Bluntness and morbidity; alas, the hallmarks of many a hunter. Victor showed an aptitude for both when he begrudgingly explained that they were not ‘too late’, as it were, though perhaps soon. She disagreed with his assessment and grimaced in his direction, finding it difficult to suppress the wave of empathetic sorrow and open revulsion she felt in regards to the situation. No, as far as the young blood saint was concerned, they were too late: if battle had already been joined, then they were too late to stop it. Combat was a consequence of failure, not some trial to be passed.
Her displeasure only grew when next, Victor suggested flipping a coin to decide who would venture into the fray, and who would stay behind with her. It was subtle, perhaps, but his wording still made his feelings – and perhaps Raine’s, also – obvious to her. One of them had to guard her, whilst the other simply went inside. The one was a duty – the other a matter of course. As she watched their ritual with a dejected frown, she wondered which facet bothered her more: whether it was the renewed proof that hunters craved the shedding of blood so much that they would be unable to come to a consensus over who got to do so without resorting to a game of chance, or whether it was the dawning realization that they must look at her not as a person, but as a mere burden, an inconvenience to be dealt with as swiftly and discreetly as possible so that they might rid themselves of her. She did not like to entertain either notion and, watching the coin roll towards the cliff’s precipice, she felt that these things said less, perhaps, about the two hunters before her and more so about the society and tragic circumstances that shaped them in the first place. Sullenly, she watched Raine head for the coin which had come to a halt not far from the edge, beyond which the ruins of Old Yharnam still belched columns of smoke whose origins it was best not to contemplate. It could not be denied: The city was sick and had been for years. Whatever tragedies had haunted its opulent spires and fog-drowned streets, its people had learned nothing from them. Surely, she could not be the only one to see the truth?
Oblivious to the terrible premonition Victor had been feeling up to this point, Adelicia was rudely awakened from her musings Raine was, bizarrely and inexplicably, lifted into the air by an unseen force. She felt almost comically reminded of how he looked a bit like a cat one would lift by her neck, with the limbs hanging downward. The impression was quickly gone, however, when she put the image into perspective and pictured just what monstrous size a hand would have to have had in order to do the same to a human – and the fact that it was happening before her very eyes. Much like Victor, there was nothing Adelicia could do, or think to do, other than watch with horrified bewilderment at what was happening to their fellow hunter. It was witchcraft – heresy even. Whether by an invisible hand or by forces not of this earth, something was happening to Victor that could not be explained through mundane means. Of all supernatural happening, seeing a man brazenly defy gravity was perhaps not the most disturbing and yet, Adelicia felt her blood freeze in her veins. As if Victor’s terror were contagious, she too felt an overwhelming sense of wrongness and, for lack of a better term, otherness wash over the plateau. There was a presence here that was far greater than any of them, than any hunter, than even Yharnam. Greater and older. It was alienating, horrifying – and somewhere, distantly familiar.
The bizarre feeling that made her skin crawl, her knees buckle and her lips tremble conjured uneasy memories of dark curtains concealing cracked windows in far-flung dwellings on Hemwick Charnel Lane, of unseen stares hidden by lavishly patterned blindfolds worn by men of science, of ominous, distant drumbeats in the night and tonsil stones shrouded in black cloth on chapel altars. None of these memories directly related to one another as they raced through her mind yet, somehow, she felt that there was something that tied them all together. It was not a specific thing or person or even causality. Frantically, she tried to think of an answer, her breath becoming rapid and labored. Why were these things entering her subconscious in response to the spectacle before her? But no answer availed herself to her, save for one: It was all the same feeling. Estrangement, apprehension, terror. An oppressive fear of the unknown tinged each of these recollections equally and sowed the seeds for her to begin understanding that the things that happened in Yharnam were not merely the result of neglect or misfortune – but that all of it happened for a dreadful reason.
As the dreadful scene came to its conclusion and Raine was swallowed whole by a thick swirl of pale blue light and smoke, Adelicia felt her consciousness slip from her, like a rug pulled from under her feet. Swaying drunkenly, she soon stumbled and fell uncontrolledly towards the uneven cobble road.
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