“Hmmm…Eileen?” Jason said.
“What,” Eileen replied, bluntly but not unkindly. She was deadly competent, and somehow consistently found the time and the empathy for his stupid questions. He’d almost dare suspect she enjoyed talking to him.
“I’ve been wondering, and I’m not sure who to ask… or how to ask, or what to say… am I hallucinating all of this? Yharnam, this whole night… you? There was a blood transfusion…I blacked out, I woke up and found the city like this… waking up wasn’t real, I’m still dreaming, right? I wouldn’t care, but… I’m not dying, am I?”
Eileen laughed in amusement. “Jason!” she said. “Such a heavy burden you’ve been carrying! I certainly don’t think I’m a figment of your imagination, but I couldn’t prove that to you.”
He only nodded in solemn resignation, and Eileen thought for a moment. “Am I someone you know?” she asked. “Have you run into people you know, who shouldn’t be here? Your theory is almost certainly correct, if you have.”
“Oh!” Jason said, relieved and impressed. “Hmm. No. I’m sure I’ve never met you before. And… I think someone like you is too complex for me to come up with.”
“Someone like me?” Eileen said, with growing amusement.
She’s dead, now. Eileen. Or, Jason left her dying, stamping her lifeblood down the cathedral steps in slick, red coward’s footprints.
Jason observed his sanity start to fray pretty early on, and lately it’s been coming out in clumps. The cleaver he clenches in his right hand is real to him, and so is the ever present constant that is pain. Beyond that, he honestly can’t be sure. The city has been changing its mind about its features all night. What’s felt like days have passed, and still the sun refuses to rise. Old man Gehrman has been scarce in the Hunter’s Dream for a long time now. Sometimes Jason can hear him crying out in his sleep, but the location of his resting place in that sickly sterile garden, a place more for dreaming than sleeping, remains a mystery. The blood moon has risen, and the city is in its death throes. Or, if Jason’s theory is correct, maybe just Jason. Eileen’s gift of wisdom is one of the stronger remaining pillars of his sanity. If he hasn’t seen any ghosts from his past, it hasn’t been proved that this hellscape is his mind.
The upper cathedral ward is one of the most breathtaking locations in Yharnam, an ornate and austere roost in the very cosmos. And if the twisted statues and intricate architecture inspire respect, tonight’s blood moon sky demands it. This is a place built for seeking connection with the heavens, and tonight the heavens want connection with the earth. If that connection has been made anywhere, it must be here… so what’s across the bridge?
Jason stumbles into the place because he found a key that fit the lock, and it’s as reasonable a place to be as any on a night like this. He’s still caught up in his bloody work for want of something, anything, better to do. He sees the tower. He sees the sky. And he sees the ghostly form of his estranged sister, Charlotte, standing on the bridge. She was still alive when he left home. She must have died. And now she’s waiting for him, here to finally escort him to an afterlife or the peaceful stillness of death. Or, if she’s upset with him for leaving, she might just push him off the bridge. And if his mind really is done pretending there’s a narrative about a hunter trapped in a dream, it might not be a garden he wakes up in…
This far into a night this long, it’s all too easy to fall into a worry spiral and get worked up into a frenzy. Jason stops and looks at his feet and takes a couple deep breaths. When he looks back at the bridge, daring to hope he was wrong, he sees it’s really not Charlotte at all. Just a woman with a hairstyle Charlotte once had. And Jason’s fifty…something, maybe, so Charlotte must be fifty-something-maybe-and-two. The woman on the bridge is as old as Charlotte was, not as old as Charlotte is. And she isn’t glowing or transparent, just very pale and dressed in white. On this second, more careful assessment, Jason’s grown about 80% sure she isn’t even a ghost.
He realizes he’s staring, and nods a silent hello. No, nodding’s not hello, that’s waving. He waves.
This would be it; the last time she stood here. She could feel it very heavily upon her shoulders. The very final time she would ever watch over Yharnam and gaze out at the ever-changing state of the sky above. Ordinarily, she felt very free and powerful so high up, but with the presence of the large, bloody moon it was easy to feel small. It was far beyond mortals such as herself.
It was never a good idea to be so driven by nostalgia; that was realised in this moment.
Where would she go? The Choir had split a while ago, driven out to continue work scattered. After what the School of Mensis had done in Yahar’gul nothing had been the same. Magda only knew of it through word of mouth; the notion of seeing it in person shook her deeply. She was both fascinated and horrified.
The Byrgenwerth... She decided silently. If not to find herself useful to some cause, there would be plenty of insight to pursue.
Magda’s gaze drew over her shoulder to one of the few people she’d encountered since the hunt on this night began. Of course, he was a hunter. However she felt about him upon sight he wouldn’t be able to see it in her even expression. Her visage betrayed nothing.
Those pale lilac eyes followed the wave of his hand before she allowed herself to nod back and fully turn to face him. Her hands rested together, one over the other, down the front of her robes.
“Greetings, hunter.” Despite how high a pitch her voice was and how it seemed to carry up here, she was very quiet. “Have you need of assistance?”
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