Work Text:
“They say Lady Susan is going away now,” her sister said one night, in the candle-lit dark of the room. “Hellen says her husband has killed himself.”
“Why on earth would Lady Susan’s husband kill himself?” Lira muttered, still busy with the mountain of curls atop her sister’s little head. “Why on earth does Hellen know about this?”
“Hellen’s father hasn't fooled himself into thinking he’s a hunter, so she’s allowed out of the bloody house,” Sarah grumbled, kicking the vanity’s legs with her feet.
“You shouldn’t speak that way, Father might hear you,” Lira said. Their father was just worried about the beasts, that was all. Hellen didn’t have a particularly terrible father, but Lira'd heard he was horribly laissez-faire. Unaware of how unsettled Lira felt, little Sarah continued to kick her feet and fidget relentlessly, and Lira took some comfort in the familiarity of her irritation at this. The news of Lady Susan leaving Yharnam was unsettling, but this wasn’t. She pulled gently on the section of hair she was working on as a warning and the night carried on.
Soon, Sarah would no longer need any help with her hair.
One day, some ten years after that night, she cut it all off. Her blonde curls swirled becomingly about her ears and she didn’t need help putting it all up anymore. Their father and Sarah had shouted about it long into the night, but, as Sarah put it, this was the way ladies wore their hair now, and he would have to put up with it or die.
Lira cried a little as they fought and felt very silly about it. It was just hair, after all. She sat at the old, battered vanity for a long time, their shouts echoing about the little shared room around her.
And then it wasn’t just hair. One night she heard a frantic shuffling sound and felt a burst of cold air on her face, waking her up from a dream about a white dress stained with blood about the middle, approaching her without anyone to wear it. She felt like she was still dreaming as she watched her sister crawl out of the window and disappear.
Frozen in horror, she ran out of bed and towards the large window, and then looked down at the street not so far down below. It was cold, and there her sister was, looking up at her with an expression like grim acceptance.
She gripped the windowsill and leaned over, so far over that she thought she’d tumble out and break her neck on the cobblestones and crush her sister too. Below, her sister put a finger to her lips in a silent shushing gesture and then turned and fled. Lira stared in horror as her sister, dressed in gold, disappeared past the gates and between the towering, suddenly imposing and impossibly twisting buildings.
She stood in the night air, torn between leaving to wake her father or descending after Sarah, turning her head one way and then another in abortive movements, frantic with choice. But the night stretched on, and she did not move from her place at the window; terrified, despising herself, she waited for her sister to come back.
When Sarah did return, the sun was just barely beginning to rise, the skyline above was tinged with red and her hair was disheveled, and her dress wrinkled.
“Don’t start.” Sarah flopped face down onto the bed, but Lira did not turn to her. She stared out at the city and the street below, numb.
“Where did you go?”
Sarah’s head lifted from the pillows, a suspicious note entering her voice. “You mean you’re not angry with me?”
Lira often felt that she was an unkind person, despite her obedience, despite her father’s favor of her for her good behavior. She knew she was, now. “I didn’t wake him, did I?” She knew she’d won over Sarah like this, with her meek acceptance and matronly calm.
The suspicion was gone when next Sarah spoke, her voice was relieved and filled with admiration. “You didn’t,” she sighed, and seemed to roll off the bed and leap to her feet. She came up behind Lira and tossed her arms about her sister’s shoulders. “I went to a party.”
“What sort of a party does not need an invitation and an escort? Or Father’s RSVP?”
“One with blood—”
“Sarah!” She could not contain this cry of horror. Blood?
“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s safe!”
“It is forbidden, it’s…” The realization struck her suddenly, she went to the vanity and sat down heavily. “Blasphemy… It’s criminal. It’s treason.”
Sarah waved her hand flippantly, reaching across to shut the window and coming to sit in her old spot at the old footstool beside the vanity. It was heartbreakingly familiar, though she was much too big now to sit at a footstool and have her hair brushed and braided and pinned up. Of course, there was also much less hair now.
“Oh, Sarah, what have you done?”
“I’ve done something fun! I’ve seen and met new people, even old hunters. They’re so much more fun than Father,” she snickered. “They don’t care about the laws at all. They opened all these easy places for blood and dancing and music, and no one even knows.”
Lira didn’t know what was worse, that she was looking at a girl, her own sister, who had imbibed blood not an hour before, or that the hunters themselves had done this. It was like someone had torn down the cathedrals right before her eyes and painted her little sister in blood all with one, violent swipe of an arm.
“Don’t fret, Lira,” her sister said gently, placing her own hand over Lira’s folded ones. “I’ll take you with me, if you want. You can watch over me and see how simple and safe it all is.”
“The beasts—”
“Superstition. Lies the church created to keep us all docile.”
“They were real, Sarah. Father--”
“Yes, but not anymore.” Sarah leaned in conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a soft whisper. “Why do you think the hunters spend so much time laughing and dancing now, happy and free? Why do you think Father’s so stuck in the past? The beasts are gone, Lira.”
Lira looked into her sister’s bright, hazel eyes and said nothing.
Morning came and so did the rest of the day. She numbly walked past beggars and sellers and ladies shrouded in veils whispering their prayers and found her favorite spot in the grand cathedral and clasped her hands together to pray. Never before had the echoes of blood resounded in the little hall so loudly. The beggars shaking, sweating, the pamphlets pasted about the city, the newspapers detailing the decline in symptoms of the addiction, the crazy men crying about beasts being rounded up and slaughtered, their fur resold to the families that created them for coats and stoles. She glanced down at the fur muff in her lap.
She prayed harder.
The day carried on.
“How were the Watsons?”
“Good. The little ones have shown great improvement.”
The silence was stretching on, but she couldn’t tell if it was just her or if her father sensed something was wrong. He was tapping his tea-spoon against the side of the cup rapidly. The clinking was making her frightened.
“I know, dearest, that your sister’s behavior has been frightening lately. This is nothing but a phase. It won’t last. Don’t let her worry you sleepless.”
“Yes, Father.”
“You know, you’ve shown a great talent for teaching the Watson children.”
“Thank you.” She smiled nervously.
“Mr. Watson is a kind man. It’s been many, many years since his wife died.”
“Yes.”
“Hm… He seemed very taken with you when I saw him the other night. He’s usually so stoic.”
Lira put more sage into the chicken, almost ruthlessly stabbing the thing with her arm, and then found the orange and took a knife to it. For Sarah. She hated oranges. “I’m glad to know he’s happy with my work,” she said noncommittally. “Perhaps some cake with your tea, papa?”
“Yes, there’s a good girl. Lovely. You just tell me if anyone ever catches your eye, little one.”
Lira smiled widely, relieved and ashamed for having been so nervous. “Immediately, papa.”
Lira stared at the ceiling in silence, the moonlight filtering into the room and making patterns of the curtains on the walls and the ceiling. She turned to see her sister watching her from across the room.
“There’s another one next week,” her sister whispered.
“Oh,” she said.
“There’s not enough of it to go around often. They have to smuggle a whole lot. I don’t know where they get it from. The hunters supply it. So, it’s not every night.”
“How do you know when there will be one? Is it every Sunday? Right after service?” She said this sarcastically, bitterly.
Her sister giggled. “No, there are signs. You know the statue of the old beast all strung up in the center of town?”
“Yes?”
“If there’s someone sitting there, dressed in all black, from twelve to two, that’s the sign.”
“Who told you that?”
“My secret, not yours.” Sarah rolled over to face the wall. “Come with me next time.”
“No, and you shouldn’t go either. You’ve gone once. You’ve seen what it’s like, isn’t that enough? You’ll break Father’s heart.”
“You don’t understand. I have to go.”
“Why on earth would you need to go?”
There was no answer.
“Come with me, keep me out of trouble, but don’t tell Father. If you do, I’ll leave, and I’ll never come back.”
Lira felt something cold stretch its fingers over her heart. The vanity’s mirror glowed white in the moonlight; her sister’s back was white with moonlight. It wasn’t usually so pale, so… sickly white. She had their father’s coloring, after all. But now she looked like someone had sucked the blood from her. Lira shuddered at the horrible, terrible thought. She felt sick.
“Don’t go.”
“Then go with me.”
She nearly told her father several times the next day. She stood before him at the door, kissed his cheek, and nearly told him his youngest daughter was imbibing blood in the company of rogue, heretic hunters. She handed him his coat and hat and nearly wept out that she’d seen her little sister go into the night in nothing but a thin dress and a jacket.
She didn’t.
She got dressed in silence, watched her sister’s sleeping form as she piled her hair atop her head and fixed a hat to the pinned curls. Sarah always slept in so late. Now that she was too old for a governess, all their old diligence had fallen aside.
Lira carefully guided three children through their lessons, played them some music to give them some respite from the drills, and then took them on a walk to the park where they could run about, before taking them back home and taking her leave the moment their father returned. She declined his (now that she noticed) excruciatingly kind and gentle offer of a ride back, and she walked home, passing by the same cathedral and standing before it for a moment before going inside.
It was empty now, at the end of the day, and it was just her and a few saints and priests. She took her position and began to pray. Then, halfway through her pleas, she put her hands down and stood. One priest looked up from a tome he was studying and watched her closely as she approached.
“Your Holiness,” she murmured.
“My child?”
“I have a fear of the beasts returning,” she said, half lying and half confessing the truth.
“Put those fears aside. They will only interfere with your worship. The church has taken great action to protect us all from the return of beasts.”
“How?” He looked at her sharply, and she cleared her throat before casting her gaze down again, and saying, less sharply, “I think it’ll ease my fear to have knowledge.”
“Ah, yes. That was a great philosophy of the Byrgenwerth scholars, back in the days of the Hunts. Line your minds with eyes, they’d say. Fear the old blood. But there was another way, without fear, and the church, with their divinely inspired wisdom, took it. They imbibed the blood. As you know.”
She watched the floor resolutely and nodded.
“The people did not appreciate the holiness of the medium, nor the arts of the blood, and abused it. This unholy, heretical abuse birthed beasts, terrible ones, and in order to stop it, the church banned the untrained and appeased the Gods.” He gestured to the vials behind him atop the altars. “Unholy, vile blood is to be feared. Not, as the Byrgenwerth scholars so foolishly thought, the old blood itself.”
“There are no more beasts, then?”
“There will always be fools, blind and evil, who disregard the laws the Gods laid out for their own good.”
She thought back to the rumors of beasts gathered up and slaughtered, their fur shorn and sold. The cathedrals had not dropped a single jewel in finery and ornament since the bans so long ago.
“Is your heart put to ease now, sister?”
“Yes,” she lied, the shine of the jewels in the altar glittering with the light of the setting sun.
“Then you had best hurry home,” he murmured, turning back to the tome before him. “The night still has its fair share of dangers, for men are all beasts.”
She left.
“I’ll come with you,” she whispered that night, knowing that her sister would leave anyway. She battled between screaming for her father and leaving with her. Something cold and restless and aching in her chest wanted to see, wanted to know. Something about the priest’s story didn’t make sense, somehow. She couldn’t lay her finger on it.
Fear the old blood.
“Marvelous! Let’s get you dressed. Oh, you don’t have anything suitable and none of my dresses will fit you. Your figure, so old fashioned, Lira. Oh, well. Maybe no one will mind that you’re dressed like some old governess.”
Lira stared at her sister’s waifish shoulders and the shapeless, formless drop of the dress she pulled from beneath her bed, gold and shining. No, the new fashions, they did not suit her at all.
Crawling out the window was much harder than it seemed from watching her little sister do it. She tried to reach the little stone pillars about the front door, but her legs did not reach. She had to let go of the ledge and catch herself atop the little stone structure abutting the wall, and then from there drop down further. It was exhilarating, terrifying.
She followed as her sister ran down the street, pulling a cloak over her head, ignoring her sister’s scoff at its ugly material. She wished Sarah would have brought hers too.
Sarah took her to a strange little alley that was filled with crates and upturned chairs and barrels. She watched her sister pick her way through them and hesitantly followed her, gasping in terror once or twice as she noticed something shift in the darkness near her feet. They approached a wooden staircase and dropped down it onto a ledge that dropped off into the old sewers. Sarah put her hands on the wall and felt across it carefully, stepping carefully, and Lira followed, terrified of what lay below. There were stories, always, of people who dropped down there and stayed, forever, changed…. The old hunters spoke often of the sewer people, but she’d always assumed it was an aftereffect of the Hunt-madness. The church often had to take old hunters away because of their Hunt-addled minds. But now, suddenly, with the strange noises and chill of the sewers surrounding her, the stories didn’t seem so mad.
“Sarah, be careful.”
“I’ve done this before. Now, quiet; we’re almost there,” she hissed. Lira followed silently, feeling all sorts of wrong and useless. They finally turned a corner into a wider path that made her much less nervous about the drop down below. There were some figures in the shadows here, and she grabbed her sister’s hand in terror.
“Let’s go back. These men are—”
“They’re fine,” Sarah muttered. “They’re not dangerous.”
They continued on, ignoring whispers and chuckles and absolutely ignoring the way Lira was hiccupping with silent sobs. She wished she hadn’t come. She should have told her father, she should have stopped her sister. She couldn’t protect her. She was so stupid.
Then, there was music. It was unlike anything she’d heard before, except on the docks from time to time, when her father had business in other cities. It was discordant, loud, and so… different. She couldn’t follow the melody, nor could she imagine dancing to it, nor a song that would fill it—
Then the singing, many voices, clearer and clearer as they got closer.
They reached a door in the wall, surrounded by glittering coins. Lira kicked at one, watching it glimmer and gleam in her tear-filled gaze. Like a little night sky on the ground, in the sewers of Yharnam.
Her sister leaned into the door’s wood and knocked, then a knock came back. She whispered something and stood back. The door creaked open, and they were let inside into the clamor and noise of something she’d never seen before.
There were people everywhere. The inside was much bigger than she had originally assumed, and it was packed. There was a makeshift bar, like a real pub, and a shelf behind it made of haphazardly thrown together wooden boards and curtains. There were bottles everywhere. They stepped barely into the doorway, and something was crushed beneath her foot. She looked down and gasped. A needle.
She turned to her sister, ready to pull her away and back to the sewers- where it stank but at least it was not filled with the glass and sharp edge of death.
But her sister was not beside her, she was running to a table and tossing down a few coins, gesturing over her shoulder at Lira. Lira did not know what to do or say, now, and stared dumbly as her sister conversed with a man with more beard than face, and a hat pulled low over his brow.
Lira cast her eyes about and noticed an older woman who stood in the back, alone, but as though everyone had given her space by request. Her hair was gray, but one could see the red that it once was in spots, streaking through the hoary silver like blood. Her face was littered with a few scars and her wrinkles looked like crags, but something about her was powerful and elegant. Somehow beautiful. Lira tried not to fidget or hunch her shoulders, but the noise and laughter and the songs were too much, and now this old woman was smirking at her knowingly. “You don’t belong here,” those eyes seemed to say. Lira cast her own eyes about, desperate to look at anything besides those of the old woman.
“Lira, for heaven’s sake, lighten up!” Sarah shouted, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her deeper into the room. “This is what I was talking about. You’re just like Father, and you’ll only ruin my night. Look around, do you see any beasts?”
Lira rushed back to her sister, away from the center of the room, and grabbed her elbow, pleading and hissing whispers into her ears. “Sarah, please. You’ve seen it all twice now, that’s enough. Let’s go back home. This is enough. Please, please, Sarah.” She wrung her hands and felt pain in her throat where sobs had begun to catch.
Sarah smirked. “No, I won’t go back yet. Not till I’ve had some of the drink!”
“It’s not a drink, you stupid girl, it’s blood.”
“Of course, but the slang now is to call it drink. Honestly you need to learn, you’ll make me look an awful saint if you keep moaning like a matron.”
“Moaning?”
“You’re angry now? I thought you were fine… You came with me!”
“I don’t know what I was thinking, I have to go. We have to go.” Lira moaned in distress, her eyes going back to the older woman in fear. The lady smiled wider and lifted her glass in a mocking toast, the red blood inside sloshing up the sides and staining the clear glass with a viscous, horrible layer of red. Lira’s vision blurred for a moment. “Oh, this is blasphemy. We’ll never be forgiven. The Gods—“
“The Gods don’t care. They’re not even Gods. Why should I worry about them if they don’t give last week’s porridge about me?”
Lira nearly sobbed. Sarah shoved past her, making a direct line to the man standing before the crates and crates of vials and bottles. Lira wanted to follow, to make sure she didn’t take any, but she couldn’t. She didn’t dare. The men were so loud and frightening, the noise so terrifying, the atmosphere felt like what a war must have felt like.
She was thrown about as more people entered, shoulders and elbows digging into her stomach and chest, hands at her waist. She felt as though she might be sick, it must have shown on her face because this time when the old lady met her gaze it was with concern. Gone was that glare from before, the satisfied smirk—
Lira looked away sharply and ran to an empty seat on the other side of the room, nearly screaming when a woman brushed by her with the stink of iron and copper clinging to her skirts and hair like a noxious perfume.
There were many women, not just men, dressed in the newer fashions, the looser dresses and higher skirts, the light colors and airy fabrics like clouds about them. Lira watched a woman twirl on the arm of a man in naught but black trousers, her dress without silhouette and her hair cropped short. She blushed and looked away. Everyone was dressed wrong, now that she noticed. She snuck a glance at the old lady and looked away again, blushing. She was wearing men’s garb. Old fashions, but definitely well-worn and tailored. Tailored from back when tailors could get any business, she guessed. She must be quite old, or very, very wealthy.
But if she was wealthy, she wouldn’t be here, in some hovel stinking with blood and the sweat of idiots hungering for a time long past and freedom from laws binding and heavy. She traced the markings in the wood on the table and fought the urge to vomit from the stench.
Someone set a glass on the table. Lira’s head shot up to meet the eyes of the old woman, silvery and so very cold. She gasped and leapt back, nearly falling off the chair.
“What manner of girl are you, to be here, shaking like a leaf in a gale?”
“A… a regular girl?”
“Regular.” The woman leaned back a little, her gaze never shifting, level and cold. “Ever taken blood?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Is that a special friend over there?”
“My sister, not my friend,” she tried to hide her confusion, feeling remarkably small and lost now. Like she was a child, or a pupil lost in a lesson. “I came to watch over her.”
“You’re doing a piss-poor job of it, letting me distract you.” Something wicked was pulling the woman’s mouth into a smile. She was so terrifying, and yet so captivating. Her smile was sharp, her eyes were mean, she seemed to be layering her words with meaning Lira couldn’t understand. Lira looked to her sister, laughing with a group of ladies and … well, it was a group of men and women, and Sarah was gesturing wildly. Lira looked away. Her sister had already done this, there was nothing else she could do but put a stop to it after tonight.
“She’s been here before.”
“I’ve never noticed her. You know, I don’t see the resemblance. You look nothing alike.”
Lira felt some spike of old bitterness at that. She knew they were nothing alike, but it didn’t feel right to hear it so constantly, like it was as apparent as her name. “You and your sister are nothing alike,” and “Your name is Lira,” were as foundational to her existence as her soul.
“Don’t like that? Sorry, I tell the truth.” The woman grinned like a witch. “What’s your name?”
“Li—” she stopped. “Lissa.”
“Li-ar, a liar. That’s what you are,” the woman scoffed. “But fine, if that’s how you want to play. You can just call me Red.”
“What… what manner of woman are you, Red?”
“You know, back when I was a lot redder, if you catch my meaning,” she gestured at her hair as she spoke, “I ran this town.”
Suddenly, Lira realized she was speaking to a crazy old woman. “Oh?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I get enough of that from these ungrateful yelps, running around guzzling blood just to feel something.”
“Is that not what you’re doing?” Lira asked honestly, hoping both not to and to anger the woman. She was very irritating, and that mean streak inside her was coming out now in her presence.
“Nice. There’s that fire I thought I saw.”
“What’s the point of all this anyway?”
“How about,” the old woman said, “you tell me a story? What do you think happened to Yharnam in the golden age of the hunts?”
“The hunters created beasts. They were interlopers who abused the holy mediums and made Yharnam pay.”
“Ooh, good church girl, you are.” Red’s tone was mocking. “Want to hear another story?”
“No,” Lira said firmly. “I want to go home. I shall go collect my sister.”
“Good luck with that.”
Lira watched her sister twirl about with a young woman her age, whose hair was a stark black to her own golden curls, whose skin was blood-sucked pale to Sarah’s golden brown. She sighed.
“The beasts never left,” the woman said, distantly now, almost whispering. “You’re all so blind. You pray every day for eyes, and then you don’t use the ones you have. Look around.” Lira did and looked to the old woman with confusion; she saw nothing unusual. “Look at you, you don’t know what you’re seeing. What do you see when you look at me?”
Lira looked at her. “I see a woman, with red streaks in her gray hair and many scars.”
Red smiled a little sadly, a little cruelly, crossing her muscled arms over her chest and leaning back in her seat. “I thought so.”
“What should I see?”
“I can’t show you; you think it’s ordinary. You’ve become poisoned by this town too. Look at your eyes.” Lira lifted a hand to them with some concern.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Nothing. They’re beautiful.” Red sounded suddenly earnest, kind, almost passionate. “I missed that color. That shape.”
Lira stood, watching the woman carefully. “I should go,” she muttered, hoping now not to anger her.
“If ever you want to see with those eyes of yours, bright eyes, come see me.”
“I will not. I’ll never come back.”
“Your sister agreed to that? Look at her.”
Lira turned to her sister and wondered what she should be seeing. “She’s only been here twice.”
“She’s been here a lot more than two times, silly girl. You’re easily fooled. This might be her last time. You must see that at least.”
This time, when Lira pulled at her sister to leave, her sister obeyed. She laughed harshly and waved to her friends, and then bounded ahead of Lira to run through the sewers, roaring with delight, her hair wild. What was she supposed to see?
Lira watched Red as she left the gathering, exhausted, and closed the door behind her, the glimmer of the coins catching on the corners of her vision. And then she was alone, in the sewers.
What Red had said—
No, she thought, pushing her from her mind. She followed her sister to the surface, determined to never return. If they never came back, everything would be all right. Her sister would go back to normal, would stop huffing, and creaking as she moved her limbs. Everything would be ok.
They went home, dressed for bed in silence, and her sister fell asleep instantly, her heavy breaths filling the room.
Her sister wasn’t in her bed when she awoke the next morning. The vanity mirror was missing glass, with the exception of one, single shard still clinging to its place at the edge of the wood. She stared into the shard for a moment, catching sight only of her brown eye. The glass was cleaned up, but some pieces were missing. She stepped on one as she crossed the room and did not notice as she bled through the house and down the stairs.
Her father was weeping at the table in the kitchen. She approached silently, her nightdress rustling as she went.
“Papa?”
“Oh, my girl. I’m so lucky to see you alive.” He turned and held his arms open, she fled to them and buried herself into that safe warmth. “Your sister—”
Her sister had disappeared in the night, and a man from the church came every night after, watching her and her father closely. Lira did not look back and served him tea in silence.
“What on earth have you come back here for?” A man in the wheelchair was glaring at her, his gun raised. His eyes were wrapped up, in filthy bandages like in the days of the old sickness, so she backed away and covered her mouth and nose. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I want to know about a woman named Red.”
“I don’t know a woman by that name, now get out of here. What on earth are you? Coming down here, broad daylight. Sniffing around. A nun? Some hunter’s pet?”
“Please, she’s…”
“Hah, can’t describe her to me, can you? M’ eyes are long gone, and red don’t go a long way.”
Lira left, horrified.
She went through her sister’s things, searching for clues. She found nothing but a vial of blood, so old it was discolored, a syringe, and a little address book.
You’ve become poisoned by this town too. Look at your eyes.
Lira shoved the syringe away, and put everything away, but in her haste she dropped the address book and it fell open. The handwriting was not her sister’s. She took it and flipped through it, unnamable anxieties on her tongue.
She could not make out a word. She could read it, indeed, but her eyes followed what her mind could not. She couldn’t make sense of it. She could capture a chant, a familiar one, about eyes—
Grant us eyes, grant us eyes, grant us eyes, the book read. The handwriting became frantic, hectic, falling apart as it went on, begging and pleading, bargaining.
The last page of writing, when she reached it, ended with a plea to take the eyes away. It ended thirty pages before the end of the little book, and Lira flipped through them, disappointed to see them all empty. She turned the covers in and out, looking for a name, but found nothing. There was a barely legible address on the second page, written sideways.
With the book in hand, Lira went to her vanity, where the mirror was still shattered and where a single shard still remained. She took out her own little diary and a pencil and began to decode the handwriting. She tracked what each letter looked like elsewhere and looked for its equivalent in the address. It took a while, but soon she had an address.
She could not decipher all the numbers, but the street was clearly one she recognized near Cathedral Ward. She tucked the address away and wondered if it was worth it, to scale the whole street before the morning rush, just to see the possible connection to the nonsense in the little book. But it was the only clue she had, besides Red. And she did not want to see Red again, even though she also wondered what would happen if she did.
The next morning, she left to tutor the children, but on her way back she did not go to the cathedral. She took another turn, heading towards a historic square, where the church giants had once guarded the faithful with honor and dignity. She had loved those stories as a child, had adored the thought of great, enormous gentlemen ready to walk a lady back home on a night of the Hunt, protecting her from beasts and monsters. She’d always thought it romantic.
Those thoughts kept her smiling slightly as she went, but she noticed no house that stood particularly apart from the rest. The little square at the end of the road was not busy, not exactly, but it was populated by women chatting and nurses pushing prams.
Unsure how this area could be the origin, or in any way connected to her sister’s disappearance or the strange book she’d found in her things, Lira sat and waited for something to catch her attention. Nothing did. She turned away, disappointed, but a flash of red stole her gaze from the ground, and she halted.
Red stared at her, first in shock, then rage, and then some strange fond look passed over her features. Lira found herself approaching, without really meaning to.
“My sister is gone,” she said, without preamble, and then bawked at her own nerve. “I’m sorry. Good afternoon, Red.”
“Good afternoon, indeed,” Red hummed. “Come, walk with me.”
Lira took the arm offered her without thinking, uncaring what she looked like, a young lady walking arm in arm with an old woman who looked like she belonged a hundred years ago.
“You’re a good, young girl, aren’t you?”
Lira blinked up at her, confused. “I don’t know. Yes?”
“You don’t want to be mixed up in the same things your sister was,” Red said. “You want to live a nice long life, have lots of babies, and marry a fine man, not necessarily in that order, right?”
Lira blushed. “I don’t know, that’s a strange thing to ask.”
“You won’t be able to do any of those things if you keep poking your nose around in the dark corners.”
Cathedral Ward towered above them, beautiful, rich, and welcoming. “This isn’t a dark corner.”
“I’m a dark corner. I was not speaking honestly when I said you should find me again, I thought you would be too frightened.”
“I didn’t mean to. I found an address in my sister’s things and came to see what it was.”
Red glared. “That is the sort of behavior to avoid if you wish to survive.”
“Survive? Do you know something about my sister?”
“I know too much about your sister. I may go her way yet.”
Lira was silent, watching Red. “I want to see her again.”
“You never will.” Lira felt a sob beginning, Red’s cruel words making it real. “You should be grateful that your last memories of her were so pleasant, that your eyes could not see.” Lira pulled her arm from Red’s and stopped walking, wiping the tears from her eyes and trying to keep her shaking sobs quiet. People might stare.
Red sighed and put an arm about her. “Tell me where to take you, girl. Come on.”
“I want to see whatever it is you see,” Lira whispered, when they were as close as Red would get to her home. “I want to know. I want to know.”
“Knowing has doomed many a human before you and me. Knowing may yet doom more. Be grateful you don’t know.” Red put a firm but gentle hand on Lira’s cheek, letting it fall after a moment to her neck. “Never find me again,” she said. “This will be goodbye for you and me.”
For some reason, this only upset Lira more, and she wept harder while Red brushed her tears away and stroked her cheek carefully. “You’ve made the simplest thing so difficult, girl,” Red said, roughly, and seemed to push Lira away at last.
Then Lira went home, burnt the notebook, destroyed the blood, and crushed the syringe. She fixed her father dinner, she prepared his tea, she greeted the man from the church, and she went to bed.
She did not weep again, but she resolved to put the madness of her sister behind her. The weight in her heart was heavier than grief, heavier than tears, as she looked out at her sister’s empty bed beside hers. She turned around to face the window, ignoring the pain as best she could, and shut her eyes.
Her resolve carried her a long while.
She prayed quietly in the cathedral, thoughts of Red far away, but her sister was always there. Her life was uneventful. She tutored, she made tea, she met with the priest at the cathedral regularly, gleaning small knowledge in healthy, tailored doses. She lingered sometimes, uncomfortably but earnestly, in the square by the cathedral. She waited, waited, for something like eyes on her skin, a rough voice to speak to her in reproach, disapproval, and under it all, some joy.
Her life was uneventful.
Until, one morning, there was a terrifying screech and a shaking like thunder and the chandelier above her head rattled and swayed. She looked up in horror, breaking off her prayer. Could it happen? To her? Here?
The blood saints nearby were shaking, praying louder, but Lira stood, the ground thundering under her. The last time a beast large enough to do this had appeared, she was a toddling child, with barely enough memory to recall the events. The priest took a hold of her arm, running towards the exit, but something broke into the foyer and the chandelier shook so hard that it came down, and Lira, lost to the noise and the terror, lost consciousness. But not before she saw the beast that entered. It towered, beautiful and strange, and her eyes grew until she was sure she had no eyes, but instead had become many, many eyes, all enchanted by the beast before her.
And then she felt nothing.
She awoke to the stench of blood.
“Leave it to you, girl.”
She forced her eyes open, bleary, pained, and turned her face towards the noise, pushing herself up on her arms and elbows. “Red,” she gasped, and tried to sit up.
“Don’t bother,” Red gasped, something dark around her middle. Lira felt bile come to her throat, watching the blood soak out of the wound. “The beast is slain, and I suppose I’ve served my purpose, finally. Curse this fate, and this choice,” she coughed, blood leaking from her wound and her mouth. Lira struggled to move closer, her legs in too much pain to carry her, but she pushed herself forward, falling onto Red’s chest, moving to press her hands to the wound. Red stopped her, moving her hands away.
“Someone will be here soon,” Lira breathed, trying in vain to bring her hands upon the wound, stopped each time by Red's somehow inhuman strength. “Someone will help.”
“There’s no helping me now.”
“My blood might—”
“No, it won't. And if it did, I would not tarnish you for this. Let me die.” But Lira ignored her and grasped at Red’s blade, ready to split her skin open and save the strange, prickly, horrible woman dying before her. Red’s hand came up and rested upon Lira’s own. Lira felt tears pouring down her cheeks and into her mouth. “They’ll know the beast is gone, and they’ll come save you,” Red rasped, ignoring her tears. “You must lie still, unmoving. Do not betray any fear. I don’t know what you will see now that you can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Promise me,” Red coughed. “Promise me this, at least. Grant this dying old fool one wish.”
“I will.”
“Do not betray anything, do not open your eyes until they arrive. I am going to die, but you must go now. Lie down and shut your eyes.” Lira opened her mouth to argue, but Red’s hand came up to cover her mouth, smearing it with blood. “Do it now. They're coming.”
Lira lay down, moving her hands away from the blood, on the cold stone floor, and she looked up at the high, ornate ceiling. She heard Red’s rattling breaths and swallowed her own sobs. She shut her eyes and kept them shut, even when Red’s breaths stopped coming and the cathedral seemed to grow so, so much colder.
They took her away, to a small room, and waited. She opened her eyes, pretending sleep and confusion, and fought against every instinct in her not to scream.
They looked all wrong. They looked terrible, she wanted to claw out her eyes, she wanted to run—
Don’t betray anything.
She swallowed.
“My father,” she whispered to the slithering, oily, horrible thing in the priest’s robes. “My father will be so worried,” she said.
“My Daughter,” the priest said, evidently relieved. “I will take you home.”
Red had forgotten one thing in her attempts to quell Lira’s thirst for the knowledge that evaded her. She had forgotten that Lira would live on. Lira lived on, understanding now more than ever why people avoided Yharnam, why strangers never lingered, why the city was so isolated and alone, and she said nothing.
She knew there were others too, throughout, who had laid eyes on things no mortal should, who walked away knowing the world was dark and horrible.
Lira thought back to the little room in the bottom of the city, where people with haunted eyes gathered and sang and danced, where her sister had wandered in and seen many, many changed, little things and walked out, never to return.
She knew, walking through the streets, that she herself tapped into other minds, lingered at their consciousness, weighed on the eyes inside. She knew, intimately somehow, that the city would fall to these little breaches, these small breaks in the rift. Gaps in the veil.
Lira set two cups of tea before her father and before the new church man. The man slithered in place, impossibly wrong, and brought the tea to his horrible, fleshy lips. Lira said nothing, but she saw and she smiled.