You roll your shoulders and attempt to crack your neck. Unfortunately, the Dream's comprehensive healthcare plan has left your spine in tip-top shape and thus ill-equipped for a proper crunch. "Showtime, I think." You look down at Ebrietas. "You keep everyone safe, alright?"
Will do!
The Messengers rattle their various weapons behind her and offer wordless battle cries.
You bow and make your way to the appropriate grave, soon waking just outside of Byrgenwerth. As you walk, you pull an old pocketwatch from your sleeves and give it a few twists. Twenty minutes. You give Annalise's disembodied head a wave and she huffs at you while you arrange the furniture into an appropriate relaxation position. If Yurie gives you lip for putting your feet on everything, you're sure you can write it off as the price of saving the world.
She'll probably still hit you, though.
"Did we forget ta take ye with us?" you ask the Queen.
"We wanted some time alone."
"Ye had a shitload of it back at Cainhurst."
"And yet We already miss it."
"Ah, don't be like that. We've put together a proper family back at the Chapel. I'm sure the Kegs can build a lil' wagon for ye ta get around."
Her scowl radiates through the iron, but she offers no comment. You do some stretches before kicking back on one of the comfier chairs, checking the watch periodically.
"We have a question," says Annalise after ten minutes or so.
"Shoot."
"Why did that cross of yours burn Us? And don't just say 'vampire.'"
"Any number o' reasons. General wickedness, consortin' with dark forces, worshippin' false idols. The LORD casts a bit of a wide net, honestly." You lean forward and fold your arms across your lap. "Any o' those sound right?"
When she doesn't respond, you sigh. "Look, there's really not much else I can do ta ye at this point. Not even sure if I can cut through that helmet. Spill it."
"We...may have employed a legion of Our subjects to kill Hunters so that We could consume their Blood Dregs to bear the child of Formless Oedon."
You purse your lips and bob your toes back and forth for a few moments. "Yeah, that ticks a few boxes. I've still got...eight minutes, give or take, so let's get some o' the sermon about repentance out o' the way. Got a lotta ground ta cover."
"Please no."
Despite her best efforts to roll off the cushion, you give her a heaping helping of fire and brimstone while ignoring her blasphemous proclamations that nothing could possibly be worse than listening to you. You're so deep in the groove that you almost forget to check the watch.
"Alright, ye get off easy this time. Got me a giant space spider ta kill." You stand, pull out some bayonets, and go through the motions while you talk. "Ye've got three options: one, I leave ye here and ye're on yer own when shit goes sideways. Two, I put ye in the sleeves and drop ye off afterwards. Three, I teleport ye ta the chapel before I do my thing."
"Third option," she replies. "We will sing a thousand of your Hail Marys before going back into those sleeves."
"Suit yerself. Lemme put a cross on yer mask so's ye don't catch fire." You grab a cross, then pause. "How's this gonna work?"
"Do you have some sort of adhesive?"
"Think I've got some tape in here somewhere."
It turns out to be duct tape, which does very little for Annalise's regal presentation. The fact that you accidentally attach it at an angle and can't be arsed to fix it doesn't help. With that done, you pick her up and teleport to the chapel roof; wouldn't do to pop in with a severed head while everyone's doing sensitive medical things. You prop her up so she can see over the edge, warn the nearby people not to lift her with their back or drop her on their feet, and turn to travel back before realizing you have no idea how to get to Rom. The roof squad directs you to the third floor, where you find Yurie rifling through old Church literature.
"Go to the upper balcony and jump into the moon's reflection in the lake," she explains. "I have a dimensional anchor set up there to get you back."
"How does it work?"
"It's a rope I found in the basement. Tie it around your waist before you jump."
You raise a finger to question this, but figure she knows more about dimensional traversal than you.
"Oh," she continues, "before you jump, please kill Master Willem. Painlessly."
"...What?"
"I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's long overdue."
She turns, uninterested in elaborating, and you make the journey back to Byrgenwerth with your impromptu two-for-one euthanasia sale on your mind. You take the stairs to the balcony, which offers a gorgeous view of the lake and the shoreline beyond. No driftwood, algae, or insects disturb the placid scene, protected twice over by the moon's shining face.
The misshapen lump on a rocking chair coughs, butting into the peace. The thing within the overlarge robes is only man-shaped in the loosest sense of the term, his face corpse-gray and uneven growths rising from his neck, He trembles in the evening air and stillborn exclamations stumble from his bloodless lips. You frown and pull out a bayonet; you're honestly not sure whether to apologize to Gehrman for this.
He seems to deflate when you drive the blade into him. Flesh and bone part with what seems like relief and only the faintest trickle of blood escapes before he goes still.
"Ye're fuckin' welcome, Yurie," you grumble.
Her dimensional anchor is waiting for you, tied to the balcony with a beast of a knot that you'd likely need four years' worth of advanced mathematics studies to undo. You tie it around your waist, give it a few tugs, and take the leap. You hear a splash, but feel no impact when you pass through. You land in a perfectly flat field of ankle-high water that stretches as far as you can see, featureless save for the colossal pillbug in the near distance.
There's nothing spidery about her at all. A dozen or more legs protrude from a potato-shaped body smothered in luminescent flowers. Her head is an asymmetrical menagerie of eyes above a circular, off-center mouth filled with razor teeth. It looks like the surface of the moon with eyes instead of craters.
She doesn't even react to your entrance despite your badass superhero landing. Jerk.
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