What remained of our makeshift arena was something too precarious for a fight. The whole thing was latticed with chasms, some as wide as I was tall. They stretched out across the hills and as far as the landscape allowed me to see, coming to abrupt halts only at the wall, where not even nothing itself could pass. Despite this, we were all still alive.

Digressers were coming in. The estray’s beams had torn through, maybe, thousands of them at once. Too bad there were plenty more. The land outside the failing flames was a sea of black. No matter how I looked at things, the wall of fire—now spotty from the estray’s beams cutting through it—was more of a prison than a barrier. One would usually think to fight harder in this predicament, but now more than ever was the time to stand back and assess the situation.

Toll was getting to their feet. The tip of one of their fingers had been shaved off, and a nasty gash spat smoke from their side. They ignored their injuries and rushed towards Briary, leaping over chasms, disappearing into mist half way there. They were going for the estray again which was rapidly reforming the wounds Briary had given it.

Enzi’s left foot was cut in half. Her left breast, despite having reduced them to manageable sizes before the fight began, was perfectly flat where the beam had run through. She transformed herself so that those spots appeared just as they had before, clothes and all, but smoke still rose heavily from them. On the finger of her left hand, the ring that called back Onryō crumbled to dust. When she caught sight of the rabdos crumbling, she scowled at it before letting her frustrations out on a pack of incoming digressers.

Markus’ suit had been torn to shreds, but aside from that he looked perfectly fine. The reason why was crumbling in his hands: a rabdos with a metallic head and hoisted upon a stick, which he’d used to protect himself. I had no idea what it was but it made no difference at this point. Unfazed by the loss of a rabdos, he went to patching up holes in the fire wall, casually sizzling everything that was still rushing through.

Volce’s clothes were a little torn but otherwise no smoke was trickling off him. The deuce had said his power lets his stand up to one names—it’s clear now he wasn’t joking. As I considered that idea, Volce glanced over and winked at me. He was in my head, still. Despite his lack of wounds, I could tell Volce was struggling. His rabdos, Mallus, was shrinking. If Volce landed a good hit on the estray he might be able to help it grow, but digressers left little ash for the hammer to eat and what they did leave was practically useless besides. That attack had cut off what little momentum he had gained, and Mallus was useless without momentum.

I was mostly unscathed, just scratched up from my attempts to avoid the beam. The oppressive silence had vanished and I could clearly hear the frustrations of battle. The heat was searing my skin and, judging by the lack of sweat, I was certain I was dehydrated. I considered joining Toll to get close to the estray. One hit on the estray with Everwant was all I needed, and the balaam made a great distraction. However, as romantic as a reckless charge would have been, I reminded myself that I was just a human and that I had limits. As soon as I thought that, a popup addressed my concerns:

[Ash] saturation down to 5/100

Fantastic. The fight hadn’t even lasted fifteen minutes and I was already running low on ash. I’d barely survived taking it and now it turned out I couldn’t maintain a saturated state for long.

I needed to end this soon. For that, I needed my knife. Fortunately, I found it in an instant, like my eyes were drawn to it, lying on the edge of one of the chasms the estray had carved out. I scrambled over to it. As soon as it was in my hands, I was furiously swiping at the few digressers who’d managed to hop over the chasms to swallow me.

However, even with the knife, even if I could land a strike with Everwant, I was really considering calling a retreat. Sure, I might be able erase the estray, but what happened afterwards? Could we really escape the horde of digressers? If we could, what would the other demons do to me? My whole plan was riding on this succeeding. This is the damned Culling: as few as one of us would survive. Given how heavily the odds were stacked against me, I needed to do something insane to survive.

I took a deep breath, which felt all so wrong under the influence of ash. An irrational plan was necessary. All the calm and need for precision that had come with that small bit of ash needed to be quelled, and so I reminded myself that I was here to survive not just today but the next eight Rings. Besides, it wasn’t all that bad. I was meant to have backup. How long did we need to hold out before—

I caught it in the corner of my eye. I spun to face the cliff I’d been hiding on earlier. If it weren’t for the ash keeping my heart at a steady beat, it would have stopped in my chest.

Climbing high into the sky was a stream of azure vapourised ash. Thick black clouds never let the ash vanish into the sky, so it was building into a cloud of its own. Then the ash stopped rising.

“Toll! Get back!”

The balaam appeared as they leaped over a swiping arm from the estray. They hacked at the spindly arm as they came through with Myst and the arm was severed clean. The balaam turned as they heard me, caught the tell-tale sign of Wrongtonk, then bolted towards the estray.

I didn’t take any risks. There was no point worrying about whatever ridiculous plans they had. I dived towards Volce and caught him mid air as he splattered three digressers at once. He yelped as I dragged him to the ground—he could deal with it. I needed the little shit alive.

I felt the shot before it came—a sudden pulsing of air, like the universe was parting in fear of the weapon’s might and I was being pushed along with it. Then, with a wave of heat and force unlike any I’d felt before, the bullet collided with its target and exploded.

I was knocked back by the sheer force of it. I felt like I was on fire—the radiant heat would have burnt me to a crisp if I weren’t using ash. I felt myself slip into a chasm and hastily slammed my knife into the earth. My ears were already hurting from the noise of the blast, but the moment the weapon’s sound caught up with the shot, I wished the deafening silence had returned.

The sky screeched in fury. I heard it for the first time, the sheer bloodlust and rage emanating from Wrongtonk. I wanted to cover my ears but I had one hand desperately gripping the knife, keeping me from going over, and another catching Volce so that he wouldn’t get flung into a horde of digressers.

When the blast subsided, I clawed myself back to my feet. Digressers had been blown away by the force so I was safe for now. The demons had all been knocked back, but otherwise were fine. I had nasty red burn marks scarring my exposed flesh, however the pain was dull and the damage wasn’t severe enough to slow me down, thanks in part to the ash. After all, the blast was concentrated on a single point: the estray.

A cloud of dust cleared from the middle of the ring of flames to reveal the estray. Its heads had been blown clean off. Where its body had once burst into a twisted flower petal of eye-less heads was now something resembling torn, charred flesh. The heads were simply gone. It was just one long tail. And it was still moving, if only to twitch on the spot.

The cause was Wrongtonk’s third mode of fire: a good old explosion. However, that force was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Wrongtonk featured in a number of Cullings in the past, and usually the explosion shot was the least preferred since its only real function was to break cover. It was generally strong enough to cause structural damage and burn a demon to a crisp if hit directly, but that? The half-remaining ring of fire was at least thirty meters in diameter, and I’d been close to the edge of it. The only answer for that sort of power was high quality ash.

And I only knew of a few Participants who could get their hands on such a thing.

Ash affords me many benefits, one of which being impeccable sight. When I looked up at the cliff, I could very clearly make out the markings on Berlin’s face, arms, and legs. I could almost read them. We exchanged the briefest of glances before she ducked behind cover. It almost looked like she was apologising.

A blade whistled past the back of my head. I spun to catch dark smoke from a digresser carved in two, and Enzi sticking her hand in her inventory.

“You should pay more attention,” she said with a smile. I could clearly hear the frustration in her voice, not through inflection but in undertone that was imperceptible to the human ear. For the first time since I met her, Enzi was no longer giving any care to her appearance. She’d shredded her hair with her sword to keep it out of her face and she’d moulded her dress back onto her body in a skintight scaled suit.

I shook my head. “Don’t bother with the flare this time. Berlin isn’t aiming for us so it won’t do anything. Just keep your distance and keep an eye on the cliff. When Wrongtonk stops spewing ash, get away from the estray.”

Enzi pulled out one of the water bottles I’d given her. It was filled with ash and she poured its contents over her blade.

“But this is the safest spot right here,” she said simply.

At that moment, the air in front of me parted like a clearing fog and Toll came tumbling out of it. Their knife, Myst, dropped from their hand, and in the other they clutched a heavily scratched up Briary. The balaam had smoke pouring off of their exposed back where the explosion must have struck them.

A digresser leapt at Toll from over a chasm and I punched my knife through the top of its head, erasing it instantly.

“Volce, cover me,” I shouted, calling out to little demon who was twirling his way back to me in a shower of black smoke.

“You’re not my maker, fire ass!” the deuce shouted back. Through our connection I felt a slight grumbling, but nothing I’d call a disagreement.

I knelt down and checked Toll’s condition. It was hard to say what constituted a debilitating injury for a demon, but the balaam weren’t moving. For a moment I considered swiping Myst off the floor, but then Toll stirred, scraped up Myst, and raised their head to look at me.

“Why did you warn me?” they asked, cocking their head.

I shook my head. “Because I need you to keep the estray busy.”

Toll picked themselves up, slid Myst into a notch on Briary length, and dusted off their torn and burnt rags. “Would it not have been better for you to let your human friend erase me?”

A number of digressers slipped in through a gap in the wall near us which Markus was yet to repair. Volce, Toll, and I all turned to fend them off. A jet of flame poured past them and Markus hopped over a chasm. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and with the other hand he patched up the wall, catching any loose digressers in the process. The heat pouring from his hand caused me to turn away.

“You know,” Markus said through gritted teeth, “the only reason I even went along with your little two-timing plan was because I severely underestimated the estray.”

So the bastards all knew about Berlin. There went the plan. In my frustration, I rounded on Volce.

“Don’t look at me!” the deuce snapped, noticing my death glare. “I didn’t say shit.”

“Then who—”

“Sorry,” Enzi shouted. “I really wanted to know what you were up to, but you were being so cagey. So I asked Toll and they said you were calling for backup.”

I’m guessing from there she deduced that it was Berlin who third partied our attackers at the lithium mine. But then… “How did Markus find out?”

The haures slapped my cheek with his free hand. “Because your crush desperately needed a Patch-me-up.”

Great. Good thing I was still emotionally numbed from the ash, otherwise I would have stabbed Markus right then and let myself be overrun by digressers. Fortunately, the demons were all taking care of the digressers for me, but that only left me in the middle, brooding, with plenty of time to think. First thing’s first: get the demons off me. I glanced up at the cliff. Vapourised ash was still rising.

“There’s just one slight problem with this,” I shouted. “Berlin and I aren’t allies. If you think she’s going to avoid shooting you because you’re next to me, you’re mistaken.”

Markus slapped my face again. “Let’s put that to the test, shall we?”

He doubled up on the heat. I was sweating like a forcalor just out of the water. Only a couple more seconds I needed. Then—ash stopped rising from the cliff and Berlin popped out from behind a rock, placing Wrongtonk on a rock for support. The weapon started pulsing blue light, indicating it was ready.

My face twisted into a grin. “She’s firing! Get down!”

As all four of the demons went to dive, I struck up with the knife at Markus’ hand. Reflexively, the haures pulled the hand away and I was free. I broke from him and charged towards the estray. A chasm was in front of me. Rather than leap over it, I let myself fall in.

The shot landed as I was half way in. The heat and air pressure blasted me in the face, causing me to flip backwards. Gritting my teeth, I waited for the right moment. I waited patiently, blocking out the endless nothing that was fast approaching me. When the world flipped upright again, I slammed my knife into the wall of the chasm with both hands.

I stopped instantly. The jolt was so sudden than my hand almost slipped off the knife and I thought for a second that I’d popped my shoulder out. If there were ever a time that I felt my knife was too good at what it did, that had to be it. But I did stop and had avoided the brunt of the blast as it roared overhead. I was overcome by a fleeting, gut-wrenching hurt as Wrongtonk’s cry carried into the afternoon sky—it wasn’t anything physical, but more like this odd desire to cradle an injured animal.

Then it was all silenced. I don’t claim to know the mind of an estray, but if I were a giant reality-eating snake who just got popped twice by explosions, I’d be pretty pissed. That silence was a furious scream.

I needed to get back up and charge at it. With Berlin keeping it pressured, my opportunity, my only opportunity, had come. I still had Everwant. There was a chance. The top of the chasm was far enough to leap up to, but I’d need to pull the knife after me. So I reached out for my inventory to grab my tie and—

That was when I noticed that my inventory was still opened, with the brass head of the cane known as Everwant sticking out from a hole in the universe. The air around it distorted in burst and sputters, causing the light passing through the spot to twist and warble.

Of all the times for something to glitch out on me, this had to be the fucking worst.