The pale sky drifted down in delicate flakes. Wind whipped in from the waterfront and buffeted the snow along chaotic twisting currents, but within the walls of the castle the air grew more still and it fell in long, lazy slopes. The hunter watched as a single speck skidded along the masonry before sticking to the stone. More floated by on similar paths; soon the castle would be draped in soft white.
The hunter leaned their elbows against the edge of the balcony and peered down into the courtyard. It would all look lovely, they thought, and the bracing cold was more tolerable when it had something to show for it. A good snow was also all the more reason to stay warm inside. (The hunt would draw them back into the night, they knew. They'd face worse than wolves again. But if they could eke out any more moments of peace here…)
The hunter sighed, a bit giddy with fulfilled longing. Even if they were to venture back out into the deathly fray, the castle would be here waiting for them. A home! The idea was astounding. The Dream was a shelter, but it was only welcoming as a workshop. The Doll could offer the hunter her own strange and quiet comfort, but the place was only meant to be a pit stop, a space to sharpen and reload and then set back out again. If the place was anyone's home, it was Gehrman's, and if it was not his home, it was his prison. The hunter had heard his desperation, wept out in the truth of sleep.
They had told Annalise of the Doll during their library talks. The hunter had grown so accustomed to the humming and praying automaton that they had to remind themself that her presence was odd even in the wriggling and slimy context of the night. If Annalise had been surprised by her existence, she had not shown it. Outside of rare outbursts of intensity— outbursts in the sense that her voice grew dark, or her hand clenched, or the hunter felt the pressure of her gaze as if it was boring its way through their skull— she sat in perfectly plain composure as she listened.
They had told her of the other doll, too— the one sitting discarded in the true workshop at the foot of the Church's tower. The hunter's suspicion that the Dream was a finely crafted replica of something else had been confirmed as they trod along familiar and too-real paths. Though the location still intrigued them, as they spoke there had been something in the stiff set of the Queen's shoulders that made them wonder if she found the topic tiresome.
Besides, the only other things they had discovered in the abandoned place had been the upturned bones of some unnamed apprentice hunter marked by a weathered stone, a decorative silver comb glinting behind the glass doors of a cabinet, and—
Shame churned in their stomach. The hunter knew there was little use in keeping secrets. Their fear had kept them from telling Annalise of their encounter with the spider in the lake and she had pulled the truth out from them anyway.
But they hadn't lied to her, they thought. They didn't even think that they were keeping a secret. They hardly knew how to put what they found to words. It had just been a delicate thing, a brittle organic curve that crumbled against their palm, and then it was no more than shining dust strewn over books left forgotten on the altar, the particles floating as a listless nebula in the moonlit air, swept about by inhale and exhale.
It had just been entrails, the hunter justified. It could have been the dessicated corpse of some bird or rat or anything else that had chosen that place to die. It was something so dead and long-gone there was nothing left to rot, just like the fragmented bones in the disturbed grave at the workshop's threshold.
(And once they had left the workshop, the weighted whispers at the back of their head had sunk back into silence, just as the chorus of any other discovered insight eventually relented. The hunter was content to let the mysteries lay inside them unaddressed. There were always more pressing matters at hand.)
They didn't want to waste Annalise's time with a memory as slippery as a bubble and twice as delicate. The little dead thing upon the altar was left unmentioned. Still, the worry wormed its way through them: had they been afraid to mention it to her or not? The longer they remained in the castle, the murkier their view of their own intuition became.
At the banquet, they decided. They would tell her at the banquet. If the hunter was to be hers, there would be no secrets between them, no matter how inconsequential.
Invigorated, they clapped their hands against the stone edge of the walkway as they peered out at the distant water. There was still about an hour or so before the dinner was to be held, but the hunter felt confident in their decision.
And the crow… would the knight be returning from the mainland in time for the banquet? The hunter hoped so. The crow was often cryptic in demeanor but the hunter wondered if their new allegiance to the castle would be able to spur some reaction. A nod of recognition, a hand upon the shoulder, an embrace—
Color rose in their cheeks as they remembered the queen's proposition. They leaned their elbows against the snow-dusted stone, the resulting chill welcome for once. Their thoughts drifted warmly as they set their chin atop their palm.
It would all be lovely…
There was a cold touch on the back of their neck— the hunter writhed and swung their weight on their heel, their hand clutching at the lack of a cleaver at their side. Their back scraped against the stone of the balcony wall and the hunter's lip curled, every muscle instinctively prepared for the worst before proper thought caught up with them.
There was a tall and unexpected figure, but nothing was attacking them. Detail frantically flooded their sight and now they had to make sense of it. Long, musty robes. A hint of gold. Wrinkled hands, with one still outstretched to where it had tapped the hunter on the neck. The rainbow gleam of gems heavy upon the strange figure's brow.
The jester, they remembered as they tried to settle their pounding heart. Or, at least, that was what Annalise had called him. They had wanted to ask her more about that, they realized with a wince. But the conversation had flowed so easily along alternative paths…
The hunter squinted at the strange man. Before, he had traveled so loudly, the scrape-shuffle-scrape of his staff announcing his presence from afar. The same tall staff was still held at his side, but he had crept up on the hunter with ease. Now he stood before them, his hand still outstretched, his stiff and wild hair wavering in the breeze, and his sunken eyes peered out at the hunter from somewhere deep within his emaciated skull.
Silence pooled ever heavier between them. The hunter shot a glance at the knobbly upper end of the staff. When swung with force, it would do terrible things to a skull. Blood or rust or both marred its surface. At the topmost portion, a blunt flat edge ran flush against the length, looking like something had been snapped off at the base.
Despite his fearsome appearance, the man made no further move, and his hand was still outstretched and frozen, as if moving a single finger would spook the hunter into bolting.
The hunter forced their posture to ease and they let their hands rest at their sides. They took a deep breath and offered a polite smile. "Is there something I can help you with, sir?"
"Alive," the strange man said with a voice like gravel, and the hunter's smile broke to a frown as his finger jabbed at their collarbone. "You are alive. And I had thought my madness had followed me off the stage."
"I beg your pardon?" the hunter said, and as his long fingernail pushed at their skin once more they swatted his hand away.
"The duel," he said, and slowly his hand returned to clutching at his staff. "Your blood was spilled at the duel."
"…A play duel," the hunter said carefully. "Not a real fight to the death, just a play one. They certainly made it a little more dramatic than I would have liked in order to entertain the nobles, but—"
They cried out and their hand flew up to hold their forehead. They glowered at the strange man and pressed their palm to where the staff had struck them.
"Speak not to me of play," he spat as he settled his weight against the staff once more. "How I tire of these endless roles and repetitions! It is always the same. But you," he said, and his unnatural height loomed as he leaned over the hunter. "You were allowed to live."
"What are you—" The hunter flinched and went quiet as the staff tilted ominously.
"What foul joy does she find in doing such a thing?" the strange man wondered, and his withered brow furrowed as he thought. "I thought she had been getting bored of late. Some fit of capriciousness must have taken her." His permanent grimace widened. "One needn't torture a calf afore making the veal unless the true hunger is for the cruelty."
The hunter made the decision to remain silent. Whatever the man was raving on about, interrupting him seemed to hold the risk of another strike from the staff.
"Perhaps it is to draw yet another defeat out of me," he continued, and his nail scratched against the jut of his chin. "Am I meant to try and strike you down before her? Throw you to the water and keep her from her spoils?"
"Excuse me," the hunter said as tension knit through their shoulders.
"Well I won't," he exclaimed. "The siren can hoard all the offal she pleases, but she will have nothing to show for it. Losing the war doesn't mean I didn't win a few battles." The staff swung up and the foot of it smacked against the hunter's stomach. "She'll have you slaughtered when she tires of the ruse. Face the truth of your fate with pride. There is no return to our Gods and our country left to us, but know that your death being in vain will mean that it will not be in vain."
"What," the hunter stammered, "the hell are you saying?"
"What I tell everyone," he replied. "My primer on martyrdom."
The hunter scowled. "You're— you're telling me that Annalise intends to kill me."
"This is indeed so."
"You're a very good jester," the hunter said as they looked around him for an escape route. "That's a very good joke."
"You are the bell-wearing lamb-fool if you do not heed my words." He thumped the staff against their stomach again and the hunter grimaced. "I'll oversee your final rites for you. The Gods would smile upon the decorum. You will not be given the sanctity of a grave, however. Your remains will be thrown to the foul pits and the damned will make a feast of your corpse." He sighed and patted a hand against his abdomen. "I remember the prayers as I should, but there are no anointing oils left. It has been many years. You understand." His hand paused as he brushed a finger over a grimy medallion. "What year is it?"
The hunter opened their mouth but then paused. In truth, they had no idea. There was no telling how old the dates scrawled on the Byrgenwerth notebooks had been, and any other awareness of the time had been lost to the amnesia.
"I almost miss the early years," he grumbled. "She made me give the rites to the hunters back then, made me inform them of their fate. Then she tired of it, and I could only watch from afar." He sighed. "So many cruel pageants fashioned out of futility. She certainly wasn't getting what she wanted anymore, and so every misery was to be visited upon me to remind me of my own final failure." He tapped at his temple, just beneath the lower golden rim of the crown. "That's why I act mad. She now considers it humiliation enough. And so I am left to do as I please, though nothing pleases me. Yet I strive, as I must, to be the last bastion of faith in this forsaken place."
The hunter stared. He had failed? Failed to do what? And the regular ritual of the play duel, the necessary indulgence of the nobles, the other hunters of the past bled before the jeering crowd—
But that was symbolic, they thought with a scowl, and the point was reassuring the nobles that the crow could overcome any blood-addled hunter that may ever return home and turn their blades against the castle.
"With the final prayer laid upon you, your spirit will find its way back into the vast sea of oblivion," the strange man continued. "Partake in the rite, lest you end tethered to this place like all the rest, with the agony of death echoed in you always."
His thumb pushed against their brow, following some reflexive ritual action, and the hunter ducked down and sidestepped out of his reach.
"No one is trying to kill me," the hunter insisted. "I mean no offense, but you seem very confused, sir."
His grim face twisted further in bafflement. "What has the world come to?" he lamented. "What shadowed ages have slipped past to let such vital knowledge moulder unknown? What excuse do you have for your ignorance? To behave so blithely— to have not even the faintest suspicion of your hosts? Were you born yesterday?"
The hunter winced. "In a way."
The man's gray teeth ground together and he leaned against the staff. "You know not of the Executioners? The radiant golden brotherhood favored by the Gods, the stalwart defenders of purity, of good—"
"Yes!" the hunter exclaimed. "Sort of. Well, I know one. A little bit."
"One!" He grimaced. "You know but one! No wonder you have been led so easily astray. Were you not schooled in the precepts as a child? Did you not attend a single relevant liturgy?"
The hunter frowned. "No?" When the man's expression twisted darkly, they winced. "Maybe?"
"Then you truly do not know that you sleep within the den of devils?" the man asked, and his hand clutched at the hunter's shoulders; whether to steady them or himself, they could not tell. "Do you think this chopping-block to be a safe place to rest your head?"
"I am safe here!" the hunter snapped, and as anger roiled up inside them they struggled to smooth it back down. "They don't kill people at the duels," they added, their voice a bit more level. "You must not have seen what happens after. It's— it's backstage, they offered me healing blood, and even in the arena they flood the place so that—"
His gnarled fingers dug against them. "Blind fool! I know their habits. You were spared."
"And they'd have nothing to gain from killing me," the hunter said, forging onward. "They want me here! The crow— I think, that is— the crow intends to take me as apprentice," they said, their tone a touch self-conscious with the admittance. "And… and Annalise is, is— she is nothing but kind to me—"
The man's head tilted back as if confronting foul-smelling refuse. "You speak their monarch's name in bliss…"
"The queen, then," the hunter said, flustered. "The queen has been nothing but kind to me."
"Your lack of decorum," he hissed, "is damning, but not in the way you seem to think." His grip on both the hunter and the tall staff tightened. "Speak true. You intend to become one of them?"
The hunter set their mouth in a firm line. Given his demeanor, it was clear that the correct answer was no. "You know of the hunt, surely?" they asked, deflecting.
"The hunt matters little here when the adversary— "
"Exactly! The hunt matters little here. Yharnam is ravaged. Everyone is dead, mad, or hiding. The Healing Church— the vicar herself became a beast. This castle seems to me to be the last stronghold of sanity."
"It is better to die at the claws of a beast with honor intact than sacrifice what you are for the favor of a place so cursed that the Gods no longer spare it even a glance," the man said in one long, strained exhale. "I should strike you down before you sully yourself."
The hunter, acutely aware of their lack of defenses, clenched their fists at their sides. "Fine, then," they said flatly. "Go on."
This startled him. The man's black eyes gleamed as he peered down at the hunter.
"You cannot truly kill me," they stated. "And neither can they. And if the need arises, I can leave this castle whenever I please."
"There is no escape from this place," the man said lowly. "The witch has wormed out some small ways to the mainland, but she will close them to you."
"If she blocks off the bridge it won't be a bother," the hunter replied. "I'm of the Dream. Are you familiar? The place may be old enough to be of your time."
His already tense expression twisted further with confusion.
"It is a safe haven for hunters," they explained. "During these long nights, at least. The place sustains me somehow, dissolves me when I should instead die, and I reawaken at a lantern as if no harm had been done." The man still seemed lost, so they ventured further. "The few remaining in the city seem to know of it. They all say I smell of the moon."
The strange man was adrift in some interior struggle. His hand flexed against the hunter's shoulder. "The moon…"
"There's an old man there," the hunter added. "Gehrman. Are you familiar?"
The man went very still, but slowly his grip tightened as if it were a vise. Then, all of him tensed. It was like seeing the cogs of an ancient machine slot creakily back into motion, and once the movement had been spurred it the momentum was impossible to stop. Anger rose thunderously in the man's wizened face. His eyes shone with a focused terror. The hunter bit back a cry as he wrenched their shoulder downward and shoved them to the ground.
"Leave this place," he exclaimed. "You must leave."
The blunt end of the staff crashed against the stone. The hunter had twisted away from its falling arc just in time. They stared up at him, eyes wide. "You're mad!"
"Flee!" The staff struck the floor again and caught the hunter's sleeve. "Flee or be felled!" The hunter struggled away from the staff, tearing the fabric of their shirt along the elbow. The man raved on as they tried to extricate themself. "It is more foul than I could have fathomed! She is as a thoughtless child, a brat, a beast. Is it not enough that this place is already anathema to the divine? Still she draws more curses down upon herself! Ah! Commit a great enough sin and the Gods will again turn their gaze towards what they have abandoned. This is known. But I will not allow it!"
"Annalise has committed no crime!" the hunter cried. "She has offered me a home!"
"Blind!" he shouted. "This place has swaddled you in illusion and you beg me to let it suffocate you! Free yourself, or I will do it for you."
"What are you—"
"Your Dream," he said, his voice growing hoarse. "Whatever tether holds you, follow it home, lest she sever it and bring damnation down upon us all." His mouth went slack; a dreadfully hopeless look fell across his face. "You have not seen the truth of this place, but you have eaten their food, drank of their wine— tell me you did not indulge in their blood."
The last adjoining threads of the hunter's sleeve snapped and they slipped out from where the staff had trapped them. The hunter did not deign to answer him as they squirmed away from the staff's next impact.
"Be still! You must look upon the sky unfettered by falsehood. Does the moonlight still shine upon you, or have you cast yourself to the abyss?" He struggled to aim the staff at them as his other hand grasped at the golden crown. "She cannot court that which seeks you. She cannot! You know not of the sacrifices made to prevent such a thing—"
The man bent forward, the motion laborious due to his great height, and he tried to fit the crown atop the hunter's head. Freed from the onslaught of strikes from the staff, the hunter rolled to the side, knocking their knees against stone as they rose to a crouch. They lurched forward in an unbalanced lunge, stumbling before they found their stride. Snow struck their face as they ran. The martyr followed faster than the hunter had hoped, his long legs striding the walkway with ease.
"Fool! Damned fool!" The blunt mass of the staff swept towards their head. The hunter ducked and the end cracked against the marble of one of the innumerable statues. "If you cannot leave, then face your end bravely! Your death will be a mercy. I will perform the rites, and I will grant your body to the water before she can know. It is a better end than countless others have faced."
The hunter sensed a second swing and they dodged reflexively, but something was strange about the man's slower movement. A brightness grew. The shorn metal edge at the top of the staff cast the stone in a lurid red light and the air split with the scent of iron.
The martyr lifted the staff up high. "Heed my warning, lest the deaths of those afore you be robbed of meaning!"
Crimson bubbled up in the corners of their vision and horror struck the hunter through. The faces of the dead rose up, caked in blood. Their jaws stretched wide and a low, howling wind burst them open from within, shearing the skulls apart and letting clotted vapor spill out into the air. The atmosphere was bombarded with a smog of rage, the vengeance of the dead given form. The hunter gasped at the pain that burrowed into them wherever the ghastly smoke sank against their skin.
The assault relented; the roiling of the spirits dissipated quickly in the cold wind. But new faces still rose and burst in the hunter's periphery— the martyr was lagging behind them as he called upon the dead with his broken blade.
Even if the hunter squeezed their eyes shut and ran blindly, the faces crowded them, the killing rage palpable in each roaring outburst. The dead faces of their past had been pale and bloated with infection, but those had held only a helpless pain. These felt instead as if a war was erupting forth from them. Hatred and pain was all they could discern.
The raging spirits fulminated in the acrid storms that crashed against the hunter until they felt as if they could bear it no longer. They staggered forward and their foot slipped over a stone edge. Their stomach plummeted as they hoped desperately that they had not sent themself careening off the high wall.
The hunter fell, but only to their knees; the path had merely dropped an increment. A few wisps of the summoned dead drifted around them, clinging to their clothes. Soon enough they were pulled away with the wind and only the snow surrounded them.
Still trapped in the grip of fear, the hunter crawled forward. Their sight was no longer crowded and they saw the flat length of the bridge that led from the high keep back over to the exterior wall. Ahead of them was the tall door, the same they had passed through before descending to the courtyard and finding the broken lantern with Elaine.
They hazarded a look behind them. The man stood seething at the high keep's side of the bridge. The broken blade atop the staff still gleamed crimson but for some reason only he in his madness was privy to he did not step forward. His mouth moved— perhaps he was shouting some final warning, or demanding that the hunter return, but the hunter turned away. They hurried towards the far door, strained to force it open, and then they slipped inside.
The hunter slumped against the wood and clutched their face in their hands. A single sob racked through them before they stifled it. They forced their breathing to return to a steady rhythm. At the fringes of their thoughts, they considered the murky memory of the hanging rune.
With a sigh, they let it fade. They couldn't just leave on a panicked whim without the ability to return. The only lantern they had encountered had been broken. Unless they somehow crossed paths with the crow again within the city, they had no route back to the castle.
To disappear without explanation after having made such promises to Annalise— they shook their head. It was impossible. The martyr was mad. That was all there was to it.
They staggered a step forward, their limbs still aching deep, and they sought out the banquet hall.
(AN: prior chapter cut from FFNet for NSFW content, head over to AO3 if you want Annalise funtimes. Also she offered the hunter a threesome with the crow, so that's the joke at the beginning here.
annd now the proper authors note
-and so the slight au aspect of the fic is further revealed; here, the executioners succeeded in scouring most of the castle and taking away an umbilical cord from annalise (see the day one patch cut content regarding the umbilical cord found in the workshop having originated from the vilebloods.) they also broke the bridge and mostly cut the place off from the mainland. however, logarius's efforts to stay behind and keep annalise in social quarantine failed, seeing as she can send carriages over to the mainland anyway with some effort, and here she is still in frequent contact with the crow and perhaps a few other vileblood knights instead of them all roaming lost in the chalices/on the mainland.
-annalise really likes to rub it in logarius's face that him trapping himself on the island didn't accomplish much. his scythe is broken and he's stuck watching as the dreg hunt goes on, albeit at a much slower pace than before.
-however, logarius counts getting the 'accursed mask' onto annalise's noggin and preventing the child of blood being born to be a big W so he has that, at least.
-logarius doesn't use theethous because i'm amused by the idea of annalise being older than him due to vileblood immortality shenanigans. so it's that or he's adjusted to modern ways of speaking over time.
-however, this story places the executioners storming the castle before the formation of the hunter's dream, as it was stealing that cord and handing it off to Laurence that allowed him to call down the Moon Presence, so grandpa loggy is still pretty old.
-this is also why logarius didn't know what the dream was- he was stuck on the island while laurence and gehrman threw that party. however, as a mostly-pthumerian with a depth of knowledge about rituals, he pretty much understands exactly what has happened once the hunter explains it further.
-so he knows that annalise has mildly kidnapped the hunter in the hopes of drawing the moon presence to the castle. he considers that to be bad enough. if he knew the hunter had snorted the same umbilical cord that he sacrificed everything in order to get it off the island he would absolutely blow a gasket
as always, thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy! this isn't necess spoilers bc i've tried to work in the mechanics of what's happening into prior chapters and it will be taking the forefront very soon, but since so much of it is dependent on Twisting The Lore I thought a quick bullet point breakdown would be nice. i'd also be glad to clarify things as i can. as always, your comments etc are always appreciated. have a good one!)
