It was morning in Gehenna. Things were changing, bones knitting back into place. The world was coming to an end, and it needed to put on its best clothes. Such facts had a way of flowing downstream, so even small, meaningless, inconsequential trash towns like GutWorth felt it. For them it was dulled, imperfect and fragile. But they still felt it.

  In a tiny one-room apartment, curled in the fetal position, was a woman.

  Her limbs felt undersized and scrawny, as if she was destined for something far more substantial. She had eyes too big for her face, and a mouth that was slightly crooked to the left. Her skin was the color of polished wood. Like her father’s boat. She rubbed a hand through her hair. Strangely itchy. Her head was covered by messy black hair outside of two 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.

  There were plenty of women in the city, plenty of them without a 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, 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. She put a pillow over her face to muffle the sound.

  “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. Remember that Morgan Lemure, your rightful leader, is the strongest of us all.”

  Repeated for years, the morning chant had lost all meaning to her. It only served as an alarm clock.

  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 clay.

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

  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.

  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 all of it?”

  Maybe in that moment he would try to apologize, to atone, but she wouldn’t let him. Her father never got such a chance.

  The thought of killing him was sufficient motivation.

  She put on one of the eight pairs of blue and yellow track jackets and jeans she had, one for each day of the weekweak. Today was Shatterday. She had plenty of pockets to conceal the dreamdust, just in case she was hassled. 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.

  In some of the lanes closest to the port, the hot red sand had been smoothed down. 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 mountains high above her. Closer but still miles away was the 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 she never felt the need to try again.

  It had been three years since then. If she could do it over, she never would have given that fisherman her name. Who would have known, right? And yet when the fishermen had asked, obviously a little wary, if she was that poor orphan who had gone missing. She, like a dope, had said yes.

  “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. Maybe the kid who had left her death threats.

  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 gave off the vibes of a leader. He wore a trendy magenta to yellow gradient covered in symbols from the Great Deluge. “And there he is. Whose body you got there, Devon? Who’s the corpse you’re prancing around in?”

  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.

  ”Looks like she- I mean, he doesn’t want to answer,” 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. They were both kids at the time, and when you’re a kid your power is directly proportional to how angry you currently were. That was the only metric that mattered. And kid Devon was fucking livid.

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  “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.”

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

  She didn’t get far. 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. Holding the other end, the man to Norman’s left looked down at the rope and it suddenly vanished. That was his Remark.

  ”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, treasuring being second fiddle in a way that made her sick. “This will be nonlethal, at worst you’ll get a few bruises.”

  She spat on the ground and got to her feet. 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 and formed a crowd. Duels were always interesting, even if the competitors were absolute nobodies.

  He summoned his Remark. It was a normal part of life, but there was something about the process that made Devon’s blood go cold. It always felt impossible, the way the weapon would appear from nothing fully formed and readily leap into its owners waiting grasp.

  Norman’s was a mostly flat 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.

  “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 collided.

  She wasn’t able to get him to the ground, but she did headbut 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 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 it, haha. They really didn’t want to see it.

  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 Deluge Wyrm 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. It seemed unfitting.

  Devon got to her feet and scooted past, feeling surprisingly light, considering the circumstances. 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. Whatever or whoever was coming, it would certainly be interesting. Interesting was worth dying for.

  …

  The automatic doors of The Newest Thing slid open with a greasy squelch. As always it was anemic with guests. There were the regulars, three old women playing cards who never bought more than an hour’s wages of food but always stayed till closing, a crying man who never bought anything, and Lemsk and Trav, eyes locked on her as soon as she entered.

  They had the telltale look of being 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. Then a sudden slam from her boss's office.

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

  All the food at the New Thing was made automatically and to order, five different tubes of varying viscosities and colors, every order was a combo of these five tubes. Mostly people got flavor ballz. Most of Devon’s duties involved babysitting the tubes. The tube labeled “sublime” was two thirds squeezed, she shotgunned what remained and tossed it in the trash slot. Opening up the tube cupboard she placed the bag of dream dust down, replaced the tube, opened a small compartment that only she used, and-

  Tread Deloused barged in, making the sliding door press out unnaturally, he squeezed through like molasses until his considerable bulk was through.

  “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 mascara trickled down from the heat. It was popular to paint your face with the colors of a dead DearthWyrm, especially if you were a collaborator who never had to worry about actual violence.

  “Um, you’re supposed to put it in your eyes.”

  ”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 cooled off.

  “Those two are here for you, Devon. They’ve been asking me for you for the last 30 minutes.” He raised his hand.

  It was instantaneous, 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 cupboards. Pots and pans fell down around her, covering the floor. She hid her face as if that would help.

  “I don’t care if you’re dealing drugs on my time,” Tread said, already turning around for the door. “I just care that you’re not ripping them off. Sampling the merchandise?” 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. “That's pathetic, Devon. I wouldn’t expect it from anyone else.”

  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, good job.”

  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, 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 tears 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 a voice in her head. Stating a name that wasn’t hers. 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 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 the book. 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.” The impurities forced themselves back in.

  Someone was screaming. Devon was younger and hiding in her dads 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 is all. 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 past. She saw all of it, the way they laughed and threw him into the ocean, mimicked 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, making sure not to start a fire. That was the last thing she needed. She looked at her hand, while it stung, 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, not completely.

  The effects from the dream dust were abating, that last image was burned in her retinas (the lanky teen who did the deed, his yellow eyes staring straight at her, could he see?) but outside of that, she felt pretty normal.

  That was weird though. She had done dream dust before, far higher doses, and she had never had an experience that felt so- personalized.

  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 communicate.

  The buzzer went off again. Well, there was no point in delaying the inevitable. She’d chalk it up to a bad trip.

  2 minutes and 45 seconds, she thought as she opened the door. It was a new record.