For those who didn't see the new informational post, I made an altercation in the chapter that really changed shit up, so go read that. If you're too lazy to do so, the TLDR is that Cyril loses his left arm from the elbow down.
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Maybe I should say something sentimental about me losing my arm. Something about a feeling of loss, maybe something that I feel empty on the inside.
At this point though, I really only have one thing to say.
I lost my arm.
The bleeding had somehow stopped during what I would tentatively call an eldritch-induced psychedelic trip, but that's besides the point. My actions have come back to haunt me, and boy did it bite my ass.
I lost my goddamn arm.
Yeah, lets go screw around with something that's telling you to bugger off. Lets go to a place, which exists in an area where death can be cheated and time is a circle and beeline to the place that tells me no.
I. Lost. My. Goddamn. Arm.
Just an umbilical cord, huh? You could have taken the hint when you felt waves of power throughout the corridor. You could have turned right back around the moment you laid eyes upon the abandoned workshop.
And now it's gone.
And I have no one to blame but myself. I led myself through to that altar, I forced my way through a death trap that by all accounts should have killed me. The only reason I stand here now is because whatever entity was pulling the strings lost its patience and jumped the gun. I stand here beside a pile of my own blood, almost certainly in shock, blabbing to myself because if I dont I have no clue what I would do.
What's the point of this? What am I doing, roaming around a city I have no place in and fighting a mix of victorian monsters and the reject pile for lovecraft?
------()------
I wandered around cathedral ward aimlessly. The melody of a bloodthirsty scream, a pain riddled groan and the sound of silence looped for what seemed like endlessly. In a screwed up sort of way, it became a constant, something that made sense. Stabby-stabby make monsters owie-owie.
A part of me really just wanted to let go at this point. Nothing about my current predicament could be considered nice, nothing that gives me a reason to really do anything.
Besides, you know, the mark on my neck. Physically, nothing has changed about it. It was a deep branding, yet it failed to draw any blood. Something far more meta-physically, it felt like a dull, constant throbbing somewhat akin to a muted base rubbing against me. It was uncomfortable, something that prevented my mind from fully submerging.
Clarity came back to me slowly, as if the haze of anger, fear and a kaleidoscope of other emotions were still trying to stay put. Almost reluctant to leave.
Much like anything that was born, they eventually broke off and faded, and all I was left with was a half destroyed courtyard, half a dozen corpses and a view of the evening sky being stilted by the many buildings of Yharnam. Looking out to it all, I braced my remaining arm against the last section of guardrail before it collapsed into rubble and took a deep breath.
Least whatever cthulhu reject didn't take my dominant arm.
I snorted on my own joke.
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At the beginning of this, I was kind of making fun of what I perceived to be complete morons. They throw at me, sometimes with an insult or a slur, sometimes a bloodlusted scream or an animalistic roar, but it was all the same. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight, yet they charged me with pitchforks, axes and crude swords nonetheless. What made them throw away their reason and succumb to true madness?
The answer was right in front of me, yet somehow I ignored it in favor of mockery and dismissal.
Its addiction.
Instead of one more snort, one more drink or one more gamble, it's drawing blood. It's everything to them, and I bet that they get some sort of dopamine rush from drawing blood from whatever they consider an enemy. They aren't looking for "beasts", they're looking for their fix of the next few hours before they move on and repeat the cycle.
Over and over.
The worst part is that I can see it in myself. Embrace it.
It isn't the simple detective in me seeking the mystery in plain sight anymore, it's me moving from one big fight to another. Keeping the reiterpallasch or whatever it was called and adventuring to something screaming at me to back off is me seeking a fight and revelling in it.
And I don't know if I can actually stop myself at this point. You shouldnt.
I can't ignore the fact that I want to fight.
I can't ignore the fact that I want to kill.
I can't ignore the fact that I'm truly disgusted with myself.
A part of me wants to say screw it, walk to the city limits and keep walking until I drop from whatever kill-switch is embedded in the mark on my neck. A part of me wants to fall back into the haze, and let the overwhelming mix of emotions take my mind off of my situation.
Yet through all of this, I still think I'm the same person. I'm the same person who uses insults and jokes to cope through hard times. I'm the same person who saved that little girl. Deep down, I still care.
Isn't that why I started all those years ago?
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"Welcome home, good hunter." The doll greeted me as I came to in the dream.
"Hi again." I simply replied. It wasn't her I was looking for, it was someone completely different.
I found Gehrman sitting where he always was; right beside the altar.
I felt a bit ashamed of myself, coming back here. Despite something within me demanding an interrogation of just what I experienced was, the far more logical part of me prevailed.
If just being near it triggered… that, then what would full power look like? Beautiful
I was angry with a lot of things, but not so much as to risk a confrontation that I can't win.
Instead, I wanted to bring to the forefront a much more pressing concern.
"You lost your arm." Gehrman spoke, flat. And gained much more
"I noticed." Replying in kind.
"You're not the first hunter to do so, nor will you be the last." As to put emphasis on the point, he shifted his leg. The one that ended with a peg.
I winced. For myself and him.
"I'll cut to the chase then, what options do I have?" I said, nearly in a rush.
"Wooden arm. Though I'm afraid that it would have no range of motion and would be less than useless."
I winced harder.
"A few powderkegs I've known in the past have attached a stake driver in situations like yours, though it's almost assuredly lost to time, much like many hunter weapons." Gehrman sighed with disappointment before continuing. "Lastly, some high ranking priests have been known to call on the daughter to unite their flesh with the cosmos, though I must admit that they are mostly rumors, since information was scarce at the best of times." He spoke with finality.
"Damn." I nearly hissed. Though my attitude shifted when I fully processed the last option. "Not much for direct naming, huh? Titles such as 'the daughter' are safe?" I threw the question out, it being equivalent to bait for information.
"Names have power." Gehrman spoke with a shrug. "Invoking a direct name tends to not bold well. Best to keep away from ire." He nodded once.
Wait a minute, is he double speaking?
"Yeah. Thought that might hold here as well." My mind began racing. "Sorry about invoking She-who-thirsts here, real stupid of me." Let's test the waters, see how he responds to this.
"Though you said it in a derogatory manner, I could tell that the god you invoked had some power behind it. It's best to keep said power under wraps, as I do not see a good future for those who abuse it." Gehrman spoke slowly, concisely and deliberate.
Holy crap, he is. He knows that I've touched some lovecraft stuff, and he wants me to not talk about it here.
Things have gotten a lot more complicated.
No talky-talk about sensitive stuff here anymore.
"Thank you for your time, Gehrman." I gave him a light bow. "I need some time to think things over." With that, I bid him farewell and walked out of the cottage once again.
That, along with the doll saying "hey, wanna make yourself stronger?" leads me to believe that he wants me to get stronger. Much stronger.
The question is, for what?
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"Hello, good hunter." The doll bowed deeply in greeting me once again.
God, I'm really doing this. I've gone back to the cycle of smelling the blood in the water and heading for the shark that caused it.
At this point, I can't be utterly overwhelmed again. If I am… I don't know what to do with myself.
I paused, unsure. "I would like to channel my strength." I stated simply, gritting out the words.
"Of course, good hunter. I will embolden your sickly spirit." With that, she held out her hands. Soon thereafter, a faint glow began circulating from one palm to her other.
I get the feeling that I'm supposed to put my hand between that. Cringing as I did so, I slid my hand in between her two hands and saw me.
What I can say is that it was like an out of body experience. The best way to describe it was if my soul was staring back at my body. Only, I could also see more abstract figures, like a general idea of my cardio to my strength. As well as this, I could see a raging, almost angry red flow circling around my body, along with a similar, significantly duller white glow. Compared to each other, it was like a planet to a gas giant.
Delicately, I pushed away the two streams, I really do not want to think about the implications of the both of them. Instead, I tried to, for a lack of a better word, "raise" my cardio and strength. It surprisingly yielded, and I felt a sense of fullness.
I tried fading the same way I do with the gravestones, and surprisingly it worked. Instead of being somewhere in Yharnam though, I came in front of the doll and quickly withdrew my hand.
"May you find your worth in the waking world."
------()------
It was easy.
It was absurdly easy.
I made myself objectively stronger in less than a minute. Though I am wary of some sort of placebo effect, I am undeniably better then what I was before.
It scares me, to be honest.
Making yourself stronger through these means… is something that without a doubt places pretty high on the foundation list of no-no's. What's to say that further down the line, I decide to pick up some sort of mind control in the future because I'm having trouble? Let go.
Damn.
Yeah, simply damn.
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In my haze, I had apparently opened the gates to the upper section of cathedral ward. That by itself means nothing, but the numb feeling on the part of my neck getting stronger as I went further up did set off alarm bells.
I don't want to do it.
There was one place that was unexplored at this point. I found a gate, but there was some weird gatekeeper who was asking me for a password. I didn't know it, so that was a dead end.
Going down led to a half demolished overlook, one in which the heights were most certainly lethal. The other way down goes to Old Yharnam, and I have absolutely no stomach to brave that area again. Once was far more than enough.
There was that one path in the graveyard. Do that instead of going up to whatever the fuck lies on the peak.
Yeah, I'll think I'll do that.
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Unfortunately for me, that path led to tightly packed squalor, one in which this dense fog covered everything walking on the street. I could hear a step-drag characteristic of one of the white-masked assholes, so I kept to the side and walked slowly.
It led me directly to a dead end, one in which there was only a red door in front of me and a window right beside me. Both had some incense burning. It itched.
"Oi, bugger off!" A voice emanated from the window, making me jump. "I can smell your stench from a mile off."
It took a moment for me to figure out what to say.
"Neck yourself." I replied succulently. "Are you trying to look for a fight, you sad sack of human shit?" A moment passed, before a giggle emanated from the door in front of me.
"My oh my, that is one vulgar mouth." A feminine voice emanated from the door, but I could not make out the person who said it. "I would invite you in, but I'm afraid that I'm off during hunts." A second laugh emanate, yet this one was filled with uncertainty
Oh. She's a prostitute.
"Not looking for comfort." I replied with a dead tone.
"You're a hunter? Oh thank goodness." I could hear an audible sigh. "I've very little incense left, might you know of a safe place?"
Ok then. That was a very, very fast turnaround.
"Sure, though you might want to grab a gun." I simply said.
It took a moment before I could hear some sort of deadbolt being moved to the side. Then she came out. Her slightly rugged appearance contrasted heavily with her elegant dress, and though time has faded the blood red and bright yellow one can easily tell that it was exquisitely woven. I wasn't really surprised when she came out holding a flintlock pistol though.
I nodded to her.
Guess some clients are a bit too much sometimes.
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Walking back into the church, I could hear Arianna breathing a sigh of relief. During the short walk, we made a little bit of chat. I could, however, feel her eyes bearing directly behind me every time we walked past a corpse.
Really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who caused it.
Soon though, the two of us entered the chapel, and I greeted the dweller once again. Noticing that I had not come alone, he gestured for me to bring her a chair to sit on.
"I cannot thank you enough, good hunter." Arianna said. "The hunt seems to be more frequent with every passing day."
"Really doesn't take much out of me." I brushed off. "Dont worry about it."
"Nonsense, I was practically out of incense." She briskly replied. "You saved my life."
"If you're trying to steer this conversation towards "oh, how can I ever repay you", sorry to say but I don't really care about your services." It was a bit rude, but I needed to get the point across. "I just want to get out of Cathedral Ward."
"Ah." She simply said. "I'm assuming that you came from Central, then?"
"Correct." Hey, maybe I can get something out of her.
"Not much to say, really. Ever since the church declared the Queenswood forbidden, Cathedral ward really only has one way here, which is behind you." She gestured to the graveyard door.
Interesting, why would this healing church declare an entire forest forbidden?
"Any particular reason why?" I quickly responded.
"Villages inside have been utterly overrun, for what some of my clients tell." Arianna stated. "The fact that they press foreigners into hunting is much more telling though."
In other words, things are collapsing at the seams. Because of course they are.
"I'll keep that in mind." Bidding her farewell, I went right back outside to cathedral ward.
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So, another dead end. Which unfortunately means that I have to find out what rests above that causes me to quite literally go numb.
I want to go take a step, but my body refuses. For a moment, I stood there, before realizing what it really was.
Fear.
It's just overwhelming fear. All I can think about is what had happened over at the "real" workshop, that it might repeat itself again.
I don't want to lose another part of myself, be it mental or physical.
I felt like I was having a panic attack. My breathing alternated between rapid half-breaths and practically impossible. In the end, I simply slumped against the fence and sat.
------()------
I was a sad, pathetic wreck. Between the fear of a repeat and my growing addiction to fighting, the latter won out.
I killed pretty much everything between me and the double gates to the presumably cathedral-looking exterior. There were two guys standing at attention with giant wooden stakes, and it was something I didn't particularly feel like dealing with at the moment.
And because I'm me, I simply shot dumb and dumber in their kneecaps. Watching them fall down a flight of stairs, I was genuinely surprised when the two of them tried sweeping me. Kind of expected them to have most of their bones broken, but oh well. A few shots put them out of their misery.
Now, I was looking at a giant door. Giving it a test push, it yielded surprisingly easily. Beyond the door laid another large flight of stairs, with bizarre statues lining either side. Brethren
Yeah, I'm already at my limit. Ignoring them, I simply went up the stairs. The sound of someone loudly praying however made me raise my gun.
Cresting the stairs, I took a look across the interior. My guess of a cathedral was not far off, as the room reminded me of a mini Saint Peter's basilica in terms of size and color scheme. The floor, originally white, looked far more grey as age and improper maintenance faded the color with a layer of grime.
The most important part was the person praying near the dead center of the room.
Now, there are a lot of things I can do. Shoot, obviously. If that doesn't work, molotov in the general direction and let that take care of the problem. That is assuming that she is hostile, but I'll be honest I have no confidence that she-.
Is screaming.
What on Earth?
The answer came unbidden, as she changed. It wasn't like Gascoigne, but she was contorting much like him, and eventually exploded.
The shockwave forced me to look away. Looking immediately back, what I saw made my stomach drop.
She had changed into a massive creature, covered in white hair. Blood soaked most of the area around her, including a massive splotch over the altar at the end of the room. Hell, it kind of looked like a massive dog with elongated limbs and a crocodile head.
The most important aspect though was that it was looking at me.
Once more, I guess.
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If Gascoigne was a force of nature, whatever this lady transformed to was twice that, at minimum.
She was absurdly fast, and every swipe blew up a dust storm from the floor, which was quickly turning into rubble.
The only saving grace was that her attacks were not as fast as she herself was. I was kind of glad of that, because if she started using her body as a meatwall I would be in big trouble. Despite all of that, a pace was indeed being set. It was fast and explosive, it felt like I was bull riding, but I managed to hang on.
That is, until I began making mistakes. People aren't perfect, and something as simple as the wrong footwork resulted in me being swatted like a fly.
Eventually, I got swatted not into the air, but into a wall.
------()------
I really, really, did not want to keep doing this. At the same time however, I needed a way to get out of Cathedral Ward that wasn't back from the way I came, and something was telling me that this was the way I needed to go.
A big plus was that there was no lovecraftian bullcrap involved here.
And so, the cycle that occurred with Gascoigne began again. I fought, I got a bit closer, I died ad nauseam.
This particular fight is particularly nasty though. This giant wolf monster had four main attacks; swiping, slamming, charging and flailing. It was a generalization that simplified a tad too much, but it represented what I was facing quite nicely.
Eventually, I began getting into the groove of things. The charging attacks were met with a lateral dodge. The flailing was met with me keeping my distance and taking a short break. The swiping and slamming were the most dangerous, and each one was dealt with dynamically. That consisted of shooting to distract, even more dodging or a slice coming from myself.
The biggest problem wasn't the fight itself however. It was that this bastard could heal too. Almost mockingly, the monster paused and brought its hands together to pray. Soon after, a golden glow surrounded the monstrous form, and the wounds be it deep or shallow stopped bleeding and started closing.
Naturally, I began dumping blood bullets into her form. Her healing was good, really good, but It could not cover all injuries, especially when more are being made in realtime.
By the end of that process, I was left panting and the bastard was still fairly healed. Letting off a roar, the massive creature charged me once again.
It was mentally and physically exhausting. Sure, I could revitalize myself with vials, and I have. The thing was that I only had so many, and a drawn out fight starts to be a drain mentally.
Then, something happened that hasn't. The big bastard staggered and fell ungracefully on the ground.
Holy crap!
Moving forward, I simply stabbed the head of the giant bastard and twisted. A screech reverberated throughout the church, loud enough to cause my ears to ring.
In response, the big bastard slammed me with one of its 'arms', sending me flying backwards. Skidding on the ground, I painfully got back up to see a giant wall of flesh charging towards me.
Did I forget to say that the bastard charges with its whole body?
Barely dodging it, the towering figure flew past me, slamming into one of the walls of the cathedral.
The monster slowly got back on its feet.
"Just stay down and die, holy shit man." My exasperated voice rolled out.
The only response I got was yet another roar.
And so we started again.
------()------
The asshole was praying again.
Instead of shooting, I simply charged and swung with the whip form of the sword. The attack weaved through the golden light and struck the exposed skin underneath. Blood flowed from the wound, and a nearly inaudible scream was emanated from the mouth of the bastard.
I didn't stop though, I kept striking. The golden light soon receded, and I was met with a slam. Managing to neatly dodge the slow attack, I struck in turn. The whipped form of the sword wrapped around the bastard's neck, and I pulled.
It was a herculean task. The bastard was resisting, and all I could do was to hold on and pull even harder. It didn't really make sense, something with a body mass not even approaching the thing in front of me was holding its ground.
Then again, nothing in this world made sense.
I didn't need to win the tug of war, I just needed to hold. The bastard was struggling in the opposite direction, directly into the barbed portions of the weapon.
Soon though, the screams changed to blood filled gurgles, and eventually the bastard collapsed onto the ground, limp.
I simply sat down and breathed, all the while looking at the body. The one beautiful cathedral was utterly wrecked, with stone pillars damaged and the floor closely resembling rubble. The mixed fog of rubble and blood absolutely permeated the place.
Black and grey light began swirling around the figure, eventually beginning to cover it. Soon, the entire form of the bastard was covered, and without a sound, the body disappeared to who knows where.
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I don't have an excuse for the late upload. Writer block hit hard, sorry.
Hope you enjoyed the bigger chapter as compensation. Put a few secrets in it as well.
