The Nightmare Sea

A Tale of Yharnam

By JackSkyandCosmos

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a work of fanfiction, written to pay tribute to the video game Bloodborne, the visionary author H.P. Lovecraft, and other influences. I in no way seek financial gain from it, and the settings, concepts, and some of the characters within remain the intellectual property of From Software and Sony Entertainment.

I also cannot be held responsible for any deterioration in one's mental faculties, resultant from the eldritch truths contained therein...those without sufficient Insight are advised not to proceed.

Contents

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 1: THE BAY OF BYRGENWERTH (1-4):

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 2: THE BAY OF BYRGENWERTH (5-12):

THE BYRGENWERTH MISSIVE

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 3: UNKNOWN SEA (13-16):

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 4: UNKNOWN SEA (17):

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 5: UNKNOWN SEA (18-22)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 8: UNKNOWN SEA (23)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 12: UNKNOWN SEA (24)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 15: UNKNOWN SEA (25)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 19: UNKNOWN SEA (26)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 20: UNKNOWN SEA (27-28)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 22: UNKNOWN SEA (29)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 28, THE NIGHTMARE SEA (30-34)

HARBOUR MASTER'S LOG, HIGH TIDE (Epilogue)

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY ONE: THE BAY OF BYRGENWERTH, MORNING WATCH

1.

As our battered craft drifts in the eerily calm waters of the Bay of Byrgenwerth, my heart is as black as the looming crags of obsidian rock that tower above our ship where we have made anchor.

She is gone. I have lost her.

2.

I had never wanted to sail upon this doomed errand, this accursed charter. Oh, the money was good, excessive in fact, and paid in genuine Healing Church gold. Yet in truth I have no great love of Yharnam, despite apparently having lineage with some of the nobility of this part of the world.

I had been there but once as a young girl, and have distinct memories of a dark, hostile citadel, that for all its grand gothic architecture and sweeping boulevards felt surprisingly claustrophobic. Even as an adult, the few Yharnamite merchants I had the misfortune to meet on trade routes and the like always came across as withdrawn, and nigh on xenophobic. They were also generally fanatical when it came to their unique religion, which as far as I can tell is a bizarre mixture of occult idol-worship and cosmic nihilism.

Thus, when the green-robed Scholar appeared at the shipping office claiming to wish to buy passage to prospect the ruins of Byrgenwerth, the long abandoned Yhanamite seat of learning, I was inclined to give him short shrift. The First Mate, however, was enraptured by the opportunity to go- she had always had a curious fascination with the tales of Yharnam-and as always with her, she had a way of enrapturing me to do her bidding.

In addition to the Scholar and The Solaire's usual crew, we were chartered by four constables, who had some heinous quarry who had apparently fled to Yharnam to avoid punishment for unspeakable crimes. I am not ashamed to say that I am glad of their company, for if a half of the most recent rumours about this wretched place are true we may well have need of them.

The journey started well enough, but for one anomaly. As we pulled away from the quayside a mad crone un-cowled herself at the wharf and began screeching at our departing wake, beseeching us not to go. The bewitched hag bawled that our voyage was ill-omened, and to prove her point extracted the carcass of a huge, white cuttlefish from her garments and held the bloody, pulpy mess aloft, shaking it at the departing ship. At this point the Harbour Master appeared and carted her away.

I paid this incident no heed, as such happenings are common to seamen and women. Thus in spite of this, we left our home city in high spirits, with the wind flying hard in The Solaire's sails as we pulled into open water. The First Mate even laughed at the crazed lady as we pulled away, the salty spit of the waves rushing around her angelic, auburn hair.

"Oh, she doesn't know the adventures we will have, the things we will see…".

3.

We had just sighted the lighthouse when the squall hit us.

Up until that point, we had been blessed with unseasonably good weather, and a firm yet fair wind that had allowed us to gently cruise round the coastline for days. The constables and crew had even taken to sunbathing on the forecastle and aft-deck, a dalliance that I allowed for the sake of high moral. In fact, it was so temperate on the evening of yesterday that they were doing so even as the ruddy sun was descending on the seaward horizon.

Yet as we began to navigate around the great rocky spit that crescents the sea-inlet to the Great Lake east of Yharnam province, the Cabin-Boy did screech from the crowsnest:

"Lighthouse ahoy! She be lit, Lady Cap'n!"

I initially thought the poor boy was once again suffering from dementia brought on by sunstroke, and made a note in my brains to restrict the time he spent in his favourite crowsnest on the main mast. No lighthouse had adorned these shores since before my birth.

Nethertheless, I raised my pocket monocle to my eye and peered over the railing at the shoreline. Sure enough, standing erect and hazy in the evening heat, was the dirty white stone tower of a lighthouse atop the dunn cliff face.

"A lamp you weren't expecting?" The First Mate's breath in my ear both startled and thrilled me as she appeared grinning at my side, clad in her high-collared leather seamen's garb with thigh-high deck boots.

I passed her the monocle. "The charts have not shown a light adorning that shore for at least one score years and ten." I replied. A few of the seamen were beginning to sit up on the deck. Something in the air had changed.

"Legend has it that a hamlet once stood there," I continued, "whose inhabitants attended to a lighthouse like the one yonder. The shipmasters' guilds have been petitioning the Healing Church government in Yharnam to rebuild it for years, for the loss of shipping to the rocks round this spit has been great. Mayhaps they have finally listened…"

Yet the First Mate was no longer listening to me. Her usual teasing, youthful face was creased up in wonder, as she frantically adjusted the viewing lense.

"What is it?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Captain… over there, on the beachhead…" She replied, pointing at a nebulous white patch between the sea and the cliffs whilst passing me back the monocle. I had started to raise the device to my eyeball when the Cabin-Boy once again screeched from the crow's nest:

"STORRRRMMM! Storm Lady Cap'n, to port! STORRRM AHOY!"

This time I felt the boy's wits must surely have plunged from the main mast ahead of him. For the sky on the landward side was the paleblood hue of late summer, and the earth and sea shimmered with the heat. Yet as I slowly turned round to face the port seaward deck rail in unison with the First Mate, that dread terror that has struck the souls of Captains down the ages entered my being.

For not only was the entire skyline a roiling, tempestuous war-tapestry of clashing, charcoal black clouds, criss-crossed with unreal blue lighting braids. Not only did a discordant quartet of the four winds suddenly howl through the Solaire's rigging, laced with a choir of the souls of the dead and bassed with the percussive crack of thunder-claps.

No, in addition to this nautical fright-show was a terrifying sight for any seaman or woman, green or sea-legged: lining the horizon from east to west was a charging wall of water fifteen, nay, twenty feet in height, bristling with angry white surf and bearing down as if from nowhere upon the Solaire and her unprepared crewmen who but moments earlier had been bathing under a now occluded sun!

"Wave ahoy!" I bellowed! "All hands man the rigging! Cabin Boy! Get down from there!"

The ship erupted into terrified life. The Cabin Boy shimmied down the main mast and bolted for the sail ropes. Regular crewmen leapt from their prone positions utop the decks and began hauling the sails in an attempt to tack the ship against the wind. The constables stood dumbfounded, their hands on their pistols and swords, battle hardened men whose weapons were useless against the enemy of nature. The Scholar stood trembling, his face as green as his robes.

"You heard the Captain!" bellowed the First Mate as she ran past them and leapt atop the quarterdeck to wrestle with the wheel. The constables began to fumble with the ropes under the bawling directions of more able seamen and women, whilst the Scholar promptly voided the contents of his stomach and then bolted below decks.

With no time to curse our fate at being so over-crewed with landlubbers, I rushed to help the First Mate. Together, we hauled the wheel and aligned the rudder to starboard as the regular crew tacked the Solaire towards the beastly wave. The boom swung, the ship lurched to port, and the bow was left aiming for that terrifying aquatic behemoth, now looming over the Solaire and closing the distance fast.

"BRACE!" myself and the First Mate hollered, as every man grabbed masts, rigging, railings, and in our case, the wheel and each other.

As the Solaire crested the wave her bow was hauled skywards, and I thought for one terrifying minute that she'd be thrown backwards top-to-tail and decant her human cargo into the briny depths. Yet with an almighty crash of timber against sea we pitched downwards and plummeted down the rear face of the wave, into a rain-lashed sea-valley between the tsunami we had just crested and a second, even more mountainous wave we would surely have to summit just moments hence.

Yet this was not our only sufferance, for over the screaming winds I could already hear the Cabin-Boy jabbering what was plainly obvious to anyone with eyes: we were being forced back towards the head of the spit by the waves, and if we did not correct our course this next would likely dash us against the rocks, even if it did not capsize us!

"Take the wheel!" I yelled at the First Mate, but she was already leaping away towards my intended destination: the storm-jib at the bow of the vessel which urgently needed releasing.

"No, I'll do it Captain!" she hollered. Unbelievably she was smiling, and I could tell in her gait as she practically danced down the ladder and across the foredeck that she was actually enjoying this pandamonium. As her hair blew wildly in the searing rain, she strutted down the foredeck, daring the storm to stop her, and yelling orders at crew twice her age:

"You there, Second Mate: look lively! You constables, get good at that rigging you wiley scrubs!"

Tossing her head back she howled with laughter, as I watched from the quarterdeck still straining to hold the wheel steady. I watched with my heart in my throat as she swung one lithe leg up onto the bowsprit and then stood, precariously, howling into the wind like a beast. Behind her, the next great wave loomed.

"Foolish youth!" I yelled across the deck, which was in disarray. "Release the storm jib and get back here, for both our sakes!"

Off to starboard, the craggy blade of the spit thrusted outwards towards the Solaire.

The First Mate casually placed a blade between her teeth and confidently traversed the bowsprit like a tightrope artist at a travelling circus. Releasing the blade into her hand she cut the storm-jib loose, and it rapidly inflated. At the same time the crew tacked the ship shore-wards to bring us round the spit and into the rushing sea-inlet of the Great Lake. The boom swung back and we began to turn, putting us at right angles to the wave.

"Get down from there! Please!" I yelled, but the First Mate just stood there, gazing in arrogant awe at the mighty wave.

"HAhaahhaha! I've done it I have…" she yelled as it beared down on us. Francially I hauled the wheel hard to starboard and screamed at her, pleading for her to get back, to stop this youthful tomfoolery, for I saw it now, there was not enough time to fully bring the ship about...

The second wave hit us in the port side with a sickening thud. I looked up, saw her laughing, joyous face, her striking figure atop the bowsprit, illuminated in a sudden pulse of purple lightning… then she was gone. I was thrown sideways by the impact. I was briefly aware of the world pitching to starboard before I lost control of the wheel, slid across the deck and hit my head on the side railing.

4.

I came too to in what had been our bed, in the great cabin with the grave-looking, bespectacled ship's Surgeon attending to my head wound. The Second Mate, a burly stalwart seaman with red hair, informed me of the events during my absence from the waking world.

The Solaire had miraculously stayed upright following the impact with the wave, and the ship had cascaded down the sea-inlet and into the Great Lake.

However, no sooner had we entered these waters the fickle storm had died a sudden death, and an eerie calm had settled over the lake. There was so little wind that the Second Mate had ordered the crew and constables into the ship's two away-boats and had them at oars, towing the battered Solaire across the moonlit surface. Even the wiry Scholar had been roused from his sick bed to help with the grueling haul, such was the deadness of the winds that night.

They finally made anchor in the Bay of Byrgenwerth at dawn, and the exhausted crew had retired to the main cabin. Yet the constables had decoupled their tow ropes, and with the Scholar had made for the college grounds at the shoreline, not wanting to waste any time in their respective ventures.

Upon hearing this, I leapt from the bed, demanding that the crew be awoken from their slumber instantly- we would return and search for the First Mate, for she was a strong swimmer! But the Second Mate reminded me what I already knew, that the sea-inlet to the Great Lake was only accessible at high tide. Thus, including time to make necessary repairs and to traverse back across the lake, it would be at least two days hence before we again could make open water.

Heartbroken and frustrated, I dismissed the two gentlemen and ascended to the deck. Only the ever vigilant Cabin Boy was awake in the crowsnest of the now crooked main-mast. The rigging was a mess, and storm-torn and soggy sails drooped miserably from splintered wood.

Off to starboard, the classical pillars of the university that gave the bay its name sat on the lake's shore in a low mist. A dome-shaped luminarium protruded from one of these structures, and the whole edifice was framed by that looming, mossy, endless rock. I could see the constables' rowing boat docked just off a lake-facing plaza.

I returned to the great cabin and tried to sleep. But my grief prevented me from finding salvation in slumber's arms, and thus I dug out these parchments from my sea-chest. Like the Captains of old, I will attempt to keep this log as an account of this accursed venture as it unfolds, so that a warning can be served to others, at least.

If the fates permit it I will write again tomorrow, but for now, I will open the rum that the surgeon has left for the pains from my head wound. And I will drink to remember, and to forget the one I lost, my First Mate.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY TWO: THE BAY OF BYRGENWERTH, EVENING WATCH

5.

Oh wretched fates, oh cruel cosmos- where should I begin this entry? Where I left off, is perhaps best...

Under the half pretence of requiring respite for my grief, I drank the sugary liquor steadily throughout the afternoon of yesterday. As evening beckoned a rust coloured sun began to set over the lake, visible in panaramic through the large windows that spanned the stern of the ship, and the entire rear wall of our great cabin.

At some point (I know not when), the Second Mate rapped on the door, blathering about how the crew had still not heard any signal from the constables and Scholar, despite nightfall closing in. I paid him no heed, and when he tried to force the cabin door I set my knee to it, barked at him to be gone to his labours, and bolted the latch from the inside.

I instead removed from my sea-chest a tiny music box given to me as a gift by the First Mate, and after winding its delicate mechanism, proceeded to waltz mournfully around the cabin to its chimes, all the while swigging rum from rapidly emptying bottles.

Eventually, I collapsed into the bed and fell into a fitful, drunken slumber, throughout which I was plagued by a vivid, haunting dream. Whilst precariously navigating a blasted cliff face of volcanic, cavity-filled rock, I was pursued relentlessly by a robed figure who possessed an enormous globe of blood-red roses for a head. Although I could not fully fathom the reason, I knew instinctively that I had to keep some fair distance from this apparition, lest I lose my very wits and sense of self. Indeed, whenever I paused for breath in this dream, I would promptly see that awful head of roses appear beyond a distant crag, and an awful pounding would build in my poor head.

This sensation followed me into the waking world the morning hence when I was awoken by yet more of the Second Mate's pounding and yelling on the cabin door. Bleary eyed and disgruntled, I staggered for the portal, mediating on how mayhaps the creature that had haunted my dreams was the very incarnation of a hangover, or perhaps grief itself!

As I reached the entrance way I grabbed my tri-corned captain's hat from the stand and plonked it awkwardly atop my throbbing head, and flung open the door.

"What?" I bellowed.

"It's the landing party, ma'am." Stammered the grave looking Second Mate.

"They've returned. Well… near a half of them. And not in good shape, ma'am.".

6.

As I stepped onto the deck the morning sun did sear into my skull, and my headache increased to such levels I nigh on thought my head would explode. However the sight of the remaining members of the landing party quickly cleared the cobwebs from my head.

Out of the original brigade of five, only the Scholar and Chief Constable had returned. The latter, a freakishly tall fellow who normally towered over one with a pride that would seem to defy armies, was now stooping, his garb and weapons leant against the deck rail, and clearly in some anguish. This was likely from a raw looking abdominal injury he had sustained whilst ashore, to which the Surgeon was now binding a white cloth. His left arm was already bandaged about the upper arm in such a fashion.

However, despite being the more injured the Constable was perhaps the least frightful looking of the two. The Scholar looked positively ghoulish, his green robe covered in a mixture of congealed blood and some unknown pale slime. As I approached he was babbling away some nonsense about monsters from the cosmos, and in my irritation I promptly told him to cease his ramblings and demanded a report from the Chief Constable.

If I had been expecting rational forthrightness from a man of the law, I was to be disappointed, for his account made scarcely more sense than the Scholar's.

Whilst prospecting the main university building even now visible on the shoreline, their party had supposedly been ambushed by a female hunter in choral garb. She was eventually defeated and killed, but not before slaying one constable and severely wounding both the Chief and one other.

But this mysterious guardian was not the most awful happening to befall the expedition. On their attempt to beat a retreat back to the away-boat a creature, of which the details scarcely made sense, had ambushed the party and killed a further two constables before being quelled by our brave Chief. After finding the Scholar cowering behind a pillar, the two of them had then returned to the Solaire.

"Ye great fates, what to make of it?" grumbled the Second Mate once the Chief Constable had finished his tale.

"I never wanted too… it wasn't my idea…". All of us turned sharply to look at the Scholar who had just mumbled this last utterance into his grimy robes.

"What now?" I demanded. "What didn't you want? Speak up, Scholar!"

"I...I am no Scholar!" Wailed the pitiful man. "It was her who made me do it!".

I froze, something catching in my throat. I fixed the Scholar with an icy stare.

"Who, fraud? Who made you come on this accursed mission?"

The Fake Scholar looked like he wished to bolt back to the cabin, but the Second mate had blocked his way.

"WHO?" I bellowed.

"Your….your First Mate! The one we lost in the storm! It was her idea, all of it, I swears it!"

7.

My shock took mere seconds to turn to unrestrainable rage. With scarcely a thought for what I was doing I grabbed the scholar by the collar of his garb and pushed him hard up against the main-mast, which wobbled precariously.

"Now listen to me you scrub!" I hissed in the Scholar's face. That bizarre translucent slime was oozing between my fingers from his garb, but I cared not.

"You tell me right now what you meant by that last comment about the First Mate, or I swear by the fates I will run you through against this mast right here!"

The Fake Scholar whimpered, and like the cowardly waste of skin he was promptly regurgitated his tale. He had been but a useless beggar with a "troubled childhood", when my love the First Mate had approached him. Apparently he was to don the green robes of a Scholar and convince me to undergo this mission, in order to collect some specific artifact from Byrgenworth at the First Mate's behest. Needless to say, I was loathe to believe this creep over my deceased darling- although I had known her fascination with Yharnam and the occult to be great I would never have imagined her to be this reckless!

"And where is this "artifact"? Where is the proof?" I declared.

The Chief Constable stepped forward, wincing from the pain in his stomach. "We were not able to retrieve it, ma'am, before we were attacked."

I breathed deeply. I knew I may regret my next actions but I had to know what wretched object had been worth this folly, her death, and the betrayal of my trust.

"We will return to the College…" I declared.

"No!" Yelled the Fake Scholar and he made to bolt, but I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

The Second Mate attempted to advise me that this was unwise, but I was having none of it. After all, the assailants that had plagued the last party were all dead, were they not?

Declining his offer of accompaniment, I instructed the Second Mate to take charge of the Solaire in my absence. Instead, I took the injured Constable and the wailing Fake Scholar, which in hindsight was perhaps unfair but it was in some sense their mess that required laundering, and in any case I was both half-drunk and grief-raged. I also took a crew member to act as Oarsman.

Before leaving, I dipped into the great cabin. As I reached to retrieve my cutlass and pistol from their rack in the bulkhead, I noticed my hand was shaking. As a remedy, I grabbed a half-empty bottle of rum and tipped the contents therein down my gullet.

8.

In the amber light of the late evening our sorry party of four piled back into the away-boat, and we cast off to the sounds of the Fake Scholar's protestations, the stifled murmurs of pain from the Chief Constable, and the slap of the oars against the perfectly still lake.

As we neared the shoreline the principal building of the university became more visible as it emerged from the ever present mist, and even one such as I who had limited use for asceticism could not fail but to be impressed. The squat, classical structure had two storeys, buttressed by stout white marble columns, with the curved dome of the luminarium observatory crowning the whole edifice. Large, square modernist windows laced with sturdy ironed frames fronted the building, with a dim yellow light emanating from within. A grand balcony strutted out from the upper floor, forming an archway over the lakeside plaza that encircled the complex. In better days I could imagine intrepid young students relaxing under the awning, discussing the mysteries of the cosmos, or meditating astride the balcony which must offer a stunning view of the lake.

At this time, however, the grounds were known to be uninhabited, the College having long been supplanted in the aspirations of young Yharnamites by the lure of the Healing Church, although I took note that the iron-trellis lamp posts that were regimentally spaced around the lakeside plaza were all a-lit with gas lamps, casting a spectral glow in the evening fog.

"Did you see any others here? Other than your attackers?" I asked the Chief Constable.

"No ma'am, not a soul" he replied gravely, as the boat slid up aside the stone railings that lined the lakefront.

Disembarkation was a predictable shambles. The injured Constable stoically declined help getting out of the boat, even though it was clearly a great effort from him to swing his frame over the railing. The Fake Scholar once again tried to refuse to come, but I hauled him out all the same.

"I am no Scholar!" he wailed again once I had him landside on the stone paving of the plaza.

"I have never learned from books! No, no...no…"

"Shut up!" I hissed at him. Both myself and the Chief Constable had drawn our weapons. Instructing the Oarsman to guard the boat with a musket, we made for the building's side entrance. The heaven wooden door squeaked on its hinges but with a little force allowed us to ingress.

9.

As we entered the ground floor of the college, I tried to suppress the memories of the stories the First Mate had told me of this place, in her high, excited voice as we had lain betwixt the bedsheets in the Solaire's great cabin, mere days earlier.

I did not think, for instance, that the Fake Scholar's nerves would be helped by the knowledge that this very campus was built above the ruins and catacombs of an ancient civilization, now lost to time but the object of much of the institution's study.

Nor did I feel it prudent to repeat her assertion that the original lecture halls of Byrgenwerth had somehow "disappeared" in an experiment performed many years previously in the College's hayday. I had no great belief in that rumour anyhow, and put it down as one of the many false myths peddled in all ancient academic institutions. Pretension over thought is never admirable, in seamanship or scholarship!

The ground floor lobby was a single large space littered with oak cabinets and desks. A winding staircase twisted its way up through the centre of the room. Eerily, this cavern of curiosities was all lit by candlelight, and appeared to be in disarray. My hands closed around the hammer of my pistol and the grip of my cutlass as I went to inspect the objects laid out upon the work tables.

Much of these transpired to be aged books and dusty journals, as one would expect at such an establishment. The yellowing pages smelt earthy and damp, and crumbled at the slightest touch.

More strange than these were the bizarre bronze models depicting a celestial body surrounded by what looked like great mirrors. I did not know whether they were the fruit of the archaeological labours undertaken beneath those very floors, or another line of enquiry entirely!

Yet stranger than those cosmological figurines were the ornate cages strewn hither and thither about the place, such as within which a noble lady might keep a pet bird. Some of these were open and empty, whilst within others lay the decayed remains of unfamiliar creatures long expired, which I was loathe to inspect too closely.

But most strange of all were the jars of eyes, grossly swollen and floating in some briny preservative. Perhaps more disconcerting than their human-like appearance was the sheer number of the squidgy orbs, perhaps over two dozen to a jar. Like the other artifacts, these were placed in random sequence across the room, and did not invite intense scrutiny...

To distract me from these spectacles I barked at the Fake Scholar, who was shaking and attempting to back towards the entrance:

"You! What was it she was after? The First Mate, what was she looking for? Tell me so we can find it and begone!"

"A-a chest Lady Cap'n!" He stammered. "She said it was a chest…"

Seeing no such object on this floor we ascended to the second by way of the twisted Chief Constable and I flanked either bannister, weapons drawn, whilst the Fake Scholar timidly crept after us.

The upper storey of the college seemed to be a library or reading room of sorts. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling in a much more orderly fashion than on the floor beneath. I idly opened one tome, it appeared to be a botanical encyclopedia of sorts, containing illustrations of what looked like long fossilised invertebrate creatures, all meticulously labelled. The door to the balcony that we had spied from the boat was shut, and I paid it no heed as I wished to gain our quarry post haste.

The other object of interest on this level was what appeared to be a large chandelier or infant's mobile hanging from the ceiling above the stairwell, depicting the same celestial body and mirrors as the models on the lower level.

As the chest we were seeking did not appear to be there either, I proceeded towards a steel ladder on the far side of the floor which lead upwards into the ceiling- presumably into the lunarium. Before ascending I told the Chief Constable to wait at the base, adding:

"If he attempts to leave.." I pointed at the Fake Scholar. "Cut him down!" I gained a certain morbid pleasure as the Fake Scholar turned an even sicklier shade of white in the candlelight.

At the ladder's zenith was a small landing strewn with more books, jars of eyes, cages and the obscure planetary models. Situated at the centre of this area was the base of an immense telescopic device, like the Solaire's viewing monocle, but infinitely more grandiose. Why, such a device could only be for examining the heavens themselves!

Another narrow staircase wound up around the device from the landing floor towards the domed roof. With some trepidation but also a grim determinedness that I should see this task through, I began to ascend. I stopped about a half of the way up, for I was sure I could hear a faint rustling in the metal rafters above my head! When it ceased, I ascended again, and briefly heard a low buzzing and felt a downdraft of air…

Cutlass and pistol held in front of me, I proceeded further, and reached another landing. This area was in near total darkness, save for a low beam of light coming from an aperture in the domed roof. By this I could see that I was level with a part of the telescopic device that had an odd steel wheel, much like a valve, protruding from it. For lack of any other ideas, and with an unnatural sudden burst of curiosity as to its purpose, I briefly pocketed my pistol (the cutlass being a better choice in this claustrophobic environment anyhow), reached over and turned the wheel a full cycle anti-clockwise.

An ear piercing groan broke the silence and the floor beneath my feet shook so hard I nearly lost my footing. I swiftly withdrew my pistol again and searched for the source, and quickly saw it: the aperture of light above me was expanding into two halves. The domed room of the luminarium had opened by some hidden lever system, and now the light of the setting sun over the misty lake streamed onto the landing where I now stood, open to the elements on the roof of the world! I was half blinded by low sunlight, having been indoors, but could have sworn that something flew out into the air following this procedure.

The contraption's movements were not complete, however. For once the roofing had completed its opening, the telescopic device began to ascend, hissing on pneumatic steel pumps as it did so. Once it had near doubled its height, it suddenly pitched downwards so that I had to duck out of the way. It then came to rest, aligned so that the giant lense was facing downwards towards the water, aiming to where the Solaire likely sat anchored on the serene lake hidden in the mist, and with the eyepiece elevated to the heavens! I was nigh on certain that this was an incorrect calibration for the device, but did not consider its operation a priority, as the daylight now revealed that which had been hidden, a single chest sat next to a writing bureau.

On some base instinct, I picked up the single piece of parchment that sat atop the bureau, which was lined on both sides in hastily scribbled writings. I then grabbed the chest by a handle on the end, and proceeded to heave it down the staircase. It was moderately heavy, but I managed to get it to the ladder and pushed it over the edge of the opening to fall the the floor below, causing the flustered Fake Scholar to leap out of the way.

I rapidly descended the ladder and went to pick up the chest to drag it yet further. However, I noticed that where I had dropped it the lid had come slightly loose, and a faint, otherworldly blue glow now emitted from the aperture.

"Just what exactly did the First Mate say was in this chest?" I enquired of the Fake Scholar.

"Surrogates." He whispered.

A chill ran up my spine.

"What did you say?"

"Surrogates. That's all she said. It contains "Surrogates!" Now please can we leave?"

A dread memory of another conversation between myself and the First Mate began to surface in my head. I reached with a mounting sense of horror to open the accursed chest…

"AIIiiiiiiighhhhhh!"

A gurgled scream from the top of the stairwell leading downstairs made both of us turn about at once. The Chief Constable was standing with his back to the top of the stairs, on guard to prevent the Fake Scholar from leaving as I had instructed. Yet his silent vigil had just been shattered by way of the sharp point of a cane plunged through his back, and standing behind him holding the cane was a lady hunter in the white robed garb of the Healing Church Choir.

"I thought you said you'd killed her?!" I exclaimed, incredulous.

"I had…" croaked the Chief Constable, before sliding forwards off of the Choral Hunter's cane and falling face first to the floor.

The Fake Scholar predictable bolted behind a pillar and started to sob.

I drew my pistol and brandished my cutlass.

10.

My father, who taught me to fight, always advocated that the fates reward those that adapt a proactive style when faced with an obvious aggressor. Although it was difficult to glean the mood of my enemy as she wore the blind-cap favoured by Church hunters, I took the deceased Chief Constable currently spasming at her feet as ample evidence of ill-intent.

Thus I fired my pistol vaguely in her direction to provide a distraction, and charged with the cutlass extended before me.

The shot went wide and embedded itself in a shelf of books against the far wall, but it did appear to startle her. I roared as I approached my target…

As I came within striking range, however, the Choral Hunter released a catch on an object bound by a silk sash about her waist. It looked like an ornate silver tankard with a mechanism attached, and it now began to disperse a pale blue mist. As I approached she brandished the contraption in front of her as an aegis, and I instantly coughed and stepped back rapidly, sputtering. Mercury!

As I regained my footing and my breath I saw that the Fake Scholar remained by the pillar, cowering in fright. I paid no heed, and started to circle my opponent, the two of us backing into a reading area adorned in plush purple upholstery. Twirling my cutlass I grinned, the adrenaline actually making me smile for the first time in days.

"So, is this how it's going to be? Very well, Choir girl!" I bellowed. I hurtled forward once more. Once again she reached for the device clearly aiming to envelope me in that deadly cloud, but this time I struck for that hand, causing her to yelp and leap back, dropping the tankard to the floor where it proceeded to bellow mercury-laced blue steam into the air. We all started coughing, and it became clear that we would have to evacuate this upper level and continue our duel downstairs. I hopped atop the banister and slid down the staircase in an attempt to gain the advantage and steadier footing on the ground floor.

Having landed next to a table of college paraphernalia, I quickly took the opportunity to reload my pistol. Just then the choral hunter came charging down the stairs, swinging her cane about her head like a woman possessed. As she reached the ground level, the blood-soaked tip of her weapon split open and a great whip of thin chain was unleashed, which she proceeded to swipe around in a great arc. I leapt to my right to avoid being decapitated, and the whip swept over the oak tables, cutting through books, knocking over candles, and splitting open glass jars that decanted eyes all over the floor in their briny suspension.

As I rolled upright I noticed several old tomes begin to catch fire, but I had no time to think of this. I darted forth and stomped on the whip, trapping it under my boot on the floor. I then slashed at the hunter's whip hand with my cutlass-she abruptly yelped and dropped the cane-whip. Kicking the weapon to the side I rolled backwards and put a good few yards between myself and the seemingly disarmed hunter, and raised my reloaded pistol in my left hand.

"ENOUGH!" I bellowed, taking note of the azure and gold flames which were starting to slither like fiery serpents across the desktops behind the hunter. She dropped to one knee before my pistol and held up a hand towards me, I presumed to beg for her life in surrender.

What happened next perplexed me beyond any mystery I had thus far encountered in that thrice-damned college. From within the sleeve of the arm outstretched towards me, three blue-greyish tentacles, as thick as my wrist, shot out like a squid grabbing its prey, and seized the pistol from my hand at such speed I did not have time to discharge the weapon. As I stood there in shock, the hunter swung her arm and used the extended tentacles to throw my pistol into the flames behind her, before retracting the new appendages with a disturbing slurp.

The now emboldened Choirgirl began to advance towards me. I still had my cutlass, and held it aloft, but I had now lost confidence in my ability to bring this fight to a successful conclusion. I am ashamed to say I actually considered bolting for the door, but quickly saw that the choral hunter would not give me that option, as she was once again holding her arm outstretched towards me, and within the gaping maw of her garb sleeve I could see the trio of feelers preparing for another assault! And sure enough, here they came!

I barely managed to hop to my left as the triple-tentacular strike flew passed me at such speed I swear it would have punctured me if it had caught me dead on. As it was, I made good of my evasive maneuver, and captured the slimy masses under my right arm, before promptly throwing my legs up to cinch the accursed retractiles together in an armbar. This brawlers move, learned from many a bar fight in sailors' taverns, was clearly not expected by our tricksy choir hunter who I now dragged to the floor by her tentacles, screeching. We both writhed on our backs on a bed of crushed eyes and brine, whist all the while the flames began to lick up the walls around us, unknown substances popping in the heat. The hunter tried to get to her knees and retract the tentacles, but I held fast with my legs, and brought the cutlass around to slash at the feelers, cutting straight through them where they emerged from her sleeve! The tentacles came off in my grip and the remaining stumps pumped slimy, clear pale serum. She screamed, a sound from hell itself, and squirmed on the floor amongst the eyes, trying to stem the flow from the severed stumps with her human hands.

With the hunter now grievously injured, I had no more time for this madness, and scrabbled to my feet. The room was filling up rapidly with black smoke as further tables were caught in the fire's embrace. Suddenly, I remembered the chest of surrogates! They were still above, and I felt a most curiously instinct to recover them. I bolted up the stairs, coughing from both the rising black smoke and the residual choking stench of the mercury. I almost tripped over the corpse of the Chief Constable, but found the glowing box where I had left it. I was about to haul it down the smog-filled stairwell when I heard a movement to my left and to my great surprise, the Fake Scholar emerged. He was quite the apparition with his green vomit-encrusted robe wrapped around his face, eyes blood red raw from the mercury, but alive so I though I may as well put him to some use.

"Quick! Grab a handle! Let's be gone!" I yelled, and we both hauled the blue-glowing chest down the staircase.

Upon almost reaching the bottom once more, the thick smoke caused the Fake Scholar to double over in a coughing fit, and he tripped. The chest thus spilled over onto the floor, flipped on its side and discouraged its contents onto the eye-strewn floor boards.

Time seemed to slow down into a gloopy flow in that flamed-licked, besmoked room. What was most passing strange was not that the the contents of the chest that my love had sought was now revealed to be a shoal of flapping, writhing invertebrate creatures. It was also not that they all emitted a strange blue glow as they squirmed in clear distress amongst the eyeballs next to the still screaming choir hunter on the smoke-choked floor of Byrgenwerth.

No, the strange thing was the feeling I felt at that moment within my very soul. I had not much ever been a woman to feel so much as even the slightest broodiness in the presence of the sweetest of babes, but in that moment I felt a most peculiar maternal instinct towards these spineless creatures of obvious aquatic origin! And thus, I found myself falling to my knees in the ocular sludge, frantically scooping the poor dears up in my arms and cramming them back into the crate as fast I could…

"Save them! Save the surrogates.." I wailed.

"There's no time!" screamed the Fake Scholar. "Come, or we'll be burned!"

I suddenly noticed the Choir hunter had ceased both her wailing and trying to stem her wounds, and had grabbed one of the little invertebrates in her human hands. Now eerily calm, she held the poor beast aloft above her head in a crushing grip. In response to this, it appeared to be glowing an ever brighter blue like a dying star.

"No! Leave it!" I yelled, swinging my cutlass towards her, but the Fake Scholar grabbed my hand, and started to haul me towards the exit. In frustration I grabbed the near-full crate of writhing creatures, and started to run myself.

A scorching rock shot through the ceiling and exploded next to the choir hunter, who was now laughing maniacally. As I ran I looked back and saw another puncture the back wall and hit a table, reducing it to splinters in seconds. The writhing invertebrate in the laughing hunter's hands grew even brighter, and suddenly micro-meteors were smashing through every wall and the ceiling, further igniting the already smouldering building in a cacophony of explosions.

"RUUUUNN!" screamed the Fake Scholar and we both careened through the open door onto the plaza outside. We sprinted a further ten paces before looking back, to see a most awesome and mind befuddling cosmic display. Multiple rocky projectiles were cascading out of the heavens to collide with the Byrgenwerth college building, smashing windows and reducing rocky pillars to molten rubble. All these summoned rocks were hammering down from the sky above towards the spot within where the Choir hunter held the captured little invertebrate aloft in a deranged last stand. Mesmerized, we watched as the meteorites increased in size and number,puncturing the lunarium and pulverising the building until the frame buckled, the classical pillars snapped like table legs and the whole edifice came crashing down in an orange implosion. A pyroclastic mass of powdered brick came after us, and we ran yet further onto the plaza, heading for the away-boat.

Finally we came to rest, panting at the quayside, and surveyed the smouldering rubble where the great institution of Byrgenworth had stood just moments ago. The bombardment from the heavens appeared to have ceased.

Thinking himself free of any further danger, the Fake Scholar began to laugh maniacally.

"We did it! I survived! I…."

Whatever the poor wretch's next words were I will never know, for at that instant something awful dropped from above and enveloped him.

He screamed.

11.

I have always been a woman in possession of an extremely robust constitution. Nethertheless, as I recall that thing that ended my remaining companion I am not ashamed to say my hand shakes quite fitfully, and I feel the need to light an extra candle in the cabin, fetch a sturdier quill and take a larger than usual swig of rum.

The abomination that dropped onto the Fake Scholar next to the burning ruins of Byrgenworth had vaguely human arms and legs, although they were of a disturbing ashen hue. It used these to grip the man about the torso. It also wore the tattered remains of a Scholar's green robe, much like our unfortunate fraud, and indeed perhaps may once have been one. However, that was where any linkage to humankind-pure ended.

From the abysmal creature's back erupted a pair of insectoid wings of a dirty translucent nature, which enabled it flight of a limited fashion. They presently flapped spasmodically, aiding it in holding the Fake scholar aloft as it kept him in its crushing grip. But wings were not the most bizarre aspect of its anatomy, oh no.

The most harrowing feature to adorn this despicable creation was its head, or rather lack of it. For where a head should be atop its neck was a monstrous globe of flesh, and embedded all about this outgrowth were a huge number of eyes of varying sizes! My mind instantly thought of the jars of eyes in the now destroyed lobby, and a mounting sense of horror built in my soul! Why, but this thing was a very garden of eyes!

Momentarily transfixed, for a few seconds I did nothing as the poor Fake Scholar writhed in the creature's grasp.

"Help me!" He spluttered. "Please!"

I had just redrawn my cutlass when the being emitted a sound of terribly great volume and ear-splittingly high frequency. I was forced to drop my cutlass and staggered back, clutching my ears on impulse! The sound continued to emanate from the critter for what seemed like an eternity before it mercifully fell silent, although a residual tinnitus remained which I swear has not completely dissipated since.

Following this emission, the being released its hapless captive and dropped back onto its legs. To my horror, the Fake Scholar collapsed to the plaza stones, fitting violently and hemorrhaging blood from about the ears, mouth and nose.

For a moment the being faced me down over the corpse, at least two dozen eyes in that awful fleshy mound staring back at me. Then its wings became a blur and it lunged. I was paralyzed by fear and wonder. I felt sure it would envelope me and do what it had done to the fraudulent Scholar, and yet my legs would not move!

With the being just paces away a loud crack echoed round the plaza. A projectile slammed into the creature and knocked it backwards. I spun about to see the Oarsman, standing in the away boat and reloading the musket.

"Quickly!" he yelled.

Sure enough, the creature was getting back to its feet and preparing to go airborne. I grabbed a handle on the chest and ran, dragging it behind me.

I almost didn't make it. Within feet of the boat I felt a draft behind me and saw the legs of the creature start to encircle me, but the Oarsman let off another shot and saved me once again.

I lept into the boat with the chest and grabbed the oars, leaving the Oarsman to his musket.

Pulling away with three broad strokes I quickly put distance from the shoreline. The creature stood looking at the water with its multitude of eyes, and for an awful second I thought it would pursue us, but it seemed to decide against it. Perhaps there was some truth in that silly occult fable the First Mate used to tell about water being an augur against horrors…

All the same, I braced my feet in the bottom of the boat and increased my rowing pace.

The creature and the rubble of Byrgenwerth college disappeared in the mist.

12.

As the Second Mate gave me a hand out of the boat and onto the deck of the Solaire, I had half a mind to order him to ready the ship's ancient cannon: I would destroy whatever was left of that thrice-damned university, and perhaps the rest of Yharnam with it!

However once back within the crew's company fatigue set in, and I realised I had little stomach for more violence. I instead ordered the ship made ready for sail at first light, at which point the tides would open the sea-inlet to the lake and thus allow our exit. The Oarsman asked me if I wanted the chest placed in the hold, to which I perhaps a little harshly barked that it was to be placed in the great cabin, and any man who attempted to open it would walk the plank!

I presently retired there myself, and sit now at the writing bureau, the glowing chest of "surrogates" at my side, as I scribble out this account. I of course have a bottle of rum open, why, if I had a vial of the Healing Church's accursed blood I would probably imbibe it now, despite having never done so previously!

Now alone I take the opportunity to open the chest and examine the invertebrate "surrogates" more closely. They are each roughly a foot long, with a flatish body of white, fishy flesh joined to a shoot of greyish tentacles at one end. They remind one in some ways of a cuttlefish. The flesh is flanked with suction cilia which gently undulate as if in a current, and they all emit a slight blue fluorescent glow.

They are quite lovely, and my feelings towards them have not changed one iota!

Before slumber I have one last task: whilst removing my garb earlier (for the Surgeon to inspect my latest wounds) I found the grimy document I had removed from the writing bureau in the luminarium where I had found the chest. Having made sure the chest of surrogates is secure at the foot of the bed, I now get within the covers, accompanied by a bottle of rum and this parchment, and settle down to read.

THE BYRGENWERTH MISSIVE

Dear Master,

I hope this letter (very likely my last) finds you as well as can be expected. I know the growths on your neck and back cause you such anguish, and that the balms I gladly rubbed about those hideous augmentations provide little comfort. Please know that my latest, brilliant discovery will soon make such earthly pains but an irrelevance.

You must know that it was with great reluctance I left Byrgenwerth. You have been as a father to me, and much more besides. I pray that you do not think I have followed that vulgar megalomaniac "L.", who I dare not name in full- although I fear that is what you must suspect.

No, I have not left to join his Church of heretics, but I must confess I now know your line of enquiry into our transcendental awakening to be well intentioned, but- dare I say it, Master- false. Our cosmic evolution will not come from the cultivation of eyes ("ocular transcendence" as you call it). Nor will it come from the degenerate consumption of refined yet tainted blood, as "L." and his acolytes hold true.

Rather, the path to humanity's next childhood will come from the place of our original evolution: the bottomless sea!

In Yharnam, the Choir's latest propaganda extols that they have had an "epiphany". My fellow students who live within the city proper tell me they now shout it from the very rooftops at great rallies, and chant it at their communion. They state: "The Sky and the Cosmos are One!".

I can report most accurately that they are only half correct- a more righteous statement would read "The Sea and the Cosmos are One!".

I know for so many, many nights you would sit at your telescope in the lunarium, gazing into the cosmic void and searching for answers… So many times I would accompany you, seated at your knee, assisting you to map the celestial bodies above. But I have discovered, in methods that I will shortly disclose, that you would have been better to point your lens the other way, towards the unexplored ocean deep, where the answers truly lie…

My discovery started when I found a secret within the prohibited records concerning the fishing hamlet of Innsmouth… oh Master, you must not be angry- I know reading those old accounts is strictly forbidden, but I was oh so desperate to impress you with my studious enquiries into the cosmos! Thus, on one night when we were together, when I was sure you were asleep, I crept over your slumbering form and did take them from your personal chest… But I am sure you will forgive me when you discover the absolution that was borne of my treachery!

Although the bulk of the records had long been seized by the Healing Church and taken to Yharnam for Choral research, what I had was enough to spark within my young mind a great realisation. Before expiring under interrogation, a dying Innsmouth priest called a curse down upon Byrgenworth, by the wrath of the one they call the Cosmic Mother (recorded in our Zoological Encyclopedia under designation Kos-M). I rechecked the translation: he did this in the present tense! Do you see what this means, Master? The Cosmic Mother still lives on other planes!

To confirm my hypothesis, I went to Innsmouth myself. Oh, I know it is also forbidden in the extreme, and I had to fool the Healing Church militias who were dismantling the place, but you know how persuasive I can be, Master…

You will be pleased to hear than within the village proper very few structures are left. Your influence still extends that far in the Church's upper echelons at least, and the Choir have agreed to raise the whole area to the ground. I was lucky to find the lighthouse still standing- engineers from the Church workshop were due to demolish it the very next day!

I ascended its claustrophobic, mossy stairway to the summit, searching for answers. I must confess when I surveyed the demolished village from my high vantage point in the lighthouse's lamp-room I nearly gave up all hope- there was no evidence remaining of the actions you so regret, or that Kos-M or any of the other "studies" ever existed at all…

I turned to examine the great lens which was the central feature of the lighthouse. I was briefly overcome with a sense of immense melancholy that no lamp would ever illuminate its sparkling panes of glass ever again. Out of sheer curiosity I placed my own hand-lantern in its centre, and angled the lens out towards the open ocean. I thought of the villager who once have must operated the boom, and how that unfortunate peasant still came much closer to evolution than our greatest scholars have achieved, at least thus far...

As the lightbeam hit the choppy waves out at sea, I fancied I saw the horizon shimmer. The waters seemed to part, and in the portal that remained I saw another world, and a flash of white movement… In that very instant I heard her song for the first time, the call of the Cosmic Mother, reaching out to me across the dimensional void.

I knew I did not have much time to reach her. The next day the Church militia would reduce the lighthouse to dust, and my route to salvation would be terminated. Thus I made with great haste to return to Byrgenwerth.

I waited until the other students were a-slumber and then crept out of the dorm. I sequestered a small rowing boat from the plaza quayside and pulled out across the serene surface of the Great Lake, under a moon as full as a ripe breast. So bright was its luminescence that the stars themselves had retired in deference!

In the hour just before the dawn I made open water by way of the sea-inlet, which by the good fates was open to the ocean. I quickly located the aperture where the lighthouse-beam split reality asunder, and with almost no trepidation piloted my tiny craft into the frothing waters within.

I found myself in a thick white fog on a calmer sea, and heard the song of the Cosmic Mother summoning me. I wept tears of joy as I followed her siren's call. If only I could describe it, Master, but all words seem to fail to embody that seductive transmission. It was as if my soul were a harp and her emissions the fingers of the most skillful player the world has ever known.

Eventually I followed the beautiful sound to this islet, a rocky outpost in the middle of an unknown sea. Here I was graced with the divine presence for the first time, and she is a sight to behold more cosmically perfect than even the Healing Church's evocative sermons can describe. A perfect being, part aquatic invertebrate and part beautiful humanoid. And Master, when she came to me she made a most touching gesture to show benign intent and to seduce me further, why- she had taken the form of your face!

I have been on the islet for many moons now, and I have communed with her on many occasions. I bear fruit from these blessed connections, and she gains great comfort from these gifts- for she has suffered great loss, and they act as surrogates. I raise them as my own on this hallowed rock in this dreamer's sea.

You must not be jealous of my interactions with the divine, Master, for just as you were a Father to me where I had none, she is my Cosmic Mother, and I am thus the child of the cosmos. When I have produced sufficient gifts, she will grant me the evolution that we have sought for all Mankind.. I will be given more eyes than you ever thought possible, Master, and when my ascension is complete I will return for you.

While you wait for that blessed day, remember that the cosmos is near. Know that I am both in the moonlight right above your head, and just beneath the waves of the lake outside your window.

When I have transcended, I will return to you, Master, and we will become one. Imagine it: the three of us traversing the endless cosmos, the endless sea, accepting of all that there is, and can be.

Your faithful student,

R.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 3: UNKNOWN SEA, FIRST WATCH

13.

Water. Water, all around.

No, let's go back...

14

Following my reading of the Byrgenwerth scholar's missive I was mightily troubled. Although I did not fully understand the meaning of the concepts therein, they weighed heavily on my already rum-befuddled mind. The events of the proceeding two days meant that I could not just dismiss her words as the fantasies of a besotted young student with a taste for the gothic.

Nethertheless, I eventually fell into a sleep of sorts. I dreamed, but my dream was not this time of terrifying creatures with heads of roses, or for that matter, eyes. I instead was transported in my slumber back to this very great cabin just a few days earlier, when my love the First Mate and I had lain between these covers for the last time.

The sun was rising off to stern, and we watched it though the bay windows that span the rear of the Solaire, propped up on our pillows. The ship's wake cut a line of frothy white surf across the blue-green sea, and a flock of gulls flapped lazily over it, making for land about a mile to starboard. We were at full sail making for the Yharnam area, and all was well.

It seems so long ago now, despite being only a half-week now passed!

"So, have you thought about it?" The First Mate said softly, caressing my arm with her hand. I feigned misunderstanding.

"No, my foolish young love, I am not going ashore to visit Yharnam with you! I have no interest in cathedrals and blood rites…"

She giggled and gave me a playful slap.

"Not that, lady Cap'n!" Her mocking impression of the crew's subservience was always so alluring.

"Although to meet a real Healing Church hunter would be most… exiting! No, you know what I mean. The important thing." she continued, growing more serious.

I of course knew to what she alluded. We had discussed the matter with much urgency of late. We both wanted to, but there was a most obvious barrier. We were both women, and even if that were generally accepted the fates had not made us so that we could bear fruit together. In any case, I was getting older by the day. It would have to be the First Mate that did it, a prospect I did not much relish but knew it would be our only option.

"Have you found one?" I asked flatly.

"Yes." she replied, hesitantly. "I have found a surrogate."

I rolled over away from her and said nothing. I hoped that my silence would be interpreted as reluctant consent, but I wanted not to know who it was.

Oh, by the fates I wish I had asked.

15.

I was awoken most abruptly- the Second Mate was bashing and yelling at the cabin door, an action that seemed to be becoming a pastime for him. Nursing my bruises I stumbled around in the almost total darkness, save for the chest of surrogates' blue glow. It was still the middle of the night, and outside the cabin windows, the lake was a moonlight absorbing ink-well. Fumbling on a hand-lantern I staggered to the door, unlocked it and wrenched it open to see the flustered Second Mate's fretful visage, the lantern light giving his red beard and hair a hellish quality.

"You better come quick, Lady Cap'n. The college, Cap'n, it…."

"It is destroyed, like I told you." I said, irritably. Had he succumbed to madness?

"Please lady Cap'n...just come. Please."

I once more slapped my tri-corned hat upon my head, reached instinctively for my cutlass before remembering I'd dropped it on the lakeside plaza, reached again for my pistol before remembering I'd lost that too, and then finally followed the Second Mate up to the aft deck, unarmed. A number of crew members had gathered topside, and were murmuring and looking worried in the intense moonlight. They all fell silent as I approached. My former Oarsman looked particularly distressed.

I followed their gazes off to the mist had finally lifted, which was odd as it was clearly nightfall, and there was now a clear view across the still lake to the shoreline.

I gasped.

The college of Byrgenwerth sat on the shoreline under an enormous full moon. By that I mean not the smouldering pile of rubble from which I had eloped just yesterday, but the fully realised structure in all its classically pillared, modernist glory. Even the balcony was intact, and the lunarian crowned the edifice, in domed mockery of the events of the preceding day.

I knew now why the crew were looking at the Oarsman and I most strangely- they had never seen the destruction of Byrgenwerth through the mist,and must have now have thought our stories to be that of madmen or liars! In fact, I now rubbed my head where I had hit it during the storm, wondering if that may indeed be the case!

As I watched the building more closely, I noticed something else amiss. There was a small boat moored off to one side of the lakeside plaza.

I indicated this to the Second Mate.

"The Cabin Boy saw three individuals enter the building a short while ago, ma'am" he replied, still looking at me skeptically. I began to wish I still has my cutlass!

"And are all our away boats accounted for?" I replied.

"They are both stowed away in the proper manner, lady Cap'n". I looked over the railing, watching my back as I did so, and sure enough our away boats were lashed to the port and starboard sides as usual.

"Then who…" I began to ask. A movement on the shoreline caught my eye. I hastily pulled my viewing monocle out of my garb and aimed it for the college. I quickly found the discrepancy: the lunarium dome that sat atop the main building was once again opening, a split in its metal casing irising apart to reveal the telescopic device within. From out on the lake, it looked like a fruit being split asunder to reveal a mechanical seed.

I watched through the monocle, heartbeat quickening, as a tiny figure appeared to leap out of the way as the telescope pitched downwards towards the lake. A figure wearing a tri-pointed hat.

With its viewing portion angled towards the gigantic, uncanny moon, the telescope in the lunarium now channeled the moonlight, and a thin bright beam streamed from its lens down towards the lake's surface, somewhere near the Solaire off to port. I heard to crew start to jabber in alarm, but did not yet lower my viewing monocle, for to my utmost alarm I saw another figure appear behind the person with the tri-cornered hat already standing in the lunarium. I cried out as I watched the Choir hunter, fully alive and regaled in her white garb, plunge a cane through the hatted figure's back. They were very far away, but I fancied I saw the resurrected hunter flash a sinister smile at me underneath her blindfold cap, as my double fell lifeless off her cane to crumple on the balcony roof, a full floor below.

The Cabin Boy's screeching from the mainmast crowsnest broke my trance.

"Whirlpooooool! Whirlpool Lady Cap'n! Off to port!"

I dropped my monocle and with a host of panicked crew members rushed to the port railing. Sure enough, where the celestial moonbeam channeled by the lunarium's upturned telescopic device hit the water, a reflection of moonlight was created so bright that the afore-calm waters were now steaming with heat, and frothing wildly. The centrifugal force created by this disruption was causing these rapids to churn anti-clockwise, creating an unholy swirl which now began to drag the Solaire against her anchor towards its epicenter.

I realised that if we did not correct this we would soon be capsized.

"Release the anchor!" I bellowed but the ever vigilant Second Mate was already at the bow, attending to the great chain there even as the ship pitched wildly to starboard against its mooring. The fearsome red-head had hefted an axe and began to wildly swing at the chain, sending sparks flying into the ether as the axehead met the iron links, and it presently snapped. The ship instantly righted, but then pitched to port and I saw to my horror that the whirlpool had widened to a gaping circular torrent and that the Solaire was now circling its edge in a rapid descent towards the scorching centre, where the blinding focus of the moonlight seemed to have created a new star. We hurtled towards that awful brightness.

"Grab the oars!" I yelled, and some of the crew moved to obey, but we were already too entrapped for it to make much difference. Some crewmen were trying to hurl down the sails, others had fallen to the deck and were praying to whatever gods they held true.

For myself, I ran to to the wheel, and hurled the rudder hard to starboard in a vain attempt to steer us out of the hells' mouth. The Second Mate ran the length of the deck and attempted to assist me, but it was to no avail. Each lap of the whirlpool was taking us a little closer to our doom.

Finally, we were within the heart of the torrent. I heard the screams of crew, and we were enveloped in white light.

16.

We were floating in midair above the deck. Gravity itself seemed to have failed us.

After a few weightless seconds, the realisation dawned that we were falling through the air, our bodies suspended a few yards above the decking. A glance sidewards revealed a body of water rushing up to meet the plummeting ship.

With an almighty splash the Solaire hit the surface below,throwing great sheets of water into the air from the displacement. Her crew hit the deck just seconds later in a cacophony of human cries, the clatter of weapons and utensils hitting the deck, and the crackle of buckling wood as the Solaire settled to its new orientation. Several crew landed overboard in the water.

I staggered to my feet by the wheel. . I was yet further bruised and a tooth felt dislodged, but was otherwise unharmed. I walked across the deck surveying the carnage.

Several crew members had sustained broken limbs in the fall. Presently the Surgeon came up from below decks to attend to them, but their screams were creating an nigh on unbearable racket. The Second Mate had also righted himself from where he landed next to me by the wheel, and was now helping several crew members throw oars down to the men who had gone overboard. The Cabin Boy, who had miraculously managed to hold on to the crowsnest as we descended, now shimmied down the rigging to help the Surgeon haul injured men and women below decks.

For my part I walked to the edge of the port rail.

Water. Water, all around. On all sides of the ship a flat, calm sea spread outwards to an infinite horizon. I elevated my gaze upwards to see from where we had fallen, but saw only a near perfectly white, featureless sky, glowing softly in all directions. There was certainly no sign of the great lake, Byrgenwerth, or any landmass whatsoever.

"Cursed. We are cursed!" wailed a young sailor near me, who was nursing an arm that looked horribly bent.

Presently the Second Mate came to my side.

"What are your orders, Cap'n?" He gasped. He was out of breath and streaming with sweat from his toils of helping the injured.

"I need time to consider. I will be in the great cabin!" I declared and then descended below deck with haste. The Second Mate stared after me, dumbfounded, but in truth I just wanted to check in on them. The surrogates, that is.

I found the great cabin in disarray. The writing bureau had upended itself, discouraging the papers that make up this account all over the floor. Bottles of rum, both empty and full, were strewn about the place, to my dismay at least a couple had smashed to pieces. The music box was intact (small mercies).

The chest had also landed on its side, spilling the adorable little invertebrates all over the floor. They were squirming in their ever present blue haze, and with the same franticness I had shown at Byrgenwerth, I hastened to gather them up and return them to the chest. They were thankfully all unharmed, and I think they appeared to get warmer to the touch when I lifted each of the poor dears into their chest, mayhaps in gratitude.

For a while I sat by the now-righted chest, listening to them writhe merrily against each other within. Once I was content that they were settled, I got up, picked up the writing bureau, and set it here facing the bay windows so that I can contemplate the hell in which we find ourselves. This dreamer's sea.

Opening a fresh, unbroken bottle of rum I begin to write the latest entry in the log.

Water. Water, all around...

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 4: UNKNOWN SEA, THIRD WATCH

17.

Today I reluctantly took audience with the ship's Surgeon. I had fallen into a slumber after the imbibing of several more bottles of rum, and he had apparently attempted to rouse me once already at an earlier hour, without success. Why a Captain cannot be allowed a moment's respite aboard her own ship is beyond my comprehension, but there you have it!

His report on our casualties to date and the state of the Solaire in general was grim, and did my throbbing head no favours. A dozen crewmen and women had been grievously injured in our fall from the heavens. One had died instantaneously when he was impaled on the foremast during his fall, another had gone into a deep slumber after cracking her head against the forecastle and had ceased breathing just an hour previously. Out of the four crewmen who had landed overboard, two had perished as the landlubbers could not swim, despite the Second Mate's efforts to salvage them. The remainder of the injured were resting up in the main cabin under the forecastle, where their unearthly howls were causing great distress to the other crewmates.

The Solaire herself appeared to be physically intact, but our supplies were dwindling. We had stocked food and water for a two week mission at most, and we were now in an unknown sea with no land in sight. Thus rationing was now in force, and the crew had already started to grumble. Morale was poor, warned the Surgeon. I grunted irritably at this, the man had a condescending way of looking at me over his pince-nez glasses. I was surprised I hadn't noticed it before!

Further to these efforts, the Surgeon had put together a brief survey of the environment in which we now find ourselves. The Unknown Sea indeed extended to the horizon in all directions, under the awning of a sky which emitted an endless, virginal-white glow. He had observed the vague essence of what might be cirrus clouds deep within the milky heavens, but there was no sign of the sun at all. As such, the passage of time could only be marked using our pocket watches, and sleep during the "night" past had proved evasive for many of the crew, already disturbed by the moaning of their injured brethren.

A weighted rope had been cast overboard, and had not stopped at even its full length of a half-fathom. There was also a persistent light wind blowing in a single direction- he could not say which as the compasses had ceased to work effectively (I later tested this myself, indeed they just spun wildly, which was most curious). The Second Mate had apparently taken the liberty of having the crew hoist the mainsail, and we were now making slow passage across this strange ocean.

One more item of idle talk had appeared to peak his interest: on the first watch this morning, the Cabin Boy had reported seeing something from the sky in the far distance off to stern. Something that looked very much like a ship...

When he had finally finished his monologue I thanked and then dismissed the Surgeon, declining his suggestion that I ascend to the deck to address the crew. Once he had left I bolted the cabin door.

I opened a fresh bottle of rum, wound up the tiny music box, and sat down next to the chest of surrogates. I began to sing them a lullaby to the tune of its gentle chimes.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 5: UNKNOWN SEA, THIRD WATCH

18.

At the start of third watch, I removed a shining coin of Healing Church gold from the sea-chest, ascended the cabin-gangway and strode up onto the deck amidships.

Once there,I bellowed to my astonished crew to gather about the main mast. Ordered the Cabin Boy down from the crow's nest. Demanded the wary Second Mate bring me his mighty hammer. Charged the ship's Carpenter with bringing me a nail, post haste.

On receiving these items I used the hammer to smash the nail through the shining coin, pinning it to the main mast through the head of Vicar Amalia which was engraved upon its surface.

This task complete, I about turned and addressed my perplexed crew….

But enough of that for now, I am getting ahead of myself. I am attempting to avoid inscribing the unspeakable upon this parchment, for my heart and soul can scarcely bear it!

But, lest any chronicler think me a vengeful madwoman, let us go back…

19.

It was the start of first watch. I knew this only because I could hear the single hollow chime of the ship's bell on the aft-deck above the great cabin, which woke me from another rum-drowned slumber. But if the bell's hollow resonance only roused me to an apathetic consciousness, the sound that followed moments later sent a shock to my soul that shot me straight up in bed.

I erupted forth from the cabin like a cannonball, and out topside onto the deck. A number of the crew had heard it too, and were standing like riverbed reeds in a current about the decking, straining to ascertain its origin. It was indeed a woman's painful cries riding just beneath the low wind. A most singular woman's cries.

"Where is she?" I screeched at a nearby Able Seawoman.

"It...it...could be one of the injured, Cap'n? Below decks?" the young girl stammered.

I had a good mind to grab one of the cutlasses stored against the railing to repel pirates, and run her through right there and then with it! Luckily for the hapless girl, the Cabin Boy suddenly yelled from his fort atop the mast:

"Island ahoy! Off to starboard, mates!"

I rushed to the railing, fumbled with my viewing monocle and raised it out yonder. Sure enough, a rocky islet perhaps not twenty paces across had emerged, as if from nowhere, about five hundred yards off our starboard side.

Sitting in the center of this outcrop was a woman, her legs spread out before her swollen form, her head arched back in strenuous tension, in the agony and ecstasy of birthing. Even at this distance and under the awful white glow of the sky I could tell it was her, although neither what was left of my wits or my heart wanted to believe it.

It was the First Mate.

"Shall we lower the boats madam?" Asked the nervous Seawoman by my side, but I was no longer listening. I stripped off my garb and dived headlong over the railing. I was briefly submerged in the salty waters beneath, before breaching and making fast across the surface in a swift stroke, out to meet her.

Hold fast, my love, I thought to myself. I'm coming!

20.

A lifetime seemed to pass in the time it took to traverse that cursed current, that cavernous channel that flowed thick like tar between the Solaire and the First Mate's islet.

I could hear her cries; now sobs, now animalistic screeches as I powered forward, one arm in front of the other. Behind me, the sounds of shouts came from the decks of the ship, but I cared not. I kicked off my boots as I swam, increasing my speed. On the few instances I occasioned to look up, I saw the First Mate's outline, getting nearer yet still oh so far, propped upright in her struggles.

Hold on. Hold on, both of you! I am nigh!

As I swam it crossed my mind not for the first time the injustice of it, why we women alone had to bear this awful burden, this gift that keeps on taking! Or why we must suffer the agony of loss, or of never having at all, and the yearning for surrogates! Perhaps even the Cosmic Mother of which the Byrgenwerth scholar spake knew of such loss, as depicted in the missive?

Finally, I reached the pitiful shore. I crawled, as if I were a slimy crustaceous being, up onto a jagged surface of twisted rock and crushed, fossilized shells that cut my hands and knees as I attempted to scrabble over it. Uncaring for mere wounds of the flesh, in this crab-like fashion I scuttled the dozen or so paces to the centre of the islet where my love lay.

By the time I reached the First Mate her labours were over. She now sat, cross legged, angelic, with the fruit of her contractions cradled in her arms. I, conversely, was bloodied and sore, and fell to my knees as I attempted to get to my feet next to her.

"Is it...is it…" I stammered, clutching the First Mate's hand in mine. It was real, by the glorious fates it was real!

"Yes." she replied, turning to present the bundle to me. "It is."

In her arms was an invertebrate creature, its flaccid white body gently writhing, its greyish tentacles reaching out inquisitively towards my love's face.

I knew I should feel joyous but for a moment I forgot myself. I burst into tears and clutched the First Mate's arm and shoulder, burying my face in her luscious auburn hair. She smelled of the sea, of milk, of honey and of home. Still I wept.

"I don't understand!" I spluttered, choking on my sobs. "Is it...ours?"

I waited for her to speak, to say the words that would provide me with relief. That would end this nightmare.

"It is a...gift."

"A gift?" I mumbled into her hair, eyes squeezed shut. "For us? A surrogate?"

"No. Not for you. For her. The Cosmic Mother."

Her words stunned me. I began to withdraw from her hair.

Except her hair was no longer there. Instead, I realised to my utmost horror that I had been nestling in a tangle of sprintly bristles that spouted from a hard, coal-black globular shell. From the flanks of this carapace, a few scraggly insectoid legs sat strewn across the hellish, spiked ground of the islet. And at the front of this nightmarish creature that had replaced my one true love, was a mound of flesh the size of a large boulder, and it was riddled with dull, lifeless eyes. It stank of death. Whatever it was, it was clearly quite long deceased.

I knelt there before the carcass, at my altar of despair, hand clenched. Faraway, someone was screaming. It took a length of time to realise that that someone was me. I was only briefly aware of the feeling of sturdy arms gripping me from behind, lofting me back into the away boat. Of oars hitting water as we returned to the Solaire.

21.

I used the hammer to smash the nail through the shining coin, pinning it to the main mast through the head that was engraved upon its surface.

This task complete, I about turned and addressed my perplexed crew.

"Listen, ye! All of ye! You see that shining coin, pinned against yonder mast? That be Healing Church gold. Ill-gotten through blasphemous blood rites and the work of mad medicine-men, but valuable all the same. See how the nail runs through the head of their current leader, through the head of Vicar Amelia?"

"Let me tell you this. When we get out of this bottomless ocean, this Nightmare Sea, I will give this and a chestful- more to the first man or woman on this ship who drives a harpoon through a gigantic white being, part hellish humanoid, part aquatic abomination, who I know to reside in these waters. The one known in the coastal fables as the Cosmic Mother! In eldritch science as Kos-M!"

A gasp went around the assembled crew. The Second Mate stepped forward.

"Lady Cap'n, even if that legend were true, she is said to have died when…"

"Enough!" I brushed him aside, and began to circle my enraptured seamates.

"Oh I know you think she does not exist, but I have seen the evidence of that despicable being's sins aplenty. Oh but I know her siren's song will be alluring, but that seductress is a poisoned spine on beautiful cosmic coral! I know you think her dead, but that fishy monstrosity haunts those waters just out yonder! As your Captain, I hereby make you this promise- I will lead you out of here and make at least one of you a rich man or woman. But first, on my honour, we will kill Kosm!"

For a moment the crowd looked befuddled, unsure what to do. Then slowly, surely, they began to come to my side. The Second Mate was trying to interject...

"Captain, we are not a hunting vessel…"

"But we have a cannon! Kill Kosm!" yelled the young Able Seawoman I had almost run through earlier, to mighty cheers.

"A dead Great One or a stove boat!" cried another.

"My spear and the cosmos will be one!" yelled my former colleague the Oarsman to much laughter, who was now brandishing a harpoon in one hand and his musket in the other.

The poor Second Mate made one last chance to appeal to reason, but was quickly shouted down.

Satisfied, I strode off the deck to return to my cabin. I briefly considered drawing a round of rum for the crew, but quickly decided it was better served soothing my own nerves.

22.

As I reached the door of the great cabin the Surgeon accosted me, holding a bundle of rags in his hands.

"Begging your indulgence, Captain...this was found in the bottom of the away boat upon your return. You were too distraught so…"

Beneath his rags was the squirming invertebrate. I recoiled in guilt-laced horror.

"Get that damned montronisity away from me!" I roared. "And the others too. Go in and get them, the chest, man, the chest! Hoist it overboard." I gesticulated at the cabins open door, suddenly not willing to go a step further until those sick cosmic jokes were gone.

However, as the wiry, bespectacled Surgeon began to drag the chest out onto the deck, I had an epiphany,

"Wait...leave them there. She will come for them!"

"W-who?" stammered the Surgeon.

"The Cosmic Mother." I replied darkly. "Or as some say, Kosm."

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 8: UNKNOWN SEA, SECOND WATCH

23.

I have not had time to make entries in the log these three days now past. The ship, the crew and myself have been galvanised with a new sense of purpose in our hunt. Harpoons have been sharpened. The great cannon, a relic of the Solaire's legacy as a military vessel, has been hoisted onto the deck and loaded, and currently sits protruding from the port gunwale. Men and woman practice swordplay with the anti-piracy cutlasses utop the deck.

With some reluctance, the Surgeon has opened his Zoological Encyclopedia. Within the index of the bestiary, he located the specimen with the designation Kos-M, only to find the anatomical diagrams torn out, and the information for this specimen redacted.

No matter, whatever her defences she will soon taste the spears of my heartbreak, she will suckle at our cannon, the bow of the Solaire will be the rock upon which she breaks!

The Second Mate has made further entreaties to cease my chosen course of action. In low tones he insists that our priorities must be to find land, food, fresh water, or a means of escape from this oceanic dimension. But I am fixed upon my purpose, like a shark who has scented blood. I will find her. I will have my vengeance!

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 12: UNKNOWN SEA, THIRD WATCH

24.

Still no sign of the Cosmic Mother.

Water, all around. To the infinite horizon and beyond. We are truly lost, a mere impression of a ship upon a painter's canvas.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 15: UNKNOWN SEA, FIRST WATCH

25.

The hated Kosm remains elusive.

Our supplies of food and water are beginning to run dry (more urgently, so is my rum), and the crew are losing some of their initial bloodlust for the sea beast. Thus I must once more suffer the entreaties of the Second Mate for us to cease our martial preparations and conserve our energy.

Weak, spineless man. Where is it exactly he proposes we go? To which point on our spinning compasses does he suggest we tack to?

My hate is the wind that fills the sails.

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 19: UNKNOWN SEA, THIRD WATCH

26.

A more urgent crises than the lack of water has befallen us: I am out of rum. Any sleep I now get is haunted by the terrifying, paranoid dreams of beings of many forms, but always with heads of roses. They follow me across the valleys, seabeds, cloud-surfaces and parched desert sands of my dreams, daring me to look at their many eyes!

I always awake sick and shivering. I must find me a surrogate…

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 20: UNKNOWN SEA, THIRD WATCH

27.

The Second Mate, that treacherous wretch, confronted me today. I awoke to his bellowing, accompanied by the awful din of him summoning me above.

"Captain! Get yourself up here! All crew gather! Heed my words!"

Thoroughly irritated, I ascended to the deck to find him by the aft mast. The crew, who were by now looking quite sunken faced and gaunt, circled round warily to see how this would transpire.

"Captain!" He roared. His beard was still as red as his face, but he had lost much muscle from starving himself, some said even more so than required by rations. He was brandishing his axe, his body tense.

"Look about yourself! No land in sight. Your crew, half starved! Your ship, barely making headway! And still, you chase fables and legends across an Unknown Sea. My condolences are with you for your losses, but madam, you must now surrender this vessel to better hands! Pray, do so without need for bloodshed!"

This last comment elicited a few murmurs of approval from the the assembled mob.

I glowered at him for perhaps a half a minute. Then I burst out laughing, maniacally. To his startled face I addressed him across the yards of deck still between us.

"You fool. You have no knowledge of a mother's loss. You have less spine than the invertebrate Cosmic Mother! You are unaccepting of the brutality of the cosmos entire, and you shall pay the price for this mutiny!"

My words had clearly rankled him, for at that moment he roared lunged forth at me, swinging his axe above his head. The force of his onrush nearly bowled me down, but I dived to the floor at the last second, and his axe embedded itself in the mast behind me. In a rage he began to try and wrench it free, but from my supine position on the deck I reached to the railing and seized a cutlass, swung it at the Second Mate's leg, and dismasted him at the ankle. He bellowed and crumpled to his knees, remarkably still pulling at his axe. I fell upon him, and as I prepared to impale him against the mast he finally got the axe free and made a swipe for my abdomen. I leapt back, the blade making only shallow scratch on my belly through my garb.

I wasted no time. As he swung the axe back the otherway, I took his arm off at the shoulder.

Still on his knees, squealing and now gushing blood from stumps at both the left shoulder and opposite ankle, he was easy prey as I stepped forward and eviscerated him about the abdomen. With blood now gurgling from his mouth, I knelt down and whispered in his ear.

"Oh, but there is need for bloodshed!"

I tore my blade free and he collapsed to the deck, ghostly pale.

28.

Later, I found the Surgeon below decks in the cramped sick bay, boiling bandages over a cast iron stove.

"How is he?" I enquired, brusquely.

"Barely alive… not long for this world...if this is any earthy realm at all!" spluttered the Surgeon, clearly terrified. He visibly shook as I leaned in close.

"As you know, we are out of water, Surgeon. Food too. And rum, moreover. I need to you to take his blood, like they do in Yharnam. Make it like their blood!"

"C-ca-Captain… it isn't...so simple… their blood... it… the Great Ones..."

I seized him about the collar. "Oh don't you worry, we will have the blood of a Great One soon enough. In the meantime, find a way! And leave the body after, for the cook!"

I made to leave his stenching hovel.

"But Captain… even if we...did as you asked...his blood, his flesh…would not be enough...the whole crew is...too many…"

I sighed at his lack of imagination, and gesticulated into the darkness of the sickbay, where distorted forms moaned.

"The injured. Them too."

CAPTAIN'S LOG, DAY 22: UNKNOWN SEA, UNKNOWN WATCH

29.

The blood of our comrades has once again emboldened the Solaire's crew. Oh it is but a poor surrogate for the genuine Yharnam article, or even my depleted rum, but oh how they fell upon it in frenzy!

And how like carrion crows we took to the flesh upon the deck, and howled with gleeful exaltation under a white sky! Before long the fever took us and the deck was a writhing mass of bodies, feeding and lusting.

I sat astride the prepped canon, watching the orgy unfolding amidships. Only two were missing. One was the Cabin Boy, who had retreated to the stern and was mournfully wringing the ship's bell. The other was the Surgeon, who was later found hanged in his sickbay.

I addressed the remaining crew thus above the din:

"My loyal shipmates, enjoy this feast, and know that a far greater bounty will nigh be upon us! Soon we will drink the blood of the Cosmic Mother! The blood of a Great One!"

The crowd erupted into an ecstatic chant:

"Hurrah for the Captain. Kill Kosm! Hunt the Great Ones! Hunt the Great Ones!"

I glanced down to my side, and saw a flash of auburn hair. Momentarily startled. I reached down and grabbed it and twisted the face to meet mine, but it was only the Seawoman from before. Her face was smeared with blood and she looked deliciously feral. She smiled at me ravenously and said "Praise you, lady Cap'n! Kill Kosm! Hunt the Great Ones!"

I smiled back, and pulled her by the hair, bringing her close.

"Yes. Hunt the Great Ones." I whispered in her ear.

CAPTAIN'S FINAL LOG, DAY 25: ADRIFT, THE NIGHTMARE SEA

30.

To begin at the beginning…

31.

We heard her before we sighted her.

We had sailed onwards for days, feasting on the flesh and imbibing of the false blood until it had run dry. The festivities now seemingly over, the crew had fallen into a lethargy, and slouched across the bloodied deck in grim mimicry of when they had joyfully lounged in the sun with their now consumed fellows, many weeks ago under friendlier skies.

I allowed this indulgence, reasoning it would make them hungry for the feast to come. And I was right.

When the song of Kosm first floated across the waves, it seemed to come both as a delicate whisper on the wind and a deep vibration in the ocean deep. Its timbre reverberated through the Solaire's wooden planks, warming the oak and gently rousing my crew from their slumbers. This aria was a lullaby sung by a mother to her lost orphan; a shanty which recounted the story of the earth, moon, stars, the cosmos entire. The crew were naturally enraptured, and many were now standing upright upon the foredeck, holding their arms aloft in a most curious manner with one hand ascended to the heavens and the other spread to the side, their eyes straining the horizon to seek the source of this blessed sound. I saw my favoured Seawoman with tears in her eyes.

"It's so beautiful…" She whispered.

I was having none of it.

I marched to the aft deck and seized the ship's bell, and began a-ringing, drowning out that serpent-siren's pitch.

"Enough! If you think that sound is bliss, think of the ecstasy imparted when you drink of her blood!"

This shook them from their fervour, and they slowly began to cheer. I ordered the Cabin Boy down from the main mast.

"You! Since you like ringing this bell so much, you will ring it continuously until the beast is slain!"

Upon descending, he gave me a look of absence, of childhood innocence lost.

But he did as I bad.

I ascended the crowsnest myself, and sat at the top of the world, scanning the horizon with my view monocle, searching for my prey.

32.

Land burst from the skyline as if from nowhere. We had come across a brief thick fog, humid in nature and sitting above frothy waters. The crew had appeared momentarily frenzied, but upon exiting the vista that awaited us caused shocked gasps.

Off to port was a rocky land spit, an exact replica of the one that encircles the inlet to the bay of Byrgenwerth. Off our bow sat a shoreline of rocky cliffs. Within this, a beached coastal inlet, potted with caves, served to make a murky lagoon framed by the spit on one side and the cliffs on the other. Curiously, this was scattered with a graveyard of ships' masts, all looking very much like the Solaire's.

Further up the beachhead, atop the cliff face, stood an abandoned lighthouse of dirty white rock. A thin beam shone out of its lamphouse towards the fog behind us.

I knew this was where we would have our final battle.

Sure enough, the song of Kosm rose in volume, then abruptly ceased. And then she breached, in the centre of the lagoon amidst the ships' masts.

33.

How to describe a deity in the flesh, a creature so many tiers of evolution above man that the very thought of it plunges the weak-willed and the artists of the world into mental decay, the scientists into frenzied, doomed attempts at understanding, the religious into manipulations and reverence?

The entity that surfaced before our oncoming vessel was at least a half the length of our ship, and was a many layered thing. Her epidermis was a mother-of-pearl, translucent scaled-skin which seemed to undulate with gorgeous purple and pale blue veins that sat just within fishy flesh. This tapered off towards a cowl at the head, which fanned out to either side in the manner of a ray, before channelling down into two very human like arms, albeit with webbed fingers. These appendages were of the same pale flesh as the hide, and being of perhaps twice the average man's length and girth. Towards the rear the cuttlebone-esque layer gave way to a thick tail, lizard-like in girth but finned to the dorsal angle like a fish. This muscular appendage flexed with power and suggested great propulsive speed. If, however, I make the being sound too alien, that is not the whole story, for nestled within this exotic outline was something altogether more human, and suggestively feminine.

"Ready arms!" I balled from the crowsnest, and even as I slid down the mast I could hear a cacophony of swords being drawn, battle cries being sung, harpoons being seized and tied. On reaching the deck I grabbed one myself, and holding the spear aloft like a javelin sprinted to the foredeck.

"KosMMMMM!" I hollered as I reached the bow and hurled my spear at my mark. Propelled by my runup, the harpoon flew true, in a high arch above the sunken ship's masts in the lagoon. But before it landed, the Cosmic Mother sounded beneath the waters.

The crew gasped, suddenly in fright as they could not see their opponent. I saw my old friend the Oarsman with his musket, frantically trying to search for a target utop the aft deck.

"Cabin Boy- off that bell and up the crow's nest. Look into the deep, find her!" I yelled, countermanding my previous order. I saw we were rapidly approaching the shallows.

"Coxswain, bring us hard to Starboard, lest we be beached!" I yelled, and the ship rapidly turned about so that out portside was facing the land.

"Where is she Cap'n?" stammered a nearby crewmate.

"Stay alert, she is nigh!" I snarled, and approached the port railing, brandishing my harpoon.

The Cosmic Mother erupted out of the water in front of me with such force that the Solaire pitched precariously to starboard. There were shrieks of awe and anguish as she towered over the deck, her tail smacking the port-side hull as it flapped in steady time, enabling her to keep perfect pace with us as she loomed over the ship inquisitively. With her torso twisted at such an angle we could now see her anterior aspect, and everyone stood frozen on the slanted deck, paralyzed by the apparition before us.

The wide, fish-fleshy hood previously described now hung over the deck, creating an shadowy awning. Just beneath its crest, a swarm of long, grey, whip-like tentacles had extended, and were probing the rigging, where the terrified Cabin Boy was still trying to make his way to the crowsnest. To the side of these, the gargantuan humanoid hands had descended to grip the railing, and the ship creaked worryingly.

Enshrouded beneath this cowl was the form of what was, or perhaps once had been, a human woman. Oh, her skin was that all-encompassing translucent pearl shade, and her legs were fused into a serpentine trunk which devolved further down the body into that formidable, thrusting finned tail. She had excessive musculature about the shoulders, which joined bilaterally to the giant arms previously described. But she had what were unmistakingly breasts, lined with rivulets of grey veins, as well as a sensual figure with a flat abdomen, which was curiously marked with a great scar…

My unbelieving eyes drank in each of these details as she hovered aloft along side us. I suppose I wanted to look anywhere other than the one detail I have thus far missed. For when I elevated my gaze, I saw that she had the face of the First Mate, crowned by those writhing great tentacles. She smiled down benevolently at me.

"My love…" I gasped, dropping to my knees and on instinct extending one hand to the heavens and the other to my side. The tentacles reached out to embrace me…

The immense boom of the cannon exploded to my left. The muzzle spat fire and the ball slammed into Kosm's abdomen at close range, right at the scar's level, and she emitted an all too human wail as she was knocked back into the water with a mighty splash.

I turned to see the Able Seawoman, straddling the still-smoking cannon and grinning wildly.

"Stay off her, you sea-bitch!" She declared triumphantly.

I knew not in that moment if I wanted to embrace my saviour or run her through with a harpoon. We all once again leaned over the railing, aside from the Cabin Boy who was still clinging to the rigging in fright, and the Seawoman, who was still gripping the cannon between her legs and laughing maniacally.

"Lady Cap'n, look! I smashed that rotten siren into fishy white pulp!"

With the ship still under sail, the crumpled form of Kosm was being left in our wake, a fetal-form of flesh appearing much like a punctured jellyfish.

"Is...is...she dead?" Stammered the Oarsman, his musket still gripped in his hand.

The Seawoman continued her taunting of the wounded deity, riding her cannon as she did so. "Did you want more of this, you filthy monstrosity? What good's your immortality now! Try stirring up trouble in this sorry state! All mangled and twisted, with every inside on the outside, for all the world to see…"

An inhuman, mournful note of great pitch and volume sounded in the lagoon like a foghorn, echoing off the cliff walls around us. We held our ears, for the sound was great, but as soon as it had started it ceased.

The floating body of Kosm now seethed with violet lightning. With an awful crack she discharged an electrical anomaly into the lagoon about her, sending vast bolt-waves of electromagnetism cascading in all directions. In less than a second a great voltive torrent of purple bolts was surging towards the Solaire, accompanied by a static wail which sounded like a thousand waterfalls.

"Brace!" I bellowed, but all was too late.

As the static wave hit us, every metallic object aboard ship conducted its awful charge. The cocky Able Seawoman, sitting astride her cannon, shot backwards in a shower of sparks, her back cracking as she slammed into the opposite railing, her inner thighs smouldering red with fresh electrical burns, her body spasming violently and drool foaming at her mouth. Across the rest of the crew, shrieks were heard and the clanging of metallic weapons hitting the deck. I dropped my own harpoon in shock, and looked down to see a crimson blister bubbling in my palm where it had been in my grip.

The crackling lightning proceeded to work its way up the masts as it dispersed, and the rigging promptly burst into flames. I heard a child-like scream, and the burning body of the Cabin Boy fell to the deck. He thrashed in a fiery hell-cage for a few seconds, but quickly went still.

The Solaire was now coasting with sails aflame, trailing a line of thick black smoke behind us. We did not have time to recover, as dull thud knocked us all off our feet. At the stern of the ship, I saw that ray-like hood looming over the aftcastle. I had only a moment to marvel at her speed at having reached us so quickly, then I heard a smash of tinkling glass as Kosm swiped one great hand through the panoramic windows of the great cabin at the ship's rear, obliterating them. She then gripped the resultant ledge and heaved the stern of the ship downwards into the water.

With the ship now pitched at this angle, bow skywards, we began to slide down the deck towards the beast. I seized the foremast to prevent my fall. Screams were intermingled with the gurgling sound of sea water rushing into the great cabin through the now submerged window pane. She was sinking us, dragging us beneath the waves.

"We are stove!" Yelled the Oarsman. "Abandon ship!"

Several of the remaining crew, himself included, tried to steady themselves against the steep gradient and make for the away-boats still tied to the ship on either side, now precariously close to the waterline. Most did not get far, however, as from the Great One's cowl shot an assortment of tentacles, which reached over the stern railing and wrapped around the escapees' feet. She then proceeded to throw them into the air like ragdolls, before either slamming them down to break against the deck or pulling them beneath the waves by her flanks. One of the the beings great hands rose up on the port side, and came down to smash the away-boat there to splinters, cutting off that exit route.

On the opposite deck a small group, including the Oursman, had commandeered the other away-boat, and having managed to cut adrift were attempting to put distance between themselves and the sinking ship.

With water now bubbling up over the stern railing, it was clear the Solaire was now flooded to a terminal degree, and she was now going down by the stern. The Cosmic Mother seemed to realise this, and broke off to pursue the fleeing away-boat.

With great clarity I now realised what had to be done. I released my grip on the fore mast, and slid down the slanting deck towards the entrance gangway to the great cabin. As I plummeted into its gaping maw I was instantly plunged into both darkness and sea water, for the whole rear of the ship was now flooded. I dived deep into the cabin, and sure enough could quickly make out the spectral blue glow of the chest of surrogates. By their light I could see the ruined window pane at the rear of the great cabin, through which the sandy seabed was visible, coming up to meet us.

Briefly, I surfaced into an air pocket at the top of the cabin. I grasped a floating wooden object to catch my breath, and noticed to my surprise it was the writing bureau, with these very parchments still scattered utop it. Without thinking I stuffed both them and a quill into the flax lining of my garb. I then sounded and retrieved the chest from the cabin floor, and hauled it out of the deck-side entrance to the surface.

I attempted to haul my quarry a few paces up the deck, but the incline was now very great. No matter. I opened the chest to reveal the writhing invertebrates, and by some instinct knew which one was ours. Mine and the First Mate's, that is. I thrust it under my arm and stood, precariously, just in time to see the Cosmic Mother rearing up out of the water, bearing down upon the remaining away-boat.

Only the Oursman remained, standing in the boat and unloading his musket at the creature, defiant to the end. With a single swipe of a spindly, giant hand Kosm knocked him overboard. The force was so great he was likely dead before he hit the water.

I placed my foot upon the chest.

"Kosmmmmm!" I bellowed.

"Do you yearn for your surrogates"?

The foghorn-esque sound began again, although more anxious and foreboding this time as she twisted her upper body to face me, the now empty away boat drifting to her starboard. Her feminine figure danced above the waves.

"Well come hither, and get them!" I roared and kicked the chest into the water. The lid spilled open and the shoal of glowing invertebrates burst out in panic, encircling the sinking ship, save for the poor dear I still held under my arm.

Kosm let rip a howl of anguish and began to crackle with that ultra-violet lighting, and for a horrible second I thought I had misjudged her. But sure enough, these charges were soon extinguished, and she launched herself back to the Solaire, to salvage her precious proxies.

I did not have long. I turned and began to climb the now near-vertical deck. Using rigging, bulkheads, whatever I could find, I scaled the sinking ship as if it were a cliff face, heading towards the bow, which pointed skywards like an accusing finger. This was an exhausting task with the frightened, squirming surrogate under my arm, and debris still afire falling about us, but I soldiered upwards.

Only once did I dare to look down, resting atop the now horizontal foremast, and beheld a sight both majestic and awful. Kosm was circling the ship, still emitting that mournful horn sound and churning the water with her tail. She was frantically trying to gather the fluorescent-blue surrogates with her human hands and alien tentacles, and bring them within her fishy cowl. In that moment, I almost felt sympathy for the beast, but I hardened my heart and continued my ascent.

I finally reached the summit, and sat atop the bow of the slowly sinking Solaire, next to the bowsprit. This was the very spot that I had last seen my love the First Mate in the true waking world. I looked down at our surrogate, her final legacy, and held her in my arms. The sweet little creature made a light squeak, and inquisitively reached its tentacles out towards my cheek. Below, our Cosmic Mother continued her doomed rescue of the little being's cousins.

"I'm sorry…" I whispered to the surrogate. Then I squeezed it as hard as I could in my arms.

It squealed and began to thrash in my grip, but I held fast.

"Ssh...shh…" I hissed, and squeezed yet tighter. The creature began to glow an intense, burning blue, and its flesh felt hot against my breast. It scrabbled at my hair with its tentacles but could do nothing.

Kosm now heard the commotion and looked up at us, encircled by her escaping kin, and I saw her face was contorted and shifting, now the First Mate, now the Fake Scholar, now the Chief Constable, now the slain Second Mate, now the Surgeon, now the Seawoman, now the Cabin Boy, now the First Mate again. But I was not to be dissuaded from my course.

"It's all your fault!" I yelled, then brought my knees to my chest atop the ship, increasing my crushing grip on the surrogate yet further. I was bathed in a blue which now bordered on white in its intensity. I felt the flesh give way in my arms.

A hot rock shot from the heavens, riding a tail of fire, and plummeted into the water beneath us. It struck the Cosmic Mother in the flank. She shrieked and began to thrash, the water becoming a tumultuous torrent of steam and white froth. A second rock, this time with all the appearance of a cannonball of ice slammed into the beast. She wailed, and electricity began to crackle spasmodically around the bow. I squeezed tighter, tears streaming down my cheeks, as I ended both surrogate and Mother. Rocks of all shapes and sizes were now plummeting from the heavens and into the tempest, which we were nearly submerged within ourselves.

I waited for the end. As bow began to descend into those hellish rapids I held fast. I felt an enormous hand clamp around my ankle.

A meteorite smashed into the bowsprit next to my head. I sank into unconsciousness.

34.

And thus unto the end…

I came to, in the same fetal position I had blacked out in, but I was now on my side. As I wearily sat aloft, I opened my arms, and the crushed, still body of the invertebrate surrogate fell into my lap. I surveyed the perplexing scene about me.

I was sitting in the bottom of the second away-boat. How I had got here I could not recall. I was alone but for the invertebrate corpse. We were drifting into a thick, steamy mist on the end of a light beam whose source was the lighthouse atop the cliff face, back on the receding shoreline. The fog was not yet so thick that I could not see the remains of the carnage in the lagoon.

A fresh ship's mast had joined the graveyard in the coastal inlet. I could see the debris still expanding from where the almost-sunk Solaire had been hit but that final meteor. A mess of timber, chests and bodies (both human and invertebrate), floated on the greeny-grey water. Beneath its surface, a constellation of shining coins could be just glimpsed, affixed to the totemic masts.

I did not at first see the Cosmic Mother, but when I extracted the viewing monocle from my garb I made out on the beachhead a white mass of flesh, washed ashore. But even as I watched it appeared as though she was fading, as if not there at all, and out at sea to port the spectral outline of a vessel could be seen making its way into the lagoon… At this point the fog became too thick as I drifted out to the ocean.

As I replaced the viewing monocle in my flaxen garb I felt these very parchments rustling therein, and gingerly removed both them and the quill. Leaning on the seating plank, I set out to complete my story.

I now sit alone in the boat, feeling numb. I think of all that I have lost. My love, my shipmates, the Solaire. I thus declare a vow to myself that I will sail this bottomless ocean, this Nightmare Sea. I will sail across worlds, dimensions, and dreams. I will sail through time itself until I find my love again and I will beg her to heed the same three adages I now present to you, dear reader.

Firstly, follow your dreams and your heart but do so in the waking world. Do not seek resolutions in the cosmos, for it cares as little for the needs and desires of humankind as we do for the remains of invertebrates that wash up upon the shore at high tide.

Secondly, do not go to Byrgenwerth, or anywhere else in Yharnam province. Beseech whatever governance your land or realm holds true to build a wall about that place, both on land, sea and in the mind itself. It is forsaken!

And finally, and most importantly: FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.

HARBOUR MASTER'S LOG, HIGH TIDE

Epilogue

I do not often write in this record, for the labours of my calling rarely permit me the time. But a most curious series of events occurred today, so I feel that for posterity there should be a record.

At the dawn high tide a low mist descended over the marina. While making my morning rounds atop the harbour walls, I did notice a small rowing vessel, emerging from the fog. I hailed the craft, and receiving no response, went to meet its pilot when it bumped up against the dock.

A weather-worn hag promptly stumbled onto the quayside, muttering to herself and concealing something beneath her tattered garb. I could tell she may once have been something of a beauty, and perhaps of some high office given her posture. But the fates had clearly not been kind, and I wondered what battles had given her this current vacant stare and nervous disposition.

In any case, when I tried to question her further she bolted with surprising speed, and disappeared into the winding, cobbled alleys of the awakening town. I did consider summoning the constables to retrieve her, but did not want to trouble them unduly with a broken madwoman. Afterall, they and the entire civic establishment have there hands full with refugees from the Yharnam crisis, who bring with them tales that some say are too dreadful for the human mind to bear…

In any case, I proceeded about my day in the usual fashion. At the second high tide, however, I was summoned back to the quayside. Apparently some great commotion was in progress.

Upon arriving, I found that very same hag, screeching at the wake of a departing ship. Not only this, but she was waving aloft the half-rotten carcass of some invertebrate creature, perhaps a cuttlefish. I promptly escorted her away from the dockside. I am secretly grateful that she did not put up much resistance, for beneath the decrepit exterior I am given the impression of great strength!

Back at my offices, I summoned the Harbour Pilot and requested that she loan our new guest a change of garb. While assisting her to dress, the Harbour Pilot did find a number of parchments about her person, which are currently sitting on my writing bureau. awaiting review.

I again considered summoning the constabulary. However, having looked in the ledger for the name of the ship our visitor had been harassing, I have noticed that its title was my very namesake! I take this as a sign that somehow, the fates of this old hag and mine own are intertwined.

I have therefore asked the Harbour Pilot to escort her back to our lodgings. Perhaps the children will take to her, or mayhaps when her present delirium is ended she will be of use about the harbour, for as I previously asserted I sense a nautical capability beneath this veneer of madness.

Yes, that is what I shall do. For I believe she has suffered enough, and we all need a little help on this lonely journey, a little jolly cooperation, do we not?

The fog is now lifted, and a brilliant sun shines down upon the harbour. Praise be!

S.

THE END.