Farren walked up to the suspicious wall and cautiously stretched out his hand toward it, with Torquil trailing behind hesitantly. As his fingers reached what appeared to all of his senses as an obviously solid stone wall he found that rather than actually feel that wall upon reaching it, his sense of touch did not recognize the existence of the wall at all; as if it had been but empty hair his hand simply passed right through it.
Of course, while Farren was reservedly testing the nature of the wall like this and Torquil was nervously observing from a distance, Ophelia and Gerlinde wasted no time but simply walked face-first into the wall and vanished into it.

To Ophelia it was as though the second her perspective shifted past the wall, it was as though it ceased to exist entirely. The instant her eyes passed the surface of the wall it was as though transitioning to the other side of a two-way mirror; if she looked back she would have an unobstructed view of Farren and Torquil still on the outside of the wall, and the pale light of the rising moon fell into the alcove as if it, too, ignored the existence of the illusion they had just passed through.
Being familiar with this kind of arcane trickery from the witches, who had taught her to render small objects imperceptible to those with low insight by crushing an empowered Madman's Eye, Ophelia would likely be in awe at this illusion. Not only was this a much larger area of effect than anything she had ever seen the witches conceal, let alone managed to do herself, but it had also been entirely convincing even with her now-considerable insight and familiarity of the phenomenon. Had it not been for the Guidance sprites betraying its otherworldly nature, even she would have had no way of seeing through it short of stumbling through on accident. The eldritch power responsible for this would have to be great indeed.

From past the illusory wall, Ophelia and Gerlinde were finally able to survey this hidden alcove. The alcove itself appeared to be something approaching a rectangular area, with the real, physical walls they had been following outside simply taking a ninety degree turn inward. It appeared to be about thirty meters deep or so, and ended in a sizable gatehouse of sorts that took up the entire width of the back of the alcove and stood ten meters tall. The arched gate itself looked to be about fifteen meters wide and looked like it probably allowed access to the interior of Yahar'gul... except that the opening seemed to be obstructed by some manner of dense, billowing whitish fog that seemed to conform perfectly to the gateway itself.

Immediately in front of this gatehouse and fog wall was something just as immediately noticeable as it, though: a beast, unlike any Ophelia had ever heard of before. It was nearly six meters from head to toe, covered in long, weirdly thin and flimsy fur that was one of the purest shades of white she had ever seen, hanging off its body limply. Its scalp had particularly long fur, like actual human hair; so long, in fact, that it fell to the ground beneath its head and pooled in a messy bundle of hair mixed with the ever-present dust of the area.
The beast lay draped over and clutching what appeared to be a large tombstone of sorts... except a second glance would make it obvious that it was not draped over it at all, but rather impaled on it through its chest, as the long, sharp point of the almost blade-shaped tombstone was jutting out of its back. Heavy metal chains were wrapped around the tombstone and the beast's torso alike, preventing them from separating.
Though it appeared to be clutching the tombstone piercing its chest, a closer look would reveal that this, too, was incorrect; rather, both of its arms appeared to have been pinned to the ground with a meter-long stake of stone of the same shape as the tombstone through its chest, with the stake going through both of its wrists and into the ground. Its hind legs were similarly secured in place, with another, identical stake pinning its feet to the ground. Both of the stakes were bound in bulky chains to the wrists and ankles of the creature, respectively; it was quite clear that it could barely move at all.
The beast looked thin and emaciated, with patches of its fur missing and its bones showing clearly through its skin; it looked both famished and atrophied, as if it had neither eaten nor exercised for quite a long time. Its hands were unusual in that the fur on its fingers was dark crimson rather than white, but also in that it did not appear to have any claws. Besides being misshapen, furry and with palms the size of a man's chest, they seemed almost human.
As Ophelia looked at it, the beast, slowly raised its head from where it had been resting on the ground, its snout veering in her direction as it sniffed. Its jaw hang slack, revealing a maw full of large, jagged teeth, and behind the veil of its hair Ophelia would find that hollow, gaping holes looking back at her; this tortured creature had no eyes.

Each of the stone stakes impaling the beast's chest, wrists and feet appeared to bear some manner of inscription on them, and the chains that bound them each also seemed to connect to something else. The chain going from the stake through its wrists stretched upward and outward, eventually wrapping around a thick wooden beam that seemed to connect the outer edge at the top of the two walls of the alcove. The stake through its feet had a short chain that attached to the bottom of the wall of the gatehouse, just next to the fog wall. And the big stake through its chest, with the heaviest and sturdiest chain of them all, seemed to run up to the roof of the gatehouse and out of sight.
To Ophelia's eyes, vast numbers of Guidance sprites seemed to flow from each of the stakes and along these chains. From this perspective, it would seem obvious that the sprites flowed from the beast and up to the wooden beam, from which they spread out to form a curtain of moon motes where she knew the illusory wall was. Other sprites flowed into the lower wall of the gatehouse and seemed to blossom out to swarm around the fog wall. And yet more Guidance sprites followed the chain toward the roof of the gatehouse, toward an unknown destination.

Ophelia almost staggered in awe at the scale of the illusion, immediately looking around the location of the illusion from past the strange threshold that they passed over. She knew it was possible, of course, to layer things beneath gossamer sheets of Nightmare to hide them from those whose eyes were insufficient... but something of this scale? She'd not suspected a thing--it was truly only Mother Moon's light and her blade's cosmic power that had availed her of the illusion... and she wondered who could possibly have created such a thing. Naira? If that was true, her grasp of things had accelerated at a rate Ophelia balked at the idea of... but they knew that long-lost Great Ones had become active suddenly, and if what Harold said was true, they were trying to beckon one into the Waking World here. Perhaps it was something to do with them? A Great One's work seemed much more likely than a mere mortal having this kind of affinity with the Arcane... though her awareness had expanded recently, and she knew that beings like herself and Gerlinde existed. One would need access to something like the Doll, or... or perhaps with enough minds' study and enough sacrifice mortals could create things like this.

"What an exceptional weaving of the Nightmare... The Witches taught me to shelter objects of importance in layers of silk-soft Nightmare, to cloud them from the eyes of the unseeing, but this is on another level. What incredible works they are capable of here... Gosh, we'll have to learn how they did this before we resort to murder. I'd love to know..." Ophelia sighed breathily, clearly most overtaken by awe of the craftsmanship of what she was observing. She followed the glimmering moon-motes next, seeing them siphoned from the bound beast along chains and up to the various other bits of architecture--a wooden beam, clearly for maintaining the illusion of the wall... and then again to the Gatehouse at the end of the alcove that they'd found themselves into.

She found herself oddly drawn to the beast, though its uncanny look of being almost-human elicited in her a strange sympathy rather than her usual antagonism towards beasts. She could imagine a person transforming into something reprehensible like Izzy had, of course, but she could also imagine its inverse: one who did not want to become a beast, and resisted it as best as they could. While she would mercilessly put down practically anything that gave into the base and savage nature of truly embraced beasthood, something that resisted... Well, to them she would offer aid. She walked towards the creature, its eyeless face shifted in her general direction, and she approached it until she was a little less than the length of the Holy Moonlight Sword away from it. She hefted the blade very gently towards the beast such that the glimmering light could illuminate its stark and sparse fur, hovering just above its snout, though held very delicately. It could not see, of course, but Ophelia did not emanate any desire to do the beast harm--she did not know if it could sense such a thing at all, but here where the Nightmare was close she thought perhaps her sympathy might be felt on a level beyond the norm.

"You with no eyes to see... I wonder, can you see them? The motes. The guidance. Can you see her, shining there in the dark?" Ophelia whispered, hoping to offer the best some semblance of the comfort she knew in the dark. Mother Moon's light was always there, playfully dancing, revealing truths and the path to glory. After the profound agony she'd felt in the Nightmare here earlier with the Dream rune... she did not want to add to that song, but weave a new one. One of understanding and illumination under the gentle embrace of the Moon, an age of light that could reveal as well as hide... and every song that had ever been made was composed of individual notes like this one. If the beast acted aggressively towards her at all she would suddenly take a very different attitude, of course, but for now it had her sympathy.

A weak, pathetic sound emerged from the beast's throat, resembling something like a mix between a whimper and a moan. It hung its head, seemingly recognizing that Ophelia had no violent intent, but also seemingly unaware of the nearness of her radiant sword.
One of the chains rattled a bit as if jostled subtly, but otherwise nothing seemed to happen.

“How weird,” Gerlinde chirped happily as she walked up to the beast's hind body to examine where its feet had been staked to the ground. “I've never seen anything like this before.”
Again a chain rattled slightly.

"No... you are lost to her light. Well, loves, I can see the flow of power from this beast up towards the wall and down to the alcove. It's... powering something, chained and impaled here--the illusion on the wall outside, yes, but more. Further in. I don't know how wise it is to make so irreversible a decision, when we don't know where this power is flowing yet. What do you think?" Ophelia asked, turning to face the group, though she kept the beast in enough of her periphery to be able to react suddenly. When the chains jostled she looked about the beast curiously, wondering where the movement could be coming from--was it making a conscious effort, or were there tremors in the ground, or a sudden gust? She didn't know what to expect, so remained open to every possibility.

"Life contains power; the traces of power we find most commonly are parts of things with a touch of Nightmare about them, because whatever bore them had some affinity for the energies of worlds beyond. To maintain an effect of this scope... it makes sense one would require something powerfully connected to the Nightmare, no?" Ophelia mused in response to Gerlinde's question, and again turned her gaze to the beast and addressed it, withdrawing the Holy Moonlight Sword as she did.

"Would you like me to put you out of your misery, dear? I will end your suffering if that is what you want."

_Farren

had expected it to cede to his ‘touch’ as it had for the two women, but still it made his brows rise quickly as his hand passed and then waved through the wall. Or, rather, he supposed it wasn’t a wall at all, but just a visual illusion conjured by some unknown power. He felt nothing even moving his hand through it, only open air, and so after a moment he nodded to Torquil after Gerlinde and Ophelia had passed through and he’d heard them speak on the other side. “Seems safe enough,” he commented simply–his blue eyes on the other man–then he turned from Torquil and pressed through the illusory barrier, entering the alcove beyond.

His eyes began to scan, but as soon as he saw the withered beast, a hand went to the hilt of one pair of unified blades, the one on at his right hip. However, as he watched, Ophelia–then Gerlinde–approached it, and the thing barely reacted except to release a frankly pitiful sound as Ophelia attempted to address it. His blood calmed and his brief anxiety–channeled into caution–faded and then sputtered out, becoming only practiced wariness.

Farren’s fingers relaxed on the hilt, but he didn’t release it as he walked forth. Whatever was happening here, the creature appeared thoroughly immobilized, and honestly rather pitiful. In fact, oddly, Farren almost felt bad for the thing. Almost. The fact that, if it were free, it could likely tear them limb from limb with surprising ferocity despite its withered state kept him from feeling entirely sympathetic towards the strange emaciated thing.

Glancing about, Farren took in the massive chains that stretched from its form and the stakes that kept it in place. Yet…somehow it seemed less that the stakes or chains kept it there, and rather something else. He didn’t know why he thought that however, but given Ophelia’s words, it seemed his intuition–or was it insight–wasn’t entirely unfounded.

Looking past the pitiful beast, Farren took in the guardhouse, its impressive gate, and the strange barrier of fog that had formed in the small opening between the slightly parted doors. His brows furrowed for a long moment as he fixated upon that point, eventually coming to a stop to the left side of the beast (from Farren’s perspective), though he gave it a wide berth of roughly 3 meters. He knew that if it were suddenly able to move…and perhaps pushed to aggression–for a force could likely compel it so if it so desired–that he’d still likely be within its reach. Equally though, he would be close enough that dodging either away or closer would put him out of harm’s way quite easily.

If anyone noticed, they might appreciate the precision with which Farren’s instincts–and experience, remembered and otherwise–allowed him to tactically position himself in space.

“I’d definitely be prudent to know what else this creature is…powering, I agree,” he concurred, though his eyes didn’t shift from the fog gate. “More pressingly…Gerlinde, have you ever seen anything like that fog before?” As he asked the question, Farren gestured at the fog gate before lowering his left arm.

When Ophelia asked the beast if it wanted her to put it out of its suffering, it simply exhaled deeply, producing a sound that had an uncanny resemblance to a human sigh. It did not raise its head, nor did it seem to track Farren as he moved around the alcove or Torquil as he entered; it appeared that it simply lied there, breathing slowly and mostly silently, ignoring their presence.

“Nope!” Gerlinde giggled in response to Farren's question, bouncing up from where she had been examining the stake in the beast's feet and running over to the fog wall, where she promptly attempted to whack the fog with her threaded cane. The cane stopped as if impacting something, but the sound it made was more akin to impacting a soft mattress than a stone wall. “Never seen anything like this!”

Again there was a subtle noise of a chain shifting, but since Ophelia was making the effort to track the sound and identify its source, she would look and realize that the thickest of the chains – the one leading to the roof of the gatehouse – was moving slowly, gradually going more slack, as if the chain was getting longer... or whatever it was connected to in the other end was getting closer.

Ophelia followed the movement of the chain with her eyes, quickly leaving the beast to its consignment--when she realised what was happening, that something was being brought closer to them.

"Look, the chain... it's getting more slack. I'd say something is headed our way, loves, the promised batch of followers Gerlinde prophesied not too long ago? Perhaps we should get in position and ambush them, take them out with the element of surprise. We should also observe how the mechanisms work--even if we die, that'll be useful to know for next time. Let's hope we get through unscathed, but, you know..." Ophelia observed, looking immediately to Farren and waving her Evelyn-wielding hand at him to draw his eye to the chain.

She then put the gun away, hefting the Holy Moonlight Sword with two hands to best wield its radiance and ensuring that her chamber of quicksilver bullets was close by--she wanted to show off a little, and make them each aware of the presence of glory they stood in. To bring that glory to their enemies, to awaken them from their path of folly and usher in a new age of light. Or something far less grand, but Ophelia's mind was moved to grand fantasies as she made herself ready and looked to see where the others wanted to go before she decided on optimal positioning.

_Farren

nodded idly in response to Gerlinde’s words, then shifted his gaze as Ophelia indicated the slackening of the chain. His eyes narrowed briefly, then he nodded once more, “I’d agree, but there’s not much in the way of options as concealment goes,” Farren offered, glancing around to ensure that he hadn’t missed something. Truthfully…they could use the withered beast’s body as cover, but he had no intention of doing so. Despite its seemingly docile nature, there was no telling if that could change at a moment’s notice.

"Well, we can't really hide, per se, but enough of us can be out of view that we can make a passable ambush... At least take out the glowing ones, or disadvantage them all terribly by being closer than they expected?" Ophelia offered in return.

Farren wet his lips briefly, his piercing gaze moving to the pitiful withered beast once more. “I suppose some of us could use the...creature to obscure their view, or step past the barrier and hide just beyond the arch to either side. I think I'll stay in view, if it's all the same to you,” he said, offering some options. It wasn't fear that had him implicitly refusing to use the beast as cover, but rather a mixture of subtle paranoia and a longstanding habitual wariness. With that established, Farren decided to position himself along the leftmost wall from his prior position. Before he reached the wall he slipped Fulmen from his back, leaning it against his shoulder before he turned his back to the wall, levered the experimental hammer in front of him, and then promptly leaned against the wall as Fulmen swung down from his right side like a pendulum. As it neared a vertical position, Farren slowed its swing and then pressed the end of the hammer against the silt-covered earth, letting one palm keep a grasp on the weapon, while his left hand fell to the grip of the Effigial Blades of Mercy at his left hip.

Then, keeping his senses honed, Farren followed the chain's path, watching it gradually slacken while the others positioned themselves.

With that they all fell silent and took up positions for an ambush against whatever was causing the chain to move. Ophelia prepared the Holy Moonlight Sword and moved to the left side of the alcove, right up against the gatehouse at the side of the fog wall.
On the opposite side of the alcove Gerlinde took up position on the other side of the fog wall, where she leaned casually against the wall while idly twirling her threaded cane. Anyone paying attention might notice that for as relaxed and unworried as she seemed, her left hand crept up to her blood vial pouch, opened it and retrieved... something that was quite clearly not a blood vial. Instead it looked like a small curved and ribbed horn of some kind, small enough that it only barely extended past the edges of her palm. Looking at it, Ophelia would immediately realize that this was the second source of arcane power she had felt on Gerlinde when they first met.
Farren took up his position about twenty meters back along the left wall, with Fulmen at the ready for what could possibly be its first use in real combat, and Torquil mirrored his position at the right wall, Loch Shield raised and axe at the ready.

As everyone found their places and began the silent wait, the chain stopped moving. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. The white-furred beast let out a low groan of discomfort, and anyone looking at it might notice the hair on its body gradually standing up. Then small, blue electric sparks started jumping between the links of the great chain. A low, hoarse growl emerged from the roof of the gatehouse, and suddenly the chain moved very quickly.
Ophelia would hear a very brief sound of something hard and sharp against stone along with a loud and violent rattle of the chain. Farren would be able to see it first from his vantage point, though, as a great, dark shape abruptly leaped into the air – huge, even bigger than the white-furred one – only for it to land right in the middle of the alcove, maybe ten meters from Farren and Torquil and with the white-furred one between it and Ophelia and Gerlinde.
All four of them would recognize the creature that had just made itself known and was now snarling angrily at Farren, as they had all seen one just like it in the Memory of Irreverence. A terrible creature of exposed bone, rotting flesh and patchy fur, with its entire body wreathed in blue lightning: an undead darkbeast... except this one had a large stake through its chest, tied to a chain that was wrapped around its torso and connected to the stake going through the white-furred beast's chest.
Ophelia would be able to see the Guidance sprites flowing from the white-furred one, through the chain, and into the darkbeast. The darkbeast let out a horrid wail, and the lightbeast whimpered in pain as lightning passed through the chain and shocked it.

_Farren

watched intently, keeping the chosen positions of his comrades in mind as he made a point of memorizing the layout–and singular obstacle–of the space. He made some rough intuitive measurements of the space in his head–nothing truly mathematical in precision, but nonetheless useful–and allowed that impression of the spatial dimensions of the alcove imprint itself in his mind. When the chain stopped moving for a time, Farren’s blue eyes narrowed and he lifted one foot from the ground, bending the knee and putting that foot flat against the wall behind him. He didn’t push off it though, instead, he waited quietly alongside the others.

Then the chain moved, all at once, and the sound of something sharp scrabbling or scraping against a surface out of sight reached his ears, followed immediately by a desiccated tangle of long fur, stringy rotten flesh, and white-grey bones hurtling through the air before it slammed down into the center of the alcove.

Farren tensed, then took a single breath even as it snarled viciously in his direction, letting some of that tension ease away despite the obvious threat. His brow half-furrowed, Farren regarded the Darkbeast with a piercing intensity that belied the sinking feeling in his gut, the slowly growing hunger in his stomach, and the tightly leashed fear at the back of his mind.

Several beads of sweat broke out on his countenance, but they were barely notable. Farren regarded the thing as it too sized him up, then he noticed it shifting slightly, not approaching, not tensing–for it barely had any flesh–but perhaps winding up.

Then it moved.

Farren’s hand had already slid down from the hilt of the Effigial Blade to the stock of his blunderbus. Thus, in the moment as it wound up and just barely initiated its swing, the Azure-eyed hunter swung the firearm up and let loose a shot, the sound reverberating off the walls of the alcove. At the same time, his other hand had taken a firmer grip on Fulmen and so at almost the same time as he fired, Farren pushed off the wall with one foot, entering something of a dash. As his first foot came down during the maneuver, Farren had already recovered from the kickback of the gun and hooked it back at his hip. He palmed a silver bullet once that was done, but noticed immediately that the creature’s swing had continued.

Like back at the clinic, things almost seemed to slow down, as if so he could really take in everything going on at once. Farren himself didn’t slow though, instead he leaned into his Hunter’s instincts and quickstepped, first covering 4 meters. As he crossed that space, Farren’s sudden movement dragged the hefty hammer in his right hand somewhat back. He started a swing partway through the motion of his forwards charge. As he came out of the first, he performed a second and as he exited that, Farren’s swing had come into full force. His feet planted, hips twisting to add torque, as he swing as hard as he could so the hammer would hit midway up the forearm of the attacking Darkbeast.

Before Fulmen struck, Farren activated its mechanism, causing the cube to split at its seams and expand, partially exposing the mechanism–though hitting it would have required precision that the Darkbeast wouldn’t have in the moment. What he wondered was if perhaps he could sap some of the energy using the internal part of the coil as he struck the lightning wreathed monstrosity.

He’d know in a moment…and if his strike wasn’t firm enough, he’d also know what it felt like to be sent hurtling across the alcove as the Darkbeast’s arm connected with his body.

Ophelia's own reaction to the monstrosity entering the arena was as calm as Farren's, though she had none of those underlying physical sensations detracting from her focus. She was filled with the absolute certainty that they would win, beyond a shadow of doubt, if not in this fight then in the next. This translated as a keen readiness to strike, blade held with both hands ready to be brought down overhead--but it was a different opportunity to Farren's that Ophelia saw. The little motes of guidance showed a connection between the darkbeast and the lightbeast chained in front of them--and Ophelia had spent enough time staring at those chains to know which of them connected to the hulking monstrosity. When she saw the little sparks of blue lightning beginning to build up and crackle between the fine fibres of hair, she made the decision to strike it nearly instantly.

The massive chain had fairly sizeable links, certainly big enough for Ophelia to get the tip of her blade within one. She quickstepped towards the beast in the centre and immediately looked for her prize in the chain connected more closely to the lightbeast. When she found one far enough away that she wasn't worried about hurting the lightbeast or herself she applied a quicksilver bullet to the reified light of the Holy Moonlight Sword and waited for the telltale ululation of building power before she stuck the point of the blade into the centre of one of the chain links, using the motion of her dash to angle the tip of the blade down and bring both it and the chain into contact with the ground where the explosion would soon occur.

She'd then assess the situation again visually, depending on the results of Farren's strike and what both Gerlinde and Torquil did--but her stance remained low and she would, in the absence of any particular growing danger, be looking for a particular weak spot near one of the darkbeast's joints--most likely in its rear legs--to potentially disable it for long enough for her allies to get some strong hits in.

As was typically the case with combat, everything suddenly started happening all at once, with Hunters and beast alike exploding into a flurry of motion. The darkbeast raised its left forelimb and angled its claws for a slash toward Farren, despite it being nowhere near in range... but Farren, having both fought Skinner when he inherited the power of a similar beast through the Hunger Rune and having witnessed Skinner's fight against the original darkbeast in the Memory of Irreverence, knew that this creature did not need to be in range. Fingers of electricity crawled down its left arm and accumulated in its left claw, building a crackling, bluish glow; there could be little doubt that it intended to project lightning.
Farren first fired his blunderbuss, the efficiency of which was somewhat diminished by the distance, but due to the sheer size of the target most of the quicksilver pellets hit anyway. Had it been a lesser beast or even a Hunter something like this might have staggered them, but the darkbeast was not only immense in size, but also possessed remarkable vitality. The pellets impacted and pierced into its bone and flesh, but the creature barely even seemed to notice.
Then he moved, quickstepping forward twice to cover the distance between himself and the beast, intending to deliver a powerful blow with Fulmen to its forelimb while it was mid-swing. He quickstepped forward four meters, which took half a second, took an instant to recover from that, and quickstepped again to cover the rest of the distance. Not only did quickstepping in rapid succession like this take a considerable amount of stamina – which Farren luckily had even more of than normal after having it improved by the doll – but over a full second elapsed from the beginning of the maneuver to the end. Quickstepping, while indeed quick, was not instant, and the darkbeast was only swiping a claw at him; it had by no means locked itself into a maneuver of its own that would be difficult to stop or alter in reaction to changing circumstances. It was, after all, not obliged to complete an attack just because it had started it.
Thus rather than the horizontal swipe it had originally intended, it reevaluated upon seeing Farren's first quickstep toward it and raised its left claw higher into the air, angling it for a diagonal smash instead.

Back in her corner, Ophelia seized this moment of their enemy being distracted by Farren to instead target the chain connecting it to the lightbeast, which seemed to be in pain from the bluish current being channeled into it, but otherwise remarkably disinterested in what was happening around it. She rushed in and, feeding a quicksilver bullet to the Holy Moonlight Sword to unleash its true power, thrust the blade into a link of the chain before unleashing the same kind of arcane explosion that had obliterated the barricade to the clinic at Rebirth's Rise. A blast of light and force emerged, booming and echoing between the tall walls surrounding them... only for the her to realize that the chain, while looking slightly warped compared to before, was still mostly intact.

Gerlinde let out a loud, maniacal laugh as she popped a quicksilver bullet from her little tube of them and, with a practiced motion, deposited it directly into the base of the strange horn she was holding in her left hand. Instantly the arcane object seemed to begin emanating an ominous red glow from within itself, as if it had come to house a flame, only to be promptly extinguished as she – with an excessive flourish – struck the horn against the flat of the blade of her threaded cane. It produced a muffled crack that would be barely audible between the explosion of the Holy Moonlight Sword and the rampaging of the darkbeast, and intense, reddish flame abruptly blossomed to envelop the entire cane except the hilt.

Though Torquil was initially shocked and intimidated by the appearance of the darkbeast and considered running away, there were two thoughts that made him hold his ground. One was that familiar sense of thrill and hunger as the Old Blood in him smoldered eagerly at the prospect of fighting strong prey. He felt his muscles swell with inhuman power and the comforting heft of his Hunter's axe in his hand, but most of all he felt conscious of the Loch Shield he was cowering behind. He remembered quite well their fight against Skinner and how unexpectedly effective the shield had been at protecting him from his lightning. Seeing the darkbeast wreathed in voltaic sparks as well filled him with confidence; with this shield, a monster like this would barely be able to hurt him.
So after Farren's first quickstep Torquil followed suit, quickstepping five meters closer as well... only to be shocked at just how much fatigue that one move cost him, leading to him opting to cover the rest of the last few meters in a more measured pace, shield raised his axe at the ready.

The darkbeast's scintillating claw descended upon Farren, and he – having pulled the lever to expose the core of Fulmen – swung the experimental thunder hammer to intercept the blow. It struck the darkbeast's forearm as intended, and while he felt the subtle give of bone being damaged by blunt force, he could also quite clearly hear a metallic creak and rattle at the impact. Being versed in maintenance of Hunter equipment, Farren would almost certainly realize that the core of the hammer was not made to withstand direct blows, and that using it like that would cause substantial damage to the mechanism. And though he did not have time to make the observation at this time, he might later realize that Fulmen did not appear to have gained any charge at all. Recalling the instructions for using it, he might also recall that exposing the core of the hammer was how he released the charge, which probably meant that it was specifically made to not hold a charge while in that form.
Regardless of the hammer striking it, though, the darkbeast's claw continued its journey down on Farren. He felt the impact on top of his right shoulder, forcing him face-down into the ground with tremendous force... only for him to hear the crackling of lightning in the claw rapidly growing in intensity for another half a second before culminating in a clap of thunder and a massive jolt of electricity that threw him backwards and away.

Simultaneously to this, Ophelia behind the darkbeast – the Holy Moonlight Sword still lodged in one of the links of the chain – would witness the same building of electric charge in the chain itself as Farren did in the darkbeast's claw. As the thunderous explosion sent Farren flying at the front of the beast, the entire chain glowed bright blue as a bolt of lightning sprang from it, into the adjacent blade of the Holy Moonlight Sword, and into Ophelia. It was not quite as intense as the blast that hit Farren, but she would find herself thoroughly shocked, burned and likely quite discombobulated.

The lightbeast wailed in agony, hit by the same force that had just struck Ophelia.

Ophelia felt the radiance of her blade unleash, and prepared to observe her triumph made manifest in reality--only to look down and see the chain had thoroughly resisted her attempt to destroy it. She looked up to observe the state of the battlefield, though between the size of the Lightbeast in front of her and the Darkbeast towering over Farren she couldn't glean much. She heard Gerlinde's laugh and rush of movement, felt the swell of power as she fed a quicksilver bullet to her own implement, and heard the telltale crackling of roaring flame. She prepared herself to make another strike, to go for the exposed hindlegs, only for the sound of thunder and a voltaic explosion near Farren to whip through the metal chain and crawl up her sword into her body. She yanked it out of the chain by reflex alone, though not nearly quickly enough to avoid the surging arc of energy that thrummed into her.

It felt like light and fire all at once, lancing through every aspect of her flesh, and she shrieked in an agony that would thoroughly resonate with the suffering present in the ever-stifling Nightmare. The regenerative potential within her seemed to churn and flicker to life as soon as the damage happened, and she felt her wounds being restored as quickly as they'd been made--leaving only that searing sensation of pain to mark that it had ever happened at all. Flecks of her hair had slightly caught alight, the bright blue sparks of electricity gleaming violently against the silvery-white, and her braid was suddenly pockmarked with flecks of blackened ash. She had to take a few seconds to gather herself from the shock, her limbs momentarily not obeying her commands to them, before she used her right hand to fish a blood vial from her pouch, leaving four, and immediately jabbing it into her thigh.

Thus renewed she waited to see how the battlefield had developed in those seconds she'd spent recovering, and would make an assessment on how best to strike from there: if the others had successfully occupied its attention, she'd rush in towards the darkbeast's exposed right hind leg and aim to slice the sword between the mass of atrophied flesh, fused bone, and rotting sinew with her glorious blade's light--potentially with a quicksilver bullet to launch an arc of energy into it too--just like Ludwig had done in the memory.

_Farren

for once, had taken a particularly high risk gamble, and it hadn’t paid off…at least not in the way that he’d have liked. Instead, the Darkbeast’s gnarled bony, lightning wreathed claws slammed down into his shoulder. He felt his arm, some of his ribs, creak and then fracture violently beneath the pressure even as the creature slammed him into the ground so fast that he would have gotten a mouthful of silt had his mouth not been closed.

The pain actually had only just began to hit him before suddenly the world went from grey silt and gnarled bone and matted fur to stark white and whirling. He was moving and something between numbness and unbearable heat had snaked through his veins and flesh in a searing instant. He hadn’t been looking in the claw’s direction when the voltaic eruption had occurred so those went unscathed, but his eardrums had ruptured and so the world was eerily quiet.

Farren felt himself—almost in a detached manner—strike a surface and slide a bit before stopping. His flesh began to knit better even as pain assaulted his senses, burns and painfully severe pins and needles coursed through his entire body. Sound went from absent, to distant, to dull, until after a few moments his hearing returned first to ‘normal’ and then to the enhanced state that he’d begun to really get accustomed to. Only as he pushed off the ground and into a half crouch, with one knee pressed to the silt-covered ground. Farren clenched his white-knuckled fingers on the shaft of Fulmen—which he’d managed to keep hold of—registering the sound he’d heard from it as it had struck the creature’s forearm. His eyes narrowed for a moment, then his gaze snapped back to the beast. Farren let the mechanism close back around the core of the hammer and sized the monster up. He noted Gerlinde’s inflamed cane and nodded, his mind whirring over what might be points of vulnerability for a creature like this. It hadn’t even hesitated when he’d struck it with the hammer…and it was fast.

Making a snap decision, Farren swung Fulmen back over his shoulder and secured it in place even as he drew the True Blade of Mercy as his right arm finished practically reknitting itself together. Once Fulmen was no longer taking up a hand he forced his shoulder joint back into the correct position with a slight wince before he pushed fully to his feet. With Ophelia closer to the beast now, Torquil and Gerlinde approaching it from different directions, Farren decided to try and keep its attention. Holding the Effigial Blade in his right hand, Farren shoved the quicksilver bullet he’d extracted earlier and reloaded the Blunderbuss as he pushed into a run to cover the 5 meters between himself and the beast.

Running in from the darkbeast’s left side, his left arm down by his hip, hovering between the stock of his blunderbuss and the hilt of the Effigial Blade. Rather than aim to attack immediately, Farren watched the beast closely as he quickly approached, looking to capitalize on however it decided to respond to the hunters bearing down upon it.

As much as things might seem to slow down for each participant of the battle at times, things were still happening all at once and in rapid succession. In the couple of moments it took the darkbeast to slam Farren into the ground and detonate the thunderous force accumulated in it, Torquil had covered the last short distance between himself and their enemy. His bulky frame strained against his armor, its silver plates creaking audibly in their effort to contain his expanding muscles as he raised the heavy axe over his head.
The darkbeast let out a furious snarl as Torquil buried the head of his weapon in the left side of its rib cage, carving through bone and rotten flesh and sinew alike. The pain prompted the monster to turn its attention to him, aiming a swift slash of its left claw at him, only for Torquil to catch the blow with the Loch Shield... and instantly learn an important lesson: though the lightning crawling all over the darkbeast and leaping toward him as it struck was mostly repelled by his shield, the force of the claw was not. Thus Torquil was sent staggering backward, his left arm bending in unnatural ways while its bones were trying to regenerate.

Since this constituted someone getting the beast's attention, Ophelia executed her plan, rushing in and slicing at its right hind leg with the Holy Moonlight Sword. She would find that the arcane blade cut the creature with surprising ease, leaving a deep gash where she struck it, though the wound predictably mended itself almost as fast as she inflicted it.

Beside her, Gerlinde danced her way closer as well, still giggling happily. She activated the transformation of her trick weapon with a flourish, making the threaded cane abruptly go from a short, rigid blade to a long, flexible whip of what was effectively many serrated blades... all of which remained wreathed in the red fire applied by her horn.
She danced sideways in a clockwise rotation around the darkbeast, toward where Torquil was still recovering and – letting out a joyful squeal – swung the whip, striking across a large area across their prey's left hind leg and back, sawing through flesh and bone and setting fur aflame.

The darkbeast roared and half-collapsed, its lower body momentarily disabled by the combined efforts of Ophelia and Gerlinde. Its claws dug deep into the dusty ground, and the bluish glow surrounding its entire body seemed to increase in intensity.

Upon successfully executing her slash, Ophelia noted the sounds of her companions following up and the darkbeast digging its claws down into the ground... but it was somewhat distant, as though the shock of the blow she'd just endured had lingered within her and deafened her somewhat. She still didn't feel altogether there, but she immediately knew that her first instinct was to get out from underneath this beast as the blue glow in the air intensified to the point that Ophelia was certain she could taste it--or her own blood, quite possibly. She evaluated her options in the moment: she might be able to retreat enough to get away from a blast of electricity, or not, depending on the size. She might be able to interrupt it, if she could get to its head... but that seemed desperately uncertain--it'd take most of her stamina just to get there, never mind to make a swing with enough force, enough accuracy, and in time...

She opted for the safer option, making an opportunistic second slash against the beast as she reversed her direction and began running up towards the corner of the gatehouse she'd begun the fight in. She quickstepped a full five meters after clearing the immediate distance from the beast and regaining some of her sense of space and continued running before eventually coming to a stop at eight meters away. She checked then to see if the beast had moved at all: if it hadn't, she fed another quicksilver bullet to her sword and swung it down in a slicing arc to release a blast of scouring energy towards the same wound place she'd been striking previously, and remained ready to hop back even further to avoid the darkbeast's reply.

_Farren

took it all in–Torquil’s heavy strike, Gerlinde’s lashing of the beast, and finally Ophelia’s attack on its hindleg. As it collapsed, Farren was perhaps a paltry two meters from its form, and so took the chance to lunge at it. Drawing the True Blades of Mercy as he did so, Farren slid the Effigial Blade and True Blade each into one of the beast’s vertebrae and then cleaved with all his might, levering them as far apart as he slashed while pulling the blades from its form. However, he felt the crackle of voltaic energy build and noticed the actinic light that sparked across its form growing in intensity. So, as he withdrew the blades in a savage motion, Farren pushed backwards in a twisting jump that covered perhaps two meters of ground, where he’d land in a half-turned position. This, in turn, allowed the azure-eyed hunter to immediately break into a sprint, quickly adding an additional 4 meters between the Darkbeast and himself before he slid an additional meter as he pivoted at the last moment, letting him come to face the creature with his eyes half lidded against the lightning’s glare.