Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, ascending the elevator
An uncomfortable silence seemed to establish itself immediately after Victor's last word, as neither of his companions deigned to speak as much as a syllable while shuffling their way into the elevator, eventually triggering the button in the floor and causing the entire thing to begin its rattling ascension. Victor, for what it was worth, did not like elevators either, least of all closed-off ones like this ones. He had no problem with heights, but closed spaces tended to make him a little anxious, and his anxiety was only made worse when he looked upward, expecting to see the sky far above but – obviously, in hindsight – being met by the roof of the elevator shaft instead, limiting his entire word to the inside of the elevator for the time being.
He looked at the two others, glancing first briefly at Raine's eyes just to compulsively confirm their normalcy, before letting his gaze linger at Adelicia. Such pretty eyes. It was such a shame that those eyes would one day be marred by the scourge of beasts, but at least there was some small comfort in the thought that he would probably not live to see that day. Even if he was not killed, chances were that he would become a beast long before she did; blood saints were known to be unusually resistant to the scourge, to the point where he actually could not think of a single such case. Relative to that, he, a mere Hunter, probably only had a few years left in him before turning. It was harsh, living with that knowledge... and even harsher for comparatively “normal” people, like Adelicia – people who deluded themselves to think that they were still human – who did not even understand the grim reality of the scourge. Who suffered from the intoxicating, debilitating madness known as “hope”.
Hunters, at least, knew: they were all going to be beasts sooner or later. All they could do was to kill as many of them as they could before turning.
“Beasts kill people,” he muttered over the hum and rattle of the elevator, about as it reached the halfway point to the top. For some reason he felt as though he had to explain himself, as if
he was somehow in the wrong. Annoying girl. “And the longer they're allowed to live, the stronger they get. Trying to 'save' beasts is hopeless. All we can do is try to protect the sane.”
He paused, going tense and raising his sword and blunderbuss as the elevator reached the top, folding doors – now on the opposite side from where they entered – slid open, revealing a surprisingly clean stretch of street with a row of single-floor, pristine houses lined up on the far side of the area. Many of these houses were made of wood rather than stone, and all were recent additions to the city, built from scratch after the Night of the Blood Moon. Nearly all of them were still empty, and not a single one of the ones in sight had light inside or a censer outside, in all likelihood marking them as unoccupied. This area was probably the safest in all of Yharnam, short of the upper Cathedral Ward itself. Maybe they could leave Adelicia and the fresh Hunters in one of those houses? Surely they would be fine here for the night.
He quickly scanned the area from right to left, then relaxed once he had ascertained that it was safe. As had been their formation from the beginning he left the elevator first, taking the lead.
“And killing beasts is all we ca-eurgh!”
Victor's lecture turned into a surprised garbled noise as
something, visible to the others as four unnaturally long, clawed black fingers, reached down from above, over the lip of the roof of the elevator, and deftly grabbed the back of Victor's hood, and proceeded to swiftly yank him off the ground and into the air. Victor reflexively pulled the trigger of his gun, unleashing a torrent of quicksilver pellets onto the cobbled street in front of them with a thunderous bang. Within a second he was already above the top of the elevator, out of sight of his fellow servants of the church.
He started inhaling sharply, meaning to shout instructions to his comrades even now, but was promptly silenced by the feeling of something sharp pressing into his back, followed by pain and what Victor could only think to describe as
wrongness, filling him with a desperation unlike anything he had ever felt before. He could
hear metal scraping against bone, feel the vibrations resonating throughout his entire skeleton, feel it in his teeth. When he looked down, he saw a black, red-stained blade sticking out of the right side of his chest. His breath caught in his throat.
And then, less than three seconds after having been snatched off the ground, Victor was suddenly flying through the air, completely out of control of where he was facing or where he was going; he had just been grabbed, stabbed and thrown away, and it had all happened so fast... he was still reeling when he hit the ground with his left shoulder first, about nine meters (thirty feet) in front of the elevator. His assailant had wasted no time, but had jumped off the roof of the elevator as soon as it had finished with Victor, turning to face the other passengers even before Victor had hit the ground.
The creature was tall, thin and long-limbed, like most afflicted by the scourge of beasts, but was also completely black from head to toe, clad in black rags and seemed, in spite of everything, relatively human in shape. Its head was obscured by a mess of black tendrils that seemed more like seaweed than hair, and though Victor could not see it from his current angle, the others would see its big white, glowing eyes behind the hair. It was armed with a saber, as black as it was except the stains of Victor's blood left on it. It let out an inhuman hiss.
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