Slumrat Rising

Truth was in. The heavy steel door had been reduced to molten slag by the blast. Still hot enough that his clothes started to charr and smoke just by being near it. Truth mitigated this by moving even faster. He went through the melted away top right corner of the vault door at a speed more commonly associated with spellbirds, and dove into the volcano.

This was a choice that reflected his keen appreciation for the vital moment to strike, a willingness to take calculated risks and, it must be said, the accumulated trauma of the day. Or, put another way, a choice that did not reflect him considering what someone might do if their vault door had just blown in as Spec. Ops teams were trying to force their way in.

As he arced over the molten steel, Truth had ample time to count noses. Four. There were four noses on the four heads perched over a double dozen arms, a muscular, almost column-like torso, and a pair of heavily muscled legs. There was a red loincloth in use, thankfully. He was considerably less thankful over the fact that the arms all held weapons and spells. The troll’s eyes were tracking him through the air. So there was that too. Such joy.

A lot of things happened very quickly. Truth activated Abner’s Amble and kicked off the wall, closing the distance to the troll near instantly. The Troll squeezed one hand and was covered in bronze armor. Another hand squeezed and he was holding an ax. Another hand held a sword. Another a trident, two more held a glave. Four held multicolored flames.

Truth lunged with the Tongue at the thing’s neck. It might have four heads, but he reckoned he could have them off like he was trimming broccoli. The troll seemed to disagree as the four flames came jabbing out at him, even as the weapons hacked down, over, up and straight at him.

Truth was faster. The Tongue pierced the flames, scattering them. The blade bit into the thickly muscled neck, then deeper until it hit the tree-like spine. He felt the bane struggle for a moment, then activate. Whatever this thing was, it was damn odd. Still died if you stabbed it enough, though. He dashed back out of range before the incoming blades could reach him.

The troll staggered forward a step. One of its hands reached up and felt the hole in its throat, frowning. Another hand, one holding a lotus, crushed it, and pressed it against the hole. The hole closed up, but the troll’s frown deepened.

An angelic bane is not so easily dispelled. If it can be dispelled at all. The troll’s expression firmed up. Black jets of curse magic started spraying towards Truth as pairs of arms knocked arrows to bows. More hands planted glaves in place, ready to repel a charge.

Truth snorted and charged right back in. Obliterate and his refined body cut a path through the magic. The tongue flicked up and over, deflecting the two arrows that the troll managed to lose. Then he was at the glaves. A smash to the right with the flat of his blade made enough of a gap.

The troll was strong, and it had many means. Truth only had a few tools. By now, he had spent his time on the tools. The edge was perfectly aligned with the angle of the cut. His weight and the power in his strong body drove the blade clean through as Botis’ fangs bit. Four faces turned white with confusion and shock. Eight eyes blinked in horror. The enormous head went flying.

“I YIELD!” The troll managed to bellow as the head arced in a bloody spray down the hall. No throat, yet it could speak.

“Okay.” Truth nodded amicably.

Then he stabbed the head over and over without letting it hit the floor. The obscene thing exploded into a mess of gore. Truth bisected the body before it could get up to anything either. Truth had noticed it readying more spells when it thought he wasn’t paying attention.

Taking prisoners? Who was the troll kidding? Things were far, far past that point. It was time to win or die. He spent a few extra seconds making sure the thing really was dead, then jogged off down the hall. No chance of an internal map, but there might just be signs. And if not, he would just have to keep searching until he found what he was looking for.

Incisive screamed with alarm. Truth looked around desperately, spotted a door, and went through it at speed. It was locked, but the Tongue had yet to meet a lock it couldn’t pick. Truth shut the door fast, and looked around. Storage room. A chair holding up some boxes. Perfect. Chair went under the door handle, then Truth got ready to deal with whatever smashed its way in.

He felt his heart pound. Once. Twice. Then there was an overwhelming sense of pressure washing over him. It was everywhere. Like being buried alive in scorpions and beetles, feeling them forced against you by the weight of every shovelful of dirt. Feeling their desperate scrabbling as they tried to dig their way to life. Dig right through you, if they had to. Hoping you would open your mouth to scream, give them a head start before they had to chew their way through your eyes and down your ear canals.

Overwhelming pressure. Overwhelming horror. The sensation of millions and billions of biting, awful things scrabbling against him, trying to claw their way in. Truth’s vision flushed with blood, then went white. He was squeezing his sword so hard, either the hilt should have been crushed or his hands burst.

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The pressure was driving him down. Down. He could feel his knees hit the floor, faintly, distantly. He thought he could hear screaming. It wasn’t him, his teeth were clenched so hard they should have shattered into porcelain shards. He didn’t know if his heart had stopped beating, if that hammering thrum was in his mind or his body. Endless crushing pressure, as the venomous insects scratched endlessly against him!

It. Stopped. It all just. Stopped. The first thing he saw when his vision recovered was a little light set next to the door. It flashed green three times, then a steady blue. And that was that. All clear. The same signal they had when the range was safe to enter, back at the PMC. Blue was safe, Red was Danger. He liked how simple it was. He still liked how simple it was.

There was no way some sneaky shit Spec. Ops. team were blowing their way into the mountain in the middle of a full blown assault. Not in a base with a bunch of high levels in it. Not one run by Starbrite. Truth would permit an almost endless sea of shit-talking about Starbrite, but you could not accuse Starbrite Security of being slack.

He dismissed his angelic sword, returning it to its home in his first aperture. Just breathing for a minute. Maybe as many as five minutes. It was a spell. He understood that. It was some horribly powerful curse. Anyone in the base not marked by Starbrite would die. Simple as that. But he survived. Somehow.

No, not somehow, he knew exactly how. His “seamless” body. The scrabbling insects must have been the curse trying to latch on to him. Was he… immune to magic now? He pictured the sun-drop spell, and the return spell used by that senior. Or those sun bright explosions that dotted the mountain. Or the tactical scale curses the armies were deploying. For that matter, the fire that troll was tossing around didn’t look like anything fun to play with.

No. Not immune to magic. But highly resistant. And particularly to curses, he would guess. Curses and divination or really anything that needed to latch a hold of him to affect him. Interesting. He had a feeling he had, once again, exceeded Merkovah’s expectations for him.

He didn’t feel ready to move. Maybe he would stretch five minutes into seven. Or possibly ten. Truth cast his mind inward and examined his body. He could see his soul hovering in near perfect alignment with his body. The spell apertures and those tiny intangible channels connecting it to his body and the outside world seemed full and strong. Very full. He looked more closely at the apertures.

A rich golden color. Just the faintest hint of orange, fading to bright buttery yellow-gold. The cosmic rays always seemed more like liquid than light or air to Truth, at least when they pooled and condensed in his apertures. His “Spell Slots,” and boy did he wish he could forget that image. There was a lot of truth to it though. He could see the Meditations being nurtured in there, then Incisive, and even the strangeness that was Cup and Knife.

He didn’t know how to describe what the spells looked like. They weren’t static. They grew in size and complexity with the aperture. He had been told since childhood that it was an automatic process that occurred over the course of a long life, not something that one could directly control. He was now sure that this was yet another lie his schools taught him.

The spells grew and changed the more he understood them. They changed to reflect his understanding of them and his use of them. They could only change up to a point, but he was quite certain that his Incisive wasn’t quite like anyone else’s. Everyone was a little different.

So how did they look? Active. Full to bursting. Even the Fourth aperture, temporarily occupied by Obliteration, was almost flooded with cosmic energy. Which was the opposite of what he would have expected. Didn’t he just resist a huge curse? Did his body absorb that curse energy, somehow?

>

Ah. Right. Alright. That made a degree of sense. But this was right up against it. He was a few days, or less, from a breakthrough. If he found a high energy area, he could conceivably break through today.

Level Five before his Twenty Fifth birthday. Even for the ultra rich, that had to be a record, right? His mind skittered away from the thought. There had to be a price for this. There was a consequence for such insane growth. This was literally inhuman. The System kept asking what he was. Truth didn’t even know where to start figuring that out.

He was strong. If nothing else, he was strong. He could go toe to toe with a Level Five, take a Level Six from ambush and he had, at least once, survived a fight with a Level Seven. Who was apparently a specialist in keeping people alive, rather than killing them, so that might be less impressive, but he would take it.

Level Five would put him solidly in the middle of the mid-tiers. Above billions. He could rule a big piece of the Free State, if he was insane enough to want it. He wasn’t that crazy. Level Five was the point at which a plausible amount of money for a very, very rich person could buy a ticket off-world on one of the Black Ships. Your spells started getting scary powerful at level five. Not that they weren’t scary powerful at lower levels, to lower levels. It was all relative.

And relative to other Level Fours and Fives, he was already a monster. Some one, some thing that blatantly shouldn't exist. Slaughtering them, while sorrowfully explaining that they were all just rats, himself included. He thought back to what he told Dr. Sun. He really didn’t believe in much. “Go Rats!”

He shook off the morbid alienation. Stretched, got loose, then sat and meditated. It felt too soon to cultivate, but he could fit in a quick round of meditation. Once he was done, all that was left was creeping undetected through a sealed magical fortress under constant enemy attack, patrolled by experts and unnatural things, all to rescue a “kinda sorta” human princess from the several high level mages guarding her.

Easy.

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