For two weeks I did nothing save hunt ghouls and rest in Rosalia's house, listening to her brewing tea, making conversation when it was necessary; asking questions about the city, its history, how large it was, the townsfolk, the Cathedral. Her answers would be cryptic, sometimes she avoided the questions entirely. I change the subject. I tell her I do not know if I have gotten used to the blood and the guts spilled when I killed the ghouls. Think of them as rabid animals, Rosalia said. It will help.
Perhaps it did. Perhaps it did not. I still retched but I kept it from her.
It was time for the hunt once more. I stalked my prey: a horde of gaunt flesh and bones with a shaggy must of hair; remnants of the purge that the first band of Hunters had started. Eshers, Rosalia said. Their eyes glowed a milky white. Individually, they were no bother but when they gathered, not even your blood will be left on the ground. I gulped back the hesitation that built on my mouth.
I loaded my flintlock with silver bullets Rosalia had left at the threshold of the door. I summoned courage from the Nether and whispered my saber's name. It was time. I sprinted into view of the abominations. Their bodies were wrapped in burns and scars and they looked all the more disgusting in the moonlight. My blade was a scintillating sight, its silver gleam chopped off heads and pierced bodies, leaving the clang of each strike in the air as well as the metallic twang of the Eshers' blood.
The casements of the nearby houses loomed, dimly lit; I caught someone's eye. Shit. In my brief stupor, an Esher had landed its putrid teeth on me, its drool a searing liquid upon my shoulders. Why did I not notice it? The tugging in my stomach had grown fainter and fainter through the days, and was now non-existent. Alice's blood. Fuck. Two weeks I did not take it. I was in no condition to fight this horde. I had to escape.
No escape, I thought. I could not see a path I can get through for the dark heads of the Eshers presented themselves in the feeble light of the streetlamps and houselights. Shit. Shit. Shit. I danced but the grace was gone. It was a frantic search to finish the movements, to get to a spot. It was not a true dance. I was bit. Over and over again. Shoulders. Arms. Legs. Abdomen. My flesh was torn from its body, thrown into the ground and feasted upon by the Eshers. I cannot scream. I fight. It was desperate, feeble and a cornered prey's last attempt at freedom.
I see a way out. Hope is dim but it shines. I take the chance. I weaved through the Eshers teeth and bodies, scramble through them; I lose a shoe and a finger but I am glad to be freed from their clutches. I will regenerate, I comfort myself. But it is slow; I needed at least a day when Alice's blood was fresh in me. Now that I had gone two weeks without it, I stood no chance. The Eshers were blind. They would not see me but they will smell my blood. I tear off a piece of flesh, my face must have been ghastly, twisted in pain and disgust. It slides off easily from the saber. I heave it towards the Eshers still quaffing on the blood, feasting on the flesh; they thrash and thump each other to get at the piece of flesh. My stomach drops but is it not the feeling that led me to slay the werewolf.
At most, I had a minute. I rush as far as my torn and broken legs can carry me—it was not fast at all. I will not make it to Rosalia's house. My head throbs. My heart pounds. The world spins. The streets look the same in my dizziness: broken pavements swallowed by the abyss. An orb hangs above me. I close my eyes. I await fate.
"Hunter?" A voice asks. I open my eyes. It is a man, rather handsome-looking though his beard does not add to the appeal. His eyes are a deep azure and they bore deep into my vermilion orbs. Outsider, I think. None of the villagers have blue eyes.
"You are an outsider," I said, slightly amazed considering the treatment outsiders got from the townsfolk. Or anybody who aided them for that matter.
"Yes, that is true," he tips his hat, "humble outsider Crawford at your service…and I assume you are a hunter, sir…Can't imagine the looks people give you…The people in Yarim are quite like arfarfan'arf…" I do not know what he means but I snicker bitterly. His speech is impeded by odd coughs; he released sallow sputum on a bed of grass. The faint smell of acid hangs in the air. I do not take notice of it.
"I am."
A silence dawns upon us; he stares at me, eyes bearing earnest curiosity. Perhaps he has not seen mangled bodies. Or perhaps he has not seen much hunters. I have not either. I only knew of one other, and I haven't seen him in the city. The silence is disturbed by the moans of the Eshers coming from a street on the east. Crawford looks at the direction of the noise, his face unusually calm, not a slight hint of fear in it. I do not think of it because of the next thought that comes. In death. I can return to the Sanctuary if I die. It is a risk, perhaps deluded thinking. But I will not die by the ghouls of this city, turning into one myself. I will die human, by the hands of human or God. I looked at Crawford.
"Will…" I staggered. "will you kill me?"
"Is that…what you want?" Crawford asks. There was no hint of hesitation in his question but the cough. Was it normal for his land to ask to kill people?
I nodded, handing him the saber. "I do not want to die by the Eshers hands."
I stare at the approaching horde of Eshers, their horrid, dripping flesh and visible bones under the eternal moon and dim lanterns are the last scene in my head. My head is sliced off. I see my body, blood rising like the turrets and towers of the city but it will never reach the top. It will fall back down, the pull of gravity dragging it to the Nether. The world turns into that red thick tea that filled our bodies and I know that I am not alive anymore but my brain ticks and works a few minutes more; memories flush, enough to turn me mad.