CHAPTER 5:
A DOLL IN REALITY
The Doll wasn't sure what to make of this. She had drifted to sleep, after ensuring that Gehrman didn't need her services, and asked the Messengers to wake her up if Harry made it back while she was still asleep. And then, she felt a calling, a pulling, a summoning. She had felt not dissimilar things before, hearing murmurs on the periphery of her mind, but this was different.
And she woke up, to a scene that was both familiar and yet different. The Workshop, but it took mere seconds to realise it wasn't the Dream. The Dream was almost perpetually bathed in twilight, a misty near-day with the Moon hanging overhead, the ever-present reminder of the presence of…well, the Moon Presence. But this Workshop was dusty, lit by lanterns rather than the twilight and the fireplace. And she started as an explosion sounded overhead, accompanied by a strobe of light outside.
Eileen, for who else could it be but one of her favourite Hunters, albeit aged, said, "It's just thunder. We're safe, more or less, in here."
"That was thunder?" the Doll asked, blinking. She knew of thunder and lightning, rain and storms, of course. But she wasn't sure she had ever experienced them before. And yet, there was something to that which called to her, the power of lightning, nature's wrath striking down from the sky. Even though it frightened her, it also felt familiar. "You're Eileen."
"Aye, I got old," Eileen said with a rueful smile. "Whereas you haven't aged a bit…well, unless you've aged within the Hunter's Dream?"
The Doll shook her head, before she turned to Harry. "I see you have already gained a friend in the waking world."
"Friend's a bit of a stretch, but she's a friendly face, anyway," Harry said.
"Ha! This young pup put down one of my more persistent marks!" Eileen barked with delight. "Saved my arse, even if I didn't ask him to. Not that I'm at all ungrateful, mind. But gods, look at you. It's been decades since I last saw you. That old sod still hasn't given you a name, has he?"
The Doll shook her head mutely. Harry scowled. "He didn't seem to like her, even though she's the one looking after him. And he took potshots at me while I was still a raven."
"You befouled his face," the Doll pointed out with a giggle, and Eileen laughed.
"Ah, I would've paid good money to see that. Gehrman was a decent teacher when he could be bothered to do so," the Crow said. "But there were times when he deserved a bit of petty retribution. Still…it's good to meet you again, Doll."
"Indeed," the Doll said with a smile. Happiness seldom came to her, save for when she served the Hunters who were part of the Dream, and even that was understated. It was more of a sense of fulfilment. And yet, being reunited with an old friend brought her a happiness she had never experienced before, though she had yearned for it on many occasions.
It had been happening more and more often with Harry present, she realised. Even as a raven, he helped her be happy, if only by dint of the novelty of his appearance. When he changed back into a human, she had been delighted, if only because she could converse with him. And now, she had a physical body in the waking world. And the implications of that were only just setting in.
"You can thank this one for doing that. He claims to have magic, and after that lightshow, I believe him more than I did before," Eileen said, indicating Harry.
"Then I thank you for your gift, Harry."
Harry shook his head. "I'm glad you're here, somehow, but…it was wholly an accident. I was wishing you could be out of the Dream. My magic played up, and, well, here you are."
The Doll examined her fingers, and then turned her gaze inwards. Eventually, she spoke. "I believe I am not here per se. Rather, I am asleep in the Dream, but my spirit, my soul, is connected to this body, able to puppeteer it. My form in the Dream, from what little I understand, is a facsimile of this body that Gehrman created, brought to life when the Dream was established. Most curious."
"That's the understatement of the year," Eileen harrumphed, before she touched her hand. "…Just like in the Dream. Texture of porcelain, and yet, it yields like flesh."
The Doll nodded, only to start when yet another loud thunderclap roared overhead. "I can see why people fear thunder," she remarked, as calmly as she could.
"Thunder is nothing to be feared, though lightning, if it hits you, is another matter entirely…"
Eventually, on the Doll's encouragement, Harry gave an abridged version of how he came to end up in the Hunter's Dream. Eileen listened, asking some questions here and there, before she nodded on the story's conclusion. "A tall tale, but lies tend to be more mundane than that. Unbelievable, yes, but…I trust you, as much as I can trust someone I just met, anyway. Still, the fact that you were Micolash's prisoner…well, I knew him before he took Mensis with him into that nightmare realm. Already half-cracked, he was. Muttering about Kos even before then. Must be one of the Great Ones, like that Amygdala that might have brought you here."
"Gehrman seemed to think so," Harry mused. "But…well, I'm not sure I'd want to go back to Micolash any time soon. You're taking this in your stride, aren't you?"
"Even if your story is bollocks, you've been through a lot. You used magic in front of me. And you saved my life. I've seen a lot of strange things in my time. A wizard from another world, if you're telling the truth, is novel, but not so out of the question. Hmm…I did pick up some things during my time. I've never had the knack for using magic, but I have a few things here and there that would be handy for a mage to use. Once I get to know you, I might give you them. They're not things I can just entrust to anyone."
Harry nodded. "Thanks for considering it anyway. I'm still trying to get used to this world. It was my first night in Yharnam. Now that I come to think about it, there were a couple of old Hunters who talked about you, Henryk and Gascoigne…"
"Oh, those two. Yes, I know them. Henryk is a Yharnam native, a good Hunter, but a reckless one. Father Gascoigne was a Church of Oedon priest from some way away, and heard about the Healing Church and its so-called miracles. He worked for them for a time, but broke away from them, for the most part, when he married Henryk's daughter. They have a couple of daughters themselves, actually."
"They're worried about the beast inside taking hold. Henryk said something about going to Old Yharnam and some guy called Djura…"
"That old fool? Djura means well, but he's delusional. Few who succumb to beasthood retain their faculties," Eileen said. "And even those that do revel in slaughter. Death is a mercy. That being said, I have spoken with Djura on occasion. Like me, he was once bound to the Dream, on the night Old Yharnam was razed. That night shook him. It shook us all."
"…And nobody does anything against the Church? If they distribute the Healing Blood, and the Healing Blood turns people into monsters…"
"They're too powerful, for one thing. And for another, the Bestial Scourge takes time to appear. I've seen cases where people using the Healing Blood never become a beast, or else take years, decades even, to do so. It varies from person to person. I've been using blood since the Dream, and I've never turned, thankfully, though these days, I get Healing Blood from Iosefka, just to be sure. She's got a good head on her shoulders, and knows how to process the Healing Blood. And the Church covers up any link between the Healing Blood and the Bestial Scourge. Anyone who makes too loud a clamour is either silenced, or their name is dragged through the mud. But it's pretty much an open secret in this city."
"…We are born of the Blood, made men by the Blood, undone by the Blood. Our eyes are yet to open: Fear the Old Blood," the Doll recited. "Provost Willem's adage, derived from an ancient Pthumerian poem, and one Laurence adopted when he left Byrgenwerth, so Gehrman told me."
"He didn't fear the Old Blood enough," Eileen remarked. "Don't get me wrong, Laurence had the best of intentions, but you know what the road to Hell is paved with…"
Eventually, Harry, citing tiredness, fell asleep. They thankfully found some moth-eaten blankets and other things that could act as a makeshift pillow. Eileen, however, stood vigil near the door, and the Doll soon joined her. "…Why do you not sleep?" the Doll asked.
"It's hard to, unless I'm at home with everything bolted and locked," Eileen said. "A Crow makes many enemies, and while most of my comrades died to the Bloody Crow's blade, more than a few fell to Hunters or that damned rabble that stirs up every time there's a Hunt. In any case, when I sleep, nightmares often find me."
"Past traumas often haunt the present," the Doll mused quietly. "Many Hunters taught me that."
"Yes, but you're not human. You're human-like, and you're certainly not just a doll, but…you're on the outside of humanity, looking inside." She indicated Yharnam, suddenly silhouetted by lightning, the spires of the buildings looking like a beast clawing at the sky. "Look at that. Both an ugly and beautiful thing, like much about humanity. I don't remember much about the Dream, but I remember you discussing the Church with me, about whether gods love the beings they created. If gods exist, then they delight in watching us squirm and fight. I'm not talking Great Ones either. If the lore is true, then the Great Ones were perhaps like us, once upon a time. But perhaps there were things before them that were gods, or mistaken for them. If gods really created us, then they are, at best, as flawed as humans are. You said you love us, as befits the created loving their creators. I beg to differ."
"I love you in spite of your flaws, Eileen. Humans are not wholly bad. Indeed, Gehrman often spoke to me of Logarius, the man who founded the Executioners before he bound himself to the Dream. Acts of goodness are not always wise, and acts of evil are not always foolish…"
"…But regardless, we shall always strive to be good," Eileen finished the quote, before scoffing. "And Logarius vanished after the Executioner's pogrom against Cainhurst. There were plenty of Vilebloods who deserved purging, true, but how many innocents got caught up in that bloodbath? Not that you'd ever hear a bad word about him from Alfred. He's a wannabe Executioner, a would-be martyr who idolises Logarius. He's nice enough when Cainhurst and the Vilebloods aren't discussed, but he's a fanatic all the same. I'd love to see how he would have coped against the likes of the Bloody Crow. I'd wager the Bloody Crow would have chewed him up and spat him out."
"You've grown cynical, Eileen," the Doll observed.
"You would too, if you experienced what I did, and not just during the time I was bound to the Dream," Eileen said. "But…I suppose that is your problem, albeit through no fault of your own. You never really lived, have you? You just exist in the Hunter's Dream, pandering to Gehrman's desires and helping the Hunters who become bound to it. Life is filled with experiences both good and bad. Harry barging into the Dream and your life seems to be the best thing to happen to you. Poor lad's pretty much a scarecrow, and that scar on his forehead…nasty-looking thing."
The Doll nodded. The scar held a taint of darkness. Slight, only barely lingering, but there. "He mentioned it had been left there due to a curse. His mother sacrificed himself to save him from said curse, cast by this Voldemort."
"Aye, well, that's disturbing enough, that wizards on other worlds know of the Great Ones, assuming he's telling the truth. Still…Harry seems earnest enough. I've just been in this work long enough to try and avoid taking things at face value."
"I believe him," the Doll said.
"I know you do, Doll, but…you're somewhat naïve, not that different from being what the nobles call…oh, what's the damned word? Ingenue, that's it!" There was a sudden lightning strike very close to the Workshop, and the clap of thunder rattled the windows and the door. The Doll shrieked, and Eileen put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, it's fine. As long as it doesn't hit us, we'll be all right. Most of the damn spires in Cathedral Ward have lightning rods anyway."
"It's not that," the Doll said, gathering her churning thoughts, and trying to give them voice. "…It feels like…the lightning calls to me. Or perhaps…I can call to it. I…I am not sure why I say that. I mean…I'm afraid of it, but it's not just the loud noise, or the destructive power. There's a part of me that I'm afraid of that calls with the voice of lightning."
"There's a part of you that you're afraid of?" Eileen asked. "I didn't even know you had that, Doll."
"…Neither did I…"
Curse the fiends…
Their children too…
And their children forever true…
The Hunter's Nightmare. If there was ever an embodiment of the wrath of Great Ones, and of the concept of 'sins of the fathers', then it was the Hunter's Nightmare. Bizarre layers of reality, like a mish-mash of Yharnam, the Choir's research laboratory, and a certain decrepit Fishing Hamlet, mangled together like some poorly-assembled jigsaw. The result of a dying curse from a Great One, combined with the rancour of a decimated village, and something else.
It started when a group of Byrgenwerth scholars caught wind of a Great One, beached in physical form, at an obscure Fishing Hamlet. The inhabitants worshipped the Great One, known as Kos (or some say Kosm, due to a dispute over the translation of the Pthumerian alphabet), and she granted them what they considered gifts, but were, to many outsiders, a monstrous mutation. One scholar from Byrgenwerth made the mistake of bearding the lion in her den, and was transformed for her troubles. But this warning shot, turning Rom, one of the most brilliant minds of her generation into little more than an almighty idiot, only provoked Byrgenwerth into taking drastic measures to get what they wanted.
Byrgenwerth had the gall to call what they did research. What it was was a pogrom, a massacre. Villagers were slaughtered en masse, their skulls crudely opened up to search for any signs of eyes on their brains. The already waterlogged village found itself knee deep in the blood of its inhabitants. This in itself was already appalling, as the inhabitants, though monstrous in form and incredibly insular, were far from malicious. As long as outsiders did nothing to harm them, they would be left alone.
But Byrgenwerth's atrocities were far from done.
Kos was in the throes of labour. Most Great Ones cannot conceive children, with the results becoming stillborn. But Kos was the first, at least for a very long time, to do so. Who with, well, who could say? But Byrgenwerth's scholars and Hunters didn't care about that. The blood of both mother and child were spilled that night.
In her death throes, compelled by the dying cries of her child, and the beseeching of her worshippers, Kos' power cursed the Byrgenwerth scholars and Hunters, along with their successors. That death would never bring them peace, that they would be drawn into a nightmare realm, for all eternity. In short, it was purgatory, no, hell.
Lady Maria knew this all too well. Remorse for what she did to the Fishing Hamlet, and for assisting the Healing Church in their experiments, did nothing to placate the curse, to placate Kos' wrath. Suicide was no relief either. Instead, she had pretty much been forced by the Church to act as a guard dog, to prevent the secrets that lead to their founding ever coming out, for the living occasionally came to the Hunter's Nightmare.
She hated this. A corpse should be left well alone, whether it be Kos', or her own. But the Church bound her to this role, and she only lingered on to look after her patients in the Research Hall adjacent, who had also been drawn in by the curse.
Sitting in her favourite chair in the Astral Clocktower, Maria was dozing, until she heard a sudden crack of thunder in the distance. She woke, alert almost instantly, before she frowned. The sound of thunder was not unusual in the Hunter's Nightmare, but it was usually a distant, faint rumble, like a form of sinister ambience. This thunder, while distant, was loud, and sharp, and sudden.
She got to her feet, and went to the massive clock-like mechanism behind her. As guardian, she could see through it, and could see the rain-sodden Fishing Hamlet. And then, a bolt of lightning hit somewhere. And she knew with unerring instinct that it had hit where Kos' corpse was.
She remembered the creature calling down lightning. She remembered being so angry at so many of her allies dying, charbroiled alive or simply juddering into death that she forgot that Kos was a mother protecting its child. It was realising this (to say nothing of the sheer blood on her hands from relative innocents, and all to satisfy Willem's morbid curiosity) that had her getting into her argument with Gehrman, throwing Rakuyo down that well in the Fishing Hamlet, leaving the Hunters.
What are you doing? Maria thought, said thoughts directed towards the author of her misery. Why are you restless, Kos?
She received no answers, not that she expected any. So she left the Astral Clocktower to tend to her patients, resigned to eternity in this purgatory. There was little else good she could do here in the Clocktower itself, save for acting as a guard dog for the Church…
CHAPTER 5 ANNOTATIONS:
So, the Doll is in reality, and she and Eileen have had a bit of a talk. But why is Maria seeing Kos throwing a tantrum? Well, this is paving the way for an interesting reveal, one that not only fits in with Bloodborne lore, but honestly explains so much.
Incidentally, guess who finally made it through that goddamned deathtrap that was Sen's Fortress in Dark Souls? Compared to that, the Iron Golem was a cakewalk, albeit with the help of Iron Tarkus. Already hate Anor Londo with the mini-gargoyles and the arrow-sniping SOB knights…
Review-answering time! So, let me point something out. Reducto is NOT the Blasting Curse. Bombarda is. While I have fudged it somewhat in terms of what it is dubbed, its effect is pretty much how I described it, if it was being used on flesh rather than inanimate objects. And Harry's magic was overpowered due to him being on an adrenaline rush, as well as being both pissed and frightened towards the Bloody Crow. End of story.
RonaldM40196867: There's little horror at this stage partly because this part is a few weeks prior to the game proper. Once we get to the events of said game, there'll be more.
BoredKing: Funny you should say that. I was actually intending that. The Moonlight Greatsword swiftly became my favourite weapon in the game, once I had levelled it up enough, and while it has its faults (especially against enemies resistant to Arcane damage), it's still my favourite. So, yes, Harry will get it from Ludwig.
bradw316: Such a question should have been reserved for reviews of Zabaniya. But keep in mind, Hassan of Serenity did not remove her face like many other Hassans did, as it was important to her seduction missions. So that is her actual face beneath the skull mask. She can change the colour of her complexion, as the illustrations for her debut story, Fate/Prototype, shows, but her default look seems to be, as you put it, like a dark elf without the ears.
zanzara: Sadly, Father Gascoigne and his wife will suffer the same fates as they do in canon. However, one thing I intend to do it to avoid the canon game fates for their children, with Harry ferrying them to Oedon Chapel himself. Their deaths were rather pointless tragedy, even for a Soulsborne game.
No numbered annotations this time.