Slumrat Rising

Etenesh held Truth until the shaking stopped, then a little longer. She let him go with a sigh. “Am I a bad person for feeling glad you need me? I don’t like being the one who needs comforting,” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Truth tried to smile and managed to twitch his cheek. He sat next to her quietly. He knew, in a dull sort of way, that he should talk about why he was in this state, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He simply couldn’t summon the emotional energy. Etenesh seemed pretty drained too.

“Must say it’s unusual to see you this way. You are always so… self-contained. Like everything around you has nothing to do with you. You are so accepting of, well, almost everything. Fight a thousand demons? “Ok.” Stare at a wall all day? “Ok.” Etenesh snorted. “I’m… terrible. Because I am happy, you let me in.”

“I’m-”

“Complicated?” She smiled.

“Yes. My childhood was not the best, and my working life has been… similar.” Truth shrugged one shoulder. “Never knew it would mess up learning spells. But here we are.”

“Talk about it with Jember and Merkovah tomorrow morning. I bet you are doing better than you think.”

Truth made no reply. He didn’t even have the energy to be negative.

Etenesh sat a while longer, then shot to her feet. She fidgeted a bit. “Jember told you that I’m interested in you.”

“It sounds like you are interested in me?”

“Yes. As best I can.”

“Haah. You could have stopped at Yes and made me happy, you know.”

“Sorry. Tired.” And hurting. He would have used a line from a romance novel if he was feeling even a little better.

“And not comfortable being touched.”

“Not… really. Trust issues, it seems.”

“Would you, not tonight but maybe soon, like to try sleeping together? Not sex, just us sleeping in the same bed. Just to see how it feels?”

It scared the hell out of him. He could feel the tiny hairs of his body rising in alarm. He could imagine, easily, her stabbing him in his sleep. Poison in so many ways. So many more ways to deliver a devastating curse. At the same time, his body was already losing the warmth she had given him, and the cold inside was enough to make him scream, and he desperately wished she would stay.

“That scares the hell out of me. I want to try that very much.”

She smiled a little at that. “Not tonight.”

Truth nodded. “Not tonight.”

“Sleep. Busy day tomorrow.”

“Sleep well.” He was falling back towards the pillow as he said it, not realizing he had spoken in Jeongo.

____________________________________________

The next morning found the group clustered together at a table in the cafeteria. There would be another conference today, and Merkovah didn’t look any more optimistic about it than the last one.

“I cannot make them think, never mind act, and the uncertainty is paralyzing even the ones who are rightly afraid. It is maddening.” Merkovah growled. Etenesh leaned over and was about to unsubtly nudge Truth when she saw him sway back from her. He wasn’t even looking at her, but he instinctively moved out of the way. She sighed and said, “Tommy. Now’s as good a time as any to ask.”

“Ah. Right. So. This is what happened.” Truth recounted seeing Botis in his vision and what he realized in the chamber last night. He instinctively didn’t mention his rough patron. No good reason, but his mind was faintly screaming at him to shut up about it. He also skirted around the self-love issue. He didn’t want to be that vulnerable.

Truth finished his jerky recitation and looked around the table. He wasn’t expecting looks of envy, but that’s what Jember was giving him.

“Tommy. Ditch the bodyguarding gig, and join me in apocalyptic mysticism. It’s your true calling.”

“It is?”

“Oh yeah! You got all that and didn’t go insane, turn into a heretic or just explode into ash. That is some top-notch stuff right there. That’s talent!”

“Are… those things that happen on that kind of vision-thing? Nobody mentioned anything like that!” Truth started to get upset.

“They would not have happened. I was right next to you, ready to intervene. You were in no danger at any point.” Merkovah sounded tired. “But I wouldn’t go back a second time by yourself.”

“Noted.” Truth was calmer but still a bit salty about the “explode into ashes” thing. “Wait, I’m not Siphios Reform Orthodox or anything. How do you know I didn’t go heretic?”

“Do you think you can sit on the throne of God, thereby becoming a hyper-angel who is functionally a mini-god?” Jember asked.

Truth stared at him. Unblinking.

“See, you’re fine.”

Merkovah waved the question of heresy to the side. “I should also note that “heresy” probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. Or, well, it does, but it means more than what you think it means. Heresy is not the word you should be focusing on. The word that you need to be giving your attention to, Mr. Wells, is “Revelation.”

“Revelation. As in, the truth was revealed to me.”

“Yes, but of course, it is more complicated than that. Without getting into-” Merkovah’s eyes got hazy, then refocused. “Let's say eight thousand years worth of religious debate, we can think of our understanding of the divine coming in a few broad categories. First, someone just tells us about it, and we believe them. Apostolic succession, or similar. Quite popular, but reliability is always going to be a matter of doctrine. The second way is logic or reason. We observe the available information, the universe, and deduce the nature of God. This actually has a high degree of accuracy, particularly in describing worldly phenomena and the rules of the occult. Most of the talismans you have worked on can be considered products of this school.”

Merkovah took a sip of coffee and continued.

“Then there is what you just experienced- revelation. Specifically, understanding of the divine derived through revelation. There is a technical term for it, but it’s not important right this second. Here’s the thing about revelation. It is simultaneously incredibly powerful and incredibly unreliable. There is a reason Jember is studying apocalypticism as a graduate-level course.”

“Eh?” Truth asked intelligently.

“You have a shocking, highly valid, and personal understanding of Botis, which has changed how you view yourself and your relationship with the world.”

Truth nodded. He certainly had.

“Well, do you think Jember or I would have had the same reaction? Or Etenesh? Given our different life experiences, I can tell you that we certainly would not have. No two people receive exactly the same revelation because each revelation, while truthful, is always understood through the medium of ourselves. That is, our own lived experiences, what we have heard of, and what we believe. By logical extension, that means that any explanation you give of your experience, no matter how correct it is for you, will always be, to some significant degree, incorrect for everyone else.”

Truth looked lost. Merkovah smiled slightly and stood.

“Come, let's have a little morning exercise. I think it will help you understand.

The basement area was surprisingly clean and well-lit. It seemed that it was often used as a multi-function space, so it didn’t take much to turn it into a sword-fighting practice area. Merkovah summoned an earth demon and handed Truth a stick.

“Your goal- Defeat the Demon. Stay untouched until you can successfully execute the cutting portion of Incisive.”

“Ok.” Truth nodded, then winced, remembering the conversation last night. Etenesh chuckled softly as she got ready to watch the show.

Tuth cast aside everything he could, just focusing on the demon. Incisive quickly spilled out of him. The earth demon was, like all of its kind, slow, tough, and unreasonably strong. A single hit from it, even a graze, and he would be seriously injured at best. So he had to dodge while looking for his chance.

The blasted thing was so slow he didn’t even know if the spell was working. Dodging was effortless. Every move the demon made was telegraphed to an insulting degree. He had ample time to finish the blade portion of the spell. The wooden stick flickered, then the spell condensed a blade over it. Truth spotted an easy opening and went for the neck. The blade sank in deep, and the draw across was smooth.

Deep as it was, it was still too shallow. Truth frowned and raised his hand, calling for a halt. Merkovah stopped the demon, then signaled for the cousins to stay silent.

Truth sat down and frowned. He could kill this demon. He had a rough grasp on the blade part of the spell, and the demon couldn’t touch him. It would take time and quite a few strikes, but he could get there.

But that wasn’t how Botis fought, was it? Botis was still. Calm until he exploded with a decisive blow. Taking the target from “alive” to “dead” instantly, and with no hope of resistance. A true one-hit-kill.

Because Botis knew every centimeter of his being. Inside and out. The viper’s fang struck once. The swordsman’s blade struck once. These were as much a part of him as his wisdom or his scales.

The blade was a part of Botis, one that he knew and loved. So what part of Truth was a blade? The answer came crashing in, driving his spirit into the abyss. The negative emotions poured into him, flooded him, drowned him. He bent over, struggling to breathe. Merkovah was there.

“Fight through it, young man! Fight through it! You are on the cusp! Be brave one more time!”

The blade in him. The willingness to cut away everything that hurt him. Everything between him and his goals. Everything that threatened him and the sibs. He had been hurting for so long, fighting for so long, he never learned to put down the blade. It had become part of him. Could he love it? That willingness to fight, to kill?

He remembered little Harmony. He remembered how he screamed as Mom held his hands under the scalding water. Remembered how helpless he was when Dad smashed him down and broke his bones. Remembered Soph and Vig, how they were hunted like prey by the monsters on the streets.

The weak cannot rely on the strong for safety. They can only grow strong themselves, forcing change in the world. They can only pick up the blade. The blade cuts. It rejects. But it also makes room for the good things. The things that had brought him joy.

He took a shuddering breath, then another. He didn’t love the blade in him. But he would learn to love it. Because he needed it. Always had, always would. Always part of him. Ready to make his world a better place. Truth looked over at the demon. Merkovah cut it loose.

Truth scrambled up off the ground, running headlong toward the demon. The stick was left behind. The beast rose up, claws the size of chairs plunging down on him. Truth swung his empty hand, and the beast was split in two. He had been holding that blade his whole life. Not his fault if others didn’t see it.

He sucked in deep breaths. His channels ached, his apertures drawing hard on the cosmic energy given by Botis. It was potent stuff. His head throbbed. His heart hurt. The earth demon, piddly little peon that it was, dissolved back into the ground, forced back to Hell. He might not love the blade in him, but it was part of him. He could learn to love it.

“Botis is a being so old we cannot reasonably ascribe an age to him. He may well predate time in our boring little corner of reality. Whatever portion of him you comprehended, you have only seen the tiniest sliver of the whole. It will be enough for you to study for decades. Perhaps a lifetime.” Merkovah said. There was a little smile floating over his face.

“What’s the Second Gem?”

“Pardon?”

“Incisive is the First Gem of Botis, according to Etenesh’s spirit. What’s the second? Truth asked.

Merkovah laughed wryly. “I don’t know. People have been asking Botis that since before we settled on this planet. Since forever, as far as I can tell.”

“And?”

“He says he’ll teach it to the person who truly masters the First Gem. Nobody’s done it yet.”

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