They were approaching the Helot, though approaching was subjective, as they were still a good ten miles from it, even with it in view.

The SS Eggshell would not get there for another day, but they were close enough to see it.

And my, it was a sight.

The Helot, as it was known then, was a giant almost mile tall structure in the shape of a beautiful woman. She was staring up to the sky, gripping in her hand another hand that ended in a disembodied arm.

Devon whistled. “I’ve never been this close to her before!” She leaned closer, the top half of her jutting off the railing.

Tremble got closer to her, breath smelling of corpse flowers. “I have, I’ve been inside even.”

Devon turned around as Tremble put her hands behind her torso, eyes going wide. Adam was giving her nothing but negative vibes. The goofiness of this reaction outweighed her suspicion.

“Well then tell me, little miss traveled the world, what’s it like? I thought there were abberations there, the type that will eat you for breakfast?” She mimed chomping on a Tremble sandwich.

Tremble didn’t miss a beat, arching her back and finding a way to make her pose seem dignified. “That was the assumption, yes, but they’re harmless. They’re quite fun to play around with, in a playful sort of fashion. They don’t fight back, they’re little automatons who do their tasks no matter what. We call them Placebos.” A nonsense word to both of them.

Devon scratched at her head, enjoying the sun’s warmth. “Huh, that’s interesting, never heard of a peaceful abberation. Then again-“ She stopped talking, nose twitching.

“Something wrong?” Tremble said, concerned.

”Devon, Tremble had her hands out, she was going to push you overboard.”

“Tch. A moment ago, I got the oddest feeling that you were… trying to push me in?”

Tremble stared at her and said nothing, until finally-

“Okay yeah I was.” She acted as if she was admitting to stealing a piece of food, not attempted murder. “I may have been hired by the Constants to kill you, and maybe I was about to go through with it.”

Devon could feel Adam in her mind, practically begging her to kill this woman.

“She has led me into death before. I wanted to assume the best, but now it’s clear, this woman wants to kill you. We need to do something.”

Strangely, she never felt safer. Straight up, this girl was pathetic. From the way she wouldn’t meet her eyes, to the way her lip quivered. If this was the best assassin Lemure could spare, then she had nothing to fear.

Tremble sighed deeply, bringing her arms forward like she expected to be cuffed. “But you caught me, so here’s what I propose- a duel. And since I was the one who proposed it, you can choose the time and place.” She nodded, as if to convince herself.

“That sounds good.” Devon said.

”It does not. She has given us no reason to think she’ll play fair.”

In Tremble’s flinching expression was something familiar. Devon put a hand to her chin, trying to place it. She shifted around, going through memories. Adam was no help, taking up space in her brain and yelling to kill her, kill her, over and over again. Maybe being cooped up had made him stir crazy. Having a potentially insane passenger in your head could be a liability, something to think about (“Correction, I’m not insane, I’m being practical”)

It was a small town, it didn’t surprise her that she knew Tremble, but the specifics still surprised her.

“Neverworthy… I recognize the name, I lived right next door to you.” For a period they were even close. “You always used to try and scare me by leaving those odd notes.” She considered this. “Though I suppose they could have been love letters, huh?”

“Shut up and die! But yes, that was me.” Tremble said, crossing her arms and putting her nose up as she turned her head away. It was cute, Devon had to admit. This was a cute person, despite the attempt to kill her. “And don’t ask me what I meant because I barely remember.”

“It’s fine, we were kids!” She was a different person, Devon thought. It was so long ago.

“Yes, idiot kids.” Tremble said, barring sharp black teeth.

”I mean, just kids.”

”Idiot kids. No understanding that the water below is shallow, yes, but that’s because the bottom is a corpse layer.” A black liquid dribbled lightly out of Tremble’s tear ducts, her cold sandpaper skin seemed to shift slightly, the texture of her face no longer fixed. “A universe worth of sisters, wearing rags that wave in the current like algae, coral reefs of blisters and calcified pus, you need to carve them open and cut cut cut cut to the Visionary, the endless ocean. Now that’s not shallow. There’s no one there. No sisters, never sisters, the sisters who kept laughing even as they bled out into-”

Coughing suddenly, her strange rant came to an end. Trembles hands lashed out at her crying face and clenched down so hard Devon expected the flesh to tear off. Tremble screamed. And while the sound was muffled the sheer misery and panic of it was, if anything, heightened. The air around her rippled, like she was summoning a Remark, but nothing solidified. For a second it was like the world was melting.

And then it wasn’t.

“You were terrible at catching fish.” Tremble said, as if her sudden outburst had never occurred.

It was difficult to come up with a response. Devon wished she had a witness outside of Adam. That was… it felt like the world reacted to her breakdown.

”Alright… so, will I have to duel you now or can I expect you to be, uh, chill?”

Tremble smirked, wiping away black tears. “I think you’ll come to find I am the definition of chill.” And then suddenly she ran off, going downstairs and slamming the door.

”I don’t remember her being like that.”

“I think she’s got the hots for me.” Devon said, feeling much lighter now that Tremble was gone. She could almost pretend their funny little conversation didn’t start with an attempted assasination and end with said attempted assassin crying black blood.

“I would not have come to that conclusion” Adam said plainly. “She tried to murder you.”

“Aha!” Devon said confidently, leaning back on the railing. “But she didn’t. And then she ran away.” After having a full on mental breakdown.

“I don’t think we really got to know each other until now.” Adam said.

”Tremble?”

”No… me and you.”

“Mmm.” Devon said, noncommittally. Above her Collapse did the work of five people, adjusting the rigging and compensating for their distance to Helot. “What makes you say that? You’ve been in my head for 4 months now, and I’ve felt you rummaging around there. Grand, you were probably the one who made the Tremble connection. You know me quite well.”

“Devon, your experiences before this have been severely limited. This is all completely new to you.”

She conceded the point with a shrug. “There’s not a lot of options for a girl with a shit Remark.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“It’s not a judgment, it’s a statement.”

Devon bristled, holding onto a nearby rope like she was going to tear it and the rigging down with it. ‘Okay, so I’m a new person. Or how about this, I was barely a person.”

“Okay. So if we pretend you didn’t exist until 4 months ago, here’s your life so far; you were almost killed by a man, you killed him, you threw up, you killed another man, then another, killed a Constant, which I guess view themselves greater than men, got into a fight, almost killed another man, then the next four months were spent training through a never ending fight where you experienced your own death multiple times, a fight that only ended a good 30 minutes ago.”

“That about covers it.” Devon said, sounding nostalgic. “Interesting to start my life right before I bonded with you.” She propped herself up on the railing, then thought better of it, lowered her back, and lifted herself up by her arms, her legs raised in an impromptu hold that burned her stomach. “I’d say I didn’t become me till about a month into the whole never ending fight thingy.”

”How can you be so calm? Even as we speak Tremble is plotting-“

“Tremble’s an idiot with real issues. If she tries anything we have six other people who can and will deal with her” Her face scrunched up, realizing something unspoken. “Not happy that Morgan could find us though. We should leave as soon as possible.”

“I have learned to repay violence with violence, and I don’t think that’s that hard of a rule to follow. That woman admitted to trying to murder you, why let her live?”

“It was so long ago, I was barely alive then, but you introduced yourself as a pacifist.” Devon’s arms were shaking now, but she committed to holding the pose for at least 30 seconds more.

“I would be a fool and broken beyond repair if I ever thought of myself as such.” Adam said gravely. “I am your passenger, and my rent, if you will, is primarily me keeping you alive. That includes violence. I think so far, I have been a very respectable tenant.”

“Eh, I don’t demand rent is the thing.'' With a sigh, Devon found her strength failing, and finally lowered herself. The pain, as always, was its own reward. She remembered a time when she and Tremble had played during the triumph of the wyrm parade. Tremble had found a squishsnake and chased Devon halfway through Gutworth with it. Devon couldn’t stop laughing, because Tremble was trying so hard to be scary while carrying around a limp snake and calling it a wyrm. “For all you know, we could become good friends again.”

“And what if you become good friends!” Adam yelled in her mind, causing her to wince. “What if you become inseparable, extremely good friends, willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, until you stop doubting that you were ever in any danger at all, and do you know what a self admitted assassin will do when they know you trust them? THEY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT. SHE’S A FUCKING ASSASSIN AND SHE ADMITTED SO HERSELF.”

Devon didn’t know it was possible for him to yell like that. With his words still echoing in her brain, she tried her best to respond good naturedly. “Alright” She said “I’ll just tell the crew about it and keep her locked up. Hailien doesn’t trust her, so it shouldn’t be that hard.”

“What was that?” Hailien said, who had been walking by with a barrel over one arm.

“Oh, so Tremble, the new girl? She told me she’s trying to murder me!” Devon said cheerfully.

“Of course she did.” Hailien muttered under her breath, stomping down to the cabins below.

“There we go.” Devon said, confident the problem had been solved. “No reason to get so angry.”

“On some level I can’t help it.” Adam said. “You have a lot of rage in here, I’ve been soaking up your hate ambiently. I’m happy to do it for you, but Devon… your head is filled with anger.”

That didn’t sound like the Devon she knew. Sure her life did suck, emphasis on did, and she still thought of Tread, 29, and 31 not as corpses, but as villains who never got what they deserved, and they still appeared in her dreams, alive and mocking. But she assumed this was quite normal, what mattered was she was happy now. She was happy because she was gonna murder the other Constants. And nothing would stop her. How was that anger? She felt grand damn peachy.

“It’s nice to be able to see the sun again. You thought that yourself earlier, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Devon said, “That too, that too.”

.

.

.

Picture, if you will, a secret hole in your neck, one that even you aren’t aware of, but it is used frequently by the microorganisms and colonizers that call your body home.

That is where Tremble was in the SS Eggshell. A cozy little air pocket in the cartilage she had had to dig to make, hidden away beneath the bow, with an entrance in a small crack within her quarters. Only she wasn’t Tremble now, she was Wyrm-touched, that's what Morgan had called her.

In this form she felt like hardened muscle tied together by rebar and barbed wire, a human with all the power of a Remark, a Remark with a human’s cunning. All in a black matte coating that reflected no light.

She was currently in this form for the sole purpose of crying. Today had been tough.

A small string slithered its way into the room, mimicking the motion of a snake for absolutely no one's benefit. After bumping up on the back of Tremble, it transformed itself into the recognizable form of a pair of lips.

“Tremble,” The string said. “Do we have a problem?”

Tremble did not answer in any coherent way, simply ducked its ichor black head farther between its legs. Its telephone pole-like spines shifted in an irregular rhythm, like they were being blown by competing gusts of wind.

The string floated down until it was level with the monster’s squirming neck.

“Tremble,” It said in a darker tone. “I sensed Devon on board. You haven’t killed her yet.”

“I tried,” Tremble said, muffled by her position. “But then she made me tell the truth.”

For a moment, there was no sound outside of the constant chattering from the birds above them.

“What do you mean by that Tremble? Did your contrarian’s needle make you-“

“I told her I was there to kill her, okay!” Tremble cried out, rolling out of her moping position and into a battle stance. Angrily she clawed at the string, but it simply moved away to avoid the attacks. “I fucked up and disgraced Morgan and Death herself. All because I was blinded by familial recognition, a connection to my past I could not ignore. I’m a failure of a killer, I’m a failure of an Idea, I should be studied as an object lesson in pure incompetence.”

“Oh come on, Tremble.”

“I’m a fucking… I’m a fucking dumbass.”

“I mean… yeah.”

“I don’t deserve this power.” She said, looking at her claws, which could have killed Devon a thousand times over. “Morgan made a mistakeeeee” The last word turned into a incoherent wail. “I’m a failure, a failure!”

In a flash the string struck her. On her sleek pure black body, there was a trickle of contortuos blood. A color that did not exist in this world till Tremble had bled it. She bled Visionary. The string did not have eyes to see, so did not notice this.

“I should make it clear that hit wasn’t from me, it was from one of the other Constants. Delivered on their behalf.”

Tremble gulped, uncomfortable with the thought that multiple Constants were hearing her as she self-destructed.

“Who… who else is there with you?” She asked softly.

“Well outside of me and Jeavel, Karol is here.” The string said, “We have 30, his charming assistant, and… basically every number who hasn’t been already killed when that Ressy battle royale started. And we’re all waiting *here*, on the Helot. Do you understand what that means?”

Tremble didn’t. Her mission had been to kill everyone on board and retrieve the Remark of Adam, but then she had befriended the crew, becoming an honorary member even, so then the plan had shifted to just killing Devon, but she *liked* Devon too. And now it felt certain that she would be tried and killed when they got to the Helot. Stupid Tremble, her name meant to quiver, she hated that the Wyrm revealed that to her.

When Tremble didn’t answer, the string did for her. “It means that if you don’t kill her, you have still succeeded in bringing her to a location where we all are. 3 Constants, about a dozen numbers, all interested and willing to kill her.”

Tremble nodded, but she wasn’t really listening. “I’ll bring her to Helot.”

“Yes you will.” The string said. “And then you won’t be such a loser anymore.”

The string began to unravel. And as it did it said, barely discernible “Well, maybe a little bit.” Before sliding back up the passage, back to slumber in counterfeit watches.

Left alone, Tremble knew she should feel better, she hadn’t messed up yet, not really. But she wasn’t successful in expressing this to her brain.

She looked at her hands, comforting herself with their monstrousness. Despite not being worthy, she still could be. She had to kill Devon, the only way to prove that she deserved this skin. This was somewhat inconvenienced by the fact that she had just agreed to bring her in alive, but such contradictions could be untangled by tomorrow's Tremble. For now, she paced on all fours for a bit, before settling down to sleep in her secret hole.