The Nightmare Beckons || Closed RP
With @lumenmaria
The sun bore down on Eileen, filtering in through the upper windows of the Grand Cathedral.
From behind her mask, her eyes darted about. Behind her, a great beast loomed, draped over the altar and wreathed in flames. A pendant was held in its hand, but it was inert. Certainly, it would be of use to her. For a beast to be here, in the center of the Healing Church, things had gone far beyond any normal hunt.
Had another blood moon come down, as it had over Old Yharnam? What had happened before she had blacked out? The sun was so blinding, as she wandered out into the light. Her eyes, accustomed to night and shadow, struggled to comprehend the lines and the shadows streaking across the sky.
The sun was like a collapsed iris - the sign of the scourge. Eileen crossed her arms, feeling like everything was wrong. Her body didn’t feel like her own. Something about it felt lighter, faster. It was a nice feeling, and it made her... excited? She couldn’t explain it.
But she didn’t need to go far to see the hunters of this place, garbed in attire that would have been esoteric and antique even when she was but a fledgling crow. Her blades were drawn, and all other questions faded into the dawn. Their bestial cries and taunts were not the work of sane men, and the blood-drunkenness was visible in the glow of their eyes. They were flesh hungry beasts now, just yet in the shape of men.
So too, did the Hunter of Hunters race through the Nightmare, avoiding the larger beasts that she could. Her task was as it always had been - to bring those who had lost their sanity to heel.
Her ascent of the exterior of the Church’s buildings - or the rough approximations of them - allowed her to breach inside through a window, overlooking the procession of two Church hunters - one praying, and one watching, standing guard.
Like a shadow, she dropped behind the altar, and noted the chains around it. The opening in the surgical patient’s skull had a slot for the pendant she had taken earlier, and so, whilst the priestess’ head was bowed, and the sentry’s eyes were backwards, the mechanism triggered.
By the time they pulled the lever to try and give chase to the intruder, the lift had come back empty.
The Research Hall above was daunting. Its myriad of mutated and misshapen patients swiped and groped the empty air where she had once been; never before had Eileen felt as alive, with such a rush flowing through her cloak. But this was how she’d always been, hadn’t it? Why did it feel so new, yet so familiar?
Such things were behind her, as again, she found herself before a door, and hopefully, more answers than questions.
...
Bloodied, beaten, and panting, Eileen threw open a second set of enormous doors. The blue creatures that populated the odd flowering garden had taken exception to her presence, and she had been forced to fight them off. Wooden planks creak under her feet, leaden as they felt. Any other hunter may have had the respite of a lantern, and the Hunter’s Dream housed within, but for her? She’d stopped dreaming so very long ago.
And before her, was something very odd indeed. Someone that even she could remember from the memories of that far-off dream, faded as it was from memory.
Stained with blood from a gaping wound, seated in a chair with a goblet beside her, was a hunter, whose likeness was unmistakable.
Seated, within the Church’s Astral Clocktower, was the body of a friend, touched by Moonlight, and a figure whom Eileen had never even considered would find themselves in violence, much less at the site of her own demise. But one thing was absolutely certain.
As her gloved hands curled around the corpse, hoisting her out of the seat, and resting her head and knees in the crooks against her shoulder, she knew that this place was no final resting ground worthy of the friend who had been naught but loving to those hunters who still dreamt. Those whom had been pulled into Yharnam’s curse.
Her beak pointed towards the only entrance, Eileen the Crow tried to pay back some of the respect she and her fellows had once taken for granted.
This Plain Hunter deserved proper burial.