Anastasia Petrova

"'Another thing that can be problematic... Witches who are... nice to me.""Oh my god! I can't believe I just had that conversation with... a Witch!'"Anastasia is one of two potential human companions and one of five potential love interests.

Background
Anastasia was raised from childhood to be a Witch Hunter. It's a duty she took seriously and never questioned until becoming involved with the protagonist.

She and her family moved around a lot, as her parents were hunting Witches. She recounts that her parents must have stopped in one place for at least some time when she was born, but they never told her about it. Anastasia was home-schooled for most of her education, as her family, perfectionistic to begin with, wanted to train her to be a skilled Hunter. The protagonist notes that this training seems cruel to have been forced upon her, but Anastasia says that her family was teaching her "to stay alive." This training entailed the following: memorizing the Hunter's Code, learning to identify and kill Witches, "physical conditioning, weapons training, learning to withstand torture, to counter magical attacks," and more, and she says she spent her whole life on this training. She was sent to high school to learn to blend in, but was quite busy. Her first "field test" was at the age of fifteen, though this may have been earlier than the average Hunter as she says she begged her father to take her.

She was sixteen when her father was killed by a Witch, and it happened right before her eyes. Anastasia cut off the Witch's head. She says that "Hunters accept these things" as though she's over it, but it's clear that it's still a painful memory for her. Her mother told her that "it was his own fault for letting his guard down and [Anastasia] should learn from it," and then her uncle, Vladimir, forced her to come to Greenland for survival training instead of letting her mourn with her mother.

Anastasia was taught that Witches can never be trusted and are monsters who are incapable of feeling. She was also taught that they do things such as organ harvesting, kidnapping children, and animal sacrifice.

As a Companion
To say that Anastasia is displeased with being chosen as the protagonist's companion is an understatement. "You do understand it's my mission to kill Witches... not help them cast powerful spells?!" she asks. She was already unhappy enough with her Life Debt to you, which the protagonist notes she seems to have a great deal of inward-directed fury about. At this point, she still isn't able to trust anything the protagonist says. Still, as the protagonist notes, she would have to be there anyway if she's going to protect her.

She also doesn't trust the protagonist's other companion, nor any of the Witches they speak to. Even so, she will put her life on the line to protect the protagonist again and again, because she sees herself as honor-bound to fulfill the sacred oath of the Life Debt.

{TBC}