow. They strode past hazy smoke shapes of nobles, crying, bleeding; the hunter refused to look at them long enough to recognize them. Some held weapons as quickly improvised as the hunter's own, striking out blindly with awls and hairpins. The hunter easily dodged the swipes; the remnant specters of the nobles moved in awkward flails. They had bound wrists, the hunter noticed as one with the futile luck of finding a knife stumbled after them. Bound wrists, blinded eyes, and a gash striped across the neck.
The martyr walked with a staff, but a sharp blade had been broken off at its base…
They hurried down the grand staircase of the entrance hall, leaping down every other step. There were dozens of the nobles in this hall, drifting through their agony, but spotted furtive at their feet were the servants. One of the noble women was on her knees, pleading with something unseen; with every word she gasped out, blood spilled from her neck and spattered the floor. The servant knelt before her and desperately attempted to sop the mess up with a rag.
As the hunter passed by, the servant glanced up; the hunter expected anger, hatred, maybe fear; there was only a dull and tired sadness. The rag was wrung into a bucket. The woman gasped, cried. More blood dripped to the floor. The servant returned to his toil, muttering an unclear invective with one last sidelong look towards the hunter.
Guilt hounded them heavily, even as they tried to stave it off with their conviction. This devastation had to be from more than the clarity of the crown; Annalise had surely dropped her pretenses on her own, and the reality of the castle now lay unmasked by her hand. Still, the servant's bitterness cut them. The dawn had been a beautiful lie.
With a stinging throat, the hunter rushed out of the gilded doors of the hall and entered the courtyard.
A stench assaulted them and they reeled in the wind like a vane. The air was syrupy with it, unhindered by the cold. Mud, wine, iron, and cadaverine— in their nose, and with the next desperate breath, on their tongue. For a moment, vomiting seemed like the most logical way to clean it out of their mouth, but the hunter fought against the automatic contraction of their stomach as they ran. Snow crunched underfoot as they angled themself towards the wall.
The torches lining the courtyard had been lit and the world took on shades of hellfire. There were more of those bloated, monstrous fleas here, blessedly distracted by the same smell. The creatures huddled over frozen bodies and prodded them for blood, but the remains seemed too withered to offer any. Some of the corpses were no more than icy limbs around flattened silver armor; others were lumps of thickly stitched fabric with holy shawls frozen stiff. The bodies had been left where they had fallen in memorial to themselves. But down in the pit, in the rocky slope that ran deep against the foundations of the walls— the source of the putrid air— the hunter saw more, tossed unceremoniously onto a heap. Thick maggots breached the steaming refuse and then slithered back beneath the surface. More of the monstrous fleas crawled at the perimeter of the rotting pile. The corpses had composted enough that as one stepped carelessly, the rotten flesh beneath its insectile feet smeared and blended into the surrounding mud.
Some bodies did have hints of the gray executioner garb, but many were an unrecognizable slurry. A black leather hat stood out like a fin, cut in the familiar Yharnam style. They could see this muddled evidence, but the crown offered yet more. Beneath the oily, rotten globules, through slabs of muscle and bone, the hunter saw the crowded earth. Faces pressed to clay, trapped under the black sky. The dead did not leave this place; they only churned, stinging the air with hatred, with pain.
The hunter could still become one of them.
Saliva pooled in their throat and their stomach lurched. The hunter managed a shudder of a swallow. They took a wide course around the evidence of the queen's ambition and hurried to the wall.
The pain of the bullet's path astride their calf was insistent as they clambered up each step. The smell of the pit lingered on them. Soon, though, they saw the wooden door at the summit of the stairs; they threw it open and staggered onto the parapet. The wind here was cold and scentless, whipping in from the surrounding water. The stonework seemed damaged, perhaps shaken apart by the same force that had destroyed the bridge up to the keep. The hunter would have to be wary of the crumbling edges.
The topmost span of the barbican was lined with four tall spires. The hunter gathered the knotted sheet in their arms as they ran. They could tie the rope there, climb down, reach the portcullis, then the bridge to the mainland— and the crow— the crow had been strangely absent, they now realized, but if they had somehow managed to slip away from the knight, then praise be.
They approached the edge of the parapet, wrapped the end of the rope around the stone, and looked out at the mainland bridge.
The bridge—
The hunter couldn't breathe. As dark as it was, they could still see the glassy glimmer of the water, especially in the wide span of space where the bridge should have been. It had been destroyed in a way much like the one to the high keep, with crumbling, shattered stone marking the start of a vast absence. The force involved must have been incredible— enough to make a Powderkeg sick with envy. The hunter only felt sick with fear. It was— ten feet? Twenty feet? Thirty? The distance was hard to determine from this distance, in this light. It was more than one could hope to jump, and the water lay so far below. Even if they could reach it safely, a swim in these waters would put them into shock, and then the cold would take them. The thought of finding a boat was a farce. The horizon hint of the mainland was an unreachable mirage.
Footsteps approached and then stopped. Dark, murky spots had narrowed the hunter's vision; their breath returned to them slowly, unevenly. They dropped the rest of the knotted sheet to the floor. They held the handle of the saw spear so tightly that it hurt. They turned around.
The crow watched them with a terrible patience. A silent stillness was shared between them; the crow broke it with a bow. The knight's chest was angled deeply forward, and the right arm was thrown out wide. The intricate helm, however, did not incline. Somewhere behind the silver, the crow met the hunter's gaze.
The hunter stood unmoving. The feathered tatters of the knight's coat fluttered in the wind. The crow lifted from the bow; the ribbon-laden hilt of the chikage was pulled fluidly from the scabbard. The sword was held at the ready, but the crow made no advances.
The first move had been offered to the hunter. Their feet felt rooted to the stone. Their boot edged forward; each step was strenuous. They wanted to run. There was nowhere to run to. They couldn't think about the consequence of losing, of winning. The world could only come to them second by second, in the minute details of flickering shadow and shifting limb.
They took one step, and then another; the flagstones blurred beneath their feet. The crow's stance lowered, anticipating them. The hunter lifted their blade and began their struggle.
