Blood echoes

Surgit urged his weakened feet to move towards the door from which the two kidnappers came. He dreaded finding more of them in there as he had no more blood vials. He cursed himself for not taking more with him from the dream. The last vial he had moved had the effect of the blood he consumed from the crows earlier.

He shouldn't have filled it from the kidnapper's corpse. After he'd seen how corroded his vertebra was, he understood why he didn't heal completely. Surgit stood by the door and leaned on one of the walls to help support his own weight. He looked at what lied in front of him.

He saw a large avenue, a cobbled road and many lamp posts on the side. He also saw a multitude of horse drawn carriages parked on the sides of the road. All of them were empty and devoid of their horses. Buildings rose up and made to touch the sky. From where he stood, Surgit felt that this place had something majestic and frightening at the same time.

It didn't feel like he was in the Cathedral Ward anymore. He wasn't in that area underneath the tower either. Those two areas didn't have an entire choir singing in the background and giving him goose bumps every time they increased the volume of their voices.

The sky was dark, decorated with faint distant moonlight. The moon was rising but the stars were nowhere to be seen, a strange thing that Surgit had just realized. He could see clouds obscuring the sky even further. But those little distant dots in the air were not visible at all.

That starless sky and the darkness that subsequently fell on the city because of it made the streets even more perilous. Surgit had to observe his surroundings harder and make sure that no one's lurking in some corner, with the help of the shadows. As much as he liked using darkness to his side, he wasn't willing to let it be used against him.

Surgit was still leaning on the door, assessing whether or not it was wise for him to explore the place even more when he heard a strange noise. Among the violent chants that could be heard even clearer outside, came the growling and sniffing of some strange animal. It appeared to be big, too big.

Just its steps increased in sound as it approached and Surgit slowly started realizing what those sounds meant. Right in front of the building laid the end of the main road. A gigantic roundabout signaled the end of the avenue, or at least Surgit thought it was a roundabout.

Beyond the circle, stairs led down towards another neighborhood as far as Surgit could tell. The stairs were hidden from his sight by elegant stone railings which demonstrated the intricacy used by their maker. From the space between each of those small pillars that decorated the railing, Surgit started seeing a shape, climbing up the stairs and accessing the main street.

He went back inside and hid behind a wall, observing the creature with just half an eye. The bloated pig came at the level of the roundabout and stopped. It turned towards the stairs and made to climb them back down.

Surgit knew that he had to kill that beast, at least to fulfill his promise to the little girl who had died because of his cowardice. But he couldn't move properly, not because of fear, but because of weakness. During all his previous fights, he had managed to kill stronger foes and bring the toughest of prey down to its knees.

He had to require other people's help at one point but if he wanted to get stronger, he decided that he would need to do his fighting all alone. If he had to fight a horde of kidnappers and then that bloated monstrous boar, he would need to be stronger and faster to dispose of them all without requiring so many blood vials to heal himself.

He tried to inspect how many blood echoes he had gotten from the two kidnappers he had killed. Within the dark void he found himself in every time he checked his insight, he saw some shapes huddling together, trying to form a green cluster. He didn't even have enough to buy anything from the messengers in the dream.

It Surgit a long time before figuring out how blood echoes functioned. To be precise, he had a vague idea on how they worked. Every time he disposed of his enemies, their blood echoes would form a ray of light within the dark void in which he swam. The more he collects, the stronger the light becomes.

Once he'd killed enough beasts, the echoes would form a green cluster. From afar, they would look like a small green star in another galaxy. Each cluster would allow Surgit to upgrade his skills or buy something from the fountain shop.

The stronger he got, the more echoes he needed to upgrade his attributes. He had upgraded his skill and strength twice. This improvement had cost him six echo clusters. He assumed that each time he needed to upgrade, he'd need an extra cluster to reach a new level. But that was, after all, just Surgit's assumption.

' I suppose I could try and kill as many of those kidnappers that lurk around this place and collect more blood echoes' He thought to himself. 'But to do so, I would need better protection and more vials.' It was time to go back to the dream.

As he walked back next to the dream lantern, Surgit noticed something his eyes failed to see before. It was shining in the ground. But the shine didn't come from the reflection of the light. Instead it was as if his mind wanted to bring his attention to it. It was a small glimmering object, the only shining thing on the ground.

'My insight must be playing more games with me again' he thought as he approached the newly noticed object. He came closer to inspect it and it was another carving on the ground. Words were carved on a set of cobble stones that formed the ground on the higher terrace of the building. He looked closer at the letters and managed to read what was inscribed. Nightmarish rituals crave a newborn. Find it, and silence its harrowing cry. That message was troubling to say the least. What kind of rituals would require a new born if they didn't have an evil agenda?

Surgit thought that he had seen enough horrors in Yharnam to be immune to shock, but this note was grim and he didn't like to think of the person capable of doing such a thing. The beasts in the city didn't seem to be able to think logically, let alone read or write. Only a human with a fully functional brain could be capable of writing such a thing.

Why would they perform rituals in the first place? He remembered the note he had found in the library beneath Oedon chapel, the one discussing a spider in Byrgenwerth and how it blocked different kinds of rituals.

It seemed that Byrgenwerth indeed held secrets from men and would most probably have an answer for him regarding Paleblood. 'Only, if other men or women were trying to reach Byrgenwerth in order to unlock these rituals,' he was mechanically absorbed in thought again. 'What other dangers lie on the way there? Whoever barred the passage to the academy must've put enough abominations on the way to make reaching it almost impossible.' The password was the first obstacle, but he highly doubted that it would be the only thing keeping people away from the forbidden woods.