*swish* Trip’s Remark, The Perfect Chrysolite, cut through the air and onto the deck, Devon dodged it just in time.

“You gotta be quicker than that!” She said, giddy with exertion.

“No, you need to be slower!” Complained Plunge, her trident Remark, Fortunate Tides, lazily cutting the air around her, a whirlpool tunnel of water where ever she stabbed. Devon ducked under it while Adam ran interference, hassling Dive as his fishing rod Remark flailed uselessly.

Devon bumped into Stumble, who stabbed her in the heart with a short sword, killing her instantly.

She laughed it off. It wasn’t real, just Stumble’s Trick, a poor imitation of Hailien’s. “Really, Stumble. You think I’m not familiar with death?” She easily deflected the actual attack with her palm, pushing her aside and running at Collapse.

Collapse signed something and rolled her Remark, aptly named Roll the Bones. The dice landed on a five. Like it had a life of its own, the dice popped up and hit Devon in the gut with the force of a cannon. Devon fell back with an oof, while Plunge collided with Collapse. Without even doing anything two of her opponents had been taken out. Stumble wasn’t getting up, and Dive had retreated to the lower decks due to Adam’s badgering. Leaving only Trip, smirking like things were going in his favor.

“Remember my rule!” Trip shouted, holding Perfect Chrysolite like a ward. “You and Adam can’t target the same opponent at once!”

She cracked her knuckles, advancing on him with a swagger in her step. “Yeah… that won’t be an issue.”

Right before she was about to pound Trip into next week, Hailien’s Remark cut the space between them.

“Alright, that’s enough sparring for today.” She turned her attention to the rest of the crew, sprawled out and groaning. “Smart move teaming up against your biggest threat. Outside of that…” and her lack of any other positives spoke for themselves. With a salute to Devon she went back below deck.

Devon fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Considering she had just won handily, it was surprising to her that she felt so exhausted.

“Are you okay Devon?”

“I’m fine.” There was an odd weight to her body that felt new, like wearing a hefty suit of armor, or walking in the ocean. “Actually, you tell me. My body feels… slower.”

”Oh, that.” Adam said, “I’ve been slowly adjusting your mass to be lower to the ground and exert more force on the earth. In other words, gravity reads you as heavier than you actually are, approximately 1.81 times heavier, and reacts accordingly. I may have overdone it today though, the process has become automatic and the growth rate has been accelerating.”

“What the fuck, thats the coolest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” She let out a laugh, spooking Trip, still in a heap nearby. “So if you reset it to normal, I’ll be stronger, cause gravity will feel lighter?”

”Well, yes, but-“

“And what if you could adjust it like a sliding scale? Like, switch from 25% to 75%. Oh! And imagine if we’re fighting, and right when I’m about to punch them we push things to 100%.”

”Devon, that’s all possible, but the reason I’m strengthening your body is to prepare you for Total Cell Integration.”

She didn’t know how Adam was able to express capital letters in her mind, but the importance of those words were as clear as if he had written them down and underlined them. The patterns he was making in her head were nostalgic, she had developed a disgust for those feelings.

“Have you mentioned that before?”

”Has there been time?”

“Grand, you can be so difficult” She busied her body by jogging around the deck of the Eggshell, the surf lapping up and greeting her as she rounded the port side.

”I haven’t suggested it before.” He said, the tone made it seem like a confession. “You remember Capacity?”

Hah. Like an old family friend. Of course she remembered, the nightmare with her face. The walking talking invalidation. Such an awful name. “Not until you bought her up!” She said, snapping down hard on that last word. She had done two laps now, since then the whole Fall Collective had come out of their injured stupor to crowd around starboard. Some nonsense that didn’t concern her. “What about her?”

“I don’t think you’re ready yet.” He retreated a bit, nestling down in a muffled part of her brain that made her feel refreshingly clear. Fine, whatever. She walked over to the gathered crowd, all pushing and shoving to stare at something.

It seemed to be a buoy. And not a particularly interesting one either. Black and red stripes like a butcher’s pole, leaning to the left as it fought a losing battle to the waves.

Neat, if you were deprived of entertainment. And yet all of them were staring at it rapt, having heated arguments that she couldn’t quite parse.

”What’s up with that buoy?”

Trip was the first to turn, him and Collapse untangled themselves from the crowd. “Are you referring to the piece of driftwood?”

”What?”

Collapse hit him upside the head and signed furiously.

“Okay, okay.” Trip said, relenting. “Collapse thinks it’s a crate.”

She enthusiastically pointed to a nearby crate, as if to remind Devon as to what crates looked like.

She looked at the crate, then she looked at the buoy.

Wasn’t even crate shaped, and clearly not a piece of driftwood.

“If this is a game it’s a shit one.” She tapped Stumble on the shoulder, who screamed in response. ”I didn’t do it!” She said as she turned, looking guiltier than Devon thought was possible. Whatever Stumble thought she knew she didn’t.

Devon kept her eyes on the buoy. “Yeah I’m not, uh, don’t worry about it. What’s your take on that thing?”

She wiped off some flopsweat and recovered her default giddiness. “Oh, that! Well, it’s a fridge, but no one believes me.”

”A fridge?” Plunge said, frozen like a sand garden. “How’d you arrive at that? Do you not see the tell tale wheels of a quad cycle?”

”A statue!” Shouted Dive, driven to tears by this argument. He pounded the railing. “It’s a fucking statue I’ve been telling you guys!!”

”Yeah, sure Dive!” They all said in unison. None of them would admit to being wrong, but they were all more than happy to dogwolfpile on him when the situation emerged.

”Hey Adam.” She tossed him casually over board. He rose into view a few seconds later, rising in a sluggish fashion. “Go check out the buoy.”

“I see it as a mirror adrift in the sea. We’re all seeing different things. I would be surprised if mine was correct.”

She let him move by himself, silently judging the movements he made, she couldn’t help thinking about the micro adjustments she would have made and how she would have moved him differently. The others kept on arguing, it was their sport.

“It’s strange. This mirror, I have seen it before. And I know it quite well, have known it, but for some reason specifics that used to be so clear are nowhere to be found.”

She felt the same with the buoy. She had absolutely seen it before, but where? It was like the memory of it had been ripped from her mind and placed right there in the sea.

Something was wrong.

“Get Hailien.” She said. Trip and Stumble raced each other for the honor.

”Oh, there’s a sense of, a sense of something far greater. Can you feel it from there Devon? Like an aura around the object.”

“Is it a Remark?” Devon asked. The buoy continued to bounce around, the thought of it being in any way dangerous laughable. And yet…

“With certainty.” Adam was so far away now. A tiny splotch of amber brown still approaching the buoy. “What I don’t understand is where the Remark’s duelist is.”

And then Adam was gone. She couldn’t see him, she couldn’t feel him. She suddenly felt a lot lighter. In front of them was the buoy, the shadow of the Helot, and the unflinching wall of the Drum (a dream everyone has).

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

And absolutely nothing else.

They were suddenly hit by something heavy and invisible.

It crushed starboard, pressure destroying the walls and breaking wooden fixtures. The rigging got tangled in the invisible, wrapping around appendages long and sharp. This thing had a shape. It was big and had claws.

Hailien came out just as the deck was bitten into. She had her Remark out and ran to starboard. With a firm hand she shoved Devon down as a claw visible with rigging made a swipe at them. “Collapse! Ready to spare some luck?”

Collapse, balancing on what remained of the main mast, nodded and bought out Roll the Bones. Like she had done before she rolled one while keeping the other firm in her hand. It landed at Devon’s feet. There were only six sides, but on the front facing side were seven dots.

Lots of luck.

Right as the invisible thing caved in a large chunk of the deck, Collapse threw the other dice. It hit something fleshy.

It hit a man, suddenly visible, hovering above them, holding a ship in a bottle. Heavily tattooed, dreads, an attempt at a mustache, he coughed up blood.

Where his left eye had been was the dice, gently rolling in his pupil. He took a few lumbering steps and fell into the sea.

With the duelist dead, his Trick was ceased. They could now see the invisible thing.

Unfortunately, it was a giant damned crustacean. Those horrifying sea beasts whose shells resembled skulls and who cried in the language of the slaughtered. It was what the Eggshell was made of, but instead of a shell, it was the whole beast, very much alive, and towering over the remains of the ship, it’s fortress like prosoma 100 feet tall and slowly grinding the Eggshell into nothing.

”That doesn’t help us at all!” Stumble screamed. She ran to a barrel and opened it desperately.

Watches spilled out as the others broke all pretenses of trying to fight this thing and focused all their energy on running around in a terrified fashion. Only Hailien was trying, slashing furiously at the prosoma, it’s carapace strangely metallic.

Devon had Adam back. It was so seamless that she hadn’t noticed. She still had that lightness in her body, but her head buzzed with nervous patterns.

”Devon, you’re back, thank grand.”

The ship was turned by a massive claw so that it was facing the crustacean head on. Everyone grabbed hold of something. Except for Stumble, who pancaked flat into the pile of hissing watches.

”I can’t see you but I can feel you, there’s people inside.”

The lines on the damned crustaceans chest moved upwards, revealing a massive black doorway, like a gate.

”It’s not a monster, it’s a machine. Whatever you do, do not get eaten by it.”

The monster advanced, its black void portal engulfing the good ship Eggshell like a tunnel. The light closed shut behind them. The last thing Devon saw was a string moving like a worm out of the barrel and right into Stumble’s eye.

.

.

.

It was exactly twenty three seconds before anything happened. Trip counted.

There they were in darkness, Collapse being vindicated as a invaluable member of the ships crew, considering the Eggshell hadn’t sunk.

Torches by the bushel full sprung out from the walls of the creatures stomach, all the flames were affixed to spikes protrusions that came out of the strangely smooth walls, the color of the flames reflected within. It was like being in the inside of an ice cube, not at all what Trip expected from a damned crustacean. People watched from large holes in the wall. Their features suggestions, their eyes pure white.

Then there was a knife held to his throat. There was one for each of them. One knife for each throat, held by a hand that ended at the elbow.

”We won’t kill you, this is for your own protection!.”

From high above there was a voice. As his eyes adjusted he saw high heels, broad shoulders, coattails, and wild hair that came down to the waist. The speaker was sitting on a swing of some kind, slowly swinging back and forth. Below the swing dangled one, two, three, no, four bodies, all wearing Death Wyrm masks, all very clearly dead. Where their numbers once were was distended flesh and black bruises.

This person had killed Numbers. Looking at the knife at all their throats, the dozens of people that surrounded them, peeking out from small holes in the wall, they were fucked. Grand, he didn’t like to say it, or think it, but they were fucked.

The swing they were sitting on (was it made of bone?) lowered with a rattling of chains. The speaker was a woman, or at least feminine. She had on a golden half mask, the image of a smiling Death Wyrm whose frills leaped out like the sun. Below that she wore a tight head covering that displayed a visual loop of a smiling woman, makeup and hairstyle far out of date. If you weren’t paying attention you’d think it was her own skin.

She was adorned with medals, melted down and turned into a cloak of rotting silvers and golds. A garbage pile of achievements. She loomed down, long skinny arms fixed rigid to the chains as she craned her neck over. “We won’t kill you, you’ll kill yourselves. In a desperate attempt to get out. For that is the rules all Numbers live by now.”

The knife at his neck brushed up against skin. Razor wire at his Adams apple. If he gulped he’d get cut. He didn’t even breathe.

He turned his eyes to see Devon, pushing the sword away with a bloody hand. Shockingly, all the other hands repeated the motion, releasing their necks, and suddenly they were all free.

The crowd yelled in disapproval. Several of them hopped out of their holes and onto what remained of the ship. Devon met them and took them handily, Adam swooped into her hand. Faces were cut, throats were slit, Remarks did not have time to be summoned as she killed half a dozen people in seconds.

”Alright that's enough!”

The lighting had changed, now all the torches were being held by those hands, all poised to throw their flames straight into the boat.

Devon had her hands around a shirtless man patterned with scars. Slowly she removed her grip.

“Congratulations. You went from not worth killing to worthy of an exception!” What remained of the crowd cheered. The scarred man smiled.

That smile disappeared when Hailien approached him, her shadow darkening his pale complexion. “I see you have no love for Lemure’s Legacy.” She motioned to the corpses jittering at the leaders feet.

The crowd let out a few “You got that right!” and “Death to the legacy!”. Trip wrinkled his nose, while he agreed with the sentiment, he couldn’t see these people as allies.

“Well, we have a woman here who killed a Constant.” She extended an arm to Devon, who somehow found the wherewithal to give a little bow. It was a bit much, to Trip. But then again he hadn’t killed a Constant.

The leader was not impressed. With a dismissive flick she cut one of the ropes. The body that fell hit the edge of the Eggshell with a thunk. Trip thought he recognized the face. Thought he did.

”Three chances.” She said, holding up three long fingers. “Five duels, if you lose three, we’ll kill all of you.”

Devon didn’t seem concerned. “I accept.” She shouted. “Is it cool if I fight them all?”

“Obviously not!” Her head craned from person to person, each of Trip’s crewmates flinching when she met their eyes (all except Stumble, oddly calm, unlike her.) “The old rules are dead and your words are suggestions, not orders. I was a Reserve member, and then the news dropped. You killed a Constant? I’ve killed six Numbers, my name is One-Three-Nine” she pronounced each number individually “thats what you get when you add all their values together. No names, nothing formal, just pure raw data. A record of my conquests. What value are Constants when they don’t have any-” she licked her lips, breathed in sharply “numberssss?”

This was all nonsense to Trip but the crowd cheered like a point had been made.

”Hailien?” He turned to her, hoping for something.

She folded her arms, her Remark strapped firmly to her back. “We fight by their rules. They overwhelm and outnumber us.” There was a pun there, and Trip hated that he was the type of person to notice that. “Although-“

There was commotion from underneath. Four of 139’s men came out with a whirling tornado, a terrifying Abberation of claws and pain.

It was Tremble, and she shifted back to a more human form with the bonk of a rolling pin.

”-When it comes to the fighters, I have my preferences” Hailien said, motioning the rest of the crew to get as far away from Tremble as possible.

The four Duelists joined the scarred man at what remained of the ships bow. Looks like their opponents had already been picked out.

“The first match!” 139 commanded “will be between” The torch bearing hands all pointed down at the scarred man, smiling like he expected this. “David Sabotage. And his opponent.” The torches glow fell on Trip. “Whats your name, little Number?”

He was a Number, technically. The thought was funny, as it hasn’t been relevant for months. And when the smart veins went bad and turned that number into splotch, well, he thought it didn’t count anymore, that he had successfully outrun the past. The past always caught up. Good or bad the past always caught up.

”My name is Trip-“

”Not your name.” The crowd booed. “Your number”

He couldn’t remember. It was just a number, by the time it froze he didn’t care anymore. Something in the 20s probably. So he said something plausible, “25”.

Was it true? Grand knows. One in nine chance, but they bought it.

The fall collective and their allies huddled up at starboard quarter. (stern didn’t exist anymore, so it had to do) Stumble suddenly grabbed his arm, her eyes manic. “You lied, it was 24.”

”What?”

”Your number. 24.” She mouthed it again, like a secret between them. Her pupils darted this way and that, they squashed and stretched. It must have been a trick of the light.

He stepped around her and summoned his Remark. They could talk about this later.

“This will be a match for value!” 139 boomed. Her voice rang out loud and clear. The flames rippled at her words, the way water responds to stone.

“24” The crowd booed him. He motioned to his friends to give him some encouragement. Dive tried to get a chant going. Stumble wandered over to the side of the ship and retched.

“You’re the only one during our skirmishes I have a tough time with.” Devon offered. She shrugged. “I don’t know if that will do you or us any good, but it’s true.”

Despite himself, he smiled. His thoughts on Devon could be boiled down to the word envy. Knowing she thought highly of him was a drug. Pure dream dust. His pride too big to think it was niceness.

Nah, nah, she was right, he’d kick this guy’s ass. He was the best fighter in the Fall Collective.

”And his opponent.” With the excitement of a repeat offender, David unzipped a scar on his chest and pulled out a massive organ. It was hard, calcified, and drenched in fluid. It also resembled a mace. With the skill of a tailor he sutured up the scar and held the organ mace high up for everyone to see, it pulsed with life. “The living armory, David Sabotage.”

Trip was the best fighter in the Fall Collective. But he had doubts that meant anything against a guy who could weaponize his own innards.