Slumrat Rising

Truth woke in the middle of the night. Sudden, urgent movement outside the door. They were only Level Threes, so he wasn’t worried about the owners of the house, but…

“Maddie. Maddie wake up! You have to see this.”

“Linh? What? What’s wrong?”

“There’s been an attack. You have to see the news.”

“Damn. Are we in danger?”

Linh laughed, an ugly noise. “Right this minute? Probably not, but who knows?”

Fair point, Truth thought. The murderer is in the house already. Not that he had the slightest intention of harming his involuntary hosts. They kept a very comfortable, very luxurious home. He wasn’t planning on spending any longer in Buran, but he would definitely patronize their establishment again should he return.

He lay in the guest bedroom (ensuite bathroom, direct access to the wrap-around balcony and striking views of the coast, total size approximately 90% of the apartment he grew up in), deciding whether he was going back to sleep or not. The scry came on, loud enough for his superb hearing to make out every tiny detail of the soundscape the top notch enchantment system created. He didn’t approve of how they balanced the highs and lows. He had heard better. Truth silently sighed. He was not getting back to sleep. Might as well see how his atrocity was reported.

The scry ball was superb, of course, emerging from a pedestal wrapped in golden vines. He didn’t recognize the make or model, so he assumed it was custom. Because, sure, why not? Once you owned the penthouse with the wrap-around balcony, infinity swimming pool, and hot tub, what’s a custom scry ball?

The presenter was a custom job too, but that was normal. Strong looking woman, this time. A subtle widening of the jaw, serious hair, no risk of plunging the viewer’s gaze down the front of her dress. Still staggeringly beautiful, obviously. Things hadn’t collapsed that far. He couldn’t help but think of a well-groomed dog. Bred for purpose, styled for purpose, made to perform, and at no point was their opinion needed or wanted or relevant. A “valued asset” should focus on generating value, not problems.

“Shocking news tonight from Buran. A party barge with three hundred and forty people on board crashed today in what authorities are describing as a clear act of terrorism.” The program cut over to a heavily warded crime scene. So heavily warded, in fact, that you couldn’t see into it.

“We have been unable to capture footage of the crime scene directly, as it is under a heavy police cordon. But here is what we have been able to learn.”

She carefully walked through the events of the evening. Taking care to emphasize the innocence and inherent goodness of the citizens on board the platform, their charitable donations, their families. It was not currently clear how the barge was made to fail, but it was, according to official statements by Buran Public Security, clearly intentional.

“While crashing a party barge would be a horrific act in its own right, what elevates murder to atrocity is that the barge was clearly, deliberately, crashed in front of a Ghūl nest.”

His hosts inhaled, a sharp gasp, grabbed ahold of each other’s hands, knuckles turning white.

“It seems particularly cruel that the most obscene product of denizen degeneracy was used to torture and defile decent, ordinary citizens. The crash was clearly intended not merely to shock the public or to murder citizens but to humiliate them. A humiliation to all the decent people of Jeon.”

Wait. Wait one teeny tiny fucking moment. “Product of denizen degeneracy?” Are they saying that the denizens create the Ghūl somehow?

“This is, of course, why the scene is currently under the strictest control. The scene must be investigated, but the Ghūl have yet to be exterminated. We have received reports that there was some initial hope of recovering bodies from the nest, but this is unconfirmed at the present time. The standard procedure is incineration of the entire site, but we will keep track of this evolving situation.”

“Saint Mechivus protect us. Three hundred and forty people, fed to the Ghūl.” Linh said.

“Your firm uses Whicker and Voss as outside auditors, don’t you?” Maddie asked.

“Us and half the country. I need to call Gaspard. Never thought I would be praying for him to be fucking an intern rather than on the job.” Linh rushed off to the comms altar. Maddie kept watching the news.

“We can confirm, however, that there was no possibility of this being some sort of accident. An ultra-nationalist slogan was found painted in blood at the crash site, removing any possibility of magical failure. We are joined by terrorism expert General Marhul Wales. General Wales, what can you tell us about the shocking reports we are getting from Buran tonight?”

Wales, clearly long retired, had shock white hair and a grim face. He nodded politely at the presenter, then looked directly at the audience. “Thank you for having me. The first thing, and most important thing, is that preliminary reports are almost always wrong or incomplete. So any details beyond the broadest outlines should be treated as “true for now,” not the final word. This is triply true for any attributions of responsibility for the attack.”

The presenter nodded seriously at that. Truth imagined the producer off-camera nodding seriously, and miming that the presenter should repeat the motion. She couldn’t be trusted to emote by herself, obviously.

“What I am hearing is that slogans and graffiti similar to those used by the Real Jeon Liberation Front was found at the scene. Now, if that does turn out to be correct, all that proves is that slogans and graffiti similar to those used by the Real Jeon Liberation Front was found at the scene. It does not prove that this was domestic terrorism.”

“You think it might be international terrorists or state sponsored terrorism?”

“It's no secret that Jeon’s enemies want to take advantage of the current global crisis. Their own countries are disintegrating, so it’s understandable they think Jeon has weakened. Stirring up right wing nationalist sentiment is the basics of the basics of foreign influence campaigns. False flag attacks are barely one step ahead of that.”

“You think this could be an attack by foreign spies?”

“I think we can’t rule it out. I think it would be very, very convenient for places like Siphios, the Free State, Rembaud and other similar terrorist havens, if Jeon turned on itself. Not to mention any near-peer economic powers. We are the economic miracle of the world, with the highest standard of living anywhere, and if I may say so, the finest military anywhere. They can’t fight us head on, so they want to turn us against each other. Stoke grievances, create division, set people against one another.”

“That would explain why they used the Ghūl. They want to encourage denizens to violently attack citizens. Move from idleness and irresponsibility to actual anarchy and murder.”

“I think that would make certain people very happy. Very, very happy. But as I said, everything is preliminary, and we won’t have the real story until a few days from now when the investigation has had a chance to really get moving.”

Truth shook his head and walked away. Did he count as a domestic terrorist or a state sponsored terrorist? You could be both, right? Or was there some classification system that would put him cleanly in one category or the other? Well. Not his problem, really. They would have sealed the city by now. He would stick around in town for a couple of days, plot the next hit. Maybe get that sin reduced some. He must look like a burning torch of evil, at this point. Can’t have that.

“Hey Linh, while you have the oil in the altar? Can you cancel the cleaners for… like a week or something? Maybe two?”

“What? Why? I’m not going to be mopping or doing the laundry!”

“Wouldn’t kill you. But no, me either. It’s just… they use denizens as the cleaners, right?”

There was quiet from the other room. “Yeah, they do. Everyone does.”

“I just think, maybe for a week or two, we could see how a golem cleaner might work. Or even a bound demon or something. I hear those have been getting a lot more reliable.”

There was another long period of quiet. Then a soft “Yeah.”

“I just want us to feel safe. I just… want us to be safe.”

Truth walked out onto the balcony and looked out over the city. Eight million people lived in Buran. Most crammed into the slums, stacked up in the hive-like apartment towers. The rest of the city was a glittering gem. Cleaned by magic and muscle, fed by more magic and muscle, watered almost exclusively by magic, transportation entirely by magic, with the bits of the economy that weren’t about taking pleasure in the efforts of others being driven entirely by magic as well.

Maddie must have known that her “safety” was a bubble-thin illusion, Truth thought. She just didn’t want it to pop for as long as possible. He didn’t feel any need to burst that bubble. It would pop on its own soon enough.

____________________________________________

The next day was spent largely indoors. No need to get out onto the streets. No need to risk leaving a trail. He reclined on a lounger on the balcony and started working through the technical gazettes he picked up. There hadn’t been any dramatic changes to talisman design in the last couple of years, but the art was always progressing. The tolerances got finer and finer, the positioning got more exact, and the designs more complex and sophisticated.

Take his old friend, the Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman, still fraudulently claiming a five-year service life. It wasn’t any more durable than when he first studied it in technical school. Actually, it was less reliable. However, the luminosity and color of the light were now programmable. It was an order of magnitude more complicated, with numerous subsystems and several mildly innovative sigils. All based on older, familiar stuff, just a little bit better, and assembled in new ways.

He was quietly surprised to find, after a few hours of reading, that he was enjoying himself. It was easy to lose himself in the comfortable rhythm of memorizing diagrams. It was a form of running away from thinking about what he did, but it was a productive sort of running away. Running away to self-improvement. He’d done worse.

Maddie and Linh stayed around the apartment, too, burning through a whole jug of oil for the communication altar. It’s not like anyone could tell them off if they didn’t turn up at the office. They also spent a lot of time cultivating. Too little too late, but still never a bad thing.

He noticed that they performed a sort of dual cultivation. They sat on cushions back to back, letting their backs touch. They synchronized their breathing so that when one breathed in, the other breathed out. He could almost see the energy cycling through the room. He definitely could see the incense swirling around them.

It was quietly intimate- a spiritual closeness as well as a physical one. He decided to follow their example and cultivated under the heat of the sun. When he had taken in as much as he could stand, he switched to the Meditations. The cosmic rays were thinning. It was subtle, but he could just about feel it now. He better grab what he could while he could.

The scry got flipped on and off for most of the day. The news segments repeated a lot, sometimes with a tiny smidge of new analysis or a fresh picture. Then someone would get sick of the constant negativity and switch it off for forty minutes, then turn it on again “just to see if anything new had come up.” There were raids, of course, people brought in for questioning, various parties claiming responsibility. Truth wondered how much of that was real. He certainly wouldn’t take credit for someone else’s atrocity. But then, he was new to this racket. Maybe that was normal.

Who exactly were they arresting? Was there some collection of usual suspects to round up? Nothing he could do about it. Instead, he turned his mind to the thought of using money to wash away sin. Based on what the priest said, the origin of the money was immaterial. Truth looked up into the afternoon sun. He was going to scrub away sin with stolen loot.

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