#They are meant to fear the old blood but instead the prayer Vicar Amelia gives

[death-rebirth-senshi]

"Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented."

[antihero-writings]

The Offspring of a Dream

Fandom: Bloodborne

Fic Summary: Why does the Doll call you “good”?

Notes: 

Obviously the lore in this game is very hidden and up for interpretation, so this fic in part has to do with my personal interpretation of things, so please keep that in mind! I know there's a theory about the Doll being a Great One/Avatar out there (haven't read up about it much through), but currently I find there's something rather beautiful about the Doll truly just being a doll, who is genuinely kind, and just trying to help us out, because the game has little to no other characters like that. I also know whether or not we are "good" is definitely up for great debate, but I'm the kind of person who likes to see/read redemption into everything, so this is just my rather optimistic interpretation of events.

Also, I don't necessarily ship the Hunter and the Doll, but I do think it's a cute ship and enjoy content for it...So you're free to interpret the internal monologue as platonic or romantic, whichever you prefer.

This is one of the only times I've used second person, so go easy on me...I chose second person because I didn't find third or first nearly as compelling for it.

I'd really really appreciate it if you could leave a comment!! They seriously do make my week, and give me the motivation to keep writing!!

I also have another Bloodborne fic about Vicar Amelia's transformation, I'd love it if you could check that out too!! Links in a reblog!!

The Offspring of a Dream: 

“New Hunter”

“Mister Hunter”

“Hunter”

“A Hunter!”

“Moon-Scented Hunter”

“Miss Hunter!”

“Good Hunter of the Church,

"have you seen the thread of light?”

“Welcome home,

Good Hunter.

What is it you desire?”—

No name.

Not a greeting, nor title.

No adjectives or addendums like ‘holy’ or ‘accursed,’ ‘beast,’ or ‘man.’ Not a crow, or a wolf, or an avenger, or a knight. Nor a roar of what you hunted.

A lonely hunter without a name, or a word.

Just a hunter, who may or may not be good.

And it was a doll, a doll who had a dreamer, but was equally lonely—

Is this all in my mind? Did I dream her up?

It was this Doll who said you were good, every time you arrived in the dream, always ready to turn your desires, the echoes of a scourge, into strength.

She said it faithfully, and it was not easy to recognize when she said it, it wasn’t a greeting, or a title.

It was a prayer.

Because she had watched a thousand “good hunters” walk through the dream, and a thousand fall. A thousand keep her company, a thousand ask for her to make them stronger with the echoes of their killing. A thousand become drunk with blood, trapped in a very different dream, that some might call nightmare. And a thousand become something other than a hunter…something other than good.

A thousand graves.

Graves for the ones who woke up.

So with a title she prayed to the moon that this one—this one—would be good.

That’s all she needed. That’s all any of them ever needed; one good man.

The title ‘hunter’ was meant to be synonymous with good. A force of holiness to purge the impurity. …But their name became equivalent with evil. Or maybe it was from the very start.

The spreading corruption burned.

Before the blood parched their lips and ravaged their bones. After. At the end of the day, we’re all human. At the end of the day, we’re all beasts.

Born of the blood… undone by the blood…

So she—inhuman, human—she prayed that one day there would be a hunter who could fight the monsters and not become one. That the blood wouldn’t burn and coil and wrap its tendrils around them, twist them inside out, and make them something more than just a “good hunter”…and so much less. She cast goodness over you, as if reminding you not to give in to the beast. Not to give in to your humanity. Reminding you that though you were a hunter, though you were drenched in blood, with heart full of holes, and brain full of eyes, you could still be good.

She put her hands together and she prayed. She prayed, and she helped you on your journey, she channeled death into strength, she whispered, and she tended to frail, living flowers, and feeble, dying, old men, and she cried.

Any god-fearing man, not burdened with an overabundance of naiveté, would know that dolls don’t whisper. They don’t ask if you love them. They don’t move. They can’t help. They don’t pray. And they definitely don’t cry.

Dolls sit lifeless on the floors of children’s nurseries, and the abandoned workshops of bitter, maniacal, old men.

Is this just a dream? Will I know you when I wake?

What’s waking worth without you?

If the gods don’t love me I still promise to love you.

You watched human hands twist into claws, skin into fur, faces into tentacles, tongues into snakes, and eyes into eyes, and wondered if perhaps this doll, with her porcelain skin and hair, with her tears and prayer, if she was more human than the rest. This doll—who asked about gods and love, who cared for you, who hoped even the worst hunters might be worth something in another, better world—was more human than the offspring of an old, forgotten town. More human than we, who are born and die by the blood.

How was she born, and how would she die? What caused her to breathe, to come alive? Was it just our minds, some ill-gotten, internal eyes? Was something so primitive as hope or love? Or was it the twisted will of some faceless moon without a man in it?

Is it just me?

Is it my mind?

Tell me she’s more than children’s toys, and old men’s dreams.

Tell me she’s real.

Could something made of metal and mechanics, and the puppet strings of our own minds die?

Do dreams die when we wake up?

Or, in the end when men are all either monsters or gods, would she stand in the wreckage, the only real, awake thing left…the only thing left that’s still human?

When men become gods, do our creations become human?

She watched them fall. She watched them reach for bare threads of guiding moonlight with human hands, and howl at the same moon with a wolf’s cry, and she still had enough hope left in her to call you “good hunter.” To believe that you would be different.

Did she say this to everyone? Did she hope every time? Or was it just you? And which meant more? If she hoped despite just how many had failed, or if she saw something different within you alone?

Here you stood, steeped in the blood of beasts. Ugly thing. Killer. Cold and merciless.

And she called you good.

Did that mean she saw the blood, and the murder, and thought it was good? Or that she looked past all that and saw the good still?

How could she, a doll, an echo herself, know what it meant to be good?

Perhaps she was made by someone who had seen a world with good left in it. Or a world which was evil, but in which there was someone like her, who encompassed all the good in the world to him.

Perhaps that’s what she was to you too. The good. The human left. Without her you may never keep fighting. You had no one else, after all. Your friends were either mad, or intoxicated, or destined to die, or destined for…worse.

Is she just a trick of the moonlight?

She was the embodiment of hope.

You tried to be good. For her. For the world. They all did. But most became drunk on blood, or knowledge, and lost themselves along the way.

What is it you desire?

It always starts good. Goals, on paper, always seem so noble. In practice, so bloodthirsty.

Laurence made a church. A force of holiness and healing. And he turned the city into a madhouse, a cage for monsters.

Wilhelm made a school. A place of mindfulness and learning. And he dabbled in rituals to hide the moon.

The old hunters thought stealing a child wouldn’t incite the wrath of its mother.

They all thought the world could be saved, that the plague could end through quarantine or amputation.

When they cut off the diseased heads the blood only spread. When they stayed in their houses they went insane instead.

The world needed more than a simple fix to return to being “good.”

The hunters thought they were fighting for a noble cause. They thought they were all good…and they turned into the very beasts they fought, awaiting another hunter to spill their blood, and start the cycle again.

The hunters only did what they could; keep killing. That was all they knew to do to get rid of the the beasts in this brick forest.

They needed a hunter who would break the cycle. Do more than just kill and give in to the call of the blood. Who would seek the paleblood, and end this dreadful night.

Transcend the hunt.

But how to eclipse the chase when evolution without courage is the name of ruin?

A hunter who would look beyond today’s night, today’s hunt, today’s beasts. Beyond the blood. Resist its seduction. A hunter who could learn where all this started, find it. And do what hunters do best:

Kill it.

—(For sometimes death is freedom, at least when it’s a dream)—

Seek the paleblood. Hunt the great ones.

—(And sometimes waking up is far worse.)

The formless blood wanted to have a child. Perhaps he thought he was giving those he chose a gift of a sort. Only horror followed.

Every great one loses its child.

One particular woman, long ago, held the name of this broken town. Perhaps it was only fitting that the child of blood and name was born in voice alone.

This child’s formless cries echoed through more than the nightmare; through the waking world—(if you had enough eyes, at least)—calling you to comfort it, to silence it.

Could everyone in the town hear it? Is that what drove them mad? Listening to a child’s endless cries, with no hope of comforting it?

Many had tried to contact it. Some tried to become gods…and misplaced their minds in the process. But you found it. Knowing it was not to be exalted, but destroyed.

You were a hunter after all.

So you killed the only thing keeping it alive, the thing desperately trying to play a lullaby and sing it to sleep.

You yourself played a tiny music box for it, from the beginning of it all—that belonged to a family ravaged by the blood, the hunt, which held a song about love and loss—just to hear it laugh, before the nightmare let out it last.

Cords of thirds. Cords of three.

One from the child of voice. One from the child of night. One from the child stolen long ago, sitting in an old, abandoned workshop.

A workshop alive now only in hunters’ dreams.

You could have left your own nightmare long ago. You could have woken from this dream and believed the world was not so dark, not so strange, not so fascinating.

But this wasn’t the only nightmare you had to liberate.

There was another, another for which all not-so-good hunters were destined—(and thus you too if the Doll’s prayers were in vain). They sent you there with a piece of a drunken man before you yourself became, inevitably, intoxicated, in this bloody bar, so that you could, perhaps navigate sleeping minds with your sanity in tact.

We, the offspring of an old, forgotten secret. Destined and bound by the chase.

So our forefathers sinned?

Ludwig thought he was holy, fighting for a noble cause, and he stood, accursed, in a bath of the blood he spilled, trampling the ghosts of those he killed.

Is it possible there exist moonlight in even the darkest nights?

When we reach for the thread of light, none of us ever want to know what it truly is. Hope can be so vicious that way.

The church turned their eyes from their hands.

All too often, when men try to become gods—or something akin—they become monsters. There's a reason the moon is out of our reach.

Laurence thought the blood would heal. That the gods wouldn’t mind a little thievery. He thought they could keep their humanity in tact, as long as they prayed hard enough.

And he watched the world burn. Watched his hope turn his universe into a waking, walking nightmare. And he burned in his own broken Neverland, ever searching for his own lost, rotted humanity.

Maria, beloved apprentice Maria—

…Is that you, my dear Doll?

Who was there from the beginning. Who vowed to forsake the blood—including her own. Maria, so sickened by her actions, who threw the hunt down a well. Who vowed to in death to be the hunt’s secret keeper, and sat, alone, a lonely princess at the top of the clock tower, alive by the puppet strings of a nightmare—

She sacrificed herself, her values, to purge you from the plague of wild curiosity.

A corpse should be left well enough alone.

And at last, behind time, was a quaint, sad, little village, that lay dripping with secrets, ransacked for its eyes.

A quaint little village where it all started. Where the sky wept, and sun collapsed in on itself, and the great lake held too soft and depraved a secret.

Every great one loses its child…but this one lost his mother.

A quaint little village where a sympathetic mother fell from the stars. Where her child was ripped from her, dissected for parts, by the very people you once thought were good.

The wrath of an angry god is to be feared. But the wrath of a sympathetic god is far worse.

And the wrath of a mother is a lasting curse.

Death is freedom, at least in a dream. But when waking up is far worse, we rewrite the past within our dreams.

This was an orphans dream, pulling the hunt into a nightmare, as he waited to be freed from reality, as he waited for a hunter to rewrite the sins of their ancestors.

As he waited for a good man.

And the spirit thanked you. And the hunt thanked you.

And the Doll thanked you, for a shackle she never even knew was there had been lifted. She thanked you on behalf of the first hunter, for he slept a little sounder.

But there was one last dream that needed slaying:

Your own.

You could have woken long ago. You could have forsaken it all for the sunrise, and left someone else to find the answers, left someone else to be good.

It would have been nice to believe the world made sense.

It would have been nice to believe the dark side of the moon wasn’t made of blood and bones, haunting a poor, old man.

Few dreams offer you the choice to die before the bad part starts—(or perhaps simply to put an end to all the ‘bad parts’ you’ve gone through, to negate the possibility of more). But you would not bow to a happy, false reality.

Neither would you allow yourself to be taken captive by the nameless presence of the moon, made to perpetuate this hunt endlessly.

You understood the word “hunter” was never synonymous with good. They lost that title before the hunt even started. They lost that title when a little orphan was stolen from his mother.

You understood at last. It was her. Maria. The one who threw her weapon down the well in protest. She—(or at least, a version of her)—stood by your side, trying to guide you back all this time. Trying to guide you back to the beginning, where perhaps her sins could be atoned for. Where perhaps there could be good still.

So in a lonely field full of flowers, it was not you who were released from the dream.

You had enough eyes to see and slay the presence of the moon, who had orchestrated this all.

We’re all just puppets of the moon.

…But a cord of three strands is not so easily broken.

So in the end you neither woke nor dreamed, but saw the world as it was—though through newborn eyes. A child of the hunt. A child of the dream. Not destined to create a nightmare…but perhaps a better reality.

When the Doll picked up your small body, she smiled at last. She knew you’d succeeded, for this was unlike any hunter’s death, or transformation, she knew. She knew you’d atoned for the sins of your predecessors. She knew you’d freed the children, the nightmares, and the men.

And she called you “good hunter” still. For she knew the gods listened to her prayers after all. She knew that though you were a hunter no more—

You were certainly good.

[mrslittletall]

Prompt: Painful Transformation Fandom: Bloodborne Characters: Vicar Amelia Word Count: 1.598 AO3-Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718291/chapters/49982243

Summary: Amelia gathers her thoughts before a hunter comes in to witness her transformation.

(Author's note: I always had the feeling that Amelia desperately tried to supress her transformation and so I worked a few of my headcanons about the backstory of the church and Amelia into it. She will forever be one of my favourite bosses with an awesome cutscene and that blood curdling screams.)

Written for @badthingshappenbingo Please note that I don’t take requests for this anymore!

"Remain wary of the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented." Seek the old blood. Let us pray, let us wish... to partake in communion. Let us partake in communion... and feast upon the old blood. Our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears. Seek the old blood. But beware the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. The foul beasts will dangle nectar and lure the meek into the depths. Remain wary of the frailty of men..."

Amelia had recited this exact prayer for the last several hours now. It was the night of the hunt and she could hear the sounds of a fight from outside. A hunter was coming... and she knew, once they would set their feet over the treshold of the grand cathedral, she wouldn't be able to suppress her own beastly scourge within her anymore.

And once this would happen, the hunter would do what a hunter would must, slaughtering their prey. The thought... terrified her. She clutched the vicar's golden pendant and once again recited the prayer again. It was the last thing that tied her to her humanity, the last thing that kept her from turning.

As she prayed she looked up and her gaze fell onto his skull.

Laurence... the founder, the first Vicar, how would he have behaved in her situation? She couldn't ask him anymore, she could only pray, pray for his guidance. It had been years since he died... turned, only a skull remaining.

Amelia had been taken in by him, everything she knew about blood research she knew from him, she had been eager to take in her role as the next Vicar once Laurence would have stepped down, but when he turned into the first cleric beast, she had been still too young, only fourteen, and the golden pendant instead had been given to the next suitable person who could act as the Vicar, one of the higher ranking church ministers.

She knew that the people had searched out for Ludwig to ask him to take the role, he was beloved and strong, but Ludwig had rejected the offer. After Laurence' death, he had been the most distressed. She remembered having sitting next to him when he had gotten treatment for several cruel burn wounds with the old blood in the infirmary, as the Holy Blade woke up and had to realize that he had just slain his lover with his very own hands. The very same person that had acted as a parental figure for Amelia, a mere orphan. They both had let their tears flow freely this day.

A few weeks later, Ludwig had disappeared. They had found a horrible beast however that had the Holy Moonlight Sword stabbed through its chest. While some of the church hunters had suspected, that Ludwig, whose mind seemed to be broken since Laurence died, had abandoned them and his sword, Amelia was certain that this beast had been Ludwig.

The way the signature sword of him was pierced through the beast, the gentle eyes she was able to see in that amalgamation of a face... she was certain Ludwig had kept enough of his humanity to end his life before he could become a threat to others.

...And now she was on the verge of becoming a threat for others. At least Amelia had made sure to evacuate the church as good as possible. Some of the church doctors hadn't listened to her and continued to roam cathedral ward, to join in the hunt. And she knew that one of the executioners had joined in it too, probably having an ulterior motive.

Once again Amelia repeated her prayer, the prayer that Laurence had taught her, the prayer that had been spoken every morning and every evening in the church. She could feel her own transformation lingering in her chest, it almost made it hard for her to speak. She clutched the golden pendant harder.

She had become the Vicar of the Healing Church once she had reached the age of thirty. She never knew why they had waited so long for her to actually vote her into the position she had trained for since she had been a child. Since then, sixteen years had passed since Laurence had died. She had been given the gold pendant, the informations about the blood research and she had been left to rule over a town that was so dependent on the old blood, that she didn't had another chance but to continue their practices.

What she also had been given was Laurence' dying message. That they never had showed it to her before had made her chest burn with anger. Written on a singed piece of paper, in shaky big letters, stood only one sentence.

“Fear the old blood.”

Amelia had tried to find out what Laurence had wanted to say. But all the people who had once been close to him had already died or vanished.

Lady Maria had taken her own life at the astral clocktower.

Gehrman had one day vanished without a trace and when she had asked for him, Laurence had given her a blank stare and vanished into his office for the rest of the day and she knew that she couldn't ask about his whereabouts ever again.

Micolash, who once had been the closest friend of Laurence had one day packed his things and left.

And Laurence and Ludwig both had turned and died, leaving her with a riddle. She didn't gave up though and searched for more people who could know what it meant and by slogging through Laurence' old diaries and letters, she had found the names of two of his other friends, Rom and Caryll.

However, she was never able to locate Rom, mainly because it had been described that she had stayed at Byrgenwerth. That had been Laurence' old school and he had declared it as forbidden ground a long time ago. Amelia wanted to respect his wishes to break ties with his old school and never tried to seek it out.

Caryll, on the other hand, could be tracked down, they had became a rune smith, but they had been clear about that they didn't want have anything to do with the Healing Church and that she should leave them alone and so this research had been fruitless too.

While she had read Laurence' diaries though, she had found the phrase on the paper multiple times, apparently having been spoken by Laurence' old teacher and the first Vicar had made sure to mock him all the way over it, describing that the old blood was their future and nothing to be feared about and that it would led humanity into a new age.

And Amelia had latched onto this. The old blood was something good, it did help people. It surely would help them reach a new age, she couldn't even fathom why Laurence last words had about fearing it. Especially because the diaries also stated that all his research had led him to be certain about that it was completely safe.

And over the years, his words had been forgotten. By her, by the church. She continued the practices she had been told as the Vicar of the Healing Church, unaware that the true power laid with the church ministers.

And now she was kneeling in front of the skull of the man who started it all, reciting a prayer that cherished the old blood, as these thoughts crept into her mind.

...Maybe it had all been the bloods fault and Laurence had realized it and wanted to give them a warning? A warning that they all had ignored and forgotten?

She didn't had time anymore to mull further about this thoughts. The sounds of fighting from outside had ceased and she could hear steps ascending the stairs to the grand cathedral.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, she stopped reciting her prayer, instead looking at the pendant one last time, bringing it up to her chest as a rift shook through her whole body.

It was unspeakable, indescribable pain as her bones shifted, as she felt how she grew far larger than before, she couldn't help but scream in pain and terror, blood coming out from within her, staining the altar she had prayed upon before.

She felt how her feet changed, new claws ripping right through her shoes, she felt the pain of antlers snaking their way out of her skull, the pain as her mouth grew into a snout, every single teeth being replaced by a row of deadly sharp new ones, every single of them coming out could be felt by her and while this all happened in several seconds, it felt like an eternity for her, as her bones creaked and shifted and forced her to bend forwards, forced her to put a hand on the ground for support, a hand lined with claws.

...She closed her other hand around the pendant. She could feel her humanity fading, but she would hold on. Hold on to the last shred of humanity she had. But for know, she knew that she wouldn't survive long with a hunter having seen her transformation right in front of their eyes.

She turned to face the hunter, a hunter who had already drawn their weapon. A hunter that would only see her as the next prey and put her out of her assumed misery.

Amelia prepared herself for a fight.

[nautilusopus]

#'Without fear we're little different from beasts themselves' or however Eileen put it#Just a fascinating way to me how they make this part of their worldview#They are meant to fear the old blood but instead the prayer Vicar Amelia gives#as well as the church hunter in the hunter's dream implying that it's and old prayer rather than something new#May well have been Laurence himself that started this new prayer and isn't that a fucking can of worms#'Seek the old blood'#'But beware the frailty of men'#Master Willem's 'Our eyes are yet to open' becomes the victim blaming 'beware the frailty of men'#*Their* wills are weak. Minds young. The meek will be lured into beasthood. Not us though totally.#Fear is natural. Thirst for blood soothes this fear. And so you should follow that thirst for blood#and isn't that the thing that makes a man a beast

"Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented."