//------------------------------// // The Reconciliation // Story: The Sentinel of Crows // by Doctor Blizzard //------------------------------// ——— 'Clunk... Clunk... Clunk' The streets of Yharnam were completely barren, in disarray. Anyone who occupied an inch of cobblestone had fled inside in a hurry. Fog hung low and loomed with a sense of madness as it truly defined the hues of the night, moreover what it stood for. Street lanterns covered the ground in saucers of light, hiding unsightly things just beyond. Strollers were abandoned by loving mothers, who had either fled or were lying cold just a few feet away. Coffins were in chains and piled into the streets; for nothing would get out. Massive pyres were erected to burn the beastly scourge to ashes. Yharnam was in shambles, but there seemed to be a gentle wind blowing through the alleyways and streets, making such an eerie and nightmarish pitch. Through the miasma of death, there persevered a lonely hunter strolling through the streets. "Another one." Eileen kneeled at the side of a dead hunter with a mangled body. Normally, the active hunters with newly ministered blood on the hunt would have been reborn back to their fighting selves, ready to slaughter once more with an emboldened spirit. But his body was cold like the rest. "Plumb out of dreams..." She gently removed his heavy cloth hat and half mask, examining his rather untouched face. Her hand washed over his open eyes and closed them respectfully with a slight shake in her fingers. "May you find peace... I'm sorry this happened to you." Eileen didn't know him, but a hunter's bond was so much more than friendship. It was to be held sacred and close to heart. She rose from her knees, all pride in her work left her body ages ago. Everything was silent all around her. But every once and awhile, she would hear a beast scream, a gunshot, and silence, then the process would start anew. She did not even notice the bells until it entered her train of thought. It was something she learned to ignore. All of the peculiar and one of a kind noises they emitted and how each one signified a hunter in dire straits. 'God, there must be hundreds of them...' She swore she could have seen the ripples of time through the slits in her mask. 'What are the odds that any of them will walk away without turning? They don't know what the blood and the hunt can do to them... There's nothing I can do about it and it's sad to say, unfortunately.' Eileen pitied their sorry souls. Their unfortunate and unknowing ignorance, a kind of ignorance that could not be helped, but only witnessed from a distance. She stared up at the snowy white moon dominating the night sky and how unmoved it truly was. 'It'll be a long hunt tonight.' Eileen's lips pursed as she sighed, looking down the endless and cluttered walkway. She pushed forward, not knowing what she would encounter or what the hunt had in store. Silently, she fled down a small bridge and walked towards a solid stone precipice surrounded by a gothic fence at the very rim. It was terribly worn and nearly corroded, but she did not care as she leaned against it with elbows crossed. What a gorgeous view through all of the disparity she saw below her. The tapering of gothic spires atop even taller buildings basking in the white glow. Every bit of metal glinted as the stars did. Every sidewalk and narrow corridor that cut the city into pieces. And every column of fetid black smoke from sources unknown. She could smell the singed blood in the air, even through her mask. Her docile hands reached into her harnessed satchel and grabbed a folded piece of red-stained parchment. Most of it came from the sanguine ooze dripping from her feathers. Of all the names on a list called 'Marks', there remained only two. "Henryk, and... G-Gascoigne..." Eileen sighed. "N-N-No, not yet. He still has time..." She could not bring herself to say what was expected of her. And like the snap of a bone-dry twig, she immediately dropped the paper and spun around, her blades split menacingly, ready to draw blood with firm hands. Eileen noticed automatically that another hunter stood in her midst, his hands were up high and his saw cleaver clattered to the ground. "Who are you?" "I-I'm sorry if I startled you. But are you, E-Eileen? The Crow?" The unnamed hunter goggled at Eileen's attire. It certainly matched up pretty well. "That would be me." The first thing she picked up on was his very young voice and shoddy figure. Quite literally quaking in his boots and a face stricken with fear just by a glance. But she could not blame the new hunter with blood coating every surface of his clothes. "Again, who are you?" "A hunter, j-just like you! My-My name is William Drake!" His eyes darted every which way, just waiting for Eileen to lunge forward. She stayed silent for the moment, which probably freaked William even more. He would have never noticed Eileen smirk under such a fervid and notorious mask of the city. "Hehehe... Relax." "Oh, thank the Gods-" William's arms fell back limp at his sides, picking up his fleshy cleaver and slowly walking towards her. "So, what did the new hunter kill tonight?" "Uh, A-A few werewolves and some Yharnamites who'd, um, turned already. Ma'am, I can't-" "Ah, putting in some work that no other killer wants to touch. Well, I'm glad someone is putting blade to flesh." She put her daggers away with a deplete chuckle to boot. "Practice makes perfect, I always say. You're not from around here, just like me." "I was only protecting myself... And, you're right." "Whatever you say, young man." Eileen glanced down at his gargantuan cleaver lined with saw teeth. The blade was wrapped up in thin strips of cloth and abandoned by its user long ago. She knew that hunter weapons were falling to dangerously critical levels for a lack of, but nothing had changed it seemed. And she remembered that message was given out years ago. Every proud, noble, and even fierce hunter of the hunt had been turned to malformed abominations long ago. The age of the old hunters was long past, and she was one the few still standing. "Hmm... here. For you." Eileen held out a few scraps of horribly yellowed parchment with the symbol of the hunter burned into each one. "You still have dreams, do you not?" "Don't you?" "Oh, I'm afraid that was a long ago. I killed my beasts, now it's time you kill yours. Now off with you, you little killer." "You're a beast hunter just like me, we share the same work. I don't understand what you-" "We do not share anything. And if you really knew my name, you'd know exactly why." Eileen glared into the hunter's frightened eyes as she put her back against the stacked bricks of a building wall. Her voice cut through the foggy air with force. She slightly recoiled at herself for snapping so easily at his small truths. The hunt made people do crazy things more often than not. "You're right! Y-You're right, I don't really know what you do. My apologies." "Listen, you just keep killing beasts. And I'll keep doing what I'm best at. I suggest you get to it." "I will, but could you listen to me for a damn second?!" William shouted louder than he had intentioned and covered his mouth. Taking a moment to breathe, he collected his widely scattered thoughts of what her reactions were going to be soon. "What is it? I've no time to fraternize." Eileen opened her ears once she heard his boot steps stop only feet from her. "Umm... Eh. T-There was another hunter in Oedon Chapel when I stepped inside. He told me he'd just killed a man who'd turned into a beast before his eyes. Wearing all black with a white scarf around his neck, a-and he-he had a giant axe, unlike others I've seen." William reached behind him, but Eileen lowered her head almost immediately. "He told me to find you because your name is inscribed on the bottom of this music box. I guess he thought it was only right to return it... I'm terribly sorry." William watched in awe as Eileen held the small music box and a giant red brooch tightly wrapped in a shred of Gascoigne's scarf. She put it up to her massively throbbing heart and quietly sobbed behind her mask. How quickly her emotions flipped only killed her inside. "Thank you..." He must have heard her crying because he gently patted her shoulder before silently retreating back into the streets of such an abhorrent city. She waited a good ten minutes before she slid to the ground, absolutely broken inside and out. 'No... No-no, no! God, please stop!' Eileen tried to stop herself, but she felt a flood of tears roll down her face. 'God dammit! N-Noo!... No-no—No!' She wanted to scream, but even that comfort was denied. ——— "Hello? Hello?!" Eileen knocked on the window of a stately home overlooking the grand ravine of a sewer. "Girls?! It's ok, it's me, Eileen! I'm a good friend of your parents!" She rushed around to the front entrance when she noticed the locks were unlatched and the door was ajar. "Shit!" Every light in the house was extinguished in black. But Eileen barged through the door with a pistol in one hand and her blades in the other. "Girls?! Come out, it's ok! I'm here to get you someplace safe... Please! You don't need to hide!" She heard the things she was saying in her perturbed voice. 'Get it together, Eileen! Calm down!' "T-They're ok, they're all ok. Just... calm down. They couldn't have gone far." Eileen scoured the room for clues and almost immediately found a note on the table. 'I'm sure once they see there godmother they'll come running to me. Just level yourself.' 'I went to Oedon Chapel, mum. I'll be safe there with big sis.' Eileen did not have time to reflect. She threw the paper and slammed the door behind her. Sliding down a long ladder into the very shallow sewers, Eileen sprinted past giant crows and caustic villagers missing their bottom halves; she made sure not to recognize any of them. But then she stood at the mouth of a giant tunnel where darkness truly manifested. A sinister chill rolled out of the tunnel as she looked at her feet. Ribbons of blood slowly filtered out of the stone passage. She grabbed an iron shaft leaning against a pipe and wrapped it in oiled linens before taking a piece of fire paper against it. It lit up instantaneously, filling the tunnel in a warm orange glow as the flames licked the ceiling. She jogged through the muck and checked everything, she did not know what lied within the tunnel. Only, she stumbled upon a giant mound of flesh, one that failed to move in the slightest. The ribbons of blood now turned thick and syrupy as the mound leaked from enormous lacerations scoring every side. Eileen recognized the thing to be a giant hairless pig with sharp tusks once she got up close. A giant chunk from its shoulder was cleaved off, likely the work of a hunter's axe. She leaned in closer; there was something snared in its tusks. Eileen wrapped her hands in a bloody cloth with a painfully familiar embroidery running through it. And next to the pig there laid a pair of buckled shoes belonging to a little girl. She wanted to collapse to her knees but her damned stoicism continued to deny her what she wanted. She could not cry anymore. Eileen drew her pistol without any feeling of remorse or hesitation and shot the pig in the head. The angry metallic verberation shook her to the core, feeling the roar of the firearm fill her with uncomforting rage. She pulled another bullet and unloaded another sharp crack into the city. By the time she was done, ten casings slowly drifted with the sewage and the blood, one after another. She hated the hunter who killed the pig, whoever it was. To deny her vengeful wrath upon a beast of the hunt that had killed her inside long ago. It would have gone against everything she believed in and swore in the Hunter of Hunter's oath. To kill hunters who had gone mad from the stench of blood in order to protect the innocent people of Yharnam. It was not her job to kill the nightmare's brought by The Hunter's Dream; a place of rebirth and desperate peace. But it dawned on her that everyone was a beast, even when they cloaked themselves in false clothing. Everyone turned eventually and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was killing beasts all along. ——— After the red moon unleashed its hidden power, the veil of hidden secrets lifted. Revealing the truth of man and the hazed line that separated them from being beasts. If Eileen had any speculations, none of them remained. She had lost track of time once the moon was washed in the corrupting ire. At moments, she became lost in her emotions and sojourned in places she always found comforting. Other times, she was violent and snapped at anything around her. But most importantly, she became utterly careless. Eileen drifted in and out of consciousness, stumbling around the streets in a tempered slur with a hand pressed hard against her abdomen. "B... Bastard. Snuck up on me good." She glanced down at her gloved hands and eerily admired the thick color of rusted red spilling off in long bands. She stuck her finger into her belly and cried out sharply in pain. She knew almost immediately she coughed up blood into the mask. Her vision blurred as her head began to spin in a city of iron railings and the color of black and red. Suddenly, her legs buckled under the dead weight near the main cathedral of Yharnam. Atop a mountain of stairs, Eileen's eyes began to flitter as she painfully staved off the gentle embrace of death. A needle and thread found themselves in her hands after she ripped open her outfit slightly. "Oh, god..." Her assailant's katana had gone straight through the center of her abdomen and out the back. She tried and tried but nothing was going to stop the bleeding. The needle tinkled against the stones below her body, her horrendously trembling hands would never come close to fixing everything. Even when she took blood to heal herself, more of it was going out than in. "This may be it for me—" Her ears honed in once she heard the sounds of heavy steps drawing near. "Come on you bastard. Finish the job. Kill me already..." Eileen glared at the lip of the stairs, waiting to see the blood-addled hunter who had stabbed her clean. Not long after, she noticed a different hunter just beginning to notice her writhing body on the cold ground. "Oh... it's you—I'm glad you're ok." She looked deeply into William's eyes. "E-Eileen? Shit, what happened?!" William Drake kneeled at Eileen's side, trying to find anything, anything at all to help her from succumbing to her injuries. "Are you ok?!" "I've made a bit of a blunder." She watched his hands grab something, preparing a blood vial for her. She reached up and held his vibrating hand. "Don't waste your blood on this poor old woman... This wound can't be healed in time. He's my mark, turn back. That thing needs to die by my blade. You don't need to bloody yours anymore..." "You won't last a minute before collapsing, Eileen..." William had a crazy thought enter his head. If a hunter could do this to Eileen, he knew that the mad hunter would have to die. "I'm doing to this for you. This is to pay you back for helping me so don't try talking me out of it!... H-Hang on, ok?" Eileen closed her eyes and felt a faint smile cross her face as William sprinted into the cathedral. "The new hunter isn't so new anymore. Good. There's still... left for me—" But she knew that moment was it for her. A lady growing old and deprived of any hope thereafter. Everything that gave her purpose was swiftly butchered in a single night. It was her job to protect the people of Yharnam and she failed miserably. And as her mind scrolled through simple musings, her eyes drifted off towards the sky where nothing but death lingered. "Eileen! Eileen, no!" William jolted her back to a barely conscious state. She felt the death of a fellow hunter nearby in his wake. "I told you not to go. Listen to your elders next time, you understand? Well, you saved my life." Eileen heaved out a heavy cough and reached up to him and let William hold her hand. "H-Here... I think you deserve this." She pulled a small badge off of her necklace; it vaguely resembled the symbol of a crow. "This is your choice alone. To-To be my successor as the new crow hunter... As it was for the hunter before me, the one you put to rest. No one will understand, but it is a hunter's work too—Oh, don't worry about me. My glory days are far behind me now. I'm just... Let me rest my eyes a bit." But when she expected the embrace of darkness clouding her vision, she experienced a terrifyingly bright flash. A flash that somehow devoured her body until she could not keep her thoughts any longer. ——— Eileen curled up against the wall as she did twenty-three years ago. She did not care if they heard her crying this time, even in the deafening silence before her peers. All those sleepless nights and every mission she went out on in her new world would never amount to what she experienced on the night she died. "And—And then I saw w-white floors and watched them, turn red. I thought I was in the afterlife, and I-I shambled through the halls, I didn't know how I was up and w-walking, but I was! I just couldn't take the pain any longer and I collapsed in-in a strange and warm place. The next thing I knew, I saw Celestia cradling me in her hooves after she removed my mask, that was it..." She tried to stop her voice from quivering, but she far gone. "A-After I found out they all died... I-I-just-gave up. That world died alongside me, I welcomed death and I ended up here... Twenty-three years ago on this night." Eileen gripped the cold marble and forced herself up without looking at anyone in the room. 'Dry your damned tears! Crying won't bring them back.' She reached down to the doorknob with her nimble fingers, letting the door swing open without any help. But something nudged her black boots. Something small and alive after the soft patter of hooves latched onto her leg. Eileen turned around and stared down at Flurry Heart who continued to pull at her bootstraps. And Eileen looked up at Cadance and Shining Armor who were astonished from either her story or what was happening, much like the rest of the room. She reached down to the babbling alicorn and nested her in the crook of her arms, returning Flurry Heart to her parents. "Take good care of her, ok?" Flurry Heart nervously cried out in a panic as Eileen made for the door again. "Ei-Eileen, wait!" Cadance gently jostled Flurry Heart. Once Eileen stopped and turned slowly, Flurry Heart stopped whimpering almost instantly. "She doesn't want you to leave... And—I don't think anyone else here wants that either... It's ok, l-let it out." "I let them all die... I'm not fit to protect you." Eileen was taken by surprised when both Celestia and Luna assaulted her with such an emotional embrace. She nearly tipped over, and after staring at the two alicorns so distraught, she tried to comfort them somehow. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. "You didn't let anyone die, Eileen. H-How dare you blame everything on yourself! I won't have any of that talk here. Never tell that to yourself, understand me?!" Luna hugged even tighter as Eileen got to her knees for ease of access. "I don't know what it feels like to be the world you lived in, but I know how it feels to be alone and scared..." "Why didn't you ever tell us this, Eileen?" Celestia broke away and looked into the holes. "No one should hold onto something so difficult to deal with alone!" "I didn't want you to hurt inside, none of you... It's my burden to bare and you shouldn't suffer for it. As far as I'm concerned? I treat you two like I did those two girls. You two are the closest things I consider family. But we've grown apart recently, so I-I—Thought it was happening again." Eileen let Luna go as she sat at Celestia's side, who was still very closeby. "I used to be one of the best. But I couldn't even save the ones I loved and I nearly went mad because of it... It makes me question my value, and it makes me obsess over perfection." "Don't do that, Eileen! You can't blame everything on yourself!" Twilight's eyes were already wet from the very thought. "Don't let it eat you alive!" "It's not even about that. It's my fears of what I never want to see again. Why do you think I never let up on anything I do?" Eileen searched the ground and felt her eyes shutter. "Is this why you never back down? Why you always feel like it's your sole duty to protect everything in this world?" Celestia sounded almost hurt for causing undue harm to Eileen. "I don't want to lose anything I love again. I will not, I-I can't let it happen again! If I have to kill to protect this world I'll do it!" Eileen's hands hopelessly laid at her sides. "I don't want that burden on my shoulders... I don't know what I'd do if I lost you all again. There wouldn't be a second chance this time!" "And you think we never worry about you? We wouldn't know what to do either! There are times where I worry about you never coming back! Both of us do!" Celestia held Luna in the process. "We used to be the best of friends, Celestia. Why did you just... Stop?" "I don't know! I'm just a damn idiot for doing something that isn't me at all. Just—Ugh! I'm so disgusted with myself... I understand now why you came inside. I've just been so busy the past couple of years that I forget you have feelings too. If only I knew what was going on." Celestia poked Eileen's mask with her golden hoof. "I want to see you, personally." Eileen nervously reached back and unbuckled the straps on her mask. She could not remember when Celestia had last seen her uncovered face, but to reveal herself in front of a group of heart-wrenched ponies seemed more daunting. The metal buckles rattled as the mask came loose, just like her pointed hat. And slowly, her identity dropped into her lap, avoiding Celestia's motherly smile. Eileen watched Celestia's hoof go under and raise her chin. Her gorgeous smile already trembling at her rarely seen face. "I'm so sorry that you lost everything you loved and how that must feel every waking hour... Because I wouldn't have the strength that you have. But you're here now, and-that's all that matters, ok?" Celestia wicked a tear away from her rapidly filling eyelids but continued to admire Eileen's elderly charm. "Now, now. Don't start with that. Lulu's going to keep you in check if you do." Eileen looked at everyone else in the room who were enthralled by her face, "not what you expected, huh?" "I said you could call me that in confidence..." Luna felt an ember-like heat build in her cheeks as Eileen jokingly tapped Luna's chest with a finger. "It's not like anyone in here has never heard it before. I call you Lulu just like I call you Celie." Eileen glanced back at Celestia, "I like seeing you get worked up over nothing I guess, call me silly if you want." Celestia chuckled, but in a way that yearned for something of nostalgia. "Well, I guess that story makes sense now, Eileen. When I first found you?" "I remember before I passed out completely, how panicked you were when you yelled "Help me, dammit!" to the guards." "Hehe, it was pretty easy to find you." Celestia's smirk turned serious in a matter of moments. "Thankfully I helped you back then. I'm sure you were very confused once you came to. And even though I didn't know you then, you looked at peace." "You saved my life, Celestia... It's part of the reason I do what I do. It's a debt I can't repay." She fingered the mask and carefully studied each blotch and every dent. "And I'm glad I ended up here." "Nonono, you paid that off a long time ago... Your company's payment enough. A blessing in disguise, I'd say." Celestia held Eileen's face as each smiled for one another. "Well? What are we going to do about all this? It's been a good run, but." "Oh-" Celestia tapped her muzzle. "We'll definitely make a few more changes to your job. You know, one that doesn't require you to be on guard duty for us all the time. Of all things, huh?" "I may be getting old, Celestia. But you won't take that job away from me. It's what I do best. Hehehe..." "Oh, I know! Heh heh—Just, could you possibly take breaks? Please?" Celestia feverishly wiped her eyes. "Y—Yes... I reckon its time I start taking things a little easier, yeah? Just a little bit." "I think we can all keep this a secret until we figure out what to do, yes? This is still a delicate matter." Luna stood up and eyed all of the bobbing heads and soft agreements. Twilight nodded most enthusiastically and closed her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. "And I think I owe you all an apology. Especially you, Twilight. I got—Excited, you could say." Celestia sheepishly admitted. "You were brave enough to stand up and know what was happening was very wrong. My, sincerest apologies." "That's an understatement." Luna poked Eileen's side. She stood up and smiled down at Luna. "That's ok, Celestia. Eileen said you needed to be reminded of what you two had, or, the three of you in this case. I'm just relieved this nasty business is over." Twilight's eyes opened even deeper, looking back at her pulsating cutie mark. A wave of actual relief washed all of her cares away. But another issue was still left unattended. Twilight gazed upon her merry works of Hearth's Warming and wondered what would happen now? She found her eyes slowly drift back to Eileen and how she patiently waited for someone to decide what to do with her presence. Shining Armor worked up the courage to apologize to Eileen for tackling her, but she understood and even complimented him for his strength. Seeing him blush was enough to make Eileen and Twilight smile. Eileen sniffed the air deeply, feeling her nostrils being overloaded with all the pleasant scents. Behind the mask, it all smelt the same, but now she was introduced to newfound delights. Twilight understood the meaning of Hearth's Warming to heart. And she knew that leaving Eileen out of everything—someone who really was alone in a world of ponies—would not settle well with her. For everything that Eileen had to endure, it was only right. "Eileen?" "Yes, Twilight?" "I don't know how my parents will react, but would you like to stay?... I want you to be a part of this. And if you want... a part of this family tradition." "If that's ok with everyone else, then I'd be delighted to stay... It's been awhile." Eileen crossed her arms, everyone else was more than welcoming. "Of course! And you'd better visit after this, Eileen, ok? I want you to be here every year. And I want you to meet my friends sometime. I know you have your differences, but I have a feeling they'd grow on you pretty fast." "Ok now, don't get too far ahead of yourself... Give me some time and I'll visit your palace again soon." Eileen plucked her bell back into her hand and showed the thing to Twilight. "Here, I'm sure Luna won't mind if you borrow mine. Ring this when you find yourself in desperate need... Or, if you need me to deal with a more—Furtive issue..." Eileen tossed it over as Twilight caught it in a magic cloud. "Go ahead, Twilight. She can tell who's ringing which one anyway." "Thanks, Eileen. I'll take good care of it." Twilight stared at the strange little bell, holding it tight against her beating chest. To be entrusted with such an important piece of captivating metallurgy made her shiver with pride. "I promise." The room went silent "Twilight! Your parents have arrived!" Spike barged through the door with overwhelming ambition and enthusiasm to match. Twilight Velvet and Night Light examined the silence in complete puzzlement as the blackened figure reared her head back. Spike finally opened his eyes and saw what they saw. "Um—Hi! Mom and dad, h-how are you?" Twilight put on the biggest smile she could muster. "Uh, good... Well, are you going to introduce your friend, sweetie?" "Oh boy, where do we begin, hehe!"