The hollow, metal staff rung out with a dull echo every time the butt met the uneven cobble road. Adelicia grasped the silver-wrought shaft with both of her hands, leaning fully against it as if too weak to support even her own meager weight. An ornamental, but solidly constructed censer dangled from the top end of the staff, gently emanating a haze of soft, reddish-pink fumes that trailed after the Blood Saint like a banner in the wind. It smelled of serenity and safety. It calmed the nerves and lulled those within into a half-drunken stupor, should one linger. At the very least, it had that effect on the young lady whose onus was the bearing of the censer staff; her companions appeared less affected, she noticed.

Taking the lead through Yharnam’s winding roads was a man called Victor. Adelicia walked a certain distance behind him, as far from him as she could reasonably justify straying without it being noticed. She found men alien and fearsome at the best of times, and especially if they were hunters, but Victor was somehow worse than most. His muscular frame, the tribal beard, the vicious scarring and perhaps worst of all, that latent sense of violence about him were all things that made her want to hide in a corner until he was out of sight. But alas, a higher power demanded that she play her role in this so-called night of the hunt and so she followed him, ever the obedient servant, yet never leaving his sword-hand out of sight. She saw it trembling every so often with unrest, perhaps even unrestrained desire. She could not fathom his thoughts, but she suspected they were nothing she would wish to partake in. Violence was, after all, a thing she found herself wholly incapable of.

It was more than mere prejudice that made her keep her distance from Victor, and which made her spine tingle at the thought of how close behind her the even taller Provostus must be travelling. She had seen hunters at work before and knew them for the inhuman things they were. Her large, blue eyes had borne witness to jagged blades rending arms from their shoulders and ribs from their spines. On dark, moonlit nights she had seen the warriors of the church shrug off wounds that should have been lethal and revel in the spilling of blood – whether it be their own or their enemy’s. And indeed, she had even seen how efficiently hunters could dispatch the common man, for an offence as slight as grasping her hand without warning. It put into context the old adage she had heard over and over: Fear the old Blood. Fear, it turned out, came as easily to her as violence came to a hunter.

The three came to a brief halt, with Victor turning to face his companions with a searching look in his eyes. She did not like the way he looked at her, as if probing her for something or wanting something – she did not know what dark fancies the man harbored, but the very fantasy of it made her feel filthy under his gaze. Adelicia instinctively shrunk against her staff when he grunted that they were close now, staring at him from underneath her innocent white hood. Long tresses of wavy, pale blond hair fell out of it and over her breast. His warning, she found, had been mostly in vain; she had encountered the giants before. They were certainly strange and unwholesome, but she found that their aspect more closely resembled that of lost children than that of men. As such, she found them more pitiable than frightful, and much more palatable than hunters like Victor.

“T’is good we shall reach the clinic before nightfall,” she judged, her voice as tender as a sleepy lover’s. Not wanting to appear as the terrified child she was, she lifted herself from her slumped posture and halfway straightened herself, still gripping the staff with two hands. “Perhaps we can even return to Cathedral Ward under the safety of dusk, do you think? We might avoid the Beasts entirely, if we make haste.”

Her words were laced with infantile hope, though doubt had already taken root in her mind. She did not know what the night of the hunt truly was, but had heard mention of it often enough to know that it was different from other nights. For somebody hoping to evade the threat of beasts and danger, the name certainly represented a grim omen of things to come.

It was horrible.