Slumrat Rising

The bronze door was covered in neat inscriptions. That was the overwhelming sense of the door- three meters tall and somehow it was more orderly than majestic. Truth could imagine the architect and the thaumaturgist having an argument-

“It looks ugly, doesn’t fit with the entire rest of the building, and is going to add a mint to the costs. You can’t-”

“Take it up with the client. Inscriptions have got to go somewhere, and while it would do the apprentice good to spend a couple months carving them into the poured concrete, I have better things to do. And I can make the door in my shop, saving the call-out and onsite fees. So. You know. Savings.”

“You work for Starbrite, your time-cost is irrelevant!”

“And yet, my boss still manages to bill me out to other departments. What a shame I got a double J-Thaum instead of something useful like an MBA or an architecture degree. Whatever you call that. Do you think the door will need special hinges? I bet it will. Lucky you spent a whole career learning that kind of thing, huh?”

It was like each subcontractor had to flex and prove they were the biggest pricks on the project. Meanwhile, security just got to stand around being the universal defecation destination. Truth hadn’t guarded construction sites, but he had heard things. He had certainly seen things guarding buildings. Security was like maintenance- everyone agreed that it was necessary and best accomplished by morons. Sounded dumb but Truth didn’t have an MBA. Presumably it was explained on the course.

Credit where it was due, the inscription was excellent. Each line was exactly the same length and width, the letters formed perfectly, and with absolute legibility. There was nothing, to his inexpert eyes, to nitpick. What it was all for was a little harder to evaluate.

He ran his eyes over the inscriptions. There were astrological records, mathematical statements, the names of numerous angels and demons, methods of divination and warding away evil. There were recipes for alchemical draughts and medicines, recipes for incense and perfume, recipes for adamantium and mithril. All things of value, but none of it secret. Most of this could be found in any specialist manual for the relevant trade. And what possible use could it be on a door?

He didn’t touch the door. Incisive wasn’t warning him, but it was just too damn odd. Truth kept working through it, getting more and more puzzled as he went. Some sections seemed to be a sort of prescription for cultivation, like something usually taught with detailed manuals or in-class instruction was reduced to a few chilly directions and an expectation that the reader should figure out the details themselves. The spells were similarly brusque. Not incomplete, exactly, just not properly explained.

“To ward away venomous insects, establish a spellform. Taking Mezzorsh as your starting point and working widdershins, draw a line forty five degrees up to Czru…” and so on, not mentioning little details like the recommended cultivation of the mage, the spell’s range, duration, effectiveness against demonic insects and other not-so-small matters.

Not exactly a high grade ward protecting the deepest secrets of Starbrite. Truth had some vague thought that it might be a sort of… legacy relic or something. Something to restart cultivation civilization after the collapse. But it wasn’t. Not really. The recipe for steel indicated how much carbon and how much iron, but didn’t explain how to make a furnace to smelt the metals. Same thing with the potions- the recipe was there, but nothing about how to cultivate the herbs or make the alembics and other tools needed to process them.

It finally clicked. It looked like a giant notepad. Like someone had written down a load of notes on a lot of things they thought were important but not that important, and kept reusing the same bit of paper until the whole thing filled up. Then someone else came along and tidily transcribed the whole thing onto a clean sheet of paper. Except the paper was three meters tall and made of bronze. For reasons. There weren’t any spells active, and this seemed to be human weirdness as opposed to mystical or divine.

He gently pushed the door. It didn’t budge. Truth had a look and discovered that the much maligned architect had put the hinges on this side of the door. Truth’s first thought was security. A simple locking bar would make the door a serious obstacle to smash through, magic or no. But a simpler idea replaced it. Policy.

It was a fire safety policy. The doors in Starbrite facilities, absent a good reason, opened towards the exit. In the event of an emergency, nobody was getting stacked up on a closed door- the door would always open outwards so people could escape. The architect had a policy manual to follow, so they did. The fact that they were in a secret underground base in the middle of a contested waterway was irrelevant.

But since it was a Starbrite door, built to Starbrite codes… Truth ran his hands down the bronze, exerting a slight pressure. A narrow rectangle of bronze was pushed in, revealing a spot to grab. Truth pulled the door open, and walked inside, closing the door behind him.

On the other side of the bronze door was what Truth tentatively decided to call a temple. There was a stone basin with an iron brazer set above it, holding burning logs of some fragrant wood. The smoke didn’t linger- it was pulled up into the high ceiling and merged with the carvings above. Angels and demons didn’t watch over this place. They were geometric forms, infinitely repeating yet infinitely complex. Subtle use of colored tiles filled the arches with bewildering splendor, delighting the eyes endlessly.

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The floor was simpler- blue stone tiles, arranged harmoniously. Here and there the ground had been inlaid with spell formations and ritual sites. There was a bath large enough for two or three- Truth reckoned it was for baptisms and purification rituals. Same thing with the blackened iron hoop, the two burn pits, the smoke filling the air- all methods of purification and baptism. He had become something of an expert on the subject.

The altar was, likewise, plain and plainly meant for serious business. This altar was a stone slab two meters long and a meter high. There was a horn cup and a stone knife on top of it, and that was it. No inlaid spells, or embroidered cloths, nothing to show to whom the altar was dedicated. Certainly nothing to lure in the curious or inspire the faithful. No Praegerite Priest worth his per-diem would be caught dead in here.

Truth thought differently. It was unadorned because it was used to venerate multiple beings and, more importantly, anything summoned by Starbrite wasn’t going to care even slightly about the magical furniture some hick scraped together. Like the way new money obsessed over tags and designer everything, while the old money didn’t give a damn and wore what they liked. Anywhere those exalted beings went in the material realm was, definitionally, a slum. Should they be moved by the hovel-owner bringing out his best tablecloth?

Truth slowly walked into the temple. No astrological symbols, he noticed. Which was odd, given everything. No pictures of anything, either. The quality was superb, naturally, but unadorned. Out of curiosity, Truth sniffed the empty horn cup. It smelled like wine, with hints of something sweet and bitter herbs. If Starbrite was chopped up, who was using the cup? A servant? Did he manipulate it directly with magic?

He kept exploring. There was a little cabinet with ritual equipment- oils, incense, wine, candles, candle sticks, the usual sort of thing. He was also amused to find floor cleaner and stone sealer, as well as some large sponges, towels and surprisingly ergonomic bucket. Someone had to clean up the altar, after all, and it wasn’t always wise to have the lingering energy of cleaning demons or talismans hanging around your ritual site.

Or so he had heard. Nothing he had ever worked on required that level of purification.

When you get right down to it, I’m a thug with a spell. I’ve learned a lot, grown a lot, but at the end of the day? I’m a fix-it-with-violence kind of guy. He saw an oil lamp burning on the wall. He hadn’t seen one of those in this life. Truth let his eyes roam, and saw more and more of them. In fact, there wasn’t a single talisman light in this place. For some reason, that struck him as hilarious. It seems like they were too unreliable for Starbrite’s personal use.

Maybe it will turn up on the SAT? What is the expected service life of a brass oil lantern, and how often do you need to replace the wick?

No. No more SATs. No more Silent Nights where parents ensure the peaceful sleep of test takers with garrotes. How had he not understood how sick the world was, that a single company’s test could stop a city dead in its tracks for twenty four hours? Silent Night wasn’t a tradition reserved for the slum. He had to imagine it was, if anything, even more intense in the striving lower and middle classes.

Mom had painted her garrote with gold nail polish. He remembered that vividly. Dad just used whatever. Mom had to be fancy. Glam. A successful business woman, because in this world, if you weren’t a successful business someone, what were you? A civil servant is still a servant. Only money and power could truly command. And Mom, in her limited way, understood that. Dad was too far gone. It took Truth a long time to realize that Dad wasn’t beating them to make himself feel better, he was beating them because anything that pulled him out of his haze of scry and booze made him hurt.

The world was a scary, painful place. It had beaten Dad long before Dad beat Truth. Truth sighed, and kept looking around the temple. He wanted kids one day. Let the violence end with him.

The temple continued, stretching out deeper into the water. Perhaps the reason for all the purification equipment and the simple altar was to prepare celebrants for the mysteries deeper within. The patterns on the ceiling mutated, but remained geometric. Potted trees started to appear, with benches under them. Little alcoves were set with cushions on the floor, just missing a statue or painting to venerate.

He could see bits of broken technology here and there. Rows of spell bowls had been smashed and scattered in pieces like oysters on rocks. Whatever had been bound in them had escaped or been destroyed. There was a smudge of ash on a lectern- once a book, perhaps. Rolls of scrolls that had rotted into slime. Still intact was a bronze sheet with more haphazard notes- on the correct angle of arch to build into a road, on how to plant chestnut trees, the formula for a particular shade of blue dye. On how to make scented soaps and little pastries shaped like roses.

On how to make light talismans.

Truth stared at the tablet. He knew every centimeter of that design. He knew its variations, he knew what materials went into it, he knew it considerably better than he knew his own family. It was the basis for the standard Starbrite light talisman. A basic technology that could be tweaked dozens of ways, from wide floodlights to focused spotlights and in every visible color.

They really were his notes, Starbrite’s notes. The Shattervoid charged a mint for books and things. Starbrite must have memorized all of this with a spell, then once he got here, wrote them down in a hurry. Later on, after he built his empire, he had someone tidy them up and etch them in bronze. An enduring record of his brilliance.

Everyone kept saying that Starbrite wasn’t creative. Starbrite didn’t have that kind of mind. So he had taken ideas from off-world, brought them here, and built a business empire off the back of them. He didn’t have to worry about being outcompeted by locals, because he had the System and by extension, slave labor. He only had to worry about getting materials and protecting both his investments and himself. He needed deathsworn. The PMC. Once he had that, it was just a question of time. Growing silently, invisibly, until he was in an unbeatable position. Until he, personally, was unbeatable. And yet, even now, even here, Starbrite was invisible.

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