“Hells spare us.”
—Lieutenant Colonel Tatlock’s mycorrhizal to the Second Signature.
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“A damn impossible sight, isn’t it?” James Anthem folds his arms and sets his pack down next to Lieutenant Nedland. In front of them, the maligned have eaten a path through the raw ground leading to Jubilee’s gates.
The great temple’s outer walls rise to at least four stories. Instead of a straight climb upwards, at the top, they curve in and over the temple, forming a domed shape of stone with its top open. From that top ascends the temple’s only bullwheel tower, not unlike those you’d find in Kaskit. Red elongated maligned snake downwards from the tips of the dormant wheels, distant shapes jumping for the trestles like lampreys thrown into boiling water. They spring up, catch hold with arms, mouths, or other appendages, and disappear into huge holes.
A line of the hardened ropeway cord leads down to a support tower in the middle of the open plain in front of Jubilee, half the height it once was, with brambles of raw ground roots reaching up at its base. Even now, burners carve a path through the bramble toward it.
“What is your professional opinion of those, zoo man?” asks the lieutenant, referring to the eel-like things hanging from the bullwheel.
“Not sure. Not everything’s been cataloged. Could be new things.” Anthem scans the life forms. “Everything could be new there. Who knows what they hosted? The ecology is complex.”
Nedland takes all this in, then hands over his looking glass and points.
With it, Anthem studies the giant bullwheel. Closer now, he can see holes bored through the stone edifice that supports it. These are small, with bright green pustules pulsing inside. There may be shapes inside those throbbing spheres or specks of dirt on the lens. The lure of discovery pulls Anthem closer.
After months on the march, arriving at the temple now seems lackluster. Did he expect a fanfare, the maligned to wheel out a carpet and welcome the Corps to its doorsteps? The temple is grand, but it is dead; its colossal scale lost along with the life inside. Then, he reminds himself that this is all surface level, and beneath this jungle metropolis, there is a Gash.
He walks west, examining what had once been a bay bordering the temple but now resembles a cliff’s edge, with a few port buildings nestling on its shore. They have a picturesque view looking out to the Swathe, most of it dried up, and the long Kaskitian continental ropeway cord that, even now, still turns. The vista is a welcome sight from the prison of palms and vines he’s lived in since arriving.
The 3rd squad sets their packs down in a circle just a few strides away. Men from other platoons look his way as he passes, but none for long. He’s earned renewed glances since they melted the nest and after his confrontation with the Thurmgeists. He’s unsure what’s written on those stares and sticks close to the rest of the 3rd squad just in case.
The Thurmgeists, eager to be ahead—to supersede the men—gather in front of the temple’s enormous doors. Anthem counts at least fifteen women, but more could be around the jungle. That most have strayed far from the battalion until now sickens him. Perhaps if they had all been at the nest yesterday, they could have destroyed it without neutralizers. And what would you be if that happened?
Lieutenant Nedland gathers the men around closed crates, pointing at the lip of a path exiting the forest and ordering supply tents built. The men set about it, but Anthem remains distant from the crowd. No one questions his idleness until Nedland beckons the zoo man over and points to a lower floor on a cross-sectional map of Jubilee. “I’ve carved a place for you to set up,” he says. “It’s inside, lower, but not close to the Gash. You’ll be well behind the men and far from the sappers who will open a hole to the Gash. No one’s going to question you.”
Anthem sighs, relieved. “You sure they’re not going to make me fight?”
Nedland shakes his head. “Tatlock’s decision, and we’ll be there with you.” He taps Anthem on the back. “What else can we do?”
What can anyone do? We march into the heart of this great temple to our deaths, and the Flung are nowhere in sight. Yet even in death’s brutal clutches, innovation still requires human hands.
Nedland calls for the others of the 3rd to join, and Watse elbows Anthem. “Clear skies, my friend,” says the unofficial meteorologist. “Couldn’t have asked for a better funeral.”
Anthem swallows back a retort as Unwin joins next, seeming to lift the mood.
Devitt returns as well, carrying a swinger carcass over his shoulders. The man who will eat anything carries a four-liter canteen that he looks eager to chug back. “The last drink of my life, friends,” he says, then gulps down.
“If Tatlock finds you spewing shit like that, he’ll burn you,” says Nedland.
“Too little of us to go around, LT. This is the death we’ve all been marching towards. Admit it.”
Nedland doesn’t and looks back at the map before Orey approaches the group. “Any word?” The lieutenant asks him.
Orey nods, turning to the men. “They had a brief stopover in Lamascus, but now the cord is spinning faster.” He sighs, along with the others. “They bring a seed, men.” He runs off to relay the update to the other platoons.
At first, neither Anthem nor the men know what to think. They had marched here with the acceptance of death, had given up their water with the assumption they wouldn’t need it, that the Flung would make it to Hyrnlak at some point, but not before the maligned and the raw claimed the Corps. With the fire seed closer than ever, Anthem and the men dare to feel a semblance of hope.
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Nedland finishes the specifics of their assignment just as one of Tatlock’s messengers calls him and a select few of the 3rd squad—including Anthem—to the lieutenant colonel’s tent. Underneath it, Tatlock paces across his map tables with his chest puffed out. “You’ve heard the updates,” he says, “the Flung will be here soon. We may… we may go home.”
The cheer comes louder than any Anthem ever heard in Kaskit, from men previously consigned to their fates, from once hopeless souls now invigorated. Anthem embraces Watse, allows himself to be lifted by Unwin, and is practically thrown into a small crowd of other officers and privates gathered around the tent to overhear the orders. Word floods the camp, quickening men to their tasks with renewed vigor.
“Settle down, settle down.” Tatlock closes the box on his spotted mycorrhizal. “We still need to open the temple completely so the fire seed reaches Jubilee’s Gash. That means every door needs to be blasted open, the mechanisms torn out so they can’t be closed again. The fire seed will ensure complete eradication if we can do that. If we are strong, we will be around to see this place burn.”
More cheers, more shouts out of turn for the hope that had once left them. The idea of a command tent means nothing now, for it seems every man in the battalion gathers near it.
Tatlock delves into the specifics, unrolling a dozen cross-sectional maps of the temple and assigning platoons to certain areas. “There are not enough burners to go around,” Tatlock says, “but we may have enough neutralizer.” He doesn’t bother consulting for an opinion from his lieutenants as it doesn’t matter; they all saw what happened at the nest.
A messenger approaches and hands the lieutenant colonel a spyglass while gesturing to Jubilee’s front gates. The other officers leave their seats, setting their looking glasses and eyes on the place. Everyone turns to the temple.
Nedland bumps Anthem. “The pustules, zoo man. On the bullwheels.” He hands a spyglass to Anthem.
The throbbing bumps on the bullwheel tower are much the same as before, only a bit larger. No. He looks again. They aren’t any bigger; they’re closer to the edge of their holes. Some look ready to burst out and split the stone, while some of the other spots are empty.
Shit.
Tatlock’s messenger runs to warn the other platoons. The officers leave the table. Soldiers buzz to life around them while the three-story doors to the great temple bustle and brim. They move ever so slightly away from their positions, parting not because of some mechanism working but because of force, of battering heads and bodies pressed against it on the other side. Then, Jubilee’s gate throws itself open, admitting hordes of stampeding maligned. They trip, crawl, climb back to their feet, and keep running. Hundreds funnel out of the gate, a thick river of black and pink with bobbing heads, two or three to each body, heading straight for the first line of the Corps offensive. The only line ready.
Nedland joins the back of the line, trailed by his 3rd squad. Anthem looks through the glass again, but there are too many of the things, some as tall as trees and others barely as high as his waist. Some slither, others run on four legs, some six. One carries what looks like a six-pound cannon on its back but appears to be made of flesh. It is a menagerie of vile and rot, all heading towards their camp.
Pinions rise, signal flares cracking above as pikemen rush to reinforce the front line with halberds and bardiches. Two lines of musketeers gather behind them, Nedland and the other lieutenants carrying the signals. Tatlock finds a hastily erected platform to observe the battle on. Atop it, he relays orders to his messengers and his standard bearers.
A salvo launches from the cannon-backed maligned, shooting projectile balls that don’t spin in the air. Legs sprout from them, then wings, and then a dozen creatures fly above the charging maligned, adding height to this wall of advancing monstrosities. As one pulsating thing, it shimmies like dense magma, uncoordinated but unresolved in its haphazard advance. There is no fear in its collected motion, no indecision. It is the furthest thing Anthem’s seen from humanity, worse than the nest, for it seems twice the maligned that could have been contained in the structure are here now, running, crawling, and leaping towards them.
Atop his platform, Tatlock raises his machete and brings it down.
The air explodes as the muskets roar, shimmering and cracking the front of the maligned mass. The creatures tumble over each other, but some fervent runners smack into the fallen, breaking limbs but still crawling, limping, or rolling toward the Corps pikemen.
The fliers dive into the lines, grabbing the pikemen and dropping and throwing them towards the temple’s walls to splatter. The remaining pikemen see the next divers and drive their weapons into soft stomachs. The creatures fall to the ground, dragging the pikemen with them while more rain down from above.
Another volley cracks the plain from the second row of muskets. Huge pocks bore into the line of deformed creatures, spilling them onto the ground like toys, catching some of the fliers. One has been spared and runs towards the pikemen, itself a bipedal monstrosity flailing two whip-taught tentacles with a twenty-foot swing span. It lunges forward and snares a man, lifts him, and squeezes. Six pikemen run in, prod, and saw at the tentacles till there’s nothing left but deformed bone, and the thing is forced to let go.
Then, at once, the pikemen drop onto their stomachs.
The next volley screams, clipping the entire front of the writhing mass in one swoop. Piles of the creatures fall as another blast comes.
Ox-infused haul supply carts while medics run behind the second line of musketeers, dragging wounded. The entire operation is automatic, each volley the tick of a clock, almost to a second’s calculated precision.
The cannons roar, and their salvo is a hand slapping the maligned away, tossing them like discarded toys. It’s a massacre, but not for the Corps, and on its back is the weight of the approaching Flung, the sight of Kaskit on the horizon.
Tatlock holds his machete high, but instead of bringing it down, he swings it clockwise as if hurling a bolas. The first line of musketeers lower their rifles and, instead, reach for things on their waists, and with the objects in hand, they raise their arms, pull back, and throw.
The sky fills with sparkling glass, hues of bright orange, greens, and gold spinning in the air, lit by the sister suns high up. Anthem’s mouth yawns open. The battalion’s provisioners and engineers must have learned from him and utilized the remaining neutralizer, for those are his carafes spinning in the air and splashing onto the maligned.
The cacophony is a thousand church windows breaking at once. Fluids spray as they mix violently with the maligned blood and even each other, exploding into chain reactions and rainbows. Hundreds of maligned bend and disintegrate, crumbling to pieces like they’re constructions of dried leaves and dust. The mixtures vomit fire and death onto their enemies, and it seems every soldier in the Corps carries not just one of the bottles but three or four, thrown in bursts that could rival a gondola’s broadside.
These are Anthem’s creations in the flesh, resulting from months of careful mixtures, sleepless nights, and sweat. They are the trust his battalion has placed in him, their eternal regard, the greatest affection a man like him could have asked for. It is the most beautiful thing Anthem will ever witness.
With the line disintegrated and a lull of land between them and the gates to the temple, Anthem sees Tatlock studying the space and knows, like all the men in the battalion do, that there will not be a better chance.
The Lieutenant Colonel orders the Corps to march into the temple, and the men obey.