Gascoigne and Virgil made their way to a place called the cathedral ward. Whilst on their way there Gascoigne filled Virgil in on how the night worked.
"So random people just suddenly appear in this dream world with no idea who they are or where their from?" Virgil looked annoyed with this question.
"That's how every single case I've come across was. No exceptions, and I've been here for almost thirty years. No ones ended this dream yet."
Virgil stopped walking to catch himself there. Thirty years?! In a god forsaken place like this? The only time Virgil has felt any sort of emotion aside from loneliness and despair whilst here was when he was tearing peoples heads off. Thirty years of that..?
"There are however many hunters who get glimpses of who they were before this dream. Some... fragmented memories of some sort, everyone gets them. There are these dungeons here with extreme enemies that take the lives of hunters by the second, but killing these beasts reward you with fragmented memories of your past life. For better or worst, these memories make some hunters even more determined to get the hell out of here so they can return to their happy lives. Whilst some others fall even deeper into the despair of this land for they don't even want to return home with how painful their past life was. There is one memory however that every hunter has in common."
"A similar memory? Is that possible?" Virgil asked. If everyone had a similar memory who's to say these memory's aren't just artificially created by this dream world?
Gascoigne chuckled, "Perceptive one aren't ya? Bet ya thinking 'Who's to say these memories aren't fake and made by this strange place' or something like that. Your face asked the question before you did."
"Well yea-"
"You're overthinking it kid it's not something like your first birthday or some shit. The memory we all have is that we've killed someone in our past lives before coming here."
Virgil would like to believe he wouldn't kill someone, but after seeing how easily he took out those villagers and the skills he just randomly had he doubts he had a 'normal' life outside of all this.
"Well here we are." Gascoigne said while opening the main door to the cathedral. It was smaller than Virgil expected and full of strange hunters. They all were transparent and floating around disappearing and reappearing constantly.
"Are those ghosts?" Virgil asked, reaching out to find his hand slipped through one of the transparent beings.
"Phantoms. Every hunter as I said is from a different time, some of these hunters are from a time long past. Some are from six-hundred or so years ago, still being summoned by newer or fellow hunters in the attempts to escape here."
"Six-hundred?!" Virgil yelled. He could not fathom staying in this place anywhere near that long.
"How exactly do you escape this world Gascoigne?"
"If I had an answer to that would I still be here after 30 years, or the old hunters for six-hundred?"
"I suppose not." Virgil said with a sigh of frustration.
"Well I'll be off then, can't keep the wife and child waiting too long or else they'll think I died as well. Take these kid, you'll need em'."
He tossed Virgil a pouch with four tiny red vials. The tops of the vials had syringes meant for infusing.
"Jab that into your leg and you'll feel good as new, their pretty common too but be wary. Run out in the middle of a fight and that's your ass."
"But where do I go?"
"Hell if I know kid. Ask around, information is more precious than blood nowadays."
And with that Gascoigne was off.
Virgil looked around the ward that was full of incense everywhere, literally wherever he looked there was an incense. There was only one person, a man wrapped in a red cloth laying near one of the four doors to the cathedral.
"What's with all the incense here? And why does it smell like I'm breathing in iron."
The man responded without looking up, "They ward off beasts making this place safe on this night."
"I see, what's your name if you don't mind me asking?"
"Vermillion."
"Well Vermillion, any idea how to get out of this shit hole?"
"You mean the dream world?"
"Can you think of another shit hole?"
Vermillion laughed, "This cathedral is a close second."
"Yes this dream world."
"Well of course not, that's something the executioners refuse to share with us hunters."
"Executioners?"
"The healing churches highest ranking murderers, but they call them priests. Gifted hunters with the secret rites of the church."
"The amount of unanswered questions I have is a bit overwhelming if you don't mind me asking them." Virgil awkwardly chuckled.
Vermillion looked up, and to Virgil's surprise he was a young teen. Perhaps fourteen or fifteen? But Gascoigne's words came back to mind, and if what he said was true someone as young as this boy has still killed someone before showing up here.
"Of course not, company is rare here."
"Then about these executioners, what exactly is a secret rite?"
"There's a total of 12 in existence, and hunters are chosen based on strength and bloodline for which one the cosmos bestows upon them. I've only seen two of them however. One being the executioner of the black sky eye, he's able to shoot small meteorites from his right eye. The other being the executioner of the call beyond- the strongest known executioner, able to cause a miniature star explosion that does not effect himself. He's destroyed entire castles instantly with his rite."
"So there are twelve executioners then?"
"Negative, the executioners all possess a rite indeed however not only executioners are given the rites. The Vilebloods had a rite with them before they were wiped out."
Vilebloods! Again with that name, except unlike Iosefka, Vermillion has no fear in saying the name.
"Who were these Vilebloods?" Virgil took a seat on the floor beside Vermillion, assuming this was going to be a long talk.
"To answer that I'd have to explain how bloodlines work. You see when a hunter awakens their bloodline they are capable of transfusing their blood into different abilities based upon their bloodlines. Follow me."
Vermillion walked to the entrance of the cathedral with Virgil and pointed at a stray dog eating what seemed to be a corpse of a dead hunter.
"I'm Vermillion of the crimson fog. My bloodline allows me to emit a poisoned fog from my body that instantly poisons and erodes all it touches, like so."
Vermillion unsheathes a dagger from his side and made a small cut on his hand, and a crimson mist began slowly creeping out of the wound. He dabbed three fingers in the blood and snapped his fingers towards the dog. The mist slowly made its way to the dog and then engulfed it, causing it to begin barking rapidly at the two but then suddenly stopped. Virgil was looking at the dog wondering if he should feel sorry when suddenly it began to bleed from its eyes and mouth and began whimpering and limping towards Virgil in an attempts to find help. It dropped onto the ground and its flesh began melting away. It's skin fell off in clumps with a wet rag sound onto the ground below, it's muscles spasmed and rotten off and its bones became a yellowish pudding like substance. All of it combining in a small black tar on the ground where the wild dog died.
"Did it feel that?" Virgil said trying his best to suppress the gag coming up to his throat from the horrible smell coming from the deceased hound.
"Pity no creature, man or beast on the night of the hunt, for it is just an illusion before your eyes." Vermillion turned and returned to his corner to sit and with him Virgil.
"That was... something else." Virgil spoke softly. Virgil considered the boys logic and how easily he did what he did and no longer doubted a young boy such as himself being capable of murder.
"Back to the Vilebloods, my blood gives me the ability to do that. The Vilebloods unlike other hunters shared the same bloodline. Not one Vileblood possessed a power different from the others. They could all turn their blood into a weapon of their choosing, and a single cut from the bloody blade of these weapons meant instant death. No exceptions."
"So kill them before they can touch you." Virgil said.
"Yes but it wasn't that simple, there's two things wrong with your logic. One, when a Vileblood bleeds, they can turn their own blood into armor. So the more you inflict non-lethal wounds the much more difficult it becomes to take one down."
"So instantly kill them." Virgil shrugged.
Vermillion smiled at the assumption.
"And secondly, Vilebloods are immortal and cannot die."
"Oh of course their immortal. Otherwise things would be too easy. But there is a way to kill them since they were wiped out no?"
"Wiped out?" Vermillion asked with a raise to his brow.
"As in none of them exist to this day."
"Whoever told you that was horribly mistaken."
'And here I thought I could trust Iosefka's words, shame.' Virgil thought to himself.
"The lot of them were indeed wiped out with the Raid the executioners preformed on their home turf but a very small amount still exist, I'm even acquaintances with one."
Virgil was most curious about the Vilebloods, he couldn't explain the fascination he was forming for them but he indeed wanted to meet said person.
"Who is this said Vileblood?"
Vermillion got up once again and took a nice long stretch, "Well I suppose I have nothing better to do, let's do a dungeon and summon him shall we."
"Dungeon?"
Vermillion rolled his eyes, "It's much easier to show than to explain, follow me."
He brought him just outside the cathedral, and infront of the building was a small altar with a chalice placed on it.
"This is a Pthumerian chalice. It allows you to enter the lowest level dungeon at no cost to you, a tier one dungeon. Inside each dungeon are four floors, each with a main enemy to kill or floor boss as we hunters call it. Each rewards you with better gear for your hunter, or fragmented memories being relatively rare. In tier one and two dungeons, dying simply means you respawn at the last messenger lamp you were at. However for tier three and four dungeons dying means you revert all the way back to the original lamp you spawn in at, regardless of what floor you've made it to. It also decreases the moon phase in the dungeon, making all the enemies inside much more viscous but allows them to drop even better items and blood. And tier five dungeons being the highest."
"What happens if you die in a tier five dungeon?"
"Two things. One your body becomes a revenant in the dungeon that will attack hunters on sight. Second, you yourself die for good."
Virgil began getting a extreme sense of deja vu, as if he'd dealt with something similar but it was locked away in the back of his mind and he was unable to put a name to what he was trying to remember. He wondered if these dungeons would fix these glitches in his memory.
"How do we enter?"
"Reach for the cup and take a sip of the blood."
"That's disgusting."
"You have no idea, this is a tier one chalice so there's just ritual blood in there which is slightly doable. Wait until there's spines and melted humans in those." Vermillion shrugged as he took his sip and vanished in a flash of light.
Virgil looked down at the cup, seeing the blood as thick as paint and blackening on the sides of the chalice perhaps from fermenting in it for so long. He brought it to his nose and the sour smell instantly made his eyes water.
"What do I have to lose I guess..."
He took a sip and too was consumed by a glowing light, but was then suddenly slammed against the cobblestone floors of what apparently was a dungeon.
He got up to his feet and rubbed the throbbing headache he had from the fall.
"A heads up would have been appreciated."
Vermillion was laughing at the sight of Virgil slamming onto the ground like an idiot and Virgil was becoming red from embarrassment.
"Seeing beginners enter these is the only form of entertainment we get around here."
Virgil examined the dungeon walls only to see that they appeared to be underground, with small cracks in the ceiling of the place. Dirt, insects, and a very faint moonlight came in through the cracks above. The walls were covered in moss and bugs and there was a fog that rises all the way up to their waists that made it a bit difficult to see the ground below. Just ahead was a unlit lamp like the one in Iosefka's clinic, a perfect replica. Vermillion walked up to the lamp and snapped his fingers and again the faint purple glow irradiating a strange feeling of hope filled the room and the ringing of the bells atop it came to life but rather than just four messengers like in the clinic, there were twelve. One set of four were just normal messengers, but another set had bloodied heads that were missing the gray skin the messengers normally had. Another set of four had tiny little top hats on the heads of the messengers and the last set were pink instead of gray.
With the four what seemed the be normal messengers again was the small what seemed neglected messenger that Virgil originally met, and again a small wave of his hand was directed towards Virgil. Virgil nodded his head with a small smile and the messenger turned its head back to the lamp looking for hope in its glow like it usually did.
"Interesting there's four sets this time." Vermillion said.
"What does that mean?" Virgil asked, most curious from the excitement in Vermillion voice.
"That means there's two other hunters here." He answered with a wide grin on his face.
"More help for the floor boss?" Virgil asked.
Vermillion looked over to him with the raise of his brow.
With a small tilt of his head he replied, "Of course not, this means we have some blood to shed. The only time hunters are allies here is if either they spawned in here with an ally, hence why were both glowing blue to each other. Or they summon an ally whilst in the dungeon. The messengers will be updated accordingly however to give the other hunters a heads up that another hunter has appeared. They will not know that we're partied though."
Virgil looked down and saw the small blue aura radiating below his feet.
"So they won't have this blue aura?"
"No, on the contrary they'll have a red aura in its place."
Vermillion reaches into his pouch and retrieved a small silver bell.
"These are how we summon other hunters. Once you meet in a hub like the cathedral ward or some place similar, you can form a bond with a hunter. Once this bond is made, ringing these bells will cause the other hunters bell to begin resonating, if they ring the bell three times they will accept your summons and appear near or at your location. If they ring it once the constant ringing of your bell that symbolizes its resonance will cease to be, meaning they declined your summons."
"And that's how you're summoning this said Vileblood?"
"Indeed."
Vermillion rang the bell and said the following, "I, Vermillion of the crimson fog summon thee, Gideon the bloodletter."
Just a few moments later Vermillion's bell rang three times and a blue light formed on the ground in front of him, followed by the first Vileblood Virgil will come to meet on his journey through this eternal night.