"I'll help you." I told the little girl. There wasn't any question about that. I didn't even hesitate.

"Really?" She asked, hopeful. Did she just understand me? "Oh, thank you! My m-mum wears a red jeweled brooch. It's so big and… and beautiful. You won't miss it."

Just how young was this child? She had to search for the word 'beautiful'. Her voice was quivering and forced, but had eased up since I promised to help. It reminded me of the state I was in after mom died, when I had gone to Emma's for her help dealing with that.

That hadn't ended well. Damnit, my heart.

"Oh, I mustn't forget." The girl unclasped the latch of the window and opened it a fraction. Her tiny hand passed something through the gap. "If you find my mum, give her this music box… It plays one of daddy's favourite songs."

I accepted the music box and peered through to see the girl. She was so small and delicate. Cute dress, blond hair, and a pretty face with a mouth that was slightly too wide. There was that familiar feeling again.

The little girl kept talking through the open window. "And when daddy forgets us we play it for him so he remembers. Mum's so silly, running off without it!"

Chatterbox, too. Was she a pretty version of my childhood self? I was staring now, and the little girl's hopeful expression was starting to fall.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"Nothing." I lied.

The little girl filled the ensuing quiet. "I don't know what you're saying, but thank you, Miss Hunter."

A chilling sensation running up my spine, I backed away from the window and the little girl awkwardly pulled the window closed. She had to jump to reach the window when it was open, and then she had to jump again when the window didn't properly close. I looked at the music box in my hand.

Curiosity got the better of me and I sat cross legged. Propping the box between my stump and my knee, I turned the lever with my hand and let it spin. Music started playing, but it was muffled. I opened the box and the notes became clear.

It was a haunting melody…

Then the music stopped. I moved to put the box away, but stopped. There was writing on the inside of the lid, faded and worn, but still legible in some places. I peered closer and my world was rocked all over again as I made out two names.

Viola Hebert and Gascoigne... Gascoigne's last name was illegible.

Fucking what?

~Drip~Drip~

I threw myself into exploring Yharnam and killing the beasts I came across. I found more red rocks and put them in a bag since they were small and not all that heavy. Each time I found someone with a gun I confiscated all their bullets. When I found myself in an aqueduct with more oversized rats and beast-men, I killed them all.

The whole time I kept an eye and several bugs out for a woman with a red jeweled brooch.

No dice, so far.

Bullets were a problem, and I was constantly running out. Eventually I found a dead hunter in that aqueduct, dressed almost exactly the same way I was. He had a tool that I could only assume was one of the ones Gehrman had referred to in our brief interaction. One of the lost tools.

It had the needle of a blood vial, but that was the only similarity it had. Instead of a place to insert vials, there was a mold in the shape of a bullet. Since I knew how the blood vials worked, I used this the same way, jabbing it into my leg and immediately feeling my vitality drain. My blood was sucked out by the tool and hardened in the mold until it had a metallic sheen to it. It only took a split second.

I popped it out and inspected the bullet. It was red instead of silver, had a circular symbol on the side, and had a cold, almost metallic feel to it. I loaded it and shot the wall to find that the bullet was just as effective as quicksilver ones. So I made as many as possible, which was five. There were five unique runes ringing the tool that lit up faintly to show how many blood bullets it had made and matched the ones on the bullets.

They illuminated in a counterclockwise order, even when the previous bullet had been fired and the symbol was faded. If I tried to make a sixth bullet, the first lost its shape and became a puddle of blood. It was good tinker tech, in all honesty. Simple. Solving a problem. I wasn't ever going to run out of bullets now. All I needed was a blood vial to top myself off with after stocking up.

Another thing I noticed in my wanderings was that the beasts I had killed on the bridge had returned to life. Their bodies were gone and new beasts had replaced them, or they simply reanimated. I couldn't tell, since the blood that had been spilled from our fight had been cleaned up.

I killed them again and resolved to ask Doll about that the next time I saw her.

Then I went back to killing beasts. As much as I wanted to pressure the little girl with questions, I dreaded the answers. I was good at multitasking, so it was difficult to keep the thoughts at bay.

The difference between Earth Aleph and Earth Bet was Scion appearing way back in the eighties. Up until that point, both histories were the same. Earth Yharm was clearly another earth, given how different everything was. The divergence point must have happened earlier in history and resulted in stagnating technology, since everything here was borderline medieval in some respects, but quite advanced in others.

Mostly blood ministration, since blood vials were so damn widespread. I had topped up my stock during my explorations and was having to walk past spare vials now.

Things were just too different for me to have stumbled onto any extended family, so why had I run into my own last name? It didn't fit in this world. And why had the person with my name been the mother of a child that reminded me of me?

Taylor. Stop.

The only one who might have answers right now is Viola. Worrying about it isn't going to help.

Just focus on the hunt for now. Figure out how to kill the bloodthirsty beasts without getting anyone that can still speak killed.

Yeah. I'll do that.

I killed many, many beasts.

My exploration came to an end by accident more than it was me deciding I had killed enough beasts. I opened a gate while ignoring the distracted torch wielding Yharnamite behind me, and found myself on a familiar ledge with a view of Cathedral Ward. Looking off to the side gave me a view of the Bridge Beast, who was resting now, lying down where I couldn't see it. I only knew it was there because of the purple mist drifting up over the stone railing.

I briefly considered addressing Gilbert, but didn't have anything new to say to him, not that he could understand me anyway.

The little ones by the lantern turned as I approached and knelt down next to them. One reached out and I let them grasp my hand. The little one looked at me with a vacant expression as my body was pulled apart.

~Drip~Drip~

"Welcome home, Good Hunter." Doll said before I was able to properly get my bearings.

I had appeared standing this time, and moved to get up without realising I didn't need to. "Doll." I responded distractedly.

"I can sense echoes coursing through you. You were gone for a long while, did you slay a great beast?"

"I slew a great number of beasts." I corrected. "I think the beastly scourge Gehrman was talking about is transforming Yharnam. There were people who looked more- were more beast than man."

"The other hunters said as much when they came through this dream." Doll said, wistfully turning her head to look at a nearby gravestone.

"When I was out, I met Eileen." I told Doll. "She said to say hello."

"Ah…" Doll looked in the other direction at another grave. I looked, but couldn't tell which one it was. "She is still alive. That is… reassuring to hear."

"So." I said suddenly, having never been that good at small talk. I would have clapped my hands if I had two of them. "The echoes. How does this work?"

"Very well," Doll gave me her full attention. "Let the blood echoes become your strength. Let me stand close. Now shut your eyes."

She took a step towards me and reached for my hand. I let her take it and she knelt on one knee before me. Doll held her hands around mine in the same way she had before, and a silver orb appeared in the palm of my hand. This time there was a soft ethereal sound that emitted from the orb, and faint, pale mist appeared from nothing around it, only to be drawn to the orb and be absorbed on contact.

"Please, Taylor, shut your eyes so I may focus on the echoes within you."

It was tough because the silver orb demanded so much attention. Doll's insistence did help, though. When I closed my eyes, there was no residual light making its way past my eyelids like there usually would be. I was in a void.

"Good Hunter, the echoes of an individual can be… refined in six ways. But in choosing one method of using an echo, the echo becomes incapable of being used for the others."

"What are they?" I asked.

"An echo may resound throughout your body, making it tougher and more durable. It may instead increase your stamina if you choose for it to. The echoes of a creature could add their strength to your own, or impart their skill to further enhance yours."

Strength and skill were self explanatory, and quite tempting. The options of increasing my, what, sturdiness? Was very tempting as well. Endurance was always useful to have.

Doll continued, "I may also have your echoes impart their… pedigree, this way."

"What?"

"Hunters have told me that the quality of their blood has been directly related to the effectiveness of certain weapons. The quality of blood is determined by the… quality of one's heritage. Most are unremarkable, but each echo has a unique aspect of blood that could be added to yours."

"What kinds of weapons?" I asked.

"Most of them spoke of this in reference to their firearms." Doll explained. "Some of them observed other hunters using blades that had a... similar effect."

"Right…" That didn't really explain anything. Likely tinkers being fucking tinkers.

"Finally, I may convince the echoes to impart their aptitude for the arcane." Doll finished the lecture. "You have many blood echoes within you, Taylor. You could choose to have your echoes improve you in a diverse way if that is what you wish."

"Before that, what did you mean by 'arcane'?" Doll's explanation didn't quite make sense.

"Hmm…" Doll pondered. "Perhaps it is a measure of how well one utilises that which is more than mundane. I must say, good hunter, you have quite high aptitude for it already."

Thanks, passenger. I thought. More than mundane? Yeah, that was my passenger.

"Does skill make me faster?" I asked out loud. With how fast some beasts could move, extra speed would be useful.

"Normally, I would answer yes." Doll said. "But I feel that you are asking something different to what the other hunters would." There was a moment of pondering. "If it must be measured, I would say it is more the ability to know how effective a more delicate weapon would be in the hunt, and having the ability to use it well."

"So it wouldn't make me fast. What about endurance? Stamina."

"That would help you continue at your pace for longer."

Yeah, I figured that. So what to do with this? Blood pedigree and arcane aptitude were out. Pedigree because the bullets did plenty as is. Aptitude because I had no ways of utilising the arcane beyond what I already had. Also, I doubted having echoes of beasts impart their arcane knowledge would help me restore my power to its previous capabilities.

More stamina wasn't really necessary. I hadn't felt any desire to fall to my knees by the end of my hunt, my stamina was fucking great. That was was put down to years of jogging every day. And skill… I don't know, it wasn't really appealing to me. It sounded good, but given that the echoes were of bloodthirsty and rampaging beasts… I wasn't sure I wanted it.

That left, "Strengthen my body and my, uh… strength." I decided.

"Very well." The doll said, and the ethereal sound reached a crescendo.

A hundred visions invaded the void. Sights of working long hours. Sounds of hammering. The feeling of exhaustion. How a leg was torn open and started to heal itself. The time I tore my way out of my cage. When I was blinded by bugs. The sensation of plummeting. How I got shot by a tall, thin woman and shortly fell headfirst to the stone floor below.

There were hundreds. At least thirty of them were a lot like that last one. One for each beast I killed.

My breath caught, seeing it all.

"Taylor..." Doll said, insistent, stopping the visions. My eyes snapped open and I stared wide eyed at Doll, who was still kneeling in front of me. The serenity that came from her power was lingering despite the orb being gone, probably because of whatever Doll had done with the echoes.

"Your arm." Doll said in reverence.

I looked.

Where the cloth should have fallen limply at my side, it was instead wrapped around something. A limb. My arm. I raised my arm in front of me and inspected it.

It wasn't my arm.

What it was was an imitation of what once was. Pale white lines outlined what would have been the borders of a slender limb, and purple mist like what drifted from the eyes of the Bridge Beast filled the space between, but it was transparent. There were particles in the phantom limb that reminded me of constellations, staying in roughly the same space despite the drifting mist.

I tried to twitch my lost fingers and they moved. I tried to clench my lost fist and the fist clenched.

Doll was standing now. I reached forwards with the hand and it moved, but the lines had frayed and the mist was starting to fade. I tried to touch Dolls face with the hand and it dissipated, the constellation scattering in a phantom wind. I stared at where the fingers had made contact with Doll.

I had felt it, the sensation of touching something hard. Wooden. I had touched Doll with a hand that shouldn't have existed.

Everything that happened made a part of me want to scream. I quickly shot that part and put her in the coffin with the one that cried. Doll's serenity had stopped and the ethereal sound had ceased, allowing me to think- or try to think straight. This was crazy, but not on a level comparable to what Scion had made. What was happening here was crazy on a much smaller scale, but in a way that was specifically trying to wear me down.

And all of this was just in preparation to kill the Earth Yharm equivalent of an Endbringer.

Alone.

I let out a sigh.

"Thank you, Doll." I said, unsure if I meant it.

"You were beautiful." Doll told me.

There were a lot of snappy responses that tried and failed to reach the surface. The experience reminded me of what had been, it had given me something like hope and then torn it away. The Taylor that wanted to cry was banging on the lid of her coffin. She wanted to get out.

If she did, I wasn't sure if I could shoot her again.

I walked away from Doll and went to the gate leading to the lower garden. The way I had quickly dismissed this place when… I wasn't sure how long ago… It seemed so stupid now. I really needed some time to sort through all this. Everything had just been so rapidly building, one after another. No rest, just question after question. Trauma after trauma.

Death after death.

The edges of Taylor were officially broken and blurred again. Before, when Amy had pulled down the walls between my passenger and I, the same barriers that were blurring now, it had been almost solicited from both sides. We worked together, knew each other, and it worked until it didn't. It had been harmony within a hurricane of chaos.

Now, it was the lives of beasts that echoed within me. They imparted their gifts in much the same way as my passenger. Almost to test it, but really to work out some frustration, I gripped the bars of the gate, hard. My hand immediately lost all its colour as I strained and the bars dug into my fingers and hand, but I wasn't gripping as hard as I could.

I put more strength into my hand and blood started running down the metal bar. That wasn't my full strength either. An echo of me pulling iron bars off of a window to reach the person inside invaded my mind's eye. I stopped. That wasn't me. I had left the bars up and promised to find a young girl's mom.

My hand had vertical red lines where my skin had broken. I let them bleed.

I stayed like that for a while.

Somewhere along the way Taylor escaped her coffin and cried for the lives we lost...

The pain we felt…

The ones we hadn't been able to help…

Our friends… The ones that were left...

And whatever it was that we were becoming.

The other Taylor came out of the coffin as well after a bit…

She joined in and we all screamed at the sky.