Moonlight
From the Journal of Daniel Hebert
February 9th(?) Continued
You ever have one of those sleepless nights that just seem to drag on forever, until suddenly the sun rises and you realize you got no sleep as you continuously tossed and turned, your only reprieve the hazy infinite moments when you weren't checking the clock? A stupid question. You're too dead to answer me and I know you had those nights the same as I did. I remember you in my arms, your breath catching as you came out of a nightmare. The kind of nightmare you never told me about, where you just retreated when I pressed. I always wondered, love, what is it you dreamed of? Was it what I dream of now?
That sick sweet smell. The greasy, lank fur of men turned to beasts. The sound of their blood spilling on the cobblestone, the feel of it on my skin. I hated it at first. It felt unclean. Wrong. I was never a hunter, not for sport, certainly not for need. But oh do I have a need now. The beasts have taken the city. Or it was always theirs, and only now that new prey has entered their domain they have awoken. I had no choice but to take up arms and turn against them. At first, like that night so long ago – this same night, I know it must be true, impossible as it may seem – I was a cornered rat, fighting for my life. But I've left that corner. I'm in the thick of it now, up to my neck in flayed skin and snapping jaws and an ocean of blood of my own making. My only reprieve is you. But she's not you. I know she isn't, but I need her to be you, Annette, and she said she'd be you if that's what I needed, and it is what I needed. The first time I died, she was there, holding me. Holding me like that time in college, when I drank too much and you took pity on a lightweight underclassman. But this time instead of a keg stand and liquor the poison was rending claws and a madman's silver bullet tearing through me as I howled and screamed, covered in stinking blood and ash. She doesn't call me Daniel, or Danny, or Danny-boy. Just the Good Hunter.
What a fucking joke, I thought. I was no hunter. Not then. But this night just drags on, and on, and on, and I couldn't stand just staying in that place, with the thing that has your face, your warmth, when our baby girl is out there struggling to draw her next breath. I dream even here, in this nightmare, when she holds me when it's time to rest. I dream of Taylor.
The Doll, that is what she calls herself, she told me I was the new Hunter. Tied to this dream within the nightmare that is Yharnam. The nightmare that birthed you, the nightmare that haunts Taylor now. That's the only way I can make sense of it. Your family came from this godforsaken, bloodstained mire of gore and violence and savagery, and your family brought the thirst with them. Cainhurst. Murder Hill. It looms out there, under the moonlight, above the lake. And all that stands between me and it is a city gone mad with the same blood-lust that I feel now. It was unclean first. A grim necessity. Something to wash off, to try not to think about when it was no longer needed. But it heals me. It makes me stronger. And when it spills upon me, I feel like a young man again. And I feel it. That need. Because I know that if I have enough of it, that if I get my fill, on time, every time, I can do anything. And that terrifies me.
But I still need it if I'm going to save Taylor.
And so I've spent however long in this endless night bleeding beasts dry, stockpiling blood, taking it in. Echoes she calls them, the doll with your face. And they sing in me now. I'm a younger man and a new man. And every bloody inch I get closer to Castle Cainhurst, the thicker it gets. The smell. This fire in my belly. It disgusts me, but I love it. It's better than beer, better than any drug, better than sex, God help me. It gnaws at me, the thirst, no matter how much I blood is spilled. And the fear gnaws at me too, that I'll never wake up from this. That I'll stay here, forget you, forget Taylor, and just be another raving beast in this fucking city.
Just one bloody inch at a time. The lanterns guide me. Lead me back to the dream, where I can see you again for just a moment frozen in time, in this endless night. And I wish she really was you, and that we were together again, and I hate you for leaving me. Forgive me.
I didn't think you could read or write in dreams. But why should I expect this one to make sense? I don't know if it's been hours or days or years since I last wrote to you, but now I sit in this workshop, surrounded by weapons and books and incense. I'm going out again. Another run, another shot. One bloody inch at a time, until it's done.
I need to get to Castle Cainhurst. Find my answers. The books here revealed the truth to me. Blood ministration. Yharnam's miracle. Yharnam's curse. And the heretics, the Vilebloods, the enemies of their Healing Church. Your people. A name, Annalise. If anyone can save Taylor, it's her. And I'll cut down as many beasts as it takes to get to her. And I'll get my answers. I'll get a new miracle for our baby girl if I have to rip her apart to find it.
I love you.
February 9th again
New Entry 1
Not gonna bother keeping track anymore. If anyone reads this they'll call me a madman. Maybe because I am. I'm still writing in this damn book after all, in this city. With the beasts, the madmen. Then came the giants. Some a size I might've called reasonable, just gaunt and stretched out and with flaming scythes. Then others so large and misshapen I swear it hurt for them to walk. But they bleed the same as everything else. And if that isn't the most fucked up part of this whole mess, that's all that matters to me now, except for saving Taylor.
The moon has moved. It's getting later in the night, but I feel like I've been carving through this city for months. Inch by bloody inch, cutting down beasts and madmen and monsters, scrounging for more blood, more weapons, more ammunition. And every now and again, a Big One. I don't know what else to call them. Alphas? They're like the beasts, but so much larger. And they've killed me, torn me apart, burned me. But I'm more of a stubborn cuss than they are it seems, in the end. I've made it through, walking on a bridge made out of corpses over a sea of blood and ichor. And then there's the hunters, like me. But not like me. They don't have a mission or cause or real goal. Just more blood. Attacking anything and everything. Smarter, more skilled than the madmen, deadlier, with all the strength and agility and raw power of the Big Ones, contained in a seemingly normal form even as they brandish hacksaws and hammers and giant fucking swords.
But they bleed, too, and they die. They don't dream like I do. They only dream the nightmare. They don't have you like I do.
I've finally left the city. Found my way back to the woods where it all went wrong. Where they died, the men I'd hired. Their bodies were nowhere to be found. But the beast was there. And it finally died. I continued forward. Then came the witches, with fire and pitchforks and mad laughter. Giants with axes.
But they all bled the same, and they died. Until they're back again in this damn dream when I die and wake up in the dream and have to go back to the nightmare and dream again.
I just have to keep cutting. I made it to a bridge, the collapsed one. I don't know what I was planning to do. Find a dingy? Fucking swim across? But fate was kind to me. A carriage was there. A hooded driver at the reins. He knew I had the invitation. I knew that's what I needed. I don't know how, but I knew it. It just was. The carriage opened up for me and I stepped inside. And here I am. Writing on this eerily smooth ride, to meet your great great great... grandmother. Aunt. Who fucking knows. You never told me.
God damn it, Annette, why didn't you ever tell me? I ask you that, and you never have an answer. Because you're dead. How long did I wait in bed for you to join me there? How long did I wait at home, waiting for you to call? How long did I hate you for dying, for leaving us?
I ask the Doll, too. And she can never answer. Sweet, innocent, and ignorant. I wonder who made her. I asked her, once. She said she was made by a man named Gherman, the first hunter. The man who made the dream I'm trapped in. I want to thank him. I want to throttle him. But he's gone, now. Freed by another. I asked where this other was, and she just tilted her head. A mannerism you never had, that reminds me that while she has your face, she isn't you, and it breaks my heart again.
I'm rambling. I'm losing my mind. I can't smell the blood anymore because it's all I smell. I smell its absence. Even now I suck down this fucking blood cocktail, not like a beer or a shot of whiskey or something like that anymore. It's water. It's mother's milk. It's the air I breathe. A most basic, essential sustenance, because with the blood I can be stronger, faster. I can take on the world and all its horrors. For Taylor. I can be the monster she needs me to be. The monster I should've been when the horrors of the world were hounding her.
The Doll says I'm no monster, that I'm a hunter. I'm no beast. I hunt beasts.
But when I tear open the guts of those things, those things that I know were once men, when I blow their heads off with this oversized pistol, when I bathe in their blood, what's the fucking difference anymore? And I have my answer. Taylor. You. But you're dead, and if I don't get this done Taylor will be too. So I need more blood to save Taylor to remember you.
The carriage stopped a long time ago. It's frozen outside. The horses died a long time ago. The driver was long gone before I was born. Before you were born. Or were you born here, so long ago? Were you a dreamer too, Annette? When did your family escape this nightmare and bring it to Brockton Bay? When did you draw me into it, really? Was it when we shared that held gaze at the food court? Was it when we first made love? When we brought Taylor into the world after we sobbed over her lost siblings that never were? Or was it when you died, and the good dreams ended, and the nightmare began?
But I'm here now. I need to keep going. Inch by bloody inch. For Taylor.
I love you.
Cainhurst Castle
This castle is full of ghosts. But ghosts bleed, apparently, so that works for me. Ghosts, and gargoyles, and giant tics. I'm very glad you didn't turn into a giant tic. I think your sisters turned into giant tics. I guess that makes sense when your diet is mainly blood. More books. Servants, poor creatures. They attack me, and I see them for what they are, slaves and broken things, fighting so savagely to defend the home that ruined them. But you weren't like them, were you, Annette? That's why you left. I can see your face in the ghosts. I see your face in the portraits. These were your people, and they died, but you didn't. Your sisters and your mother and you left when it came. The purge that made the ghosts.
Inch by bloody inch. I'm carving through them too. They're in the way and they won't listen when I tell them to just let me through. Because they want something from me that I'm not going to give them. Because I need it for Taylor.
I made it to the roof, because that is the way. It's so clear now. The man there. He was a noble man. A holy man. A wicked man. A beast the same as the rest, in the end, with his Executioners. I know this from the blood. I can hear them now, you know. The echoes the Doll spoke of. I heard them before, at the edge of hearing, but now it's a roar and a whisper. A warning when a knife comes at my back. It's helpful, now.
This man died a long time ago and he's still a pain in my ass. But he bleeds like everything else. Martyr Logarius. I need to remind him what dead means in this godforsaken dream.
Cainhurst Castle, Again
Martyr Logarius is dead. Martyr Logarius remains dead. I have taken his crown. I can see it now, the way to the throne room of your ancestors. The statues surround me, watching, a court frozen in time in this dream.
The throne had her. Annalise. The Queen of the Vilebloods. Your fore-mother. The Queenly Flesh. A man killed her, long ago, but she is immortal and dreaming still. You can't die in your dreams. You just wake up. But when you don't wake, what happens when you die?
I guess you sit there, waiting for someone like me to find you. Just this mass of broken flesh, bleeding for years. Decades. Centuries. Or a single night. I can see it now, the streams of blood leading out the door, through the castle, into the Lake, back to Yharnam. The dream started here.
This whole nightmare, Annalise's dream, struggling to cling to life after the world was done with her.
She's where it started. The Vilebloods. You. She is the answer. She must be.
I took the flesh, and I drank. I took her blood, her echoes, her dream, into me. Her and every other poor bastard trapped in this hell. And now she is bound to me, and I to her. My blood is tainted now, and I understand. She was sustained by the other hunters I encountered. Fought. Killed. And I'm one of them. And I can see how to bring her back. A chamber of water and an altar and the great being left behind. But that's not what I want.
Annalise is coming home with me. She is bound to me, as I am to her, as I was to you, and we are to Taylor. And she will save Taylor. She must save Taylor. I must save Taylor.
The blood is fresh on my tongue and I see so clearly. I must wake. I must wake.
I know you can hear me. The Doll did not say your name because you have no name, not anymore. She did not know what to tell me when I asked where you were, because you were right there. Hear me, Great One. Let me wake. I have what I came here for.
Annette, I love you. Goodbye.
Taylor, when you read this, forgive me.
And as for you.
This was not for you.
AN: I had no interest in painstakingly describing all the combat and boss fights and general grind that got Danny from point A to point B and neither did he so here this is. Next chapter we're finally going home. Hurray.
