"Ah-hah, you must be the new hunter. Welcome to the Hunter's Dream. This will be your home, for now."
You sought refuge after another venture through the dark streets of the Cathedral Ward. Blood and grime fell off every corner of your dark coat. Some of it yours, most of it from the men-beasts you have slayed on the way. Their souls echoed within your undying six-foot frame, whispering their desire to become your strength.
With a sigh, you righted your messy attire and tousled the grey, cropped hair on your head- You were too old for this.
With your failing memory, even that was a challenge. You couldn't even tell why you stepped foot into Yharnam, though you suspected, after a bit of speculating over a cup of tea with Gilbert (may God watch over him), that you must have been ridden with an illness just as he was. You couldn't imagine any other reason why someone would set foot into this cursed city.
Little did you know that your search for a cure became your ticket to an existence of unending horror.
The Night of the Hunt.
It would be wise to visit the soft-spoken Doll first, but it was always Gehrman you sought out first.
Ever since you stumbled into the Hunter's Dream, freshly dismembered by the Scourge of Beasts at the Clinic you had awakened in, the mansion hardly offered any comfort. The Messengers though, remained adorable with their ghastly appearance nevertheless.
They were, after all, the very first inhabitants you have met in the Dream, the very first friendly spirits offering you guidance instead of a gruesome death.
With languid strides, you stepped up the pavement and passed the Doll with a curt nod serving as a hello. You remembered how the Doll had laid unmovingly at the corner she now stood in, awaiting your return, with the front doors of the Workshop tightly shut. There had been no way other than the way back, through the only messenger-inhabited gravestone.
The scent of dry wood wafted through the homely-looking Workshop that should have calmed those aching joints in your decaying bones, but alas, it was not so, and now, having discovered its real-life replica, you had a sound reason to.
It wasn't real.
As much as it tried to convince you of the opposite with its misleading sense of safety. It was a dreamscape in its truest sense - a Hunter's Dream. And judging by the myriad of gravestones littered across its plane, it was dreadfully apparent that at many points in time, there were other Hunters of the Dream.
It had to be Gehrman's, or the Doll's?
Then again, how come you shared a dream with somebody? It didn't make any sense. That you were still alive after countless deaths made no sense. NOTHING. MADE. SENSE!
The more you investigated the mystery behind your continuing existence and invested time into finding a way to end the hunt, the more answers seemed to elude you. It felt as if with every layer discovered, another lay in waiting.
Seek the Paleblood to ascend the hunt.
To escape this dreadful Hunter's Dream, halt the source of the spreading scourge of beasts, lest the night carry on forever.
Ascend to Oedon Chapel.
The Byrgenwerth spider hides all manner of rituals, and keeps our lost master from us. A terrible shame. It makes my head shudder uncontrollably.
Whatever happens, you may think it all a bad dream.
By now, you WISHED it would have been just that - a bad dream; a nightmare. You discovered it was way worse.
It had been on your second return, after making acquaintances with such as Iosefka and Gilbert, that you had met the man you now came to know as Gehrman. You had regarded him cautiously back then, as your last encounter with a man in a wheelchair had been less than ideal.
But the elder posed no visible threat to you. How could he? Feeble and frail (look who's talking), with a stump for a leg. If you had learnt a singular thing about being a Hunter, then it was that not all things were all they seemed to be - and Gehrman was one of them.
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.
Those were the words Doll has spoken about Gehrman, and despite your stoked curiosity, you questioned her no further about it. Remembering yourself, your nose scrunched from the stench on your clothes, all bile and intestines from rotten dogs and overgrown crows and unsavoury things you would not put a name on.
Setting down your Saw Cleaver and Hunter Pistol on the work station right next to the altar, you were ginger in your movement to rid you of the besmudged coat and hat, leaving you only in a grey sleeveless tunic, long faded in colour and stretched too thin by years of consecutive usage.
There was a bucket of water freshly prepared nearby (courtesy of the Doll) with a clean rag peeking from its rim. Courtesy of the Doll, you'd have to express your gratitude for her once your break was over, perhaps by gifting her a small hair ornament you had found in the Old Workshop. Its colour would stand out most brilliantly against her head of greyish hair.
Snatching and wetting the rag in the container, you let it glide off the blotches of blood against pale, thinning skin, proceeding to clean yourself of the filth of Yharnam. It was an activity that brought some measure of tranquillity to your chaotic life - if it could longer be called like that - where there was no hurry to reach a finish line.
That was until your hearing picked up a most unusual sound you ever heard in the Dream, one you wouldn't have heard without the empowerment of the innumerable blood echoes you have imbibed as of far. Straining your ears, you halted your actions in favour of figuring out what exactly you were hearing.
It sounded distressing and subsequently, an image of Gascoigne's daughter flashed through your mind. The muscle beating behind your rib cage skipped a beat, you had found her just in time to save her from being trampled by a pig in the sewers. Oh, how terrified you had been for her.
The sheer panic it arose within you was enough to force your legs to act on their own accord and investigate the source.
They swiftly led you outside the Workshop, past the lonely gravestone where the Doll sometimes prayed on with ever-increasing haste, the mere sound of crying, no matter the age, has always seemed to be the thing to move your grandmotherly heart the most.
It didn't sit well with you to hear others in pain, which was why being a Hunter felt so incredibly difficult for you, as you were inflicting it at every turn nowadays. It was violent and against your nature, and weren't it for the Dream patching you up, you imagined you'd have gone mad by now.
But not at this moment, there was someone who needed your help, and your feelings were menial in comparison. Your search ended in a nook of the Dream you had never visited before and where you certainly never suspected to find Gehrman. You had not seen him in the Dream for a long time.
"Gehrman?"
No response was offered to you other than a whimper that picked at your already straining heartstrings. The soft blades of higher grass parted as you silently approached the sleeping man in his wheelchair, leaning with both hands upon his ornate cane.
Despite residing in a literal dream, the one whose dream you supposed this was, remained discontented.
Tormented.
He sounded nothing short of tormented. A subject of torture for his own mind or conventionally, by its frightening imagination that served to let him suffer within its confines.
Another louder sob tore you from your fruitless speculations and his sullen face drew your concerned gaze. You knelt in front of him. His face expressed his mounting age as it contracted into a pain-depicting grimace. The crow's feet served as channels for the flow of tears embarking on their journey downwards. Bunny lines littered the top of his celestial nose, speaking of the over-usage of this particular muscle.
It was for the first time that you had been given the opportunity to take a closer inspection of the opaque man not much older than you. Head hung low, shoulders hunched and spine bent forward, he had his hands situated on top of the other as he clutched the head of his cane until his knuckles turned white.
Without much thinking, you gently placed your palm onto his, almost jumping back from how cold his translucent skin felt to the touch. Not unlike a corpse would feel but you didn't let it get to you. Gehrman needed condoling, or at least to be lent a compassionate hand much like you wanted to offer it to him.
Gehrman did very little in response to your warmth, at first. As if he had forgotten what it felt like, and you felt another bout of pity for him. Although you were feeling quite touch-starved yourself as you sensed how the many short muscles in his hand relaxed.
After a while, the sobs grew sporadic at best, but the occasional whimper or two escaped him once in a while. When his hands grew lax, you made sure to transfer them both into yours to console him better through your touch, it seemed to be working.
The tender wind, artificial but no less perceivable, caressed your exposed skin and forced a shudder throughout your body. You grew alarmed as your shaking seemed to rouse him a wee bit, but thankfully, not enough to bring him back to awareness.
This could have turned awkward real quick - not that you minded. You were too old to care for embarrassment.
Gehrman suddenly, however, began muttering to himself and cursing your curiosity, you shuffled closer, almost touching his knees as you brought your conjoined hands closer to your mouth, further warming them up with every breath that left you.
"Oh, Laurence... what's taking you so long... I've grown too old for this, of little use now, I'm afraid."
Don't say that, you wanted to tell him even though he wouldn't have heard it. Yet, the utter defeat in his voice was oppressive and you subconsciously tightened your grip on him, those slender fingers of yours intertwining with his bony ones. It felt right.
You weren't giving it much hope as you saw how the nightmare had him trapped, but your efforts weren't proving to be in vain at all as his yowls of agony slowly dimmed and slowly turned into peaceful snoring.
You smiled to yourself, thinking you had somehow managed to calm the torrent inside his mind without waking him up. So much so that you also benefited from the skin-to-skin contact and found yourself switching positions so that you could also rest with him in a more comfortable position. One that didn't strain your knees and hurt your back.
Taking his cane, you sat down in front of him, your back resting against his shins. Letting go of him, in the meantime, was not an option as you manoeuvred his hands to rest on your shoulders. Since becoming the Hunter of the Dream, the desire to fulfil your basic human needs down spiraled until there wasn't a need for them at all.
But this felt... nice. Nostalgic. A bit sorely missed.
Like discovering something you once knew intimately, and dozing off never felt easier than with him. A little nap wouldn't hurt now, would it? The worry that Gehrman would wake up gradually fell away with your consciousness and before you knew it, your gentle snores joined his, creating a cacophony of sounds that would surely annoy anyone else - but not the Doll - who secretly stood at the far end by the graves, and watched on with the gentlest of smiles as her creator found temporary peace in the arms of their Good Hunter.