[color=#1A1A3B][b][u][h1][sub][sub][sub]Farren[/sub][/sub][/sub][/h1][/u][/b][/color]		    had moved as swiftly and quietly as he could along with the others and ultimately it had paid off as they arrived unscathed without a conflict with the Crowmother. However, it seemed that upon closing that final bit of distance to their destination, they had been spotted. Having braced himself for a fight, Farren’s hand remained gripping the not the Blades of Mercy, but rather the Beastflayer over his shoulder where it remained strapped to his back. He took in every detail of the strange monstrosity, glad he hadn’t reacted with pure instinct when it stopped above them–perched 40 feet forward and upon the outcropping of stone at the crest of the indent at the base of the mountain at which they’d arrived.

Oddly, while the Darkbeast had not frightened him, sometimes about the Crowmother had him sweating, his teeth clenched as he glowered across the distance at it, gaze locked, face a mask of concentration.

Then it spoke.

A fierce, shuddering chill rode up from the base of his spine.

The Lightbeast had communicated with Ophelia, certainly, but its body had clearly been too warped for proper speech. Somehow, this…[i]thing[/i]--for it was not a crow writ large as they might have imagined–did not have any such limitation, though its voice had clearly been warped by its transformation. Farren felt his heart beating swiftly in his chest, his blood rushing through his veins not with excitement or bloodlust, but actual fear.

The only things that had disturbed him to such a degree since his awakening at the Clinic had been ‘Frenzy’ and, well…the incident with Vicar Harold.

His breath felt frozen in his throat, like a knot, and his lungs paralyzed like someone had filled them with the frigid waters of a lake in the dead of winter.

Farren forced himself to breathe. Slowly. Deliberately.

Even still, though his fear was evidenced only by a faint tremor in his limbs, Farren’s only true consolation was that the beast had not attacked. He was also glad he wasn’t alone, for in truth, Farren wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to move right then if the creature had struck.

While his gaze didn’t shift from the Crowmother’s uncanny figure where it perched, its pale, barren head outlined eerily by the moonlight, the azure-eyed hunter waited silently, hoping for the imminent–and peaceful–arrival of the Crow Hunter.