Maybe they could both get what they wanted. He could get shocked into reality, forced to live a few moments as a soldier beyond the scope of a controlled environment. Maybe he might fall in-line. She never doubted his desperation in needing to master the killing fields. She doubted his resolve once he experienced it.

Tonight, she’d give him a glimpse of his future. They were not going to leave this arena until every last demon was dead, even if it meant fighting into the day.

She ended her chase, hiding herself among the trees as she watched Seth realized the threat ahead, stumble, and clawed his way back to his feet. The army of husks was worse than what she had glimpse in the micro seconds of her pulsing. She glanced to the sky, noting that the enemy combatant count was reduced to zero. If there were any other indicators of the battle status, she failed to see them.

Husks tore at their own bodies, forcing raw finger into their meat and pulled away parts of themselves for sacrifice. Physical sacrifices were faster than energy offerings but limited the form of the evolved husk to what ever spare parts it had access too during its reshaping stage. Energy offerings allowed the evolved husk to shape itself, to create the parts it needed through its own design.

In the time before, Astral’s scholars had debated at length which husk type had the real essence of a true demon. Upon listening to the farce as an honoured guest, she had sent her scholars out to the field to face off with each type of husk to learn first hand that in the thick of things, the theological debate of which husk was more evil didn’t yield results. Her Emperor, her god, had been furious that she had sacrificed some of the greatest thinkers of their society to prove a point.

She had the rare gift of remembering her former life and seeing the results of her work, her sacrifice, play out in her new life. The intel her scholars focused on after the initial blood bath had proven useful, saving clusters of people in a war that humanity had struck from its history. Only vague brief passages in religious text eluded to the time that had been hers.

Even with hindsight, even knowing that the bulk of the knowledge she had shared with her Hunters got a little more watered down with each generation, she still benefited from the intellectuals’ redirected focus. If she were new to the world, then maybe it would have been a waste, but it wasn’t as though she would have ever known that they had existed in the first place.

The sacrificing husks converged on a larger growing entity. Muscle reknitted around extended spines, wavering in the air at four foot intervals. Rib cages broken, jutting out from its middle like jagged teeth, caged the delicate spine while driving the evolving husk’s front into the wall, anchoring it in position. Arms missing hands and legs missing feet became the monster’s insect styled legs. The limbs drove into the wall, testing its balance against its weight. More sacrifices were needed before the evolved husk could climb the wall and terrorize the academy beyond.

The husks had accepted a leader among them. If it was successful, others would attempt the same feat using the remainder of the spare parts. The chosen version of the evolved husk projected the kind of influence that people were drawn to.

The second attempt was often bloodier as the masses mimicking the first each wanted to share in the glory of transformation for themselves while stomping out their competition. The product that evolved from forced integration possessed a rage and hunger unlike its chosen counterpart. Rage. Humiliation. Ambition. Resentment. The emotions that transformed the husk would distort it in ways that made it terrifying to approach. Creatures shaped in such a way carried with them an of inescapable deep hatred that infected its territory and brought with it the promise of an all consuming destruction.

The demon beneath the academy had likely begun life as a chosen evolved husk. If he mingled among the people, odds were good that his form of evolution was energy based. His talents so far, supported her analysis. He had patience that span centuries. A series of set backs would not force the arch-demon into action. That made him clever. He knew enough to go into hiding, mask his trail, use a proxy as a shield. He might be testing the range of their abilities now. Planning…

She called a practiced spell from her mental library and traced a line with her minds eye a few feet along the treeline. Seth slammed into her barrier, pounding his fists against it. Hands slapping against the ascending glyphs as he search for a gap in the spell. She reduced the barriers’ length and limiting its height to a foot above Seth, conserving as much energy as she could while reasonably blocking his access to an escape route. He wanted to experience the killing fields. So be it.

Her barrier followed him. She was tempted to tie the spell to the boy, but doing so could lead to unforeseen problems in combat. She couldn’t tell if he could see her in the darkness, squatting among the trees. If he could, it wouldn’t matter, she’d point to the husks she’d call to him, making him realize that he was on his own and she would not come to his rescue. Her refusal to help him would sting, but he’d recognize a lesson and he would endure.

There was a subtle warning in this version of events. He had lost track of her in his desperation to escape the onslaught that he had played an active role in releasing. His only trump card was lost in an arena she had yet to experience. He had counted on the fact that she could take care of herself, that she could be left alone while he fled. The point of this torture was to have him realize that even she could fall victim to the demon attack. What would he do then? She would have too, had he not shown up. He wouldn’t appreciate the cruelty of her thanks until years later. For now, she could endure his hate.

Astral pulsed. Her dark consuming aura licking at the heels of the self mutilating abominations. A few stopped to look back to the forest, no doubt sighting Seth’s brilliant beacon of a soul. One man vs an army of undead; one man who had so much spiritual energy that their chosen leader could complete his transformation with just sip of the human’s essence.

Seth had become her bait. She prayed that the small pack she lured wouldn’t call on companions, preying on their self-entitled glory to eliminate the horde at a rate that Seth might feel too overwhelmed to handle. She needed to be careful with the balance she struck. She needed to push him, not kill him.

She noted a twinge of excitement welling up in her stomach. She took a breath to steady her heart. The haze of a memory became clearer. There had been a version of Seth that had been a phenomenal fighter. The honour of seeing him fight emboldened allies and terrified enemies. Opposing factions allied with demons just to have a chance in Hell to bring down the legendary Hunter, consequences be damned.

‘Times were different then,’ she thought to herself, having a vague sense that the man he had been was some where in the past. Perhaps a lifetime ago, she couldn’t be sure. Crouching amidst the trees, she couldn’t help but accept her excitement; this was the start of Seth’s reputation as a living legend. Everything she’d taught him over the past couple of months would come together and he’d decimate the enemy. He’d become an asset, fighting with her to stop the thing that consumed all, instead of wasting valuable time on bullshit politics. She wouldn’t have to kill him. She felt a pang of guilt. This time, she wouldn’t have to kill him…

“This is your doing,” Astral said to her core. The shadow lingered behind her.

‘I always wondered what he was like before he became famous’ the core replied, her voice thoughtful. ‘I didn’t think it was possible for him to be as pathetic as he was.’

“I didn’t need to be here,” Astral growled. She was half-responsible if the arch-demon ascended, she couldn’t blame it all on Seth.

She could hear the shadow smirk as the vaporous entity hid the knowledge of her command. “You told me that the threat was eminent.”

‘It is now.’

Astral hated her core. “Are you trying to kill him? Is he a threat to you? Is that why I’m really here!”

‘I assure you that the last time I killed him, it was purely accidental.’

What? Astral couldn’t get her mind to compute what she had heard. The last time… the last time when? What?

She could feel her core stare at her, watching with mild amusement as the young Hunter tried to process the morsel of information. It shifted, directing its attention to Seth who reactivated his corrupted blade to face off with the few broken husks who lumbered his way.

Easy prey.

Seth’s sword cut into the husks, the corruption dulling the effectiveness of the strike. Astral’s scythe drew on her natural strengths, her natural toxicity to the demons. Every strike was laced with a poison that prevented the demons from healing. Demons had sacrificed limbs to stop her poison from spreading, preferring to spend energy to regenerate limbs. Using her scythe took a lot out of her, as though every cut cost her a bit of her lifeforce. She wasn’t attached to old age. The last time she was apart of the world, she had been eighteen years old when her god entombed her out of fear of her growing power. She had a job to do and she had no doubt if she was needed again, the gods would call on her for a third time.

Astral’s scythe was a legacy weapon, a modified version of the same scythe she had used a lifetime ago. Seth’s weapon belonged to another Hunter. His weapon couldn’t sync its resonance with him, it couldn’t process the meaning of his grip, the weight of his stance, or the shift in his movements. The captain was speaking a different language than the one used by the weapon.

He forced the blade through the second husk and turned to strike a third. He treated them like humans, failing to see that holes in their abdomen and partially severed heads did nothing to stop them from attacking. His blood stained the snow.

Horror stretched across rotted faces as blood stained claws disintegrated. Pain they weren’t supposed to feel was released from inhuman throats, calling the army of the dead to them.

Blood ran down Seth’s arm as his sword drank it in. Using the hero’s lifeforce, the swords strength could be enhanced and directed at the command of its owner. The weapon’s blade impaled the ground becoming too heavy for the captain to wield. The weapon gorged itself on his blood.

Seth refused to let go. “I need to do this!” he roared at the weapon, gaze fixed on the tidal wave of broken undead rushing toward him. The corruption on the blade fell away inch by inch, with every drop of blood it drank.

‘He never told me the story of how he got his weapon,’ Astral’s core said. ‘You should probably help him.’

“He did it before, he’ll do it again,” Astral shrugged. She worried, fighting the urge to save the day. She had learned enough of his weapon that she could help him purify it and start the sessions needed to sync him with the sword, assuming the rightful owner had succumbed to the fate that all Hunters do.