Ludolf Reinhardt had never thought much of dreams. They were illusions, distractions of the mind that took place in the void between sleep and wake. Utterly meaningless in every sense of the word.

But the dreams that consumed him now were different. Like claws from the void, the foggy visions drug him down, deeper and deeper, and with a painful lucidity that resisted any rational thought or attempts to fight back. His skin simultaneously felt as though every pore had been set aflame and then dunked within a vat of frozen ice. Little by little, he struggled, feebly, to remember. To recall the circumstances that led him to this peculiar predicament. But try as he might he could remember nothing. Nothing but blood, fog, and snow.

Snow?

Ludolf opened his eyes. The haze, thick as mussel soup, lingered for a few seconds, before finally giving way to reveal his surroundings — that of a desolate, empty field covered in drifts of freshly fallen snow and further surrounded by an almost impenetrable wall of mist. Overhead, the moon was shining bright, but there was something about it that appeared almost obscene to his eyes. Had it always been so ... oppressive?

"The Sky and the Cosmos are One!"

The sudden familiar voice piercing through the tranquility made him tense. He twisted, reaching for the blade in his coat but found that it was no longer there.

"Who?"

His voice came out as a hoarse grunt, the harsh sound of it echoing through the mist. No one answered, but he kept his hand inside his coat just the same. Though everything was quiet beneath the moonlit sky, the hair on the back of his neck slowly began to stand on end. The seconds began to pass in the stillness. One minute became another. Nothing moved, but he could feel something stirring beyond the wall of vapor ahead. And before long, the shadows began to shift, darkening into the veiled shapes of men, women, and children from a time most had forgotten.

Some were ravaged beyond recognition while others appeared almost living save for their opaque, sightless eyes and hideously gaping jaws. Some crawled like worms through the dead earth, their legs gone, their arms grasping and reaching through the banks. But whether this was meant as an attack or a plea for help, he did not know. In a sluggish mass, they moved towards him, their agonized cries growing ever louder.

With his heart leaping into his throat faster than a speeding bullet, Ludolf attempted to shrink back before the growing sea of ghosts but found that the strength in his legs had deserted him. He couldn't move! His veins turned to ice water. Any second they would be on top of him. He had to move, even if it was just a fraction of an inch. Ludolf writhed ... twisted ... and finally took one step, then another, and another before he lost power in his legs. He collapsed, gasping and soaked in sweat, onto all fours in the snow. Howls still rang out accusingly over his shoulder, but all his strength was gone, sapped by just that one move. But just before the calamity threatened to consume him, a new sound shattered the illusion. BOOOOONG! BOOOONG!

A beast?

No, said the dry, rational part of his mind that still worked. Bells.

And, indeed, there were bells. The noise was soft at first, nearly drowned by the cacophony, but it steadily grew louder and louder until the thunderous toll was all Ludolf could hear. The sound of it breathed new life into his veins — a fire that burned so hot that he wondered how it didn't sear him straight through to the marrow of his bones. Slowly, he found his feet and turned towards the darkness, his blood coursing with defiance. He opened his mouth in a roar, but just as he did something exploded from above, sending a massive wall of white-hot flames raining down upon his would-be spectors. They burned and writhed and shrieked, and the smoldering of ashes filled his nose. Yet even as the shades shrieked their last, the bells rang on, and on, and —

"Any of you lot awake?"

The vision faded.

But the sound of tolling bells did not.

Dizzy and with his mouth dry as dust, Ludolf Reinhardt slowly opened his eyes. Gone was the hellish, barren landscape he had viewed from his dreams, but in its place he found himself confronted by a new one that was equally as strange.

He was laying on his stomach with his cheek pressed against a wooden floor. From what little he could see in that position, there were makeshift cots lined in purposeful, orderly rows. The whole place reeked.

Maybe that dream hit a little closer to home than he'd thought.

Groaning softly, he pushed himself upwards, first onto his knees and finally all the way up to sag against one of the nearby cabinets.

"Unfortunately," he croaked in response to the voice from before — a voice which he could now see belonged to a large, apish-looking man who appeared as if he could knock the head off a wild beast with only his bare hands. A boon in these uncertain times . . . and yet —

Ludolf's eyes narrowed.

"Don't mean to be ill-mannered, friend," he said slowly, "But where . . . are we?"

Victor and Torquil's attention had strayed from the figures occupying the back room of the clinic after the one aptly described as the “Screaming Man” had turned out to only have stirred momentarily from his slumber. Victor was just about to resume his search for anything interesting in this place with a newly determined priority to find a key to this place, and Torquil had noticed the new Messengers offering them their message. But barely had the two made a move to go through the door to the reception before a voice – a new voice – called out behind them, stopping them dead in their tracks. They both turned around to face the speaker.
But a moment later a second new voice replied to the first, and the two Hunters at the door turned their heads in unison to look at him instead, Victor with an expression that betrayed shock and mild panic, Torquil with surprise, but also joy and relief.

The two men likely made a strange visage, standing there next to each other, particularly with Arcturus' tall, lean figure with them for comparison. Victor was fairly tall, only a little shorter than Arcturus – though both of them would still have to look up at Nigel, had he been standing – while Torquil was rather short. The comparison almost made their relative proportions seem exaggerated; Victor and Torquil both being somewhat burly, though neither could once again compare to Nigel – likely made Arcturus look obscenely thin, and Torquil standing next to his tall companions would make him seem tiny.
Of course, a lot of the attention that might have been directed at this, as well as to the fact that Arcturus and Torquil were both dressed and equipped in such a way that it would not betray their inner nature as Hunters while Victor wore the uniform of a church Hunter, might have been distracted by the fact that Victor was still completely drenched in impossible-seeming quantities of blood. His efforts to wipe his face and gloves had only lessened the red tint there, but not removed it; blood was notoriously difficult to clean off, and there was a lot of it.

“You're at a clinic for blood-ministration,” Victor replied to Ludolf's question, eyes shifting between these newly awakened fellows in a way that might suggest paranoia. Noticing Nigel's foreign-looking attire, he elaborated: “In Yharnam. You're probably Hunters now. So are we.”

As he spoke, a crowd of four Messengers – invisible to Victor but ironically visible to everyone else present for it – emerged from the floor around Ludolf's feet through what seemed almost like tiny puffs of mist. Their grotesque, eyeless and remarkably dissimilar faces turned towards him, their tiny little hands extending towards his shins, palms upturned, in an almost pleading gesture.

“You're at a clinic for blood-ministration."

Ludolf's gaze snapped from the giant over towards the door. The speaker, he saw, was a tall man garbed in robes that might once have been ivory, but had been stained through with blood. So much blood, in fact, that the smell of it was almost dizzying in the confined space. There were two others with him though neither one of them spoke before the first piped up again.

"In Yharnam. You're probably Hunters now. So are we.”

The introduction was a simple one for what it was but it caused Ludolf to freeze and go still just the same.

Hunters . . .

Oh yes, though his mind still felt full of fog, the word brought with it memories — no, understanding of the term. Images appeared in the back of his thoughts. Strange spectors in black armed to the teeth with cleavers, swords, and axes. Corpses . . . of beasts mostly, but also of men. There were other memories, too. Ghosts and shadows. A courtyard drenched in blood. Fuzzy sketches akin to a Rorschach test penetrating in the darkest corners where he dared not tread.

He glanced over to Nigel, but when the tall stranger did not speak, Ludolf straightened and dusted off his frock.

"You say this rather casually," he drawled, making an effort to keep his tone light. "Yet, I've never known a gift to come for free. Not in Yharnam at any rate. What is it you want?"

But before Victor or anyone else could answer, something bubbled at his feet. Astonished, Ludolf stepped back, but just where he had been standing, creatures began to emerge. They were small and hideous, with grotesque mouths and empty eyes, but it was their hands that attracted his attention the most. They were straining for him, their palms turned upright in a position that bore a striking resemblance to the monsters from his dream. With a slight hiss, he leaped back, his expression flickering from guarded to outright disgust faster than a set of traffic lights. No one else had reacted, but even so, the appearance of the unsightly creatures immediately set his heart to his racing.

This new Hunter in particular was bad news. Even before jumping in shock and disgust at nothing – or at least appeared to Victor as nothing – and thus confirming that he, too, was in all likelihood an immortal like these others probably were, the man's words caused Victor to frown. So few words, yet so much revealed about the man's personal opinions and beliefs.
For starters, he referred to becoming a Hunter as a “gift,” which was an unusual stance to take on the subject. To most citizens Hunters were a necessary evil; violent, bloodthirsty demi-humans that were only slightly better than actual beasts, and easily as dangerous. Most Yharnamites both feared and derided Hunters, which they made no secret of and which was one of the main reasons that Moira and her Black Church had gained traction in the first place. To most people, including Victor himself, becoming a Hunter was part of the price they had to pay for blood healing, not part of the reward. For someone to consider becoming a Hunter a distinctly positive thing, they had to have a great desire for power or thirst for violence, enough so that they were essentially willing to risk losing all other aspects of their life to achieve that.
The other statement that revealed his personal beliefs was what Victor would paraphrase as “nothing is free in Yharnam.” While Victor probably agreed somewhat with the sentiment, at least as far as the Healing Church was concerned, saying it out loud still revealed a particular dislike for Yharnam.
And this, he thought grimly, is who Dietrich, or Harold, or whoever made the decision, decided to turn into an immortal soldier. Great.
Finally and much less damningly, the Hunter's lack of awareness of the “price” he had paid for the “gift” of being made a Hunter revealed that he had some unusually extensive amnesia. It was not uncommon for Hunters to forget parts of their past during metamorphosis, but this man did not even remember the treatment or the bargain that resulted in it.

Victor turned to Torquil next to him, pointing at the spot on the floor that apparently shocked and appalled this stranger so much. “More little men?”
Torquil nodded, confirming Victor's suspicion. He turned back to the distasteful immortal, going his best not to outwardly sigh in exasperation over having to have this conversation.
“So you see little men,” he remarked more loudly, making it clear that he was once again addressing the person in the opposite side of the room. “That means you're special, too. Congratulations. Seems like there's an awful lot of special Hunters here.”
It was not until he had spoken the words out loud that Victor realized just how bitter he sounded, which probably did not make a whole lot of sense to these people, considering that as far as they knew – or he wanted them to know – they could just see things he could not. Hopefully they would not discover their own immortality until they were well and truly under the control of the Healing Church.
“And I don't want anything,” he continued, only a little less bitterly than before. “I have offered these guys that they can follow me to the Cathedral Ward for briefing and equipment, and I suppose the same offer extends to you two.” He indicated the two newly awakened Hunters by pointing with his sword.
“But we all fill a contract before becoming Hunters,” he finally reminded the other. “I don't know what your contract said, but it's usually something like 'become a Hunter and hunt beasts', and maybe 'don't make a mess of Yharnam'.” He shrugged. In truth, Victor had no idea what was in the contract he had signed back then; he had been much more concerned about not dying or living in constant agony at the time than the consequences. He figured it was something like that, though.

Nigel lost himself in thought almost immediately after he spoke. The stranger's query registered in the disoriented man's mind but it was too late for him to reply with the arrival of two new strangers to the fold. The trio exchanged a few words while Nigel eyed one of the newcomer's attire, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. The crimson dye it held was off-putting but Nigel's fog riddled mind couldn't connect the dots for a good few moments. It wasn't until examining the crimson clad stranger face did Nigel realize the cloth held blood, not dye. Nigel's eyes went wide as the scope of that much blood dawned on him. Surely it wasn't really blood? There just seemed to be too much, an unnatural amount.

"Pardon my interruption" Nigel began, turning his attention to the blood drenched man "but is that blood you're covered in?"

With this question out in the open Nigel's mind began to work in overdrive as he processed all the information he had just heard. There was panic wracking his mind but he pushed through, focusing on the facts given to him rather than the fear of uncertainty. He remembered heading to Yharnam in search of healing, the blood-ministrations must have worked, but the mentioning of becoming a hunter or signing a contract rang no bells in his mind at all. Perhaps this was all still part of his nightmare? He was certain he was awake but in dreams that was usually the case.

Any thoughts of being caught in a lingering nightmare were soon dashed. From out of the corner of his eye, Ludolf saw the blood-drenched stranger turn and gesture inquiringly to his companion.

"Little men?"

The second man nodded and the first turned back, appearing to be more irritated than alarmed — a reaction that caused Ludolf to lower his boot back down to the floor. His eyes slid — not to Victor who began to speak — but over to Torquil who had thus far not said a word. Upon closer inspection, however, it appeared that this was more practical than unwilling; the man's jaw had a strange crookedness as if it had been impacted by some kind of blunt object. Everything else about the man appeared nondescript and plain. Even the man's eyes were just a calm, muddy brown. This was a "special" hunter?

Deciding to withhold his judgement for now, Ludolf focused his attention back upon Victor in time to hear him explain about a . . . contract. He racked his mind. Try as he might, however, he could remember very little that took place before he signed it, much less the specific conditions he had signed. But at the same time, it hardly even seemed to matter. In his heart of hearts, Ludolf knew he would have signed that document no matter the costs to his body, mind, or soul. He had only one goal left to him now and, as far as he knew, it lay deep within the beating heart of Yharnam's beast-ridden streets. If becoming a Hunter meant gaining the access to the tools and information that would allow him to survive for that long, then it was worth it. Plain and simple.

"Very well," he decided aloud. "I'll accompany you back to Cathedral — "

He didn't get to finish. The large stranger, who had been quiet since Victor's first introduction, suddenly spoke.

"Pardon my interruption but is that blood you're covered in?"

Ludolf glanced over at him. "It is," he confirmed. "You can smell it from here."

Along with something else.

He hadn't noticed the pungency before due to the appearance of the Hunters in the doorway, but he certainly did now that the topic had strayed to the blood congealing on Victor's robe. It was a foul scent akin to sweat, pus, fur, and rotting meat. For the first time since he had awoken, Ludolf began really paying attention to the clinic around them, his eyes darting quickly from the Hunters to the bodies strewn across the floor, to the little men from before, and finally to the doorway from which the three senior Hunters had emerged. Had there been an incident before he had awakened?

Upon hearing Nigel ask whether the substance Victor was drenched in was blood, the Hunter frowned before glancing down at himself, confirming how thoroughly soaked he was, and then swept the room in front of him – looking at the dead beast, the several human corpses, the blood-splatters and the dangling bits of intestine hanging off some of the furniture – before looking back at Nigel. His expression had gone from annoyance to disappointment, though he seemed somewhat mollified when Ludolf confirmed that the substance was, indeed, blood.
Because Nigel was expressly looking at Victor:
Though Victor seemed to look down at himself with an air of sarcasm initially, he seemed momentarily surprised with what he found. His eyes quickly scanned his entire body, especially noting the tears in his clothes from the times he had been wounded earlier, but generally just seeming to gauge the spread and quantity of blood covering him. For as attentive as Victor was of everything around him, he also curiously seemed to avoid eye-contact with anyone.

“Yeah,” Victor confirmed grimly, looking once more to the beast with its obviously broken neck sprawled across the floor at one end of the room. “Seems the clods running this place bolted when the bells rang, and someone thought they could help themselves to some sleeping Hunters.”
He gestured to Torquil, Arcturus and through the doorway behind him to Marcus. “These guys woke up and held them off until I got here. Also killed that one.” He pointed at the dead beast. There was a note of approval in his voice.

About at this time, Torquil pointed with his left hand – his right hand holding his hatchet – towards the cabinet that Ludolf had been learning against before jumping away to escape the Messengers. “Little men!”* he garbled.
Over there, still plainly visible to all of the Paleblood Hunters and invisible to Victor, the four Messengers that had crowded around Ludolf's feet had seemingly taken to try to communicate. One of them had turned its face – void even of the sockets for eyes, and with but an empty round, somewhat wrinkled mouth-like hole – to Ludolf once more, and was gesturing with its hands for him to come closer. The other three Messengers had moved to the base of the cabinet itself, with two of them throwing their tiny bodies flat against the front of its wooden doors, raking their hands down the side soundlessly and powerlessly. The last Messenger instead laid low against the floor, as if trying to look under the cabinet, while reaching into the gap created by the stubby wooden feet of the cabinet with its hands, as if trying to reach something.

(What Torquil actually sounded like:
*“E'hl meh!”)

"Ah. Right then." Nigel said, the aroma now registering with him. He was still more than a little stunned, taking in more of the details around him and becoming more and more perplexed with the situation he now found himself in. Nigel rubbed his face a bit, giving himself a light slap before rising to his feet. Despite the feeling of reinvigoration he felt, his legs almost gave out, as if they felt alien to him now. Getting his footing once more, Nigel noticed the little men's antics near the cabinet.

"It would appear that the little ones are up to something." Victor conveyed to nobody in particular, and more so thinking out loud. Nigel approached the cabinet and squatted down next to the small creatures, trying to take in their details better. He couldn't help but feel some pity for them though he didn't know what they were. They looked sickly but perhaps that was all an illusion, a defence mechanism to lull others into a false sense of security. At the moment though he had no reason to distrust the little ones given the other's reaction to them.

From his squatting position, Nigel stood up slightly and pressed himself against the cabinet. He wasn't certain what the creatures were getting at with the cabinet but the one grasping underneath lead him to believe there may be something underneath, or more interestingly, behind the wooden cabinet. With a mighty push he began his attempt at moving the cabinet.

The cabinet, while of fair quality and, unlike some of the other cabinets in the clinic, entirely made of wood, was neither overly large nor made with sturdiness in mind. Being about the same size as Nigel himself, it might have come as a surprise to him how light it proved to be and how easily it moved; it had some heft to it, certainly, but it almost seemed as though its contents were either very light or missing, in addition to which Nigel might realize that he had gotten quite a bit stronger than he was before.
Nevertheless the cabinet slid aside with a loud screech of wood against wood, the little feet of the furniture leaving faint scratch-marks in the floorboards as it went and the momentum of the moving furniture actually causing the farthest of the double doors to briefly swing outward, opening just an inch – not enough to get a good look inside – before closing again.

The Messengers seemed to react to this, each in their own way; the one that had been trying to get Ludolf's attention turned to Nigel and seemed to stop trying to convey whatever meaning it had been trying to convey and just seemed to observe him idly. The ones that had been clawing at the doors of the cabinet fell over when the piece of furniture suddenly moved, and suddenly vanished into the floor, only for them – or two other Messengers identical with those two – to emerge out of the floor in front of the new location of the cabinet to continue grabbing powerlessly at the doors. The last one, which had been seemingly trying to reach underneath the cabinet, straightened its posture – sat up? Stood up? – and turned to Nigel, clapping its hands excitedly.
Across the room, first a very curious-looking Torquil and then a cautious Victor started approaching to get a better look at what Nigel was doing.

The wall behind the cabinet was, after all, just another section of wooden boards, in no identifiable way distinct from the rest of the walls of the room. There was not even any visible difference in color as is often the case with surfaces that have been covered for a long time. Below, where the cabinet had scraped against the floor as it moved, had been uncovered some miscellaneous dust bunnies, a comb, and what seemed like some old, dried-up small bloodstains.
More interesting was the final object uncovered by moving the cabinet: a plain-looking brass key, the type and size of which would typically be used for doors.
“How did you... never mind,” Victor started out incredulously, staring at the key in disbelief, before sighing as if deciding he did not care. He pointed at the key. “I'm guessing that explains why the front door wasn't locked. Good work. Now we can lock it when we leave.”

Arcturus had noted, much to his discomfort, the shocked reaction Victor had showed his refusal. As if it were normal for one to so easily drink from the veins of another person, expected even. He'd had to suppress a shudder of revulsion at the thought. Luckily the conversation had moved swiftly onto the matter of rebuilding the clinic's defenses, allowing the young man to push such disturbing thoughts aside. Admittedly the church hunter had been right. As meager a defense as a locked door was, attempting to fortify the building any more from outside would merely trap the people they were trying to protect. However there was one thing the church hunter had mentioned which he found odd. Incense to keep the beasts away? What was that about? Before Arcturus could ask, however, voices had once more sounded out from among the sleeping patients.

While Victor cautiously greeted the newly awakened men, Arcturus quietly looked on, having nothing immediate to add to the conversation. His piercing blue eyes scrutinized the two and their attire, assessing them and the way they acted. One of the men possessed an impressive physique, impeccably fit and even taller than Arcturus himself. The other was less imposing but still held a striking appearance, seeming confident and intelligent. Both of them had visible scars, indicating to him some manner of experience. Though in what he had no idea. Both men wore clothing of fine make, by his reckoning, one looking to be a traveler of sorts while the other struck him as scholarly. However both men seemed to have a regal bearing about them. Arcturus quickly recognized it, these two were likely both of noble background.

The scholarly man seemed to be adjusting quite well to the situation he had awoken in, while the more muscular of the two appeared quite the opposite. In a way it was reassuring. Arcturus was no longer the only foreigner out of his element. However as the others in the room spoke, exchanging questions and information, one point was brought up which caused the young man some concern.

Contract? Yes, that's right. He had signed a contract before receiving his blood ministration. Yet as hard as he tried, Arcturus couldn't remember the slightest thing about it. He furrowed his brow, turning away from the others with a small frown on his features. Why couldn't he remember? Arcturus had always had an excellent memory, making it all the more strange that he would forget something so important.

Growing slightly frustrated at his uncharacteristic forgetfulness, he began searching through cabinets and drawers, methodically scouring the room for anything that might resemble legal documents. All the while he idly continued to eavesdrop on the conversation, glancing over to watch the massive man push one cabinet in particular aside. It seemed the little men had lead the others to the key. At least now they would be able to leave some small measure of defense behind when they left.

Still, Arcturus was anxious about finding his contract. The fact that he couldn't remember its contents was unnerving. Victor had said something about 'becoming a hunter and hunting beasts,' but this didn't aid his recollection one way or the other. So he continued searching, hoping to find some archive of blood ministration contracts.

Rummaging through the back room of the clinic, Arcturus mostly found what was immediately obvious was there: tables with various medical- and chemical-looking apparatus like beakers, forceps, tongs, scalpels, scales, mortars and pestles and the like. There were also five rolls of bandages and a bucket with another two bandages, though those were stained with blood and worse and likely not suitable for application anymore. There were the weapons in barrels that Arcturus had used to arm himself after waking, but that appeared to be all the barrels held.
The room had no more cabinets to speak of and none of the tables had drawers, which might lead one to believe that most of the supplies had been kept in the reception. Nowhere in the back room were their contracts, nor any other important documents, to be found; it seemed that they were either kept in the reception, too, or the staff of the clinic had brought such documents with them when they evacuated.

While looking around, however, Arcturus would have likely taken a look at the three blackboards along the wall, two of which just bore illegible scribbles, cryptic numbers and formulas that none of them had any way of knowing what meant. The last blackboard, however, appeared to have recently been erased and something new written in a more easily readable script:
“All Paleblood → Hunters NO EXCEPTIONS
TAKE NOTES!
AVOID DANGER – keep safe, no dead
Results → 1st Hunter
TELL NO ONE”

Nigel picked the key up along with the comb, using the dirty appliance to fix his hair a bit. Appearance was everything when it came to first impressions and Nigel had a feeling tonight would be full of first impressions. Pocketing the comb, Nigel turned to Victor and approached with the key in hand.

"I'll let you hold onto this. It would be in better hands with a gent whom is more versed with the situation at hand. I'm still getting my bearings here, truth be told." Nigel said, handing the key off then turning back to the cabinet. This odd situation required a clearer head, one that Nigel believed he did not possess at the moment. Once back at the cabinet Nigel crouched down, extending his hand but pausing for a moment in contemplation. After a moment he made up his mind and attempted to give the clapping Messenger a pat on the head. Regardless of the Messenger's response Nigel would move on and crack open the cabinet and take a look inside.

"So what's at this Cathedral Ward? Who exactly is briefing us?" Nigel asked without making eye contact as he searched the cabinet.

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic, back room

Victor accepted the key when Nigel handed it to him, although he did so muttering the words “But it's just a key...” under his breath, confused as to how “versed with the situation” one would need to be to figure out how to put a key in a lock and turn it. He pocketed it immediately despite his confusion, though, and his left hand – which he had received the key in – wasted no time going back to hovering next to his left hip, where his blunderbuss hang.

The Messenger reacted eagerly when Nigel reached out to pat it on the head, seeming to somehow be able to intuit his intentions and lean its head toward his hand like a pet eager to receive its master's caress. Rather than actually pat it, however, Nigel's hand met no resistance and simply passed right through the Messenger's head and body. The Messenger's excitement with the gesture did not seem diminished by this, as it clapped its hands happily while the other nearby Messengers stopped what they were doing to (presumably) glare enviously at their kinsman.

Opening the cabinet revealed that it, as had been hinted by its weight, was mostly empty, but not entirely. Various strange metal rods of various lengths, most of which had at least one hollow end, seemed like they could probably be assembled into a bigger contraption of some kind. There were also two coiled-up lengths of flexible tube and two empty bottles, and some scissors, but most of the shelf-space in the cabinet was empty and slightly scuffed-looking, as if objects had been cleared from it in a hurry. Looking at it more closely, however, Nigel did notice that at the back of one of the shelves, tugged away behind the two larger, empty bottles, was a small rack of vials filled with red liquid: three blood vials.

“The Cathedral Ward is the center of Yharnam, the district around the Grand Cathedral,” Victor shrugged when Nigel asked his question. “It's the heart of the Heal-... or, well, the white Healing Church, and is under its direct control and protection; no beasts are getting in there. It's also the headquarters of us Hunters of the White Church. You...” He paused, lost in thought for a moment before he continued: “Well, normally we get briefed by the First Hunter, but since you're special and all that... maybe Vicar Harold will want to see you?” He shrugged again. He was, after all, just a lowly Hunter.

Arcturus took three of the clean rolls of bandages, stuffing them into an empty coat pocket before continuing the search. He had no idea how much healing blood they were going to have access to, and he wasn't particularly inclined to trust its magical properties. It seemed too good to be true, even more so now that he'd seen its effects firsthand. Best to have a contingency. Though he wasn't a doctor himself, he knew how to dress a wound if need be.

When eventually he turned his gaze upon the blackboards, he fixated his attention on the one he could read. Paleblood? First hunter? Although it was written in plain language, he could hardly make any more sense of it than the equations upon the other boards. What did the arrows mean? Take notes on what? They'd certainly failed in diverting danger from the clinic, if that was their intent, and at least a few patients lie dead by his count.

The best he could figure was that 'paleblood' must have something to do with the unique state of him and the other hunters. He also got the impression that the message was not left for him. Although he had to wonder why it had been left in the first place, given the apparent desire to keep hidden whatever they had done.

"Victor." Arcturus interjected once the white church hunter had finished speaking. "What do you make of this?" Even as he asked, though, the young man wondered if Victor would have any insight to offer. His last response to the muscled man's questions had sounded rather uncertain, after all. Arcturus was beginning to get the impression that their guide didn't have much grasp on the bigger picture. Still he glanced expectantly at Victor over his shoulder, hoping to glean something from whatever response he might receive.

Turning in a somewhat impatient manner to look at the blackboard Arcturus was indicating, Victor's jaw clenched visibly just a moment after directing his gaze there, his eyes shifting even more rapidly than they normally did.
He licked his lips as if to moisten them, then licked them again to get another taste of the blood that were still on them, before speaking: “Well... 'First Hunter' almost certainly refers to Dietrich of the Shining Wing, who leads the Hunters of the White Church. The rest I'm not so sure about; it may have something to do with all of you being 'special'. Seems like they maybe knew you would be and wanted to study you somehow.” He winced uncomfortably. “And it was supposed to be a secret.”

Turning away from the blackboard and facing the unoccupied center of the room, Victor sighed. “Make sure to grab anything you need to the trip. We should get moving as soon as possible.”
With those words he walked back through the rows of cots, somewhat awkwardly followed by Torquil, and moved to return to the reception.

Nigel nodded along as he was spoken too. He was listening intently but his eyes were focused on the red vials before him. He didn't remember much of before tonight but the significance of these vials of blood was one thing he did recall. Nigel pocket one before turning to the others.

"Well I look forward to meeting this Vicar Harold bloke. Perhaps he'll have some more information about my past. Is this amnesia a more permanent affliction or will it pass with time?" Nigel asked, unintentionally grilling the grizzled hunter with questions. Nigel wanted a good idea of what was going on before he left the relative safety of the clinic.

Nigel walked over to both Arcturus and Ludolf to hand out the other two vials of blood. They likely had strength in numbers here and carrying around a half dead teammate was just as damning in a fight as running low on your own vitality.

"Just in case things get out of hand tonight." Nigel added as he handed off the vials.

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic, back room

“Most of the Hunters that've talked about it seem to think it's permanent,” Victor replied to Nigel's inquiry about the metamorphosis-induced amnesia. He paused for a second before adding: “But they didn't really care about getting their memories back, either. The ones I have heard about getting their memories back were the ones actually trying to get them, and...”
He shrugged. “From what I hear, it's less about them remembering their past and more the memories coming to them in dreams. Maybe it's the gods.”

Without breaking his stride, Victor continued on his way toward the shattered door to the reception.

While Nigel, Ludolf and Arcturus finished up their business in the back room, Victor marched ahead through the broken door into the room that, though smaller than the other, functionally made up the other half of this clinic of blood ministration, back into the reception area. Stepping across the threshold was enough to trigger a tic in Victor, forcing his eyes to shift and focus off to the severely blood-splattered left side of the room, the sight of which give him a sinking feeling in his stomach and a clenching feeling in his chest. The copious amounts of blood did not bother him in the slightest, nor did the two corpses sprawled over there: a normal-looking Yharnamite carved diagonally almost halfway through the torso from clavicle towards his hip, and a Phumerian that had been bisected at the waist, the two halves several feet apart. Rather than any kind of conscientious struggle with what he had done or the brutality that had transpired, Victor's only reservation was with being reminded of how close he had been to being killed himself. Would he have survived without these other Hunters' intervention? Who knew... but whether he would have wanted to was another matter entirely; being so close to death could do terrible things to a Hunter.
Without even realizing he was doing it, the Hunter once again ran his tongue over his canines, feeling how long and sharp they were. It was strangely comforting, somehow... but also reminded him how hungry he was still feeling.

He quickly tore his gaze from the spot where he had fallen, quickly scanning the rest of the room to confirm that nothing of note had transpired in his absence. It remained in a genuinely terrible state, with overturned cabinets and smashed furniture scattered about the place, wooden splinters, shards of glass and scattered metal and ceramic implements littering the floor in the wake of the ravaging ruffians that had come here intending to target the still-turning Hunters. Adelicia remained by the door to the outside, so pretty, so fragile, so precious, the blood saint... so very defenseless...
Shaking his head as if to physically cast off these distracting inclinations, Victor instead refocused on a particular pile of debris (E2) that he had been rummaging through when Ludolf and Nigel had awakened. He went there directly, intent on further examining the box he had uncovered earlier.

Behind him, shuffling along with less confidence and more general curiosity, was Torquil, who also scanned the reception as he entered, to a quite different sight than had met Victor. Granted, Torquil did see the same things Victor had, but also things beyond Victor's sight. Messengers were scattered about the room, less numerous than in the back room – where they still crowded around each sleeping and dead Hunter – but still a fairly widespread presence, curiously examining everything and anything in the room for a few seconds before retracting back into the floor, only to reemerge somewhere else an instant later.
The only constant presences among these were three groups of Messengers, two of which had already been examined to some degree. The skeletal arm was still irrationally sticking out of the floor directly in front of the door at the center of the room, its bony fingers clutching the handle of the now-lit lantern giving off its otherworldly blue light, though the large crowd of Messengers that had originally clumped at its base had now dwindled to a mere four, who seemed much more intent on Torquil than they did the lantern.
A bit off to the left from the lantern was another duo of Messengers, holding a rolled-up piece of parchment between them. Torquil recalled that they had already read what had been written there:

“Glance calmly upon the lanterns pale gleam,
and find safe haven within the Hunter's Dream.”

The third and last constant among the Messengers, then, was another pair holding another letter between them, a mere couple of steps from the doorway Torquil had just traversed. Hesitating for a second, Torquil eventually went to them and crouched down so that they could show him their message. He frowned.
Standing back up, Torquil turned back toward the door to the back room and, once the first of his three fellow “special” Hunters joined him in the reception, he would point at those two Messengers and greet them with his first comparatively intelligible articulation:
“Read.”

"Well I guess we'll just have to wait and see." Nigel said in response to Victor's explanation of the amnesia, though his speech was more just out loud thoughts. Nigel didn't feel a burning drive to remember who he was or where he was from. Maybe it was just for the moment but needing to ask constant questions about what seems to be the mundane was more than a bit of a chore.

After handing out the vials, Nigel's gaze set upon a bucket of 'weapons' if they could be called that. They were little better than nothing and something instinctual in Nigel made him wretch a bit at the choice of weapons. He hadn't realized he was such a snob in the instruments of combat. Despite his inner distaste Nigel picked up two axes. Each would be more comfortable wielded with two hands but Nigel figured he would be able to make due using two.

After picking up his weapons, Torquil came back in the room with a short command; read. Nigel at that moment realized he didn't like being so blatantly commanded but once more had enough insight to follow orders.

"A please would go far." Nigel added as he walked by. Upon reaching the other room, Nigel saw another person standing just outside though for the moment he held off on proper introductions, giving a curt wave to the woman though he wasn't sure if she could see him. This room had all sorts of abnormalities aside from the little men, one of which being the ethereal note that Torquil had pointed out. Nigel crouched down to peruse the note, getting the gist of the first part from context clues and his own limited memories. What was more concerning was the hastily scribbled ending. The brute's gaze moved up to the woman he had waved at earlier before he once more approached Torquil.

"What does it mean?"

Though a snarky comment such as the one the big man had just uttered, sarcastically suggesting to say “please” when asking for something, might have annoyed others or filled them with indignation, all it served to do with Torquil was to fill him with regret and resentment for the condition he found himself in. He had excluded the word “please” specifically because he had predicted that it would be hard for him to say intelligibly, and he had wanted this particular message to be conveyed as quickly and clearly as possible given how important it had seemed.
His jaw clenched in frustration at this, ironically making it even more visibly obvious that the right hinge of his jaw was not where it was supposed to be. How had he managed to live any kind of normal life before this, not being able to speak properly? Though in hindsight, maybe that could explain the obscure sense of loneliness he felt whenever he tried to remember his time before today, before he became a Hunter; that he actually had not been able to live a normal life, but had secluded himself somehow to avoid exposing his disability? Though with his memories the way they were, all he could ultimately do was guess.

Nevertheless the big man turned his attention to the little creatures' message. Torquil had no idea what to call him besides “the big man” since he had yet to introduce himself, though to be fair, no one had introduced themselves since the awakening of these last two Hunters. Torquil kept hoping that Victor or Arcturus, who could speak normally, would take the initiative and share his name, too, but so far they had not.
Over where he had crouched down, Torquil noticed that Victor had retrieved something from the debris over there: a sturdy, reinforced-looking box of somewhat ornate design, maybe a little under a meter long (2' 7”) and some thirty centimeters wide (one foot). Victor set it down next to him while he kept searching the debris around him. It did not seem that he had realized that the big man and Torquil were doing anything yet.

A moment later the big man finished reading the note and did exactly the thing Torquil had hoped to the gods he would not do: asked him a question. Gritting his teeth in frustration, finding it humiliating to have to communicate like an imbecile like this, he nodded toward Adelicia across the room and said, very slowly and with great effort to pronounce the word in a way that would be understandable:
“Saint.”
He wanted to convey more, like how Victor earlier had offered them Adelicia's blood and had left that offer open, but he wanted to keep it brief both for the sake of him not inevitably managing to mess up his speech again, and for them to keep the exchange subtle enough that Victor did not notice.