#thats not the real doll who's showing lothric where lorian is

[boredofcinder]

@murile​

The Church Hunters didn’t know what to do with Lothric when they found him huddled over his brother’s body on the lakeshore.  He wasn’t from Yharnam, and he was just coherent enough to tell them as much.  He and his brother were just passing through, passengers on an unlucky boat sailing to another destination.  He has no possessions, nowhere to stay, and can’t walk.  The Hunters ended up deciding to take him to their workshop, so he’d at least have a place to spend the night out of the cold.  They’d find a more permanent solution in the morning, they said.  He barely even nodded. 

The Hunters couldn’t get him to eat or drink anything.  They left to get blankets and left him next to a large doll one of their elders had made, in case he’d find that comforting.  They found him sound asleep and leaning against the doll by the time they got back.  When it was time for them to return to their homes and families, they made sure he had food and water in easy reach.  There wasn’t much more they could do.

That night, Lothric has a dream.

He’s within view of a lakeshore, much like the shore by Byrgenwerth but different.  Stranger.  The sun is high in the sky, covered by a dark stain.  And Lorian is only a few feet away, crawling steadily away from the lake.  He looks dazed.  He’s always so confident.  Whatever grief he’s wrestling with must be bad.  His long hair is a tangled, stringy mess of knots.  He takes a lot of pride in his appearance, his hair especially.  He must be miserable.  But he doesn’t even seem to notice.  His wounds seem to have healed, but his clothes are still thoroughly ripped.  He looks awful.  Lothric cries out and covers the distance between them as quickly as he can.  He tries to put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, but it only passes through.  

"That is a true vision of what your brother is doing now,” a voice says.  The doll from the workshop is suddenly standing next to Lothric, towering over him.  “He is not truly dead - any killed in that place never are.  But you cannot reach him.  You are not truly beside him, only dreaming.  You are still tethered to the waking world.”  

“Who are you?” Lothric asks, suspicious but mostly grief-stricken.  

“A friend,” the doll replies.  “If you wish to be reunited with your brother, you must first enter a Dream.”  The scenery changes abruptly.  They’re back in the Hunter’s workshop, and Lothric is exactly where he fell asleep.  It’s night outside, and the workshop is dark, with a little moonlight filtering through the windows.  For a moment, he can’t tell if he’s still dreaming or if he woke up.  Then a bright light turns on abruptly in a glass-plated cabinet full of jars and samples.  “There is a vial of blood in this cabinet,” the doll explains.  The scenery changes again.  They’re in front of the cabinet.  This time, only a single vial is glowing.  Its contents are ruby red and murky.  “With this Dreamer’s blood running through your veins,” the doll explains, “you will be able to reach your brother.”

“H-how do you know my brother?” Lothric asks.  “How can I trust you?”

But instead of receiving an answer, he wakes up. 

He resists the urge to drag a chair to the cabinet and inject himself with strange blood.  He doesn’t know what happened, but he doesn’t trust it.  Lorian wouldn’t want him to put his life at risk just for a chance to see him.  And Lorian is definitely dead, not trapped in some Dream dimension!  He managed to kill the beast that attacked them and died in Lothric’s arms.  The dream must have been no more than a grief-driven fantasy.  How dare the doll character in the dream deny that reality!

Lothric resists the urge for hours.  Then he drags a chair to the cabinet and climbs up.  Not to do anything foolish, just to see if the vial from his dream is really there.

His life has been largely shaped by fear.  He can’t remember ever being as afraid as when he holds an identical vial to the one he saw in the dream and reads a label by moonlight that doesn’t make sense to him, and clearly didn’t make sense to the Hunter who captured the blood sample either:

‘Moon Presence’ (???)

If the vial is real, who’s to say the vision of Lorian isn’t?

By the time streaks of daylight are fading into the sky outside, it’s clear to Lothric that if he puts this vial back on the shelf, he will be accepting his brother’s death as permanent and will lose what slim chance he has to see him again.  The Hunters will come back.  He won’t have another chance to use the blood, and that will be the end of it.  There’s a clean-looking syringe and needle on another shelf.  He closes his eyes and promises himself and Lorian that he won’t reach for it.  

He reaches for it.  He can’t imagine what life would look like without Lorian.  The Hunters could arrive at any time, so help will be here soon enough if he has a bad reaction.

After injecting himself with some of the strange blood, he feels pins and needles in his arm, then...nothing.  He slowly puts everything back in the cabinet.  Tears well in his eyes.  What did he just do?  What was he supposed to do next?  Why did he think this was a good idea?  There was never a way to see Lorian, and he knew that full well.  He returns the chair and slowly crawls back to his pile of blankets, quite sore from moving so much.

Lothric’s decision to hide the evidence after assuming defeat was as useful as it was predictable.  He never makes it back to the doll.  Abruptly, the scenery changes, like it did in the dream.  But it isn’t a dream this time.  Lothric finds himself floating in midair in an expanse of soft clouds and dark pillars.  The moon shines brightly overhead, and a dark red being is slowly descending from the sky in front of it.  She’s somehow the worst and most beautiful thing Lothric has ever seen.  His mouth falls open slightly as she crowds away his every other thought.  Finally, two impressions alone remain in his perception: a deeply content sense of wonder, and the sight of her.  She reaches out and takes him in her hands, and he’s in too deep of a trance to resist or even seem to notice.  He doesn’t remember the rest.