One day I came to a forest, and it was near that place that I had a dream.

  It happened this way: one morning, halfway to the end of my journey, I came to a hill. From the hilltop I looked down and saw a forest that was dark and ancient and great.

  Above all the forest, one great tree, and the other, lesser, bowed. Glorious and terrible, was the tree, sweet and sinister.

  I fell to my knees and groaned and cursed the ground, the tree’s life; cursed the sky, its desire. The sun fell, and rose, and fell again.

  Then, at blushing dawn, a sound most wonderful and dreadful, and a great wind came and filled me and at once I looked up and just beyond the great tree I saw another, this greater still and magnificent, where it had not been before.

  To the Second, did the first bow.

  I marveled, for I did not know their meaning. Lightning to my left I ignored, for it was false; thunder at my right I turned from, for it meant to deceive. But a strong wind filled me and see! A cave. I came into the cave apart from myself, and tired. There in the cave I made my bed; there in the dark I slept and dreamed. A dream as a tale. Words and places and things I did not know nor imagined could be. A dream about a boy named. . .

  What. The. Shit?

  PART I: NAMELESS

  CHAPTER 1

  Born Once More

  What. The. Shit?

  Of course, dummy, that’s not his name. Just what he thought. Dummy.

  The hot lady, sheathed, beacuase of course she was, in glowing, green water, was going to kill him. . .with a bubble.

  In the bubble she’d thrown, he’d felt it. Rage, fear. . . lots of that, a desire to protect the ones she loved that outstripped any bare notion of morality.

  His throat was sore.

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  Thirty minutes ago, the boy wasn’t, and then, kinda. . .was.

  Memories and movements, thoughts inside of and around feelings, things knit, things cut, and then he was.

  He stared up into a midday sky, a dashing of orange-tinged clouds where the morning had left them.

  He thought the sky had just shaken him out. He thought about the ovoid clearing he stood in, surrounded by tall grass; of the birds and how he could discern their songs.

  Thought became word.

  "Weird,” he said.

  At the sound of his own voice he immediately, instinctively, threw a hand back into his own face. A grunt was forced from his chest by the sturdy world when he fell back.

  Slowly, he sat up, resting on his elbows.

  "Wow,” he muttered, pressed sore muscles of his neck. A gust rolled the clearing and kicked dust into his face. Spitting he swung himself back to verticality and stumbled, suddenly unsure, extending his arms as a man balancing on a log might. His legs were stiff, his knees ached.

  "Asleep?” he asked. "Dream?” He couldn’t recall ever having such a vivid dream.

  He couldn’t recall much of anything, now that he thought about it.

  Sudden pain twisted in his chest. His fists began to clench and release in rhythm with his quickening heart. He crushed dirt between his toes. That wasn’t right. Where were his shoes?

  "Who. . .?”

  The boy took several shaky steps forward, struck by how uniform and tall the grass all round him was.

  ". . .am I?” No answer came.

  Frustrated by the feeling things should be coming easier, the boy took a few steps and hopped, landing on his left foot and pivoting on his heel in a circle. Then he turned and jogged to the clearing’s edge. This he repeated several times, edge to edge, before breaking out into a full run around the oval.

  Soon he was running, stopping, spinning, somersaulting, and cartwheeling.

  Now dripping sweat, the boy plopped down in a soft patch of dirt close to the clearing’s center.

  Where was he? Why was he out in this field? Why couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he remember his own name when he could remember that all people had names?

  Out of this chaos sea of confusion one greater, shapeless fear began to coalesce. It sat there, just beyond awareness; a fish swimming beneath a thick, opaque sheet of ice. I know it’s there, but that’s it. He resolved to not move until he figured this nonsense out.

  "Wh--"

  Great clangs, severe scratchings and long tearings sounds suddenly swayed the air around the boy. The very world seemed to quiver. He whimpered, shoved his hands up to his ears and fell to his side. At every clang and bang and boom his chest became tighter and tighter.

  Somewhere deep inside, in a place of pure instinct, the boy knew he was in danger if he could not calm himself, and so he hummed, desperate trying to find rhythm or reason within the cacophony.

  Didn’t work.

  He thought of running. Where? Whatever made this noise was out there.

  His body tempted him with surrender, and he battled to remain awake as tears slid sideways down his cheeks. He opened his eyes to watch them drop from his face into little ponds in the dirt.

  It doesn’t care, the boy thought bitterly, hatefully. Nothing cares! Nothing. Alone! In desperation, through no conscious effort that he could lay claim to, he cried for help.

  A gentle wind drifted lazily over him.

  It was a good ten seconds before he realized the oppression had ceased.

  He sat up with caution. He looked to the left. Nothing. To the right. Same.

  He couldn’t sit anymore. There was danger!

  It was time to abandon this stupid clearing.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  "Sun!” He did not pause to wonder why or how he knew the sun or its celestial life, but once he located it, hand casting protective shadow over eyes, he sprinted as fast as he could into the tall grass after it.

  Long blades and shafts of the wild field bit gently at his legs as he stumbled his way into the horizon.

  Ran and ran and ran.

  In his excitement to quit the field he did not smell the burning grass, did not see the thin, drifting lines of smoke in the breeze just above the ridge.

  He did not see the ridge. It was steep. He discovered this by tumbling down it.

  After several seconds of spinning terror, the boy suddenly came to rest deep in a grassy cradle created by a shelf in the otherwise uniform hill.

  He sighed as he watched kicked up spores whiz about.

  Hush filled the air along with the spores, and above it he heard something new. Not the stock sounds of an open field at midday: wind, insects, birds, grass, but something deliberate, calculated, sentient. Something was moving at the bottom of the hill.

  Having never considered that he could stumble upon another like himself, it took him several minutes of listening to whatever it was shuffling and stopping and clinking and stopping and scraping and stopping before he decided what next to do.

  The boy crawled, gently, through the weeds to the other end of the shelf. Gently, oh my umm. . .uh. . .y'know? The things. The big things everyone kills everyone over.

  Only thirty or so feet remained before the hill leveled off into a wide, paved road. His nest was on one side of a valley within which many rolling green hills of various sizes lolled up and down. It was through the center of this valley that the road sliced.

  On the road there was upturned ground, chunks of pavement, smoking craters and deep singe marks all around a collection of scraps that look like the remnants of exploded vehicles. One of these lay on its side and spurted thick, black smoke.

  There was also blood. Lots of it. It also looked exploded. Cast around like some mad painter with a giant brush had been there.

  From his left, down behind the closest vehicle, there came a metallic scraping. It rebounding across the hills. Around the outside of the cart a figure moved. The boy’s heart skipped as his trembling eyes focused on the figure of a woman. A long orange fire danced behind her, which was stupid, until he saw it was a ponytail, and her hair. She was tall, and her long limbs were wrapped in a cool gray jacket and blue jeans. He swore he saw her eyes gleam like precious emeralds. Though far enough away that he couldn’t clearly see her face, something about her everything appealed to him. Grace, power, confidence. . .hotness. . . It all rang out from her like sound from a bell.

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  "Hot.” Had he really just said that?

  The perfect woman was dragging something huge. A cow? No, no. A really fat man. His weight didn’t seem to bother her, for she flung him about as towel. "Hot...and maybe a monster?”

  Something sharp pricked at the back of the boy’s neck.

  "Don’t move, idiot,” said someone, "or I’ll skewer your face. The maw are your clothes?”

  The boy, heart hammering, suddenly understood he was naked.

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  E tossed the filthy man, barely any shine needed. He crashed against the roof of the flipped hansom, nearly rocking it back onto its tires. The creature dropped into a pile at her feet, and she looked down on him with disdain. "Shaking wailers. Where do you all come from?”

  The man didn’t look up.

  E sighed. She needed something. Anything. She needed to justify leaving the city. Her mother would be furious. And Eterna, the old jerk, she thought, who knows what he’ll be? Homicidal? She shouldn’t have left First. "It’s going to be so much trouble for mom.”

  She went to her gauge, her endlessly rolling emerald ocean, and pulled the shine to her, let it trickle down her arm. "Sorry pal. Best put you out of your misery.” When she reached back for her beauty, however, she felt only air. "Damn,” she spat. The image of her sword hanging in her workshop taunted her. Strauss would have loved that. Your temper E, his deep voice echoed in walls made of memory, one day you’ll learn to cool off, I’m sure. Damn good thing your gauge is an ocean! His words stung fresh, as if had been days, not decades. She surveyed the carnage she’d wrought.

  "Ok. Fine, Strauss.” She had felt something in the valley that day. She had! "Probably overkill.”

  Distracted by they follow silentlys, by shadows, E started when the man at her feet coughed, and it took her a moment to realize he was laughing. Sounded at first like dying. Layers of stained, torn clothes covered him. He smelled like a crapper. Wailers. His fat head and tiny face seemed to emerge out of his neck like some grotesque growth. Small brown eyes locked with hers. Brown, she thought. Rough life.

  "How long have you been in the valley?” E finally asked.

  "Who cares about Duke?” his jowls shook. His voice had a scratch to it, as if every word cut into the meat of his throat.

  "Me.”

  "No, it doesn’t. Not really.”

  "Is that your name?”

  "What?”

  "Is your name Duke?”

  "Meat has names?”

  She ringed her ear with her pinky. "What?”

  "Meat has names?"

  "K. That's what I thought you said. What?"

  "Who could name it?”

  "What?” E held up an angry finger. "Don’t make me say 'what’ again.”

  "Duke is Duke.”

  "Where are you from?”

  "Meat is meat anywhere.”

  "Wordheal?”

  At this he only laughed.

  E felt her face flush. "Stop that! Speak like a man!”

  "It even knows how Duke should talk!”

  "I know you’re from Wordheal!” E exploded, and she poured shine into her arms. Easy to lift the large man and shake him, hard to resisting the urge to look up the valley at the distant, hazy outline of the walls and towers of the festering blob the Wordhealers called a city. "I know you bastards are the ones letting the wailers loose. Some move against First. Maniacs, screaming and slobbering. Attacking people! What were you doing out here today?”

  "Wordheal?” he mocked. "Is it that stupid?!”

  Anger pulsed, matching the rhythm of her heart. "Pillarshaker!” She threw him against the cart again. He had been hurt before, several broken ribs at least, and she heard more deep fleshy thumps this time. He should be howling. He only laughed.

  In slow, careful movements Duke picked himself up until he rested on his knees. He then craned his neck backward so far it E thought his back would snap. He was silent.

  "I don’t have my sword,” said E. "With anyone else, that might be good for you. With me? Not so much. I’ll have to use my hands, or my shine. You Wordhealers call me 'Deathcloud’, I think.” She grinned. "Want to feel why?”

  The wailer was so still that E’s threat hung hollow, even in her ears. She felt very stupid.

  Duke sighed, and said, "Duke thought it would understand. Duke wanted to show it the fair. But it’s just plain meat.” Duke looked around at the blood-stained ground hungrily. "Duke’s friends had plenty of meat before it spoiled the fun.”

  "The people you butchered were travelers, you freak! Even if they were headed for Wordheal! What’d they do to you? What fair? Make rokkdamn sense!”

  Duke’s eyes drilled into hers, and E did not look away, didn’t blink. "Just meat.” He looked her up and down. "Sweet, though the meat be.”

  E scooped Duke by his clothes again.

  Duke laughed in her face.

  "Say it! Say it again, shaker!”

  "Against First?” His laughter became uncontrolled, hysterical. "First is plain meat. First sees more than meat to Nameless. Stupid, stupid meat! Wordheal and First. The same stupids! Stupid!”

  "I’ll shut you up!”

  "Stone or cloud or meat and anything else is plain meat rotting on the rack, trying to put something on Duke. Duke won’t take it! Duke don’t want it! Duke sees!”

  E pulled her fist back, the green shine around it hardening to a razor edge.

  Then, for the second time that morning, she saw it.

  Above her gauge, her tumultuous ocean, a flare of unknown color. Behind her! Up the hills! Behind her! How could she have missed it?

  Instead of impaling this Duke, she thrust out her arm behind her and pooled the bubbling green into her palm until she held a perfect, watery ball. The first rashin E had crafted on her own: Bomb. Simple, elegant, for something that blew up anway. . .

  A wrist-flick, she threw it without turning, aiming as best she could without her skeel blade, her beauty.

  E froze. Something’s wrong. It’s small. Like. . .Oh rokk. . . She ignited; sure she was too late.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The boy had watched the woman’s eyes and arms glow green water. Weird, but what did he know? He had heard her voice rise in anger, heard the fat guy laugh. His heart beat faster, knowing she was going to gut the man. Oppressive doom, a sense of gloomy grim finality rent breath from him. His heart ached.

  Is that all it is? Is this all it all is? His chest heart. He wanted to cry. His throat hurt.

  "What are you doing?” the kid, sounded like a younger boy, who’d threatened to stab him through the head asked. "You want the shiner to see us? You wanna die?”

  At "die,” the boy’s head swam.

  Then something beautiful was approaching. A green tear drop, winding through the air, like a baseball. Some of the naked boy’s fear melted away.

  "Shake me to maw!” the kid from behind yelled as he pushed the naked boy forward.

  Hot air surrounded him, his ears popped, his head rang, his eyes watered. Confused, he spun on his heel, faliled and grabbed some garment, then he fell backward, taking the kid down the hill with him.

  "You stupid shaaaaaaaakeeeeeeerrrrrr!" the kid screamed.

  The naked boy caught himself mid roll and was somehow on his feet running, kinda sideways cause his head still hurt from whatever had just happened. The kid, dressed in some kind of cloak, ran just ahead. The boy’s throat felt burned, his head pounding as if a train was rolling across it.

  "TRAIN?! How?!" the boy screamed as he ran. "Dude, how do I know what a train is?!”

  "Get away from me!” the kid shrieked, but the boy dared not lose him. The kid understood what was going on, likely how to escape. Better than being blown up by hotness.

  "What just happened?” cried the naked boy. "How do I know what a train is!?”

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  A kid. The word blinked as neon through E’s mind. Kids? She couldn’t tell. Confusion. Too far. Smoke. Confusion.

  Temper.

  She’d made it in time. He, uh, she? they? may be deaf, but not dead. Better than nothing, right? Right!?

  E caught the blade’s glint near too late, she’d forgotten all about fat boy. Decades of training hit, she spun, caught the knife-arm by the wrist as it passed. Duke or whoever grunted as she grabbed under his armpit with her free hand and hefted him from the ground and threw him, straight up, twenty feet at least, not bad, before turning and screaming, "WAIT!” just as his fat body crashed back onto Nameless behind.

  Her vision ceased. No, it hadn’t. Light. Too much light! Foreign shine churned around her. Orange. She saw it only with her gauge. For the first time in a bit E Reno, Protector of the First True Human City, whimpered.

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  Nameless shared a sky. One sky for all beneath. One sky and one language. All else people squabbled and fought and killed over.

  That day a few, too few, tuned to such things upon Nameless felt the shine. Some ignored. Many who should have felt nothing at all.

  Only three, scattered under the sky, felt the shine and, as of one mind, set their minds to finding it.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  E opened her eyes to the silent relief that she wasn’t blind.

  The other senses, however, took a moment to calibrate, the world around her a breath or two to come into focus. She stood, cracfked her neck, looked about. Empty valley.

  "Damn.”

  Relieved to still feel her shine tossing across her great ocean, she dropped it into her legs and jumped, landing softly in a cloud of emerald bubbles near where the kid(s) had been. No sign. Just like the wailers, she thought. "Where do you people go?”

  Only then did she remember Duke. She looked down the hill. Gone too. Tough dude. The fall must have broken everything still unbroken. He’d be dead soon. Still, she’d lost him. How do you lose an almost dead fat guy? She managed it. Too late to save the sojourners, too slow to see a kid, nothing to show for any of it. Fail fail fail fail fail. Tezm all over.

  Temper, E. Your temper. One day you’ll learn to cool off. I don’t know how, but you will. Her mother would be furious. She listened to the annoying wind whistle through the quiet valley.

  "Rokkdamn.”

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The sweet sounds of the fair, of unfettered freedom, funneling up through vents and chambers and dirt. It eased Duke’s pain.

  Well, not really.

  Usually pain wasn’t a problem for him. He knew it for what it was. He endured it for what it was. Knowing it he’d mastered it.

  She’d beat his ass, though. "Green-eyed sow,” Duke snarled as he rolled off of the ledge in the dark. The pain from hitting the ground must have been immeasurable, for he didn’t feel it until he woke some minutes later. Duke lay there and stared into the damp dark, felt the cold air stick to his sweaty face.

  "Spoiled meat.” He laughed. "So what?” No one understood Duke’s humor. Even at the fair he often giggled alone. "So what?!”

  So repetitive, life. Duke hadn’t been taken in by it. Duke hadn’t been conned. Meat in a dark, cold place. Alone meat, spoiled meat, dying meat. Duke began be afraid.

  "So what?” Duke shut his eyes. He was afraid of the dark. Dark forever.

  "Sew buttons,” a voice cooed.

  Duke’s eyes shot open. He tried to turn his neck toward the voice, but couldn’t. Strength spent. Someone was at his feet. He’d heard no one approach. "Who?”

  "Just something my whore of a mom used to say,” said the voice. "Makes me giggle. Please, continue dying.”

  "No. . .” Duke rasped. "S-scared.” A light hiss filled the chamber. Laughter.

  "I wouldn’t, normally, give a shit.” The voice, neither masculine nor feminine, hummed with and odd authority. Didn't hear that at the fair often. Had he crawled further than normal? "But I confess I am curious to know what sort of perverse Rokk would make such a thing as you. Your name?”

  Duke couldn’t reply, the darkness was forcing its way in now.

  Darkness forever. Duke shut his eyes.

  Color pulse behind his eyes. Purple. Purple so dark it was almost red. He opened them again. The pain was gone.

  "Uh-uh. You don’t have permission to leave yet. Not after intriguing me.” The voice was just above his face now, buried deep in the shadows of a small hood. "Your name, now.”

  "D-Duke,” Duke stammered.

  He could not see it, but by the voice Duke thought the newcomer was smiling. "I’m new around here, Duke, and I need some help. Meat for walking and talking and keeping me well and truly hidden. Tell me, do you have a purpose?”

  Duke considered the question. "To be what Duke wants, always.”

  The hood let out a long, satisfied hiss. "Admirable. Now the important question: You mind killing people?”

  This caught Duke by surprise, as he was staring at the robe’s tapping foot. Tap-tap-tap-tap. "Same," he finally said.

  The hood’s folds bent sideways. "What?”

  "Hug, stab, eat: meat doing stuff. The same to Duke.”

  The hissing started again, and the hood’s dark shoulders jerked. "I like you, Fatso. I think I’m going to use you.”

  "Not fatso, Duke.”

  "Compromise. Fatty-Dukey?”

  "Duke takes what Duke wants?”

  "Be ruled by me, and sure. Why not?”

  A broad smile crossed Duke’s face. "What is Duke’s new lord’s name?”

  "Master is appropriate.” The hood straightened, and Duke watched tendrils of blood-purple light spread out from its folds. They coiled through the air, swirling like a million tiny snakes, stretching down until they were wrapping around Duke’s legs, arms and neck. He felt himself lifted, held in the air.

  "You came to Duke in the night,” Duke said with awe, "you brought Duke from night, you are Duke’s master. Nightmaster.” Nightmaster’s foot began to tap furiously then. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Another hiss.

  "I like.” Duke felt warmth spreading through his limbs, straightening what was bent, snapping what was broken. Meat-bits together again. "You are mine. My Duke Redivivus.”

  Duke frowned. "Reduke is better. Shorter. Easier. Can it be Reduke?”

  "Whatever. We can always go back to Fatty-Dukey.”