yoshua171

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

relief when Ophelia’s form faded–Greatsword with it–was short lived and had he been a normal hunter…so too would he have been. In the next instant, whatever had beset Ophelia sent him tumbling, or…at least, that’s how it felt. Then he seemed to be…rolling. Profoundly disoriented, Farren didn’t even have time to realize what had happened before his consciousness faded and was reclaimed.

---

Farren resolved into shape in the Hunter’s Dream, not terribly long after Ophelia, but he felt oddly…disembodied, unmoored, disoriented, and…out of breath?

Farren put a hand to his chest and slowed his breathing, eyes screwed up in a frown of concentration as he tried to parse his last few memories. Only as he glanced down and saw his boots did he understand.

They were the same boots he’d seen in the corner of his slightly reddened vision before he’d been dragged back to the Dream. He shuddered, his bile rose, but Farren’s left hand covered his mouth even as he stumbled forwards and laid a hand on a tall tombstone’s zenith to steady himself. He swallowed, hard, several times, knuckles whitening, and then took another long, slow, breath.

He slowly turned, glancing at Ophelia–looking slightly nauseated–and then to their hosts. “That…” he began hoarsely, “...was profoundly unpleasant,” he said, and then as the flash of pain he’d felt at his neck seconds before the disorienting experience of his head being severed came back to him, Farren doubled over and threw up.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

pushed, shoved and whatever it was just ignored his efforts, too powerful for him to make any significant progress. So Farren gave up, took a few hopped steps back, drew his pistol, raised it...and fired directly at Ophelia's head--his eyelid twitching feverishly as he did so.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

missed, but it was more than that, even Gerlinde’s wide sweeping strikes with her whip seemed to have no effect. Was it regenerating too fast…or was this something more than mere invisibility? As these thoughts flowed through his mind along a raging river of analysis and instinctual considerations, Farren reloaded his pistol with quicksilver, holstered it, sheathed any other weapons, and then drew the Beastflayer from his back even as he stepped into a running approach. Farren reeled his weapon back, flicking and twisting his wrist as he looked up towards the ceiling swallowed in darkness. Then, not aiming at anything but the open air above, he swung in a vertical slash, the Beastflayer extended out into its cleaving ‘whip’ blade form as it swung up overhead then downwards. It wasn’t well aimed at all, but Farren had intended to aim for a spot a ways above and in front of Ophelia. Not where they thought the creature was at all. Perhaps if he wasn’t focusing on the creature…it would be possible to strike it.

It didn’t do any of them any good as somehow, he pulled the strike back–not even meaning to–before the elongated whip-blade would have ever reached its undetectable target.

Farren’s eyes narrowed. He debated firing his blunderbuss at it…as there was an element of randomness there, but he had a feeling that was equally pointless. Farren did it anyways, flicking his wrist to snap the beastflayer’s segments back into place as it came back towards him, at the same time he drew the blunderbuss and fired in the unseen beast’s general direction.

Nothing changed, “Gods dammit,” he hissed…then surged forward in a quickstep directly at Ophelia. As he moved, he holstered the spent blunderbuss, drew a blood vial and slammed the ‘flayer back into its place on his back. All in a blink.

In sequence, if nothing struck him off course or otherwise impeded him, Farren would slam a blood vial into Ophelia’s side with his left hand, depressing it, even as he effectively tackled her with the other, using his momentum and considerable weight to try and push, drag, and pull her to her left (forward for him) in an attempt at getting her off whatever was impaling her…even if it meant tearing the blade out of her side and through his own fucking body. He braced for pain, be it from his maneuver itself…or attacks he couldn’t even perceive coming.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

watched, listened, even sniffed at the air, but none of his efforts–nor those of the others–proved remotely effective. Worse still was the fact that somehow, despite his vigilance, something truly frightening slipped past his guard–past all of their guards. Ophelia moved, sudden, but after a flash–a mere instant–it became abundantly clear that it was not of her own volition.

A wound split open in a single timeless moment and Farren’s eyes widened, but his hand was already moving.

He drew his Hunter’s Pistol, unable to see the threat, and trained it on Ophelia. Some might have panicked, might have wildly swung the weapon about, or twitched it between near-random points in their companion’s general direction.

Farren trained it on Ophelia herself, at the center of the wound, at the spray of blood that gushed from her form, at where the blood could not pass, but neither did it cling. Then his eyes shifted in a straight line back from the rift in her torso, through what his senses told him was empty air, along nothing at all. Farren, of course, had no idea what precisely was attacking Ophelia, no clue what its dimensions might be, so he shifted the muzzle of his firearm to a spot perhaps 2 meters back from Ophelia, keeping the weapon trained at a spot roughly the same elevation as the center of Ophelia’s wound.

Then he fired.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

scanned the room, his sharp azure eyes narrowing a twitch as he spied the bones and identified their likely nature. Multiple piles…all the same beast…or several? His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing a shift further.

Ophelia stepped forth, followed closely by Gerlinde, but Farren didn’t move for a moment still. The silence.

It stretched and he felt an odd tension in the air, in his own muscles. He stepped forward, “Be ready,” he uttered, before the other two were too engrossed in the etching on the wall. Farren, for his part, took several more steps deeper into the room, not following the ladies of their party, but walking perhaps four strides forward into the space before he stopped. The sheer size of the place boggled the mind, making his senses swim when he tried to stare in a straight line. Much of the space seemed to fade into a murky mire of off-black, while far off points of eerie blue lantern-light steadily glowed against the distant walls further out.

Circular, it seemed…. Strewn with bodies, or at least with the remains of a Darkbeast like Paarl had been. Yet…likely larger still.

And this place, the Labyrinth, the Interstice, was a dangerous one, always spoken of with a certain wary reverence that he was swiftly beginning to understand.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, his tone even, wary, eyes scanning, senses stretched for any sound or scent or any other sign of–...of what?

Danger? Something else?

His eyes cast across the nearer walls as he turned in place, only ever putting his shoulder facing the pillar at the room’s center, keeping it in his left periphery as he turned clockwise. What had made the etching? Surely they weren’t a native part of the room’s design. They seemed too…rough compared to the rest and…almost fresh–or at least fresher than the rest of this place. Even the air here felt ancient, smelled stale, like stone, dust, and the long slow drying and powdering of Old Blood.

The Old Blood.

Farren turned again, swiveling counterclockwise until he laid eyes on the skull fragment of the Darkbeast, trying to really focus on it as he drew in a deep pull of the stale air. Was there a hint of something voltaic in the air, a scent of decay that was too fresh, perhaps? Did the skull shift faintly with the unsettling not-life that Paarl’s undead remains had, did they crackle with unnatural lightning?

Something was off.

The question was, could he sense it…?

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

stopped in place, standing roughly between Ophelia and Torquil in the hall, watching as Gerlinde began her macabre feast. A surprisingly tactical choice, it had him smiling as he uttered familiar words, “Take any advantage.”

Farren was beginning to wonder how Madness and Intellect related and if they perhaps coincided more than he could have known. At Torquil’s actions he nodded as well, just barely catching sight of the Lake Rune in the projector as the man engraved it upon his mind. Recalling his own earlier words, it made sense to him. Why endure a foe’s strength, when you could avoid it and turn any attack into a potential opening. It was…surprisingly wise for Torquil, he silently observed, making note of how his ally had made the decision on his own, without any visible guidance.

Like each of them in their own ways, Torquil too seemed to slowly be changing.

Farren took a deep breath then, closing his eyes as he focused on why they were here. He called upon the image of Amaris, slumped upon the ground; the Winter Lantern–as Ophelia had called it, the horrid thing–and what its presence in the Dream entailed; the Vicar’s words and how they’d twisted at his mind and his freedom; the seeking tendrils of the Golden Bastard, Ego, and what he would do when they stood before its twisted radiance.

Rage shifted.
Fear roiled then smoothed.
The bonds he’d forged with his companions warped and solidified and strengthened in his mind.

Farren opened his eyes and the emotions cooled, yet intensified all at once into something else.

His jaw set, his posture straightened and grew just the slightest bit more confident, and where before a slight sense of despair had still clouded his azure eyes, now they cleared once more.

Determination, forged and earned and reaffirmed swept through him not like a tumultuous river, but like a slow stream pooling into a placid lake.

His eyes did not shine, not as they had–though he knew naught of the phenomena–but where they had been faintly dull for a time, they were clear and pure once more. Farren turned those eyes on their surroundings a second time, then between his allies, then finally back down the hall.

He smiled. Just slightly. Then spoke.

“I’ll adapt, but as before with Paarl…Gerlinde and I can take point.”

A pause, a glance a third time over the corpses, new and old. Their wounds, their positioning, and the physical nature of their wounds.

“I’d wager your observations well worth their weight. Whatever struck these down…mmm…a savage foe, but likely either quite swift, quite slippery, or hardy beyond belief.”

Farren turned his head and spat onto the edge of the hall, “Or all three, I suppose. Reckon it weren’t large as some we’ve faced, but no less deadly for its lack in size.”

Farren’s gaze shifted up ahead, past his allies, “Shall we?”

Though his words were a question, Farren only waited a brief handful of instants before he stepped forwards and headed for the hall’s end, grudgingly curious–and wary–of what they’d find beyond within the fell corridors and rooms of the Labyrinth. He didn’t bother to look the bodies over for materials, but perhaps a few steps in he paused, stopped in place and glanced back at Ophelia–having tread only several paces past her.

“Think this lot’s blood remains of any worth?”

He awaited her reply, but didn’t remain idle, pulling out the extraction tool the Moonborn Hunter had granted them some hours ago as he stepped towards the nearest still-warm corpse, seeking value in its blood.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

reached down to touch the chalice with the others, then—

He fell.

Endless Black, like the half remembered dream at the inception of his new self upon that clinic sickbed.

Unmoored.

Plummeting fast. Fast. Faster.

Sickeningly swift.

As if pulled by an unseen force through space, through distances he could not conceptualize, let alone count.

His mind wheeled upon itself, an intense gut-deep unease growing.

They passed something, a flash of substance, impossible to identify, there and then gone in less than an instant.

Then—

His feet touched uneven stone, Farren stumbled, reached out, gripped bare stone to steady himself. His gorge rose as the depth and breadth of that not-movement slammed through his entire body all at once, like he’d not had a vessel until just then.

He tasted bile, but clamped his teeth down and swallowed. Hard. Eyes too wide for an instant, Farren shuddered, gagged, then swallowed a second time.

A sharp exhale. He wet his lips, the unease began to fade, the nausea followed, overtook it, then was gone even more swiftly.

Farren shuddered, full body, visible, then shook himself and forced himself to pay attention.

A long hall of stone.

Bloodied bodies. Fresh.

Bare skeletons, garbed in torn and ruined garments, older, half buried in the detritus of strewn gorey ruin.

“Inviting,” he muttered sarcastically, feeling the urge to retch once more for a moment before he forced it down and straightened, his hand leaving the wall.

When Ophelia spoke, mentioning their Caryll Runes, Farren lightly brushed her shoulder with his fingertips and nodded once, “Metamorphosis,” he offered in his usual gruff manner, offering the back of his hand.

He didn’t flinch.

When it was done and a surge of vigorous energy finished suffusing through him, Farren knelt and quietly called upon the Messengers.

No longer burdened by the case of stolen blood, he requested his other armaments: The Beastflayer and Piercing Rifle. Thanking the helpers with a brief nod as was his way, Farren rearranged his gear and affixed the two weapons to his back as before so that he could swiftly draw them if needed–the firearm he made sure to load with quicksilver before stowing it away.

As Farren rose to his feet he drew first his Blunderbuss and then his Hunter’s Pistol, loading both, before replacing them to their hooks at his belt.

Satisfied, Farren drew the True Blade of Mercy in one hand and then followed Ophelia once Torquil had recovered, keeping his senses peeled for any telltale signs of threat or interest.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

nodded, having half been talking to himself…since he’d asked before and they’d had no answer. Still, it gladdened him that she was back and that they had allies digging into the lore, searching for answers so they might vanquish the Golden Bastard. Farren turned, looking to Ophelia, “Well…suppose it’s to the Labyrinth then,” he commented. Then he recalled the echoes in his blood. “Ah…but let me divest these echoes first…” he said, rifling through his things…checking his bullets and vials.

Farren stepped closer to Amaris and put a hand on her shoulder, “…I’m…glad you’re back,” he said, quietly, almost somber as he held her artificial gaze. Then he lightly let his hand slip away and hold between them. “Might you…turn some of these echoes into strength? I’ve felt a mite sluggish of late…” he said, referring to the strange ‘slowness’ of mind that had mostly slipped into the periphery of his awareness since one of his entrances into the Dream.

Farren closed his eyes, allowing her to assist with the process of allocating a portion (100) of his echoes to renew the nimbleness of his mind to its former state. He thanked her briefly, feeling better, more himself, and then moved over to the Messenger Fountain after he’d left the workshop. He briefly noted the lack of anything new, then he focused on what he needed.

Eleven Quicksilver Bullets and three Blood Vials. The Messengers eagerly manifested them from the echoes remaining in his blood and Farren quickly deposited them in their respective places at his belt. When he was finished he glanced over towards the Moonborn Hunter and the altar upon which the chalice sat.

He walked over, nodded to the man and regarded it with an inscrutable expression, wondering what the Interstice held for them.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

took in Amaris and Ophelia’s words quietly, his shock slowly fading as he nodded along, appearing still slightly confused when each of them was done. It wasn’t a truly satisfactory explanation…but when Amaris mentioned that her life was tied to that of Flora’s—the Great One that had presided over the Hunter’s Dream—well, that suddenly had things clicking together.

Distant as Flora likely was now, perhaps the Great One could not animate Amaris without some impetus or energy to do so. What better to serve as a source of power to fuel Amaris’ mind and movement than echoes of the Old Blood.

Still, even if they could bring her back should such a thing occur again, Farren hoped it simply would not occur a second time. Taking a deep breath, Farren cracked his neck even as he worked to clear his mind.

Then something occurred to him. If Great Ones could not kill eachother…than how had the Moonborn Hunter done so? how could a being beneath them slay them…if their own equals could not?

“How is it…that they cannot slay their own, but the Moonborn slayed many of their ilk?” He asked, frowning slightly in thought.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

didn’t see her rise, merely caught the strange phenomena that preceded that event–a faint but pervasive, nearly swallowed, sound like wind; then a faint luminescence as if someone had increased the contrast of the paints that Flora had used to craft the Dream. Farren frowned as all that just-barely there–brightness snapped in one direction like stars falling towards some abyss, if those stars were so numerous they had suffused all things in sight.

Farren forced himself to his feet with a grunt, rushing up the stairs until he stopped at the threshold, standing in it for a moment.

There she was, sitting up, Ophelia already speaking to her.

Amaris.

Farren felt a weight lift from him and a faint surge of adrenaline that left a deep sense of relief, his fatigue beginning to melt away already. He still felt some of that guilty, but now…she’d been returned to then.

With no mind for their current conversation at all, Farren spoke, “How?!”