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Chapter 3: Birdsong Chimes
A pair of silhouettes, one large and one small, tangled in a formless mass roiling across the wall. The flitting, writhing figures snapped and tore at one another. Teeth and claws hissed and scraped, empty sounds of savage blows missing their marks. The shapes danced as only two predators could, locked in a mutual hunt of the other. There could be only one victor, after all. A beast above beasts. A hunter above hunters. An apex predator to which all were prey.
The sound of tearing flesh and splitting bone broke their rhythm, a howl of agony rolling through the smoke and fire. Shimmering heat waves set the shades aripple before a brilliant light filled the space and banished them.
When the glare faded, two shadows stood facing one another across the curved stone wall of a crumbling spire. The shapes stood stark and unwavering in the intense light of wild flames; one a towering beast, the other a human figure of confidence and poise. A roaring bonfire engulfed the mound of discarded crates and boxes relegated to one side of the spire's ground floor. It snapped and crackled like the gnashing jaws of a rabid dog. Each bark sent a fountain of sparks and embers arcing across the room.
The hunter and the hunted squared off. Wisps of smoke and flickers of pyromantic flame danced around the aberrant beast's long, bony fingers. Blood of darkest red fell in fat drops from the teeth of Lady Maria's Saw Cleaver. They glimmered, flickering between garnet and jet, as the flames leapt and danced. Each droplet deliquesced upon contact with the floor, disappearing as Yharnam drank them in through each crack and runnel.
A low growl rumbled at the back of the monster's throat. It's muzzle rippled, pelt bunching at the base as the beast bared its fangs. It did not roar; it would submit no such arrogance, not this time. Perhaps it understood that the roles of predator and prey were not as concrete as they once appeared.
Long gouges, made deep and ragged by the cleaver's saw teeth, marked the aberrant beast's arms, legs, and back. Blood oozed from the jagged lacerations, soaking and matting the creature's mottled coat. Its breathing crackled with an almost sickly wheeze, and pinkish foam gathered at the corners of its mouth.
In contrast, Maria appeared little worse for wear. The hem of her coat suffered the worst of it, singed by the arcane fire favored by the beast. It still smoldered a little, with small coils of smoke, no more robust than those of a burned out match, curling away from a few particularly charred stitches. She regarded the snarling thing with a self-assured, almost blank, expression. The naked certainty in her pale eyes attested to a mind which kept two steps ahead and expected victory in short order.
Without warning, the beast shot towards the hunter. The claws on its hind paws carved gouges into the floor cobbles as it took off. Rather than raking her with its claws or casting pyromantic fire, the beast-possessed soul snapped its powerful jaws at Maria's head. The hunter held her weapon with both hands clutching the handle like the grip of a push cart. Lifting the Saw Cleaver, Maria jammed the blade into the beast's open mouth.
The jaws snapped closed around the weapon. Half a dozen fangs fractured against the unyielding metal blade with an explosive crunch. Teeth fragments peppered Maria's face, several coming to rest in the folds of her hat and collar. Taking a step towards the beast, the hunter heaved her weapon deeper into its bleeding maw. Its serrated teeth tore greedily into ropey jaw muscle, and Lady Maria felt the creature's jaw slacken even as a squeal of agony piped up from the back of its throat. She wrenched the Saw Cleaver down. The beast's lower jaw peeled away from its companion taking a wide swath of pelt along with it. Flesh separated from muscle in a strip as wide as the monster's muzzle all the way down to its belly before pulling free.
In an almost human gesture, the abomination's mutated hands clapped against the spurting remains of it's bottom jaw. It might have looked like an expression of surprise if not for the blood gushing through its fingers. Instead it appeared more as a gargoyle routing crimson rainwater from a church roof into the gutters.
Lady Maria wasted no time in pushing her advantage. She snapped the blade into its longer configuration and swung it around in a wide overhead arc. The cleaver struck the beast square atop the skull with a hollow crack. The beast collapsed at once. Chunks of pulverized graymatter leaked out of the substantial split in its skull and onto the cobbles. Not one for taking chances, the hunter hacked the monster's head off with a few more strokes of her cleaver.
Satisfied the aberrant beast would not be getting back up, Maria gave the weapon a sharp flick to shake off the excess blood. She considered the beast for a moment, brows knitting together as she started drawing conclusions. The Church would never have allowed the lowliest beast to roam the streets of Upper Yharnam, let alone one as dangerous as this. Either the Healing Church's legion of hunters were too busy elsewhere to keep the streets clear, or there were too few of them left to maintain order. Neither possibility boded well; Yharnam might very well be in her death throes.
"More's the reason to track down Garvan and be rid of this place," Maria thought. Whatever Yharnam's ultimate fate, she would find the city's Last Crow, and they would overcome the trials of the Hunt together. In truth, idealism did not often suit the Lady of the Astral Clocktower. However, Garvan had not only freed her from the Hunter's Nightmare, but put an end to it altogether. Surely she, Lady Maria, apprentice to Gherman, founding member of the Hunter's Workshop, could locate a single hunter.
She crossed to the far side of the arena where a set of dark hardwood doors stood as the spire's only exit. Pressing a palm to either side of the middle seam, Maria leveraged her weight against the stubborn hinges. With a low groan of protest, the doors inched outward into the street beyond. Somewhere behind her, another charred support beam came toppling down from above. Firelight dribbled out onto the cobbles of Lower Yharnam, the moist and mouldering surfaces shining with an oily glimmer.
Candles and lanterns lined the street, some hanging from posts while others sat on stoops, stairs, and windowsills. Despite the illusion of civilization implied by the gentle, controlled light, Maria could feel the madness rushing like blood beneath the city's skin. Her time in the Hunter's Nightmare and working in the Choir's Research Hall honed her sense for such things. A not-quite-smell of rot that set the mind looking for a source. An aftertaste in each sip of air, greasy and bitter, that puckered the lips. Whispers felt in the bones that the ears longed to hear.
The hunter made her way down the street, head on a swivel. Titters of mad laughter and low snarls followed her progress. Fleeting shapes and misshapen silhouettes darkened the window shades as she passed. Maria did consider knocking at a door or calling through a window, but dismissed the idea. She suspected that to do so would prove fruitless, and more likely, dangerous. The words imparted upon her by Gherman in their very first lesson bubbled unbidden up from the depths of her memory. 'A hunter is not defined by the strength of their arm nor their deftness of foot, but by keenness of wit. Intelligence and a capacity for restraint are what separate man and beast.' Years later, after her involvement with the massacre at the Fishing Hamlet, the recollection of those same words were what shattered her illusions of hunters as noble protectors.
Maria shook off the ghosts clutching at her coattails and forced herself to stay alert. Peering into the narrow lanes and alleyways as she passed, the hunter discovered several corpses abandoned to the mercy of stray dogs and carrion scavengers. Taking the opportunity to examine a pair of these unfortunate victims, Lady Maria discovered they met their demise not by beast, but by man. Their lacerations were clean, made by sharpened metals rather than the tearing claws and teeth of a beast. One of them even appeared to have been shot. These observations in and of themselves would not have been strange-after all, mobs of the brave and foolhardy always joined the Hunt to do their part in disposing of beasts and the afflicted-if not for a lack of any signs of beasthood in the victims.
Wandering deeper into Lower Yharnam, the former Lady of the Astral Clocktower came to a small square. The sickly sweet scent of putrescent flesh struck immediately and without restraint. Brittle yellow leaves and stems, all that remained of once vibrant flowers, poked out between the wrought iron perimeter fence of their raised stone beds. They reached, like the skeletal fingers of a long dead prisoner, petrified in their desperation for the care they once knew. Mounds of abandoned luggage cluttered the corners, most of which had their contents strewn about by whatever opportunists went about looting them.
The soft, almost inaudible, click of a flintlock hammer provided Maria her only warning of the immediate danger she walked into. The hunter dove, rolling into cover behind one of the flowerbeds just before the crack of a rifle set her ears ringing. She almost missed the frenzied barks and snarls of charging hounds as she struggled to make sense of her predicament.
Maria turned at the last moment, unclipping her weapon and raising it to defend herself in one fluid motion. The furious hound crashed into her, knocking the hunter on her back. Claws raked at her arm as they struggled. It's jaws snapped a mere handspan from her nose, strings and globs of frothy saliva spattering her face. The creature, looking as rotten and mottled as a decomposing corpse, strained against the Saw Cleaver with which Maria held it at bay. The weapon's teeth bit into the sinewy flesh of the dog's throat as it pushed. Maria wrenched the blade hard, tearing open the crazed hound's throat. It reared back, thrashing, before it collapsed dead across her knees.
A second mad dog tore around the corner, teeth bared. Maria raised her weapon to meet the creature when a second rifle shot struck it from her hands. Maria cursed as her weapon skittered across the cobbles. The charging dog lunged.
Focusing on the calm space in her mind's eye, the hunter reached for the art of quickening that once came second nature to her. An almost trance-like sense of calm enveloped her like a mantle, and she stepped aside. Maria's form blurred and faded, a cloud of dust marking where she had been a heartbeat before. The dog sailed through the dust, its jaws snapping at empty air.
Before the dog even touched the ground, Lady Maria delivered a brutal kick to the creature's chest. It crashed with bone-grinding force into the stone base of the flower bed with a yelp. Closing on the dog while it struggled to right itself, the hunter drove the heel of her boot down into its skull, which collapsed with a wet crunch.
Movement across the square drew Maria's eye, and she looked up to see the gunman standing atop a short set of steps looking back at her down the sight of his rifle. She ducked behind the flower bed again and the rifle roared a third time. The bullet struck the wrought iron perimeter fence just above her head and sent a spray of sparks raining down on her.
Taking advantage of the longarm's significant reload time, Maria recovered her weapon and moved to close the distance between her and her attacker. The gunman, focused on readying his weapon for the next shot, didn't make any attempt to back away. The hunter lept at him, Saw Cleaver drawn back to strike, just as the gunman cocked the hammer on his rifle. It took just one stroke; the razor teeth opened the man's belly and effectively eviscerated him. The gunman collapsed face down in a pile of his own entrails.
Maria took a moment to catch her breath and take stock of her condition. Aside from her ringing ears and a pair of gashes across her left forearm from the mad hound's claws, she suffered no further injury. For the first time she noticed the gunman's obvious mutation. One arm had grown longer than the other and sprouted thick, fur-like growth. The fingers of the elongated limb had split at their tips, the beginnings of claws pushing up through the fingernail beds. His jaw had become misshapen, a riot of new teeth crowding in around the old ones. A milky, cataract-like glaze clouded the eyes, and the surrounding iris appeared to be coming apart like a ruptured egg yolk. There could be no doubt: this man had been afflicted by the Scourge of Beasts. Though, Maria had never seen someone so far changed use a firearm before. Things had certainly changed during her imprisonment in the Hunter's Nightmare.
Not far down the lane, just beyond the fallen gunman, Maria came across the body of a fallen hunter. The hunter, a woman Maria guessed to be a decade or so older than herself, sat slumped with her back against the wall. Multiple deep lacerations and gunshot wounds marked her body, a wide pool of congealing blood spread out beneath her like a pane of smooth red glass. Given the axe and pistol still clutched in her hands, and the other sprays and splatters of blood painting either side of the lane, Maria surmised that she didn't go down without a fight.
Crouching beside the fallen hunter, Lady Maria sighed and gave a small shake of her head. The fact that she found the body at all likely meant that she could no longer dream, much like Maria herself. The fallen hunter had joined her last hunt.
The yet-living hunter took the dead woman's pistol and holster for her own use. She wouldn't be needing it anymore, after all. As Maria rummaged through the various pouches on the fallen hunter's belt in search of ammunition, she found a rough, rounded object amid the supplies. Pulling the object out from its hiding place and into the light, Maria discovered a small, unbelievably old-looking bell dangling from a bent mounting rod. Rather than the traditional copper-bronze alloys, this bell appeared to be made of some sort of iron. The surface was pitted and flaked with rust, and the clapper inside creaked as it lolled about inside the shell. In truth, it prickled at her with a subtle familiarity. Had she seen it, or something similar, before? In Gherman's workshop, maybe?
Curious, Lady Maria gave the bell a ring, all the while expecting the clang of some gray, ugly tone. Instead, the bell sang in a clear voice that echoed in both her ears and the hollows of her chest. Her bones felt the resonant hum, and it made her teeth tingle with an arcane charge. The insides of her skull seemed to melt into a pool of shimmering mercury behind her eyes. All at once the sensation flowed away. It was as if someone pulled a drain plug at the base of her skull and allowed all the liquid magic to run out.
"Oh dear," came a voice behind Maria, thick with motherly concern. The shorthairs on the back of her neck stood on end; she hadn't even heard anyone approach. Maria sprang to her feet and whirled to face the interloper, pistol and Saw Cleaver in hand. "What a mess you've been caught up in. And tonight, of all nights."
Opposite Lady Maria stood a woman shorter than her by about half a head. Clearly a hunter by the look of her equipment, she wore an all too familiar cloak of crow feathers. If not for her voice, Maria might have momentarily confused her for Garvan. Even still, the sight of that unmistakable outfit sent her stomach twisting up knots. The newcomer wore a mask, too, one shaped like a bird's head with a long, pointed beak. The overall effect of the outfit evoked the aspect of a bird of prey, or maybe a carrion eater. A strange blue glow seemed to highlight the curves and angles of her figure as if an unseen blue sunlight shone down on her, and her alone. At once, Maria recognized the woman's description from her time with Garvan.
"Are you," Maria hesitated, mouth suddenly dry. She tried again. "Are you Eileen? Garvan's mentor?"
"Have we met?" Eileen asked, folding her arms across her chest. She didn't sound concerned, in any case.
"Oh, no," said Maria. "I do, however, know of you. You are, or were, a Hunter of Hunters, were you not?" The memories of how she attained that knowledge still shone bright in her mind, glittering like shards of broken glass and just as sharp. Guilt needled at her like nails being driven through the soles of her feet. She had taken Garvan's journal and read through it, wielding what she learned as a cruel whip to push him into killing her. The selfishness of her actions left Maria feeling ashamed even now.
"I am," said Eileen. The feather-clad hunter paused and lifted a hand to her chin. "Or, perhaps I was? Such boundaries have been blurred by the unnatural goings on in Yharnam." She moved the hand away from her face and gestured to Maria with an upturned palm. "And who might you be, Miss…?"
"Maria," said the former Lady of the Astral Clocktower. A deranged cackle echoed down from somewhere above, maybe through an open window in one of the towering tenements. Eileen paid the sound no mind, but Maria glanced each way down the lane; she would not allow someone or something to get the drop on her a second time.
"Hmm," the Hunter of Hunters crooned. "You resemble someone I once knew. Alas, you cannot be her." Before Maria could ask, Eileen went on. "Tell me, how did you come to know Garvan?" Eileen's easy posture tightened, and she dropped her hands to her belt. A distinctly protective tone clipped her words leaving them sharp around the edges.
"Well, we…" Maria faltered. Uncertainty set her guts writing, and she despised every moment of it. She had never been one to lack spine, and bumbling in the face of Garvan's mentor made her feel uncomfortable in a way she rarely had before. "Let's just say that I owe him a debt of gratitude, one which I am keen to repay." Not a lie, but far from the full-bodied truth. How could she express the breadth and depth of it to the woman whose ward she caused so much anguish?
"A debt?" Eileen took a moment to consider before nodding once. "Aye, a debt is a serious weight to carry into the Hunt. Know ye where he might be?"
"No," said Maria. "I know only that he is attempting to bring an end to the madness."
"Hm." The Hunter of Hunters looked up, considering the distant strip of blood-tinged sky high above Yharnam's spires. "Then we must seek the hidden ones, for I've little doubt they're at the heart of this mess." Eileen turned and started down the lane, her feather cloak billowing out behind her like the wings of a bird in flight. "Come, then. You can explain to me the nature of your debt along the way."
Despite her uncertainty, Maria followed.