aefenglom | Tonight, Maria joins the Hunt

Name: Lady Maria
Date: Auguril 15th - Evening
Format: Video

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[The view opens up to Maria's face, the face of the giant clocktower in the back drop. She's sitting on a ledge on the outside of the building, one leg dangling off the edge, the other foot planted on the worn stone back of a screaming panther-eagle gargoyle. The sky, and the tower are awash with the the deep pinks and purples of the nearly-set sun. Maria herself is wearing her full hunter's outfit, her hat pulled low to shield her eyes against the sunset, but in truth it just makes her eyes seem that much brighter blue. The only oddity in her attire is that she seems to have several sunflowers tucked into her belt, around the holsters for her gun and sword sheath.

The mechanisms in the tower grind and move, and the big minute hand tocks heavily, thunking into place in the next minute slot before Maria speaks. It's almost the top of the hour.]

It has been several months, since the first of us arrived here. Life... is not made easy within this place. Not for anyone, even those of us who might be in better straits than at home. This may be the worst night yet, and we still have many more moons to come, I fear, before any of us are allowed from this place. [This, however, may very well be Maria's own last. She feels the way the headache swells and throbs behind her eyes, the pressure fit to make her burst at the seams. It ebbs and flows, depending on what she does with the Monsters, how she uses her magic, the potions and the herbs and the other stalling tactics, but she's not sure how much longer she can keep on like this. Tonight, blissfully, the pain is at its least - the full moon being the weakest pull of the mirrorbound Witches is keeping things to a dull roar at the back of her skull. For several seconds, she looks back out over the city, scanning the shapes and the shadows, watching people shutter their windows and close their doors.]

On this night, the instincts for the Monsters will be at their worst. If the pull is too strong, and you feel your mind slipping into the madness and chaos of beasthood, seek the scent of... [Lumenflowers... no,] sunflowers. They will lead you to me. I will make it as swift as you will allow me; but it may be most silent if I must seek you out. [This is exactly the threat that it seems to be.]

If the beasts loom large, and threaten to devour you, or crush you, seek me out, as well. Monster, witch, human or not, it matters not to me; it is the threat of the feral I am in search of. [Pause.] As for the rest of you... I hope you do not see me.

[Her foot shifts, and she stands, precarious though the ledge is. The terrifying drop seems to not bother her at all. The shadows deepen on her face as the sky turns a richer purple-blue, the sun setting rapidly now, though it's barely been a minute. Soon, the video cuts to black, but there's still audio in the background; a rustle of wind and cloth. Finally, there's a whirring as the clock begins to turn over again.]

The night, and the hunt are always so very long. I pray we all live to see the morning sun, and put this night behind us.

[Tock. The video cuts out as the first peal of the hourly bells sounds. Over the city, the clocktower chimes eight, and the sun slips fully below the horizon.]

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[Oh, Maker.

Somehow he's--well, the explanation fits, doesn't it, knowing what blood magic did to its users and the hideous things they became.] What made them drink it? Did they know what it would do beforehand and think it worth the risk?

And what's the Old Blood? [He suspects from the sound of it he can infer--fucking Old Gods ruining everything across worlds.]

Drink it? Well, drinking it doesn't do much, unless you've had the transfusion first. [Or you've been corrupted by the other strain - the one they called Vileblood.] But... there are a great many varieties of things you can do with the blood. It cures illnesses, and makes you resilient to new ones. It gives you strength so far beyond what your fragile human body would normally be capable of. And, more than that... it's... intoxicating. Even when I was there, many of the distilleries in town were shutting down because the blood was so much more powerful.

[She pauses, though. Old Blood was...]

It was something we discovered in the Tomb of the Gods. The blood of the Great Ones... but not everyone in town could have that small amount of blood, so they infused a number of the people of the Healing Church and used them as blood saints.

[Behind the scenes, she closes her eyes. She can see Laurence, giant, furry, hideous wolf-creature with that massive set of antlers. And she can still hear him scream, smell the burning fur and flesh as his own Church hunters brought him down. Then, in the Nightmare... as he still burned, and screamed, and sought out his human skull...] ... And they were the ones that always turned into the largest, and most hideous of beasts.

You'd said imbibed; I assumed--

[...well, not any of that. The face he makes at his watch might be charitably described as what the everloving fuck, horrified but gruesomely fascinated at the same time.

She did warn him. But now that his curiosity's roused he's not about to back away from the line of questioning.] Andraste's mercy--yes, I'd suppose if it did that much most anyone would risk it, wouldn't they--

Did they know? The blood saints--did they know what they'd become when they-- [A moment's pause as his mind skitters from one thought to the next.] Did they volunteer?

Edited (uggghHH caught a phone typo) 2019-08-25 02:04 (UTC)

Oh, and it healed wounds. Recent ones, especially - if they were still bleeding, a little bit of Blood, a quick injection, and the wounds would close right back up. [It made Hunting very easy. Nowadays, she has to rely on her magic, which is far less addicting. It's a mixed blessing, to someone used to the Blood.] And yes, they did. When they made a religion out of it, made finding people who would do anything to have such a vaunted position very easy. But the Church were the only ones that knew what happened to those who imbibed the blood. At least, the only ones the citizens would listen to.

[That sends a chill down his spine.

He's been interpreting this world--and all the other worlds the mirrorbound have come from, every one he can pick up fragments of--through the lens of Thedas, finding parallels everywhere he can. (It stood to reason, if the same hand had created all of them...) It's even easier to do in his current state of feverish agitation, and sometimes it goes much further than he'd like.

He does not like what his mind's put together between this Healing Church and the Chantry.] And what did they tell the citizens?

[A pause.]

You make it sound universal--did you use the Blood as well?

What else? They told them it was healing blood, and its ministration would cure all ills. And, to some extent, it did. [They weren't directly lying about what the Blood was, they just lied about the side-effects.

As for that other question... well, now he's thinking.]

I did.

[Maker's blood, he thinks, and nearly laughs--of course that's the first oath into mind.] What else, of course.

How did you keep from becoming a Beast yourself? [Surprisingly--even to him, because they're talking of blood magic, after all--he can't find judgment under the curiosity. Perhaps because it had been universal to her world, and if she'd had no part in making it that way, what fault could there be for not knowing better?]

The Blood leaves an indelible print on all whom it touches. [Too bad this is both audio, and he's blind; if he looked hard enough, he could see her fangs.] However... there are a couple things I can say about why it did not immediately turn me to beasthood. The first is that I am a Vileblood. The Blood Saint I first took to imbibing the blood of was my... aunt, Queen Annalise. At Cainhurst, we had a slightly different form of the Blood, with a slightly different effect; and rather than turn to a Beast, at least from what I know of, Annalise merely became... immortal.

Seems like it'd still be a curse, given what you'd live to see.

What's the other? [There's a pause, and more noise from his end--rustling as of someone pushing through foliage.] Did you end up immortal, too?

[You weren't supposed to ask a lady how old she was, but, well.]

Oh, I can imagine. [And yet, Maria has absolutely no sympathy. Her strained relationship with her distant relative saw to that - and she doesn't even know what became of all the Vilebloods, to boot. What is being a character who died before the game even started.]

Quite the opposite; I am dead, and I have been that way for years. I died long before I could see if the Beasthood could truly take root within my rotted blood. [She suspects not, though.] I used more of the Yharnam variety than my former fellows at the castle.

[oh so he's talking to an actual dead woman, no big deal

(definitely a big deal; he needs to pause and absorb that revelation)]

So what you're offering us--that's nothing you'd not have asked for yourself, if you'd lived so long and it came to that. [Which is still, in its way, awful; but it is a balanced sort of awfulness.

It also squares up something he'd gleaned listening to the rest of the folk chattering at her--] Is death truly better than regret, lady?

[Not condemning; curious in a way that might sound a little painfully personal because it is.]

Yes. Though someone else would have done the favor before I'd needed to ask, yes. [Or, really, she wouldn't even be able to ask at some point. Still, the Vileblood corruption kept the Beasthood away - or at least melded it into something different. The Cainhurst Knights... well, they also hunted hunters. But that was something else, and for a different purpose. One she'd never much agreed with Annalise on.

She has a verbose response to this, but she's already touched too closely upon things she doesn't really want to talk about ever at all, so!] Yes. And life is not without some value, but a single life versus the lives of many is no comparison at all.

Tonight, Maria joins the Hunt

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