Slumrat Rising

Truth started whistling as he pulled apart the sofa. He didn’t know how to whistle but saw no reason to let that stop him from trying. Springs- could use those. Plenty of iron there. The cloth was rotten but synthetic, making it still somewhat useful. The wood was so far gone he could carve it with his nails and zero effort. The stuffing was mostly rats' nests and other less palatable things, but perhaps it would burn? Or just absorb sound if he tossed his device somewhere. Yeah, that sounded more reliable.

“Master, what ungodly thing are you making?!”

“Why Thrush, what a strange thing to ask. It’s nothing ungodly at all. We are dealing with apartments full of demons and their summoners. Time for a little Angel magic.

….

“I never fail to be horrified by humanity's reckless disregard for its well-being. Your survival. Your shocking willingness to toy with forces you neither can nor should comprehend. It is, and I am an expert on these matters, a sickness. A moral rot. A liquefaction of the soul that implies a spiritual infirmity that mere counseling cannot remedy.” Thrush spoke in a furious hiss.

“One little almadel, barely an almadel at that, and you completely panic. Where’s your pride as one of the Infernal Host?” Truth’s nails dug into a square chunk of the former coffee table he was working with. Really, the almadel should be wax, but with how utterly rotten the wood was, the difference in carving difficulty was zilch.

“My pride, like the rest of me, is unwilling to be exterminated due to carelessness. The materials are wrong, the proportions are, at best, approximate, and the being to be summoned isn’t even named. This isn’t an almadel. It is a death trap. Not that you have any business toying with the Celestial Host. They aren’t as sociable and biddable as we.” Thrush practically vibrated with rage.

“Don’t they prefer to be called heavenly? As in the Heavenly Host? Closest to God and all that?” Perhaps it was not wise to tease a demon, but Truth was tired of the constant nagging and negativity.

“They know what they mean when they speak of “God.” You, on the other hand, assuredly do not. The angels have always been the most devoted slaves of the Creator, true, but that in no way means they are fond of humanity or disposed to help.” Thrush practically spat the word “angel,” a neat trick for a being who was not actually speaking with their mouth.

“Unfair.” Truth carefully traced another line, keeping the geometry straight by means of a table leg. “We were Pragerists and went to church every Wednesday. For months, even.”

Thrush nodded seriously. “Your humility in admitting your ignorance of God the Creator does you immense credit. If only you could apply that humility to the field of summoning.”

Truth took twisted bits of newspaper and tied them to each corner of the sort of altar with shreds of the sofa upholstery. “Can’t imagine what you are talking about.”

“When the angels shred your soul into the tiniest fragments imaginable and return your body to dust, that dust and soul stuff will linger in this world. Spreading and contaminating others with the essence of you. As a demon, I am proud to know I contributed directly to lowering a planet’s wisdom and spirituality.”

“That’s the spirit! No offense.” Truth was doing the tricky bit now, where he had to figure out which angelic spirit to summon. He wasn’t really a summoner, but he was trained on almadel and remembered a couple of names. With great care, he wrote SKD HUZI in Enochian. Thrush shuddered.

“I take it back. I’m glad this almadel is such trash. There is no way that… being… can be summoned with it.”

“Yeah, on that, we agree. But I’m not actually trying to summon an angel. Well, I am, kind of. You’ll see.”

The almadel, the little portable altar for angel magic, was as done as it was going to be. It was horrible, and no summoner worth his salt would touch it with a four-meter-long sanctified rod. It was, Truth reckoned, about perfect for his needs.

“You remember the rooms these gangsters were in?”

“They moved around a great deal, but yes.”

“Are they clustered in a particular part of the building?”

“Yes. This part. The entire southeast side of the building is their “turf.” A major reason so many apartments stand empty, despite the landlord’s armsmen.”

“That and the literal trash heap in the courtyard.” Truth said.

“That is less of a factor, I believe. A sizable population, several thousand people, live permanently in the city’s landfill.”

“Huh. Wild. Well, that makes everything simple.” Truth twisted more newspaper into long fuses and attached them to his newspaper “candles” on each corner. He then rubbed more paper together in his hands until it ignited, used that to light some cotton from the sofa, and used that to light the fuse. He then launched himself directly out the open front door and into the trash heap below.

Others might wonder why a grown man would launch themselves stark naked into a midden. Those people hadn’t spent a day running naked through a desert. What would happen next wouldn’t mess up his clothes, and he was damned if he was going to hunt for a new outfit.

Then there was a long pause- A sudden explosion, light, noise! Like an inhuman choir singing in registers within and beyond human hearing, chanting something that, if you could only grasp it, the power of the cosmos would be yours- there and gone in a tenth of a second.

Truth burst from the trash heap, driving himself hard for the first apartment on the ground floor. He focused his strength into his legs, got low, and slammed his whole body into the door next to the lock. He knew dealers often armored their doors, so he wanted to put as much into the blow as possible. The door exploded off its hinges and slammed into the back wall of the apartment.

Truth had badly overestimated local construction standards and the resourcefulness of local gangsters. He had also underestimated just how kill-crazy they were. The man in the apartment yanked a machete from off his table and ran screaming towards him.

It was like watching a child running through water, thinking himself very fierce as he waved his little fist. Tier Zero. Truth kicked a chair towards him and watched just long enough to see the explosive shrapnel tear the gangster apart.

Truth cleared the apartment in seconds. On to the next, looking in the window, listening for activity. Kick in the door, sweep, next. Next. Next. It was early evening, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that many apartments were empty. The doors bashed in with a steady BANG BANG BANG. Neighbors peeked through their curtains, trying to see what could be making such a staccato racket. Occasionally, one of the gangsters would be in. Unlucky for them.

It was easy to spot the Level One gangsters. They were rolling on the floor, clawing at their chest and screaming as their spell apertures burned. He blew through them like a summer storm.

He cleared the forty apartments on the south side of the apartment complex in a scant few minutes. Most were empty and only needed a cursory look. No gangster was able to exchange a single blow with him as most were Level Zero, and the Level ones were in the process of dying horribly.

Once he had cleared everything, he tossed the corpses onto the midden. It seemed like most of the gang was out. Maybe seeing his display would discourage them from returning. He took the opportunity to do a little furniture shopping while he was at it.

While he was trying to decide between a sofa that looked ok but had worn-out seat springs and a comfortable sofa covered in a neon green reptile print synthetic fur, Thrush finally made his appearance.

“I see you took my advice about directly killing them all and taking their things.”

“Yes. I have some unresolved childhood anger issues there, I think.” That, and they were outlaws. Not really people.

“I’m sure Master is processing those emotions in a healthy way. On a… related point…” Seeing a demon look hesitant and embarrassed was a first for Truth. He was sure it was a put-on, but it was still fun.

“Go on.”

“What just happened?”

“Before the killing?”

“Technically, no, but only because I consider Demons living entities, and I know you don’t.”

Truth grinned nastily. “An almadel is basically a summoning point. It does a lot more than that, but its main job is punching a hole between its user and whatever higher plane the targeted being is on.”

Thrush did its level best not to look at Truth like he was a moron who was spouting the obvious. It did not succeed. Truth rolled his eyes and pushed on.

“Basically, I tried to call up an angel I didn’t have the remotest hope in hell of summoning even if I had a perfectly constructed almadel, and I used a deliberately shit, broken one. It punched a hole through to the Sixth Step but never reached the Angel. The backwash of energy from that realm blew out every demonic entity in that whole quarter of the building. Just extinguished everything. On top of that, it probably fried all the active spells. It certainly burned out the shitty, underdeveloped spell apertures the gangsters tolerated. Never would have worked in the Army or even a Jeon apartment building.”

Truth looked out across the festering garbage heap, poisoning the apartment building with its miasma. He felt sticky and slick with the… effluvia… coating him after his dive. “Landlord is going to be pissed, but I supremely do not care about their happiness.”

Thrush meditated on that for a moment. “I can think of more pleasurable ways to commit suicide if you are ever considering such a stunt again. I am genuinely surprised you survived. Even the slightest intent, even awareness, from that being would have snuffed your little life like a candle in a hurricane.”

“Meh. I was pretty sure I had everything figured correctly.” Truth shrugged. “Anyhow, up for a treasure hunt?”

“That is one of the major reasons people summon demons, yes. Angels too, oddly.”

Truth looked askance at the bird.

“Summon angels to find treasure.”

“Buried treasure, yes. We laugh like, well, Hell, about it.” The demonic bird nodded.

“Huh. Odd.” Truth shrugged again. “All cash and items of value or magical significance. All weapons, all talismans that would not have come with the apartment. All books. Pile them up on the new coffee table in the apartment.”

“As Master commands.” Thrush flapped off, beginning its hunt.

“OH! Thrush!”

“Yes, master?”

“Clothes my size and shoes my size too!”

Truth, freshly scrubbed and fragrant for the first time since he woke up in the well, reclined on his new, neon green reptile print synthetic fur sofa. The loot was piled on the coffee table as instructed, the clothes laid out in heaps on the floor. All told, there was less than a kilo of assorted powders and pills that were certainly some kind of drug. Street value- unknown, but Thrush put it at around six thousand shillings (which was what the currency was called.) There were another three thousand shillings in cash. A small collection of talismans and fetishes was directly relegated to a “research but don’t use” pile. A few odds and ends that Thrush said were valued by the gangsters, some nice looking scry balls, no books.

It was pathetic. He felt dirty. He had killed a dozen gangsters, people engaged in a lousy business due to worse options, for a little heap of trash he wouldn’t have touched if you handed it to him a week ago. A week ago, from his perspective. Could you even call them outlaws if the whole country was outlaws? Did it even matter that they were gangsters? When did he get so… casual about killing?

He heard the happy *ding* from the System.

MISSION COMPLETE! You have secured lodgings, money, enough drugs to make your old man smile, and a demonic serf. Well done! REWARD: Improved standard of living, unlocked next mission. NEXT MISSION IN CHAIN: Obtain one functional spell. REWARD: A much better version of that spell unlock access to the spell store. Unlock the next mission.

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