With Eyes Open

The Central Street of Central Yharnam was, aside from the Great Bridge, the single largest street in Yharnam. Either side of it was packed, wall to wall, with towering buildings and offshoot streets. Under normal circumstances, the street itself would be clear for carriages and other transportation, but tonight it was clogged with debris of all sorts and burning piles of refuse. Huntsponies prowled along its edges and in its center, their keen smell making up for what they lacked in eyesight as they hunted.

Under normal circumstances, Celestia would have avoided this street like the plague, seeing as it was filled with murderous madponies. However, fate had forced their hand. As Eustace had discovered, Central Street was their best bet for reaching the Great Bridge relatively unscathed. Every other street, auxiliary and otherwise, was filled with the same kind of threats they'd find here, but the difference was that Central Street was wide. They'd have room to maneuver, and, most importantly, room to use firearms.

He'd explained the gist of firearms to the two of them, seeing as they weren't what one could call "commonplace" in Equestria, let alone as advanced as Yharnam's iteration. Just as deadly in the hands of them as they were in the hands of a huntspony, the bullets travelled fast enough to make dodging difficult for all but the most agile, or those with suitable shields.

However, as Eustace had been careful to note, the huntsponies were not nearly as magic resistant as beasts themselves were. Of course, with their partial transformation they still had someresistance, but it was critically less. Regardless, Celestia had decided to keep magic to a minimum, as Eustace had cautioned her against using it frequently lest it attracted true beasts.

"Stick to the shadows, if any come close, kill them as quietly as you please. We don't need them smelling us and calling together all the other ones," Eustace said softly, as he led them into the street and up to the far left bank.

As Celestia had noticed before, bonfires raged in the center of the street. However, what she had not noticed was that they were bonfires of bodies. Mounds of disfigured corpses burned, and it was clear that more were being added constantly. The fire reflected off the ground, drenched in blood and other body fluids as it was.

She grimaced. "If this is where they bring all the bodies, then that puts us where they all congregate. The center of the hunt." She didn't like the implications of that at all. If this was the center, then they were quite literally in the belly of the beast. Seh sniffed, struck by the lack of smell. "Perhaps I've grown used to it?"

Eustace, true to his advice, kept as close to the edge of the street as he could. For the most part, the huntsponies were content to stay in the center of the street with their corpse piles, but occasionally a straggler would wander away from the group, attracted to some smell or another.

Even though she protested, Twilight had voluntarily offered to pick them off from range. Eustace had let her, keeping a critical eye on her as she performed the task.

Celestia kept a close eye on Twilight as well, if only for a different reason. All Twilight had looked so far was disgusted, whether that was with herself, her kill, or the hunt in general, she couldn't say. She wouldn't have blamed her if it were the last option, however. Celestia herself was disgusted with the hunt, and she loathed to imagine what sort of vile magic had brought this kind of curse upon an entire city.

She furrowed her brows, now that she thought about it… "Eustace, where are all the pegasi and unicorns? I've only seen earth ponies in Yharnam."

"Unicorns? Well, they normally wind up with the Choir, seeing as how precious few of them there are in Yharnam," he said, tilting his head and flicking an ear. "As for 'pegasi', can't say I've ever heard of them. What do they look like?"

Celestia balked. A city of this size? Well, she supposed it was possible, but still, this city was easily the size of a major port and they'd never even heardof pegasi? She collected herself before she continued. "Like earth ponies, but with wings, like mine. Manipulate the weather? Use clouds for building material?"

At each suggestion, Eustace shook his head, his face only growing more skeptical as she progressed. "No, sorry. I'm not sure where you come from, but there's never been anything even remotely like that here. The closest thing are the gryphons, but they're certainly not ponies, and they don't make houses out of clouds."

That raised a million more questions for Celestia, but before she got carried away she went back to her initial train of thought. "Right, sorry. Unicorns, though, you said they all wind up with the Choir?"

"That's correct," he nodded, "almost every unicorn that makes their way into Yharnam is pushed into the Choir. Nopony knows why, of course, but the running guess is that it's because they can use magic."

"Thank you, Eustace," Celestia said, giving him a troubled smile. "You don't think the Choir had anything to do with this beast plague, do you?"

He stopped walking and, to her surprise, chuckled. "Of course they do. It's not common knowledge, but the blood of the Healing Church, of which the Choir is a division, causes beasthood, albeit indirectly." He began to walk again, looking keenly at a particular huntspony. "The more blood you consume, the more blood-drunk you become. The more blood you shed, the more blood-drunk you become. The more blood-drunk you become, the closer to beasthood you get.

"There's a threshold where one begins to lose sense of themselves, and all they begin to live for is the hunt. That's what's happened to those poor huntsponies; they've stopped being sentient. They're more beast than pony, now, and we've got to put them down just as if they were diseased dogs."

Again he chucked mirthlessly. "It's a gruesome task, and not for the faint of heart, but it is a task required, and one I and many others will see through."

Celestia didn't know how to respond, so she didn't. She just nodded, content to process his words.

"You don't think Astral had something to do with this?" Twilight asked from just beside Celestia.

"Not a chance."

"I don't think so."

Celestia looked at Eustace, who also looked at her. She motioned for him to continue, but he motioned back at her with a tilt of his head. She sighed, before continuing. "Astral wouldn't have done something like this, not willingly, anyways. She might have been shrewd, but she wasn't evil," she turned back to look at the bonfires, "and this is evil."

Eustace cleared his throat. "I concur. She is fair, if a bit… eccentric, at times. However, I didn't say she didn't have a hand in this because of her moral compass. Rather, she quite literally couldn't have started this. Lady Astral came here roughly twenty years ago, and the Healing Church was founded nearly one-hundred twenty years ago. The Healing Blood has been in use for a little under ninety of those one-hundred twenty years."

Celestia blinked. "Twenty? Did you say Astral came here Twenty years ago?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, I did," Eustace replied, frowning. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh no," Celestia replied, "it's just I was expecting her to have been here longer, is all."

It was too early to say for certain, but Astral only being in Yharnam for twenty years when she'd been missing for seven hundred was… worrying. She dare not theorize too heavily, because time magic, but she hoped Astral would have an explanation. Or, at least, a way out of this damned place.

-#-

Eustace's untricked blade swept through the throat of a huntspony, sending a cascade of blood over him as the pitiful creature howled through its new slit. It dropped the axe from its hoof, falling backwards amongst the bodies of its comrades.

Beside him, Celestia buried her blade deep in another's side, pulling the blade out in a single, graceful movement. The beast hardly bled before it stumbled and fell, dead.

Twilight had shot the only one amongst the group that had been armed with a firearm long before they had engaged in melee. None of the huntsponies had thought to retrieve the rifle, and none had been prepared for either Celestia or Eustace.

All in all, seven laid dead. An assortment of weapons, all shoddily made and pitiful compared to the Church's weaponry, were scattered amongst their corpses.

Eustace looked to Celestia, clearly impressed. "You know, I'm kind of sad I didn't set you up on the front line with me earlier, we'd have made much better progress if I had."

She smiled at him, solemnly. "I don't relish this, Eustace," she said, looking behind herself to Twilight, who was rejoining them, "but perhaps speed would have been a virtue, in this case."

"Of course," he replied, becoming solemn as well, "I don't relish it either, nopony with any sense would, but I agree. Considering our circumstances, speed would have been appropriate."

Twilight holstered her rifle, giving them both a nod. Over time, she'd grown more accustomed to the use of the rifle. She still looked unhappy, but she didn't look like she wanted to vomit every time she held the thing anymore.

Celestia sighed, of all the ways for her to learn this, Yharnam had to be the worst way possible. She looked to Eustace, who was absolutely covered in blood. She wasn't sure if he tried to get himself coated, or if it was just because of how he fought, but she found it repulsive. A quick surge of magic later and nearly all of the blood not caked on had been swept off of him, leaving his leathers and coat their normal colors once again.

He must have noticed the look she was giving him, because he offered her a wolfish grin. "I swear, I don't try to get it on me, it just happens." With that, he turned towards the staircase that led up to the Great Bridge, and started up them.

The Great Bridge, being raised above the entirety of Yharnam's ground level, was designed to follow the natural curvature of the landscape under Yharnam as it cut through the city. The staircase wasn't large, and soon they were back up on top of the bridge, near where they'd been more than seven hours ago. In that time, the sun had set, the hunt had begun and the city had roared to life, but in a way Celestia had scarcely imagined.

She smelled the air. A constant wind blew in from the gorge between Central Yharnam and the Cathedral Ward, and then down the length of the bridge. By the time it reached them, it was little more than a breeze, but that was refreshing enough for her.

Contrasting her first view down the bridge seven hours ago, this time there were no carriages in the way. She could see all along the length of Yharnam, with the city easily stretching for miles along the bridge. There were scattered fires on the bridge further down, but nothing like what she saw in Central Street. She looked towards the Cathedral Ward, and there were the carriages she remembered. This time they blocked her view of the Cleric Beast that, in turn, blocked them off from the Cathedral Ward.

"If we'd been quicker, we could have avoided trudging through a sewer, of all things," Celestia thought to herself, grimacing.

She didn't even want to begin to imagine how filthy the place would be. Instead, she turned to Eustace, her unspoken inquiry already known to the sage green pony.

He cleared his throat before speaking. "As of now, we're halfway to the aqueduct, or, as you'd eloquently call it," he said, nodding at Celestia, "the sewer. We'll still be following Central Street, seeing as the aqueduct is a fair distance away from the Bridge, and all three of us want to get out of here sooner rather than later. Other than that, maintain the status quo and we'll be there before we know it."