There are three things you must watch out for when hunting an autothith. The first is that, as they fight, they give off something like an aura that makes everyone around them crave violence.

That meant, as I was being flung around literally by the seat of the autothith’s pants, I was riding a high like I’d never felt before. Blood was pounding in my ears. My mouth was pulled into a sardonic grin. My injuries were a distant memory. As the demon bucked and thrashed to try throw me off, I couldn’t feel my arm’s muscles ripping or the tendons in my shoulder tearing a little bit more with each heave, gripped as I was onto the autothith’s belt in my desperate gambit.

The second is that they grow stronger and faster as a battle raged on. However, this early in the fight, that portion of the autothith’s power was nothing but a disadvantage. So even though it was spinning me around like a dog with a chew toy, I was desperate to slash it.

The third is that they all show their biggest weakness like a brand of honour. Always on their back. Their sigil. And every demon has one.

It could be said that a demon is their sigil. Demons aren’t exactly alive, hence why we never use words like “life” or “death” to describe them. Demon literalness dictates they ought not to be described in a manner that is incorrect, hence we say they are “bound” rather than “alive”, and “erased” rather than “dead”. That sigil is their entirety, and their bodies are nothing but vessels to fulfill its will.

Autothiths bare that sigil to taunt their enemies. As if to say, “Here’s how you can erase me. Come try, if you dare.” Meaning if you get behind them, there’s a good chance you could take them down in one hit. That’s easier said than done, of course; and yet luck had it that I was already part way there.

As I flew back around, I slashed wildly at the autothith’s back. Missed. I swung back round to its club hand. The autothith grabbed the club with both hands and stabbed behind it with the handle, aiming for my side. Desperately, I held up the knife to block it. This time I couldn’t stop the blow, but the clash managed to slow it significantly. The club clocked me in the ribs and I let out a heavy wheeze.

Fortunately, in that moment my movements had slowed enough to be able to aim. I brought my knife up and stabbed at the demon’s flank. The knife sunk in, but it didn’t go deep. I only produced the slightest spurt of ash, but the autothith roared nonetheless.

I was already struggling to keep my wits about me, but the moment I heard that scream all rational thought escaped me. Everything was hazy, every act was pure instinct. I kept my grip on the demon’s belt because I felt I had to, nothing more. I started slashing without rhyme, and it was predictably ineffective. The demon thrashed harder and harder. I couldn’t feel my arm but a vague and distant part of me knew that something was about to pop.

Though it would have been smarter for the demon to stop and grab me, any break in its movement was enough of a chance for me to plunge my knife into its back. Not wanting to take a risk, the demon turned it into a game: if the autothith stopped swinging me, I’d win, but if it threw me off or prevented me from striking, I’d lose.

The demon realised the win condition too soon. With its free hand it clawed at my face as I flung back around to the side. Its claws ran right from my chin to nose, gouging everything open. I slashed at the arm but only nicked it.

Then it dropped the club from its other hand and repeated the process on the other side, finding less purchase this time but scratching me up nonetheless. It repeated this process: left, right, left, right; tearing up arms and hands and face and neck and shoulders. It got faster, faster, until it became a blur.

If I’d had my wits about me I would have let go. Instead, I slashed back at him and hit nothing. The momentum was too great and I couldn’t bring my arm in. I don’t know how I managed to keep my grip on the knife.

The hand I gripped the demon’s belt with was another matter. Once the demon realised it could kill me like this, it grabbed its belt and tightened it, locking my hand in. First my elbow popped out and I thrashed right around the demon, my legs colliding with its stomach and my arm bending at a wrong angle. My shoulder was next. Muscles stretched and tore to become unusable. I think I vomited a couple of times during that ride. I was flailing around like a rock tied to a wet noodle, and I just kept slashing and hacking and stabbing like nothing was wrong.

A distant part of me knew I was going to die. The conscious part of me screamed for more violence.

The world was a blur, with a few brief respites as I slowed down before the autothith flicked me back the other way. During one of those respites, I caught the sight of golden eyes, and something shiny blur towards me.

This time the demon didn’t throw me back the other way. Instead, the autothith lunged to the side and a shuriken flew past, missing it by an angel’s feather.

As soon as I’d slowed, I began stabbing wildly at arms, face, shoulder—anywhere but the back. The demon responded by digging a claw into my shoulder and raking its claw along my arm. It slowed my mad attack down but didn’t stop me.

Somewhere in that haze, a voice reached out to me, carrying on the wind like the chords of the non-existent angels, drowning out the thumping of blood in my ears.

“Algier! If you win your fight, I’ll give you a kiss.”

Like a fog lifting from my mind, I remembered a name: Enzi Lash. I wanted to hear that name, to hear her voice again, to see her too-pure smile. But I was trapped, tied to a demon. To reach Enzi again, I had to slay this demon. Vaguely, I thought to find its back.

Mind you, it wasn’t that I had feelings for Enzi. This was just the effect of an enepsi’s influence. She was using every bit of her charm to suppress the autothith’s rage.

Seizing the moment, I hooked a foot around the autothith’s leg to keep them from throwing me. With far too much effort I shuffled around to their back. I could feel searing pains everywhere now, all blended together so that it felt like my whole body was on fire. I think I was screaming in agony. Even with Enzi’s help I still wasn’t too sure what I was doing.

I scanned around the autothith’s back, gritting through the demon’s nails that raked along my leg. There it was, right where the spine would have been on a human, close to their hips.

It was barely distinguishable amongst all the smouldering red cracks that marred the demon’s skin. The lines and glyphs that marked it were pitch black and etched thinly onto their dark skin. It was intricate, and the more I stared at it the more patterns and glyphs I could make out.

With strength that came from a place unknown, I plunged my knife right into their sigil. The autothith let out a long howl, of agony, of fear. Their claws swung over their shoulder and dug into my skull. I knew the pain was there, that the demon would find their way into my skull and dig out my brains if I didn’t win, but adrenaline kept me going. I had to hold on because it was the only way to live. Kill before I was killed. Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

My blood trickled down onto the grass. Everything was going dark. The demon slowly, slowly faded, starting from the extremities then moving towards its centre. The claws around my head faded into smoke. The hand digging into my leg disappeared also and blood poured out like a river. I should have doubled my efforts to speed up my process, but my body wasn’t listening.

My leg unwound from the demon’s and I started sliding down. I tried to hold onto the knife and managed to drag it down a little, carving through the demon like butter, but then I lost my grip and collapsed onto the grass in a bloody heap. A moment later, the demon’s feet faded into smoke and they collapsed onto their knees. Their arms became flakes of black ash that carried gently into the sky as though on a breeze, despite the day being still. Their scalp began to fade and then, still howling, the demon stared at me over their shoulder. There wasn’t fear or hatred in their eyes, but something akin to relief. Like they were thanking me. It made its screams seem involuntary, an instinct even.

As their head disappeared, that scream of agony softened until it was nothing but a sigh. Then the rest of them faded into smoke that drifted away, dissipating until it was gone. All that remained of the autothith was a circle of smouldering ash on the ground. There were glyphs on its edge, the same ones I’d seen on its back, but the intricate and layered inner patterns were all gone. The demon had been erased.

I lay flat on the earth, gasping for air. The bloodlust had passed so pain and fatigue were catching up on me. Long, deep rends covered every part of me. My blood seeped into the grass and was swallowed up greedily.

That was it. I had nothing left in me. Too injured to fight on, too tired to care, details fading from thought and the sky going darker, darker. I figured that if another demon wanted a piece of me, I’d let them.

The sun was above. It cast a haze across the clear dome that locked us all in the Culling. The radiant heat pounded against my brow and my heart thumped like mad, but I felt a chill. I didn’t remember how long I’d stayed there like that, just breathing and never finding enough air.

I remember something covered the sun. I saw a blade in its hand and thought, “That goes in the heart.” The shadow it cast grew, the darkness enclosed me, until I could feel breath tickling my face, my lips. Then something soft pressed against my mouth. Soft and warm and pleasantly right. I didn’t think to resist.

As my lips moved of their own accord, something hot trickled into my mouth. My first instinct was to spit it out, but a hand pressed against my chin and forced my mouth closed. Not that I could have spat it out; I didn’t have the strength for it. I let it trickle down my throat. An instant later, my whole body felt like it was on fire.

I tried to scream but no sounds came out. Rather, I was taking air in whenever I tried to shout and exhaling whenever I gasped for breath. My arms, my shoulders, my legs, my face—everything flared up and I wanted to scratch at them, but I’d gone completely limp and my body didn’t want to respond. I felt something un-tear, as if someone had taken the halves of a torn a sheet of paper and mashed them back together. As soon as the heat had arrived, it was gone and I found myself on my feet.

“What—what did—” I gasped, trying to make sense of things.

“Ah, you had a pretty nasty injury,” a woman said cheerily.

I looked up. Not a woman, but a demon. Enzi. Her form had returned to the facsimile of a pretty woman—no scales on her dress, and wide, bright eyes. However, she did appear a little more modest. As in, she wasn’t popping out of her red dress anymore. In her hand was a clear vial half-filled with blood red liquid. She shook it to emphasise how low the contents had fallen.

Rise and Shine, Class 1. Single use, for both humans and demons. Though it appears to function like a health potion straight from a video game, the instructions on the box are a lie. If you take the whole thing, it’ll put your body back into the state you’d woken up in, or had been in at the crack of dawn, whichever occurred earliest since midnight. So if you had injuries before waking, you’d still have them after taking the potion, just as fresh as they were back then. However, everything else that had happened to you since then would be gone, like it had never occurred to begin with.

I checked my arms, felt my face, gave my once-dislocated shoulder a spin and, sure enough, the wounds were closed and everything was back to where it ought to be. I checked my leg. The hole from the digresser bite was still there, though scabbed over just as it had been an hour ago. I was pretty fatigued, but still had enough energy to walk before the sun went down, as though I hadn’t just fought a battle to the death/erasure. I remembered everything, but felt exactly as I did while trudging through the underbrush with two annoying demons in tow. I even had the urge to stab Enzi to shut her up! It took a second to realise she was much quieter now.

“Did you—” I went to ask, then slammed my mouth shut when I caught sight of Toll, hovering around the ruins of the old house. The balaam was scraping up ashes from the floor. Erased demons. That was the answer to my question. They’d won, and neither of them had so much as taken a scratch.

Enzi glanced Toll’s way, clearly understanding the situation. “Toll erased three, I got two. And you.” She stepped forward. In her hand was a long and thin sword, the one I’d tried and failed to take. The blade waved near my leg. The beautiful demon was close enough that I could make out the subtle flames that danced behind her eyes.

“You slayed the strongest of their group. I’m impressed. You really are a remarkable human.”

I turned away, not wanting to play any more of her games. Enzi was getting dangerously close to putting her charms on me.

The enepsi flashed a coy smile, then took the Rise and Shine and pushed it into the air. The world around it rippled and the vial sank into nothing, like it was being tucked into an invisible pocket in the sky. An inventory.

We all had them. Unlike the status screens, it’s a known fact that the inventory system is granted to Participants, and managed by the Culling administrators. The storage space is infinite, allowing you to collect and store anything you want. That is, anything aside from demons, humans, digressers, and other nondescript entities that have any form of consciousness. There are only two limitations on what can be stored inside. Firstly, you need to be able to lift the thing and put it in. Secondly, it takes a few seconds for anything to be inserted and removed.

Hence the reason I hadn’t stuffed my knife in there earlier, despite it being far more difficult to steal from inside an inventory. After all, only the Participant could open their inventory, and the only feasible way to steal from it was to eliminate the Participant.

Remembering the knife, I scanned the grass frantically for it. Thankfully, it was lying exactly where I’d dropped it, right next to the ashes of the autothith I’d just erased. I quickly scraped it up. Then a thought occurred to me: Enzi had a sword.

I scanned the area searching for rabdoses. There was nothing. They’d swept up the whole lot while I was in a stupor. I caught Enzi stuffing her new slender blade into her inventory.

“Let me guess,” I said bitterly. “You took the items before you healed me.”

“Ah, but I gave you the greatest gift of all,” Enzi chimed, smiling oh-so-innocently. “I gave you a kiss.”

I stared at her deadpan. “Greatest gift according to whom?”

“Every man I’ve ever been with.” She winked. “That, plus a bit of that potion. Given that, I’d say you owe me one.”

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

In my dazed state, I hadn’t realised that Enzi had kissed me to deliver the Rise and Shine. Looking back, it was kind of stupid thing to do. Kissing someone when they’re not in a position to consent, regardless of how pretty you are, is never going to make them happy. But that’s what Enzi was. How could a demon who’d spent their existence coiled around the lusts of men understand what it was like to be broken and forcefully held together?

At first, I wasn’t entirely convinced by her words, forgetting that a demon didn’t lie. I opened my stat screen and, sure enough, my points had increased and a new row had appeared.

[Points]: 39 (was 12)

[Favours Owed]: (new)

Enzi: 1

No getting out of that one. Enzi had her hooks in me.