We were walking again. It seemed to be all I ever did in this forsaken tournament. Walk, and not die. From digressers, and from demons as they tried to talk me to death. Fortunately, there was only one demon talking. Unfortunately, Volce was the noisiest demon I’d ever met.

“Which is why pairing is best done after a downing a fifth of vodka. However, if you drink too much vodka, you can get whopping headaches and—”

“I can’t drink vodka,” I lied.

Volce hovered up beside my head and cocked an eyebrow. “What? Well then, you’ll have to go for a pint of absinth, but I really don’t recommend that. Last time a human tried that they ended up in the hospital getting their stomach pumped by a hepheseth.”

“No, that sounds like a great idea. Get so blind drunk in the middle of the Culling that I can’t walk prop—”

As if the administrators were mocking me, I tripped. I didn’t see a digresser furrow and my foot got trapped in it. I landed awkwardly in a bush, which also had a nice gap through its middle where another digresser had carved through.

Volce cackled maniacally. He slapped his knees, pointed at me, made some weird honking noise as he mocked me. Gritting teeth, I shoved myself up and dusted my pants off. Volce got right in my face and laughed, slowly enunciating each ha so as to be as obnoxious as possible.

I took a swipe at Volce and he dodged easily. As long as I wasn’t using his power, he was too nimble to strike. He seemed to know that and floated around me as if to tempt me, his red face exuding a smug grin.

“Be careful, human,” Volce mocked. “You might trip and break one of your fragile little legs.” He shrugged. “Of course, if you paired with me that would be really unlikely.”

Though I had my suspicions that he’d caused me to trip, there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, tripping over could be caused by bad luck, and Volce’s luck was apparently strong enough of a power to compete with a one name. That was by his own admission, of course, and I was highly sceptical of it. With good luck, anyone could erase a one name or perform feats that were considered impossible by even the strongest demons. But consistently? Probably not.

What was also lucky was the fact that we hadn’t encountered any digressers, despite the incessant noise made by Volce. That, however, I suspected was the work of Silica. If she could control that many digressers so finely, then it was likely that she had taken all the digressers in the area for herself.

Growling, I ignored the deuce’s annoying laughter and kept walking. “We’re not pairing until I can trust you,” I said.

Volce’s laughter stopped abruptly. “Trust me? But I don’t trust you!”

“Every time you’ve had a knife to your throat, you’ve squealed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll just pretend everything is fine while someone is trying to turn me into demon sashimi. Oh wait, I can’t pretend, because I can’t fucking lie!”

I turned on him. Volce leapt back with a yelp, holding his hands up to defend himself. It was satisfying to see him squeal, but I hadn’t stopped so suddenly to make him jump.

“Do you want to win this tournament?” I asked seriously.

“Actually, I’d really like to play poker with four sentient dogs—yes, of course I want to fucking win!”

“Then I have a plan, and you’re not going to like it.”

The deuce folded his arms and his expression turned serious. “And I’m going to trust it because…?”

“Because winning the Culling isn’t about violence or even wit. It’s about taking advantage of systems.” I approached Volce and stared intently at him. “You don’t need to pair with me to know that’s the truth.”

A pause. We both gauged each other, looking for subtle cracks in demeanour. Eventually, the deuce sighed.

“Okay, fine, you have a point. So what’s this system you want to abuse?”

“I want to erase an estray.”

The deuce narrowed his eyes at me. “You? A human? Who can barely even hold up a knife? Who nearly got their lungs smashed in by a little kick? No.”

I stared at him deadpan. Volce’s face dropped.

“Wait, you’re serious. Wait, how? What are you going to do, bullshit it to death?”

I spun on my heels and kept walking, not bothering with his badgering.

Volce floated up beside me. “Or do you think I’m going to do it? Because that’s not fucking happening.”

“We share any points we score since we’re a pair,” I said.

The points we’d scored before pairing weren’t shared, but after that moment they were split evenly. For the few digressers I’d managed to stab before Markus, Enzi, or Toll stole the erasures, I’d netted a whopping 1.5 points, as had Volce, bringing me up to a disappointing 40.5 points. I still hadn’t figured out what Volce’s points were, but if he’d dived around in my head for long enough he might have gleaned mine. He never made mention of it, though.

“And?” Volce spat. “No use getting those points if we’re eliminated.”

“But if we’re not eliminated we can both score a ton of points. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be an accolade.”

Accolades: the third type of scoring available to the Ring of Betrayal, and one present in any but the last Ring. It’s simple. Perform an impressive feat and the administrators grant you extra points after the Ring. The problem was that the available accolades would always have something to do with the conditions of the Ring itself, and the administrators never revealed them to the Participants. All I could do was guess.

But it was a damned good guess, given that there was only one type of digresser in the entire Ring. At least from what I’d seen so far. Eliminating the estray that spawned them would not be easy.

I ducked under a low-hanging tree branch, then stumbled as my foot kicked up a root. I regained my footing quickly and trudged on. That Rise and Shine had eliminated all the fatigue I’d accumulated today so I was feeling as fresh as a human that had spent the day prior being chased by reality-eating snakes could possibly be.

“Sure, sure, sounds wonderful for a lunatic like you,” Volce said, rolling his vibrant red eyes. “What’s your plan for this suicide mission?”

I said nothing.

“Oh, fuck you!”

The thing is, I had a good reason for not saying anything. We’d been walking for two hours back towards our tenuous allies. If my stat sheet was to be believed, I still had contracts with Toll and Enzi, meaning they were very much bound to this world. There was no chance those two weren’t stalking me.

Toll had a way of disappearing that had nothing to do with their balaam abilities. They weren’t revealing it to anyone, and why would they? To stay hidden from sight was a great advantage in a tournament all about survival. What it meant, though, was that Toll could have been watching us. They could have been following us for hours. They may have heard everything we’d spoken about since our encounter with Berlin. Maybe sooner, if their hiding ability was strong enough to avoid Berlin’s ash-enhanced sight. Meaning that any time we opened our mouths, we were revealing information best kept from the balaam’s ear holes.

All of which pissed me off. The only time Volce was cautious was when he was dealing with me.

“Volce,” I said softly. “I just want you to know, I would have let Markus erase you if I knew your power was so trash.”

The deuce gritted his teeth and thrust a finger at me. He tried to speak, but only managed a strangled, “You… you!”

I shrugged and looked away, trying to stifle a grin.

With a growl, Volce darted ahead of me. Over his shoulder he shouted, “If I were a human, we’d make a great married couple, you know? Right down to the domestic violence.”

“It’d prefer to marry a demon; they don’t bruise so easily.”

We heard a rustling of leaves, and both of us whirled around. It took me a moment to remember that the digressers in the Ring of Betrayal never made noise. That had me more on edge. I was about to pair with Volce when I caught sight of feathers moving through the underbrush, then a golden eye.

I lowered my knife as Toll emerged from the green looking unscathed from their fight with the digresser horde. Their spear was at their side, not held in a threatening manner but still a threat nonetheless.

“Took you long enough,” I said.

The balaam nodded. “How did you survive the attack?” they said right away. We’d just found each other after we both almost got eliminated and the first thing the demon did was play their stupid question game. Lovely.

“Tactical rolls,” I answered. “Lots of them.”

Toll’s crest peaked for a brief moment. They opened their beak to speak, but then a loud crunching and murmur came from behind.

“Where in Hell did that bloody balaam disappear off—” Markus emerged from the brush and flashed a grin at me. The embers behind his eyes flickered with a radiant glow. “Oh, there you are human! Thought your human flesh had been used to make a stew or something.”

Following him was Enzi. Her hair was immaculately kept and silky smooth, unlike what you’d expect from a woman who’d just been through the fight of her life. Though her dress clung to her body, the neck wasn’t cut so low nor was the bottom lifted so high as to reveal herself whenever the thin material swayed in the wind. She gave me a relieved smile. “Oh, Algier, I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

A circle of iron glinted atop her head as she weaved through the dappled sunlight. Bitterthorn. No doubt she was using it to help track me down. Its ability to read intent extended a short distance, making it a good tool for detecting hidden threats, and hidden humans apparently.

Volce hovered at my side with his arms cross and a pout stapled to his lips. “Oh, yeah, I’m doing great. I really love it when people give a shit about me.”

“So Algier,” Markus said, sliding a hand through his slicked back hair.

Being ignored so caused Volce to throw up his hands and howl in frustration.

“I’ll give you a, ‘so Algier,’” the deuce grumbled.

The haures ignored him and continued. “Tell us what you’d been up to this whole time.”

This was the moment I’d been waiting for: the reunion with the other demons. I couldn’t not tell them about what had occurred to us, since they knew there was no way I could casually avoid an army of digressers. However, depending on how I told my tale, it would incite new questions and potentially stifle others.

Let’s say, for example, that I touched on a subject that ultimately led to Berlin. That would have put me in a situation where the demons would soon find out about her. And if I hid those details and Toll sniffed them out, the balaam would inevitably cash in a question to know some less comfortable truths. I had some very good reasons not to tell them about her.

I shrugged. “Met a demon. Valax. She was controlling the digressers.”

All three demons stared at me, then they glanced over to Volce, expecting him to confirm.

The deuce’s face contorted in disgust. “Oh, now you notice I exist! Fuck you!” He flipped them all a pudgy middle finger.

Enzi giggled into her hand. “I’m sorry. It’s been a stressful day.”

I glanced at Volce. “Just tell them about the valax. Toll won’t stop asking you questions if you don’t.”

Volce rolled his eyes. “Fine. It was a valax, a real powerful one. The name’s Silica.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Markus groaned.

“You know her?” I asked.

“‘Know’ is a very polite way to put it. That bitch has refused to have her names reassessed for hundreds of years by the Council of One. It causes all sorts of recordkeeping issues.”

The Council of One. A group of every one named demon that meets once a century. Amongst many other smaller duties, they attempt to negotiate peace treaties between warring demons as well as remove or add names to the attending demons. The exact decision-making process is unknown to anyone outside of the Council, nor does anyone know what records the Council actually keeps. To become a one name, you have to sit on the Council, though the nature of their attendance and discussions is, again, a mystery.

Toll cocked their head and stared at me. “What happened with this valax? How are you not dead?”

“She didn’t want to kill me.”

Again, they all turned to Volce, who shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t see shit. I was stuck on that asshole’s back the whole time, trying not to get chomped.” He jabbed a thumb at me over his shoulder.

“I did manage to ask her a question before she took off,” I said. “But, you know valaxes.”

With that, I turned and started marching. I put the sun at my back. In a couple hours it would set, and we needed to be somewhere safe by then. It also made it more difficult for the demons to catch my apprehension. If Enzi used Bitterthorn…

“Hold,” Toll sounded.

Though I didn’t want to, I could feel something tugging at me. Something deep within me, compelling me to stop. I stifled a grin.

“Answer me truly, Algier,” the balaam spoke. Their voice reverberated within my skull, shook my body to its foundations. “What answer did Silica the valax give?”

Tempting fate, I tried to lie, but the moment I’d opened my mouth to speak the words wouldn’t come out. Something tugged at me. That part of me that I called my soul kept beating out a steady rhythm of truth, truth, truth. I had no choice but to obey—yet it never felt like I was being forced. In a strange way, it was my own will to answer. The mind had tricked itself into believing that answering honestly was the correct thing to do, to pay back a debt unquantifiable. Fortunately, I had two answers, and the balaam only asked for one.

I turned slowly towards Toll. When I met their eye, it captivated me. It was all I could see. The world had dulled and greyed around that golden glow. That eye saw through me, and my soul wilted under its gaze.

Carefully and accurately, I said, “The one which basks under the scorching sun watches me.”

The full answer given, the truest answer received, a great pressure lifted from me. I gasped for breath, realising then I’d instinctively held my breath. The world grew vibrant again and all the details that had been drowned out by some mental trick became clear once more: the trees, the furrows carved out by the digressers, the four demons that stared at me with blank expressions on their faces.

The exact outcome I’d hoped for. Except…

A popup appeared before me:

[Questions owed] has been updated!

Toll: 2 Mundane, 1 Inquisitive, 1 Seeking (was 2)

[Corruption] increased from 5 to 6.

One less big question owed: good. One more corruption: bad. I realised that it was answering questions that raised my corruption rather than asking them. So even though I’d tricked Toll into lowering my debt to them, I was still getting screwed over. The state of my corruption was in Toll’s hands.

The silence was broken when Volce snapped his fingers. “Oooh, so that’s what Silica meant. Fucking valaxes.”

Enzi cocked her head. “I thought you didn’t see anything.”

“Hey, I saw a bunch of squigglies open their fucking eyes. I thought they were going to erase me. I didn’t realise it was a message.”

“Of course it was. Any strange behaviour from a valax is likely to be an attempt to communicate. You should always assume that.”

Enzi was correct, though it didn’t help her much. Valaxes are a strange sort of demon, and one that predates all other cantos. How long they existed before the next known canto, the bunè, is unknown.

There are two things that separate a valax from all other kinds of demons. The first is that they can’t speak. The second is that they answer every question you ask them, without fail. How is this possible, you wonder? Well, most can write, but they simply choose not to. Instead, they control the natural world. Birds, insects, reptiles, fish, even trees on rare occasions. All that which is familiar to them comes under their thrall. The stronger the valax, the more creatures that obey their will.

For example, the valax known as Harbinger, who sits on the Council of One, can control thousands of weaker demons at once. When a war breaks out that is undesirable for the Council, Harbinger will enter the battlefield and, alone, wipe out both sides in a single battle. His power is not to be trifled with.

By those same means, a valax will provide the answers you seek, assuming they have the answer. When I asked Silica what she wanted from me, she made her digressers open their eyes. In other words, she was watching me. When I asked her who she was, she closed a hand over my mother’s locket. Answers, of a kind.

This wasn’t too much of an issue for humans. In the case of strong valaxes, the answers would sometimes pop into your head. That’s what happened with Silica. That answer which had come from the divine was what I’d provided to Toll. But demons? Literalness. Since demons are terrible at interpreting things, few can effectively communicate with a valax. As such, they tend to leave them alone. It’s not like they have beef with a valax; they’re ancient demons that usually keep to themselves, and most others don’t see a reason to bridge that divide.

I raised a hand to silence them. The demons looked my way. “How would you all like to hunt an estray?”

They weren’t going to say no. The plan had already begun; they just weren’t aware that they were a part of it.