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For almost as long as I can remember, I have had a nightmare.
Not every night, mind you; some nights my dreams are nonsense, some nights they are pleasant- especially often these past years. But when nightmares comes, it is always the same one.
I can tell it is the same nightmare, no matter at which point I find myself in it, by the feel of my blood. Blood runs thick and sweet there, singing with power.
I do not have a mother, in that place. I have a woman who bore me, who trained me in the ways of the terrible Queen of Cainhurst’s court, who… took advantage, of her power over me, but no mother. Every morning here I awake so blessed to know my mother is nothing like that woman, and every night there I quake with remembrance of who I must obey.
In my nightmare there are servants who weep and tremble when they see my approach, and they are right to, for they are a single whim or mistake from being summoned to the banquet hall. For in my nightmare, there is no sweeter indulgence than the blood they carry, and after the woman who bore me is done with me, I will imbibe any depravity to feel some kind of control.
Given time, such things become normal to me, in that awful place. Maids and cleaners and waitstaff, all I have dined upon, all I have summoned and offered in my stead, so I may be spared the lusts- both for blood and debauchery- of my peers. I all have watched, and caused to, die screaming for some fleeting amusement in that terrible cage of a life. Uncountable, for in that place I was never taught I should keep track.
In my nightmare I look to the sky through stained glass, and long for an escape I fear will never come. And yet it does, in the shape of a common man, a man by the name of Gherman. A farmer, once, now a Hunter of Beasts. His Learned Lords ask for volunteers from our terrible ranks, that might be taught to Hunt as well, and I take my chance at freedom.
I learn well, in that place, Gherman is a fine teacher, and I am desperate to be something- anything- but the monster that place made of me. I Hunt terrible Beasts, and I help the Learned Lords of Byrgenwerth delve deep into the forgotten tombs that birthed them.
But the insight they find there is as insidious as the debauchery of Cainhurst, and they are just as maddened by discovery as I have come to be by the sweet call of Blood. I do not see it until it is too late, until I am called upon to help them ‘investigate’ a place above ground that has been overrun with Beasts.
The people of the fishing hamlet are not Beasts, and I do not realize until I am already drunk on the spilling of their blood, and after that, I do not care. I slay them in droves, leaving their weak and helpless to the lacking mercies of Byrgenwerth, save for when the Blood calls to me from their young or their old, from their babes in arms, and then I leave not them, either.
I Hunt, and I Hunt, until not even their greatest guardians remain, and only then does the Blood lose its hold of me, only then do I see what I have done as it is. The terror, suffering, and butchery I have enacted and enabled upon the innocent.
And the scholars of Byrgenwerth have nothing but praise to give me, for in my lust for blood I went for my victim’s throats, leaving the skulls intact for them to investigate. To crack open and scrape for evidence of the eyes they are so certain must line these poor folks’ brains.
Efficient, they call me.
It is too much. Even in my Nightmare, numb as I am to most horrors there. It is too much for me, and I cast Rakuyo away, swear to never hold it again.
Then another of them joins me in leaving the Learned Lords, scorning them for causing such destruction while producing nothing of practical use. A man who has plumbed the depths of the power of the thick, sweet Blood of the nightmare, and found a way to heal, rather than harm.
And I follow him, desperate to be anything other than the monsters I have been.
For a time, he is honest. He becomes Vicar Laurence, and I play the role of his sponsor, my accursed family name good for convincing people of our venture’s pedigree if nothing else. The Blood heals all illness, all injury, and the Healing Church flourishes.
This time, when it goes wrong, I can see the cracks forming.
It starts small, a man born deaf who wishes to hear. No injury, no illness to heal, and so the experiments begin. Months of work, dozens of volunteers- true volunteers, though the word would become euphemistic in time- and what they begin to hear tilts the scales further.
The fervor takes Laurence, as it took the Learned Lords before him; but he is a healer, I tell myself, not a butcher, and I can see the path set out before us. He values my word, I can steer him away, I tell myself, he would not sink to the same depravities as the Lords, I lie.
And I watch it happen. I see the awful things done in the pursuit of insight, of the Cosmos; I see the Blood turn foul, making Beasts of men, new Hunters of the faithful. I see volunteers exchanged for prisoners, exchanged for poor souls who came to the church in the hopes that it would help them. And I offer nothing but words to stop it .
They think me kind, as I tend to them, the gentle Lady Maria, who holds their hands, soothes their pains, and speaks comforting words just loud enough to be heard over the awful noise of the phantasms the Healing Church puts inside them.
I lie to them, tell them everything will be alright, tell them their sacrifices will mean something, as their bodies twist and their minds fracture. As their heads swell until they no longer have eyes or mouths, as the pain grows so great that no sedative can help them sleep, as the maddening ‘drip, drip, drip’ swallows their thoughts until they forget what it was like to be anything other than terrified.
They call to me, for mercy. They ask what they’ve done wrong, swear whatever it was they’ll never do it again. They beg me to hold their hands again- even as I do, even as all feeling in them has withered away- to sing to them, to take the pain away, to make it stop, to just sit with them a moment longer. For some sort- any sort- of kindness.
They plead with me to just kill them, please just make it end. They don’t want to be what they know they are becoming, what I am watching them turn into. And I could. I could deliver them from the living hell my friend has made for them, I could Hunt the vicious men who administer the experiments with my bare hands. The Blood sings in my veins that it could give me claws keener than any blade to tear the wicked men to pieces and bathe in the sweetness I could free from their hearts, that it could give me fangs and tongue so I would have no need to waste a drop of that ambrosia. And I know it speaks true, I know I could make the whole of the Healing Church my Prey.
And that is what stays my hand, because I will not stop there, not with the Blood crooning so sweetly in my ears. I am too far gone to indulge a sense of justice without becoming the most terrible Beast since poor, noble Ludwig; so I lie to broken minds who will forget I ever spoke to them once I leave. I leave them to be abused and ill used by those who they trusted to help them.
I watch them suffer a thousand fates worse than death, and do nothing to help them.
I endure. I endure so much longer than I should have- than I should have made them endure- then one day I make my rounds, tend to my victims, and climb the clock tower until I can no longer hear their suffering. I don my Hunter’s garb, take my seat beneath stained glass, slit my wrists, and wait.
I fade, but then the cries return, rising in an awful cacophony of my failure, my eyes open, and I am somehow back. My wrists remain open, my blood pooling around me, and yet I do not die. Rakuyo, long abandoned, is at my side once more; and denied the peace of death, I descend.
I descend and I tear through the foul Research Hall like the wrath of the Gods. I free my victims from the awful prisons their bodies have become, I Hunt the wicked men who do these things to them, I rip and tear until the only sound is blood gathering in pools ankle deep. Yet still, Beasthood does not take me, so I step out, to wreak bloody vengeance through the streets and suddenly- I am back in the clock tower.
I am in the chair once more, wrists emptying onto the floor, Rakuyo not in my hand but at my side.
Then they call again, my victims, crying out for my mercy, for my kindness, for me to save them from the horror they have become. From the awful fate I condemned them to by my inaction.
I go to them again, tearing them free once more, I do it a dozen times, each more desperate and terrible than the last, until the truth of my fate is undeniable.
That I am in Hell, for the terrible things I have done, and the worse things I have failed to prevent, and I know that I deserve it.
So I sit, and I can do nothing but listen to all those who believed I could be anything other than monstrous beg me to save them. Sometimes, when desperate frenzy overtakes me and I just need them to stop I even try; but mostly, I allow my well deserved punishment to wash over me.
Then one day, a Crow comes. A Hunter, like me, to seek the sin of their forefathers that dragged them down into this place with me, to deliver me from my shackles. But there is fire, still, in their eyes, life and hope, and I know the truth beyond me will snuff it out, I know the fishing hamlet will see them as dull and lifeless as my own.
So I make a choice, to do them the only true kindness I have ever done. I drive them back, again and again, I bring to bear every rite and wrath that I have forsaken in the vain, foolish belief that I could have ever been human, that there was ever anything at all in me worth preserving. I become an insurmountable bulwark, and in doing so make them part of my punishment; but I am so tired, and with each defeat they learn until finally, finally, they strike me down.
Then I wake, and I am Maria Campbell, and I swear that I will never again be who I am in my Nightmare.