I dived as a koryf swept down from their vantage above me and swiped at me with the head of a wooden cane. Dust kicked up as they flapped their wings, then the koryf launched out of range of my knife once again.

Releasing a string of curses, I scrambled off the grass and faced the annoying demon. However, they were ignoring me. My first instinct was fury, thinking that it had decided I wasn’t worth the effort and was ignoring me accordingly. Rationality told otherwise.

The koryf had started circling the battlefield, assessing the situation. There was fire everywhere, and the source of at least half of it was the charred remains of his party members. Thorns had pinned one of the demons to a boulder. The single tree atop the hill we’d ambushed the party on—an ambush begun by Markus waltzing merrily out of the cover of the overgrown grass—had been severed and now lay flat on the ground, then subsequently ignited. The koryf quickly realised that the fight was lost.

With a great flap of their leathery wings, they banked hard and faced their squashed furry muzzle southward, trying to escape.

“Always so damned difficult,” I muttered. “Why can’t demons just erase themselves?” Well, it was purely wishful thinking. Suicide made no logical sense to them.

I stuffed my knife in my belt. With one hand I scooped up a rock and thrust the other into a hole in the universe. Out of my inventory I brought a pinch of ash and rubbed it all over the rock. Then I took a deep breath and calmed myself. I watched the koryf’s flight path, the rhythm of their rapidly beating wings, their awkward flutter. I brought the rock up slowly. Being too hasty would have only caused me to mess up my aim. Then with one smooth motion, I pitched.

The rock hit the koryf square on the left wing. Though there wasn’t much ash on it, the koryf let out a howl as the ash sunk into the most delicate part of their form. They tried to flap, but their motion was erratic now and they tumbled horn over heels. Grinning, I raced over to them.

The koryf crashed onto the ground in a cloud of grass, dirt, and smoke. Before they could pick themselves up, I’d plunged my knife into their chest and hacked over and over and over. Puffs of smoke scattered from the knife’s blade. The koryf, however, never bothered to resist. They just watched me with a vacant gaze as their body faded to nothing, until all that remained of them was a circle of ash underneath my knees.

There was no time to celebrate, however. Panting, I spun wildly in search of the rabdos that the erased koryf had been holding. There it was just a few metres away, a cane lying in a patch of burnt-brown grass. I scrambled towards it, my heart racing in anticipation. Finally! After two and half gruelling days clutching onto the skirts of these horrible demons, I was finally going to be able to defend myself.

Or so I’d hoped.

“Get down, Algier!” cried Volce.

I turned at the last minute to see flames barrelling towards me. I ducked and covered my head and the jet screamed overhead. The heat licked my back and neck, but otherwise I was unburnt.

As I raised my head, I saw Markus running a fiery torch over the grass, burning everything in his wake. In one long sweep Markus had fried most of the remaining hostile demons, indiscriminately turning them to flame and ash regardless of whether they fought or ran.

Coughing from a dried-out throat, I picked myself up again to continue my search. But when I scanned the hilltop, it was gone. I didn’t have to ask to know that it had been swiped.

Okay, that pissed me off but I wasn’t going to quit just yet. A heap of demons had just been sizzled out of existence, and they had to have a rabdos or two. Desperately, I kicked off into a full sprint.

The first rabdos I saw was a hammer lying in the grass, with flames prickling around it. As I made headway towards it, the air in front of me popped! I was knocked back by an overwhelming gust of wind and rolled along the ground.

“Sorry!” Enzi called out to me as she stuffed the hammer in her inventory.

“Simpering bitch,” I muttered under my breath.

I shot off for the next rabdos, a crossbow. However, an enemy demon beat me to it and was about to take off. No worries. I just had to chase them down, erase them, and then the rabdos was mine.

That was what I’d thought, up until the point I’d heard Toll cry, “Look up, Algier.”

Briary was whistling through the sky. After a quick calculation, I realised it was going to land right on top of the demon I was chasing.

“You fucking bird brain!” I growled, then turned heel and fled.

Briary exploded into thorns in such a violent burst that the demon was torn to shreds before they even had time to evaporate. The thorns were chasing after me, and at the last moment I threw everything I had into a leap. I messed up the landing and crashed hard on my shoulder. Letting out a gasp, I rolled down the hill, slightly too rocked from the pain to halt myself. I probably got half way down before I managed to sprawl myself out and stop my movement.

“I will murder them,” I said through gritted teeth. “I will murder them all. Slowly.”

By the time I crawled up the hill, the fight was over and my companions were picking up ash and rabdoses off the floor. My heart sank. There was nothing left for me, aside from a few scrapings of ash that the others had abandoned due to its quality being so poor.

That was it. I was done. I took a deep breath, then let out a mighty howl. I kicked a rock and sent it flying, barely registering the thumping pain it sparked in my toe.

“If I win this tournament,” I shouted at nobody, “I’m dropping nukes on every fucking demon!”

I grabbed a branch twice as long as my body and with a scream I hurled it towards the smouldering pile of severed tree, hoping it would burn. I paid for that outburst immediately as my shoulder spiked with pain. Bringing my rage to a less pain-inducing smoulder, I rolled my shoulder to try work out some hurt. At least it wasn’t my dominant arm.

Enzi approached me while stuffing a rabdos in her inventory. “Algier, are you okay?”

I turned to her. My eyes were bulging out of my head. My knuckles were turning white around the handle of my knife. She was practically insulting me! I had to remind myself to take deep breaths, or else I’d do something I’d regret. After a few seconds of breathing heavy and staring daggers at Enzi, the demon tilting her head to the side in an attempt to comprehend my behaviour.

“Oh, yeah, I’m perfectly okay,” I said venomously. “I’m super okay. I just need to take a few breaths, write a few lines of poetry, stab Markus a couple of times, have a nice bland cracker, then wash it down with some delicious water.”

“Wow, you must really like those crackers,” Enzi commented.

“Oh, they’re amazing.”

Enzi clasped her hands before her. “You know, I never properly thanked you for lending me that ash, and the bottles of water.”

Lend was an interesting choice of word. I’d done it intentionally to experiment with reducing my favours owed. It took an empty bottle filled to the brim with mixed ashes and three bottles of water, but I had succeeded, now owing Enzi one favour again. The reason it was one and not zero was because I’d asked the enepsi to lend me Speakeasy after our flight from the lithium pits. To my surprise, paying off a favour didn’t increase my corruption—that only made me more suspicious.

But you’re probably wondering, why did Enzi want water? It was for washing down any ash she got on her hands.

Even contact with ash is painful to a demon, though less so than pushing it into their corporeal form. Therefore, though demons don’t need to drink, having water of hand in battle is an enormous boon. A demon can always supply a rabdos with their corporeal form, but as battles rage on that slowly weakens them. Plus, there’s no need to use their form when you have a battlefield littered with ash. Of course, ashcrying, the name given to a very human-like response to pain caused by contact with ash, can stun demons temporarily if the cry was severe enough—that was how I’d brought the koryf down. Which means that a demon that can whip out a bottle of water to wash away ash is very difficult to stun.

“Allow me to return the favour,” Enzi said, her cheeks going pink.

“Book,” I said bluntly and held a palm out to her.

Smiling softly, Enzi took Speakeasy from her inventory but didn’t hand it over. “Now, Algier, this is the third time I’ve lent it to you. It’s a lot to ask a girl to keep putting herself out there—”

With a quick activation of Volce’s power, I swiped it from her hands. Enzi tried to pull the book away from me but, by pure coincidence, my hand just happened to be where she’d yanked the book back to. Without giving her a chance to respond, I spun on my heels and headed for a boulder to sit on.

Once the book was open, I’d calmed myself. I had no idea what had come over me a moment earlier, but I knew I needed to avoid repeating that outburst. Poetry did help, if only because it was so damned dull.

Rather than follow, Enzi watched me from a distance with a blank expression. After a few seconds, she turned and joined Toll, who was monitoring Markus’ current shenanigans.

One demon was still remaining. He was cowering before Markus, or at least he was doing what qualified as cowering for a demon. A bunè, of all things, had his hands spread apart in a sign of non-aggression and stood bolted to the spot, while Markus toyed with a thin flame that licked from a fingertip.

“I have information,” the bunè began, “about a group that has taken position near the Ring’s exit.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Markus said. “But what I really want is your points.”

“That group is powerful. They are over thirty members and growing. Even though you are strong, that group is far stronger. I can tell you more, but you need to cut a deal. Otherwise, I would prefer to be erased.”

The bunè was completely calm, which was characteristic of high name demons. They hardly showed emotions the way my shitty companions did, and were a far cry from humans.

Comparatively, Markus was about as smug and condescending as a rebellious teenager to their teacher. “That sounds lovely. How many points do you have?”

“Above thirty,” Toll answered.

Markus cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, juicy. I do hope that information is worth more than thirty points.”

I shouted over my shoulder, “Get the information, you pyromantic asshole.”

“Tell me what to do again and you’ll see how much of an asshole I can be,” Markus snapped back.

My desire to murder him had already faded by this point. I hadn’t actually shouted out of anger, but rather because it helped sell the impression that Markus actually would set him on fire. A game of Good Demon, Bad Demon, if you will. Actually, I wasn’t totally convinced Markus wouldn’t just light up the demon, regardless of whether he got the information or not. Markus was unpredictable, which is a terrifying prospect for a demon. Still, as long as he got the information…

After one more deep breath, my heart rate was slowing and my muscles were getting the rest they needed. Enzi was thankfully still ignoring me, accurately reading the atmosphere, which was both pleasant and a concern to me.

Realistically, I should have watched over Markus rather than sit on my ass and write, but I was so stressed at the time that I couldn’t bring myself to deal with the haures’ endless antics. However, his antics did give me an opportunity to rest. Or so I would have liked.

Volce hovered up in front of my face, blocking my sight before I’d written a single word. I was two seconds from thrusting the pen into his throat when I noticed his desperation.

“Hey, now’s not the time,” he whispered. He poked a finger towards a thicket just a couple hundred metres away. “A demon managed to slip away while we were fighting. We need to catch her. Come on, it’s free points. Nobody else has noticed.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “And you think they’re not going to notice if we just run off?”

“Who fucking cares? If we go now while they’re distracted with the captive, we can get points, plus any rabdoses that she has. You want a rabdos right? An upgrade from that shitty knife of yours?”

Though I knew it was a terrible idea, and I was highly suspicious of Volce actually helping for once, I still desperately wanted an upgrade. Even if a new rabdos was equally shitty—there was a large range of qualities, with some being even less useful than my knife—at the very least I could get a new rabdos to bargain with.

Sighing, I stuffed Speakeasy into my inventory and leapt off the boulder. The last thing I needed was Enzi picking the book back up and demanding a favour in return. Or, worse, Markus taking it. I quietly took the knife out of my belt and slipped off down the hill.

Nobody bothered to check on me. Why would they? I was the weakest member of the party; they were convinced I needed them more than they needed me, and they were right to a degree. That fact was something I needed to change.

We made it into the thicket without issue. I kept my head on a swivel. Digressers could pop out at any moment, and without the three erasure-happy demons to dispose of them before I even saw them, it would have been a hassle.

I turned to Volce. “Any idea which way she—”

The deuce shot towards me feet first and landed a drop kick into my gut. Wheezing, I was knocked back into a tree. I went to raise my knife but Volce was gone from sight. A moment later, he popped up from behind me and slapped my cheek. It wasn’t a hard slap, but it was enough to startle me.

Growling, I swiped at the little red bastard with my knife. Volce was ridiculously agile and he was using the full force of his luck to keep me whirling, so the knife missed him entirely and got lodged into a tree. Then he leapt up onto my shoulders and wrapped one hand over my mouth to prevent me from shouting. With the other, he pressed the tip of a needle to my neck.

“We have to talk, worm guts.”