Slumrat Rising

Chapter 100: Necessity Makes No Excuses and Accepts No Praise

“Tommy, what the Hell?” Jember yelled.

“Hero, hero, hero, hero!” Truth giggled, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Such a goddamn hero. A hero of the North, which I guess is true as I was born well north of here. Or south, depending on what you call “born.” His fingers shattered the bit of the armrest that remained in his hand.

“They aren’t wrong about home always being with me, either. Every day I ask myself, “What would Dad do?” then I do the opposite. Or I think about how Mom treats people. I think about starving. I think about hurting people for money. Hurting myself for money. About fishing scrap out of a toxic canal, or running errands for gangsters, or the shops paying off the gangsters to survive. I divide the world into Slum and Not-Slum, and it is only only just occurring to me to wonder why. Why did nobody give a shit when Dad broke my ribs? Or Mom shaved Sophia’s head, screaming at her that she was ugly? Why little Vig, who was a damn child, had to fight off boyfucker pimps? Why Har thought he had to join up with cannibal gangsters to have any kind of future? Why was Har RIGHT?!”

He was stalking around the room, hands chopping through the air. Jember and Etenesh were sitting very still on the couch, eyes wide and fixed on him.

“And every, every, every, every damn time it was down to me! Down to me! I had to find food! I had to learn to steal. I had to learn how to hide in trash, to crawl on my belly through dogshit and broken glass, just to protect the few wen I earned. Had to find the books so we could study. Had to figure out HOW to study! Had to figure out what job could get us out. What it would take. Do you know what I sacrificed? I don’t! I have no idea what I gave up because I never knew it was an option! Friends? Don’t have any. Never did. No lovers. No pets. My happy home was a Tier-C apartment that is slum housing here in Siphios, and I cried when I got those keys because it was so so so much better than what I had before.”

He gasped for air. “Hero? I was a fucking weapon, an animal, a slumrat surviving however it could. Hero? I saw one path to live, and I killed to make it real!”

He was shivering, fingers becoming ridged. “Put down the blade? Etenesh, I AM THE BLADE! I have to be! Everything is trying to kill me and the sibs.” He looked at her face, seeing the tears dripping from her eyes. “I want you so, so much. And I don’t know how.”

He couldn’t stand it anymore. He bolted from the room. Swept through the corridors of Nag Hamadi, losing himself, twisting himself along their ancient courses. He had been headed for a side door but must have made a wrong turn. He hit a stairwell and went down. Further and further. He kept looking for a sub-basement, somewhere deep enough he could hide from himself.

He was desperately trying not to think. It was outrageous. Outrageous to just call someone a hero. Who does that? Who does that? Going around claiming him. Saying he belongs to them. He’s a Desrin. He didn’t know a fucking thing about the Desrin. He is clearly from Siphios. Oh, is he? News to him! A life without attachments- not since he was a baby. Not since Harmony was born.

What did “Errantry” even mean?

The stones down here weren’t covered in the same script as above- rough sandstone down here. There were amulets, gems, carved inscriptions, and webs of spells, yes, but more pragmatic. Functional.

It all came back to the sibs and the slums and his shitty parents. He had a pretty sweet gig here when you got right down to it. Pay was a joke, but free room and board, top-notch education, top-notch spells provided, and he happened to know a certain young lady that was interested in him. What did it matter, really, if people pushed all that shit on him? All their ideas, all the things they wanted him to be? Didn’t affect him one bit. He wouldn’t eat one bite more or less.

Why was he so pissed? He found a corner and collapsed into it. Looked like a storeroom of some kind. Tarps covering furniture, boxes of stuff, heaps of other stuff. He could be a heap too.

Why did he care about all those scry-lies? About being called a hero? Because clearly, he did.

Because in addition to wanting to feel loved, you crave acknowledgment. But you are honest enough to demand that the acknowledgment is for something real. For the real things you did. The stuff you think is worth cheering for. Survival, for you, is the minimum necessary. Not something that needs recognition.

Back again, huh? Been awful quiet for a while now.

I’ve been having a full-blown identity crisis. Not good times.

Didn’t see that one coming.

You were ignoring the missions unless I literally put them directly in front of you. You had to be in the library, looking for books to read. I mean, not a great feeling.

Oh?

It’s the major way I have interacted with you that wasn’t just running your spells. And you just… haven’t been that motivated. Part of that is the rewards don’t really work for you. “Do this, get an elixir,” that’s more your speed. But you also just haven’t been that kind of hungry.

Yeah. Like, I know I need more power. I know that. World’s going to hell. Sibs are… wherever they are. Only the strong shall survive. And all that. But… I dunno.

It all seems a bit pointless. A bit rat-race. Get the sibs out of Jeon, then what? Fight Starbrite? Fight the Shattervoid? Got to do something, world’s going to Hell. But what about Truth? Who’s gonna fight for him?

Truth had to blink his eyes hard. Dust.

Yeah. Yeah. It would nice to know someone had my back. Or could do something without me having to fight for them.

You are the wrong kind of hungry for my usual support. You know what? Since we are both having a moment here, let’s call it what it is. My usual tricks. You get that the missions are a scam, right? Well, not a scam, a method of control. Yeah, you figured that out. That little jolt down your spine when you hear that focus group tested chime.

I hadn’t put words to it, but. Something about it just felt off. Like it was almost addictive.

No “almost” about it. It’s intended to stimulate a lot of the same parts of your brain as drugs and slowly make you dependent on that feeling to feel good. Addicted psychologically, if not physically. And you have started ignoring them. You see where this leaves me.

A deeply annoying voice in my head. Kind of amazed how civil you have been so far in this conversation, actually.

Yeah, well. Getting to that. So… I’m not handling the spell load for you, I’m not managing missions for you, and while puzzling out new spells and helping you learn languages is fun, it’s also of limited entertainment value after a while. And, in a bit of really spectacular cosmic unfairness, I do get bored.

Your major reason not to drive me into committing suicide, if I recall correctly.

Exactly! Although that reasoning has kind of changed. It was after the whole vision journey you took.

There was an awkward pause. Truth had the feeling that the evil little spirit didn’t know how to say whatever it was that it wanted to say. He looked around the store room a bit more. Not much to see, sitting in the corner. Some flags. A whole bunch of rope, tied up in short hanks. A stack of stackable chairs.

I don’t think I’m a Spirit of Intellect.

Finally willing to come out of the demonic closet?

Hoho, you are very funny. My very material and tangible sides are splitting because of your humorous jape. Hohoho.

There was a sort of psychic sigh.

Look, that vision you had? One of only a few things should have happened to me during that. Number one is nothing. Just… your nous goes off and has its moment, then it comes back, and I pick through whatever you understood of it. The second thing that could happen is that I go off and have my own experience. Which would make sense, to a degree, because I am almost entirely nous. The, hah, intersection of mind and soul.

I still don’t really know what “nous” means. Sounds made up.

For once, just shut up and roll with it. This is where it gets really scary, not some bullshit vocab word. Possibility number three- I see some janky, nonsensical thing because you and I are intimately connected but still separate intelligences. But none of that is what actually happens.

Truth spun a finger in a circle. Okay?

What actually happens, against all logic, is that I go on the exact same vision you do. And yes, I know what I said before. I lied. Sue me. It was a very traumatic moment. I saw Botis. I saw your… rough patron, as you call him. I felt him damn near rip me out of you! Which was pretty fucking awful as experiences go!

Wait, what? How?

That’s why I wanted you to read all those books on possession. There are too many things about you that don't add up. How come you are torturing me? How come I get hauled along on your spirit journey? How come your patron can reach into your soul and pull me out? Even before the vision, shit wasn’t adding up in increasingly major ways.

You figured something out. Truth sat up. His fists clenched.

I think so. I have had literally years, almost a decade, to observe your soul from the inside. Every time you have one of your little episodes, and I get tortured, it changes slightly. It shifts a bit and becomes a bit more real. More perfect. Just a smidge, but it’s adding up. Whatever those episodes are, it’s something about you trying to repair and improve your soul.

Prager’s nuts! No, wait, everyone thinks we’re Desrin. Any good Desrin oaths?

If there are, you haven’t heard them yet.

So my soul has determined you are a parasite and is trying to, what, drive you out?

That would actually be the less fucked up option. If that’s the case, it means that there is something physically different about your body that prevents me from escaping. One of the reasons we spent all that time reading those books on possession- is that actually a thing that can happen? According to the books available in a rural university library, the answer is “No.” Without the least suggestion that it might be “Yes.”

Alright, I’m still not getting the problem here. If it’s not my body you can’t escape, then maybe it’s my soul. You do seem to be more-or-less tethered to it.

Which leads me to the point. If it’s not your body that’s keeping me trapped. If I am seeing the same thing your nous is seeing. If a god-like being can reach into you and almost-but-not-actually pull me out of your soul, then I can see only one logical conclusion.

There was a definite sense of handwringing now.

You have remembered your swearing in often enough. The confessor had you hold a box, what he called an engram reader. It felt warm and comfortable, and you were surrounded by a yellow light. As you opened your literal soul to him and whatever was in the box. You then swore an oath of obedience to the System Astrologica, and something descended down onto you, and I came into existence. I had my self-awareness, an understanding of how to do certain things, and a few overriding objectives for how I managed things for you.

Truth, I think they mutilated your soul. I think I’m… you.