_Farren

took in the new room, giving himself some time to recover from the gauntlet that had led them there. Much of the room was just as simultaneously ancient, drab, and strange as the rest of the Labyrinth had been so far, but eventually his gaze fixated not on the chalice Gerlinde had indicated, but on the one apparently filled with molten earth instead.

Tilting his head slightly, Farren bent and gathered a handful of small stones before walking over to the lava-filled basin. Sure enough, even several meters out it started to get exceptionally hot. Just standing somewhat near made his lips begin to dry out and he knew if he drew any closer that it would start to burn.

Still, curious as he was, Farren tossed a stone or three into the basin from where he stood. However, only what one might expect occurred, with the small stones sinking in and beginning to turn molten as well. Farren shrugged and turned from it, moving to stand beside Gerlinde, seemingly having little to no interest in the magical chalice that could apparently change one’s essential appearance.

Perhaps if he’d had some deformity he might have used it, or indeed if he ever ended up in Torquil’s current situation…but he was comfortable as he was, and to change himself notably would only disrupt the sense of self he was still rebuilding ever since he’d awoken.

While Ophelia and Torquil did as they pleased, Farren for once closed his eyes and just let himself…think.

’We should go to Cainhurst…’ it was a simple thing, not borne of any drastic need or massive advantage, but rather a simple desire to properly investigate the facilities of the workshop that the Cainhurst nobility had given him leave to utilize. Perhaps he could repair some of his damaged weapons himself? That aside…he could disassemble some weapons and see how they worked. Properly. For, as he thought about it, his mind supplied the distinct impression that he’d never been allowed to do anything similar in his past life. Perhaps he’d had to reassemble one or two trick weapons, at best, but they had never been any of the more complex sorts, of that much he was certain.

Letting forth a long sigh, Farren wished that there was proper time for him to experiment more thoroughly with such things, as…in truth he wanted to craft something for himself–though he did not yet know precisely what. Without knowing what was truly possible it was difficult to even truly ponder.

Opening his eyes, Farren glanced to Gerlinde, then towards the pool, speaking while they carried on with the changes they desired. “I think…I’d rather like to head for Cainhurst and ascertain what tools exist within their workshop. Though how much time we spend there depends severely upon the state of the Ritual in Yahar’gul. Is there…anywhere else you feel it is prudent we should go?” His question was primarily aimed at Ophelia, for he considered her his equal in leading the course of their ragtag band, but truthfully he would value Gerlinde’s input as well. Particularly since she had been hunting longer than them by a significant margin. As for Torquil…well, if the man did have any aims, he’d certainly wish to hear of them, though he didn’t say as much.

Torquil and Gerlinde both looked on with keen interest as Ophelia went first to try out the miraculous powers of this strange little basin, though it was obviously difficult to tell interest – or any other emotion for that matter – from Torquil's current features. He tried his best to get a look at Ophelia's reflection in the water to see what she was doing, but due to the nature of reflections he could not see much from his perspective.
When Ophelia had finished imagining the changes she wanted to make and jumped into the water, they would all get the rather remarkable experience of witnessing the magic waters at work. As Ophelia broke the surface and began to sink, the perfect still, mirror-like liquid made it look as though she and her reflection were colliding and passing through each other, the real her on her way down and the reflection on the way up. And while Ophelia had made only minor changes, they would all certainly notice the difference as soon as they could see the reflection of Ophelia's head with the different hair coming up to meet Ophelia's actual head and hair... only for the two to cross paths as Ophelia submerged, upon which the one reflection vanished and the Ophelia now below the water had been replaced with it. Now in the water, she had become her reflection, and as she climbed out of the pool – completely dry despite having just gone in the water – her appearance had been altered to suit her wishes.
“That's all?” Gerlinde remarked, still smiling but with a tone of humorous disappointment. “I guess it's fine if that's your preference. It's certainly unique.”

As soon as Ophelia had finished making her desired alterations, Torquil hesitantly walked over to stand above the basin. He looked down and saw hundreds of refracted copies of his own inhuman visage in the water looking back at him, and felt his gut churn at the thought that the abomination he was looking at was himself. But here, now, with the magic of these waters swirling with eldritch light, he could remedy that and return to his old self. He just had to imagine –
His heart abruptly sank at a horrid realization: he could not picture his own face. He knew what it felt like to wear his face, of course, but he could not at all remember actually seeing himself. Even as the strained his mind to its limit to try to recall if he had ever caught so much as a glimpse of his own reflection, the few glimpses he could remember had either been while he was wearing a helmet or after his head had already mutated. He would need a picture of himself to ever hope to replicate what he used to look like, and he could not imagine that there would ever have been anyone who cared enough about him to make one.
But as he continued to stare at himself in the water, watching the tentacles on his face lazily undulate of their own accord and his big, bug-like eyes staring back up at him soullessly, he pondered what to do... and realized that this might be an opportunity. As long as he could remember – which was just earlier this evening, to be fair, when he woke up a Hunter for the first time – whenever his thoughts had turned to himself, it had provoked revulsion and self-hate. Even now he still did not understand why he felt that way, but perhaps this was a means by which he could distance himself from those feelings? A chance to reinvent himself and become someone else? Someone better? Yes! The time of Old Torquil was over, and it was time for him to become New Torquil! More handsome and confident, someone people would actually notice and maybe even look at with admiration!
The only issue with that idea was that he had a very limited concept of what a “handsome” man would look like. He knew what he found attractive in women, but what did people interested in men want to see in them? The main point of inspiration he could think of was Dietrich, who everyone seemed to fawn over. For a moment Torquil imagined himself with Dietrich's face, and his reflection shifted in response to this... and Torquil immediately found it unnerving to see the First Hunter of the White Healing Church looking back from his own reflection. What could he do to not just be a replica of someone else?
He cocked his head as seconds ticked by, his face-tentacles writhing and twisting as the Hunter's mind slowly worked its way through the redesign of himself. Dietrich's face... but maybe with somewhat stronger bone-structure, something closer to what Farren had. Strong cheekbones, fierce eyes. Jaw... Torquil's jaw used to trouble him before the Shopkeeper fixed it. A strong, broad jaw, like Victor's. And maybe something like Victor's beard, in those fancy braids? Ah, but Torquil did remember that his own hair was neither blond like Dietrich's nor chestnut like Victor's: Torquil's hair was black, so he could keep it that way. And his eyes... he thought his eyes used to be brown? Should he do something fancy with them, like Ophelia had with hers? He really liked Gerlinde's eyes, sapphire blue with the green ring around the iris... maybe he could invert that? Make them green with a blue ring? But not sapphire blue like Gerlinde's eyes, pale blue like Dietrich's. Yes, that looked nice. And his body? He was mostly fine with his body; he was strong and sturdy, but he did wish he was a bit taller. It had always felt slightly humiliating to be the shortest out of their little party, especially compared to Farren and Gerlinde. When he thought of a taller version of himself... maybe something like Victor's build? Victor had been even taller than Farren, and looked really strong as well. Yes...

After a long couple of minutes of silently staring at himself in the water, Torquil finally braced himself and jumped into the pool. A couple of seconds later he emerged a completely new man, with the head of a man none of them had seen before, but that was at the very least that of a man rather than a monster.
“Did it work?” Torquil asked out loud, and was immediately and immensely relieved to hear his own human voice rather than the distorted version of his first altered face, let alone the weird telepathic speech of the second one. He looked down at his glove-clad hands and blinked, and was immediately grateful for the fact that he had eyelids to blink in the first place. “It did! How do I look?”

Her own very minor transformation complete, Ophelia stepped out of the pool and retrieved her weapon from Farren with a grateful smile. She thought about what he'd said and was quite content to go to Cainhurst--while ordinarily she would have been somewhat hesitant for such a trivial trip through the Dream for the false Paleblood Hunters, there was plenty that they could get done at Cainhurst. Not only did Ophelia wish to look again at Queen Annalise's mask to see if it contained some clues about how it might be destroyed, she also wished to get the Cosmic Sword of Truth's perspective on the mask, as well as deliver the news about Arrayah having been slain. It was likely in her mind that Annalise knew of Arrayah, at least, and thus might have some interesting things to share with them. She also figured that an alliance between the Black Church and Cainhurst might be brokered: they clearly had the room and equipment for many Hunters, and if the White Church truly did begin escalating hostilities with the Black Church as she expected they could probably use all the help they could get.

"Sounds good to me, love. After that I want to head to the White Church alone; shrouded from their sight as I am, I'd like to raid a couple of their supplies for the Black Church and see about finding out how to break Queen Annalise's bindings. The true allyship of Cainhurst will no doubt be tremendously beneficial to us." She replied to Farren while they waited for Torquil to finalise his changes.

Once he did and began to step out of the strange basin, Ophelia met him a few steps away from the liquid's edge and gave him an appraising look up and down. Though if she focused on the individual bits she could pick out the inspirations he'd taken--a bit of Dietrich, and Victor, and maybe even Farren... ah, and Gerlinde's eyes, though inverted--she thought that it all came together rather well and that Torquil was now quite ruggedly handsome.

"My, my, dear, you look simply marvellous! Gosh, how handsome your chosen face is... I think it suits you terribly well, love, you've done a bang up job. You'll have to chase the ladies away!" Ophelia beamed, clearly elated on his behalf. She would remember Torquil's old face forever, of course, but he'd had such trouble feeling like himself with it and liking who he was--this chance for a new start was well-deserved indeed, and Ophelia was gladdened by the thought that he might begin to feel more secure in himself and his appearance.

“You know my interest is mainly in the Nightmare,” Gerlinde remarked about what would be next in their plans, “which is where we are now, so I'm already happy. If you want to go to Cainhurst when we get back, I don't mind.”
She turned to Torquil and shot him an appraising look. “It's all right,” was the extent of her feedback.
“I think I might steal all of the Followers' arcane implements...” Ophelia mused aloud, mostly in response to Gerlinde. “Ah, something that you missed in Arrayah's chamber: there's a queer door, with a mural of the two halves of my blade. I didn't have enough arcane power to open it when we tried, but there's a lantern there so it'll be easy to get back to. When I do I suspect there'll be a bounty of arcane treasures for us to take... though I think you should probably take them, Gerlinde: this blade is all I will ever need, after all.”
Gerlinde glanced at the Cosmic Sword of Truth for a moment before smiling at Ophelia. “Considering we found the Mask Rune at the entrance to the Followers' hideout, I don't think we should expect Deception to work on them. But I appreciate the generosity.”
Farren had, admittedly, been wondering why it was taking Torquil so long, so he was rather relieved when the man finished. Though, seeing the process carried out again was indeed a rather fascinating thing. Now less startled than he had been by Ophelia being replaced by her own reflection, Farren was able to take in the changes. Torquil emerged and as he did, he did so a new man...almost literally. Green eyes with pale blue rings, a strong jaw, black braided beard with a fierceness to his gaze and more definition in his cheekbones than before. It was a surprisingly comprehensive transformation, but given how drastic the present Gerlinde's appearance differed from the image of her in his memory? Well...it wasn't entirely surprising. Still, Farren did not react much outwardly--his eyes widened only fractionally before settling back into a more measured, appraising expression--almost thoughtful really. The azure-eyed hunter brought his hand up and ran it through his own somewhat unruly beard. What was one to say in response to Torquil's question? It seemed...rather mean-spirited to say it was a marked improvement, if only because that implied he had looked...rather unfortunate before.
Farren's gaze shifted as Gerlinde replied, her own appraising look and response brief and perfunctory, yet...that did not seem entirely right either. He frowned slightly then glanced back at Torquil and a small smile curled up one side of his lips, “It's a stark difference, but not an unwelcome one.” That left it not entirely clear whether he had thought Torquil looked unappealing before, “Well chosen I think. You've a distinct...look to you,” Farren nodded and crossed the distance, giving him a rough pat on the shoulder, gripping briefly in a companionable gesture.
“It suits you. How does it feel?” It was slightly strange to be looking up at Torquil now, but he didn't particularly care. Farren had worked with men taller than himself--women too on occasion.
“A good point... though I don't expect it to matter too much in either case: it's quite the lethal instrument even without Deception... and will only get more lethal as we accrue more arcane power. To that end... let's take the long route fighting our way out of here, hmm? More echoes means more power, and we should take every advantage.” Ophelia replied, brow furrowed for a few seconds as she considered Gerlinde's point before she broke into a similar smile.
“It feels weird,” Torquil hesitantly replied to Farren's question. “My eyes are back to normal, and everything feels a little further away. It will take some getting used to.” He flashed a smile, showing off teeth that were now a clean and healthy white like Gerlinde's.
“I'm all for that,” Gerlinde evaluated Ophelia's suggestion, “but I'll remind you that I got killed in the next room last time I was here, so I don't know what's ahead anymore. Things are also much more dangerous down here.”
Farren gave Torquil another firm jostling pat on the shoulder before letting go with a nod of understanding. He half turned to address Ophelia and Gerlinde, “What of the other path, the one we did not take?” The words called to mind the other doorway they'd not come through. After all, Gerlinde had led them this way in the interest of reaching the Chalice at speed.
Gerlinde shrugged. “More things that want to kill us, maybe more loot? But nothing especially interesting.”
Farren nodded briefly, “More echoes then...and I'll take what we can get. If there's no lantern that way, then I think--” he cut himself off and looked back to Gerlinde, “You said you died in the next room...was there no lantern before the enemies that cut you down?”
“There was not,” she confirmed with a shake of her head.
“Mmm...then I think it best we go back, clear the remaining rooms, and head back to the Dream. We've echoes to put to good use and should we die, this way we can come back...perhaps all with Deception inscribed upon our minds to retrieve what was left behind.” he replied, before turning bodily towards the path they'd cleared to get to the Chalice chamber. He glanced back over his shoulder briefly, but thought better of the query he'd considered, and instead looked back to the threshold and began to walk. If they didn't want to come along, so be it, he'd return to the Dream instead of exploring the remaining chambers.
“Deception will keep me quite safe; I think I'll head the way Gerlinde went before and try to find a lantern that way.” Ophelia replied as Farren made his intention to return the way they came clear.
“Any of you are welcome to join me, but this might be best done alone.”
“I'll come with you," Gerlinde immediately told Ophelia, her green eyes shining with greed. "I want to see what's deeper in the Nightmare, too.”
“We should stick together,” Torquil pointed out nervously. “Or... if we're splitting up, should I go with Farren? Just so no one is alone?”
“That sounds very sensible, love, having someone else to administer emergency blood vials is key to making it through I think. The boys and the girls can split up, then, take three of the vials we found down here.” Ophelia replied to Torquil with a smile before she turned again to Gerlinde.
“Are you wanting to use the Mask rune, still, dear? I think Deception or Heir will be best--I can scout a room, let you know what enemies there are, and we can tackle them that way?”
“If we are going to be sneaky about it, I'll take the Truth Rune,” Gerlinde compromised with a smirk. “I may not get the benefits from your sword, but it does still combine the effects of Deception and Guidance.”
“Smart choice. You know, you'll be the second human it's ever been applied to?” Ophelia commented as she retrieved the runebrand and gave it to Gerlinde.

With that the Hunters split up, with Ophelia and Gerlinde delving deeper into the Nightmare in search for another lantern while Farren and Torquil ventured back the way they came to clear the rooms they had passed by and eventually return to whence they came.
For Ophelia and Gerlinde's part, they very quickly discovered that the first beasts they encountered in this area – horned, fire-breathing hounds – did not so much as for an instant seem confused by the lesser Deception-effect on Gerlinde, nor oblivious to Ophelia through her empowered version of it. It also became quite clear that Gerlinde had not been exaggerating: it was immediately apparent that the denizens of this floor were much more dangerous than those of the previous one.
They fought through two rooms, each time barely scraping by, before Ophelia recommended that they try to rush through the next room while avoiding a fight. They very quickly realized their mistake as they were pelted with fireballs shot by some manner of ill-omened sorcerers, and they both ended up having to sacrifice quicksilver bullets and blood vials just to get out with their lives intact.
Made wary by the near-death experience in the previous chamber, the two Huntresses decided that it might be wiser to slow down and go cautiously, which allowed them to conquer the next room more easily. They battled their way through seemingly endless hordes of giant spiders to finally get to a tall black-clad Pthumerian woman ringing a sinister bell. It was clear even without Gerlinde announcing it that this Pthumerian was continuously conjuring spiders, but as soon as they slew her, her minions vanished.
Out of the available options, Gerlinde was now able to identify one room ahead of them as the one that would most likely have the lantern they were looking for, so the Huntresses cautiously went forth to look for it. But before they could find their way out, they were set upon by another Pthumerian, this one wielding fearsome magic, deadly weapons and displaying immense agility, all at once. Expending copious amounts of quicksilver and still having to imbibe blood vials just to survive, they did ultimately succeed by the skin of their teeth.
For them, the entire journey ended up taking a little over 30 minutes.

Farren and Torquil's trek through the upper floor, meanwhile, went quite smoothly. Not only were the denizens of that floor not as dangerous as those below, but Farren and Torquil were both strong and agile fighters in stark contrast to their female companions. They went through and cleared the remaining four rooms on the highest floor without so much as a single close call, and returned to the Dream victorious and, at least in Torquil's case, in good spirits. They made good time and got to their lantern in only a little about 25 minutes... meaning they got there a while before the Huntresses.


Which only made it all the more terrifying when, a couple of seconds after Farren and Torquil had awakened in the Dream, their false Paleblood caused a reaction. They would notice the light slowly dimming as the sky itself – though the time of day did not appear to change, remaining stuck in a perpetual sunset – grew dark. The sun was still there in what they could only presume to be west, but it was as though its brilliance was now hidden behind an almost entirely opaque veil. The gloom within the shadows cast in the Dream turned to near-black, color faded from their surroundings and even the gentle breeze seemed to still.
And then came that haunting, discordant song, echoing among the headstones and sending the Messengers scurrying into the ground to hide. They had experienced this before and knew immediately what had happened: another Winter Lantern had been summoned into the Dream.

While Farren and Torquil took cover to cautiously scout the area, trying to figure out exactly where the Winter Lantern was and how to best approach it, someone else had much less patience for disturbances such as this one. Barely had several seconds gone by with the eerie song drifting through the air before the Shopkeeper burst out of their workshop, a blunderbuss ready in their left hand as they sprinted down the stairs and in the direction of the sound. A moment later they heard the change in pitch of the Winter Lantern having spotted prey, immediately followed by a gunshot.
With that the song stilled and light returned to the Dream, and a few seconds later the Shopkeeper came strolling back toward the workshop, their entire right arm drenched in blood.
Farren, had an experience that--particularly during the famously grave Night of the Hunt--was truly novel: he felt profoundly silly. Lips parting briefly, Farren just sighed and pushed to his feet. Shaking his head, and actually managing a small chuckle, Farren rounded the gravestones to thank the Moonborn, then move to the Messenger Fountain where he would make some purchases after some moments of brief considerations.
Once he'd concluded that he sought out Amaris, “I've echoes to spend, if you please, Amaris.”

With the revelation that the Shopkeeper appeared to be highly adept at handling Winter Lanterns – as one might expect from the amalgamation of innumerable god-slaying Paleblood Hunters – the rest of the Hunters' business in the Dream was handled without incident. Farren, Ophelia and Gerlinde each took turns with the doll and the birdbath Messengers to carefully weigh their choices and spend all of their blood echoes... but while Torquil looked different now, he was still the same on the inside. As soon as he was left to his own devices he felt somewhat directionless, though even without the hint that his companions were doing so he did feel as though he should probably use his blood echoes for something.
He took a brief glance into the birdbath to see if anything stood out to him, but was quickly overwhelmed by the burden of choice and abandoned it without conjuring anything out of it. Instead he just went to the doll and told her to make him stronger. The doll asked how much, given that he had an abundance of echoes, and he simply told her “as much as possible.”

Ophelia also took the opportunity to commune some more with the Cosmic Sword of Truth.
“What can you tell me about the Moonborn Hunter? I noticed that when we summoned their aid against Arrayah none of their attacks seemed effective, even changing weapons, until we gave them something physical. They must possess great arcane power too, no?”
“The Moonborn Hunter?” The voice paused to ponder the question. “You have not seen the Moonborn Hunter yet. What fought alongside you against Arrayah, and what is here in the Dream with you now, is not that. This is the Moonborn Shopkeeper. And though powerful, they are but a projection of one aspect of the Moonborn. The Moonborn Hunter is tremendously more powerful... and even that may still only be a piece of the whole. They are a Great One, with the power to match the title.”
“Ah, of course - though... I wonder, why could they not hear the whispers of the Holy Moonlight Sword? They must have obtained it prior to becoming a Great One... though as they tell it, time broke on the Night of the Blood Moon. Perhaps some versions of them did?”
“When they obtained the Holy Moonlight Sword they were already an irregularity. Time was already shattered from actions in twisted pasts and futures. None of them were ever going to be its Champion because they were already distortions of the whole.”
“Mmm... what can you tell me of Flora, now that you are whole?”
“Flora is a Great One of the Nightmare and the one who dreams the Paleblood. She is within you as she is within Gerlinde; you carry her with you always, Champion.”

And with that out of the way, they all hastened to the Unseen Headstone, touched the marker “Vileblood Queen's Chamber”, and went off to visit Castle Cainhurst and return to the Waking World for the first time in more than two hours.


A moment later the four Hunters awakened and found themselves in the familiar scenery of the Cainhurst throne room. Things looked quite the same, with Queen Annalise herself presiding over the area on her throne as always... except that the queen herself gave off a rather different sense than last they had seen her. On their last visit the Vileblood Queen had slouched weakly in her seat, barely moving from the spot and struggling so much as to raise her head when addressed. In stark contrast to that, the queen they saw now sat straight and proud on her throne, as though the withering frailty that had afflicted her had been utterly vanquished. Though still trapped in her mask she held herself with strength and dignity; a far more intimidating presence than she had ever been.

“Ah, they return,” she said but a couple of seconds after their arrival, and even her voice sounded as though it had regained lost power. “Have thee news to declare, moon-scented Hunters? Perchance, dost thou bring the key to this accursed mask, or Divine Queen Yharnam's Bloodblade?”

---

As they materialised in the now-familiar chambers of inner Castle Cainhurst, Ophelia followed the usual ritual of approaching the Queen's throne and assuming the kneeling position one took when seeking audience with her.

"It is on the topic of your mask that we return, Queen Annalise, though not yet with key in hand. We were successful in navigating the labyrinth that the chalice we sought unlocked, we have slain Arrayah, the Black Blade, and I have become the Champion of Cosmic Truth. I will wield this power to infiltrate the White Church and find the key in question--but I wished to examine the mask first, with your permission, to get a better idea of what it is that I am looking for." Ophelia said, the requisite reverence for the queen's renewed vigour showing through her voice.

The queen's head instantly cocked slightly as soon as Ophelia spoke, but after she simply listened in silence. "Thou utter names and titles that are meaningless to Us, distant kin."
Queen Annalise raised her left hand, and two tall, hooded, black-clad figures seemed to materialize out of the shadows before coming to stand on either side of her, all in total silence.
"If it is thy belief that examining the mask will aid thy quest, then We will allow it," she declared impatiently.

Granted permission, Ophelia immediately set about the task of examining the mask to see if there was indeed a keyhole or any other sort of identifying mark that might give them some clue as to how it might be broken, while simultaneously communing with her blade. Though she wished to be thorough, she also wished to be fast.

"Do you sense anything about this mask, and how it might be unlocked?"

The examination did eventually show a hole, though calling it a "keyhole" would probably be misleading. The hole was tiny and perfectly round, making no room for a key with teeth or anything of the sort; the only thing that would fit there was a plain, thin rod.
"It is very old and powerful," the voice replied to Ophelia's query. "An eldritch device meant to seal the power of whoever wears it, meant only to be removable if its wearer is killed. There is no mechanical lock on it, but powers of the Nightmare are keeping it shut; you will need the correct key to appease its curse."

When finished with the examination Ophelia quickly and respectfully returned to the kneeling position.

"Thank you, Your Majesty. It seems that what we are looking for is some sort of rod imbued with the presence of the Nightmare--this should narrow our search considerably. I shall go now to find it, and return with it in tow." she concluded, standing from her position and beginning to head over to the lantern. With the aid of the Truth rune she would speak to Farren, Torquil, and Gerlinde wordlessly.

"I think it best that I head to the White Church alone--the less presence we have there, the better. I'll keep in touch through the little ones, just send a message if you need me for anything. Obviously I'll only receive the message when I'm out, but it should be fine--I intend to be as quick as possible."

And for good measure, she repeated her query to the Cosmic Sword of Truth about the ritual in Yahar'gul now that they were in the Waking World.

Annalise simply dismissed Ophelia with a wave of her hand.
"The ritual... has progressed far more than it should have," the voice reported, a hint of discomfort in its tone. "Something has caused it to leap closer to completion, and though its rate has slowed down again... the best estimate would be that it will finish in about three hours. Assuming there are no more sudden leaps of progress."
The voice paused for a moment before adding: "They are awakening a Great One and calling it to the Waking World. This Great One..." Now the voice's discomfort had intensified to fear. "They are trying to call Obcasus, a being who has slumbered in the depths of the Cosmos for an eternity. Some call it the Peacebringer, others the Worldbreaker, for the ideal it seeks to visit upon reality is dark and silent oblivion. Champion, Obcasus is not like the other Great Ones you have encountered; if it is fully awakened, it will seek to erase everything around it so that it may resume its slumber."

"We need more time... there is a serpentine Great One, a chronophage, who devours time as it passes--their scales are in the Snakescale Hourglasses... might we entreat them, perhaps?" Ophelia asked in return, freezing in her tracks as a creeping sense of fear began to overtake her. If even her blade, whose gentle light had warded her against all fear, was afraid... she took a shaky breath in to steady herself. The fear would persist, she had no doubt about that... but there was no failing in fear itself. So long as they acted despite their fear, that would be enough--either with assistance from the chronophage, or heading to Yahar'gul themselves to disrupt the ritual. Ophelia preferred the former option quite strongly, hoping that the power they had called upon might still be used for a more benign purpose... but accepting that if it could not, the ritual needed to end.

"The Great Serpent? Perhaps. It has the power, but the question is whether it is willing. It likely serves as a guardian deity in the forest west of Yharnam; it has for centuries."

Farren, for his part, bowed his head respectfully to the Queen, but did not remain as such. He had intended to depart, but lingered to hear Ophelia's conclusion regarding the Fell Mask that yet restricted Annalise. However, once the knowledge had been expressed, he nodded but once and began to turn to leave--intending to head for the Cainhurst workshop. However, when something caused Ophelia to stop dead in her tracks, a faint niggling intuition gnawed within his head, and he too stopped and turned back to his companion.

"Now that we know what we are facing... perhaps that will be enough to sway it. Whatever its price, if it has one, it is likely better than oblivion." Ophelia returned with a swallow, and turned on her heel to face the others.

"There has been a disturbing revelation about the ritual at Yahar'gul. They seek to awaken Obcasus, the Worldbreaker... we must go to the Forbidden Woods to entreat the Great Serpent. Now." Ophelia spoke aloud, voice wavering and trembling for perhaps the first time since waking at Rebirth's Rise. She waited for the others for only a few seconds before continuing to the lantern and returning to the Dream.

Farren took in the fear he saw in the cast of her features and his own expression darkened. After a moment, Ophelia's voice rang out in his mind. Farren stiffened, but relaxed an instant after, only for the news to sink in. His jaw tightened, worked briefly then he grunted but once, sighed, and followed Ophelia back to the lantern--and in turn, the Dream. It seemed they did not have time to dally and he would have to avail himself of Cainhurst's workshop after other business was resolved.

On their way to the Forbidden Woods through the Hunter's Dream, however, the Hunters hit a minor snag as returning there meant another activation of the disruptive influence of the false Paleblood. For Torquil's part he merely sensed himself filling with vital energy like when he channeled the strength of their fallen enemies through the doll, but for Farren this sent a ripple through the Dream itself. The result of this soon became obvious as they found the Shopkeeper and the doll... with the latter having crumbled once more into an inanimate heap, the eldritch life drained from her remains.
“We will return to rouse her, but it may be some time. The Ritual has progressed, time is short, and the Great One they are calling is a dire threat,” Farren told them.
“I might be able to revive her now if it's tremendously important to you? Just nod or shake your head, love.” Ophelia asked the Moonborn.
The Shopkeeper, kneeling by the inanimate doll, immediately nodded their head without so much as turning from the porcelain homunculus.
Retrieving the runebrand, Ophelia handed it to Farren alongside the Echo of Agony. “Apply the Heir rune and crush this: I think it should give us enough to bring her back.”
Farren simply nodded, envisioned the Heir Rune in his mind's eye and then used the brand with not a sign of discomfort. Once he felt its power in his skull, a faint, but distinct vibration, Farren turned his attention to the Echo and crushed it in his hand.
It felt...like a brief rush, and then the ghostly weight of the echoes settled in his veins. It felt like enough. Farren drew over to Amaris, took to one knee and pressed a hand to the top of her head, opening himself and pushing the echoes to her with his will.
Once again the doll blinked her eyes as whatever semblance of life she possessed returned to her. “Ah, again... I am sorry to be such a burden, good Hunters.”
Farren shook his head and rose, “Don't be, it is a failing of my false paleblood, not of your being.” He glanced to Ophelia, jaw set, ready to go if she and the others were.
“We're all Mother Moon's children here, dear. We would abandon you no more than we'd abandon each other, no matter how many times something happens. We'll see you soon.” Ophelia chuckled, her smile warm for just a moment before the sense of urgency overcame her features again and she made ready to set out.


Though their destination was in the Forbidden Woods, the only one out of the party with any idea where in the Forbidden Woods they were going was Ophelia. As such it was quickly determined that they would have a much better chance of getting to where they might find the Great Serpent if they went from a location she was intimately familiar with rather than some – to Ophelia – random place in the expansive forest. Looking at the markers on the headstones in the Dream, it became obvious that out of all of them, there was one place Ophelia was likely more familiar with than any other: the home of her old teachers, the Witch's Abode.
Awakening after touching the marker, the Hunters could observe that the structure they found themselves in only bore a superficial resemblance to the lair of the Witches of Hemwick. During the time of resurgence Hemwick had experienced in the wake of the Night of the Blood Moon, the now-vacant largest building in of the village had swiftly been claimed and repurposed as a workshop for the morticians performing their grim duties. The abode had been thoroughly cleaned and renovated, and at the height of its prosperity it had been a bustling place of business, with dozens of people happily processing multitudes of corpses.
Then things had taken a turn for the worse, of course. With the witches dead and their Mad Ones absent, Hemwick lost the protection they had had from the scourge of beasts, and with the mountain of victims of the Blood Moon being moved through Hemwick, beasts were an inevitability. The dead brought beasts and beasts brought Hunters, and some of those Hunters deserted the Healing Church and aided in rebuilding the Vilebloods, revitalizing the war between the two would-be rulers of Yharnam.
Nowadays the Witch's Abode, though still in much better condition than when the witches had lived there, was abandoned, and the briefly prosperous Hemwick Charnel Lane was reduced to a few scattered devoted, twisted souls who dutifully maintained the functions of the village.

But as nostalgic as this return likely was for Ophelia and for as many thoughts and feelings she might have about it, the Hunters were determined to make haste to their destination. They quickly exited the abode, stepping out under the night's sky into the moonlit grounds...
And indeed, straight above them – exactly where they had last seen it, rooted in place despite hours having passed – was the moon. Only, the moon would quite obviously not look how they were used to it looking. Though still pale and giving off its cold radiance, there was now a large, churning pitch-black splotch in its center, its edges slowly undulating and pulsating. Like the pupil of a staring eye in the sky, this dark mark looked as though it had already filled up about three fourths of the moon... with small, shimmering tether stretching down from it and to the ground, somewhere to their north. The distance was hard to determine from this vantage, but the direction and circumstances seemed to suggest that the other end of that ephemeral trail was rooted in Yahar'gul.

Spurred on by this reminder of their haste, the Hunters headed southward through the empty streets of Hemwick, climbed rocks and descended slopes before they, after traveling for about ten minutes, officially found themselves under the shaded canopy of the Forbidden Woods. Ophelia would know that it would likely take about another ten minutes or so to get to where people usually left offerings to their guardian deity, and so they hastened into the murk, toward the Great Serpant's shrine.
But before they had traveled for more than two minutes or so, they would encounter something quite unexpected: standing plainly among the trees off to their right, fingers steepled and a small smirk on her lips, was what appeared to be a civilian woman. She was wearing the garb of a student and had short, messy brown hair... and as if the fact that she was just calmly standing here in the midst of the Forbidden Woods was odd enough, she was also blindfolded.
It was made a little harder by the blindfold, but ultimately Ophelia would likely have little trouble recognizing this woman as the one she had seen in the Memory of Stars, and the one she had known from her old life. This appeared to be Nayra.

The decision to return to the Witch's Abode was one that Ophelia had understandably mixed feelings about. As they awakened there she was not sure what she would see--but it was immediately clear that this place was a far cry from the home she remembered. The passage of time and Hemwick's transformation after the Blood Moon had wiped away all that had been familiar, and even that had been abandoned. Whatever sentimentality she felt about it drained from her like blood had been drained from so many corpses in that place as it became abundantly clear that the home she knew now existed only in her memories. She shed a couple of tears thinking about it that she quickly and unceremoniously wiped away before continuing to lead the others outside and down paths that, for a small mercy, were more or less close enough to how she remembered them that her sense of navigation did not fail her.

When they began to travel into the woods, however, the hairs on the nape of Ophelia's neck stood on end and something in her instincts began to protest, her eyes narrowed and searched the murk and gloom for the source and what she laid eyes upon shocked her: someone with a mischievous smirk, almost... waiting? Ophelia quickly prepared herself mentally for some sort of combat to break out, wondering if the figure had noticed her at all owing to Deception-effect she was under, before she raised her free hand to stop the others if they hadn't already.

"Is this really her, Nayra? Not... some image, or... I doubt any such trickery would work on us, but..." Ophelia asked, her apprehension and curiosity each fighting for dominance.

"Nayra? Uncertain... but there is something there," the voice reported. "Beware of that creature, Champion; though its nature is difficult to ascertain, it is powerful."

"Can you tell if it has a particular weakness or resistance? Will the voltaic blade be sufficient if things come to blows, or is there another form I should invoke?"

"That cannot be discerned from afar, but it should be obvious after you have struck it."

"This is Nayra, or... something bearing her image. My blade warns me that whatever it is, it is powerful; ready yourselves for combat." Ophelia spoke wordlessly into the minds of her companions, waiting for them to get ready before she interacted with the creature. Her free hand instinctively went to the tube of recently replenished quicksilver at her hip and popped the cap, ready for action. It could not be an illusion--Ophelia's own protection from her weapon and the Mask rune's effect on the others would surely prevent such a thing from deceiving them. Perhaps it was a sentry of some kind, a precaution Nayra had managed to leave her should anyone seek to approach the Great Serpent?

"Can you tell if it has a particular weakness or resistance? Will the voltaic blade be sufficient if things come to blows, or is there another form I should invoke?"

"That cannot be discerned from afar, but it should be obvious after you have struck it."

She took a swift breath in, and when the others had readied themselves appropriately Ophelia figured it would be best to at least attempt diplomacy in the first instance.

"Nayra? Is that you?"

The blindfolded woman cocked her head and her smile widened as she lowered her hands. "Remarkable. I suppose I should have expected you to be able to see me. Yes, I am Nayra, and you are Paleblood Hunters. We meet at last."

"I don't know that I'd say at last, love, seeing as we've met before. Though I was but an apprentice before, now I am the last Witch of Hemwick... it's been some time, hasn't it? We've both changed." Ophelia replied, the slightest hint of wariness in her voice but with a wistful smile on her face.

"Met before?" Nayra cupped her chin in her hand in thought. "Witch of Hemwick? Trivialities. Although..." She turned to Gerlinde. "Hello, Gerlinde. I do remember you."
"Hi Nayra," Gerlinde greeted the figure, her smile unperturbed but a nervous edge in her voice.
Nayra's smile returned. "I suppose you were involved with breaking our darkbeast and stealing our lightbeast, then?"

"Paarl did not provide a particularly warm welcome after I came all that way to see my old acquaintance, and needed to be taught some manners. I do not think I can confess to stealing anything, though, dear--only liberating. We find ourselves in very interesting positions in this new world, don't we?" Ophelia replied, the wariness melting from her voice. Her heart still fluttered and she could feel the nascent stirrings of nausea beginning to roil within her, but she no longer felt the need to be wary: only prepared.

The woman turned back to Ophelia. "You... speak so very trivially, I struggle to even hear your words. None of that matters, though; we already captured the lightbeast and reconstructed the darkbeast once. But never mind that. You were just in Castle Cainhurst. Tell me: were you responsible for sending the knights to steal our darkbeast, too?"

"If you do not want trivial answers, perhaps you should not ask trivial questions. I don't imagine anyone but their queen can give the forces of Cainhurst orders, hmm?" Ophelia retorted.

"Indeed, but the queen did not know we had her beast. Someone had to tell her. Someone who encountered it." She turned to the side and started slowly pacing back and forth. "But you are correct that the question is trivial since the answer is obvious. Thus I will skip to the part where I thank you for your contribution to our cause." Her lips parted in a sleek grin. "The knights made excellent sacrifices for our ritual."

"I did as I have done many times before, and traded knowledge for knowledge. Cainhurst's library is quite extensive, you know? I never took you for a fool, Nayra, but to beckon some unknowable thing from the cosmos that will be the doom of everything we know and understand... do you wish for oblivion so badly, truly? I struggle to imagine you a mindless thrall to it, so... what is it that you want, that you expect to achieve? We can drop this pretense and speak directly and honestly, if you like. It would be much easier, less... trivial."

"I just want to reunite with my lord," Nayra mused, seemingly unaffected by Ophelia's attempts to goad her. "Meeting him just the once is not enough, I must meet him again. Nothing else matters." She pointed a slender finger at Ophelia. "To that end... would you not donate that delicious relic of yours? It is the reason I came all the way out here, after all. That sword radiates such power. It belongs with the Followers."

Ophelia's look turned to earnest disappointment at Nayra's words, that she had fallen so deep into madness--and the kind that precluded sense. It was perfectly possible to be terribly mad and still be on the side of sense--Gerlinde was a perfect example... but this? Putting her down was the only option if they wished to save their world.

"Be ready to fight." Ophelia wordlessly spoke to her companions as she mused for a moment, quite certain a fight was about to break out, before she gave Nayra a pitying smile and shook her head.

"You are desperately unworthy of it, dear. But there is something I could give you instead: access to all the worlds of Nightmare, and life everlasting. A means to meet your lord without beckoning him here."

Unperturbed, Nayra simply stopped pacing, raised her hands and wordlessly removed her blindfold before turning to the Hunters again.

Vigilant as ever, Farren had followed his companion, the one woman whom he thought of perhaps as something of a friend, and most certainly an equal leader of their little band. They'd encountered no real resistance upon the path and it, admittedly, had only made him suspicious. Thus, properly wary, when Farren caught sight of the figure standing with a devilish little smirk, fingers steepled, eyes blindfolded, Farren didn't hesitate. Though he did not charge, the azure-eyed hunter pulled forth his two paired Blades of Mercy, one Effigial, the other Truer in its nature. For, Farren was a man who had once been forced to traverse the city's environs under the fell light of the moon during Nights of the Hunt which had come before. He was well familiar with the fact that even the familiar and comforting could swiftly--and often did--become alien and violent during such times. So, for him, even had he recognized Nayra--which he most certainly did not--drawing his weapons seemed prudent.

As the exchange between Ophelia and the blindfolded woman progressed, Farren became increasing sure that his assessment was correct and in mere minutes, was proven entirely correct. Merely gritting his teeth briefly when Ophelia's voice warned him silently of the threat he'd already felt was obvious, Farren shifted his grip and slid one foot backwards to narrow his profile in the same moment that Nayra raised her hands and shed her blindfold.

However, before her eyes came fully into view, a dangerous possibility struck Farren's mind: What if her gaze might inflict upon them some fell fate. After all, the Winter Lanterns had.... So, as Nayra's eyes began to come into view and he found that they matched those that Ophelia had gained from the Chalice, Farren moved.

Shifting into a mad dash forth, Farren sought to close the distance between the obstacle which Nayra presented, and their party, a feverish, glowing violence in his distinctive azure eyes.

As Nayra undid her blindfold Ophelia broadcast an unspoken instruction to the rest of the party to not look into her eyes. All of them immediately took this warning to heart, with Ophelia directing her attention to Nayra's legs while Farren, without holding his charge, focused on her center of mass. Torquil and Gerlinde both started drawing their weapons, with Gerlinde looking at the leader of the Followers' feet and Torquil's eyes shifting all over the place in a wild panic, all while he had to fight the urge to look where he had been told not to look.

Then the blindfold fell, and Nayra's bizarre eyes were unveiled. Torquil was the first to fail, immediately looking straight into them, upon which he immediately faded away as he had so many times before. Everyone else had a heartbeat longer due to their evasive efforts... but ultimately those churning galaxies amid the void in Nayra's eyes were still within their field of vision, even if they were not looking directly at them.

Ophelia and Farren found their attention locked by Nayra's inhuman gaze, and their eyes were inexorably drawn to hers. And just as it had happened in the memory Ophelia had experienced, they felt themselves pulled into them, surrounded by them and consumed by them. They were lost among infinity, falling into those churning galaxies, until the swirl of innumerable stars itself seemed to open like a maw.
And just like that, Ophelia, Farren and Gerlinde awakened back in the Hunter's Dream.

Ophelia, Farren, Gerlinde and Torquil have obtained the Oblivion Rune. When branded into the mind, this rune afflicts you with the Eyes of Obcasus, making it so that you devour the minds of any who meet your gaze.

Reappearing in the Dream, Ophelia immediately set to the task of kneeling and beckoning the little ones, showing them the rune they'd just received to gain their ever-useful insight:

Oblivion
Replaces its wearers eyes with churning windows into what appears to be the Cosmos, which will devour the minds of any who look at them.
Many Great Ones of the Cosmos are older than the world itself, and among those Obcasus is among the oldest. It is a mindless creature that desires nothing but to sleep eternally in the void, and whose dreams give shape to entire realities.
Gaze into the abyss, and the abyss gazes back.

"Well... that was extremely unpleasant. None of our protections worked..." Ophelia commented as she stood up, grimly brushing herself off.

"So... we have to find a way to neutralise her or take her by surprise, or find some manner of protection that does work. Do you think she'll still be there if we go back? We are running out of time... I see now why Harold entreated us so: we are among the few they cannot sacrifice for their ritual. Moonborn, might one of your aspects be immune to this power of the abyss?" Ophelia asked, relaying what had happened and the contents of the messengers' scroll.

_Farren

felt the ebb and shiver in his blood as they were consumed by starlight and ousted from the Waking World and into the Hunter’s Dream. It felt…different this time though, and the wavering, warping force did not stop as it had before. Neither his body, nor his mind’s capacities, felt changed, but then….

Farren coiled in on himself, falling to his knees, and he tried to clutch at both arms at once, instead resulting in no movement at all, his arms held away from his body and before him. Farren watched–and felt intimately–as his sleeves tore as little spines with glowing blue tips ripped painfully from his limbs, downwards from shoulder to wrist. He felt his skin harden, his bones soften, and the muscles, tissues, and even the blood in his arms subtly, then drastically change. He cried out as his hands each grew an extra digit, then extra knuckles on each finger as they lengthened. Farren cursed in a vicious whisper as sharp, curved, hook-like claws burst forth from where once his nailbeds had been, eclipsing his fingertips slightly as if he’d always had the nasty jet-black carapace talons.

“Agh…fuck. Damned…cursed blood,” Farren gritted out hoarsely, the changes beginning to settle. In the tearing, viscerally painful heat of the transformation, he’d briefly dropped both the Effigial and True Blade of Mercy. Slowly, the pain began to ebb, leaving behind only the strange, alien sensations of blood and hemolymph interchanging within his body, as if he had always been that way. Farren moved to clutch at his skull, which ached from grinding his teeth during the process, but stopped well before as he saw the curled talons of his fingers, and the glowing ridge along the back edge of the claws which blinked in bright blue bioluminescence like some deep sea fish.

The aches ceased, replaced only by the far too noticeable internal pulse of fluids through both limbs whenever he moved. The motions felt jerky and uncontrolled even as his body adjusted and his brain accounted for the changes. Farren’s deep agonized grimace relaxed only into a disgusted glower as he stared helplessly at his own transmogrified arms.

“That…mmgh…” he winced as he flexed, then relaxed each finger in sequence. “Mmm…I…envy the two of you,” Farren said frankly, not looking up at Gerlinde or Ophelia, still trying to process the changes. He began, despite the discomfort, trying different, larger, and subtler motions and eventually he reached down and grasped both weapons. It took two tries before he found a somewhat comfortable manner to hold the implements and he knew already that some actions would be significantly more difficult than they once had been. Shifting the nature of his grip from forward to reverse was one he could immediately think of. Fortunately, there were limited uses for a reversed grip, so things certainly could have been worse. The real problem would be sheathing and drawing other weapons.

Farren pushed slowly to his feet, knees wobbling a moment from adrenaline, then calming as his body swiftly returned to equilibrium. Farren rolled his shoulders and carefully sheathed both weapons. He flexed the faintly glowing claws and carefully pushed up one of his sleeves to confirm that–yes–the entirety of the skin on his arm had become a glossy jet-black carapace. Though…the spines on his arms did seem to occasionally drip some form of rather viscous looking mucous. He wrinkled his nose at the sight, ‘Disgusting’.

His only recourse was that if he were disarmed, temporarily or otherwise, at least he could still rip and tear into his adversary.

“Well…I suppose…it could be worse,” he muttered, despite the fact that it did not make him feel the least bit better.

Farren glanced to Ophelia then, “One of us…not myself or Torquil, that is…should try to approach Yahar’gul and see if she blocks their path. It…will give me time to adjust…and provide us with the valuable intel that she can be wherever she chooses, as swiftly as we can use a lantern to get there.”

He again raised a hand to rub at a temple, but stopped just shy of clawing himself. His eyes narrowed and his lips fell in displeasure and he lowered his taloned hand with a heavy sigh. Farren hated the change, hated that the very blood that empowered him and kept him from death, could also betray him like this. Hated the warping and twisting of his body, and the mental adjustments he had to make to account for it all. However, he was not so foolish–nor so selfish or stubborn–to suggest a return to the Hall of the Old Lords. This was a change he could manage, at least, no matter how unwelcome it was.

“That aside...” he exhaled sharply and pulled in another breath as he noticed himself unconsciously adjusting the position of his arms, for comfort...which only resulted in another pulse of strange unsettling sensation that accomplished quite the opposite, “--I think using mid-ranged weaponry to strike at her eyes...or firearms at range to do much the same is likely the best way.” Farren figured that while perhaps they could not catch her off guard, that they could at least attack before she managed to ensnare them.

“The Shopkeeper is a Great One, good Hunter,” the doll answered Ophelia's question while she and the Shopkeeper walked down the stairs from the workshop to meet them. “They are so highly resistant to eldritch influence that they may as well be wholly immune.” She glanced to the master of the Dream and then back at Ophelia. “They point out that that is why they were able to perceive Arrayah. As for this Obcasus mentioned in the scroll...” She wrung her hands uncomfortably. “The Shopkeeper eagerly awaits its arrival. They cannot wait for the opportunity to hunt such prey.”

“That was a first,” Gerlinde sighed, scratching the back of her neck with an awkward grin. “I've clashed with Nayra before, obviously, but that's the first time she's taken off her blindfold. To think she had a trick like that up her sleeve all this time...”
She shook her head, turning to Farren. She glanced briefly at his altered arms, but apparently deemed to not comment on them for the time being. “I can probably shed some light on things without us spending time experimenting while the ritual progresses. As I said I've clashed with her before, and she has killed me several times... and I have killed her at least once. But as you just saw, she's obviously not dead. I beheaded her – she's surprisingly fragile, by the way – and her body just sort of... melted into the ground? Not like when one of us get sent back to the Dream, she actually liquefied right before my eyes. I also know that she definitely has some weird way of moving from place to place that is probably as fast as our lanterns, if not faster.”
Gerlinde turned away and threw up her hands in what appeared to be frustration, though her tone of voice sounded genuinely amused: “If only we'd learned Harry-poo's trick to control what can and cannot pop out of the ether before we pissed him off. But I doubt Nayra will keep hanging around in the forest; while I won't claim to know her – I don't think anyone knows her anymore – I do know that she hates wasting time, and she does have a ritual to work on. As soon as we disappeared and she confirmed that you took the sword with you, she probably went right back to Yahar'gul.”

“Champion,” the voice spoke in Ophelia's mind, “lend your ear, if you would. That creature you just encountered is unfathomably dangerous. You told it that it is desperately unworthy, but in truth it exerts an unimaginable influence even over the Cosmic Sword of Truth. While you spoke with it, it communed with the sword from a distance! Its voice overwhelmed the sword, bending its will effortlessly. Champion... not only would that creature be able to wield the sword to its full potential, it will even prevent the sword from using incantations while its many minds invade the sword. Greater protection is definitely necessary.”

Ophelia listened to both Gerlinde's explanation and her blade's imploration with her whole attention, nodding along as she did while she pondered their shared revelations.
“My blade tells me that she was able to commune with it from a distance and bend even its will--that she could even prevent me from using its incantations. We require greater protection. I... we must entreat the Great Serpent, either way--we will need time to find this manner of protection. I am willing to parley with Harold and his golden master, and I suspect they will be willing to aid us as Obcasus is just as much a threat to them as it is to us... though I did not want to tip him off that I possess this artefact, nor reveal any of its powers... but I think that is perhaps a last resort.”
“Have you any idea what might provide us with such protection, or where we can find it? The only thing greater than the runes are those that produce them: must it be a Great One that we entreat for aid?” she asked her blade in silent communion, uneasily shifting her weight between her legs as she did.
“Perhaps,” the voice replied hesitantly. “Although... ancient Pthumeru had a different kind of relationship with the Great Ones than the people of modern Yharnam. They may have possessed such protections.”
“Yes,” Ophelia began to muse aloud, “my blade is quite right... the ancient Pthumerians, like the one Gerlinde and I faced in the lower levels, had a rather different relationship to the Great Ones. It's almost certain that they possessed some manner of protection against even manifested Great Ones, and we may find it either in the Interstice proper or the bits of it that have fallen totally into the Nightmare? Moonborn, your other selves have explored much of the labyrinth and beyond: have you ever encountered such protections, or have you any idea where we might start looking? Or you, Gerlinde? You're the most knowledgeable of us on the Nightmare, after all.”
“Well...” Gerlinde grimaced. “If we're looking for a Pthumerian with a personal relationship with the Great Ones, I guess our best bet would be Soulkeeper. You know, the leader of the Harrow.”
“The Shopkeeper regrets that they cannot share their protection with you,” the doll conveyed, “but points out that other Great Ones might. If you could could manage to commune with one that isn't hostile, they may also be able to aid you, good Hunter.”
“Well, best to start with the Great Serpent that we need to visit regardless... I used to bring offerings to a higher power in the woods on behalf of the witches; it's unlikely there's another higher power there, mm? If that doesn't work... I suppose we should at least try Soulkeeper. They were very interested in we Palebloods, as I recall, seeing as they tried to kidnap us when we first awakened. It's up to you whether you come with us or not, Farren--if you wish to visit the basin and return your arms to their proper form, it would be an efficient use of time to do that while we head to the woods? Or you can come with us and we can go together after; I'd certainly not refuse the treasures and blood echoes if we succeed in getting more time.”
Farren grimaced in response to Gerlinde's words, then sighed and twitched as he had to force down the strong desire to pinch the bridge of his nose. It was an act that would have once been a small relief, that now his clawed digits would merely make a deeply unpleasant debacle. “If...Harold's Golden Bastard can protect us, then he likely protect others too. I doubt they would give such power freely. Any cost they require, no matter how deceptively reasonable it might appear, is likely more than we ought to give.” His words held a distaste and dismissal for Harold and his master that was certainly a reflection of his hatred for the lost, still...Farren felt it was based more in logical deduction than in his own intensely negative bias for the Bastard and his thrall. He glanced to Gerlinde then, eyeing her briefly, “When you...clashed with this...Nayra. Was she specifically trying to stop your progress somewhere, or were these more meetings of chance?”
“Well... yes,” Gerlinde claimed with a shrug. “It was mostly when I was trying to steal relics from the Followers. Or when I had found something really nice and rare, like Snakey or the horn... which I'd like back, by the way,” she added, shooting Farren a pretty smile.
“You're right, I think, dear: which is why they're only a last resort. I must say, this makes me tremendously wary of us taking relics like my blade to Yahar'gul... but that is a conversation for later. Farren, are you coming to the Great Serpent with us or going to the basin? We should set off again very soon.” Ophelia commented, before quickly dashing over to the workshop and taking the Rakuyo from the wall and a Chikage, storing them with the messengers, and returning quickly.
“'Nayra' may well try to ambush us again; from now on, we try to kill her on sight, before she drops her blindfold. Averting our gaze didn't work, so I'm afraid it's eyes closed: but with our hunters' senses, that should be less harrowing than it sounds.” She added as she returned, and headed towards the Frontier headstone to embark on their journey once more.
Farren cracked the smallest of grins in response to Gerlinde's very deliberate smile, designed to disarm and beguile, even if she knew such things seldom worked on him. He chuckled, removed the Horn from his belt and handed it over, though the action was a measure less smooth than what was usual for him. Eyelid twitching faintly, he looked to the headstone, adjusted the sling that held the Beastflayer on his back, knelt, and called upon the Messengers. A moment later they rose up with two of his new Piercing Rifles, both of which he carefully loaded, one with a lead bullet, the other with quicksilver. He stood then, one in each hand before he looked to Gerlinde once more.
“That smile as pretty as your aim?” He asked archly, raising a single brow, a slight grin at one corner of his lips.
“I sure hope not,” she told him, stowing the Horn of the Old Lords into the little bag on her hip. With her other hand she lightly tapped the pistol on her other hip. “Don't count on me hitting anything unless the projectile is homing or the target is point blank. Until a week ago I had never so much as touched a gun.”
He nodded without even a shred of judgement, and kept both guns, “Guess it'll be luck of the draw then,” he replied, tucking the rifle loaded with quicksilver under his right arm, pointed forward, and briefly practiced holding the other with both hands while the quicksilver rifle remained nestled in the pit of his arm. After perhaps thirty seconds, he was satisfied with his ability to adjust his aim, finally truly growing more used to the strange limbs that had been forced upon him. Finally, he walked to the gravestone beside Ophelia and shook his head, “I'll push through, for now. Time's ticking,” then he nodded at the gravestone and reached out once more.


Once more the four Hunters set out, going along the same route with the same plan. There was likely some tension among them as they emerged from the Witch's Abode and headed for the Forbidden Woods again, but even after having walked in the shade of the trees for several minutes they saw no trace of Nayra.
Even in the darkness, their sharp Hunter-senses picked up that the forest was far from empty. Beasts in all shapes and sizes lurked among the wilderness... but ironically nearly all the beasts out here were of the natural kind, not those warped by the Old Blood. Unlike the time before, when there had been plenty of people living in the Forbidden Woods despite them being expressly forbidden, the new Healing Church had actually made an effort to keep people out of there. Thus while the Hunters noticed a few oversized crows, feral wolves and tangled, wobbling knots of snakes, they did not happen upon anything especially dangerous... and more importantly, nothing bold enough to approach and attack four Hunters on a Night of the Hunt.
They ignored the beasts and made haste toward their objective, and about twenty minutes after arriving in the Witch's Abode for the second time, they arrived at the Hidden Shrine.

There, deep in the dense forest, was a clearing with several large white rocks strewn about. In the center of the clearing was an especially big flat slab of rock, arranged so that its surface was mostly horizontal, which was decorated in all manner of naturalistic symbols. Feathers, bones, snake molts, hides and all manner of trinkets were arranged around the slab, though the middle of it was conspicuously vacant. Ophelia would know that this was where offerings used to be left: basketfulls of eggs, ideally, though all manner of produce had been left over the decades.
This was the place... but of course, Ophelia had never heard of anyone actually seeing the supposed guardian deity of the forest. She did not know where to look for it nor how to summon it, just that it likely resided nearby... whatever “nearby” meant for a Great One.

Returning to her former abode for the second time was no less thought-provoking than the first, and a sense of melancholy seemed to hang about Ophelia as they continued on their journey as though she were mired by memories. By the time they'd gotten to where Nayra--or whatever she'd become, for she was evidently no longer human--had ambushed them the last time her wariness and apprehension had grown to the point that the melancholy was largely forgotten. As they continued along the path Ophelia watched it with new eyes, and used senses that she'd never possessed as a girl. How different it looked in this new light, so many years later... she navigated the hidden path with such ease and dexterity that she could never have even fathomed possessing before, to say nothing of how her studies of the arcane had progressed. When they arrived at the shrine, Ophelia felt a familiar anxious reverence welling up inside her, though her visit this time was much different compared to the last.
“Do you sense the Great Serpent nearby? Have you any idea how we might call its attention? Farren has a Snakescale Hourglass on his person--perhaps like can call to like?” she asked her blade while she glanced around the place languidly, looking for anything that might serve them in their quest.
“It is here,” the voice reported dutifully. “It is already watching you.”
Ophelia thanked her blade for its dutiful service with a silent prayer, taking a moment to breathe in and focus before she continued.
“O Great Serpent, we have come to entreat you on behalf of our world. A ritual is underway to beckon forth Obcasus, the Worldbreaker, who will surely reduce our world to nothing to slip back into slumber. It is our intention to stop this ritual, but... we are running out of time. Time I pray that you can grant us more of.” Ophelia spoke aloud, falling to her knees before the altar in a pose of supplication. She hoped that simple words would be enough for it to grace them with its presence, and that the price it asked was not too steep to pay.
At this point even Farren, who had previously been about as impudent in the face of authority figures as he could get away with – particularly with the Vileblood Queen – acted on the gravity of the situation. In a show of deference he knelt willingly, stowing one piercing rifle in the holster on his back and laying the other on the ground beside him, bowing his head.
There was a moment's pause before the voice spoke to Ophelia again: “No reaction... It likely does not understand human speech. It is still watching and listening, but it doesn't seem to understand what you are trying to tell it.”
Ophelia considered for a moment the things a Great One might understand if not their paltry language. They had a rune that afflicted one with the eyes of Obcasus--perhaps they could present it? Perhaps the hourglass could tell it what they needed? The thought of such vague communications put her mind ill at ease.
Can you perhaps translate for us? Or... I don't know. I fear I cannot fathom what such a powerful being might understand if not our words. I could show it the Oblivion rune, but how would it know that we are trying to stop such a thing rather than cause it? Ophelia replied, beckoning forth the little ones to retrieve the runebrand just in case.
“Even the runes are just human interpretations of the words of the Great Ones,” the voice explained. “The rune would be no more meaningful to a Great One than if you wrote with your own letters. And the sword cannot commune with Great Ones anymore than you can.” There was a thoughtful pause. “Great Ones are simultaneously complex beyond comprehension and very simple. Show it emotions. Communicate with it as though it was an animal. The Great Ones are sympathetic in spirit; if it senses that you need help, it will likely try to grant it.”
Ophelia thought on her blade's words for a moment, and did her best to follow its suggestion. She looked up into the canopy plaintively, and let herself feel all of the things that she had previously only been thinking about. She was not truly certain where thought transitioned into feeling, or what the difference between them was exactly, but she forced herself to think of Nayra's awful cosmic eyes. The vastness, the emptiness, the indifference of the cosmos as she was devoured and caressed and crushed by something so unfathomable that it surely thought of her no more than she thought of specks of dust as she moved through the world. She let the panic rise up in her chest and her breaths heave with weight, let the helplessness run rampant through her... but never at any point did she give up. She shed a few defiant tears as she clung to hope, staring up into the canopy as she tried her best to project her desperation and her desire to fight. If the Great Serpent could not offer them more time... everything would die. Though she'd said to Farren that the golden bastard was a last resort, her heart was not truly in that idea--if they were reduced to having to rely on him, it was as good as over. The mere thought of it echoed through her and replaced the feeling of helplessness with anger. She would not allow him to win for as long as she drew breath, having tried to use her love for her mentors against her. Against the whole world... a world she was part of and wanted desperately to save from a truly horrible fate.
“It understands emotions, not words. Show the Great Serpent how we feel, how desperately we need its help.” Ophelia added, to help give her companions some grounding.
Hearing Ophelia's instructions, for once, Gerlinde's smile faltered. Show how she feels? How desperately she needed its help? What a joke. That was the old her; the new her always smiled and laughed boldly even in the face of adversity, and she never needed anyone else's help. Old her had needed help, but never got any. Old her had showed emotion, and no one ever cared. Old her was weak and submissive, and she suffered for it. She would never be that girl again. Could never be her again.
But even so, the aid of this creature would be useful. Though she could not fully comply with Ophelia's request, she would do what she could. So Gerlinde got down on her hands and knees – a sight that made Torquil look as though his eyes might pop out of his head – and touched her forehead to the ground, prostrating herself to this supposed Great One.
Distracted though he was by Gerlinde's display, Torquil still made an effort to try to think of what to do. Show it how he felt? He was confused, mostly, and had never made any attempt to hide that fact. He spent a moment trying to think of a way to make himself cry like Ophelia was, but could not manage it. The most he could do was to think of all the horrible ways he had died this night, which filled his heart with fear and left him shuddering and trembling.
Then he got down on his knees and prostrated himself as well... wondering all the while if he was doing it right.

“It moves,” the voice told Ophelia, a hint of excitement in its tone. She would likely note that the whispers of the Holy Moonlight Sword were never as emotive as the voice of the Cosmic Sword of Truth had been. “It is close... on the slab!”
And sure enough, anyone who deemed to look at the stone slab serving as a naturalistic shrine might notice an old, weathered canine skull wiggled back and forth a little. A second later something emerged from one of its vacant eye-sockets: the tiny head of a bright blue snake. It was so incredibly small, only some twelve centimeters long or so, and appeared to be small even for a hatchling. It writhed its way out of the skull and dropped gracelessly to the stone... only to start growing larger, very, very quickly. In the space of no more than five seconds, what had previously been a young and puny creature had grown into a snake that looked like it was at least three meters long, though it coiled to still fit on the stone slab. It seemed that it had just gone from a minuscule hatchling to a large adult in the space of a couple of heartbeats.
The creature raised its head and looked around at them, and it would be quite apparent that it had only looked like a snake before increasing in size. Though its body was clad in bright blue scales, it also seemed to be at least partially made up by tangled tendrils of some kind, like the roots of some sort of unknown plant, and though the shape of its head was reminiscent of that of a snake, it had no mouth. And while one might initially assume that it had only the two eyes one would expect a snake to have, a second glance revealed that what might appear to just be part of the pattern in its scales were actually neatly arranged, evenly spaced eyes spread out across the length of its body, staring at them all.

The Great Serpent cocked its head, its snout turning from one to the next of the Hunters... and then they would all feel the air crackle, the entire area permeating with immense eldritch power. The creature's eyes glowed with an inner light of their own, and the entire clearing filled with swirling purplish light. Their ears filled with a loud noise that was like a mix between the rumble of an earthquake and the roar of a storm, until the entire world was consumed by the light.

And then, quite abruptly, the light vanished, and the Hunters found themselves somewhere else. They were still in a forest, but the trees did not look the same. There were several rocks nearby that looked somewhat similar to the ones they had just seen scattered in the clearing, but otherwise this seemed like an entirely different place.
There was no shrine and no Great Serpent here.

Ophelia could only watch slack-jawed as the tiny form of the Great Serpent crawled out of a skull, using her free right hand to daub the tears that had begun to slowly drip from her face, as she witnessed its transformation and sudden display of power. She could not help but notice the many eyes across its body and the pattern that connected them, finding it more beautiful than she even knew how to describe--almost as beautiful as her blessed blade... which was the second thing that she ensured was just the same as it was. After the earth's grumbling protestations and the skies' lament ceased she finally stood up, to see they were not where they just were and she paced for a quick moment to find a glimpse of the sky through the canopy.

When she saw no splotch on the moon--and even that the moon was in another position--she was elated... but as she stared up and continued to think about what had happened, she found herself pondering a set of rules that perhaps nobody had ever had to intuit before... or perhaps many had? If they had been taken back, were their other-selves still roaming the world? Did events that had transpired before (but were perhaps now yet to come) still have to happen the way that they had happened? The more she thought about it the dizzier she got, until she relented and decided to ask her blade.

"Mother Moon has moved! I... I think it worked! But... are... other versions of us still out there? Do we have to... avoid them? Must things still happen the way they did before? I... augh, my mind reels and writhes even thinking about it."

"Other versions?" The voice seemed to hesitate. "It does not sense other versions of the Cosmic Sword of Truth or its halves. The world also feels... off. More akin to the Interstice than the Waking World, but not as deep into it as the Old Labyrinth. It also seems that while there is no ritual to summon Obcasus anymore, there is a ritual to summon something else. But it feels strange. Everything feels strange."

"Perhaps more answers are forthcoming in the Dream? I suppose we will simply have to find out. Though... if not Obcasus, can you sense what it means to summon? Perhaps if we got closer to its source..." Ophelia asked, brushing herself off and taking in a few steadying breaths. She waited for the others to get their bearings too, trying to take everything in. Whatever had happened had happened--there was no going back, nor wishing it were something else: they would have to find their footing... and make their peace. Their goal of saving their home from a terrible fate was no different, and nor were they... were they?

"It's... strange," the voice mused, apparently very fixated on how strange things felt. "Faintly familiar, but different, like everything else. It could be... but no, that is impossible..." There was a palpable pause while the voice seemed to ascertain its feelings. "The ritual might be trying to summon Venara... but the Moonborn killed her."

"Then... yes, let us return to the Dream. The Moonborn should have some answers." Ophelia responded after pausing herself to process all that had just happened.

"We should try and return to the Dream... this is not the world we knew; faintly familiar, but... different, my blade says. Let's try and find a lantern." Ophelia suggested, her brow furrowed in concentration and mouth set into a grim line.

The sound, the sensation, a bright blinding light which followed the appearance and then growth of the strange so-called great 'serpent'. Of course, it had been no serpent, not in truth, but Farren had no real time to consider that for in moments their environs had shifted completely. Ophelia seemed much her usual self, confused, focused, intrigued. At least that much had not changed.

“Mmm...let's hope we have not traded on dire situation for another,” Farren said, his voice level, his expression filled with a certain jaded seriousness as he pushed to his feet, swung one Piercing Rifle over his shoulder and affixed it into the hold of the sling at his back. He kept the other in his left hand, his right he brought up briefly, wincing at the strange sensation, before shaking his head and turning the direction from which they'd come. “Do we try to take the path you lead us on...given that things seem...different, or do we wander until we find a lantern? If there are lanterns in this...place.”

He had no idea what was truly different, but the trees were certainly not arranged the same. The shrine was not as it had been, the Moon had certainly moved. Something just felt off. He glanced to Gerlinde and Torquil, wondering if they felt it too.

"Hmm... it feels as though we're in the Interstice, though... not as deep as the Labyrinth. Eileen confirmed to us they still had lanterns in their day, when they yet Dreamt, didn't she? The little ones seem to make sure they're placed where they might be needed... if whatever's being summoned is something that the Moonborn killed... you don't suppose this is the Night of the Blood Moon, do you? The path and shrine were always there even back then... Let's make our way to Hemwick proper, rather than wander the wood aimlessly?" Ophelia commented, taking frequent pauses to look around and gather her thoughts. She wondered, if this was some realm of Nightmare or some such, would there not be guidance sprites darting about? Moving towards some known landmark seemed to be the best choice to her mind--that and regularly checking in with the Cosmic Sword of Truth.

Farren merely nodded in response.

Gerlinde and Torquil spent their first little while just looking around, the former with wide-eyed fascination and the latter with utter confusion. Only when Farren and Ophelia started talking about going places just hoping to find a lantern did Gerlinde seemingly return to the proverbial present.

"Let's just ask the little ones," she suggested, crouching even while speaking the words. "They're the ones responsible for the lanterns in the first place."

Gerlinde sat there for several seconds, waiting. Five seconds. Ten seconds. By the time fifteen seconds had passed, she looked up with a huge smile and announced excitedly: "The little ones aren't responding!"

Farren was silent for several seconds, then he exhaled slowly in a long aggrieved sigh. “Joy,” the word emerged with an intensely sarcastic tone. Farren shook his head, “Let's... attempt to head the way we came... and hope it is similar enough that we don't end up lost in this godsforsaken forest.”

Ophelia blinked a few times incredulously, her mind racing more than before. No, not the Night of the Blood Moon... She'd pondered before if the ancient Pthumerians in the times of eld had the sort of protection they desired. She wondered... what if they were there?

"Is... this Yharnam at the time of the Pthumerian empire, perhaps?" she asked her blade, looking around rather nervously as the thought crossed her mind... but she would have been lying if she said the thought did not also thrill her tremendously.

"Pthumerian empire? The Great Serpent is a god of time, but actually traveling through time is not possible. Though... that could be why everything feels strange. Maybe this place is not fully real? Or maybe... you are not fully there?" There was a thoughtful pause. "Determining time is difficult, but it does bring to mind..." Another pause. "Yes. Of course. The first read was incomplete; the summoning is not of a Great One at all, but the Great Ones are responding. And not just Venara. Flora, Seraph, Amygdala, Kos, Oedon, Ego... This feeling is familiar. You were right, Champion: this is ancient Pthumeru on the eve of its fall. On their Night of the Blood Moon."

Ophelia's mind boggled at the possibilities before her: just what was time, really? She had no words to explain the transcendent thoughts going through her mind, beyond the constraints of language, abstract to the point of defying her intellect's approach. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, before cackling maniacally, throwing her whole body into the laugh as she claimed what bits of the flurry her mind could briefly touch. There was such potential here, such peril! To really know what it was like when the connections were not so separate--to understand whether this was the natural way of being or an artifice itself! Which way was real? Was it so simple a choice, and could they both be their own kind of real? The sheer possibilities were dizzying! She caught herself before she slipped any further after only a few seconds, catching her breath and wiping tears from her eyes as she looked to Gerlinde.

"This is ancient Pthumeru, at the night of their Blood Moon. All of the Great Ones are still alive, and more than that... they're here. Responding. Flora... Mother Moon! Think what we could learn; what relics must be here! What runes might touch our minds, what overflowing knowledge! Blast that we haven't access to the Runebrand! I am okay, for I bear the Truth, and my blade protects me... but you must be wary... ah, but where to go, where to go?" she spoke lowly, pausing every so often to giggle giddily, as though suddenly aware of what dangers might lurk nearby and suspicious that her outburst might have alerted them and unable to contain her--for the moment--jubilant excitement.

"Where to go, where to go? I wonder what is safe, what we might dare to dream... If we can die, for there might be no Dream to catch us? If we might be the reason Flora creates her Dream? Ah, but the false Paleblood!" she communed, trying to stop her thoughts from overtaking her.

"Night of their Blood Moon," Gerlinde repeated Ophelia's words, her smile slowly faltering. "A night that wiped out Pthumeru, the way our Night of the Blood Moon was supposed to have wiped out Yharnam. And no little ones." A faint shiver ran through her body.
"That sounds..." Torquil mumbled slowly, trying to make sense of Ophelia's words in combination with her excitement. "Bad?"
"The ritual is to the east," the voice told Ophelia. "Getting a sense of the landscape is not one of the powers of the Cosmic Sword of Truth, but the ritual is sending powerful ripples through the Nightmare. That is where the Great Ones are congregating."

"Oh, yes, terribly dangerous. A night of immense peril--true travel through time is not possible, my blade says, so we are either not really here, or this isn't quite real. Some... distant realm of Nightmare, perhaps? Who knows? But we are here for now, and we should learn what we can. There doesn't seem to be much of an alternative, does there? The ritual is to the east, and the Great Ones are congregating there. I fear it would be unwise for us to make ourselves known to them--but perhaps we must at least investigate? What we need is some warding against Obcasus' power--let's look for that and take everything else as it happens." Ophelia mused as the sense of danger rapidly began to overtake the giddy high of potential discovery. Whether they were immortal or not, it mattered little--they were here. They would have to do their best and find a way back or die trying.

Farren stared at Ophelia, expression grim, but otherwise neutral as she cackled. His eyes narrowed slightly, he shook his head, then looked away. For once...Gerlinde's response seemed more reasonable tom him. More...sane. He sighed and forced himself not to clench his fingers, the process would have ended up painful...and now he was stuck with his arms this way until they found a way to return to the Dream, at the very least. When Ophelia spoke again, Farren gave it up, “I suppose any plan is as good as the next,” but he didn't sound particularly pleased. Still, he also didn't even attempt to put up any further fight. Ultimately she was right. They were here. They didn't know precisely how to get back. They could not entreat the Messengers or the Moonborn and so the only course forward was through.

"What was it Queen Annalise told us... that the gilded trickster manipulated Divine Queen Yharnam, and awakened Cael? The Great Serpent asked nothing of us and took us here--wanted to show us this, based on what we wanted... the Great Serpent has always been benevolent... to me, and the Witches, at least. If we witness what happened before, perhaps it will give us insight into how to kill him... and there are other Great Ones here, ones that will help if we only ask. Gerlinde and I are Flora's children, and she is with us always: if she's here, and she senses that... bah, it's all too much! Let's head as near to the ritual as we dare and try to orient ourselves with some landmark that might be passingly familiar? I haven't the faintest sense of direction in this place, so... do we head towards the ritual or away from it? Whatever we mean to find, we've until Mother Moon reaches her zenith." Ophelia rambled, trying to recall all of their knowledge about the distant past in order to find a path. There was so much to consider, so much they could never know, and if she thought about it any longer they would miss their opportunity. Sometimes any course of action was better than vacillating until events came to them, surely?

Farren simply nodded. He was well out of his depth. Thus he kept silent and though he was not always sure of his companion's hold on reason... Farren knew he would have to defer to her in this. Yet... despite his intentions, she could not seem to make a decision...

"My first instinct would be to go the opposite direction of a ritual like that," Gerlinde giggled nervously, uncharacteristically meek compared to how thoroughly fearless she had been so far. "But if this is the same place we were before, just a different time... all we'll find west is water."

"I could climb a tree," Torquil suggested hesitantly. "Maybe I can see something from higher up?"

"That's... actually quite a good idea, love. Please, would you?" Ophelia replied to Torquil, nodding quickly to herself. "If everyone is gathering at the ritual, perhaps that will leave some places unguarded? None of us speak Pthumerian, though... I think my blade can translate; it did during the fight with Arrayah."

"Could you translate any Pthumerian we might encounter, perhaps?" she asked.

"Translation is simple," the voice said, now into all of their minds rather than just Ophelia's. "Anything you hear can be translated for you, and anything you say can be translated to them... though perhaps it would be wise not to project an eldritch voice into the minds of the Pthumerians?"

"If there were a society of people to whom such a thing were ordinary, I'd think it would be the Pthumerians, no? But... you have a point, certainly, let's avoid that unless it seems sensible... I don't know if we can expect to find any friendly faces--though... I did partake of Queen Annalise's vileblood, and she referred to me as... what was it, her distant kin? The connection might be enough to sway at least someone willing to talk to us... what do you see, Torquil?"

"Uh..." came Torquil's voice from the canopy he had ascended into. A few seconds later he dropped back down, the (now much larger) man seemingly quite accustomed to climbing trees. He pointed to what to their understanding would be north. "There's a hill with a view just a short ways over there. Then you can see for yourselves."

"Yes, let's..." Ophelia concurred, heading in the direction Torquil had pointed immediately.

Going through the landscape, there might be just the faintest hint of similarity from just watching the landscape itself – a slope here they recognized from the Forbidden Woods, a rock that looked vaguely familiar, a stream that was in approximately the same place as it had been where they came from – but these details only served to enhance how stark a contrast there was between what they had come to realize were two versions of the same place. Over the presumably vast period of time they had been displaced by the Great Serpent, practically everything in the two places had changed. Even things that people tended to view as permanent and use as landmarks for navigation, like trees, rocks or even just the shape of the landscape, had observably changed. It was a perhaps shocking reminder to some of them that even the world itself, if viewed over a long enough span of time, was naturally shifting and changing. Rocks and sediment moves and erodes, water carves new paths through the land, trees – even long-lived ones – are not eternal, but eventually expire to be replaced with new plants. Even things as foundational as the quality of the soil changed, and with enough of a shift the entire ecosystem could morph in ways that would render previously native life unsustainable, and new migratory life flourish instead.
This was still a forest, but it was effectively an entirely different forest. The trees were not just another generation of the same sorts of trees, but entirely different families. The undergrowth beneath the canopy were not just the same selection of plants redistributed, but a different configuration of bushes and ferns entirely. And the hill – when they reached it after just a couple of minutes of walking – was much taller than it had been in the Forbidden Woods, and much more sparsely wooded. Not only did climbing it get them higher than most of the trees around the hill, but the hill itself had very little to obstruct their view.

The Hunters climbed the hill, looked around... and discovered just how much this was not the Yharnam they knew.
Further north, where they all knew – but Ophelia would be particularly familiar with – Hemwick usually was, with Yahar'gul even further north, was now a huge, sprawling city the kind of which none of them had ever seen before. It stretched all the way to the water's edge – which was further west than it had been last they saw it – and all the way in front them from left to right, continuing off eastward and northward almost as far as they could see. Modern Yharnam was dwarfed by this absurd behemoth of a metropolis.
Not only did the city cover massive amounts of land, but even looking at individual constituents of the city there was a huge and obvious difference. Very little was where they expected them to be, with the only immediately recognizable landmarks being the mountains and the distant island that normally housed Castle Cainhurst... but even the castle, which was quite possibly the oldest part of modern Yharnam, did not feature in what they now saw. There was no bridge to the island, and rather than a castle it just featured what appeared to be a small fishing village whose numbers of scattered boats paled in comparison to the fleet of boats and ships occupying a harbor that was not supposed to be there.
Every house and building in the city was of a completely different make and design than what they were familiar with, and even the most humble residence was larger than most homes in modern Yharnam, and made entirely from stone, and looked to have far more ornamentation than they were used to. Far to the north, about where modern Yahar'gul would have been, they could make out an incredible cathedral that would put the Grand Cathedral of the Healing Church to shame. It lacked the weird bridges and platforms that allowed for the existence of the modern Upper Cathedral Ward, but was much larger and built from white stone, with such enormous and colorful mosaic windows that they could make them out even from kilometers away in moonlight. And to the east, toward what appeared to be the heart of the city, was a palace of unspeakable majesty. Its spires towered above everything else, seemingly competing with even the surrounding mountains to see which would be tallest, adorned with countless fluttering banners and surrounded by beautiful gardens and orchards. Its walls were built from a mix of black, white and red stone, with the distribution of the colors being so deliberate and the design of each and every detail, from the amazing, sweeping arches to the simplest doors and windows, displayed an ancient beauty that had long been lost to this land.

“There,” the voice told them, once again speaking in all of their heads. “That palace; that is where the ritual is taking place.”

But it was not just that the buildings of the city were different. Despite where they were and what they knew of ancient Pthumeru... despite the prominent full moon above them, which marked this clearly as a Night of the Hunt... when they looked past the outer wall of the city, they saw life. Where the streets of modern Yharnam were deserted on a night like this, this city was brimming with activity. Under the blue light of the eternal fires they had seen in the Old Labyrinth, the streets of this city were full of what appeared to be people, many of whom manned stalls or worked their crafts out in the open, but most were just idling around. It looked like a festival of some kind, which coupled with the distinct lack of pyres, screaming and howling, made for a bizarre contrast to the Yharnam they knew.
Just several hundred meters to their northeast, they would see a gate in the outer wall that separated the city from the forest. It was manned, but its doors were open. And there was not a single censer in sight.

It was an odd experience to travel through a place you ostensibly knew quite well--enough, at least, to feel comfortable--and at once have it be completely fresh and unfamiliar. Even down to the types of trees, the rocks that had not yet been weathered and moved by countless ages, the soil and the roots... if not for the abject horror of what they knew was to come, it would have been serenely beautiful in a way words would struggle to convey. And then they got to the hill and climbed it, and Ophelia gasped audibly as the sight unfolded before her and she began to take it in.

The scale of it all was incredibly vast, hundreds of times moreso than modern Yharnam, and all of it so much grander and richer than the scraps that remained. She'd been awed by seeing Cathedral Ward in person, but to compare that to this was to do it a horrible injustice--and a profound sense of loss came over Ophelia unlike anything she'd experienced before. The relative grandeur of what remained to their time was but a fragment of a fragment of a fragment, and to understand Castle Cainhurst--already opulent and majestic beyond belief--as the reclaimed scraps of what was undoubtedly the greatest empire this part of the world had ever known...

"He destroyed all of this... all of it, and left us with the scraps... and now he's trying to take even that from us..." she seethed, her rage and hatred bubbling up for a moment as the only response her mind could conjure in the face of history's weight, the knowledge of which pressed down upon her like a weight she feared might never go away. The injustice of it burned in her blood, her face contorting into a scowl, as she gripped the hilt of the Cosmic Sword of Truth so fiercely that her knuckles went white. It was not as though they lacked in reasons to hate their gilded foe, but seeing the scope of what he had destroyed for the first time... what had been a very personal vendetta began to bloom into something richer and deeper--like the light of a single candle reflecting through an endless hall of mirrors, magnified and intensified to the point of scorching.

"I don't know how we'll be received, but... we have no choice but to enter and find our way. I suppose the best place to start is that gate over there--we'll have to see if I'm still shrouded by the Deception effect, mm? I doubt it, somehow, but... shall we?" Ophelia sighed, pointing her blade in the direction of the gate. If nobody had anything else to add of import after a moment or two she would set off in that direction.

_Farren

felt it, even in the less familiar environs of the forest, felt the disparity that time alone had created. Felt the difference, the reversion from when they had lived to this strange surreal world to which the Great Serpent had taken them. He’d hunted in these woods before…snuck out of the city and around the standard defenses. He’d had to on meager months when work was sparse, coin nearly non-existent in his pockets. When his belly had ached for food and work had simply not been present to sustain him. Those had been lean, terrible times, but…as the hazy memories hit him–perhaps brought closer by the nature of where they tread–Farren felt…oddly nostalgic for them. So much had changed. His world was so much more complicated now.

‘Oh to return to simpler times…’ he thought…and then they crested the hill and his mind stopped as surely as his feet. Bolted to the spot, back ramrod straight, Farren’s eyes grew wide with shocked surprise, then slow building awe as he took in the reality of things. For though he had been told that they’d been swept back to another time, pressed somehow by the Will of the Great Serpent to Ancient Pthumeru, there was simply nothing that could have prepared him–or anything, by his reckoning–for the majesty of the city.

It was not Yharnam. Not just that it was different from the city he had come to know, not just that time had changed it. This was a place wrought from wholly different minds. Every structure–down to the materials, the glimmer of glass, the quiet startling gleam of polished white stone–had been hewn with a care and attentive detail that spoke of loving craft. By comparison, Yharnam, hells…even the Capital in which he’d been born and raised were mere mockeries of civilization.

Yet, as a man who had grown up with the ever-looming reality that was the harrowing Night of the Hunt…what he found even more profound were the lack of censers, the lack of fear, and the intense–even joyous–activity in the streets. While they were too far for him to properly see details, even with his senses enhanced by the potency of the Old Blood–tampered with though his was–he could still tell by the way the crowds moved and those sounds that did carry over the distance.

Farren’s hand loosened around the Piercing Rifle he’d been holding, the other in the harness at his back, and it was that simple thing that brought him back to himself as Ophelia spoke. The bizarre sensation of his mutated fingers relaxing, then Ophelia’s voice helping him focus for once.

“I…somehow doubt I’ll be welcome,” Farren murmured beneath his breath. Why…why did he feel so oddly…dejected? His mind supplied not a clear answer, nor the words of others from his past, but a view of Yharnam as he’d arrived years ago…and then a crushing sense of being displaced and unwanted when he’d walked along its twisting labyrinthine streets.

Farren raised his hand, looking upon the black chitin over its surface which had replaced his flesh. He flexed, feeling the alterations even to how it moved. He sighed and when Ophelia led–so long as the others had no reason to delay–he followed, quiet and surprisingly withdrawn.

While Ophelia and Farren took in the breathtaking sight of ancient Pthumeru Yharnam, Torquil and Gerlinde shared a moment of relative lack of appreciation for the view. For Torquil, this change meant next to nothing because even though what little he knew of his old life suggested that he had lived in this forest his entire life, he remembered next to nothing of it, and what little he did remember brought him nothing but agony. Part of him actually figured it was good riddance to remove himself further from what had brought him such pain, and separation through time was possibly even better than separation across distance. This new old city looked fancy, but besides that it meant nothing to him. It was a big city – though he did not fully comprehend how big, having no recognition as to whether it was bigger or smaller than modern Yharnam – and that was about the extent of his thoughts.
Gerlinde had significantly greater insight into what they were looking at, understood what it was and how it differed from modern Yharnam. She understood... but did not particularly care. She was much too distracted to feel much of anything at the sight of ancient Yharnam, and anyone looking her way might be struck by the fact that she – the woman who had been laughing as the fluids in her eyes boiled, who had always seemed fearless and relentless – now seemed... worried. The smile that had never left her face had faded to a faint compulsive curve at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes that had always been wide and eager were now alert and almost fearful. Her thoughts kept returning to how she had knelt to summon the Messengers, only for their absence to send shockwaves through her that threatened to shatter the spirit of steel she had cultivated for herself. Because if the little ones of the Dream did not come, what did that mean? Was the entirety of this city blanketed by the same kind of protection that held them off in the Cathedral Ward? Or... was it that this time did not have little ones of the Dream? Because it had no Dream? And if there was no Dream...
Would they reawaken if they died?

Even so the four Hunters descended from the hill, delving beneath the canopy again as they headed for the nearby city gate. After walking about a hundred meters the forest came to an abrupt stop, and they suddenly found themselves walking on flat, open ground as they approached the gate. As they got closer, they would get a better look at the guards they had seen from afar.
On the ground, standing on either side of the open gateway, were two figures in scarlet cloaks and silver-plated armor. Getting closer, the perspective on them became clearer and they would realize that both men were very tall, with slender builds and long limbs. They were both men with the characteristics they had already come to associate with Pthumerians from the Old Labyrinth: black eyes and pale skin... but unlike the ones from the Old Labyrinth, these Pthumerians were young and almost unspeakably beautiful. Each of these two random men, assigned to the illustrious duty of standing next to an open gate, was easily as handsome as Dietrich.
They were also both armed; the one on the left side of the gate was leaning on a lethal-looking glaive, whereas the other carried a falchion in his right hand and some manner of pistol in his left... and a mace on his right hip? Though with all of them being familiar with the concept of trick weapons, and realizing that this practice had its origin in ancient Pthumeru, they would surely notice the similarities in design between their weaponry. It would not be difficult to conclude that the falchion could combine with the mace and become a glaive.

Much more subtle from afar, but more obvious as they got closer and it became silhouetted against the moon- and starlit sky, they might also notice a figure sitting cross-legged on top of the gatehouse. The conditions made it challenging to pick out details about this figure, but they would be able to see a shadow lying in the figure's lap that looked a lot like an unusually long rifle.

“What is this?” the voice translated as the guard on the left spoke in Pthumerian. He seemed puzzled by their approach, but did not brandish his weapon. “Foreigners? In the Godswood? How did they get there?” Though the words were alien to them, his tone was outraged.
“They smell like Hunters,” the other remarked, sounding much less interested. His black gaze swept over them, lingering on Farren. “One of them is even an experiment. Must be from one of the other cities.”
“Whatever.” The first guard sighed, then straightened his head and raised his voice to address them: “Strangers! Do you speak Pthumerian? If not, just say something so we know which kind of translator we need.”

Ophelia took in the sights as they approached with equal parts awe and sadness, continuing to marvel at what once was and simultaneously mourn that it was already long gone. The sight of the guards gave her a similar reaction to when she'd first seen Gerlinde--an acknowledgement of their beauty--but little more than that.

She wondered if she should speak aloud, if their modern dialect was something they could translate, or if use of the Cosmic Sword of Truth's powers was better--she had even idly wondered if they might have reacted to it, for anyone from their time would surely see such exquisite craftsmanship and know it to be special beyond compare... but for this time, perhaps it was not so.

"We understand, and have a means of translation of our own." she replied, curious to see if they would understand their modern language. Better to save the parlour tricks for a situation that was less likely to become hostile.

Both of the Pthumerian guards jolted backwards and their heads whipped to stare at Ophelia as soon as she spoke, and both of them grasped their weapons warily.

"Where did she come from?!" the glaive-wielder asked.

"She wasn't there a second ago!" the falchion-wielder declared nervously.

"Ah, yes... I am shrouded by Nightmare until I make myself known... my apologies for startling you." she spoke aloud, as well as asking the Cosmic Sword of Truth to translate into their minds.

"As I said, we possess a means of translation." she continued, looking up at the strange and beautiful guards with her cosmic-tinted eyes. A small smile played about her face as she awaited the response, standing up to her full height to feel less small--she was used to being taller than most folks and having to look down, after all, though it appeared that it would not be a problem she had in this time.

"Good to know that Deception works on them... I wouldn't have thought it would, but we must be thankful for small mercies, I suppose, eh?" she commented wordlessly into her companions' minds, careful to ensure that her blade did not translate for guards before she did.

"You mentioned that you could project a voice into their minds as you do ours. Could you, please, seeing as they've already witnessed the effects of Deception? We're rather beyond pretence, I think..."

The two guards looked at each other, clearly still rattled and rather unnerved by the voice speaking into their minds, but still not appearing as alarmed to the point of hostility.

"What should we do?" the voice translated the falchion-wielder.

"The Godswood entrance should still be guarded, even tonight," the other claimed. "How would a bunch of foreigners get into Isz, let alone claim something like that?" He gestured to indicate the Cosmic Sword of Truth.

"From where do you hail?" the first one asked, looking at Ophelia but addressing all of them. "Who granted you the blood of Hunters but not the blessing?"

"Where... that is a question I am happy to answer, though I think it will make us sound quite mad. We hail from here, Yharnam, though where is not the interesting question... when is much more interesting: we hail from the distant future, brought here by the auspices of a Great One." Ophelia replied, brow furrowing in thought, and seeing no reason to attempt to lie to them. What chance had they of that succeeding, when they knew so little of this time? It seemed like slim odds to her either way, but perhaps the presence of the Cosmic Sword of Truth could vouch for her somewhat.

At this, both of the guards hung their heads and let out groans of annoyance. "Not again," the voice translated for the glaive-wielder. He sounded exasperated. "I don't understand why Tempus does this."

"It is not for us to question the gods," the other declared, though he sounded annoyed as well. Then he turned back to Ophelia. "You are not the first ones to be conjured from some other reality by the Great Serpent, though it has been years since last time it happened." Then his eyes narrowed. "What are your intentions here, Hunter Shrouded in Nightmare?"

Ophelia let out a sigh of relief at the readiness with which they accepted her explanation before replying.

"In our time the world is threatened by Obcasus, the Worldbreaker, a foolish ritual underway to awaken it from its slumber. It will surely destroy everything if we do not stop it in order to return to its slumber, and we entreated the Great Serpent for more time, or a way to be protected from its awful power. Perhaps the reason it sent us here is this blessing you mentioned, one that does not seem to exist in our time?" Ophelia replied, her expression darkening somewhat at the prospect.

There was a brief pause as the glaive-wielder glanced at the falchion-wielder, who shrugged and shook his head. "You might need to talk to an Elder," the voice translated for the latter. "We've never heard of 'Obcasus', and everyone needs approval from an Elder to get the blessing. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow."

As the conversation progressed, they might notice the sound of someone quickly descending a metal ladder on the other side of the gate.

"... Ah." Ophelia stated with a sudden frown. "When others displaced by Tempus came, did they share with you their knowledge of events that happened in this time?" Ophelia asked, shifting her weight uncomfortably between her two feet for a moment. She picked up on the sound of the metal clinking, and kept an eye out as best as she could to see what it was. She'd been so preoccupied that she hadn't noticed anyone above--though she supposed it stood to reason that a guard would be atop such a structure.

Again the falchion-wielder shrugged. "Depends on which reality they came from, but it seems most of them does not have a Pthumeru. Which I suppose is why you can be from Yharnam and not have the blessing..." He sighed. "Why?"

"Tonight is the night Pthumeru falls. The first Night of the Blood Moon..." Ophelia replied grimly, turning her gaze to the moon for a moment.

"I fear we do not have until tomorrow." she added, turning her gaze back to the falchion-wielding guard.

"Right," the voice translated for the glaive-wielder, the two guards sharing a meaningful glance. "The world is going to end tonight, of course. You just wait here, and an Elder will be here soon to personally administer the blessing, no questions asked."

The falchion-wielder chuckled to himself, but at this point the one on the ladder sounded as though they reached the bottom, and a third figure emerged from beyond the gateway. Though this figure was also wearing silver-plated armor like the guards, his was far more elaborate and well-crafted than theirs, adorned with patterns of inlaid gold. Quite interestingly, however, he also wore a very distinctive black cloak covered in black feathers, and wore a silver beaked mask under his hood. Through the eyeholes in the mask peeked bright azure eyes, which - along with how much shorter than the guards he was, being closer to Ophelia's height - suggested that this man was not what they knew as Pthumerian.

On his back was an unusually long, elegant and exquisitely beautiful rifle, its barrel decorated with beautiful swirling patterns of silver and gold, and on his hip he carried a flanged mace that was very different in design to the one that seemed to be part of the guards' glaives. Farren in particular would recognize that these weapons, though obviously decorative, were also designed very well and would in all likelihood be highly lethal.

"What is going on here?" the voice translated this new arrival's words, though it entirely failed to convey how velvety smooth the actual speaker's voice was.

"Lord Riccas," the voice translated for both guards as they first straightened and then bowed to the masked man. "These Hunters claim to have been sent here by Tempus, want to receive the Blessing of Yharnam and say that Pthumeru is going to fall tonight."

"Is that so?" Riccas turned to them and looked directly at Ophelia. "So what will happen tonight, exactly?"

Ophelia looked at the new arrival with keen interest, immediately noting his eyes as being very similar to Farren's. Feverish thoughts threatened to bubble up within her mind, but she forced herself to push them down and focus on providing what information she knew about Pthumeru's Night of the Blood Moon.

"The ritual being performed in the palace awakens Cael, the Lord of Ascension, and Pthumeru is dragged into the Nightmare. It becomes the Labyrinth in our time, buried beneath our version of Yharnam. In our time the royal line continues, though not from here--from the island with the harbour. A castle is erected there, called Castle Cainhurst, and in our time one called Queen Annalise presides over it. Much of what I know was provided by her." Ophelia spoke, trying to recall the details as accurately as she could.

I do not know if we should be speaking of this... but I suppose it is too late for that now. Is there any other salient information I should provide? she communed with the Cosmic Sword of Truth, worried that in her haste she might have forgotten something. She wished she could rat out the Golden Bastard, but the fact that one of the guards had shown extreme reverence for all of the gods and Annalise's telling of events painted him as well-regarded by Pthumeru, she did not expect maligning him to be received well... and nor did she want his name spoken aloud, for fear of drawing his attention.

Riccas slowly nodded his head as Ophelia spoke. "That sounds bad," the voice translated, though his tone sounded unworried. "Your world sounds like it had a terrible history that I certainly hope ours won't share. Do tell me, though: when did you get here?"

In her mind, Ophelia would also her the voice responding to her query: "Little is known about the exact events leading to the fall of Pthumeru. There was a Night of the Blood Moon, the land was overrrun by the scourge of beasts, and then the empire fell. That is all."

"Not very long ago at all. Perhaps ten minutes or so at a guess?" Ophelia answered, feeling rather uncertain about the time given their recent encounter with the Great Serpent. She supposed it made sense that he did not seem worried--whether he did not believe her, or believed in their ability to circumvent whatever tragedy might unfold, or something else entirely she could not fathom... she did not think she would take it seriously were their positions reversed.

Again the man in the mask nodded his head. He looked to the falchion-wielding guard and asked, according to the voice: "Did you tell them the date?"

"No, Lord Riccas," the guard replied without hesitation.

Riccas turned back to Ophelia. "So how do you know that the supposed fall of Pthumeru is specifically tonight?"

"The Cosmic Sword of Truth." Ophelia noted, indicating her blade with a small nod of her head.

"It is an implement of transcendent power and knowledge. Translating for us is among the least of its powers." Ophelia added, though she was aware that this perhaps did not sound like a convincing argument. She supposed it depended on whether they were familiar with it at all--it hadn't sensed another copy of itself existing in this time, after all.

Riccas turned his azure gaze to the sword. "Ah, another talking weapon. That explains some things. Very well, sword: how do you know that Pthumeru is going to fall tonight?"

There was a moment of silence. Then Riccas spoke again, and the voice translated: "I see. Well, I can guarantee that there are no rituals in the palace tonight; they have been forbidden, and security there is tighter than it has ever been. You wouldn't know it, having come from another world, but the Divine Queen has gone into labor. This is not the end of the empire, it is the eve of the birth of its new prince."

Ophelia pondered Riccas' words, wondering if there was a possibility he might be mistaken. There was so much they could not comprehend about the nature of time--and the fact that Riccas seemed to be in a similar position to them... it did not make her doubt the Cosmic Sword of Truth, exactly, but consider that it was indeed possible that the evidence it had relied upon might have been misinterpreted.

"Truthfully, I would be thrilled for our suppositions to be wrong. This place is magnificent beyond measure, and its fall in our era one of the greatest tragedies of all time. If it's as simple as waiting until tomorrow, that would be ideal and I'm sure we'd all be happy to wait. Though... it strikes me that you seem not to be of this era either, Lord Riccas. Were you brought back by the Great Serpent too, perhaps?" Ophelia mused, heartened a little by the idea that there might be hope for this place... but she would prepare herself for events to unfold as she still worried they might in either case.

"Not from this era?" Riccas looked down at himself. "What do you mean?"

"Ah, just that you are more similar in stature to us than the guards here--though I suppose it could be simply that you are from another place, or that our race still existed in this time? There is so much we don't know about this time--I fear I am at a terrible disadvantage even with my blade's knowledge."

A small laugh escaped Riccas. "Ah, I understand. You mean that I do not have the blessing. I am only here on a visit, you see. My sister and I came all the way from the city of Ihyll to attend the birth of the Divine Prince."

"Ah, perhaps it simply that I leapt to conclusions and have misunderstood this blessing, then? Might you be able to enlighten us?" Ophelia replied with a soft, breathy chuckle.

"A moment ago she was asking for them to receive the blessing," the voice translated one guard whispering to the other, "and now she doesn't even know what it is?"

"Your world must really be different." Riccas seemed mildly surprised and either did not notice the guards whispering or deigned to ignore them. "Very well, 'the blessing' refers to receiving the blood of the Divine Queen. It is what makes Yharnam natives like these two -" He gestured to the guards. "- resemble the queen and look different from other humans. Tall, pale, black eyes. It grants them long lives and great strength."

"Oh, yes... on nights like this, there would be no people out and about in the streets except we Hunters. Our world is beset terribly by the scourge of beasts. So it is the blessing that makes them what we recognise as Pthumerians... how interesting. Some still remain in our time, though they are few and far between in the Waking World. Most are relegated to the Interstice or the bits of the labyrinth that have fallen truly into the realms of Nightmare. Hm. What we seek is a warding against the power of a dangerous Great One--does the blessing offer any such protection? The gods seem very present in this time... in ours they are quite distant. Most are sympathetic in spirit, and benevolent, but some... some are very much not." Ophelia replied, trying to provide some semblance of context for what was truly an entirely different world and set of circumstances.

Riccas cocked his head. "I have never heard of a god that was not sympathetic to humans. Are you sure you just fail to understand their reasoning?" He shook his head. "Ah, but the scourge of beasts exists in this time as well; that is why the world has need for Hunters such as my sister and I. But the Divine Queen keeps the beasts from this city; as long as it has her protection these streets are safe, even on a Night of the Hunt."

Farren looked on, quiet, simply listening. What a strange thing to be in another time, speaking with a people that by-and-large had long gone extinct. He shifted uneasily at the mention of the blessing and its aesthetic impacts. Though...he supposed if they received such, they could simply alter their appearances at the chalice once more...though not for awhile, as things were truly dire back in their time. He wondered...he wondered if time kept ticking on while they explored this place disjointed from their own....

"Ordinarily I would say that you are probably right: Tempus certainly was, and we owe a great deal to Flora, whose Paleblood runs in my veins... but Obcasus, sometimes called the Worldbreaker, sometimes the Peacebringer, is not. Perhaps my blade might be able to impart more accurate information than I: most of what we know is sourced from it, and from our dealings with the one heading the ritual to awaken Obcasus." Ophelia began, before communing with her blade again.

Might you be able to show Lord Riccas what we've seen, or tell him what we know about Obcasus?

For a moment Riccas simply stared into space as if lost in thought, then he focused back on Ophelia. "It sounds as though Obcasus, too, is as sympathetic as any god. You mention the name 'Peacebringer', and I suspect that fits its logic, too: that bringing oblivion is to bring peace. All gods are sympathetic, but we need to be wary of how they might deem to 'help' according to their perspectives."

"True enough, and a lesson worth learning." Ophelia replied thoughtfully, at least able to understand the point he was making.

"Nevertheless, oblivion comes for our world... oblivion in the name of sympathy is still oblivion. If such a ritual were underway here, what would you do? The context is different, I know, but... perhaps your answer might reveal a path yet unseen to us?"

"We would end the ritual," the voice translated as Riccas shrugged. "Though according to the voice that has been speaking in my head since meeting you, you are hindered by someone with an eldritch power to kill if you meet their gaze. That is the obstacle you need to overcome, yes?"

"Yes, though that is not the only obstacle: she appears to also be quite difficult to kill. One of my companions here almost succeeded, but she was able to somehow cheat death." Ophelia nodded, turning to look at Gerlinde quickly.

"Yes, she would just liquify and disappear when I defeated her," Gerlinde offered.

"That kind of vitality can be hard to deal with," the voice translated as Riccas nodded his head. "The royal family is practically immortal, too, and insurgent royals have needed to be sealed because they could not be killed... though naturally none have ever been able to stand against the Divine Queen. Finding a means to seal this immortal rather than killing her would likely be best. As for the danger..." He paused for a moment. "If it takes effect when your eyes meet, could you not just blindfold yourselves?"

"Fighting her and her followers while blindfolded seems... tremendously difficult. She possesses tremendous arcane power, and a great wealth of arcane relics. She is even able to somehow suppress the powers of my blade from a distance--she is unfathomably dangerous, and we have very limited time to try and stop her. I fear that without some protection against her power and a means of preventing her from cheating death we face insurmountable odds. Particularly the latter; without that, I see no way we can stop her before she completes her ritual." Ophelia added, rhythmically tapping her free hand against her outer thigh as she thought.

Riccas shrugged. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how to kill an immortal. If you had the time and the funds, the Elders might be able to make you a Mask of Sealing, which renders anyone wearing it impotent, but..." He shook his head.

"A Mask of Sealing, you say? Does it perchance look like..." Ophelia pondered, before giving Lord Riccas a description of the mask that they knew Queen Annalise to be wearing in their time. It certainly sounded the same--which meant that if they could unseal it, perhaps they could use it against Nayra?

"Their appearance can vary, but it sounds like it could be one."

"We know of such a mask imprisoning a member of the Divine Queen's line in our time. If it were removed, do you know if it could perhaps then be reapplied to another?"

"It can," the voice translated Riccas as he nodded his head affirmatively. "As long as it is removed correctly with the right key, of course."

Ophelia nodded her head too, bringing her hand up to her chin to cradle it in a moment of thought. "We've been looking for the key already, though I'm afraid we don't know what they look like. I inspected the mask and reckon it might be some sort of thin, cylindrical metal rod? Are there perhaps universal keys, or does each mask have its own unique key? It seems like the latter..."

"I have never handled one myself, nor has anyone I know, but as far as I know each mask has its own unique key. What they look like I wouldn't know, though."

"Well, in either case, I thank you all profusely for all the help that you've offered us so far. At least a solution for that problem is in sight... I suspect we will have to entreat another of the gods for their protection against our foe. When others sent here by Tempus came, do you know if they ever found a way back to their own time, per chance? Though I am not in any particular hurry to leave, exactly, knowing whether or not we can would likely give us all some peace of mind."

Riccas - who had previously told them that he was not native to Yharnam - shrugged and turned to look at the guards. The falchion-wielder offered his insight: "Not as far as I know. From what I heard some of them went looking for Tempus and were never seen again... but most just stayed here."

"Well... if we might be permitted entry to the city, I would quite like to be proven wrong about tonight. Perhaps if any Elders are available we might be able to ask a few questions? I wouldn't want to impose, naturally, but... such an opportunity will likely never arise again, mm?" Ophelia asked, turning to her companions as she did so to gather their thoughts. Meanwhile, she asked another question of her blade:

Do you sense Tempus anywhere, perhaps? If you can locate them, perhaps that might be how we secure passage back to our own time? Or... do you have any other ideas about how we might return, when we wish to?

"All are welcome in Yharnam tonight," the falchion-wielding guard declared according to the voice's translation. "By royal decree, the city is open to all who wish to celebrate the birth of the Divine Prince. All the Elders are probably at the palace, though, and no one is allowed to enter there now, so... you will have to wait until morning."

Once it was not occupied with having to translate, the voice then spoke for itself: "Locating Great Ones is challenging under the best of circumstances, and this place makes it harder still, especially with so many Great Ones hovering about. The Great Serpent is here, but anything beyond that fact is unknown. As for a means to return... this is quite irregular. The specific rules that govern this shift in place and time are unknown."

"Do you have any recommendations on where we might go, or what we might do in the city as part of the celebration? I doubt our knowledge of the city in our time will come in very useful." Ophelia asked, more to the guards than to Riccas but happy to hear any answers that might be given.

"It is a huge celebration with attendance from all over Pthumeru and beyond," the voice translated as Riccas cut back in. "There are thousands of people in the streets enjoying all manner of festivities, as well as all manner of peddlers and craftsmen showing off their goods. If you go looking for it, I'd wager you can find practically anything here tonight. But as for specific recommendations, there is a massive crowd gathered for a feast in the palace gardens, waiting to to be the first ones to see the newborn Divine Prince. If that doesn't strike your fancy, there's also a special all-night service at the Queen's Cathedral. The Vicar is at the palace tonight, but the sub-vicar is there and is known to be a good speaker, too."

"I think visiting the Cathedral seems quite lovely, myself. Thank you again, Lord Riccas, and to you two guards. I hope we'll see each other again." Ophelia nodded with a quick smile before she turned to her companions to see what they wanted to do. To Farren in particular she spoke wordlessly into his mind:

"He has such striking eyes, dear, just like yours. Perhaps there's some connection there, some opportunity to learn about the past?"

And then she moved to step forward into the city proper. She'd wait to see who wanted to venture with her before going anywhere, of course, and wanted to give Farren the opportunity to ask some questions if he liked.

While Farren had been keeping pace with the conversation, the core of his focus had long since shifted down to the trick weapons that the two guards carried. His azure eyes glowed with a gently intensity as he tried to take in every detail of what--to them--would be ancient Pthumerian artifacts...in prestine condition.

When Riccas joined the conversation, Farren only briefly glanced his way, the look more a perfunctory threat assessment than anything else. In fact, only with Ophelia's prompting did Farren raise his azure eyes and truly see the man. He blinked. It was like a mirror image of his own eyes

“Huh...Riccas, was it?” Farren said, stepping slightly past Ophelia, “Your eyes,” he said, a note of confusion in his tone.

“They're like mine,” Farren clarified helpfully. He'd never seen anyone else with eyes quite like his own. Once, he'd thought they were just a particularly potent blue, but since he'd become a Hunter.... They glowed at times. He'd see their azure light on his own skin--his nose mostly--caught on occasional reflections. Other times he'd just...feel something different, usually intense focus or emotion. This though, to see the same phenomena in someone else...and to have it pointed out to him explicitly. “A pure, luminescent azure. Why? How...?”

Was this man an ancestor of his, perhaps? Or was it something else entirely. Perhaps there were answers to questions he cared to resolve here in Ancient Pthumeru....

"Hmm..." Riccas murmured while leaning toward Farren to take a closer look at his eyes; a vocalization that the voice apparently deigned not worth translating. "Yes, you do have the eyes. You must be a distant relative of mine, I suppose? Those are the eyes inherited by the ones with the blood of Queen Ihyll. Just as the Divine Queen has her blessing, Queen Ihyll had her own gift. Some small vestige of it must survive in you."

“A vestige...” Farren murmured, brow creased in thought, or perhaps concern. He looked back at Riccas, suddenly very grateful that Ophelia's weapon could translate for them, “...what manner of blessing? I've not noticed anything distinct.”

"Not a blessing, a gift," the voice translated Riccas' correction. "Queen Ihyll was gifted, but she was not divine like Queen Yharnam is. But it was Queen Ihyll's gift that allowed our ancestors to explore Isz and retrieve the Old Blood. It makes us more resistant to eldritch influences and the arcane."

Ophelia nodded thoughtfully at Riccas' explanation, immediately brought back to their fight with Arrayah and the piercing blue of some of her eyes. She hadn't really connected it to Farren at the time, but now... perhaps that would explain why she was so tremendously resistant to the arcane. She kept the observation to herself, but shot Farren a quick smile as they uncovered some slight piece of his puzzle.

Farren blinked, his brows rising in surprise. The faint memories he had of the time before suddenly made more sense. “Thank you, that does...clarify things,” he replied, giving the man a nod of respect. He glanced at Ophelia briefly, then back to the Hunters, “While I'm...askin', there a Hunter's Workshop nearby?” Farren eyed their weapons with obvious interest.

"There is, though you'd have more luck outside Yharnam," Riccas explained according to the voice. "As I said there aren't any beasts here, usually, so there is little need for Hunters aside from exploring Isz. But if you head down this street and turn left, you'll eventually find a small Hunter's Workshop."

Ophelia felt a strand of thought tangle with others and form a knot in her mind, and knew that it would bother her if she did not tug at it while she had the chance.

"You said 'another' talking sword. You've come across their like before, then?"

Riccas turned to Ophelia. "Oh yes, my sister has one that she got from Isz. Less fancy and more... sinister, I'd say, than yours, but it speaks to her as well."

Ophelia smiled a rather wan smile at his confirmation. Of course it would have been her.

"Arrayah, if I'm not mistaken?"

Even past his obscuring mask they would likely be able to see Riccas' eyes widening. "You've heard of her?"

Ophelia nodded. "Not just heard of... we met, after a fashion. She survived into our time, though... not as you know her. As a terrible beast, and the bearer of the Profane Abyssal Sword. Her sword is but one half, you see, of Cosmic Truth. I was the chosen bearer of its other half, the Holy Moonlight Sword. Together they make this." She said, nodding down towards her blade.

Riccas stared at Ophelia blankly. "Okay," was all the voice imparted him saying.

“Another time...another world,” Farren supplied, “...perhaps...it will not be so in yours.” He doubted it, but these people still had hope...and leaning into that ideal might make them more palatable to such folk.

Ophelia nodded at Farren's words. She found herself at something of a loss for words after Riccas' flat reply. She could not imagine what she would say if the positions were reversed--and suddenly felt rather flush with embarrassment at the situation.

"I think we should perhaps explore the city, for now, yes? Thank you again, Lord Riccas, and I hope we get to speak again." Ophelia said, somewhat uneasily, and gave him and the two guards a small curtsey before moving to head into the city proper. Perhaps space was the best thing for the both of them.

Farren saw wisdom in moving on as well, and followed, “Perhaps the Workshop first?” It was close, it might hold tools or weapons not found in their time. Even a small Pthumerian Hunter's Workshop could be of indispensible value.

"It's as good a place as any. I don't know if we'll be able to take anything back with us, physically... but knowledge seems like it should remain with us, so let us learn what we can!" Ophelia replied wordlessly, nodding as well for the sake of those who might be watching.

"Can you sense the Profane Abyssal Sword anywhere?" Ophelia asked her blade as they began to move away, figuring that if Riccas met up with Arrayah there was every chance she might seek them out. As best as she knew from the runes Ophelia had the advantage, being shrouded by Deception and protected from eldritch influences, but at least one of her companions still bore the Mask rune. A visit from Arrayah might prove interesting, though such a thing would have to be on their terms if it were to happen.

"The previous report still stands: there are no signs of the Profane Abyssal Blade anywhere. Though considering that the Cosmic Sword of Truth has already been made whole, it is possible that there is simply no reason for it to sense the presence of its halves anymore. It is the Profane Abyssal Blade, after all."

"Hm. If you sense Arrayah, please let me know..." Ophelia replied, nodding to herself thoughtfully. It would be an interesting night, blood moon or not--though the ripples emanating through the Nightmare did not give her confidence in Riccas' dismissal. They needed to be fast, and to find the Great Serpent again--the presence of the Dream, or rather lack thereof, continued to sit in her chest like a knot. She did not feel as anxious as Gerlinde looked--at least compared to how she normally did--but all of them who realised the predicament must surely be feeling the same. At least she had the protection of Deception, and could in turn protect her friends.

Riccas raised his rifle in a casual salute as the four Hunters departed from the gate and entered Yharnam proper, finally setting foot in the spiritual predecessor to the Yharnam they knew. Their boots trod a cobbled street bathed in bluish, arcane light rather than the orange glow of pyres to burn the dead; the wind carried hints of the scent of delicious and exotic foods from all over the land rather than the stench of blood and soot; and in the distance they could pick out music and laughter rather than howling and screaming. Though the full moon was high in the sky and the Night of the Hunt well underway, this city had no fear for the scourge of beasts, and now they knew why. The Divine Queen, Queen Yharnam whose name had been granted to the city, had the power to ward the corruption.
Gerlinde in particular wondered just how immense the Pthumerian queen must have been to accomplish such a feat, and she wondered even more how such a powerful protector of the realm had failed to the point of allowing the ushering in of a Blood Moon. She had been a Paleblood Hunter longer than any of the others, and she had likely spent more time in the Nightmare and the Interstice than any other Hunterm, except Skinner, perhaps. But even without the voice of an eldritch artifact in her head she could feel the Nightmare hanging over this city. The tension of many Great Ones watching with bated breath, waiting for... something.

Traversing the city streets and following the directions Riccas had given them, everything was remarkably peaceful, yet some of the Hunters doubtlessly remained rather conscious of the passage of time. They did not truly know for certain whether the Great Serpent had truly sent them to a place where time flowed independently from their own world, or if the clock was still ticking toward the completion of Naira's ritual in Yahar'gul. About ten minutes had been spent in the forest, and another fifteen minutes talking to Riccas and the guards. Now they walked another five minutes to get to the Hunter Workshop, meaning that they had already spent half an hour in ancient Pthumeru.
“The ritual is not progressing,” the voice reported as they walked, sounding slightly bewildered. “It appears to be in stasis. Perhaps the earlier estimate was wrong. It feels as though the city dangles by a hair over the abyss, but something is holding back its impending doom.”
And indeed, the city remained at the height of joyous celebration of the so-called Divine Prince. On a night like this, the Hunter Workshop – little more than a shack among larger buildings, manned by a single armor-clad Pthumerian attendant – was all but abandoned.

But there were definitely weapons, and Pthumerian weapons at that. Long, slender curved swords that looked as elegant as they looked deadly; long, feeble-looking canes made of white wood; graceful rapiers; swords, maces and shields that were quite obviously too large for a human-sized wielder; there were pistols, rifles and cannons, some of which were bigger than they were.
Quite notably, though, none of the weapons they saw there looked anything like the exquisite rifle and mace Riccas had had. There was, however, a rack of trick-glaives like the ones the guards had been using.

As they walked, Ophelia's mind defaulted to its usual frantic wonderings--with the power of Deception there was nobody but her allies to even sense her presence, and nobody to disturb her. She was curious about the time limit imposed upon them, of course, and whether it existed at all--but finding Tempus might take more time than the ritual in Yahar'gul had left, even if they did nothing else... so she let herself be unconcerned about it. She figured that worrying about it simply would not help them, nor grant her any measure of control over what happened, and there was still so much to be gained from the insights of this ancient and storied land. Her thoughts drifted towards the Divine Queen, and the blessing she might provide: whether or not she would want to accept it, and become like those she thought of as Pthumerians... but more than that, what might Queen Annalise be able to do with a vial of the Divine Queen's blood if it could be taken back? What if Queen Yharnam was still out there, somewhere in the Labyrinth, in their time? What was going on with the ritual?

They knew that the Gilded Trickster had caused their Night of the Blood Moon, ultimately, and though Ophelia was quite unsure that their actions in this dreamlike past might ripple out into the future, she wondered if that did not behoove them to try to alter it and preserve what they could? Or, indeed, if it meant that being armed with the knowledge that Queen Annalise's Mask of Sealing could be used to ensure Nayra's attempt to destroy their world failed was enough. Some manner of protection against the unspeakable eldritch power at her beck and call would hardly go amiss, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that most of the protection of this time was that offered by the Divine Queen--and that every avenue of insight and truth that they might glean from this place lead invariably back to her.

As they stopped at the workshop, though, Ophelia gave it a quick look over and found nothing to interest her in particular. If Farren found something that excited him--and she thought it quite good odds they would--she would be happy to let him drink his curiosity's fill. If they would not give him one of the rather lethal-looking falchion-glaive-things, she could simply take it for him. Who, after all, could stop her? With his eyes being what they were, he would not look out of place--and on this joyous night filled with all the sounds and smells and sights of life, who would care?

It must be Divine Queen Yharnam, mustn't it? She seems to be the lynchpin of all of this... perhaps she has misgivings, and the Golden Bastard is trying to ply her with honeyed words? I suspect the only way we will know is to show up at the palace... I'm sure getting to her would not be trivial, even with Deception, but of all of us I seem the most likely to accomplish it. I think I will go there next... Perhaps we might use the fact the ritual is yet to be completed to our advantage? Do you think we might be able to entreat Flora, or another Great One, if you only call out to them and ask? she communed, idly staring off into the distance towards the Palace while Farren did what he was going to do.