Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

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.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

Hissing and seething as she rumbled across the cavern floor, Arrayah relentlessly pursued Ophelia... though as Farren tiredly approached, Torquil and the Moonborn Hunter struggled back to their feet and Gerlinde came charging straight at her in a frontal assault, the monster slowed her pace to just be a little faster than Ophelia's own. Her azure eyes once again started darting from one Hunter to the next, and a low growl of frustration emerged from her inhuman throat. The window of opportunity she had created for herself by disabling all the other Hunters had closed; the time for disregarding everyone else to focus on the Holy Moonlight Sword had passed.

Gerlinde rushed past Ophelia in a full sprint, unfurling her saw cleaver as she went, only swerve left at the last moment before she would have collided with Arrayah. She slashed widely with her weapon, drawing blood... but then she abruptly felt her right arm catch on something, first halting her movement and then pulling her off her feet and backwards, along with their abominable adversary.
Arrayah's left hand had struck once again with blinding speed and closed its fingers around Gerlinde's forearm. Still growling and still pursuing Ophelia, she lifted the thrashing Huntress into the air by the arm, only for her thicker right arm to reach over and grab Gerlinde's left leg by the thigh, all while her thinner arm once again raised the Profane Abyssal Blade high above herself. Arrayah's right arm then pulled to the right and her left to the left, bringing Gerlinde into a stretched-out horizontal position... and blood gushed forth as claws dug into her arm and dragged across her flesh.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec and Jordan – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm, under the tree

Frowning slightly, Jaelnec once again turned to the bodies they had retrieved from the tree. Indeed, what should be done? It was not as though simply being the same species told Jaelnec much about these people anymore than Jordan would know what values a random other human had. Nightwalkers tended to integrate into whatever culture they were raised in and did not particularly have any significant commonalities from individual to individual besides the aversion to light and a proclivity to follow Laon. Even so he did feel somewhat responsible for making sure they were put to rest respectfully and in a way that would be as proper as possible.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, the squire walked over and knelt besides the female adult nightwalker. He set his sword on the ground beside him since he could not sheathe it without cleaning the blade first, and quickly checked the neck and pockets. Finding nothing, he then repeated this procedure with the male corpse, and this time found what he was looking for: a small, rough wooden carving bearing the symbol of Reina. Nothing more specific than that, no hints as to any particular Reina-based religion, so they were probably just abstract followers of the Goddess of Mercy.

“Reina. Right. At least they didn't follow a god with more troublesome funeral rites,” he sighed, retrieving his sword yet again and standing back up. He turned to Quintin. “Does Borstown have a cemetery?”
“Of course,” he readily confirmed.
Jaelnec turned back to Jordan and shrugged. “They should be buried normally with what rites to Reina we can manage. Normally each one would have a marker with their name on it, but...” Since none of them had any idea who these people were, leaving markers with their names was not really an option. Luckily Jaelnec had been tagging along on adventures for many years now, and while Freagon was mostly quite content to simply leave the dead for carrion, the young nightwalker had seen others handle nameless bodies before. “We will have to just leave shorthand notes about their species, gender and age, and a few words about how they died. Just so anyone who comes looking for them has a chance for closure.”
There was not much they could do right this moment, of course; emergency burials could be performed anywhere, but putting them to rest in a proper cemetery was always preferable. Even if that meant having to transport them all the way back to Borstown to do it.

Irah – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

“I have a few ideas,” Caleb replied to Irah's question before her conversation with Freagon. He did not volunteer an elaboration of the statement.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

Unfortunately it seemed that Arrayah, now restored by the lightbeast's saved grace yet still with her mind awakened, would not allow Ophelia to escape so easily. All three of her arms moved simultaneously: her left hand and stronger right one were swiftly and decisively retracted and brought together, and she dug her claws into her own wrist and coated them in blood. Her thinner right one maneuvered the Profane Abyssal Blade in front and above her, sword-like blade facing down. And then, as one, all three hands grasped the shaft of the spear before she slammed it down into the ground, all in less than two seconds.
The result of this was twofold. The most immediate and arguably most urgent thing that resulted from this was that a black spear abruptly thrust mightily out of the ground immediately behind her, from the shadow cast by her own luminous sword, aiming to skewer her.
Secondly, the Profane Abyssal Blade was unsurprisingly, immobile once plunged into the floor, which the monstrosity appeared to use to her own dubious benefit. In a maneuver that showed a remarkable disdain for the laws of physics and disregard for the condition of her own body, Arrayah used her spear as an anchor, holding on to it firmly with all three hands and using it to not only immediately halt her forward momentum, but as a fulcrum to swing her entire long body around, doing a quick 180 degree turn so she was once again facing Ophelia.

As soon as she had come to face the right direction again, Arrayah wrested her weapon from the ground and surged toward Ophelia anew.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

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

“I do not sense any sapients nearby besides the ones who arrived here with you and your prisoners,” Kinder was the first to reply to Yanin's query of suggestions concerning the one potential crusader that seemed unaccounted for. “Caleb also confirms that he does not sense anyone nearby within sensory range. This could mean that the last sapient has died and not been found, or that they left.”
“I'm guessing the latter,” Vela sighed, idly tapping the fingers of her left hand on the back of her right hand, producing a faint clicking noise from the gentle impact of exoskeleton on exoskeleton. Her eyes lowered and half-closed as she shook her head in resignation. “bhûhl it, we should have expected someone might get away when we all attacked from the same direction rather than surround them... but we didn't have the manpower for that either. Nothing that can be done about it now, the little g'vassi will be long gone by the time we find his trail.”
“It could be someone unaffiliated with the rest,” Kinder pointed out hopefully. “Like a second prisoner that got away during the confusion. We do not know that the missing sapient was one of the crusaders.”
The baroness scoffed. “As if we'd be that lucky. I admire your optimism, angel, but I'm sure this just means we let a child-murderer get away unscathed.”

“I'll see to that it's done,” Vela acknowledged Yanin's recommendation that the coins looted off the dead crusaders be distributed to the families of the crusaders' victims. She offered him a small smile and a nod of respect, clearly impressed by the gesture.

“Not in a way that would be practically useful,” Caleb telepathically responded to Irah's question. “You are right that I could theoretically create an illusion such as you describe, but this would be on a whole other scale than the one back then. It would require a tremendous amount of energy to create, and more energy to sustain than I could siphon even if I were to stay here.”

Jaelnec and Jordan – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm, under the tree

Over under the tree with the now-retrieved bodies arranged neatly beside it, Jaelnec had taken to simply standing there, staring blankly at the body of the young nightwalker boy, his expression inscrutable. This was not his first time seeing something like this, nor was it the worst he had been exposed to. Not only had he witnessed gruesome things while traveling as Freagon's page, including dead children in various stages of decay or having been partially consumed by some vile beast, but... yes, as Jordan surmised unbeknownst to him, something like this did indeed evoke his own origins. He looked at the boy, someone he had never met before and had no connection to past the fact that they belonged to the same species, and his brain “helpfully” and unbidden recalled the scene when he had discovered his family fifteen years ago. His parents. His younger sister. The blood. The flames. The sword.
It was difficult to sufficiently put what he was feeling into words, but what came to mind for him was “empty” or “hollow.” It was not that he was feeling nothing, but that he felt as though everything that had filled him prior seemed to drain away and leave him feeling cold and heavy inside.
He only tore his attnetion away from the boy when Jordan addressed him, which made his eyes widen with a start, as though he had been jolted awake. For a moment he just looked surprised, but then he donned a small, mirthless smile as he averted his gaze from Jordan and the corpses alike. “I'm okay,” he lied in the grand scheme of things, but not intentionally so; he was just referencing a more specific circumstance rather than his general state of being. “I think I've calmed down a bit. Thank you.”
Looking down, Jaelnec noticed the sword in Jordan's hand, which prompted him to first check the scabbard on his hip and then glance back to where he had dropped it earlier and visually confirm that it was missing from both. He went to retrieve it with a sheepish smile.

Irah and Freagon – Forest north of Borstown, Bandit Farm

“Hm? Urgent?” Freagon grumbled when Irah and Kinder approached him, turning his lone eye on them with disinterest. “Yes, I suppose I did tell Sir Yanin that I'd let you waste your time.” He looked around to check that no one else were within earshot before continuing: “I bear the mark of the Withering.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Kinder immediately started doting, waddling closer and reaching out one crumbling doll-arm. “You must –”
“Save it,” the knight sighed impatiently, dismissing the affectionate Angel of Mercy with a wave of his hand. He turned his attention back to Irah. “What I didn't tell Sir Yanin is that I've had the mark for over a week already, and as you can see I'm still here. So I'm not really as worried as him. I'm guessing it has to do with my soul not being what you'd call 'normal', but it seems it's not killing me as fast as it does other people. And even if it does...” He shrugged. “I've died before. But if you and the scarecrow think you can do anything, feel free to try. It's not as though you can make it much worse.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

“Snakey?” Ophelia called out, and that single word bounced around chaotically and meaninglessly in Gerlinde's head for a second. Unlike someone like Farren or Victor, let alone absurd cases like Dietrich, Gerlinde had not been a fighter before she became a Hunter, nor anything that had allowed her to build a tolerance for stress or fear. Once upon a time she had been a humble wench serving drinks in a tavern; a simple life for a simple girl, who was terrified that she might one day be left on her own in the world, with no roof over her head and no food to eat. A thoroughly ordinary girl who worried, who had to force herself to look the patrons in the eyes rather than stare at her own feet and who never complained even when the tavern-keeper beat her. Back then fear had been her sole motivator, and fear of pain became one of her most core drives.
Now, though? After her time in Byrgenwerth, giving birth to one grotesque creature after another? After having survived there on her own for almost five years, sustaining herself off the frenzy-inducing venom her own larval child offered her in return for her mother's milk, supplemented with old, raw and probably human eyeballs? After that child being taken away and her becoming an immortal Hunter, which was the only reason she was still alive after all the horrid wounds, afflictions and deaths she had endured these past several days? Fear was alien to her, nothing but a fading memory, and pain... she was accustomed to pain.
Even so, being unexpectedly skewered by three different and distinctly arcane spears undeniably discombobulated her a bit and made it harder to think. At the time Ophelia called out, right as their prey had wrested the spear from her chest and the multitude of projected spears surrounding her vanished back into whatever nightmare they came from, Gerlinde had still been weighing her options. Was this worth a blood vial, she wondered, or should she just let herself die and come back to try again? Dying was no big deal to her; she was used to it. Blood vials, on the other hand, could be a bother to get more of. So when Ophelia suggested Snakey, reminding her of the power she had caught in it from the lightbeast, Gerlinde simply accepted without a second thought. She was not usually one to obey orders... but she figured it probably made sense. She was hurt and so were the others. She did not quite have the mental capacity to consider it more herself – she was dying, after all – and merely reached over to stroke the snake molt's head and release its ability.

A familiar warm, soft glow, like the calm and comfortable radiance of the hearth at the core of a home, flowed from Gerlinde's arm and enveloped her in its healing light. She felt the wounds that had been failing to regenerate abruptly mend and her regenerative potential restored. About eight meters from her it also reached the Moonborn Hunter, restoring them even as they struggled to recover and stand back up from the staggering damage they had just received. About five meters from her it reached Torquil, who – much like Gerlinde herself – had been right on the verge of death, yet found himself fully restored by the arcane blessing of the lightbeast.

And right next to Gerlinde, a mere meter from her and closer than anyone else, the brightness bathed Arrayah, too.

While Farren was still recovering and just beginning to move, long before Ophelia would even have the option to whisper anything to him, Arrayah moved first. She surged forward without warning or hesitation, using her right first to backhand Torquil across the side of his head, knocking him back down instantly. Half a second later, her left hand scythed through the air with its wicked claws, shredding the Moonborn Hunter's mask and drawing a spray of blood from their face while the abomination rushed past them.
Because now that they were all nice and scattered, and they were all recovering from being stabbed by the spears, Arrayah's priorities evidently shifted entirely. She ignored Gerlinde and Farren, and she left Torquil and the Moonborn Hunter with those farewell presents... while she moved at full speed directly toward Ophelia, closing the distance between them in about three seconds. She held the Profane Abyssal Blade out and behind her in her thinner right arm, intentionally far out of reach of Ophelia, while her stronger right came arcing from the right side and clawed left hand moved from the left, converging on the middle to grapple her.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

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

After Irah transmitted her silent message to Kinder, the Angel of Mercy awkwardly nodded her little puppet-head in acknowledgment of the requests before clumsily waddling over toward where Madara was working on treating Bren. Her movements were unsurprisingly rather slow and funny-looking, since the legs of her makeshift vessel were stiff and lacking joints, meaning that she had to wobble and rotate her entire body with each step as she traversed the area, all while wiggling her little scarecrow-like arms at her sides in an effort to maintain her balance.
“My real body can fly,” she volunteered when she got to Madara before dropping down on all fours before directing one stubby hand toward Bren. A soft white light shone from it onto Bren, and the magic of one of the most potent healers among the angelic classes promptly caused the catatonic healer's injuries to mend rapidly. “It has big, beautiful wings. It is quite graceful, I think; magnificent to look at and capable of great mobility. How other angels find any kind of pleasure in inhabiting vessels like this crude thing... it is quite beyond me.”
It was unclear whether Kinder was speaking to Madara or Bren, but her tone struck a curious middle-ground between annoyance and tenderness. “There,” she said after just several seconds, “that is as much as I can safely do for him. He is practically unhurt now, but there may be some external scarring... though if he is a healer himself, he will likely be able to fix that himself once he regains consciousness.”

Once she was sure the objective of this entire excursion was well and truly cared for as she had been instructed, Kinder turned her attention to the bandits – who she supposed were actually crusaders – and swept her divine senses across the battlefield to check how many of them, if any, could still be saved. The two that Yanin had intentionally left with wounds that were not immediately lethal were quite recoverable, of course, but the rest... None of them had been mages, as Caleb had asserted at the beginning of the endeavor, and they were all human. With the average capacity of a human soul, Kinder figured that even if they clung to life hard enough to ignore the beckoning of the Wanderer, they would still only have about thirty seconds after death before their spark of life faded and they became undead. And it had already been far more than thirty seconds; as such, it came as no surprise to her that she did not sense any lingering spirits that would allow for revival. The dead here were, regrettably, truly dead, and not even an iriao, nor the Goddess of Mercy herself for that matter, could bring back the dead.
So it was that Kinder opted to focus her attention where it would actually make a difference and headed for Yanin's prisoners. The third prisoner that Quintin had executed had been the one Kinder had the highest hopes for since he was the most recent death, but she could tell that his spirit had departed almost instantly upon death. That man had not only accepted his end, he had welcomed it. But none of that mattered; with her body of sticks and straw gradually crumbling under the corrosive influence of divine taint, Kinder did as she was told and healed the crusaders just enough that their lives were no longer in danger.

Also immediately after communing with Kinder, Irah would find that she did not even need to wait for the Angel of Mercy to convey the message, as she immediately heard Caleb's voice in her head: “No need for her to pass on a message, Deo'irah. I can hear you. Or did you forget that I was asked to maintain a telepathic link with you?” Rather than wait for her to respond, the fallen thalk just continued without pause: “I think I will stay in here for now rather than rejoin you. I am managing to accumulate a substantial amount of divine energy in this shed; it would be a shame to let all this power go to waste.”

Checking the crusaders' bodies, Yanin would find very little in terms of anything that could elucidate their motives beyond the obvious. They generally seemed to have very little in terms of personal possessions on them in a way that suggested they probably stored most of their belongings elsewhere, though Yanin would also observe that the vast majority of the band's baggage and supplies were probably in their saddlebags. A few crusaders did wear jewelry, though most of it was very sparse, simple and cheap. Several simple rings – likely wedding rings as was tradition in many of the more popular religions – of steel or wood, a couple of crude bracelets of string feathers or colorful pebbles as pendants... things that were worth very little, but one might assume had sentimental value to their owners. One crusader had a dirty and weathered ragdoll tucked into his belt, and another had a child's wooden toy sword sheathed right next to his very real dagger. The most interesting memorabilia he was able to discover without going through the saddlebags was a silver locket one crusader was wearing around his neck, which contained a tuft of blond hair.
He would naturally also find that many of the crusaders had small amounts of money hidden away on them in a way that suggested they had been trying to hide the coins from their comrades. The amounts varied per person, of course, but in total it would come to 75 rodlin. He and Lhirin would also finish their count: they had the four still-catatonic crusaders that Freagon had applied restraints to, Yanin's two prisoners, and twenty-five dead for a total of thirty-one.

Over by the tree at the place of pride of the farm, Jaelnec and Quintin relieved the poor innocent plant of its gruesome decorations and gently laid the corpses side by side at its foot, allowing them to rest with some measure of dignity until such a time that a proper burial became feasible. As it turned out, Quintin had only been partially correct in his assessment of who had been hung there. Two were indeed an adult pair of penin, a man and a woman; young, dressed in cheap, weathered garb and with what appeared to be carpenter's tools still in place in their belts. But while the last three – another pair of man and woman, and finally a boy that looked less than ten years old – could easily be assumed to be human at a glance, a closer inspection revealed that they were actually nightwalkers.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

“Arrayah does not matter...” the whispers endeavored to answer Ophelia's questions, as they always did, albeit fainter and slower now that she was not wearing the Guidance Rune. “Just touch... one awakened half with the other... and incant 'Gestalt Truth'... and in an instant... it will be made whole. But do be aware... that its other half... is surely telling Arrayah... the same thing. She is also a champion... she can also make it whole.”

While Ophelia received the lethargic words of the Holy Moonlight Sword, everything seemed to converge all at once. Gerlinde maintained her rabid assault into the far side of Arrayah, while Torquil and the Moonborn Hunter stepped through after her swinging fist had missed, with each of them delivering mighty strikes to her right and left side, respectively. Ophelia stepped back and had her holy blade noisily charge its cosmic energies before flinging them through the air as a brightly glowing projectile. Farren charged in close and lashed out with his Beastflayer once more, this time targeting the wrist of the hand holding the Profane Abyssal Blade.
And while they all did this, Arrayah's eyes kept shifting from one to the next... while her left hand and free right hand raised and spread to either side, palms upturned. Even though she now had five powerful Hunters cutting into her, she did not even seem to try to defend herself. All she did was to move the thin arm holding her weapon slightly to the side, easily avoiding the very obvious blast of energy fired by Ophelia. Farren's strike hit, but once again barely did anything.

Arrayah's eyes moved, and focused on Ophelia... no, more specifically they fixated on the Holy Moonlight Sword in Ophelia's hands. Her jaw twitched, causing her overgrown teeth to move and rip open her cheek once more, prompting more viscous ooze to flow. And then – with the speed that had seemed so conspicuously absent from her feinted attempts to ward off Gerlinde and Torquil – she abruptly brought down her black spear, blade first... and plunged it deep into her own chest.
What followed only took one second: the instant the Profane Abyssal Blade pierced its wielder's flesh, inky blackness shot out along the floor where she was standing, immediately encompassing everything in a ten meter radius around her, casting it all in deep shadow. Then the shadow stirred, and from within it – from the ground and from Arrayah's body – spontaneously burst dozens of black spears, thrusting upwards and outwards, aiming to impale everything and anything within the shadow.
Gerlinde was instantly pierced by three different spears, while Torquil was riddled with no less than five spears. The Moonborn Hunter had sensed the danger and attempted to quickstep away, but since their quickstep was only five meters they still could not get away in time, and were stabbed by four spears.

After all, the Holy Moonlight Sword could shoot projectiles as well as cause explosions... so surely it would be no surprise that the Profane Abyssal Blade had two ways to manifest its power, too.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

Another small surprised giggle escaped Gerlinde when Ophelia took her second shot at Arrayah, as she now recognized the pattern between those two occurrences: she was trying to time her shots to hit their enemy just as she attacked. It was quite unexpected to her, truthfully; it had taken two days after her becoming a Hunter before anyone thought to explain the potentially disruptive effects of quicksilver when applied at the exact moment the target's Old Blood was being activated – “gun parrying,” as some Hunters had taken to call it – but apparently Ophelia knew about it now, mere hours after metamorphosis. The way she used her pistol suggested she did not have much practice, but from what she could see the timing seemed to match Arrayah's movements quite well... though obviously she did run into the issue of quicksilver bullets moving slower than lead ones, and with Ophelia standing back as she did there would be a small delay.
Watching with keen interest, Gerlinde saw Farren quickstep away pretty much just as the quicksilver bullet darted through the air right next to him, and though she could not see it from her current angle, Gerlinde could tell that the bullet would have hit just as the black spear was swung. Especially Farren would be close enough to tell that while Ophelia's bullet did not penetrate as deeply as the shots from his piercing rifle, they seemed to cause significantly more damage as the skin around the area of impact seemed to momentarily blacken, only for the necrotic flesh to be immediately rejected and healthy tissue grew to replace it. The head of his Beastflayer also hit its target, delivering a cut to Arrayah's shoulder, but it did not do much; in its whip-form, Beastflayer quite simply could not convey enough force to do more than barely pierce her skin. During a quickstep away from his target the force was even less, and as a result Arrayah did not even appear to notice.
But despite the shot hitting its target this time, Arrayah did not appear to be stunned by it the way she would if it had been a successful parry. Gerlinde mentally shrugged; on one hand it might be that Ophelia's timing was just slightly off, but Gerlinde also knew from experience that especially large and powerful beasts were often resistant to gun parries. Interestingly it seemed to have worked earlier when Farren had done it... though to be fair, he had also done it point-blank with dual blunderbusses, and furthermore done so while Arrayah had still been off guard. She made a mental note of having a talk with the trio of fresh Hunters about quicksilver, then shrugged off the thought for now as events progressed and her focus was needed for other matters.

Now, once more, everything seemed to converge in one place and about at the same time. Immediately after Farren had retreated just out of melee range, Gerlinde reached Arrayah from the opposite direction and jumped at her, transforming her saw cleaver into its compact form and starting to assault the abomination's waist viciously. A short distance away Torquil seemed to finally recover from the sheer incredulity of what had just happened and transformed his weapon into its Dane axe version, gripped it with both hands and charged as well.
And over by Ophelia the summoning of the Moonborn Hunter finally completed, with them having fully emerged from the floor, and they promptly set into a mad dash directly at Arrayah. A bluish light flashed on their person announced them conjuring a chikage, onto to immediately sheathe and then unsheathe it, only for its blade to have become coated in what appeared to be unusually viscous blood.

Thoughout all of this, Arrayah looked from one to the next in a way that seemed frantic, almost panicked, as if suddenly realizing that she had allowed herself to be surrounded by enemies. Her clawed left hand swiped back toward Gerlinde, but the Huntress ducked the clumsy attack and kept up her assault. The hand on the thicker of her right arms let go of her weapon, clenched into a fist and swung at Torquil, making him halt his advance just outside her unarmed range to avoid getting hit.
And with a glance of her glowing azure eyes at Ophelia, her last, thinnest arm raised the Profane Abyssal Blade high over her head, as if trying to keep it out of reach of her attackers.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Pthumeru Yharnam layer, the Old Labyrinth

Arrayah, the Black Blade

It seemed that now, finally, – after the party had had what could easily be interpreted as a remarkably successful and thoroughly lucky battle against a creature whose strength seemed beyond them – their fortunes were starting to turn. Ophelia took the chance to try for a twitch-reaction eye-shot at Arrayah with her own pistol; an incredibly ambitious shot for someone who had most likely never so much as held a firearm of any kind until tonight, let alone trained with pistols: she sent the quicksilver bullet whizzing above and beside the monster, missing her entirely.
Over by the beast herself, Farren set out on a perhaps even more ambitious maneuver, intending to counterattack by jumping onto Arrayah's arm – an arm that was barely wider than one of his feet – before proceeding to assault her from above. It was a flashy and very impressive plan... but that is not what happened. Instead he jumped onto her arm and immediately started slipping on the narrow, rounded limb. He immediately lost the foothold he would need for a quickstep up to target her head, and awkwardly stumbled back down to the floor, still right in front of his opponent. The silver lining was that the jump and brief moment trying to balance on top of Arrayah's arm had been enough to make the scything slash of the Profane Abyssal Blade miss.

Of course, all that meant was that Arrayah could keep up what she had been doing undeterred. Her left hand whipped off to her left, carelessly tossing Farren's piercing rifle away into the gloom of the cavern, while her right arms simply stopped the swing with the black spear from right to left... and swept it back left to right instead, still aiming for Farren's thighs.