I like the taste of blood in my mouth. It’s familiar. Feels like home.

  Most kids in Dogslum know that taste well.

  Dogslum—a shithole with too many stray dogs and too many hungry kids. Pretty self-explanatory. I grew up there. Maybe I was born there, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Never knew my parents. Just another orphan scraping by with the rest. Some kids had parents, but shit, looking at them? You’d think they wished they didn’t.

  Don’t pity us. We got by. Yusundal wasn’t the worst place to be poor. Soup kitchens doled out a meal a day, maybe two for kids. You always had a roof over your head if you wanted a place to sleep, at least until you turned fourteen. The downside? You shared it with too many others, and it stank like shit. But the streets were worse. Usually.

  When we weren’t eating or sleeping, we fought. We stole. We did whatever the fuck we wanted. That was the way of Dogslum. That was the way of kids like me.

  It was there that I got my Gift.

  I was in an alley, fists swinging. Another fight, another dumbass kid who said the wrong thing. I don’t remember what it was. Doesn’t matter. I was bigger than most boys my age. Taller than a lot of 16 year-old boys, and I was only 14, and a girl. They mocked me for it, called me Martha the Giant, and I’d beat the shit out of them for it.

  The crowd of kids gathered, laughing, jeering, spitting. Dogslum never missed a fight. The air was thick with heat, the kind that sticks to your skin. The alley smelled like sweat, piss, and wet dog.

  We struggled, rolling in the dirt. Then I got on top of him. He was mine.

  “Now you’ll fucking see,” I thought.

  I felt heat surge through me, like fire under my skin. My fist came down hard, harder than ever before. His skull didn’t just break—it popped, like a ripe fruit. Bits of skull and brains everywhere. Fuck.

  The laughter stopped. Screams took its place. Kids ran, calling for help. Some managed a few steps before vomiting. I just stared at what was left of him. I didn’t understand. How? Why?

  Then the city guard came.

  I thought I was fucked. A slum rat like me, guilty of murder? I was done for, I’d be locked away forever. But no. They let me go.

  Just a fight between slum dogs. They said. The boy swinged first, it was self defense. That wasn’t true.

  But the boy had no family to care that he was gone. No one to push for justice. I was free.

  Or so I thought.

  They didn’t release me. They brought me to a palace. A real one. Marble floors, golden chandeliers, rich-people shit. There, they told me I had a Gift. A rare one. And they would train me to use it. In return, the Kingdom would take care of me.

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  Fuck it. Sounds like a good fucking deal to me.

  There were others like me. Kids with strange powers. I didn’t fit in. They were soft, perfumed, too clean. I watched them. I learned. And I grew.

  By the time I was done training, I wasn’t just strong. I was a fucking weapon of war. Even without my Gift, I was a monster. 6’8, when I was 21, and stronger than any man.

  And when the heat came, when the Gift surged through me? Nothing could stand in my way. I had learnt to control it, to channel it. I was a monster.

  They gave me a weapon—a massive, gold-tinged hammer. An Artifact, they called it. Forged by some legendary craftsman. Blessed by the Gods, or whatever other bullshit they said. I didn’t believe it, but it felt good in my hands. It felt right. My Hammer.

  I liked palace life. Meat every day. A bed all to myself. But I was reminded, again and again, that I had a duty. That I belonged to the Kingdom. That I was a dog, and nothing more. Well, they didn’t say that last part out loud, but I understood it, I wasn’t dumb. But being a dog was all I ever knew, and so I was fine with it.

  Then came the war.

  I was sent to fight. I don’t know what for, never bothered to ask. I was sent to kill. And I did. Oh, I did.

  I was sweeping through battlefields, killing men by the dozens with a single sweep of my Hammer. The few times they’d manage to catch me off guard, their swords and arrows would barely scrap my skin. “Monster!” they managed to blurt out sometimes, right before I killed them. They were right.

  The more I killed, the better I got. My hammer felt like an extension of my body. My fellow soldiers feared me, then respected me, then worshipped me.

  I saw it in their eyes. The way they saluted. The way they bowed their heads. The way they clung to my every word around the fire, talking about the battles, the bodies, the blood. Every day, after sunset, we’d sit around the fire and laugh about who had pissed themselves during the battle, or who didn’t manage to kill a single enemy. I looked forward to it, every day.

  My men were the hardest, meanest, toughest bastards around.

  And yet still, sometimes, one of us would fall, and we’d drink to them and tell stories about some dumb shit they had done in the past.

  For the first time, I understood what it meant to have a family. To know that if I was killed in battle, these motherfuckers would gather around a fire and remember me. It felt nice.

  The war was almost done. Only the siege was left, now. The boring part, if you ask me. Just sit around and wait for the coward little shits to starve to death behind their walls.

  But then, one morning, everything changed.

  Panic swept through the camp. The King was dead. The generals, too. Killed in their sleep. No one knew who did it. No one knew what to do.

  I walked into their war tent. The bodies were cold, the assassin long gone. A single cut to the throat, all of them. It was so deep, it would be more accurate to say they were beheaded. Expertly done.

  And my first thought was…

  Who’s gonna pay me now?

  And then another thought.

  Who’s gonna be king now?

  And then, at last, another thought. An idea. Madness.

  Fuck it, why not.

  I wasn’t going to be anyone’s dog anymore.

  I reached for the crown. Lifted it. Placed it on my head. It fit like it was made for me. It felt like it belonged there, on my head. Like it should’ve always been there, and someone took it, and that I was finally whole again. Silence. Then cheers. Screams. They chanted my name.

  I stepped out into the camp, my hammer raised high. Thousands of soldiers roared as one.

  Martha the Hammer! Martha the Hammer! Martha the Hammer!

  Fuck me, it felt good. I felt power surge through me like never before. Fuck kings, and bloodlines, and Gods. I am a Warrior, and I will take whatever I want. With this Hammer, I will take it.

  I pointed my Hammer towards the city in the distance, and I turned to them, voice like thunder.

  “Let’s break those fucking walls.”

  And they lifted their weapons. And they cheered. And they followed me to war.