Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Half-excited that he had actually done something helpful for once and half-terrified over how horrendously Farren had gotten wounded, Torquil forced himself to concentrate on the urgent matter at hand. Skinner, despite having gotten cut, stabbed, chopped and now had a blade thrust into his forehead – not all the way to the hilt, but deep enough that it probably tasted brain – was still standing. His large left hand jerkily rose to the improvised horn in his forehead, grasped it and roughly dislodged it from his skull.
Torquil took half a step back and started winding up for another blow with his axe while trying to figure out where to aim it. Nothing seemed to really affect this monster all that much; even now, the wound in Skinner's forehead was closing before his very eyes, and all the damage Farren had desperately managed to do while being grappled had already healed. This man's regenerative potential had to be truly immense. Torquil wished he knew how to most effectively deplete that potential, but given that he did not know, all he could really do was to try to inflict wounds that would hinder his opponent for a moment before they mended themselves.

Angling his strike lower this time, Torquil swung his axe horizontally from right to left and lodged its blade deep in the right side of Skinner's abdomen. Then Torquil blinked confusedly, as he felt something hit him in the head even though nothing hit him... only for that feeling to be followed up half a second later by Skinner's enormous bestial left hand raking through the air behind him blindly. Mercifully Torquil happened to be too close to be in the path of the claws, but even catching the palm of that swing had enough blunt force behind it to sweep Torquil off his feet and throw him to the ground. Aside from that, though, it did not hurt that much; he got lucky.

While Farren was working on saving his life and Torquil was still reeling from the blow to his head, Skinner stumbled away from both of them and over to the dead church giant that lay just a few meters away. Without even an instant's hesitation he thrust both hands into the side of the giant's abdomen only to spread his hands to the side and tear a big hole right into the creature's steaming, bloody guts.
And again without hesitation, Skinner buried his face into the giant's intestines, seemingly content to ignore Farren and Torquil for the moment.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil (Collab)

Bizarrely, Farren would feel the thrown body hit him even when he was still quickstepping to intercept it, only to feel it again half a second later when the body actually hit. The first sensation only gave a vague impression of a floaty something hitting him, but the second, real impact had the actual force of the body behind it. But between the dual impacts of the body, Farren also felt another two more focused floaty impacts; one against the left side of his abdomen, right about where he knew his kidney was, and on top of his right shoulder.
His awkward slash with his the left half of the Blades of Mercy, guided by this half-second warning of the impending hit, somehow managed to catch and ward off the fist weapon coming to embed its bone blades into his body. Skinner's left hand, however, went unimpeded as it slapped down on top of Farren's right shoulder, surprisingly hitting him even harder than the dead body he had just caught, and immediately sank its bestial claws deep into his flesh.

Caught in the moment, only a distant part of his mind managed to associate those preemptive sensations with the Rune engraved upon his mind. Then the sharp heat of Skinner's claws slammed downwards into his shoulder with incredible force and weight. Farren gritted his teeth, grunting, his breath exploding out in a pained hiss, but he kept moving, his blade already inside the man's guard. From that position he shifted the angle of its edge and essentially 'punched' upwards, allowing the edge to slam into Skinner's arm even as Farren used his right arm to thrust the other half of the Blade of Mercy towards Skinner's heart.

Skinner's face, now only inches from Farren's, twisted into a broad, manic grin showing off yellowed teeth with sharp, elongated canines, though his equally wide and frenzied eyes lacked any of the raggedness that came with the scourge of beasts. Pressing down heavily on Farren's right shoulder with all of his strength and weight, Skinner pulled himself forward - at once incidentally displacing himself enough that Farren's thrust at his chest would miss the heart, while at the same time just allowing Farren to do so - , leaned in and opened his mouth. Farren would feel the floaty hit of something on the side of his neck warning him that he was about to get hurt.
Simultaneously, Skinner did nothing to stop Farren from chopping at his right arm; he seemed to be ignoring the Blades of Mercy and focusing entirely on the kill. Farren would feel a floaty impact of something hitting the left side of his ribcage, just below his armpit.
While all of this was happening, Torquil started circling around the other two counterclockwise, trying to get into a position where he could hit Skinner without hitting Farren.

Half a breath pulled in, filling his lungs, even as the sensations of impending attacks came into his awareness. As his right blade pierced Skinner's chest he acted upon them. Unable to move away with his shoulder locked in place by the bestial claws grinding against his bones, Farren instead let go of both his weapons and kicked his left foot, pushing his left side backwards as his right remained largely in place. Reorienting his body this way put his head and neck in a different position relative to where Skinner had been intent upon closing his teeth. Of course, it did mean he left one blade behind, impaled into the man's chest. Farren did manage to shift his right hand onto the grip of the other Blade of Mercy at which point he tried to begin a swing, attempting to slice the blade against bone and through the flesh of Skinner's arm. He kept that motion up until the blade would come down in a chop towards the side of the man's head and neck.

Skinner let out a dissatisfied grunt when Farren, in a burst of primitive survival instinct, decided to sacrifice his right shoulder to get his throat away from his opponent's teeth. Twisting like that in the grip of the bestial hand would undoubtedly be excruciatingly painful as skin, tendon and muscle cut and ripped and bone bent and cracked, sending rivulets of blood down the front and back of Farren's body. Even so he did manage to get away from Skinner's teeth, at least.
Reorienting his body like that naturally also changed the angle of his torso relative to the incoming attack from Skinner's right hand. Rather than hitting where Farren's premonition had told him it would, the long bladed fist weapon now instead hit and pierced into the front of his chest, where it plunged in and found its way to one of Farren's lungs.
Rather than do anything about Farren's attempts to continue to attack him directly, Farren would instead now become very aware that Skinner had anchored himself with both hands - his bestial hand in Farren's shoulder and his fist weapon in Farren's chest - as he felt both of those anchor points abruptly pulling upward, and Skinner quite simply just picked Farren high off the ground, holding him up over his head. Farren's entire orientation abruptly changing would likely change his intended course of action.
Torquil watched this with eyes wide in disbelief, but kept circling and raised his axe to strike.

A primal growl left his throat, half the pained grunt of a man and the sound of an injured beast as he tore apart his own shoulder to partially evade Skinner's assault. Then his feet left the ground and Farren's eyes widened slightly, but with nothing in his left hand, that hand already near his waist, he acted. In an instant, Farren pulled the blunderbuss from its hook at his hip, levered it up and unloaded its shot directly into Skinner's face in a rapid motion only a Hunter could manage.

In an instant marked by a muzzle flash and another loud gunshot, Skinner's face was turned into a bloody mess... though even torn to shreds, even with both eyeballs destroyed, his grin returned as his flesh regenerated. Because even blinded, he could still do what he wanted to do next.
Skinner's bestial hand tightened its grip on Farren even further, holding him in place, while he felt the right hand start dragging the blades to Farren's left, cutting through more of his organs and prying open his ribcage.

With little recourse left to him--and with his body screaming from the agony of having his chest violently pried open, shoulder destroyed, and various bones shattered or pulled asunder--Farren did the last thing he could think of. He pulled his right arm in practically against his collarbone, his closed fist still clutching the Blade of mercy as it came up over his left shoulder, the tip pointed forwards. This put his arm above Skinner's where he was clutching Farren's ribcage.
Farren realized he was practically howling and wasn't sure if it was more from pain, defiance, or rage. His voice was ragged and hoarse from his deflated, ravaged lung, but he did what little he could acting off almost pure adrenaline by that point. Short as the blade was, Skinner was close and it proved a boon as Farren aimed at the center of where the man's forehead had been before he'd blown it apart and then he slammed the tip of the blade forth. It cut through the tiny space between them almost soundlessly, its tip aimed to penetrate Skinner's skull and skewer his brain.

The Blade of Mercy stabbed into Skinner's forehead, and finally his grin faltered. Farren would feel the force trying to rip him apart slacken somewhat and, just half a second after, Skinner's entire body abruptly jolted forward as Torquil lodged his Hunter's Axe in his back.
With a low groan, Skinner clumsily chucked Farren forward and toward the elevator, relinquishing the grip of his left hand and retracting his fist weapon.

Farren experienced very little of what happened, just felt the pain slightly slacken, then the whistle of air, before a violent jerk as he struck something. That jerk--in a way--was a godsend, even though it had him hissing and groaning from the intense pain. Adrenaline continued to pump through him, even as blood poured from his wounds. Gritting his teeth hard, Farren dug the fingers of his right hand into his thigh and swallowed hard as he moved his left hand to his belt and clumsily fished in his pouch for a blood vial.
After a few tries, Farren got ahold of a vial and moved just his eyes rather than his head so he could see one of his legs. He positioned the needle-end of the vial above his thigh and then stabbed it down through his clothes and into his flesh. With how much pain he was in elsewhere, he didn't even feel it.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Finally the whistling stopped in response to Farren's question, though the only answer forthcoming was a brief sinister laugh. Rather than speak, Skinner started moving faster, approaching them in a jog. When he had covered about two thirds of the way toward them, he made a sudden movement with his left arm where he first drew the body he was shielding himself with closer to himself and lower to the ground, bending his left arm as he did so, before extending the arm again outward and upward. The body followed the movements of the arm like a rag doll, limbs flailing with the abrupt movements; by the way the Yhanamites head lolled around, it would not be hard to deduce that his neck had been broken. As Skinner's arm reached its apex he released his grip on the body, and its momentum carried it through the air and away from him... and straight at Torquil.

Torquil let out a surprised yelp and raised his shield as the body sailed the nearly ten meters through the air and crashed into him, but the impact was not enough to hurt or even significantly stagger him. What it did do, however, was block Torquil's line of vision so that he did not see – though Farren would – that Skinner immediately followed up the toss with a quickstep, a pause, and then another quickstep, crossing the distance separating him and Torquil in but a second.
As he did so, Farren would witness the horrid, forbidden power of the bones in Skinner's hand. He would see the bones wiggle as if with a life of their own before sending a pulse of... something up through its wielders arm. And he would observe as Skinner, within the space of the single second he spent charging, underwent a partial transformation that discarded some of his humanity and instead adopted the physique of a true beast. His upper body and arms spontaneously grew fur and his idle left arm in particular mutated into the appendage of some manner of bestial monstrosity, significantly larger than a human hand would be and with each large finger adorned with mighty claws.

Farren was close enough that he could potentially intervene, though he would likely have to quickstep himself to get there in time.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Torquil flinched away at the flash of light and heat that accompanied the loud bang of Farren discharging his rifle, sending the quicksilver projectile across the street, where it found a new home as it buried itself into the man's chest. But it was strange. They both saw the bullet cut into the man, producing a small spurt of blood as it doubtlessly found its way into lungs or heart inside... but not only did the man who had just gotten shot not even flinch, the whistled lullaby continued uninterrupted.
While Farren discarded the piercing rifle and armed himself with the Blades of Mercy, the beast claw seemed to slip out of the man's hand and disappear behind him. A moment later the Yharnamite started moving forward out the door, though rather than walk, he seemed to simply glide, his legs hanging limply below him and his feet dragging over the ground.
The reason for this became clear but half a second later, as a second figure stepped out from just within and to the side of the doorway, his left arm outstretched and latched onto the shoulder of the first man. He continued to hold the nerveless Yharnamite in front of himself like a human shield, all while whistling his ominous tune.

No longer hiding, Farren and Torquil got their first good look at who they could only assume to be Skinner. A giant of a man, well over two meters tall, with immensely board shoulders and chest and every part of his body, from his neck to his arms to his legs, bulging with rippling muscle. They could tell because the man was mostly naked; his feet and pelvis were wrapped in some kind of leathery material, but otherwise the only thing he wore was some bizarre wreath of layered dangling appendages he wore like a poncho. The appendages were also weirdly mismatched... but it would likely not take long to realize that these were all the patches of skin he had stolen. Hairless human skin, the fur-clad hide of beasts, feathered skin from some manner of avian creatures... some old enough to have started decaying, some so fresh that they were still dripping with blood.
Skinner peeked over the shoulder of his meat-shield, a look of amusement in his dark gray eyes under a mess of tangled blond hair. His right hand now held the beast claw as he, still whistling, stepping into the street and approached Torquil and Farren.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Reception, Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Ophelia

As soon as Ophelia touched a quicksilver bullet to the arcane blade of light that enveloped the physical blade of her sword, the little pellet of liquid metal and blood seemed to be instantly consumed. But as the bullet vanished, ripples spread across the Holy Moonlight Sword as its radiance doubled, then tripled, and she could feel the artifact positively thrumming with raw, restless energy.
“Behold, Huntress, the power you wield... Witness glorious, holy light...”
She thrust the sword into the barricade and, with a flash of blinding luminescence, the sword discharged the power it had harnessed from the quicksilver all at once. A shockwave cracked wood and tossed aside chairs, tables and cabinets alike, leaving behind a mostly cleared doorway momentarily shrouded in a mist of light.

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Farren and Torquil retreated back to the elevator, both of them keeping their guard up the entire time and their eyes trained on the house the blood trail had led to. They took up defensive positions there, a good thirty meters or so from the suspicious building, and set to simply waiting for Ophelia to reinforce them.

It turned out that they were not going to be allowed to wait that long, however. Roughly thirty seconds after going to the elevator, the click of a door knob being turned could faintly be picked up in the otherwise deathly silence, and a door – not the door of the residence Farren and Torquil had been watching, but the one directly next to and to the right of – slowly creaked open. As it did, the sound of someone whistling an old tune; the melody of a lullaby.
The door swung open to reveal the figure of a bloodstained man clad in the garb of a common Yharnamite, with the rough, improvised weapon Farren knew as the beast claw in his right hand.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Torquil listened to Farren's explanation and instructions, and offered a firm nod in response. Indeed, if there was a sentiment he could get behind, it was to make an effort not to die. Again.
He backed up toward the elevator without taking his eyes off the house Farren had pointed out to him and without dropping his guard for even a second. But even with all the noise they had just made and the bullet they had sent through the upstairs window, the interior of the residence remained completely still. Even the curtains were perfectly motionless, not shifting even slightly to betray the presence of breath or movement within.

Just a couple of seconds after Farren had sent his own message, another pair of Messengers came to deliver another one for him:

“Going to break barricade. We're in only entrance. Got to protect sleepers from 'Skinner'.”

Ophelia's Message

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

“Both,” the doll conveyed on behalf of the caretaker of the Dream. “The Shopkeeper yet longs to hunt, but the bells are meant for you to use any time you need them. They leave it to your judgment how often that is.”

Consulting the Messengers and showing them the silver bell she had received from the Shopkeeper, the little creatures presented her with a scroll on the subject:

Moonborn Bell
A small silver bell created by the Moonborn of the Hunter's Dream.
Its ring resonates across worlds to call its creator, who will be summoned to the user's side, no matter where they are.
Though their own hunt has passed, the Moonborn still yearns for strong prey. Hunters of the Dream can summon them freely, but they should be aware that the Moonborn is their ally, not their servant.
It will be a long hunt tonight. It would be a shame if they missed it.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

The gunshot from Farren's pistol cut through the otherwise disturbingly quiet evening air with a sharp bang that echoed loudly through the empty street. It was so loud, in fact, that they could barely even hear the bullet hit the window... which did significantly less damage than one might expect. The small, high-speed projectile did not shatter the glass as a rock with far less force would have, but merely punched a tiny hole through it and continued through into the darkness within.
Torquil jumped at the sound and took a second to gather himself after, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, but otherwise the bang of the pistol died out and left nothing but silence. To the south, Victor sped up from a jog into a sprint at the sound of the gunshot, putting more and more distance between himself and what they presumed was an imminent danger.

Just a couple of seconds after firing his pistol, two Messengers emerged from the ground next to Farren, eagerly unrolled a scroll and showed him its contents:

“Understood. Just returned to Dream - no little ones in White Church. Discovered a lot. Got supplies for us all. Joining you as soon as I can.”

Ophelia's Message

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Torquil moved to follow Farren's instructions without hesitation and was now focusing all of his attention on the house Farren had pointed out, shield and axe raised and ready for battle... or at least as ready as someone who had only been in one fight could be. The house seemed rather still, with just a bit of flickering of the light suggesting an airflow that disturbed the lantern, candle or fireplace lighting the interior.

Victor, however, actually started backing away from the house and took a couple of steps down the street leading south. “No way,” he declared firmly. His voice was no longer trembling and he did not sound particularly frightened, just resolutely opposed to Farren's plan of action. “If this is really the Skinner, he's supposed to be incredibly dangerous. Our orders if we encounter him are to retreat and alert the workshop so the First Hunter can go kill him. You might be immortal, but I'm not! I'm not going to throw my life away fighting a Hunter-killer like that!”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

“The Hunter's Dream and everything in it, myself included, belongs to you, for you to do with as you please,” the doll informed Ophelia in response to her query about bringing the rune workshop tool with her outside the Dream. She glanced at the silent figure next to her, then added: “The Shopkeeper has also given their consent, though they request that you either bring them back when you are done or leave them somewhere a future Hunter of the Dream can find them.”

Again the doll looked to the Shopkeeper when Ophelia asked for recommendations for guns, before conveying their advice: “The Shopkeeper wants to let you know that you already took the Rosmarinus, which draws its power from quicksilver bullets, and that your chosen weapon – the Holy Moonlight Sword – can likewise empower itself when fed with quicksilver, both of which would be quite potent with your affinity for the arcane. But given that they also sense a somewhat powerful bloodtinge in you, if you did want a firearm, they recommend an Evelyn.”
The Shopkeeper held out their right hand with the palm upturned, only to grasp at the air and, with a subtle bluish pulse of light, summoning an unusually long, sleek and elegant pistol into its grip.

At the same time as the doll told her this, droplets of blood hit the mercury on Ophelia's person, turning it into quicksilver. As soon as this happened, the whispers of the Holy Moonlight Sword entered her mind as well: “Huntress... You possess quicksilver... which can unleash the power of your blood... Give quicksilver to the sword... and swing... and it will project its holy light at a distance... or thrust... and its cleansing radiance will drive back anything near you...”

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Left to his own devices, Victor quickly found that Stefan did indeed have a couple of blood vials left, one of which the shaking White Church Hunter immediately pulled from his fallen comrades bag, unscrewed the lid of and moved it to his lips. He drank its contents greedily, his eyes closed in bliss, and stopped trembling. In fact he seemed to calm down quite significantly after imbibing the blood, and calmly transferred the other blood vials from Stefan's bag to his own... revealing in the process to anyone paying attention that his bag now contained no less than five filled vials.

Farren's examination of the area around where Stefan and the giant had fallen was not overly easy, as this had obviously been the site of an intense battle that had scattered what seemed like obscene quantities of blood all over the cobblestone. The teeth did not seem to make any particular pattern either, seeming to have just been either flung or have slipped out past Stefan's broken and slack jaw after whatever impact had hit it. The guts hanging out of him, too, seemed to simply have been left where they fell, suggesting that they had not been extracted for any other purpose than to do damage to the Hunter.
Spending a minute or so looking around, as Victor finished looting his comrade and Torquil nervously kept spinning in place, trying to keep an eye on all three streets at the same time, Farren would eventually notice something. Past all the high-impact bloodspatter in the area from the battle, there was a faint trail of low-impact droplets as well that would have come not from combat, but someone passively dripping blood. Following that trail, Farren would find that it lead to the door of the nearest residence with a lit censer and light behind their windows.

Touching the massive, surprisingly firm and muscular form of the church giant, Farren would find that its corpse was indeed still warm.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Trying to shrink down and hide behind his shield as best as he could, Torquil moved very slowly to follow Victor, his axe always at the ready. He kept focusing down first one open, empty street of the T-intersection, then the next, then the first, looking frantically for movement or anything that stood out... and, in particular, anything that was coming toward them. Like someone coming to kill them. Which would be bad, at least in his humble opinion.

Meanwhile Victor's hands were trembling as he licked his lips and swallowed, his eyes scanning rapidly up and down the corpse of the man who used to be his companion. He hesitantly crouched and, without letting go of his sword, rolled the body onto its back to reveal a person who was just barely recognizable as Stefan. His jaw appeared to have been shattered, and Victor only now noticed that not only did Stefan's weapon – a church pick – lie broken and discarded a couple of meters from the body, but the street was also strewn with bloody, broken teeth. The sight brought back recent memories of the beast-man slashing Victor in the face, though Stefan appeared have been hit even harder, and with blunt force rather than a sharp instrument.
Even more noticeable, however, was the fact that – aside from miscellaneous other small bloody tears in his garb – there was a sizable hole right through the front of Stefan's coat and into his belly, with his intestines hanging out for the world to see.
“Visceral attack,” Victor muttered with a nod of his head. “A Hunter definitely did this. I've heard of this guy. They call him Skinner, because he always takes a patch of skin from his victims. He's a mad Hunter that's been killing everyone, beasts, Hunters and humans alike, for months. I had heard he was really dangerous, but this... is worse than I'd imagined.”
While he spoke, Victor's hand went to check the corpse's bag of blood vials.