A shower of sparks exploded as the great sword crashed against the Burial Blade, lighting up the two combatants for only a fraction of a second. The battle had been reduced to a stalemate for the last ten minutes, neither the hunter nor Gehrman finding enough of an advantage to press the other into submission. For the moment, the hunter was holding his own, preventing Gehrman from landing any lethal or debilitating blows, but it was obvious that Draxton was losing.

Another explosion of sparks illuminated the two and sent small flakes of metal into the field of snow-white flowers. The hunter had just prevented the burial blade from impaling him through his rib cage by using his greatsword as a shield. After the impact, The hunter jumped back, trying to put distance between himself and his mentor.

“This is not good,” the hunter thought to himself as he fell to one knee. “I can’t create a visceral opportunity to save my life, I’m down to my last three blood vials, and he’s destroyed my Blades of Mercy. If I can’t figure out a strategy I’m done for.”

The current fight had not been in his favor since the beginning. His primary weapon, the Blades of Mercy, had been taken out of the fight fairly early. Having to block a vicious sweeping attack from the burial blade had snapped the swords in two, rendering them unusable. Since then, he had been on the defensive, blocking and preventing most of his mentor’s attacks with his greatsword. To add insult to injury, he had yet to score any major hits, and it was showing. Gehrman was, for the most part, untouched, barely showing any signs of injury. The hunter, on the other hand, looked to be in shambles. His cloak had a multitude of cuts in it, his left arm had been dislocated three times and was starting to give out, and he had been favoring his left leg since Gehrman had cut him in the thigh, nearly taking the leg off.

As the hunter was getting back up, he saw an opportunity. Gehrman had raised his hands out to his sides, and if he was anything like Logarius when increasing his power, he would have some time to end this fight with a stab through the heart.

The hunter ran in with his blade at the ready for a swift stab, this would be the end of the fight. He was greeted, however, with a surprise. Gehrman screamed up at the moon, releasing a large shockwave of energy. This complicated things, but if he could just hit his master in the heart, that would solve the problem. With one last push, the hunter put all he had into the stab, only to have Gehrman disappear into a cloud of mist and reappear on his left side with his scythe at the ready.

The hunter tried to retreat, to distance himself from his mentor, but his blade was too heavy, restricting the quick movement he needed. Instead, he was treated to the burial blade sinking into his left shoulder and tossing him several meters into a large tombstone. As the hunter got back up, he noticed that he had lost all feeling in his left arm. As he reached up to feel the wound made by the Burial Blade, his hand slid into a deep cut, he discerned that his arm had been completely severed from its socket, the ligaments that had kept his arm connected to the joint cut, He now had one arm, one good leg, and a very pissed off old hunter to contend with; lucky him.

The hunter reached down to his blade and released the longsword from its massive sheathe. There was no way he would be able to use a huge weapon such as the greatsword with only one hand. After using the last of his blood vials to stop the bleeding, the hunter looked up to see Gehrman only a few meters away and ready to end the fight then and there. The hunter was done for. There was, however, a longshot of an idea that he had just come to mind.

“Well, it’s worth a shot; worst case he kills me first,” the hunter mumbled as he stabbed his sword into the ground and pulled out a blood cocktail.

“So, you’ve finally given up. I knew you would eventually see reason. I’ll make this quick, you’ve suffered enough already,” Gehrman calmly said, slowly approaching and preparing his weapon.

“Not quite.”

The hunter hurled the cocktail at Gehrman, the blood exploding out and covering the old hunter as the glass of the bottle shattered against his face. Gehrman yelled in fury, trying to wipe the blood off his face. This was just what the hunter needed, an opponent who couldn't respond. He grabbed his sword from the ground and dashed toward the old hunter. As Gehrman finished wiping the blood from his eyes, he was greeted with his latest apprentice running a longsword through his heart.

It was done, his mentor was defeated, but the hunter did not feel relieved; he felt, regret. As the hunter lifted his head up, he took one last look at his dying mentor’s face, only to see something he did not expect. Gehrman's eyes, usually so far off and clouded, for once looked clear and focused. Even stranger was the smile on his face. It wasn’t a broad smile of joy, or a smile that he had seen other hunters wear after killing, but one of contentment.

“The night, and the dream, were long.”

Those were the last words that the hunter heard from his old mentor before releasing the blade and letting his body fall to the ground.

The hunter was exhausted; this last battle had taken its toll on him. He would more than likely never walk right again, he had lost the use of his left arm, and was probably going to have a hard time breathing for the rest of his life on account of several broken ribs. All this fighting, all this pain, just to keep from dying, to keep from being exiled from the dream.

Was it really worth it? The hunter could not bring himself to look at his most recent kill; there was too much guilt in what he had done. He had to seriously ask himself if killing one of the only people he had ever been able to call a friend was worth staying in the dream.

Once the hunter collected himself, a strange feeling came over him, a need for his mother. But this feeling wasn’t one for his birth mother, but one for a mother he did not know. When the hunter looked up, a beautiful sight greeted him. A great one was hovering before a red moon. The eldritch creature was very different from the ones he had met before, this one had a head almost completely composed of tentacles, thin, almost human limbs, and strangest of all, a torso lacking everything but the spine and ribs. He did not know how or when the moon turned red, but it did not matter, all that did was the need to be with this great one.

As the great one descended, the feeling only got stronger; he NEEDED to get to this entity, to feel its embrace. It was not important that the way he was walking would only worsen the injury he had sustained to his leg. It didn’t matter that one of his arms was now just a hunk of flesh. All that concerned the hunter was the being in front of him.

When the hunter reached the eldritch being, he was only too glad to let it pick him up. It comforted him that this being would be his keeper.

The Great one pulled the hunter closer to itself, wrapping its tentacles around its new child, but something was off. The Moon Presence could feel the part of its first child’s cord in the hunter, the same chord that was used by its first surrogate child to call to it, but it could also feel the presence of Oedon, Kos, and Ebrietas in this hunter. The amount of influence its brethren had bestowed on this human was too much for it to overpower. The energy it had put into establishing a link with this hunter, to make them one and the same, refused to integrate into the human. Without a place to go, the energy simply continued to collect around the hunter, creating an instability in the air around the hunter and the Mood Pressence.

A large explosion lit up the old cemetery, tossing the Moon Presence and the hunter apart. The hunter, being significantly lighter, was hurled over the cemetery fence and landed in a heap on the stairs leading up to the workshop. As the hunter faded into unconsciousness, he heard the doll speak the same phrase he had always heard her say as he left the dream to fight, but this time it seemed to be more sincere. More... elated.

"Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world."

As the hunter returned to the waking world, he couldn’t help but feel as if every muscle in his body had been forcefully ripped out of him, given to werewolves as a chew toy, and haphazardly put back in by the imposter Iosefka. A particularly egregious torment was the splitting headache he now possessed.

The hunter moaned as he simply laid there and pressed his hands into his head, hoping that the sedatives he might still have in one of his pouches worked on headaches not caused by the frenzy of the blood. Wait. Hands!

The hunter opened his eye to look at what should not have been possible. In front of the hunter were both of his hands, unmarred by the last battle. Well, mostly. He reached up to feel the area where Gehrman's scythe had sunken into his shoulder, taking away use of his left arm, and was met with only a large scar. This was just too bizarre. The hunter reached down to his leg to feel for the cut above the knee but only sensed a thin scar.

This just wasn’t right. He wasn’t complaining, but even with blood vial use, injuries like these should have taken several hours to heal, and even then, decent use of the limbs would not have been guaranteed; especially his left arm, which he was positive he would have never regained use of. Suddenly, the hunter was struck with a headache the likes of which could not be equaled except by the frenzy of the blood.

The pain was great enough that, despite the possible risks, he was going to take a sedative and hope for the best.

The hunter uncorked and downed the first of the sedatives from the pouch on his belt, quickly followed by a second. The headache that had been troubling him regressed into nothing at the accelerated rate that one would expect when using sedatives on frenzy. Without the horrible pain, the hunter was finally able to take in his surroundings, and they made no sense whatsoever.

The hunter was currently sitting on the stairs of the hunter’s workshop. Waking up at the workshop was not so unusual, he had personally done it countless times. The only unusual thing was the fact that the workshop was now in the middle of an unknown forest. It obviously wasn’t the Forbidden Woods going by the fact that he was not being attacked by dozens of snakes and Amygdala knows what in the world those snake headed citizens were. It made absolutely no sense that the hunter’s workshop was in the middle of the forest, because the last time he had visited it, it had been at the base of the cathedral ward.

The hunter sat up and headed into the workshop. When he opened the doors, he was greeted to the sight of the workshop from the hunter’s dream, with books piled haphazardly along the sides of the workshop and on every available table and desk, along with several lit candles to add warmth to the small building. Even his storage chests were here. He had to be crazy; there was no way that the workshop from the dream could ever exist in the waking world.

The hunter needed to confirm that this really was indeed the same workshop from the dream. He ran outside and was shocked by what he saw. Right outside the workshop, the messengers were situated in their usual baths, and across from the workshop sat the ritual altars, waiting for the offerings of a chalice. This was the hunter's dream.

Only one thought permeated the hunters mind: how in the world did the hunter’s dream end up in the real world?

There was no way this workshop should be here, even if it was possible for the Moon Presence to place the workshop in the world, which the hunter doubted very strongly that the entity couldn’t do; it had no reason to expend the energy needed to make the dream a reality.

The hunter simply closing the workshop and blew out the candles. Right now, the best thing he could think to do was to remove any stimulus he could to prevent the oncoming panic attack that he had heard many Yharnamites experienced when they could no longer bear the weight of the eldritch truth.

“I’m telling you, there’s been some kind of magical disturbance in the Everfree that’s never been documented before!” Twilight enthusiastically proclaimed, flipping through dozens of books, looking for confirmation that the event was indeed the first of its kind.

“And ah’m telling you, Twi, that us girls would love nothin’ better than to go an look for whatever’s got ya more excited than a dog after supper on Hearth’s Warming, but we can’t just drop everything and go into the forest on a hunch,” Applejack retorted.

“Applejack, I know what I’m feeling. Last night when I was working on a friendship report, I sensed a massive surge of magic come from the Everfree, and since then there's been a constant disruption to the magic coming from the forest. I’m positive that whatever this disturbance is will be just as big as the discovery of Starswirl's secret archive.”

“Twi, ah know you like your mysteries, but ah think this here hunch just don’t hold no water. Fluttershy says her animals tain’t felt nothing off about the Everfree, Rainbowdash ain’t seen nothin’ unusual above the forest, and the map ain’t showing us a problem.”

“I realize that, Applejack; that’s why I sent a letter to Celestia and Luna to see if they’re feeling the same thing I am. They should reply soon enough.”

Just then, Spike breathed green fire and from the flame, a sealed letter materialized.

“See. What did I tell you?”

“Well, what does it say, Twi?” It always amazed Applejack how fast the princesses were able to read and respond to Twilight's letters. It was like Celestia and Luna already knew what the letters contained and had a corresponding response waiting.

My dearest Twilight,
I am afraid that I must confirm your suspicions; both my sister and I have felt the magical disturbance that you reported, and it deeply concerns us that this anomaly is in such close proximity to Ponyville. I would recommend that you take your friends with you and investigate, but be careful. I would not be able to forgive myself if something were to happen to any of you.
Sincerely,
Celestia

“Well I’ll be dumber than a box of rocks. Ah’ll go get the girls and tell them we’re headed on an adventure.”

After the hunter had spent the better part of an hour trying to reason through what he had seen, he eventually gave up and decided that he had seen stranger things in the dungeons and Yahar'gul. The best explanation for the current situation he had come up with was that what he was seeing was most likely due to the insight, just like everything else.

After calming down and changing into clothes that could not be mistaken for gags, the hunter had opened up the workshop and decided to explore his surroundings, learning a good deal about his current situation. For one thing, there seemed to be a bell maiden in the area, judging by the nearly unending attacks he was having to deal with from weird wooden wolfs. Fortunately, they were weak, only able to withstand two hits from the longsword, and had let up on the attacks as of late, likely due to them learning that their current target had swiftly executed about sixty of their companions and continuing the assault would prove pointless. The second thing was that the altars that lead to Yharnam were not working, so going back to that accursed and damned city would not be a possibility until he could figure out why this was. Finally, the graveyard was here with the rest of the workshop.

It was the one place that the hunter was hesitant in going to, but a part of him had the unquestionable desire to go in and see. Crossing under the archway that led to the graveyard took some will, and every second that he spent in the field just brought back memories of the fight with Gehrman. While looking through the field of flowers, the hunter found his fragmented Blades of Mercy, but fixing them was going to take a great deal of time and effort. He also found the main body of his greatsword lying where he remembered separating it from the short sword. There was, however, something interesting next to the giant sheath, it was a simple badge in the shape of the burial blade’s sword. His mentor’s, no, his friend’s badge of honor.

He knew what this badge meant; he had received nine badges before this one, this badge rounding off his collection at ten. The hunter clipped the new badge onto his necklace with the other ones, but placed it at the center, next to the crow hunter badge, so that he would never forget what he had done.

Finding the badge brought back the pain that the hunter had experienced upon finding out that the hunter’s cemetery had manifested with the rest of the hunter’s workshop, the regret surrounding this hallowed ground was almost palpable. It only felt right to remove a small knife from the back pouch of his crow feather garb and look for an empty headstone.

It was one of the more obscure facts about the hunters, but because their bodies were usually torn to pieces by the beasts of Yharnam, funerals took the form of a carved headstone instead of the more traditional coffins used before the hunts began. The practice had been slightly modified since the formation of the hunter’s dream though. Now, if a hunter was cut off from the dream, they were given a tombstone in the dream to honor their time spent as a true hunter.

While walking around looking for a blank tombstone for his friend, the hunter saw some familiar names: Gascoigne, Djura, Alfred, even one of his most prized friends, Eileen. It pained him to be faced with the names of those he had killed, and those he could have prevented from dying. The hunter had a feeling that he should give these graves something special, something fitting of the hunters that they were meant for. On Djura’s grave he carved out a representation of the stake driver and filled it with black powder to honor his time as a powder keg. For Alfred, he carved out a hole and placed the Queenly Flesh into it. It was a little harder to think of something to honor Eileen, as she was never very open about her life outside of her prey, but there was something that seemed appropriate. Above her name, the hunter carved the Heir rune and the Blood Rapture rune, the two rewards he had received from Eileen’s marks. Finally, on Gascoigne’s grave, he placed the ribbon of Gascoigne’s youngest daughter at the base, another reminder of deaths he had been responsible for.

After walking around the graveyard for some time, he found a place where there weren’t any used gravestones. The hunter started the slow and difficult task of carving the headstone, but after about half an hour, he believed he had produced an adequate representation of his last friends memory.

It was a short and relatively bare epitaph for his old friend, but it seemed fitting for the old man. Gehrman never did seem to favor saying more than needed to be said. After standing up to leave, the hunter decided he should also write his own gravestone; nothing could be more appropriate for what he felt had happened as of late. The hunt and the death of so many friends, one by his own hand, was not a weigh that he was ready to bear yet again, but none the less, had to learn to live with.