Bloodborne: The Plain Doll (for waterinacup)

[Andras]

A young man lay on a table in a blackened room. He trembled as he focused on a beaker filled with sanguine blood. He heard the creaking of rusty wheels as an old man in a wheelchair scooted up to him. This was the young man's decision. There was no turning back now, no matter how hard his body rebelled against it and his sense of self preservation told him to run how we still could.

"So..." the old man spoke. "Are you ready to begin your ministration?"

"I...I...Yes." said the younger man, hesitantly.

"Very well then. But before we begin, I need your consent. You will need a contract."

This was it. No turning back now. But what choice did he have? This was the only way he could make a difference in this new world.

"What is your name?" the old man asked.

At this moment, a glowing rift appeared in the floor of the room. Pale, deformed, small creatures crawled out if it, creeping across the room and climbing the table. Their misshapen, frightful faces looked down at him as they cooed eerily.

"My name...is Caym."

Caym awoke.

Above him was the ceiling of a small, dark room, and around him were tables stacked with medical books, surgical implements, and beakers filled with crimson blood.

He took a few moments to place himself and comprehend where he was, but the harder he tried to remember the more confusing it seemed.

In truth, Caym was not certain whether he was still dreaming or not. For after the fall of Yharnam and the beginning of the Hunt, reality and nightmare had become closely intertwined. Minutes gave way to hours, hours gave way to days, and days gave way to weeks...Caym's life seemed to an endless fever dream, filled with things that barely made sense to him and things that he'd wished he hadn't learned.

All he knew was that the blood was the cause of all this. A strange, exotic blood of unknown origin; touted as a cure for nearly every disease. If only people had known what it's true effects were. Their humanity slipped away from them, violent and alien thoughts filled their minds, their bodies warped and mutated into those of monsters. And now Caym had made it his life's purpose to purge these monsters from this world.

The tall, pale, and dark-haired young man rose from the table and grabbed a few surgical tools. They were the closest things to weapons he could find. His favored tool among this batch was a Liston knife. It was intended for amputations, but perhaps it would make a passable weapon.

Walking outside, Caym emerged from the dark building and into the hellish ruins of Yharnam. The streets were empty, silent as a grave. The sense of corpse-rot lay faintly on the air, and gray smoke rose from countless pyres: covering the sky, veiling the sun and casting a diabolical orange glow over the entire city.

Calm tried to creep quietly, but in such dead silence even the lightest footfalls were amplified. He saw the flickering of several torches in an alleyway up ahead, and saw a number of men in dark clothes and wide-brimmed hats gathered together. They had weapons such as swords, axes, and rifles in hand.

Seeing what he assumed to be allies, Caym approached.

“Hey, is everyone ready for the Hunt? It’s about time you peo-“

Upon hearing him, the Huntsmen turned around. Caym noticed that their arms and legs were longer then they logically should have been, their faces were matted with raggy fur, and their eyes were yellowed and feral.

Caym froze in his tracks.

“It’s one of them!” a Huntsman shouted in a shrill voice. “He’s infected!” it cried.

With that, they surged out of the alleyway towards him. Caym, outnumbered, decided to run. They chased him through the streets of Yharnam, and although their infection made them single-minded and brutal, it also imbued them with a canny, predatory instinct. They split up and surrounded him, right near a balcony leading to a long drop.

One of them lunged forward with a sword, but Caym dodged his attack and stabbed him in the throat with his surgical knife. Being sure to yank the sword out of the beast’s hands, Caym let out a savage scream as he hurled the Huntsman over the side of the balcony: the infected cried out as he plummeted through the air and was gruesomely impaled on a sharp iron fence below.

Turning around to face the others, Caym fought fiercely: man against beast. He received several shallow slashing wounds and took a bullet to the shoulder, but he killed all of them. Panting and bleeding over the pile f corpses, he took out a blood vial and began to unscrew it.

That was when a horrific creature; not wolf but not man, appeared on a nearby rooftop and lunged down a him. Moving on all fours, he recognized it as a fully mutated Scourge Beast. He tried to strike at it, but the creature pounced on top of him, glaring down with hungry eyes as ichorous saliva dripped from it’s jaws. The beast grabbed his leg while using it’s other claw to hold him down. It yanked backwards on his left leg, and Caym let out an agonized scream as he felt his tendons being severed. With a disgusting crunch, it tore off his leg. Delirious with agony, Caym continued to scream…before the Scourge Beast lowered it’s jaws and tore out his throat.

Caym awoke once more. This time, he was in a graveyard. He looked down and saw that his leg and throat were intact; as if nothing had wounded him. Looking around, he realized this graveyard seemed to be in the sky: over the edge of the graveyard he saw stone pillars the size of mountains, rising from what appeared to be clouds. But there was a single house upon a hill, and a staircase leading up to it. And what he saw at the bottom of the stairs truly surprised him.

It was a woman, with brown and red clothes, yellow eyes, white hair and skin as pale as porcelain. She lay reclined against a wall, and she was entirely still and silent.

“Is she…dead?” thought Caym.

The Hunter walked up to the girl and observed her closer.

[Waterinacup]

The woman didn't seem to move at the moment, being void of life, and with a glassy look about her. It didn't take very long for Caym to realize that the lifelessness came from the woman's true nature.

She was a doll.

One that had obviously been created with a great deal of care in mind, with each detail being crafted to a very specific design. She was also surprisingly clean, for seemingly being abandoned in the middle of a garden, and seemed to shine as if just made only hours before.

Caym didn't get too long to observe her, however, as he could hear a few moments later, an ancient voice speak from inside the house, upon the hill, by the great tree.

"Ah! You must be the new hunter!" An old man spoke, from a small window/door that lead onto a natural balcony. The man was certainly old, indeed. His face was etched with many deep wrinkles, and his hair, white as a cloud, went down to his shoulders. His attire was very old, and torn in many places, with stains and rips that suggested the clothing was just as old as him. He sat in a finely crafted wheel chair, supporting himself with a cane, enough to sit up, while he kept his foot, and peg leg, planted right against the foot board of the chair.

Whoever this man was, he was obviously happy to see Caym, by the soft smile on his face, as he looked down at the, likely confused, man who'd entered this entirely arcane world.