Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

It was undeniably a gamble for Farren to fire his pistol at Ophelia's head at this point, given that he had loaded it with a quicksilver bullet while having modest bloodtinge and having just injected her with a blood vial to restore her regenerative potential. Luckily – if one was inclined to deem it as such – he had also just yanked on her body with all of his weight and strength while she was still pinned to a wall by a large blade, she was still bleeding from being impaled, and her wrist was continuously regenerating Arrayah's efforts to break it. All of this combined with Ophelia's naturally puny vitality meant that even Farren's relatively weak bullet did enough damage.
The last thing Ophelia saw was a flash of particularly bright azure light in the monster's bigger eye, then she faded into the embrace of death and reawakened back in the Hunter's Dream... still holding her Holy Moonlight Sword.

“Unexpected,” Gerlinde giggled over on the other side of the creature that none of them could tell was there, grinning widely at Farren. “Now what?”
But as it turned out what happened next was quite out of their hands. With none of them being aware of their opponent, Farren had no warning and no way to protect himself against Arrayah's furious vengeance. All he felt was a sudden sharp pain in his neck, then his head tumbled off his shoulders, being treated to a couple of seconds of being able to see their deformed enemy through the eyes of his detached head. Then he faded back into the Dream as well.
“Oh,” Gerlinde mused, blinking her eyes and letting out a small laugh. “Well. I guess I know what comes next.”
And indeed, a second later Gerlinde was beheaded as well. That left just Torquil, whose arms dropped down his sides as he closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. “Not again...”
Then he was killed as well.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Irah and Lhirin – Forest north of Borstown, south of Bandit Farm

“Nooo!” Weriz whined in Irah's mind, and though it had no physical form she would be able to tell that the angel wanted to squirm uncomfortably. “I do not... I do not want to hurt anyone! I hate this! But... if it is what you need...” A hint of guilty anticipation sneaked its way into its voice. “I suppose I have no choice. It is not as though I can help it.”
Their side of the incursion was – at least in a purely pragmatic sense – rather uneventful, as the sheer literally horrifying power of the swaigh made advancing on the farm quite easy. Freagon seemed bored as ever, showing no reaction to bandits entering the area of effect around them only to abruptly stop dead in their tracks, drop their arms down their sides and stare slack-jawed into the distance as they were trapped in their own minds. He also did not seem affected in the slightest by simply walking up to these defenseless people to dispassionately slit their throats; he did not appear to take any pleasure in doing so, but he also treated the act of killing as casually as doing laundry.
In Irah's head she would feel Weriz continue to moan and whine about how much they did not want to do this, all while she could also feel it radiating perverse pleasure at the dread it was spreading and violence it was causing. She knew and would be able to tell that Weriz' reluctance to and remorse for hurting others was real, but she also knew very well that the angel involuntarily took great delight in doing so, which it in turn endlessly regretted.

Jaelnec, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Forest north of Borstown, south of Bandit Farm

“Two, with her help, definitely,” Quintin answered Yanin's question of whether he and Nabi would be able to quietly take out a patrol. “Three will be a challenge.”
He glanced at Jaelnec, apparently considering for a moment to suggest that the young nightwalker stand by in case they needed a third, but then his eyes went to the squire's hauberk and he reconsidered. He also shot an even briefer glance at Jordan, but figured that since he was Yanin's charge, this was Yanin's plan and that Yanin had not suggested Jordan participate himself, he was not suitable either.
Otherwise people mostly just accepted and confirmed the orders given by the Fadewatcher lieutenant and went to get in position to get started. Quintin and Jaelnec both removed their cloaks and left them on the ground behind some brush, sacrificing the camouflage and warmth – the latter of which was rather unnecessary on this warm summer day – they offered to ensure that they would not be in the way or make unwanted noise. Quintin also put on his helmet and gauntlets, and deposited his bow into the holster at his hip to have his hands free for melee combat.
Vela seemed to pause briefly, scanning over the party before her with sharp eyes inside the shade of her facial exoskeleton, with her gaze lingering on Madara for a moment. She looked the half-palanter up and down, noting the lack of a ranged weapon – or any weapons at all – and armor, and how she had not been assigned to any of the teams Yanin had formed out of their party. The penin noblewoman did not say anything, however, but merely turned away, walked over to a nearby tree and – in a way that would have been impossible for a heavier and weaker species – jumped nearly three meters vertically, catching a branch at the apex of her jump, and swiftly and silently perching herself on it with her crossbow at the ready.

The weird, vaguely scarecrow-like form that now housed the Angel of Mercy known as Kinder turned to Yanin at his question. She awkwardly raised her arms in front of her and looked them over with the dots of light that represented its eyes for a moment.
“It depends on how active I need to be, of course,” she told him hesitantly, “and your definition of 'lasting'. I think I will be able to move for around fifteen to twenty minutes, but I will be able to continue inhabiting the disintegrating vessel for up to an hour. You will just have to carry me at that point.”

When the patrol finally came around, they moved to dispatch it prior to the main assault. The one Quintin went to was wearing a hauberk and a helmet that covered the entire head except the face, though that was hardly enough to give the former bounty hunter pause. He sneaked up behind his victim as quickly and silently as he could, and though the bandit did hear him and start to turn around, this only happened after it was too late for him to notice anything to raise the alarm or save himself. Quintin rushed up and seized the man's head, roughly pressing his gauntlet-clad left hand over the nose and mouth, while his right drove one of his daggers up beneath the bandit's chin, through his mouth and up into his brain. Though his body spasmed briefly, his death was all but instant.
Once Nabi had taken care of her part of the patrol, Quintin gestured for the rest to approach the farm.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

Farren missed, first with a huge swing of his Beastflayer, then with a blunderbuss shot; Torquil walked right up and stopped about one hand a half meter from Arrayah and swung Fulmen three times – left to right, right to left, from high to low – and missed every time. To everyone else it would seem as though their adversary was incorporeal and impossible to hit, but Ophelia would see every single attack aimed anywhere but at the creature. Gerlinde even ran over and past Ophelia, intending to bodily slam herself into whatever they were up against, only for her – without her even realizing it – navigating the space exactly so that she avoided colliding with any part of the beast.

After having moved several steps past Ophelia, leaving her rather convinced that she would not be able to impact their enemy like this, Gerlinde swiftly dropped to one knee. “Little ones!” she called, and a Messenger promptly appeared. “Runebrand!”
But rather than retrieve the item the way they usually did, the Messengers merely sat there looking at Gerlinde confusedly. Realizing immediately that they were not going to be giving her what she wanted, Gerlinde let out a giggle before rising back to her feet, turning around and resuming flailing her whip around in vain.

By the time Farren reached Ophelia, administered his blood vial and started trying to force her to her left, Arrayah had already grasped both of Ophelia's wrists. Aside from one of the monster's smaller, wildly rolling eyes suddenly seeming to stop moving to focus on Farren, however, Arrayah seemed quite content to ignore Farren and let him do as he pleased. Try as he might, though he would manage to pull Ophelia some of the way – causing the blade embedded in her torso to carve through her anew – but as soon as her right arm was stretched out she would move no further, because Arrayah's grip was strong and unyielding.
The creature kept chanting those same few words, though it seemed to speak them somewhat more slowly as its one huge, glowing azure eye shifted from Ophelia's face to the Holy Moonlight Sword in her hand. She would feel the bestial fingers start squeezing her wrist, trying to make her let go of the weapon... or break her hand if she refused.
“Ophelia is Wielder...” the whispers nervously muttered in Ophelia's head. “Ophelia is champion... but Arrayah is wielder... Arrayah is champion. Arrayah will make it whole...”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

The abomination did not even flinch at the sound of Farren's gunshot and simply remained in place, unconcerned by the quicksilver bullet that whistled through the air, missed it and vanished into the darkness. Right next to it and Ophelia Gerlinde immediately sprang into action as well, twirling her threaded cane in her hand at the same time as she changed it into its whip-form, only to immediately lash out in a wide, sweeping swing from right to left... that also missed the creature. Gerlinde swiftly followed up with another blind swipe, this time from left to right, toward the back of it, only to halt the swing an instant before it would have made contact. Finally she lashed vertically with the wire-connected blade-segments right in front of Ophelia, aiming at whatever had her pinned to the wall... and again she missed. To Ophelia, would seem as though she was missing on purpose.
Torquil started running toward Ophelia with Fulmen held at the ready, but it would take a moment for him to make it there.

During the time the others tried in vain to save their pinned companion, Arrayah kept repeating the same sentence over and over again, chanting the same few words in Pallid's language seemingly to itself, only to halt its chanting when Ophelia spoke its name. It seemed to pause for a moment, and the relatively human right side of its face twisted into a toothy, joyless perversion of a smile.
When its mouth moved again, it carefully uttered: “O-phe-li-a.”
While the monster resumed its chanting, the two of its front-hands that were not currently holding the sword still embedded in Ophelia's torso reached up and went to seize Ophelia's arms; the thin secondary right arm going for Ophelia's left, and its muscular clawed one her right, moving to pin her wrists to the wall as well.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

While Farren and Torquil remained in place, watching this huge, mostly dark space with all the vigilance they could muster in the face of Ophelia's warning, and Gerlinde and Ophelia remained by the nearby wall. Ophelia queried the Holy Moonlight Sword again, but it seemed that the whispers – though still obviously trying to be helpful – were having a harder and harder time reigning in its dread and enthusiasm.
“Here... here... What it does? Yes... cuts... stabs... blade. Wrath to its serenity. Dark to its light. Word... rune... other half... other side of coin. Deception to its Guidance. IT IS HERE!”

No one noticed anything; none out of the four of them registered any sort of sight, sound, feeling or smell despite all their efforts to maintain awareness of their surroundings... and even now, Farren, Torquil and Gerlinde still did not notice anything. To them, Ophelia was just spontaneously propelled off her feet and backward, being lifted off the ground as she did, before slamming into the wall behind her with enough force to crack the stone. A huge wound opened across her body – a wide gash spanning diagonally from the left side of her chest and down toward the right side of her abdomen, positively gushing blood.

Ophelia, likewise, did not register anything unusual until she abruptly felt a huge blade pushing into her body, and only then did she realize that something had been right in front of them all this time. It had not been invisible, it was plainly obvious right there in the middle of the room; it was not soundless, it was loudly growling, muttering words in a language she did not know, but sounded vaguely similar to the one Pallid had spoken; its every movement filled the air with a loud rumble, and she could clearly feel tremors in the ground under her feet; and the stench! A foul odor of rotten flesh, excrement and urine was so thick and sickening to the point of making it hard to breathe. It had been here all this time, but until this exact instant her mind had simply been incapable of recognizing any of it.
The blade pushing into her body was nearly as wide as her own transformed Holy Moonlight Sword and only a little longer, but whereas her own sword mostly consisted of arcane moonlight, this blade appeared entirely physical... and like the physical blade of her own weapon, it looked positively ancient. It had no crossguard, and bizarrely its handle seemed much too big for the weapon, longer than that of the Holy Moonlight Sword, but also many times thicker, to the point where a human-sized hand could not possibly grasp it. Despite its relatively large size, taking the proportions into account would reveal that this weapon was not a big greatsword or anything of the sort, but rather an obscenely huge shortsword or gladius.

Holding the blade was a hand that, unlike Ophelia's own, had a size that was quite well-suited for wielding this oversized implement. It looked swollen and unhealthy, its sickly orange skin covered in boils and blisters, and was attached to a two meter long arm that bulged obscenely with muscle. And it, in turn, was attached to the torso of the single most vile creature she had ever seen. It was utterly deformed, its body bulging and twisting with strange growths both on and under its skin, twisting and churning as though it was a sack full of snakes. The arm that had stabbed her was its right one... or rather, one of its right arms, because just below the shoulder of that arm extended another arm, just as long as the first one but much thinner, looking feeble and bony compared to the brawny appendage currently pinning her to the wall. It only had one left arm, meanwhile, but it was just as muscular as the sword-wielding right one, but unlike the right arm was also covered in thick orange scales, and each of its fingers – much longer than those on its right hands – was adorned with fifty centimeter long claws, each one practically a small sword in its own right.
The head – hovering about a meter in front of Ophelia – was very wide, and just as crooked as the rest of the creature. The right side of its skull was relatively flat, barely any taller than any of their own heads, and actually looked vaguely human, if discolored and hairless. A normal-sized blue eye sat there, rolling wildly and looking at everything and nothing in particular. All of this was in sharp contrast to the left side of its head, of course, which was not only much taller than the right side, but bulged in a way that seemed distinctly unhealthy and brought to mind thoughts of horrid diseases and cancer. A huge eye, its pupil a vertical slit unlike the right one, its iris glowing with a soft azure light, and was entirely focused on Ophelia. Around that eye were a smattering of smaller ones, seemingly just scattered randomly across its face, with some on its scalp, some on its jaw and chin, and all of them blue, roiling and unfocused like the right one. Its mouth was similarly asymmetric, with the right side looking something approaching human, the further left one looked from the right corner of the mouth the lips seemed to give way to longer and longer fang-like teeth, so long that they did not fit inside the mouth and had to press out. In fact the teeth furthest to the left not only penetrated the creature's cheek to get out, but their tips dug into its cheekbone and forehead, shifting up and down and carving fresh wounds as the creature spoke, bleeding disgusting, yellowish bile for an instant before regenerating, only to be carved open anew as the teeth kept shifting with its speech.
Things only got weirder looking down at the creature's lower body, because it had no legs... or at least, it did not have legs where one would expect them from human anatomy. Instead it seemed to just curve away at the waist, only to extend behind it in what might momentarily look like a reptilian tail of some sort, though a more apt comparison would actually be to the body of a millipede. The body did not taper, but seemed to continue at the same thickness all the way to a rounded end, and rather than slither like a snake, it was raised up and carried by... appendages. Because the entire hind-body was absolutely covered in appendages. Many looked like somewhat human arms and legs, varying wildly in size – with some being nearly three meters long and dragging along the floor, and others being so small they would have been more at home on a rodent than this beast – and deformity – with some being elongated, some stumpy, some having too few fingers and toes, others too many – but others did not look human at all. There were paws, hooves, talons, tentacles, pincers, segmented insect-legs and more that defied description and did not seem like they belonged on any kind of natural being. Any and all of these appendages capable of grasping anything also seemed to be doing so, and holding onto... things. Swords, spears, axes, maces, pistols, rifles, but not only that; random bits of rock, strips of cloth, handfuls of buttons, buckles, brooches. Just a completely nonsensical and erratic selection of nondescript things, all of which were being flailed around wildly.
Its front-body was about four meters tall and of vaguely human proportions, with a head that was vaguely two or three times as big as your average human head, whereas its hind body was a mostly-consistent two meters thick and nearly ten meters long.

“Arrayah,” the whispers told Ophelia breathlessly. “Wielder... Huntress... Champion... Arrayah... is here.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Examining the darkbeast's skull from afar did not yield much information to Farren; the skull appeared completely inert and exhibited no kind of electric energy or lingering spark of life. It was also too far away – even relatively close to them as it was at just forty meters or so – and somewhat in darkness, so seeing any kind of fine detail was out of the question. But there was no smell or movement that could indicate that the sundered darkbeast was somehow faking its state.

Over by the nearby wall, Ophelia finished reapplying the Guidance Rune to herself and attempted to confer with the Holy Moonlight Sword, only to find that the whispers sounded somewhat more frantic and disjointed than usual.
“Sister-rune? You received its rune... its Guidance... yes... this is its other half. The other half of the word... the other side its Guidance. Yes... it is here. It is close... it is so close. Its other half... it is here... it is here... it is coming. It is so very close. Wielder, its other half is so close. It wants to be whole again. It is close... it is here... it is close. It is coming!”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Having shared their last few instructions and looked over the macabre decorations of this little hallway one last time, the party ventured forth to the doorway ahead and finally emerged into a much, much larger chamber. A chamber so large, in fact, that it was cavernous to an unsettling degree, and bigger than any single interior space any of them had ever seen before. Just as with the hallway they had just come from the walls here were adorned with evenly spaced sconces giving off a seemingly perpertual bluish light, which was the only reason they had any ability to perceive the vastness of the room at all, as they could faintly make out the string of blue dots of light all the way along its edges. It was big enough that its size got difficult to even conceptualize just by looking at it, but they might be able to – especially if they realized that the sconces were indeed evenly spaced and could be used as a reference to measure by – that they were in a circular chamber that was probably around five hundred meters in diameter.
The sconces being the only light-sources here naturally left the majority of the room in darkness, making it extremely difficult to pick out details, but at least the fact the little light they had allowed them to mostly discern contours and silhouettes. They would also recognize that aside from the lights along the outer edge of the room, there was another series at the center, mounted at the foot of a massive stone column. It appeared to be round like the room it was in and easily ten meters thick with a curious, weirdly random-yet-consistent pattern on it, like a shallow thread of a screw, except with grooves that seemed to shift angles occasionally and vary in depth. Just as the light did not extend to the entirety of the horizontal plane of the room it did not light all the way up the column or the walls either, leaving the entire space above in in pitch darkness to the point where they could only guess at how tall this chamber really was.

Though nothing was moving in there and they did not see anything that was obviously a threat, there was plenty of other things to see. Looking along the walls they would be able to spot no less than five quite large mounds of what appeared to be discarded bones from predominantly human-sized creatures, distributed in seemingly random spots around the room, with the closest to them sitting about twenty meters away. Perhaps even more notably, however, they would also be able to see some much larger and more familiar remains scattered about the floor, with most of it being left in shadow but with enough of it having strayed closer to the light that they could identify it. It was the scattered remains of a darkbeast like the one they had fought and defeated outside Yahar'gul, only this one looked to have been considerably larger. The creature had been torn limb from limb, with each piece having been tossed aside and away from where its mostly-crushed torso lay; they would even be able to see the top of this darkbeast's skull, its jaw torn off and left elsewhere, with its scalp cleaved down the middle.

Along the walls they would also be able to see another two doorways like the ones they had just passed through, positioned at their 2 and 10 o'clock respectively, making all the doors equidistant to each other and simultaneously as far from each other as possible.
Interestingly, they would also find the walls – seemingly all the way around, from floor-level to a good five meters up – to be absolutely covered in crudely carved Caryll Runes. The runes varied greatly in size – the smallest was small enough that it would fit in the palm of a hand, the biggest was nearly three meters across – and detail, with many of them being so rough in shape that it was a challenge to even identify them as Caryll Runes, let alone understand what they meant. But the ones that were of relatively high quality and intelligible, they would realize, all featured just two runes repeated over and over, in a way that probably seemed distinctly obsessive. One rune they all instinctively knew what meant, and Ophelia in particular was deeply familiar with it, as it was clearly the Hunter Rune. The other was not one any of them had encountered before... though there was also something about it that felt weirdly familiar to Ophelia. With some imagination and creative license, it almost looked like an upside-down, mirrored and distorted version of the Guidance Rune.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Receiving Ophelia's orders prompted a firm nod from Torquil, who hoisted his Loch Shield for a moment, only to stop himself and consider what he had just been told. They were up against something wielding a blade with “colossal strength,” apparently, and as situationally useful the Loch Shield had been against Skinner and the darkbeast's lightning, he also remembered very well how little the shield had done to protect him from a direct hit of the undead monster's claws. If Ophelia was right and whatever was down here fought primarily with brute strength...
Somewhat hesitantly Torquil took the Loch Shield off his left hand and hung it from a strap over his shoulder instead. He was not foolish enough to throw it away like he had against the darkbeast, nor was he confident enough that his deduction was right to hand it off to the Messengers, but the way he saw it, he would gain more from having an extra hand on Fulmen than he would having the shield.
With that part of his plan in place and a role assigned by Ophelia, the only thing Torquil had left to decide for himself was which Caryll Rune to use. Part of him was still slightly distressed that he had not simply been told which rune to use, or even just offered and recommended one... but another part did not mind too much anymore. It felt as though it was becoming more and more effortless for him to think with each new nightmare he lived through. So he considered the Caryll Runes the others had taught him, considered how he fought and how his battles had gone in the past. He mentally ran through his inventory of items in his bag – four blood vials, a piece of bolt paper and the blue elixir that had appeared there after the Winter Lantern killed him – and considered how to best utilize what was available to him.
Ultimately Torquil determined that he, with his meager supply of blood vials and undeniably impressive physique, was best served by simply having a slightly better change at avoiding damage. So he took the runebrand and – flinching a little less now than last time he had touched it upon his skin – branded himself with the Lake Rune. “We've got to make you more hardy,” Farren had said. Well, Torquil would much rather be just that little more likely to avoid or at least limit the damage he took than just being able to wear it.

Gerlinde, meanwhile, spent a moment calmly strolling up and down the hallway, performing her own silent examination of the corpses at the same time as Ophelia did hers. She listened to Ophelia's evaluation with an unwavering smile, slowly nodding her head.
“Skinner,” she muttered to herself, her eyes growing a size wider. “Hungry,” she whispered, and her lips parted to show off her perfect teeth in a grin practically glowing with madness. “Unrelenting assault, yes. I can do that; carve the flesh, spill the blood.” She turned her head to look at Ophelia. “Snakey still has the mouthful of arcane healing, in case it becomes relevant. If things get bad enough, come to me; it's only once, but it's quite powerful.”
With that, Gerlinde retrieved the runebrand after Torquil was done with it, and quickly afflicted herself with a new Caryll Rune without telling anyone which one. Then she went straight to the many-eyed creature in the strange garb and the pointy, wide-brimmed hat, seized its left hand and swiftly used her threaded cane to sever its pinky. Peeling the finger – shriveled, miscolored and misshapen, much like Pallid's body had been – out of its armored sleeve, she then raised the finger to her face, put it between her teeth, bit into it and tore off a small piece of its flesh. She swallowed without chewing, paused, and smiled again as she opened her pouch and stored the pinky in there.
Gerlinde then proceeded to go first to the two demonic dogs, then the larger Pthumerian creatures, and finally each of the fifteen smaller of the fresh corpses, and for each and every one of them she cut off a small piece of them, took a bite, and stored the rest in her pouch.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arriving in the dungeon, Torquil stumbled so thoroughly with imaginary momentum that he actually fell to his hands and knees, his inhuman tongue lolling out of his mouth as he hyperventilated. Gerlinde, meanwhile, appeared to simply manifest in the spot as though the experience had barely differed from using the headstones, and seemed completely unfazed.

The corpses, Ophelia would find, not only did not have anything of note on them, but it appeared as though something had very roughly handled the bodies to the point where the knights' clothes had been torn by grasping fingers, but a fair bit of the damage the bodies had taken was post-mortem. Not a single weapon, ring, necklace or coin remained.
Examining the two large bodies, it did not take much for Ophelia to conclude that they had been hit by a very large blade of some kind. By looking at the one that had been stabbed it would be easy to determine that the implement had been very broad – possibly even broader than her own Holy Moonlight Sword's transformation – and both the stab and the hit that had bisected the other appeared to be caused by a cut from a physical edge rather than a severance through arcane force.
Something else very notable Ophelia would find was that while the Cainhurst knights seemed to have been dead for a very long time – decades at least, perhaps even centuries – all the other corpses were much more recent. They still smelled fresh, their wounds still leaked somewhat liquid blood, and touching them would reveal that they still held on to remnants of body heat. Being very experienced with corpses, Ophelia would be able to determine that these creatures had most likely only been dead for an hour or two.

Nothing seemed to happen at the moment, and the Messengers came promptly when called upon, happily delivering the runebrand. Ophelia branded herself with the Hunter Rune, and as she did so all the Guidance sprites vanished before her eyes and the eager presence of the Holy Moonlight Sword faded to a faint murmur in the back of her mind.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

One by one the Hunters went to the chalice they had gotten from the Vileblood Queen – a chalice they might note looked much prettier and far more expensive than the others that had been arranged on other altars – and looked into their crimson contents before touching the chalice itself. Though it was visually very similar to when they used the markers on the headstones or the lanterns, interacting with the chalice was a much different experience when they did it. Rather than feeling as though they were falling asleep and immediately transitioning into waking up, touching the chalice brought about a distinct sense of falling into something unfathomably deep. The Hunter's Dream was ripped away from them rather than fading to the embrace of sleep, and for nearly twenty seconds they would all find themselves in perfect pitch darkness with the sound of the wind rushing past in their ears and a sense of nothing but empty void under their feet.
They all felt rather than saw a multitude of something rushing past them; approaching, missing and vanishing back into the nothing from which they had come. Deeper and deeper they fell; it felt as though they were moving insanely fast, much faster than should be logically and physically achievable, yet they kept accelerating to even higher speeds, until they thought they must have descended into the very bowels of the Earth, the bottom of the pit at the end of the world, the lowest of all things were the Waking World and the Nightmare overlapped.
Then, and only then, did their feet come to softly land on stone, as reality seemed to rush back into being from the black... and just like that they were there, where they had wanted to go for some time now: the Old Labyrinth, at last.

The place they found themselves in was a somewhat dark hallway, helpfully lit by evenly spaced sconces, though these did not appear to actually burn or give off any warmth, instead bathing the area in ceaseless cold, blue light. The floor was made up by flagstones of varying colors, shapes and sizes, making it rather uneven and a genuine trip-hazard. The walls at their sides were close by – the hallway was only about three meters wide – and made from smaller bricks that, though still somewhat uneven, appeared at least a bit more uniform than the floor. Above their heads the walls transitioned smoothly into a rounded, vaulted ceiling that was four meters high at its peak.
Ahead of them this hallway stretched on for what looked like fifty meters or so until it terminated in an open doorway that took up almost the entire end wall, spanning nearly from side to side and top to bottom, beyond which they could faintly spy a poorly lit room. They could see more flagstone floor beyond it and more bluish light, but beyond that they could see nothing from their current vantage point.

That is, they could see nothing in the room. It only took the very briefest glance at their surroundings for them to realize that the hallway they were currently in was far from empty. In a way the scene might remind them of what they had seen on their short trek into Yahar'gul with the statues of figures in agony and fear... but these were not stone, these were flesh, blood and especially bone.
Scattered along the floor of the hallway lay fifteen emaciated, long-limbed figures with black, sunken eyes, like smaller members of the same species that Pallid had belonged to, their bodies twisted, curled up and crushed to death. There were also two much, much bigger men with similarly elongated limbs, but also large hands, pale eyes and bodies clad in black hooded rags, one of which appeared to have been pierced and pinned to the wall behind it by a blade that had since been removed, and the other looked to have been bisected at the waist. A little further ahead lay two creatures that could best be described as twisted, demonic imitations of dogs, with horned heads, absurdly long tongues and generally misshapen bodies, draped over a much more humanoid figure clad in unusual armor, with a pointy, wide-brimmed hat, underneath which was a face that was anything but human; all three of which appeared to have been smashed into the wall and flattened by great force.
But most notable of all was that there was, intermingled with all these slain, seemingly alien creatures, were the remains of a dozen figures that appeared to be human in shape. Not only that, but these men and women were all clad in similar garb, and garb that especially Ophelia would recognize: the finery of knights of Cainhurst. The sex of these knights could only be guessed at from their clothes, however, as the people wearing them had long since been reduced to naked skeletons, their flesh either decayed with time or devoured by the denizens of the labyrinth.

Observing her surroundings, Ophelia would find that here, just as in the Hunter's Dream, there were moon motes everywhere, because the Nightmare was everywhere; the only advantage the Guidance Rune would offer her here was her hightened connection to the Holy Moonlight Sword. This connection she did have, however, and she would hear its whispers as they arrived: “It is here... its other half. It can feel it... The darkness to its light... the wrath to its serenity... the other side of its coin. It is near. It waits ahead. Waits to be made whole again.”
Deathly silence gripped the area. Nothing was moving but them and the faintly flickering blue firelight.