[HIDER=Collab: Attack of the Mad One (Bartimaeus, Ashgan, Dark Jack)]The beast surged forward, black and unnaturally fast - pure darkness given form and malevolent intent. The moment its ebon muscles began to twitch, Adelicia closed her eyes, lids tightly shut and squeezing out another pair of tears. She held her censer in front of her like a shield, the rod straight as a candle, for what good it would do. With quivering lips, she began to mumble something to herself, barely audible over the clangour of battle.

“Beware the frailty of men,” she whispered in a ghastly monotone, “Their wills are weak, minds young.”

Raine’s own voice was soon absent again as the ickor shape of the creature lunged at him with an open hand, and an equally black blade. The sight of the grasp of a deformed beast was, as one could likely guess, a common subject of the nightmares of Yharnamites. Long digits seeking for purchase upon the soft hide of those left unspoiled by the scourge - claws akin to straight-sickles that you could feel pierce your skin before they even got close. Perhaps the worst aspect of the image being the long, lanky arm it was backed by that led to something far more sickening than the visage of just the hand. Just the vision of such a thing could paralyze a man with fear.

However, Raine was hardly what you could call a man. He was a hunter. His eyes were quick to react, the action familiar to him - a grapple and a strike. A little more tricky than the usual simple slashes of beast-folk, but he could recognize the more dangerous part of the attack. If he were grabbed, it would not be good.

The beast was upon him quickly with a shriek, but Raine was equally as fast to move to the side and back, his shoes gritting lightly against the cobble as he performed a slash in the same step as his maneuver. The length of his trident-like weapon reaching out and arcing horizontally at the beast’s hand, the blade on the outward edge of one of the prongs aiming to cut across the outstretched hand of his foe - while the hunter kept in mind to use his weapon’s length to stay outside of the saber’s range.

The slash was enough to make the monster withdraw its hand, but far from enough to deter it from its attack; if anything, the creature seemed even more eager to attack than before. Screaming madly it merely altered its course to intercept Raine’s movements, bounding forward as it brought its saber low to its side, performing a wide swing from right to left at waist-level.

The hunter’s eyes moved quickly to follow the beast’s movements - allowing himself the inner recognition that it could withdraw itself from attacks - it wasn’t as incoherent as some of the other creatures his kind  fought. He did not have much time to think beyond that though as his foe rebounded quickly and advanced again with a wide horizontal attack. Raine saw the maneuver coming; although the beast-scourged are fast, so are an experienced hunter’s eyes, and beasts don’t pay mind to telegraphing their movements. 

The hunter, instead of retreating backwards, shifted forward, using a couple quick, well-placed steps to move into the base of the saber’s attack arc. In the same movement, his weapon moved up his arm, the end of the staff section at his shoulder and his arm resting along its length, his hand gripping the staff under the base of the prongs - which he moved to intercept the saber’s blade while the sound of shifting metal sounded the extension of the longest middle prong. This maneuver would aim to put Raine well within the creature’s range - and would catch the blade within his trident. Were the blade to be captured, he would twist his weapon inward in an attempt to disarm the beast, pulling the ickor instrument away from the strength of its other clawed digits and into the thumb.
This maneuver being a well-practiced and surprisingly quick one, he could afford to perform it with just the one arm, as the other struck out in an attempt to grasp the beast’s bicep, due to their now very close proximity.

The creature, meanwhile, seemed anything but intimidated by Raine’s efforts. As the Hunter’s weapon caught his opponent’s saber and started twisting it, the beast did not even attempt to retain its grip on the handle, but simply allowed it to be wrung from its grasp without resistance. Instead it used its now entirely unburdened right hand to grasp at the left side of Raine’s chest, just as its left hand - the wound across its palm nearly fully healed already - mirrored the move on Raine’s right side. Raine holding on to its forearm did nothing to stop it, as they were more than close enough for the creature not to need anywhere near the full length of its appendages. It would sink its claws into his flesh while simultaneously using their combined momentum, and its own much heavier frame, to slam into him and most likely knock him sufficiently off balance to be able to pick him up in a two-handed grip with ease.

The hunter felt the expected leeway as the beast’s black blade was torn from its grasp, sending it clattering to the cobble below. However, its appendages were weapons in their own right - and as expected, would come after the disarm. The sound of shifting metal could be heard even as the creature’s lanky appendage immediately moved to grasp Raine by the torso, its claws digging into his flesh. The hunter maneuvered the weapon with one hand and grasped it now by the much shorter hilt - the weapon looking now much akin to a Sai - just as he felt a second set of claws dig into him from the opposite side. He gritted his teeth, letting a slight growl escape his lips. This was where the hunter’s inexperience with this particular beast showed. His grip on the creature’s bicep did little more than slightly hinder its forward momentum - but its armlength was impressive, and allowed it purchase onto him.

The creature used their accrued momentum to slam into the hunter, jostling him with its weight to throw his balance before lifting him in the grasp of its lengthy fingers. However, the hunter gripped his weapon with determination to keep from losing it. He thrust it upwards, being unable to move the top half of his arm, but his forearm shifting upwards with force in order to impale the creature’s own right forearm with the middle prong of the weapon. If successful, he would attempt to wretch the imbedded blade to the side to cut through the beast’s muscles, in order to weaken its hold.

Hunter Provostus didn’t feel as though he [i]needed[/i] it at the moment - which might seem a little arrogant to some, considering his current position - but he was waiting for the moment his ally found the strength to stand and attack the beast from behind.

Victor had managed to stand a little while ago, soon after his trying to do so, and had been staggering toward the clash between Raine and the beast for most of the fight, trying to move as fast as he could in his less than ideal condition. Several times he tried to set into a light jog, at least, but found himself stumbling with every step as his stamina drained in an instant. His strength had diminished to a point where he could barely function as a human being, let alone use the Old Blood in his veins to elevate his power to the levels of a Hunter, which took a considerable amount of energy.
About at the time Raine and the creature started fighting properly, with the veteran Hunter delivering a gracing strike to its left hand to deter it, Victor noticed that the pain in his back and chest stopped fading. He quickly hung his blunderbuss – unloaded for the moment, he reminded himself – from his belt and moved his sword to his left hand, after which he swiftly retrieved one of three blood vials he kept in a pouch on his right hip, popped off the protective cap with his thumb and immediately thrust the syringe at his right thigh, injecting the treated blood directly into his bloodstream. Normally he preferred to take a moment to unscrew the second cap with the needle, as well, and drink the blood rather than injecting it, but the situation seemed very suited for the quicker delivery method of the two just now. He felt the pain start to abate again as his regenerative potential was restored, allowing his wounds to keep healing. Another second or two and his body was going to be fully mended.
He still could not breathe properly, though, which was a problem. Every exhalation brought with it another mouthful of foamy blood, each inhalation felt like he was trying to breathe underwater, and he kept feeling an intense coughing fit building in his chest. He could not allow himself to cough; if he did it even once, he suspected that he would not be able to stop again, and it would debilitate him even further than he already was.
He looked on in helpless rage as Raine and their obsidian assailant fought, feeling somewhat taken aback by how the fight unfolded. The monster, as could be expected by a beast, never let up its offensive; their kind had regenerative powers beyond those of even Hunters, and practically anything Raine did to it was going to mend itself in an instant until the damage exceeded its regenerative potential. What was shocking was the fact that Raine seemed to be doing a bizarre mix of extremely defensive and offensive tactics all at once, despite these maneuvers not seeming to complement each other very well. Slashing the creature's hand was a smart move of course, momentarily preventing it from capturing him in its deadly grasp, but next he decided to not only disarm the creature – something that, on its own, might have been a clever move – but also step in close while the monster was still rushing in his direction.
[I]You damn idiot,[/I] Victor thought in disbelief as the creature unsurprisingly allowed its means of long-range offense to be wrested from its hand, only to successfully accomplish what it had been trying to from the start: capturing him in his grasp, now with both hands rather than just one. Using its weight and momentum, the creature easily knocked back Raine and picked him off the ground, not unlike how it had picked up Victor just moments prior. As Raine kept fighting relentlessly, managing to attack and cripple the creature's right arm, the monster turned around with him still in its grasp, still capable of carrying him in just its left hand, and faced the space just next to the elevator... the edge of the plateau.
Victor remembered how the creature had effortlessly hurled him through the air before with that very same left hand, and felt his heart sink. That was a nasty fall, likely to be fatal.

Gritting his teeth, Victor did not break his stride in approaching the creature as quickly as he could, but even with his fear burned away by rage and his humanity suppressed by the beasthood within, he still recognized that, in his current condition, he did not really have much of a viable means of attack. He could reload his blunderbuss and fire it in a second, but even if he was now merely two meters from the creature's back and thus within range of his firearm, it would still serve very little purpose. Not only was the blunderbuss liable to hit Raine with a stray projectile or two due to the monster's slender form, but Victor's bloodtinge was far from corrosive enough for the bullets to be particularly harmful. Unless he managed to fire it at point blank range into the creature's head, or he managed to time the shot perfectly and stun it, the quicksilver pellets would barely annoy it.
He was still a little too far to attack with his sword, and even if he could, what use would that be? With his breathing crippled as it was he could not quick-step or boost his strength to superhuman levels; in fact he suspected that he might currently be even weaker than a normal human. Whether he slashed or stabbed, the small silver sword was unlikely to cut very deep. At best he might distract the monster and get maimed or killed himself, and at worst it would just ignore him. Using the large blade-scabbard on his back was out of the question without superhuman strength...
With his strength drained as it was, he could not do much in time. If only he had a molotov cocktail, or some other means of attack the effectiveness of which did not rely on his strength or stamina...

Victor blinked, then took one final step forward. His sword still in his left hand he reached down with his right one, turned the lantern at his belt to its brightest, unhooked it from its place there and immediately and desperately hurled it at the monster's back, hitting it on its right shoulder. Though the brass frame of the lantern was too sturdy to break at impact the glass did shatter, and as it turned upside down the oil from within spilled, only to be instantly ignited by the light that had already burned within.
Within an instant the creature's shoulders, back and head were all ablaze, and the panicking beast let out a shrill cry, releasing Raine back onto the ground as it tried to beat out the flames with its hands, one healthy and one nerveless, while stumbling back away from Raine and toward Victor.

Raine felt his weight shift at just about the same time the elongated digits of the beast’s singular grip on him lifted, allowing him to fall to the cobble below, his shoes hitting the stone deftly as a splurge of beast blood poured from the black creature’s arm - the hunter having kept a tight grasp on his weapon. He fell into a crouch, watching as his foe now flayed its hands at the sudden source of searing flame sprouting from the flesh of its back and shoulders. The hunter allowed his weapon to extend once again, the sound of the steel telescoping outwards as he wasted no time in recovering from the wounds dug into him by the beast’s grasp. He stepped towards the creature that stumbled backwards in its panick, swinging his bladed trident in a heavy chopping arc towards the side of the weighty beast’s knee. He couldn’t deny his companion’s good timing.

[I]What are you doing? Stop toying with it and just kill the damn thing![/I] Victor thought, inwardly cursing the fact that he could not seem to summon the strength to fight himself as he watched Raine chop at the monster’s knee, causing that leg to fold under it and briefly hampering its mobility. It was not that Victor could not see what Raine was doing; he was trying to keep the creature crippled, limiting its prowess every chance he got while slowly chipping away at its regenerative potential, but trying to cripple a beast was a hopeless venture. Even the severe wound Raine had inflicted upon his opponent’s right arm was already visibly mending itself, and the fingers of the right hand had already started twitching again as the tendons reconnected. Until a beast’s regenerative potential had been depleted, anything short of actually severing a limb was unlikely to hinder it for more than a few seconds. And severing a limb? With how dense the bones of beasts were, cutting off a limb would be impossible without absolutely herculean strength.
It would be much wiser to either go for as large swathes sof skin as possible, bleeding it as much as he could, or to target vital organs. Gods, if he was lucky and managed to get a good stab to the brain he might even stun the creature long enough to finish it off entirely… if this being had a brain in the first place, of course. Victor knew very little of these monsters aside from what he had heard from some of the older Hunters; that Yharnamites referred to them as “Mad Ones,” and were once simultaneously the scourge and guardians of Hemwick. That they were bloodwraiths, creatures formed from the blood echoes of the dead. And that they did not show up unless called.

As Victor inhaled, intending to voice his displeasure with Raine taking too long with the fight, he got a lungful of air befouled with the smell and taste of burning flesh and hair, which proved too much for his tattered lungs. Willing or not Victor immediately doubled over and started coughing, heaving and retching, loudly and deeply. Once when he had been in his teens Victor had nearly died from pneumonia, yet even back then he did not recall having coughed as intensely as he did now. It also sounded [I]wrong[/I], a nasty wet sound to it, and soon he was expelling what seemed like obscene amounts of foamy blood onto the ground. He fell to his hands and knees, unable to stop coughing.

The creature, meanwhile, seemed reminded of the danger Raine still posed to it by his attack. While it kept beating the crown of flames enveloping its head with its rapidly recovering right hand, it swatted at Raine with its left, intending to knock him away, likely in the direction of the edge of the plateau.

A cascade of harrowing sounds and revolting stenches assaulted Adelicia’s senses as she cowered in the elevator – trapped and afraid like an animal stuck in a snare. Having since sunk into a defeated sitting position, face buried in the knees of her skirt, she dared not look at the inhuman battle that played out before her. She hated every second of it. She hated the beasts. She hated the violence. She hated the intense feeling of dread that oppressed her utterly. She hated that all she could do was cower whilst others fought over the right to claim her blood. It was terrible to be helpless.
“Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented,” she whispered to herself, a stranger’s words emanating from her lips – recited without understanding. Trying her best to ignore the frightful noise beyond her cage, she continued reciting the prayer that was taught to her. The words conjured memories of a different, if not happier time. The sanatorium had not been a kind place and she did not miss its impenetrable, prison-like walls. But, sitting here like a lamb before the butcher, she could not deny that it had been [i]safe[/i]. Safe from beasts, at the very least.
She repeated verse for verse in her mind until a particular line gave her pause, suddenly struck by an epiphany. “Our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears,” she echoed her thoughts, implying some gravity to those words. All her life, she had never felt a great appetite for blood – and had never felt quite free from the grasp of fear. The meaning of these words had eluded her until now.
Eyes moistly glistening, she peeked out from under her knees and beheld a vista painted from a nightmare: the black beast, terrible in its blighted majesty, stood in flames and screamed savage vengeance at its assailants. Behind it, Victor was on all fours, seemingly puking his lungs out. And Raine fought like a lion, his body drenched in blood whose origins she did not care to speculate on. Strangely, all the hate she felt seconds ago seemed as if blown away by the wind. Now, she felt pity and almost wanted to weep.
It was afraid, just like she was. It feared hunters, as men feared beasts and it feared starvation as men did. That’s what the prayer implied – that it seeks the blood to satiate itself, to soothe its fears. And why wouldn’t it? Beasts had been men, after all. They were the same thing, in the end.
Good gods, they were murdering one another out of fear. Over the years, decades – centuries? – men had been slaughtering men in Yharnam’s streets for the basest of reasons: Fear and hunger. How could they have gone so wrong? How had nobody seen what terrible turn humanity had taken? How could everybody turn a blind eye to the simple truth that beasts were not abhorrent, inhuman monsters – but that they were men like the rest of us?
Bursting into hot tears with an anguished wail, Adelicia’s face sunk into her knees again where she cried into the cloth of her dress.
And there was nothing she could do to end the cycle. Naught but pray that something might change – or pray that it was all simply a bad dream, and that some day soon she would awaken.

Meanwhile Hunter Provostus brought his weapon up again, rearing for another strike that was planned for the creature’s other leg, as he heard Victor fall into a fit of wet coughing. It sounded like he’d taken quite a wound to his lungs, the hunter noted. Before Raine could follow through with his second attack though, his eyes jumped to one of the beast’s arms as it began a motion to strike out at him in retaliation. The hunter’s feet and weight shifted quickly as he moved swiftly to the creature’s right side, positioning himself close to the beast but away from the swat, as his own elongated right hand disappeared behind him.

He took this opportunity to move into another attack, gripping his trident tightly while the sky-facing prongs leveled as he moved and, with the hunter’s momentum and enhanced strength, jabbed through the air in an attempt to pierce the beast’s chest. Such an attack was especially dangerous from the weapon the veteran hunter chose, as the multiple bladed prongs threatened to puncture several of the many organs in that area - the heart, lungs, and other viscera among them. Were he to find his attack successful, Raine would intend to tear his weapon free and draw his opposite hand out from behind him - now gripping a short-barreled handgun of darkwood and steel - which he would fire into the beast’s bloodied leg, the bloodtinged bullet aiming to rip through its knee as his blade had moments before.

The Mad One still seemed dazed and panicked from the fire and completely failed to react to Raine’s quick change of position, barely even seeming to realize that its questing hand had met nothing but air, focusing instead on beating out the last embers in its hair. The Hunter’s stab was thusly a critical success: piercing through the creature’s ribcage, rending through flesh and organs, causing severe enough damage for the Mad One to realize that it posed a genuine threat.
Desperate to get away from Raine the beast started to rise onto its mostly regenerated leg, only for the quicksilver bullet from Raine’s gun to disable the knee mid-move, causing the monster to fall to its hands and elbows, bleeding profusely and its back still in flames. Its regeneration had clearly slowed by now, and it would not be hard for anyone experienced with fast-healing individuals to realize that it was nearing the limits of what its lifeforce could sustain it through.

Pushing off mightily with both hands the Mad One flung itself onto its back, using its weight and arms to propel it into a clumsy backwards somersault as it tried to get away from Raine. In doing so it accomplished another two things, though: it managed to put out its burning back, and it knocked over Victor, interrupting his coughing and knocking him prone.
Without hesitation the Mad One seized Victor from the ground with its right hand, grasping him by the front of his chest, and raised the Hunter between itself and Raine as a human shield while it used its left hand to try to drag itself away from there.

Only… Victor was not coughing anymore. Three coughs ago the deluge he had unleashed had seemed to abate somewhat, followed by a cough that expelled only a few drops of blood and finally a dry one. While knocked to the ground, being grabbed and being raised from the ground, Victor had been breathing deeply and slowly, drinking deep of the delicious, magnificent oxygen that filled his lungs and revelling in the strength he felt flowing back into his body.
The Mad One was odd… Victor had never seen a beast act like this before, trying to back out of a fight just because it was wounded. Beasts knew only to attack, and they knew that their wounds would only heal if they killed and fed; retreating from battle was entirely counterproductive toward them staying alive. Yet this creature seemed afraid now that its regenerative potential was nearing depletion?
Held before the creature as he was, Victor found himself face to face with the monster, looking into the bright white circles of its staring eyes. He could see its parted teeth, hear its labored breath… he could smell its desire to kill and live. Its fear and rage.
He sympathized.
The silver sword shifted from Victor’s left hand to the right one swiftly, and without a second thought he buried as much of its blade into the creature’s left eye as he could fit.

Letting out a mindless, desperate howl the Mad One immediately threw Victor aside, scrambling backward while flailing wildly with its arms in an effort to ward off the Hunters. This time Victor landed on his feet, though, and kept his distance only to avoid the flailing arms. He bared his own teeth in a snarl, growling deep in his throat as he clutched his sword tightly.
“Let’s end this.”

Raine hesitated attacking further as the creature made a maneuver to use his companion as a human shield - an action that perplexed him. It’s behavior was not as similar to beasts he had fought before - it seemed self aware. However, it appeared his companion had recovered from his wounds enough to free himself.

Rain nodded at Victor’s words, and quickly maneuvered a couple yards to the opposite side of the beast, so that they stood in a triangle. He would watch as the beast flailed its ickor appendages in an attempt to ward them off, and wait until just after its swing had reached its peak.

Then he would dash forward to its left side, slashing at the creature’s arm to sever its muscles before aiming to deliver a chop to the beast’s temple with his trident.

Victor remained at the ready as Raine moved, prepared to add further damage to the beast in case his fellow Hunter’s strike proved insufficient, but it turned out to be unnecessary. As the trident pierced the Mad One’s skull its scream was instantly halted, its absence leaving them in deafening silence, and its limbs went limp without as much as a tremble. After but a heartbeat the creature seemed to collapse in on itself, rapidly disintegrating back into the dust from which it had come, only for nothing to remain a second later. A faint metallic clatter could be heard from where its saber had fallen as it, too, vanished along with its wielder.

And although it would be too far and too faint for Victor or Raine to hear, Adelicia’s location inside the elevator might have been close enough that she noticed the sound of ripping fabric from the corner of the cabin. Over there the old, worn hat that had been there when they embarked seemed to spontaneously suffer several tears; when the sound stopped after approximately three seconds, the hat had been so badly damaged that it could barely even considered a cohesive whole anymore.
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