Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“Touched by the Nightmare?” Dietrich laughed, a light and gentle sound, as he started to unroll his sleeves again. “I can't say that I'm aware of anything like that, no, but it does sound intriguing. I certainly hope it's not some manner of curse from the Followers waiting to hinder me in a critical moment.” He spoke the words with a mirthful smile, but his tone made it ambiguous whether he was jesting or actually concerned with what this Nightmarish presence might be.

“Bringing a cadaver here won't be necessary,” he told her, holding up a hand to halt and calm her. “On any other night I would have told you yes, but the bells have already rung once and will soon ring again with the moonrise, and the Night of the Hunt will really get started. The last thing you'd want when the beasts start coming out of their holes is to be carrying around a fresh body. No, the dead can wait for dawn.”
Pulling his gloves back on and taking great care to ensure that there were no creases in his freshly smoothed-out sleeves, the First Hunter bit his lip. “Tell me: your fellows from the clinic... they are not here, and you say they intend to come on foot. Does that mean that you are the only one of you bound to the Hunter's Dream?”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Yanin, Jaelnec and Jordan – Outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

“Fifteen years,” Jaelnec said with a nod of his head when Jordan asked, confirming the duration of his pagehood; an excessively long time by most standards, though he obviously would not know if things were different for others in the Knighthood of the Will specifically, of course. The only other person he knew who had ever been a Page of the Will was Freagon himself, and according to the stories he had heard, Freagon had been a page for five years... only to practically skip the rank of squire by undergoing his Test and becoming a knight as soon as he was made one.
Upon Yanin commenting about the bestowal of titles being a public affair, Freagon shrugged. “People already think I'm lying about being a knight. What difference would it make to have more witnesses to a fake knight naming his fake squire?”
When Jordan turned the subject to his past and his origins, Jaelnec's smile faltered somewhat, though he bravely kept trying to hold on to the happiness from before.
“I suppose I was more privileged in a lot of ways, but similar,” he told him, a shadow settling over him as his mirth kept seeming to drain moment by moment as his thoughts turned to the past. “My Mom was a priestess of Laon and my Dad was a wizard, so I did a lot more studying than work when I was a child. Still, we lived in a small village – one with pretty much just nightwalkers – so I worked like you did, too.”
He turned his head to look at his master, though he did not do so obviously and in an effort to redirect of anyone anywhere else, but just because he felt prompted to look at him. “Sir Freagon found me when I was ten. He saved me. I had been out in the woods collecting mushrooms and returned to find the village in flames. It was the Crusader's Guild. They killed everyone. Then Sir Freagon showed up.”
Turning back to Jordan, Jaelnec repeated: “He saved me, and took me with him away from there. I've been with him ever since. I owe him my life.”

As Yanin pointed out that this was not the first time Freagon – and by extention Jaelnec – had worked with others and asked what had changed, there was a slight, barely noticeable hesitation before Freagon replied.
“Time is running out,” he said simply, leaving what that meant up to interpretation.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“My arms?” he repeated, blinking his eyes several times quickly as he tried and failed to identify a reason for the request. “I suppose.”
Stepping behind his desk, Dietrich first pulled off his gloves and then proceeded to roll up first his left sleeve, then his right, all the way up to the shoulder so that both his arms and hands were fully exposed. He held them out for her to examine as she wished. He had nicely defined, but curiously understated muscles that spoke of strength without bulkiness, and his skin was clean, unmarked and faintly suntanned.
There was nothing of particular note about his arms, but she might notice another little guidance sprite appearing and disappearing again, though this time from near his thigh. She would probably be able to tell that the moon-sprites were not coming from any particular part of Dietrich, but just showed up in his vicinity every few seconds.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

Though Dietrich seemed entirely unsurprised and unconcerned about Ophelia revealing where she had received blood treatment, which she would probably assume revealed a great deal to him, the First Hunter reacted very strongly when she mentioned the corpses with scourge-ravaged eyes. His eyes widened and his smile, which had endured undaunted until then, vanished in an instant as the man's posture abruptly slouched. He raised both hands to his face and covered his mouth with them, looking deeply disturbed by what he had just heard.
The revelation of the message they had found on the blackboard prompted no reaction in him, though he still seemed troubled; he only collected himself and refocused when Ophelia moved on to mention the clinic coming under attack by Pallid and his minions. There was a small twitch at the corner of his mouth at the mention of Soulkeeper, but otherwise he did not seem to outwardly react to any of the rest she had to say, but rather spent the time recovering from what he had heard.

“I see,” he said, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “I... I'm sorry, of course you would have questions and want answers after all that, though it seems you have figured out some of it already. I am very happy you came to me as soon as you did, Miss Ophelia, though...”
He sighed and shook his head despondently. “I wish these others you speak of had come too, and I will need to have the others at the clinic examined. We need to know what went wrong, why some didn't make it.” He let out a short, mirthless chuckle. “I suppose you must think me responsible for all of this due to this... 'message' you read. I didn't write it, but you are not wrong; I was supposed to oversee this little experiment, and I helped to arrange it. I will answer any of your questions that I can, but if you want to know everything there is to know, you will have to speak with the vicar.”

Paying close attention as she were, Ophelia would notice that the occurrence earlier at the entrance to the workshop had indeed not been a unique one. Every four or five seconds, even standing mostly still as he did now, a faint, weak little guidance sprite would appear somewhere near Dietrich, exist for half a second, then sputter and vanish.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“A message?” he repeated, sounding mildly confused yet unconcerned by the statement. He made a dismissive gesture toward no one in particular, and all around him the Hunters scattered and the civilians and clerics began to hesitantly return and resume their business. Interestingly, as he raised his hand to flick it in in the gesture, Ophelia might spot the briefest, faintest trace of a guidance sprite emerging from his forearm, only to immediately sputter and die. “I'm afraid I don't know what you message you could mean, but we can certainly speak in private.”
Dietrich offered his right arm and, whether Ophelia took it or not, turned to guide her inside and up the stairs. If she were to look around, she would see that the sides of this hall were filled with tables bulging with all manner of supplies. There was an entire table set with plates and bowls of all manner of food, and another that was similarly adorned with bottles, carafes and pots of drink as well as glasses and mugs to drink from. There were several tables with bundles of tough white cloth and shoes, which she might figure could be unfolded and revealed to be White Church Hunter garbs. Another several tables had more Holy Blades, threaded canes and Kirkhammers, and a couple had piles of pistols and blunderbusses.

Once upstairs they turned left and entered a door and entered a small room furnished as a mostly spartan office-space. To the left upon entering were two mostly empty tables occupied only by several errant pieces of paper, a quill and an inkwell, beyond which was a wall that was obviously of different and newer construction than the rest of the building. Directly in front of and facing them was a slightly bigger table with a chair on either side, all of which were rather plain aside from some slight bits of ornamental carving into the edge of the tabletop and on the backs of the chairs. This table obviously served as a desk and bore a surprisingly tall and neat pile of papers, another set of quill and inkwell, a plain brass candle holder and a small, nondescript brown-covered book of some kind.
The most extravagant and decorative thing in the entire room was an elongated wall banner hanging behind the desk. It was made from white cloth with intricate gold and black trimmings, and bore two prominent symbols, one above the other, each stitched in red thread. The upper symbol was one Ophelia knew was often used to represent the Healing Church, though its meaning was unknown to her, whereas the lower symbol – despite being one she had never seen before – somehow immediately managed to convey its meaning to her: “Hunter”. Looking at it made her forehead itch.
“This is my office,” Dietrich explained, closing the door behind them. “If I can't be found in the main room or here it means my presence was required for a hunt, but I am never gone for long. You are welcome to visit anytime you like.” He crossed the room and leaned his back against the wall next to his desk. “It is also as private as it is going to get. What did you want to discuss?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“Likely story,” the Kirkhammer-wielder scoffed, tightening the grip on his sword. “That's exactly what I'd say if I was a filthy Vileblood wanting to... wait.” He squinted at her. “That's not you, Gerlinde, is it? If it is, this isn't funny.”
“Victor...” the Hunter next to him mumbled, his face twisting in an effort to remember. “That's the name of that drunk that headed out with Stefan earlier, isn't it? They did say that they got a mission from Dietrich.”
“Stefan? Sending a fresh Hunter to scout ahead?” The Kirkhammer-wielder shook his head grimly. “That doesn't sound right at all. Better kill you just to be safe...”
“That would be terribly inconvenient.”

The eyes of all the Hunters forming the human wall in front of Ophelia widened as the calm, authoritative and pleasant masculine voice emerged from behind them and up the stairs. Three of the five Hunters even took their eyes off her to look in the direction of the speaker, lowering their weapons somewhat in the process.
Within a second or so of his words reaching them, the speaker entered their field of view and started descending the stairs. He moved at a measured pace, his stride confident but unhurried, his posture straight and regal, open and unguarded. He was a young man in his early thirties – younger than most of the people here – clean-shaven, with a head of golden-blonde shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail. His features were unusually elegant and handsome, further enhanced by him donning a charming smile that revealed perfect, white teeth, making him look like a Prince Charming straight out of a fairy tale. Ophelia would likely take special note of his eyes, the irises of which were such a pale blue that they were almost white with the exception of a dark rim along their edges, making them seem almost fluorescent.
He wore a white variant of a foreign confederate uniform, his head bare, unprotected and fully on display, with a long, white cape trailing over the steps behind him, split in two along the middle and with each half embroidered with the likeness of stylized feathered wings in silver thread. Peeking over his right shoulder and out from his left hip was a unique silver greatsword, as long as the Holy Blades but considerably more narrow, and rather than being adorned with decorative engravings this was plain, smooth and polished to a brilliant sheen, making it gleam in the lanternlight.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs and kept approaching them, the Hunters blocking Ophelia stepped back and parted, setting aside their weapons and offering this new arrival respectful bows.
“Welcome,” the man said before dipping into a deep bow, placing his left hand on his chest and performing a wide, sweeping gesture with his right. “I am Dietrich, the First Hunter. May I have the honor of knowing your name, milady?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

Even while approaching the doors that obviously served as the main entrance to this immense structure, Ophelia would easily be able to tell that the interior of this place was alive with frantic activity. People ran across the stone-tiled floor this way and that, carrying all manner of supplies – bundles of cloth, armfuls of weapons and nondescript crates with uncertain contents – to whatever destination and purpose they were needed for. Walking up the steps toward the open doorway she would see dozens of figures in civilian clothing moving things around and performing various menial tasks around the place, under the guidance of another dozen or so men and women dressed in the white garbs of clerics in service to the White Church.
And among those, stalking among the masses and hiding in the shadows of the pillars that flanked either side of the huge hall she found through the doors, was yet another group of five. These figures did not partake in nor supervise the labor being performed here, but simply seemed to be watching proceedings with detached boredom and impatience. These figures all wore the garbs of White Church Hunters, and unlike everyone else, appeared to be armed; two of these Hunters were leaning on threaded canes and the last three carried small silver swords, of which two had the familiar blade-scabbard of a Holy Blade on their backs and the last had the head of a Kirkhammer.

Barely had Ophelia moved within several meters of the door to this place – which she would probably be able to deduce was the White Church Workshop – before one of the laborers spotted her and immediately, and quite noisily, dropped the armful of swords he had been carrying.
“Vileblood!” someone cried, and in an instant all the activity in the building seemed to refocus entirely on reacting to her presence. All the civilians and clerics stopped what they were doing and retreated toward the far-end of the hall, with several clerics running up the central stairway that lead to a floor above. The Hunters, meanwhile, moved with speed and purpose to form a semicircle just inside the doorway, brandishing their weapons and making it very clear that they intended to prevent her from entering.
“Not another step, fiend,” the Hunter with the Kirkhammer, a middle-aged man, declared as he pointed at her with his sword. “How did you get here?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

The idea of them splitting up did not exactly thrill Torquil, nor did especially Ophelia's nonchalance about the lack of risk now that they were supposedly immortal. It was fine for the others to be dismissive about danger now that they knew they would just reawaken in the Dream if they were killed, but he was the only one of them that had actually died. Even if he knew it would not actually end his life, the experience was still... deeply unpleasant. Every time he closed his eyes he kept seeing those glowing red eyes of the Mad One, and he could still recall and hear the sound of his own skull cracking and fragmenting as it smashed his head into the ground over and over. The pain and fear of that moment, though repressed, still lived inside him; he did not want that to happen to him again, to himself or the others.
But contrary to what one might expect, Torquil's concern about them splitting up was more pragmatic than it was romantic. Unlike the others who, unbeknownst to him, had each found their own kind of curious affinity with him, he was not actually all that attached to them beyond the fact that they were his only allies. He was happy to have others to talk to, help keep them safe and to make decisions; to smile at him and tell him he was good at things; but who those others were did not matter all that much to him.
Even so, he did appreciate that Ophelia and Farren seemed to like him, and that alone made him want to keep them safe. He liked that they liked him. Beyond that, his only relation to them was that weird flash of memory he had had about seeing Ophelia through the trees... but even that was mostly just an image without context.

So ultimately Torquil did not voice any protests against their plans and simply chose to believe that the others knew what was best. Ophelia touched the golden marker, only for her form to abruptly lose opacity, just as Torquil's had when he died, and vanish in a matter of a couple of seconds. Farren went up and touched another marker, and he disappeared, too, as if swallowed up by an unseen fog.
Gone, Torquil mused, stepping up to the Yharnam Headstone and looking at the marker Farren had touched. Completely gone, as if they were just a dream.
Then he shook his head, steeled his nerves and, tucking his new axe under his left arm to free up his right hand, reached out to touch the Rebirth's Rise marker, only to suddenly feel himself falling asleep...

Reception, Rebirth's Rise, in the eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Just as when he had arrived at the Hunter's Dream, Farren would feel as though falling asleep and, rather than actually sleeping, immediately transitioning into waking back up, only this time finding himself right back next to the very lantern that had brought him and Ophelia to the Dream in the first place. He was back in the reception of the blood ministration clinic, though even at a quick glance it was clear that someone had been busy in the thirty or so minutes they had been gone. Practically all the debris in the room had at the very least been shifted or overturned by someone searching the area very thoroughly. On top of that, every larger object in the room – cabinets that still had a measure of structural integrity left, chairs, tables, even a couple of the cots from the back room – had been moved to the exit, where it had been piled up in a messy heap to the left of the exit leading to the outside. The only thing that was exactly where they had left it, still completely untouched by the chaos that ravaged everything else around it, was the lantern-post, which still stood glowing right next to where Farren appeared, a quartet of Messengers crowding at its base.
All except one mostly intact stool, which instead stood a couple of meters inside the reception but still in front of the exit. On top of that stool sat Victor, sword in hand, with his body facing the door but his head turned to look at Farren as he appeared. Farren would see Victor's body in profile from where he appeared and could not see his left side, though he could see Victor's blunderbuss dangling below the stool, attached to his belt rather than at the ready in his hand.

Victor's eyes widened after a second of looking at Farren, and he started scanning him up and down, noting all of the new equipment his fellow Hunter had acquired in the short time since he had last seen him. The new garb, the Beastflayer and piercing rifle on his back, the pistol and blunderbuss on his left hip, the Blades of Mercy on his right... Not only had Farren been dressed pretty much as a civilian and been armed with mundane weapons last time Victor saw him, but now he was lugging around an entire arsenal!
A few seconds later, before Victor had time to recover enough to formulate his surprise, Torquil appeared right next to Farren, which prompted Victor's focus to shift and witness the arrival of the armor-clad form of another man from beyond the veil of reality.

“Oedon's blood,” the White Church Hunter swore under his breath, standing from his seat and turning to face them, revealing that he was holding what appeared to be a small, ornate case of some kind in his left hand. “And I thought I had been productive...”
He paused, looking at the lantern expectantly for a moment before turning back to Farren. “Where's the last one?”

Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

All the way across the city of Yharnam and far above everything else, Ophelia found herself awakening with her feet on cobblestone and a brisk wind catching her clothes and hair. She was standing on a curious semi-circular platform in the middle of what appeared to be a long, narrow stone bridge. Behind her she would see the bridge, its sides guarded with iron fences, extending almost a hundred meters toward what appeared to be the top of a tower, shaded by crooked, leafless, dead-looking trees on both sides that looked like they were leaning in over the bridge, their branches extending like the bony fingers of a giant, inhuman hand reaching to grasp those crossing it. She would also see several other spires over there, narrower and shorter than the tower connecting to the bridge; if she were to look over the edge, she would find that these spires belonged to a church below, along with which she would see the entirety of Yharnam sprawling out enormously from her current high vantage point. Only a faint memory of sunlight remained at this point, coloring the distant western horizon in the last remnants of dusk, while the rest of the star-strewn sky had already forgotten the light of day and embraced the night. Quite notably, though the moon had been present and huge in the Dream, it seemed that it had yet to rise in the Waking World.
In the other direction, in front of her as she awoke, she would find the path flanked by two thick, squarish columns of stone that held up an immense, ornate arch beyond which the bridge continued only for another several meters before joining a much larger platform, upon which sat a colossal structure of stone, with numerous giant windows lit from the inside, great chimneys emanating columns of smoke, and a great pair of open double doors under a canopy room held up by a semicircle of pillars. Beyond the doors she could faintly see activity and she could hear someone hammering on an anvil, but telling details would require getting closer.
She would inevitably notice the statues scattered in front of her, toward the huge building that had once been known as the Orphanage. Depictions of dozens of hunched and huddled figures swathed in cloth, their proportions strange and inhuman, though some of them held on to staves that necessitated opening the cloth, revealing a twisted being underneath that bore no semblance to man nor beast, and more like a twisted approximation of a human made up of roots or tentacles.

Of much more immediate notice, however, was the object she awoke right next to, standing before her right in the middle of the platform. A small, ornate plinth stood before her, decorated with subtle designs of what appeared to be ocean waves, intermingled with nude forms of men and women depicted as swimming leisurely in the water. Above, right at the rim before the rounded edge transitioning onto the flat top of the plinth, was a long, continuous string of big, stylized eyes. It appeared to be made entirely of solid gold; a thoroughly awesome amount of gold. And it appeared to be rooted into the ground beneath it, as if it had sprouted straight out of the cobblestone.
On top of the plinth sat a vaguely familiar sight: a lantern giving off a pale, bluish light; the same light as the lantern she had used to reach the Hunter's Dream from Rebirth's Rise. Even the design of the lantern was the same, though the metal parts of the enclosure around the light-source were like polished gold.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

“Any of the Gatekeepers' lanterns you find and light will become conduits, allowing you to return here safely, and adding another marker to the headstones to reawaken through,” the doll explained, smiling softly at Ophelia. The Shopkeeper also walked over to stand next to the doll. “As for the markers that are already there, good Hunter, the Shopkeeper is not responsible for them. Any time the Dream has no Hunters, the Gatekeepers take back their lanterns and the old markers are extinguished. The Shopkeeper filled the headstones with markers in their time, too, but those markers were erased once their task was completed. The markers you see now are the ones created by Gerlinde, the fourth Hunter currently bound to the Dream.”
The doll glanced nervously a the Shopkeeper, hesitating a moment before adding: “I am sorry, good Hunter, but we do not know what the golden markers are. They are conduits, we know that, but they are not created by the Gatekeepers. It is another new thing for the Dream; all the markers I have ever known were silver.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream

Torquil smiled, nodded his head and told Farren “Thanks,” when he once again gave voice to his appreciation that Torquil was alive and well – something that Torquil admittedly was quite happy with, too – and offered a brief explanation of the words on the headstones. It did not change how happily he smiled and he did not say anything, but the fact that Farren felt the need to explain that the writing represented places in Yharnam... writing with such arcane labels as “Cathedral Ward”, “White Church Workshop” and “Old Yharnam”... it made him a little sad.
How stupid does he think I am? Torquil wondered as he turned away from Farren, feeling suddenly quite self-conscious and embarrassed about his own acuity compared to the others. Sure, he did not like to make decisions or to ponder stuff he did not understand at a glance, but he was not that stupid... was he? He had known they were places, just not where those places were... right?

Starting to feel really uncomfortable in his own head, Torquil looked around for something to distract himself with and settled on the living doll that everyone seemed completely unperturbed was walking around and talking like a real person. For a moment he let himself be distracted by simply looking at her, as she was undeniably quite beautiful, if somewhat obviously inhuman, and he quite liked her dress. Her hat was cute. But soon enough he told himself that cute or not she was still a doll, and instead recalled some of the things she had told them.
He was particularly interested in her ability to make them stronger, which both Ophelia and Farren had taken advantage of already, and decided that he had better seize the chance to gain some power from her, too, so he would not end up being worthless to the others.
“Uh... hi,” he said as he awkwardly shuffled up to the doll, prompting her to immediately turn to face him attentively. For a second he wondered what to even ask for, but both Ophelia and Farren had asked for stamina, so he decided to just follow their lead. “Can you give me more stamina, too?”
The doll cocked her head, watching him intently with her large, round eyes. “I am sorry, good Hunter, but I cannot. You need to have blood echoes for me to channel into strength for you, and you have none.”
“Oh.” Torquil lightly kicked a tuft of grass in the path in front of him, looking anywhere but at the doll. “How do I get those?”
“They are the lingering wills of the fallen,” she told him patiently. “You need only be nearby when someone dies, and the power of their blood will echo in yours.”
“Right.” He still did not really get what blood echoes were, but he thought he understood how to get them, at least. “So I get them and come back here, and you can make me stronger?”
The doll nodded her head affirmatively. “So long as you reach the Dream through a stable conduit.”
Torquil stared at her blankly. “What?”
“You need to return to the Dream by using one of the Gatekeepers' lanterns or other markers that can send you here reliably and peacefully,” she explained. “Otherwise, if you lose consciousness or fall asleep, you will still come here but will leave your blood echoes behind.”
Nodding his head slowly, the armored Hunter pondered what he had just been told. “So earlier... even if someone had died at the clinic, I'd still have no echoes now because I died, too?”
“Indeed.”
He sighed. It seemed he had another reason not to get killed again.