Gehrman awkwardly shifted his weight as he stood at the bottom of a deep, dark cavern. The day after the wedding, his mother in law had already thrown him into such a place.
Of course, this was in line with their deal.
At the moment Gehrman was not in Ravenheart, but rather a Citadel a bit farther north. This was a strange place that was full of petrified trees and wild beasts. A large flat field filled with dust and crawling warm rivulets of blood acted as the environment of this area of the Dream Realm.
Despite the ominous and alien environment, the beasts that made home here were not that terrible by comparison to most. Awakened made up the vast majority, with only a few Fallen abominations crawling about.
The area as a whole was known as Fellwood, but the Citadel he was currently below had been dubbed Lunar Tear.
For around the twisting tower that was the Citadel, a space of blood and dust formed a wasteland. The gravity was altered and the light changed. One truly felt they were walking on a different celestial body, one of great alien power.
Lunar Tear was one of the earliest Citadels conquered by the 2nd Generation. In fact, it had been conquered by Ki Song herself. Though it held little strategic value, a few people still lived here as a sign of honor to the Queen's first conquest.
The tower itself pierced the clouds and seemed to reach forever. This was where the few Awakened made their home, using this place as a space for academia and study. Of course, it was not well known as such, because only those sworn to Song could enter the tower.
After all, this was the location in which Ki Song obtained the Beast Gods Lineage.
Far below the twisted tower of bone and blood was a cavern that sharpened into a very claustrophobic space in which a person could not make a single movement without bumping into the ribbed walls.
This secret location was found by Ki Song after she explored the place during a full moon, and the luminescent moonlight revealed the path, breaking through the ceilings and floors to reach into the secret space far below that held a small pool of blood.
This had been the blood of the Beast God, and by bathing in it, the Lineage found purchase within Ki Song.
This was how she explained it, at least.
However, that Divine Blood had been absorbed by her, as the original inheritor of the Lineage. However, due to the God's unique divinity, Ki Song was able to pass it on with her own blood.
A suitable host was necessary, and she would have to pour her own blood into that same space, creating a pool once again for a child to be reborn in.
At least, that was the symbolism.
In a moment of unusual clarity, it hit Gehrman that this was really fucking weird. However, he had done so many things that were so much more atrocious that it would have been the height of hypocrisy to be grossed out by the ritual.
That was how Gehrman found himself at the bottom of this cavern, the moonlight illuminating his eyes as a steady stream of blood calmly filled up his surroundings.
Of course, as a Supreme losing this amount of blood was nothing. In fact, since her Aspect was clearly related to blood, it was possible Ki Song could fill the whole tower in an instant with red.
However, she took her time. The amount and speed of the stream was more than enough to kill an Awakened, or even what the average Ascended, but it was solemn and peaceful in this specific context.
Gehrman said nothing, letting the peace pretend the sound of the blood hitting the growing pool was a peaceful waterfall.
He let out a breath.
He closed his eyes.
Relaxed.
This was a necessary step in order to ascend further up the ladder of divinity. The influence of the Moon Presence had reached an uncomfortable level both in the Nightmares, and now out here.
Not only that, it appeared that by taking on the symbolism of the Orphan of Kos, he had attracted the attention of the child's mother as well.
While Paleblood was much more dangerous, having groomed him to be an avatar for itself, the machinations and purpose of Kos was not clear either.
She had seemed both benevolent and cruel at times. In his Madness, he recalled a dream in which she simply floated amongst the waves, at peace.
Such an existence was all She desired, and yet, that was torn from her. The tragedies of Kos and the Old Hunters Nightmare were convoluted across multiple dreams, and so the state of the Great One was confusing as well.
Still, the fact that it's Caryll Runes now worked in the Waking World and Dream Realm indicated that She now also had a stake in this realm, as Her presence, or at least nearness, was the only way for those Runes to have the effect they did.
It was possible Kos would be helpful in combating Paleblood. After all, the two had been at odds with the souls of Gehrman and Maria, splitting the both of them into the Doll and Gehrman in the Workshop and Maria and the Orphan in the Old Hunters Nightmare.
Perhaps She would aid Gehrman in maintaining autonomy then?
It seemed like too much to wish for.
Especially since things would only be growing more complicated.
There were other Great Ones who could potentially play roles in the upcoming Nightmares, and thus in these realms futures as well.
The Great Watcher, Amygdala, whose avatars were spread throughout countless dreams had truly unfathomable purposes. Johann had both experienced Amygdala willing to transport him to different dreams as well as those who sought to end his life.
The Daughter of the Cosmos, Ebrietas, was largely benevolent. She had been instrumental in the founding of the Healing Church, but at the same time, Johann had also encountered an aggressive version of Her in the Chalice Dungeons.
This was specifically odd, as Ebrietas – based on everything he knew – was a weaker Great One, one who was unable to truly spread herself across all Dreams. She was known to be "left behind", after all.
Finally there was the most enigmatic, and perhaps the most powerful. The Formless One, Oedon, was an omnipresent entity that had fathered the child known as Mergo, breaking the theorized law that Great Ones could not create children.
Gehrman knew nothing about him besides this, as well as the fact that He had a few Caryll Runes that had a uniquely bloody and dark design.
Having such alien existences crash down on this already distraught and terrified world would be a disaster.
So Gehrman needed something to combat them.
The foothold that they would all use, indeed the only thing they could use to gain access to these realms, was Gehrman.
It was only natural that a patron from these realms, or at least their Lineage, would be able to dissuade such actions.
At that moment, Gehrman felt the blood of Ki Song finally reach the very top of his body. Cresting over the last strand of hair he stood completely submerged in the blood of the Beast God.
Without any indication of stress, he opened his eyes.
What he saw was not a wall of red. It was not the tight hole that he found himself in.
Instead, it was space.
This specific version of outer space was a good bit different than he had imagined. For one, the constellations and stars seemed very far away and muted. The darkness and emptiness of everything held oppressive.
However, this strange backdrop was all but forgotten as Gehrman took in all the other absurd details of the sights around him.
It took him a moment to realize that "outer space" was only out in front of him. The reason that the constellations and stars seemed minimal was because there was something blocking his view from above and below.
Turning his gaze upward, Gehrman couldn't quite make out what it loomed over him, as its appearance was rather simple. A dark stone, though not as black as the void of space, spanned the endlessly over the sky.
However, the stone itself was not a sky. From what he could tell the black stone was far away, very far away. And yet, it still covered the entire sky. It would be like if the moon took up the entire night sky all of a sudden.
From this black stone, a countless number of grey pillars spiraled downward. They seemed skinny from afar, but Gehrman imagined if he got close each would have the diameter of a city.
There were millions of them, all driving themselves into the depths below Gehrman.
The mind boggling scale of everything twisted his sense of reality.
A similarly eldritch sight met Gehrman below him. What looked like a slab of clear grey blubber shifted randomly and in patches from flesh to grey water. The skin turned to foaming waves akin to those at sea, and crashed against the pillars.
Everything was so far away that not a single sound reached Gehrman, yet he imagined that the size of each wave could have easily decimated a citadel.
Gehrman simply stared at the strange vision, awestruck by the power he beheld.
Then, he turned around, and faced the last of the eldritch things of this strange hallucination.
This was entirely different from the endless sea below or the stone above.
It was a living, breathing creature.
And it was watching him.
Like everything else in this vision, it was inordinately large.
The size of its eye was akin to that of the humongous castle that crowned New Yharnam.
The creature itself seemed to be a wolf. However, it had no fur or skin, instead, muscle and veins pumped blood. It was a truly horrific and bloody image. One that would have made an ordinary person gag a bit due to the sheer gruesomeness of it.
To Gehrman though, there was a majesty about the creature.
It felt so…alive.
More alive than anything he had ever encountered. It didn't make sense, logically. Something was either alive or dead, life wasn't a spectrum. However, this thing made it seem like it possessed something more, an energy unique to it alone.
This was but a small flicker, a trace of one of the 6 ancient gods of this realm.
The god of the moon, hunting, carnal desire, blood, beauty, and the cycle of birth and death.
The Beast God.
Its eyes were blood shot, and its pupils took on the shape of miniature moons. Its celestial nature was so evident that it shook Gehrman to his very core.
Gods, Seisahn and her sisters faced this thing when they were kids?
Perhaps, but perhaps not.
It was unclear if this vision was a normal part of the process.
"Uh, hi," Gehrman gave a little wave to the creature.
The remnant of the Beast God considered him, tilting its head and sniffing. The flow of blood in its body shifted. With a small amount of disgust Gehrman noticed all the blood pumping to the now shuddering brain of the creature.
"I don't really know how this works from here so-"
Gehrman stopped, his voice caught in his throat as a terrible feeling ripped through him. He doubled over, wheezing as he felt his body start to tremble.
"What the fu-"
His entire body underwent a convulsion, like he had been electrocuted. Gehrman felt the blood in his body jolting about, much like how he would order it during battle. However, he was not in battle, and he was not ordering his blood to do anything.
Geherman realized two things at the same time.
The first was that the thing looming above was not black stone, and the scale of it was a lot larger than he had considered.
Extending his senses in the hallucination further, he could see the edge. Not of the black stone, but of the indent.
This whole thing that took up the entire sky was but a tiny glimpse of the strange stone mask-like face of the Moon Presence. He was currently underneath the indent, and from this perspective, that little circle in the face of Paleblood was the size of a planet.
A feeling of such insignificance and horror threatened to pull Gehrman into a pit of despair.
His initial estimation had been, "bigger than anything I've ever seen". Only for the new estimation to be "many, many times bigger than the biggest thing I've ever seen."
Is this what Paleblood is? Is this what I am to Her? Even as a Saint I am nothing more than a bacterium compared to Her?
Gehrman slowly turned his head to the remnant of the Beast God that had seemed so terrifying moments ago.
For a single second, Gehrman wondered if this was pointless. Comparing the scale of the two things was laughable. While the wolf creature dwarfed Gehrman, it would amount to nothing more than an insect to Paleblood within this hallucination.
And if these strange sights truly represented the scope in power of these beings, then what could a Divine Lineage do?
The Beast God was surely once more powerful than the Moon Presence, but now, all that was left was the dregs.
Compared to a Great One, a true Void Being, what could it accomplish?
The answer came to him soon after.
The entire hallucination shuddered as the skinless wolf looked up and howled at the sky, at the Great One who dominated it.
The space of the place twisted as suddenly Paleblood was much, much farther away. So much so that Gehrman could see its entire stone face.
However, that just added to the horror. Gehrman's mind actually sustained a decent amount of damage simply from processing the face of Paleblood at this magnitude.
At the same time, the seas below trembled and turned far more aggressive.
The waters turned to violent tsunamis with hurricanes forming everywhere. It seemed to be trying to reach upward, but the Beast God Lineage did not even look down at it, for the pillars put in place by the Moon Presence still held what was evidently the manifestation of Kos in a tight prison.
Even though reality had warped and Paleblood had been somewhat ejected, Her presence was still more than filling the space around them. The pillars that pinned Kos were endless, and they did not lose any fortification.
Nor did they lose their connection to their master, it seemed.
Those pillars that looked much like the ones that endlessly graced the fog outside the edge of the Hunters Dream suddenly turned black, and dark tentacles split from them.
In mere moments, hundreds of thousands of enormous, building size tentacles were reaching for Gehrman.
Though they were impossibly far away, he felt they would reach him in seconds.
Gehrman hurriedly turned to the skinless wolf.
"Please, I need your protection. I'm not one to beg, but I think you can see the situation I'm in is not an ideal one."
The Lineage considered him, tilting its head and watching him with a far off gaze.
The moon-like pupils glimmering with mysterious light.
"Ple-"
Gehrman could not make another plea, as in that moment the tentacles reached him. He was surrounded on all sides and was immediately captured in total darkness. It was odd, he expected a stench, or perhaps an alien isolation within the tentacles, but he felt nothing of the sort.
There was not inherent rejection, no disgust, it was only his logical mind that warned him of the great danger.
"No," his voice quavered. For the first time in a long time, Gehrman felt so incomparably small and weak. He felt the Madness rising.
He desperately wanted to use it. To tear through these tentacles with the Frenzy, Dissociation, Anguish, Obsession, Void.
He really wanted to use Void.
He felt it calling, itching to come to the surface.
To devour the Flame and the Light.
To encompass and devour all things.
However, he pushed it down. Gehrman knew the situation was bad, but he also knew that if he resorted to such measures, the Beast God would never offer their patronage.
He needed something pure, something powerful.
He needed to break free.
The tentacles were closing in. Despite their size, they filled the space around him, impossible filling every crevice. More tentacles slithered inside, making an impenetrable cage of eerie silence.
"No," Gehrman growled.
It was peaceful.
"No."
It felt like wrapping himself in a warm hug. It felt like home.
"No!"
Gehrman's entire being flared, but not with Madness, with Will.
He was Transcendent, and was thus not privy to the realm of Supremes and Gods. He could not inherently sense and wield Will.
But the principle of it was simple. It was a base thing that even those of the Void had. Even more essential than Desire, Will came before all.
It existed on a plane of its own. It trumped every Aspect, every Sorcery, if one held a strong enough Will, they could rewrite all rules and powers to fit their whims.
Gehrman was made up of souls who had suffered far, far more than any human ought to. The endless prison of the Hunters Dream, the Night of the Hunt, the torture and wrenching of freedom and humanity that happened in that cabin in Dovust Park.
Gehrman had endured more than any other human being on this planet, or in the Dream Realm, simply by the virtue of the lives he had lived up until this point.
He had those experiences, and he had new ones as well.
He was those people, and he was his own.
Though Will was influenced by Rank and Affinity, its core, its base was that simple thing that all creatures of the Void, and all creatures of the Flame of Desire knew.
And Gehrman's base Will was stronger than any living Supreme, perhaps even any of the ancient Supremes that ruled in the Dream Realm.
Though he could not wield it like they could, he could manifest it with an inordinate amount of power.
So he did.
"I am not you," Gehrman's voice trembled and his eyes turned bloodshot. "I am not your puppet. I am not your flesh."
The invisible power that his Transcendent self could not sense or even truly comprehend rocketed outward, tearing like bestial claw and tearing saw through the tentacles.
The dark flesh ripped, only to be replaced. The inevitably of it seeming impossible to debate.
And yet, Gehrman still pushed.
"I exist. I am alive. All you are, is a aimless fucking dream that can't even form a coherent sentence. You beast. You creatures who are less than a beast. I'm going to fucking slaughter you if it's the last thing I do!"
The blood, the will, and the Flame of Desire in Gehrman's heart reached a tipping point. At the very moment, he reached the precipice in which he was about to descend into madness, he felt the shift.
The Will of the Beast God awakened, and it resonated with him.
The claws of the skinless wolf tore through the mass of tentacles, instantly obliterating them. The prison was decimated in an instant.
All around, a storm of endless tentacles whirled around him and the wolf.
Gehrman steadyed his breathing, and looked once more at the Beast God Lineage, who now returned his gaze with a closeness and familiarity that hadn't been there before.
Neither moved for a moment.
Then, in less than a second, the manifestation of the Beast God snapped forward, devouring Gehrman whole.
He was surrounded by blood and muscle in an instant, the heat and energy of it overwhelmed him. His blood literally boiled.
If he had the ability to scream, he would have destroyed his lungs with the rush of surprising pain.
It was different from Anguish, though not necessarily worse. Having all of his blood evaporate, disappear, and leave him an empty shell was a uniquely harrowing experience.
He laid in the belly of the beast, feeling as dead as he ever had, when suddenly everything around him contracted.
The muscles, blood, sinew, all of it rushed into him, being absorbed by him.
Blood returned to his veins, and it exploded with vitality and rigorous aggression.
It ended in the span of a single second.
Before Gehrman could even comprehend what was happening, he was back to reality.
Standing in that small, slim cavern where he couldn't even move.
All the blood that he had been steeped in was gone, and the Spell whispered in his ear the good news.
[You have received an Attribute].