Gehrman sat at his desk.
He held a stencil in one hand, tapping it against the scarred wood. A screen was open before him, and papers sat around him.
"Why are you looking at that?" a voice called out.
It was Caster's voice.
Or maybe it was Laurence's.
For some reason, the two seemed indistinguishable at the moment.
He looked around to see who had spoken, but all he found was an abyss black. The only things that existed were Gehrman, his desk, and his work.
Everything else surrounding him was non-reality.
His head turned back to the screen. On it a great number of words were printed in a neat font that Gehrman preferred.
"The Electromagnetic Spectrum…Humans here have known about it for centuries. They understand how it works and how it operates," he paused, then gestured to the screen. "You see this black bar with the tiny sliver of color inside? As it turns out, every color we see is actually a part of this Electromagnetic Spectrum. It's radiation."
He waited for the voice to prompt him further.
Surely they would have questions about such an interesting topic.
And indeed they did, but it was not the question Gehrman had expected.
"Why?"
His hand paused, the desk granted reprieve from his monotonous tapping.
The voice had thrown a bit of a tricky question at him, but it was nothing he couldn't handle.
"Why indeed," Gehrman's face broke into a wide grin. "Why can humans only see this tiny piece of the spectrum through a visual medium? We can measure everything else, radio waves, gamma rays, and more. We know how it operates, and yet we can't see it. Humans have knowledge beyond what their being can comprehend. They can even use that knowledge to manipulate invisible, unseeable things…but it remains unseen."
"Why?"
The voice sounded more perturbed now.
Gehrman decided to tackle this from a different perspective.
"Everything that we can't see is just the color black. I found that interesting. The type of black we see when looking at the unknowable is a constant. It's the same type of black we see when we look out into empty outer space."
"Why?"
"Outer space is full of that radiation humans can't see. Every time I think about it, I wonder, what would it look like if I could perceive it? If I had a visual representation of each radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, what would the night sky look like?"
Then it screamed.
Gehrman's eardrums ruptured, the ringing in his ears like gunshots. One that he had heard only a few times before. When he had been cut in half in his First Nightmare, when his skull had been split in the Forgotten Shore, when he had been eaten alive by the countless Vermin of the Vileblood Queen.
It screamed.
"Behold! A Paleblood sky!"
Then, in less than a second, everything was different.
There was no transition.
The darkness was there, and then it wasn't.
He went from sitting at his desk to standing over empty cobbled streets.
Above, the night sky was painted artfully a color akin to a body drained of blood. A long dead cadaver which had morbid upkeep.
The words seared into his Soul.
"Behold! A Paleblood sky!"
He felt his wrist flick and suddenly he was split in two.
But Gehrman still stalked forward. Gaze glancing off all the corpses. He walked under that sky that had turned into a portrait of the beyond.
At the same time, Gehrman saw himself walking, eerily quiet and devoid of all emotion except killing intent.
Neither of "him" acknowledged this, instead he moved as if he had walked this path millions of times before.
He sidestepped, and brought down the Saw Cleaver.
The teeth sunk into an abomination of many spindly limbs. The thing jerked and jumped, attempting to rip Gehrman apart, only to be easily cut down.
Then another instantaneous shift happened.
He was in a dark place deep underground.
A lady of the night, beautiful in her own way, sat weeping in agony and despair.
She clawed at her eyes, tore chunks of her hair, and wallowed in misery so profound that it shook the very soul.
But it did not shake Gehrman's Soul.
The blonde haired prostitute was drenched in her own blood. Sick with it.
Below her the cry of an infant sounded.
It came from an indescribable entity that faded in and out of existence. Trying to stabilize itself in multiple planes, yet existing in none.
Gehrman brought out his Hunter's Pistol and fired a single shot.
The thing died.
Arianna died.
Only an umbilical cord remained.
One Third Umbilical Cord.
Or rather, Third Umbilical Cord.
Or rather, The Third Eye Cord.
Third Eye.
Peering beyond the-
"Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate."
The voice did not scream, but it might as well have.
Gehrman felt every bone in his body snap.
His neck twisted several times over.
And when it finally stopped he saw a dizzying vision.
At first the mess of colors and sounds made him think of the Void he had once traveled. But this was not the case.
He closed his left eye.
Gehrman was in the Hunters Dream, looking at Gehrman.
It was the current him, 17 years old, surprisingly handsome and heavily scarred.
His face twisted in agony.
He closed his right eye.
Once again he saw himself. This time standing.
This Gehrman bore a different attire. Torn and ripped, the ghostly grey outfit held aspects of every era of Yharnam Hunters. Bandages, pieces of welded metal, and a mask that covered his eyes, yet allowed more vision than seemed possible.
It was the Harrowing attire of a dead man.
What was his name again?
It didn't matter, as the dead man had faded into the nightmare like so many others.
Only Gehrman was left now.
He "Tricked" his Church Pick and coated it with bolt paper. He ate a seed of writhing, grotesque malice, and the Beast Blood Pellet filled him with strength.
He stood on the shore of a cold beach.
Sharp stones and grey mourning coated every inch of this cavernous place.
And at its center, a smooth, light grey slab of unidentifiable flesh. One might have mistaken it easily for a small whale.
But then the grey flesh bulged. Something was inside the thing.
As soon as Gehrman recognized it he fell to his knees and stabbed his eye sockets with his fingers and pulled with all his might. The fibers of the optic nerve that connected his brain to his eyes snapped with an absurd tearing sound.
He screamed and cried. His voice echoing, sounding like that of a boy, an adult, and an old man.
Even without eyes he saw himself back in the Hunters Dream, he was sitting in a wheelchair.
Why had he not noticed the wheelchair?
That Gehrman too, was crying, weak and pitiful. A blubbering mess no better than a child.
A child.
A child lost his mother.
The three distinct cries and wails multiplied hundreds, thousands, then millions of times over as a singular entity echoed its agony across every plane of existence.
The thing inside that mysterious grey carcass.
The thing that other Gehrman moved to fight, every single thing he wore, held, and had taken gave him the best possible choice for what came next.
Gehrman felt the blood around him dimly, it had been swirling, cutting, and killing all this time.
But there was nothing left to kill.
There was only him.
He exited the cadaver of that eldritch existence.
The Orphan.
…
There was light then.
Moonlight, dim and shadowed.
It was night, and he knelt. He sat at the center of a crater.
More accurately, it was the bottom of several different craters. Each with deep ravines cut into it. This plot of utterly destroyed land, these craters…they covered the space of an entire mountain range.
Blood was everywhere.
So much of it that it was now all slowly pooling around Gehrman.
Not because he called for it, but because he was simply at the bottom of this gigantic hole in the earth, and gravity said that this blood would meet him at the bottom.
"The…electromagnetic spectrum," Gehrman murmured.
He coughed and grabbed his throat. He had cotton mouth, and was completely dry. He made multiple attempts to swallow and gasp, trying to summon some saliva to wet his desert of a mouth.
He stayed there, sitting completely still as the blood came up to his feet, then his waist, then his shoulders.
Blinking and looking up at the sky aimlessly, Gehrman did his best to regain himself.
It was almost completely quiet around him.
Only the trickling of blood made the softest of noises.
In his mind, he pretended it was water, and that he was near a serene fountain.
"I should build a fountain. In the New Workshop and in the Grave Citadel. It should be the same fountain. The exact same one. And then, when people visit both places, they'll have a moment where they are all confused, and wonder if I had moved the fountain to the Waking World or the Dream Realm to prank them."
Gehrman smiled, pleased with his ingenious idea.
"I don't know how to make a fountain though."
It shouldn't have been that hard, his engineering knowledge was among the best in the world. But he had dropped most of his architectural knowledge in favor of more practical things as of late. He was unsure he could build the glorious fountains he wanted to make.
His mouth suddenly felt a bit of wetness. Unfortunately, it was not saliva, and was instead the pooling blood that had made its way up to his head.
He spit it out, disgusted.
"Don't wanna taste that for a while," he groaned.
After standing he looked around for a bit, then he gave the middle finger to the giant pool of blood.
"Trying to drown me, asshole? Try again next time."
He shook his body like a wet dog ridding itself of the rain that had soaked it.
Then he started the long journey of traveling up. One rock at a time, he climbed up as steadily as possible.
About an hour went past before he could remember he could fly.
But by that point it felt like cheating, and he was already nearly at the top so he decided against it.
When his hand did finally reach to end, he pulled himself up and rolled his soaked body onto the flat ground.
Looking up at the night sky, he flinched involuntarily and his body turned to the side to avoid looking at that view.
Laying horizontally, he saw the world in a new way…or maybe he just saw it that way because he didn't recognize where he was.
Gehrman began to hum a light tune. One that he kept getting wrong over and over again. It pissed him off, so he spent another hour practicing until he got it right.
"I bet Kai would be impressed. Guy is a 'so called' Idol Star. Thinks he's hot shit making all these songs and being a singer and shit."
After declaring his superiority to his friend he spent another hour reflecting on his actions. He came to the conclusion that comparing himself to others was unhealthy.
Also, it was probably arrogant of him to declare he was better than Kai after successfully humming just one song that he had stolen from somebody else. He might have been better than Kai, but he was sure that his friend had put a lot more effort into song than him, so maybe Gehrman was still lacking in some unknown area that Kai was an expert in.
Who's to say?
During his hour of reflection he also came to realize that he swore a lot more than any of the cohort.
Was this a sign of immaturity?
Indeed, it most likely was.
Despite being older than all of them combined he felt the need to cuss in order to make up for his outward appearance.
Truly, his self reflection sessions were on another level. He had learned so much about himself simply by taking the time to ask the really important questions.
But then Gehrman decided to ask himself the question "what is your favorite drink?"
This was a bad move, as it nearly sent him down a spiral of identity loss and nihilism because he had no damn idea what his favorite drink was and it made him worry that he wasn't a real person because who the fuck dosen't know what their favorite drink was? Fortunately, he was eventually able to pull himself out of it.
He was able to do this by asking a different question.
"What happened?"
Gehrman sighed and sat at the edge of the crater. Or rather, the edge of this crater which in turn had a few other craters in it.
And at that bottom crater was a pool of blood the size of Sunny's house.
Gross.
He lifted his hand and called a bit of it to him.
It didn't work.
"Oh yeah, it's cold now. Hmmm, if only I had a Molotov Cocktail I could set it on fire and we'd be back in business."
Alas, he had no such thing on hand.
Shaking his head in deep sorrow he decided that he should just make his wings from his own blood like he always did.
Grunting and groaning like an old man he stretched for a bit, looking like an athlete before a big game.
Then in less than a second his wings sprouted and he was in the air.
The winds were almost nonexistent, so it was incredibly serene up in the sky.
It was completely empty. Cloudless.
Everywhere he looked there were just plains and mountains.
Fortunately, there was also no rubble or signs of war (besides the humongous collection of blood) in those craters.
Still, it would be impossible for there to be no residue if he was standing on the ruins of Erebus Fields.
Comforted by this fact, he started to spin in circles in the sky.
In his head, he said it was to check all the angles to see if he could spot anything.
But really, he just wanted to spin.
It was a great pastime.
Unfortunately, it was cursed to be interrupted.
"Guh-man! Guh-man!"
A long ways away he heard a sound that was so damn annoying he wanted to shoot it with a gun.
But it was calling his name (kind of) and it would be rude to shoot a messenger, no matter how terribly they pronounced his name.
"Seriously, who can't pronounce a simple 'r' sound."
As it turned out, crows can't make the 'r' sound.
Because flying in an anxious circle a kilometer or so away from him was an Echo that looked almost identical to a normal Crow.
...
Author's Notes (put it in the chapter since I yap a lot)
LOOOTS of stuff in this one.
We jump around a good bit in the beginning, reliving key moments of Bloodborne. The scenes we saw are the ones that probably stuck with me the most. The message, "Behold, a Paleblood sky!" The lower part of Yahar'gul was quite harrowing the first time you read it, and for me it was deeply unnerving and confusing since (if you recall) the first dialogue in Bloodborne is that old doctor guy responding to a question about Paleblood.
Shortly after, in a conversation with Gilbert, we trigger dialogue that suggests we asked him where we could find Paleblood.
And yet, this often gets forgotten after the crazy events of Rom and Yahar'gul, so when you see this message it's a really chilling moment. Since it is night, the fact that the sky changes to look like this is interesting, and I like the idea that after beating Rom and awakening to a higher plane of Insight we can see the night sky as a Great One might perceive it: through visualizations of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. I know it sounds nonsense and it probably is, but I thought it was a cool idea.
The Ariannna scene was also deeply disturbing the first time around. I made a point to call the ⅓ Umbilical Cord by its multiple translations. For whatever reason, across Europe and American versions of the game it had this weird name that implied it was ⅓ of a singular Umbilical Cord or that it was the "third" of one which doesn't really make sense.
The more accurate translation would be Third Eye Cord, invoking the concept of the Third Eye and seeing higher planes of existence. This makes a lot more sense so in the future I'll be calling the umbilical cords Third Eye Cords.
Finally the last vision was a teaser for the future. Seeing Gehrman crying and wailing in his Nightmares was always a crazy detail to me, and there is one interesting theory on Gehrman's existence in the Old Hunters Nightmare (the DLC location) that I will explore in the future, and this scene was setting that up.
I had a lot of fun writing Gehrman's craziness and I think this was one of his best "insane" scenes that I've done so far, so I hope you enjoyed it.
Anyway, let's move on.