[h3]Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth[/h3]
With Arrayah reduced to a mess of naked bones and sloughing flesh, there was not much more to do in the Pthumeru Yharnam layer of the Old Labyrinth. Finding Gerlinde's saw spear was quite simple since it jutted out of the rock wall quite prominently, though dislodging it – especially without utterly destroying the blade – would take some work and time. To solve this issue, Farren first tried pulling it from the wall a couple of times, which accomplished little besides slightly wiggling it in place and probably bending the blade a little. With his first strategy seemingly having failed, the aspiring craftsman and mighty Hunter beckoned the Messengers and retrieved his Kirkhammer from them, and then proceeded to start smashing the wall a couple of meters next to where the saw spear was lodged.
Sadly the wall, even after a couple of good hits with the hefty hammer, did not appear to be particularly liable to crack or fall apart. Bits of dust and pulverized stone drizzled from the hammerhead and a new slight indentation in the wall, but otherwise it seemed that destroying the cave wall was not a viable solution either.
“Even if we get it out, it'll be terribly blunt. Let's pick up a replacement in the Dream instead, mm?” Ophelia suggested.
[color=#007FFF][b]“Mmm…seems a shame, but….”[/b][/color] he grunted once, frowned and knelt. After a murmured word and a moment, the Messengers rose. He sent a message for Gerlinde, 

[quote]Shall I retrieve your Saw Spear? - Farren[/quote]

After just a few seconds the Messengers returned to present Farren with a scroll:
[QUOTE=Message from Gerlinde]That would be wonderful! But don't take too long, I think Torquil isn't doing too well. Gerlinde [img]https://i.imgur.com/KQ5Rxo0.png[/img][/QUOTE]

Farren read the message, his eyes narrowed, but he remained in place for a moment before he began to position what few tools he could to begin extricating the weapon. [color=#007FFF][b]“Torquil’s not well…go. I’ll get this. Should be…perhaps 15 minutes, hopefully less. If it’s dire, send a message and I’ll abandon this and come.”[/b][/color] That said, he started to get things in place.
“I doubt that particular one holds any sentimental value, love. Let's just pick up another one in the Dream and be done with it, eh?” Ophelia replied, though she would acquiesce and leave if he seemed determined to continue.
Farren paused, glanced at her, then glanced back. His azure eyes lingered on the weapon for almost a full minute before he sighed and withdrew his implements and stowed things away. He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, [color=#007FFF][b]“Fine…”[/b][/color] he clearly didn’t like to leave a perfectly good weapon behind, but he did his best to let it go. Ultimately, Torquil was more important.
Ophelia's expression softened somewhat at Farren's clear disappointment and she gave him a smile. “It's not like anything will happen to it in our absence, so we can always come back and get it later?”
[color=#007FFF][b]“Mmh. Hard to say. Who knows. Could soak in the nightmare and…”[/b][/color] he shrugged, having no idea what that might do to a physical object, though his gaze did shift to her weapon briefly. Something occurred to them then…all the bodies that had been in the tunnel they’d originally came from. Farren stopped and pivoted so one shoulder was turned in the tunnel’s direction.
[color=#007FFF][b]“It just…occurred to me. Arrayah never came for us in that tunnel,”[/b][/color] Farren pondered aloud, his eyes narrowing, [color=#007FFF][b]“…and some of those corpses were new...”[/b][/color]
Farren wet his dry lips, the dust and stagnant air having dried them out. [color=#007FFF][b]“So, if not her…then what killed them…?”[/b][/color]
He exhaled after a moment, fully turned and headed the other way. Afterall, who was to say the lantern was down one of the other corridors?
As he headed that way—his stride determined, but not brisk—Farren drew the True Blade(s) of Mercy (right hand) and one of his loaded Hunter’s Pistols (left hand).
Ophelia nodded and followed Farren. “They do have to come from somewhere, don't they? I suppose the labyrinth is perpetually filled with beasties if the tales and our experiences are any measure. Though... we should be quick. I want to get back to Torquil sooner rather than later.”

The two of them went back and checked, and sure enough they discovered something they had missed the first time around. Right in the middle of the ceiling, almost all the way back toward the deepest end of the tunnel, they discovered a small square hole – less than a meter in either wide and long – with what appeared to be a metal ladder attached to it. The ladder ended just as the hole opened into the space, however; while it seemed like a probably point of entry, it would have been too high for anyone to feasibly be able to climb back out again.

Torquil's axe, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen, no matter how they looked around the area where Torquil collided with the wall and died. If either of them had watched Torquil get thrown, impact and die and tried to recall it, they might remember him still holding on to the axe when he disappeared and it vanishing along with him. It took another several minutes for them to locate Farren's mangled piercing rifle, which would require extensive repairs if it was ever to function as anything but a crude bludgeon.

Searching for a way out of the chamber turned out to be somewhat time-consuming as well, though mostly due to the sheer enormity of Arrayah's cavern and the distances they had to cross. They already knew what was down the tunnel they had entered through, of course, but even ignoring that there were another three tunnels to search. Two of those three turned out to be rather quick to explore since they seemed to have collapsed and been blocked by rubble just a couple of dozen meters from the entrance, whereas the fourth and final tunnel turned out to be mostly intact.
They followed the tunnel for about a hundred uneventful meters before they discovered two things: an unlit lantern waiting for them to act as their means of return to the Dream, and a... sort of dead end. The tunnel seemed to end in a massive door of some kind, made entirely of metal and decorated with all manner of interesting iconography, most of which appeared to be humanoid creatures of some kind that appeared unusually tall, long-limbed and beautiful in the way they were portrayed, and garbed like high nobility. Among dozens of these figures that appeared to turn away and cast down their gaze in what appeared to be shame were two figures that stood out from the rest. One was a male clad in armor, who leaned on a quite distinctively shaped spear in his left hand; the other was female, clad in flowing robes, with her right hand on an equally distinctive greatsword with a broad blade that was depicted as giving off some kind of energy.
There could be little doubt that the adornment on the door showed two past wielders of the Profane Abyssal Blade and Holy Moonlight Sword, respectively. But even though it was obviously a door capable of opening, there was no obvious mechanism to do so, and it refused to budge even when forced. Thus even though there appeared to be more further into this layer of the Old Labyrinth, it was effectively a dead end.

Ophelia pondered the strange mural for a moment as she hemmed and hawed, before beckoning Farren to join her. 
“It's a bit of a long shot, dear, but... Fractured Truth.” she spoke as she raised the Cosmic Sword of Truth aloft, and allowed each hand to take one of the two blades that resulted from the separation. She turned to Farren and offered him the Profane Abyssal Sword, nodding her head towards the engraving with a curious smile. “Perhaps?” she muttered as she cradled the Holy Moonlight Sword softly, awakening its radiance if it was not already and offering similar instruction to Farren if the same was true of its counterpart.
But even with the two halves of the Cosmic Sword of Truth divided, the door seemed to remain as immovable as ever. “[I]The door seemed to respond before... when it was whole...[/I]” Ophelia would hear the soft whispers of the Holy Moonlight Sword tell her. “[I]But now... there is still something... but much fainter. This door... must be very old. Perhaps if you... were more powerful... and it was whole...[/I]”
[I]“Ah, of course... we humans must pale in comparison to the depths of the arcane that those who came before achieved. We shall return when I have grown to their might.”[/i] Ophelia responded, before motioning to take the sword back if Farren had taken it already. “Gestalt Truth,” she incanted quickly to conjoin the blades once more, “Ah, not yet. We... hah, we've taken rather a direct path to this point, haven't we? We must hunt, dear, that's all... grow stronger. Then we may return and see what lies beyond, mm? For now... let us return, yes?”
For his part, Farren simply grunted, having offered back the Profane weapon, shivering slightly as it left his touch. He decided he’d leave it to her unless it was ever truly necessary for him to wield. Though…the united form was appealing to him, it had a draw that felt…otherworldly. It didn’t suit him. [color=#007FFF][b]“It’s just as well,”[/b][/color] he said, somewhat gruffly. He wasn’t carrying all the damaged or broken implements he’d gathered, but instead had stowed them with the Messengers.

With their hopes of conquering this intriguing door dashed for the time being, the two of them lit the lantern to summon the Gatekeepers, and promptly – after a very long and grueling fight – returned to the safety of the Dream.

[h3]The Hunter's Dream[/h3]
Finding themselves cleaned and refreshed by the transfer across worlds, Ophelia and Farren awakened in the Hunter's Dream to find it just as they had left it. No fresh horrors seemed to spawn out of the Nightmare despite the arrival of someone with false Paleblood in their veins; instead, Farren would find a piece of fire paper somewhere on his person that he did not recall getting.

Looking around, they would soon find that the doll, the Shopkeeper and Gerlinde – her body and garb alike restored to pristine condition – were all gathered near the main entrance to the workshop, with Torquil nowhere to be seen.
“[I]Ah,[/I]” Ophelia would hear the voice of the Cosmic Sword of Truth in her head, “[I]that is a strange feeling, the power of that false Paleblood in Farren. It sent ripples across the Dream when he arrived, but... it does not feel as though it is [/I]intended[I] to disrupt the Dream. It is not Paleblood, but something that merely mimics its properties. How unusual. It is as though another Great One has tried to replicate it.[/I]”