Ophelia let out a final shaky breath and gave a small smile to Torquil--who she recognised mostly by process of elimination--and sniffled loudly as she collected herself enough to be able to actually speak.

"Ah... I'm sorry," she began, pausing for a few seconds to try and find the right words. "He didn't deserve that, and... Gosh, why do I just push people away whenever they strike a nerve? He just... reminded me that they're really gone. Again. Two sets of parents lost... and it seems like I can't even keep friends close either. Why do we push people away when all we really want is to be close and to be loved? Ah, but here I am babbling away--I... I don't want Farren to come back, to change the Dream again, in case something happens. I..." she continued, the words spilling out nervously and frantically like a child being scolded and coming clean before trailing off to a reflective quietness.

She knelt down to beckon the little ones and once again had them retrieve a scroll for her, which she quickly wrote on with her outstretched finger and bade them send the message therein to Farren:

I'm sorry. Can we just... put this behind us? We mean to join you at the Workshop and travel down to the Industrial Ward, let us know when you're ready. We can walk separately if you feel like space is a good idea.

"Well, I've written him; let's see what he says."

---

Farren ‘awoke’ from his transit between the Dream and the Material world, steadied himself, took in his environs and the fact that nothing of note had changed, before he moved to the door with purpose in his stride. As he reached the sealed threshold, he closed his eyes a moment and then gave a coded knock. After a moment, someone gazed at him through the peek-hole and a moment more passed before the door swung up and he was allowed in.

Nodding to the individual who manned the door, he turned his sights on the path to Seven’s personal workshop. Farren walked to it, knocked once, then twice, before entering as he found it unlocked. Once inside he knelt on one knee and called to the Messengers. As he awaited for them to deliver Fulmen to him, he spoke up “I’ve got some gear that needs maintenance, Fulmen included. Came across a rather…nasty Beast and tried something riskier than I knew it to be,” he said frankly. When the Messengers lifted the handle of Fulmen up to him, he grasped it and heaved the weapon up and fully into the world, hoisting it into both hands, one further up the shaft, before he laid it gently as he could on one of the work stations.

"Already?" Seven asked rhetorically, letting out a sigh as he went over to have a look at the experimental weapon. "What kind of beast was it? How did Fulmen perform?"

Farren winced slightly, but nodded, going back to one knee as he remembered Bulwark. While he awaited the Messengers again—after murmuring as if to himself—he replied. “Darkbeast. Undead skeleton of a massive dog or some bullshit, wreathed in fucking lightning,” Farren said, resisting the urge to spit on the ground. He shook his head, “Thing was resistant to charge…for obvious reasons, so I tried to see if Fulmen might be able to drain some of the Beast’s own power…it was a dumb idea…I’ll take a minute or three to write everything in the log book while I’m here. Hadn’t gotten the chance yet,” he added. The Messengers arrived and he asked after the logbook as well. They handed it to him and he took that in one hand while he held Bulwark in the other. Farren repositioned some things on another table after he set down the logbook to have a hand free, then set the still expanded Bulwark on that table.

"A darkbeast? Extremely rare. That'll certainly be valuable data." Seven leaned in to examine the discharge trigger of the weapon for damage first. "Not dumb at all, I'd not be surprised if Fulmen would charge very, very quickly from hitting a darkbeast. But from the sound of it, that's not the case?"

Farren grunted, moving to lean up against the wall, crossing his arms, before remembering that he’d said he’d write in the logbook. He decided he’d explain the situation first. “Well, it might’ve been…if I hadn’t foolishly opened the mechanism first,” he said, frowning a bit at his own foolishness. He really ought to have tried a normal strike first, at the very least. “Though…using it like I did at least saved me getting hit by something a fair deal worse…” he added, sighing as he reached up and rubbed at his temple. As he recalled the fight he also couldn’t help but get distracting flashes of Ophelia from just a few minutes ago…on her knees sobbing. He hadn’t really, understood why she’d broken down like that, but he realized that it probably hadn’t been him—not exactly. She was made of sturdier stuff than that. He shook his head…he really didn’t want to think about that at the moment.

Seven froze in place, then slowly turned to shoot a look at Farren that made him seem incredibly tired and much older than he actually was. "So... two things. Firstly, Fulmen is designed specifically to not hold a charge when transformed. The whole point of transforming it is to force it to discharge. Secondly: when transformed, it shouldn't be used as a hammer."

Farren held the man’s gaze, even though he found that it made him surprisingly uncomfortable. He realized only as the man spoke—telling him what he’d already figured out—that it was guilt he was feeling. “Yeah…it really should have been common sense. It…it’s not a mistake I’d repeat,” he assured the man, trying not to look away, though his discomfort slowly became apparent as he did so. Perhaps to release the tension, Farren uncharacteristically laughed a bit, looking rueful as he spoke again. “It was a split second decision in the heat of a terrifying, fraught situation. Believe me, I regretted it almost immediately after….”

"I can imagine," Seven sighed and turned back to the weapon, pulling and holding the trigger to force it to switch to and remain in its transformed state so he could examine its internals. "Well now. It looks like it took a hard hit. It's not broken, but it probably wouldn't be able to take much more punishment before something goes wrong."
He released the trigger and turned back to Farren. "It's good that you brought it as soon as you did; I can do some maintenance without needing to make new parts to replace broken ones with, and that should get it back into working order. Should only take a few minutes." His eyes narrowed. "You have coin?"

Farren seemed immediately relieved as Seven gave his diagnosis of the weapon’s current state, he was glad he hadn’t tried to use the weapon any further. However…as Seven mentioned coin, Farren froze. He hadn’t really thought about funds since he’d awoken in the clinic three hours ago. “Ah…shit,” Farren muttered, then he recalled what he’d harvested from the Darkbeast’s undead corpse. He met Seven’s eyes, “I…don’t and I’m not sure where I…used to keep it back before…well, you know. Hmm…I do have some material I gathered from the Darkbeast though…” as he said it Farren knelt once more and called upon them, asking that they retrieve the portion of the Darkbeast’s arm that he’d cleaved off and taken for himself. “I figured it might be useful for future development of Fulmen. The creature’s bones seem to be…remarkably conductive and also undying…so the material—even separated from the body—can sort of repair itself, if slowly.”

Seven grimaced at the sight of the darkbeast's arm. "If you happen to visit Hemwick, do me a favor and throw that thing into the lake. I've read enough about darkbeasts to know that their bits are far from safe to handle." He shook his head and turned back to Fulmen. "Don't worry about payment this time, I'll do this maintenance on Fulmen for free. But for anything else..." He turned and shot a meaningful glance at Farren's Bulwark. "...we're going to need coin. We're not the White Church, we don't have practically infinite resources. We need funds."

Farren nodded, first at the man’s comment about throwing it to Hemwick—something he had no intention of doing—and then once more as he explained that next time he’d be requiring payment for repair of Fulmen or any other implement. “I appreciate it. I’ll figure out funds before I ask for anything further,” Farren said, handing the forearm back to the Messengers. He’d have to figure out a use for it himself, it seemed. He grabbed Bulwark and stowed it away with the Messengers as well. “How much should I expect these sort of repairs to cost?” Farren asked, watching the man work with a discerning, clearly interested eye. Farren wondered if he’d ever mentioned his interest in this sort of thing to Seven—he doubted it…the memories he had implied he’d been a rather closed off sort of person before. Then again, he felt far more comfortable around Seven than he had around basically anyone else since he’d awoken.

"For something minor like this, not much," Seven said while tinkering with Fulmen. "Three coppers would do it. It'd have been a lot worse if I had to replace parts or make major repairs. Depending on what parts end up broken, I may have to ask for gold."

“Ah…” he acknowledge, before he fell silent again, “I always wondered about these sort of things,” he said, trying to remain casual. Some part of him was still that closed off man and wanted to keep the true depth of his interest somewhat concealed from Seven—if he didn’t know already.

"That so?" Seven remarked without looking up from his work.

Farren grunted slightly in confirmation, frowning to himself, “I think perhaps some part of me wanted to eventually do what you do, I suppose. Become a craftsman,” he said and though he’d tried to not let it slip, he sounded somewhat wistful. The idea seemed like a pipe dream now, with the new perspective given by his change in situation and being divorced from the experience and life of his past self.

Seven made a vague, ambiguous noise and gestured over his shoulder at the considerable amount of documents Farren could plainly see lined two entire walls of the room they were in. "Crafting is only a small part of what I do. But that aside, there's no reason you can't be a craftsman. As I understand it, the Old Hunters used to make their own trick weapons. There's no reason you couldn't do that too."

Farren nodded, glancing over the documents briefly before he looked down, seeming thoughtful. “I suppose. I just wonder if I have any of the ability, I guess,” he replied, shrugging slightly, though he doubted the man would see it. Likely Seven knew him—or at least his past self—well enough to hear a hint of uncertainty in his tone. “Certainly don’t know where to even start,” he added, frowning faintly at the thought.

"Making a knife is usually a good place to start."

At this point, a pair of Messengers appeared in front of Farren to show him a scroll:

I'm sorry. Can we just... put this behind us? We mean to join you at the Workshop and travel down to the Industrial Ward, let us know when you're ready. We can walk separately if you feel like space is a good idea.

Once more, Farren knelt even as he was considering Seven’s words. Those thoughts paused however as he read Ophelia’s message—a slower process than it might have been for someone else. He nodded after to himself quietly. He sent something back quickly after a few moments of thought.

It should be a few minutes more for repairs. No coin to fix Bulwark for now, perhaps you could retrieve an intact spare from the chest. I’ll send for you when it’s finished. As for the rest….

Consider it behind us. I was…. Though I cannot entirely remember, the trauma I endured on account of Ego weighs on me. It is not the bastard’s influence, but it can warp my words…my intent. I know now that you meant well…and you gave me more grace than perhaps you had to. I should not have brought your ability into question. For that I apologize.

I hope that we may proceed with greater respect. I for your knowledge and competence, and perhaps you for my agency.

We will walk together.

Then he let the Messengers take his message back to the Dream as he rose to his feet, brow slightly creased. Farren retrieved the logbook and slowly–clumsily–so that his words would hopefully be legible. He detailed his brief usage of Fulmen against the Darkbeast, including his mistakes, and indicated that should he encounter such a creature in the future that he would test the weapon’s efficacy to build charge without first exposing the core.

It took him perhaps the space of five or so minutes to complete the task, despite not truly writing more than a paragraph or two along with a rough–but detailed and surprisingly accurate–sketch of what he knew of Fulmen’s design. When he’d finished, he closed the logbook and gave it to the Messengers, who he’d bid wait at the ready rather than retreat entirely.

Finally, after the relative silence, he spoke, “I knife then…” he murmured, mostly to himself, before looking to Seven again. “How much would a set of simple tools be? Something for whittling. A portable whetstone to sharpen a blade of metal…or bone. Perhaps some odds and ends to affix things together. Ah, and some leather, I suppose.” Farren knew he had no coin at the moment, but he was certain his past self had squirreled some away…and he remembered that he could also exchange echoes for coin back in the Dream, though he didn’t much like the idea.

"Depends on where you get it, I suppose," Seven told him with a shrug. "We can probably get you a nice starter set for a gold coin if you want. Of course, if you were to join the Black Healing Church you could use our workshop for free. We'd fix your equipment for free, too. We only charge outsiders."

With that, Seven stepped away from Fulmen and gestured to it. "All right, I've done everything I can at the moment. Resoldered some loose wires, straightened a few bits, tightened a few screws... It's pretty much as good as new. Pretty much."
Farren nodded thoughtfully, “Hmm, I’ll keep it in mind,” he replied, nodding slightly. He didn’t much like the idea of binding himself to a particular faction, if he were being entirely honest. While he’d worked with the church before, he’d been working with both of them…and on the side occasionally for others who could pay sufficiently. The idea of being anything other than a free agent had a sense of finality for him, and tied with that was a sort of restrictive almost-claustrophobia that made him surprisingly uncomfortable. He frowned for a moment before Seven spoke again, gesturing to Fulmen as he did so.

The azure-eyed hunter raised his eyes and looked the weapon over, his frown fading. He smiled slightly and nodded, “I appreciate it, Seven. Anything you or yours need?” He asked, then cracked a small grin as he lifted his eyes to meet the Seven’s. “Other than coin, that is.”

"Need?" Seven repeated, returning to his desk. "What do you mean? The sort of jobs you used to do?"

Farren shrugged slightly, “Any choice materials that we might come across while dealing with the Hunt, that sort of thing,” he said simply in response. “You've done me a favor. I'd like to repay it.”

Seven shrugged. "Blood stone and other unusual materials would always be appreciated, of course, but besides that..." He paused. "One thing we will eventually need is a supply of mercury. Until now we've been buying and trading for it from the White Church, but I've heard they've lost their cinnabar mine to the Fire Dancers. Honestly, no one here cares too much about who we're buying it from; if the White Church get their mine back that's fine, and if we can get a trade agreement with the Fire Dancers that's just as good. But we need mercury."

Farren nodded, his thumb playing at the edge of his lip, but not pulling at it exactly, for a moment, before he nodded again and stepped forward. Farren glanced Fulmen over one more time, then picked it up, letting it rest on his shoulder. After a moment he let it slide backwards while he still held it, until it slid into the sling he'd fashioned for it previously, hanging in place at his back.

Farren outstretched a hand to Seven, “White Church mobilized some time ago to attempt to retake the mine. We might head there at some point soon, but it's hard to say. I'll keep you in mind,” his hand remained outstretched for Seven to shake. “I'll bring coin next time and if I can spare any bloodstone we find, you'll have first pick.”

Seven robotically shook Farren's hand, though his attention had already shifted back to the papers he had been working on. "Good luck."

Farren gave the man's hand a hearty squeeze--though he restrained himself enough not to hurt the man. As he let go of Seven's hand, Farren glanced at the papers the man was reading, trying to catch a few words--though he didn't linger more than a few moments, unless something caught his interest.

It was difficult to decipher much from a brief glance at Seven's papers. It looked like some kind of spreadsheet mostly covered with rows and columns of numbers.

Farren’s gaze slid off the spreadsheet easily, nothing really catching at his curiosity. He turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him as he left. As he found himself back in one of the main rooms of the Workshop he briefly glanced about, noting a series of crates opposite Seven’s office door, arranged against the wall. They weren’t guarded. Farren raised an eyebrow briefly, but shook his head. Surely they needed these supplies and he had other ways of acquiring his own besides. Perhaps one of the others might have investigated further, but Farren wasn’t much in the mood for stealing from the Black Church–if only because in his mind it would be like stealing from Seven.

Thus, Farren continued after a brief pause and headed from the building, finding the courtyard outside essentially unchanged. He knelt down a few feet from the Workshop entrance and sent another message to Ophelia.

I’m finished up here.

Once they’d taken their little scroll, Farren handed them his logbook now that he’d made his recent entry and no longer needed it for the moment. They took it into that strange other place and disappeared into the ground–or at least that’s the way it looked. With that done, Farren stood and glanced to the night sky, watching the moon and the stars while he waited.

It was a nice night…or perhaps it would have been, if not for the Hunt.

With that Ophelia received Farren's message, and she, Gerlinde and Torquil went to join him at the Black Church Workshop through the Yharnam Headstone marker. Reunited, they started walking south toward the Industrial Ward.

Things had been quiet as they walked and had it not been a night of the Hunt, it could have been a rather pleasant stroll through the city. Sadly, such a thing was not to be, a fact which was occasionally punctuated by the far off call of a beast or the faint scream of some poor citizen or Hunter. Aside from that there was only the sound of their steady footsteps and the faint breath of the wind. The quiet however, was not entirely a comfortable sort of silence, it felt heavy, and while it certainly could have been from the many burdens set upon their shoulders that night, but to Farren it felt distinctly like something else.
Distance and tension.
Lingering consequences of his argument with Ophelia, consequences he couldn’t address. The fact that she’d not replied to his original message and that they hadn’t spoken since all of them had reunited spoke volumes. Farren sighed and altered his gait slightly until he came in line with Gerlinde.
He’d not break the peace, but perhaps ridding them of this weighty silence would begin to do some good. “Gerlinde…” he started, looking thoughtful, his eyes on the road at his feet as they walked, “...you were held for quite some time. What…what did they do to you?”
He raised his eyes, turning to meet her gaze, or at least to look at her, taking in any subtle tells he could.

“Hm? Oh, you mean the Byrgenwerth scholars?” Gerlinde said with her usual ceaseless smile, only to then start speaking very quickly and eagerly: “At first they didn't do much, actually, they mostly just came in every few days and examined me and my baby in extreme detail. Did you know that I was pregnant at the time? Anyway, for the first few months they just kept examining me over and over again until I gave birth. Then they examined me really carefully. They gave me an injection of some kind, and suddenly I was pregnant again! From an injection in my arm! It was really weird and scary, especially because this pregnancy progressed way faster than it should. Like, I started showing after just three days! And a couple of weeks later I gave birth to something that wasn't really a baby, but rather... some kind of weird blue, sort of baby-like slug-thing?” She giggled. “And then they did that over and over again, so many times I lost count. They kept examining me and giving me injections, and making me give birth to those strange creatures, right up until they stopped visiting. It was only later that I learned they had left me alone because everyone disappeared during the Night of the Blood Moon, and in the meantime I was just in there, with my only company being the last slug-thing I gave birth to.”

It was with an eerie stillness that Ophelia had gone about her business in the Dream before returning to the Waking World, her face mostly blank and expressionless as she went into the shop and retrieved another Bulward for Farren, as he'd asked. She immediately handed it off to the little ones, returned outside, and conferred with everyone just enough for them to agree on their plan and execute it. Ophelia didn't hand Bulwark off straight away, though, just giving Farren a slight smile and a nod as greeting as they went on their way. During the walk she mostly seemed to focus on navigating and getting lost in her thoughts--about how, when it came to it, the only things she really had left of either of the two lives she'd lived was knowledge and now the runebrand... and how when things had gotten tense and those two things had felt called into question she'd crumbled almost immediately. With how much they'd done and how much they'd learned it was easy to forget that they'd woken up transformed scarcely three hours ago--and she let some darkly prideful self-flagellating feelings go after examining them for what they were. She was permitted, she thought, to have those moments of personal crisis given the circumstances. There was no alternative: the fraying fabric of the life she'd had before the treatment was gone, and this was all she had now. She would have to forge herself a new identity to reconcile the parts of her that still ached with grief and loss, to find who she wanted to be and what she wanted to put herself to... to find whatever purpose had drawn her into the Dream in the first place, she supposed.

Farren's sudden line of inquiry broke her from her reverie, and she paid close attention to it. It all seemed rather ghastly, though Gerlinde was cheerful enough when recounting it that Ophelia reckoned that her suffering had been buried very deeply indeed to permit her such levity. The seeming lack of empathy did weigh on Ophelia's mind heavily, but it paled before the welcoming embrace of conviviality that only two practicioners of the arcane could have... and it was useful to have someone blindly attacking things with no regard for their safety, it turned out. The thing that intrigued her the most was why Farren had asked, though, and she waited diligently for his response to begin to piece it together in her mind before she opined verbally.

_Farren

listened, quiet, watching her expression even though–almost paradoxically–seeing and hearing her apparent joy at recounting the experience only made him feel worse. As she went on, Farren’s expression went from serious with a hint of curiosity, to one of increasing concern. Listening to her speak of what must have been one of–if not the most–traumatizing experiences she’d ever had, Farren really came to grips with how thoroughly Gerlinde must have been crushed beneath the weight of that overwhelming strangeness and despair. Coupled with the fact that it must have been unbelievably lonely and frightening as she dealt with essentially constant and rapid changes to her body that she’d have had no real explanation for, well…it was no wonder she seemed so disconnected from herself.

Beside that, the confirmation that she had indeed been pregnant weighed on him and his shoulders dropped slightly beneath the compounding pressure of that knowledge. The whole story was, in fact, so profoundly heartrending that Farren didn’t even have it in him to be disgusted with the scholars. “I wish I had known,” Farren said quietly, sounding subdued as he glanced away, then up at the night sky. It was a pointless thought, perhaps even more pointless to voice it, but the words had come anyway.

“When did you realize that none of it mattered?” he asked, not looking at her as he referenced what she’d said some time ago in the Dream. A part of him wondered what they’d done with her original child and–indeed–the slug-babies thereafter. It was not lost on him either that she’d been left with the last of her…children and that Gerlinde had not said what had come of the infant–if that was even the correct term. Still, he didn’t ask…it was better to have one terrible piece of knowledge at a time, so as not to break….

_Farren

listened, quiet, watching her expression even though–almost paradoxically–seeing and hearing her apparent joy at recounting the experience only made him feel worse. As she went on, Farren’s expression went from serious with a hint of curiosity, to one of increasing concern. Listening to her speak of what must have been one of–if not the most–traumatizing experiences she’d ever had, Farren really came to grips with how thoroughly Gerlinde must have been crushed beneath the weight of that overwhelming strangeness and despair. Coupled with the fact that it must have been unbelievably lonely and frightening as she dealt with essentially constant and rapid changes to her body that she’d have had no real explanation for, well…it was no wonder she seemed so disconnected from herself.

Beside that, the confirmation that she had indeed been pregnant weighed on him and his shoulders dropped slightly beneath the compounding pressure of that knowledge. The whole story was, in fact, so profoundly heartrending that Farren didn’t even have it in him to be disgusted with the scholars. “I wish I had known,” Farren said quietly, sounding subdued as he glanced away, then up at the night sky. It was a pointless thought, perhaps even more pointless to voice it, but the words had come anyway.

“When did you realize that none of it mattered?” he asked, not looking at her as he referenced what she’d said some time ago in the Dream. A part of him wondered what they’d done with her original child and–indeed–the slug-babies thereafter. It was not lost on him either that she’d been left with the last of her…children and that Gerlinde had not said what had come of the infant–if that was even the correct term. Still, he didn’t ask…it was better to have one terrible piece of knowledge at a time, so as not to break….

“Ah, but you're mistaken,” Gerlinde told him with a happy sigh, looking up at the bright full moon that was slowly rising ever higher toward its zenith with an exaggerated grin. “It's not that nothing matters, but that there many things that don't. I didn't matter, but the things they must have learned from my body must have mattered immensely. They must have been of unimaginable value... and realizing that I was the one they were studying because I happened to be born with Paleblood... why, I must have been an amazingly precious research subject!” She giggled.
“But as for realizing that... I don't think it was some kind of sudden epiphany or anything like that, it was just something I discovered gradually. This awareness that people only matter as much as others decide they do and the ways others decide they do. Of course I know why I see this now, too: that I went completely, utterly mad. That there isn't the faintest shred of sanity left in me. But you know what? Madness isn't all that bad. It's quite... liberating, really.”

Ophelia listened to the back and forth and was suddenly overcome by an epiphany of her own as she considered all of the perspectives at play: it was truly only the luck of Byrgenwerth not being aware of her Paleblood or otherwise dissuaded by some hazy remnant of a distant past that it had been Gerlinde and not her. It could've been her, and Farren wouldn't have batted an eyelid then like he hadn't for her--or if he had, he'd given her over to the scholars there anyway. Condemned her, indirectly, to this madness... and thus equally willing to have done it to her. It almost scared her, though she wasn't scared of him--at least, not who he'd appeared to have become after his transformation. Gerlinde was truly and utterly mad, and Ophelia had begun to doubt whether she might have their best interests at heart. Well, that wasn't true, Ophelia could tell that Gerlinde was at least somewhat in it for herself and her novelty... but she wondered what their price was in Gerlinde's mind, and how readily she might offer them up as sacrifice if the opportunity arose.

It was an awful mess. The only one who seemed not to have a terribly complex past was Torquil, and even that was an assumption on their end. His silence left them to fill in their own blanks about who he was, and he seemed to be just as content to leave that portion of himself undelved as he was to follow along and do what everyone else was doing. Fellowship seemed a rather dark and distant prospect with their bonds apparently fraying at the edges, and Ophelia felt a sickening disinclination to do anything to stop it in that moment. She tried to look for the good, but... it had mostly been a mad scramble. Ophelia supposed that things were worth clinging on to in the long run - they would never be far from one another while linked to the Dream and contactable by the little ones, always a scrawled word and a nap away. But not now. For now, she stewed in her thoughts and nursed her fragile psyche as she jogged lightly--this was the first chance she'd ever gotten to try vigorous exercise for picking at the weft and weave of her mind.

_Farren

heard the words, processed what they meant, and they gave him no solace. While that had not been the point, he’d hoped that maybe for much of it she’d already been mad, but it seemed that the progression had been more subtle than that. It seemed that despite her madness, Gerlinde was entirely aware throughout and the rationalization that she didn’t matter–or at least that she hadn’t–would likely have done little to stymie the fear and pain and confusion as her body was repeatedly used and abused in the interest of twisted experimentation. All for what? The Scholars had all vanished in one way or another, they were likely all dead or worse…so what had it all been for. Who carried on whatever paltry knowledge they might have gleaned? Farren frowned, still staring at the night sky. Farren felt bile rise in his throat as anger bubbled in his gut. He swallowed hard and glanced at Gerlinde with a sigh, for what good would his anger do them now? “For what little it is worth, at least you’re with us now. Perhaps whatever they gained…helped someone, in the end,” he added the second sentence slowly, haltingly, then looked away.

He didn’t really believe it.

Farren knew that though Gerlinde didn’t seem to blame him, didn’t even seem to mind the position in which she’d ended up, that he would likely never feel better about having done what he had. He tried to pull his attention elsewhere, noticing a melancholy that hung about Ophelia and a strange shift in Torquil–though the latter was far more subtle.

“What’s on your mind, Ophelia?” Farren asked, deciding to start there as his long strides let him keep up with the others.

"Could've been me. Just chance that Byrgenwerth found her first." Ophelia replied, lacking her usual animated musicality and instead being just... flat, dejected. She didn't break her gaze with the road, didn't adjust her pace, just... kept on as she'd kept on. For all the content that the words conveyed, she seemed strangely listless and unaffected by the whole thing as though dissociating from it... but to watch her walk and muse to herself it was clear to see that she was still herself and in control of her faculties. This was perhaps the first time any of them had seen her like this, though spells of depression had been increasingly common in the past few years as her body betrayed her and her circle of close friends grew ever smaller. She turned to gaze upon Farren and spared him only a blank look and a very wan smile indeed before she focused on the road ahead once more.

She'd snap out of it soon enough, she knew, as she always had. All things passed in the fullness of time... or when the demands of their new and dangerous world demanded it, she supposed. For this mercifully calm stretch of their journey there were no such burdens placed on her yet... though a part of her did remain tense and vigilant, and it was likely that part that Farren was observing in her. He was much the same, after all. She supposed that she didn't really begrudge him his past actions, not in the way that he might expect... he had his world, and it had shrunk to the point he'd done things that were desperate. That seemed to be the thread that connected everyone in Yharnam, those born here and those who came from afar--desperation clung to them all, sanguinary desires in a less-than-sanguine people soaking everything crimson ever since that damnable Blood Moon. She supposed they, the architects of that happening, were to blame more than anyone else--and that if any of them still lived, they had paid their prices... except Ego. Ego was their price to pay now, and she did think of Farren in a softer light when she considered that.

"But it wasn't you that made the choice, not really. They'd have found another if not you, stopped at nothing to get what they wanted. We're all just poppets, aren't we?"

“Once upon a time, maybe, but not anymore,” Gerlinde mused without taking her eyes off the moon. “We all used to not matter, we were all worthless once, and perhaps we were even once poppets... but not now. Now we're immortal superhumans that can travel across time, space and levels of reality, with access to resources beyond what even Byrgenwerth or the Choir ever imagined. I mean, our host back in the Dream is a literal god... sort of. We're already incredibly important just by virtue of what we are, and now that we have the Mask Rune we're hardly poppets anymore either.”

Torquil just kept up with the rest of them in silence, his eyes lowered to the ground just a meter or two in front of his feet. For once his right hand was free; he had taken some inspiration from his companions' attire to improvise a way to store his axe, and though he lacked the skills in crafting that particularly Farren seemed to have, he had been capable of turning a simple leather strap into a loop to hang the weapon from. He listened, absorbing what was being said wordlessly, all while still trying to process the strange visions he had had when he had been overwhelmed with Frenzy.
And the fact that he was so preoccupied alone was even further cause for him to ponder. He disliked thinking and trying to figure things out to the point where he had just assumed and accepted that he was just stupid... but there was something about this that he just could not let go. Something about the feelings stirring in his heart when he recalled those eyes staring into his.
At this point, Torquil genuinely just hoped they would get attacked by some kind of monster soon so he would be distracted from his own thoughts, even just for a little while.

_Farren

almost missed a step as Ophelia’s response hit him and he blinked, finding his pace again in the moment immediately after–though he was in reality no less shaken. Perhaps it had been her tone, but no…no it was more than that. Farren’s brow knitted with concentration as he cast his gaze to the stone and occasional dirt of the road.

Ophelia was right…it could have been anybody and if it had been someone he’d known…cared for, would he still have done it? The hunter swallowed at that as the fact that he even had to consider the idea at all was telling in a way, even despite the fact that his mind rebelled at the thought. Surely he wouldn’t have…right? He knew that at least now he would not, but he was not the man he had been…though that man lived inside him, not like a spider in a living burrow, but like Farren had been constructed of his former self’s parts. Stitched together poorly, then the pieces joined by the heated frenzy of blood ministration, all melting together, muddying things.

Yet, before he could delve further, Gerlinde began to muse aloud. At first he listened, eyes still cast to ground as he kept pace with the others. As she went on, her words drew his eyes to her, though his frown remained. In a way her words made him feel better, if only barely, but despite them he couldn’t shake the sense that while they may no longer have been on strings, dancing to the will of unseen puppetmasters that still there was something guiding their actions beyond what they knew. “Perhaps not…but we are still in this… game, pieces on someone else’s board…” he hated saying it out loud, hated that it was likely true. It made his stomach turn, his blood boil, but he took a breath and calmed those instinctual reactions. That wasn’t what they needed right now, wasn’t really what he needed–though the bloodlust and rage and paranoia sometimes disabused him of that reality.

Farren straightened, though it was harder to tell with them jogging, and a steely look came into his azure eyes as he locked his gaze ahead of them–though his senses remained stretched to pick up any potential threats. “No, you’re right Gerlinde. It doesn’t matter. The board might not be ours now, but this is not a game, not truly. Ego…and his ilk–enemies, allies, kin–they may see us as pieces to be maneuvered, but we can rebel, we can act against their designs, and I for one certainly intend to.”

There was new vigor in his words and Farren seemed to believe them, a small smile touching his lips and the corners of his eyes. “...we are not what we were, who we were, and we have all lost something in getting where we are now. Yet, the future remains for us to sculpt,” he let those final words hang, falling silent as they jogged through the dark–moonlit streets of Yharnam, and he found that while he might not have fully believed those words when he began, that now he itched to make them fully true. He would bring them forth or he would die trying…then try again.

And again…and again.

Ego had broken him once, but a thing could only be warped or shattered so much.

"I wish I was convinced." Ophelia replied sullenly, otherwise not adding very much to the discussion at all. They were both right, after a fashion, but their collective power and agency was very highly conditional--they had the power to make whatever moves on the proverbial board that they liked. They just couldn't see all of the board, nor intuit where their enemies would move their pieces--and thus it wasn't their power that bottlenecked them: it was assessing the strategy of where everyone else could move, and what everyone else wanted. Farren's rebellious streak was motivating, certainly, but more than that it was dangerous. Defiance... he didn't even know what he was defying. He'd felt the warping touch of Ego and thought himself learned in what that mysterious being wanted, but they knew virtually nothing of Ego's desires or abilities or plans. They had only a cryptic message and vague impressions, little tidbits given to them by the little ones--and while any information was better than none Ophelia knew they were still acting in the dark.

"What we are hasn't changed--we think, we feel, we judge, we act. Our means of action have expanded, but the other bits..." she began, but trailed off to imply the negative rather than stating it outright. She joined Gerlinde in gazing up at the moon and sighed wistfully, at least finding comfort in the light of Mother Moon and the gentle embrace of the Holy Moonlight Sword.

_Farren

did not allow himself to react to her sullen words, did not let his frustration show. Clearly, whatever haunted her would take time for her to grapple with. “Perhaps that is true,” he said, sounding thoughtful, “...but if anyone is to guide us with such sparse information, if anyone is to steer us to grow our knowledge, it is you, Ophelia.” He glanced at her then, and if she caught his eye she’d see a solemn respect and surety in his gaze that perhaps even if she did not feel so sure in that moment, it might buoy her that someone believed her capable. For his part, it was an honest admission, but so too was it an olive branch to begin repairing what had been damaged in their spat back in the Dream.

Hopefully she would accept it.

Ophelia didn't look Farren's way, nor did she respond to his praise for fifteen or twenty seconds. She simply stared up at the Moon, her pace slowing slightly, and finally let out a heavy sigh.

"I can't guide us, not to salvation. Not to a world where you wake up one day and all of this is behind us. I usher in an Age of Light beneath Mother Moon or I stay in the Dream forever. The Waking World... what does it have to offer me now? How much more must I lose? My parents wandered into the woods and never came back, and my mentors were slaughtered by the almost-god who shepherds the Dream. I have no friends or family left in the Waking World, nobody that would give me purpose... I only have this. All that is behind me is ash, and all that is afore me is light... is that the path you want to walk?" She spoke, softly and resignedly. Gerlinde was the only one in remotely a similar position to her, really. She knew nothing substantial of Farren or Torquil's past, nothing that would give her some hope that they wanted what she wanted. Their paltry insight and lack of familiarity with the Arcane led her to assume that they did not seek connection with the other worlds, did not seek to ascend this base level of reality to something greater and brighter--they were experiments who'd turned against their creator, and it wasn't like any of them had ever discussed how this ended before. It had only been a couple of hours, though Ophelia could swear that it felt like days or weeks.

"I suppose we've never given any thought to what comes after. After our purpose is done and the Dream no longer has need of us... If there is an after at all. I... don't know if I want to leave and come back here. Come back to being nothing..." Ophelia added after a few seconds, turning to look at Farren only for a passing moment as she did so before she cradled her head to the Holy Moonlight Sword and lost herself in her thoughts once more.

Hearing Ophelia's words, Gerlinde abruptly burst into laugher. “You guys take everything way to seriously. Who cares about the past and future? What importance is what came before or comes after? Salvation, light, ash, mentors, parents, children... why does any of that matter? We explore, we see, we learn, we kill and we grow stronger. What else do we need?” She giggled, closed her eyes and shook her head. “You wonder if there is an after? How could there not be? You haven't seen it yet, Philly, but I have been to the Nightmare outside the Dream... and neither you nor Farren has felt it the way Quilly and I have, but we can't die. And even if we did die, I can't imagine any other fate for us than being reborn as natives of the Nightmare. The world is so unimaginably far beyond what we can comprehend. Nothing ever ends.”

Torquil just jogged on in silence, his gaze still fixed on the ground in front of him. He found himself wanting to agree with Gerlinde, yet unable to do so. He did not remember his past and desperately wanted it not to matter, for him not to care, but even so it continued to haunt him. And the idea of waking up with all of this behind him... to return to an existence like what he had left behind, to being weak, alone and forgotten... the idea did not sit well with him at all.
“Farren,” he said after a moment, looking up at the only other male Hunter in their group from below the brim of his new hat, “can I try that hammer of yours?”

Farren pursed lips, his expression briefly a frown before becoming something more neutral. Briefly, he glanced to Gerlinde and then Torquil as he spoke. Regarding the man for a moment as he considered the question, Farren eventually nodded and unslung the hammer from his back, taking it into both hands as he stepped forward, coming alongside the man to hand it off.

At Gerlinde's reaction Ophelia finally had the first normal reaction she'd had since coming to the Waking World - she balked.
“They say that those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat it for a good reason. We don't want to become responsible for another Blood Moon, or worse...”

Oddly, while Farren agreed, he said nothing. Instead, he remained silent as he thought on what both the women had said as he watched Torquil with a measure of interest, wondering if he'd wanted Fulmen for a reason beyond simply trying it for himself.

“Responsible?” Gerlinde repeated incredulously. “I don't see how we could manage that. Unless you're thinking about trying to call a Great One to the Waking World yourself? No, the people of Yharnam seem quite eager to cause another Blood Moon with or without our help.” She giggled. “And so what if another one did happen? Moira was a Paleblood Hunter without a Blood Moon, and now she's just a regular Hunter. The Shopkeeper was one with a Blood Moon, and now they are an eternal sort of-Great One who can do whatever they want. The way I see it, it seems like another Blood Moon could benefit us. I don't know about you, but I think I'd make a pretty good god, myself.”

Torquil received Fulmen from Farren and mumbled his thanks, awkwardly managing to grasp the hammer with both hands without discarding the Loch Shield. He shifted his grip up and down the handle for a moment, getting a feel for the balance of the weapon, and found that he rather enjoyed its heft. It was not unlike his axe besides being heavier, which he could only imagine would mean that it could strike with even greater force.
Curious about how it functioned – as he had not received the instructions Farren had, and the one time Farren had wielded the hammer he had almost immediately damaged the weapon for very limited benefit – Torquil experimentally pulled the little lever on the side, triggering its transformation. The eight segments of the hammer head split open and separated, exposing its inert core, and Torquil cocked his head and examined this strange piece of technology. It was far beyond anything he had even the faintest understanding of, of course... but that was exactly why it interested him. He let go of the lever, and the weapon returned to its original form. He pulled the lever again and let it go again, and one more time, watching the mechanism attentively each time.
Still confused as to the “trick” of this trick weapon, Torquil frowned for a moment before giving the weapon a test-swing, sweeping the heavy weapon through the air at nothing in particular. His frown deepened, still not understanding. It seemed like a nice hammer, but it seemed pointlessly over-engineered for being just a hammer.
“I don't get it,” he announced, and moved to hand the weapon back to Farren.

"Who knows what we might do to get what we want? Especially if what we want is to become a god... The world didn't survive the last Blood Moon, Gerlinde, not really. You never saw Yharnam as it really was, before all of this... Though I am in agreement with you that becoming a god sounds like the best outcome we might hope for. We as true Palebloods, that is, I don't know enough about the false Palebloods to say for sure whether it's possible for them." Ophelia replied, waiting a few seconds before she continued.

"Ascending... We need to know how those who came before ascended, don't we? The knowledge of the past is crucial, love." Ophelia added, taking on a tinge of animated feeling but still retaining much of the morose and still qualities from before as she spoke. Ascension... she had no idea what one had to do to become a god - the way that the Shopkeeper had described their experience sounded quite unusual. She supposed that the category of "gods" was, itself, perhaps merely a function of their paltry understanding--there were scant few sources to consult on such a matter. More reasons to understand how those who had come before had done it, she supposed.

_Farren

was pondering their words when Torquil opened, then closed, the mechanism before speaking and moving to hand Fulmen back. Farren shook his head slightly, “Opening the mechanism only does something after the hammer’s built charge,” he began, clearly intending to explain the weapon. “…to build electrical energy you must first strike something with the hammer.”

Farren paused a moment, considering, “…it’s dangerous though, if you build too much charge before opening the mechanism it becomes…quite destructive.”

"...right," said slowly, concentrating a great deal to try to understand what he was being told. "It builds charge when I hit things, and if I open it while it has charge... something happens that can be destructive. Got it."

Farren nodded, “It’ll release electricity, like the Darkbeast we fought,” he clarified once it seemed that Torquil had a general grasp of the idea. “Just…make sure you count your hits and if you strike 10 or more times, do not open the mechanism.”

"Releases electricity like the darkbeast. If I hit more than ten times, don't open it. I think I understand."

Farren’s gaze was searching as he held Torquil’s eyes for a moment. Then his serious expression passed and he gave Torquil a companionable pat on the back, and a nod, feeling relatively confident in Torquil’s understanding. Still, he’d make a point of keeping track of how many times the man struck something…just in case.

With that taken care of, Farren glanced between Gerlinde and Ophelia, before looking at the pale moon above. “Gods, eh? What a strange world I’ve woken to,” he mused, shaking his head slightly, a strange smile briefly touching his lips before slipping away. “Not sure how to feel about that possibility, but…well, I think you’re both right, after a fashion. We could do nothing, but with the forces we know of so far…leaving things as they are would likely be just as disastrous as a misstep on our part, potentially even moreso.”

He glanced to Ophelia then, still sensing the morose air about her, though the idea of ascension seemed to rouse some of that strange intensity he was more accustomed to. “Even if…we don’t follow that path, we can achieve things few others in the city can, by virtue of always having another chance to try. Surely, at the least, we could investigate the various…players on the board and if nothing else stymie any efforts that would bring the city ruin.”

In truth, Farren felt it was, in a way, their duty. For every other faction seemed fixated on a single goal or ideology, each intent upon something and sure to take drastic measures to achieve such. While they did not have the resources of any of those factions, they also could not die…they could take risks that others likely never would. Though in some ways their unique nature as paleblood hunters—though he and Torquil were of a manufactured sort—did put them at a disadvantage. He had the sense that people would be far more likely to try and use them for their own purposes, and if not that…then distrust them purely due to what humanity they could be considered to have lost along with their mortality.

Ultimately though…one simply had to take account of such things and act with them in mind. So he thought at least….

"It's already ruined, Farren. Has been since long before you came here. I don't know how much it's worth trying to save a ruin." Ophelia replied, something in her shifting again. So much loss and destruction hung over this place like a pall--it wasn't like Yahar'gul, where it was obvious and tangible and palpable, but kept behind a very thin barrier indeed: one that Ophelia was starting to feel like she could see through. Ego... or perhaps those at Yahar'gul, would penetrate it soon enough unless they stopped it from happening. It did have to be them, she reckoned, for all the reasons Farren had mentioned--but it struck her in that moment that even though attempting to stop such a thing from happening would cost any mortal their lives, it was only an agent of Ego that had urged them to do anything about it. None of the mortals of this city, that she'd seen, had been lining up to rebuke the possibility of another Blood Moon--and if they weren't willing to lay down their lives for it, if they weren't willing to suffer for it, why should she? She'd felt so noble earlier, a proud protector of that which she valued, but recent events had caused her to question that value--what had Yharnam ever done for her? What had its people done, really? All that she'd held dear had been ripped from her in one way or another, and she ached terribly to fill that loss. Was that how the Great Ones felt too? She half-remembered a saying, perhaps from a dream, that the gods inevitably lost their children and sought out surrogates to fill that void... or perhaps that was just the workings of a feverish mind.

"... after this, we go to Cainhurst and get the chalice. The labyrinth must hold secrets of ascension, relics of gods past--things we can use. If this world will offer us no succour, then we will transcend it." Ophelia said after a moment's pause, looking at Gerlinde with some glimmer of determination behind her eyes.