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Thank you for joining me by the fire.
Chapter 56 This Time, Tonight
It was cool.
The feel of the air was like a ghostly caress as it dragged over his too-hot skin; it lingered with the kiss of moisture, dew upon flesh. It was almost chill, shy of cold, but enough that he felt his bare flesh respond to the sensation all the same.
He inhaled; the air was awash with scents, familiar and as painful as they were beloved. They rushed through his airways and stirred his mind as fiercely as any stimulant, a longing that struck him abroad his mind.
He did not Dream…
So he awoke.
He knew immediately that he was in her spot.
He was on his back, laid out and facing upwards, the sky above a grey curtain as if all had been draped in an ethereal cover. There was light, but from what he did not know, for it was cast into and from the slow, chaotic eddies of the grey that encircled about.
He turned his head to the left and beheld the wall that was usually dressed in an ivy curtain, the stonework only just visible beneath. Now, the plant was grey and half dead, the green sapped from it nearly entirely.
Its leaves were dressed in white and red and ash.
He reached out to examine the sickly-looking plant, its current depiction confusing and disturbing as he knew this was not how they were supposed to be.
His hand froze of his volition, his eyes cast from the foliage that captured his curiosity to the stark image emblazoned upon his skin… a star with an eye at its centre.
The Caryll Rune, 'Eye'.
Familiarity and recognition were cast aside as realisation and fact dug into him like a bore.
This was not a memory.
With more force than he had initially intended, he grasped for the leaves, the dry, dying plant crumbling in his grip and staining the tips of his fingers.
In white and red and ash.
He dragged his thumb across the pad of his fingers, feeling the substances, the powdering mixture turning dirty as they combined. He brought it to his nose and inhaled.
Blood, his own, with all that it carried and entailed.
Ash, cold and long since burnt, the hint of old fire ever present.
The plant, desiccated, withered, faded.
Her Blood…
His left hand clenched violently, the knuckles and joints popping as he forced himself to sit up with a guttural groan. Phantom echoes of pain that no longer was caressing his middle. A quick examination revealed it whole and unimpaled.
He wasn't dead.
But there was another pain, this one no echo but a sharp sting that forced itself into the vortex of his conscious thoughts. He looked to his right limb, looked past the savage inked flesh and the 'Clawmark' that allured.
He looked, with furrowed brow, to what he held that bit into his flesh and drew the faintest hints of red unto its surface.
Porcelain.
His mind once more jolted at the reality, 'This is not a memory.'
Such a terrible thing.
For he did not dream.
A Hunter free of Dreams.
Yet he awoke all the same.
Sitting up in her spot, he cradled the piece of his dearest friend to his chest, uncaring that it cut into his flesh as he sought to protect it. He beheld the immediate world around him with investigative eyes, desperate to understand. Her blood's scent had lit a fire that would not be doused, but the piece of her had turned that fire into a storm. The memory of the first time he had beheld her blood was enough to dredge up a sickening slew of old hurt, but the sight of her harmed…
He recalled the times he knew she had been harmed, recalled how he had smelt her blood before he had ever laid eyes on it. The two being separate events. The scent of it now was powerful, and older, he recognised it easier, and thus, it stirred his mind more deeply.
The first time she had bled before him, it had been a time concealed in naivety.
The second… less so.
He looked right.
He knew well what ought to be there, the stretch of the stoned path leading past the headstones and the small yard. The gardens, rife with short, almost wild plants filled with life and the flowers… the small luminous white blooms, like stars in puddles of green grass.
He saw only the almost still grey.
He shifted his legs off the side of her spot, his legs quickly finding the ground below with another shot of phantom pain. He looked down to examine the source and saw his bare flesh, naked and marked with the etchings his sister had gifted him.
The Marks of a Slayer.
He turned away from his naked limbs and the 'Metamorphosis' that encircled his base to see a lantern on its side beside his feet. A lantern that for as long as he could remember had always been lit, a soft, warm glow to beckon him towards her spot.
He retrieved it and quickly held the chilled metal light source to his eye so he might examine its condition. It was whole and intact, and with only the briefest of ministrations, it ignited.
The grey was pushed back.
The fog that had concealed much was driven away and revealed what he knew to be true.
The Hunters Dream.
His oasis in hell.
It. Was. Wrong.
The stones were stained, dirty and coated in a layer of filth. The visible grass was like the ivy he had investigated before, withered and discoloured. The flowers… the little white blooms were gone, all of them.
His desire to leave this place grew more substantial, but… he needed answers; he needed to know before he could return.
His legs beneath him didn't feel real as he walked further into the small yard where he once rested. His bare feet scuffed along the dirt and dead plant matter on the ground, sending shivers up his legs as he felt the awful juxtaposition of what it should feel like and what it did.
Memories of his time in this yard assaulted him, none more so than the sound of her voice as she conversed with the lit-
He stumbled over to where he knew the bath should be, the stone decoration filled with mist in which sat the entrepreneurial assortment of Messengers.
It was decimated.
The ground was gouged and crushed where it should be, and the actual bath itself had been violently hurled and smashed into the incline leading up to the Workshop's back entrance. It was in pieces, scattered about, with some of the larger ones being stabbed into the stone face of the hill.
The sight of it caused him to look again at the shard of porcelain he held.
He felt ill.
He cast another look over the shattered decoration, his gaze searching for something ever more grim as he scanned for the corpses of any Messengers.
There were none.
This did not lessen the ill feeling as he knew well that there were things that preyed on the Little Ones readily.
His attention followed the path of destruction to the gouges surrounding the site where the Bath once stood. He placed the lantern on the ground, for he was unwilling to part with the piece of her, which he kept clutched securely.
The grooves wrenched through the dirt were of different depths and widths, and they had no singular or uniform nature to them at all.
But there was a path.
He picked up the lantern and began to walk backwards; now that he knew they were there, he could not miss the many wounds that permeated the floor. His steps lead him back to the stone path where the grooves seemed to congregate, twist and split off.
But it was where they diverted that made his blood boil.
Slowly, held back by the growing anxiety that had taken root, he turned his worried blue eyes toward where he had awoken.
With the lantern's light to push back the grey… he saw what had been concealed.
Her spot was scarred, just like the area around the Bath.
A splatter and pool of faded white, long since dried, painted the wall and space where once she would have sat waiting. Around that, scratches and gouges, slashes and grooves, piercing craters and cracked stones.
A fight.
There had been a fight.
Something had attacked her.
The blood around the piece of her that he held so tight began to bubble.
Jaune growled in a low, inhuman manner.
He forced his eyes back to the trail of whatever had attacked his dearest companion, looking at how the trail evolved and changed. The Awakening Stones, anchors to Yharnam and beyond that he had once used during the Hunt, were broken and crushed. The stairs leading to the workshop showed indents where something long and heavy had slammed into them.
Jaune walked up the stairs, his bare feet careful not to disturb the trail he followed as he made his way up toward the Workshop. He could already see signs of the fire by the now scorched black stone and charred plants around where it had blazed.
He remembered how it had burned, the sight of his oasis engulfed in the conflagration.
He remembered looking for her as he did now.
He reached the top of the stairs; the workshop entrance was before him, and seeing the ruin up close elicited a variety of emotions he felt poorly equipped to unpack. Just the sight of the threshold he had passed through numerous times, defaced and dilapidated, gave him pause.
He stepped past where once two doors had existed and entered the Workshop proper, the charred interior more than enough to allow him to recall what once was.
It hurt.
Where once there had been reading desks accompanied by piles of books and tomes, now there were piles of wreckage and refuse. The shelves and desks, once filled with everything ranging from ingredients for tea to tools and reagents for Blood Alchemy, were but blackened husks.
The trail he had been tracking seemed to halt back near the apex of the stairs and did not continue into the Workshop… but Jaune could not help but let his feet carry him further into the interior.
He passed the fireplace, the memory of its sound like a lullaby to his ears, the effect potent enough that he found himself resting his Lantern by its stones. Though it was not the same, the warm glow of the lantern did a fair, if not lesser, job of echoing the soothing hearth.
Jaune turned his attention to the blackened walls adjacent to the fireplace, the section of the Workshop he had arguably spent the most time in.
The Workbench.
It, too, was marred and blackened, ruined such that the whole thing was listing to the side and leaning against the fireplace proper. The reagents and ingredients that had been kept both on and within it were lost entirely to the ravages of the flame. Even without sifting through it, he recognised a heap of slag that was likely a piece of metal or perhaps even a Blood Mineral.
Despite the destruction, he still smelt the old tang of the Blood and felt the traces of the echoes expended in this exact spot.
It was here that he had refined his arsenal.
Jaune cast his gaze upward…
To behold nothing.
For where once the weapons of the Workshop, as well as his many own, were once proudly displayed, there was now only the scarred wall.
This, however, did not surprise him… after all, his arsenal had been with him in the end.
Jaune tore himself away from the Workbench to tread across the ash that was once the carpets he had come to appreciate long ago. He spotted in his peripheral the mirror he had once used to examine the many… changes he had undergone during his time trapped in the Eternal Night.
He tried not to look at the ruined tea set lying in a heap on the floor and the table on which it usually rested, which was now half gone.
The back doorway was blocked completely, the structure having crumpled inward and left the exit obstructed with a combination of bowed walls and a collapsed roof. Jaune would have paid more attention to it, but he found the altar at the back of the Workshop far more pertinent.
It was clean… well, cleaner than the rest of the room and laid across its top was a stretch of cloth the colour of deep crimson that, while burnt, didn't seem to be damaged.
Jaune looked at the stone altar with confusion; he remembered well that once there had been candelabra and books laid atop the stone bench, but that could be said for many of the surfaces in the building. There should have been nothing that would have halted the flames from doing to the altar what they did to the rest of the room.
He concluded that it must have been cleared afterwards, the fabric likely salvaged much the same and laid out across the altar. He reached for the cloth, holding it betwixt his index and thumb as he massaged the item in question. It took him a moment before a spark of recognition burst to life as he recalled where he had encountered such fine apparel the shade of deep red.
'This is mine… one of my capes,' Jaune realised, the burnt edges unable to disguise what it was any longer. Jaune pulled the cape up to his nose and breathed in without even thinking about it.
It was undoubtedly his; the scent of his person and blood intermingled with the garment so profoundly as to be one and the same. But there was more to it, layers of complexity that could not be understated, layers he had to pull apart. What he expected to find was quickly discovered: himself, Blood, char, smoke...
Then it got more complicated.
He inhaled again, his eyes closed, trying to piece together what was going on and what had happened.
'Where is she?'
He found it, the scent, not hers precisely, for she did not have a scent, not like others, not save her blood, and that was a scent without a name. Her scent was the Hunter's Dream only… more; she was the flowers in the grass, the wax in the candles, the crispness of the air. She was old books, steeped tea, and the indecipherable perfume of Arcane that danced in the Echoes.
The cape had been within the burnt Workshop, surrounded by ash and char and dust and ruin, yet despite this, it remained nearly whole, definitely cared for, and smelt of all that pointed to her rather than the ruins it was confined to.
It had not been simply left.
'Left…' Jaune cast his eyes back to the wall above the Workbench, where his weapons and those that had belonged to the Workshop had hung. His gaze drifted down, but… no, they were not there.
'Why aren't the workshop weapons there?' Jaune thought as he had grown to trust no other weapons save his own and his bare hands.
He looked back to the cape; it had been left here; it smelt of her and was placed with purpose, but nothing else of his remained in here… 'Why?'
Something more was afoot: the tracks outside, the evidence of a fight, her blood… and now a singular piece of his attire lightly damaged placed upon the altar of the ruined Workshop.
'Why was this left here when nothing else of mine- My chests,' Jaune's train of thought ground to a halt as he looked to the spot near the front door where his stuff was usually stored.
With no small amount of skill, Jaune wrapped the cape about his waist in a one-arm flourish to at least make a go of concealing his naked self. Then, caring no more for the old pain of nostalgia, he marched to the area where his chests should have been.
With a swift kick, he sent the burnt ceiling that had collapsed in the area, scattering to the side to reveal…
Nothing.
The chests were gone.
He had not thought it odd that his weapons were absent, for he could not recall how many he had used in his final confrontations, but perhaps it was not so simple. It seemed all his things were gone, all but a single piece of his attire that he had not been wearing during the end.
So, for it to have been left like that on the altar, nearly untouched, after the blaze, someone had to have left it there. Jaune reached to run his free hand through his hair, his old tick refusing to disappear, when the possible answer came to him.
It came from 'Guidance.'
"Stitch!" Jaune's voice burst out hoping and eager, hollering for the Little One.
Silence.
"Hugo!" This time with force, an order, a summoning.
Nothing came of it.
"Mort!" Jaune tried again; this time, he didn't hide the worry, the concern.
But there was no response.
"… Anima?" This was a question posed to the empty air, lost and longing.
Jaune was alone.
His grip tightened on the shard of porcelain in his hand, the sharp bite of its edge centring him.
He fell to a knee and examined the space where one of the chests should have been. He was too occupied in the end to have concerned himself with his things; he recalled at least that much. He also knew that his fighting style did not allow for him not to have his arsenal to hand.
So someone had been with his things, usually said duty was that of his four.
Jaune brushed at the floor of the Workshop with a heavy hand, brushing and scraping away all that concealed the floorboards from his eyes.
Scrape marks.
Jaune spared the smallest of instances to revel in being right. His things, the chests they had resided in as well, judging by the old scrapes on the floor, had been moved. If he had to guess, his four had likely dragged the chests out of the burning building to safety.
He looked back to the cape wrapped about his hips again with surety.
Cainhurst, this belonged to the Cainhurst Knight attire, the fine quality and deep red ever befitting the old noble house.
The house of Maria.
It was her, his dearest friend, the Doll. She had been the one to leave the cape on the Altar, and he was sure of it. One of their last conversations had been about the old nobility, and in the end, Jaune had encouraged her to partake of any and all things he had that belonged to them.
It had seemed only fitting, given her peculiar origins.
'Why does one lay cloth over stone… over a surface… because it's a Workshop,' Jaune concluded, looking back to the section above the Workbench, the pieces falling into place.
He didn't linger a second more, all but exploding out of the Workshop as he cast his eyes back to the stairs. He examined the different damages, this time examining the differences closer, looking for a pattern within the trail.
Most of the damages were very hard to identify, a combination of crushing blows, piercing stabs, craters and gouges… but not all of them.
He saw it, a slash, deep and clean, creating a cleft in one of the less damaged stairs.
A weapon.
She fought back.
Jaune looked at the porcelain in his grasp and smiled.
The lantern was forgotten in his haste, and Jaune stayed low as he followed the trail of the confrontation with touch and sight. He concluded that the lion's share of the confrontation had been fought in the yard, hence why that destruction was more prevalent. He looked again at the white splatter that indicated his friend being injured.
Said injury was likely why he held a piece of her now.
He beat back his rage; he needed to focus.
He continued to walk, following the path until he came to a bend where he at last paused.
This was the path to the base of the large tree that overshadowed the whole of the Hunter's Dream—the small meadow surrounded by graves where his hellish journey had come to its end.
Where he clashed with Gherman…
Where he clashed with it…
A vile concoction of old pain and trepidation made his tongue feel as if it was glued to the roof of his mouth. He clenched his right hand, hoping the shard's bite would aid him again, but it was not enough.
He did not dream, but some memories were worse than others.
The end was amongst those that left him waking ill and confused.
Yharnam, the Dreams, the Nightmares… all of it had taken a toll on his mental faculties; he was well aware of this. But the end was nothing more than flashes and impulses, a picture full of holes, that left Jaune with a pervasive feeling of wrongness.
He knew that as the Eternal Night dragged on, he lost more of himself to the Hunt than he would likely ever truly know about. The memories that returned to him were rarely happy, and fewer still that did not end in tragedy eventually.
A part of him dreaded one day recalling the whole picture.
But fear had never stopped him.
It would not now.
Jaune felt his blood race, his veins filling with potential yet unleashed as he took a step.
Then another.
Jaune rushed down the path that led to the meadow, and as he raced past the twin iron wrought gates, he beheld a sight that slammed into him as if it were a physical wall.
He remembered.
A scarlet moon hanging in a bleak, cloud-stained sky, its vivid light painting the world in ominous hues of shadow and blood.
A hill, littered with flowers once white and luminous, now ruined and pulverised beneath a tide of thick crimson that turned soil to mud and ran down the incline as rivers of red.
This… this was the sight he beheld before he awoke in Reach.
It was different now; the flowers were dead and gone, and the sky was nothing more than an ocean of grey. A foul combination of fog and never-fading smoke engulfed everything. But the hill… remained as it was, though the blood… the blood had long since dried.
Jaune licked his lips, the scent of this field like rot gone stale, making his senses twinge; he stepped past the outcropping of graves and entered the place where his journey had ended. There was a taste in his mouth he couldn't place, and swallowing did little to relieve the discomfort.
Jaune's vision, limited by the fog, could still make out the hill's incline, the giant tree's rough outline, and the few wooden crosses that remained in one piece. But without his lantern, he found that there was little he could see correctly, so he settled for focusing solely on the trail left by the Doll and whatever had accosted her.
He walked carefully over long-dead flowers, focusing on the faint traces of the more recent fight on this old battlefield. It took all his mental fortitude not to get waylaid by the traces of… it.
Still, he felt the urge to look where their battle had scarred the very face of the Hunter's Dream. He wanted to sink his hands into the dried channels where blood he had drawn once ran in such quantities as to down the very earth.
But she came first.
The anxious energy that had taken root in Jaune had long since grown to such a degree that Jaune felt as if his muscles had become springs. The smell, the memories, and the very feel of this place did nothing to help settle him.
But he was free of Dreams.
He would not succumb to memories.
His short journey through the dead hillside meadow ended when the trail led him right up to where the outcropping of graves encircled the area.
Only there were no graves.
Jaune stared, his heart thundering in his chest as he beheld the edge of the dream and the sea of clouds below it.
He took a step back… then another, to be sure he was getting the full picture.
Where there should have been a continuation of the circle of headstones was a collection of crushed stone and warped metal. The ground had been torn up and clawed as if by some terrible creature scrabbling to find purchase.
It was like something had torn off a section of the Dream.
Jaune moved around the divot, mindful of his steps as he looked down into the seemingly endless plummet below.
'Not truly endless', he thought, knowing well how such planes of existence were layered.
He looked closely at the crushed headstones, the names and identifiers of Hunters long gone, nearly indecipherable in the ruined state. It was a sad state but not what had captured Jaune's attention; no, that was reserved for what was clearly more of his dearest companion's blood.
He hefted the piece of stone that was stained with a shaking hand, his eyes wide as he faced further proof that she was hurt.
A breeze blew, and something fluttered.
Jaune looked at the noise, his face pale as he dropped the blood-stained stone and scrambled forward. Body half hanging over the edge of the abyss, Jaune snatched from a piece of warped iron an item of clothing he would know anywhere.
It was the Doll's shawl.
'Was the doll magic?'
"She was to me…" Jaune whispered.
Jaune's back burned.
His veins felt as if they bulged.
His blood raced like torrents of liquid lightning.
He breathed like the bellows of a furnace.
Jaune stood as a monument to silent, seething, bloody rage.
The wind picked up around him, and the pervasive smell of old rot flushed away as the grey that lingered and obscured dissipated. Jaune was unaware of this; his world was consumed with the items he held in his hands.
He felt so much yet did not know how to feel it. His friend, his companion, his closest confidant, his dearest was gone. Not just gone but missing; she was missing and hurt, and he was…
He was in the Hunter's Dream.
He should not be in the Hunter's Dream.
He was a Hunter free of Dreams.
Free of Nightmares.
He began to shake, falling to his knees as his rage drowned beneath uncertainty and fear.
This wasn't right, this place shouldn't be, this Dream…
Jaune looked up into the grey sky, dreading what he would see as the grey fog dissipated, his mind already conjuring images of a baleful light in the sky.
Ting*
The wind died down, Jaune's attention split, the nervous energy in his body fuelling instincts hone over an eternity as he responded to the noise.
He looked up the hill, past the battlefield where he had ended the Nightmare, where he had fought and bested Gherman, drowning the old man in his righteous fury.
He looked past the dried puddles of tainted earth where he had made the thing bleed.
He looked to the tree that stood sentinel over the entirety of the Dream and gasped in awe.
Hammered into the side of the tree's heavy trunk, some were suspended, and others were placed as if upon shelves… but all of them, each and every item felt as if they were a part of him.
Jaune raced up the hill; his fear forced down, his worry pushed aside, and his rage for the moment stalled. He crushed dead plants and stepped around befouled earth despite his attention being solely on the great tree's trunk.
He slowed as he reached the apex of his ascent, his eyes wide as he saw that each of his weapons, from those that had been with him the longest to those that had been later additions, were all present. He wanted to reach out, touch them, and hold them; he longed for the sense of rightness he knew would come if he could, but just hold a piece of his arsenal.
But his arms remained crossed, cradling what was hers over his heart.
Jaune looked about the trunk of the tree, his eyes settling on a set of Chests he knew had come from the Workshop below. He didn't doubt for a second that he would find the complete assortment of his inventory should open them.
He breathed in through his nose, picking up the powerful odour of his things. The many types of apparel he had worn that had never truly smelt the same afterwards. The scent of the items that carried the oddness natural to anything truly Arcane. The metallic burning perfume of gunpowder and his firearms were also present.
Jaune moved to the chests but stalled in his approach as he finally recognised something that had him backstepping with his teeth bared in a feral snarl.
It was a wheelchair.
When his instinctive fury settled, he allowed himself a brief moment to feel foolish for reacting so to an empty chair. He did not, however, resume his approach.
No, he stared.
He stared because, in truth, the chair was not empty, merely unoccupied. Resting in the seat of that familiar wheelchair was but a single article of clothing.
A beaten-up old cap.
Gherman's beaten-up old cap.
Jaune stared for a long time before turning his head away, eventually forcing his eyes off the item.
His feelings for Gherman were a lot, and he did not have time to deal with such right now.
Jaune again approached his things, this time being more aware of his surroundings so as not to be startled by empty furniture. His chests were laid out in a row in front of the few sparse graves that fenced off the trunk of the great tree.
And resting atop one of them… was a note.
Jaune blinked at the sight of the sheet of parchment attached to the lid of the chest; a bit of wax spilled atop it to keep it in place.
With his hands full, Jaune had to kneel to see the written message clearly.
Do as Hunters must
~A, S, H, M
"Heh… Heheh… hahah! Hahaha!"
Jaune laughed.
Jaune laughed until tears left his eyes with reckless abandon; he laughed so much that his voice cracked, and he was forced into bouts of wheezing in between.
Jaune laughed.
He laughed because he was not alone.
He laughed until he couldn't, and all he could do was smile.
Then he got to work.
Jaune flicked open the chest to which the note was attached and saw inside the neatly folded attire of his many different sets of gear. Each of them pristine, mended and cared for by his missing friend. He ignored them for the moment, instead carefully and delicately placing the Doll's shawl as well as the broken piece of porcelain atop the folded outfits.
Then he closed the lid as if afraid that to do so with too much force might somehow damage the precious treasures he had laid within.
His hands now free, Jaune pushed off the chests and took stock of his arsenal.
His eyes danced along razor-sharp edges, serrated teeth, shining honed steel, and darkened metal wrapped in cloth and straps. He looked upon weapons, both refined and monstrous.
Then he looked back to where the Dream had been mauled, a section torn off and cast away.
The place where the trail of his friend ended.
Where the Dream ended.
He wanted answers…
But he needed to get back.
Jaune looked back to the tree one last time… and nodded.
He turned away from what was his and began to trek down the hill.
As he did, he felt the cool return as a breeze danced through his wild blonde hair.
He felt his skin burn in defiance of the cold, and patterns etched onto his flesh swelled with heat.
He cast his eyes to the sky, and his grin became savage and wide.
There was no Moon.
The sky was grey, a sea of naught, with nothing to occupy it.
As it should be.
For he was free of Dreams.
Free of Nightmares.
He walked where he willed, uncaring for the wounds gouged from a battle he could not be bothered to recall. His near-naked flesh grew dirty as dead plant matter and old torn-up earth clung to his flesh, but he paid it no heed.
He was no stranger to filth.
The wind was strong now, and there was a veritable maelstrom around him as dust and dirt were lifted and flung about to the whims of the invisible force.
He ignored it.
He came to stand at the edge of the Hunter's Dream and breathed in.
He stood on the precipice, at the very end of the only safe haven he had known for an eternity of suffering.
A place he had come to think of as home.
A place he had come to learn was a cage.
He moved his foot so that his toes hung out over the end of the abyss, the distant pillars, ever mysterious, standing like the trunks of colossal trees in the endless grey around him. The wind was pulling at him, tugging at him, lashing at his flesh and hair, the cape he had secured about his waist whipping around wildly.
Jaune looked at his hands and saw inked flesh.
This was not a memory…
And he was free of Dreams.
Jaune leaned forward.
…
And fell.
The force of the wind multiplied.
The rush was a cacophony that drowned his ears in a gale of indecipherable sound. He fell, and all the while, with eyes wide, he descended. He flew through h the air like a projectile, pulled ever downward, his heart a blitzing percussion in his chest. His features were ecstatic and free as he continued his incredibly rapid descent.
His flesh felt alive as blood rushed beneath the surface in patterns his skin had long recorded. There was no cold, no heat, no discomfort, no numbness… there was sensation.
Jaune smiled. The drag pulled on him, and slowly, he turned to face back toward the Dream from which he descended.
Jaune saw his past and still grinning… Jaune closed his eyes.
YVYVYVYVY
He awoke savage and unbound.
Blood, thick and viscous, erupted from his cracked, torn lips, the crimson surge painting his throat and chest anew. When his throat was clear, he howled, raged and bellowed, his fists clenching as he brought them down atop the pipe that kept him trapped, bending the thing that impaled him.
With blood-slicked fists, Jaune twisted, uncaring for the pipe impaled through his guts, his hands wrapping about the piece of plumbing.
Then he squeezed.
A flash of red the same shade as the blood that coated his so liberally flared as the metal crunched and warped beneath his grip with impossible ease. He twisted the pipe, and it snapped free of the wall, Jaune's whole body slumping at the loss of support.
But he wasn't done.
Screaming in abject defiance, the last Hunter of Yharnam pulled on the pipe that had run him through, his flesh clinging to its surface as it was pulled out inch by agonising inch.
With one last powerful tug, he tore the metal free.
It came with a splatter of red and an arcing spray that followed the path of the thrown pipe, which clattered to the side nosily. Jaune folded in on himself, splashing into the sizeable pool of red that had gathered around where he had been stuck.
He spat on the stained floor and drove his fist into the ground, splashing red as he pushed himself up.
He couldn't stop.
He felt the surge of blood that was gushing out of his midsection taper off as a power he was all too familiar with began to swirl and condense.
But it was not alone.
He looked down and saw red that glowed, red that danced across his Slayer Marks and danced off the pooled blood. Red that flared along the edges of the gaping hole that existed where his stomach should have been.
Jaune watched flesh and skin surge back with truly unnatural speed, Blood and light working together to make him whole. Jaune watched as ink that had been absent on newly knitted flesh began to grow back as Blood moved in the channels that he had made on his person.
Jaune's legs kicked, and he was forced to grit his teeth as he felt feeling return to his legs like a bolt rammed into the base of his spine.
The Blood moved in response.
Jaune kicked again, this time on purpose and with much more strength, as he forced his broken legs, jut back into place with a wet crunch; he watched as the light began to illuminate the 'Metamorphosis' visible beneath his torn pant leg.
He felt it the second the bone was whole.
He pushed, splayed his fingers and shoved with all he had, his chest heaving as he shoved his upper half off the ground, his knees sliding beneath him as he did. Blood dripped off his torso in such quantities that it all but rained down into the puddle where he had laid. He got one leg under himself and kicked up, forcing himself upright.
He stumbled, his body crashing into a support pillar, painting it red.
Jaune spat to the side as he looked out to the world beyond the wrecked, bloodstained room he occupied.
He marched forward, hands supporting him as he moved through the wreckage to reach the only source of light in the wrecked area, the massive hole he had entered through.
Each step sent blood sloshing outwards as his legs fought against his instructions, making nuisances of themselves.
A flash outside illuminated Jaune's arm for a brief instant, long enough for him to witness Grimm 'blood' disintegrating off his flesh.
The growl he let out was wholly involuntary and indeed not human.
Jaune reached the edge of the wreckage and, holding himself aloft by leaning against the fractured wall, looked out into the night.
The city was blazing.
All around, he could hear the continuous percussive drone of gunfire as it hammered out uncountable rounds of ammunition into the sky. The flashing lines streaked up into the dark and displayed the sheer magnitude of firepower on display for Jaune's eyes.
Then, the clouds began to part.
For a moment, Remnant's broken moon tinted the palest of red to his eyes, shone down on the world, and Juane saw clearly what the bullets were fired at.
Grimm.
Numerous flying bodies filled the air and darted back and forth, their shrieks and cries near loud enough to match the gunfire as they swooped above the cityscape. Jaune looked below them and saw more, though without wings, filling the streets like a writhing swarm or some great tide flowing to an imposing wall.
He turned his eyes back to the moon.
He was back in Bastion.
"Jade, Sky…"
Jaune looked down at his right hand, to the savagery of the Caryll Runes that adorned it, calling for him to unleash violence. He breathed, his chest rising and falling as he looked back to the broken moon and felt old strength fill his entire body like water free of a dam.
He closed his eyes and pictured the tree.
The tree where his arsenal resided.
Slowly, hesitantly, scared that he was mad, Jaune raised his right hand and plunged it into the air.
No, not the air.
The mist.
His eyes opened wide and amazed.
His fingers curled about wrapped leather, and he felt a surge of such familiarity that a half laugh, half sob tore itself free of his bloodied lips.
He pulled as if drawing a sword free of its sheath and looked on with teary eyes as, beneath the broken moonlight, his Saw Cleaver filled his hand. With a voice so low it was a whisper, he welcomed the weapon, "Hello, old friend, welcome back."
With a swipe, his weapon unfolded, and Jaune looked on, tears cutting a swathe through the blood that painted his face as he grinned like a lunatic at the serrated weapon in his grasp.
He felt whole; a piece of himself long missing had been returned.
Blinking, he looked away from his weapon and turned his Arc-blue eyes back on the city in chaos.
Jaune pushed off the warped support he was using to help hold himself up until only the tips of his fingers remained against its bloodied surface. He looked out to the chaos, taking it in, while he adjusted his grip on his Saw Cleaver, reacquainting himself with the feel of his oldest weapon.
As he did, he felt his strength surge through his veins, the power of the old Blood that he had made his own, emboldened by the ministrations of the Doll, settle into place. Unknown to him, however, as the Blood settled, so too did a brief sheen of red skirt over his form until it faded, settling back within him.
Only, it did not settle fully, as one Rune continued to blaze with light unseen upon his spine…
Jaune inhaled.
Chaos, death, fire, blood.
Jaune exhaled.
He had to find his sisters.
Jaune once more stood on a precipice, just as he had before. He smiled, wild and crazed, as he looked out onto a city submerged in hell.
He laughed curtly, for he was a Hunter free of Dreams…
But…
"Tonight," Jaune breathed, begging to lean forward, "Jaune Arc joins the Hunt!"
And Yharnam's last Hunter leapt into the fray.
A.N.
THAT MOON'S LOOKING REAL LOW!
I am so happy to get this out, and I hope you guys are all happy to read it.
And! just to show my excitement, let's havesome SETSU ART!
You can check them out over on Ao3 or go straight to the source. There is one specifically for this chapter, one that harkens back to the previous and a lovely original.
Please be sure to give yukisetsura all the love for their work; you can check more out over on X or Tumblr and sorry I can't be more precise as FF no likey.
If you want to read ahead or just offer me some further support you can find me over on that PAT-RE-ON site as AceReaper. If you want to and have some cash to burn, please feel free to come join the burgeoning cult I apparently have incited.
We will be sure to save you a spot by the fire.
As always,
Until next time.