Annie raised her bow and the rabid young man accelerated at her, as though he hadn’t just been concussed against the canyon wall when she had sent a single arrow at him. He displayed no fear or self-preservation instinct. She hadn’t even activated a Skill and he had been completely overwhelmed. Behind him, Annie’s target smiled with a sly curl of her lip.

Chaos was obviously exactly what the woman wanted.

Annie’s eye traced the shaft of an arrow to her target. Yet perhaps because of how young he looked, her heart urged her to reconsider. Maybe he doesn’t really want to die. Maybe his brain broke from the impact. It seems rude to punish this kid for his deficient brain.

With this judicious allowance, Annie lowered her bow slightly. When the young man raised his weird dagger hands to lash out at her, she dropped low and swept his legs. Crouching down and aiming sideways, she fired. Her arrow took him in the shoulder, carrying him up and pinning to the high canyon walls. His body flopped around as he howled in fury and pain.

Then Annie focused on her real target. Her eyes widened when she saw that all traces of her had vanished and a familiar figure stood in her place. A tall man stood with a club leaning across his shoulders. Those muscles-

“Honey,” Dozer rumbled quietly. He had a smirk on his face. “You couldn’t attack your own husband, could you-”

Annie’s nose crunched the illusion Dozer’s nose, earning a delighted set of cackles from Annie. “Wonderful! I’m not allowed to attack him at home. Says it sends the wrong message to Delilah. So I really appreciate this opportunity to thoroughly thrash this lump.”

The illusion dissipated and the woman stumbled back and looked at Annie in horror and confusion. Annie couldn’t help but snort. However, the whistling release of Annie’s next arrow cleared up most of her confusion. The woman pulled out a heavy, knotted rope and whipped it around to deflect the arrow. A powerful image of violence and bloodletting spun itself through the rope, adding weight and brutal momentum.

So she’s not just all flashy illusions, Annie mused.

With surprising skill, the woman twisted the rope at the very moment it blocked the arrow's path. Annie’s predatory attack screeched in outrage to be challenged. For a brief moment, both images flared and struggled with each other. Annie, again, had to admit this woman had legitimate talent. She possessed enough gumption that the arrow was redirected slightly and only took a chunk out of the woman’s thigh.

She squealed in pain and clearly lost herself for a few seconds in panic, as though she were more familiar with inflicting attacks than receiving them. Her form flickered between several strange bodies. Finally, it settled upon Lucifer, who looked up at Annie with imposing eyes. Annie was almost lazy in knocking the next arrow. He lowered his hands and gripped his saber. “Lucifer Sla-”

Annie’s arrow interrupted the illusionary attack, shattering Lucifer and digging an arrow halfway through the woman’s forearm. She looked at it for several seconds, seemingly bewildered by its very physical presence in her body. And Annie would have finished the job on the distracted foe, had she not felt the young man finally dislodge himself and pounce toward her back.

She donkey kicked the fool in the jaw, his malfunctioning brain be damned. This time, just to be thorough, she rapid-fired arrows to pin each of his arms and legs and prevent him from interfering. To Annie’s great annoyance, he had apparently adjusted enough that he slashed out with his dagger fingers and shattered the first arrow, before the flurry of followups overwhelmed him. So as he was carried back and slammed into the far wall, only two legs and one arm were pinned. Annie sent one more arrow over, just for good measure.

Then one more, thumping into his inner thigh uncomfortably close to his manhood, just to vent some of her frustration. She turned back to the woman.

She had become another unfamiliar hairless face, this one releasing pulses of ruby energy from her hands. A dark orb of the stuff had condensed in her palm and as Annie’s eyes narrowed, she opened her hands and the force exploded outward.

Her cloak rustled into place across her shoulders as she marshaled some of her other weapons. The White Hunter had many methods beyond arrows.

Annie mentally reached out, utilizing the chilling cold that had pooled in this high canyon for so long. She weaponized its properties and squeezed this illusory attack out of existence. The ruby light vanished. Then she stalked forward, watching for any sudden shifts from this slippery customer. “I don’t really get you. Alright, you hate Randidly. But you must realize that nothing you ever do with actually hurt him, yes?”

“No one is invulnerable.” This time, the woman became Donny. He raised a shield and released a pure pulse of white light, but Annie somersaulted through the air and landed behind the projection. Donny spun, whipping his shield around, but didn’t make it before an arrow ripped through the back of his neck. The illusion shattered and the woman stumbled away, most of her ear torn off.

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“Theoretically, you are right. But stop throwing handfuls of sand against the mountain. All you are doing is annoying the other people standing down here next to you when you get grains in their sandwiches.” Annie pulled out a special arrow, one forged by Sam for the express purpose of ending the life of the monster who had forcefully cultivated the contagious Nether. Its sharp arrowhead had the same dark color as the stones of the canyon. “Well, anyway. Goodbye.”

The woman vanished at the same time that the foolish young man started screaming and flaring his image. Obviously, Annie’s quarry hadn’t truly disappeared, but her illusions thoroughly masked her presence. And the vestiges of that presence swam through the young man’s chaotic image like a fish, keeping Annie from pinning her exact location down.

Annie clicked her tongue as she turned around. “I warned you.”

She loosed the arrow as he took a step forward. The projectile pierced entirely through his chest, without seeming to slow down his momentum at all. His expression just turned blank and puzzled. After a few more steps, however, blood began to leak from his lips and the hole in his chest. He tried to take another step but just fell forward. His body bounced once and he tried to cough, but there wasn’t enough air in his lungs.

Humming to herself, Annie turned back and tilted her head to the side to listen. The wind, her dependable informant, whispered to her. At its tip, she drew another arrow, aimed at the sky, and loosed it.

She skipped the rest of the way, still humming to herself. She left the canyon and descended into a nearby valley, where a stream of snowmelt wound its way between several anemic pine trees. Annie heard a family of Shadow Foxes shivering in their den, her high Level exerting an extreme pressure on their small bodies. Behind one of the pine trees past the foxes, she found the woman, frantically dragging herself across the ground, an arrow sticking out of her spine at her tailbone.

“The media is going to love it,” The woman panted as she spoke, too enthralled in her efforts to look up. Her fingers scrabbled at the frozen ground and pine needles, seeking purchase. “Annie, a hero of Donnyton, casually kills the world champion of the combat tournament. Most will make the leap and realize it was because of his comments about the Ghosthound. That the top watches each other’s backs, at the expense of the average person-”

“You really don’t know when to quit,” Annie took several long strides and stood above the woman with her hands on her hips. “Again, I have to ask why any of this will matter. This won’t harm him.”

“Oh, I know not physically. But if people’s opinion of the Ghosthound changes, that will harm him. It will poison him.” The woman dragged herself forward on her elbows, leaving a trail of blood on the ground.

Annie threw up her hands. “I guess we agree to disagree. I don’t think Randidly even pays attention to gossip.”

Weirdly, that statement finally got the woman’s attention. She paused and looked up at Annie. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the color of mud. “Oh, you don’t get it, do you. Can’t you feel it? We are literally his body. Not just inside of it, but literally flesh-of-my-flesh messiah paradigms. If the body turns against the mind, he will feel true pain. We can become the flaw in his power that he cannot ignore.”

As Annie mulled that over, a lightning bolt crashed down on the woman. The image of a pained and struggling woman crawling on the ground shattered and revealed the woman looking quite spry, aside from the fact she now rolled around under the influence of the electricity.

Annie raised an eyebrow as Clarrissa floated down from the clouds. “What, you here to tell me to stop playing with my food?”

“I’m here to tell you not to kill her.” Clarissa rolled her eyes as she alighted softly on the ground. “This goes much more smoothly if we have someone alive to stand trial. Your bloodthirsty crusade reaches a happy and justified ending.”

Annie’s expression flattened. “After all the shit this woman has orchestrated, if you expect me to be sorry for hunting them-”

“No, I apologize, that came out wrong.” Clarissa raised her hands placatingly. “Without your efforts, there would be so many injustices continuing that we hadn’t even realized were happening. Thank you, Annie. What I mean to say is that please, consider letting her pay for her crimes in the court of public opinion. Her corpse solves the problem of her. But being able to lay bare her propaganda and schemes solves the bigger mess that she started.”

Something vicious and bloodthirsty in Annie’s heart wanted to say no. She wanted to fire one last arrow and watch the life drain out of this cockroach's shredded throat. The primal predator in her would savor the experience and then raise its head in exultation.

The Predator in her wanted a corpse.

However, the experience of fighting against the woman had been so mediocre that the hunter in her seeking a talented quarry just seemed to shrug its hands. Begrudgingly, Annie nodded and lowered her bow. But then she smirked. “Alright, on one condition. Hit her with a few more of those lightning bolts for me. Make the fat little bug squirm.”

*****

Merrick drew a shuddering breath and sat up. His hand instantly went to his heart. “Did I…?”

“Die? Technically. My arrow slipped between your right and left ventricle, just below the major arteries. My Skills let me view Health, so I was pretty confident an inducing a short-term coma with the shot by putting you between 2 and 9 Health in a single go.” Annie crouched over him, looking bored. The other woman was nowhere to be seen. Annie rapped her knuckles against the ground. “Take this as a warning. You let your pride get you involved on the wrong side of a fight, kid. Don’t let it happen again.”

Merrick was too busy breathing to have much of an emotional reaction. To his surprise, she kept speaking.

“However, I’ll say this- in just a few clashes, you adjusted enough to block one of my arrows. You… don’t suck.”

Then she departed, leaving Merrick laying on the ground and looking up at the thin strip of grey sky above the canyon. Even just that stretch seemed too vast to fathom.