You know, hardest thing about writing in a foreign language is the vocabulary. Half of the time I'm just hunting down words to use, like a big, jigsaw puzzle.
Anyway, here's the next one. Hopefully, you guys will like it; I was pretty hyped up by the good reception the Prologue had. It's the raw version so I'll probably run some editing later.
Chapter 2
He woke up with cold cobble pressing against his face. As if to greet him, crows cawed distantly and the pervasive scent of smoke and rot invaded his nostrils.
Groaning, Shirou pushed himself off the ground, noting that, as always, the Hunter's Garb returned to its dark, pristine form, as if it hadn't been shredded and wet with blood yesterday. Leather gloves creaked around his fingers as he tested their flexibility, the insides lined with animal fur. It was heavy, with multiple layers compressing torso, arms and legs. A small, extra protection against dangers worse than the cold.
"At least it wasn't the sewers this time," he said to no one in particular. That had been a nerve-wracking experience, with humanoid-looking beasts bearing unnaturally long limbs groping for him, a mad dash towards the nearest ladder and a deceptively quick giant monster pig hot on his tails.
When he told this story around a campfire and a cloud of incense to ward the beasts away, Gascoigne and Henryk had laughed at him, and warned slightly too late that hunters were avoiding de sewers until there was a group large enough for the job.
Yharnam had a tendency to give its inhabitants a dark sense of humor, he had realized.
Shirou rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck side to side, earning a satisfying 'pop'. His limbs thrummed with hidden strength, the rune he painstakingly carved into his mind bolstering his vitality. Strapped on his back was the Saw Cleaver, a trick weapon handed to him by Henryk, carved with a wicked, blood-letting blade and bandages lapping the curved handle and the edge. Fastened to his belt, his Hunter's Pistol lay loaded.
Surveying his surroundings, he reacquired his bearings. He was on a bridge – a familiar one. Back a few steps, behind him, there was a flight of stairs that led to Gilbert's house. He'd pay the sickly man a visit later – he'd been one of the few who responded kindly to his pounding on the doors when he first found himself in an unknown world. The other voices had been tucked safely in their houses, either mocking him for his foolishness of standing out in the night or swinging rusty, crooked weapons on his direction.
Up ahead, on the other end of the bridge, two lamps illuminated the left corners of the street. Gleaming, iron coffins were laid out, barricading the doors of the houses. They were chained shut – fresh, nigh-indestructible padlocks winding themselves around the coffins. All of it to make sure that what went in, stayed in. Boxes and heavy sacks completed the provisory, but effective defenses.
The Moon hung low amidst the harsh and jagged towers, brilliant and ominous. It seemed to glint brighter in response to his gaze, almost like it was watching him.
Shuddering to an inexplicable sense of dread that washed over his body like icy water, he shook off the bizarre sensation and walked down the pathway, sharpening his senses for incoming threats and hand groping behind for his weapon.
That's when a haggard-looking man demolished the boxes from behind and lunged for Shirou,
Eyes wide and heart jumping to his throat, he flung himself back, falling clumsily on the floor. His shaky fingers reached to snatch his pistol.
The man barreled forward, eyes bright with a scarlet, starved glow. The mad glint of a beast. It swung a cleaver of his own, which clanged as it struck where Shirou's head had been a second ago. In his knees, Shirou pulled the trigger and three shots were fired from his gun, one after the other, leaving his ears ringing. The beast was stopped dead on its tracks by the unnering bullets that struck its chest.
Stalled, but not defeated.
Shirou flung himself up and assumed his stance, knees slightly bent and legs shoulder-width apart, Saw Cleaver held in a defensive grip. The beast circled, and Shirou watched it warily, mirroring its movements. He took a couple of steps back and chaotic, unnaturally long limbs tried to close the distance instantly with a roar. Attentive to its movements, the telltales of every possible attack, Shirou ducked to the right and swung at the beast's belly, who let out an ear-splitting scream. Immediately, he lurched out of its range and took gulps of air.
His increased durability was still nothing compared to the beasts who had cursed blood flowing through their veins, pulsing with unknown power. It was best he didn't push his luck.
It howled and hacked at the air, rusty cleaver hissing, and charged. Shirou hunkered down low and rolled to the right, back nearly crashing against a wall. The beast, sensing an opportunity, leaped at him.
"DIE!"
Another roll removed him from the attack radius, and the beast's back was left exposed to him.
At that moment, words that Kiritsugu said a long time ago flashed in his mind.
"Don't treat enemy magi like human beings."
It wasn't the same. Beasts weren't magi, and although magi were often amoral and willing to do anything to achieve their goals – or so Kiritsugu said – they weren't mindless monsters. They would sacrifice others, family and even themselves to reach the Root, but they wouldn't kill out of bloodlust and madness.
Still, the principle applied to this situation.
Despite never leaving him any words, any description on what it meant to be a Hero of Justice, Emiya Shirou knew in his heart, after experiencing Yharnam's horrors, that a hero should be capable of slaying monsters.
His weapon snapped to its second form, fully extended and cleaver gleaming wickedly. Twisting his foot and synchronizing the motions of both hips and shoulder, like Gascoigne taught him, he stabbed forward with all his strength. The sound of squelching blood melded with a loud crunch of bone as the cleaver skewered the beast, who fell to its knees with a trembling gasp.
It almost sounded relieved.
Limbs went limp, but Shirou had been fooled before by beasts pretending to be down for the count.
The upper body fell with a dull 'thud', and leerily, Shirou pressed his foot on its back and forced the Saw Cleaver out, more of the sickening symphony grinding in his ears.
'This isn't a human being. If I left it alone, it might have just attacked someone else.' He hammered into his mind. Even if it, in its last seconds, had spoken.
Because, despite his certainty that a hero should kill the monsters, unease stubbornly remained, turning his insides as his gaze fell on the carved open beast, who in death didn't look much different from a man.
He couldn't afford to look too closely. He couldn't afford to think about it.
"If I could just..." He shook his head. There was no reason to wander into 'what ifs'. His meager skills of magecraft couldn't do a thing to cure whatever disease plagued this city.
All he could do was compare it to mythological stories of his world, of men and women cursed by the gods, of people who could come back from the dead and those who were driven mad by unknown spells. Kiritsugu did tell him their world was once inhabited by gods and all manners of creatures that lived alongside humans.
If there were gods in this world – and the Yharnamites seemed to believe so, if the many religious-looking statues spread across the city were any indication - they were cruel ones who shouldn't be worshipped.
Centering himself with a deep breath, he patted the dust off his garb and suppressed the urge to project a cloth and clean the blood and grime up. That would leave him open for more ambushes.
Shirou mentally thanked whatever power it was that brought him here that his clothes would return good as new when he woke up here again. The foul, sticky blood that seeped into his garb, feeling rancid and wet to the skin would have raised a lot of questions back in Fuyuki.
'Hey Fuji-nee, what do I use to get cursed blood stains out of fabric?'
He had a feeling that wouldn't be well received there. A little afraid she would know the answer, too, because he was pretty sure that shinai she used to beat people – and occasionally him – up was cursed as well.
The sensation no longer brought that throat-closing nausea, but it was far from pleasant.
Then, he braced himself for the pain of magecraft, mitigated only by the calloused hands of discipline.
"Trace on," said Shirou, and molten lava seeped into his pores. Mana flowed – a vicious intruder intent on flaying his insides - tracing a pathway into his spine, coalescing into it in a scorching embrace. The only thing preventing him from flinching was hard-earned pain tolerance.
Thrice he completed this routine, leaving three magic circuits available. Not longa go, six years of harsh training and repetition had only granted him the same one circuit.
His battles in Yharnam, the urgency of putting his life at risk at every skirmish, had advanced his skills faster than any training he could've put himself through. As if he was meant for the battlefield.
Mana flowed into muscles and bone as he completed the Reinforcement spell, empowering his body along with the runes – the Clockwise Metamorphosis - and smoothing out weaknesses. The arcane symbol he glimpsed when he used Structural Analysis on a beast was worth the head-splitting migraine tailing him for the entire following week
Shirou resumed his hunt, readier than he had been for Yharnam.
The Yharnamites responded in kind. Mad, hollering in the streets, chasing down beasts, waving their crude weapons in bloodlusted eagerness. He learned, one day at a time, when to hunt and when to keep his head down, knowing that any 'ally' could turn on him for all the sorts of perceived slights.
Sometimes, he ran, even if rankled at him. He wasn't suicidal, and if running away would let him save someone the next day, he would.
With a sweeping slash, his weapon bit into another beast's flesh – one of the wolves this time, nimbler and able to dart into his guard in the blink of an eye. It died, but its parting howl attracted another of its kin. Five bullets puncturing its head gave it the same destiny.
This city writhed with self-loathing as they slaughtered each other, and the dissonance to his home city, peaceful and orderly compared to Yharnam's twisting streets and more graveyards than parks made it hard to accept both of them as real.
Even if he wasn't one of the savage parodies of wolves stalking the streets, or a deformed giant smashing whatever dared come near him, the population often couldn't tell the difference. One could look human and be a beast all the same, and they wouldn't mind terribly if that wasn't the case. Life here didn't have the same value it did in Japan.
As he walked downstairs toward Yharnam's downtown, the rustle and flapping of fabric assaulted his ears and Shirou twisted on his heel, gun trained on the source of the sound behind him.
"Jumpy, are we?" said the man, amused. He had skipped over the rails above the stairs. "You could hurt someone like that,"
Grumbling, Shirou returned the pistol to its place. "Someone would've deserved it for sneaking on people like that."
He shrugged. Clad in a yellow Hunter's Garb, with fabric stretched over his mouth and nose to filter Yharnam's air, Henryk said. "Fair enough. How's the hunt going, kid?"
His forehead furrowed. "Busy, I guess. There aren't many beasts, but some stragglers are escaping the larger groups of civilians hunting them."
"Busy, he says," Henryk shook his head. "You know, this is no place for a kid. How about you go back home and let the real hunters get the job done? There are enough civilians sticking their noses in the hunt when they shouldn't."
Having gone over this many times before, there was only one appropriate answer that summarized his sentiments. "No."
Henryk chortled. "Well, I tried. Viola can't give me grief now."
Shirou grinned despite himself. "Should you give up so easily? You're a terrible role model."
"Don't recall signing up for that. I'm Hunter, not a babysitter. Besides... " Henryk looked down the street past the rails beside them. A dark smudge of blood stained the ground. "I could use the help tonight."
Shirou nodded wearily. "Gascoigne isn't coming?"
Eyes crinkled, darker. "Nah. Told him to take a raincheck this time. Man oughta stay with his family and out of this dirty business for a while."
"Is he alri-" Shirou halted himself. He wouldn't ask that question. He couldn't acknowledge the likely answer. "Yeah, that'll be good for him. Guess I'll have to watch your back then, old man."
"Hah! As if I need some upstart doing that for me. You haven't been to a real Hunt yet, lad." He reached to his left and Shirou noticed the extra holster. "Before I forget, here." A gun flew on his direction, and Shirou grabbed it in the air. It was a double-barrel pistol, crafted in a complex design. It gleamed in the night.
Morbidly curious, he asked."What is a real hunt like?"
"You don't see the sunrise until it's done, and it isn't done until nearly everything that moves is dead." Henryk shook his head, as if dispelling his thoughts. "Anyway, in all my years of hunting, never saw a shot like you. Wouldn't have believed if I didn't see it with my own eyes either. Can't be beginners luck after the tenth time."
He had been only a couple of weeks at the Kyuudo practice in Homurahara, having left to better prepare for his nightly hunts, but they had been enough to teach him the essentials. Tracing the target's image in his mind and shooting it perfectly had been just a matter of getting used to the new technique and new tool.
In this case, Yharnam's pistols.
"It wasn't that hard," said Shirou idly, caressing the cold steel on his hands, enraptured. Guns captured his thoughts nearly as well as swords. He would analyze it thoroughly later. "The two bullets will fire at the same time?"
"That's right. That thing has a punch to it. It eats twice as many bullets as the regular one, but that shouldn't be a problem to you and your magic tricks. Just watch out for the recoil."
Projection would allow him to have ammunition as long as he had mana. It took a while, but he found a use to the skill Kiritsugu had deemed useless.
Shirou pocketed it in his holster and bowed. It a common gesture of appreciation in here, coincidentally sharing it with Japan. "Thanks Henryk. I'll use it well."
"Eh, sure. Just don't shoot your own foot or something. It's not pleasant, or so Gascoigne told me."
His eyes widened. "Gascoigne shot himself in the foot?"
That was a strange image to considering since Shirou was only alive because of Gascoigne's quick and expertly interference on his first night in Yharnam.
"Aye, when he was young and stupid." He grinned. "Well, younger and stupider. He can tell you about it later. Come on." Henryk descended the steps and Shirou followed suit.
And so they wandered the twisting streets, weaving around fallen carriages that choked the way, walking past leering, stone gargoyles and carefully wrought statues of idols Shirou didn't recognize.
Few beasts prowled the streets this time, but the one comfort left for him was how much he learned simply by watching Henryk work. After all, there would be more tomorrow. Experience taught him so.
The predatory grace in Henryk's gait and deft reflexes as he dodged and waved around beasts were the result of hard work and many battles.
Shirou would be like that, one day.
Hours later – or he thought hours had passed since time was hard to tell in Yharnam - engrossed in the Hunt, his head jerked up when Henryk announced "This is it for tonight. Good work, lad."
As if by magecraft, the words brought to him a wave of exhaustion that made his eyelids drop and his body heavy. A yawn struggled out of his mouth. "Alright, I guess it can't be helped."
"You know, it's stuff like this that makes me worry for you, lad."
Stretching his arms above his head, Shirou's brows furrowed. "What do you mean, old man?"
"You being eager for all of this. You ain't supposed to enjoy the Hunt, Shirou," said Henryk, using his name for once. "It's dirty work. Unpleasant, but needs to be done. That's all there is to it."
Shirou reeled back. "It's not like I enjoy it, Henryk. But this way, we're helping everyone, right? That's something good," he defended.
"Help," muttered Henryk. He turned on his heel. "I guess you can look at it that way. Not sure if it'll last though." His head craned back and he looked to Shirou, suddenly taciturn. "Just don't let yourself get caught up in the Hunt, lad. Those who do don't come back."
The weariness in his words resonated within Shirou, making his exhaustion clearer. "Yeah, I'll be careful."
They walked back to Gascoigne's house in silence, keeping tired eyes open and wary for threats. Thankfully, few of them came.
After walking up several flights of stair and navigating the maze that was the streets, their feet took them to a familiar house, stony and encompassed by sharp, waist-high fences, with large, bright windows that were lit up from the inside. A steely gate separated the neighborhood from the rest of the town. By the window, they heard a cheery voice.
"Grandpa!" the young girl called out from the inside.
"How can she always tell?" mused Shirou.
"Has a good nose, that one," he said with a touch of pride. "If she uses it well, it'll keep her outta trouble when she grows up."
They patiently waited for the many locks behind the door to get undone, a slow and methodical process that wracked his nerves despite no beasts being around. It felt almost like tempting fate.
Gascoigne, for once in civilian clothes, wearing a shirt with high-collar and a bowler hat, came out to greet them. "Henryk, thank goodness! And is that Shirou? Come in, come in."
Shirou had wanted to excuse himself at that, but surrendered due to Gascoigne's insistence and Viola's polite, if a little forced invitations. Gascoigne's wife hadn't warmed up to him and he was fairly sure she wouldn't any time soon.
Henryk's granddaughter barreled onto his legs, and the man's taciturn expression softened.
It was warm and cozy in the house, safe from the world outside, where Gascoigne and Viola's child could have a decent, if sheltered childhood.
They sat in the chairs near the fireplace, and Viola brought Henryk and Shirou leftovers from dinner. Victorian food offended his spoiled, modern sensibilities but he did his best not to show it. Viola already glared at him enough.
They did their best to engage him, even if the sensation of being an outsider never really left. It seemed to stalk him wherever he went these days.
There wasn't much to talk about since Gascoigne and Henryk's lives were consumed by the Hunt and Viola would have none of it near her daughter. Books and old stories – the ones they could tell near the child at least - were the safe topics.
When the child went to bed and Viola alongside her, Gascoigne asked about the night's hunt, with eager, bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep. Catching in the corner of his vision Henryk's incensed expression., Shirou instead asked Gascoigne about the foot incident, who swore up and down he didn't actually shoot his own foot - 'It was all a misunderstanding, you see'.
Old, funny stories seemed to ground him, together with the soft melody of a music box on a shelf and he looked better as time passed.
The three of them exchanged stories, laughed together and they badgered him, intrigued, by the strange land Shirou claimed to come from. His heavily edited tales still impressed them, and if they knew he was keeping much close to the chest, they didn't comment on it. He left in better spirits than when he came in.
The night was close to ending when he returned to the streets, and this dream was soon to end as well. He came by Gilbert's house, which wasn't far from Gascoigne's, stood by the window and chatted with the sickly man for a while, who reassured Shirou he would be alright.
Bolstered by the success of the night, or the closest he could get to it within his current limitations, he pondered about the few islands – small as they were – that were untouched by the plague.
Perhaps there were more of them around. Small, warm shares of happiness like Gascoigne's household – and he freely let the memories plunge deeply into his subconscious, hidden but not entirely forgotten, of Gascoigne mumbling to himself, bloodshot eyes and the eery silence he would fall to every few minutes. The islands were all the more precious because of their rarity. There was more to this world than beasts and madness.
He could do more than Hunt. He could protect the people who wanted nothing more than to live their lives peacefully, even if they didn't recognize or appreciate his efforts.
Drowsy, his mind drifting into a pleasant haze, he looked above to the Moon. It hung past its low, still bright and full, gleaming at him. Looming, watching.
Shirou sat by Gilbert's window, and as sleep came to him again, he realized he had never watched Yharnam's sunrise.
Well, here it is. Yeah, Shirou, the king of gruesome bad endings, hasn't died yet. The idea behind it is that the Hunt, capital H, only starts when a Hunter makes the contract.
And Shirou keeps avoiding his legal obligations. Lawyer up, Moon. That shit can't stand.