The maligned gurgles.

It crooks its fish head to one side, bending its neck ninety degrees and touching its shoulders with pointed rabbit ears. Two wet eyes the size of dinner plates scan the room with pupils burning a bloody orange, and out of its torso emerge ten flailing horse legs, the front two ending in pincers as long as a polearm.

The thing can easily crush an armored Thurmgeist but won’t dare.

June-Leckie calls them krabs with a ‘K,’ flat and round maligned, their pincers being the only similarity to their crustacean counterpart. With mammalian bodies covered in fur, the krabs otherwise assume the visage of their host species: caribou, cows, anything fat and slow. Anything that can’t run.

More sophisticated descriptions for the things decorate the medical zoology textbooks and the Emergence Corps’ field reports, the latter documents the Thurmgeists shouldn’t access but do anyway. The creature’s distinctions, however, are meaningless to June. The krabs are maligned, and all maligned must die.

She props up her helmet’s visor. “Pikemen in the rear! Burners first!” Her voice echoes in the narrow room but is barely audible over the krab’s gurgles. The Thurmgeists don’t fit into the Corps’ command structure, but men still listen to them. They would be stupid not to.

A squad of pikemen hears, and the men consider their responsibility as the inferior—the expendable. They form a line between June and the krab, and when their sergeant arrives, he relays the order as if they were his own.

They remain in place, the burners June ordered nowhere in sight. Probably dead. “Fucking idiots!” June calls. “Get back!”

Distracted and hardened by battle lust, the men prod the krab with bardiches, attempting to herd it away and expose its stomach. They robbed their weapons from corpses minutes prior, from other fallen, from men just as bold and brave as they think themselves to be.

What does courage mean in the face of things that eat and consume? How about honor? These men are more an obstacle than anything—meat shields at best.

The maligned backs away slowly, pressing against the stone wall behind it. The thing appears to be retreating, but June knows better and can intervene anytime. She chooses not to.

Another Thurmgeist appears from June’s periphery. “Orders, June?” Grace Kanis is under June’s command, another incubator rescued from the vats. She’s as green as the men in front but a hundred times as valuable—nay, a thousand times.

Can you even quantify such an advantage?

Thick armor covers Grace from head to toe. Her only discerning feature is her long braided hair sticking out of a hole in the back of her helmet she had carved there. It sways like a maligned’s dead tendril, and Grace likes to think it lures and subdues the creatures.

“Best make an example out of these clowns,” says June, nodding to the pikemen arrayed before her. “We’ll join the rest and go down to the Gash.”

“Straight to its edge?”

June nods. “If there’s a Mind, it’ll be hiding next to the Gash—close to the raw ground.”

Another squad of pikemen lends their aid, doubling the idiotic contingent, and it’s then that the maligned stops gurgling. It crouches, shields its two wet eyes from the onslaught of poking blades.

This is June’s last chance to reconsider her inaction and to see the men as something beyond useless piles of flesh. Instead, she utters, “This, Grace, is why you never corner krabs.”

The maligned’s bellowing shriek is the only warning. Its left claw shoots out, stabbing a pikeman’s chest, pushing through a weak spot in his armor, and jutting out the other side. It slams its other claw down on a halberdier and crumples his head. The six remaining men run like scared dogs towards June, pleading in their eyes and regret.

So sweet the perils of men are. June steps aside as they barrel past. “Useless rats! All of you!”

The krab pulls away, its claw still embedded in the pikeman’s chest. The thing wriggles, its underbelly bulges and pops, and from it emerges tentacles that wind up the soldier’s legs, curl around them, and squeeze. Feelers emerge from the tentacles, snake-like appendages that prod the soldier’s armor until they find the chinks, the holes, the entrances. Once found, the feelers drive into the man’s flesh, past the bones, searching for veins and organs and spreading like the roots of a tree over a time-lapse of decades.

June approaches the krab and finds two sets of eyes scanning her up and down, evaluating her, recognizing her for what she is. The maligned raises its free claw high and points the sharp end directly at June’s head. It leans in and holds the pincer close enough to graze her neck, hanging in the air like an executioner’s cleaver ready to strike down.

Never does the krab touch her, though. Never could it.

“Doesn’t it ever creep you out?” asks Grace, staring into the krab’s eyes with the curious fascination of a child watching something die. She knows this thing can’t hurt her either. “After all this time?”

“Used to.” Grace had never seen maligned back in Kaskit, but June had the fortune of escaping the incubation vats early and seeing the creatures in action—thank the Hells. June advances and runs a gloved hand over the krab’s bulging eyelid. It flinches, does not flee, but does not lunge either. “Decree shield us.”

“Decree shield us.”

The Writings—the natural laws of the world, transcribed and recorded—protect June, Grace, and every other woman in the world from the maligned. The Decree is one instance of the Writings, one of a library’s worth of physical laws that cannot be disobeyed. Few eyes have seen the Decree, but all have witnessed its effects. Some women, like June and her Thurmgeists, live by them.

So as Written, so shall be.

June unsheathes her machete, a jagged blade stained black with maligned blood, chipped from hacking into carapace and bone. Even dull blades become needles in the hands of Thurmgeists.

As clockwork, as natural and fitting as rain and the two rising suns, June and Grace lean back and drive their machetes into the soft of the maligned’s eyes. Its gurgles turn to bubbling screams that turn to frantic wailing. It wants to flail, wants to throw the two women away, crumple them like the men, capture them, turn them, but it knows it can’t.

The krab sags to the floor, crumples, and lies still. Its body emits a pop, much like a boiled frog. The men hold their pikes at the ready, and maybe they’ll trust their Thurmgeists next time. June just laughs.

“Their brains are always behind the eyes,” says June. “Always.” She finds a soldier’s corpse beneath her, wipes her blade with his tunic, and walks away. “Finish it!”

Pikemen rush in, fueled by revenge for their fallen comrades. They drive their assortment of pilfered blades into the maligned’s carcass, puncturing it like a pincushion. June kicks a body as she goes, knowing these men deserve no recognition or accolades.

Behind them stands an opening that could reach a church’s steeple. June pushes the pikemen aside and steps through it onto a bridge that leads to a platform into an enormous cylindrical room.

It’s as if an entire palace’s innards have been scooped out. Massive bridges span the space above, Emergence Corps infantry striding atop them, armored Thurmgeists running ahead of the men in ragged formations. A volley of musket fire cracks in one of the rooms in the walls of the cylindrical space, echoing down as the sound of pebbles tossed aside. Waterfalls spew from balconies and splash onto plants clinging to pillars, themselves infested with a dozen different strands but not quite maligned. Not yet.

And, of course, the raw ground is everywhere. Manifesting as roots in their earliest stage, the raw snakes up the sides of the giant space, seeking nutrients, water, sustenance, and a chance to continue expanding. If the roots fail to find life to feast on, they will harden, decay, and turn to ash, spreading on the ground and giving the phenomenon its name. Afterward, each fleck will act as a seed that can be carried away on the wind or by another organism to grow into roots again and resume expanding. The process makes June want to throw up over the bridge.

When she gags and looks down over the side, she sees the Gash.

The opening is a tear through the crumpled stones of the great temple’s floor. A jumble of roots completely blocks anyone from peering down its depth, but you would never need to ask anyone where exactly it leads, for all know the Hells lie at the end of it. June almost stops walking, imagining herself sliding down the Gash until she hits the bottom, facing the maligned and the raw ground. She would hack them all away, burning to a crisp while the Hells consumed her. It would be a worthy trade to eradicate all these things.

June follows the bridge to the platform at its end, one of many circling the space below where the Gash tore through. At the platform’s center congregate nine Thurmgeists, some holding their helmets at their side, others keeping their visors open. A couple hold blazing torches, but the light is unnecessary as the holes and cracks in the temple’s ceiling give way to blue skies. An albatross the size of a horse flaps past the opening. Above them, Emergence Corps scouts, burners, and sappers carry powder kegs.

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

“The recruits helped escort the sappers,” says Alcina, one of the Thurmgeists in the circle. She’s the thickest-built woman June has ever met. Her heavy shell armor is the same as the women’s, a thick suit of plate meant to keep out maligned claws and feelers, though it did little to help the pikemen crushed by the krab. On a Thurmgeist, the heavy shells are more regalia than anything: testaments to their obscene advantage on the battlefield. Alcina’s own isn’t enough to disguise her muscle, and whatever Ox strand she hosts must have planted itself deep and early in her life. “Only a couple years out of the incubation vats. I heard Gauss had a fun time explaining their presence.”

As he should. The Emergence Corps does not formally acknowledge the Thurmgeists but never throws out the women after finding them stowed away in the holds of their transport gondolas, either. June knows the Hyrnlak Archipelago is a much better fate than any incubation vat. At least out here, invincible against the maligned, the women can make a difference.

The two Thurmgeists who had escorted the sappers huddle over the body of a maligned, sawing it open to find the vital organs. With similar shoulder-length dark hair, both of them could be twins.

“They’re going to be very bored after today,” says June-Leckie. “The ride to Kaskit is six weeks. I’ll be glad to be out of this shit hole.”

“I just want to see this Gash and everything burn.” Grace removes her helmet, letting her freckled face bask in the damp air. “The Flung have the seed?”

“Apparently.” The Far Flung Sails is Kaskit’s navy, now repurposed to be its gondola force.

June warms at the mention of the fire seed, the Flung carrying it over as if on a velvet pillow, to be thrown into the Gash and burn all of this raw ground and every other organism in the Hyrnlak Archipelago. It will take at least a few years for the raw ground to sprout forth from the Gash and repopulate the maligned, but by then, the Emergence Corps will establish a stronger foothold.

June’s mind returns to Kaskit, the place of her birth and the terminus of her life. It’s one of only four remaining cities in the Smatter Council, the continent’s governing body. Towns, villages, and even regional boundaries became meaningless once the Gashes opened up, giving way to the raw ground and the maligned. Humanity is stronger in numbers, and they will, someday, drive the maligned and the raw ground back, like they almost had 97 years ago.

Alcina coughs. “If there’s a Mind down there, well…”

June shrugs. “Nothing we can do.” The Decree works on both sides, not just for the benefit of humans but also maligned. A truce born out of desperation to protect the women of humanity and the Minds—the things that direct the maligned. When the Bursting occurred, and the largest Gashes opened up, the maligned went straight for the women. When Man discovered the Minds, they went straight for the things in retaliation. Women and Minds nearing extinction, the truce was born. June still wonders if humanity would have prevailed if the Decree had never been Written.

She catches Grace Kanis looking down at the temple floor, concern written all over her. Worry? “Everything alright?” June whispers.

Grace looks somewhere far off. “Just, you know. All this time to get here, and it may be over now.”

“Don’t tell me you’ll miss the place.”

“No, just… I hope the seed burns it all. Really. I can’t imagine this stuff spreading any further.”

Alcina has overheard, and her hands on their shoulders should not be so reassuring. The flames will have to be enough. “Report back after,” Alcina says. “And describe it to me. I’d rather not see it firsthand.”

Alcina’s a little squeamish like that, and as June thinks of teasing her, the woman runs to catch up with the two newly recruited Thurmgeists on their way to dismember the krab. They leave Grace and the rest of the Thurmgeists alone on the center platform.

“You heard Alcina!” June looks around and makes sure the women are listening. “We’ll clear out the chamber, hack away everything we can, open the doors so the fire seed can burn the place fully. The Mind will likely flee, but let it go. It’ll be worth it just seeing the thing.” She sighs off the weight of a military campaign nearing its conclusion. “After that, we go home.”

The other Thurmgeists share the relief, but the weight does not lift completely. What will they do once they return and the city discovers they fled the vats? Become incubators again? No. Dooming themselves to incubation isn’t an option. June will cut through fields of maligned before she bears a child. Such is not the fate of women, not with an advantage like the Decree.

June helps two Thurmgeists lift a lid in the center of the platform. Despite its weight, it comes free easily, and by some mechanism in the stonework, it opens to reveal a staircase spiraling down into darkness. They wait around the opening as if it’s the mouth of a volcano, gathering their wits and each other before descending into blackness.

Grace takes the rear, the other four Thurmgeists forming the bulk. Water drips, and footsteps skitter. Black spotted lizards crawl up the walls, their tongues twice too long, their tails severed and never growing back. A snake with four heads chases one of the reptiles along the steps before slithering underneath June’s legs. None of these things make for the women, as even the mundane-minded beings are bound by the Decree.

At the bottom of the stairs, they enter onto a platform a few meters above the bottom floor of the temple. June looks down its edge and finds dark green roots of raw ground, eager and searching for sustenance. They cover every inch of the bottom floor, and June follows them to the Gash just a few steps away. This close, she can feel the heat from the Hells escaping. She suppresses the urge to run to the Gash’s edge and look down to say she can—to flex their victory.

“Keep the door open,” says June.

While two Thurmgeists decipher the stoneworks to lock the entrance door, the rest fan out, kneeling at the sides of the platform and scanning the depths for any semblance of the maligned Mind. Regardless of its chosen host, it will be enormous, likely an amalgamation of all sorts of creatures. June has heard of Minds the size of cathedrals and, with all that mental energy, the things can communicate with maligned across hundreds of kilometers, directing their movements. Hyrnlak has at least one Mind, but there might be more.

“June?” Grace’s voice is distant, her pause too long. “I found something.”

If the women only focused, they would hear the men running down the staircase.

“Something?” June asks and finds Grace on a raised section of the platform.

In front of the Thurmgeist stands a mound of maligned flesh. It’s an oval shape, almost like a pod big enough to stand in. It pulses as if worms scurry underneath its membrane. It bears no limbs, pincers, claws, eyes, or other discernible features. It seems just another pile of useless tissue with a small opening at its top.

Beside June, Grace shivers, though it’s unclear why. June assures the girl with a tap on her armored back, pulls her away from the pod, and peers inside.

A thin membrane covers the pod’s opening. Through it, a web of veins and arteries attaches to something inside. It’s round and has what looks like tufts of rope or twine. June feels the threads in her hand and finds they are pieces of hair—human hair—paired with delicate skin and a head.

A distant sense hides in the corners of this massive temple. Something is always watching them on the Hyrnlak Archipelago, but never before has June been so unnerved by those thousand presences—or maybe it’s just one.

“Gather round me,” June calls. “Tight formation. Watch your feet.”

None of it should matter, yet these words and the Decree seem far away, a reassurance from dying mouths. None of it comforts her.

“There’s more,” chitters Grace. Her teeth clack as if she is naked in the winter. “E-eleven of them.”

The other Thurmgeists approach, holding their torches over the openings of the pods. June remembers she’s carrying a torch and raises it high as she parts a pod’s gelatinous curtain further to look inside.

One of the Thurmgeists screams, then another, and another. June would hear them if her mind were not glued to the sight below her, one that she had suspected at first glance but could not accept. Now, she has no choice.

A woman stares back at June, looking up from inside the pod. Her skin is pristine, smooth as a child born yesterday. This vitality sharply yields to vessels like blood veins running from the pod’s interior lining and into her cheeks. They dig into her face, some thin as hairs poking through her pores. Her eyes are bigger than they should be.

Grace heaves and wretches, and another Thurmgeist does the same.

“Why?” It’s not Grace asking the question, nor the other Thurmgeists, but June, as if this is an elaborate prank. But no one is laughing. No one can even speak.

The maligned can not turn women, not as the Decree states it. So, what are those things inside the pods? What Hell have we stepped into?

This is impossible.

Decree shield us. Decree fucking shield us.

June hears it before she sees it.

First comes the chittering and scraping as pincers search for purchase. Then comes horse hooves clomping as they struggle to walk down the steps. Men pile in at the bottom of the room, screaming frantically, running from a hulking shadow emerging from the doorway that seems to have no interest in them. The thing’s eyes open, two sets, burning orange as bright as the torchlight. They look down on the women, not the men, with a renewed vigor—a hunger.

June has the presence of mind to withdraw her machete but almost drops it when she gets a second look at the creature.

Bodies of the fallen soldiers are plastered against the maligned’s body, connected by a loose membrane like a scattering of rocks glued together. They writhe, their mouths yawning agape so much further than anyone’s mouth should open. They’ve got curious eyes, too, pulling in every direction with no seeming cause. Then, at once, all those eyes turn to the top of the maligned, where three bodies burst out, two smaller than the bulkier third.

June has seen her before. “Alcina?”

The krab lunges at June, swings its claw, and nearly connects. Grace ducks, but the Thurmgeist beside her is too slow. The krab catches her by the stomach and shoves her down, straddles her, sits on her, and presses a claw against her exposed face. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, and young, and her pristine youth is on the brink of vanishing when her screams cut off. The maligned pincer covering her face, she looks at June and tries to pry herself free as the horse hooves extend, cradling her in their grip. From them sprout tendrils that slither up her skin and dig holes in the flesh. The woman’s shrieks meld with the thing’s, turning to a moan, then a dying wail.

What is sense in the face of this? June is far past confusion. For the first time in the Hyrnlak Archipelago, she feels raw and naked. She feels fear.

“We need to go!” June yells. “Now!”

Grace doesn’t hear.

“Go!”

June rises just as a feeler shoots out from the krab’s torso. It catches her leg, three more joining it and pulling. Their ends are human hands thrashing like something drowning. They search for the straps behind her leg plates, trying to undo them, borrowing knowledge from the turned soldiers and Alcina. From their fingertips sprout blades of bone, eager needles raking June’s skin. One slices down her calf, pain lancing. She fills that cavernous space with her screams.

Grace comes into view above her and hacks at one of the tentacles. The feeler squirms back and retreats into the confines of the maligned’s body, thrashing and pulling with it another Thurmgeist. She hacks again at the second tentacle before it crawls away.

June rolls, shoots to her feet, and runs towards the platform’s edge, where an opening leads along a path of roots nearby. When she realizes Grace isn’t following her, she turns back to find the maligned has pulled more Thurmgeists in. The screams of the turning procession collect and synchronize, deep and primal from bent throats. Plastered to the thing’s body, the women kick as appendages shoot from the visors of their heavy shells.

Grace crashes into the raw below, and June joins her.

Pustules burst around them, thorns cutting into June’s skin. She runs headlong for the passage towards Grace, who is gagging and crying. Grace goes one way just before a root falls and blocks June’s path. She cuts through it with her machete as Grace’s hysterical wails fade. Shadows dart among the roots, June’s unsure if they’ll come for her.

She crawls through the enclosing prison, branches slipping past her, the darkness encroaching. She finds an opening in the bramble, reaches for it, pulls herself above the roots, and runs until she can’t breathe.

Grace’s shouts disappear, leaving June with the darkness and her beating heart.