Slumrat Rising

It didn’t feel safe under the overhang. Truth thought a moment and scolded himself. He was still thinking like a low-level noob. He was a Level Four with an imp. He coated his hand with the fangs of Incisive and carved a little cave out of the bank of the stream. “Thrush, make it watertight and blow out the dust and dirt. Then tidy up the exterior and remove my traces.”

“As you command.”

Thrush was decent at obscuring their trail. Combined with a few talismans and his various spells and blessings, Truth was a genuine nightmare to try and track. Still. He’d have to think about ways to improve his coverage. An Imp just wasn’t able to play at this level. The only reason Truth summoned Thrush was their former relationship. Well, that and he knew he could easily crush the little monster if it got squirrely on him.

And he did not like having those eyeless things sweeping the city for him. He was a monster of a solo combatant, but he did not want to have anything remotely resembling a fair fight with anyone, ever. Let alone someone a couple of levels over him. He’d been jumped enough for one lifetime.

He took out the pad of legal paper. A cat would have struggled to see in the dark of the cave. Truth did just fine. Most of it was gibberish- scribbled numbers, disjointed words, or long, rambling notes about things he didn’t have any context for. Why a twelve-digit string of numbers justified triple underlining and a pass with a highlighter, he didn’t know. Maybe Siphios Intelligence could figure it out. What he could figure out was that there were repeated references to a boathouse at Army Ford.

“Copy to B-house.”

“Courier package to Boath at AF.”

“Traffic on the road to Army Ford? Budget for limo-carpet? Bad look?”

“Sample formula to boathouse. As Bri? Nitro crapper.”

There were only a half dozen references on the legal pad, and even less material addressed anywhere in Army Ford. Far, far, far more to various offices in Harban. But this was it. He could feel it.

Truth knew three things about Army Ford. One, it was way the hell up in the mountains in the far north of Jeon. If there was a boathouse up there, it was purely for whitewater rafting by the suicidal. Second, Army Ford was a fairly old, if fairly small, city with a surprisingly large number of mid-sized factories. He only knew those two facts because he read about Army Ford in one of his spy novels and got curious. This was because the spy novel mentioned something he wanted to confirm- the third fact he knew about Army Ford. It was the headquarters of the Jeon Special Operations Service. The elite of Jeon’s military.

The Starbrite PMC poached from them constantly. It was practically advertised by everyone involved. You got your badge with the winged tiger so you could get your lapel pin with seven stars when your contract ended. Now, the S.O.S. was too damn expensive to keep hanging around their base all the time. But if there was one place where you could discreetly stick a highly defended facility and no one would even look at it sideways, it would be Army Ford.

He dug through the rest of the documents, and he was sure this was damning stuff, or maybe top-notch something or other, but he didn’t understand a word of it. Literally, as it was often written in a mathematical and symbolic language that he simply could not interpret.

System?

>

Figures. Whelp. Let’s make this Merkovah’s problem.

>

The closest dead drop is in Buran, right?

>

Truth spent an hour resting and cultivating. The cultivation was unsatisfying. Just sitting in a cave meditating felt wrong. It sort of worked, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that all the dirt and rocks were blocking the rays from hitting him. Either that or the thinning reality was starting to reach him too. Hopefully, it was all just in his head. He had a bit better luck running the Meditations of Valentinian. It had taken a painfully long time, but the visualization was coming with just a bit of work. A huge improvement over not managing it at all, he felt.

He stepped out of the cave feeling refreshed. “Thrush, fill in the cave, and hide that I was ever here.”

He set off almost due east, up the mountain. There were no roads or paths up here. No watchful eyes. Truth let himself fade into the forest and just ran. Leaping from tree to tree when the mood took him. Keeping his steps light and flying through the night forest like a mountain demon.

When morning dawned, he had crossed mountains and rivers, lept over highways, swung from branch to branch and gloried in the strength of his body. The freedom of movement, of traveling unhindered through the world. Of moving like a dream.

He greeted the sun with a round of cultivation. Letting that august personage’s kindness fill his apertures and strengthen his limbs. The identity of the great solar demon was a severe taboo. It wouldn’t do to offend the planet’s tutelary spirit, after all. Was God’s indifference going to harm them? Truth hoped not. Bad enough that an entire planet was catching strays from Starbrite and Siphios. The great solar demon had been here before humans settled this world. Presumably, they would be here long after humanity vanished again.

He drifted down the side of a mountain, finally coming to rest in a convenience store parking lot at the fringes of a little town called Jinu. Truth had a vague recollection of the town, but only as a place to stop off for a piss on his way to Buran. There was… a river through here? There was a river that ran through here. It did eventually get you to Buran, too. He didn’t have all day to sit in a tourist boat, though. Risk a bus? Steal another carriage? He was still high from his magical night in the mountains, but he knew the crash would be hit hard soon. It had been almost a full day since he last ate. Never wound up getting that fried chicken.

He walked into the convenience store. His much-abused duffel bag was hanging in there, but only barely. It had been a tough few days for a distinctly cheap product. He’d have to keep an eye out for a replacement. Ah, coffee!

It smelled a little off. He took a long sniff. Very off. Burnt, but somehow oversweet. The label on the pot claimed it came from Siphios, but that was a damned lie.

“Hey, could I try, like, a shot of this coffee? I just want to see how it tastes.” Truth asked the clerk.

“Sure. Five wen.”

“Five wen! How much is a cup of coffee here?!”

“Five wen.”

Yes, this was Jeon alright.

“Screw it. Got any sandwiches?” Truth’s stomach wasn’t growling, but only thanks to body cultivation preventing it.

“Sure. Ham and cheese in the refrigerator, cheese and pickle next to it. Condiments are extra.” The clerk pointed.

He found them. The bread looked like it was made from extruded packing foam, and the fillings were micron thin.

“How much for the Ham sandwich?”

“Fifteen wen.”

“You having a stroke?!”

“Mustard is only two wen a squeeze if you buy the sandwich.”

“You sell squeezes of mustard without a sandwich?”

“Sure, you could bring in your own sandwich, right?” The clerk nodded wisely.

“Does that happen often?” Truth asked.

“Never. But it might.”

Truth walked out without buying so much as a bottle of water. He didn’t even want to shoplift.

Breakfast was a surprisingly decent bowl of rice and veggies on the tourist boat going to Busan. If you want to be invisible, be where they aren’t looking, right? Also, Truth was crashing hard. He reckoned sitting and watching the world go by as he ate snacks was about what he had the energy for. Funny that. His cosmic energy was full up, his body practically vibrating with magic, and he was tired. The bit of Truth that wasn’t attuning to the cosmos was tired. His lips quirked involuntarily. He had been up for more than twenty-four highly active, stressful hours, and he was just tired. One step further away from “normal,” one step closer to the godhead.

Truth lasted almost forty minutes on the boat. Once the “fun” music came on and the “funny” tour guide started talking, he discreetly jumped ashore. He could put up with an awful lot, but there was a limit.

He wanted to stay away from public transit as much as possible. Even before the return of the Black Ships, they were some of the most heavily surveilled places in the world. All the eyes, all the attention, would tax his cosmic energy hard.

Stealing a carriage was possible, but even with his blessings, the cops were going to be looking for stolen carriages. They were a trail, and the hunters were out and about. Starbrite and Internal Security both knew a high-level operative was loose in southern Jeon. They wouldn’t get bored looking for him.

This corner of the peninsula was pretty densely settled. Running was a not-great option. He could go the backyard route again, for a while, but there would be rapidly diminishing returns there. So how to get to Buran without wasting a ton of time and exhausting himself further?

Truth wandered along the road for a while, eventually reaching another convenience store. Same chain, same colors, even the clerk looked the same. He had that dead inside smile that said they were a denizen who would get punished for not smiling on the job.

Truth looked around. They were… near the highway, right? He dug out his road atlas. Yes, near the highway. The entrance ramp for Highway 10 was about five blocks from here. A bunch of carriages parked in the lot. One a rather smart sedan. A quick look around the store saw a man in a suit buying a criminally overpriced cup of “coffee” without complaint. Level One. Truth had a sip of the beverage while the suit finished his transaction and nearly spat it out. The nation of Siphios had been libeled. They should pursue legal action.

The suit grabbed his drink and walked over to the sedan. Truth waited for him to unlock it, then got into the passenger seat. They drove off. No music. Apparently, the suit was thinking deep thoughts. Or something. The carriage smoothly turned up the ramp towards Highway 10, towards Buran. Truth lay the seat back as far as it would go. Time for a little nap.

Truth woke suddenly as the carriage slowed. He instinctively cast Incisive and was immediately jabbed with alarm. He carefully peeked out the window. Traffic was backed up for three kilometers on the highway. There was a checkpoint on the road. Loads of the eyeless freaks perched around the barriers. Lots of soldiers. And high up in the air, a golden bird circled above the highway.

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