Omake Week 2019, Day 2: And here we have the reason why Omake Week is early this year. I always post the Bloodborne omakes on the first day of each month, and this...is the finale. Meaning I'd have to skip a month if I wanted to make Omake Week any later, or alternatively do Omake Week without an entry for what's been my most successful omake series of the last two years. My hit count will really miss you, "Even an Omake..." readers! Of course, Chapter 14 was also a (temporary) finale, so it's not impossible that in a year or two I may go ahead and post a new one, but this definitely seems a more "final" finish, for reasons that will be pretty obvious from the story itself. Plus, with last week's entry, I managed to get through the entire list of bosses. I'm going to miss this dork (who somehow managed to nonetheless get past Defiled Amy, which I have not) and his long-suffering Doll.

~X X X~

"It always comes down to the hunters' helper to clean up these kinds of messes."

He'd sounded so placid, Balyn thought. Not at all, for example, like a man who was about to stand up out of his wheelchair and try to chop Balyn's head off with a scythe.

Not that the whole thing wasn't incredibly impressive, the slow, methodical march towards him like the inevitability of doom, intercut with the sudden vanishing-and-reappearing dashes that put him right in hand's-reach of his quarry using the art of Quickening. If this was what the First Hunter was like in his active days in Yharnam, it was no wonder everyone who came after followed the general tenets of his style.

Balyn's last blood vial was gone, along with most of his dignity as he scrambled on hands and knees away from where he'd been knocked down. He expected the fatal blow at any moment, and when it didn't come he looked back over his shoulder.

Gehrman was floating in the air, arcane energy swirling around him, being drawn into his body. Whatever happened next, Balyn was pretty sure it wasn't going to end well for him, so he took his chance, got a good two-handed grip on his rifle spear, and threw himself at the First Hunter in a lunging charge. The spearpoint buried itself in Gehrman's chest, but he still hung there, absorbing power, sustained by whatever force he was conjuring.

As a last resort, Balyn pulled the trigger for the spear's integrated shotgun. Since the stab wound had put the barrel inside Gehrman's torso, when he fired the shot had a considerably more potent effect than usual. Gehrman's body spasmed, then he collapsed out of the air into the flowers like a marionette whose strings had just been cut.

"The night…and the dream…were long…" he whispered, an almost blissful look on his face, and then he was gone. Not just dead, but gone, his body dissolving into shimmering motes of elemental moonlight. It reminded Balyn of nothing so much as when he'd beaten Micolash in the Nightmare of Mensis, and he suspected the same thing was happening now, that Gerhman's consciousness was being released from the Hunter's Dream.

The major difference there was that Micolash had been pretty upset that Balyn had played alarm clock for him (to which Balyn's attitude was "tough for him," as he didn't waste sympathy on people who were driving the city crazy as a side effect of their magical rituals), but Gehrman had been happy about it. And in all fairness, it was consistent. Gehrman had expressed some pretty negative attitudes about what Balyn thought seemed like a pleasant enough place.

He really should have learned by now that he shouldn't think things like that.

Even as the last traces of Gehrman's body faded away, darkness began to fall, shadows descending across the face of the moon and red staining the sky like blood. Balyn looked up at the moon, and immediately wished he hadn't.

It was coming down.

Not as a giant orb, of course (an orb that had been hanging in front of the clouds, somehow, something that he really should have paid more attention to), but as a towering figure, of ropy, bare muscle, a head crowned by writhing tentacles like hair, and a face that was nothing but a huge, flat mask with open holes like eyes and mouth.

Balyn felt frozen in place while the presence from the moon descended. This was different from the other creatures he'd fought, even things like Ebrietas and Amygdala. This was a Great One in every sense of the word, an existence so far beyond humanity that it was barely comprehensible, and his will was swallowed up by its descent.

It reached for him with huge, six-fingered hands that closed around his body, lifting him up as if he were a babe, bringing him up to its face. Balyn could feel its will invading his own, seeping into his thoughts and engraving its shackles into the fabric of his brain, unknowable words like shapes, runic signs that sang in the darkness of—

"No!"

Suddenly, tremendous force seized Balyn by the cape of his hunter's attire and yanked him out of the Moon Presence's grip, flinging him back to crash into the flowers. The shock of it scattered the influence on his mind, ice water dashed into his face to dispel the growing dream.

"No!" repeated the Doll, shouting into the thing's face. "Not him! You are not going to take this hunter to replace Gehrman!"

Balyn couldn't help but be touched by her concern.

The Moon Presence convulsed, and the air seemed to vibrate. Somehow, he knew that it was speaking. Whatever it said, though, made no impact on the Doll.

"I do not care if you need someone to instruct and guide future hunters, Flora. Send out the messengers. Recruit someone from the Nightmare if you must, but find someone else." She grabbed the Moon Presence by the upper arms, articulated fingers closing around twisted flesh. "I have endured the bad jokes. I have tolerated the puns. I have listened to his inane remarks. I have suffered through episode after episode of rank stupidity. If I have to listen to one more minute of this I. Will. Go. Mad. You have to set him free!"

She punctuated the end of her speech by vigorously shaking the Moon Presence, treating Balyn to the sight of the massive Great One flopping around like a landed fish.

A messenger bubbled up out of the ground next to him and offered him a sympathetic pat on the leg.

"Eh, it's okay," Balyn told the little fellow. "I mean, she's not wrong. Though that was a little blunter than I'd have liked to have heard it. She could have put it more nicely. You know, doll it up a little?"

It was the first time Balyn had ever seen a messenger facepalm.

~X X X~

A/N: This story obviously stands in contrast to the earlier events of Chapter 14, which was the previous end to this story. But much like in Chapter 18, we know that the Nightmare swirls and churns unending, and that which we dream is not always that which we conclude. Either that or Chapter 15 onwards was his NG+ run, and the Doll really had had enough by this point!