It took them a surprising moment to find us. I had a week of school before they ever showed up. Unluckily for me, it wasn’t the last week. So I still got shoveled with meaningless assignments, and boring lectures about the ‘upcoming end of the year exams’ and all of that, without even being allowed to just go through with them.

Teachers were cramming words down our gullet, force-feeding information like we’d hollow out an die, just baby birds seconds away from starvation. Naturally, everyone was exhausted. I had a different reason to be exhausted as well.

Naïve excitement, and this desperate need to prove myself, had caused me to relearn how I’d used that tentacle-thing. It had taken around a day before I could summon it again, but as soon as I could, I was using it as much as I could possibly manage. Not only that, but I was testing the power of it.

Each time I summoned it, I would attempt to figure out how much power I was putting into it. Sometimes, if I stalled the veins from releasing for a second, the tentacle would be larger, and the reach would be farther. However, if pushed out faster, it would thinner, reach only an arm’s length away, but speed faster. What I’d learned after these assessments, however, was that I got tired quickly. My mom had practically forced me to stop training, and almost half-carried me to my bedroom (which was far too embarrassing to think about, or ever acknowledge had happened).

When they finally did appear, I had just finished an essay for English, and a Geometry assignment for Math Review. At first, I didn’t even assume it was them. When I walked up to the new door, and stared through the peephole, all I saw was three people. One was an older man, with graying hair and a raincoat. The second was someone about my age, red hair, brown eyes. The third looked middle-aged, disinterred and utterly bored expression playing across his face.

I opened the door and stared towards the three, not quite sure what to say, nor how to react. It took a second as I stared towards them, to realize who they had to be.

“Umm, come in?” I offered, not quite able to smile.

The old man nodded, and moved his way through the other two, casually sitting himself down upon our couch when he made it in. The red-haired girl looked me up and down, walked in, and sat down on the coffee table. It was the bored middle aged man who decided to speak to me.

“Since the others clearly don’t want to give you the introduction, we’re going to be working with you,” He nodded towards the other two, “That’s Vincent, I call him Vince,” The old man looked up and nodded, before glancing back at something in his hand, “And that’s Alyssa, trademark Blade of the group,” Finally, he turned a thumb on himself, “And I’m Carter, Carter Jackson,”

I was about to say something else, when Vincent spoke up, “It would appear that his focus is Eldritch,”

“What does that mean?” I asked, looking around at the group.

The old man was smiling slightly, and it was Alyssa that explained, “It means that you slot into the group nicely. Also, that you can summon eldritch monsters, and use eldritch energy with ease,”

“Well not with ease,” Carter corrected, “It takes time and effort to learn one’s focus,”

“Okay,” I replied slowly, “But what is a focus? None of this is really…Making any sense, y’know?”

Vincent sighed after a moment, putting down his piece of paper, “Yes, I suppose we are moving just a touch too fast. All Anti’s have a focus, or more specifically, a power to which they are attuned. I, for example, have an Illusion focus. This means that I can summon illusions, or demons that use illusions to trick the minds of humans; if I have the need,”

Carter spoke up after him, “I have an Elemental Focus, which means that I can control the elements at my own desire, or create specialized effects from them, along with the capacity to summon demons of elemental basis,”

Alyssa spoke last, “I have a Blade Focus. If there is a blade within my vicinity, I can control it, summon it to my hand. If there isn’t one, then I can summon it. A blade summoned from nothing must be held in my hand, but those summoned from the environment can be manipulated at will. I can also summon demons of torture, if their torture is focused upon the use of knives, swords, or any object that cuts,”

“And I have…An Eldritch Focus,” I supplied, and after a moment of thought, “Do we have any idea what I can do with it?”

It was Carter that spoke up, “You can think of Eldritch like…Summoning nightmares into the waking world. You can make things that no human being would ever want to see, and set them on your enemies,”

“It’s part of why you’re, essentially, the balance,” Alyssa replied, “You can think of Blade, Elemental, Illusion, and Eldritch as the four main Focuses,”

“Right,” I said eventually, still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, “But why can we summon demons? Aren’t we trying to push them back into hell?”

Vincent smiled at that, “Summoning a demon is quite different to them breaking through the walls of hell, I can assure you. As soon as one is finished with a summoned demon, they return right back to their realm of hell,”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

So in a fight against rampant demons, I would be summoning unimaginable horrors, Alyssa would be throwing blades around, Carter would use the elements. It was Vincent’s role that wasn’t entirely clear to me, considering I couldn’t imagine an illusion working on a demon. What if they didn’t have eyes, or some other sensory organ? I decided that, if I was working with them, I needed to understand his role specifically.

“So, um…No offence Vincent, but, what do you do? I get that you create illusions, but…How is that going to work against a demon?”

“Well, to put it quite simply, I don’t. Not really, at least,” As I opened my mouth to reply, he held out a finger, “I keep the absolute minimum of civilians from going insane,”

I nodded at that, slotting that away for future consideration. At the moment, I needed to figure out what we were going to do next. So, I asked. It turned out, the next thing we were doing, was demon hunting.

“Now, you’re not going to be fighting a demon today, I’m not going to force that from you. Rather, we will be searching for a demon, hunting for their trademarks,” Vincent explained in-front of me, “I would much prefer it that you have as much information as possible, lest we become separated, and you no longer have a clue as to how to do your job,”

“He likes to make all of this really dramatic,” Alyssa said beside me, “It’s easy for any Anti to find a demon on their own. We practically gravitate them,”

“That may be true,” Carter said in-front of us, “I would argue that it’s still important to know the basics; instinct alone cannot always guide the way,”

“Too true!” Exclaimed Vincent, “It is the mark of a true hunter to know the why and how of their instincts,” He walked forwards a bit, before coming to a halt, “Take, for example, these bricks,”

“What about them?” I asked, walking up and looking towards them.

They were old, as if they’d existed since the fifties. Steadily, it appeared as if age had taken hold of them, and a surface of rot had emerged from an underlayer unknown. But they didn’t look like anything special, just another spectacle of ages steadily passed, and pressures built upon as time pushed itself forwards.

“Artificial age,” Alyssa said, gaining an approving nod from Vince

“That is correct. Sometimes, the point from which a demon enters our world will have…Signs of decay, or lasting imprints of age that it should not have. Tell me, have you ever entered a building, and seen a particular part, or perhaps even something miniscule, that looked far too old for that which surrounded it?”

“You’re telling me that would’ve been a-“

“A demon? Quite,” Vincent responded, “Now, since there were no signs in the direction which we walked, I presume we keep going forwards,”

“Does he always talk like that?” I asked Alyssa in a whisper as we moved forwards.

“It gets kinda annoying, doesn’t it? I’d say it’s a coping mechanism,”

“A coping mechanism?” I replied quizzically.

She shrugged, “You’ll see,”

We walked onwards, and if it weren’t for the fact that the sun was just on the eves of the horizon, steading itself forwards, I would swear we’d walked straight into night. Perhaps it was the length of the buildings, steadily getting larger around us, or maybe it was merely a feeling, a sensation moving through my chest. Either way, the further along we walked, the more trepidation I felt enter my steps.

Finally, we stopped again, and Vincent knelt down, “Here, another sign. Most would argue that it is sulfur that leads upon the hints of a demon. Instead, it is charcoal for most. When entering from hell, a lot of demons will shed the burned bones of humans, or some other mass, burnt to a near crisp. From them, we find charcoal,”

“Why was this one so far away from the entrance sight then?” I replied; if they shed it near-immediately, it wouldn’t make sense for it to be so far away.

“If you were being hunted, would you try to cover your tracks, or just brazenly let everyone see where you are?” Carter replied before Vincent got the chance, “Think about it,”

“Right,” I felt a small blush rising to my cheeks, “Didn’t think about it like that,”

It made sense, if you thought about them as anything more than rabid animals. From the way they’d been described, I’d sort of just assumed they were like…Deer, not really capable of much besides running. But they were demons, so it made more sense that they’d be able to do a lot more.

We walked on in a steady silence, and I noticed that the demon had finally stopped trying to hide its tracks. If it were anywhere near a human reasoning thought process, it probably thought people wouldn’t have walked far enough to find a trace of it. Eventually, however, the charcoal cut off completely.

“How are we supposed to find it now?” I asked as we kept walking passed the tapering-off point.

“Just wait,” Carter replied, his voice dropping to a whisper, “Just wait,”

It was only then that I noticed the walks of the other three. Alyssa was slowly drawing a blade out from behind her back, Carter had his hand to a canteen I hadn’t noticed, and Vincent strode calmly, both hands held behind his back. As we moved throughout the alley, I started to hear it. It was a wet, squelching sound, with an undercurrent of pained moaning. If it weren’t for the other three, I would’ve stopped in my tracks.

We moved closer to the sound, which appeared to be coming from one of the buildings. Steadily, Vince walked forwards and placed a hand against the wall.

“Another fantastic trick,” He replied in a stage whisper, winking, as the door unlocked with a click.

“He places an illusion over his real body, and ‘dilates time’ so it seems as if he’s magically unlocking the door,”

“I protest!” Vince replied, a small smile on his lips.

Despite their joking, it was obvious that each was tense, and throughout their conversation, those wet squelches continued. Slowly, he pushed open the door. We walked into the back of what appeared to be a diner. Equipment was laid out throughout the kitchen, but all of the stoves were off. The deep fryer still guzzled away, but nothing sat within it. Steadily, carefully, we walked to the front.

Bodies. An entire diner’s worth of people lay strewn across the room. Organs pulsated across the ground in a twisted mockery of life, and within the center of it all…

Breathing, a gigantic breathing mass of flesh. Folds of strewn flesh, layered over with gigantic eyes, blinking in our direction. It had small stringlets of flesh that seemed dormant at its side for merely a moment. As soon as it laid eyes upon us, those strings arose in a whip-like fashion, darting forwards with a speed too fast for my eyes to comprehend.

In a moment, Alyssa was in-front of me. A knife held within her hands. She slashed down at a thin strand that seemed purely intent upon grasping me. It was a second that wrapped itself around my leg. I only had a moment to stare dumbly at it, before I was falling bodily onto the floor, rapidly shoved forwards by this…thing, that my mind could only loosely categorize as a demon.