[h3]The Hunter's Dream[/h3]
“Don't look?” Torquil repeated her instructions breathlessly and incredulously, feeling even more of his already diminished courage drain at those words. How in the world was he going to fight something without looking? And if he looked on accident... oh gods, he had three eyes! What if it was even more dangerous to him? But no matter how little he liked the instructions, he decided to trust that Ophelia knew what she was talking about and resolved that whatever disadvantages he had to fight under, he still had to fight. Ophelia said so. No matter how much he wanted to hide or flee, if her and Farren wanted to fight then Torquil would fight.

Outside Farren fired his pistol, letting the sharp bang of the gunshot cut through the ghastly song, and a quicksilver bullet zipped across the graveyard, and embedded itself in the Winter Lantern's bulbous head.
The song did indeed still, but the abomination barely even seemed to flinch at being shot. What it did do, however, was raise its head, train several of its multitude of eyes on Farren... and started letting out a horrendous, continuous and deafening, baleful screech. A dull, yellow glow emerged from its many eyes, and even at a distance, Farren would immediately feel the effect of having drawn its ire: not only could he feel the familiar sense of madness creeping into his mind and every cell in his body start vibrating with building frenzy, but the eyes of the monster also proved to have a much more immediate effect.
As soon as its attention hit him, Farren felt something sharp pierce into his lower abdomen from the side, and looking down he would find himself impaled on some sort of long, shadowy quill-like arrow or spear. A second later and the object, whatever it was, vanished as spontaneously as it had appeared, just as a second one seemed to manifest out of nothing and stab into his back, just below his left shoulder. Another second and that one disappeared, and a third one was suddenly in his right thigh.

The creature started moving toward Farren, but before it got very far it was struck by the blast loosed from Ophelia's Holy Moonlight Sword, which appeared to stagger it for a moment. But even staggered its horrid screech did not stop, completely drowning out Ophelia's warning, and Farren still felt the effects of its malevolent gaze. But as soon as it recovered, it turned around – with new eyes on the side and back of its head continuing to stare at Farren – and it began to rapidly skitter up toward the workshop instead, vengefully pursuing the origin of the much more damaging surge of arcane power rather than the lesser threat of Farren's humble gunshot.