Slumrat Rising

Chapter 141: And God Laughs

Truth looked at the shard of glass. Then Merkovah. Then back at the glass. Then at Merkovah.

“I think I finally snapped. This is the what now?”

“Only just now? Sorry. I hate that thing with every fiber of my being. Not your fault.” Merkovah waived his apology. “Obliteration. The functional components lead you into some fairly deep technical weeds, but simply put, you use magic to simulate, then ultimately generate, the anti-magic magic used by the Anti-Thiests. You can understand why it took a hellishly long time to work out.”

Truth took a moment to process the words because he was sure he hadn’t understood them properly.

“I… use magic, which is definitionally the cosmic energy inside of me interacting with the cosmic rays outside of me, to cast spells that do basically the same things as that cabal of Anti-Thiestis. Which is to destroy cosmic energy letting me unmake spells, and cripple mages by emptying the cosmic energy inside them. Do I have that right?”

“Yes.”

“That…”

“Sounds insane?”

“Yes. Very much yes.”

“As I said, we have been working on this for a long, long time. The short version is that at the most basic level, you create a field that excludes cosmic rays. Basically, they just bounce right off. At the more advanced level, you force the rays away, channeling your own magic to disrupt incoming magic. At the highest level is true obliteration, except unlike what the Cabal did, this would result in a very energetic reaction. The spell is somewhat brain-melting to learn, but in practice, it should be a great deal simpler to master than Incisive.

Merkovah caught Truth’s eye. “It will also get you killed if you get caught using it… basically anywhere if you manage to get off-world. It will certainly get you killed if you get caught using it on this world. It’s a spell that, when mastered, accelerates the diminishment of magic in this world. Which is to say, the end of technological development. The end of clean water and plentiful food.”

“And warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. Not to mention the number of buildings that will just collapse when the magic stops holding them up. I get it.”

“On the other hand, at even a basic level of mastery, you will be a one-man killing machine. Starbrite, and Jeon, share a combat doctrine. They rely almost entirely on range-based weaponry layered with spells. You could negate most of its effectiveness and power with Obliteration and endure the rest with your over-refined body.”

“I just couldn’t leave any witnesses.”

“No. You could not.”

Truth shut his eyes and imagined it. He infiltrates Jeon. He looks and sounds like a local boy because he is a local boy, so ninety-nine percent of the population would ignore him in the first place. They would be encouraged not to notice him by the Scales portion of Incisive. He needs to break into a building. Alarm spells, flying curses, spell hounds, the whole bit. Most just ignore him because he is wearing military-style clothes and has a bit of paper saying “Pass.” For the higher-tier stuff, they just… vanish. Wink out of existence. A local district manager would be found dead in their office with their throat slit and painted on the walls “No Salvation For Starbrite. FREE JEON!”

He could blow up a lot of shit that way. And that was just him thinking casually. For example, he could murder the spirit controlling the bus network. That would cause more than a little chaos. Truth would be a top-notch murderer and saboteur, even more so than he already was. But it would mean that, at least until he was Level Five, it was all that he could be.

Wait. Wait just a goddamn moment.

Truth started laughing.

System, memorize this shit!

ON IT! Truth could hear the system cackling.

“Teacher, why don’t you just pass along the Sword of Moshe and, let's say, a good healing spell?”

“Young man, it’s a dangerous weapon, but-”

Truth shook his head.

“Teacher… I still have the internal System. I may not be a Starbrite Man anymore, but who says a man from Nag Hamadi is any less prepared?”

____________________________________________

Later that same day, Truth found himself up on the roof, ready to ingest the elixir. It was a pitch-black pill that looked too big to swallow safely. Nevertheless, he was to swallow it. He looked up. The stars were hard to see in the city glow. Shame. He would have liked to do it in the sun again. Seemed fitting. Merkovah was already grumpy as hell over “feeding the demon spawn within” and flat-out rejected him.

Truth figured it was wisest not to press.

He examined the Elixir. Black, spherical, with faint dashes of green and orange scattered over its glassy surface. There was a faint smell to it, just the faintest hint of cedar and musk. He tapped gently with his nail. It made a faint “tok” sound like a monk striking a wooden fish.

A long way from Old Feng’s. A long way from something brown and homemade in an unlabeled glass jar stolen from a trash heap. Of course, he was wrong about it being homemade.

Actually, no, he wasn’t. Huh.

The elixir had an austere beauty. High-end Level Three elixirs would always have been something precious and absurdly costly, even before the end of days was announced. An ordinary family couldn’t afford a sniff of it in Harban. But then, if you were breaking into Level Four, you weren’t an ordinary person, were you?

Truth had only known one Level Four person, Captain Clavegaugh. A Level Four ran the Harban branch of the Starbrite PMC. At least in Jeon, you were really somebody if you were Level Four.

“We’re ready!” A voice yelled. He had seen that guy around the Temple. Never got his name. Truth nodded, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and put the elixer in. It was exactly like trying to swallow an egg-sized rock. The results were predictable.

“Start cultivating!” Somebody yelled. Truth tried to control his choking enough to start circulating the Nine Worm Path. The cosmic rays flowed into him at a furious rate, and as they circulated, they eroded the elixir, melting it. The elixir poured down his throat as the rays hammered into him.

Execution method? He believed it. It was like every millionth of a square centimeter of his skin had a needle jabbed into it thousands of times a second. He could feel himself teetering on the edge of burnout as the energy overloaded him. Then, twisting through him and lining the tiny channels came the elixir. The scent of cedar and musk flooded the rooftop garden as his body made frantic use of the medicine.

Truth desperately wished he could run the Meditations as he cultivated. There was so much energy hitting his body. It was a shame to waste it.

Forget it. I can’t run it for you, and the worms can only help. Focus on the job at hand.

He did just that. He leaned into it, driving his cultivation as fast and hard as he could. He could feel the cosmic energy filling him. The apertures widening and spilling the energy from the first, to second, to third, then washing away the seal to the fourth aperature.

The weight gathered in them and pressed in on him. Making him that little bit more like the stars. Growing and shifting up the color scale, brighter now, having shifted from red to orange to a ruddy gold. Larger too, now, as the masses of cosmic rays flooded him, swelling, those points where body, soul and the universe mingled.

There was some tingle, some outside nudge on his awareness. He let the energy flow along the Nine Worm Path, as mindlessly instinctive as breathing now. He could safely divert a little attention. A song, and an offer?

He focused a little more. It was The Tongue of One Who Speaks For God. The angelic blade had accompanied him almost every waking and sleeping moment since he arrived in Siphios. He could imagine living without it. He didn’t much like the thought.

The blade just felt so right to him. The way it danced in his hands and worked with his body like the very best sort of partner. Content to let him lead, but always ready to do her part.

Merkovah be damned, the Tongue was a woman, and a very fine one. His heart may belong to Etenesh, but his platonic life partner was the meter and a quarter of angelic steel that lived on his hip. Apparently, the feeling was mutual.

There was a tentative offer, an invitation to greater closeness. Not a merger, exactly, but a joining. Truth smiled. He would like that very much. He extended the path of his energy cycle slightly, reaching out to the sword.

There was an unpleasant moment, like being caught between the bells of two cathedrals each ringing out their call to prayer. The shard of demon punishing steel at the heart of the Tongue seemed to find something it recognized in the Nine Worms, and they in it. His perception suddenly lurched as some seemingly solid piece of the world shifted.

The Tongue changed- not its shape but its nature. The angelic blade shed much of it’s physicality, and became spiritual. That spiritual sword then swam with the cosmic energy within him, and took up residence in his first aperture. The bells tolled a joyful clarion, as though the sword had at long last found it’s home. The Worms cheered too, though their cries had a darker tint to them.

It was all much too much. The furious flood of the array driven Cosmic Energy. The cooling, strengthening elixir. The Tongue joining with him. It was all far too much.

Within his fourth aperture, a new star was born. Rapidly shifting into luminescence, then into blazing light. The stars within him seemed so vast now, so furiously bright compared to that dim light of Level One.

Truth smiled, letting the array pour more and more power into him. He couldn’t wait to see how much he changed.

“Saints and Angels preserve us. How much power can he absorb?”

“Dunno, but if he’s still at it by dawn, I’m calling it. This is absurd.”

“Was the elixir that good?”

“Nothing is that good.”

Truth could hear the people running the array muttering. He decided to ignore them for now. He could feel the elixir wearing off, and he wanted to pour as much into his newly widened apertures as he could. When he finally stood, he took the time to really feel his body. He flexed. Stretched. Reached for the sun and did a final round of moving cultivation. Glorying in the power of his body and the star-stuff within him. With a subtle flex of his magic, he declared his presence. His strength. He knew himself, and for today, he was enough. Tomorrow he would learn something new.

He felt a spell go off to his side. Jember was there, taking pictures. “Etenesh is going to love these pictures. Actually, I know a lot of people who will.”

Truth laughed quietly. “It’s fine if Etenesh sees, but please don’t let my face get around too much.”

“Still worried about bad guys in the Old Country?”

“For a little while longer, yes.”

“Fine, fine.” Jember smiled, glorying in the sunlight. “And this, too, is God,” he murmured.

“What do you say we give the Deserin community one last gift, a thank you for all the moral support?”

“What do you have in mind?”

____________________________________

A week after Truth left Siphios, a small package was delivered to a Xandre local news station. It went to air almost immediately, and the segment repeated on news stations across Siphios. Just a picture and a few words, but it was the hopeful news everyone wanted to hear.

There was a picture of a Deserin man photographed from behind. He was proportioned like a hero, tall and imposing as the Aussa Highlands of his birth. He stood on a rooftop and watched the sunrise. His zeph was proudly tasseled, his sheathed sword hung comfortably by his side. Around his neck was a scarf, declaring him a regular in the terraces at High Chirchin. Even from behind, you could tell he greeted the day joyfully. Unafraid.

“The Hero released this statement, and nothing more- ‘One day, I will rest. One day I will come home to my mountains, lay down my blade, kneel before my wife, and let her blessings shower upon me. Until that day, I fight. But I am not the last sword in Siphios, and I do not fight alone. Brothers and Sisters and every soul that loves our land. Put down your fear, and draw the blade in your heart. The time of heroes is upon us. Time for the swords to rise up. And bring low the armies of Hell.”