All children, except one, throw up.

Akiro had never thrown up. Not when he’d been a child. Not in the five years since that he’d been an adult. And he wasn’t going to throw up now.

Akiro usually didn’t fixate on such things. In fact, he’d made it this far in his vomit-free life by avoiding gag-inducing thoughts. Unfortunately, tonight was different. Tonight, above a cursed, pink-cast marsh. Tonight, beneath a once-in-four-years Blood Hourglass moon. Tonight, with all the tiles Akiro had set into place ready to topple. The first tile of which would topple here with this balloon boat ride over Mirul’s Folly.

“This is…far worse than I thought it’d be.” The balloon boat’s master balloonist pulled her scented bandana tighter over her nose and raised her hand. “I’m taking us up.”

Akiro, standing with one boot on the prow of the balloon boat in a flawlessly picturesque pose, did not immediately grasp the threat in the woman’s words. The air here did carry one of the worst stenches he’d ever experienced. His topknot, formerly tussled by a forest-scented wind, now whipped about his eyes beneath a stench like a cat had retched a hairball into a sizzling sauté pan. Yet the master balloonist’s commentary on the swamp’s stink wasn’t what seized Akiro’s heart.

He thrust off the prow and caught her hand. “Do not take us up!”

Pain flared in his palm. The master balloonist stood balancing in the middle of the balloon boat’s boat, which was almost identical to a seven-seat fishing boat. A fact Akiro was familiar with because the most valuable thing his family had owned when he was born was a seven-seat fishing boat. However, this boat had a till in place of a middle seat, a sail for a rudder, ropes tying it to a great oiled-leather balloon four times its length in all directions, and, in the right season, was used for fishing cloud trout, not sea herring. None of these features, however, ignited his palm. In catching the balloonist’s hand, he’d intercepted her method to send them skyward. A gout of magical fire cast from her fingertips into the balloon’s mouth.

“Are you mad?” The balloonist yanked from his grasp.

In what was visible of her masked face, she looked clammy. Akiro resisted the urge to shake the sting out of his hand. All balloonists were elementalists. Not elementalists as skilled as his aunt, but nonetheless capable of burning the palm off a leather glove and blistering a hand. It was Akiro’s first imperfection on tonight’s quest. It was of no consequence though. Tomorrow, Princess Kokudo would erase all his imperfections.

“We can’t go higher.” Akiro motioned over the balloon boat’s gunwales. “We won’t survive the fall.”

Ten body-lengths beneath them, the murky marsh of Mirul’s Folly glinted pink from tonight’s Blood Hourglass moon. The heavenly body was cast in a reddish hourglass from the quadrennial-rare state of the suns. Against the strange glow, heavy-limbed trees reached skyward, grasping the noxious air just below the balloon boat’s rudder sail, while carrion birds fanned their mismatched plumage on crooked branches as if waiting for Akiro’s sky vessel to fall.

The Dred Isles were wondrous, and all other lands were dung. The truth of that burned in the very core of Akiro’s heart. Even here in Mirul’s Folly, the most cursed place in the Dred Isles, the perfection of his homeland could not be argued. Nor could it ever be altered, for this land was the birthplace of Princess Kokudo.

In the master balloonist’s sweat-sheened face, such reverence was not reflected. “We’ll never make it to the temple. The stench is already unbearable and still it grows worse!”

Akiro had to do something. She was failing him. She’d agreed to pilot them to the heart of Mirul’s Folly, the destination he’d spent four years and all his savings preparing for.

He dropped into a forbidding forest stance, for one could not deliver poetry without a pose. “Allow these words to steel your resolve. A fearless heart beats—”

A shock like a lightning eel’s sting jolted through his wrist.

“Commander, no!” Cow hissed. “Your poems will just make things worse.”

Grimacing at the strange shock, Akiro turned and caught sight of a host of sickened faces. His squad members in the balloon boat teetered on the cusp of vomiting. The monster they hunted, the mythical Malient, remained the one creature native to the Dred Isles missing from Princess Kokudo’s menagerie for a reason. The Malient only emerged under a Blood Hourglass moon in the heart of Mirul’s Folly. Halfway to it, the marsh already smelled like a week-dead shrimp had been added to its hairball sauté.

Thankfully, Akiro had prepared for the stench to sap his companions’ resolve.

He clapped Cow’s shoulder. “The right poem will give us newfound strength, much as tonight’s victory will.”

Cow’s shoulder was solid, and Akiro clapped it so often its sturdiness revealed the soldier’s confidence. Cow was not confident. Nor was he a cow. He was a stocky young Squatkin with a splotchy white and brown beard. This splotchiness, currently flecked with nauseous spittle, was not the reason for his name. Like Akiro and the rest of his squad, Cow was Unnamed. The largest and lowest caste of the Dred Isles, Unnamed were only allowed surnames based on their family’s most valuable possession at the time of their birth.

Despite Cow’s protestations, Akiro dropped back into a forbidding forest stance. “A fearless heart beats—”

Again, a shock through his wrist.

“Commander, please!” Lobstertraps covered her mouth.

Akiro broke off, rubbing at the phoenix-feather bracer encircling his wrist. His squad had gifted it to him just before tonight’s flight. The shock seemed to be coming from beneath it. Perhaps the phoenix feathers were having a strange reaction to the swamp. Regardless, his squad here deserved a poem’s nerve-settling promise. Cow with his spotted beard. Lobstertraps with her red facial fur. Orchard, with her slanted, leaf-green eyes. Shovel with an unbendable spine and Tannery with sour body odor.

Akiro often wondered if Unnamed inevitably embodied their moniker or if an Unnamed’s moniker inevitably evoked embodiment. And if Unnamed inevitably embodied their moniker or if their moniker inevitably evoked embodiment, what did that mean for Akiro’s name of Fishboat?

Floating over the treetops of Mirul’s Folly was, however, not the time for such introspection. Akiro needed the balloonist and his squad locked in. For the latter, it shouldn’t be difficult. Amongst the Sealed City’s Unnamed squads, only his Unnamed Crane Squad would dare venture into this marsh, let alone hunt the Malient. And of the soldiers of Unnamed Crane Squad, Cow, Lobstertraps, Orchard, Shovel, and Tannery were the bravest.

Strangely, bravery in the face of death seemingly didn’t translate to stalwartness in the face of stink.

A stink which was presently adding toe-nail gunk to its dead shrimp hairball sauté.

Akiro combed a hand over his topknot, the silkiness of every strand in perfect place reinforcing the resolve in his guts. “Do not consider the air foul. Consider the air scented with our Naming. For tonight, that is what we shall achieve. The rest of our squad awaits our heroism from Sulpher Bay, just as the Menagerie Warden awaits our return to the Sealed City. Remember the skunk carcasses we left in our barracks to rot these past three months. It will not be for naught.”

Despite the rousing speech, none of Akiro’s squad looked strengthened, and the master balloonist looked even more sickened. Probably because he hadn’t delivered his inspiration in a poem.

He stepped back to the prow to let the foul wind flutter his hair in an inarguably impressive Mountain Peak Pose. “We are off duty. None of you are order-bound to hunt the Malient with me.” He left unsaid that none of them, himself included, had true family. Only each other. If they chose to fulfill their promise, it would be for the glory of their squad. “We have only had ginger tea today because we knew we would vomit.” Well, he wouldn’t. “But no soul should ever be defeated by fetor. Not when poetry sings through their blood.

“A fearless heart beats—”

Another shock through his wrist.

The Master Balloonist cut into his hitched words. “I’m willing to offer a full refund if we leave right away. Strike that. I’ll pay you to let me fly us out of here.”

“We could recoup our investment,” Cow said.

“We’ve already made it farther into the Folly than any other living squad,” Tannery added.

“What say you, Commander?” Shovel asked.

Akiro gawked at them. It was as if the stench had made the master balloonist forget her honor and the rest of his squad the perfection Princess Kokudo offered. May the Serpent Goddess constrict his soul, but they needed a poem, and this time nothing would stop him from delivering it.

One foot braced atop the balloon boat’s bow, he dropped into his deepest foreboding forest stance ever. “A fearless heart beats­—”

A shock exploded through his wrist, but he gritted his teeth through it. “with hourglass-reddened blood

“and raven-black wings!”

His shouted poem rang across the swamp, setting carrion birds winging moon-ward and shadowy creatures splashing into the murk. Within the balloon boat, his squad stared and the Master Balloonist swayed beneath the balloon’s mouth, casting hand pointed upward.

Then all six of them vomited.

Akiro felt a surge in his guts, that innate desire to empty the belly alongside a companion in either commissary or disgust. Akiro willed himself to swallow through it. The swamp had added the spit of a dozen elderly men’s dawn breath to the sauté, but that could not have been enough to put them all over the edge. His poem should’ve steeled them against anything except—

His neck hairs prickled. He spun about and time seemed to slow.

Mirul’s Folly was a marsh lake, heavily wooded between its puddles, ponds, and flytrap lilies. But it wasn’t called Mirul’s Folly because the Malient had burrowed its home at its heart. It was called Mirul’s Folly because an ancient temple to the weeping goddess still stood here. If stood was the right word. Their balloon boat had crested the last trees to the center of the swamp, where bits of ancient architecture, stone lanterns, cloud dog-engraved columns, and angled buttresses, floated in the air.

Like so many things the weeping goddess clung to, the temple lived beyond death. Though it was said to have been built a thousand years before the fall of Thuja, bits and pieces of the temple’s rose-patterned glory clung to their position despite the collapse of any supporting architecture. In any other land, it might’ve been heartbreaking. Here in his homeland however, Akiro only felt a kinship with the temple’s relentlessness. His love would last just as long. For Princess Kokudo, he’d gotten his transport into sight of the Malient’s lair without a speck of bile spitting from his lips.

But his triumph at making it this far wasn’t what had induced his companions’ watery vomiting. In the center of the weeping goddess’s temple, an inky shape undulated. The movement was so foul and unnatural, Akiro felt his stomach surge. He swallowed hard, eyes burning and knees going weak enough to cost him his foreboding forest pose.

The Malient.

“What is it?” Orchard cried, retching.

Orchard was one of his most cunning soldiers, her mind as capable of seizing hold of information as a bear trap, and the unexpectedness of the question might’ve spared Akiro the shame of regurgitation, had he not possessed an ironclad will that surely would’ve been up to the task.

“Do you truly not remember what we’re here to capture,” he began.

Then he saw Orchard wasn’t facing the temple.

Mirul’s Folly was a remote, oblong marsh a quarter-day’s slog in length and half that in width, its length running north to south and its eastern end falling away into Sulfur Bay. Their balloon boat had breached the foul place from the west, flying here from the Sealed City. The only light this late into dusk should’ve come orange from that city’s distant watch fires, silver from the stars, or red from the Blood Hourglass moon. Maybe, just maybe, Akiro might’ve caught a twinkle to the north if the land didn’t rise there to block view of the Cove of Emperors. Yet it was along the old border road to the south that yellow lights glowed. A troop of figures carrying hooded lanterns, heading west.

West, toward the Sealed City.

A cold finger of disbelief dragged scratched up Akiro’s spine. No one should be on the old border road, especially tonight at the apex of the Malient’s stink. That road led between Sulfur Bay and the Sealed City, but even if the bay’s bonfire jellyfish weren’t out of season, none one had used it since its switchbacks down the cliffs had been destroyed by a tidal wave four years ago, in the same summer Akiro had been appointed commander.

“They’re Outlanders,” Tannery breathed.

The others had followed Orchard’s gaze, and Tannery had the sharpest eyes of all of them. From this distance, Akiro could only make out drab, fitted garb, not the flowing, colorful silk robes worn by all citizens of the Dred Isles. The figures carried inelegant weapons as well, spears with simple tapered heads, bows lacking fine recurves, and swords forged boringly straight. With those, they’d never outshine Akiro and his squad in any fighting pose, let alone defeat them in combat.

Akiro’s lip curled with a sneer. “Perhaps the stink is coming from them—"

One of the lanterns caught its light on a singular Outlander’s face. Hair, a crooked, stripey mismatch of colors. Skin, splotchy browns and creams. Clothing, overly sleek and darkly boring.

She was the most imperfect woman Akrio had ever seen.

“What do we do, Commander?” Tannery asked.

“The general should be warned,” Lobstertraps said.

It was souls like this Outlander woman who exemplified why the Unnamed Crane Squad were needed to guard the Sealed City. Traveling by night on this forgotten road, they were doubtlessly up to some dark deed. Someone had to seize that woman amid her strange, jaunty walk, spin her around, and kick her back into the sea before she stained the Dred Isles’ beauty. Akiro’s adoptive aunt, the Sealed City’s general, needed to be warned of her and her coconspirators immediately. Akiro should have the balloonist bring them about, or concede her wish and let her rise them to just below toward the scattered clouds so they could signal the Sealed City in warning. Akiro was dutybound to stop them.

Almost.

He was the commander of Unnamed Crane Squad, sworn to guard the Dred Isles’ emperor, princess, queen, and throne city. But tonight, he and his entire squad were off duty. Tonight, during the apex of the Blood Hourglass moon. Tonight, in his one chance to earn a naming.

If he and his squad stopped the Outlanders, they’d be praised for performing beyond their responsibilities as guards of the Sealed City. His aunt might even award them a stipend to improve their barracks garden or weaponry.

However, if he and his squad captured the monstrosity writhing within the ruined temple ahead and brought it to Princess Kokudo’s menagerie, it would be heroism on a level that she’d have leave to bestow upon them all a Naming.

The Dred Isles’ caste system, like everything else in Akiro’s homeland, was perfect. Getting Named was one of life’s beautiful impossibilities. Almost no one in these last seven years of peace achieved it. But Akiro’s dreams were not ordinary.

If he didn’t, he’d remain Commander Fishboat of Peaceful Mountain for eternity. Or to his adoptive Aunt Cindra, Nephew. Only his immediate family had ever called him Akiro, and they were all dead. Occasionally, his squad called him Stinky Fishboat when they were upset with his orders or poems. Yet Princess Kokudo could literally write the names she gave him and his squad, along with their progeny, on the scrolls of their empire for eternity.

Beyond that, Akiro had an unspoken flame flickering in his breast. In one of the Sealed City’s grand competitions, he and Princess Kokudo had connected over poetry. Were she to name him, becoming one of her suitors, even earning her hand in marriage, wasn’t beyond possibility.

“A smattering of pathetic Outlanders poses no threat to the Sealed City’s defenses,” Akiro said. “Master Balloonist, take us to the temple posthaste.”

His squad erupted in sharp, retch-interrupted, objections.

Akiro slashed his hand through the fetid swamp air. “I cannot give you an order. But if I did, it would be that the Unnamed Crane Squad carry on with their quest to earn a Naming.”

His squad quieted. They were loyal to him as Akiro was to his princess. By the serpent goddess, with souls like them in his life, he could be anybody. How he loved them for it. With something more than stench stinging his eyes, he hammered his fist to his chest in salute. “Emperor take my tongue if you have not all earned an impromptu poem with your bravery.”

“Commander, no!” they all pled simultaneously.

Grasping a stay line, Akiro rose atop the bow in a powerful peacock pose. “They do not believe—”

Another shock jolted his wrist but with triumph so close at hand, he could not be swayed. “A poem will help but I…

“Will be their Naming.”

He shouldn’t be grinning like he was, especially with the swamp’s sauté seemingly adding a Giantkin’s runny feces. But though his squad began vomiting again, he couldn’t restrain his belief.

Except they weren’t just vomiting. They were making warding signs and gesturing madly.

He spun back toward the temple at the heart of Mirul’s Folly. The Blood Hourglass moon had risen higher in the sky, and now closer in proximity, their balloon boat had a better view through the temple’s scattered remnants. Pink light now spilled into its interior, only shadowed here and there by ivy the clung to roof sections that floated higher than the canopy of the surrounding banyan trees. The writhing within the temple was no longer a shadowy abomination. Flesh caught moonlight with vilest shade of dark brown Akiro had ever seen. The creature seemed to undulate and grow as if disgorged from the marsh’s watery pregnancy.

Akiro’s iron stomach heaved. The Malient was both orifice and tentacles. Writhing. Contracting. Worm-like appendages blinking white, saucer-like eyes about while others sloughed it down the cracked stone pews, squelching and sliming. At its center, a mouth with sharp teeth, chomping and belching wetly. It scraped moss off a half-floating column. Drank in putrid puddles and streamed a black trickle out its opposite with such filth that Akiro’s vision began titling.

He couldn’t see himself sliding down their ropes to face the thing and not vomiting. But for Princess Kokudo, he would do anything. He swallowed spittle and opened his mouth to command his squad to ready themselves.

“To Dilaela with this!” the master balloonist gasped between retching. “I’m taking us up!”

A great fire billowed from her hand into the balloon’s heart, one that would do far more than burn Akiro’s palm. She meant to take them away. Not after the Outlanders or closer to the Malient but simply higher, away from the swamp’s stench. The very stinkiness of the air seemed to still as if frozen in disbelief.

It was just like Akiro’s first competition in the Sealed City’s Contest of Dynastic Poetry. He’d submitted his poem. Somehow, it had found its way into Princess Kokudo’s hand for her to read. Akiro had felt impossibly sick. Like death would be better than seeing her laugh.

She had.

But not mockingly. She’d been delighted by his perfect poetry. That’s what waited in the heart of the Malient. Not an Outlander woman’s revolting imperfections. Not the stains of a potential life-long random-vomiting disease. Not even terrible casualty. In the heart of all that sickness, in the heart of the Malient, waited Princess Kokudo’s laughter.

Akiro could not let any Outlander or balloonist steal that away.

So, closing on the heart of Mirul’s Folly, he drew his long blade. “Rising dragon strike!” Shout ringing the foul air, he leapt up from the bow’s gunwale and slashed steel through the underbelly of the balloon boat’s balloon.