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When she got hit by the first frenzy, Lorieth was rooted, it robbed her of her senses, a complete darkness unlike any that she'd known. What was more frightening was a quiet presence coming forth in her mind, the eerie personification of her fears and secret. Lorieth saw memories blurring past her like a tape winded too fast it, a nauseating flurry of fragmented past that she could no longer bear to remember. Yet unseen fingers wrenched free the hinges that barred their release, and all her feelings came pouring forth.
"Maria.."
The scars running down the length of Maria's back, soft fingers laced within her own. A lazy dawn stretched over the buildings beyond them, a crushing tenderness that Lorieth no longer remembered. These were the happiest days of her life - -- their life, she was certain Maria felt the same.
The scene had changed. "I have to leave" Maria was saying to her. It was just after midnight on a November night, the grass in the courtyard crunched under their feet. A unsettling cold had settled over the university campus, Maria was dressed in her scholar's robes, she held her medical briefcase tightly in one gloved hand.
They stood apart as if separated by some invisible fence. Lorieth hugged her elbows and made her voice steady when she spoke. "I understand" - even though she didn't. She had anticipated that this day would come, prepared herself for it, braced herself for the weight of these words.
Maria looked at her with- what? longing? love? sadness? Lorieth could not tell in the dark, or perhaps was too scared to speculate the conclusion of this moment.
"You knew of this, didn't you?" Maria came closer, she still clutched at her briefcase.
"Yes"
"Does it have to do with your father"
Lorieth decided at that moment that she needed to come clean. The chess pieces were placed and she only needed to make the first move. Yet her tongue felt like lead, and when she thought of her father the white dead faces of the clergy came before her.
"Yes" Lorieth dug her nails into her elbows. Maria had the rights to know, and almost foolishly, Lorieth hoped that she can convince her to stay.
"Nothing you say will change my mind" Maria had an edge in her voice, "This opportunity would open many doors for me."
"You could die" Lorieth managed to rebuttal. "This blood disease has no cure, I don't know what kind of secrets they hide in that city but, Maria, please. the blood sickness have no end. Is the truth really worth dying for?"
It was the first time Lorieth seen Maria angry. Her voice, which usually so full of compassion and empathy - a doctor's voice - now stabbed with ferocity and disgust.
"Of course. Have you forgotten, the pursuit of knowledge was assigned to us so we could better the world. If we cannot even save our family, we do not deserve a life lived in ignorance." She had meant for the words to hurt, and they did.
Lorieth thought of her mother.
i could not save my family
. The hacking coughs that rang for three days and three nights, the burning fever, the blood boils that etched at her mother's skin. Her death came quickly, but in the end there was no mercy, Lorieth knew she had suffered.
"I don't trust the white clergy, all they have done is take away those whom i love." Lorieth noticed a soft waver of light in Maria's eyes as she spoke the last word. It is true, they had robbed her of her family, and now they will take away the her only love too.
"I have not been idle in my studies, the white clergy spoke true of blood ministration and eldritch truth." Maria shook her head. "And most importantly, a recent rumour of a miraculous excavation in the city."
"Idle gossip," Lorieth spoke in spite of herself. She had seen this blind ambition in her father too, before he left with the clergy 5 years ago, only then she wasn't able to convince him to stay. "Maria, you must reconsider. It is too dangerous - I have seen what the clergy is capable of. They bring firearms and sharpened cane disguised as walking sticks, their masks are said to hide the empty eye sockets beneath-"
"Are you bunching me together with the Church?" The distaste was back in Maria's voice. "they are just mere means for me to access the city, what they do, I do not care for. My goal is clear: to find the cure for this illness. How could you not understand, Lorieth? And here you speak of love, I don't think you even knew me."
"I,--" words caught in her throat, the realization that nothing will be the same after this, whether she stays or goes.
"I had hoped you would come with me." Maria was curt now. "I thought- with the disappearance of your father- you would be the first to go."
The truth lies in your blood. Her father's handwriting read in the journal he left behind.
Yharnam is the city of blood ministration
- he'd wrote, and in the margin a series of numbers and symbols that Lorieth did not recognize. That was 5 years ago.
"Blood ministration holds a key to the sickness, and it is my duty to uncover this mystery." Maria turned her back. "I will cure my patients, they deserve to live as much as we deserve the truth."
A pause, then almost in a whisper, she said. "Lorieth, I hope one day, we can meet again."
And they did.
8 years later, in the clocktower of a hunter’s nightmare, with Maria's blood on Lorieth's hand, and a death that never seemed to leave them.
--
Maria’s blood, cold.
Lorieth was suddenly overwhelmed by a twisted triumph of liberation, her love ripped away from her mortal body like the blood running down her blade, unhindered, free and grotesque. She gripped hard at the Saw Cleaver, let the weight of the weapon settle into her aching muscles. The rush of adrenaline had faded to a dull pain at her feet, she felt every muscle tense at each breaths, when just moments ago she could not see anything but Maria’s face and the fiery blood that swept around them as they danced to the tune of death.
It was mesmerizing, to see and hear the sounds of blades, the taps of shoes on the wooden floor, to feel, at last, the love and melancholy, the anger, the loss, all rise and fall around her.
There was fear also, when she watched Maria wretched the twin blades from her flesh and let the hot blood run. It was the most vivid fear Lorieth had experienced since befalling this nightmare.
What she was afraid of was not death, but the forgiveness of love from Maria that she herself does not deserve.
When the last strike brought Maria to her knees, Lorieth found herself supporting the weight of the fallen with all her strength. She had forgotten to pull back, had sunk into the killing frenzy that numbed her from any conscientious thoughts. Strangely, the tears ran hot on her cheeks. Maria’s blood was cold on her hands.
“Lovely dance,” Lorieth’s mind snapped back as she felt the touch of Maria’s fingers at her face.
Maria’s eyes, glossy with death, yet still so blue, conveyed all the unsaid exchange that left them stale before but now resolved to its final ending. Lorieth took her fingers and touched them to her lips, Maria’s skin was so cold, her body deprived of any life.
“Do you remember our midnight dance in the lecture hall that winter?”
“Maria.. No-” Maria silenced her with a gentle touch of the hand to her lips. She traced the curve of her tears with a thumb.
“That was the winter I fell in love with you. You were naive and ordinary, stubborn and uncreative. I thought I was going soft, falling for you, I consoled myself with talks of empathy and sympathy. But no matter how much my mind tried to convince me that this was a ruse, my heart never stopped beating for you.”
“I hope you forgive me for the choices I made. I had to come here, I had to see for myself the miracle of Blood.” Maria laughed darkly, “little good it did for me. You saw the Living Failures - kins that could never become A Great One. Yet I persisted, I tried to help these people, justified my actions on the pretense of medical miracles…” Maria lowered her gaze, Lorieth saw the familiar shame in the pursing of her lower lip - as she often did so after the scolding from a professor. “I turned terrible, I knew that and I wanted all to end, even that could not come for me. I was left as a corpse in this clock tower, used like a puppet to shield the Truth that lie beyond.”
She turned her gaze to Lorieth and held it there, a slight upward curve of the lip. A smile so gentle it locked Lorieth breath in her chest.
“But I am glad you finally came. In my heart I knew I would see you, here, one day, coming up the stairs, waking my slumber from a false death and finally liberating me. On some days I doubt, I think: ‘how could she kill me? She is too weak, too tender, too soft-hearted to run that blade through my heart’. I knew your love for me haunted you as it did me, and fear paralyzed me to think that I would never see you again.”
“I am here now” was all Lorieth managed to say.
Maria was right, the love she had for her choked her, suffocated her, it rotted her from within.
Maria closed her eyes, her smile remained. She was so cold, Lorieth held her closer, the first ray of light peaked through the great clock dial at the end of the tower, and when Lorieth opened her eyes, Maria was gone.