An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
[1] [Full] Chapter 13: Fishing (Simon's POV)
Simon wakes up. He hadn't thought he would wake up after his lungs were filled with blood. And yet, here he is, in a pitch-black room, wounds tended to, listening to the most beautiful song he's ever heard. He's in a world where the stars are alive, and he's been rescued from his blood-soaked iron coffin by a strange, clever little rock-spider alien trying to save the stars. Of course he'll help. Too bad neither of them are biologists... But the new human ship approaching them might have someone aboard who is... if they don't turn Simon into a lab rat first, anyway.
[BloodyMary where Simon gets wormholed to PHM 'verse but it's before the Hail Mary arrives, so he's saved by Rocky and spends a while on the Blip-A]
Simon wakes up. He hadn't thought he would wake up after his lungs were filled with blood. And yet, here he is, in a pitch-black room, wounds tended to, listening to the most beautiful song he's ever heard. He's in a world where the stars are alive, and he's been rescued from his blood-soaked iron coffin by a strange, clever little rock-spider alien trying to save the stars. Of course he'll help. Too bad neither of them are biologists... But the new human ship approaching them might have someone aboard who is... if they don't turn Simon into a lab rat first, anyway.
[BloodyMary where Simon gets wormholed to PHM 'verse but it's before the Hail Mary arrives, so he's saved by Rocky and spends a while on the Blip-A]
Okay, tumblr has broken and will NOT format links correctly, i've been trying for like half an hour. so this post is formatted different than the other chapters. oh well, the link should still work fine, nothing wrong with the actual fic itself :)
i’ve rewritten the entire warmind campaign basically with cayde as our guide instead of zavala. this took me about as long as playing the campaign plus bonus chicken nuggets break. im so sorry mobile users there’s a readmore i promise
start mission, orbit to mars:
cayde: “hey, guardian, got some weird reports from mars. the ice caps are melting and warsats are out of control. go check it out for me, will you? i’ll buy you a drink when you get back. stay safe up there.”
most of beginning of warmind goes the same, but with a bonus “holy fuck its the ana bray!!!!!!!! legendary gunslinger!!!!” scene
near rasputin and cayde transmats in, urgent. “no, no, hold on, you guys. ana. i know this is your family’s whole thing, but.... i’ve got a stake here too. ive been looking for rasputin my entire life. this is... this is it. this is him. rasputin is here.”
ana: “he’s been here the whole time.”
cayde: “all those other bunkers... every other warmind... the cryptarchs were wrong. ikora was wrong. oh, i can’t wait to tell that to her. this is rasputin! buried under ice for centuries! we thought he was on earth, or on io, or... wow. he’s really here.”
ana: “do you want to meet him?”
cayde: “uh, duh. I have... i have to tell him something, actually.”
xol goes BLARKLJAKDLFJDSLF
ghost: “maybe we could postpone that meeting until we figure out what’s doing that”
cayde: “you said this place was crawling in hive, right?”
ana: “yeah”
cayde: “....i might have an idea. i need to... look at some notes.”
next mission
cayde: “so eris left copies of her notes before she left. it took me a bit to find them all and go through them, but my Ghost helped. especially with toland’s stuff. you remember toland, weird warlock, obsessed with hive? yeah. anyway, apparently, some of our scouts on the dreadnaught found a statue marked with a name no one has found anywhere else, but the statue was right beside one for crota. which i think means only one thing: crota has a brother, and that brother is here on mars trying to get to rasputin.”
ghost: “what would the hive want from rasputin?”
cayde: “the same thing the rest of us want. his power.”
ana: “or to destroy him. there’s gotta be something else, though, cayde, i keep seeing something really big.”
cayde: “i was getting there. see, the hive have their worms, right? symbiotic worms that they feed with... violence and death. yeah. the more they feed them, the stronger they get, which is why oryx was so big and bad before we kicked his taken butt. so this thing is either a really, really, really big bad hive worm, or... and i hate to say it, but it might be one of the worm gods. the OG big bads. ‘cause apparently, the hive weren’t always like that. toland says they made a pact with these gods in exchange for power.”
ana: “you think it’s a god?”
ghost: “oh, we’ve killed gods before. i think we’ll be fine.”
cayde: “haha, that’s the spirit! see, this is why i’m sending you. we’ve got to secure rasputin before the hive or the cabal can, or before they destroy him. i would join you, but zavala got on my back about rushing after you the other day, so. yeah. sorry, you’ll be on your own.”
ana: “cayde and i can guide you remotely. i know the facility, and cayde knows the hive. or at least has notes about them.”
ghost: “that’s not exactly reassuring.”
cayde: “hey, you’re the best of the best. guardian, i believe in you. show the hive who runs this galaxy, and who built rasputin in the first place. ghost, make sure they stay locked and loaded, and take all the notes you can. eris will want them if... when she comes back.”
prob some new mission, mostly just kill hive, o fuck it is a god, its xol look he’s here in toland’s notes, let’s gtfo and regroup
edz mission:
ana: “cayde and i were talking, and apparently, he’s got an idea about something in the edz that might just be what we’re looking for. he wouldn’t say what it was, since he had to go and deal with a scout who found one of his caches still intact, but gave me some coordinates to give to you. when you get there, let us both know. hopefully by then he’ll tell me something, if he’s still busy with his piles of long-hidden glimmer and outdated weapons.”
edz mission starts
cayde: “oh, good, you’re in the right place! i hope so, anyway, that’s what my scouts said. right, so, there’s something in your area that the taken were really, really interested in. which, by extension, means the hive would be interested in. your job is to go in, grab it, and bail before the taken get it or you.”
ghost: “okay. what are we looking for, and how many taken are we going to have to face?”
cayde: “no idea about the second question, but the first... well, it’s something that xol won’t be able to resist. something for him to feed on.”
ana: “not sure i wanna know what a monster god feeds on.”
cayde: “power. what else does any god feed on? we’ve intercepted some red legion transmissions about something in the area.”
ghost: “you still havent told us what it is, cayde.”
cayde: “i’m getting there! sheesh, let a guy have some dramatic speeches. alright. so, you remember that big explosion when the traveler woke up? it jettisoned bits and pieces all over the place. poor guy’s more messed up than before. one of those pieces fell in the edz. it’s a little chunk, but filled with Light. fresh Light, not like the stuff in the big shard of the traveler. maybe a piece, oh, five feet tall? something you can transmat to mars and draw xol out so we can finish him off.”
ana: “so you should go take it from the taken.”
rest of mission goes p much the same
cayde: “ana, that was so cool! wha-- wait, how did you get the warsat to do that?”
ana: “i asked him. rasputin listened to me. he was made to protect humanity.”
cayde: “yeah, so were a lot of things that didn’t end up doing that. but at least rasputin’s got our backs. i hope. i’ll thank him if we can kill this worm. guardian, secure that piece of the traveler, if you will. you up for killing another god?”
ghost: “do we have much choice?”
cayde: “nope. see you on mars.”
next mission
cayde: “so here’s the plan.”
ana: “oh, here we go.”
cayde: “don’t you start with me, i’m not talking to you. ahem. gaurdian.” [papers shuffling] “head into the hive caves around there. it’ll get dark and gross. find where xol feeds, slap the traveler’s fragment down on the table, call him for dinner, and put a couple bullets in him.”
ana: “my ghost has been running some scans, and i’ve been using some of the tech here to help. there’s a pretty big cavern not too far down that intersects with a lot of the tunnels. that’s my best guess. but.... i dont know if this’ll be it. i mean, rasputin couldn’t kill xol the first time.”
cayde: “just do the best you can, guardian. i’d... really like for you to not die in there. if you run into too much trouble, we’ll regroup, try again. i’ll talk to ikora. maybe she’ll listen to me, get some warlocks to back me up, and the two of us can convince zavala... maybe we can make an assault on him... as long as it isn’t like what happened on...”
ana: “mars to cayde, hello?”
cayde: “i’m here, i’m good. sorry, thinking out loud. how’s it going, you two?”
ghost: “fine so far--wait. guardians, i’m picking up some kind of interference. i can’t make sense of it. ana, are you getting this?”
ana: “yeah, i hear it, too. i’ll broadcast it to your ghost, cayde, see if we can’t analyze it.”
more shooty shooty, going down
ghost: “the interference is getting worse. it... kind of hurts, actually. but i’m starting to pick up a pattern. do you have anything yet?”
ana: “cayde’s flipping through all of eris’s notes. i think he might be looking for a warlock to help us out. but i’m seeing the pattern, too. maybe it’s an encoded message?”
more shooty
ghost: “look at the size of these tunnels. xol must be immense!”
ana: “meaning xol is... stronger than we thought.”
cayde: “hopefully we can take him down before he gets any stronger.”
ana: “shouldn’t you be reading some notes?”
cayde: “i am! i’m still listening! i’ve got some helpers. remind me to thank ikora for loaning me a couple warlocks. they love this stuff. might let them copy it for ikora’s library and the city archives if we survive all this.”
more shooty, interupt ritual
ghost: “those hive were chanting in an archaic form of their language. it was hard to translate, but i heard that name again. nokris. and something about... him... being labeled a heretic?”
cayde: “what could possible be heretical to the hive? they literally feast on death.”
ghost: “something about... resurrection.”
cayde: “oh, that’s not good. uh, hey, you, voidlock with the weird helmet horns, yeah, hold on guardian, i’ll be right back--”
ghost: “that can’t be good.”
kill ogre part
ghost: “the feeding ground is right below us. i hope you’re ready.”
ana: “cayde and i decoded the pattern from that interference. he’s working on the rest with the warlocks. but the pattern is.... ‘akka, eir, yul, ur.’ those are names, guardian. ancient, powerful names. this is more than we--”
ghost: “ana? ana! cayde! ... i have a bad feeling about this. be careful.”
nokris fight, cool cutcene that was the single most badass part of the original warmind campaign
ghost picks us up, whole “thank the light!” bonding moment
cayde: “guardian? ghost? status report. please, status report, i can’t lose any more guardians, not you--”
ghost: “cayde! we’re okay! we’re alive!”
cayde: “oh, thank the traveler! you guys went dark for a while there. got kind of scared you... yeah. i’m glad you’re safe. you’re safe, right?”
ghost: “for now. we killed nokris.”
cayde: “that easy to kill oryx’s son? hm...”
ana: “xol is heading directly for the clovis bray facility. and for rasputin. we can’t let him destroy rasputin! he could be our only hope for defeating xol, for defeating whatever could come next.”
cayde: “sorry, guardian. no rest for the wicked. damn what zavala says, i’ll be there as soon as i can to try and back you up, but you gotta get up there and kill xol.”
ana: “rasputin is with us. we save him and he’ll save us.”
cayde: “are you on board, guardian? ghost? it’s a lot on you, i know, but... what do you say?”
ghost: [waits for guardian’s fierce nod of agreement] “we say it’s about time we end this.”
will of thousands mission starts
ana: “xol is tearing apart rasputin’s neural network. if he does enough damage, he could trigger a chain reaction that will devastate all of mars. you need to get there, and use the valkyrie.”
cayde: “zavala knows i’m trying to leave, but im getting my hunters to distract him long enough for me to come out after you, guardian. ikora’s gonna talk to him when i’m on a ship out, explain what’s going on. he doesn’t trust rasputin, especially after the whole siva thing a few years back, but... we don’t have a choice. i’ll be there as soon as i- zavala! uh, hey, what are you--”
ana: “sounds like he might be delayed. i’m with you, guardian. we have to stop xol.”
get to facility, rest of mission goes on as usual with ana guiding us
last fight starts with xol
cayde breaks in during early fight: “i’m en route! i’ll be there soon.”
ghost: “it’s a little late for that.”
cayde: “ah, crap. i’m sorry. dammit, zavala! [sighs] you’ve got this, guardian. i believe in you.”
kill xol
ana: “you did it! you killed a worm god!”
ghost: “we all did! we’re a team now!”
cayde: “i’m touching down on mars. you killed it already? i missed all the fun again?”
ana: [laughs] “let’s go meet rasputin, cayde.”
rasputin cutscene
all in silence. ana looks to cayde, who looks both awed and nervous.
ana: “you okay, cayde?”
cayde: “huh, yeah, yeah, i’m fine. i just... this is it. this is really it. rasputin.” [small laugh] “i just... i wish andal was here. i wish he was here to see this. he used to joke that i was rasputin, you know. that i just needed to wake up and save everyone.”
ana: “well, you did help save everyone. and you did help wake rasputin up.”
cayde: “ha. yeah. we all did, though. especially you.” [nod to guardian] “andal would’ve liked you. i’ll tell you about him over that drink i promised you.”
[slowly approach, most of rasputin’s speech the same. exception: “many have come to view me as nothing but a primitive weapon. others sought to control me. to destroy me. in my years of slumber, all but myself have forgotten what i was created to be” in place of “your vanguard sought to wield me as a primitive weapon”]
cayde: [staring in awe] “i think i need to buy zavala a drink, too. and saladin. and two for me. what have we done?”
ana: “don’t worry.” [hand scanny thingy] “we’ve got this. oh-- what did you want to tell him, cayde? now’s your chance.”
cayde: “ikora won’t believe this. hey... rasputin? took us long enough, but we found you. and we need your help.”
then we find out we didnt kill xol or nokris and they are resurrected in the ascendant realm and we get an actual real raid to kill them and that’s how we get some cool exotics and lore and shit
father gascoigne’s story is one of the most tragic and interestingly told in the game. i’ve got a lot of feelings about him and his family. i couldnt bear to tell his daughter the truth, because i know holding back all information is the only way to ensure his children survive the hunt. ive got a bit more written in this format; this is just a little preview. i’ll clean it up later, maybe i’ll post it. it’s entirely neutral on the identity of the hunter, only about their feelings in this world.
tw: blood, explicit violence and body horror, canon-typical.
Second person POV, gender neutral hunter. Character study.
You’ve grown used to the smell of blood.
It’s everywhere. The puddles on the broken, cobbled streets are more red than rain. It soaks your clothes, stiffens your collar and weighs the filthy edges of your duster. You are only clean when you gasp the empty air of the dream, and even then, the blood stains more than your garb.
Hot, coppery, tinged in decay and wet hair and unpleasant fluids, each drop fills you with a writhing energy. Whispers in your veins, haunting words in your ear. There is something terrible, something more, something wrong, with this place, and you know you will not, that you cannot, leave here without knowing what it is.
As was your contract.
Seek the Paleblood.
You don’t know it is, not even the slightest clue. You saw just a tiny flash of something, moving in the darkness. A feeling of being watched. It began when you crushed the skull of a madman in the sewers, and a searing pain cut through your mind with secrets you are not sure you want to know. You returned, nauseous and feverish, to the dream to the porcelain doll’s greeting, her fingers cold but her voice warm, her glass eyes sad but her words kind.
The echoes of blood, indeed, you think, as your weapon cuts through another beast. Whatever curse has befallen you in your acceptance of the hunt, you are certain by now that it draws the life of the beasts you slaughter into you. What that means, however, is beyond you.
Thinking about it does you no good now.
The deformed man, a hulking brute with a club as big as your body, lays motionless in its own blood as you straighten and shake the gore from your weapon. You take a breath, your heart slowing, sweat drying on your brow below your tattered hat. The rapid recovery from such violent exertion is familiar by now. It was alien to your experience before the sun had turned the sky red as your blade.
The blood of a hunter never rests, is never sated.
The cloying smell of death reaches you, but this time there is something else. A less intimate scent, but one you recognize with interest. The sweet, herbal incense wafts in the air.
You glance up. To your side, a cold iron ladder leads to the street above. Your ascent is swift.
The pots of incense diffuse their beast-rebelling smoke outside of a barred window. A soft light shimmers inside, and you can hear a quiet voice, humming. With a habitual check that no beasts are indeed in the vicinity, you approach.
“Hello?” you call.
The voice hushes, and you hear footsteps, little ones. Human ones. The response startles you.
“Who… are you?” queries a girl’s voice, young and wary, lacking the deep fear or raving madness that plagues the other survivors locked away in their homes. She is a child. “I don’t know your voice… but I know that smell. Are you a hunter?”
“Aye,” you reply. “I am.”
You know there are others. Gehrman, in the dream. Eileen, lurking near the sewers. Others you had not met, but had heard of.
The girl sighs in relief. “Then, please, will you look for my mum? Daddy never came back from the hunt, and she went to find him, but now she’s gone too…” She takes a shaky breath, and you can hear the sobs held back in her chest as she finishes, “I’m all alone… and scared…”
You immediately fear the worst. The words die on your tongue, however, as you open your mouth to tell the girl her parents are likely dead.
Why dash her hopes now? In this terrifying hour of this poor child’s life, you are her only hope. You swallow and nod. “It’s alright,” you tell her. “I’ll look for her.”
In the distance, something howls.
There’s a hope in her voice that aches deep in your stomach, roiling like a nausea that none of the gore could rise within you. “Really? Oh, thank you!” She sniffles. “My m-mum wears a red jewelled brooch. It’s so big and… and beautiful. You won’t miss it.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for that, then.” You take a step back.
“Oh! I mustn’t forget!”
You furrow your brow.
There’s a soft rummaging sound. “If you find my mum, give her this music box.”
A tiny arm shoves through the bars holding a little wooden box.
You reach up to take it in a careful, gloved hand. You try not to get any blood on her clean skin.
“It plays one of Daddy’s favorite songs. And when Daddy forgets us, we play it for him so he remembers.”
You turn the box over in your hands. Surely he was not so old as to be forgetful… perhaps just a bit ill in his mind. In this place, it would make sense. The horrors here would drive anyone mad, and the brain would do anything to forget terrible things, in your past readings.
You hope that is the case.
The girl, at least, seems unfazed by her father’s forgetfulness, so you take that as a good sign. She lets out a sad little laugh and says, “Mum’s so silly, running off without it!”
“I’ll do my best. Stay inside. Stay safe. The night won’t be forever,” you promise.
You hear her move further inside.
The rain picks up as you move on.
You nearly forget. It isn’t twenty minutes, by your estimate, before the breath leaves your lungs and your wounds are too much to bear. And again, and again, an endless loop, the sun never changing, the beasts returning, a nightmare that never ends. It feels like weeks, your teeth gritted and blood spattering the walls as you fight and you learn and you survive. And you grow. Your strength, not just in body but in mind, in spirit. In your sight and your knowing. Every death fills you with rage and hunger. The echoes feed your blood, sing in your ears.
The dream is an empty respite from the nightmare. It is peaceful, but hollow. You are uncomfortable there, although the doll is gentle and kind, and Gehrman is intelligent and patient.
The waking world is cold and damp and full of life and death and more feeling than you can bear. There is no real break from the horror.
The streets are winding, confusing. No matter how many times you track through the same alleys, they blend together. You move through memory, but you cannot rely on it. You are relentless.
Things begin to grow unfamiliar as you press on, as you become stronger. You move with caution. Up a flight of stairs, you are nearly slaughtered by two lurking beasts. You take a moment to breathe. It appears a dead end, at first, but then you turn back and see another set of stairs, to the left of the ones you came from.
You step forward and look up.
A graveyard greets you, cold and broken. A massive tomb sits at its center, angled with age and erosion.
Your boots click slowly on the cobbled street and fade to quiet as the stone becomes dirt and mud.
It stinks of blood.
You see them, then. The corpses. Beasts, the half-turned and blood-fearing men of Yharnam who had been prowling the streets to hunt, now torn asunder, their entrails and flesh strewn over the clustered gravestones. They are beyond recognition, to an extent; you grimace at the sight of some less bestial pieces. Their hunt ended early, though the night stretches on.
And then you smell it. Past the blood, the rain--something you know. It is other, but it is so intimately familiar to you. It is the smell you carry.
There is a wet crunch. Your head swivels. There is the tear of blade through flesh. Your eyes land on a flash of silver.
A man, his back to you, at the other end of the graveyard. He wears a black garb reminiscent to you of the clergy. His hat is wide brimmed, flat. A gun is gripped in his quivering fingers, a pistol; one you know fires quicksilver and blood, because it’s a hunter’s gun, like your own held tight in your left hand. You watch him raise his axe, its blade as wide as your torso and rusted with years of blood and wear. As yours is, his weapon is wrapped in tattered gauze.
He brings it down again. His arm jerks as he yanks it backwards, tearing through a corpse at his feet.
You stare in silence as he chops the body again, then a fourth time. Blood sprays out with each hit, and you can see bits of flesh scatter.
On the fourth hit, he pauses.
Slowly, the man rises. He is tall, broad, with unkempt silver hair hued unnaturally in red.
He speaks.
“Beasts all over the shop…”
He speaks softly, almost sadly, his voice hoarse, accent foreign.
You tense your grip on your weapon.
“You’ll be one of ‘em, sooner or later.”
He turns. A face younger than you expected, middle aged, bearded. His eyes are covered in gauze, as most in Yharnam, but he can see, and you feel his gaze lock on you. He bares his teeth; they are too big for his jaw, yellowed.
He breathes, and you smell blood.
You smell blood, and you smell his madness. He is a hunter, as much as you are.
But he is not a hunter for the dream. You can feel it. The waking world is the only world for him. He bears the black garb of the church that you are only distantly familiar with. You know enough regarding hunters of his status to be wary.
You swallow and steel yourself.
This hunter has no escape from this world to reset the madness in his mind and the thirst in his blood, for blood.
He moves fast, darting between the gravestones with a speed that catches you off-guard. He is as quick and light on his feet as you.
The first hit from his axe makes you cry out in agony. You stagger back as fresh blood coats the blade. You recover enough to dodge the next swing, and you dance back.
Your leg sparks with pain as you jab a vial of healing blood into your body, and your wounds close.
It is the most brutal fight you have had yet.
His blade scrapes the ground, sparks flying from the axe, and he snarls and grunts with each swing. Your gun and his crack loudly in the night. You fear you may be equally matched, but slowly, you batter him down. He is aggressive, almost recklessly so, and you find openings in his attacks that you are careful to avoid in yourself.
You learn fast. You have to.
He stares at you from across the gravestones and licks his lips. His fingers twitch on his axe’s handle.
He leaps, and you barely roll out of the way. You lash immediately, and he grunts as you knock him away, blood dripping from his side. You move back, planning your next move, when he speaks.
“What’s that smell?” he croons.
He inhales deeply. His head tilts to the side and his jaw twitches.
He leans forward. “The sweet blood. Oh, it sings to me…”
He steps closer and reaches up to wipe the blood and the spit from his jaw, leaving another red stain on his black sleeve.
“It’s enough to make a man sick.”
He laughs, but it’s sick. It’s a cough. Wheezing, wet.
He lunges, and your battle resumes.
You smell blood. It coats the gravestones, seeps in the earth, squelching under your boots. It isn’t sweet. It is rusted iron raw in your throat.
It sings, though. The echoes whisper in your mind as you pull your trigger into his chest.
In your gasping breaths, your intense ferocity, your realization that you will win, you nearly miss it.
The hunter smell-- it is not gone.
But you look upon him in horror as he staggers back clutching his head. He wails, a sound so full of pain and agony and sorrow you feel it rattle in your ribs. You step away, raising a hand to cover the stench of blood and beast that rolls from him in waves.
When he throws back his head with his terrible cry, the man seems to explode.
The transformation is so rapid, it seems instantaneous. He grows two feet taller, his clothes rip and tear, silver fur sprouts across his body. His hands become claws and his legs turn digitigrade. His fangs drip with saliva tinged dull pink.
“Gods help me,” you hear yourself rasp, knowing that they will not.
He pounces, and you lash against the stench of the beast.
He is ferocious. He fights now, mindless, enraged, not scared, but something similar. His wail of grief echoes in your ears.
He wants to die, and he wants you to end it.
You can’t blame him.
But he fights, and it hurts. His claws shred your flesh, although your curse and your blood knit it back together. You feel ribs crack in your chest and instantly heal. He throws you into a tree, and you cry out as you slump to the ground. There is no chance for the pain to immobilize you, as you roll to the side and jab the healing blood into your thigh. His claws slam into the space you had just occupied.
As you pick yourself up, something falls from your pocket.
He hesitates-- just enough.
You snatch the music box and pop open the lid with one hand.
Haunting, tinny music chimes from the box. It sounds like a nursery tune.
He reacts instantly, dropping to his knees. He howls, and it’s the sound of a broken man.
You spot something red.
It’s bright, glinting, on the roof nearby.
It rests on the chest of a corpse.
You feel a choke in your throat.
A red jewelled brooch.
He never came back from the hunt. And now she was gone, too.
You had slaughtered hundreds of beasts, but seeing this-- this beast was a father. He had a daughter who loved music, he had a wife who cared so much for him as to risk her life to find him on the night of the hunt.
This beast was a hunter with a tragic story, and it is your duty, as a hunter, as the person who vowed to find that girl’s parents, to bring the story to an end.
You try not to see a hurting, sick man as you slash with your blade.
You fight with pity and duty. He snarls and snaps and roars, but you can hear the grief and rage in every sound. He wears you to the bone, and you’re exhausted, but you refuse to give up.
You are almost out of healing vials.
You open the music box again, and his pain rattles your weary heart.
In his moment of remembrance, you strike.
Your bullets stagger him, and you feel the rush of blood and the whispers of hunters before you as you press your hand to his chest.
He is on his knees before you.
Your fingers burn with unholy fire as they press into his flesh, claws in their own right in this gruesome attack. Unexplainable, unspeakable. He would understand.
For the first time, you see his eyes. His silver hair parts, the gauze falls away just enough.
Dark brown. Simple. Bloodshot, certainly. But they are human eyes. And as you reach further into the cavity of his chest and blood spills from his lips and seeps over your arm, the soft tinkling of the music box still playing, he blinks. Something is there, in his eyes.
You reach up and pull the covering from your face. You gaze upon him with sympathy.
“It’s time to dream, hunter,” you say softly. “The night will carry your peace, and the sun will burn your sins.”
You see his clawed hand reach up. Instead of slashing at you, though, he grips your elbow. “Dawn,” he rasps, the words warped by his muzzle. “My-- my-- she must see--”
“I will ensure your daughter sees the sun rise,” you promise. “I will end the scourge. It is my burden now. Sleep, Father. No more blood.”
You wrap your fingers around his heart and smile gently.
For the first time in what surely must have been a very long while, there is peace on the hunter’s bestial face. He closes his eyes and murmurs a name.
You tear his heart from his chest.
Despite your best effort, his final moments are in agony. His last roar seems to shake the very earth, and you swear, you hear him beg for forgiveness as his beating heart stills in your hand.
The hunt ends.
He slumps to the ground in a pitiful heap of bloody church garb and fur.
The heart in your hand melts into blood.
Something glints in the dirt beside his body. You pick it up; it’s a key. You pocket it, and then retrieve the music box.
Inside, there is the tiny paper reel to play the music. On the inside of the lid, you find an aged scrap of paper. A letter, or part of one. The words are terribly faded, but holding it in the best light you can, you finally make out two names.
You repeat Father Gascoigne’s last word, softly, into the night. “Viola.”
You close the box, and tuck it away.
A lamp glows by the tomb. You light it, but hesitate. Your eye turns again to the corpse above.
It isn’t hard to get there. You move carefully over the blood-slick stone.
The corpse is a woman in a dark dress. Her head sits at a terrible angle, her blonde hair stained strawberry from the blood cold from her throat. She was beautiful, before.
You crouch beside her. “I’m so sorry,” you say softly.
You take the brooch from her chest.
With a weight in your chest, you return to the empty dream. The doll knows, of course, but says nothing of it. Her hands are gentle as she takes yours to channel the echoes.
“The night has an end, good hunter,” she says to you before you wake. “It always does.”
She smiles gently.
You hunt. You smell blood. The beasts who were once men fall before you. You are cleansing them, releasing them of their curse, their disease, their scourge. The church looms above you, the chapel filled with horrendously cursed hunters of the church. Betrayed by their own blood, it seemed, with only the chapel and the kindly soul tending it offering a blissful safety in the bloodsoaked city.
You return to the girl, not on purpose, a time later. Stronger, now; the moon has risen. The night drags eternal until the blood is cleansed. It seeps in the cracks of the stone and drips into the filthy sewers that led you back here, in your absent wanderings, a desire for familiar but no less unpleasant streets, an almost respite from the unimaginable horrors that plague your mind and wander the cathedral and the forest. From the burning town beneath the city, and the hunter you don’t want to slay, and the terrible secrets that you are unearthing about the accursed scholars and the tainted blood and the knowledge men are not strong enough to comprehend.
You are starting to know, now. There’s more to the blood, and more to the church, and the scholars. There is more to Know and more to See and you hope that your mind will not be broken.
You smell the incense and approach the window.
You hear her this time, coming to the window, before you can even speak. She sounds sad; hopeless. “Hello, hunter. Still can’t find my mum?”
It isn’t said with any jeer. She does not think she can be found.
You grip the brooch in your pocket.
You look out, to the night sky, and the moon hanging low and round.
The moon, silver and pristine and pale.
You think you can hear the music again. It bounces in your skull.
And as you think of this little girl, alone, orphaned by your hand, and your promise to her father as you pulled the beating heart from between his ribs, and you hear the growls and the howls and the roaring of the beasts that slaughtered anything that moved for less than nothing, and as you think of the safety of the chapel so far from here, on a path bathed in your own blood as every beast that stalks the streets and alleys and sewers has killed you again and again and again…
You realize you have a very difficult choice to make.
