Slumrat Rising

Truth dove into the panicking masses, letting them break his line of sight with the golems chasing him and the eye-spies above. It was far from perfect. They were still on him. But it helped. As he went, he shouted.

“The Golems are killing people! They have gone crazy! The Golems are killing people! Bombs, they set off bombs! Starbrite’s gone crazy! They are killing people!”

He didn’t even need to use Incisive. The words had all the effect he needed. Spells and charms started crackling out. Most people only had the Jeon universal spell, of course, but these days, who didn’t carry at least some sort of personal protection? It may be illegal, but again, these days, what did Illegal even mean?

Not that homemade or black market attack fetishes did much against commercial-grade security golems. Some poor bastard even had a knockoff needler. Truth watched the needles, pathetically free of any sort of attack spell, plink off the armored form of a golem. Maybe if he had a Sharp spell. Or one of dozens of anti-golem spells that were developed over the centuries. But he didn’t, and the needles went plink-plink-plink until the golem caught up and smashed his head into the ground and crushed his hand and slapped a paralysis charm on him, leaving him on the ground and unable to scream as the rest of the mob charged over him.

“Don’t let them get you! Don’t let them get you! The Golems are killing people. Starbrite is Killing People!” He hadn’t really thought about starting a panic beyond some vague notion, but his trainers in Siphios had been quite clear- provocation was the core of “freedom fighting,” and overreaction by the provoked could always be turned against them.

He ran crouched between people, yelling as he went. Waste not, want not, all that. And it gave him a chance to subtly shape his identity, becoming harder to spot. Becoming one with the mob. He worked his way to the edge of a shopping galleria, the security shutters rumbling down fast. He dove under them- and vanished.

Truth idled around the locked-down mini-mall for an hour or so. Most of the store employees had been ordered to shelter in place, shuttering their stores and praying the mob didn’t break in. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody understood what was happening. This sort of thing just didn’t happen in nice districts. Secure, citizen, districts. This was the kind of thing that maybe, MAYBE, happened in the slums. Not that they knew much about that, of course!

It was a point of snobbish pride for the stores here- the retail staff were all the children of citizens, getting a little training in before their doubtless glorious future careers. The managers wanted to train their staff well- usually, the managers represented the bottom-most rung of salaried employees for a vast corporation. Their best hope to climb was a protegee succeeding and remembering their mentor.

Truth drifted along, looking through the shutters. That’s how it was in Jeon. You were employed by Starbrite, or one of the second-tier great corporations, or your parents pretended you had died in the crib. He looked in at the clerks, trapped behind the bars and mesh of the shutters or three centimeter thick enchanted glass storefronts. They were pacing around in neatly pressed suits and skirts, with ties or neckerchiefs or hats all in the focus group tested, board of directors approved color scheme. Attractive young “brand ambassadors” learning how to maximize shareholder value. Trapped in little boxes, waiting for the mob.

For once, the orders were correct. The mob had no interest in breaking in here. The safest place to be was out of the district. Truth walked over to a mostly empty food court and found a table. He had filled a good-sized sack with loot. A bit banged up by the rough handling, but still very nice indeed. It was noticeably heavy. He grinned. Maybe he had underestimated the long-term earning potential of armed robbery.

Truth swung the bag back and forth a little bit. What could he buy with all that loot? Well… was there even anything he wanted to buy? Elixirs were always good, but elixirs for those level four and up were not exactly retail buys. Maybe at a major branch of the Green Lotus or some other top-notch subsidiary of an alchemist tower, but even then, he would bet that you had to put in an order and wait for something to become available. All those Starbrite Level Four’s would be buying from the System Shop, too. That would take a big bite out of the market. Anyway, not something he could purchase with a stolen ring.

So elixirs were out. What about weapons? Those could certainly be acquired with stolen jewelry. A needler might not be as delightful as it once was, but it was still immensely lethal in his hands, a heavy needler more so. And if he really wanted one, he could walk up to the nearest army base, present the “order” to the quartermaster, and be issued his very own, free of charge. No need to spend more than the time on the trip. So that was out too.

A fancy firebird? His own flying cloud? Not practical under the circumstances or in the foreseeable future. Enchanted clothes? Overrated, mostly gaudy even by his standards, and Etenesh had made it clear she liked him in his skin, or as close to it as decency would allow. In retrospect, her saying, “My pretty man had a God Bod, and he should show it off,” probably wasn’t just her flirting.

And just a tiny piece of his soul was so toxic to her, it drove her into paranoia and misanthropy. He was literally poison for her.

Truth gave himself two quick slaps and shook his head, trying to shake out the intrusive thoughts. She was recovering. His “gift” would help her survive what was to come. She still loved him. And he had to make sure they would have a future together. As well as get his revenge.

He stood, sweeping everything back into the sack. He wanted to grab a nap in the mattress store, but the grate was down. He’d make do with a bench or something. The district would be sealed for a while, but they wouldn’t keep it closed all day. The losses for the stores that weren’t robbed would be far too high. No, a few hours at most, and he would off to hear the good word and to unburden himself of sin.

____________________________________________

Truth walked along the road to Saint Florians of the Loch. Saint Florians was on a major street, naturally, and on an enormous plot of land. Lush, immaculately tended ornamental gardens surrounded the church, itself a monument of stone and sculpture. Different sorts of sculpture than those found in Siphios. Not alive or moving, certainly. But massive, and everywhere.

The walls were covered in nitches for marble saints, or plinths raised so that Praeger, in his many forms, might bless the masses. Granite lions guarded the wide, sweeping stairs up to the massive bronze doors of the church. The church made the stance of the faithful clear- God is great, and you are very, very small. God is eternal and you are temporary. Truth didn’t have a problem with that- it was the literal truth, after all. But the subtext made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “The Church is very big, and you are very, very small. Be obedient. Be grateful. Or else.”

Late afternoon. It should be pretty dead, he reckoned. Might be a bit tricky to track down Arch-Priest James, but he could ask around. He had a casual look around as he walked- a pretty normal Buran neighborhood. Citizens, exclusively, of course, well lined with trees and shops. An awful lot of those shops had “Out of Business” signs on them. Truth kept his eyes roving, on the theory that you never knew what you might find if you were looking.

A Ghūl stood in an alley, half hidden by the shadows. Truth nearly tripped over nothing.

A Ghūl. Miles from the slums. Out at midafternoon. One hand covering its rotted eyes, standing deep in the shadows, barely ten meters from nattering ladies enjoying a blow out at the blowdry bar. It turned to face him, and softly beckoned him closer.

There was a strangeness to the moment. Like the world had suddenly gone soft, and thin. Like pictures projected onto a fluttering curtain, only seeming to move because the wind blew the curtain about. Truth approached the Ghūl. Closer. The Ghūl beckoned him closer. The peeled flesh, the naked bone, the rotted away holes where ears should be. It called him over, and lost in the unreality of the moment, Truth went.

The Ghūl… embraced him. For a long moment, it simply embraced him, pressing a rotted hand between Truth’s shoulder blades, the other wrapping around his ribs. For the space of a few heartbeats, it connected with him. A statement of fraternity, of acceptance. Then the breeze blew, and it was gone. Whatever he was, was good enough for them. Without question or condition.

Truth stood in the alley, his arms wrapped around nothing. He couldn’t put words to it. An illusion? But he should be almost impossible to glamour. Some Ghūl magic? But they didn’t use magic. They were famous for not using magic. He felt like he was teetering on the edge of something. Some vast realization, and once he understood it, he would never be able to live in this world again. A truth so terrible you would die if you knew it, and he was balanced on one leg, leaning over the precipice.

Truth had remarkable balance. The moment passed. He didn’t know how much time passed before he returned to himself. The sidewalk was as solid as before, the church as grand. The ladies nattering away, getting their hair blow dried and styled by hard-eyed professionals, hadn’t missed a beat. The world was as real as could be.

He violently shook his head and walked into the church. He grinned nastily at some of the enchantments around the door. Specifically designed to drive away demons, ghosts, and malevolent magics. Well. Good luck exorcizing him.

The interior of the church was quite spacious and almost entirely empty. The majority of the space was taken up by a single great room filled with hundreds of seats. They descended below street level and rose up to two stories high, simple white wooden seats on sealed concrete slabs. Easy to clean. The tiered chairs surrounded a pentagon in the middle of the room- nine stacked platforms, the last being painted metallic gold and ornamented with frozen quicksilver. He spotted projectors amongst the talisman lights, as well as a sound system that would do a concert hall proud. And that was it. It seemed like the ornamentation budget had been spent on the exterior.

Truth had an unaccountably irritable feeling looking at it all. He remembered the dais from going to church as a kid. The priest stood up there and preached, turning to face the different parts of the congregation as he spoke. But he remembered music. The church in his memory was alive with lights and colors and the sounds of singing. This was dead. Sterile, even. Had there been some kind of problem? He walked around until he found a business office. Neatly dressed staff were bent over their ledgers and abacus, fingers as busy as their eyes.

“Pardon me, I am looking for Arch-Priest Reik?”

The clean cut young man jumped half a meter out of his chair in surprise.

“Glory! How quietly do you walk? Took a year off my life. You are looking for His Eminence?”

“Yes, he told me to call on him when I was in the neighborhood.”

“You are a friend of His Eminence?”

“No, no, just an acquaintance, but he seemed very insistent that I come and see him.”

“I am sorry, but you are both too early and too late.”

“Pardon?”

“Too early because he will be here leading worship at seven this evening, and you could make an appointment to see him then. Too late, because he generally does his pastoral work between noon and five, and has been out of the Church for hours now.”

“Ah. Well. Perhaps I will attend the service and find him later.”

“Wonderful. Our doors are always open. What name should I put on the appointment?”

“Johnny Bells.”

“Could you spell that?”

“Probably.”

There was a pause. “Sorry, force of habit. You wouldn’t believe some of the names we get.”

“No problem. I have to put down a deposit to hold the appointment, right?”

“Ah, no, not a deposit, no, of course not…” The young man started to explain hurriedly. Truth reached into his sack of loot and brought out a rather chunky ring. He casually rubbed off the maker's mark and serial, then etched a crude picture of a rat on the inside of the band. The embarrassed acolyte thought he was fishing around for his wallet, and looked shocked when the ring clattered on the mythril plated dish on the counter.

“Here, for James. I will see him after the service. I hope he’s ready.”

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