[h3]Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth[/h3]
[h3][color=darkred][B]Arrayah, the Black Blade[/B][/color][/h3]
But though Arrayah's eyes shifted around constantly, keeping track of what everyone was doing around her, she did not lash out. Instead she halted her advance and stayed in place once again, simply watching Farren and Ophelia make their exchange, then keep running in different directions. Her lip curled, showing off more of her hideous teeth, as she cocked her head and simply observed with the Profane Abyssal Blade held high above her.
Without anyone doing anything to help her, Gerlinde remained at the mercy of her captor's brutal torment. Arrayah's claws kept dragging across the Huntress' right arm, carving through skin, meat, muscle and tendon as she was practically peeling off Gerlinde's flesh all the way to the bone. So maimed, it was no surprise that her body quite simply did not have the fundamental mechanical capacity to keep hold of her saw spear, and within a couple of seconds the trick weapon clattered to the floor in a growing puddle of Gerlinde's blood.

While all of this was happening, Torquil and the Moonborn Hunter had long since managed to get back on their feet and were now moving to reengage Arrayah. The Moonborn Hunter charged straight past Ophelia without the faintest acknowledgment of her presence, their attention focused solely on their prey, but Torquil started running, then slowed and finally stopped when he was about fifteen meters from her.
Torquil stared at the eldritch black spear held aloft over their enemy, and his mind flashed instantly to when she had done so before, and what had come after. In a moment of uncharacteristic clarity, the simple Hunter felt as though he could completely re-experience that event at will and analyze it in excruciating detail. When Arrayah impaled herself on the Profane Abyssal Blade, arcane copies of it – and in hindsight he could tell that the conjured spears were indeed arcane forces rather than true physical blades, pulverizing, disintegrating and vaporizing rather than piercing or cutting – burst out of her and the ground around her after a second's delay, distributed over an area in a ten meter radius from her. Anyone standing four meters from her or closer were guaranteed to be hit, since the range of the attack was greater than the range of a quickstep, and even if one reacted instantly, one quickstep was all they had time for. Gerlinde and Farren were both within range of the wide-area attack, and now the Moonborn Hunter was rushing straight in there again as well. Ophelia was in range as well, though whether she stayed that way was dependent on where she was running (since her last heading was simply “towards Torquil and the Moonborn”). If he moved forward just another several meters, all of them would be in range, which would doubtlessly provoke the big attack.
Figuring that they probably did not want that to happen, Torquil reluctantly resolved to keep outside the ten-meter radius in the hopes that this would give the others a chance to fight without being devastated by multitudes of spears from the ground.

Over at the battlefield the Moonborn initiated their new assault, sprinting in to deliver a huge sweeping slash with their transformed chikage before transitioning into a sustained barrage of rapid blows. Each strike cut Arrayah's hide and left marks of corrosion... but not much; the cuts were shallow, and the sting of even the powerful bloodtinge of the Moonborn seemed to teeter out rapidly. As before, the effigial weapons of the Moonborn Hunter barely seemed to affect her.
Content to ignore the inconsequential Hunter of the Dream, Arrayah's left hand released Gerlinde's freshly mutilated and disarmed right arm, only to quickly move to the left, where she grasped the fuel-tank of her flamesprayer and sank her claws into it. Liquid gushed out of the punctured container, rendering the weapon worthless.
Arrayah let go of the flamesprayer and moved her left hand to Gerlinde's right calf, sinking in her claws before letting go of her prey with her right hand. While she hanged Gerlinde upside-down from her right leg – predictably causing her skirt to fall toward her head, leaving her legs and underwear bare – Arrayah's now-free right hand moved to the floor in front of her and picked up her saw spear by the handle.