Balyn really wished that the moon would stop changing color.

It was bad enough that the thing looked like it was about ten times its normal diameter. But when he'd killed the vacuous spider Rom, it had gone and changed from an ordinary bluish-silver to the dull red of a suppurating wound. And when the Blood Moon started bleeding out, it seemed it took all of Yharnam's sanity with it, with people becoming beasts, cackling mad Pthumerians puppeting weird, resurrecting versions of people, and giant Amygdalae clinging to nearly every building like someone had decided that a pigeon problem was just too boring for this town.

But if he'd been so foolish (which he wasn't, as he'd been paying attention) as to think things couldn't get any worse, then he'd have been proven wrong when he walked through the arch into Advent Plaza and the moon was snuffed out entirely.

Then the bells chimed, and something crawled out of it.

He'd already encountered what he'd figured was the remains of all the people kidnapped by the hooded Pthumerians, bits and pieces of them stuck together into vaguely beast-like animated horrors. It turned out that he'd missed a few…

…hundred.

The monstrosity squelched and slurped out of the shadowy pool that had consumed the moon, great gouts of slime drooling out with it like the dark hole was a massive maw regurgitating something foul it had eaten. Balyn could easily conceive of the thing as being half-digested; it was a giant mass of corpses and body parts stuck together into a vaguely slug-like form, only with the addition of two massive structures for arms and a number of smaller, writhing limbs.

Yes, it was not hard at all for the hunter to associate the One Reborn with the concept of a supernaturally upset stomach. He was glad enough that he himself hadn't stopped for a snack since the night of the hunt began or else some innocent messenger would just have been stuck scrubbing it off his boots the next time he died and returned to the Dream.

Which, as it turned out, happened almost immediately. Balyn was too busy fighting his general nausea even to be sure if it was the tiny twin of the shadow portal that started dropping body parts from above his head or the shower of fireballs thrown from the balcony by the One Reborn's summoners that finished him.

~X X X~

"Welcome home, good hunter; what is it you desire?"

Rather than respond at once to the Doll, Balyn took a long, deep breath, savoring the clean air faintly scented with the gentle aroma of moonlit flowers.

"That was actually about it," he said.

"Pardon me?"

"If anybody ever invites you to take a tour of Yharnam, you can freely skip Yahar'gul. I mean, seriously, the town has enough problems as it is. The scourge of the beast is running rampant, everybody's going crazy behind locked doors, the Healing Church seems to think 'being human' is what they're healing people of, and yet someone's out there conducting rituals to make everything worse! I swear, it's enough to make me want to take a giant saw and hunt those lunatics down and—" He glanced down at the saw cleaver in his hand. "Oh. Ohhhhh."

He looked down at the nearest tombstone, where a cluster of tiny, manikin-like messengers awaited his next request to take him into the waking world.

"Did you guys know about this when you picked me?"

The messengers just shrugged. The one on the left's hand hit the top hat the middle one was wearing and knocked it off, precipitating a general melee as it dropped into the pool of light they'd surfaced from.

"Are you…well, good hunter?" the Doll asked, with noticeable hesitation.

Balyn sighed. Sometimes he thought that she had to put up with a lot in her job.

"Sorry; it's just the frustration. The Stench Reborn really got to me. Bad enough that it's disgusting, and worse that it's powerful and that I have no idea how to fight it, but what really bugs me is that it's a liar."

She tipped her head to one side, as if trying to get a new perspective on what he was saying. From her tone, it didn't seem to be helping.

"What do you mean, a liar?"

"Its name! 'Cause not only are there those six ladies in red, but even I count really well up to one and that doesn't even get close to the number of bodies coming back around for Round Two in that thing, let me tell you!"

Apparently, Balyn wasn't the only one with counting skills, because before the Doll did anything else she closed her eyes and softly counted, very slowly, to ten.