Skadi heard her name called, and her heart skipped a beat. She frowned, ushering the kitsune to quicken in its steps, cursing under her breath. Of course she was worried, with the way Anya was yelling. It was anything but subtle, and she was more than aware that the AI of the enemies here was more than what she had come to assume in games. The fox leaped and bound over branches and roots, nearly stumbling and losing footing at least once, but she forced it to keep going. How Anya had gotten ahead of herself, she wasn't sure. Where Skadi had taken care to be aware of her surroundings, the other woman must have been charging in thoughtlessly. Why? Even as the question echoed in her mind, she knew.

She had made a mistake.

She came to an abrupt halt the moment the clearing and the woman came into view, trying to recover her breathing before she was seen as she allowed the kitsune to slow to a pace it preferred. The moment Anya was in her sights again, she was safe. The woman frowned as she looked at her, doing her best to compartmentalize the mixed feelings that swarmed in her chest. There was a battle coming up. "If you keep yelling like that, maybe he'll come to us instead." She dismounted, eyeing the house as she equipped her enforcer and then glancing at Anya. "Are you alright?"

2/10
seneca

Skadi blinked as Anya turned to her with a glare, but there was something mixed in with the woman's anger. For some reason, she didn't expect to get punched, but even the volley of questions didn't seem like anything she'd expect from a guild member. Then again, Anya had always been separate from the rest, by her side from the beginning of Regalia. At times, she felt as though Anya was more committed to her than the cause of the guild itself, although she had never voiced these suspicions. She was terrible enough with people to acknowledge that she might be wrong.

At first, she was quiet, no room to get a word in edgewise with one question after the other from the woman. Why are you doing this?" Left Skadi grappling with the fact that she needed to verbalize something that she wasn't sure she would. When Anya stated that they both knew the bounty was bad news, Skadi nodded. "That's why." She said without missing a beat, even if it wouldn't make sense to the other woman.

Anya wasn't trying to stop her, and that was something she was grateful for. She didn't have to remind herself that the slayer wasn't like the rest; while whatever the game had in store for them in the house was guaranteed to be gruesome, when it came down to the actual fight Skadi trusted Anya to be able to hold her own. She folded her arms as she stepped forward, eyeing the front door and the windows. A cellar door would be convenient, but also land them straight in the worst of the horror unless those behind the quest were original.

Anya had asked for an explanation. "Most of the people in this game haven't dealt with this sort of thing." The words tumbled out, and she shook her head. "It's different than whether or not they can handle the battle itself." She knew it sounded stupid, knew that it would be different, but she hadn't been able to talk herself out of this. She didn't expect Anya to change her mind, especially now that they were there. She didn't move to meet the woman's eye, her own pair set on the house itself. The front door probably held some kind of traps, she had decided. If the bounty hadn't bothered to put up a front of normalcy, he'd be expecting aggressive visitors. "We can't go through the front door." She announced, her veneer of calm uninterrupted. "Not without a way to test it, first."

3/10
seneca

Skadi had just forgotten why she had started off on her own for this when Anya did exactly what she had just said not to do. Skadi stared with wide blue eyes, frozen for a moment while she waited for the floor to drop out from underneath Anya or a net to fall down, any other way to immobilize her and render her helpless and waiting. None of it came, but the woman still stood for a moment longer, frozen with her own fury.

The moment Anya went inside out of her line of sight, she broke into action, following her up the stairs even as a voice in the back of her mind screamed at her not to. Immediately as she walked in, she glanced over her shoulder both sides, just in case. Nothing. She looked up the stairway as far as she could see, nothing out of the ordinary aside from a resounding notice of, 'only one exit.'

"That was reckless." She responded absently, her mind alert on keeping her focus on their surroundings. They could not afford to be caught by surprise, no matter how leisurely Anya wanted to lean against the stairway. She didn't want to answer the question Anya had asked so casually, her eyes on the details of the house. She didn't see a stairway down like she had expected. Perhaps the upstairs was the only path available. "Personally, one." She said, finally, "Plenty of murderers, though."

After looking into the kitchen and realizing there was nothing she wanted to find in the fridge, no reason to pay attention to the evidence on that lavel, she turned back towards the stairs. "If we go up, our way back might be blocked. Or we might be doing the same to him. Are you ready?" She asked, looking at her. She stood at the foot of the stairs, with little room for Anya herself to pass on by. If the slayer agreed to do this, then she would lead the way.

Just in case.

4/10
seneca

The Vanadis stared blankly when Anya purred compliments at her, her heart beating faster. She wasn't certain what to think or say of the rush of feelings that were tempered with her current caution. They - no, she - had a job to do. This wasn't the time, and yet ... since when had Anya actually flirted with her? It made Skadi wonder, distracted just long enough to consider that maybe Anya had realized-

It didn't matter. Not now.

Skadi had been ready to go up the stairs and let the bounty come and find her, but no, Anya actually wanted to investigate the kitchen of a cannibal serial killer. The woman closed her eyes for a moment, processing this information, but Anya was already moving and so she wheeled around on her heel and turned back to trail after her into the kitchen. It was a small relief that the developers weren't as over the top as she had been expecting - at least, not yet. She still made a point of not looking in the direction of the battered, old looking fridge. She didn't want to give Anya any ideas.

Her head jerked when Anya shouted, sidestepping the rats. Her nerves were already starting to jump; the absence of the murderer was worse than if they had just run into him already. When Anya motioned to the door, Skadi let out a long sigh and swept through the air with enforcer, grip on the shield tightening. "No," She answered flatly. She didn't announce that she was going first, simply doing so and forcing the door open. It creaked, a yawning of the wood that grated against her nerves, and Skadi stared down at the pitch blackness that lay beyond a few steps.

Of course.

She glanced at the light switch just inside, the back of her hand hovering before it. It would announce her presence, she thought, but then she realized that they already had, if not for the simple weight of their steps on the main floor than by Anya. She thwacked the back of her wrist against the switch, waiting as the lights flickered, one every couple of steps above the stairwell on the way down. They were dim, and they continued to flicker, but they wouldn't be fighting in the dark. Skadi took one last moment, before she began to walk down the steps in a measured way, eyes up ahead and quiet.

The moment she stepped down at the bottom of the stairs, she turned her head to see the grotesque display of carved bodies, some splayed across a table, some hanging from fishhooks that had no place in the architecture. None of them were players; decorations, for the sake of being grotesque. They weren't real, Skadi told herself, and yet her anger still flared as her expression and eyes hardened.

She stepped forward without checking her flank, and barely raised her shield in time to block the attack from her blindside. The bounty had been waiting just behind the wall between the room and the staircase, and Skadi growled as her eyes narrowed at the monster in front of her, chains wrapping around her shield with a clang.

5/10
seneca

For a long moment, there was nothing in the world except for Skadi and this bounty that looked her straight in the eye as he pulled back on the chain, her arm aching as she was jerked forward and towards him. And then it was him who was pushed instead of pulling, moved with the force Anya spent, and Skadi snapped back into reality from the blinders she had put on. She wasn't alone. She barely heard Anya's quip, let alone registered it.

Just as quickly, the butcher had turned his attention to Anya, and Skadi screamed and rushed forward, her index finger twitching over the grasp of her shield. A pulse left her body, coating the ground in invisible ice and pushing the butcher away from the attacker, yanking his attention towards the defender in a nonverbal taunt. The Vanadis did not let him be the one to close the gap she had created, lunging forward with the tip of her shield first. She did not care when she hit armor he had melded into his own body, not pausing to swipe at him again even when she met the sickle he had implanted to replace his own hand.

All she cared about was making sure he died before he could touch Anya.

At point blank range, she finally just pointed the tip of the shield towards his face and issued a hailstone rain, icicles piercing directly into his body. Some shattered immediately upon hitting armored plate embedded into his skin, but enough didn't. Enough sank true, obviously causing the man pain he preferred to be on the other side of, and Skadi didn't even wince when he lashed out, sickle sinking into her leg until a moment after he'd done it. She didn't stop, lashing out again with her enforcer instead. It hurt, but she knew immediately that he'd missed any important blood vessels.

Probably on purpose, she thought grimly.

6/10
seneca

Skadi had thought she had heard Anya angry before, but it had never been anything like the tone that had cut right through the officer's concentration, pulling her back into reality and drawing her gaze from Grimace to the woman. Just as quickly as she had glanced towards the slayer, her eyes were left to follow the sword that cut through the butcher's arm, and then into his leg. She had gotten into a frenzy before, but it had never been anything like this. Skadi felt, deep in her bones, that something was wrong. She couldn't place what, not exactly, just that she needed to fix it.

She needed to be the one to finish this.

The moment the butcher fell to one knee before her, Skadi reached with her free hand to force the man's head back, drawing her shield before his neck in a quick motion. Just as quickly, she'd pulled his head forward as she slid the blade across his throat, limiting the resistance. Pixels gushed around the edge of her shield, but Skadi did not laugh or smile. Her expression was just as grim as she had been the entire bounty, drawing quiet even as the bounty began to disappear.

She wasted no time to dwell on the empty victory. Instead, her eyes turned to the woman who had joined her in this, perhaps unwittingly. "Anya," was the only word that choked out of her at first, the woman not quite back to any sense of normalcy. Perhaps she wouldn't be, not yet. "We should leave," She acknowledged, voice hollow, but she didn't move.

7/10
seneca