Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia
Dietrich shrugged at Ophelia's insistence on accompanying Victor back to the workshop, and though his left eye did slightly narrow at the claim that they could “guarantee his safety in a way that no other Hunter can,” he did not comment on it. He also cocked his head and furrowed his brow when she tried to call upon the Messengers again; he looked at her expectantly for a moment, waiting to see if her pretend-pondering resulted in any further questions, but seemed to disregard her behavior when that turned out not to be the case. The Messengers, even here away from the golden lantern, remained absent.
“As you wish,” he told her, offering her a quick, small bow before stepping forward and offering his arm once again. “You'll like Vicar Harold, I'm sure. Everyone likes him. He's such a nice old man.”
Once more regardless of whether she accepted his arm or not, Dietrich opened the door and led her back into the main room of the workshop, where everyone present appeared to have returned to their places and be hard at work with whatever they were doing. Hunter equipment were being carefully maintained by some of the civilians, with them sharpening and oiling blades, the switching springs and gears that allowed trick weapons to perform their transformations, disassembling, cleaning and reassembling guns... all while others kept bringing out more baskets of food and drink and more bundles of cloth. Ophelia might notice that three of the Hunters she had seen when she first entered had left and two new ones had arrived, one of whom was unarmed and watching one civilian grinding the small sword of a Holy Blade on a whetstone while another was examining its blade-scabbard.
“Nights of the Hunt are always hectic, no matter how many times they happen,” the First Hunter explained as they traversed the room. “It's a lot safer than it used to be just because we have more Hunters than the old Healing Church, but that also means a lot of work making sure our Hunters are well-equipped and cared for.”
Ophelia and Dietrich descended the central stairs back to the ground floor of the building, and as they did, one of the side doors in the hall furthest from the entrance – to their left as they descended the stairs – opened, and another two people in White Church Hunter garb emerged, a man and a woman. Both of these were unarmed and seemed to still be in the process of putting on their gloves, and seemed a fair bit less tense than the other Hunters. Then they spotted Dietrich, froze, and abruptly split up and hurried away.
Dietrich sighed. “No matter how much some pretend otherwise, deep down we're still human... with every base need and desire that entails.” He did not elaborate on what he meant.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and went back out the double doors Ophelia had entered through just a few minutes ago, close enough to where she had originally awakened in the Upper Cathedral Ward that she could actually see the golden lantern. Rather than going that way, however, Dietrich turned left before leaving the semicircular platform and toward a second stairway that went up into an enclosed passage rather than back outside.
This set of stairs was quite a bit longer than the one they had climbed to get to Dietrich's office, ascending toward a landing where the passage turned ninety degrees to the right and continued to rise. They climbed up toward an end of the passage where they could see the unobstructed night's sky.
When they finally arrived, the passage opened up into a huge, mostly open area. The part Ophelia and Dietrich were on was a stone walkway, raised a good three meters or so, that drew a horseshoe-shape clockwise around the area, with the two ends of it – the one they stood on and the one across from them – were under a canopy roof held up by a row of sturdy stone columns, but the central part was unroofed and open to the starry sky. To their left the pathway they were on lowered somewhat, and on the part at the very middle of the room it transitioned into a final stair that allowed one to reach the lowest part. Also to their left it would be almost impossible to miss the large, tall stained-glass window adorning a colossal building that took up that entire side of this room, and seemed to extend even beyond it. On this part, below the window but above the stair, she would spot another golden plinth with another lantern, identical to the one she had arrived through. This one, too, appeared to be already lit.
But all of that paled next to what one saw when glancing down from the pathway, into the lower part of the area. The ground down there appeared to be soil rather than stone, and that soil seemed to being used to grow an entire field of flowers unlike anything Ophelia had ever seen before. The stem of each flower looked to be easily as tall as her, most of them even taller, with large spade-formed leaves. Each flower was topped by a bud that looked to be larger than her torso, which looked as though they were just barely beginning to bloom, with the center of each bud just barely cracking open, revealing the very tips of petals that seemed to glow faintly with a silver light of their own, as if each of these flower-buds had captured and were now emanating the light of a currently absent moon. Though they were not spherical, those buds somehow reminded Ophelia of eyes, and she got the strangest sense that
they were looking at her. The entire field down there, she would doubtlessly notice, was also positively swarming with guidance sprites.
And right there, kneeling amidst this field of huge flowers, seemingly in the process of weeding one of them, was the single human figure that seemed to live in this space: a feeble, elderly man that looked to be in his early fifties with short, light-gray hair. He stood and wiped his hands on a robe that looked a lot like the one Ophelia was wearing over her dress, staining the white cloth slightly with dirt and soil, before looking up at them and sending her a wide, thoroughly grandfatherly smile. Wrinkles and smile-lines marked the skin around his light-brown, heavy-lidded eyes.
He was a nice old man.The thought came to Ophelia unbidden, no matter whether it would be a natural observation for her to make or not. Due in part to her
insight, but more so because of her
affinity for the arcane and
experience with one's perception being manipulated supernaturally, Ophelia would be quick to realize that something was influencing her mind here. Simply knowing was not enough to help her resist it, however, and though she could feel
the Holy Moonlight Sword trying to help her power through, this influence was yet too strong.
“Ah, Ophelia!” the
nice old man called to her, turning and climbing the stair to join her and Dietrich on the raised pathway. “Welcome! It's so good to finally meet you!”
Beside her, Dietrich released the straps attaching his greatsword to his back, only promptly move it in front of himself, tip down, as he lowered his head and knelt before this
nice old man.
“I am Harold,” he told her cordially, still smiling, as he reached them. He offered her his hand.
Rebirth's Rise, in the eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil
“I... see,” Victor said, his eyes narrowing as he tried and failed to comprehend what Farren was doing and saying. Seeing this other Hunter being so confused by something Torquil actually understood – at least somewhat – brought a smile to his face behind the visor of his helmet. It felt nice not being the only one that was lost for once. “I suppose we can just get going, then.”
As the three of them exited the clinic where Torquil, Farren and Ophelia had first awoken as Hunters mere minutes ago – finding the corpses of the ones that had tried to abduct them messily disposed of on the ground – , Victor signaled for the others to wait while he returned to the ruined doorway. He transformed his sword into its giant form before thrusting its blade into a gap in the pile of furniture, lodging it in there, before using it for leverage to strenuously tip the heap until it eventually fell over with a deafening crash, mostly – but not completely – blocking the opening.
“It's obviously not hard to get through,” he told them, dislodging his sword and returning the blade-scabbard to his back, “but it only needs to slow anyone trying to enter down, not stop them. If a beast wanted to get through an obstacle, nothing would stop it.” He pointed with his weapon to the censer next to the doorway, which was now filling the air with a faint, misty smoke. “But as long as they have to pause here, even for a moment, the incense will stop them from going further. A Hunter or a human could get through no problem, but anything with the scourge is going to have a bad time getting in here now.”
With that business taken care of, Victor lead them down the plateau the way he had come, following this street sitting high above the landscape below as it stretched forth from the clinic. As they went, it would be difficult not to notice that the row of residences to their left and evenly spaced lampposts to their right continued unabated a hundred meters, then another, each house practically identical to the next, each one with dark windows and closed doors. The seemingly eerily endless, empty and repeating scenery was striking and felt weirdly unsettling to Torquil for reasons he did not understand, prompting him to focus more on the landscape to his right, which – though mostly the same, since it was the same landscape seen from a distance – at least changed slightly as their perspective shifted along this long, lonely street.
It took walking six hundred meters or so to reach the end of the street, where it was capped with another house identical to the rest. Here, however, they found that the metal handrail that had occupied the edge of the plateau all the way from the clinic finally gave way to a large framework of metal beams and plates, with some manner of arcane machinery on top from which a pair of thick, sturdy chains extended downward, toward the bottom. There was a good chance that Farren would recognize this construction, as it was something that could be found scattered about Yharnam in the strangest places despite it being an invention that was mostly unknown outside the city: an elevator. The cage one would use to travel up or down was not here currently, but seemed to be at the bottom.
The elevator itself was not the only notable thing in the area, though; the cobblestones in front of it were stained with what appeared to be somewhat fresh blood, with more spatters of blood scattered around the area suggesting that a fight had taken place here. And sure enough, just a few meters from the elevator lay the carcass of another beast-man not unlike the one that had accompanied Pallid and whose eyes Ophelia had claimed. Several deep cuts were carved into its body by bladed weapons and most of its fur looked like it had been burned off and skin charred by fire. Another several meters from it lay a discarded cavalry saber, its blade stained with blood.
“That thing was waiting for us when we got here,” Victor told them with a nod toward the beast as he went to the elevator, grabbed and pulled a hefty metal lever that stuck out of the ground there, upon which the machinery above them started whirring and the chains rattled and began to move. “It sat on top of the elevator and grabbed me as soon as I stepped out of it. Stabbed me through the chest, the plague-ridden rat. Good thing Stefan was here, or I would be dead and you guys probably abducted by the bloody Harrow.”
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