Author's Note: Hello readers. This chapter is so, so very long overdue. I have struggled with getting anything on the page for some time now. Even now, it has been an absolute grind to get chapter four completed. I do, however, want you to know that every review, every favorite, every DM inquiring about the story and my wellbeing is what brought about the eventual completion of this chapter. Whenever a notification came in about TLCoY, I would return to my working document and hammer out just a little bit more. At last, I present the fruits of my struggle. It is not perfect, and the only editing done was completed by me. You have waited long enough, so I hope this short entry will show those still waiting that I have not forgotten nor abandoned Maria and Garvan.
Chapter 4: Shadows in Motion
The gatling gun chattered a violent song, its wheelchair-bound operator straining to crank faster as his feather-cloaked assailant closed the distance. Tracer rounds stitched the air with burning yellow-orange streaks, the baleful stream of gunfire raking left and right as the elderly hunter tried to track his evasive target.
Garvan flowed around the withering fire, crowfeather cloak billowing behind him. Coming within striking distance of the gunner, the Blade of Mercy flashed silver in the dim lantern light. It sank into the Healing Church hunter's chest, nailing the old man to his wheelchair and shattering half a dozen ribs from the brutal force of impact. The elderly hunter tried to scream, but Garvan's blow had driven all the air from his lungs. Eyes yellowed by age and the taint of madness rolled, glassy marbles rattling in an empty cup, until at last coming to rest angled toward the ceiling.
With the gatling silenced, only the clicking of the weapon's cooling barrels disturbed the quiet. Garvan yanked his weapon free from the gunner's chest and turned to survey the rest of the room. The workshop's former defenders lay strewn about the floor in various states of dismemberment and exsanguination. How ironic that the bastion of the Healing Church's hunt should be staffed by men already half-transformed into beasts.
If Iosefka–or rather, her Choir agent imposter–spoke true, then the old workshop should be somewhere beneath the Church workshop on a different level of the spire. Upon further examination, however, Garvan could find no such means of descent. Taking a second look around the first level of the Church workshop, he came to a section of the outer walkway that had collapsed.
Garvan peered over the edge and discovered another walkway below, intact despite its surface being strewn with rubble from the partial collapse of the walk above. Without any other obvious means of descending to the spire's lower levels, the Hunter of Hunters climbed down and dropped onto the lower walkway. He followed the outer edge around until he came upon a doorway in the spire wall which opened into a mess of half-collapsed floors and rickety scaffolding.
A single joist extended from the base of the doorway to the opposite wall, old floorboards still clinging to it in bits and patches. Garvan narrowed his eyes at the lonesome support beam and leaned out over the edge to look down into the yawning dark. From what he could see, several other joists crisscrossed the spire's interior further below. Haphazard remnants of floors and walkways ringed the wall's perimeter like mushrooms growing along a tree trunk. If ever there had been ladders or stairs built to descend the tower, they'd long since rotted away and collapsed.
It had been too much to hope for a simple path downward, Garvan supposed. Nothing in Yharnam could be straightforward–or so experience taught him. Come to think of it, the removal of an easy path to the old workshop might have been intentional on the part of the Healing Church. Whatever schism split the Church Hunters from Gehrman's own faction no doubt left the Church wanting to bury any connection to the Old Hunters. So much of Yharnam's history consisted of betrayal and dissension that following the lone strand of truth through the tangled web of intrigue might very well be impossible. Laurence's theft of the Old Blood from Byrgenwerth and his master, the timely arrival of Blood Ministration after the outbreak of the Ashen Plague in Old Yharnam, the Healing Church's allegations against Cainhurst about the use of forbidden blood when the nobility began to challenge the Church's growing authority, the splintering of the Old Hunters into factions such as the Tomb Prospectors and Powder Kegs–who could speak with any certainty on the motives for any of it? It was as if Yharnam were made of glass. Each new chapter in its long history left a new spiderweb of cracks creeping along its fragile facade. When at last all the fractures met, the crumbling began. Whatever its former glories, Yharnam had shattered at last.
Without any viable alternatives, the Hunter of Hunters shimmied out along the lonesome beam. Several scattered candles guttered on the walls below, and by their feeble illumination Garvan attempted to determine a way down. The closest sturdy-looking support he could see must have been fifteen meters down, maybe twenty. Another floor joist jutted from the wall with a patch of stubborn floorboards forming a makeshift platform. The Hunter of Hunters looked above the platform at the crude scaffolding that ringed the wall. If he could jump and catch hold of the scaffolds maybe he could drop the rest of the way to his intended platform–that is, assuming the scaffolding held.
Taking a few steps back to get a running start, the crowfeather-clad hunter leapt out over the absent floor toward the wall. His grip found purchase on the soft wood with alarming ease, fingers digging into the brace which began to disintegrate beneath his weight. The wood gave way with a splintering crunch and Garvan plummeted to the platform below. The floorboards buckled beneath his boots, and for a heart-stopping moment the joist began to sink before settling into a new equilibrium.
Garvan gritted his teeth and moved closer to the wall; if he stood too close to the end of the broken beam, his weight might lever it free from its mounts. After taking stock of his situation, and fairly satisfied that the platform would hold him for a few moments, the Hunter of Hunters began searching for his next step downward. From his vantage, Garvan spotted a door frame set into the wall with only a shallow fringe of old boards denoting where the rest of the floor used to be. Given his misjudgement of the scaffolding's integrity, the Hunter of Hunters loathed the idea of putting his faith in the frail looking timbers supporting the remnant floor. The subsequent plummet to his death resulting from the joist collapsing would be inconvenient, but ultimately irrelevant. The sudden and complete lack of access to the door would be the true problem. Even should he return from the Dream to try again, there would be no reasonable method of accessing the door.
Studying the platform and its surroundings, Garvan hoped to find something to assist him in reaching the door–leftover rope, feasible handholds, even jutting brickwork. Much to his dismay, no such options presented themselves.
Recognizing the futility in wishing for better options, the Last Crow of Yharnam committed to making his first attempt count. Garven took a deep, rib-stretching breath and leapt again. He came down hard on the desired platform, dropping to all-fours in an attempt to distribute his weight more evenly across the flimsy surface. Despite his efforts, the ramshackle assembly of remaining floorboards groaned. A series of dry snaps issued from the failing structure which began to list.
Garvan scrambled for the doorframe and managed to get his hands on the lip before the platform fell away beneath him. With his lower body left to dangle, the hunter dug the toes of his boots into the stonework and started hauling himself up with furious effort. He couldn't fall now, not with the platform gone. Maria's true grave, so close to him then, would become all the more difficult to reach if he failed here. Finger flexing painfully to maintain their grip, the hunter strained to haul himself up to waist level. Slinging one leg up into the doorway, Garvan rolled inside and flopped onto his back.
Rather than waiting to catch his breath, the hunter clambered to his feet and rushed down the short staircase connecting the spire with what he hoped to be the old workshop. Maria, she was here. She had to be here.
He emerged into an all too familiar garden, graying and wilted from lack of sunlight–perhaps even sickly from the pall of virulent death which smothered Yharnam like a burial shroud. The Old Hunter Workshop looked just as it did in the Hunter's Dream. Despite the lack of swirling cosmic sky and the moon's looming face, it was unmistakable. There was, however, no time to marvel at the original template for the Dream. Garvan sprinted up the ragged flagstone path toward the lone grave at the back of the workshop.
The headstone he sought rested exactly where he expected it to be, but Lady Maria was nowhere to be seen. A Hunter of Hunters, however, must keep a sharp eye. Atop the soft gravedirt interring the venerated hunter, Garvan spied the impressions of boot soles. Crouching down to get a closer look, he studied the bootprints. They couldn't be more than a few hours old. The omnipresent dust floating thick in the air had not yet settled into the prints enough to blur the outlines and rob them of their detail. From the sole pattern, the hunter of hunters recognized them to be an older style of boot. The impression, characterized by a series of long horizontal ridges, had been designed to combat muddy conditions. Newer hunter soles instead favored a crosshatch pattern of deep runnels to provide better traction on smoother, bloody surfaces. Another detail jumped out at him. A crest pressed into the heel of the sole by the boot's maker marked it as the property of Cainhurst nobility.
Yes, Garvan felt certain that the boots belonged to Maria. She'd returned from the Hunter's Nightmare and walked the waking world once more. Standing up, the Hunter of Hunters traced the path of her footprints away from the grave and into the dilapidated workshop. Well, she had been there. In retrospect it had been foolish to expect she would stay at the site of her grave upon waking. Why hadn't he considered that before? A brief bloom of frustration flared hot and red in his mind. She could be anywhere in Yharnam's twisting bones now, a lone hunter unable to dream amid the horrors of the blood moon.
No matter; Garvan reminded himself that Lady Maria had been a hunter in the time before the Hunter's Dream. She knew how to handle herself without the crutch of waking and dreaming. The hunter's goal remained unchanged, and now he'd finally come across veritable proof of her return. All his efforts, all his sins, had not been in vain.
Sudden impact from behind sent Garvan flying forward off his feet. His armored head crashed into Maria's headstone, the thick slab of gray rock snapping at the base. The Hunter of Hunters scrabbled at the dirt, in the end managing only to roll over onto his back. Darkness encroached around the edges of his vision, what remained swam with starbursts of vibrant light and nonsensical shapes. The ringing in his ears drowned out the sound of his own thundering heartbeat.
The confusing jumble resolved into a looming figure as the hunter's eyes cleared. A corpse-pale face, gaunt and weathered, peered down at him from beneath a tattered hood. It growled at him, a sickly rasping sound, and lifted its bare foot over Garvan's head.
"I thought they all died with the coming of the blood moon." That one coherent thought flitted through his rattled synapses before the pthumerian kidnapper's foot came down and robbed him of any others.