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Blood poured down her left side from a sharp, stinging pain on her back, just below the shoulder. She looked down at her bloodied hands, hoping it wasn’t hers. The dripping trail of it behind her certainly was. How stupid of her, picking a fight the evening before a Hunt. She’d make it. She always did. But she was losing a lot of blood...
Strong arms with gloved hands held her firmly against a woman’s chest. She struggled lamely, still too weak to put up a fight.
“Hush, little one,” came a surprisingly gentle but heavily accented voice, “I’m trying to help. What’s your name?”
“Melody,” she said. It wasn’t completely true, but that’s what she told people.
A strange, star-shaped chandelier hung from the ceiling. She tried to sit up, only to find her arms and legs bound. Desperate but cautious, she turned her head to look around. Next to her was what looked like a coat rack with a glass container hanging from it, with a long tube snaking down from the container to her arm. She was getting a transfusion, which meant... No. Nononono
nononono
no.
“It’ll be *fine*, dear. There is no one in this city I’d trust more to keep her safe than you,” came the accented woman’s voice.
There came a frustrated sigh and a moment of silent tension. “Alright. But only because it’s you, Eileen. And if she destroys my clinic I’m holding you personally responsible.” That was probably Iosefka, then. She’s the only woman to run a Church-sanctioned transfusion clinic outside of Cathedral Ward. Her voice was soft and pretty, but her tone was determined.
“Fair enough,” Eileen chuckled, before lowering her voice so it was inaudible. Damn.
A minute past, or perhaps two, before an old man in a wheelchair squeaked his way to beside her metal bed. He had bandages over his eyes, but in Yharnam that didn’t mean much. “Well, little miss, it seems the good hunter has signed you a contract.”
“I’m not a ‘little miss,’” she protested coldly. The cold, hard bed was getting on her nerves. “And I certainly didn’t agree to any fuckin’ contract.”
He seemed taken aback; whether it was by her rudeness or refusal of the contract was hard to tell. “Well, unfortunately once the transfusion has begun it cannot easily be stopped without risking serious harm. But don’t you worry,” he added more gently as he fiddled with a knobs and replaced a small glass vial on metal coat rack slowly pumping her full with foreign blood. “Whatever happens, you may think it all a mere bad dream.”
And with that she slipped into a deep, disturbed sleep.
To her right came the sound of dripping blood. She looked over to see a monstrous creature, like a deformed, elongated wolf, emerging from a pool of fresh blood.
Scourge beast.
She’d faced them before, but she’d had her knife then, and now even while dreaming she was bound. It reached toward her with a long, clawed forepaw- almost more of a hand- before exploding into flames, filling the air with the stench of burning blood.
Then came the little ones. Ugly, pale things like wax men molded by an artist who didn’t quite know what went where climbed up the side of the bed and over her body, crawling their way to her face and smothering her and there were so many she couldn’t see-
“Ah, you’ve found yourself a hunter...”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Melody Sterling woke up in a daze. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, then jumped off the bed and to her feet when she heard a loud rattling behind her. It was just one of the strange coat rack-like things used for blood transfusions. This one had a tube running from the hanging glass cylinder down into her upper left arm, which she pulled out on instinct. Pain lanced up to her shoulder as the thick needle left the hole it had made in her skin. She gritted her teeth and hissed through the pain, grateful for the bandages already wrapped around where the needle had gone in. The Hunt was on tonight, and Melody knew that even indoors it was best to make as little noise as possible.As soon as the pain died down, Melody looked around the room. Three of the four walls were covered with shelves full of books and bottles of various sizes and contents (mostly blood, Melody assumed). The room was smaller than she’d expected, with only room for two of the metal beds, which from this angle looked more like metal tables. In one corner of the room stood an empty chair with similar restraining straps to the ones on the table-beds. The old man who had administered her infusion was nowhere to be seen. There was no way he was stupid enough to outside, not during a Hunt.And if the Hunt was on, she’d want a weapon. Her hand went the makeshift sheath she kept her knife in only to find it missing. Fuck. She must have dropped it somewhere, or had it taken during the transfusion. She’d liked that one too; one of the edges had been nice and serrated for cutting rope and beasts alike. No need to get ahead of yourself, she reminded herself. If the clinic was safe enough she didn’t even need a knife she might be able to just wait out the night, assuming the hunt didn’t last too long. The first step in securing a hideout is always finding the entrances and exits; she found that one way in and two ways out was ideal. She went to check the door to right of the bed she’d woken up on and found it was unlocked. Behind it was a stairway leading down, seemingly farther into the clinic. Melody marked it off in her mental map and turned to check the other door across the room. What caught her attention, though, was a small scrap of paper sitting on a nearby chair. She picked it up, unsure of why it had caught her attention amidst the general clutter, and was startled to find it was in her handwriting.“Seek Paleblood to transcend the Hunt.” Not only did she have no memory writing it, she didn’t even have a clue what it even meant . She’d lived in Yharnam her entire life and she’d never even heard of Paleblood. And the word “transcend” reminded her too much of the sermons spouted by the Healing Church every Sunday. She pocketed the note and vowed to figure it out later.The other door was, of course, locked, without even so much as a keyhole on this side. Melody groaned inwardly and went to look for something, anything that she could use as a weapon before heading downstairs. All she found was a few dirty syringes and a pair of scissors, so she spent a few minutes pulling the scissors apart into a pair of makeshift blades. She stuck one in a pocket, holding the remaining blade at the ready, and headed down the stairs.The room at the bottom was much larger than the one she’d come from, with four transfusion tables along each of the right and left walls and a wide walkway down the center, drawing Melody’s gaze towards exactly what she had feared she would find: a scourge beast, the lycanthropic end result of a human infected with the beast plague. This one was relatively small, likely only recently transformed, but still three times Melody’s size. Thankfully, the thing was making a meal of what looked like a human corpse and hadn’t noticed Melody. She ducked behind one of the tables and considered her options, praying it couldn’t smell her over the stench of spilled blood.Staying put was no longer an option- as soon as the beast was finished with its current meal it would go looking for another; plus if one beast got in, then any number could follow. But the only way forward seemed to be past the beast. As much as she didn’t like the idea of being chased, she didn’t fancy her odds fighting the thing, and while scourge beasts preferred fresh meat they didn’t like abandoning their meals. It probably wouldn’t follow her out of the building, if she could make it that far.She took a deep breath and began sneaking around the side. What little noise she made was masked by the beast’s feasting and growling, which only grew more unnerving the closer she got.Finally she had a straight shot past the beast. She wouldn’t have a lot of space, just a foot or two, but it would be enough. So she took a deep breath and shifted forward into a runner’s stance, steeling herself for a frantic chase.Then she bolted forward, trying to close the distance between herself and the beast. But her foot caught on the cross-shaped wheeled base of one of the infusion racks. She managed to keep from tripping, but the rack fell to the ground with a crash.Time seemed to slow as the beast turned to investigate the sound. Instinctively, Melody leapt forward onto the thing’s back where she knew it would have trouble reaching her. It went wild, bucking and snapping impotently as she held on with all her strength, but she was still weak from the transfusion and it threw her easily. She hit the ground on her side with a thump. Dimly she realized it had thrown her in the direction of the exit.She scrambled to her feet and ran like only a person with death on their heels can. It was a straight shot to the door, and she could see the reddish glow of sunset through the window. She slammed into the door and it didn’t budge, so she twisted and pulled the doorknob. Thankfully it was unlocked.She stumbled into a courtyard and cast her eyes about. Two gates, both closed. A big one leading out into the city, and a smaller one she could probably climb leading to what looked like another courtyard. She sprinted to the gate and began scaling it, a hand and foot at a time. The beast’s jaws closed around her leg and it pulled her to the ground. Her head cracked against the stone, and her world was consumed by blood and teeth.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The first thing she noticed was the nearly overpowering (but admittedly pleasant) scent of flowers she couldn’t name. The second was a quiet, beautiful singing that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
I’m dead, aren’t I,
Melody reasoned.
I got eaten by a beast and this is what being dead is like.
She listened to the singing for a bit.
Nicer than I expected. The Church always talked about souls being melted in blood to be born anew. And didn’t that Christain minister say we’d all burn forever in hell? This doesn’t feel like either of those.
On a whim, she decided to try moving her arms and discovered she was laying facedown on what felt like cobblestones. She opened her eyes and confirmed that yes, she was in fact laying facedown on what seemed to be a cobblestone path in a garden of some sort. After mulling it over for a bit, she decided to try to stand up. As she pulled herself to her feet, she saw that the path she was on lead up a hill to what looked like a small chapel, or perhaps a house. Feeling strangely calm, she started up the path, noting with curiosity how it was lined on one side by tombstones. One of them even had incense-scented offering candles lit at it, as if it had been visited recently, but if it had ever had an inscription it was too worn to read.
She turned around slowly, drinking in the sights around her. The line of tombstones; the small, unkempt garden behind them; a breathtaking view of strange stone pillars rising through the misty sky surrounding them as far as they eye could see, somehow both reminding Melody of the familiar towers of her city of Yharnam and driving home the unreality of the strange place she found herself in. Another path lined with graves led around to the side of the center building, and below it sat a large basin, probably a bird bath. Then she jumped, startled by what seemed to be a woman slumped on top of a low wall and against the dirt of the hill, so perfectly still that Melody hadn’t even noticed her. But on closer inspection the woman was just an immaculately crafted doll, beautiful and eerily lifelike but otherwise entirely mundane. Melody sighed, disappointed in herself for not noticing the doll sooner. If this was the afterlife and not some arcane dream, it was the strangest one she’d ever heard of.
But it really was a pretty doll.
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. This place felt like a pleasant drug, fogging her mind and dulling her instincts with the scent of moonlit flowers. She had the sudden feeling of being trapped, like an animal in a cage. She took a deep breath and steadied herself, forcing the feeling down.
She stepped back and turned to walk up the path up to the building, only to be interrupted by a tug at her ankle. She looked down to see what it was, and found a small cluster of tiny deformed man-like creatures, like an alchemist’s homunculi, seeming to sprout from the ground and offering up to her a trio trick weapons, common sights during the Hunts and instantly recognizable.
Pick one,
the creatures seemed to say as they moaned softly,
you’ll need it.
She squatted down to consider her options. First was the saw cleaver. She’d seen dozens like it. Brutally efficient even in the hands of a novice hunter with minimal training, it was a weapon synonymous with the Hunt. She still had nightmares about hunters wielding saw cleavers, complete with rending flesh. Besides, even the minimal training needed for the unique weapon was more than she had.
Her next option was the hunters’ axe. It’s easier to use than even the saw cleaver, requiring only a strong arm and a steady hand. She’d barely be able to lift it, much less swing the heavy blade effectively.
As she considered the weapon, images came to her mind of a large man with a kind face and a gentle voice. She brought a hand to her eyes and it came away wet, though she couldn’t have said why.
So she turned her attention to her last option and froze.
The threaded cane. The favored weapon of Healing Church doctors and every other hunter who considers themselves above the common masses of Yharnam. Above people like herself.
Her mouth twisted into an angry grimace, but she pushed aside her preconceptions (memories of being beaten and whipped by men and women, hunters and “doctors” with nothing better to do than torment a child) to consider the weapon itself. The whip mode would be tricky to get used to, but she could probably figure it out. As for the cane mode, well, she didn’t know any of the pretentious forms typically associated with it, but at the end of the day it was a sturdy metal stick with a point at the end. It couldn’t possibly be that hard to use.
Melody groaned and stuck her hands in her pockets, wishing she still had her knife. None of these hunters’ weapons felt like good options, but she desperately needed something to defend herself with, and they would be better than nothing. Or one of them would be, at least.
Angry at her own decision, she yanked the threaded cane out of the hands of the homunculi and gave it an experimental twirl. As much as she hated to admit it, the cane felt natural in her hands. With a flick of her wrist it extended into a whip and whistled exhilaratingly through the air. Despite herself, she smiled.
The creatures at her feet moaned again. She looked down and found they were offering her another choice: between a simple pistol and a bulky blunderbuss. This was a much simpler choice; she grabbed the pistol and stuck it in her belt.The homunculi retreated back into the ground, apparently satisfied.
Melody walked up to the large wooden doors of the building at the end of the path and tried the doorknob. It was locked. She tried knocking. No response.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Nothing. She tried the side door up the other path, with similar results, and noticed yet another little path that she hadn’t seen before, hidden in the bushes and leading behind the building and into a modest garden with an excellent view of the oversized moon.
She sighed and turned back to the main paths in front of the building, unable to shake the feeling that the moon was somehow watching her. As peaceful and seemingly safe as this place was, it still felt
wrong,
and alien, in a way she couldn’t quite per her finger on. Aside from the massive pillars rising from the clouds so far below her. That was probably it, she decided, despite knowing that wasn’t it at all.
She picked up a pebble and hurled it over the bushes and decaying metal fence, into the abyss beyond, feeling a little better for it.
After a minute more of exploring she was pretty familiar with all of the strange little island that she could access; she still couldn’t find a way into the building, and she’d found a gate leading to a field she’d been unable to climb. So she’d gone back to looking at the tombstones, more out of boredom than anything. They were strange things, seemingly without inscriptions and getting progressively stranger as they approached the building. One of them towards the end seemed to be cracked in half and
bleeding
.
On closer inspection, the tombstone farthest away from the building and most normal-looking of the bunch, if still rather ornate, did seem to have an inscription of some sort, carved into the stone in small, faded letters. She brushed away at the accumulated dust with her thumb until she could read it.
“First floor sickroom?” she read incredulously, sure she had gotten it wrong. Why would anyone put
that
on a tombstone? But before she could try to figure it out a dark grayish-blue void opened beneath her feet and pulled her under.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
For the third time in about as many hours, Melody awoke in a place she didn’t immediately recognize. At least she was standing up this time.
Which would imply that she had been asleep standing up, but all things considered that would probably the least weird part of the night so far and it meant she didn’t have to climb to her feet yet again, so she decided not to question it.
After taking a moment to orientate herself, she realized that she was back in the clinic where she’d been given a blood ministration. Yorshka’s Clinic, or something like that. Up those stairs would be the room where it had happened, and down that hall would be the beast that had killed her earlier-
She sank down onto the floor next to the strange blue lantern in the middle of the room (which she could’ve sworn hadn’t been there before), trying to process what had happened to her.
She had been given a blood ministration. She woke up, and had to run past a beast. It had caught and killed her.
She had died.
Except she hadn’t.
She’d woken up in that strange place surrounded by moonlit clouds and smelling like sweet flowers.
And then she came back.
People didn’t
do
that except in old stories about gods and the underworld where there were always strings attached.
Maybe this whole thing was some hyperrealistic dream. What was it the blood minister had told her? “Whatever happens, you may think it all a mere bad dream.” She was just having a nightmare. A nightmare of blood and beasts. She was used to those. She’d just have to wait to wake up, is all.
She pulled herself to her feet, using the threaded cane as support. Not fancying the idea of facing off yet again against the beast that had killed her, she instead headed up the stairs leading back to the room where she’d been ministered to.
Not unexpectedly, the door was closed and locked. Through the clouded windows, though, she managed to make out the figure of a Healing Church doctor.
“Hello?” she called.
“Oh, are you... out on the hunt?” the doctor replied, approaching the door. Her voice sounded familiar, her name just on the tip of her tongue, but Melody couldn’t quite place it.
“I mean, I guess?” Melody said, thrown off by the question. “More importantly, I’m pretty sure I was a
patient
of yours and now I’m stuck out here with a beast in the front of your clinic!” She took a deep breath, surprised to find she had been yelling.
“I’m... I’m very sorry, but... I cannot open this door,” the doctor pleaded, sounding as if on the verge of tears. “I am Iosefka, and this is my clinic, but... I’m so, so sorry. My remaining patients must not be exposed to infection. Please, try to understand my position...”
“Look, I- I can take care of myself,” Melody found herself promising. “I am a Hunter, like it or not, and this isn’t my first Hunt. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Yes, of course. Perhaps this will help you, if only in some small way.” Iosefka opened the door just a crack and held out a small blood vial. “It’s a clinic original, and should be highly invigorating.”
Melody took it and held it up inquisitively. The liquid inside was yellowish and gelatinous.
“Is... this blood?”
“Carefully refined and filtered, yes. I invented the process myself.”
“Paleblood?”
Iosefka laughed lightly. “I suppose you could call it that. In actuality, it consists mostly of- well, I don’t suppose you’d care too much.”
“Not all Hunters are mindless killers,” Melody reminded her, placing the blood vial in her pocket next to the note she’d apparently left for herself.
“Of course,” Iosefka replied politely, with just a touch of amusement in her voice. “Now, go. And good hunting.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Lost in her thoughts, Melody made her way back to the lamp. Her hand crumpled around the piece of paper as pieces started fitting together in her mind. She reached the bottom of the stairs, and pulled the paper out of her pocket.
Seek Paleblood to transcend the Hunt.
She didn’t remember writing it, but then again she didn’t really remember much of anything from before the blood ministration earlier that night. Which was probably a rather important bit of information now that she thought about it. Shit. Shit shit
shit.
“People don’t just lose their memories,” she whispered to herself, leaning on her threaded cane as she stared at the paper in her hand. Lost memories, waking up on a strange sky island (or whatever it was) instead of dying, this strange note... there had to be a connection, but she wasn’t going to find it sitting around this dusty old clinic. She looked up at the doorway that would lead her out... and once again past the beast blocking the way. She groaned inwardly.
At least I know it can’t kill me. Probably,
she reasoned as she made she way forward. The thought wasn’t as comforting as it could’ve been.
Just as it had been earlier, the beast was distracted but wary, slavering over a human-looking corpse. She steadied herself as she once again crept up behind the monster, memories of her first attempt flashing vividly through her mind. But this time she had a weapon, which she swung with both hands against the beast’s hind leg and was rewarded with a satisfying crack.
With surprising speed, the beast wheeled itself around to face its assailant, but Melody was ready for it. Already her cane was in its whip form, and with a quick flick of her wrist she sent its serrated edge along the beast’s twisted snout, causing it to flinch once, then again, then- enraged, the beast threw itself through her next strike, aiming at her throat. She rolled away, narrowly avoiding the thing’s claws and fangs. Once again her weapon was a solid cane, the swift transformations coming as naturally as breathing, which she braced with the pointed end upward. With a roar the beast lunged at her again and she drove the cane upward into its throat.
Time seemed to freeze as the two processed what had just happened.
After a moment the beast seemed to realize it was dead and collapsed on top of the newly blooded Hunter. Laughter, born out of relief and exhilaration, bubbled up and spilled out of her throat.
“I didn’t think that would work,” she giggled breathily as she extracted herself from under the beast’s corpse.
“Iosefka!” she shouted back into the clinic, grinning, “I took care of your beast!”
The euphoria wore off quickly, however, leaving Melody surprised and more than a little disturbed at her own reaction to her victory. It hadn’t been the first time she’d killed, she knew that from the bits and pieces she remembered of the past Hunts she’d survived (the fact she could remember past Hunts at all was noteworthy), but it has always been a cold necessity. She’d never
enjoyed
it before.
Memories of blood-drunk Hunters clawed their way to the surface of her mind, human in form only, their bodies given over completely to the Hunt. Faces distorted in terrifying parodies of men. Blood, spraying everywhere. Screams of pain and a softly sobbing child...
Melody blinked and found herself back in the present, leaning against a ministration bed. Something was in her eyes, clouding her vision. She wiped it away with her hand and her fingers came away wet. Had she been crying? Weak. Pathetic.
Worthless.
Wordlessly, she reached down and picked up her threaded cane. It was time to leave, and try to find a safer place to wait out the hunt.
She turned and noticed the dead beast out of the corner of her eye. She doubled over, heaving. The cane clattered back to the floor. She retched, adding to the stink of the beast, the spilled blood, and the clinic itself.