Work Text:
The sound of a hammer against chisel fills the workshop with a crisp, metallic ring. With each swinging motion the mason draws the muscles of their back taught, and bears down upon the stone in a relentless, driving rhythm. The figure in the stone rises, given life with the hammerstrike as the beat of its heart. Though the stone is unyielding, the mason knows its secret melodies—it tells them where to strike, guiding each break with the pitch of its reverberations.
The stoneworks lie near the quarries that produce the limestone from which Yharnam is built. Stone is brought on the waterways and carted up the hill to the stoneworks; they leave as sculptures downhill to the carriage crossing, and are ferried into the city by the way of drydocks. It is a remote enough place—so that the constant ringing of the hammer would not be a nuisance to the nearby village.
Here at the stoneworks the mason had grown, and it is all they’ve known. Though the mason must have had a mother and a father, a family, they are a long-forgotten memory. The old master of the stoneworks who took the mason in, never told them anything about their family. Persistent inquiry was answered only by cruel beatings, and the mason learned quickly to be silent and keep out of the way.
The majority of the stonework’s business was, and still is, headstones: plain stones lining the charnel lane for the common folk, and elaborately carved monuments for the wealthy, to keep ever-standing vigil over their mausoleums in the city. The limestone slabs, stacked against each other like dominos, served as a playground and refuge both to hide out of sight and nurse their bruises.
In its heyday at the workshop, even the Cainhurst nobles would commission statues to grace their halls, each equally fine and regal. The workshop was full of people then, apprentices and journeymen and day labourers alike, moving stones and swinging their mallets. The mason learned to work stone like learning to eat or drink. They learned to copy the drafts on paper with powdered charcoal and a spiked wheel, to split stone along the seams by way of plug and feather, to score outlines with a scribe to guide the split. The old master, despite his temper and drinking habit, was not stingy with his instructions. The mason grew into a skilled artisan, one of the most skilled in the workshop, fast and accurate in their work.
But the heyday of the workshop was long ago. One by one, the journeymen left in search of other pursuits. Some grew tired of the old man’s abuse. Some found employment in other workshops, working with imported alabaster for the nobles. They bragged of how much finer, more sophisticated their sculptures would be; it would be art , gracing fine galleries, not the demeaning sort of public work .
Those who stayed and were content to work with the common stone, succumbed to illness when the plague touched the frontiers. The small round tablets did nothing for their incessant coughs, and the mason carved headstones to bury their own dead. There were more dead than there were plots for graveyards, and headstones sprung up on every street and corner lot like pox-sores, or mold on a damp day.
Still, the mason lived, and the old master too—though he gained a hacking cough that put him in an even fouler mood than before. Business picked up slowly, as the Healing Church began building up the Cathedral Ward.
The mason dreams that perhaps, with the next commission or the one after, they could afford to hire a few hands and settle the old debts. They would find the peace of former days restored at the stoneworks, and it would be as before, long before things started going wrong. They can still fix it, thinks the mason. It would be as if nothing happened.
—
The door to the workshop creaks ominously, startling the mason out of their work. They turn around to see a man enter, dressed in the grey and red robes of a Byrgenwerth scholar. The man strolls in without hesitation, and it takes him a moment to notice the mason at the drafting table.
“Well I’ll be—I figured I’d find this place empty!” exclaims the man sheepishly. “Say, you could afford to light a few more candles. Or, maybe you couldn't. Open the windows at least, phew!”
The man waves his hand around his face, presumably to swat away an invisible insect. “No matter. Well met, I say. Well met!”
The mason bows awkwardly, as the man walks towards a nearby window to let in more light.
“Can I help you?” asks the mason, squinting as light suddenly floods the dim interior. They hadn’t been aware of how long they’d been working in the darkness.
“Are you the owner of this establishment?” asks the scholar, as he saunters around the rows of workshop tables and half-finished sculptures, poking and prodding without care. The mason decides to excuse the man’s overly familiar way, recognizing the Byrgenwerth college as a group of eccentrics without a firm grasp of acceptable social conventions.
“Please be careful with that, those are fragile! And the owner, that would be my master.” The mason points with their chin towards the rocking chair in the corner, where the old master dozes, oblivious of visitors. “I am overseeing things at the moment, as he is ailing. I would be happy to pass along any questions you might have to him when he wakes.”
“Your master, he is the one who carved those figures in the Church of the Good Chalice?”
“That would be—” The mason is interrupted as the old master coughs up a fit, and they smile apologetically. “That would be me. Under the supervision of my master, of course. Although as you can see, he is in no state to have visitors.”
“See, those statues piqued my interest…” says the man as he scans the workshop with beady eyes. “I have yet to see a depiction such as those before. Is it a product of your own imagination? Or does the imagery have some provenance?”
The mason has to think for a moment before they can answer.
“I can’t rightfully remember,” the mason says truthfully. “It may have been made in the likeness of one of my master’s own collection of old statues. He used to go down into the tombs when he was young.”
“From the labyrinth? Glory be, that could be an artifact of marvelous provenance!” exclaims the man.
“We-Well, my master had many such statues in his possession. Like this here,” the mason turns to point at a small clay figurine on the ground nearby. “The Church has commissioned a set of grotesques, and so I fashioned them to resemble this little one.”
The ancient statuette, and its six replicas, stand in a neat row along the wall of the workshop. They are shaped like small sitting children, with comically round heads and fat bellies, mouths open out as if to scream. Two of them hold a lantern in their long, spindly arms. The other four wear a robe that covers their squat body, hands clasped neatly in front of them as if in silent prayer. The original is in a much poorer condition than its newer siblings, and most of the details are worn away, but impressions of wavy lines on it indicate a fur-covered body.
“I find them rather cute,” says the mason.
The man spends some time peering over the statues and mutters some awfully scholarly-sounding words. The mason shuffles nervously.
Near where the mason stands is a basket of fruits, bartered from a woman of the village in exchange for some small chore. As the man ambles closer to the mason, his eyes light up with obvious interest. They are common fruit, but in season and fresh.
“Peaches!” exclaims the man, rubbing his hands together in a way that reminds the mason of an insect.
It wouldn’t do for the mason to appear a bad host—especially if the scholar is to turn up as a potential new client for the workshop.
“Please, help yourself,” the mason gestures towards the basket.
The man does not hesitate, and grabs a peach in each hand, tucking one away inside his robes and biting into the other.
“Have we…perhaps done something to offend the church? Uh…” the mason falters for a moment, searching for the right term of address. “...Good minister?”
“Minister ? Gods no, none of that. You may call me Patches,” the man talks around the mouthfuls. “And don’t you worry, good friend! Like I said, I’ve only come because I had a personal interest in meeting the maker of these figures…and to deliver an order, on behest of a colleague from the Church. Now, where is it?”
The man licks his fingers and spits out the pit he’s been sucking on onto his hands, and takes out a bundle of paper from his pocket.
“The Vicar wants a set of statues all along the Great Bridge. In the form of these shrouded figures,” he says, pointing to a pen-and-ink drawing on the page. “On their hands should be divots where oil lamps can be placed.”
The mason reads the paper, and their eyes grow wide.
“These are simple enough, but with all due respect,” the mason hesitates. “Why so many?”
Patches scoffs. “Why does the Good Church need so many statues? Why do we do anything?”
The mason nods. Patches grins, and shuffles in closer to slap the mason’s shoulder with a jovial snap.
“To appeal to the gods!” he proclaims solemnly. “We must beg them for favor, for health, for enlightenment. We erect statues with their hands raised to the sky so they may pray for us while we sleep.”
“Do they even know we do this for them? Are they pleased at our efforts?” asks the mason, the question tumbling from their lips without consideration. It is something they’d harbored inside for a long time, and had not dared to voice before. The man before him, Patches, has that quality of getting people to lower their defenses.
“If you knew the answer, what would you do, my friend? Would you have us stop our devotion?” Patches asks, in mock offense.
“So you do think—you think they don’t listen. That they are blind and deaf to our suffering,” says the mason, anguished.
“Oh, merciful be the gods, that they may look over the offenses of the ignorant. Their graces truly are infinite.”
Patches still has his hands clasped on the mason’s shoulders, casual but intimate.
“Do you perform these deeds solely in anticipation of the blessings that the gods will bestow on us?”
“Of course not! No, I just wonder…why we do this. All of…this.” The mason falters as Patches squeezes their shoulders.
“A sophist in the making, eh? Perhaps our good Vicar simply wants to beautify the city. Ever the aesthete, that man. Or,” shrugs Patches, “perhaps he believes in the awe and fear that these figurines will instill in our hearts. Even the common folk can have their own audience with the divine!” He cackles in a tone that says he does not believe this at all.
He continues. “You’re the artist, you should know. Oh, how art inspires and provokes!”
“I am only a mason. I would not know how to inspire such important things.”
Patches leans in, and whispers conspiratorially. “But do you not long to touch the sublime? To channel divinity, to feel grace through your fingertips?”
To that the mason has no answer, for that is a heavy burden.
Patches gestures with his hands, urging the mason to hold out their palm. He drops something in their hands, and closes their fingers around it.
“Now this is a good fruit, sweet and juicy. Perhaps you should plant it. Maybe it will sprout, even. More peaches, for generations to come!”
When the mason opens their hands, lying there is the pit of the peach fruit. The flesh has peeled neatly away from the stone, and the myriad grooves forming naturally on its surface are deformed and latticed.
The old master, quiet through the whole encounter, begins coughing again, wheezing and painful.
“Oh, have faith, my friend! If the gods should be merciful, you will soon have your answer, and I will soon meet you again!” He laughs, and exits breezily, leaving the mason alone and inexplicably flushed.
—
Over the next few weeks, the stones are ordered and cut. The smaller of the statues are carved at the workshop, and wrapped with burlap and straw to be carted into the city. The larger stones are sent directly to the great bridge, and placed in their final spot where they will be carved on site. The weight, the mason is told, is of no concern— the bridge is sturdy enough, so they say. Sweat lathers the sides of the draft horses as they pull the wagons full of stone blocks, and day labourers push them upright, ropes pulling on one end and wooden braces pushing on the other.
Around the stone, a wooden scaffolding is constructed, and the mason oversees the entire affair of their placement. Long strips of vellum are pasted along the four sides of the limestone, on which they had carefully drafted out a shape of the final figure as they envision it. The outline is neatly traced with a sharp metal scribe. The first strike of the mallet rings brightly against the chisel, and each strike becomes a rhythm that the mason becomes lost in.
It is a daunting task for one person alone, and the mason wishes for the old days. Even if the master himself was there, barking orders in his ornery, overbearing way, it would have been welcome. Thankfully they are used to handling grueling work alone, and slowly but steadily they chip away at the stone. Their mind is troubled, however, mulling over their earlier conversation with the scholar Patches.
The sculptures pray to the gods in their stead. So in each swing of the hammer the mason imparts a prayer: May the workshop prosper, like the old days. May the master get better, and may he be kind. May the mason someday create something they can be proud of.
But the more they work, the more they begin to feel uncertain. The lump of material under their hands feels as shapeless as wet paper. They feel no miracle of the figure that comes alive under the hammer, and if anything, the mason feels as a bird that has suffocated in its egg before it could even be born.
The words from the scholar had instilled in the mason a desire that they had never even realized. A prideful desire, to be sure, to reach for something they do not even fully understand.
But the fact that the mason has glimpsed it before makes them want it all the more. They had seen it, peering over the old master at work. Beauty came to life under his withered fingers, and it was eye-opening. A jolt of envy passed through the mason like a lightning bolt.
The mason does not know the gods.
Sure, they have heard the names whispered fervently in prayer, or sometimes in curses. But they do not know the gods. No knowledge as intimate as a tongue inside their mouth, not enough to birth them with their own hands. No visions of the sublime to inspire the wonder of divinity amongst the populace.
Such thoughts cloud the mason’s mind, until each clang of metal against stone feels like an accusation. Unable to bear it any longer, they abandon the half-finished work and begins walking, miserable.
Their aimless wandering takes them to the steps of the great cathedral, but standing before it oppressive doors, the mason feels too small. The candlelight emanating from the open doors are too warm, and the carvings on the door seem to jeer at their ineptitude. Instead, they turn around the cathedral, following the winding alleyways until they come across a much older and smaller chapel.
At the door of the shrouded chapel, the mason kneels for a long time.
Its walls are high, with long elegant arches reaching up to the heavens, and blissfully empty save for the low stone basin in the center. The mason cannot discern its use.
Despair turns to anger soon enough. The mason hates themself for their feeble mind, for their lack of insight. When the self-loathing grows too strong and they cannot stand it, the mason raises their mallet high and brings it down upon their own hand.
The mason screams, a mix of pain and rage. Over and over they hit still, until the bones are shattered and flesh is crushed. If they could have picked up the hammer with the broken hand, they would have shattered the other hand too.
“And what exactly are you hoping to achieve by this?” says a woman’s voice from behind the mason, and they turn around, startled.
Blurry through tears, they see a woman dressed in the white of a high-ranking cleric, an imposing mask covering the upper half of their face completely. She holds an elegant cane, which makes a tapping noise as she walks. Next to her stands Patches.
“Missed your mark by a bit there, eh? You were supposed to be hitting rocks!”
“Have you brought me here to show a madman, Patches?” the woman says in a cold voice, clearly unamused, and suddenly the mason feels shame flood their body.
“Well, don’t embarrass me, my good fellow! Say something! Or have you given in completely to the madness?”
The mason stammers a reply, breath hitching from pain and embarrassment. The word barely comes out audible.
“Perhaps you require blood,” states the woman, pulling out a slender, embellished syringe from her pockets. Without asking for a reply she jabs it in the mason’s hand, and immediately their flesh begins to knit together. Euphoria reverberates through their body and the building around them seems to spin around.
“Well, don’t just flop around there. What is it you seek?” Patches asks.
Emboldened by blood, the mason blurts out a question.
“How do you commune with the divine? I birth the stone messengers in my hands to appeal to the gods, to praise their mysteries, but in the end they are only stone. Oh, the gods have chosen you, good ministers. You seek the mysteries, and the gods answer! Please, how can I be like you? How can I feel their breath writhe inside me? Will I ever achieve the sublime with my own two hands?”
At the outburst, the woman and the scholar look at each other for a moment. Then Patches breaks out into laughter.
“What did I tell you? This one has got the spirit!”
“I concede, there is some inkling towards the arcane. And no lack of enthusiasm,” says the woman cooly. “But beware the fall, mason.”
The woman leans close. Her face, soft in the candlelight, wears a bemused but entirely condescending expression. The mason gets the impression that she wants to sigh, but is holding back with infinite patience.
“You are arrogant to think you can achieve our lifetime’s work in a single night. Oh, we have devoted every living breath in pursuit of the divine! Do you believe such questions have never been asked before? We toil through countless nights for a single sacred audience.”
“No, no, I did not mean—,” the mason cries out, their cheeks flushing.
“Young fool, faced with your limits you come here, to hold your meager talents hostage. Do you suppose the gods shall suffer its loss?”
“Oh don’t be so hard on them!” Patches interjects. “Look kindly on their singular devotion! Like a puppy following its master. Something guided them here, of all places, Surely there is significance in that.
“I’ve precious little time as it is, Patches.” The woman’s lips draw thin.
“Are you prepared to devote yourself wholly? For if you are, then I shall do you a kindness.” Patches ignores the woman and asks the mason, eyes sparkling, “You are one lucky fellow, and a way to an audience lies here in this very chamber.”
The mason nods fervently, eyes fixed on the scholar. “I wish to know… I wish to rid myself of my beastly idiocy.”
“Then the way is simple, make your way to the altar yonder. Step into the basin, and offer yourself to the gods. ”
“What happens then?” asks the mason timidly.
“Oh, what’s the worst that could happen? Whatever you imagine, is it worth the shame of living? “ asks Patches. “Without knowing the grace of the gods, forever? Don’t dither!”
Slowly, and surely, the mason makes their way inside the chapel, to the basin that sits at its center. The sides of it are intricately carved, and candlelight reflects on the shallow bit of water pooling within.
“Nothing’s going to happen. This is a waste of time,” says the woman, tapping the floor with her cane impatiently.
“A little patience, I implore you!” placates Patches.
The gaze of the two scholars makes the mason squirm at the intensity. Uncertain what to do with their hands, the mason sticks them inside their pockets and feels the poke of something on their fingertips—the pit of a stone fruit. Briefly they recall how Patches had placed it on their hands, and the mason finds a little solace in it. As if the man had already entrusted him with the secret key in the form of a simple drupe. The mason traces the labyrinth of wrinkles on its surface with a thumb, learning its geometry, and prays that it will grant them passage to a higher plane.
As the mason finally steps onto the basin, a thought crosses their mind.
“My old master—he is sick,” says the mason. “Should something happen—”
What a strange thing to say, they think, even as the words leave their mouth. What is supposed to happen? Nothing, probably. They will disappoint the good ministers of the church, and it will be embarrassing. They will see the mason for the fool that they are, reaching—
But before they could finish the thought, there is a noise.
At first, it is like the rush of wind, the sound of a sea shell pressed to the ear, a gentle rumbling. They turn their head around, but cannot discern the source of the sound. The air in front of them begins to ripple, like heat rising off the ground on a hot day, and then light ignites like a spark somewhere within their very being. There is a sensation of a million tiny, cold needles forming inside, expanding suddenly, threatening to burst.
The pain is unbearable, and yet rapturous. Tiny stars buzz around them like flying insects. They feel the pain of a thousand glass shards cutting the flesh into ribbons, icy cold light cauterizing their vision. They see images flash by, things they cannot even begin to understand, lost before they even have a chance to process it.
Something holds them in a grasp more intimate than any mortal embrace, and they weep at the kindness, to feel divinity surrounding them.
“—---------!! “ they cry out, moments before their head explodes.
The skull splits with a loud crack, and the insides squeeze out like paste from a piping bag. Their very being expands beyond what the mortal shell can contain, and whatever divine reckoning conceived within is returned to mere flesh and bones.
There is a moment of silence, followed by the dull, wet sound of viscera hitting the floor. Then, the mason’s lifeless body is released from the unseen grip, thudding onto the pool of blood.
Patches flinches, not because he is squeamish, but because the woman standing beside him has taken the brunt of the explosive force. Her gown is now splattered liberally with gore, white turning pink as the blood immediately soaks through her pristine garb.
He gulps nervously as the woman turns slowly to face him, blood dripping off the mask and onto the gentle curve of her chin. Her eyes, though hidden by the mask, are filled with enough menace that Patches could almost feel their sharpness physically.
“Well! Uh, the poor bugger,” says Patches as he hurries to the remains. “Most people die a lot less messily.”
“Patches,” says the woman sternly.
“Who would have thought they had it in them! I certainly didn’t! You should have seen what I saw at the stoneworks. Off the rockers.” Patches continues nervously. “A shame, eh? Perhaps they might have made a fine conduit for your, heh, experiments .”
The woman silently wipes her face with the unsullied part of her sleeve.
“And look,” says Patches, trying to shift the focus of attention. “All this wasn’t for naught. See?”
Patches points to the remains of the mason’s skull, lying amidst the viscera and cloven in half. Within, something shimmers with barely detectable light.
The woman steps over quickly and picks it up, annoyance slowly melting into fascination.
The light inside the skull is a mesmerizing illusion, shifting in and out of visibility. Flecks of light arise like smoke, and form a shape reminiscent of the invertebrates that act as the augurs of the Great Ones.
The woman knows that certain insights can only be gained from such remains, left behind by those who perished in their study but were nevertheless touched by a great wisdom.
“So do they serve a grander purpose, in posterity,” mutters the woman.
“Hmm?” asks Patches, rummaging through the mason’s clothing.
“Never mind. Are you really going through their belongings?”
“It's hardly as if they’ll be needing any spare change now!” replies Patches cheerfully. “And they won’t be missed. No kin nor kith to claim them.”
“They were going on about their old master.”
“Oh phooey, no. I saw his corpse. When I went to the workshop to deliver the orders. Dead for weeks, months, who knows. Flies as thick as stew.”
“Hmm…Ashen blood?”
“None of that sort! Head smashed in with a hammer. That hammer-wielding maniac turned their master's brain into mashed potatoes. And in the midst of the carnage, there they stood, talking to the dead body as if he still lived. Lost their wits completely, I tell ya. Aa-ha!”
Patches exclaims triumphantly he pulls his hands out of the bloodied remains, holding a small object in his hands, although his face falls with disappointment as he checks the spoils.
“Oh bugger it. What’s this? I thought it was an eye.”
“Let me see it,” demands the woman, and examines the object in her hands. “A drupe of some sort. The pit of a peach? But it has turned into stone. A lithic transmutation, with such latticed patterns found only on the calculi of the tonsils.”
“A tonsil stone! Perhaps a single granule of truth was afforded after all.”
“So often do we become surreptitious devotees, unknowing that divinity has already chosen us. Pity this one could not face the gift and live,” ponders the woman.
“When called upon, the gods often answer!” Patches laughs as he steps lightly over the corpse. “Blessed be, oh Amygdala, merciful Amygdala! The gift of the godhead cometh!”