Slumrat Rising

Truth had never taken someone for a ride with him on his iron horse. Another first for Etenesh. She snuggled behind him, pressing against his back as her arms wrapped around his waist. She was so warm.

He took them through the streets of Xandere at a speed most Level Three’s would consider unwise, and most Level Ones would consider suicidal. Splitting the gap between lanes, darting between heavy wagons, and even going through notionally pedestrian-only alleys. He never once had to slow down. His reflexes and Incisive were more than enough to see them safely through.

Just one more casual display of superhuman ability, Etenesh thought. She had just pointed at a mountain South West of the city and asked if he would take her there. He nodded and pulled around his iron horse, missing the pun entirely. And now they were moving as fast as a flying carpet through the streets and alleys into the suburbs.

The glories of Xandre, the towering trees and mushrooms, and spiraling palaces and temples all faded into sprawl. Not too bad in Xandre. They built dense neighborhoods. But suburbs are suburbs almost everywhere and always boring.

Truth saw a gathering outside some kind of building. Fifty Desrin, kneeling and facing a man with a stringed instrument in his lap. He was sawing away at it, singing. The crowd was singing with him, repeating the same few words over and over again. Their arms crossed over their chests as they rocked back and forth, endlessly repeating the words.

Then on, and there was a sudden increase of angry young men on the street, not angry at anyone in particular just yet, but working up to it. He saw bottles. A lot of bottles. The set of shoulders and the squinting eyes of young men looking for a fight. He nipped quickly through the crowd. He wasn’t wearing the zeph tonight, but he figured, why chance it? Maybe people just didn’t want to see that kind of PDA during the end of the world.

Past some kind of technical school now, pointlessly big lawns surrounding boxy white buildings with students pouring out of them like furious ants. It took one day to get from confusion to panic, anger, then despair, then right back to anger. Anger was a wonderful thing, Truth thought. Despair was paralyzing. Angry gets shit done. If only there was shit worth doing.

There was some kind of meeting going on outside a temple. It didn’t look like Nag Hamadi hardly at all, but some of the iconography was similar. Progressive, maybe? People were dressed a lot more casually. A cleric of some kind was in front of the crowd, yelling, waving his hands in the air. A woman stood next to him and would jump in with words of support. With calls to praise God, praise the Angels, bless your brothers and sisters.

Not a hint of a cop. Must be needed somewhere else. Not his problem. He sped up.

Now the city was flashing by- office parks and industrial zones, gravel parking lots filled with spell wagons or carriage dealers, or mattress liquidation stores. Whatever the Hell they were. Faster and faster, watching the city blur and then fall away. They were in the green now, and rising up.

The road up the mountain was busy, traffic jamned stuck, all headed up. Truth ignored the queue and zipped right past. Iron horse privilege. There were carpets coming in too, and bound spirits carrying the rich and powerful. Something big was going on up here.

He was quite certain it wasn’t him.

“You know, you never hesitated even once, the whole way.” They had slowed enough for Etenesh to talk normally. “Right into a wall of traffic or a busy intersection, or what looked like a mob forming up. You just went for it, and a way appeared. Totally in control the whole time.”

Truth nodded. It was easier than explaining that, for him, the way had always been there. Etenesh just couldn’t see it.

“I was leaning into the control and danger play because it’s what you needed to feel safe. I really, really get off on knowing I can give that to you. But it wasn’t something I was into by itself, you know?”

Truth shook his head. He didn’t know.

“I’m into them now,” he could hear the grin as she whispered in his ear. “That was hot as hell. Pretty man.”

Truth was still trying to get his words in order as they pulled into the packed-full parking lot of what looked like a monastery perched most of the way up the mountain. Etenesh flashed an amulet, and the guard directed them around back to what appeared to be staff parking.

“I don’t think I have seen a Siphios Orthodox monastery before.”

“Ah, we don’t have monasteries, at least in the sense you mean the word. This is a temple, yes, but also a spiritual retreat and a ritual site. A popular one, too, being on a mountain just outside the city.”

“I can see that. Um.” He searched for the right words. “I know what we are doing here, but what are we doing here?”

Etenesh giggled a little, a surprisingly happy little sound that suddenly, shockingly, lifted his spirits. For a second, she was the sunny woman he first met, hair flying wild and free.

“Our particular faith, Siphios Orthodox, believes that in the beginning, God created a perfect person. Everything else was less perfect, so there were two or more of them, but this human was perfect because he was made in the image of God. And there is only one God.”

Truth nodded at that.

“But the human saw how all other living things reproduced and grew and filled the world. Not this world, you understand. The world, the first one.”

“Oh. I don’t think I know where that is.”

“It’s not there anymore. Anyway.” Etenesh waived off the disappearance of the ancestral planet and plunged on. “The perfect person was lonely. They were made in God’s image, but they were made of matter. Limited. So they begged God for a mate. God was wroth because the perfect person was perfect, and now they were asking him to make a less perfect version.”

Truth nodded along.

“So God tore the perfect person in half, returned them to the mud, and rolled each half into a little ball. One ball he shaped into a man, the other into a woman. Both with the memories of having been the perfect, holy androgyne.”

“I think I am seeing where this is going.”

“And, of course, the only way they can even slightly return to that divine state of grace is in acts of reunification.”

“Called it.”

“Reunification” being a term defined a lot more broadly than just sex. Marriage, for example.”

“Ah. Killjoys get in everywhere.”

Etenesh snorted at that but gladly grabbed his elbow and snuggled up when he offered it.

“Ironically, it was that duality that finally made humanity part of the world, not somewhat above it. Now, it was part of the eternal cycle of duality- man and woman, day and night, life and death. Everything exists in opposition and only becomes divine when it transcends that opposition. And, of course, since they were no longer perfect and were now bound up in that cycle of duality, they were condemned to suffer death after life. Had man and woman not separated, they would be eternal.”

“Huh. So… what about the things that aren’t really one thing or the other?”

“There are endless quantities of teachers and scholars standing by to find a place for everything and things to put in opposition to said everything.”

“No, but… there are things that are kind of alive and kind of dead. There are solar eclipses, and when it’s night in Siphios, it is day on the other side of the planet. People who aren’t really one gender or the other. There is way too much grey for a black-and-white world.”

Etenesh looked like she wanted to argue the point, paused, then laughed softly.

“You know that I am a subject matter expert on this point, right? I study the origin of God and those powerful enough to be deemed subordinate “gods,” aka the stellar eminences, at a postgraduate level. My department is likely the best in the world on that subject.”

“I did not actually know that. Honestly, you told me what you were studying, and I didn’t understand a word of it.”

“Fair. Most don’t. It’s not a big department. I’m laughing because I can see why you give Merkovah a headache. You are applying analogies and logic to an incredibly simplified description of a vastly complicated topic. It’s not “wrong,” you are just working with less than the total information necessary. And to get the total information necessary, you would need to study these questions of philosophy and theology to at least a university level. If not postgraduate.”

“Ah.”

“You aren’t dumb, Truth. You are damn smart. But the universe is so, so big. There is so much to learn. Even ancient cultivators only understand a tiny part of the whole.”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes now a brilliant ocher in the fading light. “For tonight, in this place, at this time, can you accept that we are two parts of a whole? Not identical, but equal. Complete by ourselves, but perfected together?”

He smiled at her. When she looked at him like that, he would agree to a lot of things. “I can.”

“Good. Because I have wanted this for what feels like a lifetime. Now, my cult sent over some ritualists-”

“Wait, what?!”

“I promised you a religious experience for your first time, Mr. Medici. And you know I take my faith very seriously.”

____________________________________________

“I’m just not used to making an appointment for sex. As a concept.” Truth tried to explain. The cultist just shrugged.

“This is sex in only the most technical sense. Basically, it’s going to be you and her symbolically reversing the creation of humanity and restoring perfection to the self and the faith.” The cultist was masked and robed, their voice muffled. Truth had not the faintest clue as to their identity.

“Not… exactly reassuring.”

“You will be fine. She knows what to do, and believe me. You will be up for it.” Truth was led up the side of the mountain to a small clearing. It was very private- the dense grasses and shrubs blending with the ancient trees to wall out the light and sound of the rest of the world. There was just the moon above and the earth below. Five cultists had surrounded the edge of the clearing, patiently waiting. When Truth entered, the sixth left his side and took up their station.

The cultists raised their arms up and started to pray. From out of the night sky came a sound like sighing. Feathers drifted down, and among them was Etenesh. Not fully clad in her God-raiment, but still falling on his senses with a warm fire. He wanted her. Burned for her.

He strode towards her, his obsession growing. The cultists were forgotten as their prayers transformed the grove into a blessed garden. He had eyes only for Etenesh. He discarded his ritual robes. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to hide. Not here. Not from her. She was almost as naked as he- wearing the glory of the heavenly night around her.

The cold in Truth, the empty place where love should have lived, screamed at him, told him to go to her, hold her. To warm himself, at long last, in another. He strode towards her, more than just “hungry.”

He didn’t see how he shimmered, bending the world as he bathed in the moonlight. He didn’t see what the cultists saw- A god claiming his bride.

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