The lady looked like a spooky scarecrow. She wore a long dark purple leather coat on top of which she wore a cape made of black feathers. She had black trousers on and black boots. On her head she wore a small pointy hat which looked like it had been stomped upon by a giant troll. What made her look even more forbidding was the plague doctor mask.

Her arms were covered in bloodied bandage. She held a hunter’s pistol on one hand and a shiny blade on the other. The blade was the only clean thing she had on her.

“Oh; a hoonter, are ya?” the woman asked the moment Surgit got closer. “Well, yes I am”, answered Surgit, puzzled and glad to meet a sane person. “A hoonter and an outsider? What a mess you’ve been caught up in. And tonight of all nights,” she said with a tone of sarcasm in her voice. Surgit didn’t know how to answer that comment. He knew that it was the night of the hunt. He had calculated the date earlier and made sure that they wouldn’t land in Yharnam during the hunt. But here he was, hunting beasts and hearing voices inside his head.

The woman saw that he looked puzzled and fumbled in her pocket. “Here,” she started “to welcome the new hunter.” She handed him some parchments on which a man dangling upside down was drawn. He looked at her puzzled “What are these exactly?” he asked.

“An ignorant hoonter!” she exclaimed with that same sarcastic tone. Surgit started to get irritated by that tone and that accent. He wanted to cut her in half but the voices in his head seemed distressed. The twitching he usually gets when facing enemies stopped. It was as if those voices worked as a talking sixth sense. “They’re bold hoonter’s marks. They come in real handy when ya need to leg it,” the woman explained. “Just stick it on yer forehead and up ya go, you’ll wake up next to a lantern.”

“Thanks I guess,” he said while stuffing the parchments in his pockets. ‘I will need a new garb if I want to hold on to these items,’ he thought. ‘I seem to get into the habit of losing things lately.’ He was absorbed in his thoughts. The woman’s mask was still pointing towards Surgit. After a moment of awkward silence, she spurted out: “Prepare yourself for the worst. There are no humans left. They’re all flesh hungry beasts now.” Surgit looked at her puzzled. “You mean to tell me that those talking creatures down there were actually human?” He asked, he was relieved to have his suspicions confirmed. “Well yes but that was long ago. The only humans left are huddled inside their homes. The good that will do them! Heh.. heh…” Even her laughter annoyed Surgit. Perhaps it was her unnerving mask that kept him on his toes. “Now off ya go,” she continued. “A hoonter must hoont.”

Surgit was relieved to see someone up and about, but meeting a woman dressed in black looking so unsettling wasn’t comforting. She looked terrifying. From her weapons and the pistol she carried he concluded that she was a hunter. But he didn’t want to ask her anymore questions about hunting and the order of the hunters. He had a feeling she’d make fun of him again. “Ignorant hoonter” he said, mimicking her accent and making faces. “I’ll show her who’s the hunter.”

He was back at the mezzanine. He stood right on top of the spear wielding beast. In a heartbeat, he had jumped down and plunged his cleaver so deep through the monster’s skull that he heard its spine shatter. He knew the sniper had heard him tear through the creature’s flesh and he was ready to anticipate what was about to happen next.

He wrenched his cleaver from his enemy’s body, or rather; he tried to wrench it from its body. The weapon was embedded into the poor creature’s bones. As he struggled to remove his weapon the sniper had already taken aim. With all his superhuman strength, Surgit moved the weapon and the body it was stuck to. The beast’s corpse acted as a bullet sponge while he approached his enemy. The gunman kept shooting at him stupidly even though it didn’t work. As Surgit got closer to the body, he left his weapon where it was and jumped behind the sniper. One punch and Surgit felt his opponent’s ribs cracking. Another punch to the face and he dislocated its jaw. He then took the sniper’s rifle and aimed it between its eyes. Two shots were enough to bring the fight to an end.

The shots attracted the beast on the other side of the warehouse. Surgit saw the light from the torch approaching him. He tried to get his weapon out but it was still stuck deep within the corpse’s spine. He ran to where he had landed on top of the monster and took its spear. He turned just in time to see the beast, ten paces from him, making that raspy noise and running towards him. He threw the spear with all the strength he could muster towards his assailant. The weapon penetrated his chest and threw him a few paces back. Surgit ran towards the beast and shot its right shoulder with his pistol twice. The crosscut saw fell down just in time for Surgit to arrive, pick it up and burry deep in the beast’s skull. With both hands, he wrenched it out and slammed it on the dead body multiple times.

When he came to, his whole body was painted red. He was covered in blood and flesh. He’d never felt more alive. He went back to retrieve his weapon. With the sniper’s rifle, he shot the beast’s spine multiple times until he broke it. He took his cleaver and smashed the piece of bone which was stuck to it on a wall. “That’s what you get for keeping my weapon.”

After he calmed down, he came back to see the woman again. He’d forgotten to ask her name. He found her in a peculiar position. She was squatting on the railing and observing the area beneath her. She turned to look at him and Surgit felt his hair stand on end. He was sure that she would be a very tough opponent to fight. “Still lingering about?” she asked “A hunter, unnerved by a few beasts?” she started to chuckle under that terrifying mask of hers. He was about to say something when she followed up: “No matter, a hoonter must hoont.”

She jumped down towards the canals, disappearing in the darkness of the lower part of the city.