yoshua171

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

azure eyes snapped from left arm to right, then to Arrayah’s other nearby limbs, then he quickstepped. Not retreating, not a fully lateral movement either, but an acute angle towards Arrayah’s left, more forward than anything. He moved the full length of the movement, with it taking him significantly closer to the monstrosity, while circumventing the downwards strike. The other attack simply wouldn’t reach him, the angle of her right arm’s articulation such that it never made contact with him as he went so deep into close range that an attack that wasn’t either precise, blindingly fast, or designed to hit an area simply wouldn’t hit him.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

had been circling, at barely a jog, hoping to redirect some of Arrayah’s attention–it worked after a fashion, but by and large the malformed wielder of the Profane Blade kept her attention upon whoever closed the distance.

She was whittling them down–and quite effectively at that. Farren narrowed his eyes, certain he had to do something, but not sure what. He winced as Arrayah snagged, then began to maim Torquil–‘dammit’--he cursed internally, gritting his teeth, then Ophelia’s voice reached him.

‘Paarl’s Blood.’

The vial of Darkbeast’s Blood.

Farren felt a vicious grin slide onto his features, his azure eyes lighting up slightly–they’d dulled, growing dim as he neared a point of exhaustion. The hunter moved, dextrous as ever as he maneuvered his pistol onto its hook mid-jog. He didn’t simply slot it down, he dropped it with precise timing at a specific height and angle, and it caught the hook on the way down even as he moved forward and around Arrayah.

That hand then darted into a pouch and retrieved the vial.

At that stage he was nearer to Torquil than to Ophelia, arranged roughly halfway between the arrangement of her head and her outstretched left arm as it held his wounded ally suspended. Eyes wide to take in the positioning of each of her limbs, Farren shifted on his heel, plunged the vial into his flesh through the cloth of his garments, and depressed it.

The world slowed–no that wasn’t it–his perception of it had shifted. Then, distracting him from that strange sensation was a surge of vital energy pulsing into his body from the point where the vial had punctured his flesh. Before even he had slid the vial back into a pouch of empties, Farren felt that intense sensation of rejuvenating energy course through his entire body, his labored breathing and elevated heart rate circulating it in mere moments.

His offhand joined his main upon the Beastflayer and then he burst into a full speed dash at Arrayah. Brandishing his glaive, Farren didn’t attack immediately, but instead sought to bait an attack from Arrayah, drawing her attention to him.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

narrowed his eyes, squared his jaw and shoved his free hand into the pouch where he’d put the ‘Sands’ previously. His fingers deftly, gently, shifted between the pouches’ contents. He tugged the small Snakescale Hourglass from the pouch at his belt far before Gerlinde rushed past them both. Time-willing, Farren met Ophelia’s eyes as they closed the distance, and he passed off the implement, keeping it concealed by his hand until she’d taken it. Farren didn’t stop moving though, he kept towards Arrayah, but as Gerlinde was lifted and savagely clawed, he swerved to the side opposite the one she’d initially attacked, his eyes wide to maximize his peripheral vision. He didn’t get terribly close, nor did he attack. Instead, Farren was more of a distracting presence than anything else. A distraction that was closely observing Arrayah for signs of reprisal.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

had just risen and readied himself when Ophelia’s voice called out his name. His head whipped to her positions, eyes taking things in immediately. The way Arrayah was about to plunge her spear into the ground, the way she’d drawn the old blood beforehand. He called out to her a warning, “Shade Spear!”

Whether Ophelia managed to evade or not, Farren gritted his teeth at the sudden pivot Arrayh made, the length of her form round on Ophelia, looming as Arrayah swiftly began to pick up speed once more. ‘To her? The hell am I meant to do,’ his mind supplied grimly, but he didn’t give the thought much of his time or attention, he just hefted his weapon and broke into an admittedly slow jog in her direction. Given the danger Arrayah posed–and the fact that the mad beast was certainly faster than Ophelia–his ally would certainly realize his own fatigue as he moved far less adroitly than he had been up until that point. The frenetic action of the battle against the maddened wielder of the Abyssal Blade had clearly begun to take its toll on him. He was conserving energy.

As he moved, Farren tried to consider what mad plan the witch might have to deal with their foe. Did she want him to try and stun her at the precise moment she tried to strike her down? Should he draw his pistols to make an attempt? Did she need something he had?

“Plan?!” he cried out, voice mostly repaired, but sounding heavier, labored, as it cut through the noise of Arrayah’s rapid approach. He hoped she’d reply quickly enough to give him time to adjust and then act.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

felt the contact of his blade hitting its mark, but it did little, and it seemed Arrayah had enough of her wits about her to avoid Ophelia’s arcane moonlight. Grimacing, Farren began to withdraw the weapon–and had just managed to finish doing so–when he noticed Arrayah reorienting her weapon. A flash of dread went through his veins, but there was no time to act, or process. He caught sight of the Moonborn’s quickstep, and did much the same himself, moving away at speed, but it didn’t matter. Swiftly joining the dread and old blood coursing through him, searing sensations struck as shadowy projections of the Abyssal Blade slipped up from the earth and pierced him. A sound, half guttural scream, half fearsome growl erupted from his throat even as the shadows slid through his flesh and then out the other side, leaving him proliferated with shade-filled holes. Perhaps three, perhaps five, of the projections had impaled him, and at a sharp enough angle that they briefly lifted him before he began to slide down their hafts. Fierce, grinding, aching agony crashed over him in a constant flux of horrific feeling.

“Ffffuuuck!” he cried out hoarsely, breath stolen as one lung collapsed completely. None of the blades hit his heart, but one had gotten close. He felt his body working in overdrive to attempt to heal itself, but the cause of the damage remained, impeding the process. Not to mention that they kept sending intense, mind wracking agony through his entire body. Farren’s azure eyes flashed with intense emotion, wide from pain, then narrowed as he gritted his teeth and bore the pain.

When the blades finally retracted–or dissipated–he would be like a puppet with its strings cut. There was no catching oneself with such grievous damage having been inflicted. It was fortunate that his reserves had been essentially full, but the wounds would likely have them dwindling. The moment he could, Farren would slam a blood vial into his thigh with his free hand. Miraculously, his weapons remained by-and-large unscathed, aside from a few clean scratches. Ah…and it seemed one of the hunter’s pistols at his lower back had some damage along and through the grip. Farren growled as muscles and bones snapped into place or regrew entirely. His clothes were partially shredded, but he was decent enough, if covered in blood and gore as unhealable aspects sloughed off in favor of regrowing new parts.

The moment Farren could reasonably move, even if pained, he’d push to his feet swiftly and retreat to make some distance between him and the horror they faced. If anyone else had similar ideas, he made sure not to be too closely packed, finding that them having been relatively close together had only made it easier for her to get almost all of them.

Rather than rush back into the fray, Farren would began to pace in a steady counter-clockwise motion to find a new position, forcing Arrayah to split her attention further. He was moving roughly towards Ophelia, though she was a bit further out than him. Either way he was firmly out of Arrayah's current range, in terms of the Area attack she’d just dealt them.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

managed to evade Arrayah’s swing and as he came out of his Backstep he slid slightly along the ground and completed his swing, drawing the weapon back into its closed state at an angle backwards. Azure eyes already narrowed in focus as he took in the ensuing instants, Farren noted the actions of Torquil, the newly summoned Moonborn and Gerlinde, all while Ophelia observed. Then he noted Ophelia shifting posture and position, the glow of her Moonlight blade shifting in orientation completely as she moved it.

He’d seen that posture before. Farren traced the rough angle the edge of her blade was at as well and then followed it through the air towards….

Farren grinned and pushed forth in a shorter quickstep than before, his already wound up Beastflayer whipping out in a single forceful slash angled up and forwards at Arrayah’s raised arm, as close to the wrist and hand as he could manage. It was a strike in line with ones he’d seen from Torquil–heavy and with a faint bulging and shift of his musculature as he called upon the power of the old blood that coursed and pulsed in his veins. Further, Farren had timed his exit of the forward quickstep such that the glaive’s blade would be the most likely point to strike Arrayah. Ideally, the two strikes–his and Ophelia’s–would be more effective than either on their lonesome.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

wobbled briefly, then ended up falling from the perch of her arm, much narrower than he’d processed in the flash of a moment in which he’d made his decision. A shame, but he recovered before his feet touched the stony floor. By the time they had, he’d reassessed, noting the marginal slowing of Arrayah’s swing, at which point his body tensed and then immediately released that coiled power in a backwards quickstep. He let his weapon extend in a swing during the quickstep, aiming for the space across Arrayah’s shoulders and collarbone. Farren kept himself primed for additional movement, not sure precisely how Arrayah would respond to his retreating attack, or Ophelia’s shots at her.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

managed the shot--though not where he'd have preferred--and to at least rise to his feet, but Arrayah’s grip on his Piercing Rifle–coupled with the sound of splintering wood and metal warping under stress was rough on his senses. He got the sense that even before his transformation, it would have bothered him, but with his hearing and tactile senses now significantly enhanced it was a terrible thing. In fact, some distant detached part of him observed, it was almost like she had crushed his own wrist…or perhaps a precious, if silent and inexpressive companion.

Incidentally, Farren did not much like being deprived of friends, faculties, nor precious implements, and so his reaction was not to simply remain in place as her fingers fully tightened, it was to immediately release his grip, pivot grip the Beastflayer and then surge forth into a quickstep, which after a single foot, transitioned immediately into a brief leap. Farren didn’t jump at Arrayah so much as he jumped onto the wrist holding his ruined rifle, before erupting into a quickstep along the path of her stationary arm. Only some small part of his awareness noted the whoosh of air from his left (where Arrayah’s swing had begun) and noted the lightswallowing motion of something as it moved in a deadly horizontal arc.

If it were to strike him–it would not, not in his new position–it likely would have cleaved him in half…or perhaps just disabled his legs by handily removing everything from the thigh down. Fortunately, the hand gripping his rifle was significantly above that trajectory, and better still, her shoulder and head were higher still.

Farren’s resulting actions were as such. A flare of movement up her massive, malformed limb as he made his own attack. Rather than attempt to cleave her head in twain, Farren released the mechanism of the Beastflayer, swung it forward with precision, extending it out in a whipping motion towards the left side of her head as he moved. It would miss unless her head moved into its path, but as Farren’s quickstep took him forward and his momentum dragged the weapon’s linked blades along with it, Farren would pull it in a jerky motion back towards him, and unless she stopped him, one of his whip-glaive’s bladed sections nearest the shaft would hook against the side of Arrayah’s head.

Farren’s trajectory would take him directly past the right side (from his perspective) of Arrayah’s head, onto her shoulder, and then over her twisted body as he kept moving, and with every additional step after his blade had caught on her flesh, his forwards sprint would drag the Beastflayer’s extended blades from temple, across her face, and along the other side of her head in a prolonged–if swift–vicious laceration.

When Farren began to grow too near the many arms upon the centipedal portion of her beastial form, he’d push off her body in a jump to his left, aimed just past her body towards the ground.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

startled even himself as her largest, glowing orb sputtered out in a gush of blood and bodily fluids, his own azure eyes widening in the dark as he swiftly reloaded his implement and–oh fuck.

Arrayah launched herself in a lunge that carried such force that she hurtled through the air more like a bullet than a massive, human-centipede monstrosity. Farren wasn’t in a position to properly quickstep, so it was more of a roll into a sideways dive that he performed in an attempt to get himself out of the way. The whole scenario was so sudden that he didn’t have the time nor wits about him to think more than one, simple things: ‘I HAVE HER ATTENTION’. It was less an observation than it was a screaming recognition of the shift in circumstances that he had experienced in the space of barely a couple seconds.

If he did manage his maneuver, he’d swiftly roll from stomach onto his back, aim, and attempt to fire on Arrayah’s head once more, but only once she had either turned toward him or come to rest–whichever came first. Should he manage that, well, Farren wouldn’t try to reload, he’d simply hurry to get himself on his feet again, if he had even the chance for that.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

_Farren

caught a glimpse of the Moonborn Hunter’s maneuver…the very tailend, and then an eruption of shadow and an expulsion of blood. “Shit,” Farren swore, turning his eyes back to the pillar and Arrayah’s massive, skittering, clambering form. He doubted her leaving the pillar would be any better for them than her staying perched upon it, but at least this way there was a chance for them to fight her.

The mixture of the cursed thing’s disturbing, nonsensical singsong…and the monotone of what must have been the presences of the Moonlight and Abyssal Blades respectively did not help matters. He tried to tune them out.

What he didn’t miss, though, was the opportunity that Arrayah’s attack presented him. With the shadow blade still sliding back into darkness, Farren drew the Piercing Rifle, sliding to a stop as he aimed, and then fired, his shot aimed at Arrayah’s head. He didn’t wait to see her reaction, just pushed back into motion and palmed a quicksilver bullet to reload the armament while keeping his gaze locked on her twisted form. If there was no immediate reprisal, Farren would finish reloading, holster the rifle, and draw a blood vial from his pouch, holding it in one hand as he continued to heft the Beastflayer in the other.