The beast-man attacked, and this time Ophelia, feeling the burn of quickstepping, relied on comparatively human movements to evade. Fortunately the intense, feral rage guiding the creature's actions made it clumsy and predictable, but even so it still moved faster than most humans would be able to. Even so it saved her from being torn to ribbons as it had intended, reducing the damage to merely being raked across the back by one clawed hand as she rolled past, ripping through her clothes and marking her flesh with their sharp, painful touch.
When both of them came to a stop again, now having moved past each other, Ophelia would feel the pain of her superficial injury swiftly receding as it regenerated. The beast-man spun around to face her again, hands raised and poised to pounce on her again... when his eyes inexorably drifted from Ophelia to his freshly bloodied claws. He stared at his hand with wide, manic eyes, and started trembling. Licked his lips with an unhumanly long and wide tongue. His breath quickened, and when the beast-man turned his attention back to Ophelia after a couple of seconds, the hatred and fury from before had been replaced with something even more primitive: hunger.

Farren rushed through, and got a brief glance through the door to the reception of the clinic, where he would see Victor less than a meter past the threshold, boxed in and obstructed by a wall of three huntsmen. The Hunter seemed to have willingly impaled himself on the middle huntsman's waiting pitchfork, with the farming implement embedded into his abdomen, while the huntsmen to each side chopped at him with a hatchet and a saber, respectively... except that the hatchet-wielder to the right was halted mid-motion by a swift rising slash of Victor's sword, carving a wound from the huntsman's groin to his neck.
Then Farren was past the door, and though he could still hear the now-familar sound of two rifle-shots in quick succession, he did not see it. Instead he focused on attacking the Mad One, setting into a series of complex, rapid slashes with his two sabers.
Just as Torquil before him, Farren would find that carving into this creature did not at all feel how he expected. It felt less like cutting meat and bone and more like hitting a husk of charcoal and ash. The wounds he dealt did not bleed, nor did he feel any trace of what one would expect to be inside a creature. No muscles or tendons, not even any bones... just that uniform bizarre imitation of flesh, breaking, cracking and crumbling where he struck it. The first attack tore away a large chunk of its chest and abdomen, and the second attack completely bisected it at the waist, leaving it collapsing onto the ground.
For anyone paying attention, it would be quite evident that the Mad One – especially compared to the rapid healing demonstrated by everyone else currently fighting in the area – was not regenerating. But the purplish glow that filled the interior of its body grew brighter, as did the dual blazes pouring from its eyes.

In-between yells of anger, cries of pain and the telltale sounds of metal rending flesh from inside the clinic, the symphony of battle was punctuated by another gunshot, though one that sounded different than the rifle-shots. A louder, more powerful boom from what was not unreasonable to presume to be Victor's blunderbuss.
But then...
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding –
It was the easily recognizable sound of the hoarse man's bell, only now it was not graceful short, controlled chime, but a hectic, continuous ringing, as if it was just being rung as quickly and strongly as possible.

The sound was loudest to Farren, who was right next to the door to the clinic. Flashes of gold flitted across his mind's eye at the sound, and he suddenly felt as though he was being watched.
It was not as intense for Ophelia, but it was no less distracting as her thoughts were filled even more with eyes than usual – eyes on the outside, eyes on the inside, eyes inside herself, Caryll runes, ghostly, slug-like phantasms writhing in her head...

And while Farren and Ophelia tried to deal with the effect the bell had on them, they were not the only ones. On the ground where the Mad One had fallen, its ruined form was bathed in ominous red light, and it just regrew its body. The enormous gash across its torso mended in but a fraction of a second, and from its severed abdomen, new legs burst out of its body.
Over by Ophelia, a similar red glow enveloped the beast-man's form. His already sizable frame grew even taller and wider, his fur and claws longer and his entire frame bulged with obscenely large muscles. His eyes – just like the Mad One's, and just as when the bell had last chimed – glowed red.

The Mad One did not even try to stand back up, but swung its cane at Farren from the ground, moving even faster now than when it had attacked Torquil.
The beast-man stepped toward Ophelia again, moving in low this time and with both arms outstretched to the sides, as if to encircle and grapple her.