yoshua171

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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?

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

unfortunately found himself caught in the outer expanse of the electrical conflagration as it slashed through the air in every direction like violent actinic roots branching at strange and arcane angles. In the instant before he was struck, Farren had three thoughts, first that Gerlinde and Torquil hadn’t retreated, second being a simple set of expletives, and third being that the sight was a form of violent beauty that he knew he’d never bore witness to in his prior life.

A strange sense of appreciation thus washed through him in the instant right before roots of searing voltaic pain cascaded through his flesh. Farren’s muscles, eyelids included, twitched and spasmed, but he managed not to allow that to entirely throw him off, landing with more grace than one might expect given when he’d endured. Farren slid to a halt some 4 meters from the Darkbeast, jaw tight, pupils blown wide even as his eyes almost bulged from how wide he was holding them. A beat passed, and then he managed to extract a blood vial, stab it into his leg, and depress it with a pained hiss. “Agh…” he snarled out as his regeneration kicked back into action, going from a sluggish pace to a rapid reinvigoration of his earthly vessel.

The vial returned to his pouch as he pressed forwards, inhaling sharply before he began to pick up speed until he was fully running at the Darkbeast. “Ragged bastard,” Farren growled out just before reaching it, then he was next to its head. Without hesitation, his flesh renewed by then, Farren stabbed the twin unified Blades of Mercy into its eye sockets and then wrenched out the Blades. Yet, a jerk of his wrists during the motion allowed him to deliberately split his Blades, leaving one Effigial Blade and one True Blade of Mercy embedded in the creature’s head, while he withdrew their twins.

With a wrath that might have surprised even him if he’d had any mind to reflect in that moment, Farren then began to lay blow after blow upon the monster’s neck, slicing away flesh and fur as he repeatedly scoured and split away at its vertebrae once more. Finally…he’d found an outlet for the rage that had bubbled in his gut ever since the violation of the Garden.

Finally he had prey.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_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.