Paleblood Fruit Chapter 1

To Awake to a Dream

?; Insight, 0

He woke up on an uncomfortable metal bed with ragged dreams pulsing in his head.

Eyeless faces with plaintive gesturing hands running over his hair, trailing mucus and who knew what else, a laughing woman, a man falling to his knees, blood pumping out of the hole where his heart had been, screaming, denial denial denial no-

It was not a gentle awakening. The boy jerked upwards with a snarl, his slate-black eyes opening wide and darting madly. He thrashed, nearly throwing himself off the gurney. It was a gurney, not a bed; a bed was for sleepers, and he was not-

Alone.

He stopped, his arms coming to a rest on either side of his body. Slowly, he raised them up, gripping the sides of his head. An intravenous drip, thick with red liquid, slipped from his forearm as he did.

He was alone.

Where was he?

His whole body hurt. It ached, a deep, pulsing tremor. There was a gleaming chandelier on the ceiling, burnished bronze and sharp spokes, upon which cold rays of orange light cast themselves through a high window. Slowly, he raised himself up on trembling arms. Then, he looked around, idly rubbing his chest. There was a pain there, like his heart was on fire, like it had been sucked out and messily reinserted. After a moment, it subsided.

He was in a dark room, empty but for thickly populated ornate wooden bookcases pressed up against the walls. Everything was covered with dust, or perhaps soot: as he soundlessly slipped down off the gurney, his foot left a clear impression in the filthy floor. The boy turned his head, looking behind him. There was another gurney there, its head covered in a thick black liquid. The candle beside it, raised up on an intricate iron stand, cast a peculiar flickering light over the mess.

Blood. Hmm. There was more of it in a bowl next to his gurney: and medical tools, scalpels and what looked like oversized spoons. And beyond that…

He blinked.

There was nothing but darkness back there, but on the other side of the room there were two lanterns set in the peeling, mold-ridden wall. They cast a strong light over a door of scratched wood and two opaque windows.

Where else would he go?

He took unsteady steps, but the pain in his body was finally fading. There was something running through him. He felt oddly heavy, but lighter on his feet than he'd ever been.

Ever been?

He stopped.

That wasn't right. No, not at all. He'd been…

Fast. Fast, and now he was slow, and heavy.

But not the kind of heavy that would slow him. This was different. Tangy, almost, if weight could have taste. Something was thrumming through him, like syrup in his veins.

He kept walking. While at first they had been silent, now his steps sent up protesting creaks from the wooden floor, his sandals leaving light scuffs. He was heavy, and he walked like it. His shapeless grey cloak fell around him, and his baggy pants, tied to his legs, sagged in the oppressive silence of the clinic.

There was a chair next to the door, high backed with a cushion that had long ago given up, and as he passed it, something caught his eye. A yellowed piece of paper. There was a note scribbled upon it in handwriting that looked like an imitation of a gymnastic maneuver, harsh and curt.

Seek Paleblood to transcend the Hunt.

He bent down to pick it up, looking over the words as he slowly approached the door. A hunt? For what? And "Paleblood." He'd never heard the term. Anything like the term. It was alien.

Was it a note for him?

He frowned, stuffing the paper in the back of his pants, and opened the door carefully. It creaked as he shoved on it, and he winced. Why, he didn't know.

There was a window straight ahead, above a long descent down black wooden stairs. More orange light shone through it: it seemed like it stopped itself after penetrating the glass, barely illuminating the flight. He crept down them, taking in the familiar stillness.

There was another room, nearly identical to the one he'd just left, at the bottom of the stairs. As he slipped through it, thoughts clawed themselves up through his skull and into his mind.

Where was he going? Why was he here? Where was here? Had he been in an accident? Where was whoever had treated him?

'This is a clinic: I must have been hurt.'

That made sense. But if he had been hurt…

He couldn't remember. That almost made him stop for a second. He couldn't remember if he'd been hurt, where he'd come from, where he was going…

Who he was.

That couldn't be good.

But then-

He stopped.

There was a noise: a low growl, and then a ripping sound, almost like a piece of paper being torn in half. Then, a wet splatter.

It was coming from the next room, which was completely shrouded in darkness. He crept forward, moving among the shadowed gurneys. This must have been where the patients had been stored, he thought. There were no patients now.

But there was that noise, growing louder and louder.

He turned a corner, and amidst a room stacked with gurneys and piles of dusty, rotting books, beheld a beast.

It was a low, dark form, covered in bristling fur. Four candles were set up in a square around it, and as the young man watched incredulously, it bent down and tore a strip of flesh and bone from the mangled corpse at its feet. Claws, far too large to be real, surely, leapt from its elongated and strangely twisted arms and legs like a hawks talons. More blood splattered across the floor, making that peculiar gushing sound once more.

'What the fuck.'

The thing–

Wolf? Demon?

–ignored him, continuing its feast. Beyond it, there was another flight of stairs, and another set of doors. Sunlight shone enticingly through its windows. That was the way out of this dusty, dead place.

And the beast was right in front of it.

Inconvenient.

He could creep around it, perhaps. It seemed rather focused on the body at its feet. Maybe it wasn't hungry anymore. Maybe it wouldn't mind.

Maybe maybe maybe. No, that was just asking to be torn apart.

The body the thing was tearing into, it occurred to him, might have once been his doctor. Wonderful thought. Maybe he could just sprint past it? Or…

No, fighting it would be pure insanity. He had no weapons, and it probably outweighed him by at least five-hundred pounds, probably more. With those teeth and claws, it'd be a death wish.

The beast gave a sudden vicious jerk, tearing away one of the corpse's arms with a snap and a spray of nearly black blood that flung itself across the thing's maw. The teen took an involuntary step backwards.

Right onto a broken vial.

The clear, clean crack of breaking glass echoed throughout the room, and the monster paused. Slowly, its head twisted away from the torn body beneath it. Beady black eyes fixed on the boy, and lips caked with blood and marrow peeled back, revealing too-white teeth.

The boy didn't speak. He just grimaced, slowly shifting his foot away from the broken glass. He stared down the beast, maintaining eye contact. That usually intimidated animals… people too. Maybe he could take the initiative and make a break for the-

The thing moved, half a ton of hate leaping across the clinic floor with a claw raised high. It screeched, like two thousand windows breaking, and the boy's eyes went wide.

He dove to the left in a panicked roll, and the claw swept over his head, ruffling his hair. The monster had covered seven meters, easily, in a single leap. That kind of speed was bad news.

He wasn't panicking. He was almost surprised at that. This kind of situation definitely seemed to warrant panic. Whoever he had been before he'd forgotten, he must have been used to these kinds of situations.

The notion wasn't exactly comforting, but it was interesting. Maybe-

The monster spun, snarling. He slid backwards, his back bumping into a gurney, and rolled over it as the beast swiped again, barely missing.

Too much thinking. He had no weapons; his bare hands wouldn't be able to inflict the kind of damage to take something like this wolf down. But the floor of the clinic was littered with bottles and vials, broken and unbroken, and just behind him there was a high bookcase, enormous and heavy.

That could work.

The wolf-thing pressed forward again, slavering and hungry, but relatively mindless. It was looking for an easy kill: he could understand that much. The gurney was crushed under it, and the beast's jaw snapped out, trying to take his head off. The boy ducked, and the monster's head shot out over him.

He reached up, locking his arms around its neck.

'This is such a bad idea.'

He pulled, yanking the wolf over into an attempted shoulder throw. Off balance, the animal screamed, the sound painfully loud. Then it shifted, digging its claws into the ground, and heaved, throwing its head to the right. The young man was suddenly sailing through the air.

He hit the wall in an explosion of dust, and slumped to the ground, wheezing.

'Thought so.'

The thing came at him once more, and he kicked out reflexively. The wolf yowled and raked his leg, opening bloody gashes all along it. It hurt incredibly, like liquid fire racing up and down his body. It came in for the kill, mouth wide-

And he stabbed it in the eye with the broken bottle he'd picked up off the ground.

The thing screamed, wincing back, and he surged upwards, his other hand behind the bookcase next to him. He pulled, and it creaked, beginning to tilt downwards. Books began to rain from it, thick and dusty volumes that landed with resounding booms.

The bookcase landed on top of the wolf-thing with a thunderous crack, and it stopped screaming. The dust settled, and after a moment the clinic returned to silence.

He was tempted to smile. That had actually-

The bookcase exploded, riddling his body with chips of wood, and the demon burst from it, roaring so loudly that his diaphragm shook. As he backpedaled, surprised and panicked, it stabbed out with one of its eerily human-like hands. The claw sliced through his stomach and up into his chest, popping one of his lungs. He could feel his ribs breaking. There was too much blood. He couldn't possibly have that much blood in him.

The thing's mouth fastened around his throat. There was a terrible pressure, and a horrible slicing sensation. The jaws started to close in. He could see the thing's eyes, full of hate and horrible hunger. One of them peered out from the bottom of the bottle embedded in the monster's face.

He screamed, and reached up, pushing on the bottle as hard as he could. The monster yowled back in triumph.

He made a fist, bringing his hand back even as the world started to go dark. He couldn't feel anything below the waist.

'I'm not dying like this.'

The fist came down, and punched right through the bottle, scattering broken glass into the wolf's eye. It howled, but only for a second; the boy's hand kept going, burying itself in the monster's eye and pulverizing the ocular bones, pushing deeper and deeper into the thing's head. His fingers fastened around something semi-solid.

He yelled, a broken, dripping sound, and gave one last shove. Something wet and rubberlike in the monster's head squished, and it slumped. Its weight brought the boy down with it, pinning him to the clinic floor.

He stared up at the ceiling, trying to take a breath. He couldn't; the air entered his mouth, and wheezed out the holes in his throat. The world was already rushing away, shadows sweeping over everything. His body was heavy, even heavier than it had been, and what wasn't heavy was bathing in lava and agony.

'Damn.'

Despite his best efforts, his eyes started to slip close. As he died, something flitted across his brain, carried by the last of his neurons as they fruitlessly fired.

'That was a short dream.'

He woke up with a leaden taste in his mouth and the smell of ashes and dead flowers filling his nose. He was face down on a road, pressed against cold cobble.

His chest tingled, heart pumping, lungs filling like they were supposed to, like they hadn't just been torn out by something that could only charitably be called a wolf. He sucked in a breath, the cold air crisp, and it went down his throat as if it hadn't been ripped out a moment ago.

'What.'

He looked up, slowly pulling himself from the ground on fresh, un-lacerated limbs.

The clinic was gone. It had been replaced by a small cobble-road, a set of gravestones, a field of grey, dead flowers, and a…

Temple? It didn't look like any temple he had ever seen, but that was the word that leapt into his mind when he looked at it. A high, arched roof, severe stone construction, and overgrown with vines and other sickly looking plants. There was a flight of stone steps leading up to an invitingly opened door. It looked like a monument to something long forgotten.

His hand involuntarily reached up as he stared at the building, running over his chest. It and his throat had been gone, and now they'd returned.

The obvious conclusion was that he had died, and this was the afterlife. He took in the pale sky, swirling mist, crumbling headstones, looming moon, dead trees, and abandoned building. Beyond it swirled a grey and fathomless sea of fog, out of which stuck the occasional towering pillar. He stood upon an isle in a sea of nothingness; only a wrought iron gate, tall and sharp, stood between him and likely oblivion.

He snorted. If this was an afterlife, it didn't seem very pleasant. Vaguely, that seemed appropriate to him.

Turning around, he slowly approached the temple. There was a motionless figure at the foot of the stairs, tucked into an inlet of the hill upon which the temple rested. Several candles were set next to it, and their flames piped upwards without a hint of flickering; there was no wind here. The figure looked like a person, but as he drew closer, it became clear it was far too still for that. He bent down to get a closer look, peering intently.

It was a life-sized doll, dressed in immaculately fitted and designed clothing, like a statue overlooking the ocean of fog. A white cloak with smudged red frills adorned it, along with glossy black boots and a tattered bonnet. It wore fingerless gloves, tight and dark, and had a red handkerchief hanging from its neck. Its hair was a faded pink, vibrant despite its loss of color against the rest of its outfit, and perfectly crafted porcelain eyes peered out of its pale face, painted a bright and piercing green.

Subtle cracks ran like tears down its cheek. He stepped back, cocking his head in curiosity. Whoever had made this doll had put an amazing amount of work into it. It almost looked alive.

Who, in a place like this, would do such a thing?

A flash of movement drew his eyes as he turned to head up the stairs. Something tiny and pale, its limbs emaciated and its face a hole where there should have been features, peeked out at him from behind the doll.

They stared at each other for a moment, and then the thing squeaked and stumbled forward, like it had been pushed. It chittered angrily at whatever was behind it, and then reached back, dragging out something long and black by its filigreed handle.

A cane. The little thing struggled to lift its weight, but eventually it had pulled the whole thing into view. It couldn't possibly have been hidden behind the doll: it was too long for that. The thing with a hole for a face offered him it, handle first, and after a moment of hesitation, he gently plucked it away. It was a comforting weight in his hand: the cane was weighted oddly, heavy at the end where it tapered into a brutal point, and there were odd segments in it, places where it seemed it might be able to detach.

He stared at the newly acquired cane, then back at the thing, and gave a small nod. The little abomination gave a delighted trill, and much faster than before, yanked something else out from behind the doll: an ornate tube with a handle and trigger, some sort of cocking mechanism sticking out of the top of it.

He reached down to take the odd device as well, and the pale thing did a small dance, before scuttling away, vanishing into some nearby bushes. He watched it go with a quirked lip.

Now, both his hands were full: one with the unnaturally heavy, but still manageable cane, and the other with the metal contraption. He held them loosely as he continued up the uneven stone stairs.

"Ahem."

He started, looking to his left. There, past the open doors and within the temple, sat a man in a wheelchair, with bushy white hair barely concealed under a wide-brim yellow hat and a similarly colored beard that fell all the way down to his waist. He wore a black robe with a high collar, almost up to his ears. Upon the collar, there were six crimson spots: they almost looked like droplets of blood. He was was staring out from under the brim of his hat at his young visitor, and the boy who had forgotten everything felt a slight chill.

His eyes were wrong. They had no iris, at least not a normal one. Instead, they were a purple so dark it was almost black, with concentric rings moving in towards the pupil: six in total, like the spots on his robe. It was like looking at the bottom of a very deep well.

"So…" the man croaked, his voice sounding like it had taken a bad fall down several sets of stairs. "You must be the new Hunter." The crackling fire set behind an iron grail beside him almost drowned out the feeble sound.

"Won't you come in?"

The newly named Hunter hesitated, and then took a slow step forward, crossing the threshold. The ancient man grinned.

"Excellent," he coughed. "I thought you might arrive soon, even if…" He stopped, his face twisting in pain and disappointment. "Ah, well. Better this than the alternative."

For the first time since he'd woken up on a rusty gurney in a deathtrap clinic, the Hunter spoke. His voice was smooth, but carried an undercurrent of violent threat.

"Who are you?" he asked, carefully setting the point of his cane on the ground.

"Ah…" The old man chuckled. "You must have so many questions. Pity I can't answer-" He twitched, and his smile vanished. "Most of them." He sighed. "But I can tell you this." He pinned the Hunter with his unnatural eyes.

"My name is..." And here his lips twisted, before he pressed on. "Hagoromo." He spat out the word like a ball of phlegm. "And I am a… friend, to you, and to Hunters." He gestured around, taking in the alter behind him, the piles and piles of loose books, and some sort of tabletop, above which hung saws and other weapons of questionable practicality. "Welcome to the Dream. This is the Workshop. It will be your home, for now. You're sure to be in a… bit of a haze right about now. Don't worry about that. If I'm…" He twitched again, gritting his teeth. "Correct, it should fade in time."

"Are you…?" The Hunter stepped forward, reaching out a hand, but Hagoromo waved him off.

"Just… old. And tired. Don't you worry about me." The ancient man coughed again, and then grinned with just the slightest bit of friendly menace. "No, it's not me you should be worrying about at all."

The Hunter's hand stopped, and he pulled it back carefully.

"Now I can't… direct you," Hagoromo ground out. "But I can give you… some advice."

"And what would that be?" the Hunter sharply asked.

"This is the night of the Hunt, when all manner of… awful things emerge to stalk the streets," Hagoromo whispered. "Monsters, and worse. It's a Hunter's… duty, to deal with them."

Duty. That set an odd chime ringing in his head.

Duty. It seemed so familiar, and yet… there was an odd disdain building in his chest.

"And if I don't 'deal with them'?" he asked, somewhat rudely. Hagoromo shrugged.

"Then the Hunt will never end, and you will be trapped in this dream. Forever. Alone, among the ashes and the dead." Hagoromo blinked. "And me, of course. But I have it on astute authority that I'm not very good company."

The Hunter frowned, and Hagoromo laughed, a hissing sort of sound.

"Oh, don't look like that. I'm sure you'll come to see-" He broke off again, hissing not in laughter, but as if he'd been burned. "Well," he muttered. "You'll have to trust me when I say participating in the Hunt is for your own good."

The Hunter looked around with a noncommittal noise, taking in the Workshop. "For a place like this… there aren't many tools."

"There used to be more." Hagoromo coughed. "Many more. Nowadays, it's a bit… disused." His teeth flashed in the firelight. "I'm sure it'll fill out with time."

The Hunter sighed. "If I'm to take part in this Hunt…"

"Oh, leaving is simple enough." Hagoromo chuckled. "You just have to visit your grave."

"So I did die."

"Quite messily," Hagoromo confirmed.

"Wonderful." The Hunter hesitated. "And if I die again…"

"You will return, or as close to it as possible. Whole, and strong," Hagoromo rumbled. "That is the boon of a Hunter. Their Hunt is not finished until their prey is slaughtered."

"And once the Hunt is over?" the Hunter asked.

"Well…" Hagoromo croaked. "We'll get to that… when we get to that."

"You're not telling me something," the Hunter said, regarding the man in the wheelchair suspiciously.

"Of course. I told you as such."

"Can you tell me who I am?"

Hagomoro stared at him with his dark eyes. They narrowed slightly, and his cracked lips turned down into a bitter smile.

"No."

Without a word, the Hunter spun on his heel and began to march out the door. If he couldn't find answers here, they would be elsewhere. They had to be.

"I see you chose the Threaded Cane," Hagoromo said quietly, and the Hunter stopped at the threshold, one foot on stone and one on carpet. "Or it chose you. The difference is academic. Be careful with it; it has a bite."

The Hunter stared down at the cane in his hand. It was a blunt instrument, how could it bite?

"And a pistol, as well. I'm sure you have no idea what it is, but it's quite simple: point it at whatever you want dead, and pull the trigger. It will help."

Well, that was cryptic.

After a moment of hesitation, the Hunter turned, and inclined his head to Hagoromo. The man nodded back, his strange eyes gleaming with amusement.

"Oh, and one more thing," he said, reaching into the pockets of his cloak. He withdrew two strips of bandages, strange symbols embossed in red on their faces. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed them to the Hunter, who caught them without ceremony.

"Wrap those around your wrists," Hagomoro suggested. "They may seem little, but they are a connection to this Dream: they'll let you carry more than you should."

The young man blinked. "You're saying…"

"You can use them for storage," Hagomoro wheezed, and the Hunter looked at them in wonder. "This Hunt will be long: you'll need more than what you can simply carry. These will enable that."

"Now, go: the night is just beginning."

The Hunter looked away, and left.

He stopped before the tallest grave, at the bottom of the steps. This was his, he could feel it. This time, when he reached out, he didn't pull his hand back.

The wolf-thing was where he had left it, still on the floor and leaking a steadily widening pool of blood from its ruptured cranium. He skirted around it, taking in the body warily. It wouldn't have surprised him if it had risen again to continue its mauling.

He'd woken up on the gurney once more, the cane and pistol he'd received in the dream held in a death grip. It made no sense. He'd died, and returned with more than when he'd left. That wasn't how it was supposed to work. The implications hurt to think about, somewhat literally: whenever he pondered how he could possibly have returned from the land of the dead, the Dream, bearing weapons, his head began to ache, as if it were about to split open.

That seemed like it would be a bad thing, so he refrained from those thoughts.

The path to the clinic's exit was now clear, and he ascended the stairs to shove the door open in a single brute motion.

It was a courtyard, with several dead trees, two looming iron gates, and several statues, piled seemingly without care in the corners. The Hunter frowned, staring at them. They were pictures of worshipful men and women, their heads hung low, hands clasped pleadingly in front of them. They looked almost frightened, and if not for their proportions, disturbingly lifelike. Candles were draped over them, flickering in the orange light of day.

What kind of place was this?

He found his answer just a minute later, as he strode over to the leftmost gate. Peering through it, he could see in the distance an enormous bridge, hundreds of feet long, hanging over an abyss filled with yet more baroque construction. The scale was boggling. This city had to have been the product of hundreds of years' work.

There was a plate next to the gate, a rectangle of rich bronze, into which was carved two distinct words, embossed in gold against the dented metal.

Central Yharnam

"Yharnam." It rolled off his tongue like a cat, undue emphasis placed on the "h", emerging as "Y-har-nam." He stared at the plate for a second more. Finally, he had a name for where he was.

Yharnam. Central Yharnam. He was in the middle of it, this city of Yharnam, an imposing, eerily quiet place of looming metal towers and distant burning fires. He could smell the smoke, and something else along with it, unidentifiably meaty. Far away a murder cawed, and he twitched.

Crows. He didn't know why, but the sound filled him with a terrible anger, quickly flushed away into melancholy.

He sighed. His ignorance was getting old.

The gate opened with a shove, and he stepped out into the street, sandals barely making a sound on the cobble beneath him. There was something slick lying in a puddle off to his left, and just beyond it, a dead horse tied to a carriage. He ignored both; the horse was long dead, its chest deflated around protruding ribs, its eyes torn out. Whatever had killed it was long gone.

There were several metal coffins laid out next to the wrecked carriage, subtly gleaming with oil and embalming fluids. They were chained shut. Fresh padlocks, utterly without rust, wound themselves around the carved iron of the coffin, massive locks staring out from the lids.

Chaining coffins shut. There were several implications for that: local custom, perhaps. Maybe some sort of symbolism about the dead being beyond reach. Or they were buried with their valuables, and the chains were to prevent any opportunists from taking advantage of that. But then why had no one moved the coffins inside?

He stopped, considering the silence of the clinic and its courtyard. The wolf-thing that had been inside. The barely perceptible wrongness creeping down the Hunter's spine as he looked around, taking in dozens, no, hundreds of towering buildings, all sheer and unfriendly looking, all precariously perched on each other like a house of cards built on another house of cards built atop single, rotten plank of wood, and all just as silent as the clinic...

He couldn't hear a thing. It was all too possible no one had moved the coffins because there was no one who could.

He set off with that sobering thought. The street continued up and to the right, though there was a balcony just before him. He didn't bother descending to it; he already had a fine view of the drop, which appeared to lead deeper into the city. The smell of smoke was particularly intense in that direction. The Hunter wrinkled his nose and followed the street. It was a slight incline, but his stride ate up the ground in a hurried, slinking motion. With the weapons in his hands, he felt an undeniable certainty falling over him; he hadn't even realised how his hands had been unconsciously groping for something to wrap around earlier. Something he could use to defend himself.

There was another carriage sitting in the road ahead, blocking off half the street. Another iron gate, taller than the others, sat next to it; he could tell from a glance it wouldn't be opening to his hands. There was a dancing light flickering off of it, cast from a lamp or a fire.

He strode around the carriage, and came to a sudden stop, the cane coming up instinctually.

There was a man there, facing away from him; he hefted a rusting axe low in one hand, vicious looking splinters protruding from the handle, and held a torch high in the other. He was extremely tall, almost two feet more than the Hunter even with his stooped gate, but his arms nearly made it down to his knees. They were grotesquely extended, and the fingers as well. They wrapped all the way around his torch and axe like ill-fitting gloves.

The Hunter's arm lowered, and his cane tapped the ground. The man jerked, and began to shuffle around, glaring out with bloodshot eyes from under a bedraggled mess of soot-ridden hair. A long, unkempt beard of wiry hair hung from his chin and cheeks, the torch's light making every frayed end clear.

"Ah…" the Hunter quested. "Hello."

The man stared at him for a moment, and the Hunter's eyes narrowed.

"Beast!" the man shrieked, his jaw distending oddly with the scream, and he swept his axe up from below, intent on gutting the teen.

'Uh oh.'

He leapt back, barely beyond the reach of the axe's sweep, and drew the pistol up. Without ceremony, he pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

'That bastard.'

The man-that-was-not-a-man shrieked again, rushing forward and waving his torch erratically. The Hunter cursed, withdrawing his pistol and darting to the left. The torch shot by him, warming his face, and he brought the cane around in a vicious spinning arc. It cracked into the back of his opponent's neck and the crazed man yelped, a deep gash opening up just below his head.

He made to turn around, raising the axe, and the Hunter withdrew and struck him again, in the side of his chest. The blow knocked him to the side and to one knee, and he yelped again, a sound more like a dog than a man. Gritting his teeth, the Hunter stepped forward and swung one last time, wielding the cane like a sword.

It struck the kneeling man right in the temple, and he crashed to the ground, blood and grey matter leaking out of his shattered skull. The Hunter panted, staring at the body.

The first person he'd met, and they'd immediately tried to gut him. Not exactly a good sign.

He sighed, and turned away from the body. It was dead now: it no longer mattered. As he walked forward, he couldn't help but note that the street seemed to be a dead end. When he reached the railing, it was just a sheer drop. No door out, nothing. He frowned, before seeing something glint out of the corner of his vision.

Bending down, he found a body, changed much in the same way the man he'd just fought had been changed: elongated limbs, pale complexion, and horrible hair. It had died clutching two bottles close to its chest, glinting amber with oil soaked rags stuck in them, with more of the dark liquid roiling in their depths. There was a small matchbox propped against the man's knee, stained with black blood.

The Hunter picked it and the bottles up curiously, looking them over. The matchbox was nearly full, and the bottles were light despite their contents. He shrugged, and looked askance at the bandages that Hagomoro had gifted him, now wrapped around his arms. Perhaps…

He tapped the matchbox to the seal, and it vanished. There was a puff of smoke and a hiss of air rushing into a new void, and the Hunter blinked. He tapped the seal again, and the box returned, somewhat rumpled.

'Well. That's useful.'

The bottles, liquid sloshing, followed the matchbox back into the bandages, and then the Hunter looked around.

There must have been something he'd missed. This place couldn't just be a trap people couldn't escape; these un-men and that wolf-beast must have gotten here from somewhere. There had been a heavy mechanism he'd walked by, a lever about half his height. He could start with that.

He strode back and tested the switch. It was heavy, but after a bit of pulling, he managed to get it to move an inch, before it clunked back into place. He grimaced, and hung his cane and pistol from loops in his belt. With both hands, he managed to pull the thing back. It made a horrific grinding sound, but finally settled in the opposite position with a protesting clack.

A moment later, a ladder plummeted from above, slamming to the ground not three feet away. The Hunter grinned.

"LEAVE!"

There was a flash of white fire across the world, and his left hand suddenly felt very, very wet. He spun, eyes wide, and nearly had his ribs caved in by the man he'd left for dead less than a minute ago. There was a broken butcher knife in the things hand, wet with fresh blood, and the thing was baring its teeth, laughing and screaming in equal measure.

"Leave this place, foul beast!" the man cackled, and then came in with the knife again. The Hunter raised his left hand to grab the man's wrist and hold off the strike. Instead, the knife kept coming, and scored a deep stab in his left bicep.

'What?'

He leapt back, gaining distance, reaching for his cane. Why hadn't-?

He finally deigned to look down, and noticed that his left hand was no longer attached to his body. In fact, it was lying on the street at the man-thing's feet, looking distinctly out of place.

Well, that explained the agony pulsing up and down his arm. He bit his lip, trying to fight the sudden fire: it seemed that by acknowledging the injury, he'd allowed his body to as well.

Didn't matter. He could still win this, even with one hand.

The thing came again, but this time it was met with the cane, striking it in its hand and sending the butcher knife flying. The un-man screeched, and the Hunter roared back, spittle and blood flying from his bit lip. He pressed in, savagely beating his attacker; every blow was a step, and every step was a blow. First, he reaped a broken arm, and then another. Three shattered ribs followed, and finally the neck, crushed by a brutal leaping strike.

The man-thing fell and landed flat on its back, hissing oaths and bleeding copiously from just about every limb, and the Hunter spat blood. He walked forward, and without ceremony, brought his cane down hard on the thing's throat. It died with a whine, the cane's spike piercing its trachea.

There was a moment of silence, and then the Hunter growled, falling to a knee and cradling his stump. It was still gushing blood, thick and bright red, almost the same color as the distantly setting sun.

He hissed in pain, glaring first at the body at his feet, and then at the descended ladder. His eyes narrowed, and he heaved himself up, hanging his cane from his belt again.

Than, after pausing to kick the body once, viciously, he started to climb.

It took him about three minutes to make it halfway to the top. Looking down, and taking in the drop...

'This may not have been such a good idea.'

His phantom hand sent an enthusiastic agreement.

'Shut up.'

His sentiment was echoed less than a second later by a monstrous roar, like a tidal wave of sound that keened up from the distant citadel on the other side of the bridge.

He stared back at the spires blankly, every hair on his body suddenly standing up: that sound was the kind that explicitly declared, in the very primal language of life itself, "I am going to kill you, and I am going to eat you."

"And I will enjoy every moment of it."

The Hunter knew, deep in his gut, that he'd eventually meet whatever was making that wordless promise.

"You shut up too," he muttered, and then continued his painful climb. Splotches of dark blood marked his ascent.

When he finally reached the top of the ladder, he didn't so much step up onto it as flop. Breathing heavily, blood pumping more and more thriftily from his stump, he took several gasping breaths, before shuffling to his feet and staggering away from the ledge.

He found the same little creature, faceless and tiny, staring up at him.

"You again?" he muttered, sinking down to get a better look. The thing stared at his stump, and then at his sallow face. He got the distinct feeling that if it had had lips, it would have been pursing them in disapproval.

It turned and scuttled away from him, and he followed. The pursuit barely lasted three meters; the little creature stopped next to a low hanging lamp, stuck up out of the ground on a crude iron pole. It stared at the lamp, and then at the Hunter, its hands playing out a pantomime: taking something out and holding it in the palm of its hand, running its thumb and curled index finger over its palm, and then shaking the both of them off.

The Hunter cocked his head, and then, after a moment, tilted it upwards in realization. He tapped his bandages with a shaking hand and removed the matchbook.

The pale thing clapped, but as he stepped forward to strike a match (how, he wasn't quite sure of yet), it crossed its arms in a definite negative, making a shrill "Hmmph" sound. The sound seemed to emanate from the hole where its face should have been. The Hunter paused once more, bending down to watch his guide. He could barely feel his legs; distantly, he noted that his stump wasn't bleeding much anymore.

Emphatically, the little guide snapped its fingers, producing a sound like a firecracker. The Hunter frowned, mimicking the motion, and the guide nodded excitedly. Then, it pointed to the low hanging lantern, before scuttling up its frame and perching on top of it.

"Huh," the Hunter croaked. He kneeled down, holding his hand next to the lantern, and feebly snapped.

It instantly lit with a ghostly pale light, casting low shadows around it. The guide on top of it sprang into a little dance, nearly toppling off.

The light was warm, far warmer than such a little light had any right to be. He settled down next to it, crossing his legs and tucking his stump into his lap.

He would rest here a while, and then continue the Hunt. If that really was the only way to escape the Dream he'd been carried to, and that old man Hagoromo, it was unthinkable to take another option. His eyes started to slip closed. A grey tiredness was sweeping over him, stealing his strength and leaving him to sag lower and lower. His bones felt hollow.

Then, as darkness encroached, he saw it. Or he could swear he could see it; right now, with how much blood he had lost, things like "sight" were questionable.

It was an outline, or a ghost, sitting just across the lamp from him. Someone dressed somewhat similarly to him, covered in cuts and sinking lower and lower, just as he was. Someone with wild yellow hair, and a grimace full of teeth.

The ghost was as familiar as the back of his hand, and he had no idea who it was. There was just a shadow in his mind, a dusty word echoing up through the crypt of his memory.

"Idiot," he muttered, head sinking into his chest.

And then, he was dreaming once more.

AN: A couple things.

For anyone who's concerned, yes, I'm working on Not Sick. I got piledrived by work over the last two months, but I have two chapters on the table right now. I'm just tweaking them excessively: this shit needs to be as close to perfect as possible.

For newcomers who don't give a damn about Not Sick: yo! Hope you enjoyed this initial chapter.

Now, for everyone: Paleblood Fruit is going to be an interesting experiment. You see, this is only half of the story. If you want the other half, head over to JMenace's account (you know, The Howling Wind (and if you don't know The Howling Wind, read it dammit)). He's got the other chunk, or should pretty soon.

Now, to see if this works.

Cheers,
Serendipity