Chapter Text
All was still and silent when Ophelia awoke at the lamp in Iosefka’s Clinic.
That fact alone was enough to set the Hunter immediately on-edge. She held her breath and strained her ears, and heard… nothing. Distant sounds, like the cawing of carrion crows and the howls of beasts, of course, but nothing there. Not the creaking of the floor-boards, not the coughing of a patient or even the sound of that damn mouse chewing its way through a wall somewhere.
Her grip on her blessed blade tightened as she turned and strode up the staircase to the clinic proper, anxiety making her stomach tighten as she first realized how eerie wooden walls could be when left unilluminated.
The door at the top of the steps, she reached without incident; when she went to let herself in, however, she found the knob wouldn’t turn. She rattled it a little, her right hand still holding onto the sword which rested on her shoulder, and frowned.
Iosefka didn’t usually lock the door, did she?
It was only then that Ophelia realized she’d never asked for a key – why would she? The door had never been locked. Not after Iosefka had started allowing her in, at least.
She tried knocking, of course, but it yielded no response, and anxiety sank its claws even deeper into Ophelia’s belly.
Seizing the grip of her claymore with both hands, she brought it off her shoulder and held it vertically before herself, tip to the sky, and pressed a kiss to the flat of the blade as she willed it to reveal its true form. Blue-green light rushed to the sword, imbuing it with cosmic power and broadening its blade nearly threefold. This was Ludwig’s guiding moonlight, the holy blade wielded by the Holy Blade himself before being passed down to Ophelia in what was surely a cruel twist of fate.
A thrumming magical blade slipped between the door and its frame made short work of whatever locking mechanism had barred the Hunter entry, and she shouldered her way through, appreciative of the creaking of its hinges simply because it was a noise.
The room she stepped into was empty, its surgical tables and IV stands left without patients to serve, the contents of the shelves and cabinets lining its walls long having since fallen prey to a thick coat of dust.
This, Ophelia knew, was the room she’d had her blood ministered in. The room she’d arisen in while the sun was still setting in the sky, when the night of the Hunt had only just begun.
…
Why had she come to Yharnam, anyways?
It was a question that gave Ophe pause, though only for a moment. She had a cute doctor that needed to be checked on.
The hallway wasn’t empty.
Little blue fellows with oversized, sort-of-deflated heads lounged around in silence, none of them moving a muscle.
Ophelia waved a hand in front of one’s face, and it did look at her, but it made no move otherwise. Its expression seemed somewhat annoyed, and the Hunter apologized quietly before leaving it to its… standing.
This struck Ophelia as being rather odd, but... the blue fellows were odd anyhow, and she didn’t know what to make of it, if anything.
She moved on, following the curve of the hall, headed straight for Iosefka’s office. She turned the corner, unconsciously picking up her pace, and rushed to the door.
Mercifully, this door remained unlocked, and she let herself in – this door didn’t creak, but glided open on well-oiled hinges. It was her own handiwork, and she thanked herself for it, because it meant she could hear a drip in the office proper, up above.
Drip… drop.
This room was… almost two rooms, really. The ground floor had a small library – just shelves lined with books rather than medical supplies, really, though the shelves made a rather nice, question-mark sort of shape, a straight line leading into an indented curve – and the stairs leading to the upper portion, which Ophelia took two at a time.
The landing held nothing for the Hunter, and she burst into the connected room – it really was two rooms – and froze, her blood turning to ice in an instant.
Iosefka sat behind her broad, wooden desk, her usually pristine white doctor’s attire dyed pale red, blood blossoming around the bladed shaft of the threaded cane driven through her chest and out the back of her chair. The doctor’s precious blood dripped from the weapon’s tip, and Ophelia’s beloved sword clattered to the floor as she rushed to the side of the woman she’d so fancied.
She didn’t check Iosefka’s pulse. Some part of her knew, deep down, that the doctor was already dead.
Ophelia might have killed that part of herself, had she been willing to acknowledge it and less occupied at that particular moment.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she cupped the older woman’s pale face in both hands. She pressed her forehead to Iosefka’s, and whimpered, begged, “Iosefka? Angel?”
Iosefka didn’t respond.
The Hunter began administering blood vials. The first didn’t change anything. A second, a third, a fourth – she tore the cane from her sweetheart’s chest, then tried a fifth. A sixth.
Th- the next one would work.
It had to.
The seventh vial brought no appreciable change.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth were injected all at once, directly into Iosefka’s chest, and a breath rattled from the doctor’s lungs, weak and wheezy, a singular spasm wracking her whole body before she promptly went limp. She slumped over in her chair, kept upright only by Ophelia’s hand on her cheek.
Rational thought briefly abandoned the Hunter, the meaning of this response failing to register in her mind as the feeling of having Iosefka’s head loll against her hand did something strange to her. Left her in a strange sort of trance.
A giggle caught her ear, and, in a haze, Ophelia whirled around.
The assistant doctor wriggled on an operating table, propped up on her hands and knees, her eyes darting to and fro, her shoes apparently lost to the aether, her doctor’s garb lightly spattered with pale red blood.
Ophelia didn’t need rational thought to make the connection there. Blind rage was perfectly sufficient.
Her hands found her greatsword where it lay on the floor, and as she retrieved it, it shone with turquoise moonlight.
Good Hunter, it seemed to tell her, that woman drove her pathetic little sword-cane through dear, darling Iosefka.
‘Perhaps I ought to show her what a real sword can do,’ thought Ophelia, and the sword seemed to thrum with the same idea at the same time, as if the two were in unison.
The woman on the table was babbling madness, and every sound from her damnable throat urged the Hunter forwards.
When Ophelia stood beside the plain, metal table, she raised her precious sword high above her head, stepping forward as she brought the glowing blade down, splitting the table, and the woman upon it, in two. Blood sprayed in a spectacular arc from the wound, decorating Ophelia with a vertical stripe of warm, wet gore.
She tugged the bloodied blade free from the hardwood floor with a grunt and took a step to her right.
The woman who had run Iosefka through gurgled something which was probably insane, but which was, mercifully, cut short when another stroke of Ophelia’s blessed blade took the head of the table clean off.
She left her weapon embedded in the floor, then, and returned to Iosefka, bracing a knee on the chair and taking the white-haired doctor into her arms. She just held her, paying no mind to the fact that she was streaked with gore, as one tends to be after cleaving a woman in twain and subsequently taking off her head for good measure.
For a time, she wept.
At length, Ophelia rose. She pulled her sword free of the floor and gave it a firm shake to dismiss its enchantment and return it to normal size, then brought it over to Iosefka’s desk and set it down. Then, she scooped the doctor up into her arms. She cradled the woman for a moment, pressing her cheek to Iosefka’s head; eventually, she sat the limp woman on the desk to free up her right hand so she could call the Messengers to come and retrieve her guiding moonlight.
As soon as their clammy little hands had taken hold of the commendable blade and spirited it away to the Dream, the moon-scented Hunter picked Iosefka back up and began to walk.