The Fishing Hamlet. The location of one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by the Old Hunters. An atrocity that would have led to the suicice of one of the first Hunters, Lady Maria, and her subsequent fate and imprisonment in the realm known as the Hunter's Nightmare under most circumstances, had it not been for the unexpected discovery of something in one of the homes on the edge of the Fishing Hamlet, changing the course of the Hunter's fate.
And that something was a young child's whimpering in fear emanating from a small shed containing not only the child, a young girl presumably at the age of four (maybe five given how skinny she looked), but also a pair of weapons. A small crossbow and what appeared to be a damaged but fixable Church Pick, a trick weapon of the Healing Church, though why the weapons were in there in the first place wasn't something that Maria found important at the moment. Taking a few cautious glances at the surroundings and suspiciously not finding anything resembling a possible threat, the Hunter flipped her trick weapon, the Rakuyo, in her right hand and stabbed its longer blade into the ground, deep enough that it wouldn't fall but shallow enough that she could pull it out of the ground at a moment's notice. She still kept her pistol, the Evelyn, in her left hand though, ready to adjust her aim and fire at a moment's notice. Kneeling down to a height closer to the child's, Maria started speaking to the child in an as calming manner as she could manage.
"Hello, young one." Greeted Maria.
"Hhhi, pretty lady." Replied the child timidly while slowly moving closer to the back wall of the shed, away from Maria, which didn't go unnoticed by the Hunter.
"Thanks for the compliment. What are you doing-" Maria snorted slightly in amusement in response to the compliment, but as she was talking, the child's eyes widened in fear.
"Fish."
"What?"
"Fish!"
"Well it is a fishing hamlet and there are a few pieces of fishing equipment in here." Replied the Hunter calmly, taking note of a fishing net and a rusty harpoon in the shed.
"No! Behind you! Fish-thing!" Instead of answering, Maria simply sent a glance over her shoulder, before quickly standing up, just as quickly spinning on her heel, stretching out her left arm and firing Evelyn right into the face of a Fishman wielding a big cleaver, who stumbled forward before falling down to the ground, mere inches away from the Hunter's boots, dead. Following the sound of the gunshot, there was a rather loud sound of what Maria assumed to be the various items inside the shed crashing down on the ground.
"Ow." Muttered the child in a clearly pained tone. Apparently a few of the various things inside the shed had fallen on top of the child. Turning back to the child after blowing out Evelyn's smoking barrel, Maria noticed that the child's left temple was bleeding. Pulling out a relatively clean napkin made of cloth out of her pocket, Maria slowly approached the child, making her intention of cleaning up the small wound obvious.
"Hold still, I'm just going to wipe away the blood from your temple."
"That won't be necessary. I can fix that myself."
"Oh? Care to show me how you intend to do so?" Asked Maria in a tone of subtle sarcasm, simply believing that the child was just being stubborn.
"Sure." Much to Hunter's surprise, the child's blood slowly but surely started to quagalize at an unnaturally faster rate than normal and the rest of the blood had been formed into a small (and surprisingly smooth) ball made of crystallized blood, which the child without a care in the world simply put in her mouth and simply kept it there, letting the candy-sized ball of blood dissolve in her mouth like it was a piece of candy.
"She's a Blood Mage." Muttered Maria under her breath.
"A Blood Mage?"
"… you heard me didn't you?"
"Yup. I have pretty good ears."
"Anyway. Got a name? Mine is Lady Maria of Cainhurst, but most people just call me Maria, which I quite frankly prefer."
"I'm pretty sure my name is Elizabeth Potter, but my apparent relatives mostly just call me either Girl or Freak, neither of which are preferable." Stated the child, now known as Elizabeth Potter.
"They don't sound very nice."
"They aren't. So what was that about me being a Blood Mage?"
"*sigh* I'm not really the right person for this, but there's quite some stigma against Blood Magic and it's practitioners, Blood Mages. Especially around the city of Yharnam where almost an entire sect, referred to as the Vilebloods, were wiped out by the Healing Church's Executioners. Almost no survivors."
"Almost?"
"Yeah. A few of them managed to flee the country. The Executioners couldn't find the queen and one of the Hunters of the Workshop found one who they took in as an apprentice." Maria didn't really notice it, but her tone and expression conveyed a bit of nostalgia as she mentioned the last one.
"You're the one who was taken in as an apprentice, weren't you? You're a Blood Mage yourself."
"How did you-"
"It was written all over your face. And you just told me."
"… shoot."
"Meh. If you're gonna curse, curse. Don't hold back on my account, I've probably heard worse."
"The fact that you're saying that with a straight face almost makes me wonder just what you've heard."
"Try constant insults from a drunk uncle who makes no attempt to hide the fact that he hates my very existence even when he's not drunk."
"Let me guess, the alcohol simply disables the filter?"
"Yup. He's rude while sober and even ruder when he's not. So in conclusion, always rude."
"How did you even end up here? Yharnam is more or less in the middle of nowhere, far away from many other countries and surrounded by rather dangerous waters."
"Yharnam?"
"That's the name of the country you're in. Which is named after the capital city… which was actually named after the queen."
"Never heard of the place. One minute I'm hiding from my drunk and clearly angry uncle in my cupboard under the stairs and the next thing I know, I'm here in the shed. Basically, I have no idea how I got here."
"Okay? As interesting as it would be to speculate on that subject, I should probably regroup with the other Hunters. You can come with me. Hopefully you'll be allowed to come with us."
"And if I'm not?"
"… they might try to kill you in order to eliminate witnesses."
"Thanks for being honest about it at least, I hate liars."
"If that's the case, then you'll definitely not like the members of the Healing Church. *sigh* for what it's worth, I'm sorry in advance Elizabeth. If they force me to do it, I'll try to make it as painless as possible."
"Cynical apology in advance accepted."