Author's Note: This story is part of a series that starts with "A Hunter is Never Alone." It begins right where the previous fanfic left off, with my character ending her co-op experience and traveling to the Nightmare of Mensis to fight the final boss. It's based on a random idea I had while finishing my first playthrough of the game, so apologies if it deviates from the canon endgame in some pretty significant ways.

It was with no small amount of anxiety that I returned to the Nightmare of Mensis. I'd been avoiding the place, really, ever since I killed Micolash and put that terrible brain out of its misery. I had thought that, by this point, I would be beyond fear entirely, but something about the place just gave me the creeps. I couldn't quite pinpoint whether it was the bizarre landscape, the mutated creatures - crow-dogs, dog-crows, the pigs with too many eyes - or the constant threat of frenzy from the brain or the nasty singing women on the bridge. A woman I'd cooperated with one time had called them "winter lanterns," which was an oddly poetic name for such gruesome monsters. After I'd gotten a good look at one, I was never able to look at the Doll the same way again.

But the brain was gone now, and I knew a way to avoid the Winter Lanterns on the bridge. There was just one path I had not yet taken - I had not gone very far past the elevator that led upward from the Micolash's maze. And so, when I returned, that was where I knew I needed to go.

As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, I heard a baby crying. The sound came from somewhere even further above me, foreshadowing my eventual destination. I climbed a flight of stairs to get to the next level of what the gravestone in the Dream had informed me was "Mergo's Loft," and immediately managed to get the attentions of several black-cloaked figures. Were those…the Shadows of Yharnam? If so, what were they doing in the Nightmare? As they approached, I extended my axe and got into a fighting stance. As they ran up toward me, I let loose and swung the axe in a circle, hitting each Shadow at least twice and knocking them down on the ground. Of the three of them, two got back up. Just one more blow each, and they were down.

I had only a second to revel in my victory, because just then a fireball thrown from a balcony hit me in the shoulder. Cursing, I looked up just in time to dodge another one. The fire was being thrown by a fourth Shadow, clearly enraged by the deaths of his fellows. I took the stairs two at a time and ended him just as quickly as the others. That fight was surprising, but not truly difficult. I continued exploring the area, but soon stopped again when I saw the backside of a giant pig in the distance.

I crept up behind the mutated creature, then slashed downward with my axe hard enough to knock it to the ground. The pig squealed, its legs splayed out behind it, but I decided to avoid the obvious course of action. Being covered in blood was one thing, but I refused to stoop to the level of sticking my entire arm up a pig's rear end. Instead, I hacked it to death the old-fashioned way, grinning in victory when it finally rolled over and died.

Up ahead, there were two more of them. One pig was already a bit risky, but two of them was a gamble I'd rather not take. The giant swine noticed me and bellowed, spitting out a cloud of foul gas. But I was ran past it and its fellow, and by the time they gave chase I was already climbing the next set of stairs. There was a bad moment then, when I came face-to-face with another gang of Shadows, meaner and more numerous than the last set. I got my clothes singed and a slash to my side from a katana before I was able to jump clear of them, and I prepared to fight back… But my enemies' attention was otherwise occupied.

The giant pigs had followed me all the way up the stairs, and the dumb creatures seemed to see no difference between one humanoid shape and another. They charged at the Shadows of Yharnam, who were forced to defend themselves with blade and flame. Both sets of combatants ignored me entirely, so I took a seat at the top of the stairs and merely watched the show. There was something hilarious about the way the Shadows dodged and flailed, completely out of their element, and a giggle bubbled up inside me as I watched the first pig fall down over a Shadow and crush him in its death throes. In the end, they very nearly took each other out. When the dust cleared, there was just one Shadow left, and I finished him easily.

I was still chuckling to myself as I turned the next corner, but what I saw there instantly plunged me into a more serious mood. A woman in a white dress stood weeping in the courtyard. She looked pale and nearly skeletal, and the entire front of her dress was covered with blood. I'd seen her once before, right after I'd beaten Rom, but what happened next had been wiped out of my memory. I just remember trying to talk to her and somehow waking up in the Cathedral Ward under the gaze of an Amygdala… So this time I approached her with more caution.

"Hello?" I asked tentatively. "Are you all right?" (A brilliant question to ask, by the way. Even a blind man could tell she clearly wasn't.)

The woman turned toward me, still weeping. "My.. my baby…" she gasped. "They've taken her away from me…"

"That's your baby?" I asked urgently. "The one that's been crying?" But I couldn't get anything intelligible out of the woman. She just turned away from me and kept crying, staring up at a dark passage in front of her.

"I'll get your baby back," I tried to reassure her, unsure whether that would actually be possible. There was so much blood on her, she couldn't possibly be alive anymore in the real sense of the word, and the baby… Nothing about this scene indicated a pregnancy that had ended well. But I was supposed to be looking for a baby anyway, I knew that much. So I had to try.

I followed the mother's gaze up to the small passage, which turned out to contain yet another elevator. This one went upwards at an astonishing speed, finally letting me out at what looked like the very top floor of the Loft. I entered a circular room that reminded me of an arena, which was never a good sign. Some of my hardest fights during this Hunt had been in dead-end rooms like this one.

In the center of the room, I saw a lone baby carriage. The crying started up again, much louder this time and clearly originating from the carriage itself. After all of this time, I was about to meet the creator of the sound that had taunted me ever since I first entered the nightmare realms. I was loathe to enter the room, but I took a step forward, and then another. Something crunched under my foot, and I looked down to see that I had stepped through the ribcage of a skeleton.

I continued onward, now driven by a morbid desire to look into the baby carriage and see what it contained. I was nearly there, straining to catch a glimpse, when an enormous shadow descended from above. I jumped back as a pair of dark wings unfurled, making the thing look like some kind of avenging angel. The creature straightened itself up to its full height, revealing eight arms and an enormous hood that looked like it covered an elongated head or proboscis. Six of its arms held curved daggers, which it brandished at me threateningly.

I backpedaled furiously and started digging through my pockets, looking for something to strengthen my weapon. I wasn't taking any chances with this thing. I was out of both fire paper and bolt paper at the moment, but my hand closed upon the empty phantasm shell I'd been carrying for a while now. I rubbed the slime over the blade of my axe, making it sing with arcane power. Then I rushed at the thing, staggering it and getting in several hits before it recovered. I jumped back just in time to dodge the first flurry of blades, but was less lucky with the second.

This enemy had an insane reach, able to hit me even when I stood directly behind it. I tried attacking from all angles, and was rewarded with solid hits at the same time as being punished by its wicked curving blades.

Suddenly, the entire room went dark. My enemy had called up a thick purple fog out of nowhere, reminiscent of the way the Living Failures had called down the cosmos to disorient me.

A blade flashed out at me through the darkness, and I threw myself to the side to avoid it. Backtracking furiously, I found myself in what I thought was the center of the room.

The enemy appeared again, this time from the other direction. In my haste to get away from it, I stumbled right into the baby carriage on the ground and nearly fell. I managed to keep my balance, but the carriage tipped over and ejected its yet-unseen contents on the ground.

In the next instant, my world became a whirlwind of pain. I was staggered, then tossed back and forth between what looked like two separate versions of the thing I was fighting. I couldn't tell which was the real one and which was the clone, but either way I was unable to land a single hit until they finally gave me enough of an opening to escape.

I bolted to the furthest edge of the room and crouched there just long enough to use a blood vial, then forced myself to stand back up and run in a circle around the perimeter. This strategy seemed to work, because I was able to avoid both clones until the fog finally lifted.

Perhaps the fog attack had tired my enemy, because the rest of the fight went more smoothly after that. I was learning its patterns, and despite being tired and bloodied myself I was able to avoid most of its swings. What seemed like a small eternity later, I struck the final blow. The creature dissolved into black dust that fell like a fine mist around me.

"Yessss!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms into the air in victory. Still out of breath from the fight, I stood panting in the center of the arena and waited for something further to happen.

I could still hear the baby crying. The sound was quieter, muffled somehow, but it came from the overturned carriage. Maybe the fight wasn't truly over yet. Not until I saw what was inside.

I both wanted to know and didn't, but eventually curiosity overcame dread. With shaking hands, I lifted up the carriage.