Farren unleashed his series of brutal attacks on the darkbeast's exposed and defenseless face, spraying viscous, foul-smelling blood as he buried his blades into its undead flesh, though even now it appeared that its immense vitality allowed it to keep regenerating. An attempt was made to perhaps halt its flesh from mending itself by leaving one half of each of his Blades of Mercy in its empty eye-sockets. As he did so, however, Farren would find that the half of the Effigal Blade of Mercy he had abandoned suddenly gave off a soft bluish light and vanished without a trace.

Torquil took a second to shake off the effects of the lightning blast he had just weathered, only for his gaze to wander to Gerlinde right next to him, who kept laughing and attacking frenziedly. He blinked his eyes behind the visor of his helmet, his brain struggling to fully comprehend what he was looking at. To recognize that the figure before him covered in burns, with blood flowing from her eyes, ears and various rupturing blisters, who was giving off smoke that filled the air with the stench of burnt flesh. To understand that this was really Gerlinde, the beautiful woman from the Dream. The harlot. Attacking with no heed for her own safety, grievously wounded in her effort to slaughter their prey, while he cowered behind his shield.
A hissing breath escaped through Torquil's teeth as he felt that familiar sense of rage fill him, that horrible desire to dominate, hurt and kill. That feeling that had filled him with disgust and self-hatred before... but now he had something to receive his fury.
He threw aside the Loch Shield – it only engendered passivity, anyway – and grabbed the bottom of the handle of his Hunter's axe with his left hand to extend it, turning it into a giant Dane axe. And while Farren was carving away at the darkbeast's face, Torquil took two steps forward while shifting the grip of his right hand lower on the handle, feeling his fatigue building as he summoned all the strength of the Old Blood into his muscles once again, and delivered an enormous horizontal chop from right to left, slamming the axe-head into the base of the darkbeast's skull with enough force to make the creature lean into Farren's assault further.

But the darkbeast did not remain dazed for long, and as Farren went in to deliver his second round of attacks, it opened its jaws and abruptly exhaled what was effectively a cloud of electricity that filled the area around its head. It would force Farren to back away or be subject to another electrocution.

Simultaneously to using this bizarre lightning-breath, the darkbeast also reached its right foreleg out toward the chain hanging off it, planted its claw on top of it and – just as Ophelia was about to reach it and deliver another explosion to the weakened link – sent an especially intense surge of voltaic energy pulsing through it.
At the other end of the chain the lightbeast let out what could only be described as a scream, trashing in pain as fingers of lightning crawled all over its body, scorching its flesh and singing its white fur black. But as it screamed, the docile creature was also surrounded by a strange, soft light... like the gentle glow of a comforting fireplace, only without the flames. The light enveloped the lightbeast, and as it did its burns regenerated rapidly, even for a beast. And as the light pulsed around it, it also flowed back along the chain and into the darkbeast, washing across its body as well.

_Farren

had been about to step in for another strike when he saw movement in his periphery. Azure eyes turned and bore witness to the opening of the Darkbeast’s jaw. His eyes narrowed and a flush of warning surged in his blood as something like a haze of electrical energy gathered, and then began to be expelled from the creature’s maw. Farren pushed back, not making the same mistake he had before, and instead backpedaled a few steps even as he noticed it move its massive skeletal claws onto the chain. Recalling why it had collapsed to begin with, Farren shifted focus, running towards its right back leg. At the same time he sheathed the remaining Effigial Blade at his hip and promptly unhooked the blunderbuss, gripping it in his left hand as he kept his head turned towards the beast, noticing the interaction between the strange light of the withered beast and the Darkbeast’s sudden revitalization.

If nothing interrupted him, Farren would reach the Darkbeast’s nearest rear leg, at which point he’d have wound up a heavy slash with the True Blade of Mercy—the strike aimed to take it straight through the joint that attached its leg to its hip.

Further, if he was able to sever the leg, or even open up a blunderbuss barrel-sized wound, Farren would shove the firearm into the wounded area and unload the quicksilver round directly into its undead flesh—the barrel pressed into whichever wound was present.

Otherwise, Farren would likely take defensive actions if he threatened by the rotten beast.

While Farren moved to join Torquil and Gerlinde on the darkbeast's left flank, adding his Blade of Mercy to the onslaught of he transformed Hunter's axe and the flaming threaded cane, Ophelia finally had her chance to execute her plan. The soft glow from the lightbeast, both the part enveloping itself and extending to the darkbeast, lasted only a couple of seconds before it faded, after which the chain connecting the two seemed to become void of either beast's energies.
Seizing the opportunity she fed the Holy Moonlight Sword another quicksilver bullet and thrust it into the sturdy steel link once more, unleashing another arcane explosion. As the blinding light faded and the dust settled, she would find the chain even more bent and warped than before, with the link partially twisted open on one side – clearly on the verge of breaking apart entirely – but still just barely holding itself together.

The darkbeast's head veered momentarily to follow Farren, its empty eye-sockets glancing at him, Torquil and Gerlinde making a united front as they carved into its left side with wild abandon, yet despite their efforts best efforts could not seem to inflict lasting damage; if anything, it seemed to regenerate even faster after the pulse of light that had just washed over it, as if its vitality had been restored and reinforced. Then its head veered to the right, to where Ophelia stood over its chain all alone, and had just caused a rather loud and flashy explosion to attract its attention.
With an abruptness that nearly knocked Torquil off his feet, as he only barely managed to dislodge is axe in time, the darkbeast leaped into the air. It moved with a speed, agility and precision one would not expect from such a massive creature, sending rotation in mid-air while soaring as much as ten meters over everyone's heads; a movement that, predictably, jostled the chain connecting to it significantly and jerked the weak link Ophelia had been targeting away from her some eight meters or so.
And then it plummeted back to the ground right on top of Ophelia, bringing down both of its front leg claws on top of her, both of them burning with bluish energy and erupting into a powerful electric explosion on impact.

Ophelia felt the familiar singing of her blade's power ripping apart steel, saw the momentary glimpse of the cosmos' inexhaustible light, and still could not get through the chain cleanly. "Just break!" she screamed out, frustrated with its futile resistance, before the sudden flurry of motion from the others and the Darkbeast demanded her focus once more. She caught the Darkbeast rearing up to jump in the air, its limbs twisting in ways that its eerie form and propensity for regeneration alone must've allowed, and quickstepped instinctively as far as she could back towards the entrance, though at a 45 degree angle to her right to avoid the Lightbeast and give her sufficient time to quickstep again--this time directly towards the other end of the room, albeit adjusting for anything that might get in the way. Quickstepping twice in succession was not good for Ophelia's limited stamina, however, and as much as she wanted to press the attack and finally break the chain so the damage they dealt to the Darkbeast would stick... she would need to catch her breath.

She began a light jog over to where the almost-broken link of chain was, keeping an eye out for the Darkbeast's movements, and keeping tabs on everyone else too: she hoped that it'd just go for one of the others, that the redirection of its ire to her was momentary, but she knew that it most definitely might not be--and if the Darkbeast came for her immediately again, she'd begin her evasive manoeuvres once more and shout out to one of the others to break the chain at its weakest link--Farren or Torquil, at least, whomever was closer.

_Farren

withdrew his blunderbuss as he detected something shift in the creature’s body. He backstepped—not using his hunter ability—and just in time too as the Darkbeast leapt high into the air with an athleticism and speed that briefly frightened even him. The feeling didn’t last long though, not before transitioning into a different sort of fear as it hurtled down through the air towards Ophelia.

However, she’d noticed in time and surged from its path just in time. Knowing there was no way he could have done anything about her predicament either way, Farren did his best to immediately take advantage of the beast’s distraction, bending down to one knee with his eyes still locked on the Darkbeast as it hurtled rapidly down to where Ophelia had been a moment ago. He murmured to the Messengers, hoping they’d respond here, even as he offered them Fulmen. He’d retrieve it once things calmed down again and he had a chance to look it over thoroughly.

From the little helpers, he requested Bulwark and the Beasflayer even as he sheathed the True Blade of Mercy as well.

“Torquil, Gerlinde, keep it distracted. I’ll help Ophelia with the chain,” Farren offered the others in the way of direction. Partway through the sentence, the Messengers received his call, took Fulmen, and gave him the two armaments he’d requested. While he’d waited the brief time he’d used one hand to deftly rearrange the harness on his back. Thus, when the weapons shifted up through the ground—maneuvered carefully by the withered little hands of the helpful creatures—Farren nodded to them thankfully and accepted each. Bulwark he slotted into its own loop of thick leather at his right hip, whereas the Beastflayer he took into both hands, pushing back to both feet as he did so. Perhaps the intense levering force of Bulwark in that Chain link could wrench it the rest of the way open and break the Darkbeast’s connection.

Neither Torquil nor Gerlinde replied to Farren's orders, though Torquil did nod once in recognition of having received it. He glanced back over toward the Loch Shield on the ground for a second, contemplating going to retrieve it before facing the darkbeast head-on, but before he could reach a decision on that Gerlinde was already moving, letting out a mad cackle that would have made even the wickedest witch bow her head in reverence. Thus Torquil followed, though whereas Gerlinde set off in a mad sprint, he stuck to a jog; repeatedly hitting the beast with all of his strength was already pushing his stamina to its limit, and getting there faster would be worthless if he was defenseless once he got there.

The darkbeast, meanwhile, did not immediately seem to reengage the Hunters. Instead it turned to the lightbeast and quite simply climbed on and perched atop of its fellow undead. Only once it had gotten up there did it turn back to the Hunters, just in time to catch Gerlinde's burning whip across its face... to which it responded by raising both of its front legs before it, spread wide to the sides and claws turned inward, and channeled lightning into both.
A second later it swiped both claws inward and past each other in front of it, and each claw projected its own huge wave of blue lightning crawling across the arena and toward where all of its enemies had decided to bunch up.
Gerlinde, once again, took the wave point-blank and without so much as attempting to evade it. Torquil panicked, tried to quickstep to his right to get out of the way, but got hit anyway. And past them, the destructive energies continued toward Ophelia and Farren.

Ophelia seemed to see everything almost... slow down, as though she was experiencing ripples across a pond gently washing over her rather than experiencing linear time. She hadn't the time for another attack on the chain, and if the slight sting in her lungs was anything to go by she hadn't the stamina either. She gulped in what little air she could, let the machinery of her body have a single revolution without exertion, and prepared herself to move again. As the Darkbeast clambered on top of the Lightbeast and began to summon forth its intense energies once more--perhaps the brightest they'd seen yet--Ophelia realised nearly immediately what was coming and urged herself to move. By her estimation the safest direction was simply north-west from her current one, and so she drew upon the waning fire of the Old Blood (or perhaps merely her body's inability to harness it) and quickstepped again, as quickly and as far as she could.

When she arrived at her destination the first sensation she felt was a deep burning in her lungs and a sudden ache in her muscles that was as familiar as it was uncomfortable, and the second was a furious and crackling surge of energy missing her by a hair's breadth--the clothes on her back felt suddenly hot and though needles were pricking at her from within them. She could feel a faint throb resonate throughout her body as she remembered the agony of being thoroughly shocked before. She simply stood for a number of seconds gulping in greedy breaths of air to restore the limits she'd pushed herself to--turning around to survey the battlefield first--and simply remained there until her stamina was recovered. If the Darkbeast came for her again she could perhaps turn it to her advantage, though Gerlinde's mad assault having resumed gave Ophelia hope that it wouldn't be her the beast went for, but Gerlinde.

_Farren

managed to fully equip himself with his choice of weapons, but his relative inaction had its consequences it seemed. As he looked up, Farren witnessed the Darkbeast clamber atop its victim and then begin to prepare another volley of voltaic violence to mete upon them. “Fuck,” he muttered, as his eyes and memory alike informed him that unlike Ophelia–who he heard immediately dash–he didn’t have time to cross the necessary distance to escape.

So he didn’t try to, instead, about a quarter of a second after he’d heard Ophelia’s feet push against the silt-covered earth–making a distinct sound that paired with seeing her in his periphery told him she’d dashed–Farren did the same. However, rather than retreat, the azure-eyed hunter advanced. As the current danced rapidly towards him through the air, Farren approached it as well, but unlike before he embraced the anger still half-furled in the furnace of his chest.

Two-thirds of the way through, his body met with the unnatural lightning of the Darkbeast’s attack, surging through his body, igniting his flesh, boiling his eyes, rupturing his eardrums, and drawing coruscating rootwork burns through his entire body, his veins and nerves appearing as faintly glowing viridian patterns through his almost-blackened flesh. His hair, similarly, ignited, standing on end, but pushed back by the speed of his movement and the direction of the current as it passed over and through him.

His eye sockets leaked an almost cream-like goo, forming tears that trailed sideways along his cheekbones, mixing with streaming tears from the pain. Farren howled, not like a wolf, but like an enraged, pained animal–the sound equal parts savagery and agony.

Not even waiting for the Old Blood to surge through his body and begin the process of healing, Farren swung, twisting his wrist on the Beastflayer as he did so. Each of its segments ‘clicked’ open in a distinct noise as the mechanisms that held them together unlocked. He finished his quickstep, but kept running towards the Bastard, teeth gritted against the agony searing through his mind, letting it center him in the moment.

His eyes and internals healed first, then his ears, the world snapping into sudden and sharp relief as the Beastflayer ratcheted out, extending almost in slow motion as he moved like a frenzied wraith in a beeline straight for the undead monstrosity.

The moment extended, then time seemed to snap back into its proper flow and the Beastflayer spooled out en full and cleaved in a left-to-right horizontal arc through the air, crossing the 2 additional meters before the weapon would begin to flay through the Darkbeast, aimed center of mass. Only as the arc was halfway through its motion did Farren’s flesh finish knitting together, putting on display a horrid rictus of a grin, his mind utterly devoid of true thought as he matched the Hunter impulse in his blood.

Certainly, the beast could heal, but how would it fair if the weapon cleaved horizontally through the center of its body one side to the other, skull included?

Torquil immediately fell to his hands and knees as soon as electric currents were no longer forcing his muscles to spasm, with white smoke pouring from every joint in his armor. He could feel his skin sizzling and his internals failing, thoroughly cooked as they were, and felt panic grip him at the familiar sensation of his regeneration slowing down, bringing back memories of when he died... only this time would not be as merciful as then. The first time the Mad One had smashed his head into the ground until he passed, beating him swiftly into unconsciousness in such a way that the pain only lasted for a few seconds. This, though? He could tell that he would not die from this immediately. He was stuck here with the pain.
He fumbled with the pouch on his right hip, struggling to find anything with his muscles and nerves still buzzing from being electrocuted, but eventually managed to retrieve one of the blood vials Ophelia had given him. He took it, popped off the outer cap and prepared to inject himself... and realized that he had no idea where to do so. He was covered in metal armor; there were no obvious gaps to jab the syringe through, and the needle obviously was not tough enough to punch through a plate of silver. Where could he...
There was a pause as he froze. He swallowed. And then he turned the blood vial so that the needle faced his thumb, and slammed the vial into the visor of his helmet, stabbing the needle – and injecting the blood – into his forehead.

Over by the two beasts, a new horror emerged as soon as the curtain of blue lightning passed: once more billowing a column of white smoke, her hair in flames and holes burnt through her clothes, Gerlinde continued to run at her prey. Her body was covered in horrible burns, including open, bleeding wounds and downright charred flesh, and her lips had curled back – mostly burned away – to reveal a demonic grin with about a third of her teeth missing and blood pouring from it. Even her eyes were wide and especially insane-looking, the eyelids gone and the eyeballs partially shriveled and blind. She was no longer laughing.
Rather than continue to lash toward the darkbeast, Gerlinde instead dashed rapidly toward the lightbeast's head, ultimately crashing straight into it and clutching it with her arms and legs. Then she leaned away and drew back her left arm, its fingers visibly elongating and sharpening into claws, before she plunged her left arm up to the elbow into the lightbeast's right eye-socket.
The lightbeast let out a piercing shriek, only for it to wail even louder as Gerlinde violently withdrew her hand, taking a large handful of the creature's brain and a whole torrent of blood with it. The soft glow began to surround the lightbeast anew.

Farren's attack, predictably, was nowhere near capable of cleaving through the darkbeast. Due to the lack of rigidity in the Beastflayer's whip-shape, it instead ended up mostly just slapping against the monster's side, only to drag across its surface over the side and across its face, sawing through it with each passing blade-segment.
It kept regenerating relentlessly, but did not seem to immediately counterattack this time. Instead it seemed to just sit there for a few seconds, glaring in Farren's direction, while the blue lightning crawling all over its body – which had somewhat diminished in the wake of the wave-attack – seemed grow in intensity, recovering to its past prominence. It hissed loudly and menacingly.

Ophelia's sharpness of focus returned after she'd spent three or four seconds just breathing, and she whipped around immediately to begin the hunt for the weakened link of chain once again. They'd never get through this thing while the chain lasted, and they had limited vitality and resources--and limited tolerance to such horrendously painful and traumatic experiences, too, lest they end up like Gerlinde. She began a light jog, eager to more fully recover her stamina and have the manoeuvrability needed to actually dodge whatever the beast would get up to next. This was her first experience in combat as a true Hunter, one armed with the right tools and companions, and in her mind's eye it was very much like a rhythm, or a dance, or a game--there was a flow, and there was strategy. There was a back and forth to it that could be observed and learned and performed, an art that fused the best parts of insight and beasthood--two things that Ophelia understood as being at the opposite ends of a spectrum.

She sometimes wondered why the sheer terror of it didn't grip her, like it had Torquil. She realised in hindsight that she was the one who was aberrant in that instance, that his fear was truly very much justified--for results required experience. There was always a price to pay in doing the act. Then she saw the little motes of moonlight, and she knew she was bathed in a sheath of Mother Moon's light: enough to reveal that which she sought, but not so bright as to be obvious. Obfuscating in all of the most beneficial ways, and revealing too--like the flow of power through the chain. She began moving towards it immediately and with extreme focus, keeping herself at the fastest pace she could while still recovering her energy, which resulted in her circling clockwise around the twin beasts.

"The Chain!" She called out again, wanting to impress upon them the urgency of the task but without the breath to spare them more than those two words.

_Farren

kept on going and despite not finding the result he’d desired, he did not despair. Besides, Gerlinde had dealt it considerable pain, and the noise of the Beastflayer’s blades grating through its rotten flesh and against its stubborn bone was oddly satisfying in its own way. Yet, the hunger did not abate and Farren’s right arm carried the motion backwards, flicking the weapon as its segments became near one another once more. His left hand found the tail end of the pole and twisted the mechanism.

He was still moving the entire time, inexorably devouring the remaining meters between himself and the beast, his azure eyes locked with the eyeless gaze of the monster as he ran. Distantly, some part of him noticed not his strength flagging, but a sense of heaviness beginning to slowly rise from deeper in his body, as if borne from his bones and unto his blood. Farren ignored it, his hunger, his rage, and the need to keep the beast thoroughly busy even as Ophelia called out, reminding them all of their true goal. The Beastflayer snapped back together into a glaive, its bladed end trailing behind him for a moment before he brought it to bear once more. By then he’d covered much of the distance already, no more than two meters between himself and his prey.

Eyes wide, Farren noted as the beast began to move, raising its right arm up–claws glowing with actinic light–likely to perform a downwards strike. Undeterred, Farren didn’t wait for it to finish, instead his gaze shifted northeast and then he pushed forward in a blur of motion, quickstepping as far as he could towards the broken chain, covering 5 of the 8 meters in a fraction of a second. As he exited the movement he felt his lungs burning and abandoned the notion of a second quickstep to cover the remaining 3 meters, instead keeping the pace he’d been maintaining moments prior. He was trying to reach the damaged chain link, with any luck he might get there before the monster’s attack hit ground.

Rather than swivel in place to track Farren and try to land its intended attack, the darkbeast simply followed him with its head as he quickstepped away. The claw it had raised and begun focusing energy into lowered again, the bluish glow dispersing back into the rest of its body. Then its maw opened as it let out a long, terrible, hoarse screech, the fur on its body standing up and crackling with energy as its entire body started glowing more brightly.
They would all doubtlessly recognize the signs of it preparing another massive explosion of lightning as it had done earlier. Farren in particular would also probably realize that the weak chain link he was targeting was within the area of effect... and Ophelia in particular knew from experience that whenever the darkbeast channeled lightning, the chain also became electrified.

Meanwhile the warm glow from the lightbeast enveloped it, healing the horrible damage Gerlinde had just gouged out of its skull. Like before, the warm glow also spread up and enshrouded the darkbeast on top of it... though notably, the glow appeared to reach the darkbeast directly at the moment, spreading up to where it was perched on top of the lightbeast before it had a chance to fully spread along the chain to reach it.
Gerlinde, still hanging onto the lightbeast's face, regenerated, and her silence first turned into a cough, then a hoarse croak, and then back into her boisterous laughter as her throat and lungs resumed something approaching normal function. Though her hair was considerably shorter now and still smoldering, and her clothes had gotten somewhat less decent than they already were, she appeared to be ready to keep fighting. She looked up at the darkbeast preparing its attack while lowering her left hand to her hip and popping out another quicksilver bullet from the tube.

Ophelia had scarcely begun walking on her quest to find the chain before she saw the telltale signs of the beast charging another explosion, felt and heard and tasted the electrical potential in the air, and promptly turned around and quickstepped forward, towards the illusory wall, and from there broke into a full run--having to immediately draw upon her newly replenished stamina to ensure she was out of the way of the beast's onslaught. She would stop as soon as she judged herself safe--as best as she could given her recent memory of it--turning back to face the beast to observe it and then breaking into a light jog circling around it counter-clockwise to eventually end up on the chain until either her allies or the Beasts did something to alter the flow of actions on the battlefield once more.

_Farren

saw the shift in his peripheral vision, and his head turned slightly, noting that the glow of the beast had expanded to the core of its body. Farren deliberated only for an instant before continuing his path.

The longer this went, the less able all of them would be for whatever came after–not to mention the more likely a death would become. The chain had to be severed, even if he had to suffer for it. So, Farren drew Bulwark as he ran, reaching the chain link mere moments before the Darkbeast released its explosive charge. Rather than try to complete the action, Farren dropped to his knees beside the chain and gripped the blade’s handle with both hands as tight as he could.

Then the world went white.

Torquil slowly and dazedly raised his head – the now-empty vial still sticking out of the visor of his helmet, the syringe embedded in his skull – and felt his injuries regenerate, along with the entirely unexpected and intense high of his first time getting blood treatment. The intense rush of energy spreading throughout every cell in his body, the feeling of strength returning to his limbs, the delightful rightness he felt as the power of the Old Blood in his veins was replenished... he could understand how people might get addicted to it. Unfortunately it was hardly the time to stop and marvel at how amazing it felt, since they were still in the middle of a pitched battle.

Raising his left hand to shield his eyes from the bright flash of the darkbeast unleashing its huge burst of lightning, Torquil tried to track what everyone was doing at the moment.
He saw Ophelia retreat just in time to avoid the blast, only to jog on toward the piece of the chain she had damaged twice, clearly exhausted to the point where she would probably have to take a breath before she could continue fighting.
He saw Gerlinde hugging the lightbeast's face, standing immediately in front of and below the darkbeast, getting hit by the explosion point-blank for the third time... yet as the lightning receded, he was surprised to see her still standing, still alive. And not only that, her injuries – horrible though they were – were regenerating rapidly. The lightbeast was still giving off its soft aura of light, which was still enveloping the darkbeast as well, and though the lightbeast had obviously been caught in the explosion as well, it was also healing at an incredible rate.
He saw Farren draw a sword and run to the damaged part of the chain, take a knee and get hit yet again by the darkbeast's voltaic rage. Farren had seemed quite exhausted as well, and though it was hard to tell, Torquil could not imagine he had the regenerative potential to recover from another blast of electricity.

Having unleashed all of its stored energy, the darkbeast seemed to momentarily slouch on its perk, the electric crackle across its body gone... but returning rapidly.

Though it was one of his least favorite things in the world to do, this was another instance where Torquil felt it necessary to actually stop and think for a moment. Their goal at the moment was to destroy the chain connecting the light- and darkbeast, according to Ophelia. He had no idea why it was so imperative that they break that chain right now, or at all for that matter, but he assumed that Ophelia knew what she was talking about. She was clever, unlike him, always thinking lots of thoughts. So the chain was the target.
Looking around, though, none of them were in any condition to do much of anything to help their odds during this fight. Gerlinde had been fried by lightning so many times that he could not imagine she had much regenerative potential left – quite frankly he was amazed she was still alive, let alone still healing – and did not look like she had the strength to break the chain. Ophelia had proven quite effective with her big glowy sword, but she looked like she was hanging on by a thread, constantly pushed to the absolute limits of her stamina. And Farren was probably worst off of all of them, having been hit even more times than Gerlinde and running on fumes in terms of physical endurance.
And finally there was himself, of course. Having just taken a blood vial he was healing back to perfect health and felt like he probably had regenerative potential to spare, and he had had time to catch his breath a bit and could probably fight a bit again. If he went and retrieved the Loch Shield and could somehow make the monster focus its attention on him, he have been might be able to endure its attacks while the others caught their breath and broke the chain... if it had only used lightning, that was. With the shield he could weather the electric storm somewhat, but if he got hit by physical attacks he doubted he could withstand more than one or two hits.
He could run over and try to destroy the chain, but it looked like Ophelia and Farren were both already doing that, and if everyone did that the darkbeast would be free to brush aside Gerlinde and then wipe them all out.
What do we do? he asked himself, because the inevitable conclusion he reached was that they were going to lose. The darkbeast looked like it was still at pretty much full strength, while all of them were barely able to keep going. Quite simply, even with the four of them together, it looked like they were just not strong enough to deal with something of this caliber. If this fight went on, he figured, they would keep spending their finite resources – particularly their blood vials – just to prolong their struggle, only to then be killed and have to make do without those resources after returning to the Hunter's Dream. And what would happen in the time it would take them to get back here, especially if they had to resupply first? Had the darkbeast not learned from this fight? Would Gerlinde's Followers not logically want to come and be here to sabotage them in an eventual rematch? It was going to be bad. Very bad.
Torquil swallowed, and stood from where he had fallen. He wished they had time for him to ask the others what he should do. But there was no time. He had to think, then act. So he did.

Ding-ding

He shook the silver Moonborn Bell, and as they had for Ophelia earlier in the evening, the Shopkeeper emerged from the ground in front of Torquil, and immediately turned toward the two beasts.

_Farren

was blind, deaf, and functionally mute, his body charred, his clothes with holes burned in them. The pain was endless and this time he didn’t feel the immediate rush of vitality surge through his body. He tried to swallow, but the sensation was beyond painful. His hand fumbled numbly at his vial pouch for a second, found purchase, and then weakly stabbed the syringe into his thigh. He groaned and even that hurt, but the vial of the Old Blood began to suffuse him, an ecstatic heat that spread from where the vial had punctured his flesh down through his leg and up from his thigh at the same time. It combined with a prickling sensation, like pins and needles dialed up past reckoning with. The heat reached his head and the haze in his mind cleared almost immediately, followed swiftly by his vision returning. “Fucker…” Farren rasped out, then he managed to move, bringing Bulwark down into the gap of the damaged chain link. The blade easily punched through the silt, then the dirt, driven by his rapidly returning strength as heat and jagged needling nerve pain coursed throughout his body. With a pained grunt, Farren twisted his hand, activating the mechanism of the blade…and Bulwark expanded in a sudden burst of force, each ‘expanding edge’ aimed at a weak point of the chainlink. With any luck it would be enough.

Too dazed to notice, Farren barely even registered the sound of the bell, perhaps he’d missed it while he’d been deaf and recovering. Further, he hadn’t even glanced in Torquil’s direction and his peripheral vision felt hazy and inconsequential in that moment of narrow pain-ridden focus. Perhaps it was better that way.

As Farren's Bulwark transformed into its shield-form, it did indeed do some additional damage... not a lot, but some. Though the mechanism that allowed the sword to become a shield was fairly powerful, it was still a high ask for steel to cut steel, and if Farren examined the folding blades at some point he would find a sizable chip where they had met the chain. One side of the opening to the link, which had already been warped and weakened by the two arcane explosions it had been exposed to, bent outward and broadened the gap. It looked as though it would be possible to simply pass one of the other links through the opening now, and the chain would be severed.

In the meantime the darkbeast seemed to have recharged enough to stand back up properly and look around to check on the positions and activities of the intruders... only for its sweeping gaze to stop instantly as soon as it saw the Shopkeeper. As the Shopkeeper cocked their head, seemingly looking back at the monster, the darkbeast glared at them. It opened its jaws and let out a growl; a deep, hoarse and horrifying sound that sounded like bones grinding on bones, creaking and cracking. Its claws dug into the lightbeast beneath it, which whined pathetically.
Over the course of one second from spotting the Shopkeeper, the darkbeast's dull blue electric glow changed gradually first to violet, and finally to bright red, with sparks crawling everywhere on its body. Even its dark, empty eye-sockets and the shadow within its maw were filled with scarlet light.

Then, in a burst of insane, almost impossible-seeming motion, the darkbeast crossed the six meters that separated itself and the Shopkeeper at a speed and acceleration that seemed almost as fast as that of a quickstepping Hunter. Its right front paw – giving off an almost blinding red light – slammed down on the Shopkeeper, who just had time to raise their left arm over their head and, in a flash of blue light, conjure a perfect copy of the Loch Shield. Then the claw hit with such force that silt was thrown up from the ground in an obscuringly dense cloud of dust, filled with crackling red lightning.
Torquil, who as the summoner was standing right next to the Shopkeeper, was both thrown aside by the shockwave of the hit and shocked by the burst of electricity dispersing from the hit. He scrambled back to his feet and retreated, axe in hand, and began making his way over to the actual Loch Shield.

Ophelia's spirit had not yet flagged as she began stalking across the battlefield, and for the most part she was simply planning to get her breath back and begin the assault anew when she had more in her. She was calm and focused, the dull aches and throbs and searing hot agony of before now only a distant memory and her eyes firmly locked on that of the thing she was hunting--she observed where the energy seemed to begin as it gathered it, if such a place existed. She observed how long it took to recharge, to gather its wits, and tried to imagine how it was choosing what to target (though she came up rather short on that front). When the telltale notes of the Moonborn Bell rang out Ophelia's ears reacted immediately and her eyes very shortly thereafter, glancing over towards the sound to see Torquil, the bell still held in his hand.

She thought for a brief moment that that seemed unnecessary--that though they were on the back foot they were about to start being able to make real progress. It seemed that being close to the Lightbeast as the Darkbeast and Gerlinde were conferred healing to them too... They could probably all use that to their advantage--force the Darkbeast away somehow, or... Something. She still felt very much in control of the situation... until she saw the Moonborn Hunter get noticed by the Darkbeast, and a charge of energy greater than anything they'd yet seen accumulate within the horrid creature so intense it glowed with what Ophelia only imagined the Blood Moon must've looked like. Then it moved--no, it quickstepped, or something very close to it--and Ophelia dashed back instinctively in response, moving five meters directly backward towards the illusory wall to give her space from whatever was about to happen.

She readied the Holy Moonlight Sword, though she knew there was little point in her joining in the fight now... unless it seemed that even the Moonborn Hunter might need aid. But should that come to pass, she'd need her stamina back, and it seemed every time she just about was beginning to recover some monstrous event interrupted her. She was suddenly very glad indeed that they were immortal, and how insidious a killer overconfidence was.

_Farren

healed much faster from that point, as Bulwark levered the chainlink open even further, though it hadn’t done quite the degree of damage he’d hoped it could. Nonetheless, as his senses came fully back into focus, he caught the trailing crimson bolts as the Darkbeast leapt into motion. Farren’s gaze shifted in the direction he’d seen the blur, his brow already furrowing before he watched in dumbfounded silence as the Darkbeast began its clash with the Moonborn Hunter.

Though he’d not know it, Farren had thought similarly to Ophelia…that they could have prevailed given a bit more time and space to maneuver, but seeing that single clash changed his mind.

“Bloody hell…” Farren muttered, but he didn’t gape for more than an instant. The silt blocked his view anyways, so instead he turned his azure eyes upon the chainlink, withdrew Bulwark’s expanded shield form from the space with a grating metal-against-metal racket, and then he tossed the weapon to his left rather carelessly. Far moreso than he normally would have. His hands swiftly caught on the chain link, and he used his strength and dexterity both to unhook it from its fellows, severing the link between Light and Darkbeasts.

That done, Farren glanced at Bulwark, noted the chipped outer edge with a frown, then mumbled to the Messengers, who took the weapon away the next moment. He’d have to get it repaired now…that’d been reckless, but necessary–he hoped.

Rising to his feet, Farren kicked the now separated portions of chain away from one another and pulled the Beastflayer from his back, watching for further movement.

Surely the beast couldn’t overpower even the Shopkeeper….

Gerlinde turned and leaned her back against the lightbeast's forehead, struck her still-burning threaded cane into the ground to force it back into is cane-form, and seemed content to simply watch the darkbeast assail their newly arrived ally. She smirked, seemingly unbothered by the fact that she – now fully healed, though her hair obviously did not heal and remained burnt – was even less decent than usual due to the holes burnt through her scant clothes.

Though touching the chain directly would result in him being electrocuted once or twice, it was a simple matter for Farren to separate one link for another now that it had been bent out of shape enough, rendering the chain finally severed. To everyone else, the effect of this was simply that the reddish fingers of lightning crawling along the chain in bursts timed with the darkbeast's attacks now stopped at the broken link and no longer reached the lightbeast, but the Guidance Rune revealed the other facet of its effect as well: that the Guidance sprites flowing along the chain from the lightbeast now simply reached the broken part of the chain and, rather than reach the darkbeast, scattered into the air and dispersed.

But even so the battle was far from over, it seemed. The hindmost part of the darkbeast protruded from the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by its first attack, but the frontmost part of it was obscured. Even so they would all be able to hear the thunder-like cracks, see the bright flashes of red light within the cloud and feel the tremors in the ground as it kept pummeling its target with a speed and fury unlike what it had demonstrated earlier. Three times in addition to the first did the red lightning strike before the Shopkeeper suddenly emerged, quickstepping backwards out of the cloud in the direction of the illusory wall.
The Shopkeeper's clothes looked significantly more tattered than when they had first arrived and smoldering in places, yet somehow still managed not to reveal even the smallest patch of skin. Their body also seemed to still be intact, though given the intense punishment they had just received that was probably due to them having regenerated rather than not taking damage.
Dismissing their version of the Loch Shield, the Shopkeeper instead reached both arms over their right shoulder and summoned a copy of the Holy Moonlight Sword, complete with its luminous giant blade, which instantly pulsed in the way Ophelia would recognize as the effect from it being empowered by a quicksilver bullet. They swung the blade in a mighty horizontal arc, and just as it had happened for Ludwig in the Memory of Irreverence it projected a wave of pale light outward and through the air. The projectile vanished into the dust cloud, though all of them saw a subtle flash and head a dull boom as it found its mark.
In the brief instant between the Shopkeeper swinging and the burst of moonlight hitting, however, the ominous red radiance intensified once more within the cloud, and the pale moonlight blade was met by a wave of crimson lightning. It washed over the Shopkeeper's unprotected form, but did not have a trajectory to threaten anyone else.
A second later the darkbeast rushed forward in pursuit of the Shopkeeper, seemingly content to ignore the rest of the Hunters in favor of focusing entirely on this new threat, and swiped at them viciously with its left claw, drawing a splash of weirdly pearlescent-looking blood from the Shopkeeper's chest. The Shopkeeper, in turn, dismissed their sword and instantly replaced it with an obscenely large scythe – a copy of the Burial Blade they had seen in the Dream – and carved deeply into the darkbeast's skull.