It was morning in Gehenna. There was a new smell in the air.

  Old scabs were finally healing, bones knitting back into place. Leave it to dusk for the world to finally get its shit together. It was a signal from the planets core, now is the time, put on a brave face for the Demiurge.

  Such facts had a way of flowing downstream, so even small, meaningless, inconsequential trash towns like GutWorth felt it. For them the signal was dulled, imperfect and fragile. But they still felt it. In a tiny one-room apartment, curled in the fetal position, was a woman just waking up.

  Her limbs were undersized and scrawny. She had eyes too big for her face, and a mouth slightly crooked on the left. Her skin was the color of polished wood, like her father’s boat. Her head was covered by messy hair that was brown outside of two bright purple strands that hung down beside each ear, contouring her face; one of the only habits she maintained was keeping it trim. She had let her hair grow out in her previous body. But in her current one, long hair just didn't feel right.

  Now, to be clear, there were plenty of women in the city. Plenty of them without a number or kill to their name, but none of them were as small, or as cold, or as tired of being woken up by propaganda.

  "The Grand Council gave us Remarks to express ourselves in ways our tongues cannot!”

  So said the teeth-pierced speakers outside, strung up on organ-draped poles. They were on every block. If you knocked one down, two more would take their place the next day.

  “To dance with Death is to live. Our Remarks kill those who don’t know the steps.” The posh voice echoed off the dusty streets and sealed windows. Their mayor had such a way with words.

  A motley crowd seeped out from clay houses and sunken concrete tombs. They cupped their ears and kept their heads down. Everyone had to work, after all, even if none of the jobs were good. She watched them all from her room's porthole, her face propped up by her pillow.

  “A strong person has a strong Remark, this is true! Remember that Morgan Lemure, your rightful leader, is the strongest of us all. This is also true!”

  Repeated for years, the morning chant had lost all meaning to her. It only served as an alarm clock. She turned toward the mirrored walls of her apartment and did her hair, trying to get to the bottom of why it felt so itchy.

  Her name was Devon Near. She would eventually destroy existence, but at the moment she was checking her hair for lice. (Short hair also made it easier to confirm, no lice or bugs of any sort!)

  A rough knock on the far wall rattled the mirrors.

  “Rent’s due tonight,” the interchangeable voice of one of several rent collectors her landlord employed, “put it in the usual place, no exceptions.”

  Heavy footsteps plodded off. She heard the knocking again, distant this time, and then the same speech for one of her neighbors.

  Quickly, she opened her drawer and pulled out a bag of muddy red clay.

  Dreamdust. A drug that made you feel the thrill and ecstasy of violence without any of the risk. Rub it in your eyes and you’d get up to thirty minutes worth of blood, guts, and slaughter of all flavors. A lot of duelists used it when they wanted something less stressful than the real thing.

  She bounced the bag on the palm of her hand. It was a good heft. She had spent all of last night digging in the beaches for this, her hands were caked in dirt. She’d get a good price for it. She could cover rent for the season and then some. With shifty eyes, she slid the bag of dream dust into her front pocket.

  “There will be tryouts today to join Lemure’s Legacy,” the voice of GutWorth’s mayor proudly proclaimed, as if it was something special. Hah. There were always tryouts, she thought.

  Backstabbing was encouraged, and people were desperate to rise through the ranks. The higher your number, the stronger your Remark. The Legacy, or “Numbers” as they were called, were cruel townies on a never-ending power trip. Numbers wore armor based on Morgan’s own, with gaudy capes and dozens of badges. They were all stupid, worthless, mean-spirited assholes who loved to throw their weight around.

  And today she would be passing off her drugs to two of the cruelest.

  “Morgan Lemure reminds you all that dueling is egalitarian. If you believe yourself to be the true ruler of GutWorth, he will be happy to duel you and put that to the test.”

  Perhaps today, Morgan Lemure would visit the terrible diner where she worked. Stranger things had happened; his elite guard, the Constants, had eaten there more than once. Perhaps, if she were asked to grill him some food she'd put some poison in it. The kind that worked slow. That was what he deserved, she thought—an awful death for an awful man.

  And maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to lean in while his mouth bubbled with foam and say to him, “Do you remember me? Do you remember what you did to my father? Do you know who I am? Did you know that I saw it all?”

  Maybe in that moment he would try to apologize, reveal that, shockingly, he had a conscience. But she would never give him that. Her father never got such a chance.

  The thought of killing him was sufficient motivation to get up and actually go to work.

  She put on one of the eight pairs of blue and purple track jackets and jeans she had, one for each day of the week. As the door slid shut behind her, she ignored the loud buzzing of insects four doors down and the muffled sounds of an argument above as she trudged to work.

  The streets of GutWorth were not streets so much as sand dunes that buildings had happened to sink into. Devon dealt with the worst of it daily.

  The hot red sand had been smoothed down in lanes closest to port. Easy enough to walk on with practice. Not so in the outskirts. Height from one street to the next could differ by as much as fifty feet. Her shoes sunk into the sand again and again.

  The constant smell of burnt rubber lingered in the air. It was always present, no one knew why or where it came from. You got used to not knowing things here.

  The suggestion of a sky peeked in through the mountains high above her. Closer but still miles away was a giant wall that circled all she knew. It was a reflective blue tinged surface, heavily scarred with scratches and strange oozing sores. Though Devon couldn’t know if others thought the same, it felt as if they were inside of a massive hollow Drum. Like a crate, or a barrel, but built on the scale of an ocean. Having never been outside it, she wanted nothing more than to-

  “Devon!”

  Her neck hairs bristled as footsteps approached. Suddenly paranoid, she patted the bag of dream dust in her pocket as the voice said,”Where have you been? We barely see you anymore.”

  She didn’t recognize them. Someone else behind her chuckled. She kept walking forward and hoped they would get the hint.

  ”Are you sure that's him? I’m pretty sure that's a chick.” She stopped and gripped her thigh, suddenly very scared. It was a nervous tic carried over from her first body. Hopefully they’d think she was reaching for a concealed weapon or something.

  “Nah it’s him, even if it doesn’t look it. Idiot tried to off himself in the Shifting Waters. He just got boobs instead.”

  Not bad boobs, she thought to herself. Maybe the only part of her she was okay with, honestly. What they said was worded crudely but not wrong. She had jumped into the Shifting Waters assuming it would kill her. But instead she emerged in flesh tolerable enough that she never tried again.

  “Grand, I heard about that,” said the second voice, a bit slow on the uptake. The first voice had to be a neighborhood kid that hadn’t been killed or left town yet, someone who remembered her far better than she did him. “I would have never recognized.”

  ”Yeah, because it’s not her body. Her soul must have latched onto some poor corpse.”

  Well, her assumption was this body had been made for her; the alternative was too strange to think about. The Shifting Waters was not an exact science, its process was as mysterious as it was unpredictable. Everyone knew it sometimes changed those who fell in, sometimes it made monsters, but other times it simply didn’t affect the person at all. For her, the Shifting Waters had been kind, Grand knew why. And yet… every night she went to bed knowing something was still missing, but she always fell asleep before she could pinpoint what.

  Letting go of her leg, she arched her left foot and kept it firm, creating a trail in the sand as she pivoted to face them. This, hopefully, came off as badass and intimidating.

  There were three in total. The one in the middle was a guy with a prominent cowlick and a undeserved smug grin. He wore a trendy magenta to yellow gradient covered in symbols from the Great Deluge.

  ”Looks like she- I mean, he doesn’t want to talk,” said one to the left of Cowlick, looking stricken over almost gendering her correctly.

  She was mean mugging the three and trying to look as dangerous as her toothpick arms allowed. Suddenly, she remembered who Cowlick was. What luck, he was one of the few people she had leverage over.

  “Hey, you’re Norman.” she said. “I kicked your ass, didn’t I?”

  It was years ago, when her father’s death was still recent. Cowlick, real name Norman Certain, was rubbing salt in the wound. He said his daddy told him that her daddy deserved it. People like her daddy deserved to die, he said, ‘cause only the weak ever die. She kicked him, punched him, bit him, made him cry, all without summoning her Remark.

  If you knew her, the idea of Devon winning a fight was ridiculous enough to be a joke in itself, but she really did fuck him up back then. They were both kids at the time, and when you’re a kid your power is directly proportional to how angry you currently are. That was the only metric that mattered. And kid Devon was fucking livid.

  “I’m pretty sure you still have a scar from that.” She pointed at his nose, where there lurked a faint divot. “Yeah… that part there never fully healed. Too bad the rest did.”

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  ”Piece of crawl shit!” Norman ran at her and Devon took off laughing.

  She didn’t get far.

  There was a lightning strike in her brain, a sudden sense of occupancy that she could not explain.

  ”Capacity Kill.”

  Her run slowed, she was suddenly unstable.

  Something snagged her ankle and she hit the dirt hard. With a confused groan she turned over to see a coiled rope with eyes tied around her leg.

  Her scream cued laughter. Norman and his lamentable goons slouched forward with glee, she was still reeling from the voice in her brain. Was that a Trick of one of their Remarks?

  Holding the other end, the man to Norman’s left looked down at the rope and it suddenly vanished.

  ”Devon Near, I challenge you to a duel to defend my honor. I have two seconds here that won’t hesitate to kill you if you run again.” They both nodded in unison, Norman crouched down and offered a hand. “I’m not gonna kill you or anything. Just a friendly fight so we’re even. At worst you’ll get a few bruises.”

  She spat on the ground and got to her feet, shaking clear the weirdness. All five-foot-four of her stared up at his snot nosed face. She was pissed. At this rate, she was gonna miss her shift and her drug deal.

  “I’ll take your silence as acceptance,” he said.

  “You can take it however you want,” she replied.

  They were causing a scene. morning commuters and street vendors glanced their way, some even stopped what they were doing to form a crowd. Duels were always interesting, even if the competitors were absolute nobodies.

  He summoned his Remark. It always felt impossible, the way the weapon would appear from nothing fully formed and readily leap into its owners waiting grasp.

  Normans Remark was called Monothirst and was a mostly flat orange bludgeon with a hole in the shape of a skull at the larger end. It looked more suited to playing ball games than dueling, but most Remarks were strange. They always fit the person, and the jokey sort of ego this one suggested fit him quite well.

  “Alright Devon, lets see yours.”

  Devon did nothing. Someone in the crowd coughed.

  “Well Devon, I know you have a Remark. I’ve seen it before. Yours is like… it’s a dead fish isn’t it?”

  One of Norman’s goons laughed. He tried to steady himself with a hand on Norman, who swatted him away with his free hand.

  ”That wasn’t a joke, her Remark is a dead fucking fish.” He turned to the crowd now. “This woman is a shifter. She’s unsightly and disgusting, so is her Remark.” Devon wanted to give him props for gendering her correctly, but was more concerned with bum rushing him now that his back was turned. The crowd let out a collective gasp when she hit.

  She wasn’t able to get him to the ground, but she did headbutt him in the torso. Norman kneeled over in pain. She grabbed a metal bucket filled with crawlcow feed from a passing farmer and hit him upside the head with it. She would have continued but the weight was more than she expected, and she fell with the bucket, suddenly having to catch her breath.

  Norman was on the ground in no condition to keep fighting. With his concentration broken, his Remark melted back into nothing.

  He stared wide-eyed at Devon, seeming unable to comprehend that his record against her was now 0-2.

  The crowd applauded politely before departing. She overheard a few comments of disappointment that she hadn’t summoned her Remark. They didn’t want to see that though, she thought. They really didn’t want to see it.

  ”Capacity Kill”

  The voice again. “Whats up?” She mumbled to herself.

  No answer.

  Her heart felt like it was gonna burst. Physical exercise, the exertion of it, she felt it too rarely. The exhaustion though, that was familiar. She took a second to sit, let her body relax, and closed her eyes, as if waiting for something.

  “Make way, get inside! No one is safe!”

  She opened her eyes to see a platoon of Lemure’s Legacy marching towards her. They all wore masks of the fabled DearthWyrm BloodPrice as a cowl around their head, their faces covered by black cloth that represented the creature’s cavernous mouth. The one at the front pointed a gloved finger at her. “I’d suggest locking your doors tonight ma’am.” The soldier said.

  ”W-why? Has there been an attack?” Norman asked behind her, his hatred towards her forgotten.

  “An attack? An attack?” The Legacy member cackled. “It was no attack, it was a slaughter. A stranger by the name of Adam killed four of our Numbers. I saw it myself. I’ve never seen such ferocity, such cruelty, and with a Remark that didn’t look fit to cut mold! We’re spreading the word, take it to heart.” Devon couldn’t help but notice the strange glee the member had as she recounted it.

  Devon got to her feet and scooted past, feeling surprisingly light Sure there was a killer out there, but anyone who killed Legacy members couldn’t be all bad. Plus, she had just avoided losing a duel. As rarely as she was challenged to a duel, even rarer had she won. She deserved to be, if not happy, at least not miserable.

  The restaurant she worked at was at the edge of town, in the direction the killer was supposedly coming from. She weighed the risk of dying, and decided with a shrug to keep walking to work. She and this Adam probably had more in common than not.

  …

  The automatic doors of The Newest Thing slid open with a greasy squelch. As always it was anemic with guests. There were only the regulars today/

  In total there were three old women playing cards, who never bought more than an hour’s wages of food but always stayed till closing, a crying man with a Remark that gave him a infinite supply of tissues, he who never bought anything and mooched off their free water, and Trav and Lemsk, eyes locked on her as soon as she entered.

  They had the telltale look of the dream starved. Eyes that couldn’t focus, pupils far too big. She flashed them a big smile and patted her pocket to confirm she had the stuff.

  A sudden slam from her boss's office.

  Wanting to avoid whatever he was angry about, she ran clumsily into the kitchen and started her duties.

  All the food at The Newest Thing (which, despite the name, was at this point very old) was made automatically and to order, everything on the menu made solely with five different tubes of varying viscosities and colors. Mostly people got flavor ballz, which was all five rolled up into a ball and freeze dried.

  Most of Devon’s duties involved babysitting the tubes. The tube labeled “sublime” was two thirds squeezed, she shotgunned what remained (free food, even if it was garbage, was a wonderful perk) and tossed it in the trash slot. Opening up the cupboard she placed the bag of dream dust down, replaced the tube, opened a small compartment that only she used, and-

  Tread Deloused, her boss, barged in. The sliding door pressed out unnaturally, he squeezed through like molasses.

  “What do you have there?” He walked over to the dream dust. Before she could say anything he stuck a sausage-like finger into the bag and licked it like a crawlcow devouring a salt lick. “Got something to say?” His black and white mascara trickled down from the heat. It was popular to paint your face with the colors of a dead DearthWyrm, especially for collaborators.

  “You’re supposed to put it in your eyes.” She said, nonplussed.

  ”Like this?” He shoved a glob of the dust into Devon’s eyes. Her vision went red and she had to hold herself back as the initial adrenaline rush that came with such a high dose cooled off.

  “What the FUCK?” She yelled. Probably a firable offense, but it seemed to delight Tread. Her suffering had that effect on him.

  He cocked a finger to the door behind him. “I’m guessing those two Numbers you hang out with are here for the contraband. Dealing? Again? Naughty girl, Devon. On company time, no less.” He raised his hand.

  She closed her eyes and angled her body to make the fall hurt less. She knew from experience what was about to happen.

  He didn’t hit her, he aimed directly above for the open cupboard. Pots and pans fell down around her, covering the floor. She hid her face, rubbing her cheeks to try and sober up.

  “I don’t care if you’re dealing drugs on the clock,” Tread said, already turning around for the door. “I just care that you don’t rip them off” He paused, turning his neck around so that she could see his dark beady eyes, alive with glee, the black and white of his face paint was pooling around his neck, like his flesh was melting off. “I expect twenty percent of whatever you sell today, and anything else you sell in here going forward.”

  She couldn’t speak. Maybe from the fact that she had just been dosed without her consent with some grade-A hallucinogenic, maybe from the fact that anything she wanted to say was liable to get her hurt.

  He turned casually to the tubes.

  “Oh, you refilled them, nice job Devon.”

  He wiped the last of the face paint off. “Grand it’s fucking hot in here, how can you even stand it?”

  He shifted and turned the stove down. For his benefit alone, of course.

  He closed the door gracefully, from the other side she heard, “It’s alright, it’s alright. Your friend just made a little mess, she’ll clean it up and come out shortly.”

  Wiping something wet from her eyes, she turned the stove up, and automated the next few orders. There was nothing else to do, no food that needed heating. She placed her hand above the open flame and allowed herself to breathe.

  She lived a boring and pointless life. Harsh but true.

  Only continuing to exist because one day, one day, she could finally have her revenge.

  Her options for said revenge were limited. She’d train physically, but she didn’t know how, any of the methods or techniques were exclusive to Lemure members. Technically she was a reserve member of the legacy, but all that meant was that she was a glorified errand girl. The stove was something she could control. This was training, even if talking about it would get her strange looks.

  At first she found her pain tolerance was frustratingly low, but over the years it had gotten to the point that she could hold her hand for minutes without feeling any discomfort. She loved how the sense of danger increased with each passing second. She knew that if she was to lower her hand an inch, she’d be burned, and that even keeping it here would result in second or third degree burns if she held it long enough. It was that danger that was so appealing to her, a danger that she controlled.

  She smiled, daring herself to lower her hand, oh, about a third of an inch. There we go. Now that was a distance that could still make her nervous. The flames were practically licking her hand and all she felt was a comforting warmth, and yet there was a panic at the back of her head that was intoxicating.

  “Capacity Kill.”

  There was that voice in her head again. Fuck, she was hoping it was gone for good.

  “Capacity Kill.”

  It repeated that name. Wait, was it a name? She wasn’t entirely sure, and before she could respond (think?) back, she saw-

  Visions of bodies being burned.

  A woman riding a beast with a human face went down a line of masked figures, whispering in their ears before killing them with a revolver lazily draped against her leg. Someone was playing taps.

  A scorched leather book of physical exercises, situated on a table like a tome of heresies. An urge to devour. There was water in the room and it was filling up faster than she could read. She saw the Vetruvian Man doing jumping jacks. The golden ratio could be a good template for supersets. Physical fitness as a form of resistance! She could do nothing with that. Now she drowned. Someone was laughing.

  There were dark wizards and spaceships and laser guns and death. She threw up black bile. Her body's impurities were being expelled.

  The black goo grew teeth and smiled. “I am finding it hard to connect. Something has clearly happened to you. Can you hear me? Can you please respond?” It said, The impurities forced themselves back into her throat.

  Someone was screaming. Devon was younger and hiding in her dad’s boat. Men were there on the docks and he had said, “Stay right there little fish, hide under the blankets, they’re looking for some of today’s catch tonight. Can’t wait for tomorrow. It’s okay. We’re lucky it’s spawning season.” But there was a fear in his eyes that didn’t match his tone. He had ruffled her hair, shouted a salute to the waiting men, and was promptly stabbed in the back by a laughing youth. She saw all of it, the way they laughed and threw him into the ocean, mimicking the way he had stumbled and cried. They didn’t even take the fish. She was screaming.

  FUCK. The searing pain yanked her back to reality.

  Wrenching her hand back, she turned the stove off quickly, so as not to start a fire. She looked at her hand. It stung, but there were no scars, at least no new ones. Her older burn scars, from when she had been less careful and far more masochistic, were still just as evident. She hoped they never disappeared.

  The effects from the dream dust were abating, that last image of the lanky teen who had killed him was burned into her retinas. but outside of that, she felt pretty normal.

  She had done dreamdust before, far higher doses, but she had never had an experience that felt so- personalized. It wasn’t supposed to show you your own memories.

  And that voice, the fuck was that? Some sort of hallucination? You saw weird violent shit when you were on it, that was the whole appeal, but it had felt like something was in her head, something trying to send a message.

  The buzzer went off again. Well, there was no point in delaying the inevitable. She chalked it up to a bad trip (ignoring that she had heard the voice far before the dreamdust) and went outside to sell.

  …

  “Capacity Kill…”

  Far away, but getting close, a man in bloody attire fell to all fours. Exhausted, spent, you couldn’t possibly know. The Drum was omnipresent and loomed over him like a massive sun. Shadows with no apparent source ran above him with the speed of passing trains, staining the green fungal bridge he had wandered onto. Was this the way to transport? How to know, how to know?

  He clutched his chest and steadied himself. Just a few more miles, that’s all he had to do, then these bones could be put to rest.

  He had picked up her signal, she was crying out to him, he had traveled thousands of miles and had tried to make contact, but she had given him nothing. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Why,” Adam said, squeezing a shard of glass so tight his fingers bled black, “why won’t you answer?”