yoshua171

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

wondered at the distress he saw in her eyes, his chest tight with the knowledge that something else terrible must have happened before they’d even arrived. Farren breathed, wiped his eyes, annoyed at the presence of the tears. He gave Torquil a small nod of acknowledgement, in some ways glad for the silent company, in others wishing he were alone again.

He knew it was best that he wasn’t alone, however. When Ophelia’s harsh, pained scream—a sound of anguish and rage both—echoed out, Farren didn’t turn and run to her. He visibly, almost violently, winced. Like it had hurt him—and not because his hearing was sensitive.

Some time later—both too long and too short—Ophelia stormed from the workshop, he hadn’t turned to look right away, but he could tell by the sound of her steps. When he did turn…well, she looked a bit like a storm too. It was the first time seeing her well and truly angry in a way he understood. Not aggrieved like she’d been when they’d argued some hours ago, but filled with a righteous fury. He understood that feeling, he nodded, somehow buoyed by the fact that they seemed to feel the same way…and the fact that no one was blaming him—even if he was.

“You go, let us stay. I’ll send for you if the lack of the false blood’s presence returns her to us,” Farren said, sounding resolute. “I’ll see if I can help Moonborn with the ritual…and explain to Amaris if she…if she returns to us.” His voice was thick for a moment after he said her name, his usually confident and unshakeable gaze shifting away for a moment, then back. She’d see guilt written in that hesitation, before he steeled himself again.

“And with Torquil and myself not leaving and returning unnecessarily…we’ll avoid stirring the Bastard’s power again,” he added, venom in his utterance of the appellation.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

waited and the minutes felt long, too long, leaving him with the weight of Amaris’ limp inanimate form where it lay behind him on the floor. He could still see the image of her in his mind’s eye and no matter how much he tried to banish it, it just…wouldn’t go away. Agitation and a gnawing something deeper inside him grew with each passing moment. Little twitches, first in his eyelid, then his fingers, began to manifest. Faint sensations of touches on his skin–like the light brushes of thin tendrils…or something else (Golden tentacles perhaps) began to bother his mind.

For it was in his head, he knew it was. He bore the Mask Rune. The Bastard couldn’t touch him, not truly…but the thing that bothered him more–as he became properly aware of what was happening–was that the sensations were all too familiar.

Farren supposed that he wasn’t so sane as he’d thought after all. The thought disturbed him and he retreated into the cold searing press of the fury he was nursing, he let it envelop him…and the paranoia, the gnawing sense of guilty, and the brushing not-grasp began to recede. He swallowed hard and then–not soon enough–he heard Ophelia’s voice, calling out…distressed.

He moved before a thought even went through his head, pushed from the threshold of the workshop and down the stairs so fast that it was nearly a quickstep, that he nearly tripped despite the awareness and near-mastery of body that the Old Blood had given him. She came into view swiftly, or rather, into focus, for she’d been there already. Her eyes were faintly red–as if she’d been crying–and some small part of him felt as if it must be for Amaris. Of course, that was impossible, there was no way she could have known. His lips parted, but the words died in his throat, choking him. His throat felt thick with emotion, his face screwed up and he felt…tears well?

An angry irrational part of him, a reflection of his baser, less compassionate side harshly criticized him, wondering at how he could feel so strongly for a mere doll. The thought just made him feel more strongly still and he scowled even as he let a tear fall. He didn’t know if Amaris was truly dead, but even if she were not…he felt responsible–he had done this to her, and that hurt him. She was a pure soul, no matter the nature of her vessel or the origin of her mind…and no one deserved to be snuffed out like this, even if it might not be forever.

He held out hope that if they took the Puppet’s paleblood concoction from the Dream, that she would wake.

It was a thin reedy thing, that hope, but he clutched to it nonetheless.

“Here, Ophelia,” Farren finally managed as he tried to speak a second time. The azure-eyed hunter found that his voice sounded as thick and strained as his throat felt. He swallowed again, “...nevermind the…corpses. Amaris, she…” his words choked off as he felt something wrack him. Farren staggered, he gritted his teeth and half turned, gesturing back towards the workshop. “Go,” he said and though time was likely not of the essence in this case, that single word sounded urgent. Farren’s eyes remained on the packed earth as he fought back tears, realizing that what he’d felt had been a single, solitary sob.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

^{Featuring @Dark Jack}

_Farren

just stared at the limp, lifeless body of the Doll. It didn’t look like her somehow. Where before there had been a semblance, an aspect at the least, of life therein…of consciousness, despite her artificial frame…now there was nothing. Truly like a puppet with its strings cut. The Shopkeeper did in fact have to shove past his shoulder to fully enter, and the act had his already uncharacteristically loose grip on his pistol utterly fail.

The recently loaded gun clattered to the wooden ground and the sound barely stirred Farren. However, the blow had rocked him to the side slightly, and he only steadied himself by instinct alone—and even then he seemed to stagger. They’d not thought things through… he hadn’t thought it through, in truth. Of course bringing so much of Ego’s False Paleblood into the Dream would have consequences…. Just what ran through his and Torquil’s veins had been enough to cause tremors, shifts in weather…and manifestations of various phenomena—the Bloodwraiths…Torquil’s transformation, the strange shifts in his own capacities.

Farren gritted his teeth. He was better than this, but he’d been in too much of a rush. Too motivated by spite to consider the potential consequences of their intentions.

Yet, traitorously…even as guilt and shame roiled through him…they were swiftly overpowered by a stronger, fiercer, far more violent emotion.

Or rather, it would have been. It had been before.

This time, that familiar rage burned cold in his veins, like he’d been filled with choking ice.

“This only just happened…didn’t it?”

Farren said, his affect completely flat, his expression somehow frighteningly blank. But his eyes burned with a frigid cold and not just metaphorically either. They actually seemed unnaturally luminescent, if the Hunter deigned to look.

The Moonborn Hunter merely nodded and Farren gritted his teeth.

“...I’m Sorry,” he managed, his voice strained

Still without looking up, the Shopkeeper raised a hand and pointed at Farren.

He frowned, not understanding. “...I don't...can you write?” He asked suddenly, remembering the notebook he could retrieve.

The Shopkeeper shook their head, then finally turned away from the inanimate doll and stood up, walked over to and around Farren and pointed at the bag on his back.

'Damn,' Farren thought. Though...he wondered if the Messengers might help. Then again...he didn't fancy interacting with them right then. When the man circled him, Farren's head turned, following the motion, but not turning around. He noted what the Hunter was pointing at and his features darkened.

“Ah, I see. Yes, I'd presume it's related. False Paleblood and proper Old Blood,” Farren noted, turning so the pack was behind him once more. Some small part of him felt like the Moonborn Hunter might attempt to destroy both if he let him. “We didn't...think it would have an effect such as this without already being within a body, I suppose....” He added, frowning, clearly upset as well. There was still a stiff coldness to every motion he made and every word he managed.

The Shopkeeper just stood there for a moment, arms hanging down their sides, seemingly at a loss for what to do. Then they turned from Farren to walk back to and then past the doll, into the corner of the room where the wheelchair they had been sitting in on the party's first arrival in the Dream. They pulled it out of the corner and over to the doll, only to allow themselves to fall and slump into it.

“We'll...find a better place for it, once the others return,” Farren offered, his tone more hollow than he'd like. Farren didn't sit, even though he wanted to. He did slowly remove the pack and set it just outside the door of the workshop, before he leaned against one edge of the threshold...waiting for the others to arrive.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

slid to a stop, pistol still raised, his other hand on the hilt of the Effigial Blade despite the fact that it hadn’t served any true purpose in the conflict. The flames engulfed the second creature, searing away the Twisted thing with a frightening swiftness. Farren reloaded his pistol in a swift series of motions…just in case, his gaze scanning the area for any extant threats that perhaps hadn’t yet revealed themselves.

Nothing presented itself, but Farren kept the firearm in hand, his other hand on the hilt of the Effigial Blade of Mercy as he glanced the Moonborn Hunter’s way and nodded. “My thanks,” the azure-eyed hunter added, “…that would have been…much worse had you not acted so swiftly.”

Farren let out a slow breath, frowning as he considered the implications of what had just occurred. He hoped that when Torquil reentered the Dream that it wouldn’t trigger something similar. Farren wondered if the location of the Container of False Pairblood might have an impact on where in the Dream these occurrences happened.

With that potentiality in mind, Farren glanced to the Moonborn Hunter once more, “Do you need to be near Amaris for her to commune with you?”

Dismissing their weapon in another blue flash, the Shopkeeper turned to Farren, clenched their fist in what seemed like frustration, and pointed urgently toward the workshop.

Farren grunted his assent and began jogging towards the workshop.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

recoiled slightly, but recovered quickly as his second attack failed to have the effect he’d been aiming for. Worse still, the Twisted Messenger finished recovering, not even seeming to notice the strike at all before it healed. With the understanding that strikes from his blades were almost certain to be ineffective, Farren pushed back into a backwards quickstep, trying to put at least a few meters between himself and the grasping creature. Whether it caught him or not, Farren was already clicking his blades together into his right hand before reaching his left down into a pouch to palm a quicksilver bullet. He’d continue with his other hand, sheathing the Effigial Blade as he drew up his pistol and now with two hands worked to swiftly reload it. Even if caught in its grasp, he’d attempt to load, tilt up, and then fire the bullet up on a trajectory that would penetrate between ‘chin’ and neck and travel upwards through its entire skull if it didn’t get lodged within it.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

was moving in one moment, and rocked into stillness the next. He struggled, indeed he writhed and contorted and fought, but to no avail, his adversaries swiftly closing in. Farren clenched his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and braced himself for whatever twisted terrors were about to befall him.

Then there was a whistle, a crack, a blooming flower of flame, and then blinding searing heat.

It was different from the crackling sharp flash-burn of lightning that was searing pain, convulsing muscle and then black numbness. This was like a wave of molten heat, melting pain that spread from the surface inwards, but not all at once. Farren let out one agonized emanation before he managed to clench his teeth down so only his lips and face were seared–his eyes shut reflexively before the wave properly hit him.

He heard the noises of the Twisted Messengers, the sound of heavy running strides from the direction of the cabin behind him, the tumble of one, then two bodies against dirt and stone and flora. His prison released him, the constriction suddenly gone, his weight suddenly fully on his own feet again. Farren staggered back one, two, three steps. He was already half healed, then more…but he felt pinpricks of scintillating fire all over. Quicksilver, his mind told him, catching up.

Farren’s eyes snapped open, swiveled to the right, locked on the Messenger there that had begun to recover. Though not a proper Hunter’s tool, Farren drew his dagger in a whip-fast motion, flicking his wrist in a swift surprisingly accurate throw directly at the Messenger’s center mass. The thoroughly sharpened, if otherwise mundane knife, sailed through the air towards its target, but Farren was already acting further, having snapped his blades back into one and drawn his Hunter’s Pistol. He brought it up in a swift draw and fired directly at the same Messenger’s skull.

His body twisted, back to the Messenger he’d struck as he let the pistol find its hook at his belt. Then he quickstepped. This time he moved at a slight acute angle from straight on, intending to arrive behind or to one side of the other recovering Messenger. The angle of his movement was an attempt to not be fired at head on like he had been prior. If he arrived unimpeded, Farren would use the momentum of his movement to turn on his heel–shifting it into centrifugal force–which he’d used to attempt to cleave the Twisted Messenger in half.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

left the others behind, not because he wanted to, but because even if they fell, they would merely return to the Dream. Plus, it seemed prudent that he get his cargo somewhere that the Vicar and his forces could not reach him. After all, even if this was not the Puppet’s sole supply of False Pale Blood, they’d do well to deprive the bastard of any resources they could. As he headed back to Oedon Chapel he found that the trip was an uneventful one—something of a relief in some ways, though the hunger in his blood had began to niggle at the edges of his mind.

He was less aware of it than he had been in the past, so Farren naturally did not attempt to suppress it. With any luck, that predatory instinct would not be left unsated long enough to intermingle with the paranoia that roiled, slithered, and crawled upon itself in a knotted coil deep deep within his mind, beyond his notice.

Eventually he reached the lantern and, mostly to test if normal lanterns not within the hold of the Golden Bastard’s power would respond, he stretched an arm out towards its faint warmth. Moments later he found himself waking in the Hunter’s Dream and—to his brief pleasure—he experienced a thrum of thrilling vivacity course through his body. He felt suddenly lighter somehow, more energetic, yet oddly not more ‘awake,’ though in another sense he’d never felt less fatigued—which was to say that he felt no tiredness at all, quite the opposite really.

However, that tremulous thrill wasn’t something that Farren got to enjoy for more than a few brief, immeasurable instants, for almost as it began, Farren became aware of the uncanny shaking of the Dream. The mild annoyance he’d largely moved past on his way back—which had briefly ceded to the energy of the power imparted to his blood—now returned like a quiet murmur echoing off a far off structure. It was swiftly overshadowed by a tinge of fear, the subtle tendrils of paranoia reaching from somewhere within him to lightly graze over his heart. Then…suspicion.

Farren’s azure eyes narrowed, the almost blinding flash of luminescent yellow light sending a sharper stitch of terror through him. A terror that roused the simpering, jibbering ghost nestled within him. Farren swallowed hard, his jaw tightened and without hesitation, he drew the Effigial Blade of Mercy, splitting it into two hands with a sharp jerk and a twist.

Then he registered the screaming, his eyes swiveling until his gaze came to fitful rest upon the writhing Messengers. His frown deepened, his heartbeat sped, his fear grew and a realization struck him in the same instant that the Messengers began to swell and grow. ‘It was the blood’ he thought, [i]‘…just a little disturbed the Dream, called things…empowered us on occasion…twisted Torquil’s form. This much had twisted the Dream’s occupants themselves, though mercifully few of them.

The power that had touched them here—it seemed—must have been the wretched touch of the Golden Bastard. He recalled them; the Runes he’d noticed adorning the case of False Pale Blood they’d pilfered. The Sun Rune had been among them. Ego’s Rune. So as the Messengers rapidly changed—his weapons already drawn—Farren did two things nearly in the same moment.

He quickstepped—not to retreat, but to attack—working to cross the distance between himself and the Twisted Messengers, and he called out in a roar that was half a call to arms and half a battlecry of sorts.

“Moonborn!”

Both creatures finished their transformation before Farren reached them, and one raised its finger as he watched—almost in slow motion—and some fell power gathered there…then fired. Farren’s left foot shifted trajectory, he began to twist, and then he slammed the foot down in a push to the right, attempting to enter a second quickstep to interrupt the first and circumvent the attack or at least take the hit somewhere less vital. Either way, he’d likely bull forward, quickstepping again if necessary to maintain sufficient speed not just to reach the Twisted Messengers, but to pass behind them in a blur.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

took in the sights, one by one, taking special note of the path they took and those that he could see from their shifting vantage point as they traveled. He’d never been good with words or numbers–be it reading them or writing them or accomplishing arithmetic…though he had fewer issues with that last task than the others. Needless to say, Farren had a way with his body and a way with place. Finding North was as easy to him as breathing, and fixing locations and paths in his mind was similarly easy. One supposed that his mind compensated for its failings by excelling elsewhere.

Really he’d never given it much thought before–or at least he didn’t remember doing so, which wasn’t saying much–but now on introspection as they headed for the White Church Workshop of the present day, it struck him as relevant. Farren wondered if he had any other talents…or skills that he wasn’t entirely aware of.

When eventually they arrived at their initial destination, he did indeed stow away their prize and while he didn’t wear his tension so easily as Torquil, Farren did have a small reaction to the interjection of the cleric. Initially it seemed to be tension, but Farren shifted it into a display of annoyance, first frowning, then rolling his eyes as the man insisted upon imposing his will on them.

Beyond that, Farren kept himself on high alert, keeping in mind the positions of everyone in the immediate area to the best of his ability. He noticed when almost everyone’s attention shifted to a point behind him–during which point he heard only the shifting of cloth and hair, as well as Gerlinde’s voice as she stretched. Farren didn’t look, though some part of him wanted to.

He didn’t speak up though, just deferred to Ophelia’s superior ability to charm those she encountered. She really did have a remarkable way with people.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

watched as Ophelia departed, lingering in the Dream with Torquil, as he’d said he would. However, rather than sit as his companion had, Farren ended up pacing, the action oddly precise, in two almost exact parallel lines, as he thought through all they had learned. At some point, he noticed Torquil…experimenting with the changes to his anatomy….

Specifically Torquil had extended his strange new tongue and was wiggling it about experimentally, an act that made Farren shudder faintly. Of course, he wasn’t looking directly at the man, he’d just caught the act in his peripheral vision and so it at least likely would not appear to Torquil—if he noticed at all—that Farren was reacting to him in particular.

Then, a thought struck him, after a minute or so, and Farren knelt down in a swift motion, murmuring as he called upon the Messengers. He quickly scrawled out a note in their offered scroll, and then bid them deliver it to Ophelia.

“Inquire after the False Pale Blood’s location.”

As the Messengers slipped back into their dwelling place on the way to Ophelia, Farren rose, wondering if perhaps Dietrich might know its location.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

listened intently upon Amaris’ words, taking each piece of the puzzle in and stowing it away for future reference. He nodded perhaps halfway through, showing his acknowledgement, and as Amaris finished he looked thoughtful. “I appreciate the thorough explanation,” he said, wetting his lips as he though about the various ways that the Old Blood could move through the world, change…transform, both within a host and outside one. It made sense, “I do believe that was all, Amaris. Thank you,” he added, giving her a respectful nod before he glanced to Ophelia, and then Torquil, “If we’re ready…where to first, or would you rather visit a place or two while we linger in the Dream...?” He said it with the obvious implication that it was best that he and Torquil not exit and re-enter unnecessarily, given what they now knew.