#The Byrgenwerth scholars touched blood-drunkenness

[reslari]

Maria has fangs not because of the parallels between the Vilebloods and the historical vampire, but for the same reasons Father Gascoigne has fangs. That fateful day, as the rain washed the blood from the villagers' corpses into the streets, Maria touched the abyss, and the Beast lurking within all men lashed out and scarred her for it.

It was enough to scare her back to the light - but no one after would be so fortunate.

[shinjishazaki]

some thoughts on Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower

there’s no doubt that Maria’s strength in blood and fire came from her lineage, and there’s no doubt that she could have smashed the good hunter into the floor from the start with the strength of her third phase attacks.  so why not?  why take an undoubtedly longer and more arduous route to build dexterity for a weapon like the rakuyo?

how long did this really take?  she couldn’t have been some unestablished noble to get an uncommon weapon like the rakuyo.  she must’ve traveled away from Cainhurst, since it wasn’t a weapon forged within the castle walls.

a concept: Maria left Cainhurst Castle before the Executioner branch of the church was made and sent for the vileblood extermination, but she was already in a long life.  her long admiration of Gehrman was not something started in childhood, borne of tales of the old hunters, but something heard out in the wider world.

Gehrman must’ve had some kind of skill before he began working with Laurence on the church.  an old prospector, perhaps, reaching somewhere in the dungeons that would’ve given him an audience of his very own with something that could have introduced him or linked him to the moon presence for his bargain.  it’s no stretch to see word of him and Laurence and the other old hunters before they were the old hunters reaching Maria.

and if Maria’s focus was in skill and not in inherit talent from her lineage, why not find admiration in this man she’s not met?  why not, if she’s never known the depths of his ambitions, or at least the depths he will go to burgeon the ambitions of his compatriots.  he is sacrificing, of self and of others, to a damning fault, but she would not know.  no one really would, perhaps save Laurence with the way Laurence descended.

so Maria journeys to Yharnam, joins the hunters.  learns the final refinements to her skill, gains the admiration of others for her clever, vicious, brutal kills.  make no mistake with the beauty laced in every attack of the rakuyo, every clean parry and visceral blow--Maria is just as blood-covered as the rest of them at the end of a hunt.

(someone--perhaps Brador, perhaps Laurence, but never Gehrman--tells her the blood is becoming on her.  she cuts them with a lightning fast slash of the rakuyo’s short blade and with blood on her cheek asks, “even when if is the blood of a hunter?”  they chuckle and say nothing of it again.)

her drive is not to help build the church.  she has no love for it, only an apathy.  her drive is to exceed and surpass what had become the limit of the vileblood strength.  when word of the corpse of a great one in the fishing hamlet reaches the church, her interest in the mission is sparked by the reverence Gehrman has in his voice when he speaks of what a great one may grant.  she goes with him, and with Laurence and whoever else takes up the cause.  whoever else, including the choir and the scholars of Byrgenwerth and the scholars of Mensis that always make her fingers itch for a weapon.

the residents of the hamlet were off somehow.  the kos parasites hadn’t transformed all of them to the ghastly beasts they would become, but of course it was more than enough for the church to make the order: bring the residents to the surgical altar.  bring the residents to us, that we may scour their skulls in the quest for cosmic eyes.

and, of course, that was enough for the old hunters.  they captured what they truly believed were beasts, and what they had doubts over.  it was too enticing for all of them.  some for the bloodlust and blood-drunken haze.  some for the chance at knowledge.  some for the chance to become greater than their forebears, their heritage, their common humanity.

perhaps that touch, that trace of mother Kos in the hamlet, was enough to give Maria the ability to use her blood arts without injury.  we know of two weapons that wound their wielders--the bloodletter with its tricks and frenzy and the chikage with its constant bleed--but the rakuyo does no damage to Maria when she stabs herself.  it does not injure her to use blood arts.  it seems unlikely for a weapon out of Cainhurst’s country--and for a weapon not truly designed to tap into blood arts.  it is a weapon for a dextrous hand, not one forged to call the strengths of a vileblood.

mother Kos could have given her that.  the great ones are sympathetic in spirit.  but this isn’t what Maria set out to build for herself.  she did not want to draw strength from her blood, or even from what could be arcane strength with the flames.  she wanted to stand apart.  but mother Kos would not have given it to her as a gift.

the great ones are sympathetic in spirit, but they are quick to curse.  the blood arts would surely beckon Maria into the blood-drunkenness with how easy they would come to her with Kos’ gift-curse.  and Maria would not realize until it was far too late.

it would take the research hall to make her realize.

the research hall was a mirror to herself.  the patients had been beckoned by the prospect of becoming greater than themselves, lured by the healing blood and trapped by the experiments that would leave them with swollen heads filled with sounds of water.  just like Maria, they wanted to excel.  but unlike Maria and the hunters, their curse of living failure was borne of man, not of a vengeful great one.

Maria would pass through the hall, like all hunters would.  there would be no lanterns then, no dream to use to cross land quickly.  they would have to go through the halls of deteriorating patients, up and down the staircases and elevators.  and no one would take much notice of the patients.

but then a blood saint was assigned to the hall.  Adeline.  young, far younger than Maria at that point and so very idealistic and hopeful.  and she would be the only one to reach out to Maria as she passed one day.

“you have such grace for a hunter, Lady Maria,” she said.  the smile on her face was terribly sweet when she said, “you’re quite lovely.”

it gave Maria pause.  it made her wave at Gehrman to stop waiting for her, and it made her join Adeline for tea.  it made her visit Adeline most every time she went through the research hall.  in turn, it made Adeline happier and happier every time to see her.

when Maria brought Adeline to the lumenflower garden past the first floor balcony, Adeline had kissed her with that same terrible sweetness as she had smiled that first day.

this would not continue with a curse upon her.  Adeline soon began to speak of the revelations the patients wished for with longing in her voice.  she asked Maria to sit with the patients as she administered blood, and there Maria finally heard how the patients had gone mad with wanting an ascension.  with wanting an audience with greatness.

she cast the rakuyo into the fishing hamlet’s well in the dead of the next night.  she spat after it for good measure, leaving it behind as she returned to her clocktower.  she drove the scholars from the research hall with nothing more than unused IV stands, deadly as anything.  she barred the doors, locked them, and threw the key into the depths of the sea.

every day and night, she sat with the patients as Adeline administered blood.  she held their hands when the sound of the sea inside their swollen heads shook them violently.  she held Adeline’s hands when her head began to swell, and she sang to Adeline when the sound of the sea came to echo between her ears.

before Adeline lost her eyes inside her head, she laughed and said, “you have a terrible singing voice, Lady Maria.  it’s wonderful.”

the hall was cursed, doubly from man and from the spillover of her own curse.  the patients began to die, one by one.  it was inevitable: they could not eat even if they had food from the church, and blood eventually stopped healing starvation.  once Adeline’s strength began to wane, their fates were truly sealed.  though starvation meant nothing to her, Maria’s fate was sealed just as much.

once the hall had gone silent, Maria went upstairs.  she triggered the staircase’s turning mechanism with a precise shot from her pistol before throwing it away as well.  the doorway to the garden before the clocktower was left out of reach, and she closed the doors behind her.  she went to her clocktower, locked the doors, and went through the astral clock once more to cast the key into the sea.

the clock was sealed when she came back through.  she let the celestial dial fall through a broken floorboard, distantly hearing it hit the clocktower’s gears.  when the echoes faded, she went to the chair she had brought to the clocktower so very long ago.  she sat in it, and she picked up three things from the small table she had brought in more recently.

the first was a photograph, old and faded.  it showed a man in fine clothing, and a shape in his arms that was no longer discernible.  she could not remember where it came from or why she kept it with her.  she set it down, considered it, and slammed her fist upon it to shatter the glass and tear the photograph.

the second was a glass.  it contained a dark, viscous liquid.  it reeked of sour ash.  it hadn’t been difficult to find snake venom in the stores of the research hall.  it wasn’t difficult to drink down in one breath.  it wasn’t difficult to drive a long knife--the last knife left over from her hunts--into her stomach.

she set the glass down, crossed her legs at the knee, and folded her hands in her lap as she waited to die.  it came soon enough with the venom burning through the hole in her stomach and curdling her blood.

and then, Lady Maria was brought into the nightmare.  the patients called for her from the research hall.  Adeline called for her, softly and sweetly and wondering where she could be.  Maria sat in her clocktower, rakuyo once more in her grasp, and did nothing to attempt to escape the nightmare.

only when a good hunter arrived, steadfast and unwilling to surrender no matter how many times they fell under her blades, could Maria finally rest.  had she been able to, she would have thanked the hunter.  there could be no greater peace than leaving all dreams and nightmares behind.