The force fields encasing the Oasis only repelled Spirit Beasts, so humans were free to slip out as they pleased. Most of the time it was for hunting or rare herb-gathering.

This morning, Kaya headed out alone for some target practice.

Something about the day had her pumped up. Maybe it was the sunrise, hot and red like warm blood. Maybe it was the rush of air on her skin, a feral summer gale roaring past the Oasis, stirring the sands. Or maybe it was her. Her heart seemed to beat with twice its strength today, her sinews and muscle thrumming with life. She grinned. Let’s do this!

All of that Oasis stuff was behind her. Literally. She had to get her head screwed on straight. She had to get back to her roots: happily punching things. It’d be like back in the Tribe—back when life was simple and the world made sense, when she didn’t feel like a speck of sand blown about by wild winds.

No shenanigans. Not today. No more weird Oasis folk, no more golden circles, no more pink tornadoes! Today she was having none of it. She was here to beat something up, get her knuckles a little bloody before the main event. That was that. Any Origin-Realm critter would do just fine.

It didn’t take long to spot one.

Atop a dune some thirty-odd paces away, the smoky eyes of an endspider peered out from under the sands. Most of its body was buried, invisible to the untrained eye. Its front legs poked out, two grainy, flecked mandibles which dissolved into the dune’s textures. Its aura was subtle, restrained—but Kaya could tell it was at most late Origin. It was waiting. Probably for some lost sandwolf cub, or for a baby Vordor to wander near its nest.

Kaya leapt, screaming a battle cry, and chucked out a [Ray].

A scorching blaze roared from her fists, scalding a stark gold line scalding the air. The Endspider didn’t have time to screech before the Technique bore down upon it. There was a blast of sizzling heat, an ear-splitting crackling, and the dune flared molten crimson. The glare was so bright even Kaya cringed, shielding her eyes.

When she looked again, there were no eyes. There were no mandibles.

The thing had been roasted to a blackened husk. What?!

Kaya looked at her hands, eyes wide. Then at the corpse.

That felt good!

Her breathing quickened, her grin growing fiercer, blood running hotter. It was like every fiber of her being was singing with light, crackling with boiling power. That was awesome!

But… how—?

She was not that powerful. Nowhere near it. … Right?

Had she broken through in her sleep somehow? She’d heard of this sort of thing happening. Or maybe her Bloodline had awakened some kind of… she didn’t know.

Then it struck her. This feeling—it was familiar. It was the same feeling she’d gotten laughing, kneeling in that puddle of pulped flesh.

She stilled. Then she stared at the back of her hand. The infinity there was glowing.

Not like before. It wasn’t shining, but it was there. Her breath caught.

Last time this happened, she blacked out. She’d only come to once it was over, and she was splattered and—she shook her head, clearing it.

She certainly didn’t feel very passed out. She felt normal. Good-normal, even.

Was this, like, a well of power or something? Could she control it, even? Even now it felt like her brain was burning up with the thrill of it, smoldering bright. She grinned.

Then she slapped herself.

No-no-no! She just said she wouldn’t—what was wrong with her? What was she thinking? The feeling of flesh squishing under her fists, of bones cracking—

Crackle. Shift. Hiss.

Her eyes snapped open.

What was that?

She whirled to face the sound.

The smoldering, slaggy sands were shifting. Sinking. Falling inward, as though a pit had opened up underneath it, swallowing gobs of blackened sands whole. No. Not a pit.

A tunnel.

A sudden chill gripped her. Is—is that..?

In the darkness of the tunnel, eight scarlet, glassy eyes emerged. Then mandibles, bigger and hairier than the Endspider she’d just killed. Trunklike legs squirmed out of the sands. Its body was like three huge, furry boulders strung together. Its biggest segment was its last, a motley of red-and-black, and it was quivering.

An Endspider Queen, in the flesh.

Kaya froze. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the thing. Oh, hells!

Where there was a queen, her children soon followed.

Eight bloody eyes flickered in the darkness. Then another pair. Then the sands all around her shifted, seething, as huge forms clawed their way out from the ground, sand streaming off them like water. She barely managed to back up three steps before she heard the grating swish of shifting sands behind her. She whirled around, seeing those dark venomous things rising from behind her, to the left, the right, everywhere she turned, moths bared, the slick, slimy gloss of venom gliding down their hissing fangs.

She tried to breathe, swallowing, a sudden dryness in her mouth. She had to keep calm. She was a huntress—she had been—she’d been in scrapes before. She could get out of this one! Before the panic could take her she forced herself to think, to plan. Nine in total. Eight surrounding her, all in the Vigor Realm. All at her power level. Could she flee? No—impossible. Endspiders could leap faster than she could run and she was surrounded besides. Could she fight them? She felt a manic laughter bubbling up at the thought.

And yet…

It was like her body hadn’t gotten the message.

Her mind was on the verge of hysteria. But her blood coursed through her fiercer than ever, pulsing down every finger. It was as though she was excited!

Then she struck by a startling thought. A horrifying thought. A thought that made no sense whatsoever.

She should be scared. She was scared.

But there was something new here, something that should not be. She was also eager. It made no sense, but it felt right.

She was getting hysterical—hysterical with fear, but also glee. Some part of her, deep-down, craved this. That last little critter had been no challenge. Now she could really get her knuckles wet. She could have some fun.

That dryness in her mouth? That was from fear, but she was also panting like a bloodhound.

Her eyes picked out every sharp detail—down to the rustling of those russet furs, even the warped reflection of herself shimmering in the Queen’s glassy eyes.

She saw herself grinning. She saw herself bare her teeth.

Eagerness warred with fear in a rancid stew of thought. She didn't know what to think--what to do!

So she stopped thinking.

She let herself go.

It was as though she'd been straining to hold shut a door in her mind, to lock out a part of her that was shoving on it with all its might. Letting go was the easiest thing in the world. Her grin widened, growing savage.

She cried out, and the world erupted in fire.

There was no logic to what happened next. In a blink she was before an Endspider. One moment she was there. The next she was here. The spider's mandibles opened wide, yearning to sink into her, and she shoved her fist in, in, in, up to the arm, feeling its leathery, sticky insides squirm around her, and she set her own arm ablaze. And it burned—wonderfully, beautifully, loudly, deliciously, a triumph of heat and light. Dimly she heard her own cruel laughter, and felt a sick rush of joy flutter her eyes.

Then two spikes of pain seared into her back: fangs sinking into her, cutting muscle and sinew, pumping her with venom; but she turned, its fangs tearing at her, and sank her fists into it, and she burned so much hotter. Endspiders could feel pain. She saw its eyes shrivel, heard its screeching hiss, and she could nearly taste the texture of its agony. Yes, yes, yes! Burn for me!

The fire took it, engulfing it, gnawing through it in mere seconds, and then she only saw its remains: a massive clump of ash and charred flesh scattering on the wind.

She was conscious, but there was no thought, only brute action. She was made of pure feeling—like a wildfire tearing through an old forest, indiscriminate, chaotic, searing everything, everywhere, fearing nothing and no-one. Her cackling grew louder, higher. She was lost in a mad euphoria. She was fast and utterly strong, burning with the same fire that lit the stars, and she knew that this—this alone—was what it meant to be truly alive.

Outside the Oasis an inferno torched the sands. Lives were smothered like candles. And each time she put out a light, she made sure to look into its eyes, made sure she caught the exact moment the life left its body. And in that moment she sighed with a pleasure that curled her toes and lit up her soul.

But fire needs something to burn. What does a fire do when the forest is naught but ash?

Kaya stood there, panting, smiling like a devil, knee-deep in a mound of incense. Incense of her own making. The summer winds carried them off slowly, cautiously, as though nervous to incur her wrath.

Steps away the Queen limped away, stricken The Queen—some Queen! It was fleeing! Kaya snarled. How dare you!

There was a flash, a screech, a silence.

Kaya stood there, still and silent, for a long, long, time. She was spent. As she gasped in air, thoughts floated slowly back into her. Soft, cottony wads of thought. Harmless. She was in that satisfied-tired, happy-tired state, floating in a pleasant, warm void of the mind.

Slowly, she glanced down her arms. Her torso. Her legs. She did a survey of her body.

No wounds. Not even a scratch. It was as healthy as she’d found it this morning. There was even a golden glow to it.

She looked down at her hand, at the glowing golden loops, and she knew.

Last time this happened she’d blacked out in a panic.

But this time she knew. She was here in the visceral moment. And what was weird—really, really weird—was that she wasn’t horrified this time. She knew she should be. But she wasn’t.

She was smiling.

She looked around at her, shaking her head in wonder.

She did that!

And her smile grew wider.

It was wrong. She knew it was wrong. But saints did it feel good! She knew where it came from, too—and it wasn’t from that golden glow on her hand. That simply fanned a flame.

This time, she felt it. There was no denying it. It came from in her.

Why had she been so scared of this? Because she thought that creature, kneeling in the blood of the slain gang, wasn’t her. Because Kaya Rust was not the sort of person who liked hurting other people. Kaya Rust was not the sort of person who took pleasure in pain.

But was she? Really?

Did she think these things because she ought to think these things, or did she think these things ‘cause they were true?

She looked at the charred ruins about her, and looked down at her hands, and she knew the answer.

She really had always liked punching things. Winning a fight gave her a sick joy, sure, but it was the pummeling that really did it. She had never been a thinker. She had always been a puncher. It was the simple truth of the matter.

Yet it had never gotten half as wild as this. Those golden hoops had poured a bucketful of oil on a candleflame, and it spread out of control, and morphed into something monstrous, all-consuming. It took a deep-down part of her—a part of her she was ashamed of—and inflamed it to unfathomable heights. It muted her fears. It squashed her doubts. It gave her a drunken, pigheaded confidence so she could indulge without a care in the world. It was her that had done these things. Just an utterly awful part of her, a part of her she hardly dared to admit.

She licked the blood off her lips. And she loved it.

But a worried voice still niggled at her mind. It was the thinking part of her, the part that flinched at this—this excess. This awful, gross display. Was this really who she wanted to be?

And yet… she bit her lip. Why was she more concerned about this than she was about her being an utterly helpless!? She gnashed her teeth.

The scene of that first time she’d gone berserk flashed in her mind. She’d been stuck on that last bit, her kneeling in the bodies.

She snarled. Was she forgetting that these were the bodies of would-be rapists?! How stupid! Who was the monstrous one, really? Each time she’d called on this—what had Io called it?—contract, it had come to her aid, and yanked out a part of her she desperately needed. It had saved her. No—she had saved her, with a part of herself she insisted on holding down! Kaya in the Azcan Oasis was a sniveling, sad, broken thing. Was that who she wanted to be?

She clenched her fists. To hells with that!

When something came at her with fangs she wasn’t dodging anymore. She was done dodging. Let it sink its fangs into her. She’d bite right back and savor its blood on her lips and smile.

She laughed with her whole body, fullthroated, holding back nothing. She sounded like herself. She felt as though there had been a nail stuck in her head her whole life, and she’d finally pulled it out. It felt delicious.

Then there was the last trifling concern. It seemed silly now.

This contract—what was it? Where had it come from?

She grinned.

Did she really care?

It had Io’s seal of approval. And Io said she ought to do as she pleased with it. And this—oh, it pleased her very much.