Author's Note:

This will be Chapter 1 of a 3-part story, loosely based on a co-op experience I recently had in the game Bloodborne. It's written from the viewpoint of the character I'm currently playing as, and I've nearly completed my first full playthrough of the game. This is also the first fanfic/story I've written in years, so don't be surprised if the writing is a bit clunky. But hope you enjoy!

I needed to stop thinking. To get out of my own skin for a while. The chapel didn't feel safe anymore, not after I had returned to find the old woman dead and Arianna missing. I considered returning to the Hunter's Dream, but the doll's sympathy would probably just grate on my nerves right now and I'd be even more alone with my thoughts. After offering the chapel dweller my condolences on the old women and carefully making no mention of Arianna's whereabouts, I stepped outside into the courtyard and rang my Small Resonant Bell. It was a bit of a stretch, really, trying to connect with someone in this area. Most people passing though here were still at an earlier point in their hunt, and it was difficult to connect across time in addition to the effort required to resonate with a parallel universe. But I didn't particularly feel like going anywhere else right now, and I was prepared to wait.

I rang the bell and stowed it away, listening to its continued subsonic vibrations. Then I stared up at the great beast hanging off the wall of the chapel and raised my arms in the universal gesture to make contact. The Amygdala - was it the Great One itself or just one of many? - turned its head to look in my direction, but made no further comment. Did it know I'd killed its leader?

At the correct time, I changed my posture and Amygdala's attention was drawn to me again. I remembered the hastily-scrawled note I'd found in the lecture building and wondered - did Amygdala notice something different about me now?

After some time, I fell into a meditative trance and stopped wondering. When my bell finally resonated, I was caught by surprise and only snapped out of it when my vision went black in preparation for transport.

I reappeared in my beckoner's world and immediately staggered, feeling lightheaded from the sudden shock of dimensional travel. Yes, I'd come quite far tonight. I felt airy and a bit insubstantial, and I realized that I wouldn't be able to take more than a few good hits in this state without dying. Good thing I wasn't planning to. The feeling passed, and I trotted up the steps back into Oedon Chapel. This version of the chapel was empty except for the chapel dweller: there was no old lady, no Skeptical Man, no Adella glaring at me from the shadows.

My beckoner came in through another door and waved to me in greeting. He was a young man, almost as blond as Alfred but much taller and thinner than the mad Executioner. He was wearing basic hunter's garb and carried an axe, which I appreciated. It was one of my favorite weapons as well. "Hey!" I called back. "My name's Demetria. How about you?"

"I'm Sean. Well, I don't know if that's my real name, but..."

"Let me guess," I finished. "You can't remember."

"Yeah, you too then? Wait; are you supposed to be the same as me then? How does this whole cooperation thing work? It's my first time trying."

"We're all in the same boat here, but a hunter is never alone," I replied. I restrained myself from jumping into my latest theory about how my hunter's dream was really just one of the pillars rising out of the white fog in the dreamlands, and all those other pillars in the distance were dreams belonging to other hunters. But, if so, then what sustained them? What united them? "Anyway," I continued, tearing myself away from my thoughts. "What have you been up to tonight?"

"Just got back from Old Yharnam. I finally killed that poison beast!" he exclaimed proudly. "And I pushed that guy off the tower. Serves him right for shooting me so many times."

I winced slightly, thinking of old Djura meeting such an undignified end. But I was glad my beckoner had been to Old Yharnam. It meant he had some appreciation of the scope of the plague and its origins, and he might be stronger than he appeared based on his scarecrow frame and naïve appearance. Anyway, who was I to judge by appearances? I was nothing more than a skinny, rather plain girl myself, still not as strong or as fast as the true veteran hunters, and I'd had trouble even swinging my axe in a straight line before I'd spoken to the doll my first time.

"Can you be my guide through the Cathedral Ward?" my beckoner asked me. "I could probably do it myself, but... I'd appreciate anything to make this night go faster."

"I don't know how much help I'll be with that part," I said wryly. "I'm pretty slow myself. I feel like I've been living and dying in Yharnam for years at this point. But I'll try my best," I pledged.

Sean looked me over, probably trying to decide how useful I would be. I could see him weighing my female figure and small stature against my unusual attire –clearly obtained on some quest he'd not yet undertaken – and the confident way with which I hefted my axe and gun. He seemed to come to a decision, and gestured for me to follow him out the door.

Together, we walked out of the chapel and out into Cathedral Ward. I helped him take out the first few Church wardens, noting that they lacked any eyeballs on their lanterns. This was Sean's world, and everything I saw was filtered through his lack of insight. But I knew the eyeballs were there, and the closer I looked the more I -almost - saw them.

Sean was intimidated at the sight of the first axe-wielding giant; but to the boy's credit he barely showed it. I darted forward to dodge its first swing and then carved at the thing's legs and back until it fell, face-forwards, to block our path forward. Are there a lot of those?" asked Sean as we clambered over the gigantic corpse.

"Unfortunately," I confirmed. "But they're really not that bad if you know what to do."

"I wish they'd just disappear when they died," he grumbled.

"You wouldn't wish that if you'd been to Yahar'gul," I countered, leaving it at that.

We continued onward up the stairs in the plaza, reaching the gate to the round graveyard. "Now, we could go through here." I began, "but first we need to unlock it by -"

I broke off, realizing that he'd found the path on his own and was already preparing to battle against the next Church warden. By the time I got there the warden was dead, and we continued onward into a fog-filled alley. Both of us noted the incense-lit doors around the same time, him with the excitement of discovery and me with a pang of remembrance. I stayed well back as he knocked on the first door and spoke to the house's occupant. The faint sound of her voice made me sick to my stomach, and for a moment I was afraid I would vomit up something that did not belong in this world.

Sean noticed me lurking behind him. "Are you okay?" he asked, watching me lean against a nearby wall for support.

"I'm fine," I managed to say; and then the moment passed. We fought our way up the alleyway, dodging bullets and hacking at demented villagers. There were a few close calls, I'm ashamed to say, when I had to step back from the fray and inject myself with blood from the vials in my pocket. But we made it through, and soon ended up on the steps of the Grand Cathedral, looking up at the guards who awaited our ascent.

"There must be something nasty up there," my beckoner observed wisely. We decided to avoid it -or rather, her - for now, hacking our way through the guards on the stairs but choosing to take a right at the last moment before opening the large double doors. "What's the other way?" Sean asked me.

"That's Hemwick," I said. "We can go there next or if we have trouble here. But this is your night. What do you want to do first?"

In response, he continued down the way we were going. I followed cautiously, deciding not to say anything for now, but I would warn him if we got too close to the Amygdala in the small chapel. Frenzy wasn't a fun experience for anyone, even if it could be rather... educational.

We started walking down some stairs toward a courtyard, and I noticed two small figures lurking below out of the corner of my eye. "Wait a second," I hissed. "Danger down there. How do you want to -"

And again, as before, Sean was already gone. I could tell the boy could be something of a hothead, rushing into a fight without considering the odds. You'd think a few deaths would have cured him of it by now. Cursing softly, I followed him down the rest of the way just as the two hunters reached him. He was swiftly overwhelmed by both of them, but I snuck up behind the one with the rifle spear and cast out my Augur of Ebrietas. The hunter staggered, but I missed the moment to visceral him, so instead I got in a few hits with my axe and darted back before he could reply. Leaving Sean to his own hunter, I lured the first one further and further away. He hit me a few times, opening up a nasty gash on my left arm and whipping me in the side with his weapon's trick form, but I was able to recover and dodge away before getting anything worse. I hit him again with the Augur and swooped in for the visceral this time, relishing the disgusting-but-satisfying feeling of pulling the man's intestines the rest of the way out with my gloved hand. He was somehow still alive afterward, though clearly in no shape to fight, so I finished him off with my axe.

Turning back to Sean, I saw that both he and the other hunter were bleeding heavily onto the pavement, but they still continued to circle each other and occasionally trade blows. I hurried back to join the fight and -stupidly- managed to run straight into a swing from the second hunter's Tonitrus, breaking my already-damaged arm and sending a shock of electricity through my body. My moment of idiocy gave Sean a chance to recover, and then we renewed our assault. With two of us fighting, the enemy hunter was down in no time.

"Well," I gasped, still out of breath from the fight. "Those guys were harder than I remembered."

Sean sat down heavily on the ground and pulled out a blood vial. He'd been shot many times, but with enough blood the bullets would soon work themselves out of his body. I also took a moment to rest and recover, but as soon as my arm stopped aching I was up again and collecting Blood Dregs from the corpses of the hunters we'd killed.

"What are you doing," Sean asked in disgust, watching as I collected the viscous fluid in the empty blood vials I'd just used.

"It's for the queen," I said vaguely, wondering whether he had already spoken with Alfred on his way to Old Yharnam. That man could have had quite an influence on an impressionable lad such as him. "You'll find her later."

Sean shook his head but decided to change the subject. "You're a pretty good fighter," he said. "Especially for someone who can't even see where she's going."

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked innocently, peeking out at him from underneath my unusual headgear. I wore the Cainhurst set, for the most part, but that foppish wig had always annoyed me. I'd initially worn it with the Hunter's cap, but the juxtaposition of fine craftsmanship and tattered leather bothered me until I was able to replace it with the choir cap instead. "I've got eyes on the inside," I said, cringing inwardly even as the words left my mouth. Gods, I sounded like Micolash, that howling idiot I had recently defeated in the nightmare realms. "Just kidding. It's the screen over the front. It's not as opaque as it seems. I can see through it, mostly, I think it just filters out certain frequencies..."

"Can I try it on?"

My first reaction was to refuse. I was protective of my things, and even though his hair looked clean, who knew what kind of lice this guy could have? But then I figured, why not? If I were to die in the next few minutes, the blindfold cap would come back to my own world with me anyway, and there was no harm in letting him just put it on for a moment.

I took off the cap, wincing at how bright and harsh everything looked without it, and handed it to Sean. He took the cap and turned it over in his hands, studying the details of its craftsmanship. He put it on, but immediately took it back off after a few seconds as if the hat made him uncomfortable. "I guess you can see in this thing," he grumbled. "But it's so dim and everything looks weird though it."

"It's like a pair of glasses," I replied, taking back the cap and replacing it upon my own head. "You can't see well in them if they're not your prescription."

"I wish you'd keep it off," he said wistfully. "I barely even got a look at you, but I could see you've got really pretty eyes."

I chuckled a little at his attempt to flirt with me, but his comment made me sad for some reason. I'd seen my own face several times during the Hunt, reflected in dirty mirrors or standing water, and it was generally nothing to write home about. Narrow cheekbones, weak chin, large wide eyes that made me look permanently startled. At least their color was interesting, a kind of green so light that they almost looked yellow when the light hit them a certain way. And my hair wasn't half bad either, a deep rich brown color and a length that would have fallen over my shoulders in waves if I hadn't been keeping it tied up with a bit of string on the night of the Hunt. Really, I wasn't any less attractive than the average person. I just had a deep-seated aversion to compliments - someone, somewhere must have convinced me that they were never true. Had there ever been another person who'd done the opposite? Did I have someone back home who'd tried to break down those walls?

I shared none of this with Sean, just sat there lost in my own thoughts. A few minutes later, both of us had healed enough to go on to the Grand Cathedral.