Slumrat Rising

The Shattervoid swarmed around their lost girl- uncles and cousins the size of mountains and rivers. Aunties who stepped between the stars. Brothers? Sisters? Sibs of the sea of stars? Truth had lost sight of Sally. He must still be within her, he knew, but it felt like he was standing in the void. Awkward as a work friend at a family reunion.

Worse- the family didn’t speak his language. Or, rather, he didn’t speak theirs. He could feel the conversation more than hear it. Pulses of cosmic energy that made his apertures throb inside of him. He could feel even more vibrating against his skin, bouncing off his sealed body. He could imagine the pressure crushing the apertures of a less well developed person. You could feel the conversation like the sun shifting across the sky, alternately burning and blinding you.

He didn’t try to introduce himself. He was perfectly content hanging around at the back of the room, searching for a graceful exit. Unfortunately, when you are magically attached to the belle of the ball, there is no escape. He just hung on and tried not to stand out. Should be easy, when you were the smallest thing there, by entire orders of magnitude.

He looked over at the moon. He had a morbid impulse to describe it as “bone white” or the like, but it just wasn’t. It was gray. White in places, yes, but there were massive gradations in tone from sun-bleached powder to slate, to an almost total basalt-black in the shadows. It had spiney mountains and wide craters. Some places seemed to have been raked smooth, others were boulder strewn fields. Abandoned resorts and luxury retreats glistened and shimmered in the sunlight. It wasn’t all one thing. It wasn’t all ugly or dead.

He looked past it to his “homeworld.” He didn’t even have a name for it. It was just… the planet. Presumably it had a name, something to identify it amongst the endless millions of other planets. He had never bothered to learn. Like the countries surrounding Jeon- if it wasn’t relevant to putting food in his belly, it didn’t exist.

Getting food into bellies was already a problem in Jeon. It was about to get much, much worse. It was the cascade effect. For very reasonable reasons, the planet had specialized in industrial production. Now there wasn’t enough food being produced locally when imports got cut off.

This rolled into magic declining fast, meaning there would be little chance to start growing more locally. Not with the kind of production and regularity the planet’s population would need to maintain itself. This directly rolled into increased warfare, as people realized they needed to grab all they could, while they could.

Soon there would only be children left, children and the supremely powerful who’s body cultivation let them survive in the dead magic times. The difference in status, wealth, power, between a low level and high level today was unimaginable. How much greater would it be when there were just mages and slaves? In a world where some dreams were forbidden, it would be a pure Hell.

Sitting in the middle of it all was Starbrite. He might not be the cause of everything, but he was certainly pushing the wagon along. Speeding it up and helping steer it as it rumbled down the hill. Making sure it plowed squarely into the combination orphanage and puppy rescue, and not his meth lab next door.

It didn’t look like a Hell-World from up here. It looked… nice. Blue. Shockingly, richly blue, the oceans rich lapis. The color brought out by the blinding white of drifting clouds. Then the immense brown of deserts and plains. Green blush burnished it here and there, where some ancient jungles still survived, pressing against the equatorial oceans. Their coastlines smoothing into mostly clean swoops and arcs from however many hundreds of kilometers up.

Once upon a time, in another life, he had been a sailor. Charting his course against other oceans, between coastlines that never existed on this world. He didn’t know what to think about that.

There was an aggressively fake cough from behind him.

Truth turned. There was a late middle aged man standing behind him. Truth categorized his expression as “Forced to be polite, but clearly not feeling it.”

“You are Mr. Medici?”

Truth controlled the urge to look around and ask who else he could possibly be. It was a struggle, but he managed.

“Yes. How should I call you?” The question seemed to momentarily flummox the older man.

“Is… Ragnax still a normal name?”

“Sure.” Truth nodded. It had been a very strange year. He was prepared to consider Ragnax an utterly normal name.

“I’m Ragnax. “Sally’s” uncle. I understand we have you to thank for rescuing her. As well as kidnapping her?” Ah, there was the edge in the voice he had been expecting.

“Brainwashed Starbrite drone. I didn’t know what the package was until a couple of minutes before I was ordered to fight to my death. “Return her to her parents” was never an available option.” Truth shrugged.

The exhaustion was crashing down. He was feeling lightheaded. Had he really killed two Level Eights in a day? Even using trickery and ambush, it felt unreal. He, single handedly, was responsible for the planet’s overall decline in top combat power. Incredible.

“You seem to have gotten better. And had a change of heart.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause. Ragnax was clearly waiting for some elaboration. Truth was waiting to pass out. He was covered in burns, cuts, scrapes the size of dinner plates that somehow managed to hurt worse than the cuts, and what skin wasn’t scraped over was bruised and covered in cement dust. The sweet embrace of oblivion couldn’t come fast enough.

Ragnax seemed to give up on social queues and went straight for interrogation. “And you just happened to make your way into the secret base where my niece was being held, and just happened to have the necessary skills to get her out just as the volcano erupted for no obvious reason?”

“Yeah.”

“You really think I will believe that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?!”

“Because it’s true? All that took a lot of work. A lot of running around.”

There was a pause. “Are you… maybe my Jeongo is not as good as I thought. I think you are missing something.”

“Probably.” Were the edges of his vision starting to dim? Fingers crossed.

“I assume you want a trip off world. For you and a few thousand of your nearest and dearest?” There was an edge to his voice that Truth was willfully ignoring.

“Eventually. I also have… just a ton of questions.”

“Shame we aren’t in the business of questions, then. We are in transport, and your fare is still short. There was another part of the ticket price, you may remember.”

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“Kill Starbrite. Didn’t forget.” Truth started swaying. “Oh sweet, I’m finally passing out.” He fainted on his feet. Not seeing that he was still suspended in space, with a very frustrated looking Ragnax glaring at him. Ragnax disappeared as silently as he appeared and then it was just Truth, drifting through the void, in silence.

He didn’t know how long he slept for. There was a moment of absolute panic when he woke up. To be suspended in nothing, surrounded by unimaginably vast things, but unable to move. Unclear on how he was breathing, or surviving the horrifying brutality of the cosmic rays that ripped through the void. He spasmed, instinctively trying to reach for anything. Anything he could hold on to, that could anchor him in the emptiness.

Sally giggled. *I got you. It’s okay. It’s okay. You are all okay. ‘Cause I got you!* There was something in her voice Truth didn’t like. Not a meanness. His Big Bro senses were tingling. Something had broken in Sally, and she knew it. She needed him to pull together. Not that he could fix whatever it was, but at least he could not make it worse.

“Thank you. It was pretty scary for me. I have never been this high up.”

*Never left your world?*

“Top of the atmosphere is the highest I ever went before.”

*Doesn't count as touching the void. Still an earthworm!*

He laughed with her. “Well, it’s not a great planet, but it’s where I keep all my stuff, you know?”

There was a pause. *Actually I wondered about that.*

“Where I keep my stuff?”

*Yeah. Like, I get that you can’t fold space like us, but do you really just… leave it places? Like, do you each have your own little base just to hold your stuff? And you go and do stuff and it just stays behind, and you have to hope it will still be there when you get back?*

“Er… basically. Though “base” is too big. Think, like, a little-” He was going to say “a little box” but quickly changed tack. “A little house, or a few rooms in a big building. Rooms in a big building would be the most common.”

*Oooh.* There was a pause. *I will never go inside anything ever again. I will never leave the void ever again. Not for anything, ever. Actually, after we leave here, I don’t know how long it will be before I will come back to a solar system. A long time, I hope. A very long time. “Never” would be okay.*

“Fair.” Truth could feel her struggling with words. Not sure what she was feeling or what she thought about it yet, let alone knowing how to say it. “It’s okay, you know? If you don’t have the words right now. Some day, hopefully soon, I will make it off-world. You can send a message through your relatives.”

There was a sigh. *Thank you. I… don’t know how to talk to people. I want to talk and talk and talk and talk but they always hurt me if I did, or they said I was distracting them, or…* Truth tried to send calming emotions, and had no idea if he was succeeding. He probably wasn’t.

“Sorry, I’m trying to be reassuring and I don’t even know what direction to face. Where are you, exactly?”

Sally giggled. *You are looking right at me. Every which way you look, you are looking right at me.*

“I am… in you? Somehow?”

*Kind of! We aren’t like you. Those bindings they put on me? Those tattoos and curse tablets? They were to keep me on this side of the-* She made a noise that, to Truth, sounded like ten thousand flute players were trapped underwater and were trying to communicate their approximate location via song.

*Basically, we are in two places at once. There is what you see here, like auntie over there, and what we actually look like on the other side. Right now, I don’t have a “Ship,” and my body is… not good. My Moms and Dads are taking care of me. So I’m pretty much all on the other side. But I’m still connected over here, so I can keep this little bit of space safe for you. Air, a tiny bit of gravity, that kind of thing. Let you have some visible light while not roasting in the cosmic rays.*

“Wow!” Truth was certain he didn’t really understand that, but it sounded damn impressive. Wait, did she say Moms and Dads?” Plural?

*They don’t want to talk to you. To anyone from this planet, really.*

“I completely understand.”

*Though Mamma-* There was a sound that seemed equal parts music and mathematics, *said that you should have something to mark bringing me back. It’s a pretty ordinary thing on developed planets, but there aren’t any on your planet. Not even Starbrite has one.* A little ring popped into existence. It was a dull brown wood, sanded and oiled into some degree of comfort.

“What is it?”

*A spatial ring. That’s what earthworms call it. Basically, we open up a little safe spot on the other side of the barrier for you, where you can put stuff and take it out again. The ring is the anchor on this side of the barrier. It only works if a Shattervoid makes it work for you. Like, we have to keep making it work, it doesn't work forever. And. You know.*

“Nobody is doing anything nice for Starbrite. Got it. These are common?”

*Yeah, they take basically no effort to keep going. You don’t even notice it. And this one is from me! I made it!*

“Thank you very much, Sally! How much can I put in there?”

*Not very much right now. My body is… wrong. They are fixing it. It might take a while.*

“I’m sorry. None of this is your fault. None of this is fair. I hope that you can remember that, on the bad days.”

*Bad days? Oh. Yeah. The bad days.” Sally sounded calmly familiar with them. “So what’s next for Mr. Medici?*

“Go back to Jeon and figure out a way to kill the nearest thing to God my planet has ever known?”

*Starbrite isn’t even close to God.* Sally was firm on this. *He’s sicker than me. His soul is all wrong. Nothing should look like that. Nothing is supposed to work like that. It’s sick. Wrong. Diseased.*

“Stronger than me. Than anyone.”

*On your planet? True.* He had the sense of her nodding. *But you don’t sound too worried about it.*

“Yep. Things just went very wrong for Starbrite. He lost some very important people. He lost whatever was in that Sarcophagus, and he lost you. And he wanted you so badly, he was willing to lose everything he had built on this planet to get you.”

Truth smiled. “He’s angry. In pain. Scared, maybe. He’s going to do something stupid. He’s going to lash out, to prove he’s powerful and in control. And when he does, he will show an opening. Then we kill him.”

He started laughing. “Or we wait for the magic to collapse and watch him die then. No escape off world for him! Oh he will be desperate!”

*Desperate people do desperate things, Mr. Medici. You might not survive them.* Sally sounded eerily calm about that. Truth tried not to mind.

“Sounds like future-me’s problem. Isn’t it nice that there is a future-me?” He coughed, much more politely than Ragnax had. “Now, about that. How, exactly, do I get back dirtside?”

Thrush found his master sitting under a battered looking fir tree on a foothill in the mountains of southeastern Onis. He would have thought it much too close to the ash plume of the volcano for comfort, but then, he had never cared for fire demons. A small effort, and a bubble of clean air formed around the strange young man.

“I did worry about your safety, Dread Magus. How good to see you are unharmed.”

“Thank you. The duffle and bird suit both look… a lot more intact than I expected, actually. Well done!”

“Your gratitude is far more than this insignificant speck dared hope for.” His voice was buttery smooth. Truth’s lips twitched. It would be an adjustment getting used to the imp again.

He fished out his treasured scarf and wrapped it around his neck. Not cold, he just really wanted the comfort of it. Then swiftly took it off again, and got himself properly dressed for what felt like the first time in far too long. Once suitably dressed, shod and scarved, he sent the duffel and the bird suit into the space Sally had made for him. Everything fit. Promising.

“I don’t fancy flying through an active volcano plume.”

“Master is no doubt wise.”

“Buuut, since I had a minute, I hunted around. And guess what I found?”

“This pathetic imp couldn’t possibly fathom the depths of the Dread Magus’s reach.”

Was that a… grammatically it felt off. Truth pressed on, dramatically yanking away a drop cloth. Underneath was something that, legally, technically, probably, qualified as a two wheeler. If you looked past the rust, and the parts from five different manufacturers, each in a different color scheme.

“I found a ride. Hop on, imp. We’re off to kill King Rat.”

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