Well the year is coming to a close, and I've had myself a lovely little vacation from life. That aside I promised you, dear reader, a holiday special. A bit late though.
The Hunter, cursed for the past week with fleeting attacks of anxiety and panic, sat testily in a chair with a book of church prayers. He would stand in the parlor of the workshop without so much as a thought in his head, clutching his head as the eyes of insight peered into him and whispered terrible visions into his head. He saw spiders crawling around in the void, and heard inhuman whispers drown out everything in his head. He would often stagger to a bench or a soft bit of earth to lay down and rest the thoughts away.
In his dreams the Hunter would float among the white void. He was floating on his back, and opening his eyes would cause no discomfort as the eyes peering at him softly watched him float on. The whispers were clear in this place, and he felt light as conversations he did not understand rang out around him like an incomprehensible orchestra. Every so often he would see a passing tentacle or the obscure shadow of some form pass his sight. Such shadows would stop for a moment and stare at him before passing, a small whisper or a low noise telling him it had something to say.
When he would awake, the Hunter would feel limber. Unstoppable. He went into the dream and went into the fray, slashing away at beasts and seeking new answers to find the old Byrgenwerth school. Though his searches were concluded when his burst of energy would taper off, his limber body would go rigid, and he would stagger back to the dream to recover.
On his way he was signalled to a nearby bell tower, and a rope ladder fell. When he got to the top, hands haphazardly reaching for new supports, Eileen reached and dragged him into a nearby bed. She looked at his body for injury, a vial of blood in her hand waiting to cure what ails her comrade. No bruises or cuts, no signs of plague, pulse racing, eyes dilated, he's going mad. She looked at his face, drenched with sweat and panic, and drew her knife. She had been watching him from her towers. The Hunter would fly into hordes of beasts and slash them to ribbons, he was more aggressive than what she normally saw, and when he would stop the killing and the crowds of infected citizens were strewn out in bloody heaps, he would slink off into the shadows until she saw him next. If he was going man, he would not be easy to stop. She thought of Henryk and of the other Hunters she had to put down and cringed. He was a friend, she was going to kill a friend.
The Hunter let out a moan as he felt the eyes press into him once more, only the pain was more intense. He felt the waves of nausea build up in his chest, and then he heard the whispers clearly. Let me in Hunter, I have waited long, and you will listen. Let me in.
Eileen looked at him once more, closing in slowly on his prone form. His eyes were open and bloodshot with exhaustion. He was covered in blood save for his face, which was reddening with what she expected was fever. Eileen made eye contact with him briefly, he calmed for a moment and she whispered "Forgive me" before moving her blade to his neck.
And he disappeared.
The Messengers grasped wildly at his cloak and shirt, ripping apart his garb in transit in the aether, and when he was bare, they left him in a great lake of white. He floated there for what seemed to him an eternity, before the familiar shadows and whispers came before him at random.
Then silence.
Gehrman sat in silence in the small workshop tucked into his tea, although today was new to him. He noticed that the entirety of the workshop seemed as if it was coated in a cheery morning dew. His cup seemed uncharacteristically polished, and his joints felt fine. The flowers about the shop even seemed to stand an inch taller, and that pale imitation walked with more life than it deserved. He thought it queer, but there were no voices, and he savored the tranquility. He wondered aloud if Maria would return from her hunt soon, she so enjoyed tending to the lumenflowers after a hunt. Last she left two days ago he remembered she had taken seeds to sow in the church hall, she spoke fondly of the patients therein. She would be back soon, she forgot her whetstone.
Gehrman then decided that it would do him good to stand and stretch his old bones, he was tired of sitting and waiting for the moon to speak once more. And he stood from his chair. Slowly rising to his full height, looking down then on the Doll, who took his cup obediently as he reached for his blade on the wall. It had been a while since he had fiddled with the old thing. So he walked outside the workshop and used an old key fastened to his cap's brim to unlock the inner garden. He thought of how Lawrence would love the new addition of the garden, though since he became a Vicar he had been terribly busy. Gehrman drew the whetstone from his pocket and dragged it over the length of his curved armament twelve times each side, then touched his nail to the blade, making sure to sharpen the old tool just so it maintained a sturdy killing edge. When he finished sharpening it, he held it close to his waist and with a fluid motion thrust the handle into the catch, his joints popping accompanying the sinister reaper.
Usually Laurence would sharpen or temper the blade while Gehrman would stretch, but now Gehrman had to entertain himself until either he or Maria returned, they were terribly concerned for his state, though he insisted that he was spry in old age. "Age before beauty" he thought before swinging the great scythe in wide arcs, twirling the massive staff in his hands as if it was a pencil, and then arcing the crooked blade right through a wooden pillar.
The Doll went about her duties with a brisk air of concern. All the time she thought of the vanishing Hunter and his persistent illness. It reminded her of the convulsions Gehrman sat through decades prior. Before she could even move or speak she remembered the fog and the messengers watching his trembling form mutter and foam at the sky; this frightened her to no end, but she worked nonetheless tirelessly. She stopped for a moment however when she heard an iron gate screech open, and noticed that Gehrman's armament was not in its place on the wall.
Not a moment she hesitated to move towards that gate which filled her with fear. Not once in her memory had she recalled that gate ever been touched, and not once had she seen Gehrman brandish his feared sickle. However there he was, standing almost impossibly tall and impossibly not frail, swinging that massive blade impossibly forcefully and moving impossibly fast. He rolled and swiped his blade through a wooden pillar as thick as a tree with ease, not for a moment hesitating to draw an unseen firearm and destroying the airborne column in a powerful hail of buckshot. He then lunged forward and with a thrust of his trunk-like legs he split another column in half before condensing his blade into its smaller form and slashing away at some unseen adversary. He moved, a man possessed, it seemed to her that he was not could not be human. Gehrman was too fast, too strong, too frail in his seat to suddenly become so terrifying.
She walked away, thinking all the time how the Hunter could compare to such an avatar. When she first started listening to the inhabitants of the workshop, Lawrence once called him "The Saint of the Hunt", someone agreed, but she could not remember who. Regardless, she thought that she saw a volume on ailments common among hunters, and became filled with determination to find a cure for her Hunter.
I am that which you can not know, and you will awake anew. Knowledge of your mission, and knowledge of a new path. Go Hunter, accept my voice, and walk as I do.
He stood then in a queer circular pavilion. Rather, another man stood there, staring at him, being prone on the floor. Without any real thought the Hunter leapt to his feet with ease, noticing a total lack of pain as he did so. Alfred looked to him skeptically, shaking his head and chortling "You're quite spry for one who was found in a gutter". The Hunter looked to him, thanked him for bringing his unconscious form to a safe place, and without wishing to appear rude gave his friend a few blood vials before walking down a stairway to a great door of sorts.
Gehrman finished his training, and walked back to the workshop whistling some long forgotten tune. He wondered what his students would fascinate him with when they returned, all while locking the gate he entered for precaution. As he turned the key though, something shifted within his head and the gate's polished iron turned to rust. He didn't mind, and walked once more to his destination things seemed to take on a darker hue, and the very earth seemed to harden underneath his feet. He figured that perhaps he was tired from his exercise, and that his age was getting to him. Either way, Lawrence and Maria were going to be back in the shop, the Doll will be sitting on the table in the corner, and everything will ease up after some tea. He managed to sit down in his chair before a terrible panic hit him and his body went into a sleep like paralysis.
Meanwhile Eileen was setting traps all around the old city, not for the rabid beasts in the streets, but for that Hunter lurking in the shadows. After he had disappeared, Eileen was certain that he had become blood drunk from the prolonged hunt. To her though it was a job, just another blood crazed fool who's good intent mixed business and pleasure. While wiring a pitfall in an old rooftop she stopped for a moment to look at the surroundings. She had noticed that the usually barren rooftops were more bloodied than usual, and it lacked the diseased stench of beasts.
She stood then, and lit a small hand lantern to see the extent of the carnage, perhaps something had done her job for her. She looked in the alcoves and in the small jutting towers for signs of struggle or corpses. She found it strange that the bells that were usually in the towers to ward off vermin in times of the hunt were gone, and more often or not something or someone had been tampering with the symbols kept in the architecture meant to ward away the foul blood. She then came upon a belltower in the city atop a block of homes, and in the tower, she for the first time felt an alien sickness warm in her stomach.
A hunter was strung by her heels in the bell, her head dangling by a rope, and a clean single cut allowed her blood to pour from the wound into a bucket. Eileen felt a chill rise up her arms, and kicked the bucket's contents to the floor to confirm a creeping hypothesis. The blood in the bucket seemed to move slightly as it splattered to the floor, small clumps of coagulation churning on their own. She said aloud the word "Cainhurst" before a pair of bullets hit the bell, dropping the macabre bell onto Eileen. She removed the corpse, jumping to her feet and taking cover from the assailant, but she saw only a silhouette in the distance brandishing a fine blade.
He drifted for a long while with a pounding head in the vast white abyss, clad only in his undergarments as a soft but ominous voice rang out to him. He attempted to move, and found that he could, and so he stood. He battled for a moment then with the voice, mentally pushing outward until he then heard a pure sound. Like the washing of undulating waves, and he thought of the sea, accepting the scenery as he heard it.
Then he was standing in his garb in the white expanse, and sitting ten paces in front of him was a man dressed much like himself, atop a pale white stone.
Well it's the next year and I've kept you waiting long enough. I can't say that it'll be any more frequent or infrequent, as my schedule has been just as manic as I have. Though I'll still try and get more chapters out. I have not abandoned my projects yet so don't worry. I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday as I have had. That said I may come back and edit this one, writer's block sucks. Anyway, criticism is always encouraged.
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