[color=gray][center][h2]Akeno Kudo[/h2][/center][/color]

She wasn’t the first person to pass through here. Given the situation Akeno wasn’t sure if that should be reassuring or worrying. On the one hand the signs of previous passage, namely the trail of highly visible footprints left by whoever it was that came before her, meant that she was probably on the right track at least, but it was also safe to assume that whoever that person was they were… like her. A Communicator. She didn’t know what to think of that yet.

When she found the wriggling thing wrapped in a cocoon of bandages later on it only confirmed her worries. Akeno continued through the cave, this time with a hand hovering near the hilt of the sword at her waist.

The voice in her head, the one that claimed to be a god, hadn’t spoken up since it had presented her with the choice between the caves she was currently in or climbing the mountain above it. She’d chosen the cave; reasoning that whatever was in there couldn’t be harder than fighting an entire mountain, but the deeper she trod into the darkness the more she began to question the wisdom of her choice. Maybe if the god had deigned to tell her [i]where[/i] she was going Akeno would feel better about things, but her hallucinations had never been particularly forthcoming.

Akeno stopped, letting out a sigh that fogged in the freezing cavern air. If only she could easily dismiss this all as some delusion on her part; she wouldn’t have trekked halfway across the continent is she truly believed she was crazy. The voice was one thing, the dreams another, but it was impossible to dismiss the changes that were taking place to her own body and her own mind ever since she’d started hearing the words of a god. Not to mention the sword that hung from her waistband, the one that had suddenly appeared in her dorm room out of thin air.

A sound to her left, one separate from the constant ambience of dripping water drew her attention. Her flashlight honed in on it, following the skittering of something with lots of legs moving over hard rock, until she caught sight of a spider scuttling towards her. Normally this wouldn’t be a cause for concern, but then most spiders weren’t knee high and the light reflecting off of its tiny fangs showed that it wasn’t just a harmless house spider.

Akeno’s hand wrapped around and drew the sword from her hip, the knowledge of how to use said weapon flooding her mind and strength filling her body as soon as her fingers made contact with the hilt. The spider leapt for her and steel flashed in the dark as she swung once, neatly bisecting the head of the oversized arachnid before it could reach her.

With another swing she shook the ichor from the blade before sheathing it again at her hip, also shaking the uncomfortable feeling from her brain as she did so. It was a strange sensation, having instincts that were hers and yet not hers at the same time take control of her body. She’d learned to fight over the years, but never with a sword; to do so meant ignoring her own experiences and giving herself over to something that came from something else. Not something she was comfortable doing.

Her journey through the cave continued for another hour at least after that, through which she saw neither more spiders nor anything else of note. Not until she found [i]him[/i] anyway. She froze when her flashlight revealed another human being down in the darkness with her and she barely even saw the runic markings he was pondering over. Her hand came to rest on her hilt of her sword in as casual a manner as she could manage and she started to move again.

[color=gray]“Hey.”[/color] What did you even say in a situation like this? [color=gray]“You too?”[/color]

[@Hitman]