There! That had to be it!
The torch in Balyn's left hand smoked pungently, as if the flame was consuming not only wood and pitch but unseen particles that tainted the air of the ancient crypt. Ihyll had once been the capital of long-lost Pthumeru, he'd read somewhere, so these twisted halls must have been the royal tombs, the line of the fallen monarchs. Queens they had been, but still no more than servants of the Great Ones, those set above the rest in the hopes of bearing children of special blood.
It was a fairly unsettling business, Balyn thought. Children were a part of most marriage plans, sure, but not with things that had way too many arms or writhing tentacles or eyes in very weird places or no defined form at all. And this was the highest honor imaginable in their society, the very pinnacle of what made one a Queen!
Pthumerians had some…interesting…cultural values, Balyn decided.
But it wasn't like he had any room to criticize. He wasn't an anthropologist or really any kind of scholar. He was a hunter, his job to kill bestial humans (or be messily killed by them). And given what he'd seen of scholars generally during his time in Yharnam, Balyn was happy about it. Too much of what they learned seemed to fall into the category of "knowing too much drives one mad." That, at least, wasn't a problem he had.
Wait. Something about that sounded wrong…
He shrugged. It probably wasn't important, whereas the antique coffin in front of him, on the other hand…
Balyn set down the torch and planted both hands against the coffin-lid, clenched his teeth, and pushed. The lid resisted for a moment, its great weight adding to the friction between top and box before yielding at last to his strength. With a loud grating noise the stone slab slid back to crash onto the ground. The thing was massive enough to be a proper sarcophagus, only there was no inner coffin, just a skeleton so ancient even the bone was crumbling to dust.
Was that it?
Balyn picked up the torch and held it over the open coffin. Light from the flaming brand bathed the interior and in one spot cast back glinting sparks, reflections struck in something that even the ages could not tarnish. The hunter reached in and plucked out the tiny object.
He'd done it! All the searching, all the prowling through the time-lost dreams of ancient tomb complexes conjured up by the chalices, it had all been worth it. With this he could not fail!
He really should have known better.
~X X X~
"Speak not, these words. We have little need of a consort." Annalise, the immortal Queen of Castle Cainhurst, had a regal voice, even imperious when her will was crossed, but she softened it now.
Somehow, that made it all the worse.
"Such a path would belike lead to further ruin. Thou'st dear to Us. We would see no harm befall thee…"
She gently brushed her fingertips across the iron mask that bound her face. Forced onto her by Logarius and his Executioners, its hold had not loosed despite that martyr meeting his true end at Balyn's own hand. It was a reminder of the kind of peril that stalked those associated with the Cainhurst Vilebloods.
"I understand that there are risks." Oh, he understood, all right. He remembered all too vividly what the throne room had looked like after Alfred the Executioner had beaten and ground the queen's flesh into paste and gobbets, tiny bits yet writhing with Annalise's immortal life-force. For Balyn, too, death was only a temporary thing so long as he carried the Hunter's Mark carved into his mind, but the night of the hunt would eventually come to an end and presumably his service to the Dream with it. "But I'm willing to face them. I'm not some hapless young courtier. And some rewards, my Queen, are worth any peril."
Annalise, though, shook her head.
"Ahh, still thy honeyed tongue…The thought alone sufficeth. Thy worth is too great. Now, speak no more on this matter."
Balyn let out a heavy sigh. He knew that tone of voice.
"As you will it, Your Majesty."
~X X X~
"Welcome home, good hunter," the Doll greeted him when he returned to the Hunter's Dream. "What is—" she began her usual inquiry, but broke it off at the sight of him. "Good hunter, what ails you?"
He thought for a moment before answering, as it was kind of embarrassing to talk about this kind of thing. But then, he decided, if one couldn't confide in an eldritch animated doll that lived inside a dream-world, then who could one confide in?
Balyn just wished that she hadn't been modeled to look like Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. Maria had been a distant relative of Queen Annalise, after all, and the two women shared the same tall, slender figure and long, pale hair. That part was a little unnerving.
Still, he hopped up to sit on the edge of the low wall where he sometimes found the Doll napping.
"Queen Annalise turned me down," he said.
The Doll tipped her head to one side, regarding him with curiosity. Balyn supposed it made sense; she was, after all, a doll. And to the extent that her personality mirrored Lady Maria's, her original had somehow managed to miss that Gehrman was interested enough in her that he crafted (or had made for him) a life-size doll in her image after she was dead, so it wasn't like the Doll would be getting any insights from that direction.
"What do you mean?"
"I offered her this."
He held up the ring. The stone glimmered in the paleblood moonlight, as if it sensed the presence of a Great One as in the bonds it had been crafted to symbolize.
"It's an ancient Pthumerian betrothal ring. The Cainhurst line is descended from the Pthumerians, and at least from what I understand, they keep to a number of their ancestors' customs there. These rings were only used to covenant the weddings of those chosen to bear a child of special blood, and of course that's her fondest wish."
"It sounds, then, that she would both recognize and appreciate the sentiment."
"That's what I thought, too, and I guess she did. But she still turned me down. She kept saying how becoming her consort would put me into a dangerous position. And I do see where she was coming from; her whole court was slaughtered in that attack by the Executioners. But the circumstances are different, now. The Healing Church is in turmoil. The Vicar is dead, the School of Mensis lost their lives in their ritual, and the Choir seems like it was wiped out by the effects of the blood moon even before I got to them and defeated Ebrietas. It'd be a miracle for them to even be able to hold on to their power in Yharnam, let alone start something with the Vilebloods. She doesn't need to be afraid." He let out a heavy sigh. "I just wish I could help her understand that."
He ignored the option of 'she does understand that and is just letting you down easy,' largely because he lacked the self-awareness to think of it in the first place but also because it would have been significantly out of character for the imperious Queen.
"I see," the Doll said. "That sounds very difficult."
"Can you think of anything I can do?"
"I wish that I could, as this endeavor seems to be making you both serious-minded and thoughtful." He decided to ignore the implications while she pondered the matter further. "Romantic problems do not usually arise during the night of the hunt, so I do not have a lot of experience with—oh!"
With that sudden interjection, she turned and dashed up the stairs to the workshop, skirts swirling around her ankles in her haste. It took her only a moment to find what she wanted and return to Balyn.
"Perhaps this might be of use, good hunter?"
She extended a book bound in green-dyed leather to him. Balyn glanced at the title stamped in gold-embossed leather.
"'How to Pick Up Fair Maidens'?"