Though the both of you stumble over the streams of blood and broken bits of man, you reach the center of the arena first. As the creature slouches towards you, you extend your index finger and thrust it straight down in a message all warriors instinctively recognize. It nods, scrapes two of its remaining blades together, and redoubles its pace.
No tricks. No magic bullshit. No steps back. You are going to stand here and beat the shit out of each other until one of you falls over.
Maybe it figures this is the only way it can beat you. Maybe it doesn't have enough steam left to chase you around. Whatever the case, you pull out the placenta and welcome it to Thunderdome with a swing that nearly takes you off your feet. Something under the robes goes
crack and its blades answer back with deep, murderous cuts along your upper body. You bellow, it screeches, and the two of you trade earth-shattering hits among the smouldering ruins. It's the sort of fight you live for, pure conflict unsullied by tactics or morality. You fall into the rhythm like a daydream or a fever.
One of its sickles takes out your eye at one point and you barely notice; it's not like depth perception matters when you know exactly how far away it is. You pull weapon after weapon from your sleeves, discarding them between strikes rather than readjust your balance. Ludwig's blade carves through the handle of one sickle, your club rips another clean from your foe's hand, and it frantically carves away at you as you put your entire body behind roaring pendulum blows. Each cycle leaves more of your flesh, blood, and bone behind, coal for a burner that's devouring itself.
And then, suddenly, you swing and the Wet Nurse isn't there. Your weapon carries you off your feet and into the jagged mess below. You sputter in the smoke and blood and wait on wavering hands and knees for the creature to behead you. When your head remains firmly attached to your neck, inasmuch as it can ever be said to be, you squint through the haze to see it crumpled on the ground, misshapen and torn from your onslaught. You're too busy struggling to breathe to come up with an appropriately pithy eulogy.
Beneath the baby's wails, the crackle of burning flesh, and the remnants of your left ear piecing itself back together, you hear soft footsteps from the entrance. You watch Yharnam visit each of her fallen men, or at least the largest pieces she can find, and bow. She gives you one as well, deeper than any of the others, before scooping her child into her arms. The two walk through the doorway and into the endless evening, her coos kneading the baby's cries into laughter, and you try to stand.
"Wait," you slur, "still gotta lecture ye about fuckin' a Great One before marriage."
NIGHTMARE SLAIN
A lantern rises from the earth as the world, like its fellow Nightmare before it, begins to come apart. You grab onto it and fall into its light just as the last of the colour is leached away.
You awake, whole but bone-weary, to the familiar sky of the Hunter's Dream. It's blindingly bright after the gloom of the Nightmare, and you keep your eyes shut as you stretch several dozen kinks out of your joints. With your best smile on, you open them back up.
"Hope," you call, "have I got a story for..."
The sentence dies on your tongue as you look to the end of the path and the heat washes over your face.
The Workshop is on fire.
"
HOPE!" you shout, looking frantically about.
"I am here, Hunter Anderson," she says from behind you. You whirl to see her downcast, hands clasped together. Ebrietas sits beside her, arms and tentacles wrapped around herself.
"The dawn will soon break," she continues, speaking as though from a script. "This night, and this dream, will end. Gehrman awaits you, at the foot of the Great Tree. Go on, good Hunter."
[] Write in...