Chapter Fifteen: Bad Moon
"I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous."
- H.P. Lovecraft, What the Moon Brings
Master Willem rocked gently in his seat. Below him, the moonlit lake swilled gently, the luminous waters splashing gently against the algae-clad rocks which converged at the foot of the bridge.
Beside him, the Byrgenwerth spider, once one of its students, nestled quietly, all of its many, many eyes fixed upon the moon, which hung heavy in the sky that night.
There was something strange about the moon that night; not that Willem would know it, of course. Even without his blindfold, the old schoolmaster had started to lose his vision many months ago, and the world surrounding him had grown foggy. Not that this was any great loss to Willem, who had long forsaken interest in the world. What had once appeared lush and green, crisp and brown, and crystalline blue, was dull and lifeless.
Only one vision concerned him now – the colour pallet of the cosmos.
The sky was orange, the clouds bloated with heavy foreboding. Where they parted, broken away in vicious curves, was a full moon, shining luminously against the night sky.
Only it was red – bloody like a newborn child, so brightly sanguine it actually hurt to look at for too long.
Rom gazed at the moon – the great, angry eye of the cosmos – and felt afraid.
A creeping, unrelenting fear that doesn't let up even when you look away. He was not as insightful as he had once been, knowing only the most primal instincts, but he knew that this moon was a very, very bad thing.
On a hilltop several miles away, Caryll too looked up at the blood moon, pondering its meaning; recalling old apocryphal tales about the end of the world, and mankind's final judgement. He couldn't help but remember how Willem had been so fearful of the cosmos and its spell over humanity.
Caryll remembered that even then the old man seemed to be slipping away. If only he had been more willing to accept matters, then perhaps he could have saved Byrgenwerth's research. Steered it in the right direction – helped to prevent occurrences like this from happening.
But he knew such torturous thoughts were pointless. Nothing could undo what had happened, or the choices that had been made. And it was better that way. Nobody should have that much power.
As Caryll sat, cradling his Rune of Guidance and letting its soft, comforting voice whisper in his ear, he stopped. He tilted his head in the direction of the sound. It was faint, but unmistakable.
A baby's cry.
Caryll listened for several moments, but he couldn't hear the infant's wail any longer. It had been fleeting – so swift in its arrival and departure that at first he was certain it was a mere hallucination. But then, he looked up at the sky – at the crimson moon, evanescent and striking – and he knew that it was real.
He cradled his rune closer to his chest.
The cosmos were a strange place.
As two long-lost Byrgenwerth scholars gazed up at the moon, several miles away across the evergreen forest canopies, tangled amongst the twisting, cobbled streets of Ya'Hargul, a tall, bulky spire jutted up into the wispy, clasping hands of the orange sky. Within it, cradled in the top window and gazing out across the entirety of the town, Micolash stood proud.
The coming of the bloody moon meant only one thing. Mergo had accepted their request for contact.
Of course, he had expected as much. It was plain to see just how much the School of Mensis had accomplished whilst in the cradle of the Great Ones. How far they had taken their omniscient knowledge, and developed it – improved upon it.
Now, Mergo, the child of Formless Oedon and heir to the power of the Great Ones, beckoned her infant finger to Mensis. She would grant them radiance, elevate them to a higher plane of knowledge.
To greatness.
Micolash caught the gaze of one of his slumbering acolytes. The spindly, insectoid-like Amygdala, a refraction of the Great One itself, looked up at him with evident admiration. The first human to have levelled the playing ground. The human who had rose the intellect of humanity onto the pantheon of greatness.
"It is a fine evening for communion," he said, to nobody in particular. Below him, Ya'Hargul watched, and waited.
Turning around so sharply that his neck jarred slightly against the Mensis cage upon his shoulders, Micolash looked out over the gathering at the table. The Brain Trust.
Seeing all of their eager, enlightened faces reminded Micolash that he had spared no expenses in the assembly of this council. Scouring the land for the brightest and open-minded men and women had been a long and arduous task, but tonight, it would finally pay off.
"Thank you all for coming," Micolash began, beaming. "Tonight's agenda, if it was not clear enough, is the establishment of the new world order. Mergo has granted us audience, and we are on the verge of ascension. But, we mustn't, in our rapture, forget why we sought this new order."
The last sentence was met with a chorus of shaking heads. Micolash smiled. He had chosen like-minded individuals with good reason.
"In this new order, there will be no violence," he expressed. "No ill will. No envy, greed or lust. Our bodily desires are just that. They have no bearing on the liberty of our minds."
No doubt, some of the Trust would see to obtaining closure on the majority of these bodily desires before communion came at midnight. Micolash wasn't entirely pleased by this knowledge, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. They were human still, after all.
"Furthermore, the new world order will need leadership," he declared. "And, seeing as how I have led you proudly into the dawn of this new era, I see no cause for a debate on who should fill such shoes."
There was noticeable ambivalence towards this amongst the assembly. Some had clearly thought that the astral plane would be free of politics and all of the unnecessary conflict that arose from it, whilst others were seemingly riled by the prospect of a leadership assumed by Micolash, with a select few of them believing themselves to be more suitable candidates.
Micolash ignored them all the same. "Now, as we are all aware, there is a force that seeks to annihilate Mergo, and, by extension, our collective. This being covets Mergo's power all for itself. And, as we are all aware, when the moon is fullest, this being is at the height of its power."
Determination swept through the faces in the crowd, replacing the brief emergence of something pitifully resembling concern.
"This... presence, has taken many forms. It has acted through human parties many times, and is likely to do so again in these final hours of vulnerability."
One of the scholars spoke up. "Are we expected to fight? For, I cannot even hold a sword, let alone use it."
There was a mumble of consensus in the crowd. Micolash raised his arms to silence it.
"In a most desperate situation, yes. But I can assure you with a 99% probability rate, that this will not happen. We are more than equipped to fend off these invaders."
At the very moment that Micolash finished his sentence, a mile or so away, on the outskirts of Ya'Hargul, one of his black iron warriors was stabbed from behind, a long thin sabre pushed through the centre of his back until it protruded from his front.
The Choir Intelligentsia who had struck calmly withdrew his sword, and pushed the corpse away. His party, consisting of twenty or so of the late Zephyr's best swordsmen and arcane specialists, stepped forward, their black boots stomping through puddles of thick, muddy water that had pooled in the concaves of the ground.
One of them, a rookie of two months named Gregory, paused to gaze up at the full moon, which seemed to be dripping brightly-coloured blood all across the sky.
"This is it, isn't it?" he said softly, the faintest traces of melancholia in his enunciation. "The end of days?"
His comrade, a fierce young brunette named Veronika, shook her head firmly.
"Only if you let it, Gregory."
He nodded at this, remembering where he was and who he was with. "You're right, of course. This is no time for resignation."
He barely finished his admission before another group of ironclad warriors came sprinting out of the shadows in an adjacent alley. One was swinging a Threaded Cane, the hard, serrated metal grazing the sides of neighboring brickwork with a terrible hiss.
Gregory found his bell in the heat of the battle, fingers closing shakily around its wooden handle. He pealed it several times with the side of his other fist, letting its healing chime ring out across the battlefield, whilst praying inwardly that he would not fall foul of an attacker's blade.
Within minutes, it was over, with no friendly casualties. Gregory saw Veronika stooped over one of the attackers, a long, coiled tendril thrusting out from the palm of her hand and coiled around the man's throat. The image sickened him, and in that moment he treasured the fact that he had been given a support role, and had not, as he had once hoped, been deemed suitable for arcane manipulation.
"This way to Mensis," Veronika ushered, after stopping briefly to sponge the blood off of her hands.
The party passed under many arching streetlights and through several rusted iron gates, but eventually they reached a long, open stretch of pavement, shadowed by a large bridge that crossed overhead. Two of the Intelligentsia were sent ahead to scout out the corners, but after a few minutes neither returned, and the rest of the party moved tentatively forward, weapons drawn at their hips.
A painful silence descended over the proceedings, and as Gregory stepped across the corpse of a small child, lying sidelong with open and vacant eyes, he felt unease creep through him like cold sludge.
Suddenly, there was an awful screech, like something out of a nightmare, and a huge black mass shot out of one of the darkened alleys, striking one of the women at the front of the advance. She screamed as the mucus-like gunge coated her body, searing her clothes before devouring her flesh. Gregory saw the whites of the woman's bones and fell to his knees, gagging.
He heard another banshee wail and rolled onto his stomach, pleading with every god he knew to save him from such an agonising fate.
All around him, his comrades were falling. He caught flashes of ghoulish images – flailing skeletal limbs protruding out of crates, like some kind of old child's toy, weaponized by the dark hearts of men.
More of the sticky substance was flung about, some of it splattering on the ground inches away from Gregory's head, and sizzling against the sodden touch of the wet pave.
He heard deep, resonant sobbing, which he quickly realized was his own.
And then, it was over, and he was being pulled to his feet by Veronika, a stern expression on her face.
"Ring the bell, sage!" she hissed. Nodding, Gregory raised the silver bell with a clank and let it ring out over the blood-soaked street.
Gregory saw many, many dead bodies lying about. At least twelve of his party had been slaughtered by the frightful creatures, several of which were strewn about, giant holes letting light through their peculiar hides.
"What... Are those things?" he managed to whimper.
Veronika pursed her lips. "I haven't a clue. But they're dead now. And we still have a mission to accomplish."
Gregory nodded again. But he wasn't so sure that he had anything left to accomplish, besides cowering in a tavern somewhere.
Up ahead was a small courtyard. At the top of a small flight of stairs was the entrance to the Mensis meeting building.
The last remnants of the party hobbled through the arch and down into the courtyard. Up above their heads, the scarlet moon shimmered boastfully, mocking the deaths of their brothers and sisters.
Gregory heard them first. The bells.
He glanced at his own just to make sure he wasn't imagining things. But there they were, pealing across the narrow, enclosed walls of the courtyard. Out of the corner of his eye, Gregory saw slight, gangly figures positioned around the tops of the walls, reaching out with thin, emaciated limbs. But, before he could point them out to anyone, the first of the black clouds had come rolling in.
The darkness obscured the moon as more and more wispy shadows clutched together above their heads, weaving together and shifting into a new shape.
A hole.
And, from the void, a fleshy red mass had started to emerge.
Veronika seized up, tensing as a bulky, writhing thing started to pull itself out of the hole in the sky, trickling wet with foul-smelling liquid that hit the earth with a soft pitter-patter. She clutched a ball of arcane energy close to her side, poised to barrage the unholy abomination as soon as it was completely revealed.
The thing, whatever it was, was gigantic. As it flopped out of the hole, and began a swift descent to the ground, its full body was exposed, and, at nearly twenty feet long and at least thirteen tall, it towered over the Intelligentsia.
The monstrous being met the earth in a shower of grime, a heavy, wet thud reverberating out across the streets of Ya'Hargul, its new home. Slowly, it prised itself off of the ground, sickly fluid dripping off of its grotesque and spindly limbs.
Gregory swallowed the bile that had risen to his throat, and pressed his fingers hard against his temples to try and dull the dizzy pain that the visage of the creature had provoked. The thing that stood before him defied description. It was not a body, so much as many, many bodies, all overlapping and melting into one another. Legs trailed out from its bottom, all kicking as though each one aspired to gain a life of its own. Atop the whole, writhing mess was a torso, back arched erect.
Veronika froze, feeling the layers of her mind peel away like the skin of an onion as she attempted to comprehend the ghastly sight before her.
The hesitation was all it took. The beast swung a thick, meaty arm out at her and a few of the other Intelligentsia. Gregory didn't see her die – she was there one minute, and gone the next, the void filled only by the crunching of her bones as the creature broke her into many, many assorted pieces.
Gregory tried to back away, but his legs had gone to mush, and he ended up on his back, staring right up at the nightmarish creature as it leered over him.
There was a moment. Recognition, of all things, in the heat of the chaos.
He hadn't been there, but he had heard the stories. And, as the thing drew nearer, and he saw the sear marks on its conjoined flesh, he knew that he wasn't mistaken in his revelation.
He barely had the chance to scream as the reincarnation of Mother Kos, and the inhabitants of the burned down Fishing Hamlet, crushed him into pulp, and absorbed him into their festering congregation.
Across town, beneath the wavering candle light of the old Hypogean Gaol, another party of Intelligentsia had nearly breached Ya'Hargul's walls, when they stopped.
Ahead, half-buried in the dark soil, something enormous was stirring.
One of the men started shooting wildly at the beast, which was slowly scrabbling to its feet. The bullets, glistening in the faint glimmers, pinged off of the thing's skeletal frame, chipping away at the marrow, but barely affecting the beast at all.
With a faint growl, Paarl rose from his grave.
His eyes, long worn away and now nothing but hollow gauges, peered out at the group of white-cloaked men. Intruders. Letting out a piercing wail, Paarl arched his back, his spine tingling slightly as waves of blue lightning coursed through his core, crackling as the current weaved through his bones.
The ensuing conflict did not last long. Paarl, enhanced far beyond human ability, cut down the invaders effortlessly, slicing them into fine bloody ribbons with his razorblade claws. When he was finished, he fell back on his hind legs, and gave out a triumphant roar.
Such slaughter would have made Archibald proud. Paarl had, truly, surpassed every one of his expectations. A glorious creation, for certain.
Unfortunately, the old doctor was no longer around. Paarl missed him, sometimes so much that he completely forgot that it had been him who had ripped him apart and trounced his remains into the earth.
Satisfied with the spillage of trespassing blood, Paarl settled down, and fell into a light snooze.
The evening was still.
As Gehrman watched, hands clinging gently to the railings of the grassy balcony, a swarm of local Yharnam bats flitted past, visible only for the briefest of moments before their dark forms were obscured by the gloom once more. Just like the bats, Gehrman had become one with the night – his robes, now ragged from years of abuse, were synonymous with the setting sun, and with the hunts, which rarely concluded before the first light of dawn the next day.
Gehrman sighed wistfully. He always looked forward to the dawn.
Behind him, the Astral Clocktower sat in shadow. The ornate silver arms sat rigid, the old wooden floorboards alive with migrating insects, paths carved out by the blades of moonlight which pierced through the glass windows. Somewhere in the darkness, Maria sat, resting. She had practically collapsed in his arms after all the hours of travelling. She may have slept for a week, which would have been preferable to Gehrman, who wasn't anywhere close to finding the right words he needed to explain himself.
To express his feelings.
To make sense of a future that was shrouded in uncertainty – a mountain spire cloaked with clouds.
Below him, hundreds of metres down, clusters of flickering yellow lights, each as individually insignificant as an ember in a hearth, indicated a mass movement of people in the streets. Gehrman needed only to watch their frantic, erratic movements to discern the unrest that they felt.
It seemed that Laurence was quickly losing the favour of his people.
Beyond the flitting fireflies, in the distance, he could make out the faint shape of trees. The old woods that led to Byrgenwerth had changed very little, and the recognition of this endurance – rare in such tumultuous times - filled Gehrman with an inexplicable pleasure.
Not for the first time, he longed for the old days. The simple days. When he was young, unburdened, and quite unaware of the inescapable scent of stagnating blood.
He had slept so well back in those days.
Not for the first time, Gehrman wished that turning back the clock was as simple as it sounded. He pictured the old clock face only twenty feet away, imagined himself wrenching back the hands. Several hundred thousand revolutions should do.
Before such thoughts could torture him further, he heard a crunch behind him, and came face-to-face with a disheveled, pale Maria.
"Maria, you should rest," he insisted.
She shook her head. "Sleep is no comfort to me. Whenever I close my eyes, I see the red snow again. I would rather remain awake."
Gehrman nodded his head, understanding completely; trying to purge the guilt. "I have forsaken sleep altogether. Lest I return to the catacombs... Or the hamlet."
Maria let out a long sigh. "My mind is always with the hamlet. The things we did there... They'll haunt me to my grave. I only wish I could go some way to making recompense for that day... But I can't."
Gehrman reached a hand out to comfort her, but Maria stepped back, recoiling from his touch as though it were a thrusting knife.
"We were enemies not a day ago," she whispered. "Nothing's changed. I'm not ashamed of my association with them."
Gehrman nodded. He accepted that. He didn't care.
"Maria," he whispered. "We have so little time left. I want to spend it together. The way it should have been before. Forget allegiance, forget sin. Let us start again with a clean slate; turn back the clock."
He bowed his head, losing his nerve, before straightening up and looking Maria straight in the eyes. "I love you."
Maria shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. "How can you love me? I'm a monster. A monster that has done wicked things..."
Gehrman smiled, disbelieving. As though he'd never heard anything so ridiculous in his life.
"And I haven't? I've committed the worst of crimes. Shed buckets of blood. I am wicked, just as you are wicked. So, let's be wicked together. Somewhere far, far from here."
Maria stopped retreating. Her body involuntarily leant forward, heart pounding against her chest, desperate for escape. As Gehrman closed in, she numbly reached for him, hands closing around the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair.
"I love you too," she whispered, before planting her lips firmly against his.
Gehrman pushed against her. He felt the warmth of her flesh on his – the gentle touch of breath from her nostrils. She smelt like a meadow – white flowers, all in bloom. Their mouths moved in perfect harmony, their hands clasping together and running across their shoulders, their hips.
Still tangled in each other's embrace, they collapsed onto the cold ground, the untended greenery clutching at their bodies as they undressed, tossing their clothes aside.
Gehrman's lips ran down Maria's chest. He felt scars, both old and new, and wondered how many of them she had gotten whilst fighting side-to-side with him. He sensed her pain, both bodily and emotional, and tended to it. His mouth closed around her breasts, his nostrils drawing deep, taking her in.
Maria's fingers traced the thick muscle of Gehrman's arms. She visualised the years of combat that had transformed a skinny young scholar into a soldier. As his hands brushed over her shoulders, she pictured the many lives that they had taken, and wondered, with breathless trepidation, if she would be their next victim.
Gehrman held Maria. Maria held Gehrman.
And together, as they had many times before, they weathered the night.
In the afterglow, Gehrman lay awake, lost in thought.
He started to picture Laurence. The thing he'd promised he would do, for the better of Yharnam.
Up above, the cosmos was calm. Even the moon, demonic in appearance, appeared to be settled for now. The sky, a poisoned shade of purple, had seemingly accepted the fate of things, and had nestled in for a prolonged but painless death.
He thought of Willem. Caryll. Archibald. Micolash. Ludwig.
All the people that Laurence had trampled on to get what he wanted. The vicar had sought reverence, and through that, power, turning a blind eye to the rot that he had set off beneath his own feet.
Ludwig was right. He had to go.
'And yet,' he thought, as he stared at his coarse palms under the moon's crimson glare. 'I have taken so many lives in the name of a better tomorrow. The beasts. The hamlet. Cainhurst. What if my interference has changed the world for the worse?'
He relinquished the thought. There were no answers here.
He rolled over, glancing at Maria's sleeping husk. She was peaceful – something he hadn't known for many, many years.
Rising wearily, he got dressed – quietly, so as not to wake her.
Dark clouds were gathering over Ya'Hargul. Gehrman decided that he would steer well clear of the demented citadel, and with the kind of determination that one can only attain in the late hours of the evening, he set off toward the elevators.
Maria, who had only been feigning a tranquil slumber, rolled over, and watched him leave through grainy eyes.
"Master Laurence?"
The servant trembled as he raised a fist to hammer upon the old vicar's hallowed door. He, like the rest of the clergy, had heard the rumors of Laurence's beasthood. He had seen, with his own eyes, the gallons of blood that was regularly transported to this very spot. If there was any truth to the claims, he was about to find out. Few had seen the vicar since his speech on the wall of Old Yharnam and, judging from the riled-up crowds gathered outside the gates of Cathedral Ward, people were eager to see him again.
If not for any good reason.
"Enter!"
The servant recoiled from the sound. Deep and throaty, it resembled Laurence's hypnotizing tones very little. Tentatively, the servant opened the door, stepping over the threshold into a room swathed in gloom.
The first thing he heard was the breathing. Raspy, guttural; angry. It was coming from the corner of the room, where the great window had looked out over Yharnam – before it had been boarded up, its light obscured completely.
There was something – something huge – standing there.
The servant tried to speak, but his words were indecipherable; a tangled mess of nerves.
"Speak up, I can hardly hear you," the thing growled, stepping forward with a heavy thud that splintered several of the surrounding floorboards.
The servant stood rigid, inhaled, and tried again.
"The men from the Choir that we sent to Ya'Hargul have... Have not returned, sire."
The thing in the corner gave a little grunt, dismissing the notion with a lumbering wave of its gigantic, gangly arms.
"No matter - let Mioclash play with his toys. We have what we need. The third Umbilical Cord from Gehrman's old workshop will grant us communion with the presence of the moon, Flora. The end of the world as we know it is upon us."
The servant stood idle, uncertain of what to say. His thoughts, scattered like dust in a tornado, suddenly focused on his old tabby cat. He wondered, as though it were the most important thing in the world at that moment, if he had remembered to feed her.
The thought disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, as Laurence ambled out of the shadow.
It seemed that the rumors were all true. Yet, even through all of that beastly hide, shrouded in shaggy black hair, Laurence retained an air of importance. The servant felt his back straighten up, completely of its own accord. A task he would have assumed impossible on account of how paralysed he felt.
"It really was thoughtful of you to bring me some sustenance," Laurence cooed, leaning forward on the backs of his gnarled claws. "I have spent many months consolidating my strength, and now, on the eve of my victory, I am hungrier than ever.
The servant dallied, confused. "Sire, I'm afraid to say I have not brought you anyt-"
Laurence cut him short, lunging forwards and clamping his jaws around the servant's neck. It was over in a matter of seconds. Very little blood was spilt.
The grisly vicar ran his tongue over the spattering of blood around his mouth. The coarseness of his flesh was still something he was unaccustomed to, but the taste, fresh, wet and sickly, was divine. He felt the boy's strength, however unfulfilled, seeping into his own. His skin tingled with delight – a warmth so alluringly intense it was comparable to sacred flame.
His eyes, ever brighter than before, landed upon the open door. A grin crept up his scaly lips.
"I have been long away," he declared. "But tonight, I shall return to my city. I shall return to my people. And they shall have blood."
The hall was alive with activity.
Micolash's chest swelled with pride as the entirety of his prized council took their places around the room, Mensis cages firmly placed upon their shoulders.
Preparations were complete. It was time for communion.
For ascension.
He watched as a pair of acolytes brought forth a small, ivory box with ornate silver gildings, and placed it gently upon the floor in the centre of the room. With a tenderness comparable to the affection of a parent, one of the acolytes prised open the box, and wound the small handle fixed to its side.
Quietly at first, but then louder and louder with each passing second, the music box began to play. The song was chilling – a haunting melody performed by the Choir who, on this rare occasion, lived up to their name somewhat.
As the lullaby filled the room, Micolash closed his eyes, and spoke in a hushed voice.
"Majestic Mergo, heir to the Cosmos, and daughter of the Formless Oedon. Can you hear our prayers?"
There were no sounds to be heard in the chamber other than the elegant aria of the music box. Undeterred, Micolash continued with his recital.
"Oh boundless Mergo, hear our prayers. Accept our gifts, command our souls."
At this, both of the acolytes who had carried the music box drew out knives and cut cleanly across their own necks. There was no hesitation; as their bodies slumped forward, their life spilling out around the chiming box, their faces remained firm and set, eyes fixed on the wall blankly.
Micolash raised both arms in the air. "Mother Kos. Or, as some say, Kosm. As you once did for the vacuous Rom, grant us eyes. Grant us communion. Let us see."
A cold breeze picked up inside the sealed chamber. Micolash's body started to convulse as a sound, loud and clear but only in his head, shook through his core.
It was the curious moan of a child, enthralled by the prospect of a new toy. And then, it was a sniffle. And a cry. Mergo's emotional state seemed to fluctuate faster than anyone could keep track of.
"Mergo!" Micolash shrieked, hearing the Great One's wail through every pore in his flesh. "Receive us!"
Around him, the assembly of acolytes – his proud Brain Trust – began to shiver, their heads nodding up and down and around, tapping rhythmically against the bars of their cages. Some of them still had their eyes open, pupils darting about as Mergo's tantrum started to intensify. Blood pooled from their ears and down their cheeks. Their flesh rippled from the inside out.
Micolash himself was rigid still now. His body remained, lifeless, in the chamber, but his mind was free. He found himself crawling on the ground in a large courtyard. The pave, wet with rain that was at once both fresh and stagnant, shone brightly, bathing in the luminescence of a waxing white moon. The sky was dark, as empty as the inside of his skull.
In the centre of the yard was an infant's cradle. Micolash was praying to it, his head bowed, as Mergo's chorus of sobbing continued, the pitch becoming so intense that the very walls of existence seemed to peel away like an old tapestry under the duress.
Back in Ya'Hargul, the streets were crowded with onlookers, bundled together in corners and at windows. They had come to witness the dawn of the new era.
They had come to die.
Their bodies bloated and shrank simultaneously. The sensation was agonising; a flood that tore them apart from the inside. Mergo's wails parted their flesh, their bones melding into the stone walls and the earth below their feet.
Then, it stopped.
Mergo fell silent, as did Ya'Hargul.
Inside the chamber, every single member of the Brain Trust had fallen asleep, their minds drifting into a nightmare from which they would never awake. Gooey, fleshy liquid trickled out of their nostrils, escaping the barren cavern that had become of their heads.
Micolash himself sat in his chair, head tilting lifelessly forwards.
In his mind, he saw the cradle, vacant as he had always, fearfully, known it would be. He didn't even raise his head to look as an enormous, deathly-purple figure descended from the heavens, and draped its violet cloak around his eyes, slapping shackles on his wrists, and sending him falling through a vacuum of black, empty nothingness.
As he fell, the thoughts crept in. One stronger, and more insistent than the others.
The new world had cometh.
Maria sat up, her train of thought derailed and the carriages sent hurtling over the precipice of a cliff side.
Her ears pricked up to the soft, rapturous giggle of an infant, the echo of which reverberated around her head for a few fleeting moments before departing.
Rubbing her eyes, she rolled over and gazed up at the sky. The stricken purple clouds had dissipated, and the night was clear and calm once more. The blood moon was no more, new pearly rays of white streaming out through the arches of the clock tower.
Gehrman had not returned.
He had only been gone for half an hour at most, but she knew he was never coming back. And, if he did, she would never see him again.
She had made up her mind. She got up, and started to walk towards the clocktower.
It had been the dreams that had persuaded her. The kind of dreams that one experiences whilst awake.
Maria saw the bloodied streets of Central Yharnam at the stroke of midnight, and the brutalised bodies of things that had once been men strewn out upon the ground.
She saw the towering spires of Cainhurst Castle, and the hundreds of dead nobles, servants and knights that lay within them, reduced to bloody pulp.
And she saw the hamlet. Women and children screaming as the firestorms consumed their houses, and then their flesh. Dead bodies strung up as trophies, mouths stuffed with dead fish in one last scornful gesture.
The dead called out to her, pleading her to join them. They needed her. She would make them better.
"Lady Maria," the cold, dead corpses had sung. "Help us, Lady Maria."
And Gehrman, stood at the sidelines, watching. He, who would always forgive her.
And she, who never could.
She found her old chair and sat down it, feeling the wood creak under her weight. The sound was oddly comforting, and for a moment, she lost her resolve. But then, the smell of seared flesh came rushing back at her.
She clutched the bottle in her hands with cold fingers, picturing Annalise. The mother of the Vilebloods. The mother she had never had.
She wanted Maria to do it. One last act of defiance. A woman of Cainhurst should never have to submit to anything. Especially not imprisonment in a life that has lost all its meaning. Annalise had denied herself the opportunity, but for Maria, it was still there.
Maria wasn't immortal. She was flesh and blood. Human. That's why she was hopeful Gehrman would understand. They'd had their moment of happiness. More than some people have in a lifetime. Now, it was over.
She unscrewed the cap, letting the liquid flow between her lips and down her throat, burning slightly as it slipped down her throat. Maria shifted in her seat, feeling it settle in her stomach.
Knowing she had only a few moments left.
Calmly, she lay back, gazing up at the old, grand clock face. Watching each second tick by, none more or less significant than any other. They were all important. Every one.
It didn't take her long to die. As the minutes ticked past, she grew colder. The faces of the dead grew clearer, as she slowly edged closer and closer to her. They welcomed her in with open arms, and she let them, embracing their icy flesh with unflinching remorse and sorrow.
For just a few seconds, she glanced back. Back at the world she was leaving.
Back at Gehrman.
The moment was tiny; insignificant, perhaps. There was only one thing tethering her to that world, and he was there before her eyes, receding into the distance. Anyone else might have blinked and completely missed it.
But, it was there. And then it was gone, Maria wiping it away like a tear running down her cheek.
The people of Yharnam, all crowded outside the barred gates of Cathedral Ward, had been waiting for Laurence's return for a long time. The man who had left Old Yharnam to die, burning half of the town to cinders and leaving the rest to collapse under the weight of its own festering squalor was very much in-demand.
What they weren't expecting, however, was the thing that lumbered through the courtyard, surrounded by fifteen or so of the fearsome Church Giants, which the people of Yharnam had come to fear more than the beasts.
It was no beast that they had seen before.
At nearly fifteen feet tall, it was the largest creature to ever walk Yharnam's cobbled streets. It was bigger even than the giants which guarded it, which made for a laughable, if deeply-terrifying image.
Laurence, who had expected such a reaction to his appearance, welcomed their fearful glances with a giant, toothy smile. Resting on his heels, he drew up, and looked out over the crowd beyond the fence.
"People of Yharnam," he boomed. "I, Vicar Laurence, the founder of the Healing Church, bring to you today your salvation!"
The people recoiled at the brusqueness of his voice, a sentiment that was only exemplified by the accompaniment his ghastly appearance.
"We have all drunk deep of the Holy Blood," he continued. "Bathed in it. It courses through our veins. And it has shown me the future of this world!"
Many people started to flee. Those who stayed to listen seemed entranced, neither terrified nor engrossed – simply awestruck.
"What you see in myself is the final step of our evolution," Laurence declared. "You too shall embrace the beast, as I have. This is the holy way!"
Laurence could see some of the crowd drawing weapons – knives, Molotov cocktails, firearms. He ignored them. They could do him little harm.
"Maintain life before absolution," he growled, reciting his new favourite mantra.. "Drink deep. Tonight, Yharnam will be born again."
A bullet struck the vicar in his left calf. The sensation was akin to a pinprick, and Laurence simply sighed.
"Heretics will not last long in my new age," he hissed. "Make sure you go unseen, or else."
At that, he began to amble away. With his congregation receding into the distance, Laurence allowed himself a small grin.
From a nearby rooftop, Gehrman watched the thing that had once been his colleague as it crossed the courtyard and entered the confines of the Grand Cathedral, leaving its giant cohorts behind. Quietly, under cover of darkness, he pursued.
Laurence reached the altar, and let out a deep breath. He glanced down at his enormous claws, flexing them by the light of the candles that adorned the room.
He recalled Willem's words to him all those years ago. 'Fear the Old Blood.'
"Foolish old man," he whispered, snarling at the very image of the proud schoolmaster, rocking away in his chair, content to be ignorant.
"I have left you in the dust, where you belong."
The umbilical cord lay out on the altar, surrounded by a wall of incense that flooded the entire hallway with their earthy scents. Laurence prodded it gently with a nail, allowing its power to seep through him.
Growling deeply, he shuddered with pleasure, enthralled with his victory.
"Laurence."
The First Vicar froze at the sound of the voice. He felt his lips draw apart, tongue running along his gums apprehensively. He slowly turned his head, already feeling tension rising in his back and neck.
Gehrman stood at the end of the hallway, his scythe resting in his hands. His face was solemn.
Just a tiny speck at the end of the room.
Laurence clenched his claws, eyes narrowing. "Gehrman. Have you come to die?"
The First Hunter did not move. His eyes remained fixed on the gargantuan beast that he had once, very long ago, regarded as close to family.
"I've come to see the new age, Laurence," he replied.
Laurence felt a snarl rising in his throat. Taking an aggressive step forward, he retorted "There is no place for hunters in my world."
Gehrman started to walk forwards. "Those people out there aren't fooled by your speeches any more, vicar. They see you for what you are. You have nothing left."
The Cleric Beast opened its mouth wide and let out a startling shriek. Stunned, Gehrman briefly paused.
"Those sheep will follow me because it's what sheep do," he hissed. "I brought worth to this town. I raised it from nothing, gave it hope, protection, prestige. Nobody can take that away from me. Not you. Not Micolash. Not the League. No 'one."
Gehrman grit his teeth, glancing up at the towering behemoth. He had never fought anything like it before.
Suddenly, he didn't fancy his chances.
But there was no backing off now. He had a promise to keep.
Laurence roared again, and startled to amble towards him, the ground cracking slightly as his enormous feet hit the stonework.
Gehrman seized his scythe with both hands, swinging it round to build up his heartrate. Laurence was nearly upon him.
And, above them both, the moon watched.
Curious.
