I stared at the eyes of Doll. The intent there had gone from concerned to curious. It was a subtle shift, but was all that was possible given Doll's wooden features. Meanwhile in my court, my brain was churning, trying to comprehend what just happened.
Doll had understood me. A part of me was jumping for joy that someone had finally understood my words. Another part of me thought this was just a dream. A horrendously vivid dream, sure, but a dream nonetheless. That part was waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me. It hadn't been pulled yet, but it would hold out until it eventually was. Then it would be yelling I told you so at all the rest of me.
Another part of me wanted to cry. I shot that part and it back in the coffin where it belonged.
I sat with a grunt, expecting a broken body. To my surprise, I was fine. I stood shakily, recalling how broken I had been with each new movement, afraid that the wounds would catch up to me and I would spontaneously break again.
They didn't, though, and I made it to my feet. As I moved my clothes didn't fall away in ribbons like I expected them to. My clothes had been repaired.
Doll rose when I did. I had been resting my head on her lap.
"Repeat after me. The Simurgh and Tattletale sitting in a tree." I said, testing the water.
"The Simurgh and Tattletale sitting in a tree." Doll repeated, confusion in her voice but not her face. Then, "If you are not feeling well, you should rest a while. You won't be able to hunt with a troubled mind."
"Stop." I told Doll, and she nodded respectfully, clasping her hands in front of her. I had so many questions. Doll seemed like she had answers, I just needed to figure out where to start.
"I keep dying." I eventually said. "And every time I do, I come back here. Why?"
Doll nodded again, then answered, "This is the Hunter's Dream. A nightmare for the diseased. Theirs is the will be afflicted with the disease of madness, be on the verge of death, and still live. Such is the dream of the hunter."
"Hold up." I told Doll. "Can you repeat that simpler?"
"This dream exists to sustain the Hunt." Doll said. I homed in on that word and knew what my next question would be. "A hunter works to hunt their prey. Not even death can stop a Hunter that dreams."
"What is the hunt?"
"I do not know the details." Doll tipped her head apologetically. "Such questions would be better directed towards Gehrman."
"Who is Gehrman?"
"He was a hunter long, long ago. But now serves only to advise them. He is obscure, unseen in the dreaming world. Still, he stays here, in this dream. Such is his purpose."
"Where is he?"
"He normally welcomes new hunters in the workshop." She was referring to the only building in this place. I turned and looked at it, thinking. The doors had opened since I was last here.
"Good Hunter, if I may…" Doll asked. I turned back but didn't say anything, letting her talk. "You seem haunted. What is troubling you?"
I arched an eyebrow. "Right now?" I hummed and tried to tap my mouth with the hand I no longer had. I looked down, then glanced back up. "I'm figuring things out. There's the craziness in Yharnam and then the absurdity you've just told me. I'm getting there, but the picture still feels empty. Other than that stuff… I dunno. I shouldn't have the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore, but…"
I looked up at the moon again. "I did it. I was supposed to be done."
Doll gave a small, polite curtsy and didn't say anything.
"Do you know of Earth Bet?" I asked.
Doll tilted her head quizzically. "I am not familiar with that term. Is that where you are from?"
"Yeah…" I glanced down and looked at the little person in the gravestone, the one that would take me to Iosefka's.
"What are these?" I asked.
"Ah, the little ones." Doll spoke fondly. "Inhabitants of the dream, they find hunters like yourself, worship and serve them. Speak words they do not, but still, aren't they sweet?"
I looked at it, it's mouth hanging open as it slowly rocked back and forth, forever reaching for me. "You could see it that way." I told Doll. I certainly didn't share that view, they were unnerving.
I turned back to Doll. I had more questions,
"You know of Yharnam right?"
"My knowledge of the waking world is limited." Doll confessed. "My place is to remain within the dream and guide you."
"Gehrman would know, right?"
"He knew more of Yharnam that this doll ever did." Doll affirmed.
I pondered for a moment. "Then I should be asking Gehrman these questions, shouldn't I?"
"If your questions pertain to the hunt, then Gherman would possess the answers."
"I'm not done talking to you." I told Doll as I started turning away. "I still have questions."
"I will be here when you ask them, Good Hunter." Doll told me as I walked to the workshop.
The workshop was a cluttered thing. Not as cluttered as some tinker workshops I'd been in, but still pretty messy. One wall had a chest, a cabinet, a lit fireplace, and a workbench lined up, while the other had stacks of books against the wall, interrupted by openings in the wall leading back outside. The far end of the workshop looked more like a church. There was a statue, and before that, an altar with a lot of lit candles on it. Everything was either unpainted wood, or red fabric. The blood theme was strong here.
There was an old man who I could only assume was Gehrman sitting in a wheelchair just before the altar and off to the open side of the workshop. His hair was long and white, and looked like it had been that way for decades. The age in his hair was matched by the age in his skin, wrinkled as it was. One of his feet had been replaced by a peg leg, and he was sitting forward in his chair, leaning on a wooden cane.
I stepped before him and evaluated the old man. He looked like he might have once been an experienced soldier. There were plenty of people like that on Earth Bet, you just didn't tend to meet them unless you were doing the PR rounds as a hero. As I sized him up, he evaluated me in turn.
"Ah-hah, you must be the new hunter." Gehrman said, his voice scratchy in the way people tended to speak once they passed eighty. It was warm and welcoming in a way that Doll just hadn't. "Welcome to the Hunter's Dream. This will be your home, for now. I am…"
He paused, letting out a dissatisfied sound. "Gehrman, friend to you hunters. You're sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do!"
That made me arch a fucking eyebrow.
"You'll get used to it…" Gerhman trailed off.
"I'm going to ignore your advice, old man." I told him testily. He grimaced as he heard me speak. "I'm thinking real hard about this because I'm supposed to be dead. Me being alive wasn't in the fucking cards. You're asking me to go kill some beasts because 'it's what hunters do'? Fuck you. I killed a god, damnit. I wanted to have some fucking rest, but here I am. You better be able to give me some goddamn answers."
"You're certainly a strange one." He commented, tightening his grip on the cane. "What brought you to my doorstep?"
"You're the one with the answers. What brought me here and how do I get it to send me back?"
"Oh, now this is unprecedented. A Hunter wanting to wake from the dream? There is no better way to combat the scourge."
"This might blow your mind, but I don't care about the scourge." I snapped. "I care about why I'm here."
"To hunt-"
"Not fucking good enough."
Gerhman paused and evaluated me with fresh eyes. Much sharper than the pleasant old man from a minute ago. "I do not control this dream, Hunter."
"Taylor." I said. "My name is Taylor."
"I do not control this dream... Taylor." Gherman stumbled over my name in much the same way he stumbled over his own. "It extends where it does, and sometimes a wayward hunter washes up on these shores."
"Shores." I repeated flatly.
Gerhman made an unsatisfied noise. "This is a safe haven for hunters. That you have appeared here means that you are undoubtedly a hunter. You said you killed a god. Then you are a hunter of the highest order. One that I can respect given…" he tapped his leg with the cane.
"I'm not satisfied, Gherman." I deadpanned.
"I give what information I am able." He rebuked, then swept his arm to the workshop. "This is a workshop where hunters used blood to enhance their weapons and flesh. We don't have as many tools as we once did, but…" He paused, searching for the words. "You're welcome to use whatever you find."
"Uh huh."
"Even the doll, should it please you…"
My eyebrow, which had calmed down, re-arched itself. That was a sentence with dangerous connotation. I decided not to comment on it.
"Anything else to say?" I asked.
"Only advice." He said. "Do go out and kill some beasts. It does wonders for clearing the head."
I had already decided I didn't like Gherman. His advice made me start to dislike him. Still, he was the second person I had spoken to and I needed answers.
"Yharnam." I said. "What's wrong with it?"
"The beastly scourge." Gherman replied like he'd answered this question a thousand times before.
"Do you have anything more specific?"
"Only what I remember from walking the city myself." Gherman confessed. "That must have been, oh, decades ago at this point."
"Were you a hunter?" I asked.
"I was around when the first workshops were built, yes." Gherman answered politically. "I was there when they were taken apart as well."
"So the beast scourge has been going on for decades?"
"It comes and goes." Gehrman said sagely. "I am here to assist the hunters when it is here."
"What's the cause?"
"The cause?"
"The origin. Who or what made the scourge?"
"Oh, the scholars would have loved you." Gehrman chuckled to himself. "The scourge was first noticed a number of short years after the healing church rose to prominence."
"So the church caused it?"
"The hunters of the church were the most active of their time. I can't see why they would spend so much of their resources to contain something that they unleashed."
Naive. I thought. Unleashing a danger upon the populace then becoming the greatest savior was a textbook publicity stunt. The church was revered, going by what I had gathered. I wasn't about to assume that this reverence was one hundred percent, or even fifty percent deserved.
Make that twenty percent, some people were evil.
"How do I get to Cathedral Ward?" I asked, changing the subject somewhat.
"I couldn't say for certain." Gherman answered. "In my time the quickest route was to take the bridge."
"There's a huge fucking thing in the way and it killed me when I tried to cross."
"If there is a beast in your way, then it is your duty to kill it." Gehrman advised. "They are not human, nor can they ever be tamed. All they do is kill. You should do your duty and hunt the beast."
"It threw me across the goddamn city."
"Then don't let it catch you." Gehrman's eye twinkled. "It is your arm that you are missing, not your leg."
I stopped humouring the old man there and left without ceremony. He didn't say anything and watched me go. Coming down the stairs I found some of the little ones as Doll had called them were offering me an item. It was a bell. Old and rusted, but when I tilted it to the side it still let out a resonant sound. There was a second gathering of little ones that gave me a second bell alongside a small pistol. They offered no explanation and vanished into the floor.
Doll kneeling next to the little one that liked to take me to Iosefka's clinic. She stood gracefully and faced me as I approached.
"Good Hunter," She dipped her head in reverence as she said it. "Have you been lighting the lanterns in the waking world?"
"Lanterns?" I asked.
"Yes. The lanterns serve as beacons for the little ones, and allow them to travel to different places in the waking world from the dream."
"I didn't know they did that. It seems useful, do you have a lighter?"
Doll tilted her head to indicate confusion. "I do not know what you are referring to, Good Hunter."
"Something to light the lanterns with."
"You shouldn't need a tool to light the lanterns. A hunter that came through the dream before you told me once that he lit the lanterns with by rubbing the glass briefly. While another mentioned that she had to snap her fingers on the wick to ignite it."
I had been expected that, given what Gehrman had been saying. "What happened to those hunters?"
Doll turned a fraction to the right and pointed. "The first hunter rests there." She pointed somewhere else. "The other rests there."
Both places she pointed at were gravestones.
"Is that what's going to become of me?" I asked carefully.
Doll turned to me. "It may." She said simply. It was the most reassuring thing she could have said.
"I see." Kind of expected, really. I wasn't allowed to rest even after saving the world, or the end of it. The lines blurred together and I hadn't been around to see what happened after I finished Scion. Then when it was all said and done, I'd be put in a grave.
"Before you go, there is something you may want to know." Doll said. I waited for her to continue. "When you die, your blood echoes in the one that slew you. When you slay another, their blood echoes in you, along with any echoes that creature may have possessed. Right now there are no echoes within you, they were taken by the one that killed you.
"As I sense no echoes, I cannot channel them to assist you. But if you were to acquire some, I could use them to enhance your self with the experience they leave behind."
Not Ingenue, then. More like Victor from the Empire Eighty-Eight, a skill vampire. God, that was a long time ago.
"So right now my blood is echoing in the one that killed me?" I checked.
"That is true." Doll confirmed. "It is possible for blood echoes to be left behind and easily reclaimed from the spot where you die. But for such an event to occur, your death would need to have occurred at the hands of none other than yourself."
"I'm not going to commit suicide." I told Doll.
"In the event of an accidental death, then."
"Fine. Anything else I need to know?"
"Echoes are tied to the dream. When you have the echoes coursing through you, you will be able to carry them safely. The same is not true for those that do not dream. They will be driven mad by the lives thrust upon them by the echoes, and they will have the experience of these lives, though not the form to necessarily use it. There may… be physical alterations as well."
I recalled the beast in Iosefka's clinic. "An increase in size and purple mist drifting from the eyes?"
Doll gave a deep nod. "That is how the other hunters have described it."
"Thank you, Doll." I said. "I think I like you more than I like Gehrman."
Doll gave the best approximation of a warm smile, but her face didn't change much. "I am grateful for your kind words, Good Hunter."
"Taylor."
Doll bowed her head further than before. "It is an honour, Taylor."
I breathed deeply and considered what lay ahead. The bridge beast, as I decided to call it, would be bigger now that it had my echoes. It would be faster and more tactical to boot, given my luck. There was no way I was going to be able to fight it as I was now.
Then I should start finding some beasts to kill, get some echoes and use Doll's power to the best of my ability. I was glad a power like that hadn't shown up in Earth Bet. If the Slaughterhouse Nine had got a hold of it…
I shook my head. Jack slash was effectively dead where we left him, I saw him, left behind for eternity. It had been brief, but I did see it there amongst the infinity. There was no point in dwelling on it now.
I gave Doll a nod and crouched down to let the little one pull me away.
The doll nodded in kind. "Farewell, Taylor. May you find your worth in the waking world."
~Drip~Drip~
