Slumrat Rising

Jember and Etenesh had set themselves a little densely warded ritual circle to operate from. A triple ring, lodged inside a series of increasingly complex forms, rose in sheets of white light around Truth and Merkovah. The old monster in disguise looked bored. His weapon of choice was once again the thumb ring. Truth was enjoying swinging the sword around and listening to it thrum.

“Ready, Teacher?” Etenesh yelled.

“Ready. Lift it.” Merkovah waved his hand to move them along. The cousins started chanting and waving their magical tools, directing energy to different sections of the formation as required. Or so Truth assumed. He hadn’t seen the manual for this formation. They must have done something because Merkovah started chanting and pointed the thumb ring directly overhead.

The spell bowl rose like a mushroom from the red dirt. A few reinforcing spells on the outside, but with spell bowls, the real action was always on the inside. Jember blazed with golden fire, the light blinding around his hands and eyes. His chanting reached a furious pitch, the magic words and holy names spilling from his tongue. Blessings and abjurations falling like rain on the red earth.

Beside Jember, Etenesh embroidered the sheets of white light with sigils, occult glyphs, and sacred geometries of bewildering complexity. The air seemed to change, becoming denser. More real. Redefining the battleground as a place of true and final battle. Her fingers trailed pale blue light flecked with iridescent purple like a butterfly’s wing drawn into a thread. She did not chant. She impressed her will upon the world directly.

Merkovah stood between earth and heaven, all traces of casual boredom gone. He raised his ring high and spoke a Name with utter authority. The skin of reality seemed to peel back, and a terrible golden eye glanced at them. The weight of the gaze seemed to hammer at the area inside the wards, shuddering them, pressing against the reinforced reality of the space. Truth was riveted by this terrible power, so much so that he didn’t see Jember flipping the bowl. But he sure heard the screams.

What he had seen in Chil Perdermo had been what trashy slavers could jam into their victims. This, whatever Merkovah said, was the real Goetia Pandemonium. The overturned bowl boiled with demonic insects. Pestilential parodies of the most nightmarish vermin. Every limb was dressed with spikes, barbs, or catching hooks. Every mandible was a crushing vice of jagged chitin, dripping venom. Stingers, poisoned hair, poisoned breath, explosive bolus’ of corrupted acid, every aspect of the demons was crafted to inspire fear and despair. To initiate you to the mysteries of Hell before you die.

Rising from their number were a few grander beasts. Heavy things, slow, earth demons in rough parodies of bears and hyenas. They could despise the fripperies of their lessers. Hungry for the warmth of human flesh and human souls, they charged over toward Truth and Merkovah.

The Angel made a sound like a bell ringing in church and ten thousand voices saying their prayers for millennia in faithful unison. Embers of flame streaked downward, landing in the mouths of the larger demons. They wanted warmth? The angel was “happy” to provide. The coarse demons struggled, roaring against the flames. Bellowing, smashing their heads against the ground, spitting their own balefire back. Then the vermin tide was on Truth, and he had no time for anyone else’s problems.

Truth whirled the blessed two-handed blade over his head and brought it down straight, cutting into the head of a beetle. The chitin cracked, and syrupy black ichor leaked, only to burst into golden flames under the spells of the sword. The fire turned the demon’s head into a lantern before Truth had the blade out.

He quickly moved next to the ward, limiting the directions the swarm could come at him from. They came at him madly, and he desperately shifted around to make them interfere with each other. He lunged out, piercing the neck of some abyssal ant before it could get its mandibles around his leg. A worm covered in bony blades spat acid at him. Truth tried to shift out of the way but was penned between the ward and the press of insects. In a fit of desperation, he tried to slap away the corrupting liquor with the flat of his blade.

The blessed steel flashed with pale light and slapped that filthy liquid straight into the face of an ox-sized grasshopper. The grasshopper screamed in shock and outrage before thrashing around wildly, crushing smaller demons beneath the hooks and barbs of its strong legs. Truth would have grinned with satisfaction, but there were twelve hornets diving in, each as long as his forearm and mad as the Bastards Convention on Father’s Day. He whipped his shining blade around and had at them.

They came from above and below, from behind and straight ahead. He tried to fight with his back to the ward as much as he could. It wasn’t enough. He started taking hits- a hook tearing across his skin, a brutal claw scraping down his side, leaving bloody furrows. Still- they tore flesh. Truth took lives. He hacked, chopped, raked, stabbed, sliced, and even bashed with his pommel when he thought it might do some good.

He quickly learned their measure, figuring out how to use the larger ones to block or funnel the smaller ones or how to use the flyers to screen him from the projectiles. It was a puzzle. A frantic, frenetic maelstrom of pain and despair and raw physical and magical might. And a puzzle. How do you keep them far enough away that they can’t hit you but close enough that you can hit them? How do you keep the number that can attack you at one time to a minimum? What is the most efficient way to kill a given demon? Each fraction of a second was too precious to waste.

Truth gave himself to the battle, feeling its flow at a level more instinctual than rational as he slid the pieces around. Not realizing that he was refining his swordplay, merging it into footwork that was evolving minute by minute as the battlefield became strewn with corpses and gore. Not caring that his sword was no longer merely glowing. It was a raging beacon fire, chanting its holy liturgy as he baptized it in infernal blood. The corpses were slowly dissolving on the field. The blade, and his blade work, had destroyed the demon’s spiritual bodies. Their weak grip on the material world had been shattered, and they were forced back to Hell.

His body ached with exhaustion. How long had it been since he had felt his muscles burn this way? Before he died. Nothing since had tested him like this. But in this battle, these seemingly endless insects pushed him hard.

Sweat fell into his eyes. The salt could no longer burn him, but he blinked it away in irritation. Sweat slicked his hands, but the blade was well-wrapped with tacky cordage. They would not slip.

His sense of the battle told him that the demon’s numbers were dwindling and that he could handle this degree of blood loss. He kept his feet moving, sliding away from one blow and using that momentum to sever a leg or a head. To cut a mastiff-sized wasp out of the air so that it landed on the back of a beetle, convulsively stinging in its death throws. To stab, again and again, and endlessly again, where he thought it would do some good. With a brutal chop, he took the head of a scarab demon. And then there were none left to kill.

Truth’s chest heaved, sucking in great gasps of air. No ichor dripped from his blade. It had burned away almost instantly. On instinct, he ran the blade over his wounds, letting the holy fire brush against him. He could feel the traces of the demons boiling out of the holes they left in him. It was something. He looked around, trying to understand the state of the rest of the battle. Done, apparently. All the greater demons were dead. Everyone, Jember, Etenesh, Merkovah, and even the angel, looked at him like they had just seen a wonder.

“A talisman maintenance technician, Tommy?” Etenesh tried to sound playful, but her voice broke around the word “maintenance.” Not scared, but stunned silly.

“Army certified.” He gave her a tired grin. “This is a good sword.”

“It’s yours.” Merkovah looked untouched by the struggle. The angel made a sound like the rattle of millions of rosaries and the rain drumming on stained glass windows. Merkovah nodded calmly. It seemed that the angel and the exorcist were in agreement.

“Come along, Mr. Wells. Let's get you patched up, and I will explain just what I want to do out here.”

To Truth’s surprise, the angel hung around in the sky. The cousins seemed to have expected this and focused on keeping the wards up, isolated in their own little pocket of the ward. Soundproofed, Truth assumed. The sword, however, had become a problem. It was bright as Hell. Well. Bright as Heaven. Billows of holy fire were shooting off the blade, and it was chanting. Loudly chanting, and in a language Truth didn’t speak.

“It’s just excited. Let it work off a little energy. Now, quickly while the wards are up and the angel is creating interference.” Merkovah was splashing his wounds with a potion, then binding them up with boiled gauze.

“My aim, “Mr. Wells,” is nothing less than the liberation or death of the System Astrologica. Starbrite’s true elite, the so-called “C-Suite,” mostly cultivate off-planet. The arrival and departure of their Level Eight and Nine experts is no secret to those of a certain level of power. The loss of their “intelligent spirit” would render most of the company powerless. It would be all too easy for the powers of the world to swoop in and tear off fatty chunks.”

“And when the “C-Suite” hears about this and come back to clean house?” Truth asked.

“Those few that could survive the loss will be dealt with. It’s not like there are no level eights outside of Starbrite. They are just few and comparatively weak. Unwilling to move unless they can be sure of landing the killing blow. I intend to provide them with that opportunity. After your display here today, I think you can be part of this scheme. I think you could play a substantial role.”

Merkovah clasped him on the shoulder and looked Truth in the eye. “Young man, will you save the world with me?”

Truth considered carefully.

“Hell no. But I am interested in learning more specifics. I don’t much care about the world, but I would be very interested in smashing the System.”

Truth pulled up his own System and smiled.

Stellar Ray Attunement- 90%*

Bone Density- 5.6*

Strength- 4.1*

Speed- 4.3*

Proprioception- 7.5*

Reflexes- 7.8*

Level Progression- ~1%

Resistance to magic- Level 0: 25%, Level 1: 10%, Level 2: 5%, Level 3: 1%

Spell Mastery:

Meditations of Valentinian: unknowable, but not impressive so far.

Incisive: N/A

Magical Equipment: The Tongue Of One Who Speaks For God.

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