All that was left after the digressers had fled was barren earth. Regardless, I didn’t want to get up. Lying on the ground and soaking in the sun was so comforting—warm and pleasant and positively human.

I never realised how much I cherished moments like this, but I suppose it made sense given that, once I opened my eyes, I’d be surrounded by physics-defying monstrosities.

As I lay, I felt something wriggle under my back. Uncomfortable again, I opened my eyes to see Volce crawl out from underneath me and lie on the ground next to me. The little red coward had been clawed to my back the whole time.

Volce balled his fists. “What. The fuck. Was that?”

He slammed his fists down to little effect. He wasn’t even strong enough to make the ground thump.

“Valax,” I answered.

Volce sat up and gaped at me. “Ah, yeah. No shit. But how the fuck do you know her?”

“I don’t.”

“Bullshit. You humans always lie.”

“That time I didn’t.”

I was too freaked out to bother lying. Questions kept running through my head, much the same as the one’s Volce had asked. Most importantly, I wanted to know how a valax had managed to control that many digressers.

Valaxes are one of the more interesting kind of demons. Though they have the usual strength and skills as your average demon, they have a talent that makes them far more fearsome. That is, they can control other beings. Generally it’s animals, and the less intelligent the animal is the easier their control is. For example, insects, reptiles, fish, and even some mammals. Very rarely can they control demons, and controlling humans is simply out of the question.

As a valax gets stronger, they can practically command an army. Hence, strong valaxes can turn the tide of any battle, assuming they actually want to fight to begin with. More often than not, valaxes are passive.

But controlling digressers? It’s not easy. Theoretically they can, since digressers are not intelligent, but as digressers act almost entirely like a computer—that is, they follow a set of pre-coded instructions—the valax would need to individually puppet each digresser rather than giving them instructions to follow. The sheer talent and power needed for that valax to execute such a feat… I still don’t understand it to this day.

“So, er,” Volce stuttered. “You think everyone else is eliminated?”

I pulled up my stat screen. “At least Toll and Enzi are still alive, assuming this thing isn’t bugged.” Sure enough, the favour I owed Enzi was still listed, along with the questions I owed Toll.

“Alright!” The deuce hopped up. He couldn’t float very high, managing only a little over an average human’s head in height. Pointing down at me, he shouted, “You need to tell how the fuck that crazy snake bitch knew you.”

Ignoring the deuce, I pushed myself up with a groan. “Time to move,” I said. I picked a random direction and started walking. I had no idea which direction I’d come from, but one thing was for certain: there was no way I was going in the direction that the valax was heading.

I pushed through the barren land and into the carved-up forest. The place was a mess. Lines criss-crossed where the digressers had slithered through and trees lay sideways over mangled, carved up shrubs. I spent more time climbing over and leaping across things than I did walking, and my legs hated me for it.

Volce hovered in front of me and waved his hands. “Hey, no, enough of this bullshit. I need answers, stat! What did you do to piss her off?”

I walked past him without answering. This caused Volce to grip his lank hair and howl. He started circling around me.

“How do you know her? How did you get here? What did you use to do before you got thrown in the Culling? Hang around any demon hunters?”

“Just shut the fuck up,” I growled. “We can’t make noise. The valax is still out there, and whoever attacked her as well.”

If it came to it, I was too tired to fight. Too tired to flee as well. That run had thoroughly drained me, somehow more so than yesterday’s run and all that fighting despite having done a lot less work today. My legs trembled as I walked and my hands felt weak. Just accumulated fatigue.

“Hey, if I have to read your mind then I will,” Volce snapped. “I can do that. It comes with the contract.”

“It’s conditional, idiot. Remember? You offered me that while you were pissing yourself last night.”

Of course Volce remembered. Demons rarely forget. Their memories didn’t work like a human’s. They had no brains but instead recorded everything in their sigil like a computer drive. Of course, over hundreds of years they could overwrite some of that memory, but still.

Volce poked my forehead with his finger. “Then I’ll make you let me read your mind!”

“Piss off,” I growled.

I swatted at him with an open palm, but the nimble deuce evaded it easily. I was half tempted to slash at him with my knife next time he touched me.

“Or what?” Volce said. “You’re going to erase the only demon who’s contractually obligated to not fuck you over? I gotta say, your squishy human brain is really fucking bad at basic logic. You do realise that my power is the only thing that’s going to save your ass when—oh fuck!”

Heart leaping, I whirled to face where Volce was gaping. My knife was raised but it did me no good. A boot slammed hard into my chest, knocking me down. I tumbled over a fallen log and crashed into the trunk of a tree.

Groaning, I picked myself up. I’d dropped my knife; it lay just a short distance from me. I clawed my way to it, gritting through the pain that was radiating through my back and chest.

Volce tried to dodge the attacker, but with a single swipe he was sent flying into the tree behind me. Smoke rose from his back as he drifted towards the ground. He tried to stabilise himself but he was too injured to control his flight, so he twirled down like a falling leaf.

My hand closed around the knife. I raised it threateningly at my attacker, knowing it was pointless. And it was. My attacker pointed a revolver at my head just outside of the knife’s range.

“Drop it, Faust,” she said.

It took a moment for realisation set it. Faust: a term given by humans to those who’d betrayed them, forsaken the endless guerrilla war against the demons in exchange for the power demons offered. To be using that term, that could only mean that the person speaking to me was a human. The only other human in the Culling. Berlin.

I’d mistaken her for a demon at first. Her eyes were pitch black and her skin had gone ashen. Lining her face were markings of nondescript form—they were inconsistent in such a way that it was hard to tell whether they meant anything or were just fanciful markings. They were a by-product of a human becoming something… more. The tell-tale sign that this human was hopped up on demon ashes.

I would have preferred to de-escalate the situation, but if Berlin was calling me Faust, she wasn’t in the negotiating mood. Even though we were both human, this was still the Culling. The life of a human was only worth as much as their points.

But more than that: my eyes settled on that gun, on its familiar wood-panelled grip and the swirling patterns that lined its barrel that, when traced, you’d find was formed from a single line. I remember thinking that I wanted to gut her for daring to lay her hands on it.

“Okay, I’m putting the knife down,” I grunted. While on my knees, I held up my empty hand and slowly lowered knife with the other. I looked down at the ground, presenting fear.

Until the moment I’d formed those contracts with the demons, I hadn’t even been aware that there was something there at the core of me—a soul is what we call it, but it’s not a very good approximation of its function. When Toll had answered my questions, I’d become aware of it. When Enzi had done me a favour, I’d recognised it. When I’d formed a contract with Volce, I’d touched it. I knew it was there, I knew what it did, like how a newborn pup knows to crawl to its mother and suckle on her teat. I reached out for that contract and found something wrong: a straw stuck in something viscous and hot and bubbling like lava. I held my breath and took a sip.

Volce’s power flooded into me. My eyes turned red. My body burned up. I felt—I knew—that I could do anything. Malice and confidence roiled within me in equal parts. I wanted to break something.

I could feel Volce there, lying behind me. He was faking his injury. He was excited, wild with fury, and waiting for a chance to smash Berlin’s face in.

Grinning, my knuckles whitened around my knife and I leapt up in a flash. My hand reached for the gun and I managed to grab Berlin’s wrist. Startled, she squeezed the trigger, but I’d already pointed the gun away from me and the shot landed harmlessly in the earth.

I stabbed at her gut. But where the knife thrust there was only air. I blinked then realised she’d dodged to the side so quickly that I couldn’t even see her move. My hand was no longer clasped around her wrist. I only had a moment to realise how fucked I was.

I caught a glimpse of disappointment in her pitch-black eyes before a knee landed in my side. I didn’t see her strike. The only reason I knew it was a knee was because I felt the strike from below, felt something crack, and my feet left the ground for a full second. Next thing I knew I was crumpled on the ground, clutching my ribs.

In that time Volce had pulled a needle out of his inventory. He howled, “You fucking ash tray!” Before he could stab, a boot planted hard into his face and slammed down. The impact was so violent I could feel the force of Volce being smashed into the earth. His needle flew out of his hand and was lost in the foliage.

The deuce let out a muted scream. I’d never seen a demon cry in pain before, but through our connection I knew it was genuine. Somehow, Berlin had made a demon feel pain. If I weren’t struggling to breathe from the cracked rib, I would have screamed also. I could feel that pain, though it was distant and muted. Like that phantom twinge you get when you watch someone get carved up in a horror film, but cranked up a thousand times or so.

With her foot, she shoved Volce aside like he was a sack of potatoes. The demon writhed in the grass in agony, unable to get up. She approached me looking like she wanted to skin me alive. Groaning, I tried to claw myself away from her. Pointless. She pressed her boot down on my back and pressed, right above where my rib was broken.

A scream ripped from my throat. Everything turned grey. I think I might have passed out for a moment because the next thing I heard was, “I said, how the fuck do you know that valax?”

Somehow, I managed to choke out, “I don’t.”

“Bullshit!”

Berlin spun me over, eliciting a wheezed yelp from me. Clicking her tongue, she stuffed her gun into her inventory. Then she sat on my stomach and the breath left me entirely. Her hands wrapped around my neck and squeezed.

I coughed as I tried to take in what little air as I could. My hands clawed at hers but Berlin’s skin was rock hard, enhanced by the ash. I tried to throw her off but moving sent spikes of pain down my side. Not that I’d be able to move her, anyway. She stared down at me with fury in her void-like eyes.

“I saw what she did,” Berlin said through gritted teeth. “She attacked the demons you’re dealing with. She protected you. So tell me how you know her!”

“I don’t—”

I was telling the truth. Back then, I didn’t know the valax, or at least I didn’t realise how tightly our pasts were intertwined. Berlin wasn’t convinced. Either that, or she just wanted me to suffer. Maybe if I’d made up a lie she would have been more convinced, but my brain was so addled by the torture that I instinctively told the truth.

Berlin scoffed. “Well if you don’t know, I’ll just fucking kill you for making a deal with a deuce.”

Blood was pounding in my head. Everything was going hazy. It was getting hard to think. I was convinced I was done. So instead of dying in shame, I decided to stick it to her before I croaked it.

“That’s ironic,” I wheezed, “coming from… someone who’s… on ash.”

She bared her fangs and her hands gripped tighter around my neck, cutting off what little room I had left in my airway. “I know my limits,” she growled.

“He’s not lying!”

Berlin let off the pressure. I gasped for air so quickly that it caused a coughing fit, and each cough caused my ribs to scream with pain. I turned my head to the side and caught Volce sitting up, smoke rising off his head. One side of his face was pressed in. The edge of his mouth and eyes twisted down sharply, deforming themselves to fit the new shape of his head. Dead foliage had dug itself into Volce’s face.

I could feel his desperation, his fear. Volce raised a hand to ward off Berlin. “We’re paired. I can read his thoughts. He doesn’t know her.”

Scowling, Berlin lifted herself off me, drew herself to her full height, and stalked over to the deuce. “You’ll need more than your devil’s words,” she spat. “Prove it!”

Volce gaped at her. “Are you fucking insane? I can’t lie!”

Berlin pointed her gun at the deuce.

Panicking, Volce raised both hands and screamed, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. Lucifer’s ass, you’re fucking insane!”

“Spit it out!”

“Okay, okay,” he said carefully, as though trying not to spook a stray dog. Through our connection I could feel a deep-seated fear, something that had lived with Volce for a long time, a fear that had little to do with the gun at his head.

“I know that valax,” he began. “Her name is Silica Sin Librassi, and her last two names are bullshit. She’s powerful—probably up there with the Marquises—and she’s been around for way longer than any other demon I know.”

“Name doesn’t matter. Rest is obvious. Anything else?”

Volce cocked his one good eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t know her? I’d figured you’d know her since you’re a demon hunter. She’s pretty famous in those circles.”

Berlin stared at him deadpan. “You have to the count of three before I erase you. One.”

“Er, I mean, it’s perfectly normal for you not to know her!” the deuce wailed, waving his hands frantically. He paused to see if Berlin would keep counting, but she was waiting silently. Volce let out a long sigh.

“Okay, so, here’s the story. A few decades ago I got caught up with a demon hunter, back when they were everywhere. These days you hardly see ‘em, but a while back they had all of these underground hubs that they used for exchanging information.

“Well, this guy I’m with gets an anonymous tip one day. He’s told to go to some back-alley bar by a close contact. We find the place well enough, and when we walk in the room is all cobwebs and dust. And rats. There’s rats hiding in every corner, and they’re all just staring at us. Real creepy.

“Guy thinks, ‘Valax.’ And he was right, not that it really mattered. The rats start swarming us. I tried to float away, but the furry assholes started jumping me from the rafters. They pin us down, then from the back of the room walks in this valax.”

As Volce was relaying the story, sensations flashed through my mind, passed to me by our connection. The smell of the dust, the scratching of the claws, the fear radiating into me from the valax’s dull black eyes—it all felt like a simulation, like I was on a virtual roller coaster ride and the thing was tilting to mimic the G-forces.

“Sure enough, it’s Silica, though we found out her name later on. Anyway, she hands us a strip of wood with a demon’s name carved on it. It had basic instructions about where to find the demon and stuff.

“Now, I don’t know about you, but if a creepy valax catches you off guard with an army of rats and tells you to go hunt a demon, you’d probably—”

“Get to the point!” Berlin snapped.

Volce flinched back. “Right right. So anyway, this guy I’m with starts taking her missions, and she had a lot. She’d tell him which demon to erase and he’d go do it. He wasn’t the first one either. Word around the hunter circles was that she offered the hardest jobs, and only to the best.

“However, I haven’t been bound for almost two hundred years because I take stupid risks. I knew that valax was going to be the death of that guy and I managed to shirk our deal. Sure enough, one of those missions ended up killing him. That’s everything I know about her. She’s mysterious. Nobody knows what she wants or what her Hound is.”

There was a long silence, with Berlin drilling a stare into Volce and the deuce glancing around nervously. Then Berlin cocked the revolvers’ hammer.

“Three.”

“Aaaargh!”

Volce dived to the side as Berlin fired. The bullet hit the earth. Then she stuffed the revolver in her inventory and turned to walk away.

I could feel relief pouring in through the connection, and a heavy dose of frustration. If I listened to Volce, I’d have let Berlin go. However, I was far too pissed to care.

“Hey!” I croaked.

The demon hunter glanced over her shoulder at me. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. Don’t push it.”

I knew that. Volce knew that. I ignored it all. Pushing myself up to my feet, hand clutching my side, I said, “Where did you get that gun?”

A flash of anger crossed Berlin’s face. “Why do you care?”

“After accusing me of lying? Accusing a demon of lying? Fair enough if you just killed us, but that was low. That’s something I’d expect from a bunè, not a human.”

I took a painful step forward, swallowing the pain. Panic was racing through the connection with Volce, though I didn’t need to be paired with him to know how he felt. He was frantically slicing a finger across his neck behind Berlin’s back.

“If you want to be a little more humane, then at least answer that question.”

Berlin stared hard at me. Those black eyes drilled right into me, telling me that she could crush me in an instant. I tried not to breathe, as each time my lungs expanded my side would scream at me that I should roll over and die.

Then, to both my and Volce’s bewilderment, Berlin clicked her tongue. “It’s mine by right. The administrators stole it and put it in the Culling. I took it back.”

“By right?” I repeated.

“It was my mother’s, but she’s dead now. I inherited it.”

“You—your mother?” I stuttered. My whole body trembled. The pain in my ribs faded completely as blind rage consumed me. “That gun is Erasure, and it was given to me by my mother! It belongs to me, not you.”

There was a moment of confusion in Berlin’s pitch black eyes, then her features twisted into a vicious scowl. She stomped up to me. In a flash her hands were wrapped around collar and my feet were off the ground.

“Your mother?” she spat. “You think that’s fucking funny?”

I glared back at her, defiant. My red eyes meeting her black. “Her name was Terra. She was a demon hunter. She was killed five years ago.”

“Oh, you read the fucking news. Good to know you’re not a complete neanderthal.”

Her grip tightened around my collar and the cloth started cutting into my neck, making it difficult to breathe. I wanted to kick her but knew that even without a weapon Berlin could kill me without effort.

“You know what’ll be even smarter?” she went on. “If you learned to shut the fuck up and be grateful when someone decides to let you live.”

She dropped me like a sack. In pain, in fatigue, I crumpled to the floor. I sluggishly pushed myself up and tried to stare at Berlin defiantly, however the demon hunter had already turned to leave.

Over her shoulder, she shouted, “I’ll be watching you, so don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

There was nothing I could do to make her stay. To make her answer my questions. She wasn’t a demon, so all of her answers could be lies. She wasn’t a demon, so she had no reason to give an answer in the first place. But most importantly, she was a human, so killing wasn’t something she just did when reason dictated, and that was probably the only reason I was still alive.

Then in an instant, she kicked off from the ground and she was leaping across the forest like a leopard on the hunt. It was only when she was gone that I no longer had a reason to pretend my side wasn’t splitting with pain and I collapsed on the earth, groaning.

Volce, too, no longer had a reason to maintain his act. He leapt up into the air and shook a fist at Berlin’s trail.

“Yeah, you should run away, crazy bitch!”