The following was communicated by the Rebel Prisoner of War on the condition of full amnesty for all acts described or spoken.
The Thing grew out of the market square. It started as this little nib. Only the old matron, Katya, noticed it when it was in that state. In a week it grew to the size of a market stall. It was right in the way of the aisle and blocked any way of getting by, and boy did it stink. People had to get on with their days, though. So we went on, and a plan was made to pull it up as soon as someone had the time. But before anyone got some, it was already as big as one of the row-houses. The ooze started coming out around that time. It was thick, it was dense and heavy, and it smelled worse than the Thing itself did. By then a lot of us had given up on getting rid of it entirely. We didn’t say it out loud, but the simple fact of the matter was we could see how big it had gotten, and Milo the Forester had told anyone who’d listen that it had deep, deep roots. You could wound it with an axe, but it would take weeks of chopping to hack it out. No one had the time for that kind of work, let alone the money to pay for it. Meanwhile, we’d gotten used to the smell. The market was the market, people needed it and they adjusted. Some of us even grew to like it. The smell kept tourists from the Imperial Quarter away. The shopkeepers didn’t like that, but for the rest of us that made the smell almost worth it.
It was Minerva, the Apothecary’s Apprentice, who figured out that there was sulfur in the ooze. Not only did she find it, but she figured out how to distill it. It was an easy process to perform, and the sulfur that came out was almost pure. That’s when some of us got to thinking. Everyone still remembered the Spring Solstice uprising. We all supported the uprising’s cause, that’s what the Imperial authorities could never understand. The only reason their rebellion didn’t go further was because we couldn’t make our own gunpowder. We could get charcoal by coppicing trees, and saltpeter could be easily distilled from urine. But Sulfur, there was no accessible way to get sulfur, until now.
Some of us were already planning a second Spring Solstice uprising. We had stores of smuggled gunpowder built up. But with how easy it was to make powder with the ooze, we elected to leave the smuggled stuff in reserve. All the bullets we used to cut down the City Guard, those were fired with powder made from the ooze. So were the bullets we used to cut down the White Guard when we stormed the Imperial Quarter. We got to work building defense for the city right after that, because we knew right away they’d send Naval detachments next. That’s when the ooze first ran dry.
Between the smuggled powder we’d still yet to touch, and the homemade stuff we hadn’t used yet, we weren’t worried about the first wave of Marines. But we knew they were just the beginning, the real response would come after them. We had manpower, sympathizers were swarming into town from the countryside. We had metal, the foundries and the scrap yards supplied all the bullets and rifles we’d ever need. But none of that mattered if we ran out of gunpowder.
That’s when the dreams began. The person I saw get hit the hardest was Frita, the Artisan, but everyone had them in one form or another. A lot of us couldn’t describe what the dreams were like, and the ones that could always saw something different. The only thing the same was what we all felt like doing when we woke up. A few people set about it right away. First you water a patch of dirt right next to The Thing. Then with stakes, pitchforks, anything you could find, you work the earth in the same spot. Keep adding water and breaking it up until you have a deep pit of watery, slimy mud. Then, and this is where the workers stopped, you take a person and submerge them into the mud. Make sure they got far enough down to completely disappear into it. If you do that, the ooze flows again.
There were some arguments over the idea, but a solution offered itself up. We still had some of the White Guard as prisoners. We were doing our best to treat them with dignity, but they were making things difficult of us. They kept demanding luxurious treatment that we didn’t have the means to provide. When we failed, they’d scream that we were humiliating and torturing them. A few of them had even tried to stage a breakout. So we decided the leader of the breakout would became the first offering.
It worked. the Ooze flowed, but only for a few days. After that another offering was needed.
We kept feeding it POWs. Some people didn’t like it, but the fact of the matter was the Imperials weren’t taking prisoners at all. That imbalance silenced most of the complaints. Things kept going like that until the Imperial tactics changed. The Marines started retreating earlier, they started engaging at longer ranges with their flanks protected. A lot of us speculated that the Imperials had learned about the Thing and it’s ooze, but since I’ve been here I’ve learned it was far simpler. You thought we were going to use the prisoners as leverage in negotiation. Either way, the supply of POWs dried up, and The Thing was still hungry.
The policy we came up to replace the prisoners was one I agreed with early on. You have to understand, my father had spent time in an Imperial Labor Camp. The guards beat him, they starved him, they set dogs on him. Everyone I know has a similar story of themselves or a family member suffering at the hands of the Imperials. The fight we were fighting was was in the name of our countrymen and our ancestors. It was for our liberty, our freedom, and the freedom of people all over the world. We were already dying from musket shot, from cannonballs, from disease, so being chosen at random for a sacrifice, that didn’t seem so bad. It meant a guarantee that your death meant something, something vital. You couldn’t get that kind of guarantee on the front lines. Best part was, that at least in the early days, selection wasn’t random at all, there were plenty of volunteers. They offered themselves up and the ooze flowed, there was no reason to be upset over it.
That changed as the winter came on, and the Imperial Regular Army arrived for their siege. The waves of Marines were staggered out, there was an ebb and flow to the fighting when it was just them. During the lull, more supporters would filter in from the countryside. We had time to rest, to fix defenses, to rebuild material stockpiles. But when the Army dug in, new supporters were cut off, save for the people that could sneak in. At the same time their constant attacks meant that we needed every single person on the battlements. If you volunteered as an offering there was no guarantee you’d be alive by the time you were needed. What’s worse is that The Thing didn’t take corpses, of course, but it didn’t take the mortally wounded as well. You had to be healthy or able bodied, or you’d just come bobbing back up in the mud. We had a few people drown in the mud before that was figured out.
We still made accommodations though, it wasn’t like we just abducted people off the street. The Attendants, we called the people who handled the offerings the Attendants, would come at night. They’d knock quietly so as not to disturb the neighborhood, and they’d bring extra food rations and lamp oil. The Offering could have all night to feast with their family. Goodbyes could be said, affairs could be put in order. Then the offering would be walked to The Thing, no bound, not dragged, of their own free will. Then they’d place themselves in the mud, no fuss or forcing. That was the way it went. It was how we all did it. The Attendants would purposefully wait for dawn even, so the offering could see the sunrise one last time. The only thing that bugged was this system caused a cutback on liquor. It was another of The Thing’s requirements, it would reject any offering that was inebriated or unconscious. You had to be awake and alert, or it wouldn’t take you. So not only were the feasts sober, but it meant that liquor and hashish were generally cut back upon, so no one could booze themselves up too bad and make themselves unavailable for selection. I like my drink but it did also give us an excuse to keep ourselves sharp for battle, so there’s that.
I didn’t start to have second thoughts until I encountered Frita the Artisan one day. I found her in a neighborhood that had been burnt out by artillery fire. She was picking through the ashes for iron nails, the foundry would pay for them in exchange for rations. She never quite recovered from the nightmares, but I could see she’d gotten worse since the last time I saw her. I could see the clear outline of the bones in her wrists, and her eyes were gaunt and sunken. She told me she was still having dreams, but wouldn’t describe any of them to me. She was eager, however, to talk about things she’d seen in the night.
Every once in a while, she said, an Offering would come out of the mud. Not a reject, but someone The Thing had taken who’d found a way out somehow. She’d seen it happen three times. They were unrecognizable from when they’d gone under. All their hair was gone, like it was singed away. Their skin had the color and effect of melted candle wax. They gasped like frogs when they came up, and convulsed and flailed with a desperate voracity. The Attendants would bind them at the ankles and the wrists and stick them back in, a vulgar task as the Offering would fight them with every ounce of degraded strength they seemed to have. She said the first time she saw it might have been the first time it happened. She said they took the Offering back to the sick bay the first time. The Offering never spoke, only shook and wheezed, and was occasionally overcome with convulsive fits. Milly said she didn’t know what happened after that. But she said it was three days before the third wave of Marines arrived, and I was able to piece it together myself. Right around that time there was a incident where the ooze stopped, and The Thing refused to accept any new offerings, able bodied or not. This only lasted a few days, and no one knew how the Attendants fixed it, but it must have been that they gave the recovered Offering back. The most disturbing detail was something Frita said about that first recovered Offering. His skin was bleached and his hair was gone like the others, but he also had a tattoo. It was faded but Frita could still make it out, a soaring eagle across the Offering’s chest. I knew it, it was White Guardsmen who’d staged the breakout. He’d have to have been down there six months.
This gave me doubts, but not serious ones. I was still loyal to the cause we were fighting for. Everyone knew that the fate awaiting the Offerings we probably horrible. We didn’t need to know about the recoveries to know that. But whenever fear or doubt about The Thing took hold, I always reminded myself about my father. He never wanted me to feel pity for him, he always said, because in his eyes he was one of the lucky ones. Only about half the people who go to the camps ever come back. He told me the ones who deserved my pity were the dead, and the ones they left behind. In my own life as well I’d seen public beatings, random arrests. I know three people who were beaten so bad they died right there in the street. I know two who were sent to labor camp on false charges, I still don’t know if they’re alive. Frita, for all the horrors that tortured her asleep and awake, was even more loyal than I was. As a girl she’d lived in a village that was targeted in a Pogrom. Deputized Imperial militia had thrown her infant sister to hungry bloodhounds while her parents watched before killing them both. She’d only survived, she always said, because she hid in the pig pen and covered herself in manure.
Compared to what Imperial forces do to us without thinking, out of habit, The Thing doesn’t even seem evil. It was hungry, we fed it. In exchange it gave us the means of liberation, the means to defend ourselves. If we didn’t use it, and didn’t start the 2nd Spring Uprising, what chance did we have that we wouldn’t die anyway? What chance did we have that we wouldn’t be arrested without reason, that we wouldn’t be brutalized by the City Guard? That we wouldn’t starve to death the next time the Imperial Granaries issued a new price increase? That we wouldn’t freeze to death if the Imperial Foundries commission decided our firewood was better spent heating their factories? How many of the offerings would still be dead anyway from some horrible pointless brutality, instead of getting the chance to serve their countrymen?
That’s the mantra I consoled myself with, and it worked. It still works. I still, in my heart, believe this to be true. But one night, there was a quiet knock at my door.