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Chapter Text

Headmaster Micolash,

I assume that you will think this letter unexpected, inappropriate, and improper, and you would be correct in thinking so. I understand your thoughts regarding the Healing Church and the Choir, both of which I have affiliated myself with increasingly these past years. If your decision upon receiving this letter is to discard it and give me nary a second thought, I would likely think you right in this choice. 

Regardless, I have found myself with my back against the wall, and I cannot bear it any longer. You are aware of the slaughter that Byrgenwerth commanded me to, and aware of the tragedy it unleashed upon Yharnam and beyond. I do not claim that the agonies I have suffered is anywhere near to that of those I inflicted pain upon, but I have searched for closure in one thousand different ways, and found that it will likely never come to me. Only death, only the sweet embrace of the dream, will free me now. And yet, I still cling. It is strange, yes? How desperately the human heart clings? One might almost think that it would be better to be a beast. 

Vicar Laurence fears your methods and your rituals. He says your science is unclean and will bring about the end of humanity as we know it. I believe him. That is why I write. You, perhaps, will grant me peace at last - the will to continue with what I know I must. 

 Your studies relate to that of contacting the Great Ones - I have met those that have communed with Ebrietas, the daughter of the cosmos, but she is imprisoned upon this land, unable to return to her own kind. I hear that you speak of beckoning the Blood Moon, the very thing that brought this beastly scourge to Yharnam, and making contact with a Great One. I assume that this contact is in regards to ascension, as it always is with you scholarly folk, but I would like to make a personal request regarding this matter. It is one that I would rather discuss in person, and not where my correspondences may be passed among the hands of various members of the Choir. As such, I request an audience with you, hopefully in the near future. I can sense that my time is coming - I fear that even a meeting with you will not prevent such a fate. 

Should you choose to reject this request, I shall accept it with as much dignity as I have left in me. However, I do implore you, Micolash, to look upon my pleas with sympathy. I know you do not think of me kindly these days, but you are a fond article of times gone by, if nothing else, to me, and I am afraid I am too easily swayed by nostalgia. I only wish that you are somewhat the same.

 I understand that Kos is believed to be the one that ascended Rom. I care not for the Byrgenwerth scholars or their machinations, and yet, dearest Micolash, I find myself mourning your loss. I am deeply sorry, my friend. A child is a precious thing, and should not be interfered with. I know that better than most. 

Should there be more to discuss on such a matter, we shall do so in person. I eagerly await your reply. 

Yours truly, 

Lady Maria 

*        *        *

My dearest Lady Maria,

How devious of you, to speak the child’s name so freely! I suppose Laurence was the one who whispered her terrible fate into your ear - and now you use it against me so liberally, while knowing so little of what truly transpired. I suppose it is no matter in comparison to what is at hand - the very joining of the cosmos and the lowly earth on which we stand. What has happened to Rom, has, indeed, happened to Rom. The Great Ones will not be swayed so easily as you or I, and Mother Kos will likely stay most firm in her decision. Of course, should we commune with her at a later date, as you so expertly tried to obfuscate in your previous correspondence, we may, of course, endeavour to do as such, but I would like to watch you attempt such a feat without your brain popping out of your very skull. 

Regarding matters related to your ‘personal request’, I would be glad to meet with you to discuss the Ritual of Mensis. Upon my recent departure from Byrgenwerth, I have set upon a new path, free from the influence of the Choir, the Healing Church, or Byrgenwerth itself. The School of Mensis shall no longer be a division of a greater organisation, but instead its own scholarly art, a fusion of my best theories and ideas, and those of others that have not the courage to deliver on their promises. We have constructed a lecture hall in Yahar’gul, an unseen, far off village, where I conduct my daily teachings and prepare for the ritual. You will like it, I think, Maria. While you may never plant eyes on your mind, while you may never design to ascend beyond your fragile mortal form, even you may appreciate the beauty of scholarship. Come to me, next week, my friend, and we may discuss communion with those greater than ourselves. 

I should warn you, Yahar’gul is an unfriendly place, and the process of reaching it is far unfriendlier. I believe the snatchers wander the cathedral ward this time of year, so should you ever encounter one of those, just let yourself get kidnapped and see what happens. It will be a faster mode of transport than any that you could organise yourself. If you do not find yourself willing to be thrown into gaol for the sole purpose of reuniting with me, then in any other circumstance, I would advise that you should, as it were, get thee gone. However, as you have so politely begged, my weak assertions are unable to sustain themselves against your pleas. Find enclosed a map and various instructions related to reaching the unseen village, to which the door has recently been sealed. I can assure you, the idea of dematerialising in one space and reappearing in another so far away does sound threatening, but is ultimately harmless so long as one has the right constitution. After all, dear Maria, you were once a hunter, were you not? Perhaps you should dig out that old Rakuyo of yours. I don’t imagine the pigs will take to you kindly.

Furthermore, I should advise that you need not be so apologetic, Maria. I despise you as much as I do any Choir-sworn cocksucker, but alas, unexpected, inappropriate, and improper are all things that I do awfully well. Regardless, I can, most unfortunately, appreciate your nostalgia. I am victim to it too, it seems, victim to it one too many times. 

See you next week. 

To your good health,

Headmaster Micolash

 School of Mensis

Chapter Text

Maria had seen insanity in her youth, as there always was amongst nobility, but Micolash was not there just yet. There was something wrong for certain - the muttering had, apparently, been so annoying that Laurence had kicked him out of their room and insisted to Gehrman, who in turn insisted to Maria, that Micolash be taken out like a dog on a walk. It had, to Laurence’s credit, been mostly Micolash’s idea, but Maria still found herself torn on which of his many faults she would belittle him upon when she returned back to the Byrgenwerth dormitories. 

“The very cheek of him!” she grumbled, pulling the handle of the door up. “And you, Micolash, you could at the very least pick a decent time to drag me out here!” 

Despite her words, she still gestured for him to step through the doorway first, to which he curtseyed with far too much grace and practise for a man. Stepping through soon after, Maria let the handle drop, the door slamming to the ground and sinking the hallway into darkness. Maria hung her hand lantern at her belt, yellow light illuminating the dank walls of the dungeon. Beside her, Micolash lit his torch - a greater light source, perhaps, but one Maria was willing to forgo, if only for the comfort of a pistol in her left hand. 

Micolash ignored Maria’s gripes, shaking a bottle of something at her. 

“Here,” he insisted, popping the cap open with his thumb and picking out a pill onto his tongue in a dangerously close manoeuvre with his torch that nearly set the both of them on fire. “It’ll calm the nerves.”

He placed the pill onto his tongue, swallowing it dry. Maria scowled at him. 

“I don’t need calming, Micolash,” she huffed, trying to watch ahead for threats. “Besides, I don’t find myself particularly nervous.” 

Micolash let out a chuckle, refusing to retract his outstretched hand. In the dim light, his skin was pasty, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had begun to set. Maria had ones of her own, although they were less severe, possibly because she at least attempted to rest, even on the nights when nightmares of the things she’d seen down here ravaged her. Micolash, however, had the air of a man who did not sleep, too taken by the cosmos to comprehend the notion of rest, staring awake at the ceiling during the nights.

From what Maria had heard from Laurence, this was entirely true, that Micolash rarely did sleep, and if he did, he whined and howled and chattered about in his dreams, mostly garbled speech that Laurence claimed was certainly the language of the Great Ones. Maria was, oftentimes, the one that had to tell him to not give his roommate so much credit. 

“Maria, Maria, Maria,” he tittered, further extending the bottle. “You are far too easy, Maria.” 

 He spoke as if every sentence was a song, and every word a verse, even when his words were, on occasion, mundane. Maria had grown used to it over the years, but the tension in his fellow students’ postures didn’t go unnoticed when rambled upon the Great Ones and their secrets, rapturing about them like his theories were music, discordant and terrible, for he did not seem one to have a musical ear at all. Maria did not mind the music too much, nor did Laurence, despite the way it grated on the ears - she supposed that it was because they were both tone-deaf, too. 

“Oh, stop it.” Maria scowled again, but tried to keep it good-natured, this time. She turned a corner and rammed her Rakuyo into the chest of a white, skeletal humanoid. Realising an opportunity, she quirked an eyebrow and prodded the bleeding corpse of the creature. “Hey, Micolash. He looks just like you.” 

“Such cruel words, Maria, that you might shatter my heart into a million pieces!” Micolash clutched his hand to his chest in mock outrage. Her words were not necessarily wrong - while Micolash did not yet have the mind of someone entirely crazed, his appearance was at least halfway to that of someone who did fit that description, having only deteriorated over the years. Anything of substance had begun to melt off his bones, although, in his Byrgenwerth uniform, nothing could be observed further than a small frame and thinning arms. But in the yellow light, the sharp angles of his face gave him a gaunt appearance that did not lend itself well to his already fractured reputation.

Maria pulled her Rakuyo from the creature’s chest and nodded to the bottle in Micolash’s chest-drawn hand. 

“So, what is it?” she asked. Micolash eyed the creature and produced a tattered notepad, holding it precariously in the same hand as his torch. Maria had to dodge to not be set aflame once again. 

“Opium,” Micolash confirmed her suspicions, pulling a pencil from his pocket and flicking open the cap of the bottle with his teeth, carefully shaking another pill into his mouth. Maria scrunched up her expression. “Oh! Don’t look at me like that. It’s a safe dose, I assure you, just enough to soothe the mind. Otherwise I wouldn’t have taken two.” 

Maria thought to answer that he would have taken two regardless, but she had far from enough energy to try to keep up while he ran psychological circles around her. Arguments with the other scholars were common - mostly demands to trek further than what prospectors had mapped on their own - but Micolash, happy to leave the arduous legwork to those with less frail dispositions, was happy to entertain himself arguing up and down the walls during expeditions. Maria, at least at this hour, was happy to not take that risk. 

Micolash scrawled down some notes and offered the bottle again. This time, Maria popped a singular pill, making a face as she, with great difficulty, swallowed it dry. Micolash, when she had finally forced the pill down, seemed ready to make a quip, but a glare silenced him. Maria had scarcely taken pills in her entire life, only ever compelled by Laurence and Micolash during episodes of their equally horrifying, equally dull drug habits. Her body rarely had a use for medicine - many of the scholars, ever-fascinated by her heritage, theorised that it was her special blood, but Maria avoided that explanation, if only to avoid the thought of the Vileblood. 

Trying to wipe the nasty taste off her tongue, Maria surveyed the following, notably empty, corridor, before gesturing for Micolash to proceed.  

“You know, I’m not awfully fond of the pills,” he said, as if he hadn’t just been about to mock Maria for the same thing. “But Master Willem says that smoke might not be good for whatever goodies we might find down here. I think it’s a load of bollocks, but…” 

Images were called to mind, of Micolash sat in his office, an ornate opium pipe balanced in his right hand, a pen in his other. When Maria came to think of it, there was rarely a time above ground when he was not shrouded in the stench of a dream, of clouds of smoke and attitudes of mirrors. Underground - although, he never did free himself from intoxication - there was an aura of lucidity about him, now that the smoke had wafted away and the person beneath was visible. 

Finally stowing the notepad, pen, and bottle, Micolash regained an acceptable grip upon his torch. 

“You are less of a pain when you do not smoke,” Maria said, following his gaze along the walls. “You should make a habit out of it.” 

“Oh, Maria. You wound me so!” Micolash mocked, miming a faint. Maria pushed past him, peering around the corner and staring at the empty chamber. 

“It is what I do best,” she spoke, letting a chuckle slip from her throat. 

“Maria!” she heard Micolash’s smile before she turned to see it. A grin stretching his face wide, he clutched her about the shoulders, pressing a clammy hand to her forehead as if she were feverish. “Gracious, are you sure you’re quite well? I must have misheard - say, that wasn’t laughter , was it?” 

Pushing his bony hand away and proceeding into the chamber, Maria sighed and shook her head as he erupted into howls of glee. It was, even after checking behind every pillar and in every crevice, entirely empty, despite the blood splatter upon the walls. Trying not to shiver, she turned back and gestured for Micolash to follow. 

“You treat me as if I am a freak of nature, Micolash,” she mused, prodding a stray corpse propped up against the wall with her Rakuyo. Despite the pill she had finally caved into taking earlier, her nerves were not so calm as Micolash promised. The advice Gehrman often gave her - of harnessing fear, of controlling it - was sorely failing her now. 

““Perhaps you are, Maria,” Micolash hummed, picking a corridor at seemingly random. Maria felt the urge to flinch upon his words, to remember the blood that coursed within her veins. “But then, I would be too. Too much laughter, or too little, is a recipe for insanity, do you agree?” 

“I will go insane if you keep blabbering on like this, that is for certain,” she retorted.  She thought it oddly curious, how he did not fear her name - to the other scholars she escorted, she was ‘Lady Maria’ or ‘My Lady’. Never plain ‘Maria’ - but that was simply the quirk of a man who refused to change his manner for anyone. 

 Maria surveyed the corridor. The walls, despite being grey brick and stone, seemed nearly cerulean, sickening to the eyes and mind. On a regular night, and there had been far too many down here with Micolash, not even to mention Laurence, the corridors would be teeming with life, beasts and non-beasts alike, desperate to maul the both of them and likely eat them for breakfast. But tonight, blood streaked the bluish walls, dark, rusty, and dried, and as they proceeded down the corridor, down each flight of stairs, through each door, the amount of corpses only grew. While some of the splatters matched their bodies, others bore no wounds, but blood streaked their corpses, and other parts of the wall were coated in blood, as if it had been sprayed onto the brick itself. As Maria holstered her Evelyn and ran her fingers along the wall, only some patches of blood came back wet. She scrunched up her face, wiping fingers on her clothing. 

“A bloody sight, indeed,” a voice whispered next to her, seemingly having noticed her interest. “It’s always this way with you lot, isn’t it? Nothing has the right allure, the right spark that lights up your curiosity - unless it’s covered in gore.” 

The prospectors, as some said, were less like guardians, and more like warriors, orchestrating a genocide upon the population of the labyrinths. Many of the scholars resented them, named them cruel and violent, bound by their disposition to weaponry and slaughter. Micolash, too, subscribed to such an ideal when it took his fancy, but Maria, in secrecy, believed that was less to do with his true thoughts, and more to do with what his changeable heart felt right for him to say. 

In reality, the scholars were just as bound to their morbid curiosity, their thirst for knowledge and power, as the prospectors were to their blades. Both inextricably linked, the body and the mind of the beating heart that was Byrgenwerth. Maria found herself glad that the two factions were trapped together, barred from civilization by the sprawling forest. Byrgenwerth would never truly reach Yharnam proper, lest the city be ravaged by agonies beyond comprehension. 

“I doubt that you could make such accusations, when you are a scholar guided by that fleeting heart of yours and not your mind,” she shot back, suddenly feeling awfully grouchy, although she suspected that was the stench of the blood. In labyrinths as cramped and poorly-ventilated as these, the smell of blood lingered and sickened all who drew too near. It was her mistake. “You are not an idiot, Micolash, so I assume you have a purpose, and not that you insisted we come all the way here for nothing.” 

Micolash raised his hands as if surrendering. His torch nearly hit Maria in the face as he turned to face her properly. 

“Forgive me, my lady, for I meant no offence,” he said, although the smile on his lips betrayed the opposite. “But I have been asked here tonight, and we must go.”

Maria held his gaze with a flat look, but this did not beat down his enraptured expression. Micolash’s eyes stuck out as odd, as present and vacant, as clouded and clear. The colour was pale, but not green or blue, a light grey that was more akin to white than anything. Often, Maria thought him to be more beast than man, but even Laurence smelled more of beast than him, and the vileblood that coursed through her own veins left her powerless to any such argument. Perhaps this was simply how humans were, once every layer had been stripped away, and the pretence of everyday society had been forgotten. Perhaps everyone, even herself, was a mad scholar in the end. 

“And might you tell me exactly why?” Maria took the chance to break the stare. Micolash breathed deeply, as if the explanation would take all of his effort.  

“Do you know of a mother’s grief, Maria?” he whispered, as if he were in a trance. He looked somewhere beyond Maria’s shoulder, and despite the feeling that something was there, she resisted the temptation to look. 

“No, of course not,” she said, trying to shake off her discomfort. Children would likely never be in the picture for her - most women at Cainhurst fretted to find a husband, but men had never been of interest to her, and she wasn’t about to pretend that they were when she’d experienced such insufferable pickings as she had when she’d come to Yharnam. 

“Of course, of course,” Micolash muttered. “But she does. Oh, how her heart is mangled even worse than her body. She bleeds so much. It is your blood, Maria.” 

Maria held his gaze, furrowing her brows. It wasn’t uncommon for Micolash to claim visions - he often did so to taunt Laurence, to claim greater connection to the cosmos than he. He spoke in riddles, songs, in poetry that Maria would have studied back home - there was no use in attempting to interpret it, not with a mind like hers. 

“My blood?” she asked, her expression flat. “I’m sure. How about we go this way, my friend? I imagine that should there be any mystery to be found, it has something to do with all these corpses.” 

Sighing deeply and unholstering her gun, Maria began upon the trail of blood, which, most glaringly, was having far more of an effect on her than usual. Being cursed with special blood of her own, Maria did not quite pride herself on her steel constitution, but at the very least reaped its benefits. Now that a strange sort of faintness had begun to creep up on her, a queasy feeling in her stomach, she turned to Micolash, who had already begun upon his ramblings. He had suffered from bouts of terrible illness the entire time she’d known him, usually so bad that they would take him for months. 

“It makes you wonder, does it not?” Micolash mused, his voice growing unstable as they proceeded closer to the source of the blood. “What came before us. Something built this, a civilisation constructed this with their own hands. But they’re all gone now, oh, all terribly gone.” 

Maria did not recall much of her Cainhurst education on music, but syncopation was perhaps the most suitable word - the feeling of a beat that did not match those that it paired with. Here they stood, two twin rhythms laid parallel to each other - the prospector, born of the blade and blood, and the scholar, dedicated to mad mutterings and scattered notes. Both had a heart where there should not have been one. 

“Micolash, do you happen to feel ill at all?” she asked, nearly stumbling when she spoke. She reached out to the wall to stabilise herself, and came away with a palm covered in blood. Maria had to stop herself from retching. 

Micolash, catching her in the act, stopped as she regained her bearings. 

“No, I don’t think so,” he mumbled, bringing a finger to his chin as if recalling his current physical condition was particularly hard for him. “But, alas, I have been sick since birth, as all of us are, sooner or later. It will come for you too, Maria.” 

Maria did not need to think of that day, not more than she already did. It followed her on sunny days, on evenings spent in the gardens with Gehrman, on nights when she sat on the ledge of the Lunarium, and pondered what lay at the bottom of the great lake. His sickness would take her too, and that would be her end. Inevitable as it was, it was hard not to fear it. 

“Are you sure you are alright, Micolash?” she asked, and once the words had slipped from her lips, the pair froze, staring at where the speech had fallen to the ground. 

“I am quite well, I assure you,” Micolash stared at the wall just past Maria. “If anything, you are the one who seems unwell.”

He was right, in the end, for despite her attempts to hide it, she felt far too sickly to conceal it. Another scholar half as mad would probably have criticised her similarly.

“You seem agitated, is all - more than usual, I mean,” she quipped, before correcting herself. “I only meant to inquire after your health.” 

“Excited, perhaps, is the right word. I long to learn what lurks beyond.” Micolash drew out each letter, emphasising the roll of his tongue in his mouth as he articulated each ‘L’. “But no, none of us are ever truly alright, are we, Maria?” 

She held his stare, let herself attempt to make out some semblance of meaning in his eyes, blown wide like paleblood moons. 

But perhaps it was too much. She did not belong in the same realm that he did, the realm of the psyche. She was merely a vessel for a blade, a host for her Rakuyo - one that did not concern itself with the machinations of the mind attached to it. 

Maria took a shaky, but decided, step forward, her face clear from Micolash’s view. 

“You spend too much time in your head.” 

Micolash did not go so far as to desecrate himself by insisting on the last word, but Maria felt his smile on her back all the same, spread wide along her spine. Part of her regretted escorting him here, allowing him on this venture without reason. At least all their other nighttime expeditions had been in search of something a little more specific. At least, then, he had kept his mind. 

The corridors grew bloodier as they stalked on, even more blood than she had seen when she’d spied on the Cainhurst knights’ training in her youth. Something about them had felt dirty, watching them learn to stab their own sacred blood from their bodies, and watch them slaughter their foes - which, at the time, had been harmless training dummies - with the own essence that kept them alive. It was a silly, childish fear, one that should have been forgotten as the years went by; but it had driven her from Cainhurst all the same, as if it were a warning. What for was a mystery that Maria did not wish to pursue, but all things in its time, particularly when it concerned matters beyond comprehension, as everything did nowadays. Foretellings of the future were more of Micolash’s forte - perhaps, in another world, she would have stowed away her pride and asked him. 

Too much thought, too much philosophy, not built for a body or a mind like hers. It made her sick, although that was increasingly looking to be the fault of the strange blood, and not the discussion. 

Just as she considered turning around, feeling a little as if she were about to throw up, a delighted gasp pierced the air behind her, and Micolash rushed to Maria’s side. 

“Shh!” he whispered, his eyes alight with fervour. A shaky breath rattled from his lungs, and he pointed beyond the door ahead. “Listen…”

Maria strained her ears, trying to hear past the doorway ahead despite the way her head thrummed with her own heartbeat and an ache sank down through her ribs. The door, iron-cast and ornate, was open just the slightest crack, a trail of fresh blood leading to the opening, thick, and sticky, and splattered across the stone. 

Micolash, clinging to her shoulder, breathed in urgent gasps, as if the breath would be ripped from his lungs at any moment. The pair drew closer, lit by a dimming light, until Maria, with her sickened ears, could hear what he had. 

“Is someone… crying?” she asked, keeping her voice low. 

“Yes!” Micolash’s whisper sprung from his throat, so ecstatic that it nearly gave out into a squeak. 

Maria breathed deep, peering past the doorway with a blurry vision. In the grand, almost cathedral-like room, stood a woman, dressed in an ivory gown lined with lace and white roses, ending in a train that spanned the stone around her, as if her clothing, her very being, melted into the floor itself. Her skin, pallid, colourless, matched the shade of her hair, veiled by a thin, gossamer headdress lined with a chain of silver flowers. In the pale moonlight that seemed to exude from her very being, she looked as if she were a ghost, her head tilted above in prayer. 

What ran Maria’s blood cold was the sight of the poor woman’s stomach. Gore hung out of it, streaking down her front, her bright, fresh blood seeped into her snow-white gown, staining it a deep, dark red that would never come out. And yet, despite the mauled nature of her body, she wept, and Maria thought that she might have seen a bump, a bump that foretold a baby to be born. 

She whispered a prayer, one that Maria was too far away to hear completely, her voice so fragile that she thought it would break. She paused frequently to sob, although whether it was from pain or misery was unclear. 

“This is her, isn’t it?” Maria whispered, eyes wide. “The woman with my blood. She was real.” 

A noise escaped Micolash, the bones of his fingers digging into the meat of Maria’s shoulder, as he gaped reverently at the ghostly woman. 

“Beautiful!” he wheezed, pulling his notepad feverishly from his clothing and scrawling down unintelligible letters, each line more jagged than the last. 

With each passing moment, Maria felt more as if she would faint, but Micolash only drew closer to the door, pushing past Maria and practically pressing himself up against the iron as he listened frantically to each word that fell from the woman’s lips. He only spared himself the room required to write notes as she spoke, and as he did, a low cackle rose from between his ribs, one that he seemed to be unable to control. 

The queen broke from her sobs, from her prayer, and stared squarely at the door, straight at where Micolash stood. With the last of her strength, Maria grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him out of the way, eliciting an undignified scream from him. 

“Who goes there?” the queen called, and Maria instinctually shoved Micolash into the wall, turning away from him and using her body as a shield. “You! Show yourself. It is I, Queen Yharnam of Pthumeru. I demand you to show yourself!” 

Maria looked back briefly at Micolash, whose eyes looked less than human - a ghastly blend of ecstasy and terror. She thought, for a moment, to call him an idiot, a fool, an unsightly blemish upon her work, but cast that aside - the banter, if it could be called that, could wait for later. 

“Yharnam?” she mouthed, but he only shook his head furiously, devoid of answers just as she was. 

“Let me speak to her,” he whispered, his lips quivering as they formed the words. 

Part of Maria wondered if that would be the wiser choice. In her state now, the only protection that she could provide to him would be the shield of her own body. Something crawled beneath her skin, worming its way through her blood, sickening her. Perhaps, if he faced her, he would have a better chance, able to run at the first sign of danger. 

A coward’s thoughts. The prospector’s job was to protect, to slaughter, to be the blade that defended the mind. Maria was better than that. She would be many things - a vileblood, walking amongst the clean, a thoughtless woman who gave scholarship nary a second thought - but she would not be a coward. 

Still, it was a poor decision to stand before a queen fully armed. Holstering her Evelyn and handing her Rakuyo to a stunned Micolash, Maria pushed open the iron door. 

It would be as it had when she had approached Queen Annalise in her youth, when she had been granted audience with that distant relative. There was no need to fear anything, she could delude herself. 

Shakily stepping into the chamber, Maria found herself taken by the grandeur of what seemed to have once been a throne room. A tattered carpet ran the length of the floor, and although its wear showed its age, the embroidery rivalled any that Maria had seen at Cainhurst. The walls were lined with grand, stone pillars, and above where the queen stood, was a crystal chandelier - faded and yellowed, but daunting all the same. 

Maria knelt. Breathed deeply. 

A scream erupted from the queen's mouth, and a jet of foul blood slammed against Maria, adrenaline shooting her awake. Scrambling back, she gasped for air, aiming her Evelyn at the shrieking queen as she thrashed, shooting jets and blades of blood about. What had once seemed to be a dignified and rational monarch had devolved into some form of animal, a banshee intent upon slaughtering her. 

“Micolash!” Maria shouted, launching bullets into the woman’s flesh as she grabbed the side of the door, barely making it to her feet. “Micolash! Shut the door!” 

Once she had thrown herself past the doorway, the combined efforts of her and the scholar, who seemed suddenly much more lucid, managed to shut the heavy door. The screams quieted, and the pursuit seemed to have stopped there, but Maria barricaded the door with her body all the same, sinking down onto the blood soaked floor. 

“Maria?” Micolash crouched down, offering up her Rakuyo. She took it gratefully. His eyes were awake once again, although the mania had not yet worn off in its entirety, his expression quivering in anticipation. He reached out, assumedly searching for injury. 

“Don’t touch,” Maria gasped raggedly. “It’s the blood. Poison.” 

She leaned her head back against the door, groaning softly. Any efforts to understand the source of the poison gave way to a splitting headache and bile in her throat. 

This would be the end. Sacrificed to the queen of a civilisation that she had never heard of before, trapped in a place where she would never see the sun again. Failed at the task that she had been born for, and failed yet again at the task that she had spent years in training for. Neither a Cainhurst knight, nor a tomb prospector. Her corpse would rot down here, as had many others, and her name would never be spoken again.

“Micolash,” she whispered, having to squint through heavy eyelids. “You should go.” 

Micolash jumped back as if he had been scalded, yelping like an animal. 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he huffed, although sense ensured that he lowered his voice. “Do you truly think I could ever stand a minute out there?” 

Maria shut her eyes, not dignifying him with an answer. If he desired to die down here, then that would be his choice, and he could rot beside her. What time was it above ground? What was the weather like? Perhaps Gehrman and Laurence were waking now, wondering where they were. What would they think of her, broken at the bottom of a tomb, poison seeping into her veins? 

At least, perhaps, she would not die alone. A selfish notion - she ought to have demanded that Micolash run, run until he saw the first sign of daylight - and yet she could not help it, did not mind that the man she was supposed to protect would perish, too. Death was a welcome friend, one that she had forgotten to fear long ago, but one she had avoided the company of, if only because it had been so lonely. At least now, she would have someone to face it with, someone to stand by her as she looked that lonely friend in the face. 

“You look awful,” Micolash peered at her as if she were a wounded animal. Maria looked at him, coughing up something close to a scoff. 

“You’ve always been one to make the ladies feel special, haven’t you, Micolash?” she drawled, although her speech did not land so well when she was desperately trying to wipe the foul taste of blood off her tongue. 

Micolash burst into laughter, but halfway through, seemed to remember himself, remember her, and stopped, trying his best to look solemn. It did not suit him. 

“Perhaps that is not my forte,” he admitted. “How you and Laurence have tolerated me for so long is beyond me.” 

Maria rolled her eyes, and shut them once again. 

“I can assure you,” she muttered. “I am equally perplexed.” 

They both managed a weak chuckle, the best that either of them could do in such a predicament. At the very least, Maria could pretend that she had died happy and fulfilled, as many people did when they passed. If one could delude themselves that they had lived and died as they wished to, they could, perhaps, pass into the beyond renewed. If there was a beyond - Yharnam was a little past base theology by now. 

“I suppose I should say something meaningful,” she rasped. “That you were a good friend.” 

Micolash moved to sit beside her on the blood-soaked floor, before Maria’s eyes flew open, and she held him back.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “The blood. It poisons through the skin.” 

Begrudgingly remaining in his crouched position, Micolash tilted his head, once again trying to look thoughtful - although, there was something kind about it this time, something tender, less of a mockery and more of a good-natured jibe. 

“I mean, are we truly friends?” he asked, and the plainness of it all stung just a little bit, even if she knew it was true. “Glorified acquaintances, maybe. I spend too much time around you, no thanks to Laurence.” 

Maria thought back to the countless times Micolash had broken into her room at horrifically improper times during the night, telling her that he wanted to go into the tombs, that Laurence had said to go to Gehrman, who had said to go to her. They were not the pleasant memories she’d imagined herself reflecting upon in her last moments. 

“Oh, don’t start. If anything, I suffer the most from your acquaintance,” she muttered. “Each day, I feel myself becoming more and more crazy. It’s your fault.” 

“And I feel myself becoming more and more sane. Seems that this union has been detrimental for the both of us,” Micolash grumbled, his short, black curls sticking to his forehead. He pushed them back with a hand, exposing a forehead bearing a premature wrinkle or two. 

Maria swallowed softly, feeling the poison go down her throat. Part of her - animal instinct, maybe - screamed at her, berated her for worsening her condition, but another remarked that it was simply hastening the inevitable. She bowed her head. 

“Go, Micolash,” she croaked out, although it took far too much effort. “You are not so stupid as to stay here and rot.”  

Micolash breathed deeply, and Maria did not feel the need to put further pressure on him by looking in his direction. Silence lingered, and life’s grip was loosening. She threw up a few times, the body’s last effort to rid her of the poison. 

“I cannot go,” Micolash breathed, once her stomach had settled. “It is a strange feeling. I have no qualms with my death, nor others’, I never have. But it feels cruel to leave you alone here.” 

Lifting her face to meet his stare, those paleblood irises lined with half-moon shadows, Maria spied honesty in his eyes. It hurt too much to hold his gaze, and she turned, hacking up the last of yesterday’s dinner. 

“I am glad you are here, then,” she choked out, exhaustion forcing the words out of her before she could stifle them. She could not meet his eyes, staring at where she imagined the words to be on the floor, right in the middle of the pool of her own vomit. 

“You are?” Micolash muttered, tapping anxiously at his knees. Maria couldn’t tell if it was because he was trying to think of a solution, or because he was impatiently waiting for her to die. “I suppose… I am glad I am here too.” 

Maria regretted saying it, for all it was worth - she wasn’t entirely certain if it was even true, only that it felt like something that she was supposed to say. They had, after all, spent far too much time with each other. Worse still, she would die beside him, in a tomb soaked in blood. She would have no last words, no, she’d never thought herself the type for that. What profound thing could she even say, other than a goodbye? In the end, her last words would be to him - not to those she considered herself to truly respect. 

Although, perhaps she did respect Micolash, after all this time. It would have been hard not to, with all the worthless hours they had spent together. Maria looked upward at the blood coated ceiling. It had begun to dry now, too long since Queen Yharnam had come through here. How strange that her city was named after a woman she had never heard of. Stranger still that she belonged to a civilisation that didn’t seem to exist. At least it no longer mattered anymore, none of it - Pthumeru, Queen Yharnam, her mysterious respect for a scholar gone mad. But Maria had never thirsted for answers or knowledge, not the way those that she socialised with did, she could live with a few unanswered questions. If anything, it put her more at peace, knowing that she would never be burdened with the truth. All that was left to do was to drift away. 

Some time - minutes, days, weeks? - a horrified shout sounded somewhere in the distance. Maria tried to ignore it, were it not for a sudden pain in her leg, jolting her back to life. 

It happened gradually, but surely. Her vision returned, her headache faded, and she began to feel her limbs once again. Her first instinct was to assume that it was adrenaline, that she and Micolash were being attacked, that her body only wanted to die on its own terms. It had happened many times before, an exhausted body reawakened by a threat. Gripping her Rakuyo, Maria swung, and an erratic, familiar scream echoed off the walls of the corridor. Micolash gripped an empty blood vial. 

“Old blood?” she breathed, eyes wide, before a sudden flame of rage was lit within her. “You had… old blood? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” 

Micolash stood up, walking several paces backwards to avoid a physical confrontation. He held his hands up, dropping the empty vial to the ground. Maria pointed her Rakuyo at him, still wary. 

“I… I forgot,” he stuttered, “Laurence gave it to me a while ago, I simply kept it in my pocket, I never thought that I would need to use it, I, I don’t even take old blood you know that I only-” 

Maria, with the small amount of mental faculties that she was regaining, made a mental note that she would berate Laurence for all she was worth that he had squandered their meagre blood supply on a scatterbrain like Micolash. 

“You might be silly, Micolash, but you are not that obtuse,” she snapped. “Tell me the truth!” 

“It is the truth!” he yelped, shielding himself from her with his arms. “Please, Maria, I only just realised, there’s no need to-” 

She cut him off with a scowl, shutting her eyes and taking a deep breath. Micolash would never be so fearful had he not been honest - she knew that, at the very least, and lowered her Rakuyo. 

“No matter now, I suppose,” she sighed, although she still simmered. “I am better now. We should leave.” 

Micolash visibly relaxed, a familiar, wide smile spreading across his face. He rushed ahead, although Maria did not miss the tremor in his gait as he moved back to where they came from. Feeling a little bad for pointing her weapon at him, Maria followed cautiously behind, ensuring that he could not see her shaken expression. 

To think that she had laid down and accepted her fate! To think that she had finally given up on the one thing that she knew how to do - protect. She was a shame, a stain upon her fellow prospectors, and she should ought to suffer consequences - although the embarrassment of having her life saved by a fleeting memory belonging to none other than Micolash would have been enough. Maria glowered at the blood-slick cobblestones, silently criticising such cowardly behaviour. 

“Laurence is such a terrible fellow, is he not?” Micolash said, although he sounded terribly proud of his fellow scholar, despite his words. “To entrust a vial of old blood to little old me! You must be fuming, Maria.” 

Maria was careful to avoid the stains upon the walls. She would not be so lucky next time. 

“I’m not willing to get in between the two of you,” she answered, rolling out an ache in her shoulder. “What Laurence chooses to do with his supply is up to him. You’re the one who lives with him, after all.” 

Maria would be lying if she said that she did not suspect that there was something more, something perhaps a bit unseemly between her two choice scholars. While she had never taken any issue with it - for how could she throw stones from her glass house? - she thought that, perhaps, there was not so much of a neat divide between their work and their lives as they liked to pretend. If Laurence was giving out blood vials to his roommate, then that was his own business - but she would have to chase him up on making back the missing supply. 

Suddenly remembering her own manners, Maria stopped, bowing her head despite the fact that Micolash could not see her. 

“I would like to thank you, Micolash,” she said, hoping that he did not turn back to look her in the eye. She did not wish to see a kindness that did not belong in that gaze. “I would have died back there, were it not for your… quick thinking.” 

Micolash barked a laugh and spun, pointing an uncannily long finger at Maria. Thankfully, any emotion either of them had elicited from each other prior had since faded. 

“Oh my!” he giggled, waggling his finger. “Gratitude from the Lady Maria! I ought to sketch this moment now, and frame it forever on my wall.” 

Careful not to dignify his taunts with an answer, Maria cracked a small smile and pushed ahead, pulling her map from her pocket. Where she recalled the hallway leading to Queen Yharnam’s throne room to be, she sketched the last few turns and the great chamber that she, unsurprisingly, could hardly remember. With great effort - and far too many mocking pointers from her charge - the small amount of untrodden territory was finally mapped out, albeit messily in the dim light.

To what was likely both of their surprises, the journey home was mostly silent and uneventful as they managed their way out of the labyrinth, staggering up the stairs, feet worn from exhaustion. Outside, morning had dawned, and clouds settled over Yharnam, and rain poured from the heavens. 

Maria could not deny being the slightest bit disappointed, for what she had imagined was the sun, beaming down upon them as they emerged from the tunnels, as if some greater force were welcoming them back into the world of the sane. And yet, stumbling forward, Maria lay down in the grass, and Micolash sat by her, feeling the cool rain beat down upon them. 

“You know, Maria, I’m not so fond of being this soggy,” Micolash complained after the first minute. She sat up and shot him a dirty glare, one that didn’t particularly need words, and he quickly shut up, staring up at the cloudy sky. 

It felt strange, once again, to be alive, to feel concepts of cold and wet, to no longer exist within the dampness of a dungeon. Death had gripped Maria for less than an hour or two, and yet, she’d grown used to it, sunk into it, as natural as ever. Perhaps the sickness that Micolash had spoken of, the one he had suffered from since birth, was not so far off as she had initially suspected. 

But these were not thoughts for one who rejoiced in being alive. For now, Maria shunned those worries, pushed them from her mind, and felt the morning rain on her cheeks. If death were to take her, it could wait until she was ready to welcome it again. 

An hour later, when the rain had stopped and the sun peeked out from beyond the clouds, the two returned to Byrgenwerth, surprised that either of them could stand after their harrowing night. Micolash, re-energised by only a comfortable chair and a long smoke, got to explaining his findings, setting Byrgenwerth abuzz with talk of the mysterious Pthumeru. Maria, after what might have been an entire day of bed rest, took up position as a witness, as confirmation to a mad scholar’s claims. She did not mind, in the coming years, that they never spoke of the night again - as far as she was concerned, it was entirely for the better. 

Chapter Text

The Mensis scholars had a haunted look to them, their eyes vacant, as if blindfolded, like there was no point in seeing. It reminded Maria of how Micolash had looked long ago, crouched over his work, when she couldn’t tell if it was smoke that clouded his vision, or if it was simply his thoughts standing in the way. As she would have expected from a man like him, he had sculpted every one of his students the same way - a lecture hall full of Micolashes, of men and women who’d been convinced to lose their minds, had eagerly chased after insanity like it were a prize to be won. 

That had been why she hadn’t been sad when Laurence had come to her to tell her that Micolash had left the Healing Church and swore that he would never come back, that his studies had twisted themselves into the very beasts they were supposed to have helped him ascend beyond. The years of defending scholars down in the tunnels below Yharnam had passed for Maria, but Micolash had never really been a quiet figure within Byrgenwerth, nor had he been when he’d migrated to the Healing Church. If she did not hear of Mensis and its studies from the man himself, bragging to large swathes of the Choir about his breakthroughs, she could still hear him howling in glee or anguish every now and then, even from several floors up. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been surprised when she’d heard the news - she was certain most of his ‘discoveries’ were the result of worse experimentation than she had seen conducted upon her own patients. Laurence was a man willing to let most evils go, but even he had a line drawn somewhere, although it seemed to spike erratically at points, allowing less for some, and more for others. Maria had seen Micolash’s eventual descent coming since they were mere youths, she an apprentice and he a student. He’d certainly been more stable, more becoming, back then, but there was still that itch at the back of his mind, one that he’d never been able to reach, the one that had eventually let him spiral into whatever he was now. It was a feeling he had attempted to describe on numerous occasions, as if he almost relished the idea of going mad, and one that if Maria looked hard enough at him, she could feel, too. Laurence, of course, no matter what she said, dismissed her opinion for long enough that, by the time he acknowledged it, the situation had been too much for him to ignore - and a ‘further schism’, as he had referred to it, occurred, although Maria would have probably equated the matter to more of a spat, a cat fight, than a legitimate disagreement, like that at Byrgenwerth. 

She had taken her side back then, as she had before - only a fool would have sided with Mensis, although, to Micolash’s credit, he certainly knew a lot of them. But, alas, here she was, back amongst an old acquaintance’s studies and his increasing following, looking for answers. Maria thought she’d learned that lesson long ago. 

The Mensis scholars moved as clockwork, filing out of the mahogany-panelled room in near silence, too taken by their new thoughts and ideas. For a building that Maria thought had been built in a pinch, it was surprisingly classy, elegant, even. Micolash, as she had quickly learned, had begun hiring hunters here and there to kidnap civilians for the experiments - nothing that he hadn’t done before, so Maria couldn’t be bothered feigning shock nor concern. Perhaps one of the experiments had been an architect, and constructing the lecture building had been their personal torture. It wasn’t particularly far-fetched to imagine Micolash and his students crowded around a frightened Yharnamite, demanding physically impossible additions to their brand new lecture hall. 

Amongst the silence, a few of the scholars spoke - but it felt less like speech, and more like a steady hum, largely incomprehensible to the ear and to the mind. Much of Micolash’s lecture had been the same - Maria had spent most of it in a bored daze, only to be broken from it by a splitting pain between her temples and a vision streaked with scarlet. Micolash’s words frequently went from intelligible to garbled, accompanied by the unfortunate rhythm of a pounding heartbeat and a terrible ringing. It felt as if something bound her from probing any further into such matters, from deciphering the words and blood-sickened truths that the headmaster spoke. Part of Maria - base, human curiosity, no doubt - struggled against her binds, but another part embraced her mind’s own restraints. If it was her sanity that deafened her ears to Micolash’s words, then so be it. Curiosity and intrigue, as she had so regretfully learned, did not always lead to greatness. A shame, then, that not a single scholar she had met had ever learned that lesson. 

Maria remained sat in her chair, a metal thing that seemed to delight in her discomfort, feeling an awful lot like a misbehaving child that had been ordered to stay back after class. She had never attended school in the traditional sense, having been chosen for an elite education at Cainhurst to prepare her for knighthood - and when she’d returned to a place of learning in later years, it had only been as an apprentice bodyguard. Lecture halls such as these felt open, exposed - like a thousand eyes had been inlaid within the walls to ensure her every move. 

“You seem distressed,” Micolash’s voice had warped over the years she’d been blessed with his absence. He still sung his words, more of a dramatist than he’d ever been, a stage performer in this mockery of a musical, but the song was guttural now, sinister. He still did not smell like a beast, but he spoke like one. “Alas, I suppose I’m not terribly surprised. Even my best pupils don’t tend to enjoy this sorry business all that much, not anymore.” 

Micolash did not turn from the chalkboard as he spoke, gesturing to the wall with each inflection in his voice. Strangely, Maria felt as if he saw her, saw her through eyes that he kept on the back of his head - eyes on his mind, as they had intended to do at Byrgenwerth. 

“You spoke cryptically, and many of the words I could not make out at all,” she said, standing and approaching his desk. Long ago, she would have spoken it exasperatedly, rolling her eyes and demanding that he get on with it, but times had changed since then, and instinct reminded her that she would do better to stay guarded against a man she no longer knew. “If your own students can no longer derive enjoyment from your teachings, I would not find myself shocked.” 

A laugh rumbled deep within the headmaster’s throat, and he whirled around, robes fanning out behind him. Even after all these years, he still sported the garb of his alma mater, his aged Byrgenwerth robes. The clothes of the healing church had never particularly suited him, leaving him stiff and starched, suitably restrained from what he deemed true scholarship. While mad scholars had been a frequent occurrence at the university, the formality of the Healing Church’s proceedings had always looked absurd on Micolash. It was better for all of them that he had been freed from such a matter. 

He tapped his fingers - which had devolved more into spindly claws, needles with bitten off nails at the ends - on a strange cage that sat on his desk. Half the size of his own person, it could have possibly functioned as a bird cage, except there seemed to be a large hole near the base, and no other way to let an animal in or out. 

“What is that?” Maria asked, reaching out to run a finger along the hexagonal top of the cage. Micolash jerked his hand away from it, as if he’d been scalded, and directed his attention to the small lamp nestled comfortably amongst the stacks of paper that stood tall upon his desk. 

“I’ve been calling it the Mensis cage,” he answered, ignoring her question as he lit up the lamp and heated the contents of his pipe over it. “Pretty thing, yes?” 

Maria waved smoke from her face, scrunching her nose up from the stench. Years ago, she had been used to it, comfortable with opening the door to the scholar’s office and being hit by a wall of smoke, barely batting an eye - but now, the smell of smoke and an old opium pipe was an unfamiliar, far off memory. None of the others at the Healing Church had been partial to opiates the way that Micolash had, preferring the blood vials of their own creation. When he had departed, the dream-smell had too, and Maria had, at first, relished the silence where it had once been deafening. Now that it was back, it woke something up, a beast deep inside her, one that seemed to grieve the same way that it had when she’d returned to Cainhurst after the slaughter. It had snowed on that day, as it had every day after, and bloodlickers had stalked the grounds, feeding upon the bodies of the dead. Her friends, her family, her enemies, all torn to pieces by Logarius and his executioners, mauled until the halls ran red with vileblood. She had been the only survivor. She had shunned the Cainhurst bloodline long ago, swore off her bloodtinge, pronounced herself so disgusted by all such matters that she would never return, and yet, when they had all been murdered, she had grieved. She had wept over the bodies of women she had despised, and it hadn’t even mattered that while they still lived, she would have never spared them a word. 

It was not the same feeling, with Micolash, but as he brought the pipe to his lips and breathed, a pang struck her heart, a longing for something. Dreaded nostalgia crept up her back and whispered in her ear, directing its efforts towards him, towards the inhalation of a sickening dream. It took all of her effort to not finally cave, after all these years, and ask him if she could try the pipe. 

She must have been silent for long enough to cause notice, because Micolash seemed intent on studying her features through the vapours, squinting like she was some sort of puzzle he couldn’t figure out. 

“Hmm. You have a…” he tapped his left cheek expectantly. When Maria touched her own, her fingers came away with blood, and when she wiped her eyes, more red smeared across her hands. Blood tears. Trying to maintain her expression, she looked back up at Micolash, whose smile stretched his own dried out skin as he continued. “Not to worry, not to worry. It is common, among those who cannot see. The brain, it cannot understand, not without the eyes. It tends to… bleed. But you will be all right, dearest Maria, not to fear, not to fear, the thing to fear will come later, still.” 

Laurence, bless the poor soul, had begged her not to go, had warned Maria of what the school of Mensis had done when they had still been associates of the Healing Church, that since, their experiments had surely only deteriorated into true barbarity. To prove a point, he’d even gone so far as to dig out some old research notes Micolash had left behind, but when they’d sat down to read it, neither Laurence nor Maria had been able to comprehend the garbled letters on the pages, yet another fault of their intact sanities - although, when it came to either of them, sanity was perhaps not the right word. Not with one slowly morphing into a beast, slave to the miracle he had orchestrated, and the other pleading for forgiveness at any cost, ravaged by her own guilt and grief. 

“Well, regardless,” Maria finally managed to cough out, moving on as gracelessly as possible, “You read my letter, Micolash. May we discuss my request?” 

Her segue, it seemed, did not go as unnoticed as she had hoped from a man half-absent from his body. Micolash eyed her suspiciously, raising his eyebrows - thin hairs nestled on his brow that had been picked and prodded at until half had stopped growing back. A few more years, and he would likely be rid of them - an unflattering look on an already unfortunate face. 

“Yes, yes, Kos…” he muttered, clicking his tongue as he looked around the lecture hall as if to check that no one else was there. “Some of my students say that she goes by Kosm, as revealed to them by the Mother herself. Say, Maria - you would know, wouldn’t you? You met her in person, after all.” 

Micolash’s lips curled up into a smile, locking his eyes with hers. With any other, as was so common with scholars, Maria often assumed that they brought up the fishing hamlet for the express purpose of understanding those greater than themselves, characteristic scholarly insensitivity - but with Micolash, that sinister smile told all.

Maria didn’t bother with an answer - Micolash had made his point, and she would not go so far as to desecrate her dignity even further with a response. He had been one of the many that had basked in the spoils of her sins, and yet unlike the others, he never stopped to appreciate her sacrifice, nor the sacrifices that the poor fisherfolk of that village had made on that fateful day. From then on, it was as if he had always been that way - as research into the Great Ones deepened, so did his disregard for life. Where Maria had been taught to value every life her blade struck down, he had seemingly been told that they were mere vessels for a greater purpose, a purpose that he would achieve. There had been ghosts of it at Byrgenwerth, but it still left Maria wondering, wondering who had taught him how to be so, or if it was simply how he had been born, his psyche and morality shattered from his first breath. She tried to remember that, long ago, things had not been this way - that he had been an oddity, regarded even as mad by his peers, but that he had still been a man beneath it all - but things had changed since then. Would she have been surprised if he was no longer a man, but something else? 

“Anyway, the Mensis Ritual is far beyond you, Maria,” Micolash grumbled, lifting the Mensis cage off his desk with great difficulty and placing it on the floor where he seemed to be making sure she could not reach it. “I was hoping that maybe you had gained some semblance of insight from your experiences with the Choir, but as it seems, the Healing Church is as thoughtless now as they have always been. Laurence, Ludwig, Gehrman. Are they well? Are they alive? ” 

With those last words, he jerked his gaze towards her, almost hoping that one of them was dead, that it would let unfortunate memories resurface once again. Responding with a flat gaze, Maria tried her hardest to busy herself with some semblance of regular small talk, if that was a possibility amongst them. They had frequently made a mockery of it in their youths, sardonic comments on the weather when they’d been thirty feet beneath the ground, idle gossip that had been recycled through Byrgenwerth a thousand times - but they were adults now, they had grown into their own lives. 

“Yes, they are all well. Laurence is…” she started, and realising that there was no good news pertaining to the Vicar, nor Gehrman and Ludwig, swallowed the sentence as it rose in her throat. “How is Caryll?”

Micolash picked at an uneven nail, excitement bursting beneath his skin. Maria saw the answer before she heard it. 

“Dead.” 

It wasn’t a shock, nor was it any cause for grief or tears - when your hand was dealt by forces beyond recognition, death followed you, a second shadow trailing along the ground that you stood on. Cainhurst had been sudden, a massacre in what felt like moments, but since, many lives had passed on in Maria’s company. More would fall as she sat by their bedside, even more would fall in greater Yharnam. Oftentimes it barely seemed worth it to mourn, to shed even a tear, when loss sickened the streets she wandered. Micolash certainly wasn’t grieving Caryll, or lamenting the loss of Rom - at least, not in a traditional sense. It was a shame that the pain in either of their hearts refused to cease. It wasn’t a good look on either of them. 

“I hadn’t heard,” Maria muttered, concealing her expression with a bow of the head. “Was it peaceful?” 

A fruitless question. No death was peaceful anymore, not these days. 

“Oh, no one came to tell you yet…” Micolash’s voice seemed to simmer, bordering on a line of ecstasy. He leaned over the desk, leering at Maria, running his tongue along the jagged edges of his chipped, yellowing teeth. “That’s a shock. The Choir were all over it, all over what happened to her. Perhaps they wanted to keep it a secret, a secret, a secret from lowly charity workers like you.”

His old habit of emphasising his words with his mouth had only worsened, visceral lips, teeth, tongue, smiles and bared teeth as he spoke, his very being quivering. He rejoiced in mocking her, it brought him a high more than any pill or paste or smoke could. Tears shone in his eyes, and he brought the pipe to his lips again to quell them before Maria could discern their source. 

“Was it the runes?” she asked, taking a step backwards, to which he wiggled his head, flashing his eyes at her, placing his pipe back down. 

A laugh whined from the back of Micolash’s throat, slowly devolving into an erratic cackle, shoulders shaking as he bent over the desk, his head pressed to the newly varnished oak.

“Oh, oh, yes, it was!” he wheezed, snapping his body upright, clutching his hands at his face the way a man would when he turned to beast. Maria’s hand instinctively went to her Evelyn, gripping it in the holster. 

She’d sworn off that gun. She’d sworn off her Rakuyo, she’d tossed it down that well, but the Evelyn was likely the last of its kind. Logarius and his executioners had discarded, likely destroyed, the Knights' weaponry, no doubt. But the fight - not the hunt, never the hunt - was part of her, it thrummed in her veins, and a weapon was more like a limb than a tool. Even if the Rakuyo, her core, the thing that had inhabited the place where a heart had grown within her, could be discarded, the Evelyn was hauntingly familiar. The Rakuyo was her soul, but her soul had been abandoned long ago - Cainhurst had been massacred, ripped from her before she’d known its value. The Evelyn stayed at her hip, even as she tended to patients that she took care of as repayment for violence, as a vow to never fight again. But it itched in her, lay dormant in her instincts, in the animal, the beast, the Vileblood that she was. A monster’s blood lived in her, and, one day, she would become the violent creature that she had come from. 

“Ooh!” Micolash yelped, dropping his hands down to his chest, where they were supposed to form fists. “Evelyn! I haven’t seen you wield her, in, well…” 

That tell-tale smile again. Maria wondered if now would be a good time to shoot. 

“Stop with the theatrics,” she snapped, hand firmly on the weapon. “Speak plainly, and I mean it. Caryll is dead, yes, but I demand to know - might you grant me audience with Kos?” 

Micolash’s expression fell, his arms falling to his sides like a doll, limp as if he had suddenly gone dead standing upright. His mouth curled into something between a sneer and a scowl. 

“Oh, try enough times and you’ll come up on heads,” he spat. “But you wouldn’t live to tell the tale. You’d end up like old Caryll. Blood everywhere when they found her! Eyes, mouth, nose, splattered all over her papers! Halfway through a rune. Looked terribly good too, shame she never finished it. And then the Choir nipped up her workshop tool, just like that! Now, it’ll end up with one of your hunters, thrown down a ditch. Decades of work, gone in an instant.” 

He let a chuckle rumble in this throat, waving his hands slowly through the air, as if mapping out something invisible, or perhaps beckoning something. The gestures ran smoothly, slowly, resembling peace, but peace had nothing to do with these times, and neither did he. Maria lingered on the thought of a bloodied Caryll, slumped atop the work she had dedicated her life to, before she discarded it from her mind. 

“Speaking to Kos,” she chose to ask, instead, “You say it would kill me?” 

Micolash nodded, shutting his eyes. If Maria hadn’t been mistaken, she would’ve said that he seemed almost sad for her. 

“It hurts,” he whispered, although he did not seem bothered by his alleged pain, rounding the desk with a spring in his step. “When they talk to me - oh, it hurts. My mind is almost fit to burst, it cannot know the things I understand, the things they tell me. Oh, you, your brain would pop! A sight that would be.” 

Maria, secretly, thought that he looked as if his brain had popped, eyes blown wide with glee. She stowed the remark away for another time, when she didn’t have so much depending on the matter. 

“That’s it, then?” she said, gnawing on her lower lip. “No, it can’t. Please, Micolash, there must be a way - anything at all.” 

Micolash’s gaze snapped back to hers once again, and this time, he furrowed his brows, as if he were trying to work something out - reaching into her mind and turning the cogs himself, slotting a meaning into place that even Maria herself did not wish to find. Silence hung between them, a rotting corpse that made the air stink of something she could not put her finger on. 

Finally, Micolash’s voice ripped through the silence. 

“You’re going to kill yourself, aren’t you?” he spoke, staring absently at her forehead. His tone was suddenly lucid, lacking his sing-song quality, lacking the sound of Micolash. Maria froze where she stood, unsure whether who she was talking to was even him. 

“Huh?”

“That’s why you came here. That’s why you don’t care what it will take,” he said. Despite Maria’s attempts to make eye contact, he never moved his stare from her forehead, right where her mind would be. As if he had seen the truth, her truth, with the eyes on his brains, long before she could ever figure it out. “You’ll die anyway.”

Suicide had been a pretty word among the Choir, and a prettier one at Cainhurst. The notion of the tortured soul, so beaten down by every torment they had sustained throughout their life, was a notion favoured by psychotic scholars and accursed nobles. To the Choir, killing oneself was a scholar’s last hurrah, their last message to the Great Ones, their last chance at ascension - most of the suicides Maria had observed amongst her colleagues were elaborate rituals to attempt ascension, usually carried out by those who had nothing left to lose. For a Vileblood, death was art - neatly slit wrists in an ornate bathtub, a pale body in bed with a purposefully set bottle of sedatives on the bedside, other methods that Maria had heard spoken of that were apparently too horrifying to even speak aloud. The notion of a tortured noble was popular in greater Yharnam, no doubt thanks to the melodramatic ways of Maria’s distant relatives. Oftentimes, it was as if they were born for a performance, lived for a performance, died for a performance. Even the Executioners’ slaughter was theatrical, sudden and bloody and wet. Their memories had lived on in the tragedies they enacted as they died - perhaps this was why Maria had never felt at home in Cainhurst. Now that her own suicide was dawning upon her, it had none of the dramatics she had thought it would - it was, instead, a lonely woman who refused to age past her twenties, lingering in an unpleasant past that drove her to an unceremonious, insignificant death. None would mourn her, none would fall dramatically to their knees and weep beside her corpse, and this was preferable. 

“I wanted to apologise,” she finally decided to say. “Perhaps it would alleviate… something or other. At the very least, grant me closure.” 

Micolash stared at her forehead for a moment longer, then snapped himself back by the waist, shrieking and writhing with laughter. Maria took several steps back this time, less fearful of the beast, and more terrified of the man. 

“Oh, a class act, a class act indeed!” he cackled, although if Maria closed her eyes, she would have thought it would have sounded like a wail. “Apologise to a god! Never thought you this ambitious, Maria. Perhaps you would be at home here!” 

Maria clamped her teeth down on her lip, damning herself for ever hallucinating lucidity in those eyes. She wondered if it would have been a better decision to stay home, to take a long drink of wine and end herself there. Better that than withstand all of this hassle, playing silly games with a man who pretended to know what he was doing. For a fleeting moment, her eyes flitted to the door - but she was in far too deep to be having second thoughts. Let him say what he wants, do what he wants. She would end up dead anyway. 

“Don’t lump me in with you and your lunatics,” she snapped, regaining enough confidence to step forward once again. “A man’s daughter is murdered, and he wishes to avenge her death. A woman lies on her deathbed, and wishes to reconcile with the brother who hates her. You needn’t bat an eye at either of those matters, but when I wish to apologise for my misdeeds, you are suddenly appalled?” 

“Misdeeds?” Micolash spat, the vowels nearly squeaking in his throat. “ Misdeeds? Dear Maria, you deal with the cosmos now. You deal with that which you could not hope to comprehend. Beg and pray as you will, but you do not have what your ‘lunatics’ do. You are of a different sort of stock.” 

Erupting into laughter again, Micolash turned from Maria, leaving himself open, letting her bubble in frustration and rage. In what felt more like a movement of instinct than of thought, Maria drew close, and grabbed him by the collar, whirling him around and pulling him upward to face her proper, eyes burning into his soul. She had not come so far to be ridiculed and ignored. Whatever happened, she would find the answer that she was looking for. 

“Ten years ago, I would have agreed with you,” she growled. “But we are beyond that now, far beyond. Gods live among us, they watch us, they judge our every move. They bestow hope and despair, reward and punishment, laughter and anguish. If you are so special as to commune with these creatures in life, then I shall commune with them in death, no matter how unequipped you think me to be.” 

Micolash stared back, eyes wide with something between fear and glee. When he breathed, it heaved and rattled through his body. 

“You really have changed,” he said, but it came from the back of his throat and sounded more like a mumble. The emotion in his voice was impossible to place. 

“I had no choice,” Maria huffed, shoving him from her, trying to forget the stink of his breath. Micolash toppled backwards, nearly colliding with the desk. In his state, which had become more skeletal in the years she had not seen him, the sturdy table looked as if it would be able to snap him. 

“So it seems,” he wheezed, trying to maintain his composure as he staggered to his feet, hanging onto his desk for stability. “The blood has sickened you all. It drives Laurence to lunacy, it sends Ludwig and his hunters blood drunk. Only Mother Kos knows what it has done to you .” 

Maria held his gaze, unsure whether he meant it figuratively or literally. 

“Insane man,” she muttered, shaking her head and shutting her eyes. Micolash’s face lit up, clasping his hands together in mock delight. 

“There it is!” he gasped. “After all these years.” 

The meaning was clear, and Maria, for once, felt no shame when the accusation fell from his lips. She had prided herself in the past, as if she were somehow above her peers, for not denigrating her colleague so, for not acknowledging his addled state of mind - as if that would ever change the truth as it stood before her now - but this time, no pity nor sympathy rose within her as she set her gaze upon his. 

“I’d thought you were different,” Micolash sighed, his posture slumping. “That you thought me to be the genius you know I am.”

Maria bared her teeth in something between a laugh and a growl, something in her chest curling in on herself. She hoped that it was rage. 

Cainhurst had been elegant and melancholic, and when they fought, Maria had felt it was more of a dance than a slaughter, which, for a long time, it had been. To fight as a Vileblood was not to fight to protect, but to fight to perform, a show of power from untouchable nobles. It was rare that the others ever travelled into Yharnam, but should they ever have deigned to do so, they wore their Chikages slung around their waists and wore the Cainhurst helm upon their visages, so that every Yharnamite might know that they were not the dainty ladies of further west, but warriors forged in destruction. 

Things had never been this way for Maria. The fight was not a dance, not a drumbeat, but ruthless and bloody. She and her fellows did not need to show that they could hunt, for they were the hunt, adrenaline and murder in their veins, anger bleeding from their skin. 

Once upon a time, she would have been ashamed - but with Micolash, shame was not in the question. Whatever undignified territory she could tread upon, he would always tread upon worse. She hoped that it was rage. 

“Genius is worth nothing without sanity,” she spat, “What happened to Master Willem? What happened to Rom?” 

She had only dared utter it in writing before, for to watch his face contort was both a pleasure and a cruelty. Where a controlled, measured response had once been was a startled stumble and a dark growl from the back of Micolash’s throat. 

“Don’t you dare speak to me about Rom,” he snarled, clutching the edge of his desk until his knuckles turned white. 

“So that you might ignore the atrocities you have committed in her name?” Maria scoffed, looking down upon his pathetic figure, skeleton curled around oak. In recent years he had become so small, so haggard, that he could have resembled the very thing she wished to forget. The orphan, sobbing and gangly, flashed upon her mind, before she brought herself back to the present, eyes boring into a horrifying lookalike. “You claim to be sane, yet you run from the past like a madman.” 

Guilt shot through her like a bolt, and Maria chose not to linger upon it for any longer. 

“Is that what you think of me?” Micolash hissed, skirting around his desk and gripping the back of his chair. “Flailing and screaming, scorched by my memories, a wailing wretch damned for eternity?” 

His voice rose with each word as he waved about his hands, miming as he spoke. 

“I can be who you want me to be, Maria,” he laughed, his shoulders shaking in such a fashion that she could not tell whether he wept or cackled. “I have been for years! Oh, great Micolash the insane, driven mad by all that is holy - I have been what they said I would become, but when shall you?”  

He leaned over his desk at her, leering and giggling and writhing about. A shiver spread across Maria, slow and taunting, agonising - just like him.

“I shall not become you!” she shouted, shaking off the feeling. “I shall die before I become you, rejoicing in my own insanity!” 

As she spoke, the world seemed to silence itself, as if there had been some noise in the background she hadn’t fully noticed, as if the erratic hum of the evil village in which she stood had suddenly come to a halt, all eyes fixated exactly on this lecture hall, on these words, between these two people who no longer knew each other. 

Micolash hung his head, eyes trained on his desk. When Maria strained her eyes to get a better look at his expression, the dim glow in his eyes was absent, only leaving the haunted grey. Maria tried her hardest to ignore the feeling of eyes on her back, if only because she feared that they were somehow his. 

“I don’t enjoy the insanity, Maria,” he said, so plainly that it made her jump. His words were not that of the Micolash she had known for much of her life, the scholar who had seen the cosmos and become so enticed, that he should give everything up for it, no, they were the words of a man. A man who had, to his own mind, committed so many transgressions, and yet none at all. “You should know that, knowing me all those years. Who could enjoy losing their mind?” 

The lucidity made her sick, too see him like this, to see him so honestly when he had seemingly been this way since birth. What could happen to a man, to have him turn out so terrible? 

“The experiments. The inventions,” she started, gesturing wildly. “Mother Kos, Micolash, the very village in which we stand is a testament to your lunacy! Do you truly think a man with any presence of mind could do what you have?” 

“Indeed, indeed,” Micolash hummed. His head snapped up as he looked about the room, as if he were speaking to a group and not one person, and Maria remembered, with considerable shock, that he was a teacher. “A clever mind, yours - a shame that you refuse to use it for any true accomplishment. 

Maria tried her hardest to ignore the jibe, as if he hadn’t been insulting her from the moment she had stepped into this building. For all the effort she had partaken in to make it here, she had seemingly nothing to show for it. Things were ending up that way more and more these days, it seemed. 

“But yes,” Micolash continued, pacing back and forth. “That is the cruelty of it all, is it not? I cannot go back, not now, not ever - the Great Ones beckon me, and I am helpless against their call.” His eyes fell to the ground so that Maria could not see them. “I tore down all I had for them.” 

Maria furrowed her brows and took another step forward. 

“Say that all you wish, but the reality remains the same. You have bound yourself to these matters of your own volition.” 

“No, truly, where would I go?” Micolash asked, barely holding back his laughter. “To Byrgenwerth? Hah! I should die before I speak to Willem again, unless it is to condemn him for what he did to Rom.” 

When he spoke her name, his voice buckled in on itself, as if he could not bear the thought of the child. Maria had not witnessed the event herself, but the thought of an infant, barely able to speak, sobbing as she became a monster, stirred something horrifying in her chest, as if the sinews of her heart were tearing themselves apart to not think about it for any longer.

Micolash, seemingly having collected himself, began again, breathing deeply.

“And the Healing Church? Well, I doubt that I would have the chance to speak to anyone again. Not before Laurence would have me slaughtered. Yahar’gul should be the only place that would take me now.” 

There was a sadness in his words, one that Maria pointedly disliked. It was better, then, that they could not meet each other’s eyes, so that she could at least attempt to dial back on the matter. 

“Vicar Laurence does not hate you so much as you think, Micolash. If he truly did, he would have had you killed long before he demanded your departure,” she promised, trying to sound tender. It did not work; kindness had never been a good fit on her, for even as she had stood by the deathbeds of tortured patients, she had never been sweet. She was a murderer at heart, and the gods knew that. 

“Even if that were true, it would not matter,” Micolash sighed, slumping into his chair. “You are right, after all, that I am imprisoned in this village now, that I will remain here even at the end of the end. The ritual is all that I have.” 

Maria knew that, at the end of the end, as he so poetically said, he was right. If the absurd obscurity of Yahar’gul wasn’t one thing, his students were another, and the wounds he had left upon Yharnam were far too fresh to warrant his return. 

“That’s not true, Micolash, and you very well know that!” Maria spun, striding up to his desk and slamming her hands down upon it. “What of my atrocities, the acts I have repented for? Why could you not do the same?” 

Micolash threw his head back in laughter, as if her words were a joke told on a sunny day after they’d spent the night in the tomb of the gods, back when she’d still had some semblance of a sense of humour. 

“Oh! No, Maria, I could never stoop to do as you do,” he cackled, his hands clutched to his chest until he could compose himself enough to speak again. “No, you shun your curiosity, you blind yourself to the cosmos. You fear only to look up, out of your own twisted shame, out of the fear that you might face the god you desecrated.” 

Maria stumbled backwards, if only because she could no longer bear the insults. How many times would she face justice, face guilt, how many times would she have to remember? She thought, for a moment, that she should bring something terrible up from his past, as if that would soften the blow, but Rom felt forbidden, as if she were doing the child an injustice, and not Micolash. 

Morality did her no good in this world, but she insisted upon it anyway. In her younger years, Maria had wished that her heart would leave her, that she would become the blade that she had always strived to be, and yet it refused to, it fixed itself within her chest and did not let go. Once again, she regarded it with sorrow, and wished for it to leave once again. 

“But you still regret your actions?” she asked, folding her arms. Micolash lifted a finger to his chin in an abominably pretentious way, and Maria had to force herself not to scoff. 

“Yahar’gul has been my saving grace in that it has opened me to insights that my own feeble mind could never have conceived,” he said, rocking back and forth in thought. “So no - I do not find myself plagued by your wretched guilt, I need not pay penance for my sins.” 

Maria frowned once again, stepping forward. 

“Then why should you hate your own madness, if it has granted you such knowledge?” she asked. “Was that not all you pursued when we were young?” 

Thoughts of a young Micolash, crouched over textbooks and smoking until his lungs choked, would have sprung to mind had they not immediately been replaced by the way Micolash’s head snapped up to gaze into her soul, grey eyes staring into green with a horrified ecstasy that could not be matched even by the most tortured creature upon the soil she walked. With a heaving breath, his words were said with much effort. 

“I did not know that it would hurt so much.” 

Silence fell, lingering for far longer than either of them would have liked to admit. Micolash’s gaze fell to his desk, and Maria turned, hopping upon the wood with her back to him. She swung her legs like a child, and wondered if they had met in another life, whether things would have ended in such a way. How could one save a man who knew that he was doomed? And how could one save a woman who thought the same? 

Lunacy, beasthood, was not wide eyes and maniacal smiles, no, it was something far more sinister - for who could be more insane than those that had cast down everything, given up all that they had owned, for just one thing? 

He was lost. And so was she. 

“I cannot, in good faith, help you,” Micolash finally spoke. Had she not known that he was behind her, she would not have known that the voice was his own. “I hope that you realise that, Maria.” 

“You think me weak,” she said, not sure what she could lose or gain from her words. 

“I do.”

Maria turned with a scowl, fighting against every fibre in her being to maintain her composure, to not shield herself from his words. It took all of her willpower only to accept that his words were truth. 

“I’m not,” she settled upon, still unable to stop herself. Micolash nodded silently, his expression unnervingly at peace. 

“I know,” he said. 

“So why?” 

Maria turned again, so that, whatever his answer, she would not have to look him in the eye as he said it. Whether she did this to spare him or herself the pain, she could not tell. 

“Because if I give you what you wish for, you shall die.”

Maria stood this time, turning to him, clutching her hands upon the edge of the desk as he had done before her. Despite all the time, despite the fact she had never truly known him, parts of him lingered within her, as all people did. She did not want to think about what she would give to let them go. 

“I will die anyway!” she yelled, and when tears stung her eyes, she blinked them back frantically. “You know that! You would condemn me to death!” 

Micolash leaned his elbows on the desk, and buried his face in his hands so that she could not see his expression. 

“And yet I hope,” he said, shaking his head. “I hope, and I hope, and I hope, Maria. Oh, how I hate to hope. How I hate to be human.” 

They would do far better if they were gods, she supposed, if they were only more than cruel, childish hope. Perhaps this was why ascension was so sought after, why the Great Ones were so coveted - for if they could move beyond mortal failures and mortal fears, mortal wishes, they could be spared the pain of being human. 

Maria could not grant him any answer that would relieve him of his agony, for hope had tortured her until she had shown her face here. Should there have been anything to say, it would only be that she despised her humanity - or whatever she was that was worse, a monster not-monster, Vileblood - just as much as he, but she could never say such a thing to Micolash. She could not build a bridge that she would be forced to burn. 

“This should be goodbye, then?” she finally choked out. Micolash lifted his head from his hands, and his pallid complexion was streaked with red, as if he had been crying. 

“Yes.” 

She thought for a moment, that she should say that she cared for him before she left, that despite it all, he had left his mark - but the only response she could fathom to that was that if she truly cared for him, she would not kill herself, and she could never promise such a thing. 

“Alright then,” she sighed, brushing off her hands with as much decorum as she could muster. “I thank you for your time, and I shall take my leave. Farewell, Micolash.” 

He breathed deeply, refusing to look her in the eye. Maria supposed that it was better that way. 

“Indeed, my friend. Farewell,” he managed, before turning his head entirely, hiding his expression, and Maria, trying to maintain at least some dignity between them, left as promptly as she could. 

That night, she would partake in her own Vileblood until her body was drained. Micolash, as he read the letter in tears, assured himself that he did not care - that she would only be the first of many.

*        *        *

Headmaster Micolash, 

I only write to you now out of respect for what was once a courteous partnership, and for what I can only assume is our shared grief - although I would not be so surprised if you were far beyond earthly guilt by now. Lady Maria, your colleague and what I suppose could be constituted as possibly your only other friend, has recently committed suicide. I begrudgingly part with my deepest condolences - the Healing Church has felt her loss immensely, and I am at least a little bit sure that you shall, too. 

I am aware that she met with you on the day that she passed, and that you discussed matters deeply important to her. If I find out you pulled any kind oF BULLSHIT

[Most of the remainder, save for a mere few closing lines, was written in what Micolash could only describe as an illegible, beastly scrawl. Nevertheless, it was signed with Laurence’s pretentious, elaborate signature - Micolash could only ever assume that he had not cared enough to draft another letter. The final paragraph was near-indecipherable, but far too familiar not to recognise.] 

I hate you. I hate that you killed her, and I hate that I care for you all these years later. I hate that after all this time, I still want what was once so terrible to me back again. I hate that she did this to me, and I hate that you still do, that you squash my heart in your fist and hold it just out of my reach. I hope you grieve her most abhorrently for the rest of your life. 

Yours,

Vicar Laurence

Healing Church