"You have got to be kidding me," muttered Balyn. He'd have loudly moaned it to the skies—good complaints were by their very nature meant to be shared—but he needed the breath for running, and the pack of humanoid beasts really didn't seem like the kind of fellows who were all that interested in listening to him, anyway.
Maybe "fellows" isn't right, he amended mentally as he sprinted back over the short span of bridge he'd crossed upon entering Old Yharnam. A couple of them, the ones wearing heavy cloaks draped over their heads as if the light hurt their eyes, had something feminine about them in their posture, their movements. And beasthood definitely seemed to be an equal-opportunity lifestyle choice; all genders seemed perfectly willing to sprout fur and claws and try their level best to rip Balyn's skull clean out of his head.
The slavering pack was right behind him, for all that he was sprinting as fast as he could, boots slapping against the cobbles with sharp cracks. Balyn hadn't expected that he'd be having these problems now that the night of the hunt was over, but apparently, to paraphrase a babbling lunatic of his former acquaintance, a beast was a beast, even in the broad light of noon.
He veered hard left, leaping down onto a kind of wooden catwalk, down again over a roof to a sort of elevated courtyard, then through a gap in the railing onto an outcropping from the next building over and down again onto a kind of walkway that ran past an iron gate. Behind him, he heard the barking growls and snarls of the beasts as they scrambled to follow. Coming from different heights as they pursued him down the series of drops, they almost sounded like a choir of sorts, albeit one whose director was doing a really bad job.
Balyn sprinted along the walkway, taking a hard right, wooden planks rattling under his steps and those of the bestial parade following. He leapt for the rungs of a ladder, praying the lashed-together wooden rungs would hold, and started climbing as fast as he could. Only when he reached the top, in a kind of tower mounted to the end of a projecting wall, did he turn and glance back down behind him.
"Ha!"
He'd had a feeling that these beasts would be bad at climbing. It was something about their hunched backs, perhaps, or the shape of their legs, caught halfway between a human body and a wolf-like scourge beast. Balyn had remembered that, in the vague, dreamlike way that he'd remembered so many things from the night of the hunt.
They were still after him, of course, but he hopped down from the tower-top to a broad ledge (who designed this city, anyway!?) and jogged forward towards the bridge, having managed to come full circle. No mere beast could outsmart him!
He could have sworn that the three beasts waiting for him just across the bridge, patiently watching for him to come back into their clutches, were smirking.
There was no retreat, not with the pack slowly reassembling behind him. Audacity, always audacity, that was the way, said someone that surely nothing bad had ever happened to! Balyn charged at the beasts, sprinting furiously, diving and rolling under swiping claws, and he was past! Now, run, charge ahead, veer right and down a short flight of steps, then right again to the entrance to a long, narrow staircase that hugged the outside of the building.
The landing bent to his left, but Balyn could hear the snarls of the pursuing beasts, feel their hot breath on his neck, and instead of turning he jumped, leaping through a broken gap in the landing wall, plunging through the open air! His feet struck the edge of a chimney, blocking his fall, and he sprang again, dropping the last fifteen feet or so to the plaza below. He flexed his knees as his boots hit the cobblestones and absorbed further shock by rolling forward, scattering a number of very surprised crows who barked at him angrily.
Balyn didn't pause for an instant, coming to his feet and sprinting straight ahead, dodging piles of smoldering beast corpses and rushing down a rickety flight of stairs to another cobbled walk that ran alongside a large clock tower adjoining a ritual hall. Then it was up, up, up another long ladder, ascending at least three stories, then onto another wooden platform and finally up another ladder off to his left.
He dropped to his knees, panting for breath as a man in ashen gray garb approached.
Balyn reached into one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a thick envelope, then reached up and slapped it against the man's belly.
"Here! Here's your newsletter from the Yharnam Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Beasts. And if the publishers haven't all been eaten by then and are able to put out another issue next month, you can bloody well come up and get it yourself!"