sleepytimejunction | fear the old blood

fear the old blood

[Rumors travel around in Garreg Mach fast. Most of the time, they're baseless and don't really catch Ashe's attention; he's admittedly more interested in making sure he's performing well. He has a roof over his head, and he wants to keep it that way, so he keeps his nose out of trouble.

But there is one that hangs on his mind. That there's something deep in the bowls of the church, a monster, a beast. That particularly bothers him, hangs over his mind, makes him think about how beasts have been improperly revered or maimed in the past. He's seen it in all manners by now. If the church does actually have a creature they're harboring, he can't help but wonder why.

It wouldn't be the first church to keep secrets, after all.

Ashe eventually decides that having all the facts won't hurt. If he's wrong, then he'll be happy to be. If he's not, well...

That's why he has his sword strapped to his back and his gun at his hip. He has more items he's harbored since the days before Lonato officially adopted him, most of them locked away in a trunk just in case. It's night, and most everyone is back in their dorm rooms. There's security, but Ashe knows their patterns enough to keep out of sight. He's spent his life as a thief, then as a hunter, now a student; he can manage.

It takes a bit of research, but he does find a secret path that starts in Rhea's office and extends to a rather old fashioned elevator. He opts to not use it in case it causes noise, instead climbing down the chain as he makes his way.

He doesn't expect what he finds, a grand room under the monastery, deep inside, full of stone caskets.

And something else.]

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I do not. I am capable of many forms, when I have my strength with me. The bat you saw in the crypt ages ago was the very least of my abilities.

[He pauses, then indulges an audible boof that doesn't quite align with the dignity of his mental conversation.]

I was mortified to appear before you in such a sorry state. But no more, now.

I still think your bat form is cute.

[For a moment, Ashe is quiet as he nuzzles into the fur. He closes his eyes, running his fingers through the dark fluff.]

I'm glad that I could help you. I always... felt like I was too late for a lot of people.

Precisely how any fearsome creature of the night wishes to be perceived. "Cute".

[This time, the rumbling noise he makes sounds almost like laughter.]

Tell me of it. Pour out your heart to me, while we relax here, and I will listen.

At least it came from me, right?

[He smiles against the vibrations of the rumble, sighing against Dimitri. There's a pause before he lets himself speak.]

...There was this old beggar man in one of the chapels who had a way to keep the beasts out with this kind of incense. He asked me to try to bring survivors to the chapel. There weren't many I could find. A-and so many people I couldn't save.

Even... even a hunter can turn into beasts. If they lose their mind or get consumed by bloodlust. I tried to find this little girl's father and mother, but... the mom already had died, and the father was a hunter. He was already crazy, and I-I had to, um... I had to put him down. I... hated I couldn't do anything for any of them. Even worse, the little girl-- I had to tell her...

Mmmm. Perhaps you did him a kindness, to free him of his madness. Not that it would be any easy task to explain to a small girl about her father.

[He thumps his tail against Ashe's leg, flicking it here and there with slow, rhythmic contentment.]

But I understand. Your heart is kind, and your intentions pure. Every life you were not able to preserve, you took as a personal failure.

[He falls silent a minute, letting the stillness drag on before he begins again.]

You would make a very poor leader of armies, my Ashe, and a very bad king. Perhaps it is just as so that you were not made to be a hunter of beasts. But there is a place for your kind heart in this world. I am sorry that the world was so cruel to you in return.

Someone else said something similar once.

[There's a small, bittersweet laugh from Ashe, and he draws his legs up to himself.]

I got to watch people lose their minds, or just barely keep them. After everything was said and done, there were maybe five survivors out of the city at best. Assuming that old lady made it, anyway.

But you're right. I'd be bad at leading anything. Ruling anything. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just take over my parents' business, but here we are instead.

There is a difference between being a hunter of beasts, and seeking to save others by being a hunter of beasts. They are easily confused, but dramatically different.

[His breathing slows, the rise and fall of his big furry side moving Ashe along with it almost like a rocking chair.]

What was their business? What did they do?

I'm really only good at killing, but even then I hate doing it.

[It sooths him, making him sleepy, slowly.]

Restaurant. They liked to cook and make people happy. I was little when they were around...

And how young, when they left you?

[He's listening, of course. Not just to Ashe's words, but to his breathing, his heartbeat. Seeking ever to calm him from the near-fit he'd had before, when pressed too hard about this place and its history.

Perhaps a different type of history is simpler.]

How young, when you had to take responsibility for others, when others should have kept responsibility of you?

I was seven.

[He murmurs the words softly as he dozes a little, but just conscious enough to speak.]

They became ill and died. People burned down the restaurant and house, as if that would somehow contain the sickness.

I was a thief for awhile, trying to keep my brother and sister alive... Then I got sick eventually, too. So I got desperate and went to Yharnam.

And later to Fodlan, where you enrolled in an academy at Garreg Mach monastery.

[The things people do in their desperation, Dimitri thinks forlornly. The ways they damn themselves for the good of others. He had wanted to deliver his brother a victory. Ashe had wanted to keep his siblings alive.

The things they do to themselves, for those they love.]

If that remains your dream, to follow your parents' legacy, then I will aid you in it however I can. I promise you.

Mm, I don't know what I want anymore. Maybe to help people, I think... When I came to Fodlan, I was wandering until I was adopted and enrolled to the academy.

I don't really have the skills for anything else but killing beasts...

[He snuggles down and sighs.]

But if it helps people, I guess that's okay.

Perhaps it is enough to want only this, for right now. A warm fire, a sturdy roof, and a thick-furred beast who loves you to recline upon.

[His tail thumps lightly against Ashe, flicking in the air.]

If you awake and I am not here, do not fear. I will have only gone to speak with your lady Doll.

Mm. Okay.

Thank you, Dimitri.

[Finally, Ashe lets himself rest. Maybe it's just a combination of different things, having pulled so many one nighters at Garreg Mach, or the blood loss. It's hard to say.

But he does, at last, fall asleep against the vampire, fingers curled into his fur.]

[For a long time, then, Dimitri the vampire king rests in a world without chains, filled with the warmth of blood and the satisfaction of a small body curled up against his own. In the dream, the fire burns neither too hot nor too cold, casting its ambient glow through the little workshop as boy and hound doze together.

Part of him considers how best he could extricate himself from the comfortable trap Ashe has placed him in, pinning him beneath the lean of his own body. It would not be so difficult, and there are things he could tend to outside these walls. But to do so would mean having to untangle Ashe's slim, calloused fingers from the depths of his fur, and this small heartbreaking gesture, he cannot bring himself to break.

So he sits, and waits, and pricks his ears to listen for the footsteps of the Doll drawing near. He isn't altogether sure whether he can even speak to her when he's in his changed form like this; perhaps such things are only reserved for living creatures, and the Doll is many things, but living is not precisely one of them.

Still, he tries.]

Lady, are you close?

[The Doll approaches carefully. Though it is subtle, there is a hint of warmth in her eyes as she looks down adoring at the sight before her, Ashe curled up against the large beast of a vampire.

I am here, she says quietly as to not disturb the little hunter. As a matter of fact, she's opening a small trunk to take out a knitted blanket to drape over the lean form. What can I do for you?]

He is sleeping.

[It's not that the Doll needed clarification of something she could readily see with her own eyes, but Dimitri can't help but observe it anyway, the soft fondness saturating his tone.]

He exhausted himself earlier, seeking to remember something lost to him. I wonder if perhaps your memory is longer than his.

[A sight all too rare. It pleases me to know how much he adores you, the Doll says, smiling faintly.

She kneels beside the giant wolf, and without fear or repulsion she delicately strokes her hand over the top of his head.

My memory goes on for many years, remembering every hunter who stood and fell alike. What do you wish to know?]

Hmmmmm.

[He rumbles a satisfied growl, lifting his head just a touch into the eerie solid material of the Doll's hand.]

He says there was a creature here, when the hunter called Gehrman was slain. A creature of such vast power that the name for it was Great One.

[He pauses, significantly.]

He does not remember what transpired after this Great One was defeated. He became weak and disoriented, and I brought him to the fire to rest after the strain of recollection sapped his strength.

[There's a pause, and the Doll's eyes relax as she considers how to explain. Her hand rests on Dimitri's muzzle.

Her name was Flora. She of the moon. The Great One who made a pact with Gehrman years ago to fight the beastly illness of the waking world. However, it also meant that Gehrman's life was long lived in this dream, and only this dream. Trapped. How often he would have nightmares, tormented by his prison.

The Doll's eyes look at Ashe now. But Gehrman was still ready to serve his duty. To release a hunter from their contract. This was true for Ashe, but you know him. His heart too sweet, unable to let Gehrman's suffering go on -- or the suffering of other hunters. After Gehrman's release, Ashe would battle Flora. He won. I do not know the precise circumstances that led to it, but he was reborn. I found him, and helped raise him.

There's a pause. What I will tell you next, it will add clarity. Why the dream still exists. Why the messengers are still here. Why I, too, am still here. Yet, he suppresses this memory. So I implore you to be careful with what you will learn.]

...The discrepancy in his memories. Of course.

[Yes...he does remember that from long ago, doesn't he. Ashe seeming to confuse how long he'd spent here. Recalling that the Doll had raised him, while growing up around a restaurant owned by his parents at the same time. Nonsensical, unless the juxtaposition were explained like this. One could easily lead two lives, if there were a rebirth in the middle of it.]

She did something to him, this Great One. She brought about this...unusual circumstance.

[Some, yes. And unintentionally, our sweet hunter caused this too, though I do not think he expected it to turn out this way. When he defeated Flora and was reborn, he was not reborn a human. He has now taken her place. For a time, his body was not of a man's. Then, one day, he changed his form. Perhaps it was easier for him to believe himself still just a boy.

She shrugs a little. If it is what brings him joy, then I have no desire to correct it.]

And I had thought — I had thought that what I felt here was only the echoes of a being once present. Now you say that there is still a creature of such magnitude here, none other than my little hunter.

[It certainly is a lot to digest. Something powerful enough to contract with a human, create this dream, resonate with the moon — all in the small sleeping body of his love.

It's rare, Dimitri muses wryly, when he is not the most vast and terrible power in a room.]

He has given so much to the world already. I will ensure he is repaid in kind.

[His sacrifices have been many, the Doll agrees tenderly. There was a time during his hunt that he brought me a gift once. Never before had a hunter been so kind. It was the first time I truly felt happiness. I thought I was merely content to aid and love hunters, but to experience something new after so many years... I could not have ever considered it.

She lightly rubs her fingers behind Dimitri's ear. Be well to him, mighty beast.]

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fear the old blood

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