Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

For a couple of seconds Torquil actually slowed his stride toward Arrayah, deeply confused by what Ophelia had just told him. “Just discharge Fulmen, dear. We need to know what happens,” she had said, which seemed to suggest a different course of action than he was already aiming for. The inclusion of the word “just” seemed to suggest that he should disregard other conditions, and discharge the voltaic hammer now rather than when he was at point-blank range of their enemy as he had intended. Initially that seemed like a waste to him, but he was sufficiently convinced of Ophelia's wisdom and good judgment to assume that his own plan was wrong and start to rationalize his interpretation of her plan.
It was true that there were a lot of unknowns with Fulmen right now – he had just pondered that himself, after all – , and that discharging it under circumstances with as few variables as possible would probably yield the most useful information. Even he understood that much. And while unleashing all that energy potentially at nothing seemed like a waste, it had also turned out that recharging it could be done rather easily. He could just discharge it to see what happened and then hit a rock, or even just the ground, nine times to fully charge it again. It would take time that he was not sure they had, and repeatedly hitting stone like that was bound to degrade Fulmen's durability considerably... but maybe it was worth it? Particularly since he was so unsure how many hits worth of energy he had stored right now. It was not what he would have done, but if Ophelia suggested it, it must be the smartest move somehow.
But then he glanced back at her and realized that she was not looking at him, but was quite pointedly staring straight at Arrayah, which made him second-guess his interpretation all over again. Maybe she did mean for him to discharge it at Arrayah? It was still incredibly ambiguous, with her words downright suggesting to disregard their adversary and her somatic language being so subtle. It could just as easily be her simply observing Arrayah, as she had since the start of the battle, as it could her indirectly trying to tell him to attack her. He wished she had been more clear in her instructions, like telling him where to discharge Fulmen in words or even just pointing as she spoke, but with things as hectic as they were and time being a valuable commodity in the midst of battle, he did not really want to waste precious seconds asking for clarification.
Thus Torquil decided that since Ophelia's instructions were ambiguous, he would stick with his original plan. He had meant to discharge Fulmen anyway, so he was doing as he was told; he was just going to do it directly adjacent to the rampaging monster if possible. She could scold him later if he was wrong.

Up ahead, Farren, Gerlinde and the Moonborn Hunter all prepared for Arrayah to finish her wide turn and come rushing back. Farren offered his instructions and then started moving, with the two others immediately following in formation. While Farren went right, the Moonborn Hunter darted left and readied their Bulwark for a slash across the opposite side of the mutant's body. Unlike Farren, who intended to simply do as much superficial damage and shed as much blood as possible, the Moonborn – drawing upon the experience of countless lifetimes of studies and battles, and realizing from Farren's words that they were to try to create a window of opportunity for Torquil – meant specifically to cut as deep into the side of the torso as possible. They knew from experience that cutting a bone altered by the Old Blood was all but impossible, which was why it was so incredibly rare for beasts and Hunters to be dismembered... but they were not aiming for bone. Though Arrayah hardly resembled a human anymore and injuring her “legs” would be a fool's errand, her torso did seem to mostly maintain its original structure. They knew that if they could severely damage as many abdominal muscles as possible, ideally not just the ones at the sides, but in the front and back as well, remaining stable while erect would become borderline impossible. It was a gamble since Farren did not aim to cut deep and thus probably would not do much damage to those muscles, if any at all... but the Moonborn Hunter did not know that. They moved to hopefully knock Arrayah down, and that was that.

Gerlinde also heard Farren's words, observed his and the Moonborn Hunter's movements, and began to rapidly evaluate how to best contribute. Her usual mode of operation was simply to do as much superficial damage as possible, similar to what Farren was currently aiming to do, but in the current situation she wondered if something a bit more clever was not called for. With the two others charging ahead into melee range, and particularly with Farren abandoning his guns in favor of his Beastflayer, not only were they putting themselves in danger since Arrayah could just turn slightly left or right to trample one of them... she could also swipe at both of them since the threat of being gun-parried was no longer a factor. Truth be told Gerlinde very much doubted that Arrayah's addled mind was intelligent enough to identify those conditions, but then again Gerlinde herself was rather addled, and she was thinking it. And they did know that Arrayah was at least smart enough to use Caryll Runes. The fact that she was trying to trample Farren now could be in response to her being staggered by gunfire when she had tried to rush and attack him at the beginning of the battle... or it could just be the random actions of a mad blood-crazed creature.
Ultimately Gerlinde decided to err on the side of getting the best of both worlds and, with wide eyes and a wider grin, charged directly at Arrayah... only to, when she was a mere couple of meters away, let loose a gout of fire from her flamesprayer up and aimed directly at the monster's head. Even if her eyes managed to get through the conflagration intact, simply being engulfed in flames would at least obstruct her vision for an instant. Hopefully that instant would be enough.

And so, everything happened all at once: Gerlinde blinded Arrayah's many eyes and burned her face, only to get promptly and brutally thrown to the ground and trampled by the massive creature, disappearing under its form. In this moment of vulnerability, Farren carved Arrayah's left side and the Moonborn Hunter cleaved deep into her right, all while each of them slipped narrowly past her form.
Letting out a horrid wail, Arrayah clutched her face and wobbled, knocked out of balance even as her wounds kept closing rapidly. She awkwardly came to a halt as her torso drooped to her right, struggling to remain upright until her muscles had reconstituted. It was a brief opening, not even enough to be considered a stagger and far from enough that any of them would feel the instinctive urge to visceral attack her... but for Torquil, it was just enough.

Fortuitously arriving at just about the perfect moment, Torquil – against his better judgment – closed the distance and initiated his attack with a two-handed swing of Fulmen aimed straight at the left side of Arrayah's lowered head. It was a solid blow combined with a now significant amount of electrical energy that seemed to stun her for just a fraction of a second longer, but her sheer size was enough that her head absorbed all the kinetic energy and brought the hammer to a complete stop, directly adjacent to her head.
And then Torquil pulled the trigger.
The eight segments of the hammerhead separated and shifted outward, revealing the naked core inside... and for about half a second, nothing seemed to happen. Fulmen stopped vibrating, the electrical sparks ceased, and for all intents and purposes it seemed completely inert, as if all that energy had just spontaneously vanished. But during this brief instant of near-tranquility amidst the chaos, a faint bluish glow filled the air between the exposed core of Fulmen and Arrayah's head, which rapidly intensified... until it culminated in a blindingly white flash that turned the entire world into nothing but white light and black shadow, accompanied by the sound of a muffled clap of thunder that rolled and echoed through the cavernous chamber.

It would take a second for anyone to be able to see or hear properly again even with their accelerated healing, but when they could they would find Arrayah laying on her right side, completely toppled over. Her limbs – both her main arms and the multitude of assorted limbs on her hind body – twitched spasmodically, seemingly paralyzed for the moment, while black smoke billowed off her head. The flesh looked to be seared on the entire left side of her head with a lot of it downright missing, and many of the eyes that had been there – including the largest one – looking blind and cooked, with several having actually burst. None of them, nor the one on the right side of her head, were glowing anymore; they had grown entirely dark and dull.
But even know her flesh kept knitting itself back together at an astounding rate. Laid-bare facial muscles shed their scorched parts and reformed themselves, skin spread to cover the wound, and even punctured eyes seemed to reseal their exteriors and refill with fluid. Arrayah was quite clearly not dead, though this had quite obviously done a significant amount of damage and left her dazed and very vulnerable for several seconds.

Remarkably, Torquil looked to have gotten through the ordeal unscathed aside from the blood running down the sides of his head from his ears. He looked rather stunned himself, though it was more out of surprise than because he had taken damage, and he reflexively held the trigger to keep Fulmen in its transformed state. This allowed anyone who cared to check to notice that the core of Fulmen was quite blatantly giving off a red glow and that a quite noticeable haze of heat was rising off it. It appeared to be intact... but also very hot, to the point where Farren in particular would likely recognize that the metal would be rendered quite a bit more fragile than normal.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

No, was the thought that immediately echoed through Torquil's mind, causing his mouth to go dry and his throat to constrict, though the discomfort of either was admittedly rather insignificant next to the pain of getting impaled and hurled through the air. He had used a blood vial just recently and had been at full regenerative potential, so he was fully healed when Ophelia got to him... though he could intuit that the damage he had just taken had probably pushed him nearly his limit. He probably needed blood to replenish his strength, or anything more severe than a superficial scrape would probably be enough to make his accelerated healing fail.
But that was not even the issue bothering him. “Fulmen hit the ground, so add one to the count,” Ophelia had said, which only stressed the fact he could plainly feel himself. He could easily tell from the way it vibrated now and how it was sparking more than ever that Fulmen had built more charge... but that also opened up a lot of questions. If Fulmen built charge from hitting anything, even inanimate matter like the floor, did that mean it had built charge when he hit the wall back in the Hunter's Dream? How long did it take for that charge to dissipate? Did it ever? Could he be sure that the hammer had only impacted the floor once just now, or was it possible that it had hit multiple times?
His count of hits so far suddenly seemed worthless, as the number he arrived at was only the minimum. It was quite possible... no, it was downright probable that he had already exceeded ten hits. There was no way to tell other than counting, after all; not unless you were familiar with the signs of different levels of charge. Did feeling the vibration start at the seventh hit? Eighth? Tenth? He had no idea.

A fair distance away – though considering the events transpiring it was far too close – Arrayah rushed straight at Farren, only to receive another dual blast from his blunderbusses. But unlike the first time when Farren had successfully disabled her for a moment, this time the monster did not even try to use her sword. Rather than empowering herself with the Old Blood in her veins to deliver a swift strike, this time her move was merely to try to trample him with her sheer mass and momentum. Without her accessing the power of the Old Blood the quicksilver had nothing to disrupt, and so she did not even flinch as she was hit by the barrage of projectiles.
Arrayah did not slow down even as Farren quickstepped aside in the last moment, but instead started making a wide turn to circle back and attempt to rush him a second time.

Off in the distance the Moonborn Hunter stood back up – their body and, remarkably, clothes fully healed despite the horrendous damage they had just received – and jogged over to retrieve Farren's Bulwark where it had slipped from their grip when they had been impaled and flattened, and then started closing the distance to where Farren was facing off with their adversary where they joined him in waiting for her.
About at the same time Gerlinde let out a gleeful giggle and bounced up from where she had been crouched, landing on her feet and turning her gaze toward Arrayah. Now that she had finished her business with the Messengers, Gerlinde had switched her threaded cane for a currently folded saw spear, and now carried a flamesprayer in her left hand. Armed thusly, she also moved to join the fray; once Arrayah got into range again she would start firing her flamesprayer continuously.

Licking his lips, Torquil spent a couple of seconds just staring indecisively at Arrayah rumbling her way across the cavern, her weird many-limbed hindbody curving sideways as it trailed behind her. He could feel the ground tremble under his feet, and he could feel Fulmen shaking in his hand... as if it was responding to the tremors, or was just eager to meet something as thunderous as itself.
What was he going to do? His first inclination was to stow away Fulmen and switch back to his Hunter's axe, since he could not be sure how many hits it had stored up now. But when he thought about how many times they had already hit Arrayah, how much damage they had done and how it barely seemed to faze her at all. And not only did she not seem weakened at all, he also recalled how Ophelia had mentioned Arrayah's Profane Abyssal Sword possibly transforming and manifesting new abilities, none of which they had seen yet. So far, aside from showing off just how overpoweringly superior she was to all of them by dominating them with blazing speed and monstrous strength... she had not done much. Ophelia's stated goal for them coming here was to push Arrayah to demonstrate her abilities so they could learn for next time they fought her. And evidently they were not pushing hard enough.
He looked down at the lever on the handle of Fulmen, and swallowed nervously. What would even happen when he pulled it? Would it just deplete all of its energy at once into something touching the head of the hammer? Would it discharge as a bolt of lightning that could hit a target from afar? Or maybe it would just unleash chaotic electricity everywhere, like an explosion. Yet another thing he did not know, and this he concluded that the only way to make sure he did not waste this charge was to trigger the discharge at point-blank range.

Torquil's left hand quickly retrieved a blood vial from his pouch and injected him with it, replenishing his spent regenerative potential; he had a feeling he was going to need it. His right hand gripped the handle of the hammer tightly.
And he ran forward, grasping the bizarre hammer sputtering and sparking with both hands as he moved toward where everyone else were about to clash with Arrayah.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

There was a slight twitch in Freagon's brow as he shot a brief glance back at Irah and Bren when the deigan spoke. “Feel free to kill them immediately next time,” she had said, and as soon as he had looked through the now-open door into the farmstead and confirmed that the remaining four armed and mostly-armored men in there were all currently catatonic, he allowed his mind to busy itself with that statement for a moment. Previously Irah had seemed rather opposed to killing – in fact he recalled her specifically uttering the words “I would prefer no more lives be lost” – so the obvious interpretation of her words now did not seem likely. No, he did not think that she was giving him free reign to murder whoever he pleased in the future.
So it probably pertained more specifically to the current situation and referenced their enemy taking a hostage. So in essence, what she actually meant was “next time an enemy takes a hostage, feel free to kill the enemy immediately, regardless of the danger it poses to the hostage.” If that was true, then he found himself severely disagreeing with that as a mode of operation. Though he personally could not care less if some random fool ended up as collateral damage during a fight, he did follow a code that promoted the protection of innocents... and on top of that, a big chunk of the reward they had been promised was conditional on the healer's survival. He also figured that several others in their current little group, particularly Yanin, Jordan and Jaelnec, would find such a sentiment morally objectionable.
Given how outrageous he figured most people would find the idea of disregarding hostages, Freagon also mostly disregarded that interpretation. Could she mean it even more specifically, then? That “next time an enemy takes a hostage and we have immediate access to a powerful source of healing, feel free to kill the enemy immediately, regardless of the danger it poses to the hostage.” It was somewhat more palatable if interpreted that way, if still somewhat callous – about as callous as himself, as that had been his own reasoning earlier – but it also seemed like a rather worthless instruction to give. Just how often did she expect this specific combination of conditions to all be true at the same time?

Deciding whatever Irah had meant was nowhere near important enough for him to ask for elaboration on, Freagon instead allowed his focus to shift to a more thorough visual inspection of the interior of the farmstead. It mostly seemed like a fairly normal space for rural farmers to live: a one-room structure with one end – the one directly in front of him as he looked through the door – serving as kitchen and dining-area, and the other, off to his left, being part-storage and part-bedroom. There were three proper beds in there and another four straw mats, all of which were currently unoccupied. One of the beds had bloodstained sheets, so it probably belonged to the brute Freagon had just killed.
He also noticed a large wooden chest in there, nestled in between the beds and mats. It looked somewhat out of place there and had probably been moved there by the bandits for some reason.
“There's another four inside,” the nightwalker told the others. “Looks like they're still immobilized. Want me to kill them?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

In front, the Moonborn Hunter undid the transformation and retrieved Farren's Bulwark while dismissing their own practically useless effigial Blade of Mercy-half, only to grasp the greatsword with both hands and prepare to carve a wide gash across her stomach.
Just a couple of meters to their right, Torquil delivered a third hit quick succession, generating an even bigger burst of lightning and wreathing Fulmen in an even more intense coat of voltaic energy. He heard what Ophelia shouted, but decided to ignore it for now; he was already counting the hits based on the instructions he had been given when he received Fulmen from Farren. He would likely do as he was told if Ophelia gave the word for him to discharge it, otherwise he would do it after the tenth hit... actually no, Farren had specifically told him to not discharge Fulmen if he got in ten or more hits. That bracket included ten, so nine was probably the limit; Ophelia was right. He resolved to pull the lever after nine hits.
Behind, having placed himself beside Arrayah's deformed hind body, Farren flayed their enemy across the back with the hefty, flaming threaded glaive. Smoke briefly rose from charred and cut flesh, but even now the abomination's immense regenerative powers appeared unabated and the damage healed nigh-instantly.

While all of this was happening, Arrayah's one big, glowing eye kept staring at the Moonborn Hunter... but that was not all. One of the smaller eyes began emitting its own azure glow and abruptly stopped rolling around randomly to instead fix itself on Torquil. A second small eye on the back of her head began glowing and locked in on Farren. And all through that, the remainder of her smaller eyes seemed to move around less and less frantically, as if calming down... and were slowly building an azure glow of their own.
Arrayah struck with the quickness of a viper. Both of her right hands gripped the handle of the Profane Abyssal Sword and executed a fast and immensely powerful downward thrust right as the Moonborn Hunter was winding up their attack. In a stroke of luck she missed the head again, but the blade of her sword hit the side of the Moonborn Hunter's left clavicle and continued down, practically splitting their torso in two all the way down to the waist before the Moonborn simply collapsed under the immense force being put on top of them and fell flat on the ground.
With her lone left hand she swung it wide from above and down onto Torquil's back, eliciting a cry of pain from him as she buried her sickle-like claws deep in his body. She effortlessly picked him up with her claws anchored in his body, only to whip her arm around and fling Torquil powerfully through the air, with a trajectory aimed for him to hit Farren directly.

Seeing this, Farren opted to step aside rather than try to catch the large flying man carrying an electrified hammer and focus on offense instead. For Torquil's part, this resulted in him hurdling another five meters past where Farren had been standing before crashing into the floor and half-rolling, half-sliding another three meters before coming to a stop. In the chaos process of this, the head of Fulmen incidentally impacted the floor, producing a sound like muffled thunder and leaving a scorch-mark at the point of impact. The scintillation of the hammer also intensified further, and Torquil felt the handle start to vibrate faintly.
Meanwhile Farren moved to attack Arrayah again, attempting to aim a strike with the threaded glaive at her face. Given that him placing himself opposite of where the Moonborn Hunter and Torquil, who had both been attacking from the front, had been meant that he was almost directly behind their opponent, however, actually hitting her face was highly unlikely to happen, but he managed to slash at the side and back of her head.
The glow in Arrayah's frenzied eyes intensified slightly, but the eyes that were now focused remained so and continued to watch individual targets. She violently withdrew her sword from where she had plunged it through the Moonborn Hunter and into the ground, producing a spray of blood and sending their ally from the Dream's sundered body rolling a good ten meters away, before turning around and once more charging straight at Farren.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

“Then die,” Irah said in Fermian, and Freagon immediately started swearing internally. He figured that the purpose of switching languages was almost certainly because she knew that both Lhirin and himself would understand, whereas there was a high likelihood that this brute of an outlaw probably did not even recognize which language it was, let alone understand it. But that last part was the reason for his instant frustration with the decision to do so: this most likely uneducated individual would know nothing more than it was a language he did not know. He had also just warned them that Lhirin should not try “anything cute” while specifically describing his weapon as a “rune sword”, which meant he had experience with at least some kinds of mages.
Thus Freagon, even as he shifted his weight forward and began rapidly accelerating to close the distance between himself and their enemy, experienced a further worsening of his mood. He figured it was very likely that the bandit, who was in a very stressful situation and probably recognized the overwhelming danger he was in, would intuitively assume that Irah was casting a spell. And if he thought that, the knee-jerk reaction would probably be to wound or even execute his hostage.

But that entire line of logic turned out to be quite irrelevant. Before Freagon had even completed his first rapid step forward, his highly light-sensitive eye registered electrical sparks on the slender falchion and the dagger.
You must be kidding me, was the sentiment that swiftly made its way through the old knight's mind while he, as he burst into motion, could do nothing but watch human biomechanics under the influence of an electric current do their thing. The current was channeled into the weapons from which they would naturally surge groundward through the path of least resistance, which meant going through the bandit. From the weapons it traveled into his hands and forearms, causing the flexor muscles to contract and making it impossible for him to let go of either weapon. More importantly, however, it would also cause other flexor muscles to bend the arms inward... which did mean that the falchion was pointed in a less dangerous direction, but also that the dagger held at Bren's throat was abruptly and involuntarily jammed into the healer's throat. Not only that, but the ensuing struggle between spasming flexor and extensor muscles made sure that the convulsing arm would be moving uncontrollably, all while gripping the dagger tightly, thus twisting and jostling the blade inside the wound.
Needless to say, Bren was bleeding profusely, mortally wounded. At least it meant that Freagon did not have to worry about him anymore, and lightning-magic did render the bandit defenseless. All he had to do was end his worthless existence.

Freagon was there in a flash, and his sword was moving even before he had gotten there. He needed to get past Bren – even if he was already severely wounded, it would not do them any good to injure him further – which made it awkward to deal an instantly lethal strike. So rather than going straight for the kill, the first swift slash was delivered to the outside of the bandit's left unarmored upper arm. He aimed for the biceps and made sure to cut deep, though not deep enough to cut off the arm entirely, and severed the flexor muscles there. With those disabled only the extensor muscles were functional, which meant that the electrocuted arm involuntarily swung outward and away from Bren, both pulling the dagger out of his pierced throat and releasing him from the bandit's grip.
A brief jolt of electricity went through Freagon's arms as he made the cut, but he was ready for it and the contact was intentionally very brief. Killing the bandit with such superficial strikes was not feasible, however, at least not without access to his throat. So even while Bren was still in the process of falling forward and away from the bandit – a movement that seemed almost as though in slow-motion next to Freagon's maneuvering – the nightwalker circled clockwise to the bandit's exposed left side, raised Roct up so that its pommel was almost against his own chest and the point of the blade was aimed directly at the side of the bandit's chest.
Then he stepped forward and, regardless of whether his arms were electrocuted or not, used the momentum of his own body to drive the blade all the way through the man's ribcage, piercing his heart in the process.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

The Moonborn Hunter did not hesitate to grab Farren's Bulwark as soon as it as offered, though they did pause for a second afterward to cock their head as they seemingly examined the sword as if puzzled as to why they had received it. Rather than dwell on the question they obviously could not ask, however, another bluish flash announced the arrival of half a Blade of Mercy in their left hand before they promptly rushed into a frontal assault against Arrayah.
This time Arrayah – now fully recovered from getting stunned and crashing into the wall – delivered a diagonal slash with her sword the instant the Moonborn Hunter was in range. Her long arms meant that she could hit the Moonborn long before they could reach her, and this attack was executed with an explosive burst of speed that made it difficult to even see it from up close, and impossible to evade it with a quickstep. The most the Moonborn could do was to lean slightly to the side so that they “only” received a deep and horrid gash into their shoulder and chest rather than being instantly beheaded.

Ignoring the damage they had received, the Moonborn kept up their aggression and Arrayah's attention on themself. They stepped in close, right up to her body, and viciously stabbed both of their weapons into their monstrous opponent. The Blade of Mercy-half barely penetrated Arrayah's skin, piercing maybe a centimeter or so inside and doing entirely negligible damage, whereas the Bulwark – propelled by their superhuman strength – plunged in all the way to the hilt.
Arrayah let out a terrible, inhuman wail and recoiled from the damage, but that was nothing compared to the earsplitting scream that filled the cavern a second later when the Moonborn Hunter activated Bulwark's transformation while its blade was still embedded inside her.

Torquil also decided to take advantage of this moment of weakness and rushed up to Arrayah's left side, relentlessly slamming her with Fulmen another two times. The first hit produced another burst of electricity, somewhat larger than the previous once, and left a slightly more severe burn before it regenerated. After the second hit with an even bigger burst, however, the hammerhead seemed to have begun continuously emitting fingers of lightning that crawled across its surface.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

Contrary to the bandit's demands, Freagon very specifically did not throw down his weapon, nor did he lower it or point it anywhere but directly at the villain's sternum. His lone eye narrowed slightly as he shot the other his grimmest, most baleful glare to wordlessly communicate the sheer sense of impatience and annoyance he felt in that moment. But he did not move or speak.
Standing still, the old knight played through numerous scenarios in his head to determine a way he, with a realistic set of natural movements, could disable or kill the man... but he could not think of any way to do it without making it extremely likely that Bren would be stabbed in the neck. Part of him wanted to just accept that outcome and murder the bandit anyway, since he knew they had an iriao present that could easily mend a stab-wound in the neck... or any kind of damage the bandit could inflict with the dagger for that matter. Iriao were miraculous healers at the cost of inflicting immense divine taint, as he knew very well, so the danger of Bren dying would be minimal. Even so he figured the others would probably not approve of him showing even such calculated disregard for Bren's life.
Freagon's eye narrowed in his grimmest, most baleful glare as he stewed in his impatience and annoyance. Other people were such a bother; had he been alone, this vile creature would have been dead before he could have spoken his first word.

Out of the corner of his eye, Freagon registered familiar movements where he knew Lhirin was standing, but made no attempt to see what he was actually doing. Even from his peripheral vision Freagon could tell that it was some kind of subtle hand-gestures, which either meant he was secretly trying to cast a spell – which would be altogether foolish since the bandit could see Lhirin's face, which meant he would see his lips moving to whisper the incantation – or, more likely, a repeat of the way he had covertly communicated with Irah back at the manor. It did not annoy Freagon as much this time due to the situation possibly actually calling for subtly... though it was still a bit frustrating to know that even if he had been looking at it directly, he still would not have been able to interpret it.

Irah spoke to the bandit, beseeching him with a naivety that the nightwalker immediately dismissed as fake to surrender.
“I'll tell you what happens next, bird-brain,” the bandit growled at her as he moved further out of the doorway and started awkwardly moving sideways to his right, all while dragging Bren with him and keeping his dagger firmly pressed against his throat. “I'm going to leave, and you are going to let me. If either of you or the black-eyed freak tries to stop me, the healer dies. If you follow me, the healer dies. And if I catch even a hint of the guy with the rune sword trying anything cute, the healer dies. Let me go, and I'll leave this sorry bastard somewhere out of sight, no worse for wear.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

Arrayah straightened her hind body back out into its neutral position behind her after smashing Torquil, Gerlinde and Farren into the wall, but kept pressing her three front arms into the wall to try to push herself backward. With some groaning and cracking of stone, the abomination pulled herself from the wall – an imprint of her body and head left smashed into the rock itself – and she turned her head to the right, toward the Hunters. All of her eyes were moving, rolling around wildly without looking at anything in particular; even the big, glowing eye that had previously focused on Farren seemed to have resumed erratically shifting everywhere. But over the course of a couple of seconds that chaotic shifting was interrupted only four times: once when the big eye paused to stare at Torquil, then once at Gerlinde, then Farren, only for the eye to finally cease its rolling and concentrate its attention at Ophelia.

Torquil was both the one closest to Arrayah, the one least injured by her strange attack and the first one to recover, so by the time their enemy had identified all of its attackers he was already back at her “hip” and slamming her with Fulmen again. As he struck this time there was a small pulse of electric sparks at the point of impact, and as the hammer was pulled back there briefly was a faint scorch-mark on the flesh before it regenerated.
He was just winding up for another strike when Arrayah's thinner right arm swung down and out to her side and effectively backhanded Torquil across the face with a fist that was slightly bigger than his head. The sheer force of the blow sent him reeling and staggering several meters away, but he was quite surprised to find that the pain and damage did not seem quite as bad as he would have expected from being hit that hard.

About at that time Gerlinde – looking over and seeing Farren use a blood vial – also used one on herself, and decided to hand over her Horn of the Old Lords to Farren for the moment. As soon as she had done that she retreated to a distance, but looked back to see Farren wreathe the head of his threaded glaive in flame before transforming it and lashing at Arrayah. Just like the true Blade of Mercy, the beastflayer seemed to cut Arrayah's hide and flesh with little issue, on top of which the flames, even at a brief contact, seemed to surprisingly also leave the surface singed before it regenerated.
Nodding to herself, Gerlinde glanced down at the bluish-white flames surrounding her own arcane-infused threaded cane and smiled, happy to have confirmed her suspicion: these flames were not truly “fire” so much as they were a flame-like manifestation of the arcane. The red flames that now burned on Farren's weapon were real fire, and seemed capable of hurting their target. It was still enormously inconvenient that her primary weapon was rendered mostly useless against this opponent as long as the arcane blood gem was embedded in it, but at least it brought her a little closer to understanding.

While Ophelia rang the Moonborn Bell and the Moonborn Hunter ascended from the floor, Arrayah dislodged the Profane Abyssal Sword and the claws of her left hand from the wall, fully freeing herself as she turned around. And for just a couple of seconds Arrayah seemed to just stare at Ophelia as if in a daze, while her deformed maw awkwardly uttered: “O-phe-li-a...”
The Moonborn seized this chance to rush in and initiate their own assault. As they ran a bluish flash announced their summoning of a weapon, which this time turned out to be a whirligig saw, the saw-blade of which started revving a couple of steps before they reached their target. They swung the bizarre polearm in a huge vertical arc from above and down into Arrayah's chest and stomach. But similarly to how Farren had found that his Effigial Blade of Mercy struggled to cut the beast, the Moonborn's spinning saw-blade seemed to mostly deflect and skip over the exterior of her skin, doing very little damage.
Arrayah struck out vengefully with her sword, clearly aiming to behead the Moonborn, but they quickstepped backward and away just in time to evade the attack. They cocked their head and dismissed the whirligig saw.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

All things considered, the attack on the bandit base was proceeding very smoothly, Freagon noted as he cut down another defenseless bandit while making his way around the farmstead itself and toward where Quintin had marked its entrance on the map. It would have gone even more smoothly if he had been on the actual fighting force in their plan rather than the one protected by Irah's Angel of Fear, but part of him was actually content with things the way they were. Since what he was doing currently was effortless to him, he had sufficient time and energy to study everything else that was happening on the battlefield.

Irah had obviously already proven her value several times over with the ridiculous amount of tools she had at her disposal in the form of her elemental magic, mysterious “divine” healing potions and the ability to summon and play host to divines. Such magic came at a great cost, however; to his knowledge she had not only summoned a greater divine, but also acted as the conduit it used to heal people for a short while. Then she had been exposed to the dense divine aura of Caleb back at the manor, and now she was hosting another greater divine, and this time one whose powers were perpetually fully active. Resistant or not, this much exposure was bound to cause significant amounts of divine taint, and being resistant meant that taint could take a very long time to resolve itself. She was immensely powerful and useful for a while, but they would eventually reach a point where relying on her divine allies like this would render her significantly less useful. He was somewhat undecided on whether her use of summoning magic today had been overly liberal... though the thing that kept bothering him was that she had summoned the Angel of Mercy into herself before even coming to Bor Manor. Before she had any idea what had happened, she had already exposed herself to significant amounts of divine taint. That, specifically, suggested that summoning was her first resort rather than her last, which would seriously limit her usefulness on a prolonged quest.
Lhirin was an odd one. He certainly seemed to have considerable magical power and mastery, but he was also weirdly erratic both in the way he fought, talked and reasoned. Sometimes he showed remarkable intelligence and insight, and other times he hyper-focused on specific details and jumped to conclusions without considering the bigger picture. The fight against the wraiths at the manor had revealed a lot about Lhirin, particularly those first few moments of the encounter. First he had rushed ahead of the rest of them and been captured by the water wraith, which to an extent was fair enough; how often was it necessary to look up to check for threats? But Lhirin had not only not looked up, he had not looked left or right either, he had just focused on the threat in front of him to the exclusion of everything else... which was an incredibly dangerous habit to have. And then a moment later, when Lhirin had been trapped in the rug wraith, he had opted to magically manipulate iron nails to attack the creature wrapped around him. Which had worked, but was a bizarre decision to make when he had had a sword in his hand that he could have easily cut himself loose with. He had also chosen to imbibe a dose of piaan after just fighting the few wraiths and ghouls there, before they even knew what they were up against in Caleb, which was entirely as dangerous as Irah's over-eagerness to expose herself to divine taint. He had the talent and power to potentially be useful, but he quite obviously had a lot to learn to succeed as an adventurer.
Nabi was an interesting one. A member of a species Freagon knew little to nothing about, from a culture he was unfamiliar with, she was understandably distant compared to most of them and mostly played a spectator rather than participant in discussion. During combat she seemed competent enough and even seemed to strike a somewhat decent balance between when she relied on her sword or her magic. She seemed to be an incredibly diverse force with a lot of tools at her disposal for battle, though she quite obviously lacked knowledge and experience.
Madara was a difficult one to conclude much of anything about. She was obviously not a combatant as such, but she had already proven to be an exceptional surgeon and physician. Having her around was certainly going to be immensely useful, particularly once Irah had managed to thoroughly taint herself by relying on her iriao to heal people... or, ideally, to avoid Irah getting to that point in the first place, though that seemed unlikely given her behavior so far.
Yanin, and to a lesser extent Jordan, were Freagon's greatest delight out of the bunch. Obviously neither of them had any magical gifts, which would render them much less useful against certain threats... but Yanin in particular was obviously an extremely potent warrior who excelled in combat. Not only that, but he possessed a focused, logical and inquisitive mind. Excluding Freagon himself, Yanin was almost certainly the most formidable out of everyone in their little party, and the prime candidate for leadership.

And finally, of course, there was Jaelnec. He performed about as well as Freagon had expected, albeit not in all respects. It was mildly surprising that the timid boy who had lingered mostly as a background observer in every conflict he had been present for was this aggressive in his fighting-style, though in hindsight Freagon supposed he should have expected as much. This was the very first time the freshly named squire engaged in real combat, and the first chance he had had to actually put everything he had learned for the past fifteen years to use.
Still, the way he was fighting was hardly efficient and far from safe. Charging at multiple enemies like that made sense if Jaelnec had been alone and had to fight aggressively to avoid being swarmed, but in this situation it would obviously have been better to form a line with the other melee fighters and compensate for the enemy numbers that way. On top of that it was all unnecessarily flamboyant – something Freagon thought he had thoroughly beaten out of him during their sparring matches – and somehow overly reckless and hesitant at the same time. The most surprising thing about it all, however, was how well the innocent, naive little nightwalker handled his first time killing other sapients. Jaelnec had just lethally wounded three men and did not even seem to react to this at all... though Freagon wondered if it was not just compartmentalization and adrenaline keeping him focused and moving.
At least it looked as though the boy was reeling in his aggression some after those first three, halting his charge and letting bandits come to him and generally fighting more conservatively. A fourth bandit charged Jaelnec as Freagon watched, wielding a longsword that was longer than the nightwalker's bastard sword but obviously shorter than the spear, and the squire wisely stayed out of measure at first. For a couple of seconds the two of them just made small jabs at each other, striking and stabbing to test each other's defenses but staying out of reach as they did so. Jaelnec only stepped into measure after parrying one particularly ambitious thrust from the bandit with his sword, and upon doing so he instantly ended the fight with a stab at his opponent's throat with the spear before retreating back out of measure so that he was safe during the bandit's death throes.
It was still far from perfect, and Freagon would have a lot of things to lecture his squire on later... but for now it was sufficient. It was certainly better than most fighters.

But as much as the battle provided useful observations, eradicating the bandits was not the main reason they were here. Taking point, Freagon reached the door into the farmstead. According to Caleb's information, Brent the Healer was in here. The old nightwalker's eye narrowed, raised his gleaming sartal sword to his right, and used his left hand to turn the handle and open the door.
Freagon's reaction was, as usual, instant in what happened next. The split-second the door started to swing out of its frame and the first rays of sunlight slipped past it and inside, a loud bang announced a hard impact against the wood, and the door that had been opening slowly abruptly slammed outward and as far as its hinges allowed, completely open. Freagon stepped backward and away from the building just as a long blade emerged from the interior and cleaved through the air where he had been standing an instant earlier, clearly intending to immediately kill whoever opened the door... irrelevant, Freagon noted, of whether the one doing so was one from their party or one of the bandits. The one inside had not had time to identify their target.

While Freagon retreated another couple of steps and took up a defensive stance, the one inside the farmstead stepped out of the door and into view for everyone else. It was a particularly large man, obviously; probably over two meters tall and heavily muscled, which suggested he probably possessed raw strength that was greater than that of Freagon or even Yanin. But his brawn was mostly obvious because the man was not wearing a full set of armor. He had steel-plated gauntlets and greaves, and he wore a full helmet, but his entire torso was not only unarmored, but almost entirely naked. He wore bandages around his chest and abdomen, mostly clean but slightly bloodstained at on his left side, and Freagon noticed that he seemed to be dragging his left leg slightly. The bandit was presenting his right arm in front of himself, holding out his weapon defensively: a long, slender two-handed falchion.
But much more worryingly, the bandit's true defense was held with his left arm. Carried in front of him and used as a shield, the bandit dragged the catatonic body of a thirty-something year old man. This human shield had no armor, but was wearing nice yet modest and somewhat bloodstained clothes, adorned with numerous bags and pouches attached to belts and straps crisscrossing over his body. His eyes stared stiffly straight ahead, his consciousness trapped by the magic of the swaigh.
On top of holding up the body of this man with his left arm, he also used his left hand to hold a dagger to his hostage's throat, its tip pressing hard enough into the skin to already cause light bleeding.

“That's enough fun already!” the bandit roared, flinching slightly as he did so but remaining resolute. “Throw down your weapons or your damn healer dies!”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Profane

As soon as the dual blast of Farren's blunderbusses, followed by Ophelia's arguably late and unnecessary command to initiate combat, all the Hunters started to move at once to assault their monstrous adversary. The first attack to hit would be the ranged blast from the Holy Moonlight Sword impacting Arrayah's torso, erupting into its usual burst of arcane energy... and barely leaving a scratch. Unlike previous engagements where its powers had been obviously destructive, even if the target regenerated the damage rapidly, with Arrayah it looked as though the damage was negligible, doing little more than lightly singing her skin.

Gerlinde started moving as soon as Farren fired his weapons, dashing swiftly toward the fiend while feeding her Horn of the Old Lords a quicksilver bullet and quickly applying its power to her threaded cane... only for her to blink confusedly, albeit not enough so to pause her charge. Whereas the other time the others had seen her apply the horn's fire they had been deep red, the flames that now sprung from her cane were bright bluish white instead.
Ignoring this for the time being since they had more urgent matters to contend with, Gerlinde transformed her weapon into its whip-form and immediately began her barrage, lashing wildly at Arrayah's torso... only to find, like Ophelia before her, that her weapon almost did not even leave a mark. The flames did not seem to burn it and the serrated blades seemed to fail spectacularly to do more than superficial damage. Even so she continued unabated, since they still had to fight and the cane was her only weapon besides her pistol. She was doing small bits of damage, just... not much.

Meanwhile a far more daring attack was being undertaken by Farren, who opted to get a better angle to strike by getting on top of Arrayah's hind body. The numerous mismatched appendages there did not seem to react to Farren at all, even when he touched or downright attacked her body, making it seem as though their movements were entirely random and mostly autonomous. Even so getting up on the body was immensely dangerous with so many weird limbs flailing about uncontrollably. And indeed, he paid a heavy price, as not only did he get kicked by a small hoof and clawed by a stray cat-like paw, but a somewhat humanoid eight-fingered hand even managed to incidentally nick him with an old one-handed falchion; not enough to cut deep, but enough draw blood and do a relatively small amount of damage.
But now that he had attained this questionable but potentially advantageous position, Farren had the opportunity to continue his assault with his two Blades of Mercy. Quite interestingly he would find that his two weapons performed very obviously differently against this creature; whereas the regular Blade of Mercy cut smoothly through Arrayah's flesh as one would expect them to, the Effigial Blade of Mercy seemed to struggle far more, as though its edge had blunted. Any momentum in his swing with the effigial weapon seemed to be halted as soon as it hit the creature's hide, and he would be able to tell that he needed a disproportionate amount of force to cut through her at all.

Finally Torquil arrived as the last of the Hunters, reacting slower than any of them, but nevertheless expending the stamina to to accelerate into a sprint that pushed well past the speeds his body would have been capable of when it had been human. He ran right up to what would have been Arrayah's right hip in terms of human anatomy, right against the wall, and as soon as he arrived put all of his own momentum into a two-handed swing with Fulmen. It hit hard and true into the hideous mutant's flesh, deforming it and jostling her with the blunt impact, so he felt encouraged and hit her again, his own body swelling with his Old Blood-enhanced strength.

But unfortunately the party did not have long before Arrayah did indeed begin to “stir”. It only took three seconds before the front-arms that had hung limply down her sides suddenly raised into the air, only for all three of them to slam forward and into the wall, with the left one digging its claws into the stone, the strong right one plunging the the Profane Abyssal Blade into it, and the thinner right arm simply clutching at it with its fingers as best as it could.
Farren dismounted with one last heavy bit of damage with the more effective of his Blades of Mercy, but by then it would already be evident that Arrayah was doing something very strange. Rather than push away from the wall she seemed to hug it intensely... only for the hind body to lift off the floor slightly – the weight of this ten meter long mass of flesh and limbs resting entirely on the front body anchoring into the wall – and curl away from them to Arrayah's left over the course of just a second.
Then, like the arm of a catapult releasing its tension, the hind body came shooting even faster back to the right, scything across a huge swath of the cave. Gerlinde tried to quickstep away, but she was too close; Arrayah's hind body was long enough and its swing fast enough that Gerlinde could only manage one quickstep, and that was not enough to get out of its range. It caught her and slammed her into the wall with another massive crash.
Torquil, who had been standing even closer and reacted much more slowly, predictably also did not manage to get away... though ironically his closer vicinity to Arrayah meant that he only got hit by the “base” of her hind body, which moved much slower and with less force than further out toward the tip. Consequently he got shoved and squished a little, but did not suffer anywhere near as much damage.

Farren, with just one quickstep, also would not escape and got hit by the full force of the attack.