When I dusted myself off outside of Annalise's throne room, I found the Little Ones waiting for me, diligently maintaining a lantern. The Queen of Cainhurst had implied that there was someone else with me ("Get thee gone, both of you!") and, upon reflection, I realized that Valtr had looked over my shoulder after I introduced myself. Fruitlessly, I jerked my head around in the vain hope to catch sight of my hitchhiker. After a few moments of feeling like a fool, I took the lantern back to the Dream.

Between the two, it seemed that Doll was slightly freer to talk about whatever held them there. She obviously couldn't simply state what their woes were, but it was apparent that she had more free rein: perhaps her captor thought her less capable of effecting meaningful change. She was a doll, after all, which implied limited agency – and implication and subtext often held real power in this dreaming world. In case my questioning stirred up something nasty (and remembering the panic I'd felt upon approaching that thing in the Hunters' Workshop), I opted to check in with Gehrman first.

Laurence had been his friend, so I was cagey about my tentative alliance with Annalise, but I explained that I'd managed to come to an accord with her. "She said she recognized me as a cousin. What's that about?"

"Well, unless you're actually a blood relation, which…" He took a moment to eye me up and down. "You're tall, but not that tall. Unlikely. Then, as–" His breath hitched for only a moment. "As Maria told me, it was tradition for royalty to address each other as 'cousin'. Are you familiar with the concept of bloodlines? The idea is that certain families have earned the right to rule, and as such they must on some level share some common blood. Some say this is divine blood, others that it is simply the best blood of man. Regardless, the overall concept is the same." He pursed his lips in the tic I still suspected he'd learned from Maria. "You, however, don't behave as one with a royal upbringing. Neither did Annette mention anything, and I'd expect she would have mentioned it at some point – hers or her husband's. So I've no idea what Annalise was on about. However, I'd not dismiss it as the ramblings of a madwoman. The Queen of Cainhurst is powerful and is, or at least was, quite wise. She may see something that I do not. Her Pthumerian blood might give her differing insight."

I leaned on the nearby desk. "Can you tell me more about Pthumeria?"

Gehrman shrugged. "I was hired for my talents as a fighter and craftsman, lass. I never paid much attention to history. I learned some due to simple proximity, but I'm no scholar." He let out a sigh and leaned back in his wheelchair, steepling his fingers. "Pthumeria – Pthumeru – was an ancient civilization. Precursor to Yharnam at the very least, and possibly the precursor to most nations. There were other nations estimated to have been contemporaries, such as Loran, but I know even less about them. Regardless, the Pthumerians were said to be towering demigods that lived for multiple mortal lifetimes, mastered the elements, and ruled the heavens. The godlike queen that presided over the nation at its peak is actually Yharnam's namesake. Queen Yharnam was also the last queen of Pthumeru. Something happened, some cataclysm. The Byrgenwerth scholars were always divided on if the Pthumerians were a subterranean people or if somehow their cities were swallowed by the earth."

He closed his eyes and took a breath. "Regardless, there was a mass die-off and the Pthumerians went extinct within several normal generations. I know not if Byrgenwerth was founded above the Tomb of the Gods, or if it was happy coincidence that led to the Tomb's discovery," his voice was oddly wry and bitter on 'happy coincidence'. "But Byrgenwerth plundered the wonders therein. I was hired to face the few deathless threats that still dwelt therein, as well as my prowess at crafts for the purpose of disarming traps. Maria was a woman of all talents, one of Byrgenwerth's most intense scholars…"

He trailed off. I imagined the same image came to both of our minds. Maria, her throat slit by her own hand, resting in her chair with that tired expression marring her beautiful face. I figured that another hug might be too much for the touch-starved old man, like drowning someone who had been dying of dehydration. I placed a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed. "Could you draw me a map from the old door to Byrgenwerth?"

He shook his head with a cluck of his tongue. "Wouldn't do any good. The forest is malicious. I guarantee you that the paths have changed, and a map would only leave you more turned-around. The only landmark I can recommend is the graveyard. Dotting the woods are enormous gravestones, to represent the civilizations that have come before. However, between the Forbidden Woods and Byrgenwerth, there is the Graveyard of the Great Ones. You genuinely can't miss it: the stones stand stories tall in some places, memorializing the Great Ones and their lost children." Gehrman turned his head to lock eyes with me. "Keep your wits about you, Taylor. The Graveyard has always felt...off to me. Not the site itself, but I never felt more watched than when I moved through there."

Thanking Gehrman for his time and the primer, I headed to see Doll. She didn't notice me approach, staring intently up at the moon. It glittered down, opalescent in the scintillating colors that rippled across its surface. Every step I took changed the colors reflected, as if I was looking at some gargantuan crystal or kaleidoscope.

"...Doll?" I finally asked. She actually started, with a quick intake of breath, and turned to look at me.

"Ah, my apologies, Taylor. I was lost in thought. Do you need something?"

"Well, channeling my echoes would be nice, but I also wanted to talk with you." I sat down on the garden wall and she joined me. "I met with the Queen of Cainhurst. When she eventually kicked me out of her throne room, she said for 'both of you' to leave. Another old hunter, Valtr," I noted the recognition in her eyes, "also looked over my shoulder at one point as if looking at someone behind me." I took a deep breath, trying not to shudder. The idea of being haunted, something dogging my steps, was distressing to say the least. "Is there something tagging along with me?"

Doll gave me a sad, pained smile. "There is so much I wish to tell you, but you are not ready to understand it. Know that, in this particular case, I believe your...companion, to be benevolent."

The fact that she clarified 'in this particular case' only made me more nervous. "In this case? I've had other things following me? Or...or latched onto me?"

She wrapped her slender, strong, not-too-cold arms around me in a gentle embrace. "Worry not about that which you cannot change, Taylor. You may be able to make a difference in the future, but not now." Her hands slid down my arms to take my hand. "Now shut your eyes, and let the echoes become your strength."

(BREAK)

I reappeared at Valtr's tower, vowing to myself that I'd hold up my promise and slug him after taking the elevator up. I crossed the bridge, fought through the savages, blazed through the houses – and skirted around the breakaway floor this time. I took my time, looting the place: I was hunting down the bestial huntsmen to ensure they didn't do the same to me, and as such there was plenty to take. One item that I found, which freaked me right the hell out, was some sort of beast's hand. I can't find terms that would do it justice, but the best I can do is that there was some sort of hole in the palm which then branched out to the fingers and the end of the wrist. This was some kind of tool, I could feel the metal within, and the piping made me think of bagpipes. I stored it, intending to ask Doll or Gehrman about it later.

I cleared out the dog cages again, opting not to head to the poison lake that was the shortcut to the clinic, and found no sign of that strange man Patches. Eventually I expended the resources in the south and turned north (or at least I thought it was north). I reached a downward slope into a muddy...I wasn't sure I could call it a river, since it didn't seem to be flowing. So I suppose it was some sort of long and narrow lake, stretching on farther than I could immediately see. Above me towered some sort of banyan trees, and I was so busy watching for critters in the trees that I got blindsided when more fucking torsos crawled up out of the muck. The last time I'd seen these bastards was in the aqueducts, and I was exactly as happy to see them now as I had been then.

And of course, as I capered around in thigh-deep muck to avoid these long-limbed freaks, I was then blindsided yet again by huntsmen hanging out in the trees like damn monkey-men. They hurled oil pots and molotovs down at me, and I returned fire as best I could. Evelyn hit much harder than my old pistol, and just a single shot was usually enough to punch through a man's chest. I sustained myself on the corpse-blood of the crawling torsos, replenishing my wounds, and eventually either struck down the huntsmen or got safely out of their range. The last of the crawling undead flopped up onto the opposite shore and, more able to maneuver, I easily juked around them and finished them off.

I dusted myself off, debated and ultimately decided against using a blood vial to close the last of my injuries, and then I heard a whistling sound. I'd never heard something like this in person, but something in my lizard-brain triggered a memory from that movie Pirates of the Caribbean. "What's that noise?" the governor had asked. Commodore Norrington (and how the hell did I remember that name?) had paused a moment, then panicked. "Cannon fire!"

My eyes flicked to the sky and, sure enough, I saw a fireball arcing through the air toward me. My legs moved of their own accord, launching me toward the nearest house. I had to break line of sight, and perhaps these madmen would be reluctant to destroy their own structures. Of course, the house had its own residents, but they weren't much trouble. I holstered Evelyn to grapple with my left hand, catching enemies by the wrists and then using the closed saw spear to carve them open.

This was a kill zone if I didn't fight smart. A long, narrow corridor of stone, choked with ramshackle houses like you'd see in Asian slums created from too-rapid development. Chunks of wood and thin sheets of metal stacked together to create the impression of houses, many with walls crumbling from erosion and lack of maintenance.

I darted from house to house, zigzagging steadily closer. It seemed that my gamble had paid off, and the cannoneers weren't inclined to blow up their own village. As long as I stuck to their homes, I was relatively safe. Of course, with the monsters in the dreaming world, I was never truly safe, but close enough for government work as my dad would sometimes say.

Finally I managed to close on the duo who were manning the cannon. Less deteriorated than their brethren, these huntsmen shouted something at me. My ears were too brutalized to hear them, however, and I greeted them with the saw spear. Evelyn barked, jerking in my hand and barely audible to me over the screeching tinnitus. They fell easily enough, leaving me with the cannon. I didn't know if it would stick, but I wanted to take this thing out of commission. Ripping the fuse from the gun was a quick fix, but easily undone. The thing was the only well-maintained item in this whole damn village, oiled and polished. The whole contraption was metal inlaid with vague decorative bas-reliefs that I didn't understand. Even the struts were metal, attaching it to a rotating base like some sort of mortar turret. I decided to put my blood-enhanced strength to work, bracing my feet on the base of the cannon so it wouldn't spin around. It was awkward, leaning back and pushing off with my legs while pulling with my arms, but eventually the metal shrieked and I fell back, the cannon hitting the ground with a heavy clunk. I'd ripped apart the support strut and now the thing rested on the ground, hopefully useless.

...Or I'd just made a man-portable gun for a huntsmen's assistant.

Opting not to entertain more scary thoughts, I turned my attention to the dark and creaky windmill that the cannoneers had apparently been guarding. The thing was gigantic, comparable to many buildings back in the real world, exceeding many of the structures in Yharnam. The four blades slowly spun in weak wind, while the building butted up against a steep cliff.

Switching on the little lantern at my waist, I stepped inside.