Slumrat Rising

They didn’t talk much after that. Truth didn’t know if he said the wrong thing or not. He probably did, but… it was hard to be “Tommy Wells” right now. It was usually freeing to be “Tommy Wells” in that he wasn’t carrying all the things that “Truth Medici” was carrying, but he didn’t want to have to lie. To make up things about himself. Part of it was he really liked Etenesh and Jember. Even Merkovah, beardy weirdo that he was, had grown on him. Liking them was part of it. A bigger part was hating that his life had been dedicated to a series of lies.

Truth felt that most people didn’t have to pick apart their personalities to try and find the bits of them that hadn’tbeen tampered with. Like the talking poorly about himself thing. He had known for a long time that the schools he went to were shit. He never felt good about it. It was as far back as boot camp- he was made to feel stupid because he didn’t know things. Not just ignorant, dangerously ignorant.

Violence came naturally to him, and he didn’t know a lot of things everyone else knew. He must be a dangerous moron, right? Probably into some cruel, disgusting things. Fitting for an ugly bastard like him. Yeah, definitely into some sick shit. No wonder nobody has ever seen him with a living “friend.”

He could feel the intrusive thoughts elbowing their way in. Reminding him that his pretty new face and fancy muscles weren’t his. They were things done to him. Nobody could love him, even like him, if they knew the real him. The ugly monster of violence, wearing some pretty skin.

“Amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt someone slip into a depressive spiral before.” Etenesh said with a flash of her old spark.

“Eh?”

“I mean, a bit rude. A bit un-galant. I’m sitting here having an existential crisis and fearing for the future of my nation, and here you are, making it about you.”

“Oh. Um. Sorry? Unintentional?” Truth was flummoxed. The romance novels didn’t cover this.

She grinned a little. “Well, you see, I was already feeling poorly, and then the fella I’m interested in dropped some heavy history on me. I was processing. Sorting through the emotions. Glad you finally let me in a smidge, though.”

“You have something? Like an ointment?” She was really grinning now, more of that spark shining.

“No, something witty. I think witty is the right word.” He turned towards Etenesh and looked seriously at her. “I have fallen into the cerulean ponds of your eyes.”

She stared blankly at him for a moment and cracked up. “That has nothing to do with anything. Cerulean means blue! What? How?”

“Ah damn. I was pretty sure it meant deep.” Truth muttered. Etenesh snorted, wiping a tear from the corner of a tawny eye.

“How many women has that line worked on?”

“Did it cheer you up?”

“It did.” She nodded with mock seriousness.

“It has been one hundred percent successful.” He replied with equal seriousness.

She smiled at that and said, “Hey. I want to nudge you. You ok with nudges?”

“You may nudge me. Once.”

She scooted closer and leaned into Truth. Prodding him with her shoulder exactly once.

“I’m depressed. I mean that in both senses. I’m feeling depressed, and I think I have the actual medical condition Depression. It’s a little early to go self-diagnosing, but. Seems pretty likely.” The smile drained off Etenesh like water into sand.

“I… don’t know how to help.”

“I don’t either. Don’t try to cheer me up. That much I know.”

“Alright. Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be. The highlight of the last couple of days, right there.” Etenesh stood. “I’ve booked room 1-03 tonight. A basic double. I’ll leave the door unlocked if you want to join me. Just for sleeping. No pressure, I won’t be hurt if you don’t come.”

She gave him a little smile. “Though I would like it if you did. You are warm.”

She walked off, shawl covering her head and shoulders. Truth thought she was the warm one. But he would do his best to be brave.

Merkovah finally called Truth into a small conference room. Once the door shut, the room glowed with cosmic energy flowing through dense webs of formations. He more or less recognized some of them as anti-surveillance formations. He had seen and used similar working in the PMC. Some of his bodyguarding clients wouldn’t so much as take a piss without them.

“Alright, Tommy. The room is warded to a profound, even paranoid level. The counter-surveillance spellwork is genuinely upsetting once you understand how it works, and privacy is guaranteed. Now, after knowing you for a little while, I am quite certain you won’t tell me everything. You will probably treat this room as though it wasn’t warded at all. Am I right?”

Truth nodded. It didn’t matter if the room was warded. If he told Merkovah anything, the odds were excellent that he would tell a third person, and so on. He would only reveal things that were unlikely to get traced back to him.

“Haaah. Well, that’s exhausting. Still, anything you can tell me will be enormously helpful.”

Truth laid out what happened at the border crossing in the most bare-bones terms possible. Merkovah displayed a keen sense of propriety. His questions tightly focused on the smuggler (Do you know what kind of crow the bird head was?”) the talismans (“Were they soaking in blood, or did it just look like blood? Could you smell whatever it was?”) and to Truth’s considerable surprise, the details of the fight (“So the needlers did essentially nothing? But you could kill him with a wagon?”)

The conversation, interrogation, really, ran on much longer than Truth had expected. The whole fight, from the time the smuggler pulled up to the time he expired, was less than ten minutes. The fighting part might have been less than four. By the time they hit the fifty-minute mark, Truth deeply regretted saying anything. Merkovah must have picked up on it because he called for a quick break for drinks and snacks.

“Teacher, if you would forgive a massive change in topic-”

“I would welcome it, actually. Nice change of pace.” Merkovah gestured for him to continue.

“It’s a religious question, I guess.”

Merkovah made a gesture of thanks. “Praise be! I wondered if this day would ever come.”

Truth decided to ignore that. “Why is everyone so hung up on God?”

Merkovah looked like his brain locked out for a moment. Like he heard the words but couldn’t process their meaning.

“Pardon?”

“I remember what you said before- everyone agrees there is a God. And that the universe was created by God, and that in some way I don’t really understand, the universe both is God and is God’s thoughts. But… so what? The world is kind of trash. There are good bits, absolutely. And it’s a lot bigger than I will ever know or understand. But I don’t think you can look at the world and go, “Yes, good job. Do it the exact same way next time.”

If there were a living sculpture of the concept of not knowing where to begin, it would look like Merkovah.

“Young man, leaving aside questions of blasphemy-”

“Is it? Blasphemous?” Truth asked. He didn’t know.

“Depending on who you ask, yes! And as a nationally respected and internationally known Teacher of Cannon Law, if you ask me, I would say yes, it absolutely is blasphemy.” The old monster disguised as a young man glared at Truth. But, proving he really was a university-level teacher, Merkovah felt the need to tack on- “Of course, this is a much-debated point, with no really satisfying answer.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you are hardly the first person to look at the world and wonder about the origin of evil, sin, or the pinky toe.”

“So what’s the word from on high?” Truth asked.

Merkovah grinned slightly. “How long do you have? Answers range from (and I am speaking just for the prophets of my own faith here) “The world is perfect, but a lack of faith leads to sin, and from sin to misery” to “The world is a test of your faith and your ability to lead a good, godly life.” Other religions take a different tack, ranging from infernal intervention, divine punishment, or even a sort of corporal punishment intended to morally correct us. Sinful living results in pain. But safe to say that it’s an open question… between religions.”

“More conflicting information from the prophets?” Truth asked.

“Remember how I said that there may well be multiple, yet mutually exclusive, versions of God? This is part of why we think that. Also, there is another philosophical debate over whether God can change his or her or their (depending again on the religion) mind. Or if they simply reveal different portions of their mind to us at different times, as necessary. So it’s a mess, theologically. A significant degree of faith is required.”

“Right, but… all that sounds like God intentionally made the world the way he did. What if God…” Truth searched for a euphemism, “didn’t quite nail what he was going for?”

“Tommy… God is definitionally perfect. A being without error. Above everything.”

“Is he, though? I mean, if we don’t actually know what God wants and we are getting contradictory information here-”

“Alright, now that IS blasphemy. Young man, I know you don’t have any religious training, but that is simply too much. The universe, the entire, endlessly complicated fabric of reality, relies upon God to exist. He is the cause with no cause, the essence before existence. God may be strict. He may even be cruel. But he is never wrong.”

Truth remembered his Dad splitting open his cheek with a sloppy punch when he asked if there was any food in the house. Truth had been nine. Mom screamed at him that same day for being ungrateful and a leech. Maybe he deserved it, but the sibs didn’t deserve to go to bed hungry. And wake up hungry. And stay hungry until Truth could shoplift a few handfuls of food, carefully split between them. But the old monster looked truly angry.

“I’m sorry. Now I know better.”

____________________________________________

Truth sat in his little room, thinking about what he learned. Apparently, the transformation magic used by the bird-headed smuggler was a sort of demonic possession. It used to be quite common many centuries ago. It had fallen out of favor due to improvements in talisman technology, as well as the fairly extreme demands it made of its users. Ironically, it was supposed to be extremely popular off-world. The demons could last a lot longer and fight a lot harder in a body that had practiced body cultivation. The smuggler hadn’t. The demon could endure the little needles and resist the magic, but he was too squishy to hold up against a speeding wagon.

Truth thought about the Meditations of Valentinian and what, exactly, he was trying to do as a human and a mage. He needed to become stronger. The ability to resist spells was crucial, but so was the ability to resist physical damage. To become, if not untouchable, unaffected by the evils of the world. So he could make things right. Maybe not fix the whole world, but his little corner of it.

He closed his eyes and tried to meditate. He had a pretty good idea of what “untouchable” might look like. His rough patron existed like an ancient mountain in his mind. Those strong hands picking him up and throwing him around. Truth focused as best he could on his hands, trying to hold the memory in place as he ran the spell. It was slow going, but he thought he had made some progress.

Then he dusted himself off, washed up, brushed his teeth, and found Room 1-03.

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