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Even now, with all the experience he'd acquired using this power, Vanderberk could not rightly say what exactly it was. He had a sense that the things within the Inferno were not as they appeared to be--not sentient beings with minds and wills of their own, at least.

But he knew for certain that they were not illusions, either. That was why his invisibility was so important when using it. If he did not conceal himself, then the Inferno would attempt to devour him, too.

Not that invisibility alone was enough to wholly avoid the Inferno's attention. It just wouldn't go after him while a more obvious target lay in front of it.

And while it might have been wrong to say that the mad, twisted forms that inhabited the Inferno were alive, the Inferno itself undoubtedly had a certain level of sentience. That was why he'd taken to calling it the Living Inferno, after all.

It always made its desires known to him. Its fury. Its hatred. But most importantly, its hunger.

Lozaro called them Devourers, the forms within the Inferno. And the name seemed apt.

"In a sense, you might think of your 'Inferno' as a single-celled organism," Lozaro had said. "And the Devourers, are the constituent parts which allow it to function. Diverse though they may appear, they ultimately all serve one, singular purpose. To feed."

"On what?" he'd asked.

"Whatever you provide."

He just had to be careful that he did not provide himself. For the Living Inferno was relentless. Until its hunger was sated, he would have a very hard time trying to deactivate it.

Here and now, though, Vanderberk was not yet worried. Perhaps the greatest utility of the Inferno was that it could sense things he could not. The Devourers would hunt his prey for him. Very likely, they would even kill his opponent on their own, but even if they didn't, then they would at least be able to point him in the right direction.

Because that was the real trouble with psychics. Their obnoxious tendency to hide. Rarely were they much of a threat once revealed. Most often, however, they did not work alone. He knew that it was therefore quite possible that he was, in truth, fighting multiple opponents, at the moment, and that the psychic was merely concealing the others.

He watched as the Inferno shuddered around him. Streams of Devourers swirled over to his right, their collective forms looking like rivers of mouths, arms, eyes, and teeth--among other barely distinguishable shapes.

He followed their lead.