Chapter Text
Elijah wiped away at the sand on his eyelashes, left over from his not-so-peaceful slumber. While his heart hung heavy with his losses, he opted to focus on something else instead; survival. After all, it was what kept him standing for so long when his body was failing him. On the topic of his survival, however, was also its connection to that contract he signed. He had to find the Blood Minister.
Now that he had taken the time to recollect his senses, however, he realized just how dreadful this place really was. With his thoughts thinking only of how to get rid of whatever was hindering his breathing, he never took in how desolate the clinic seemed. The lights were practically nonexistent, save for the streaks of moonlight peeking in from the windows. The tables were all a mess, with bottles of who-knows-what lying open, ready for easy cross-contamination. Even the IV pole that he remembered was pumping something into his veins looked a bit untrustworthy to him, not that he was ungrateful. The tank hooked up to the contraption was empty, save for how its glass walls were stained with a dark and viscous red. He could barely see his reflection in the dirty tank. His build looked like that of any sick Victorian man, though truthfully, Elijah couldn't recall what he looked like before. Probably the same, but no sunken eyes, or a complexion as pale as a bone, and fuller cheeks? His hair was an inky black, slightly wavy but overall unkempt, and reaching just below his ears. His eyes were a cool blue, though more grey in dim lighting, as they were now. Elijah then glanced back at the bandage on his arm. Lightly massaging the ache in his elbow, he made a silent prayer in thanks to whatever force of nature returned him his vitality, despite how skeptical it made him feel now that he had his clarity back.
He frowned as he jangled the handle of the door behind him, finding it locked. He then walked down the stairs of the room, the floorboards making an ominous creak at the slightest pressure of his foot. From above him hung an unlit chain chandelier, and a tall window, its glass covered in coats of dust. The setting sun seeped out through it, illuminating the building only with a few streaks of pale orange. As he kept heading downward, a wide door blocked his path, the windows on it dusty, yellowed, and slightly cracked as if someone banged against it at some point. The entire building had a rather unique smell to it, Elijah thought. There was the unmistakable wet smell of mold sitting in the wooden cracks somewhere, along with the low hum of winds coming from what he assumed was the weather outside. The place was still rundown, but as Elijah’s eyes passed over the wooden walls, full of exquisitely detailed engraved designs, he felt a sense of melancholy. This place surely was beautiful back in its heyday, but it had fallen into quite a state of disrepair from what seemed to be years of neglect.
Just before he was about to approach the door, he was interrupted by the sound of a low growl. Or rather, maybe it was more of a low moan? It sounded familiar, but not in the welcoming sense. His eyes trailed back to the floorboards. Many of them had their nails uprooted, others seemed more like they were close to it. He crouched down for a moment, noticing that it seemed almost as if something large was prying at the floor and that tiny shards of glass glittered in between the cracks. A feeling of fear crept into his heart. There was some sort of fight here or at least some sort of tantrum. That was when it hit him, sending a cold chill down his spine. Where were the other staff? Other patients, for that matter? He woke up alone, which didn’t bother him much before, but it made him more than just uneasy now.
”Uuaguhaha…”
The sound made Elijah jump quickly to his feet, ready to spring back upstairs. He looked around, but there was no one in sight. Was he simply just hearing things?
”Uuaaghh…”
His eyes darted back down to the floor, a shriek escaping from his lips as he saw a pile of dust start bubbling. Was that the source of that moaning noise?
”Umm…” Elijah slowly crept towards it, before he let out a stifled gasp. From the strange dust emerged a tiny white head, oblong in shape, with… Oh. Oh no. That’s…That’s the same little grabby thing from my dream. Oh God. That wasn’t from whatever that Minister gave me? Is it real? Am I still asleep? Ohh, no no no no.
Now thoroughly disturbed, he tried to back up again only to be met with the same moaning sound, this time from another little white creature behind him. He considered stomping on them and running… At least, that was until he noticed that they weren’t moving from their dust piles to go after him. Were they not hostile after all? Considering that this time he wasn’t strapped down to an operating table with a needle in his arm, the creatures seemed harmless, save for their startling appearances. Their faces still bothered Elijah greatly, but at least this time they weren’t crawling around on his body. He made hesitant eye contact with one of them, this one holding a piece of parchment, periwinkle in colour, the ends of the frayed from age. The little creature held it up to Elijah, the gesture resembling a person giving a gift. Elijah stretched out a hand toward it, to which it made an eager nod. He retracted his arm again, it seemed to make a dejected little whine. He still hated the way its misshapen head and beady eyes looked up at him, but he breathed out a tiny laugh. It reminded him of a weird puppy.
Elijah ignored the scroll, the small creature making a very unenthusiastic groan at him as his eyes trailed over to the other dust pile dwellers, all of which gave him the same look of unapproval. Elijah said nothing to them, his eyes still glued to the tiny little messengers as he walked through the room to the doorway. He was then filled with a new sense of dread as he heard another growling sound, this one much more guttural and animalistic than the sounds that the white creatures made. Slowly, his head turned toward the sound and he was struck frozen with another bout of fear.
Surely I’m not awake. First the little grabby things, and now this. It’s that wolf that caught on fire, isn’t it? Elijah gulped, staring at the source of the sound. It was like a werewolf, except that it seemed less like a wolf and more beastly in a sense, and it was so thin and wiry that it looked as if it were starving. Judging by the mutilated body hanging out from the beast’s gaping maw, Elijah concluded that if he were to move an inch further, he’d have a one-way ticket to whatever plane of existence that that poor fellow’s soul was now. His grey eyes darted back to the white creatures. One only made what looked like an encouraging gesture to keep walking in response. The other started holding up its scroll again for him to see. On the paper, its ends frayed from age and repeated use, were directions on how to…fight beasts? Elijah’s brow furrowed as he started to piece together what they seemed to want from him.
“You want me to fight that??”
They nodded again.
“Absolutely not. I’ll die. I’ve only just now started to live. Unless I’m already dead. Is that what this is? What I’m seeing? I’m dead and this is some sort of afterlife?”
They shrugged at him.
“I’d much rather not go into that room.”
They groaned at him.
“You can’t just climb on top of me while I’m incapacitated, and then demand that I go fight a monster the moment I wake up!”
They stared blankly at him.
“Are you capable of talking? At all??”
They groaned at him again.
“Are you lot serious?? I will die.”
They looked at each other, then back at him. They seemed to try and mouth him the word, “Go.” Elijah had very little want to listen, however. Dreaming or dead, awake or alive, he wasn’t the type of person to go rushing head-first into something so risky, especially not when that thing in question was a starving wolf. But there was nowhere else to go from the room he woke up in, aside from that room with the locked door. He didn’t feel very safe with the notion of staying in the operating room, however, and not when he was seeing tiny creatures pop out from dusty corners. He could try dashing past the wolf. He had survived running from rabid dogs back home before when they were frenzied and had certainly survived being bitten before as well, but there was a drastic difference between being bit by a dog and being bit by whatever that monster was. Gods, he felt nauseous. Even if he stayed put, what if that thing realized it wasn’t satisfied by the corpse and realized that he was there anyway? Would he risk dying either way? He sent an angry look at the tiny white creatures before it quickly morphed into a look of exasperation. At the very least, Elijah knew one thing. He was very good at running. He was at least so good at it, that he managed to run all the way to Yharnam for a cure. He didn’t want to risk fighting a beast unarmed, but he could run past one, surely? A pang of doubt fell against his mind.
Wasn’t like he could run forever.
“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” He muttered. And so he ran. He cursed at himself internally when the wolf lifted its head toward him. He tried to use the room to his advantage. That scuffle he noticed from the room must have moved from there to here, considering that the room showed signs of the same carnage; broken floorboards and glass. The room was large, seemingly a mass patient holding room with multiple empty gurneys and IV stands. All of the tanks were either empty or shattered, leaving tiny droplets of blood to trickle down. The beast snarled at Elijah, starting to run towards him. Elijah’s feet seemed to move before his mind did, running behind a wooden support beam and hearing a loud crash behind it as the wolf collided with it. With its attention focused on having crashed into the pillar, Elijah fumbled and headed toward the exit, pushing a gurney out of the way. A thunderous growl came from behind him, and he reared his head backward to see where the wolf had gone, only to realize that it was dangerously close to him, claws certain to make a gash into the flesh of his back as it leaped toward him.
He screamed, shouting out cries for help despite knowing there was no one there. He could feel the tearing of his shirt, and the way the wolf’s claws plunged into his shoulder blades. He tried to crawl forward, maybe kick the wolf away, and successfully head for the exit, but a sharp pain shot through his torso. He tried to kick, but being tackled from behind like this, he wouldn’t know exactly where to hit, and it wasn’t like the beast had much of a body to get hit either. He could feel the beast sink its teeth into him, feel the yank of the beast’s mouth as it tried to pry a piece of him off.
Elijah’s fingers dug into the floor, trying to pull himself away, his fingernails starting to bleed as he was forcing splinters underneath them. Tears streamed through his eyes as he was met with an all too familiar feeling. When he came here, his body had been slowly giving up on him and he could barely stand upright, much less breathe steadily. He had regained that ability only minutes ago, and now he was dying again. As he felt the tendons in his body tear and heard the crack of his bones, he was sure this time. He was dying. What a pity to be given back a life that was so short-lived and yet so well wasted.
…
The smell of dirt was what first filled his nose as he regained consciousness. Strange. The last smell he remembered was the breath of something rotten and metallic. The light made his eyes flutter open, and he was greeted by cobblestones and daisies. He pushed himself up to his knees, with no pain or aches as he did. A hand rushed to feel his back, fully intact. Elijah blinked several times, jolting to his feet, and walked around in a circle, trying to confirm that his body was still attached to him. The place was quiet, in a serene and calming way. There was some sort of peaceful haze that covered the land, in an almost dreamlike sense. As his worn shoes left soft little clicks against the paved stone path, he came upon a small stairway lined with many tombstones, leading up toward a small building. There were the same white creatures from before, this time in their strange bubbling dust piles as well, but sitting atop the steps. Elijah, partially too confused to be scared by them this time, but still skeptical, tentatively stepped towards them. They eagerly waved him over, though somehow, they gave him looks of disapproval. What for? For dying? He thought. This time instead of just scrolls, they offered him something else that at least made him less inclined to be mad at them. Elijah’s brow raised slightly.
“Weapons? What’s this, you forgot to give them to me the last time you told me to go into a room with a starving wolf?” He said spitefully. One of them started its usual moan again, though this time, it somehow sounded…Upset? Elijah scoffed.
“What else was I meant to do? Smack it with my hands? And then die with my arms in its mouth?? I’m not a fighter.”
The creature tilted its head in a fashion that reminded Elijah of a confused dog before holding out a scroll for him the read again.
The messengers offer you a trick weapon and a firearm. Choose one of each. Trick weapons and firearms are employed in beast hunting.
“Beast hunting? I don’t understand you at all, I’m no hunter.”
It was this comment that seemed to make them all groan at him again, this time louder, and with a more annoyed tone. Elijah let out a breath sharply through his nose.
“...Messengers, then. Is that what you’re called?”
They nodded. The assortment of weapons served to intimidate Elijah further rather than comfort him. What in the world had he got into? As his hand stretched outward toward one of the weapons, a strange feeling tickled him from inside. A whisper as faint as a breeze filled his head for a brief moment.
The contract.
Elijah froze, then retracted his hand and looked at one of the messengers with a serious expression.
“The contract I signed. This was what I signed my name onto, wasn’t it? That Minister had me agree to be a hunter.”
Elijah could’ve sworn that with their faces seemingly stuck in expressions made to wail and sigh, they tried to smile at him. Elijah stood up, slowly backing away, then holding his head in his hands.
“What have I done?”
