“Dear God, I wish you were real,” Volce trembled, “because then it wouldn’t look so weird when I beg to get out of this bullshit!”

I grinned at Volce. “So that was all false bravado before, huh? It almost sounded like you lied to me.”

“That was before I knew what we were up against!” Volce shouted. He thrust a finger at the tide of black glitching over a distant hill. “How the fuck are we supposed to deal with that?”

“Easy. Just follow the plan.” Though I tried to act like I was unfazed, I couldn’t stop my legs from trembling. This was far outside what I had expected. The estray hadn’t even shown itself, but if it could produce this many digressers, it would be strong.

“Okay, okay,” Volce said, waving his hands. “But we don’t have to go down there, right? Since you can’t do shit without them and I can’t do shit if you don’t do shit, we’re just supporting the others. Which means that the plan doesn’t start unless the others initiate, so if they don’t attack, we’re good!”

I was already pulling a pinch of ash out of my inventory. It was from the autothith I’d erased on day one. Now we were at day four. I’d already forgotten what day of the week it was. It didn’t matter.

“Volce, want to make a bet?”

The deuce’s panic faded in an instant and he cocked an eyebrow at me. “You want to gamble with the lucky demon? You really must have your brains in your mouth.”

I tried not to let Volce’s beyond terrible understanding of anatomy get to me. “When I created this plan, the intent was to have Toll and Enzi blast a pathway to the estray and for Markus to ward off the area with fire.”

Volce crossed his arms and nodded.

“I bet you that Markus will defy those plans and be the first to attack. If I’m right,” I pointed at him with the black and red ash piled on the tip of my finger. “Give me that needle of yours. The one you tried to kill me with.”

“I didn’t try to kill you,” Volce said hastily. “Just threatened. You know what a death threat is, right?”

“Do we have a bet?”

Volce rubbed a hand to his chin. He was delaying. It made sense. I’d gotten a good sense of Markus’ behavioural patterns over the last few days. If I was right, his hound involved something concerning greed. He would take every chance at his disposal. Couple that with my heavy suspicion that he was hiding his power and it all made sense. After all, few demons could tank a shot from Wrongtonk like that. Today was the day that Markus made his strength known, and he’d use that secret to suck up as many points as he could. Possibly even try to take out the estray on his own—that was a concerning thought.

I glanced out at the swarming tide of digressers. The hills that they crossed were completely lifeless, having had their foliage removed from reality one too many times. Yeah, I highly doubted Markus had enough power to take on that alone.

“Alright,” Volce said finally. “But if I win, I get to keep every rabdos you find from now on. Plus, you have to follow every order I give you, even if it kills you. Plus, you can’t use my luck to cheat those conditions in any way.” He held out a hand to shake. “So do we have a—”

I grabbed his hand and shook immediately, much to Volce’s surprise. He’d offered an intentionally ridiculous price for failure to try deter me. It wasn’t going to work. I’d designed that plan knowing Markus would charge in recklessly. The purpose was to get him locked in a fight that was too difficult for him, so that the rest of us would be able to carve their way in when all attention was on him. Even a one name had their limits.

I let go and Volce stared at his hand with a look of absolute terror. “You—I didn’t—fuck!”

As though to rub ash in Volce’s wounds, a roar came from below us. Flames billowed into the sky. I could make out a small dark figure below. Markus had not only gone first, but intercepted the horde of digressers well ahead of the intended battlefield. From here, it was about half a kilometre. And the line of sight from here was perfect, given that the flames were pouring out atop a hill.

Two victories in the span of a few seconds. Today was a lucky day, and that was before I paired with Volce. It also made me forget about the fact that I was about to march into a horde of reality-eating monsters and face off against whatever the fuck made those things.

Next, a crude javelin soared through the sky. Briary landed directly in front of the pack of digressers, behind the wall of flame Markus was putting up. Thorns shot out and impaled dozens of digressers, igniting from the fire as they passed through it.

Then far off, a copse of knobbly acacias fell as one as a gust of wind sliced a path clean through the horde of digressers. Enzi burst from the toppling copse and leapt inside the circle of fire. Toll reappeared inside as well and grabbed Briary, then faded away into mist again. Digressers charged into the flames and sizzled themselves to death.

Grumbling to himself, Volce stuck a hand into the air.

“Not yet,” I rushed to say, holding up a hand. “You can give me the needle any time.” Then I beckoned him over.

Though it functions similarly, a bet is somewhat different from a contract. For starters, there isn’t any official contract formed, just like when betting with a human. You’re probably wondering, what prevents them from just flaking on the bet just like a human. It’s simple: the need to maintain truth. Since there is little room for wiggling your way out of the conditions of a bet—I’ll pay this if that happens is as clear cut as it gets—demons have to pay or else become liars. However, there’s no condition on when the payment needs to be made, only that they must in order for their word to be true.

Volce grumbled as he made his way over to me behind the outcropping. “Are we going yet? What’s happening? I’m still pissed at you but I don’t want them taking all the points.”

“Not yet.”

Suddenly, the digressers all halted their charge through the flames. Not letting up, Markus pushed forward and scorched as many as he could, but they were backing up now, getting away from the searing flames.

Then a dark hand like solidified oil reached up over the ravine wall that was almost as wide as Markus was tall. Another followed, then another. A three armed estray slowly raised itself over the edge of the ravine. There was no way to describe this thing other than… wrong.

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Its head was flat, grey, and scaly, and protected by a dark hood that fanned out an entire human body length to either side which flapped of their own accord. I would have said it looked like a snake if not for the lack of nostrils, eyes, and any gap distinguishable as a mouth.

As the estray slithered over the ridge, a path seeming to dig itself into the dirt before him, it kept growing and growing. Its body was long and sinuous and for a heart-stopping second I thought there would be no end to it. However, once about ten metres of tapering tail slithered its way out, the thing finally stopped moving.

Its head darted from one side to the other, as though observing the devastation despite having no eyes. Then it curled its tail around itself and raised its head to the sky. A dark line split the side of its head. With a sharp jerk its head tipped sideways and then split open to form a maw that lacked teeth. The two halves of its grey head kept splitting along the divide, like oily sinew stretching then coming apart, then snapping back into the edges of the divide so that its growing maw simulated teeth. It kept pulling apart well beyond what any mouth would, until its head was snapped back so it was almost flat.

Then it screamed.

It wasn’t like any scream I’d ever heard before, mainly because there was nothing to hear. Everything went silent. The roaring of flames, the hush of the wind, the constant chitter of insects—all gone. I couldn’t help but watch in a mixture of fear and fascination.

When the silence faded, I still felt like I was deaf. Everything had dimmed from my consciousness as I strained my attention towards the estray. Then the thing lowered itself onto its three lopsided arms and slither-crawled its way to the circle of flames that Markus was no longer adding to. All three demons had their attentions focused on it just as I, though unlike me, they were holding their weapons at the ready.

No matter how well thought out my plans were, I had never anticipated that fear could undo it all.

“Hey!” I heard on the edge of my consciousness. “Snap the fuck out of it.”

A hand stung my cheeks. It swallowed my attention entirely—pain brought me back to the present. Then like a switch had been flicked, air escaped my lungs and I gasped for breath.

In my fear, I’d been holding my breath for almost a minute. If Volce hadn’t slapped me, I might have passed out. I started going through a list of my belongings to get my thoughts in order. Knife, check. Ash, spilled some but mostly there. Jacket? Gone. Panicking, I stuck my hand in my inventory and felt it. In storage, where it ought to be. I let out a sigh of relief.

Volce’s upper lip curled. “Hey, are you actually getting cold toes or whatever? Lucifer’s tits, I just wanted to snap you out of whatever auto-suicide you were undergoing, but if you want to run, I’m for it.”

“No,” I huffed. “I can’t back out now.”

“Human, you’re more petrified than a tree in Hell. Give it up. You’re not going to make it by denying what you are, so just throw in the blanket and—”

He stopped talking the moment I paired with him. The deuce could feel my fear, but I could feel his eagerness. He wanted to erase that estray. He wanted those points. He wanted to win. And now, I did too.

Putting my hesitation aside, I raised the pinch of ash on my finger and said, “Here’s hoping this shit doesn’t kill me.”

The deuce blinked at me, then his face paled. “Wait, you’ve never used ash before? Fuck! I knew I should have spent less time digging around that porn stash in your head! You know how many people have died trying ash?”

Plenty. So many desperate fools looking to take revenge on the demons for an unfortunate loved one’s death or in protest against shitty work conditions. Ash was like meth on crack: it’d make you something else, if it didn’t outright destroy your body in the process.

Without ceremony, I stuffed the ash in my mouth and tasted fire. If Hell had a scent, this was it: sulphur and charred meat that singed the mouth so thoroughly that it felt like my whole body was on fire. My body reflexively tried to cough but I held it back and forced the ash down my throat.

It went down slowly and everything it passed through burned: neck, lungs, heart, stomach. It wasn’t just simple heat, however. Those organs were overworking themselves. I was breathing too quickly. My stomach churned. My liver practically squirmed inside of me. And my heart raced faster and faster and faster. That beat became so heavy and fierce that it was all I could feel, all I could hear. I clutched a hand to my chest. I couldn’t take in enough air. My whole body was cramping up and I was sweating rivers. All I could do was focus on trying to breathe. All I could feel was the thumping of blood in my ears.

Then my heart stopped.

As in, one moment I could feel an impossibly rapid beat reverberating through my body, then the next there was nothing. My first reaction was to justify it. Sure, I couldn’t feel it, but humans usually don’t feel their hearts beating. However, I had a hand over my chest. I should have felt it. My breath was getting more laborious. My vision faded into a pinprick where all I could see was Volce collapse to the ground and clutch at his chest.

My mind then flared into a panic. I needed to get my heart restarted. I raised a fist and slammed it into my chest. Nothing. I did it again and again. Everything was going dark. Desperate, I balled one hand around the other and was about to thump my chest, when I felt my heart start again.

Everything cleared up in an instant. My breathing was no longer laboured, my chest neither cramped nor was my heart trying to escape my rib cage. My vision returned to normal—in fact it was sharper than ever before. I could make out faint lines running through the blade of my knife, which had no start and no end, yet I could tell they were many. The blade of my knife…

I had it gripped in both hands with the point aimed at my chest. In my panic, when I’d gone to thump my chest with both hands, I’d forgotten I was holding it and almost stabbed myself.

Yet under the influence of ash, I wasn’t horrified at all. The fact I’d almost died meant little to me, since life was just a passing moment in eternity. Well, that’s not quite what I was thinking at the time. I’d had a much better understanding of it then, like I’d been trying to solve a riddle all my life only to realise that the answer was so simple. Now, trying to grab that answer was like holding smoke: fleeting, pointless, and only left me feeling like a fool.

I stood up calmly. My fatigue was gone. The slight creak I’d been developing in my left leg over the years, aggravated over the last few days as I limped subtly from the digresser bite, didn’t elicit a groan when I stood. I felt light. I felt strong. But most importantly, I was aware of everything.

Volce rose off the ground slowly, rubbing his chest. “The fuck just happened?”

I opened my stat screen.

[Ash]: 7/100

“Seven percent,” I answered simply.

The deuce gaped at me like I’d grown horns. “The fuck is that?”

I didn’t know what was so hard to understand, especially since he could read my mind. Seven percent ash saturation. That seemed to be my limit for how much ash my body could handle for now. Until I was able to understand the phenomenon better, I figured it would be best not to push my luck by taking more.

I shrugged. “Get a weapon. We’re going to hunt an estray.”

Volce’s expression shifted to neutral. He stuck a hand into his inventory and drew out a comically colourful hammer. Its head was far too large for the thin, intricately carved wood that made its handle. The patterns that covered the head were outrageous. Stars and circles and lines, in vibrant red and yellows, covered the head which was neither metal nor stone nor wood.

Mallus, Class 6-A. A rabdos which grows the more ash it consumes, and unlike most other rabdoses of its class, it doesn’t need to be supplied ash by the user. But don’t let the size fool you, it’s light as a feather. Don’t let the weight fool you, it hits like a train. Many a demon have been vaporized on its face.

So that was where Mallus was hiding. On the night we’d met Markus, Toll had mentioned that the demons trying to ambush us had Mallus. Volce must have hidden it from them, somehow. After all, it was pretty famous.

The hammer was longer than Volce was tall, and the deuce swung it around himself in a wide arc with measured ease. I could feel Volce’s excitement trickling through our connection. “Good to see you’re done being a little bitch,” he jeered.

It occurred to me then that his mouth never properly matched the sounds that he was making. A riddle for another time.

I nodded then leapt over the cliff without another word.