Chapter Text
Leon is, in his humble opinion, far too old for this shit.
He is (somehow) a full fifty years old. He’s been doing this—walking into warzones, fighting bioweapons, getting drenched in the blood of the dead—for thirty years. And he is, by some fucked up miracle, still alive. He definitely isn’t getting any younger, his aching joints and back like to remind him of that fact, but congrats to him, he’s made it to half a century. Practically retirement age. (Allegedly. In this economy, who knows.)
And yet, here Leon is, boots on the ground in another bioweapon bloodbath. It isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before. Zombies, monstrosities, things with too many eyes or limbs. Due to a quirk of today’s strain, this mission is a particularly gruesome one. The zombies are more regenerative, requiring they literally be hacked or blasted apart to be put down. Anything less than a magnum isn’t cutting it and Leon has taken to liberal use of his hatchet.
It is carnage. A carnage he lives and breathes, as familiar as an old coat.
Perhaps unavoidably, he is soaked in blood. It clings to his hair, his skin, his clothes, sticky and foul. Every breath tastes metallic, the smell of iron hanging heavy in the air. Leon is, quite literally, splashing through blood a few centimeters deep.
“I hope you know I’m putting in an expense report for the dry cleaning,” Leon snipes over comms.
Sherry, his handler again for today’s mission, huffs. Leon can hear her eye roll. “I’ll let them know to expect you. On a scale of ‘Mr Clean’ to ‘turning the Nile to blood’ where are we here?”
Leon’s axe cleaves through the neck of another undead, blood splattering over his face. He takes a second to wipe it off, swiping the back of his hand over his face. Considering it is just as gore-covered as the rest of him, it doesn’t exactly do much. “At least a Nightmare on Elm Street,” he mutters, winding back for another swing.
The DSO did have designated biohazard cleaning facilities, particularly helpful for dealing with clothes, weapons, or any other equipment that had been out in the field. While in the early days they’d disposed of everything that might have been contaminated, and still did for new diseases, it got expensive quickly. Especially for Leon and his taste in jackets.
Even still, their current tactic of ionizing radiation and the strongest bleach known to humankind isn’t exactly “easy on the skin.”
Leon grunts as the last infected falls, hacked to pieces. He waits, ready for the next thing creeping around the corner, but it’s quiet, at least in his immediate vicinity. Exhaling, Leon rolls his shoulders, even as he keeps hold of his axe. Onto the next room, then. He steps forward, boots splashing through puddles of blood. As he does, his foot catches on something unseen in the bodies and fluids beneath him.
It’s nothing major and Leon shifts to rebalance himself, but instead of correcting the stumble, it just makes it worse. It is as if the floor has become molasses, sticky and sucking in his feet. Leon swears, twisting to see if a still-living zombie had grabbed hold, axe rising to take it out, but there is nothing. He is falling back first now, and Leon instinctively readies himself to roll to his feet. But instead of hitting hard concrete, he keeps falling
as blood closes over his face and the world
goes
black.
It is dark. Cold. He squints, blinking as he tries in vain to focus the swirling mass of darkness into something sensical. He is on his back, lying on something. (Wrong wrong get up get up.) He tries to sit up, but his limbs are like lead, and only succeeds in his head lolling to the side. He catches vague shapes in the gray—shelves, arched doorways—before managing to bring his head up slightly.
His blood runs cold.
A small shrivelled hand appears in his sight, and then another, and another. And then, the things they are attached to follow. They are pale, so pale they are almost glowing, small shrivelled corpses—corpses the size of children—with distorted mouths and hissing breath.
They claw over him, dozens of the things, crowding his face until their gaping hollow mouths are all he can see, as if they are trying to suck out his soul. And perhaps they are, because the world fades again to black
“Ah, you’ve found yourselves a hunter…”
and Leon wakes up.
He jolts upward, hand going for his gun as he scrambles to get up, get moving Kennedy— and then he falls. Instinct takes over and Leon braces himself, hitting the ground only to immediately roll to his feet. Leon comes up, hands raised and eyes sharp, but… there is nothing. His eyes flick around, assessing his surroundings, but the more he sees the more confused he becomes.
Wooden floors and dusty shelves, the only light source a flickering candle-lit lamp. Behind him, a high platform reminiscent of a surgical table, covered in a thin moth eaten blanket. Must be what he was lying on.
But this wasn’t…. where is he?
Unease clogs Leon’s throat, decades-old instincts rearing in alarm. He… he’d been in the facility, dispatching zombies, hadn’t he? Yes, yes that’s the last thing he remembers. So… he blacked out. But this isn’t the facility. The decor in that place had been more “concrete painted in blood” as opposed to… Victorian era woodwork?
The agent scans his surroundings. The room he is in feels… antique, that’s the best word for it. The furniture, the architecture, all of it. It’s like he’s ended up in a Victorian mansion. A mansion he has no memory of getting to, nor reason for being here. It isn’t the first time Leon’s woken up somewhere unfamiliar, nor the first time he’s dealt with creepy mansions. But neither ever bode well.
Leon takes stock of himself. He is uninjured, still dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing back in the facility. Heavy combat pants and boots, sleeved shirt… but his jacket is missing, as are his holsters and all of his weapons. All of them. Including the hidden ones. He still has his tactical belt, but its many pouches are utterly empty.
“Shit,” Leon mutters. He hates when they’re thorough. He shifts, looking around the room he’s in. Empty of life and undead. On impulse, Leon picks a book off the shelves to see if it holds any clues, only to find it written in an unfamiliar language. It looks vaguely like German, if German had been blended with Slavic. If Leon squints he can almost make out what it says… something that might be ‘blutbehandlung,’ and notes about blood transfusion?
A throbbing ache in his skull prompts Leon to toss the book aside, rubbing his forehead. He can’t read it anyways… and the pressure building behind his eyes warns of a migraine. Probably from straining his eyes in this low light.
With nothing useful in the books, Leon turns toward the “bed” he’d been on upon waking. There’s a deep sense of disquiet as he stares at it, rubbing his wrists. He hadn’t been restrained at all just… left there. Leon scowls. This entire situation feels deeply wrong. Stripped of weapons, left unrestrained and unguarded on what feels unnervingly like an operating table.
In fact… Leon’s eyes trail to some metal stands near the “bed.” They look like antique IV stands, using cylindrical glass containers instead of plastic bags. While Leon can’t see the contents particularly well, the liquid inside shines dark. Blood, most likely.
“Maybe I got kidnapped by vampires,” Leon muses, stepping away and toward the candlelit exit. As he reaches it, however, he glances back at one of the IV stands. He’d rather not go unarmed… One minute later, Leon holds a makeshift weapon in the form of an IV pole. It’s far from a handgun or combat knife, but it's better than nothing.
Weapon in hand, Leon gently pushes open the door. He finds himself at the top of a stairwell, dim light filtering in from a high window. He carefully makes his way down, floorboards creaking with every step.
Gothic architecture? Check. Weird medical equipment? Check. Creaky floorboards? Check. These people are going all out on their dedication to creepy old mansions.
The next room holds no more clues than the first. Only broken glass and dark stains long rusted into the floorboards, the kind of stain Leon knows all too well. Blood.
Something terrible happened here, Leon muses. But what?
A guttural snarl interrupts his speculation, and Leon’s head immediately snaps toward it. His grip tightens around the metal pole, adrenaline pumping through his veins. That’s nothing human. He moves closer, footsteps ghosting against the floor. Following the sound brings him into a room filled with more surgical tables and blood stands, similar to those he woke up near.
In the middle of it all, teeth tearing into a human carcass, is a BOW. It’s some kind of furred bestial variety, humanoid in shape. It’s snarling, flashing a maw filled with fangs as it stoops over to tear a chunk of flesh from its victim. The BOW reminds Leon of a werewolf, akin to how T-virus infected are zombies. It hasn’t sensed him, too focused on devouring its prey.
Leon exhales, barely a whisper.
The BOW has claws as long as his forearm, a mouth full of fangs, and a hunger for flesh.
Leon? He’s got a metal pole, stealth, and thirty years experience.
It’s no contest. The werewolf doesn’t even get a chance to fight back as Leon slinks behind it. It bellows in pain as he stabs the pole straight through its chest and out the other side. The BOW howls, trying to swipe him with dagger claws, but Leon’s already out of range, taking his improvised weapon with him. He watches as the creature moves, lumbering around to face him. The werewolf snarls, baring a mouthful of fangs, and lunges forward. It’s fast, but Leon’s fought faster. He slips sideways, bringing up his improvised spear, and uses the BOW’s momentum against it.
The creature impales itself cleanly on the metal IV pole, straight through the skull. For a brief second it chokes on metal and blood, then slumps to the ground. Dead. Leon rips the pole out, eyeing the monster carefully.
“You’re not one I’ve seen before,” Leon mutters quietly, nudging the BOW with his boot. He’s seen quite a few bioweapons over the years but this isn’t a kind he’s encountered before. Though Chris had run into some BOWs he described as “werewolf-like” a few years back. Maybe this was part of that class?
Leon shakes his head. He needs more intel before he can get to what’s causing this. Shouldering his makeshift weapon, Leon moves past the monstrous corpse.
He takes a second to inspect the body the BOW had been devouring, but there’s not much left. Half-eaten entrails spill over the hardwood, and in the darkness Leon can see the outlines of more partially devoured bodies. But despite the gore and the darkness one thing stands out: the clothes are strange. Definitely not modern.
Like the rest of this building, there’s something distinctly… Victorian-era British about it all.
Quietly, Leon slips past the bodies into the next room, climbing a staircase. He pushes open the doors, stepping outside into a courtyard and around it…
Leon blinks.
Cobblestone lines the ground beneath his feet, dead trees lifting gnarled branches to a twilight sky. Around him rise stone buildings with jagged roofs, towers with buttresses, windows of wrought metal and glass. It’s like stepping into a city made from a cathedral. And it is also, definitely, not just one Victorian-styled mansion.
Cautiously, Leon steps forward. He can feel the impact of his boots on the stone. When he inhales, the acrid stench of smoke and decay sears his nostrils. Gravestones are scattered around the courtyard, unburied corpses tossed at their base. There’s a hiss in the air, the resonant gong of a bell in the distance. The sound of rumbling snarls, of inhuman things lurking beyond the walls.
This is definitely not the facility.
Leon exhales, carefully flexing his hands. He takes note of the stretch of his muscle, the pull of his tendons. He inhales, the stench of iron sharp and pungent. It doesn’t feel like a dream or a hallucination… and while he can’t rule it out, Leon’s never been much of a lucid dreamer.
Yet…
He tripped, got swallowed by blood, and ended up in the Victorian era.
Leon scans the courtyard, cataloging every detail, every crack of stone. A dream, perhaps, but everything fits a little too well. Things remain the same even if he diverts his attention, never wavering even a bit. Sight, sound, smell— it all fills his senses, sharp and present. Real, or seemingly so.
“Right,” Leon shakes his head. “Setting aside how I got here, or where here is… let’s assume this is real. My dreams are never this lucid. Which means… somebody decided to make a gothic city and release some BOWs on it, and I got kidnapped. Fantastic.” The smell of blood is so thick he can taste it. Wherever he is, it’s nowhere kind.
Leon sighs, rubbing his face. “Just another Tuesday.”
Leon treads carefully as he moves out of the courtyard. Just beyond a set of wrought iron gates, an entire town sprawls out before him. The skyline is one of jagged spires and an orange twilight sky. It brings him pause for a moment, a ringing sense of unease, but there’s nothing to do but go forward. Leon settles his grip on his makeshift weapon and continues.
He moves along a small cobblestone street, where carriages—actual horse-drawn carriages—lie abandoned. Well, formerly horse-drawn carriages. There are no living horses to be seen, only half-rotted corpses lying in the road. It’s not the only body either. As Leon walks he spots a few human corpses, far more recently dead than the horse, slumped against spiked iron fences.
Thankfully, they don’t get up.
Muffled voices pull Leon’s eyes to figures carrying torches aloft another street over. Humans, though whether or not they’re infected or friendly is another matter. “Maybe they’ll give me answers,” Leon murmurs as he moves closer. “Or invite me to tea.”
They do neither.
As Leon gets close, the nearest figure—a man, again dressed in Victorian styled clothing—snarls, rushing him with an axe raised.
“Wait!” Leon shouts, stepping out of range of the strike. But the man doesn’t listen, instead pulling the axe back over his head for another go. Leon sidesteps it easily. His opponent’s movements are sloppy, flailing the axe wildly without much direction. Whoever he is, he isn’t a professional.
As the next strike comes, Leon slips inside his opponent’s reach, grabbing the arm holding the hatchet and twisting until the weapon clatters to the cobblestone. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Leon growls, now face-to-face with the man. Bloodshot eyes stare hatefully at Leon from beneath a thick black beard, teeth flashing.
“Cursed beast!” the man snarls, spittle flying in Leon’s face. He struggles against Leon’s grip, dropping his torch and lunging for Leon’s neck.
Using the man’s arm as leverage, Leon steps under the attack and shoves him to the ground, twisting the man’s arm behind his back. Leon’s attacker howls and swears viciously, teeth snapping at air. Pinning him down with a knee to the back, Leon repeats: “I’m not a ‘beast.’ I don’t want to hurt you, so stop attacking me!”
But the man doesn’t listen.
And the sound is attracting others.
Movement in his peripheral has Leon’s head snapping sideways. More people are approaching, wielding pitchforks and torches and what looks like a meat cleaver. Their eyes are similarly bloodshot, sporting wild manes of hair beneath bandages and dark hats. “Die, beast! Away!” they shout, men and women, faces twisted in fury.
Fucking hell.
Leon moves off his previous opponent, bringing up his pilfered metal pole. The villagers snarl, cursing him as they lunge. Leon slips away from the first attack, using the IV pole as a staff. A few swift strikes to the stomach knock the wind out of one, he sweeps the feet out from under a second. He catches another incoming axe on his pole and kicks the axe’s owner square in the chest.
He doesn’t aim to kill, only to incapacitate. Leon’s not sure what’s wrong with these people, but he’s not ready to kill them. Not yet. And a concussion is better than dead.
But his attackers don’t seem to care.
“You plague-ridden rat!” a woman shouts in his face, rushing him with a cleaver held high. “It's all your fault! Die, already!”
Leon roundhouse kicks her in the chest, throwing her into a nearby building. There is mania in these people’s eyes. They barely seem to see him, beyond that he is not one of them. In all, it is vividly reminding him of his far-too-memorable trip to Spain.
At last, the dust settles and Leon stands amidst a pile of bodies. Unconscious, not dead. Though they didn’t exactly try to return the favor.
First, Leon pilfers their weapons. Most of them he dumps over a nearby cliff into a deep canal, save for an axe. He hefts it, testing the weight. It’s not as good as his custom tactical hatchet, but he doesn’t exactly have anything better. It’s got a blade. It’ll do. New weapon in hand, Leon takes a moment to assess his attackers more closely. Like the corpses he’s seen, they’re dressed in clothes better suited for 19th century England. And, their faces are… unusually hairy. It grows from their heads into a thick and wild mane, covering almost any exposed skin like fur.
Normally, it’d be no more alarming than any other quirk of genetics. But it brings Leon pause. After all, they’d called him a beast. And he’s already met a werewolf tonight.
At last Leon stands, gripping the handle of his new axe, eyeing the unconscious bodies. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know how he got there, and the locals seem to have decided that he’s unwelcome. Which, fair enough. However as mentioned Leon doesn’t know where he is and by extension doesn’t know where the fuck to go.
“Goddamnit,” Leon mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. Right. He needs a plan. He needs intel. Someone who’ll talk to him, a phone he can call, a map he can read, a narcissistic asshole he can punch. Something. Because he does not want to rehash Spain, only this time with even less intel or resources.
Leon’s foot taps against the cobblestone as he thinks. The only real lead he has is the room where he woke up. Admittedly, he hadn’t searched it top to bottom. He hadn’t skimmed all the books nor explored all the exits. He’d been focused on getting out, at least until it became clear that outside had even fewer answers. “Right,” Leon nods, tightening his grip on his axe. “Let’s go see what I can find.”
Retracing his steps, Leon works his way back into the building. The werewolf is still lying dead where he left it, and doesn’t so much as twitch as Leon moves past. That’s something anyway.
He marches up the creaking stairs, grabbing the door handle only… it doesn’t move. “The hell?” Leon mutters, trying the door again, and again it doesn’t budge. Locked. Just his luck. Just as Leon’s bracing himself to kick the door in, there’s a shuffle of movement on the other side and then, a woman’s voice.
“Are you… out on the hunt?”
Leon blinks, stunned for half a second. Then the words register and he leans forward, catching movement through the tinted glass. “Hello?” he calls back eagerly. There are cracks in the windows of the door, and through them he can fleetingly see the woman on the other side. She stumbles back, gasping sharply as Leon leans closer.
He immediately withdraws. “Sorry,” he apologizes, softening his voice. Best not to scare the first person who hasn’t met him with violence. “I’m Leon,” he introduces. “Who are you?”
“Iosefka,” the woman says, shadow moving behind the glass. “This is my clinic.”
“You’re a doctor?” Leon asks. So this is a medical facility. His assessment of surgical tables and IV stands hadn’t been wrong. And, if this is her clinic, surely she should have some idea of how he’d gotten here… Or, she was in part responsible.
Iosefka hums in assent. “Physician. I minister blood to patients, and do what I can for the injured and the sick.”
“Right,” Leon nods and knocks on the window. “Can you let me in?”
“I cannot, I’m sorry,” Iosefka says and for her part, she does sound genuinely regretful. “But, the patients in my clinic must not be exposed to infection.” Infection. The word echoes in Leon's head. The thread connecting the werewolf and maned villagers tightens, like the loop of a noose. “I’m sorry,” she apologies again, “but you smell of blood, stranger.”
Leon grimaces. “Yeah, sorry. Hard not to, out here.”
While he’d taken out the townspeople bloodlessly, the werewolf downstairs was a different story. Not to mention the bloodbath he’d been carving into the facility before ending up here. He’s not exactly clean; blood is splattered over his clothes. Besides, Iosefka is right. It’s basic quarantine protocol to keep out any potential infection risks.
Oh well. Leon looks back at the door. Even if Iosefka doesn’t want him inside, he’s found someone to talk to. Someone who clearly knows more than him. “Where are we?”
“You don’t know?” Iosefka asks, surprise clear in her voice.
“Would I ask if I did?”
Iosefka huffs, clearly unamused at the snark in his voice, but she answers nonetheless. “You’re in the city of Yharnam,” she says. Her tone clearly expresses her disbelief that he doesn’t already know this. “Home of the Healing Church, and the scourge of the beast.”
“Yharnam,” Leon rolls the strange name around in his mouth. “Never heard it before in my life,” he mutters sourly, rubbing his face. “Shit. I’m definitely far from home.”
“…You truly didn’t know?”
“No,” Leon shakes his head. “I woke up in there,” Leon nods past Iosefka into the room she guards, “and now I’m trying to figure out how the hell I got here and hell the fuck to get home. Though…” Leon grimaces. “You said that what’s out there, it’s an infection?” When Iosefka hums assent, Leon sighs. “It’s usually my job to contain infections.”
“So, you are a hunter!”
Leon frowns, shrugging. “I mean, I guess?” He wouldn’t call himself a hunter, his missions usually tended toward extractions or eliminations. Which… you could describe it as hunting? Hunting implied an objective in finding a target and killing. And while that is basically what Leon does when he’s sent to wipe out an infected location, it… doesn’t sound right.
Not that terminology matters much. He’s killing all the same.
Shaking off his melancholy, Leon refocuses on the task at hand. “The people out there, in the town. They’re infected, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Iosefka says quietly. “We call it the scourge of beasts, for that is what the infected become.” She chuckles darkly. “The Hunt is on tonight. Be careful, stranger. Anyone can fall to it… but hunters are at more risk to succumb to the blooddrunk thirst of the beast.” Iosefka pauses before she continues, words soft like a secret. “I hear them, tonight. They’ve lost themselves, don’t even realize the infection has taken hold. They will see you as the monster, and will hunt you as a beast.”
Beasts… she had to mean the werewolf then, or things like it. And the loss of self would align with Leon’s experience of the villagers attacking him. Similar to Spain in that sense.
“What about the Hunt?” Leon echoes, frowning. “What is that?”
Iosefka laughs incredulously. “You’re asking me to explain the Hunt to a hunter?”
“You can call me a hunter, but I’m not a hunter from here,” Leon explains, shrugging. He’s aware how painfully ignorant he is of where he’s found himself. If Iosefka will give him answers, then Leon doesn’t care how much of an idiot he seems for not knowing ‘common knowledge.’ “Presume I know nothing.”
“The Hunt is just that, the Hunt,” Iosefka says. Leon catches a flash of movement behind the glass, as if she’s raising a hand to gesture. “Some nights the infection burns stronger than others. On these nights, the Hunt commences to rid Yharnam of the beasts. Townsfolk lock their doors as the hunters stalk the streets, purging the city of the infected.
“But tonight…” Iosefka pauses. “I have not seen a Hunt like this before.”
The physician falls quiet, silence stretching between them. If Leon listens carefully, he can almost hear the roars of the beasts and shouts of the hunters Iosefka speaks of. A city that lives with infection, that periodically scrapes clean its rotted flesh like a blade over bone.
“I’m sorry that tonight is the night you arrive in Yharnam,” the woman suddenly says. Leon opens his mouth to try and reassure her—it’s unlikely to be anything he hasn’t seen before—but there’s a shuffle of cloth on the other side of the door. Then something small is pushed through one of the openings in the door’s shattered windows.
“Take this,” Iosefka says, prompting Leon to gently pull the item from her grasp. “It’s all I can do.” Holding it up, Leon inspects the object. It’s a vial holding an amber liquid, capped with a sharp needle in place of a lid. “This is Yharnam’s curative. If you are injured, it will heal you.”
Leon eyes the vial cautiously. “What is it? Medicine?”
“That and more,” Iosefka agrees, tapping the window. “It’s used for all manner of illnesses here. Administer it to the blood and it will take effect quickly.”
Well that explains the needle, if you're supposed to inject it into the bloodstream. Leon twists the vial. There’s writing on the side, though of course he can’t properly read it. One word looks vaguely like ‘blutzusatz,’ or ‘blood additive’ which doesn’t seem inaccurate? Maybe Leon’s on the right track with the written language being an offshoot of German. (But then, Leon doesn’t speak German well enough and he’s definitely been hearing English… right?)
Leon shakes his head. Medicine or not, he’s not exactly crazy about injecting a strange unverified substance into himself. His entire job is basically a case study on why that’s not a good idea. Vaccines? Leon loves ‘em. Saved his life on hundreds of occasions. Weird unknown liquid that could be potentially biohazardous? He’d rather pass.
“Do you have any herbs?” Leon asks, shaking the vial. He’s learned a fair few things about using plants to dull pain or using poultice to seal wounds. If he can get his hands on some, he can make his own medicine.
But Iosefka seems to find the question very funny. “If you find a living plant in this city, at this time of year, your luck will be simply unparalleled.”
So, that’s a no.
“Right,” Leon shrugs and stuffs the vial in one of his hip pouches. Without his weapons or ammo, he’s practically overflowing with space. And while Leon’s not sold on Iosefka’s medicine, he’ll keep it in case of emergency. “Thanks.”
“You need not thank me,” Iosefka says, an odd note of sadness in her voice. “Not for something so small. Now, go. And good hunting… Leon.”
Leaving Iosefka’s clinic behind, Leon steps into Yharnam’s streets again. He still has no idea how he got here, or how he’s going to get home, but one step at a time. There’s an infection running rampant through this city, the kind that makes monsters. Exactly the kind of thing Leon specializes in dealing with. And while Leon would like to ascribe the entire situation to his terrible luck, he has a nagging sense this is more than just coincidence.
With no real sense of where to go, Leon starts walking. The unconscious bodies of the townsfolk he fought are gone. Since there’s no signs of (additional) struggle or half eaten corpses, they were presumably found by some of their fellows. Nearby—along the route they must have taken—the road is bisected by an imposing wrought iron gate, locked and nigh impassable. Or, it would be, if it wasn’t bordered by a fence about 3 feet high. Leon hops the fence in less than a second.
The cobblestone street continues on the other side of the gate, threading between the towering buildings. As Leon walks, he notes what are undoubtedly manholes in the street, from which warm fetid steam drifts up into the chill air. Sewers. “Let’s hope I don’t have to go hiking through these ones,” Leon mutters, wrinkling his nose.
It isn’t the only thing he can smell. There’s an acrid stench to the air, one of sulfur and sweet and sickness, one that burns the inside of his nostrils. It’s a stench Leon unfortunately recognizes. The smell of burning bodies. It only takes him a second to find the source.
Past the gate is a stake with a body strapped to it, fire eating at the corpse’s feet. While the flames have consumed much of the abdomen, Leon can still make out the head and upper body. It’s not quite a werewolf—lacking the true snout Leon’s first foe had—but nonetheless it's covered in now-charred hair, a mostly-human face baring sharp teeth in a soundless snarl. Bodies don’t burn easy. It’ll take a long time until this one is gone.
Leon moves on.
As he walks Leon scans the buildings the street is sandwiched between. They’re surprisingly tall, with multiple levels of terraces and balconies, even little bridges connecting them. The Victorian gothic comparison also continues to hold true, gargoyles adorning the buildings. One gargoyle at street level stares sightlessly at Leon, the statue’s back arched as if to pounce. Creepy.
“There it is!”
The shout has Leon’s head snapping upward, eyes zeroing in on the source. It’s a man on a terrace a good twenty feet above the street who’s staring straight at Leon. Shit. This is what he gets for being distracted. Oblivious to Leon’s thoughts, the lookout points at him, shouting, “Kill it!”
Leon’s gaze shifts from the lookout back to street level in time to see a mob rounding the corner, following the call. The mob is made of half a dozen townsfolk, each armed with a makeshift weapon like a pitchfork or sickle and a few with torches. Leon shifts backward half a step, tightening his grip on his axe. “Sure I can’t convince you folks to talk things out?” he asks as he eyes the advancing party.
“Foul beast! Burn!” the mob shouts, raising their weapons toward Leon.
He grimaces. “Worth a shot.”
And so, the fight begins.
Leon sidesteps the first lunging attack, before immediately moving in close. With his free hand he grabs his attacker’s shirt collar and drives a knee into their gut, then throws the stunned villager toward their fellows. The mob stumbles out of the way as their ally crashes to the cobblestone, quickly stepping over the gasping body.
“Who’s next?” Leon asks, raising an eyebrow as he spreads his arms invitingly. One takes the bait, coming at him with a flailing meat cleaver. Leon stands his ground, tightening his one-handed grip on his stolen axe. Not yet… not yet… now! He swings the axe, parrying the cleaver’s wide blade and knocking it aside before rushing forward. His boot meets the villager’s chest, the distinct pop of bone fracturing as they’re thrown backward by the force.
Another pair of hunters with torches flank him, torches held out and forcing Leon to shift backward lest he be burnt. “No thanks, not in the mood for barbeque,” Leon mutters. Two quick swings of the axe cut the torches in half. Another swing introduces the butt of the axe head into the side of one villager’s skull. They crumple, instantly unconscious.
Stepping back, Leon eyes his remaining opponents. Three still standing, two slowly trying to pick themselves up, one down… and a couple more coming to join the party. Great. Leon scowls at the newcomers coming down the street. “Who invited you?”
“Die, beast!” they reply, rushing him.
Leon goes to meet them. Two swings of the axe down the first hunter—one to parry their blade, the second introducing a solid block of metal to their skull. Then Leon is twisting, using the momentum to deliver a kick to another villager’s chest. That unfortunate victim crashes into a pile of crates that buckle under their weight.
“It’s rude to show up unannounced,” Leon snipes as he shifts his gaze to the remainder of the mob. They curse him and his bloodline and his mother—which is just uncalled for—eyes blazing beneath ragged manes of hair.
Before Leon can quip back, there’s a flash of movement in the shadows on his left, low and fast. Leon whirls, throwing up an arm to intercept. He bites back a snarl as teeth sink into his left arm, staring down the patchy muzzle of a slavering dog. Before the dog can try to rip a chunk out of his arm, Leon’s axe cleaves into its chest, blood splattering as he crushes bone and organ.
The dog yowls, relaxing its grip on his forearm, and Leon wrenches his arm sideways to throw the creature off, pulling his axe in the opposite direction. The dog falls to the ground and before it can think of attempting to struggle to its feet, Leon brings the axe down on its head. It doesn’t get back up. Tugging his weapon free of the corpse, Leon eyes the rest of the mob. They stare back with furious bloodshot eyes, stunned and injured, but alive.
Leon grips the axe two-handed, gritting his teeth as it pulls the muscles of his now-injured left arm. He can no longer afford to be merciful, not if he wants to stay alive.
And so, as the next villager lunges with pitchfork held high, the next swing of Leon’s axe slices through their neck.
The fight finishes relatively quickly after that. Leon pants, surrounded by cooling bodies, blood running between the grooves in the stone. With a sharp exhale, Leon flicks his axe, clearing most of the blood from its blade. After a quick scan of the street reveals no further hostiles, Leon slips to the side of a building, bracing his back against it.
Setting his axe next to him, Leon rolls up the sleeve of his left arm to inspect the damage. He grimaces. Blood slicks his skin, and while the dog’s bite had missed any arteries, his forearm is not looking too good. He lost his medical kit with the rest of his gear, which means his only option is… Ah. Right.
Leon fishes Iosefka’s medicine vial out of his pockets, eyeing it dubiously. “I hoped I wouldn’t need this so quickly,” Leon mutters wryly. Right. Iosefka said this was used ‘for all manner of illnesses’ which… doesn’t actually explain what it does. Another inspection of the vial’s label only offers a few new words—something that might be ‘vitality’ or ‘energy’—so that’s no help. “Alright,” Leon shakes his head. “Stem bloodflow, then suspicious medicine.”
He doesn’t have any bandages on him to wrap the wound with, so… Leon eyes the dead townsfolk for a second then shakes his head firmly. Nope. He does not want whatever the hell kind of germs are in their dirty clothes in his open wound. Thankfully, the drapes inside a nearby abandoned carriage offer a cleaner (though still not sterile) alternative. A minute later, arm freshly wrapped, Leon sits with the vial in hand once more.
“Ah hell,” he says, leaning his head against the building behind him. “I’m really doing this?” …He is. Leon grits his teeth and plunges the needle into his leg.
Almost instantly, energy hits his system in a shot of pure adrenaline. Aches and pains Leon was only half aware of evaporate, leaving him bouncing on his toes. Energy nips at his heels, filling him like an overcharged wire. In that instant, Leon is confident that he could run a full marathon without breaking a sweat.
“Damn, that’s a rush,” Leon mutters. He hasn’t felt this good since Elpis. The agent eyes the empty vial appreciatively, shaking out his limbs. “Not too bad.”
Buzzing with energy, Leon stuffs the vial back in his pocket. Grabbing his axe, he continues down the street, surveying the terraces and buildings around him. As he goes, Leon’s eyes catch on elongated boxes, stacked and scattered like pallets along the roadside. Coffins. Frowning, Leon’s eyes skip down the street and now that he’s looking…
There are coffins everywhere. The sheer number of them, stacked in the street and stuffed into corners, says more to the sheer amount of death in this city than even the monsters and burning corpses. And, interestingly, it seems every other coffin is chained shut.
Could do with some of that back home, Leon thinks idly. Though, in reality, Leon’s never heard of a zombie staying inanimate long enough to actually be buried. They tended to get nippy long before then. And even if they didn’t, infected corpses are typically incinerated, not buried. On the other hand, Leon’s had to shoot corpses crawling out of body bags more than once.
“SHRREEEE—”
Any further musing is interrupted by a god awful piercing screech that echoes over the city. Leon pauses, warily eyeing the sky. Whatever made that was definitely big, and if Leon had to bet, unfriendly.
“Experience tells me I’ll get to meet that later,” he grumbles.
Still, just to be petty, Leon turns off the main street onto a side road. It’s not like he’s got a set destination anyways. He doesn’t have to deal with the screaming nightmare monster now. It can wait.
Poking around the dead-end side alley, Leon finds another bonfire eating away at a charred corpse. Aside from that, there’s a few doors facing the street, a few corpses, and literal stacks of crates shoved against the sides of buildings. Leon opens one of the crates on a whim and inside, nestled amongst straw and cloth, are some large bottles. Pulling one out, Leon uncorks and sniffs it, and is greeted by the familiar bite of alcohol.
For a second, Leon contemplates taking a swig, but eventually replaces the bottle without taking a sip. No drinking on the job, not like he did in his thirties. He’s been sober (aside from the occasional beer) for years now and he’d like to keep it that way. Opening a few more crates, Leon finds clothes, assorted tools like wrenches and hammers, and most strangely, an entire box of rocks.
“…Rock collection?” Leon wonders aloud, before closing the lid.
As Leon migrates to inspect another box there’s a loud crash behind him. Leon turns in time to see a man lunging from a previously closed coffin, arms outstretched for Leon’s neck. Leon twists away from the attack at the last second and the man runs face first into the front door of an adjacent building. The door rattles on its hinges but holds firm.
As the villager recovers, Leon advances and boots his attacker in the chest. They stagger at the impact and away from the door before finally regaining their balance. Despite the force of Leon’s kick, the man is still standing, snarling at Leon. Oddly, one of his arms is much longer than the other.
“Wrenched outsider!”
Leon startles slightly as a voice suddenly snaps from behind the building’s door. His opponent, on the other hand, pays it no mind, focused on the target in front of him. The man lunges for Leon’s neck, teeth flashing. Leon twists away once again, kicking the man’s knees out as he passes and delivering a strike of his axe to the side of the head.
The villager falls dead to the cobblestone and Leon lowers his axe, exhaling. Threat eliminated, Leon crouches to inspect his attacker closer. Like the other villagers, the man’s hair grows thick and wild from his head. But more concerningly, one of his arms is elongated, skin covered in coarse black fur and hands tipped with claws.
“So this is the start of Yharnam’s beasts,” Leon murmurs, standing.
Glancing away from the corpse, Leon looks back at the door the villager had collided with. The door behind which someone had spoken. Leon weighs his options, but it doesn’t take him long to decide. He knocks. For a moment there’s no reply, but then the same voice snaps, “What’d you want, outsider?”
“Sorry for the noise,” Leon says. After all, who liked loud neighbors?
The speaker, a woman from the sounds of it, barks a laugh. “You’re not from ‘round here, ‘specially with clothes like that!” Leon glances down at himself in reflex, mildly offended. Before he can offer a rebuttal, the woman spits, “Lousy offcomer, we don’t want your kind here!”
With that the metaphorical door is slammed in his face, the physical door still firmly shut. Leon blinks at the wood for a moment, then huffs, stepping off the porch and turning away. “What a warm welcome,” Leon grouses. Still, it is a step up from trying to murder him in the street. He has such high standards.
Leon spends another few minutes poking around the crates and boxes, looking for anything that might be useful. He finds some clean bandages wrapped in wax paper, which Leon immediately tucks in his pockets, and more interestingly, a chest of small vials filled with dark amber liquid. When Leon picks one up to inspect it, the label has the same writing as the vial Iosefka gave him. Blood additive.
“They have this stuff just lying around huh?” Leon shakes his head, baffled.
After a few seconds of indecision, Leon stuffs a few vials in his pockets alongside the bandages. While he’s still not jazzed about injecting this shit into himself, he’s got nothing else if he gets injured. He’ll keep them for emergencies. Whether or not it helps with healing, the energy boost could save his life if it comes down to it.
Even so. Injecting unknown compounds into your system is how drug overdoses happen. It’s only thanks to significant detoxing that Leon avoided opioid withdrawal after the amount of oxycodone he took for the debilitating pain caused by RCS. And that was after he spent the last decade successfully kicking his alcoholic tendencies. Leon would rather not accidentally start a new addiction, thank you very much.
Once satisfied he’s scavenged enough, Leon hefts his stolen axe once more and returns to the main street. A few solitary townsfolk attempt to ambush him, but Leon handles them easily. As he rounds the street corner, he notices movement along the upper road running parallel. It’s another hunter, who seems to register Leon at the same time Leon sees them. However unlike the rest of the villagers so far, this one doesn’t start sprinting toward him.
No, instead as Leon watches, they raise something long and slender in his direction. Immediately Leon dives for cover behind a carriage, the crack of gunfire echoing off the buildings.
“So they do have guns,” Leon growls as he settles his grip on his axe. Only… that didn’t sound like any sort of modern gun. No, it sounded more like what you’d get from firing a musket.
In the aftermath of the gunshot, Leon can hear muffled shouts rising in volume, no doubt drawn by the sound of the discharge. Sliding along the side of the carriage, Leon risks a glance toward the gunman. He pinpoints them, then immediately pulls back into cover. A moment later, the crack of gunfire comes again and the corner of the carriage explodes into splinters.
Leon counts the seconds on old instinct, even as the sounds of the mob draw closer. The wooden handle of his axe digs into his palm as he counts. —three, four, five, CRACK.
One, two—the shouts grow louder, Leon draws back his axe in anticipation—three, four, five. CRACK.
The first of the mob moves past the carriage and Leon jumps from cover, bringing his axe down on their skull. One. Leon whirls and the axe meets another’s neck, hot blood splattering over his skin as he wrenches it through. Two. The downswing moves smoothly into the upswing, cleaving a third from navel to sternum. Three. Leon releases the axe and slips around an incoming sickle. With a quick twist of his attacker’s arm, the blade is Leon’s as it slices the throat of its previous owner. Four. Leon follows the momentum into a powerful roundhouse, the neck vertebrae of another snapping on impact. Five.
Leon throws himself behind the carriage, and—
CRACK.
Five seconds. It’s not a scheme to draw him out, that’s the reload speed. Definitely an old style rifle, but makes sense with how antiquated this whole place feels. Leon exhales. Five seconds. No problem.
With his new sickle in hand, Leon steps back out from the shadow of the carriage and into the fray. One, two. He severs the arteries, bodies falling and red flowing freely down the street. Three. He stabs the sickle through the chest, leaving it stuck between the ribs. Four. He grabs an axe from the ground and hurls it forward, blade neatly burying itself in a skull. Five.
Get down.
Leon falls into the rhythm of the deadly dance, following the beat of gunfire. He rips his way through the mob, one after another. Blood streaks his arms and a dozen pilfered weapons, grabbed and discarded. He tastes iron and copper. His muscles burn.
One, two, three, four, five.
Sharp claws on a too-long arm scrape his skin. A blade he didn’t quite catch leaves a bloody line amidst many. The snarl of rabid dogs join the chorus, teeth snapping at his heels. Leon’s lungs ache, his shoulders scream, the cry of a villager turns to a choking wet gurgle.
The seconds crawl and the villagers fall.
Finally, the shouts and cracks of gunfire quiet. Leon is left standing in the center of the massacre, axe in hand. He stays at attention for a minute, waiting and listening, but nothing else emerges. Exhaling long and slow, Leon steps away from the carnage and to the side of the road, leaning against the brick wall. On autopilot he begins cataloging his injuries.
Leon picks out a few scratches from the claws of dogs and infected hunters alike. A saber had slipped past his guard to score a cut along his side. The old bullet injury in his left shoulder throbs in time with his heartbeat. “Right, nothing too bad,” Leon mutters. He swipes a bloody hand over his forehead. It’s sticky.
With his back braced against the wall, Leon looks around as he gives himself a moment to rest. Aside from the corpses now scattered around the square, the biggest thing of note is the massive bonfire in the center of the street. And, within the bonfire, the massive corpse of a beast.
Like those Leon saw earlier, the creature is strung up on a stake and left to burn. But, unlike the others, it is far larger, its clawed hands as big as his torso. But, while undoubtedly fearsome in life, now the werewolf is nothing more than a charred husk hanging off a thick pole of wood. The giant fanged maw gapes open, eyes staring sightlessly into the fire.
Idly, Leon wonders if the fires are reserved just for disposal of the beasts. Judging by the abundance of coffins, there isn’t anywhere left to bury the uninfected either.
Thump, thump, thump—
A rhythmic banging draws Leon’s attention from the bonfire to a gateway past it. A set of massive double doors, solid wood from the looks of it, seal off any path forward. But as Leon watches, the doors shake with the force of the rhythmic impacts. Thump, thump, thump— Leon narrows his eyes, pushing himself off the wall as the door groans and wood cracks ominously.
Finally, the wood gives way, doors slamming open as something large and heavyset crashes through them. It staggers but quickly regains its balance, standing to reveal what looks like a smaller version of the giants he’d faced in Spain, a troll perhaps… or a Tyrant if they had hair. In one of its hands, the “troll” clutches a massive brick of masonry.
Leon shifts on his feet, eyeing the ragged cloak over the troll’s shoulders. One of the infected villagers? Or was it always like this? Whatever it is or used to be doesn’t matter, as the troll’s eyes land on him.
It bellows and rushes him, deceptively fast for its size and gait. Leon throws himself sideways, rolling to his feet as the troll slams into the wall. His joints and muscles flare in protest and Leon curses. Shit… With his free hand Leon digs into his pockets and pulls out one of the vials he found. Emergencies only, Leon thinks wryly as he eyes the recovering beast. My entire job is an emergency.
Before Leon can second guess himself, he slams the needle into his leg. Adrenaline hits like a tidal wave, fatigue evaporating as strength surges back into his muscles. With greater ease, Leon hefts his latest stolen axe, watching as the troll regains its footing and swivels to face him.
“Let’s dance big boy,” Leon smirks, baring his teeth.
With a second wind thanks to the vial’s energy boost, Leon ducks and rolls away from the giant’s attacks. The giant is fast, faster than it looks, and each strike of its makeshift brick hammer cracks the cobblestone where Leon used to be. He weaves through the attacks, axe sinking into the troll’s flesh and tearing pieces out, bit by bit.
Eventually the giant lies dead at Leon’s feet, just like all the others. After making sure it’s thoroughly dead, Leon slips away. The burst of energy from the vial hasn’t dissipated, so Leon makes his way around the battlefield to loot anything useful. He checks the weight and balance of some of the other axes—eventually taking his favorite—before finally returning to the long-dead corpse of the gunman that had first fired on him.
The body is where Leon left it, however many kills ago, throat cut open by one of Leon’s blades. Next to the body is the rifle the villager had used, and after tucking the axe through his belt, Leon picks the gun up to inspect it.
Now, Leon’s become something of an expert in firearms over the decades. Using them, identifying them, hell, he’s even designed his own!
That said, Leon’s never seen a firearm exactly like this. The ignition system is flintlock at a glance, but it also has elements of a percussion lock. It’s also breech-loading, ammunition added from the back of the barrel, which would help explain the relatively quick reload speed of five seconds. (At least compared to similar muzzleloading flintlocks where you’d be lucky to get off two shots a minute.)
Leon hefts the gun up to firing position, trying a few different holds until he finds one that fits. Hmm… Leon glances down at the rifler’s corpse. A minute later, searching the body turns up a bandolier of black powder pouches and ammunition, along with a small knife. Leon tucks the knife away and starts going through the motions of trying to load the gun.
Rip open the wax paper that holds the powder with his teeth and pour it down the barrel. Stuff the bullet and empty paper casing down. Click the barrel back into place, raise to firing, set the hammer, and… fire.
The crack echoes around the street, a bright flash and burst of smoke bursting out the muzzle. Across the street, while it’s hard to tell at this distance, Leon can just make out the barrel he aimed for sporting a brand new hole.
Leon lowers the rifle, eyeing it with a grimace. The recoil isn’t too bad, but he can tell that the power in this thing isn’t great. Not to mention, it’s single shot and flintlock. Flintlock. Leon is lucky the thing can fire at all with how blood soaked everything is! Old school firearms? Get the powder or flint wet and congrats, the gun won’t fire and you’re stuck cleaning for hours. Not to mention how prone they are to misfires or the nonexistent reload speed.
Leon would get more reliable and deadly results throwing rocks.
With a deep sigh, Leon slings the rifle and stolen bandolier of ammunition over his shoulder. “My kingdom for a Sentinel 9,” Leon mutters. He’ll keep the rifle, even if it is archaic, but dear God does he miss his guns. It would make this all a lot less messy. At least the axe he picked up is effective. Unlike the guns.
Five. Seconds.
Yharnam, as Leon is finding out, is very tall. This city is buildings on top of buildings on top of buildings, like layers in a blood-covered stone cake. The terraces that Leon saw aren’t simply terraces, but streets in their own right, staircases winding around the outside of buildings. What had begun as backtracking had turned into a climb as Leon ascended to the top of one of the buildings, emerging onto a fenced precipice. There’s not much up here, though the view is rather impressive, offering a view of the cathedral-like city spires and the orange glow cast by the setting sun.
Leon lowers himself down by the edge of the building, taking a deep breath. Initially he’d just wanted somewhere relatively secure to check his wounds and take a breather, but it had turned into seeking somewhere to avoid the stench of blood, smoke and sewers that hung over the city. And when in doubt, go up.
The air is a little better up here. Leon can still catch the reek of death, but the wind is helping to carry it away, so Leon won’t complain too much. Now that he’s settled, Leon sets his gear down and takes a minute to assess his injuries again, namely, the bite on his arm.
After wiping as much blood off his hands as he can, Leon carefully unwraps his forearm to inspect the dog bite. Instead of swollen flesh, all he’s met with are shallow divots, skin pink and new.
He stares. Leon knows that dog took a chunk out of his arm. He saw the punctures from its teeth. However, there isn’t any sign of injury, save the blood staining his sleeve.
Leon knows he heals faster and is more durable than normal, a side effect of the plaga from his time in Spain. While the parasite is completely destroyed—something that dozens of scans and x-rays and blooddraws have confirmed—Leon didn’t get to it before the plaga was able to tweak his physiology. Not enough to make him lose his mind or grow insect legs, thank God, but enough to notice. Leon heals faster than he should. Hits that should be fatal leave him injured, but alive.
Admittedly, it’s helped him get out of more than one scrape in the past. Bioweapons seem to take particular delight in throwing Leon around like a frisbee, and it didn’t take long for him to realize he hadn’t come out unchanged by the plaga. While it wasn’t enough to classify Leon as a bioweapon, something designed and altered, it was another noose around his neck. Something else the government could hold over his head to ensure his cooperation.
But surviving getting thrown spine-first into a brick wall by a Tyrant is very different then an injury he gained less than half an hour ago vanishing without a trace. Leon is absolutely certain that has never happened before.
To the things he fights? Yes, Leon’s faced down more than one monster with accelerated regenerative capabilities. But not to Leon himself.
Iosefka’s medicine is effective. Too effective.
Leon pulls one of the vials out and looks at it. He rolls it in his hand, the label still taunting him with its near-readability. In a sudden fit of frustration, Leon reels his arm back, ready to throw the damned bottle over the edge of the cliff but… he stops. Slowly, Leon lets his arm fall back to his lap, vial still clutched in his hand. He exhales, hanging his head as he rolls it over his palm.
“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his face. Slowly, Leon returns the vial to his belt. It's against his better judgement. But, Leon has nothing else.
With a sigh, Leon pushes himself to his feet. Maybe he’ll go back to the clinic and find Iosefka, see if she’s got any more to say about her “medicine.” He hasn’t found a phone, and he’s starting to lose hope of there being anything remotely electronic in this city. Picking up his axe again, Leon turns away from the precipice to head back down. However, along the way he evidently makes a wrong turn, because he runs into an iron gate. Unlike the last one, this one is flush with the neighboring buildings, so he won’t be bypassing it easily. Leon tries to open it, but the gate refuses to budge, not even to a cursory kick.
“Damn it,” Leon mutters, slapping the metal with the flat of his hand. “Why is this place such a maze?”
A chuckle immediately has Leon whirling, hand gripping his axe, but there’s no monsters or angry villagers seeking to bisect him. Only a nearby window, lit from within, a shadow moving behind the frosted glass. “You must be a Hunter, and not one from around here either,” the speaker says as Leon lowers his axe and cautiously approaches. “I'm Gilbert, a fellow outsider.”
“…Leon,” he offers.
“You must’ve had a fine time of it, Leon,” Gilbert says wryly. “Yharnam has a special way of treating guests.”
Leon glances down at his blood stained clothes. “Yeah, that’s for sure,” he mutters. “Though it’s not the worst welcome I’ve been given.” The rousing hospitality of Raccoon City residents was a special kind of personal hell.
Gilbert chuckles, a quiet huff of laughter. “I don't think I can stand if I wanted to, but I'm willing to help, if there's anything that can be done.” The man breaks down coughing, and Leon can do little more than listen until the fit slowly dies and Gilbert regains his breath with a soft swear. “This town is cursed,” he says warningly. “Whatever your reasons might be, you should plan a swift exit. Whatever can be gained from this place, it will do more harm than good.”
“Trust me, I want to,” Leon laughs bitterly. “But I don’t even know how I got here, let alone how to get home.” He pauses, glancing at Gilbert’s silhouette consideringly. “But if you’re from outside this place… do you know about the U.S.? Or America? That’s where I’m from.”
Gilbert hums. “America, you say? Hmm… Never heard of it.” Leon’s stomach sinks, full of lead. But before he can fully despair, Gilbert continues. “But the Healing Church and School of Mensis might be worth a look. Between them, they hold almost all of Yharnam’s knowledge. They’d be sure to have a map or something similar to aid your search.
“Across the valley to the west of Yharnam lies the town of the Healing Church, known as the Cathedral Ward. And deep within the Cathedral Ward is the old grand cathedral,” Gilbert explains. As he does, Leon looks in the direction he speaks of, toward the setting sun. From here, atop towers of stone, he can see the Cathedral Ward and the massive bridge connecting either side of the rift. “Yharnamites don't share much with outsiders,” Gilbert says with a touch of resentment. “Normally, they wouldn't let you near the place, but… the Hunt is on tonight. This might be your chance…”
Leon turns back to Gilbert’s window. “Thank you,” he says, lips quirking up in a small smile. For the first time since he woke up, Leon’s got a lead. Gilbert chuckles, a soft cough rattling his throat, and Leon shifts forward, wrapping a hand around the window bars. “Is there anything I can…?”
“No, no,” Gilbert says, tone wry. “Don’t worry about me, nothing you can do for it. Medicine doesn’t work for me anymore, not even Yharnam’s.”
“Right,” Leon nods, because unfortunately, he understands. “Thanks again.”
“Good hunting, Leon,” Gilbert says, in the same odd farewell as Iosefka.
“Take care of yourself,” Leon returns before he slips away from Gilbert’s window. Looking out toward the bridge, Leon traces it back to his side of the rift. Right, the bridge had passed overhead near where he fought that troll. If he retraces his steps back that way, he should be able to find a route up.
Destination set, Leon slips back into the alley streets. However, he’s barely a dozen paces from Gilbert’s window when something new catches his eye. It’s a… lantern, filled with a dim white light, sprouting from the cobblestone like a small metallic tree. It’s quite similar to the lanterns Leon has seen hanging on buildings, and in all respects is quite ordinary. With one key exception: Leon knows it wasn’t there on his walk up.
Cautiously, he approaches, circling the lantern. Nothing changes, so Leon reaches a hand out, fingers brushing cold metal. The reaction is instant. The lantern abruptly flares in brightness at the same time there’s a flash of movement near its base. On reflex, Leon’s boot shoots out to kick whatever it is away. He gets a brief glimpse of small pale figures before there is a hissing wail. However his boot doesn’t hit anything. Instead when Leon draws his leg back, his boot slides cleanly through the figures as if they aren’t there.
It… it’s the small corpse things that he’d glimpsed while asleep. (Though maybe he’d been less asleep than he thought.) Something like five of them are cowering around the lantern, looking up at him with pitted eyes and mouths.
Leon hesitates, taking a step back from the lantern. The beings don’t follow him, instead staying clustered around the lantern. The one he reflexively kicked doesn’t seem harmed, considering Leon put enough force into that kick to crack bone. He half expects the creatures to retaliate but instead the little things hiss, before a few reach into the ground. The cobblestone bubbles as they pull out… a scroll of paper?
Bafflingly, the creatures then proceed to offer the paper to him.
Leon blinks. “For… me?” The beings shove it harder in his direction and Leon hesitantly reaches down, carefully taking hold of the paper. He unfurls it, not sure what to expect from a paper offered by small pale glowing shrivelled corpse things but… well. “TRANSCEND THE DREAM,” words swimming between English and pseudo-German, makes about as much sense as could be expected.
Stuffing the paper into a pocket, Leon looks back at the little creatures. Well now he feels like shit. (Or, even more like shit.) “Sorry,” Leon murmurs, kneeling down in front of the lantern and its little guardians. “You surprised me.”
The little things hiss and gurgle, undulating in place as they look up at him. One of them, perhaps bolder than the rest, scoots a bit closer to him, though it never leaves the lantern’s light. Its small shrivelled face stares up at him, almost like a curious cat (or perhaps more accurately, a curious child.)
After a second, Leon hesitantly reaches out and pats the thing. It’s… weird. He can definitely feel something, almost velvety in texture, but at the same time his fingers ghost through the edges of its body. This… whatever it is, isn’t all there. Like some sort of ghost. Despite that, the being gives an odd hiss, and almost seems to lean into his touch.
“You’re friendly, aren’t you?” Leon mutters, continuing to gently stroke a finger over the thing’s head. His answer is a gurgling hiss, like someone choking to death. Charming. “A friendly ghost… corpse… thing. Hah,” Leon chuckles. “Guess I have to call you Casper, then?”
‘Casper’ hisses, and a few of its friends, seeing Leon is no longer trying to punt them like a football, scoot closer. Suddenly, Leon finds the little things shoving for attention, all vying for their own head pats. It is, somehow… kind of cute?
Leon sits like that for a minute, indulging the little creatures. Then something… clicks. Leon blinks, staring at the tiny ghost corpses. They stare back, curious. On autopilot, Leon pulls his hand away and sinks his nails into the soft skin of his arm. His nails bite into flesh, a small but distinct note of pain pulsing from his protesting nerves. The little ghosts don’t so much as flicker.
Of course. Why would pain change anything? He’s already been bit by a rabid dog, which is a hell of a lot more painful than pinching himself. The little lantern creatures watch him, existence now mocking instead of cute.
“Well, it’s official, I’ve fucking lost it,” Leon announces, matter of fact.
Tiny ghost corpses. He is hallucinating tiny ghost corpses. Sure. Why the fuck not. That’s about the only explanation for this. Maybe it’s because of the drugs he injected himself with, or maybe Leon got infected with the disease that’s spreading around and hallucinations are part of the symptom package. Or maybe he’s not hallucinating and this all is, in fact, a dream.
A dream would make sense. He doesn’t remember how he got here, to this place familiar yet not. And, if Yharnam is real, then it has somehow managed to miss the past few centuries of technological innovation while doubling down on the Victorian gothic architecture. While in one of the most industrialized and satellite-coveraged areas of the world.
Also, tiny glowing ghost corpses.
So. Either Leon is dreaming, or he’s gotten airdropped into the most isolated European town on the face of the planet. And is also high. (Which… it's not the first time that’s happened.)
But, if this is a dream, surely his subconscious would have the decency not to subject Leon to such awful firearms. Because seriously, who the fuck only stocks flintlock pistols? Or, maybe Leon’s finally cracked completely. It was bound to happen. Because if this isn’t a dream, the tiny glowing ghost corpses don’t say great things about his current mental state.
Leon rubs his face. It feels real, the stubble of his beard scratching against his palms, calloused hands running over his eyelids. He can still smell the pungent tang of iron, the fetid sulfur of the sewers. When he counts his fingers and the bricks of the street, traces the lines of his palms and the threads of his pants, they stay the same. There are no holes where the edges of the dream should be.
He wants this to be a dream. But if it is, Leon has no idea how he’s supposed to wake up. Not when he can feel the beat of his heart and air in his lungs.
Eventually, Leon has to pull himself off the ground and keep moving. Whether this is a very lucid dream or he’s finally gone insane, Leon can’t risk the alternative that it isn’t. He’s seen plenty of fucked up shit over the years, and while ghosts is pushing it even for him, Leon’s been fighting zombies for decades. Maybe ghosts are just next on the bingo card.
Besides, Leon is a survivor at heart and Gilbert gave him a lead. Now to follow it.
He quickly retraces his steps back to the giant bonfire, craning his head back to look at the bridge passing overhead. Right, there has to be a staircase up somewhere around here… After a bit of searching, Leon finally pinpoints a series of terraces that look promising. He climbs the stone steps between them before turning a corner into a large courtyard and… a pack of hunting dogs turn to look at him, foaming at the mouth.
Leon sighs. Of course.
Immediately the dogs start barking, baying for his blood. Two rush him from either side, lunging for his throat. Leon catches the first in the skull with the blade of his axe and immediately slips sideways to dodge the second dog mid-pounce.
“Keep your dogs on a leash, people,” Leon growls, swinging his axe around and into the second dog’s head as it recovers. It goes limp, skull caved in. Prying the axe out, Leon eyes the remaining dogs stalking the edges of the courtyard and their handlers coming around the corner. Leon rolls his shoulders. “Right, time to teach you how to heel.”
One frantic minute later, Leon has kicked a dog in the muzzle, has a new bite wound on his arm, and is making a mental note to add arm guards to his arsenal.
“Of course, this wouldn’t happen if I had actually decent guns,” Leon mutters, glaring at the corpses of his former opponents. He rubs at his newly-rewrapped forearm, sending a particularly spiteful glare at the corpse responsible. Bypassing the bodies, he finds a stairwell onto the bridge and finally steps foot onto it.
The bridge is quite wide, but considering the abandoned carriages Leon can see, that makes sense if it doubles as a road. From the elevated position, Leon can look down on the buildings and lower streets of Yharnam. Even from above, the city is a maze, multiple levels of streets crossing over each other, narrow corridors vanishing between buildings. If there is a single road in this city that intersects at a right angle, Leon will eat his watch.
Axe in hand, Leon looks west in the direction of what Gilbert called Cathedral Ward. In the distance cathedral-esque spires tower over the skyline, and while not nearly as tall as some skyscrapers, it’s no less impressive. As Leon walks, he idly notes the periphery of the bridge is decorated with statues, shrouded in stone fabric with hands raised upward to hold lanterns aloft. It’s oddly elaborate to decorate a roadside, let alone how religious it all feels.
“On the other hand, Gilbert did say Cathedral Ward was home to the ‘Church,’” Leon recalls. “Which does imply some sort of religious institution.” And statues prostrating before the city ward dedicated to the church and those making the pilgrimage to visit it is a potent bit of imagery and symbolism.
As Leon walks he catches movement ahead of him. He slows, narrowing his eyes. Further down the bridge, in the direction he needs to go, a pair of werewolves stalk between the abandoned carriages. Leon takes a careful step back and tightens his grip on his axe. The best tactic will be to bait one away, and handle the monsters one at a time. However, before Leon can do so, the beasts raise their heads, sniffing the air. Then they turn to look at him with blazing yellow eyes.
Well shit. So much for that plan.
The werewolves snarl as they turn to face him, lips curling back to expose a mouthful of fangs. Leon watches as they slink closer on limbs too-human for a quadruped, arms and legs splayed awkwardly to the side. At least it makes it easy to predict their movements, Leon thinks as one of the werewolves’ legs draw under it, muscles bunching..
The werewolf in question lunges forward into a gallop with claws outstretched. Leon slips under the attack and whirls, driving his axe into the beast’s hindquarters as it charges past. The werewolf yowls in pain as Leon slices through muscle and rips the axe out, blood flying back into his face. Before Leon can cut the beast’s tendons, he has to jump backward from the snapping jaws of the second werewolf.
From there it becomes a dangerous and deadly dance. While individually the werewolves are no issue and Leon can easily evade their attacks, the fact there are two means his attention is split between them. And the beasts take advantage of it. Leon rolls away from one attack only to have to immediately veer away from another, jaws inches from his head.
It’s nothing he hasn’t faced before, but usually Leon has his handguns—which offer more flexibility—instead of needing to navigate with a hatchet. And while he might be faster, the werewolves have more reach.
Leon swears viciously as one of the werewolves clips him on the side, claws raking over his ribs. He presses his free hand to his side and it comes away wet. Fuck, fuck, that’s not good. Leon rolls away from another attack and as he comes to his feet, he grabs another medicine vial from his pockets. Without even looking Leon slams it into the meat of his thigh. The adrenaline hits his bloodstream like a physical blow, pain evaporating and a fresh surge of energy blazing like a wildfire.
The werewolves turn to face him again, snarling with fangs bared, claws dripping red with Leon’s own blood. Leon bares his teeth in kind, raises his axe and moves. This time, instead of dodging under the next attack, he vaults over the werewolf’s back, axe catching in the junction of the beast’s neck and shoulder. He severs arteries and shatters the creature’s clavicle and it collapses, dead.
One to go.
With only a single werewolf left, Leon’s free to hack it to bits one strike at a time. Eventually it lies dead on the cobblestone from a dozen cuts of his axe, black fur matted with blood.
Once sure it won’t be getting back up, Leon brushes his fingers over his bleeding ribs. Or, formerly bleeding ribs. While blood still sticks to his skin and shirt, the wounds themselves have closed in a mere minute. Just like before, the medicine vials are terrifyingly potent in their acceleration of healing.
Leon exhales, drawing his hand away. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he mutters. Shaking his head, he continues down the bridge and past the werewolves' corpses. He circles around a few more abandoned carriages, only to pause as he notices some dark shapes on the ground and perched on top of a few statues.
Are those… dogs?
No, Leon realizes as he gets closer and the creatures turn to look at him. They are, instead, absolutely massive crows—crows the size of a goddamn eagle—with bloody beaks and beady eyes. The ones perched on the carriages immediately take to the air and start to dive him, but go down easily with a swing of his axe. The grounded ones on the other hand… they shamble forward on legs and wings, perhaps too heavy to fly, snapping at his ankles. Leon crushes their skulls beneath his boot.
“Even the birds are bloodthirsty,” Leon murmurs as he steps off a bloody mess of bone and feathers. “What’s next… the fish?” After a moment’s pause, Leon sighs. Shit, he just jinxed himself, didn’t he?
Setting aside increasingly likely fish encounters for later, Leon cranes his head up, the wall bisecting the bridge from Cathedral Ward looming less than 30 meters ahead. But the universe doesn’t even give Leon a second to appreciate his arrival before a piercing shriek echoes through the valley. Something massive jumps from the other side of the wall, shaking the bridge as it lands heavily in front of Leon.
It straightens, giving Leon a brief but clear glimpse of the new threat. It’s huge, comparable in size to the dead werewolf strung up over the bonfire, but while larger than most bioweapons Leon faces on a daily basis, Leon’s seen bigger. The creature resembles the werewolves, humanoid-like proportions to its limbs and emaciated torso, with thick fur, long bloody claws and a giant set of antlers.
It screams, the same wailing cry Leon has now heard twice. And as he’d suspected, its source was big, unfriendly, and dead set on ripping Leon to shreds. Sometimes he hates being right. The beast snarls as it claws its way closer, showing off a maw of jagged teeth.
Leon has an axe. And a very shitty gun.
Right. This is gonna be fun.
Leon jumps back as a clawed hand as big as his body slams into the cobblestone. Then he lunges and brings his axe down into the creature’s forearm, blade cutting through long matted fur until it bites into the grey flesh beneath. The monster hisses, swiping at Leon with its free hand and forcing him to dodge. He dives beneath the attack, leaving him under the creature, its body and legs looming above his head. Leon doesn’t need an invitation.
His axe hacks into the flesh of the beast’s legs, leaving deep cuts in its skin. It roars above him, feet stomping at the ground and forcing Leon to slip away lest he be trampled. Now out from under the creature, Leon takes the opportunity to move a few paces back, watching as the beast searches for him, howling for retribution.
When it spots him again, it doesn't waste time. The monster lunges. But while it may be fast, Leon is faster.
He falls into a rhythm, slipping in and out of the massive creature’s flailing claws to deliver a few swift strikes with his axe. He targets the joints and tendons, though it’s not nearly as effective as he hoped. Meanwhile, the beast punches and slams the ground, trying to crush him, but Leon’s played this game before and keeps moving.
Still, while Leon is good with an axe, it’s slow going. Even though the beast is bleeding from a dozen wounds on its legs and torso, it’s still kicking and screaming. Death by a thousand papercuts, Leon grouses. He misses his Requiem. A few bullets in the skull from it would’ve killed this bastard by now.
At the thought, the rifle still strapped to his back slaps against his thigh. Leon eyes the monster a dozen meters away, its hot pants clouding in the chill evening air. Well, he might as well see how bad this gun is. His axe strikes aren’t exactly doing much either. Leon shoves the handle of the axe through his belt, using his other hand to swing the rifle off his shoulder. He grabs the powder capsule and manages to load the gun within three seconds. With each second, the beast lumbers closer.
Before it can get within striking range, Leon raises the rifle to his shoulder, braces and fires. The blast rings in his ears, butt of the gun recoiling into his shoulder. Despite the rifle’s shoddy design, Leon’s aim is true and he hits the creature in the skull. It staggers, but the damage to its head is minimal and it proceeds as if it barely noticed.
“I knew it,” Leon growls as he throws the rifle aside. Still, the beast seems a bit disoriented from the blast noise if nothing else, so Leon takes advantage to rush forward, pulling the axe back out from his belt and digging the blade into its stomach. Then, he’s ripping the axe out, blood splattering over his face, and slipping out of reach to start the dance over again.
Seriously, that rifle is better suited as an explosive, if only Leon had a way of remotely detonating it. Or maybe he can stick the rifle down its throat and the monster will choke on it.
Sadly, Leon doesn’t get to shove the rifle down the monster’s throat. But he does deliver the promised ‘death by a thousand papercuts.’ After what feels like an hour—but his internal clock informs him is most likely ten minutes—the beast staggers, tripping forward. It crashes to the ground, moaning as it tries to shove itself back up.
Before it can, Leon drives his axe into the top of its head. The monster shrieks, but Leon doesn’t give it a chance to retaliate before he’s slamming the blade of his axe down through the bridge of its snout. And then he does it again and again and again, until its skull is nothing more than a bloody mess.
Once he’s certain the beast is dead, Leon staggers back from the corpse, axe dragging his arm down. This is what… the fourth giant werewolf he’s fought so far? “Forget ‘home of the church,’” Leon mutters as he shakes out his arms, muscles slowly cooling as the adrenaline drains from his blood. “More like, ‘Yharnam, land of giant werewolves.’”
But, giant werewolves or not, Leon can finally keep moving. He pushes himself past the beast’s corpse to the gate it was guarding. Setting his axe down, Leon braces his hands against the massive wooden doors and shoves. The gates creak but refuse to budge. Locked. Because of course they are.
Leon exhales heavily, half-heartedly kicking at the doors. As expected, it does nothing. “Well, I’m not going that way,” Leon grouses, looking up at the massive gates and the wall barring his path. Not unless he can find some explosives or a chainsaw. But he still needs to get into Cathedral Ward. “Maybe Gilbert will know another way in,” Leon wonders aloud. He might as well ask, Leon doesn’t exactly have a better option at this point.
Sighing, Leon turns to once more retrace his steps. He wipes a hand over his forehead, grimacing. He’s soaked in blood, there’s not a bit of him that isn’t covered in gore. His clothes cling to his skin, his hair matted and sticky, and when Leon spits out a globule of phlegm, it tastes of iron.
If Sherry were on comms, Leon can only imagine her comparing him to a walking crime scene doing an excellent rendition of Picasso’s red period.
With each step, Leon’s feet go squish in his boots.
Leon brings a blood-soaked hand to pinch the bridge of his blood-soaked nose. “I need a fucking shower.”