In a crowd of burly Norse barbarians, a woman with a sculpted face, curves in all the right places, and looks that rated a perfect ten was impossible to miss. Daisy had spotted her the instant she appeared—genetics had a way of calling out to its own.
She just hadn't known this woman was Skadi. Thinking back to her history with the Hammer of Skadi, the two of them had been entangled since over a year ago.
A faint pressure washed over her—suppression at the genetic level.
Daisy shrugged it off with the Phoenix Force.
Kill her. Bring the body back for research. That was the only thought in her mind.
At the same moment, Skadi "saw" Daisy too. Just as the Hulk despised Blonsky for bastardizing his cells, Skadi felt revulsion at the budding Eternals genes inside Daisy's body.
She extended a hand and pointed at Daisy from across the distance.
An indescribable force settled over her. Before Daisy could identify what it was, the sensation vanished.
"That's the hunting rune! Skadi has marked you—it's a fight to the death!" Sif was multitasking heroically, hacking through enemies while narrating Skadi's ability kit.
Daisy didn't feel any debuff. Seemed like a tracking marker, nothing more.
The next second, the wolf called Kaldr came for her.
Crimson eyes blazing, the beast launched itself like an arrow. Several kilometers (a couple of miles) separated them, but Kaldr closed the gap in a heartbeat, bounding left and right through the tangled melee with lethal rhythm. Two leaps and it was in her face, jaws gaping wide at her throat.
"Watch out!" Sif's warning arrived half a beat late.
Right behind the shout came two ice spears from Skadi, angled so that no matter which direction Daisy dodged, one would find her.
"Back off!" Arms crossed, Daisy triggered the bracers. Her hair whipped upward in the shockwave, silver light pulsing across the metal. She picked the wolf's angle of attack, sidestepped in a blur, and slammed a fist into its jaw.
The sensation on impact wasn't like hitting an animal. It was like punching a ball of cotton.
Daisy scowled. She hated magic-based enemies. Nothing about them made sense. That punch felt like it hadn't connected at all.
But the creature wasn't immune to physical attacks. The hit bought her a brief window while the wolf readjusted.
She drew her sword, flicked the tip upward, then followed with a flying kick that sent the wolf howling toward Skadi's incoming ice spears.
The spears were even stranger. Just as one was about to hit the wolf, it vanished into thin air and reappeared ahead of it on the exact same trajectory, slightly faster than before.
Daisy threw herself sideways.
She used the dodge to cut diagonally, closing the distance.
She dodged two more ice spears. One grazed her hair. Skadi's throwing technique was flawless—fast, powerful, and the spears tracked their targets. Even knowing the World Serpent was watching through Skadi's eyes, Daisy had no choice but to play a trump card.
A quick mental probe confirmed the hunting rune didn't restrict spatial movement. Daisy teleported in and swung horizontally at Skadi's neck.
The sudden attack shattered Skadi's rhythm. The mindless goddess froze for nearly half a second, and in that sliver of time the blade was already descending toward her throat.
Genes or no genes, losing a head meant death.
The World Serpent, operating by remote control, scrambled to steer Skadi into a dodge. She was too valuable an asset to lose this cheaply.
The evasion was clumsy. Daisy materialized behind her in the same breath, thrusting viciously at the center of her back.
This is a formidable woman of Midgard. Even the World Serpent had to concede that much. He'd underestimated Earth. This kind of unrestricted spatial jumping was a nightmare for remote-controlled puppets.
His reaction speed didn't matter. The signal had to travel out, he had to issue a command, and the command had to travel back. That round-trip latency was negligible against ordinary opponents, but against someone as quick as Daisy, it was crippling.
He had no choice but to loosen his control, restoring more of Skadi's combat instincts.
Daisy landed three consecutive cuts. On the third, she noticed the change. Skadi's eyes were still clouded, but her body moved as though someone had pressed fast-forward—several times more responsive than before.
The mechanical pattern vanished. No more if situation A, use skill 1; if situation B, use skill 2. Instead, Skadi slammed a palm into the ground, and a sheet of ice nearly a kilometer (over half a mile) across crystallized in an instant.
Daisy's speed dropped immediately. The cold was bone-deep, forcing her to burn more chi just to stay warm. Skadi, meanwhile, glided across the ice without the slightest hindrance, her speed jumping by a good twenty percent.
The wolf was back, circling behind Daisy to form a pincer.
Kaldr lunged—and landed precisely where Daisy had intended to teleport.
How the beast had detected her exit point was beyond her. She aborted the jump, cut an incoming ice spear in half with her sword, and caught another on her shield.
"So annoying!" The wolf's speed on ice was absurd. Silver fur trailed afterimages as it darted across the frozen surface. Once that beast pinned her down, she'd be eating a barrage of ice spears. The wolf had to go first.
Pure physical power couldn't do much to a magical creature. Daisy bit down on her lip. The Phoenix let out a soft cry, layered over Shou-Lao's deep, crushing pressure. The combined aura slammed into the wolf, freezing it mid-leap.
In that instant, Daisy's fist—wreathed in a torrent of flame—hammered into the wolf's flank.
"Kal...dr..." Soul-linked to the beast, Skadi absorbed the blow's feedback. For the first time, something stirred behind those vacant eyes. Rage.
Deep in her mind, where no one was paying attention, a single link in the chain of control cracked open.
The wolf and Skadi shared a life force. Kaldr staggered upright, felt its master's fury, and threw itself at Daisy again—desperate to tear her apart.
Skadi's combat skill jumped two tiers. She stopped hurling spears from range and closed in for close-quarters combat.
Flame against ice. The air froze in one instant and shattered the next. The zone of combat expanded rapidly, blast waves flattening rows of the World Serpent's soldiers.
Daisy deflected an ice spear with a punch, knocking it sideways. The redirected spear threaded through dozens of enemies like skewered meat on a stick, and each one froze solid on contact.
"Get inside! I'll handle her!" Daisy had to keep checking her allies' positions, and it was costing her. Skadi and the wolf shared a friendly-fire immunity enchantment; she had no such luxury. One wide-area shockwave could hit anyone on her own side. Fighting with teammates nearby was tying her hands.