Baptism

The blood-drawing apparatus in Oedon Chapel was well-maintained, as all church mechanisms for blood ministration were. The building around it, by contrast, was crumbling into disrepair, with every corner choked by dusty cobwebs and the faces of its saints blackened with soot and rubbed smooth by rain; there was little the mattered to the Healing Church now besides the blood, not even the souls of its parishioners or the grandeur of its own holy places. Everything fell to ruin around that sacred ritual, even the Church's own clerics.

Arianna had her own set of needles and glass vials, of course -- every Yharnamite did, if they valued themselves and feared the beasts that roamed the nightmarish nights -- but the church's apparatus was easier to control, and much better at keeping the blood sealed from contamination by the night's miasma. It was definitely a godsend when filling several vials, and Arianna was preparing as many as she could before the hunter returned. The goodly hunter had taken two doses of her blood already, and would surely need more. Arianna might be helpless against the onslaught of the plague, and unable to prevent the suffering that all hunters must inevitably endure, but at least she could provide this small comfort for her -- the tall foreigner with pale, distant eyes who had brought them all to the relative safety of Oedon Chapel, the hunter who spoke little and smiled less. The one who saw -- however distant, however mad -- an end to this cycle of beasts and those who put them down like rabid animals in the streets.

Drip by drip, the glass vials filled up with fluid, glimmering ruby in the candlelight. Slowly, steadily, Arianna bled her life into the glass. The air smelled of copper, and by the third vial she had begun to grow weary, her head starting to feel light. She would need a dose of blood herself when she was done.

The touch of a hand on her shoulder roused her from the meditative reverie of bloodletting, as absorbing in its own way as the taking was. Arianna flinched, turning to find the nun standing behind her with her hand drawn back, looking as though she had pet an uncertain cat.

Adella was a sister of the Healing Church, and whatever circumstances had brought her to Oedon Chapel had left her scraped thin and haunted, her dark eyes always darting to and fro in search of danger. She was rail-thin and quiet, but she watched everything like a hawk. In particular, she watched Arianna. The refugees of Oerdon Chapel and its strange keeper mostly kept to themselves, but Arianna was hardly surprised that it was Adella who chose first to break their self-imposed quiet. The woman seemed fascinated with her in some strange, sad way.

Arianna tried her best to smile kindly for the woman. Adella was not outwardly cruel to her, nor had she ever uttered a word about her profession, but something about the other woman unsettled her all the same. It wasn't that she expected her to say or do anything, precisely -- it was simply the fact that in Arianna's line of work, one learned to trust gut feelings and develop a keen eye for character, and something about Adella simply made the back of her neck prickle like an oncoming storm.

"Miss Arianna," Adella said, and the name stuck in her throat like it was full of cobwebs. Her voice creaked like an old cellar door opening, and she twisted the hem of her pinafore nervously in her hands. "A moment...a moment of your time."

"My time's usually not priced by the moment," Arianna said, but the nun did not seem to appreciate her levity. Her seemingly perpetual frown tightened. "But what do you want, dear?"

"I want to...I don't know how to say it." The nun did not meet her eyes.

Arianna let out a breath. This kind of halting hesitation was one she was well familiar with -- she had seen it in sheltered virgins and mourning spouses who came to seek her service often enough. "I'm off on hunt nights, dearie," she said gently, "and besides that, I don't usually see ladies. Nor churchfolk, neither." Adella stepped forward, undeterred, and was now close enough that Arianna could see a darkly familiar kind of need welling in her eyes.

"I know. I want -- I've seen you with the hunter. I've seen how she looks at you. How she takes your blood." The nun licked her dry lips, swallowing; whatever emotion had gripped her, she seemed to find it near impossible to vocalize, every word forced out like it was being pried from her tongue with a knife. "The scent of blood, it...it..." The woman stepped closer to where Arianna sat with her legs primly crossed, her body hunched over in an expression of supplication, or perhaps desperation.

Arianna looked up at Adella, who kept her wild eyes on the floor. She was of the Healing Church, and besides that one of their special supplicants chosen to learn their holiest and most secret rites, trained in the ways of blood ministration; the medium that flowed through her veins was venerated while Arianna sold hers in the street. Arianna had never truly liked or trusted the merry band of hypocrites who called themselves the Healing Church, and Adella had scarcely given her a reason to change her mind, skulking in the shadows as she did. Arianna had even caught her spying upon one of her conversations with the goodly hunter who had brought them both here, though for what purpose she could not say.

But here, now, she looked so pitiful with her gaunt face and hollow eyes, twisting her hands and bowing her head like an anxious beggar asking for alms. Her clothes were hardly of fine make, mended many times before tonight, and her shoes almost worn through; she had clearly not lived a life of luxury despite her vaunted title. And when she finally looked up from the ground, Adella had the desperate, hungry look that Arianna recognized so well -- that peculiar Yharnam hunger, wild and gnawing, common to those who partook of the Church's holy blood and now were forced to go without. A hunger, her clients had always said, not of the body but of the soul, aching for that blessed communion.

Healing Church or no, Adella seemed not so different from the clients who sought comfort in her arms any other night. And whatever had brought her here seemed to have left a dreadful mark upon Adella's mind -- she jumped at the slightest shadow and kept such careful watch, as though she could not make herself believe that the chapel was truly safe. A woman alone in a city of beasts herself, Arianna understood that fear.

She could hardly afford charity, but a simple good deed... that she could not bring herself to turn down.

"Hush now, dearie," Arianna said, reaching up to take the other woman's hands in her own. "I'm off on hunts, but these are hardly ordinary circumstances. We've enough incense to last us till morning, love, and we're all safe here for the moment...all of us thanks to the good hunter who brought us here. And the night is shaping up to be long indeed."

Arianna rose to her feet, and Adella pressed forward to meet her with surprising force.Though the folk of the Healing Church were not sworn to celibacy or any such vows, she had never known them to be much interested in carnal pursuits -- distracted, as they were, by the pursuit of some higher form of ecstasy, a rapture of the spirit that seemed as real to them as the realm of the physical. Carefully, Arianna slid her hands down her back, thumbing at the laces of her plain black shift. She could feel her ribs through the thin cloth, as though she had not eaten for some time. Poor blood-addled thing. "There, there," she found herself murmuring into her thin hair.Adella responded with a wordless groan, and brought one knee up to grind between her legs.

"Little eager, aren't you? Not used to that from --" Arianna began, but Adella cut her off with a hand laid over her lips.

"Hush," she said, her voice clipped and breathless. "Just...hush." Well, there certainly were clients who preferred the quiet. That wasn't so unreasonable. Maybe Adella was afraid one of the others would hear, or perhaps she was more embarrassed than she seemed and couldn't bear to hear her desire reflected in another's voice.

"We'll discuss later, then," Arianna murmured, and made a soft moan as Adella traced the line of her lips with one fingertip, brushing gently over her cheek. Adella's other hand moved to caress her side, feeling the fading brocade of her dress, nails scratching along the seams, and then leaned in close, as if to kiss Arianna's neck -- a gesture she found overly familiar, and would not have permitted with most clients, but her heart had gone out to the disheveled nun, her eyes wild with blood-fueled paranoia and her body weak from deprivation. If she let the woman feel a little more welcome, if she let her play at dallying with a lover rather than visiting a whore, what was the harm?

Adella buried her thin, drawn face in the crook of Arianna's neck. She did not kiss, or lick, or even bite as Arianna expected -- instead, she hovered there, breathing deep, as though searching for something she could not name, before she broke their embrace and stepped back.

Adella sat herself down onto a disused pew a step away from the pair of them, smoothing her skirts out behind her and over her knees. Looking up at Arianna with a hungry gaze, she patted her lap. Her tongue lapped once, then twice around her lips, slightly parting as though in anticipation of words she could not force herself to say.

Arianna might have laughed, if she hadn't trained herself so well to be polite. Of course, a nun with her hair primly drawn into a tight bun, fresh from a convent where she was taught by her strict abbess to eschew all worldly delights and cultivate their elevated soul so that their holy blood might be eventually decanted and served to their adoring flock...of course she would want this. Of course her stunted, embarrassed conception of lovemaking would position her either as strict schoolmarm or chastened schoolgirl.

Chaotic though the night might be, but people really were predictable.

"Of course, Mistress," Arianna said, putting a bit of a simper into her voice. "Shall I call you mistress?"

"You can call me," Adela said, still not meeting her eyes, "whatever you like."

"Then I shall. I have never had the chance to play at being a schoolgirl. Having no proper education myself, you know, it always fascinated me. Church girls in their uniforms, their heads all full of exalted learning...quite exciting, really." Arianna hitched up her skirts and leaned down in front of Adella, giving her a long view down the front of her bodice, should she choose to take it in. And take it in she did -- her eyes followed the curve of her cleavage down into the shadow of her dress, studying every detail as though she would be tested upon it later. Arianna's smile widened. Church folk weren't so different from other folk after all, perhaps -- the same needs, the same wants as the rest of Yharnam, when the sun set and the moon rose high. It always comforted Arianna a bit, when the howls of beasts filled the streets, to see certain things were still common to humanity.

Soon, she had laid herself across Adella's lap, her head close to the wooden seat of the pew on one side and her hips raised tantalizingly on the other.

Adella's thighs were bony beneath her plain dress, but warm against Arianna's belly like anyone's lap might be. Laying her chin on her folded hands, she fluttered her eyelashes. "Oh, Mistress Adella," she began playfully. "What is my punishment to be?"

The first blow came unexpectedly, with no gentle stroking or light swats to lead her in. Adella brought the flat of her hand down on Arianna's upturned rear, right on the fleshy curve of her arse, with such such force that she could feel the thud of it deep in her bones, and it stung her skin sharply even over the thick taffeta of her skirts. Arianna would have cried out in pain and surprise, but Adela seemed to anticipate this and muffled her with four fingers crammed into her open mouth, filling her so widely that she could not muster the leverage to bite down. If she had thought Adella merely lacked some sensitivity, the hand muffling her mouth dispelled this notion immediately. It came too quickly, too roughly to be thoughtless.

With Adella's nails nearly clawing the back of her throat, Arianna could neither scream nor even grit her teeth as Adella hit her again, this time on the back of her thighs -- harder than before, with the reckless strength of someone who cared little if they caused hurt. Arianna could feel the beginnings of a bruise blooming as Adella slapped her across the arse again, again -- hard and fast and leaving her no moment to regain her senses -- until tears started to prick at the edges of her eyes. She lost track of how many blows she had endured by the time Adella finally paused long enough for Arianna to even slip a thought in edgewise.

The hand that had been battering her twisted into the fabric of her dress at the waist, twisting until it dug into her belly sharp and tight like a rope. "I can smell it on you," Adela hissed. There was still that edge of desire there, that need -- but Arianna could seeshe had mistaken its source. "That filth your veins. It smells like rot and decay. Covers up the whole chapel when you draw your blood for our good hunter, drowning out the incense. Makes me feel half a beast just being in its presence." Adela yanked hard on the handful of cloth, and Arianna moaned into her hand as the cloth pressed crushingly into her skin before the seams split, thread unraveling and shredding to tear the skirt from the bodice. Her dress hung ragged around her hips now, her arse and all else exposed to the open air in her split drawers.

Arianna was too stunned even to struggle. Adella's fingers were choking her, thrust deep and leaving the taste of dirt and Arianna's own lip rouge on her tongue; she fairly screamed into Adella's hand when she felt the nun roughly pry at her cunt, probing as carelessly as one might tear into soft, unfeeling earth. "Having a lovely time, are you?" Adella sneered, as she yanked her fingers free -- now slick with arousal. Mere moments ago, Arianna had been ready for an evening's sport, and she had little objection to a touch of rough handling from time to time. Of course, her cunt was fair dripping. Arianna felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment at her body's reaction. "At least you know how you ought to be treated." An open-handed slap to her exposed cunt forced another whimper of pain out of Arianna's throat. Adella leaned down over her, close to her ear, and hissed with a fierce and snake-like malice, "Scream, and you'll bring the whole cathedral running. Who do you think will save you? That addled old woman? The blind lice-ridden beggar?" The threat was clear, and Arianna's heart sunk as she realized that Adella was quite correct. Who, save perhaps that good hunter, would take her word over a lady of the Church? The chapel keeper, perhaps, and he was the only one who could not see her plight.

A long, quiet moment stretched out between them, and Adella slowly released Arianna's mouth. Arianna let her head droop against the pew, the rough cloth of Adella's dress scratching her cheek, and tried to catch her breath. Below her waist, everything was a confusing mix of arousal and pain, wetness sliding down her bruised thighs.

Adella pressed her down with a hand on the small of her back, with a strength that belied her fragile-seeming frame. There was almost some unholy strength in Adella now -- a strength that perhaps that everyone had taken for simple, honest resilience but now seemed threatening and beastly.

Arianna had always prided herself on being a good judge of character. She was perceptive, resourceful, and astute. She had to be.

How had she let her soft heart mislead her so?

Her respite from Adella's abuse was short-lived. The soft crack of a wax seal being broken caught Arianna's ears, and she twisted her head to try and see the origin of the sound, though her position and the dim candlelight made it impossible. Out of the corner of her eye, Arianna caught the glint of flame on glass.

Perhaps satisfied that no resistance was forthcoming at the moment, Adella slid her hand down Arianna's back, feeling where she had torn the seam of her dress. For a long moment, Adella seemed as though she was admiring her handiwork -- her hand roamed appreciatively over her battered arse and thighs, feeling the heat that rose on her reddened and welted skin. Arianna hissed between her teeth at this, Adella's suddenly gentle touch tingling like static sparks on her sensitive flesh. It was, for a moment, almost nauseatingly close to the feeling of a moonlight tryst, as Adella's hand slid between her legs, teasing her.

Arianna braced herself for another blow, but it never came. Instead, something wet and warm splashed onto the upturned curve of her arse and slid down the cleft of her buttocks, dripping down to mix with the wetness of her cunt. The scent of iron and incense flooded her nostrils, made her dizzy.

Blood. And not only that, pungent and concentrated blood by the scent of it -- that intoxicating scent seemed almost overwhelming the instant the vial was uncorked, heady with the promise of drunkenness and oblivion. A whole vial of the stuff she tipped over Arianna's battered backside, soaking into her ruined clothes, sliding enticingly over her aching holes. Arianna's skin tingled where it touched her.

"How generous," Arianna murmured. "I thought, from how you carried on, that you would hardly treat me to a stiff drink." It was a foolish thing to say, but Adella's words had needled at her -- cursed blood, forbidden, tainted -- and the wild scent of refined blood was going to her head already. Sure enough, Arianna heard the musical crash of an empty vial shattering on the ground, and Adella's vise-like fingers tightening around her throat.

"I am hoping," she hissed, squeezing down on Arianna's neck in a clear threat, "to wash off the stench that has addled our dear hunter so." Arianna tried to speak but Adella's nails dug painfully into her skin, choking the words off. Her vision swam. "To perhaps make you understand the proper place of a gutter whore whose heart beats with red poison." Panic started to well in the base of Arianna's belly, and she started to struggle in earnest now, but. Adella held her fast as blackness started to prick at the edges of Arianna's vision. She felt like she was drowning -- dying -- in the stinging pain and intoxicating scent of blood.

And just when she was certain that she was about to slip under, all fight drained from her, Arianna felt something thick and hard probing at the entrance of her arse.

Arianna could not find the breath to scream when Adella's grip on her throat slackened at near the same instant she forced the knobbed, blood-slick object inside of her, unceremoniously prying her hole open to accommodate a solid, unyielding inch. As Arianna choked down a lungful of air and gasped a pained, ragged moan into the back of her arm, she vaguely realized what it must be -- one of the tallow candles that littered the chapel, half-burned from long-ago services and now simply used to light up the long nights. The greasy wax and cloying slick of blood had eased the candle's way inside her-- enough to make it a simple matter for Adella to force it up her arse, at any rate. Not nearly eased enough to make it bearable. Arianna opened her mouth to say something -- anything -- a taunt, a plea for mercy, a cry for help -- but all that came out was a strangled half-sob as Adella pushed the candle deeper.

"What's that? Nothing left to say?" Adella said. She slapped the curve of Arianna's arse again, making her clench painfully around the intrusion inside her, before her hand drifted down to lazily stroke the outside of her blood-slicked cunt, toying with her clit. She could feel an involuntary jolt of pleasure shiver down her spine from it, and felt her cheeks flush.

Adela laughed when she felt Arianna shudder beneath her hand -- the first time Arianna had heard her laugh since she had come to the cathedral. it was a cruel, wicked sound, like the howl of a beast, and she accompanied it with a fierce, unrelenting twist of the candle inside Arianna's arse before starting to fuck her with it -- slowly at first, so she could feel the hot sting of it sliding in and out, stretching her open, then steadily growing faster. Arianna panted helplessly as Adella pulled the candle nearly fully out of her before plunging it back in its full length, until her knuckles gripping the object were flush against her backside, then ripping it back out again. In, out, in, the knobbed tip of it probing deep into her belly with every thrust.

Adella uncorked another vial of blood and tipped it over her, the thick liquid streaming down over Arianna's thighs, pooling on the pew below her and starting to soak into her shredded skirt. The smell was starting to make her dizzy -- that heady, wild smell that promised intoxication. Could she grow blood-drunk like this? The thought pierced through her head, distracting her for a brief second before the stabbing, stretching pain of the candle inside her pulled her back to the messy, humiliating reality. Even apart from Adella's rough treatment, the candle felt foreign, alien inside her -- a cold, unyielding object without the human warmth of a lover's eager cock or probing fingers. Arianna had the feeling she was being stabbed more than fucked.

She moaned into the back of her hand, more from desperation than pleasure, and Adella laughed a sick, humorless laugh as she increased her pace. "All our good hunter will be able to smell on you now is this beastly gutter-blood," she hissed, thrusting the candle as deep as it could go, her fist clutching it now flush against Arianna's blood-smeared backside. "Gutter blood for a gutter-scrabbling whore spilling over with accursed filth." Arianna had never felt anything so deep inside her before, the tip of the tallow rod pressing against spaces within her that had never yet been stimulated. She arced her back reflexively to ease the discomfort deep inside her, only to have the smallest shift of the shaft inside her leave her choking with pain and violation.

Adella watched Arianna squirm in her lap, pleased with her handiwork. "Perhaps now," she said, slowly as though she wanted to be certain that Arianna heard and understood, "our hunter will cease to be drawn to your vile medium, and so shall she be saved."

Three bloody fingers forced their way inside her cunt. Covered in heavy leather gloves, as though she were some disgusting specimen Adella could not bear to touch with her bare skin, Adella left the taper sticking out her arse like an obscene candelabra and pumped her fingers in and out of her other hole. The slick squelch of blood and her own wetness sounded loud and echoing in the quiet chapel, the humiliating noise filling up her ears until it was all she could hear. Adella's thumb rubbed roughly into the flesh outside her slit until it found the hard bead of her clit and began to stroke. Assaulted from within and without, filled up, half-drunk on potent blood, everything blurred into a nauseating stew of stabbing pain and building arousal that brought Arianna no real pleasure.

Adella's hand twisted into Arianna's hair and pulled, jerking her head up to expose her messy, tear-smeared face. "Just give up, vile-blooded whore," Adella hissed, and Arianna knew what she meant. With a ragged moan that was closer to a sob than anything else, she felt her cunt shudder around Adella's fingers, hips bucking wildly as the nun forced a climax out of her like a barber pulling out a rancid tooth, and she felt exactly as raw and gaping after.

When she slumped bonelessly over Adella's thighs, willpower shredded by her forced climax, Arianna barely felt it when the candle was jerked roughly out of herAdella shoved her off her lap onto the ground, brushing her away as though she were a speck of ash that had landed on her dress. Arianna hit the ground heavily, barely managing to cradle her head out of the way of the stones, and lay there for a long moment without moving. Had Adella tired of tormenting her?

Adella dismissively tossed the bloody candle down next to her. "There. Light that and pray," she sneered, and her soft footfalls receded somewhere into the depths of Oedon Chapel.

Once she was alone with the silence, Arianna pushed herself up into a sitting position, groaning as the motion put pressure on her abused arse and thighs. She gathered her ruined skirts up around her, morosely mulling over what to do now.

Clearly, the woman had lost her mind. She was as mad as any beast outside, perhaps. Ought she to tell the good hunter? Perhaps she could do something.

Do what? Bring her to her senses? Not likely. And mad as she was, Adella was still human, with all that entailed.

No, a basin of water and a needle to mend her torn dress was all she needed now. Better not to burden the hunter with more tales of cruelty and madness. As wrecked as she might be now, Arianna would meet the brave and gentle hunter who faced the darkness outside with a welcoming smile and a vial of blood to tend her wounds. It was the least she could do to help her, and perhaps the only thing.

There was so much in this world that it was simply better not to know.