"Figures," she sighed. Her gaze snapped to Seth. "I need you to be not useless," she barked, striking a familiar chord in his military training. "This isn't a game," she hissed, full lips curling away from her teeth. "If you don't get your head out of your ass, you will be killed."

That seemed a bit harsh. "You used a weapon," Seth mumbled, hoping to cut her off before she lectured him about using his environment.

Astral glanced wide-eyed to her scythe as though surprised by its presence. With a shrug, she handed it over to Seth. "There you have a weapon," she sneered. He was surprised by how heavy it was. She used it like it was weightless...

Maybe using the scythe as a counter balance to her movements was how she pulled off some of those extreme moves. It felt hot in his hands, not burning, just hot, like a living breathing thing. He noted that the energy flow along the shaft stopped upon contact with him. With no source to draw from, the blade shrunk and dulled, catching fragments of penetrating light. In his hands, it was an ordinary scythe. He felt the sting of disappointment. He wasn't special like her.

Astral climbed to the ledge of the half-wall, fists on her hips as she surveyed the floor below.

"Can you do that with anything?" he wondered.

"Do what?" Her standing there like that, like some cocky Peter Pan. Was she advertising her presence to the remaining husks? She leaped back toward him and hefted the torso to the wall, pulling at it by the armpits and leaving bloodied entrails to mar the formerly pristine floor. She remained unbothered by the gore, as though the stench and general gruesomeness was all part of the plan.

"Control the flow of energy to the blade," he stated, running his fingers up the shaft and pointing the thin arc of a blade a foot above him.

She paused, perplexed. "What?" It was a nice change, Seth relished the moment. She maintained her confused expression, her pointed nose scrunched up as though the idea just wouldn't sit well while she guided an arch brow through a half-squint. "Flow of energy?"

Maybe he was seeing things. He did his best to return her half-squinted 'are you insane?' look. Astral nodded once. To what? Seth wasn't entirely sure but watched as she hefted the torso over the edge and proceeded to watch it make its impact with a sickening thud. Astral nodded her approval and climbed to the ledge. Was she going to jump down? "Meal time!" She called. Movement on the lower floor suggested that the remaining husks were alive and well, their monstrous figures silhouetted by thin strands of light that bore through the small gaps in the barricade.

Astral cast a glance over her shoulder. "Pay attention to this part."

The captain flailed attempting to restrain the fourteen-year-old before she leaped to the floor below. Clutching the smooth surface of the half-wall with sweaty palms, he saw the disfigured human mockeries below shamble toward her.

"Not all spawn have complete control over their new bodies when they finish transitioning," Astral explained, her voice echoing through the sealed room as though she had taken center stage. "Like the spawn in the lower levels, the first thing they need to do is feed."

"The best time to take them out is as soon as they hatch. Spawn don't manifest like normal demons, so using your environment is the most effective way to take out a nest without getting nailed with the Hunter's Curse." He felt the Fates' stifling grip on his bleak future lessen. True to her word, she was teaching him about survival. More importantly, she was teaching in how survive in a way that wouldn't rob him of his future.

He could barely make out the shapes of the husks as they lumbered over toward her. One was large, three times taller than the student who faced it down. It had exaggeratedly large arms; it's fists slamming into the ground like massive hammers. The sturdiness of the large husk would likely give Astral a hard time if she planned to unbalance it. It's middle had taken on a serpentine shape as though the spawn had yet to shape the remainder of itself. It pounded its threats into the ground, it's talent for speech lost.

The woman skittered toward the torso bait. Elongated arms spread from her body, reminding Seth of a spider, only she relied on the thousands of fingers along her belly to glide her along the floor toward the easiest source of food. She plunged her face greedily into the torso's opening, hands pulling at guts and flesh. She'd pull her face out long enough to catch her breath, a long tongue slithering across swollen lips, lapping at the blood on her face and hands. Nothing would go to waste.

"Is that all you got!" Astral laughed at the angry man, guiding him toward the bait. "You're just a noise maker. A snake with a vicious temper! A useless excuse of demon whose all talk. Completely incompetent in the grand scheme of things," she taunted. The husk's mallets for hands thundered down, smashing into the ground to crush the girl who knew better than to stand her ground. She kept moving, allowing the angry beast to destroy whatever it came into contact with. Blinded by its rage, it grew faster and reckless, oblivious to the damage it was causing. The second floor quaked as a support was smashed to bits.

A sickening crunch silenced all action.

Seth's throat dried instantly, his stomach plunging to his feet. Did it get her? He couldn't see her anywhere. The beast lifted its mallet fist, inspecting the squishy remnants that stuck to it. It gingerly sniffed the wet mess.

Seth clutched the scythe, his breath caught in his throat. 'It got her! Just like that! It got her!' his mind repeated, stunned. 'She was so confident. And just like that, it was over.' He wrung the scythe, feeling the plates along the shaft dig into his skin, biting into him.

He had no choice. If he wanted the program to end, he needed to take action. He climbed the half-wall and instantly regretted looking down. He wasn't that high up, was he? The floor below swam in his vision. He could barely make out the unmoving mutated mass of the demon woman in its depths. The hulking demon smashed the remnants of his female companion again and again, tenderizing her for easy consumption. Seth wondered if spawns saw each other as prey.

He needed a plan of attack. Taking the demon head-on would be suicide, yet, Astral was confident enough in her abilities to take on two husks simultaneously while unarmed. 'Look where that got her,' Seth reminded himself.

One support pillar was crushed; would taking out another cause the second floor to collapse on the beast? Would it be enough? What if it was just enough to get the edge on it? If he acted quickly, he could use the scythe on it and kill it. He didn't have time to think about another solution. He needed to end this game and get Astral help; if that was even possible.

He'd have to take the stairs though. Jumping down would probably end up breaking his legs, and that would be counter-productive. He ran down the stairs, two at a time, trusting his feet to guide the way. A sharp whistle drew the demon's attention.

His feeding frenzy interrupted; it raged toward the sound. Seth didn't quite make out what happened next. The demon thundered in between pillars and walls, hidden in the darkness of the lower floor. Holes were smashed into walls; steel supports bent into odd shapes. The floor shook, shaking Seth's feet from under him as the room filled with dust and a deep rumbling. Pops and twangs of pipes and supports joined the cacophony as the floor collapsed, swallowing the demon in its void.

The sound died down, leaving only the angry howls of a confused demon. The fall into the basement floors hadn't killed it. How did he honestly expect to do anything remotely effective against that monster?

The program ended in a wash of white, returning him to the safety of the program projection chamber. Nowhere in the sterile room was Astral's body found. Seth held his breath. Did the program swallow her?

"Gimme that!" He felt the scythe rip from his grip. Astral had come up from behind him, no worse for wear.

He threw himself at her, hugging her close. "I thought they got you," he told her in a hoarse whisper when he thought his voice wouldn't betray him. She pat him on the back, keeping her contact with him light and limited.

"That would have been embarrassing...." Astral admitted.

Seth frowned, holding her at arm's length. He regarded her skeptically. "What do you mean by embarrassing?" he asked slowly. Were husks insignificant kills?

Astral's lips formed a thin pink line. Whatever it was she wasn't going to tell him. She waved him off, breaking his hold. Her gaze shifted to look away from him, squinting at some distant scene. After a moment, she resumed eye contact and carried on with her lesson. "It's easy to get overwhelmed by husks. Your best solution is to use them against each other. As soon as they hatch, they're in competition for survival, and it's not uncommon for them to turn on one another," she instructed. "Ironically, the difficulty in dealing with husks is drastically reduced when their numbers increase. However, there are exceptions like the insect swarms of the lower level."

"What are husks exactly? They looked..." He didn't like the implications. Was it possible that 'infected humans' were dormant husks?

"I guess it's time to have THE Talk," Astral made light of the idea. She must know what it meant in the grand scheme of things. She gestured to the elevator, signaling the end of the practical portion of their lesson. He appreciated her methods, maybe not initially or even during, but he did recognize how much more receptive he was to the theory when he had spent his morning running for his life. Granted, in this situation she had chosen to inflict something deeper, something much more sinister than mere survival of the fittest.

Astral retracted her scythe; it's blade melting away into an impossibly small shaft as the staff broke itself down to the size of her arm. It expanded, as though taking a deep breath, she slid it over her hand and positioned it on her forearm, where it let out its breath and wrapped itself snuggly in place. She pumped her arm, testing it for awkward movement, satisfied she pulled her training uniform's sleeve over the bracer.

Seth gaped. It was an impressive piece of technology that came alive in her hands alone. Was this the work of Omega Corp? Were they manufacturing Hunter specific weapons? What reason could they have to allow for a single person to be able to use the weapon? So many questions! She'd never tell. Would she even know?

"Right, THE Talk," she called up the digital panel and punched in her access code. "Demon biology is very diverse. To put it simply, husks are created when a demon embeds their young in a human host. How and when this action takes place varies. Some demons send out bursts of spore. All it takes is breathing it in. Luckily spore type demons generally prefer heavily damp area, and you can usually figure out where a nest is based on the mucus build up in the area. By the way, that mucus, excellent accelerant. Downside, highly corrosive to fleshy matter."

Spore demons, bad. Very bad. Seth nodded like an idiot.

"Some demons will umm... I don't know how to put this delicately, but they basically rape every hole on your body and lay eggs, that are about this big." She showed him her pinky finger. He felt nauseous. "Obviously, the event is traumatic and runs the high risk of disabling the host trough shock, among other things...like lack of eyeballs, and bleeding of the ears and-"

"I get the point!" Seth cut her off. Could she be any more casual about how disgusting and downright terrifying the husk process was? Seth wasn't sure which part bother him the most, her casual disregard or what the demons did to create husks. He decided that she must have been exposed to these terrors for far too long to have a normal view of the process. It bothered him on how clinical she was about it. Again, she reminded him of his father, only he'd have a note of excitement in his voice, anticipating cutting into a new specimen, or analyzing a new data sample.

"A willing host and an oblivious host are the only two forms of husks that you need to be concerned about. All other forms of husks don't generally reanimate and carry on with their day to day lives. Demons usually just want the warm meaty bags of flesh to feed their young."

"Please don't refer to people as warm meaty bags of flesh," Seth advised. "It's...It's just wrong."

Astral shrugged as the elevator pinged, happily announcing its arrival. They stepped in and Astral struck the ground floor button on the digital panel. Orders received, the panel vanished from sight.

"Is that it?" Seth hesitated to ask, but the silence between them was making him nervous. Did he insult her?

Astral tilted her head thoughtfully. "It's probably best that we limit discussions of such a personal nature."

Right! He was an idiot to attempt to bring up anything demon related outside of the training room. Given the punishment for unregistered Hunters, of course, she'd want to avoid discussing anything remotely related to hunting while exposed to the Council's Academy's security feeds. Who knows when one slip of the tongue might be used against any of the students in their future careers.