Nyla's eyes, crimson like a glistening pool of blood in the sun, creased joyfully around the edges as she finally managed to pop the armour off the man. It looked almost like her tearing into a crab, his meaty limbs jutting out as she tore off their protective covers.
It was a novel idea. Resourceful. There was something to be learned here; there were parts of this game she simply wasn't playing, wasn't taking advantage of.
Then, as Nikola was making a mental note to strip the dying in the future, Nyla did a gesture that suggested she was using a skill. Part of her body became shrouded in inky black smoke, and a swirling gap opened in the wall. Another hole opened up beside the players the Rogue had left hanging there, and Nyla chuckled as she reached nimbly through the portal. Her shoulder popped out of the swirling blackness, and seconds later her fencing foil was piercing through both of their rib cages.
They looked, horrified, at the lady-arm that had popped out of nowhere to attack them. They had but a few moments to gurgle out a wet 'no' before Nyla tugged the dam out of them and they began to leak blood.
Nyla leaned into the hole on her side of the wall and her face appeared on Nikola's side, cackling. "Don't leave your kills unattended, Nikola, or they'll count as mine."
"The rules of this game become vaguer and vaguer the more you speak," Nikola sneered.
"Oh, rules," Nyla spat flippantly, waving a hand, "Nikola, if you're going to get anywhere in this world, you need to keep going even when the rules are vague. Or, better yet, just make your own."
Nikola's nose wrinkled. "How can I win if I don't know the purpose of the game? Does the timer stop when one of us gets to the top, or is it simply who kills the most people that wins and time is not truly a factor?" Something about not having a defined win condition sucked all the satisfaction out of their game.
"Who knows," the pink-haired woman said with a shrug that almost seemed like a dare - the shrug looked particularly silly since one of her arms was still poking out of the portal, without a shoulder to anchor it.
"Fine. Whoever makes it to the top of the tower with the most kills will be declared the victor, and the timer stops when the first person reaches its peak." The Butcher slotted her cleaver's handle between her teeth and bit down, before using her cat-like grace and fingers to pounce up one, two, three tiny islands in seconds. The third wobbled beneath her weight, but ultimately accepted her.
"You're going to challenge somebody who can teleport to a climbing race?"
"What was it before?"
But Nyla's portal was already folding in on itself, the wall beneath it returning to its bricky gray. The players pinned there were looking limp, still suspended by her quills, much to her disbelief.
"Sure, fine! Let's race to the top, Nikola, but I've killed 9 so far. Good luck catching up."
She swirled another portal into the wall with her hand and pushed one of the people above Nikola off the unsteady stairs. They yelped and went to grab the person they'd been climbing with, but that only served to make both of them lose their footing. With a scream, both of them succumbed to gravity.
Swiftly, Nikola tightened her grip around the handle of her cleaver and positioned the weapon below one of their necks. As their body fell, she felt the skin around the neck tear like rubber and the head roll down her forearm before tumbling into the blackness below.
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Nikola was at 9 now, and Nyla 10.
The Butcher heard the sound of another portal opening, and then another. Horrified wails erupted into one ear and didn't even bounce off the other side of the tower before another joined on the other side. It was a blood bath with surprisingly little blood, considering the bodies were neatly disposed of in the bottomless pit.
Or, the process would have been neat if she hadn't begun slamming her cleaver, elbow, anything into them as they went to zip past. If she allowed them past her, they would count as Nyla's kills. It looked almost like a vertical baseball match as more bodies were flung downward, only for Nikola to slam them into the wall, or catch them with a well-timed skill.
The pink-haired woman watched the carnage from above with bouts of hyena-like giggles each time she managed to shove someone over the ledge.
This game of whether Nikola stole her kill or not became their true game. Nikola lost count of how many of the players actually died from her efforts, and how many simply hit the wall and then met the pit with a lower health bar.
The Butcher's heart slammed against the wall of her chest, sweat beading on her brow. As she wiped some blood off her arm, she noticed that her face was smiling, her lips turned upward. Her eyes were creased around the edges; she was feeling the fun emotion.
Goring the fleshy bodies as they thwumped down to her felt like the games she had played with her father in her youth, like catch or the one where she would try to hit a thrown rock with a stick. She breathed out an easy laugh.
To her surprise, she heard it mimicked from above as Nyla tossed another person down.
The competition evaporated as the two ascended the tower in unison. Every time their eyes met, the two of them shared a cascade of laughter. It felt scandalous and right at once; having somebody to kill with scratched one of her deepest, darkest itches. She had to keep looking back at the fencer to check that it was actually glee distorting her eyes rather than disgust.
But every time she looked, she saw the same lust for blood reflected in Nyla that existed in her own core. And it terrified her. And it was delicious.
She caught herself wondering if she had finally found somebody who would embrace the part of her that felt a little too good when her cleaver popped through the first layer of somebody's skin, rather than trying to temper it or urging her to hide it away.
The kills came more easily then.
Nikola didn't even realize it, but just as her limbs were burning all the way down to the bone and her chest was rising and falling like a vibrator, there were no more stairs to climb. They had reached the top.
Her feet were numb like rocks as she bounced over to the platform Nyla was on.
"Who made it to the top first? Who ended the most players?" Nikola asked, the sound of her own voice foreign to her in the silence.
"I lost count," Nyla admitted breathlessly--
--just as Nikola caught her foot on a crack in the ground and tripped. Both of their sets of armour made an angry clang as their chests met, and then another as they hit the hard stone below. Nikola's hand was just blood-slicked enough that she couldn't catch herself before she found herself literally the closest she had ever been to a stranger's face before.
But after what they had just done, were they really strangers at all?