Hello again! I got a banger for you peeps today, sorry it takes so long but sometimes life just gets overwhelming. I hope everyone had a good holiday and if not then I hope it turns around for you. I hope everyone enjoys this chapter that i'm especially proud of. I do not own RWBY or Bloodborne and they belong to their own respective studios.
A Moment of Respite
The Grimm had lost track of them after the stragglers were gunned down and even the creeps had stopped coming after them once their numbers had been quelled.
The bloodied hunter rested back against the wall of the metal basket she found herself riding in. The weight of her armaments kept her from bouncing up and down in the jostling basket.
She stared back at the surrounding forest as the mine disappeared from view. They were traveling down the mountain path, and save for the occasional grimm from the forest they were traveling faster than the grimm could track and follow them..
For now they were relatively safe.
For now they could briefly show how they truly felt. Some were extremely grateful, most had dark looks on their faces from losing someone close. They didn't seem to linger too long on it, a shed tear or two later they recollected themselves. To Alaine it was strange, disturbing even that they moved on so quickly.
'Ah but who am I to judge? This is their reality, and humans adapt to change remarkably. Maybe this was just a dark adaptation to their harrowing environment'
Whatever the case now that Alaine wasn't confined to the damned corridors of that cave so her elusive and hard hitting style would be free to reign.
The silence was rather suffocating here. Not a word was spoken, solemn faces surrounded her. In Yharnam the only silence you would hear was after everything nearby was dead so this situation actually made her a little unnerved. However she wasn't the best at conversation after all this time, much less with unfamiliar folk.
That silence persisted up to the point where they arrived back to the town. The steel machines stopped inside town where the last of the wounded were carried off somewhere followed by a trail of both hopeful and mourning townsmen.
The air was thick with loss. There were people looking around, families crying and loners in despair. Even with those heavy emotions on them none seemed to completely lose themselves to madness. On the contrary they seemed to collect each other, pick them up from despair with some unknown bond that was not through blood but through community.
Alaine's eyes widened at the sight, suddenly remembering something she had forgotten during the last night of the hunt. The moment completely stunned her and left her gawking at the scene before her. Most Yharnamites were selfish things when it came down to it. However she had met a handful of good natured ones and even a helpful outsider so even as everything had become a nightmare there were still glints of light in the darkness that had swallowed her beloved city.
The only time she had seen something like the people gathering with determination in their eyes like this was the Powderkegs and old Oto workshop. People tied together through loss, although the direction of that determination was towards survival instead of murder. Although for Yharnam that was one and the same murder those that turned so they would not murder their fellows.
They began migrating to a town hall and the moment allowed Alaine to collect herself. Sliding off the little bridge on the back of the vehicle.. leaving a lot of sticky.. thick blood half mixed with the more watery kind she had collected from the mine. The truck lifted up and jostled from weight she and her weapons relieved themselves from it.
"You okay Alaine?"
she shook her head in a way to snap out of the strange fixation and then turned to the Drunk- No to the Huntsmen with his leg kicked out on the small drawbridge of the machine. He was undisturbed by the blood print next to her and looked at her with stern eyes.
Those eyes changed once more, what an intricate person.
"To be completely honest. Yes and no. I'm remembering things in bits and pieces. Things that were a part of me. Comradery, bonds through grief, determination to survive for those lost. Lastly, feelings of happiness and longing. I feel as though I want things to be different for them than how things turned out for me. Even if I don't remember how I lost that"
"It sounds like you got a past. Probably from an outlying settlement. Grimm could just wander in since even with walls something powerful could climb, fly, or break through. Or a wandering hoard could just swallow it up.."
He paused for a second, likely thinking about scenes he had come across himself. She was seeing this silver touched crow in a new light.
"Huntsmen are stretched too thin to cover every single one. So they rely on the militia made up of local townspeople and retired huntsmen, sometimes a huntsman or two if they have familial connection to the outlying town."
Alaine felt as though she was having a feeling she had heard this before, lived through it even. There was a time where hunters were ten a penny, then suddenly there was the war between the Healing Church and the Kinblood of Cainhurst, quickly branded as the Vilebloods.
Both sects were gone for the next set of hunts save for a couple token Executioners and Kinbloods. Those ones were particularly grueling. Suddenly many hunters had either been killed or missing without a trace. The Executioners all ended up dead or gone, and the Kinbloods had held a similar fate. Although at least some had survived since the Crow of Cainhurst had become venerated as a Hunter of Hunters somehow. That was back when the workshop still had power that the church had to respect.
She suspected some manner of ritual was performed to force the church not to harm any member of Hunter of Hunters or else she doubted she would have met him after he had gone mad.
The Hunter's became fewer and fewer, and the monsters too monstrous until it was just the wicked Church and the Hunters of Hunters… then later Mensis beckoned the moon closer, demanding audience with the moon presence. Byrgenwerth somehow knew about the ritual and hid the ritual using the only human ascended great one of their time. Rom the vacuous spider. She undoubtedly was a great one, but only scratched the surface of godhood and it took a lot of work to communicate with as noted by Master Willem himself.
But it was too late, the moon was drawn close. All they did was delay the inevitable maddening of the entire world. It made the night endless, and drove those who consumed the most blood turn slowly.. before it devolved into chaos. Brain suckers, scourge beasts, and more took over Yharnam. Leaving the few people that survived to struggle inside their homes.
The church closed off the bridges between them and the common people and left them to rot. Frenzied militias were formed but even while the red moon was hidden the closeness of the moon made it easier to slip into beasthood.
By the time she was… brought back to service the city was lost.
But there wasn't a church here, instead their enemy is infinite and from what she could tell, deathless. Like water the substance can be separated but their… wretched substance simply floated off. And yet despite that they persisted, fought and thrived. It reminded her of the age her great grandfather had told her of. Wretched church.
"Yes. There was a lot of infighting on what to do.. a lot of fear.. and a madman and his followers made our defense weak and… our home was lost."
Alaine turned and followed the people, leaving boot step after boot step of blood on the stone beneath her feet. The occasional drip off of her coat splattering there, Alaine sighed and looked back at the rogue.
"Do you know of a place where I can clean up? Despite seeming indifferent I do not enjoy looking like a massacre and smelling like a corpse."
This much blood on her reminded her of all the other times she was drenched in blood. You never got used to that sickly sticky feeling. It would also affect the morale of the people, you simply can't trust someone drenched in blood even if a good chunk of it was also her own.
Qrow stared at her for a moment before answering her
"I mean any shower would work.. but that'll be a risk considering it won't take too long for grimm to track us down"
Alaine sighed and then paused for a moment as she brought out a bell from one of her belt packs and then held it out for Qrow
"I need to rearm. I'll use my semblance to travel to my workshop and travel back. Ring that bell if there is an emergency"
Qrow just grabbed it by the base, avoiding the now bloody ring normally used to hold the engraved bell that seemed strange to the touch to him.
"Don't be long."
To that Alaine lowered her neck gaiter and just nodded as she walked forward. Ah she hoped he didn't have the insight to see through her trickery. She smiled and called the little ones of the dream by stretching her bloody hand in front of her.
A iron lantern was hoisted up out of the very ground itself, even swaying forward before coming back and righting itself. To Qrow it did it all by itself in a ghastly shimmer of light, but in reality the messengers of the dream had raised the lantern by her command. They were reverent of her before, but now she knew they were always under the surface and following, eagerly awaiting orders like servants.
She couldn't do this just as a hunter, but her ascension meant that she had a whole number of powers that she now had. Although it wasn't like she knew them, she just had an instinct to extend her elevated thoughts to the messengers and asked them to create a connection between the dream and this world.
She turned her hand sideways and snapped her fingers. A pale blue flame flickered to life and the very space around it rippled as if it were under a lake before the space itself settled back to normal.
Qrow was unphased by what he had seen, which Alaine raised an eyebrow at. "Ah, to him it must be the only explanation." With that thought out of the way, she made an all too familiar motion to her. While kneeling down she kept her hand outstretched and bowed her head to the bell covered lantern.
The bloodied hunter's body faded in a pale blue tinted fog, leaving a bloody spot where she kneeled and a lonely, somber lamp in the middle of the town and a man with a grim expression on his face.
It was her first time traveling through planes of existence since arriving in that new, strange world. That familiar calling of the dream pulling her to the place she darkly called home.
Suddenly Alaine was in an oak chair with her top hat pulled over her eyes. She rose from the chair and raised her hat to find herself in a field full of white flowers, lumenwoods dotted the field. Finally she saw the graves surrounding the field, then a black pointed iron fence and gate. She was now clean of blood, her clothes clean and without holes, her body absent of even a single scratch or bruise.
She turned around and found herself in front of a tree with a memorial carved into the sprawling and vibrant tree in stylized font. "Here Lies Gehrman" and just below that. "The First Hunter" then it was finished off with a few touching words "His nightmare is over, shall he rest in peace forevermore"
Resting against the tree was his beloved burial blade, wrapped in his red scarf that blew with the gentle wind, and his hat placed delicately on a small sanded down branch that now acted as a hanger for it.
Alaine managed to smile through her grim and somber mood. She knew who had made such a thoughtful grave for the First Hunter. She would have to commend her for it.
Her boom hammer was on its head leaning against the chair while her cannon sat below it like an oversized footrest. She brushed off the top of the cannon and hoisted it up, resting her wrist on her shoulder as she picked up her Boom Hammer next and held it straight and low as she walked.
She turned around once to look back at the tree and took a mental picture as they called it. It was a scene she would never want to forget for the rest of her existence.
Alaine turned back around and walked through the iron gate, pushing it gently with the hammer before pushing it back in place behind her with her boot.
The place before her was both familiar and new, strange yet comforting. Instead of a half dead grove it was instead vibrant and full of life. White flowers from the field were sprouting out among the greener grass. A great tree hung over a pristine yet homely building. With two sets of curving stairs rising to meet closed doors and a small yard with a fountain in the middle. Inside the bird fountain were messengers carrying all sorts of things although she paid them no mind and looked around.
The previously dead tree now towered over the workshop, actually on the two far facing sides one could see more trees, including the one for Gehrman's grave. Lush bushes and beautiful moss grew along the workshops front, both were flowering in pinks, purples, and even peach and orange colors. Vine plants and more sprawled from hanging gardens on each side of the entrances.
It wasn't just the plants, the stone looked as if it were freshly laid, there were no cracks and even the headstones looked mended, dusted, and re carved. It looked… fresh. It was as if this place had just been made but also had been here and taken care of for a very long time. The doll was a diligent and gentle worker.
Alaine walked through her refurbished home and walked up the stairs, eyeing the graves that once lead her to Yharnam. Out of curiosity she reached out her hand to each one of them, curiously she could still see the many places she had been. They were all still there, including the nightmare realms which affirmed some of her suspicions about how they were connected.
Alaine pulled her arm back, picked up her hammer and stepped up towards the doors of the workshop. When she got there the doors were pushed outward, making the Hunter take a step back and look up at the being who had opened them.
It was the Doll. Although she was in a completely different style. The Doll's hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was wearing a plain but tasteful maroon dress with a white apron on the front.
"Welcome home, good Hunter. Do you need the workshop?"
Alaine nodded intently and looked up at the Doll as the Doll stared back with a thoughtful expression. Wait expression? The doll couldn't make an expression before, her porcelain face did not allow that.
Completely distracted Alaine set her hammer down again and reached out, poking the Doll's cheek. Instead of being met with firm porcelain the Doll's flesh squished gently under her touch.
"Your form has changed"
With that said the doll actually smiled at her, it was beautiful, heartwarming, and full of love. Alaine was actually stunned by such an innocent and joyful smile.
"I'm glad you noticed my Goddess"
At that Alaine shifted rather uncomfortably at that, she sure didn't feel divine. She sighed and rested her head against the cannon resting on her shoulders.
"I won't tell you what to and not what to call me but when we have guests, please call me… Alaine…"
It felt weird telling the Doll her name. For so long she was known simply by her purpose, as Good Hunter. Then suddenly she felt as though she wasn't being fair, and then she realized why.
"Doll doesn't quite fit you anymore then does it? You're something more."
It was the Doll's turn to be stunned now, her eyes wide and her smile full of excitement. She took a couple steps back to allow Alaine into the workshop and then sat down at a small table with two chairs.
Alaine picked up her hammer and set it inside the workshop and did the same with her cannon. She took the free seat and looked at the Doll curiously.
"Do you have a name in mind?"
The Doll shook her head ecstatically and then put her hands on the table while staring rather intently at her. Even her hands were now one instead of segmented joints. It seemed as though not only was the doll more human? Her soft spoken and reserved personality was more a reflection of humanity. She had a spark of it before but now.. she was completely indistinguishable from another.
"Sadly no, it is something I have never thought about before."
This transformation wasn't just physical either. It seems that her personality had come out ten fold. That and the Doll looked really happy to see her, poor girl must've been lonely here.
"Alaine. Since this new form happened because of you… I think you should name me. You are my creator's greatest student, a great one.. and we are in a pact. Much like Flora and Gehrman, although thinking back on it. I hope our connection is happier than that of the one between Gehrman and Flora."
Alaine nodded, so she wasn't completely blind to that thing and what it did to Gehrman and nearly Alaine herself.
But what a question from her. Name her. It took some thought as well as a bit to pick between the two names she had in her head. She smiled soberly and then gave her answer to…
"Lilith. That is now your name. You're no longer an object with a spark of life. You have the fire of humanity within you. "
The Doll looked puzzled at her little speech but nonetheless looked happy to be named. She even mentioned it to herself a couple times as if she couldn't believe she had one of her own.
Alaine had a theatrical side of her that she leaned into sometimes purely for her own enjoyment. With that figured out she stood up and wrapped her hands around her weapons.
"Lilith, could you help me with repairs? I'll tell you what to do, I just need some extra help with repairs."
It was also an excuse to touch up on one of her lesser used weapons. It was one of three blueprints stolen by the church so she has no guilt in stealing back such as the repeating pistol, flame sprayer, and the church cannon, all pilfered from the powderkeg workshop. Even if she could only use one of them it was still a consolation that they were back in the proper hands, even if they were defiled by the church.
Alaine gritted her teeth at that thought, causing Lilith to ask if she had done something wrong. After assuring her that it wasn't her and that she had stumbled upon a bad memory instead she thanked Lilith for her help.
The pale woman bowed to her and then turned around and walked out of the workshop. She looked over the workshop that looked more like some esoteric armory full of different weapons on the walls, shelves or unceremoniously leaned up against something.
She looked over the weapons she had chosen. All of them were ravenous in quicksilver usage except for one, her beautiful cannon… the gatling gun, the flame sprayer, and the workshop blunderbuss. She would need all four and as much ammunition as she could get her hands on.
She went to the altar in the workshop and kneeled, pressing her head against the bloodied cloth. The blood moved about, forming symbols on her forehead as she tried to memorize variations of the same rune. The blood glowed a golden hue.. then red and then an empty gray.
She now had eleven more quicksilver bullets on top of the thirty she had, ten of which were because she made room by getting rid of ten vials. With five blood bullets on top she had a staggering forty six bullets.
She had used a great one's rune, formless Oedon. With this rune memorized she could condense more mercury in each bullet. With a little blood manipulation she could split that mercury alloy into more bullets.
A quick stop at her supply coffin to grab molotovs, delayed molotovs, and something she made on a good idea but didn't have much use for on the night of the hunt. Tripwire molotovs.
Next was her choice of melee… she needed something efficient, destructive, and capable. Her boom hammer fits that description rather nicely but only when she activates it. Plus… depending on how badly they would be besieged and how long it takes for help to arrive she doesn't need to be spreading more flames in an inferno.
She set her hammer down to lean against the workbench she uses and looked up onto the wall. Hanging above the bench itself was a masterpiece of engineering, initially designed and made for Valtr the beast eater. The idea behind it was to rip apart any beast however big or small with both sawing and crushing capabilities. The Whirligig Saw.
To explain how it worked would take hours of going over blueprints. However the basics is that a very heavy trigger is pulled, pushing the head of the mace into pushing a pressure plate full of gears, springs and pulleys all to make the twin serrated circular saw turn inside the housing. She grinned as while she preferred her boom hammer for its activated destruction, this beautifully engraved saw was rugged and could take a beating.
She reached up for the big dual circular saw by standing on the workbench and grabbed the handling bar on the housing. She put it on her back and held the bar in a reverse grip. She'll have to wear the harness in order to hold it on her back without holding onto it like she was. She grabbed the handle and mace, having a rifle trigger system in the handle, even its own hammers that clicked forward and back depending on the position.
Alaine stepped down carefully, using the workbench and wooden chair to shift the weight down to the floor. With her 'semblance' explained she could ask the little ones for her heavy weaponry and switch whenever she felt like it with the help of the little ones
With the harness on, flamesprayer on her belt, pistol in her coat and gatling gun in her left hand she was equipped for the battle ahead. She looked rather menacing but she couldn't help that, she was armed to the teeth with engraved weaponry from her workshop.
The Hunter went to leave the workshop when she passed the storage coffin. Her footsteps stopped dead in their tracks when she heard a familiar glimmering sound.. Alaine turned to face a hanging sword, covered in cloth that thinned as it went along the forte and groove of the blade as if to hide its true nature.
The sword sat above another storage coffin, this one covered in chains and locks as if to keep whatever is inside from breaking out. It's where she kept the arcane tools she had collected throughout the endless night.
Her eyes stared at it.. before she could hear it glimmering once more. She squinted at it in confusion, only to see its true form under the surface of the blade, an ocean of space and stars within the reflection. Alaine set the mace and handle to the whirligig down as well as the gatling gun as she approached the blade.
"What is it? You haven't called out like this since I faced off against Ludwig all that time ago. Why now?"
The blade shimmered once more and answers fell into her head. As if skeptical, Alaine pulled back a step, unsatisfied by what she had received. The blade shimmered once more and the corner of the Hunter's mouth twitched into a crooked smile.
"If I find out your lying to me, I'll make and put you in a case and bury you never to be seen again"
She reached out and grabbed the blade's handle. It was wonderfully made, perfectly balanced but still weighty, its ancient design is almost inhumanly perfect.
But its true form lay underneath the steel and must be called out. She spread her left hand over the cross guard and tiny particles of ghostly blue light faintly hung halfway to the blade. A similar but greener color light particles came from within the steel of the blade and met the ghostly blue.
Then she ran her hand across the blade and that green light spread and solidified itself, spreading from each end of the cross guard down across the blade itself in an elegant show of light and arcane. Forming a graceful engraving on top of a deep ocean of light as she dragged her hand across the long sword, the blade itself became the groove and the light around the blade and into a sword worthy of being called the Holy Moonlight Greatsword.
Alaine held it next to her face, left eye gazing into the blade while her right was faced forward. Despite never wielding a sword and forsaking every weapon of the church, the sword itself burned itself into her memory, showing her how to use it to its full potential. She saw through the ages, fighting in several different people's bodies, Ludwig, human, and then pthumerian.
It tried to stop there but she delved deeper into its sight, her eye burned from the action but she persisted seeing battle after battle against beasts, humans, kin, even a great one or two throughout this ancient weapons history. She demanded to see its experiences, it would've driven any human mad to see all those lifetimes, harrowing battles, wins, and losses, even its several burials with great wielders. Then she saw the top of a casket, it was opened after she heard footsteps approaching.
She saw a man open his eyes in surprise as well as two older men look down in disappointment. She recognized their garbs as that of the Executioners.
"Just another burial, probably for a high ranking pthumerian but all that's there is a ceremonial sword and shield. A pity."
The two other executioners left the rim of the casket and the younger man's expression soured and he went to turn away. That was when she heard the sword's voice once more, the sound of a woman's voice yelled out.
"Wait!"
The man looked flustered and whipped his head back around. He stared in disbelief at the corpse but then the blade in one of the corpse's hands shimmered. With shaking hands the man reached out and pried the blade out of the pthumerian's hands. He raised it up and looked into the steel, only to let out a gasp as he took several steps back.
His two companions looked on in confusion and watched as the man raised the blade over her head and then looked on in admiration as he spread his hand across the blade. The man laughed out as his companions kneeled to the man known as Ludwig, soon to be known as the holy blade of the church.
Alaine shook her head and then found herself back in the workshop. She stared at the sword for a moment.
"You only wish to guide and be of service. To be in the hands of people who want to lead and guide them to greatness and ascension."
She held the blade outward, gazing into it before she let her left hand fall and flicked her hand downward to the side, casting off the moonlight and returning it back to its normal form. She knew she made a back sheath for the blade somewhere, once she found that above on a shelf the Hunter wore it on her back much like the sword's owner before her, just between her cloak and the whirligig saw.
As much as she detested the church, she understood that heroes can be deceived into being on the wrong side. Ludwig The Holy Blade was one such man.
That should be enough.
Alaine picked up the mace and gatling gun and then walked out to one of the now lush trees. There was a new grave right next to the tree, she kneeled down to it and read its description.
"Remnant Gravestone" then "Onyx"
So I don't know if you peeps like these longer chapters or not but for these larger ones I have a hard time finding a place to split it. I've been told specifically for these last two chapters that there really isn't a place to split the chapters apart and to just run with it. So maybe this is something you'l get occasionally. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, leave reviews and tell me what you think. Until next time.