108 Hunting in the dark (1/2)

The night was dark and starless. Francis sat on top of a hill, observing the whole village of Hemwick. Looking at it from atop the hill, the village seemed to extend to no end; wooden houses and big structures with high chimneys from which smoke emanated endlessly.

Francis had learnt a great deal about the village. The first thing was that it was now inhabited by blood crazed women who would cut your throat at the first opportunity. They were gathering ritual materials from corpses and would burn the rest.

This explained the smoke emanating from the buildings all around the village. The big brutes known as executioners were there to ensure their safety against stronger enemies. In other words, their role was to interfere when somebody broke inside the village and tried to stop the harvesting of human organs.

Francis tried to get his new mentor to tell him about these women's objective. The retired hunter refused to give him any clue about it, claiming that Francis had to discover the truth by himself. He told him that he promised to train him to become a better hunter, not to tell him about Hemwick's history.

If he wished to know more about the place, all he had to do was to walk around the streets and question the women patrolling it. A joke in bad taste, as all of the women would attack at the sight of Francis. The only words they were capable of uttering were ”I'll slice you in half you fiend” or ”I'll cut your throat”. Most of them just attacked him while screaming at his face and waving their sickles or hammers at him.

Since he discovered the existence of the hunter's dream and his inability to properly die, the notion of death had taken a new meaning to Francis. He was careful during his fights against hordes of women for sure. He didn't want to lose all his echoes stupidly to them. On the other hand, he didn't shy away from danger.

He wanted to put himself recklessly in dangerous situations and see how he could manage to pull himself out of them. One time, he was ambushed by a group of angry women, accompanied by two executioners. The fight was long and bloody.

He had had to use all of his blood vials and he ended up with a broken leg and two protruding ribs. He laughed as he drank the blood oozing from an executioner's neck after he sliced it open. In Yharnam, as much as in Hemwick, blood was in abundance and prey was all his to hunt and feast on.

His mentor had told him about hunters who could turn into beasts. They feast too much on the blood, more than they actually needed. The excess of blood corrupts their own mind and makes them blood thirsty hunters.

They start relishing fights and exhilarate at the sight of blood. And so they fight any and all that moves. They kill and consume blood until their thirst is satiated. ”And when is it satiated?” asked Francis once. ”When they completely transform into hideous beasts and another hunter comes to finally put them to rest” he replied.

”You must know this, not all hunters have good intentions. Some just want to see blood. Others want to consume it and let themselves be consumed by it in return. Few look for a way to put a stop to the night of beasts and horrors, but none of them survive long enough to reach their objective.”

That revelation confirmed Francis' doubts about the order of the hunters. ”So you mean to tell me that there are no good hunters left around in Yharnam?” he asked after taking his time to assess the information he had received from his mentor. ”There may be one or two, but I have never met them.”

Francis never told the old man about the dream he had the night he received the blood ministration. That castle and the woman in the iron mask. If his mentor was willing to keep secrets hidden away from him, nothing obliged him to confide in him.

Moreover, he understood that trusting anyone in this godforsaken place would probably mean his demise. Not that he feared death anymore; he dreaded being used most of all. The retired hunter had his own hidden agenda and he had his. He doubted that someone who had tasted immortality would give up his life after that gift had been taken away from him.