She shut her eyes, enjoying the blanket of pure darkness over her stigmatic induced sight. She listened for the calls on the wind that never came; there were no souls intact enough to salvage, but there might be remnants particles of what had been human souls. She was careful when she released her pulse to the world.

For a brief moment, she was everywhere, rushing in all directions, escaping her body with an exhilarated sense of freedom. She washed over the earth, the trees, and danced in the wind all while her body remained erect and calm.

From her vantage, she saw the dark dying red and purple human-shaped wisp that formed the husks that pursued Seth stop, sniff at the air and release the deep guttural howl no human throat was designed to vocalize. They called their brethren, the promise of a meal tempting them to ignore their pursuit. The hungriest broke away from their target, while those who saw Seth as easier prey returned to their game of chase, buying him delayed seconds.

Checking for demons was one of the perks of learning how to control a Hunter’s Pulse, but it was not the reason why she had used it in this instance. Calling the demons was a side effect of calling the soul remnants to her. She didn’t need to pull hard, just hard enough to draw the particles of her fresh kill to her.

She opened her eyes, keeping her gaze to her feet to avoid the disorienting sense of being thrown back into her body.

Like she had done in Clearwater, Astral called the souls to her. As the tiny flecks of humanity danced around her in, she drew them in. There wasn’t enough of the individual souls that were worth salvaging, worth returning to the source. Her justification did little to undo the knot in her belly as she consumed the remnants. She was no better than the demons she hunted.

Fatigue’s lulling promising faded, releasing her body from its heavy grasp. Dregs of souls was a temporary solution to a bigger problem. She wouldn’t last forever and half eaten souls was the best she could do without taking a human life to re-energize herself.

Overhead, projections lit up the sky. Astral and Seth’s face were positioned to the left, the defending team. On the right, sixty faces sat in neat rows. She suspected she wasn’t seeing all of the information, such as scores. She was sure that the faces projected above had details such facial features and colors that she couldn’t make out. On the Husk team, their souls had been consumed leaving their images as silhouettes. Seth’s portrait shone with an intensity that reminded her of the sun. Even in a state of panic, consumed by fear, his soul remain uncorrupted. She admired that, even if it made her wonder why.

Seeing her own face as clearly as looking in the mirror always brought on a sense of relief. Shaded lenses stared down on the arena as her dark hair shifted around her like black vapor weighed down. She knew that no one saw the supernatural elements of what she was, but the unnatural glow of her blue eyes, the mark of her stigma, could be seen by all and needed to remain hidden.

With the demon’s access point disrupted, she could attend to the next task: eliminate the husks before they broke free of the arena and ravaged the campus beyond. Her family’s tech was great at keeping demons out, just as it was great at keeping demons in. In this case, in with the students. A vague trickle of a memory nagged at her subconscious, a memory too hazy to call into solid recollection. It was going to bother her all night.

She activated the sigils in the tip of her shoes, shortening her strides and lowering her bounds to keep her actions in the normal to exceptional range. If the arena security triggered notices to security personnel that the zone had gone active, she suspected there would be plenty of people within the Gaming Commission interested in watching the feeds from the aerial cameras. She needed to remember to mind herself and keep her talents within normal range. Limiting her leaps had the added bonus on being less of a strain on her limited energy reserves. It was too late to hide her scythe from view, might as well own up to it. For the time being at least, she had enough support from the outside that reclaiming the weapon wouldn’t be a lengthy endeavour.

In mid leap, she released her pulse to call the husks to her while scouting for Seth, and returning her senses before her body hit the ground. Certain she was headed in the right direction, a new element of the game occurred to her as she leap through the gentle glow of naked trees as they drifted into their seasonal sleep. The energy captured within arena may have had an emotional side effect on the combatting units, but if the games were meant to train Hunters against demons through a coliseum format, the energy collected from the spectators would have fed the spawn, forcing the husks to evolve. For tonight at least, there was no threat of spawn unlocking their demonic strength and regeneration.

The ground sparkled in uneven layers against a bed made of a steady stream of code. The earth was real. The life that had settled within the arena was real. As she came down on the first of the husks that were called to her, she wondered if the organic material had been introduced to the zone because the governing body had lost access to the program or had it been a case of not knowing that the program existed at all and they had chosen to rebuild on the existing framework. Given the lack of information on the central program chamber, she’d have assume the latter.

Without missing a stride in her mad dash toward Seth, her scythe tore through two more husks who melted away at the toxic kiss, as she dodged a third. She pulsed, calling the particle remnants of the human souls to her while triggering the surviving husk to pursue her.

She spotted Seth’s brilliant glow admits the lazy flow of dormant trees, his predators leaping after him with broken arms and legs. The distance between the husks and their prey remained constant. One misstep, one fumble and they’d be on him. End game.

Astral cursed, the boy was useless, too wrapped up in his fear to see the opportunities he ran past. She pulled on the branches and released them to cut into her pursuer. The tactic was little more than an irritant to the husk, but the muffled breathing followed by the sounds of the husk spitting out dead leaves as it got a face full of branches made her chuckle. It wouldn’t dodge, it didn’t need to, there was nothing dangerous in what she was doing. Do it often enough, however, and the husks regeneration abilities would fail.

Ahead she saw her opportunity. In a single cut, she severed several saplings at waist height and slowed down to allow her predator to close in just as she leaped over her trap. The husk impaled itself. Confused it lashed out and snarled, its human features taring as it forced its body beyond its flesh-bound limits. A light kiss from her scythe and seconds later the husk melted away in ash as she returned to her hunt.

She pulsed again, stronger this time, hoping to draw the remainder of the husks to her. In her flight, she saw the gate bombarded by hundreds of husks. The demon beneath the ghost must have started feeding his spawns into the arena as soon as the seal had been removed. She cursed herself for such an oversight. She’d take care of it now.

Seth was on the verge of breaking through the bush, into the open. She couldn’t shout without attracting the hoard. A few husks here and there were one thing. A whole army was asking for trouble. She’d faced those odds before and won, but she had to sacrifice a city to win.

She toyed with the idea of letting Seth go, burst through the bush, into the open to see the army that they had unwittingly unleashed upon the school, upon the sleeping students. He should see first hand what his self-serving motives posing as a higher purpose got him. He was right in that he was far from ready to serve on the killing fields. He didn’t respect the horrors the service would bring. He didn’t respect the lives that would be sacrificed. All he cared about was living to see tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. The people he’d sentence to death along the way didn’t matter compared to his survival. He just hadn’t realized how selfish he was, how his fears had twisted his actions into to something terrible to point of evil.

She had a plan and pulsed again, a smaller but potent burst that caused his pursers to change course. A few minutes later, Seth had breached the forest line, and Astral had killed the remainder of the last wave of husks.