《Never forget, Aurora... Look for Paleblood to transcend the Hunt》.
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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 absence 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 that, it was just a waste of the last of the energy the corpse she inhabited stored, but wouldn't the Hunter's Dream collapse if her life ended? What would become of her 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 after Lady Maria's suicide.
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 was, until she finally found it.
Paleblood.
The Moon Presence.
She had... failed her words, the ones that 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 was not lost on her the exaggerated amount of blood that came out of her 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 they would not return. Even if it was only a Kin, these instances kept recurring throughout her 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 was an endless fountain of blood within her.
Then, at a certain moment after an indeterminate amount of time, all that changed.
Maybe it was minutes, decades, centuries, millennia, it didn't matter in the end.
A single pale drop fell into that dark pool.
A drop of Paleblood.
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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 feigned tranquility because she was always fixed on her ultimate goal, that which 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, ever in her existence, would have prepared her for what was about to happen next.
Flora descended to reward the winner, the one who had surpassed The First Hunter... and the victor had rejected its reward, had rejected the Night of the Hunt.
And so, they gave themselves up to the glow of battle.
Here is the result.
"Are you cold?" she asked the little jet squid that was in her path.
She stretched out her arms and picked up the little guy. Thus holding it with 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 itself, did she still have the right to call herself Aurora or was she beyond that? That was also one of the questions for later.
Still held by the unusually warm hands of The Doll, The Good Hunter, or at least that which she had transcended to, 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, they manifested certain appendages on its body.
They were a Thousand Eyes.
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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... peculiar left arm, 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 native to the incomprehensible corners of creation.
A skeletal body with traces of flesh on its being, four totally equal arms accompanied by two 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 Outer God, was her beloved Aurora, The Good Hunter.
Long ago now, they both began to wander through the Hunter's Dream, they wandered so much that they did not know 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 her head as if trying to tell her something, but failed.
From one moment to the next, they felt its own body rejecting it, that they was collapsing in on itself as punishment for having gone further than they should have. Perhaps it was so, considering how far its was from the Hunter's Dream and the Waking World to which in some distant time they had come to belong.
"So we cannot reach Beyond this long night..." said the Doll getting down on her knees beside The Presence of the Hunt, as this Outer God called theyself.
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 they stood at the pinnacle of the Great Ones, that they could set foot in this place, the limit of its dominion over the dreams and nightmares of they 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 Alien 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 Déjà 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.
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Now.
"Where did you get this story, Eina-san?"
Bell Cranel, the Little Rookie and the one to break the record in level up, asked this 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 already stood out 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 police 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 as the boy just looked longingly at the book. "Although... I've never heard of a hero called The Good Hunter before."
"The merchant said this stories were famous in some villages outside Orario. He also said that parents use them to make 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 path the hero traveled that ended with a tragic romance..."
Eina grimaced slightly, Bell was getting too 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 for the sake of spending more time with Bell, she had to put a stop to it. She had work to do.
Luckily for the Half Elf, I didn't need to do anything thanks to an intervention that nearly made them jump out of their seats.
"Excuse the interruption, are you Eina Tulle?"
Both the Half Elf and the young man stopped their thoughts in their tracks and turned their eyes to the source of the question; this case, it was a woman of peculiar appearance even by Orario standards. They soon dismissed such an idea, it was somewhat disrespectful.
She was tall, very 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 Amazoness, 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 as in the boy, if anything it was diluted, it was a pale red.
"Well? You are Eina Tulle?" she said to Bell in a neutral tone but one that somehow strangely conveyed her intentions to break the adventurer and her advisor's trance.
"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 revealed while adjusting her bluish topknot.
"Ah, right, sorry about that. Bell, I'll be right back," she said with poorly feigned calm, which made the woman think how seriously Eina took her job.
The young adventurer nodded silently, still caught up in his thoughts, not just because he was thinking about this woman's unearthly beauty but because... he felt it.
She was someone strong, quite strong in fact.
Possibly it was someone who had reached LV.3 outside of Orario which was already quite a feat in itself, the doubt Bell still had was, which family could she 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 his focus to the book Eina gave him to kill a little time.
Its title was 'The Pale of the Moon', its authors being Aurora and Mary Selene.
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That same afternoon a heavy rain was falling on Orario accompanied by thunder and lightning.
Daphne Lauros, an adventurer from the [Apollo Familia] and her partner/friend/sister from another mother, Cassandra Ilion, had been assigned to follow 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 its gross", Daphne said in an annoyed tone trying to find a place to take shelter.
They had traveled far enough looking for a place where the rain would not mercilessly attack them. In fact, Cassandra was pretty sure that The Hostess of Fertility was nearby. They could rent a room from Mamma Mia or just wait inside while the rain passed.
"You two... look terrible."
Cassandra let out a high-pitched squeak 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.
"Uh... no offense, but I've never seen you anywhere in Orario before, and I'm sure I'd remember someone in such gaudy clothing. What's your name, stranger?" questioned Daphne with a feigned calmness that was all too obvious. The mysterious woman only needed to see how tightly the redhead's hand was clenched to figure it out.
She chose to remain silent for a few moments, debating with herself whether she should tell these two strangers her name.
Aurora Selene.
Vileblood
The Good Hunter.
Paleblood.
Moon Presence.
Red Hunter.
Bloodsight.
So many names she'd had... it was strange, but somehow she wanted to honor them all.
And she couldn't think of herself as Aurora either. Was it too weird if she thought of herself as Aurora's daughter? After all, that wasn't a lie as such. She had three mothers after all.
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 third mother gave her.
The ones she earned since her arrival in Yharnam.
And the ones she became worthy of upon encountering Paleblood.
"My name is... Flora Leukos, daughter of Aurora".