"You're her next target, Monica. She's coming."
Monica's heavy blade collided into the beast with a crash that shuddered up her arm into her shoulder, a whisper carried on the air causing her to startled and whirl with the creature still stuck on her sword.
"We have to move. NOW!"
She yelled at the Half Elf, impaling the beast in one quick thrust and turning to run, the bloodied sword slid into it's sheath on her back.
"We end this. Tonight." She growled, taking a knife from her boot and stabbing herself in the cheek to mar her flesh and smear blood over her face in the hopes that it did not recognise her. The men ran with her, Hunter struggling to keep up but managing all the same. They pushed on through the woods, until they came upon a manor nestled deep within the trees, hidden out of sight.
Managing to convince them of their plight, being lost hunters, cold and hungry, they were invited inside. Monica warily glanced around, the half elf hiding in the shadows of her coat, ready to strike. The men outside wore armour matching the ones guarding the main hall, but every one was the same. Their eyes did not look right. They gave her a bad feeling. A man tended the bar, offering nothing but kindness and a somewhat sad expression of absolute adoration for his mistress, akin to the others in the house.
"I love my work here. Mistress takes very good care of us. But we are not allowed upstairs, no, nobody is allowed upstairs.."
His expression drifted off into one of deep thought as he polished a glass.
She took a dream catcher fashioned from sticks and gems from her coat, leaping at him and holding a hand over his mouth as she worked to break the spell's hold over him, and as she gripped the man tightly, his startled stare of horror up at her slowly turned to one of confusion.
"I don't know where I am.. please don't kill me.."
He whimpered beneath her hand. She shushed him, slowly taking her hand away from his mouth. He, unlike the others did not seem loyal. He was afraid, he wanted to go home. They hid him in the commode and made him lock the door as Hunter and Monica worked to free the guards from her spell.
The men passed out from the pain of being freed, and they left them on the floor as the three stalked up the steps, hands on hilts of swords, and bows. The hallway was empty, as was each room. The Fox woman's bedroom was the most curious, each cabinet and table surface filled with hand mirrors, beauty objects. A severed head lay with eyes staring blankly into Monica's, flowers and piles of gold thrown around the floor.
"Where is she?!"
Monica screamed with frustration, kicking in the final door to also find it empty.
The house began to shake violently, Hunter gripping the wall to steady himself, Sealamin and Monica planting their boots on the ground to stay upright. "She's close." They bolted down the steps, to find the guards they had freed lying cold and dead. Monica panicked, bashing against the door to the commode.
"It's us! Are you alive!"
The trembling bartender peeked through the door, and dashed out.
"W-We have to get out of here! We have to run! She could kill all of us!"
They took him outside, ready to beat down the remaining guards still in the Fox Woman's clutches. But they were gone. The terrified bartender darted off into the darkness surrounding the manor, as Monica called after him-
"Don't stop, for anything, run!"
Her words were cut short as the man simply dropped dead, his body hitting the ground like a ragdoll.
"NO!"
Monica rushed forward, shaking his limp body and panting with rage.
"FOOLS! All of you, fools!"
She appeared before them, in the form of a fox with two legs, standing upright, anger in her eyes and claws on the end of humanoid fingers.
"You move, I shoot."
The Half Elf nocked an arrow, setting his sights on the creature as the forest was cloaked in sudden darkness.
"She moved."
Monica growled, as he let several arrows fly, hitting her in the arm, and chest. She disappeared, and the three stood up- back to back.
"We're gonna set the house on fire, for that.."
Another whisper carried in the air.
"It took me -ages- to build that.."
"And we're gonna burn it to the ground."
"All your pretty mirrors? Destroyed."
"All your dresses."
"All your friends."
"All your memories."
"I will kill you all."
An angry growl sounded as the fox woman appeared once more, ready to attack with a horrifying servant at her side. Monica charged the horror, jamming her shoulder into it's metal chest to force it back, but took quite a beating in the process. She took it down, turning with a heaving pant as the half elf pinned the fox woman with arrows, and Hunter knocked her onto the ground.
Monica looked down at her in disgust, finally uncovering her face to the moon light.
"Y-- You are beautiful.."
The creature croaked up at her, as the half vistana bent to slip a ragged, rusted knife from her boot and holdit to her throat.
"How do you think it will feel, to have your face peeled free the same way you did to those women.."
Monica mused quietly, letting the knife reflect light from the moon as she traced the line of fur around her throat.
"M-Mercy.."
"I can m-make you all beautiful.."
"Rich.."
The half elf and Hunter simply gave Monica a sharp nod. Gritting her teeth in a savage fashion, Monica slipped the knife beneath the woman's skin, slitting her and skinning her as she had done the deer in the glade.
"I want her to feel it. I want her to feel all of it."
She snarled. The creature writhed in agony as her face was torn free, but stopped moving as the knife was thrust into her throat, laying limp, dead eyes staring upwards at nothing. Monica rose, the fox face clutched in one hand, the bloodied knife in the other, as one of the guards came running up and freezing as he laid eyes on the corpse of the fox.
"M-Mistress.."
"This is exactly what it looks like."
"You are monsters!"
"She mutilated and butchered innocents, this was her fate."
"We loved her, we all loved her! She gave us everything!"
The half elf appeared behind him, a blade held to his throat. "Before I die.. there is one l-last thing.."
"You don't get to die. You get to live with the memory of what you all have done."
Monica stuffed the fox face into a bag, eyeing him angrily.
"She has- a daughter, a girl she raised as her own.. I know about the c-curse, but the child- she doesn't know, you can't kill her!"
Monica paled, dropping the knife into her boot once more.
"No harm is to come to this child."
She nodded to the half elf, who smacked the hilt of his knife against the man's head, rendering him unconscious.
They ransacked the house once more, coming upon a final, hidden room filled to the brim with treasure. On the desk a note, a letter to the child. Monica looked between the two, curling and uncurling her tattooed fingers.
"We have a name. A lead. That is the best we can do for now."
The murdering fox now lay dead, though now they had another thing to worry about. Another missing child to add to their list.
Pavalia..