Never forget, Aurora... Look for Paleblood to transcend the Hunt

... ... ...

... ... ...

Kneeling in a field of white flowers stained with blood, so much that she did not know if it was hers, of her current enemy or of the master she faced. At least she was certain that her own blood was mixed in this spill, not only because of the wounds she received during her two battles, but also because of the blood that still remained on her dying body.

A gaping hole was present in her chest exposing ribs and the obvious lack of a lung, an occasional trickle of blood could also be seen gushing out, surely coming from her heart that was somehow still beating. She would have to attribute such a feat to the continued use of Blood Vials on her journey through Yharnam, Cainhurst, Yhahar'Gul and the Hunter's Nightmare.

She didn't want to think about it, it was just a waste of the last of the energy that the corpse she inhabited stored but wouldn't the Hunter's Dream collapse if life ended? What would become of hers beloved, The Doll? She couldn't help but think that, mostly because the memory of cutting deep into Gherman's torso with the Saw Cleaver was still sickeningly fresh in her mind. The man put a lot of his efforts into keeping The Doll, all because of the guilt he carried.

Without Gherman, the anchor of this place, there would have to be a new candidate to lead the hunters, and that candidate had been her...

At least it had been, until she finally found her.

Paleblood.

The Moon Presence.

She had... failed at her words, at what kept her sane and cynical on her journey. She found the Paleblood but did not transcend the Hunt.

"What a... waste...", she said, sorting out her mind for what she was about to think. It didn't go unnoticed the exaggerated amount of blood that came out of his mouth for just saying that.

She had transcended the Paleblood.

She had killed The Moon Presence.

Its corpse still lay in front of her, spasming occasionally as it became a mere nothingness, as if merging into the landscape of the Hunter's Dream.

Did the Great Ones really die? If she had been asked that question before all this, she would answer with a resounding: no.

Now... she wasn't so sure.

Her victory against the Vacuous Spider had revealed the reality in Yharnam, the creepy Amygdalas all over the chaotic city and the Paleblood Moon, the warning that The Moon Presence was watching.

These revelations could only mean that Rom was truly gone, that she would not return. Even if it was only a Kin, these instances kept recurring throughout his journey...

"Ugh... so much... for nothing..."

Aurora made a last effort to maintain herself but it was too late, the loss of organs and blood was too much for her body, added to the fact that without The Moon Presence, her immortality was gone. She was only unconscious, but it wouldn't be long before her whole organism would begin to die for good.

There, kneeling in a field of pale red tinted flowers and a vast pool of dark, almost black blood, The Good Hunter died.

Her body rested there for so long, bleeding relentlessly as if there were an endless fountain of blood within her.

Then, in a moment after an indeterminate amount of time, all that changed.

Maybe it was minutes, decades, centuries, millenniums, it didn't matter in the end.

A single pale drop fell into that dark pool.

A drop of Paleblood.

... ... ...

... ... ...

She had passed by here so many times looking for something, but had no idea what it was.

This feeling she had experienced before, only not from herself, but from her beloved, The Hunter.

She only appeared calm because she was always fixed on her ultimate goal, the thing that had dragged her to this place.

The Doll couldn't help but feel down, from the beginning she knew how this was going to end... or so she thought.

When Gherman left, it was something she could have expected, but nothing could ever prepare her for what was about to happen next.

Flora descended to reward the winner, the one who had bested the First Hunter... and the winner had refused his reward, had refused the Night of the Hunt.

And so, they gave themselves up to the glare of battle.

Here is the result.

"Are you cold?", she asked the little jet squid that was in his path.

She stretched out her arms and picked up the little one. Holding it in her hands, she seemed to be caressing it.

"Oh, good hunter", said The Doll in an amused tone, followed by a small laugh full of innocence.

There, in the Hunter's Dream, they were both bathed in the light of a glowing moon, clean, free of The Moon Presence.

In the end, it had all been worth it. Whether or not this was what she was looking for was something Aurora would ask herself later.

In yes, did she still have the right to be called Aurora or was she beyond that? That, too, was one of the questions for later.

Still held by the unusually warm hands of The Doll, The Good Hunter, or at least that to which she had transcended, felt something at the sight of the moon, it was comparable to a thousand beats per minute, to the purest adrenaline rush that any being, higher and lower, could ever experience.

Then, just to respond to that something, she manifested certain appendices on his body.

They were a Thousand Eyes.

... ... ...

... ... ...

How long ago had they left the Hunter's Dream behind? She didn't have the answer and she didn't want it, she was happy like this, that was The Doll's firm belief.

Her right arm was wrapped around a left arm... peculiar, and even that wasn't the right word to describe it.

What made that left arm ¨peculiar¨ was how thin it was; it was covered in skin as dark as night itself and looked parched. If that was already strange, then the entire body of the being to which that arm belonged was something totally out of nature, an entity from the incompressible corners of creation.

A skeletal body with the remains of flesh itself, 4 totally equal arms, 2 strangely shaped appendages that served as legs and a head full of tentacles with only one orifice filled with small eyes.

This being... this Great One, an external god, was her beloved Aurora, The Good Hunter.

A long time ago, they both began to wander through the Hunter's Dream, they wandered so much that they were unaware of the moment they left it behind, but that mattered little, now it all belonged to Aurora. The world of dreams and nightmares, the domain beyond the Waking World was in her alien hands.

"Well... Now where are we going, my Good Hunter?", said The Doll in a rather jovial tone.

The Great One turned hers head as if trying to tell her something, but failed.

From one moment to the next, she felt that his own body was rejecting him, that she was collapsing in on himself as punishment for having gone further than she should have. Perhaps it was so, considering how far her was from the Hunter's Dream and the Waking World to which in some distant time she had come to belong.

"So we cannot reach Beyond this long night?", said The Doll, kneeling down beside The Presence of the Hunt, as the outer god called himself.

With her hands she held the face of the Presence. A face that could be described as many times as the eyes it had and still be incomprehensible to mortals and even to other gods.

It was because of that very halo of mystery, the fact that she stood at the pinnacle of the Great Ones, that they could set foot in this place, the limit of her dominion over the dreams and nightmares of hers native Waking World. For that very reason it was time to take the next step.

It was not optional, they had to take that step. They had gone beyond the point of no return many moons ago.

"Good Hunter... Aurora, it was good while it lasted", The Doll began in a voice laden with melancholy. "I know of the love you feel for me as a creation of what you once were... of what you now love, of what you long to be again".

The Doll closed her eyes and reached out both hands to caress The Foreign God who lay on the ground in agony from a recklessness.

"This long night has come to an end, but apparently neither you nor I will see the dawn that lay beyond the bloody hunt"

Like a deja vu, The Presence reached out to touch the doll's cheek as if trying to wipe away an imaginary tear.

There was only one certainty in this story.

This was a long time ago.

... ... ...

... ... ...

"Where did you get this story Eina?"

Bell Cranel, the Little Rookie and the one to break the record in leveling up, asked this question to his guild advisor, a half elf named Eina Tulle.

Today was a day like any other in the city of Orario, called the "center of the world", and that wasn't so wrong. The city itself was already noted for how varied its sprawling districts were, added to that was being the headquarters of several high-ranking and renowned [Familias] such as the [Ganesha Familia] who also acted as a order force, the [Hermes Familia], the [Loki Familia] and the one at the top, the [Freya Familia]. As the icing on the cake, Orario had a direct entrance to the Dungeon, the world's greatest enigma and the source of mankind's enemies.

Above the Dungeon loomed the intimidating and wondrous Tower of Babel, built to protect the entrance and at the same time be a monument to the gods and the mythical covenant of the [Familia].

So yes, for that and much more it is fair to call Orario the center of the world.

"They sell copies in the marketplace of Babel. A dwarf merchant was selling several and it looked interesting, so I thought you might like it too"

"Heh, thank you very much", he said with a beaming smile that would be on Eina's mind all day long as she looked longingly at the book. "Although... I had never heard of a hero called The Good Hunter".

"The merchant said his stories were famous in some villages outside of Orario. He says the parents use them to make the children go to bed early, hehe".

"Ehm, weird, it doesn't sound like a horror story. It's kind of like the aftermath of the hero's journey that ended with a tragic romance?".

Eina grimaced slightly, Bell was getting excited. If she didn't put a damper on it, they'd probably be stuck here talking about stories for hours. As much as Eina would like to do exactly that in order to spend more time with Bell, she had to put a stop to it . She had work to do.

Luckily for the half elf, she didn't need to do anything thanks to an intervention that almost made them jump out of their seats.

"Excuse the interruption, are you Eina Tulle?"

Both the half elf and the young adventurer stopped in their tracks and turned their eyes to the source of the question which in this case was a woman of peculiar appearance even for Orario standards. They soon dismissed such an idea.

She was tall, her attributes were hidden by nothing more than a sleeveless blue vest that exposed toned arms. Bell could have sworn he saw some markings on her right shoulder, were they tattoos? On Eina's side, she fleetingly thought she might be an Amazon but dismissed it as soon as she beheld the woman's pale skin, so pale it became as sickly as it was beautiful.

They both must have been engrossed for quite a while because the woman looked at them intently. Her eyes were like Bell's but at the same time not. The red in them was not intense like the boy's, but diluted, a pale red.

"So, you are Eina Tulle?, she said to Bell with a neutral tone but that somehow strangely conveyed her intentions to break the adventurer's trance and his advisor.

"E-eh?", Eina shook her head, confused about what happened. "Wah, I apologize for that!"

"... It's okay, I just need your help with something. Misha sent me", she said, settling back.

"Oh, right, sorry. Bell, I'll be right back", she said with poorly feigned calmness, which made the woman think how seriously Eina took her work.

The young adventurer nodded silently, still caught up in his thoughts, not just because he thought of the woman's unearthly beauty but because... he felt it.

She was someone strong, quite strong in fact.

She was possibly someone who had reached level 3 outside of Orario which was quite a feat in itself, the doubt Bell still had was which [Familia] she might belong to. He could do no more than shrug his shoulders, no matter how much he thought about it he probably wouldn't come up with the answer he wanted. That being the case, Bell shifted her focus to the book Eina had given her to kill some time.

Its title was 'The Pale from the moon'.

... ... ...

... ... ...

That same afternoon a heavy rain was falling on Orario accompanied by thunders and lightning.

Daphne Lauros, an adventurer of the [Apollo Familia] and her companion Cassandra Ilion had been assigned to follow the Little Rookie and his two friends, Liliruca Arde and Welf Crozzo. They had seen them enter a bar and knew well who was inside, so their job was done.

As a kind of karma retribution for setting this trap for a confrontation between Bell Cranel and adventurers of the [Apollo Familia] , it was just at that moment that the heavens made themselves heard and the great rain was released, leaving both adventurers drenched.

"This sucks", said Daphne in an annoyed tone trying to find a place to take shelter.

They had already done quite a bit of searching, in fact, Cassandra was pretty sure that the Host of Fertility was nearby. They could rent a room from Mama Mia or just wait inside while the rain passed.

"You... both of you look terrible".

Cassandra let out a high-pitched squeal as a female voice spoke to her and Daphne from the apparent darkness.

Without being asked, the woman dressed in an outfit that in Daphne and Cassandra's opinion made her look like a giant raven, tossed two small coats at the [Apollo Familia] members.

"Eh... no offense, but I've never seen you anywhere in Orario before. What's your name, stranger?", Daphne questioned with a feigned calmness that was very obvious. The mysterious woman only saw how tightly the redhead's hand was clenched to find out.

She chose to remain silent for a few moments, debating with herself whether she should tell these two strangers her name.

Aurora Selene.

Vile Blood

The Good Hunter.

Pale Blood.

The Moon Presence.

So many names she had had... it was strange, but somehow she wanted to honor them all.

And she couldn't consider herself Aurora either. Was it too weird if she considered herself Aurora's daughter? After all, that wasn't a lie as such.

She made a decision that determined to continue doing something as simple as lowering the scarf that covered her mouth. But it was something very symbolic for her.

The name her "mother" gave her.

The ones she earned since her arrival in Yharnam.

And those she became worthy of upon encountering Paleblood.

"My name is... Flora Leukos, daughter of Aurora".