The Old Blood

CHAPTER ONE: THE NIGHT UNFURLS

A man sits alone upon the steps of the burnt-out shell of a house. The scent of corpses is thick in the dusk air. The man closes his eyes, and inhales the rotten atmosphere, finding strange comfort in the bloodstained city he'd called home for so long. 'Aaah, Yharnam. What a bloody bitch. I envy those who haven't felt the cold stab of her blackened nails. I envy those who have not known true fear. But as Mother says, without fear in our hearts, we are little different than the beasts themselves.' The man thinks to himself.

It was a night of the Hunt. He expected the Moon to be complete. Too many times he has wandered these streets, striking down anything that looked like a beast. And if he was to be quite honest, it was getting old. The repetitive slaughter, the stench of blood: it was all quite droll. He didn't know how or why the beasts popped up, but they just did one day. It was not like he needed a good reason to kill them though. They would kill everyone if the Hunters didn't intervene. The man was dressed in the white and grey garb of the Vileblood Hunters. He was of a rather blocky build, and his frame was wrapped in muscle. A faint layer of stubble stretched across his lower jaw, and his eyes glittered grey in the moonlight. His shaggy chestnut hair was slicked back, and shining dully in the fading light.

As the sky grew increasingly dark, the man sighed. 'Best get a move on,' he thought. He removed his sword from the sheath that also doubled as a bigger blade from his back, and drew his pistol. Tonight, he had a quest. One of utmost importance: kill the Vicar of the Healing Church, one of the most important figures in Yharnam, yet share the guilt of bringing a city to its knees. She had succumbed to the Blood, and it was said that the beastly scourge had taken over her mind, warping her from the innocent girl- if anyone in the Healing Church was ever innocent- she once was to a blood-crazed maniac. He reckoned that he needed to make his way to The Cathedral Ward, where the main body of the Church was located. As he set forth, he couldn't shake the unease that he felt about that night.

Fighting through Central Yharnam was simple enough. When the Hunt began happening more and more frequently, even the townsfolk helped try to alleviate the beastly scourge. So every night The Hunt was in play, there would be mobs of men with impromptu weapons and torches trying to assist the Hunters. But eventually, even the Hunters started to succumb to the Blood and fall into beasthood, and mistrust of any Hunter began to spread through the city. So be it Beast or Hunter, none are too welcome in Yharnam.

He dashed through the streets, cleaving through crazed men with ease, ducking and jumping around their makeshift swords, his blade biting deep into their flesh before being ripped out and plunged into the next victim. The man didn't feel too bad about it though: as a Hunter, he was taught to remove the scourge at the first sign of Beasthood, lest the rest of the city falls like Old Yharnam, buried and burned to ash underneath the new Yharnam. And to be quite frank, most of the men he was killing were on the cusp of beasthood themselves.

"Away, away!"

"You plague-ridden rat!"

"It's all your fault!"

"You're not wanted here!"

Thus were the delirious cries that assailed the man as he cut them down by the droves. He quickly passed through a street with a huge pyre in the middle, before two huge double doors that rattled with the pounding of something humongous. Corpses both bestial and human lay on the pyre, attended by a mob of huntsmen. The man was upon them in a flash, slashing and whirling with his sword, becoming one with the length of consecrated steel. He was shot at by the rifleman on top of the overturned carriage, but in one fluid motion, he drew a throwing knife from his belt and slung it at the rifleman. The hail of bullets stopped, and he didn't bother looking to see if his knife hit its mark. Soon enough, all the men lie dead on the ground, missing limbs or even heads as the ground ran thick with blood.

The next couple of areas were like this: kill everything, move on. He shortly came to a large dry dock, a vast room with an entrance to the city's sewer system. Overturned boats lay in the channel, and large rats prowled. Not to mention the huntsmen that milled about, their transformation to beasthood a step away. These foes were much more formidable than the previous humans he'd taken out. He climbed up onto a path that led to a small balcony that overlooked the room. He stood there, surveying the sewerscape. As he was gazing, a beastman turned its head directly to where the man stood. "Shoot!" he hissed, ducking behind some barrels behind him. He stepped on something, though, and went tumbling head over heels through the window behind him; "AAAAAAH, OOF!" He cried as he hit the boards below. His vision reeled, and three birds circled above. 'What? Wait, no,' he thought as his vision came into focus. What he thought were three vultures turned out to be the bird-like mask of the infamous Hunter of Hunters.

"I thought I taught you better than that," the Hunter said in a thick, disproving elderly voice. The man blinked a few times, still recovering. The woman offered a gloved hand. "Now, what brings you for this little surprise drop-in?" She asked, lifting the man to his feet.

"Well Ma, I was on my way to Cathedral Ward, and I uh, got a bit turned around," he said.

"Well, it's no matter. The Great Bridge is shut, and so is the gate to Cathedral Ward. You'll have to go through the sewers and Oedon Chapel. Grisly business, I know. But a Hunter must Hunt. You should always keep this in mind, Evaahn. A Hunter, no matter the circumstances, must Hunt."

"A hunter must hunt..." Evaahn said, repeating the adage. "Indeed. I thank you for the info, Ma. I'll be seeing you."

Eileen simply nodded and turned back to overlook the open sewer of the city.