“Reduced metabolic rate? Who wouldn’t want that? There was a case of an olm—a cave salamander—going 2,000 days without moving. No human has come close to matching this, but this did not stop the Emergence Corps from favoring the Olm strand among their recruits. That is until the maligned expanded too far for them to be picky. Now… now the Corps will take anyone.”
—Professor James Anthem to the students of MZ-208: Etymology of the Strands at Galt Alese. Two weeks before being drafted to the Kaskit Emergence Corps.
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A man of books and knowledge filed down to a blunt instrument, a husk of his distant self. He sinks his boots into the desecrated soil of the Hyrnlak Archipelago, and he is never the same again. Hells, if you could see him, you would pity the very raw ground he walks on, the roots that grip his boots, searching for cracks and a way in. The raw taunts him as it climbs the side of the buildings, pushing through the shallow netting guarding the openings, slowly but with certain progress until the battalion’s burners have to incinerate the stuff. Fire cleanses all, save for man’s loathing.
Private James Anthem sleeps in bivouacs of fine netting to keep the mosquitos out, flinches at every skitter of a jungle pest, and jolts awake at the faintest rustle of a gust of wind or a groan. He eats nutrient-pumped rations and cultured meats from cells gathered from the few remaining animals around the archipelago. He misses even the most mundane normalities of home, reminisces on the freedom to roam around unassisted, to drink water without waiting outside the boilers for his turn, to gaze up at the night sky and not worry about a maligned bird of prey swooping down and pecking his eyes out. He is too clumsy, too absent-minded to remember the formations and the places they patrol and the names of people who command him. He is thrown into the marches with half a mind, the drills with only a bit more, just enough to keep him out of the piercing stare of his comrades and the skittering maligned.
The Cliff House becomes their home—the looming structure once sheltering the archipelago’s native population centuries ago. The Corps has sealed the passages, though most gather in its central square. The man huddles in its corners much like a frightened mammal would, scrawling notes and passages he remembers from Galt Alese, sketches of the city streets he frequented, the food stalls he’d been kicked out of, the view of the setting pales from his study’s window. He takes those visages with him on patrol, on watch duty, holding them in clenched fists. He sleeps until the longing overwhelms him and presses him to throw the depictions into the fires, forsaking a shred of himself to smoke and to memory.
Anthem’s musket feels as durable as a child’s toy, though thrice larger than his own hands. When putrid water hammers down one morning, he fumbles to load the rifle, and the lieutenant, witnessing such a display, kicks him in the back. Powder sprays everywhere, flecks of the stuff all over his arms and boots. He finds the powder charge in a tuft of grass still mostly intact, but soon after comes another hovering shadow, the looming form of Private Frine, that meathead of an ape. It is not the first time these months that figure has stood with ill intent, the excitement of a chance to be alone with Anthem, where he can release his grudges, avenge the retorts from the scrawny zoologist, and inflict the most pain with the least consequence. The meathead keeps Anthem in eye’s reach, glancing like some stalking tiger, a hungry mosquito, and he makes this known when he swats the vial out of Anthem’s hand. Forced to sit out, Anthem observes the others in the 3rd squad loosing their volleys while he is rebuked, dressed down and reminded he is weak, frail, and a rusted cog in an otherwise functioning machine. He is a liability, a waste of food and space. If Hyrnlak is genuinely a pocket of the Hells, he will be the first to go.
“Don’t sweat him,” assures Sergeant Nedland that night and every night before. “There is no sense in talking to brutes like that. The worst you can do is indulge him. Keep your head down and focus.”
So that is what Anthem does. His vesicle tank lightens as the months pass, his grip on the musket strengthening. His aim improves. It takes him forty-five seconds to load, and when he is no longer the slowest at the task, Lieutenant Fletcher turns his discipline away, encouraging the other soldiers outside Anthem’s squad to draw closer to him, this beacon of ire no longer. Many are veterans, men stationed at Hyrnlak for months before Anthem arrived. He overhears their stories, the trials they’ve suffered while surviving against hordes of assaulting maligned, the men they’ve known that have come and gone and will continue to go. They recall the scouting missions and the skirmishes outside the RLZ around Lomlen and the nearby islands. All the while, Anthem cannot shake the feeling that he is a thorn in the side of not just his squad but the entire battalion.
“Useless thoughts,” says Unwin one night, his voice muffled through the netting of his sleeping bag. “If you start to think like that, it means you’re not busy enough. Keep your head down and focus.”
But that is the same thing Sergeant Nedland had told Anthem months ago. He cannot remember a more taxing time, even while losing nights at the Galt to cramming, conducting labs, researching, and perfecting the next day’s lesson. As Unwin and the others snore, Anthem guesses it is not that he isn’t busy but that the tasks here do not fulfill him, that he performs autonomous movements without thought, with no room for logic or reasoning. Your survival on the Hyrnlak Archipelago depends on your ability to follow orders, how fast you run, how close you can stand to a maligned without fleeing, and how accurately and deep you can drive your bayonet. After four months, Anthem still has not seen any of the native things other than the sorry excuses that scurry around the RLZ. They are not the threats the soldiers before him speak of, the ones they’re all training to fight: the house-sized monstrosities, the snakes with legs, the dogs with more tentacles than an octopus, and more horrific descriptions Anthem tries to forget.
He’s yet to apply any of his lessons in combat. He’s yet to have an ounce of critical thought or analysis. His body sharpens, but his mind withers away.
Unwin and Ned’s shared mantra plays out in the background of Anthem’s days, the principle that keeps one foot ahead of the other while all lie and wait for the first maligned attack. “Any day now,” Nedland keeps saying, but by the fifth month, it becomes a joke, and by the sixth, the sergeant stops the utterance completely. Yet the transport gondolas keep arriving, shooting out of their mouths another platoon, and another, and another, until the pressure of an impending attack mounts like a zit underneath his skin, ready to burst. More men appear each month, but none are dying. Not yet.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Eventually, they’ll have to fight.
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On the morning of the latter half of the seventh month at Hyrnlak, Anthem wakes, marches, drills, and joins his 3rd squad of the 2nd platoon. Nedland flags him down, Unwin too, and Hamill following, and together, the men take their hourly inhalation from their vesicles, the process having become a ritual early after landing. Together, they pass the Bunching Tower, the Overlook, Mug Rot Alpha, and Mug Rot Beta, two teetering pagodas that resemble coffee cups he once drank from back in Kaskit. Anthem can recite hundreds of callouts for every structure in the ruined city now, and when before they were empty, now from each sprouts a man, a face, and then entire squadrons. Soon, Ropeway Landing Zone 1 will be too small to contain them all. Then what? We march on and rid ourselves of this dying coastal city?
The Corps’ decontaminators check their lifelines and tank volumes before they pass through the RLZ’s walls. Anthem takes a whiff of his vesicle and has to keep himself from taking three more. The others do the same, staring around at the limping trees, the invading fronds, the pathways winding around Lomlen that they’ve only ventured on patrols. He does not bother to swat away the bugs that bite his arms and get a mouthful of the neutralizer-inhibitor mix before fluttering off and crashing to the ground.
Their path leads them into a thick layer of treeline about half a kilometer deep, and after weaving through it for what seems like an eternity, they emerge into a clearing, most of it blocked off on their side by stone bleachers, once seats for an audience. The bleachers face a center clearing larger than ten of Cliff House’s market squares, maybe twenty. It was once a sporting ground, an arena for gladiatorial combat or the performing arts. Along its open section, lines of bricks form lanes reaching the end of the arena. Men gather at the edge of each of these and aim muskets.
The first volley pounds the temple grounds, the resounding crack filling every inch of Anthem’s awareness. Five men in a line kneel to make room for seven more behind them, who release another crunch into their range.
“A big fucking miss,” Unwin utters and points to a mix of forms standing in the middle of the range. They are scarecrows, more at home in the remaining farmer’s fields surrounding Kaskit, and composed of sticks with heads of giant fruits carved out to resemble eyes and fitted with tree leaves portraying clothing. Symbols of rank scrawled on the chests denote them.
“That one looks like Frine’s big dumb head,” says Anthem, gesturing to another range where one scarecrow stands with a watermelon head larger than the rest of its body.
The other men bark their agreement until Hamill snorts like a pig, chokes on his spit, and then the laughs turn his way. They pass another group at a range loading their muskets, who stare. Anthem quickly notices who is among them.
“Who fucking said that?” asks Frine, standing in the line and finding Anthem. “Eh? Zoo man?”
Zoo man? “You have about as much creative energy as a snail,” yells Anthem. “What’s next? Soldier man? Man man? You have enough words to spare? How about enough foresight to think that far ahead?”
The meathead’s hold on his musket wavers until Sergeant Hallisey, Frine’s direct command, shouts him down. “Keep your pigs in their line,” Hallisey tells Nedland.
“The only pigs I see are you fat fucks.” Nedland tips his head to Hallisey. To Anthem's estimation, the opposing sergeant is over six and a half feet tall, but he hosts a strand that bulges his stomach to the size of a powder keg.
Hallisey orders his squad to calm their snarls, and the 3rd squad finds their range, introducing themselves to the council of scarecrows positioned before them. There’s a fat one not unlike Hallisey, though half the height, and two skinny ones with barely any leaf clothes or regalia. Nedland orders the men to cover their targets up, and Anthem seizes the chance to create a bonnet by folding fronds and tying bark to them. As they’re running back with their ensembles, the 2nd squad fires a volley right next to the plot, the balls ricocheting off the ground, too close.
At the firing line, Nedland orders the muskets loaded, primed, and fired. They begin the exact moment as the 2nd squad but discharge their volley ten seconds earlier. Nedland yells something incomprehensible at the small victory, and Hallisey sneers just as his shot rips the gathering scarecrows in his range.
“Cease fire!” Lieutenant Fletcher’s cracked voice sounds like he’s on the brink of hocking something up. “I see spirits are high here.” The 2nd and 3rd say nothing to this. “But not high enough.” He gathers the men closer. “Let’s make a game out of it, shall we?” Before Anthem can ask more, the lieutenant hails over the rest of the eight squads in his 2nd platoon. “Live targets, men. Each squad gets at least one, but there could be more. The first squad to kill their targets gets a prize.”
Live targets? Maligned? What else could they be? The only other living creatures on Hyrnlak are better off as food, their cells stripped for culturing, in the least.
“What’s the prize?” screams a private from far off.
“I’ll fucking think about that later!”
“Not much of a prize if it doesn’t incentivize us to compete,” says another, rushing through the mouthful.
Fletcher looks at his men, ponders, and arrives at a conclusion. “Alright, how about this? If you kill your targets first, you won’t be on night watch for the rest of our time at RLZ 1.”
The proposition earns some consideration from the men, but more questions arise. “How long will that be?” utters a private.
“Could be gone any day now,” says another.
“Could be dead tomorrow,” says one more.
Everyone shares this last sentiment, and it becomes abundantly clear the lieutenant’s offer isn’t enough to quell the unease. Instead of doing away with the idea altogether, the carousing seems to amuse Fletcher. “Let me sweeten the deal, then.” He takes ten seconds to think, holding hostage the attention of every man in his platoon. “How about this? The first squad to kill all of their targets gets to go home.”
If a wave of maligned had chosen that moment to stampede into the 2nd platoon, the things would have run the men over before anyone would have noticed. Not a single volley loosens, not a foot shuffles. Every soul is trained on Fletcher and won’t escape so quickly.
“You can’t do that, LT,” says Hallisey. “We need all the hands.”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want, men. Tatlock’s allowed it, and the next transport gondola will arrive tonight from Kaskit. It will leave with ample space to hold one squad. That is, if you want to.”
The men stir, turning to one another, grabbing their friends by the arms and yanking, checking if this is some inoculation-induced hallucination the lieutenant is exploiting. It isn’t, and Anthem, too, is rooted in place, thinking of how far away home had been all this time and how close it is now.
“Pick your weapons,” Fletcher continues, “assign your formations. Take thirty minutes to plan and meet back here. We will organize your targets.”
“What are we going to be fighting?” asks Unwin.
“That, private, is part of the exercise. I won’t tell you, so be ready for anything.”