Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

The idea of them splitting up did not exactly thrill Torquil, nor did especially Ophelia's nonchalance about the lack of risk now that they were supposedly immortal. It was fine for the others to be dismissive about danger now that they knew they would just reawaken in the Dream if they were killed, but he was the only one of them that had actually died. Even if he knew it would not actually end his life, the experience was still... deeply unpleasant. Every time he closed his eyes he kept seeing those glowing red eyes of the Mad One, and he could still recall and hear the sound of his own skull cracking and fragmenting as it smashed his head into the ground over and over. The pain and fear of that moment, though repressed, still lived inside him; he did not want that to happen to him again, to himself or the others.
But contrary to what one might expect, Torquil's concern about them splitting up was more pragmatic than it was romantic. Unlike the others who, unbeknownst to him, had each found their own kind of curious affinity with him, he was not actually all that attached to them beyond the fact that they were his only allies. He was happy to have others to talk to, help keep them safe and to make decisions; to smile at him and tell him he was good at things; but who those others were did not matter all that much to him.
Even so, he did appreciate that Ophelia and Farren seemed to like him, and that alone made him want to keep them safe. He liked that they liked him. Beyond that, his only relation to them was that weird flash of memory he had had about seeing Ophelia through the trees... but even that was mostly just an image without context.

So ultimately Torquil did not voice any protests against their plans and simply chose to believe that the others knew what was best. Ophelia touched the golden marker, only for her form to abruptly lose opacity, just as Torquil's had when he died, and vanish in a matter of a couple of seconds. Farren went up and touched another marker, and he disappeared, too, as if swallowed up by an unseen fog.
Gone, Torquil mused, stepping up to the Yharnam Headstone and looking at the marker Farren had touched. Completely gone, as if they were just a dream.
Then he shook his head, steeled his nerves and, tucking his new axe under his left arm to free up his right hand, reached out to touch the Rebirth's Rise marker, only to suddenly feel himself falling asleep...

Reception, Rebirth's Rise, in the eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Just as when he had arrived at the Hunter's Dream, Farren would feel as though falling asleep and, rather than actually sleeping, immediately transitioning into waking back up, only this time finding himself right back next to the very lantern that had brought him and Ophelia to the Dream in the first place. He was back in the reception of the blood ministration clinic, though even at a quick glance it was clear that someone had been busy in the thirty or so minutes they had been gone. Practically all the debris in the room had at the very least been shifted or overturned by someone searching the area very thoroughly. On top of that, every larger object in the room – cabinets that still had a measure of structural integrity left, chairs, tables, even a couple of the cots from the back room – had been moved to the exit, where it had been piled up in a messy heap to the left of the exit leading to the outside. The only thing that was exactly where they had left it, still completely untouched by the chaos that ravaged everything else around it, was the lantern-post, which still stood glowing right next to where Farren appeared, a quartet of Messengers crowding at its base.
All except one mostly intact stool, which instead stood a couple of meters inside the reception but still in front of the exit. On top of that stool sat Victor, sword in hand, with his body facing the door but his head turned to look at Farren as he appeared. Farren would see Victor's body in profile from where he appeared and could not see his left side, though he could see Victor's blunderbuss dangling below the stool, attached to his belt rather than at the ready in his hand.

Victor's eyes widened after a second of looking at Farren, and he started scanning him up and down, noting all of the new equipment his fellow Hunter had acquired in the short time since he had last seen him. The new garb, the Beastflayer and piercing rifle on his back, the pistol and blunderbuss on his left hip, the Blades of Mercy on his right... Not only had Farren been dressed pretty much as a civilian and been armed with mundane weapons last time Victor saw him, but now he was lugging around an entire arsenal!
A few seconds later, before Victor had time to recover enough to formulate his surprise, Torquil appeared right next to Farren, which prompted Victor's focus to shift and witness the arrival of the armor-clad form of another man from beyond the veil of reality.

“Oedon's blood,” the White Church Hunter swore under his breath, standing from his seat and turning to face them, revealing that he was holding what appeared to be a small, ornate case of some kind in his left hand. “And I thought I had been productive...”
He paused, looking at the lantern expectantly for a moment before turning back to Farren. “Where's the last one?”

Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

All the way across the city of Yharnam and far above everything else, Ophelia found herself awakening with her feet on cobblestone and a brisk wind catching her clothes and hair. She was standing on a curious semi-circular platform in the middle of what appeared to be a long, narrow stone bridge. Behind her she would see the bridge, its sides guarded with iron fences, extending almost a hundred meters toward what appeared to be the top of a tower, shaded by crooked, leafless, dead-looking trees on both sides that looked like they were leaning in over the bridge, their branches extending like the bony fingers of a giant, inhuman hand reaching to grasp those crossing it. She would also see several other spires over there, narrower and shorter than the tower connecting to the bridge; if she were to look over the edge, she would find that these spires belonged to a church below, along with which she would see the entirety of Yharnam sprawling out enormously from her current high vantage point. Only a faint memory of sunlight remained at this point, coloring the distant western horizon in the last remnants of dusk, while the rest of the star-strewn sky had already forgotten the light of day and embraced the night. Quite notably, though the moon had been present and huge in the Dream, it seemed that it had yet to rise in the Waking World.
In the other direction, in front of her as she awoke, she would find the path flanked by two thick, squarish columns of stone that held up an immense, ornate arch beyond which the bridge continued only for another several meters before joining a much larger platform, upon which sat a colossal structure of stone, with numerous giant windows lit from the inside, great chimneys emanating columns of smoke, and a great pair of open double doors under a canopy room held up by a semicircle of pillars. Beyond the doors she could faintly see activity and she could hear someone hammering on an anvil, but telling details would require getting closer.
She would inevitably notice the statues scattered in front of her, toward the huge building that had once been known as the Orphanage. Depictions of dozens of hunched and huddled figures swathed in cloth, their proportions strange and inhuman, though some of them held on to staves that necessitated opening the cloth, revealing a twisted being underneath that bore no semblance to man nor beast, and more like a twisted approximation of a human made up of roots or tentacles.

Of much more immediate notice, however, was the object she awoke right next to, standing before her right in the middle of the platform. A small, ornate plinth stood before her, decorated with subtle designs of what appeared to be ocean waves, intermingled with nude forms of men and women depicted as swimming leisurely in the water. Above, right at the rim before the rounded edge transitioning onto the flat top of the plinth, was a long, continuous string of big, stylized eyes. It appeared to be made entirely of solid gold; a thoroughly awesome amount of gold. And it appeared to be rooted into the ground beneath it, as if it had sprouted straight out of the cobblestone.
On top of the plinth sat a vaguely familiar sight: a lantern giving off a pale, bluish light; the same light as the lantern she had used to reach the Hunter's Dream from Rebirth's Rise. Even the design of the lantern was the same, though the metal parts of the enclosure around the light-source were like polished gold.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

“Any of the Gatekeepers' lanterns you find and light will become conduits, allowing you to return here safely, and adding another marker to the headstones to reawaken through,” the doll explained, smiling softly at Ophelia. The Shopkeeper also walked over to stand next to the doll. “As for the markers that are already there, good Hunter, the Shopkeeper is not responsible for them. Any time the Dream has no Hunters, the Gatekeepers take back their lanterns and the old markers are extinguished. The Shopkeeper filled the headstones with markers in their time, too, but those markers were erased once their task was completed. The markers you see now are the ones created by Gerlinde, the fourth Hunter currently bound to the Dream.”
The doll glanced nervously a the Shopkeeper, hesitating a moment before adding: “I am sorry, good Hunter, but we do not know what the golden markers are. They are conduits, we know that, but they are not created by the Gatekeepers. It is another new thing for the Dream; all the markers I have ever known were silver.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

Torquil smiled, nodded his head and told Farren “Thanks,” when he once again gave voice to his appreciation that Torquil was alive and well – something that Torquil admittedly was quite happy with, too – and offered a brief explanation of the words on the headstones. It did not change how happily he smiled and he did not say anything, but the fact that Farren felt the need to explain that the writing represented places in Yharnam... writing with such arcane labels as “Cathedral Ward”, “White Church Workshop” and “Old Yharnam”... it made him a little sad.
How stupid does he think I am? Torquil wondered as he turned away from Farren, feeling suddenly quite self-conscious and embarrassed about his own acuity compared to the others. Sure, he did not like to make decisions or to ponder stuff he did not understand at a glance, but he was not that stupid... was he? He had known they were places, just not where those places were... right?

Starting to feel really uncomfortable in his own head, Torquil looked around for something to distract himself with and settled on the living doll that everyone seemed completely unperturbed was walking around and talking like a real person. For a moment he let himself be distracted by simply looking at her, as she was undeniably quite beautiful, if somewhat obviously inhuman, and he quite liked her dress. Her hat was cute. But soon enough he told himself that cute or not she was still a doll, and instead recalled some of the things she had told them.
He was particularly interested in her ability to make them stronger, which both Ophelia and Farren had taken advantage of already, and decided that he had better seize the chance to gain some power from her, too, so he would not end up being worthless to the others.
“Uh... hi,” he said as he awkwardly shuffled up to the doll, prompting her to immediately turn to face him attentively. For a second he wondered what to even ask for, but both Ophelia and Farren had asked for stamina, so he decided to just follow their lead. “Can you give me more stamina, too?”
The doll cocked her head, watching him intently with her large, round eyes. “I am sorry, good Hunter, but I cannot. You need to have blood echoes for me to channel into strength for you, and you have none.”
“Oh.” Torquil lightly kicked a tuft of grass in the path in front of him, looking anywhere but at the doll. “How do I get those?”
“They are the lingering wills of the fallen,” she told him patiently. “You need only be nearby when someone dies, and the power of their blood will echo in yours.”
“Right.” He still did not really get what blood echoes were, but he thought he understood how to get them, at least. “So I get them and come back here, and you can make me stronger?”
The doll nodded her head affirmatively. “So long as you reach the Dream through a stable conduit.”
Torquil stared at her blankly. “What?”
“You need to return to the Dream by using one of the Gatekeepers' lanterns or other markers that can send you here reliably and peacefully,” she explained. “Otherwise, if you lose consciousness or fall asleep, you will still come here but will leave your blood echoes behind.”
Nodding his head slowly, the armored Hunter pondered what he had just been told. “So earlier... even if someone had died at the clinic, I'd still have no echoes now because I died, too?”
“Indeed.”
He sighed. It seemed he had another reason not to get killed again.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Yanin, Jaelnec and Jordan – Outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Jaelnec's eyes widened somewhat in surprise when Jordan addressed and congratulated him, but only for a second before he broke into a wide grin. Somehow during the short time that had passed since Freagon had named him his squire, the excited, nervous energy that had filled him had already mostly dissipated and his new title almost slipped his mind entirely.
Part of it had obviously been the fact that his meeting with Irah had occurred between then and now, which had apparently been distracting enough to chase it from his mind. The entire conversation with the female deigan had taken quite the toll on him, truth be told; not only had he had to memorize – or try to, at least – the instructions on how to best apply the potion that now rested securely in a pouch on his belt, but Irah herself just seemed to be unerringly distracting to him... and that was without her so overtly looking him in the eye and smiling at him, driving his mind wild with fantastical speculations as to what exactly she was trying to convey.

“Thank you!” he told his fellow squire, eagerly grasping the offered hand firmly. “I guess it hasn't really sunk in yet that I'm actually a squire now... finally, after all these years!” He laughed, the elation that had left him when he spoke with Irah returning. He was also secretly grateful that his eyes made it hard for people to see where he was looking, because he could not stop himself from scanning over Jordan's armor and feel a twinge of jealousy and shame at how shoddy his own was by comparison.
Freagon had his usual air of indifference with a hint of impatience, but did turn to look at Yanin when he spoke up. “He does,” he confirmed grimly. “It is time. He has someone to protect now, and someone to protect him. It isn't just the two of us anymore.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Yanin, Jaelnec, Nabi, Jordan and Madara – Fadewatcher station, Borstown

“Then that's the plan,” Vela stated, giving the table a hard smack with both of her hands as she turned and headed for the door herself, followed by Quintin. “Everyone get your things ready and meet us by the road north of here in a few minutes, and we'll go. These kidnappin' scum won't even know what hit them.”
“Boy,” Freagon called as he turned and headed for the door without so much as a glance at anyone else in the room. “Come.”
Recalling his master's declaration that they needed to talk before leaving for the mission, Jaelnec once again felt his heart sink. He had been so distracted with all the planning and drama that had been going on that he had – only too happily – pushed Freagon's ominous utterance from his mind, but unsurprisingly the knight himself remembered only too well. Though he felt every instinct in his body urging him to ignore the instruction and refuse to listen to what his master had to say, he knew that he would obey. Not only did he have to if he wanted to keep Freagon as his master, but these past fifteen years had also conditioned him too well to obedience to ignore.

So it was with an expression of fear and reluctance that the page followed his knight, walking outside, turning right and going to the side of the Fadewatcher station; barely out of sight for anyone exiting the building and heading to the street, but far from being a private place. The two of them took up positions facing each other but a good five meters apart. All the while thoughts kept racing through Jaelnec's head as he tried to predict what his master wanted... and he reached a very likely conclusion.
“Please, sir,” Jaelnec pleaded through gritted teeth, forcing himself to meet Freagon's gaze no matter how much he wanted to look at the ground, “don't tell me to stay behind.”
The Knight of the Will cocked his head, his single black eye boring into him unblinkingly. “Why?”
Blinking confusedly, the younger nightwalker was taken aback by the question. This was not how determining their course of action usually went with Freagon. “I want... no, I need to help.”
“Are you sure about that?” Freagon crossed his arms. “A dead child. The dark-skinned one mentioned the Crusader's Guild, and you're probably ignoring that we determined there isn't any evidence that it's them. You're making it personal.”
“That's not what this is about!” he declared, but was only halfway telling the truth. Of course hearing about the bodies hanging in the tree, and especially hearing someone air the possibility of the crusaders being involved, affected him... quite strongly. How could it anything less, when the crusaders were the reason Jaelnec was where he was today, having been raised by the heartless knight errant? But it was more than that, and he knew that he had to focus on that part if he was to have any hope of persuading his stubborn master. “This is what I've been training for, sir, and we're outnumbered! We need every man we can get! I can fight!”
“Why?”
Again Jaelnec blinked, even more confused than the first time he had been asked that question. “I don't... why what?”
Freagon stared at him unwaveringly. “Why will you fight?”
Shaking his head incredulously, the page asked: “Because we need fighters?”
“No.” There was a finality to the way he spoke that single word that felt like a slap to the face for Jaelnec. “I know you can fight. I taught you. But you don't need to fight. Why will you fight?”
Jaelnec made a wide, sweeping gesture with his hand at nothing in particular. “To save the healer, of course!”
“You don't need to fight to do that.” Not a muscle twitched in Freagon's face, and his posture was solid as stone. “Deo'irah wanted you to bring her potion. That could save lives. You can help without fighting.”
Licking his lips, Jaelnec could feel tears starting to burn in his eyes as the sense of devastating disappointment gripped his heart like a vise. “I don't get it. Why am I not allowed to fight? I've been your page for fifteen years! What have I been training for if not for this?”
Much to the young man's surprise, his older kinsman nodded his head at this. “That's what I'm asking. Why will you fight?”
Jaelnec let out a shaky breath and inhaled deeply, trying his best to calm himself and think clearly, to try to figure out what was expected of him. “Because these are bad people, and someone needs to fight them.”
“Why?”
“Why?!” he repeated exasperatedly, growing to hate that question more and more each time it was asked. “They killed people! They killed a child! They need to be brought to justice!”
“Then I've failed.”
Now it was Jaelnec's turn to stare stiffly, eyes wide in disbelief at what he had just heard. Though the tone was the same, the words making up that sentence was the only instance in all the time Jaelnec had known Freagon that he had heard him utter anything that sounded like admitting defeat or failure. As a sentiment, those words coming out of Freagon's mouth felt thoroughly unnatural and wrong to such a degree that his brain quite simply did not know how to deal with it.
After a moment's silence the knight continued: “I've been too focused on teaching you how to fight like a Knight of the Will. I've neglected to teach you why to fight like a Knight of the Will.”
He uncrossed his arms and pointed an authoritative finger at Jaelnec. “Anyone can fight well, boy; being a good fighter doesn't make you a knight. It's our code, our values, that make us knights.”
Heaving a sigh, Freagon shook his head grimly. “We don't make judgments based on shit like 'justice'; that word can mean anything to anyone. We don't punish, boy. So once more: why will you fight?”
Swallowing a lump he imagined to be his shame, Jaelnec straightened his back and responded with conviction: “To keep everyone else safe.”
Freagon nodded his head in approval. “Better. But saying it is just the start. To act like a Knight of the Will, you need to follow that rule. And to be a true Knight of the Will, not just in word or action, but in your heart, you need to internalize it. Believe it. Make it part of you. We don't punish, we protect. We don't fight to destroy evil, we fight to preserve good.”
Humbled by his master's words, Jaelnec could only bow his head in acceptance of these surprisingly philosophical instructions. He had never heard Freagon speak like this before, and it quite frankly amazed and slightly frightened him.
“So...” Jaelnec began after a moment's hesitation, “can I fight?”
Freagon scoffed, and started slowly walking toward his pupil. “Pages don't fight.”
Again Jaelnec felt his heart sink. “But –”
“Draw your sword.”
The fact that the knight did not pause his stride, but kept slowly and inexorably approaching, combined with that statement, was enough to prompt Jaelnec to take a step back warily. “I-I don't understand, sir...”
“Draw your sword.”
Hesitantly and confusedly, Jaelnec reached down to grasp the hilt at his side and, in one smooth motion, let the steel blade slide out of the scabbard, and took a defensive stance.
Freagon came to a stop about a meter from Jaelnec. “Kneel, take off your hat and place the sword on the ground between us.”
Jaelnec's eyes widened. “You mean...”
“I told you,” the older nightwalker grumbled impatiently, “pages don't fight. Kneel, Page Jaelnec of the Will.”

Trying his very best to do so with a measured pace and some semblance of dignity, Jaelnec followed his master's instructions and knelt before him, and reverently placed his sword at the knight's feet. Meanwhile, as Freagon towered over his ward, he drew Roct from its scabbard and let its pristine blade gleam beautifully in the sunlight.
As Jaelnec lowered his head and looked at the ground, Freagon raised the sartal sword and touched the flat of the blade to his forehead. They held these positions for a couple of seconds before Freagon asked: “Infant, what name did your Will take?”
Jaelnec answered without hesitation: “My Will is Jaelnec, for my Will and I are one.”
“Child, through whom did you learn your Will?”
“My Will was taught by Sir Freagon, and his page I remain.”
Freagon nodded his head approvingly and lowered his sword so that the opposite flat of the blade was resting on the top of Jaelnec's head. “Man, who will let you touch your Will?”
Uncertain whether he was about to start crying or laughing, all Jaelnec was sure of was that he could not stop his voice from trembling: “My Will shall be brought by Sir Freagon, and his squire I shall be.”
“Death before dishonor.”
“Dishonor before disloyalty.”
“Disloyalty before evil,” Freagon spoke the final line of the declaration. “Show me if your Will can guide the future.”
Freagon moved his sword, took a step back and sheathed Roct. “Rise, Squire Jaelnec of the Will. Let's get a move on; we've got bandits to kill.”
“Are you sure about this, sir?” the other asked as he retrieved his weapon and stood. It was a little weird since he had been the one trying to convince his master to let him fight, but this development was much more drastic than he had expected. “Do you think I'm ready? I can barely last even ten seconds against you...”
“You're looking at it wrong,” Freagon asserted, not looking back as he started walking off. “You can almost last a whole ten seconds against me; most petty bandits won't stand a chance.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Barely had Ophelia's fingers grasped the materialized skull before she felt the bone crumple, turning to dust at even a gentle touch... but the dust did not get fall to gravity or get carried away by the wind. The white mist-like cloud slipped through her fingers and traveled up her arm, slithering among the moon-motes that still danced before her eyes, up her shoulder and eventually seemed to simply fade away as it reached her head.
To the others, Ophelia looked like she fell into a trance, simply staring off into space. But to Ophelia...

Memory of stars

During a more peaceful day, just outside Yahar'gul

“Look!” a woman in ragged clothes called out excitedly, pointing at a pile of refuse a short ways ahead of her group. Within the pile of trash something shone in the daylight with a metallic sheen, causing her to salivate as she hastened ahead. She narrowly avoided stepping on the partially buried and mostly decomposed head of an overlooked corpse as she ran over, only for her to temper her eagerness and cautiously sift through what she had found.
“Heh, almost stepped on one,” a similarly weathered man murmured as he and a second woman crouched down by the mostly buried corpse and started unearthing their find, eagerly checking the carcass for valuables. “There's so many 'round here.”
“I know, right?” the woman helping him loot the corpse chuckled. “Everyone's afraid of the place, but there's a bunch of dead people. It's a goldmine, ripe for the taking.”
Ahead of those two the first woman stood from her treasure, shoulders sagging and a sour mien on her face. “'Twas just an empty bowl. Nothin' good in here.”
“This fella's got a purse of coins,” the man announced, triumphantly raising the small, moldy bag he had just retrieved. “What'ya think, Ella? 'nough for a few vials?”
The woman helping with the corpse – Ella – deftly snatched the purse from her companion's hand and easily ripped the fabric apart, pouring a handful of intermingled silver and copper coins into her waiting hand. “Maybe a couple, if we get them cheap. Not enough for the good stuff.”
“Rats,” the man cursed, immediately getting back up and shading his eyes with his hand as he started looking intently ahead.

These three ratty individuals followed the outer wall bordering the dark, forbidden place called Yahar'gul, eagerly searching for any forgotten or discarded items that might have been left behind by those fleeing the hidden village, or the remains of any unfortunate soul that had fallen in their escape. They wrestled porcelain toys from the brittle hands of children, tore teeth of gold and silver from rotting skulls and dug through layers of maggots and other carrion insects in search of wayward jewelry. Coins were only the most direct source of profit; these looters seized any opportunity to take something of value, hoping against hope to find intact blood vials without even realizing that any such blood would surely have rotted by now.
“There's another one over there,” Ella called, the other woman darting ahead as soon as the words were spoken. “Clothes look fancy.”
The other woman threw herself to her knees before the corpse, immediately starting to rummage through its pockets. “Fancy's right! And fresh! This guy can't've been off'ed more than a few days ago.”
“Really?” Ella walked over there, and sure enough this corpse seemed much more recent than the others they had found, likely another looter that had been careless and gotten killed by a beast...
Or so Ella had presumed, until she took a closer look at the lifeless form before her, causing her to frown in confusion. He had relatively fancy clothes, yes, but not just any fancy clothes; the corpse wore a Black Church Hunter's garb! She reflexively sniffed the air, checking for the distinctive scent that perpetually surrounded Hunters, but whatever smell might have once hung over this body was obliterated by the thick stench of death and decay.
“Praise Oedon!” the other woman exclaimed, seemingly indifferent to the possible identity of the corpse she was looting. “Blood vials! There's like, eh... three, four... five? Five of them!”
“Seriously?” The man threw himself to the ground next to her, joining her in searching. “Gimme one! I haven't had a drink for days!”
“Find yer own!”
Ella remained standing as her fellows argued about ownership of their find, quite perturbed by the thought that this person, who was probably a Hunter for all they knew, had been killed here... recently. Hunters were monstrously powerful; so powerful, in fact, that Ella had never even considered the fact that they could die. More troubling still, the corpse seemed mostly intact. Had this guy been killed by a beast, surely it would have devoured him.
“I don't think...” she started, only to be distracted from what she was saying as her eyes fell on a second figure on the ground nearby. Though this one was in much plainer clothes, that corpse seemed much newer than the others they had found, too. And next to that body, a third. And a fourth. In fact now that she did not have tunnel vision on the prospective loot on the dead Hunter, Ella realized that this particular area seemed to have over a dozen more or less recent dead bodies scattered about, another several of which were also Hunters.

“We should leave. Now.” Ella took a step back, trembling despite her general indifference toward the dead her great desire for blood. “I don't like this. Something's not right.”
“But look at all this stuff!” the other woman cheered, either not noticing or not caring about the creeping dread in Ella's voice. “We'll be drinkin' for weeks with all this –”
There was a flash of red light from somewhere, though it was so blindingly bright that Ella was not even sure where it came from, causing her to close her eyes and shield them with her hands. The light was as brief as it was bright, however, and soon enough Ella was blinking away the shadows and dancing lights burned into her retinas.
“What was –” she started asking, only for her to choke on her words as her recovering gaze fell on her companions... or rather, on where her companions had been mere seconds earlier. All that remained of them and the dead Hunter they had been looting was a pile of dark-gray ash and three charred skeletons, two of which were sprawled on top of the third.

“Fascinating,” a female voice spoke to Ella's left, causing her to jump and recoil from the sound, whimpering in fear and confusion... both of which only intensified when she failed to identify the speaker anywhere near her, despite there being nowhere to hide. “Interesting. A rather small area of effect, but surprisingly effective, at least situationally.”
Before Ella's eyes the air in front of her started shimmering, the image of the background warping as though seen through curved glass in the shape of a humanoid figure, before the image of the ground and wall past this aberration was finally replaced by the fully fledged form of a person standing before her. The abruptly revealed woman wore strange clothes the like of which Ella had only seen on merchants and some of the fancy-pants that came here to study Yharnam, and carried an odd, fleshy lump in her left hand. The lump seemed to be slowly throbbing in her grasp as though with a steady heartbeat, and was giving off a soft glow the same color as the flash from before. In her other hand she held... something? A fish, maybe? It looked like a long, blue wiggling creature of some kind.
The strange woman did not seem to pay any mind to Ella, but was instead looking at the remains of her freshly obliterated friends, seeming entirely unmoved by the sight.
“The effect would probably not be as pronounced against something with a greater life force, like a live Hunter or beast, but it is certainly promising. It seems that increasing the ratio of mercury to blood by ten percent reduced the target area by twenty percent, but increased the heat generated by... ah, I suppose I will have to examine the remains, won't I?”
“Y-y-y-you...” Ella stumbled back, her eyes wide in terror at a danger she did not understand, her entire body trembling in dread. “P-please... don't...”
The woman turned to look at Ella, which finally gave voice to the scream that had been building in the ragged looter's throat. Her eyes were wrong; where there should have been scleras were instead a fathomless black void, stars glittering in an alien night's sky that should not exist, whereas iris and pupil had been replaced with a churning, swirling mass of tiny violet specks.
Ella fell on her hands and butt, screaming in abject horror as she tried desperately to scramble away, yet finding herself incapable of breaking eye-contact with this unnatural visage before her.
“Fear not,” the woman remarked softly, a smile creasing her mouth that might have seemed kind if not for her eyes, which expressed nothing but indifference, “for they, as all of us, will be reborn in the Nightmare. This life is but a test posed to us by the gods. Surely you do not doubt their boundless wisdom, little looter?”
She could not stop screaming. She could not speak, could not think, could barely even move; this was fear unlike anything Ella had ever experienced, so intense that it washed away everything else. The world itself seemed to shrink and fade away, until there was nothing but those eyes, swallowing her, consuming her, the starlit sky within surrounding her completely.
“Accept their love,” the woman sang, her voice hypnotic and hauntingly beautiful as the violet spheres floating amidst empty space grew more active, the movement of the life within growing suddenly frantic. “Embrace the gods... and allow them to embrace you.”
The mass of writhing motion abruptly pulsed, their centers folding away to reveal what resided within, revealing an insight beyond what any human could fathom, beyond what a mind could endure...

And the memory faded.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

Torquil mostly just stood there for a while, looking at Farren first pulling objects out of the birdbath and then holding hands with the living doll, and wondered if the world used to make sense or if it had always been utter nonsense like this. People getting killed but not dying, waking up on an island in the clouds with a sky that decided to just spontaneously switch time of day... People talking to glowing, magical swords, and passing entire arsenals to little bony men that lived in the ground...
Sighing to himself, Torquil shook his head in resignation and wondered if things really made more sense to the others, or if they were just more comfortable being confused. He longed for that place he had seen flashes of in his memories, that nice, cozy little cabin in the woods... remote, quiet and simple. Lonely, but predictable, understandable. He would even prefer being back in the city of Yharnam and embroiled in some frantic fight to the death with a beast hoarse men, where none of the weirdness mattered and all he had to do was to hit the ones that wanted to hurt him really, really hard.
So weird...

Not sure what to do with himself while Farren did his thing and Ophelia changed, Torquil turned to have a closer look at the headstones that were apparently their means of returning to the “Waking World”, whatever that meant. The glowing spot on the last headstone he understood from the doll's explanation represented the lantern Farren had lit earlier, waiting to be given a name. It did not exactly “make sense,” but he understood the general concept, at least. He pondered a name for it for a moment, but could not come up with anything before his mind started to wander to other things...
Like the other things written on the headstones.

The one he was looking at had an inscription way up at the top, where it simply said “YHARNAM” in capital letters, but that was not all. Below that it had “West Blood Ministration Clinic”, “Great Bridge”, “Tomb of Oedon”, “Cathedral Ward”, “White Church Workshop”, “Upper Cathedral Ward”, “Lumenflower Gardens”, “Old Yharnam” and “Black Church Workshop”.
The one next to it had the title “FRONTIER” and listed places such as “Hemwick Charnel Lane”, “Witch's Abode”, “Forbidden Woods” and “Immigrant Camps”.
Yet another had “UNSEEN” at the top, and “Outside Yahar'gul”, “Castle Cainhurst” and “Vileblood Queen's Chamber”.
And finally the last one was ominously marked “NIGHTMARE” and had just two items, “Halls of the Old Lords” and “Lair of the Wise Master”.
All of the lines that sounded vaguely like places gleamed like silver, except two; the letters of “Upper Cathedral Ward” and “Lumenflower Gardens” were gold instead of silver.

Torquil shrugged to himself. It was way too abstract for him to try to figure out what places these names referred to, especially when he was barely familiar with Yharnam in the first place. Hopefully the others would understand.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

The doll looked to the Shopkeeper, then back to Ophelia. “The Shopkeeper is aware of the other Hunters you speak of, though their nature confuses them greatly. Not only has there never been this many Hunters bound to the Dream at once, – even the four we have now is more than I have ever seen – but something also seems to be awry with many of those currently undergoing metamorphosis. A process that should have been a guaranteed success has turned unreliable, and several among the marked have perished before they could even complete their transformation. And many of those who have yet to awaken – if not all of them – may never wake at all. It is most perplexing and unnerving.”
Again the doll paused, seemingly listening to something only she could hear. “While it is true that they witnessed the old Healing Church at their worst, good Hunter, the same could be said for all the factions of Yharnam. On that dreadful night, nigh all who strayed anywhere near the city were driven mad or became beasts. But it is true that the Shopkeeper also found evidence of the wickedness of the Healing Church that far predated the Blood Moon. They were a vile, ruthless institution, and they do not lament their downfall.
They are not certain whether the new Healing Church is any better or worse than the old one, however. From what they know, the new Church are much more cautious with their experimentation, at least, though they seem even more reckless with their reliance on the Old Blood than the old one. All they know for certain is that the White Church seems quite hostile toward them, though they have done nothing to deserve such enmity. They have also not heard anything about the Church having found a way to link to the Dream, and none of the Church have come here as of yet... though it would not surprise them if they were trying to achieve such a thing.”

To Ophelia's last request, the doll bowed yet again, the Shopkeeper merely offered a curt nod of their head whereas Torquil immediately and awkwardly started shuffling toward the door. Ultimately, though, all three of them left and headed back outside and down the stairs there, past the tall headstones the doll had previously mentioned.
Now that the doll had called attention to it, Torquil noticed lines of letters carved into each of these headstones, most of which glittered with a silver sheen, but a couple of which had a golden hue, too. On the last headstone, lowest on the slope, he also spotted the glowing spot the doll had mentioned, waiting for one of them to give it a name.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

“Of course, good Hunter,” the doll replied to Farren's expression of gratitude with a small bow. “We exist to serve. Feel free to stay as long as you want, explore as much as you desire and ask any questions you have; this Dream, and everything in it, belongs to you.”
She turned around and gestured out the open door she and the Shopkeeper had entered through. “When you decide to leave, you can do so by using one of the engraved headstones of the Dream. The four large stones right outside this door in particular will connect to lanterns you find and light during your travels, allowing you to return to them at will. The lantern you used to get here,” she said, indicating Ophelia and Farren with a nod of her head, “will also require a name. Simply look at the glowing spot on the stone and speak the label you wish to give it. Once inscribed, you need only touch the engraving to reawaken in another world.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

The Shopkeeper stood at Ophelia's encouragement and nodded their head in acknowledgment, but even now they did not utter so much as a sound. The only noise any of them had heard from the Shopkeeper so far was the soft rustle of their long Hunter's coat when they moved; had it not been for the slow rising and falling of their chest, none of them could even have been sure they were breathing.
“The Shopkeeper thanks you for your forgiveness and your kindness, good Hunter,” the doll relayed, bringing her hands together on her stomach and bowing to Ophelia once again. “As you guessed, the Shopkeeper is indeed responsible for ending the Night of the Blood Moon, though things may not be as simple as one would assume... though that may be a tale best saved for another time.”

With but another faint rustle of their coat, as even their boots on the wooden floor seemed soundless, the Shopkeeper went over to a table that stood under the wall with unique weapons – a table filled with tools that Farren might recognize as being for the maintenance, adjustment and creation of Hunter weapons – and raised both hands to place a number of objects there. From their right hand they placed three padded satchels that would be recognizable to both Ophelia and Farren, as it was exactly the same type of bag that they had seen Victor retrieve the blood vial he had given them from earlier. From their left came three curious tubes, mostly metal but with one continuous section from bottom to top made of glass to allow one to see the interior.
“The Shopkeeper wants you to have some of the standard equipment of your profession, good Hunters,” the doll explained, though she remained by the door and merely looked on from a distance. “Those satchels are to safely store restorative blood vials while making it as unlikely as possible that they break as you fight. The tubes are for storing quicksilver bullets, preventing them from becoming fluid.”
Not done yet, the Shopkeeper than placed three quite peculiar-looking syringe-like devices on the table. “Those are for extracting blood and compressing it into blood bullets,” the doll explained. “They aren't as stable as quicksilver bullets, but just as potent.”

Finally, the Shopkeeper turned away from the table and back to the Hunters. They raised their right hand toward them, fingers closed in a fist and palm upturned, only to open the hand and reveal three small silver hand-bells there. Quite notably, none of them had seen the Shopkeeper retrieve the bells, the tubes or the satchels anywhere; in fact if anyone was paying close enough attention, they would realize that the items just seemed to spontaneously apparate in their hands.
The doll nodded her head slowly. “While the other items are equipment most Hunters have, these bells are the Shopkeeper's gift to you, and only you. Whenever you might feel that you have encountered something for which you require assistance that you do not have, use those. If you ring one of these bells, it will summon the Shopkeeper to your side for a time.”