His back became slick with blood, and the innards that littered the floor made it easy for his body to slide across the bare ground as he was being dragged.

“I guess I should thank them then?” whispered Cehedia before swiping his knife at the area just below the leg that was being dragged.

“Ugh.” He had been hoping that the thing dragging him was at least sort of tangible, but it seemed as if he was having no such luck. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the thing that was killing people finally came into view. It was a 10 feet tall figure, with a humongous body, its features obscured by the mist.

Cehedia was suddenly jerked into the air, where several other examinees were floating as well, waiting until it was their turn to be eaten. One of the boys next to Cehedia was pulled towards the beast, his hands stretched out towards Cehedia as if pleading for help.

“It’s slow,” realized Cehedia as the boy was lifted above the beast’s mouth before his body exploded like a balloon, a good chunk of his innards missing the beast’s mouth entirely and falling to the ground.

One of the girls that had been captured began mouthing something inaudible, and a split second later a glowing light pulsed from her eyes. The image of an angel surrounded her, and a pair of massive white feathered wings sprouted from her back.

*Hwgeherhe*

The beast seemed to notice this and tried dragging her towards itself, however, its link had been severed by the light, and the girl flew higher into the air. Even from where Cehedia was floating he could tell that the girl was relieved, she flew even faster towards the sky trying to escape the carnage entirely.

“You can’t use gifts for prolonged periods of time, I wonder how she’s going to ge-“ Before Cehedia could even finish his sentence, the girl came plummeting down towards the ground, however right before impact, something grabbed her. The girl’s eyes opened wide in terror as she realized what it was. Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to free herself, but it was all for naught. The beast tugged at her limbs, pulling so hard that her joints became dislocated. A second later it all came undone, blood sprayed to the ground before her dismembered body parts were tossed aside.

{Let me out, let me have a go at him.}

The beast slowly turned its enormous body and dragged another victim towards it. The sound of tearing flesh, crunching bones, and popping joints filled the air. The beast would periodically kill a victim and repeated the process until only Cehedia and three other boys remained.

Cehedia’s body trembled in fear as the invisible vyse that held him in the air pulled him towards the beast. His body hovered above the beast’s enormous mouth, before he felt the vyse let go of him, and he dropped towards the gaping abyss which was the beast’s mouth.

“Seth, attribute darkness.”* With those words, he disappeared into thin air, and the beast chomped at nothing, shattering its teeth due to the impact. Cehedia appeared behind the beast, his knife glowing a brilliant black color as he stood there staring into the mist.

“It’s like I thought,”* he tried whispering as he caught his breath. His hands were still shaking from the shock of near death, but his eyes remained calm, never averting their gaze from the beast’s figure.

“It’s an amalgamation of flesh. An overgrown flesh-glob.” Cehedia was familiar with flesh-globs, in fact, they were the reason he was able to make money in the shanty districts. You see, when people died, small demi-demons called flesh-globs would take control of their bodies, and over time seek more flesh to increase its size. As a deterrent, people would usually chop up dead bodies and feed them to mice before the flesh-globs could get to them.

There were very few incidents in which flesh-globs made it into hive cities, but there were still some, and if they weren’t dealt with quickly they would turn into this.

“But why the mist? It doesn’t make sense.”* Indeed flesh-globs didn’t have any special abilities like true demons, they were more like wild animals that used only their brute strength.

Cehedia’s blackened blade began flickering, before going back to its normal state. The thin blanket of darkness that surrounded him disappeared as well.

“Well, it doesn’t matter, I just have to stay still right?”* As he mouthed this, a slimy miniature creature snaked its way among the corpses that were littered about. After entering the ear of a dismembered head it came out of its mouth, continuing its search amongst the meat sacks.

After standing still for 20 minutes, Cehedia’s legs began to show signs of fatigue. They felt like stiff boards, and his muscles were screaming at him to sit down and rest. But he knew that was suicide, he had been watching the beast for the past 20 minutes and it hadn’t moved an inch since it ate the last boy.

10 more minutes passed and his legs began shivering under his weight, he knew he wouldn’t be able to last much longer. He was already lucky that the enemy he was facing was one he was familiar with, but the addition of this strange unknown power made it exponentially more difficult for him to deal with it.

Once again another slimy creature snaked past him, puncturing a hole in one of the corpses before entering it. The creature crawled inside the corpse's flesh before bursting out. It snaked its way closer to Cehedia, stopping at his feet as if inspecting what exactly was in front of it.

“I’m not a corpse, fuck off!”* He wanted to scream, but no words came out. The creature crawled up his leg, before trying to puncture a hole in his calf. A split second later, the creature’s body fell to the ground, cut neatly in two.

*Hwegfhere*

“Fuck!”*