Slumrat Rising

Chapter 58: The Measure of a Mage

Truth had learned his lesson the night before- he drove directly to the highway and stayed on the highway. He still couldn't read the signs but figured “Generally North-East” was manageable. And the numbers were the same, so B8 should be pretty recognizable, right?

He had himself convinced for all of four seconds. “Thrush, do you know which way leads to the B8 Road?”

“I do not, Master.”

“Do you know what the sign for the B8 road looks like?”

“I do, Master.”

“When you see a sign pointing me towards that road, guide me to it.”

“As you wish.”

He wished. And gunned it. So far, the sights were oppressively generic. It was somewhat disappointing. The city didn’t look all that much like Harban, of course. Much grimier, much less modern. Much more worn-looking. But the aesthetic was kind of similar. All tall towers, wealth, and blandness increasing in direct proportion. Oh, there was the occasional burst of color, like the building with the hundred-foot-tall monkey made of green and purple fire climbing all over it, but it was the exception. And aside from the monkey, the building was kind of crap.

Truth shook his head and pushed on. After about half an hour, Thrush directed him to an exit ramp, and things immediately improved. The road shrank, for one thing. Instead of six lanes, it was now two. The buildings shrank from sixty stories to four. And everything, everything got more colorful.

The first thing he noticed was the flowering trees and bushes. They reminded him of Chil Perdermo, how they seemed to escape from every crack and crevice in the pavement. The flowers were vibrant pom-poms in tangerine, magenta, coral, and gold. Then a palm tree, tan trunk running straight up to vibrant green fronds.

Next to the palm was a little three-story building painted blue, a balcony running along the second floor, paint missing in chunks. Apartments, perhaps? On the ground level was a bus company, and next to that, a shop selling balls and belts and little geegaws and bottles of water, juice, and sodas. Bags of snacks piled up next to clear plastic bags of cut fruit. Then it was gone, the next wonder opening up before him.

It was liberating, knowing he could go anywhere and do anything. It was suffocating too. He wasn’t used to operating without direction. Ever since his enlistment, he found strict direction reassuring. Now, there was nothing. He was picking the destination, the route, the… everything.

He cruised past some hotels that, inexplicably, had roofs made of densely packed straw, then there was a gap between the buildings and a beach stretched out alongside the road. Brilliant golden sands stretching out to brilliant crystal blue-green water.

Was this what the beach at Okepuela looked like? He never got to see it. The stories of the beach party were epic. Did this beach have parties? With all the hotels nearby, of course they did. Should he stop and go for a swim? Nah, he hadn’t even left the city limits. No time to stop now.

He sped on down the road, the buildings becoming further apart and cheaper. He could see corrugated steel roofs that had managed to warp and fray at the edges, like roofs of ruffled brown fabric. Everyone was armed, he noticed. Not happy looking. But not miserable either. A shirtless man was pulling a wheeled cart larger than himself, filled with palm fronds and broken branches. A landscaper, perhaps? Or someone paid to haul away rubbish?

What he wasn’t seeing was a lot of magic. It was still there, of course. Something had to drive the buses and light the shops. But casual magic usage was much less. It must be a side effect of there being no universal spell. Only the most basic magical devices, things kids could use, were available.

Which made sense given that most people were still Level Zero. Or, as a Harban boy kept thinking of it- children. Level Zero meant you were a child. Not really a mage and, therefore, not really a person. He tiptoed around that thought. The “not really a person” thing was becoming suspect.

He let his eyes run up the road. The traffic was moving, but it was a pretty full road. Almost bumper-to-bumper wagons and chariots. Zipping alongside the carts were bicycles and iron horses. Everybody just getting on with life. There was a playground in an empty lot. It looked nice, he supposed, definitely for the five and under set.

When you start picking at the threads, many things start unraveling. Like… was Starbrite behind the Jeon Universal Spell being everywhere? Truth knew you could do some pretty sophisticated factory jobs using only that spell. Heck, even some surgeons got by with it. Plenty of demonic and angelic support, of course, but still. He shook his head. Time to try living in the moment.

Kids were running around. Most seemed to be doing some kind of job. He could relate to that. One was picking trash up off the side of the road and loading it into a wheelbarrow. A little girl was brooming the courtyard of a gated home. Maybe her parents were doing the same job inside the house. He was pretty certain it wasn’t her home. There was a string of fifteen children in blinding white shirts and plaid trousers, laughing and chattering as they walked down the road, backpacks over their shoulders.

Once again, the convoy system triumphs!

They were really crawling along, weren’t they? He was supposed to be racing along here. Had he even gone fifteen kilometers? The road narrowed as the trees and bushes started crowding in. Truth had to struggle to remember that he was still on the outskirts of a major city. It felt… jungle-ish. The trees and bushes seemed to form a solid wall with dusty brown soil underneath them.

The road pressed through the tree wall, and suddenly Truth was crossing a flat bridge over a river. Long, muddy, blue-green reflecting the shore and sky. Thatched huts near the water, terracotta tile roofs on houses set a little way back, and clean white boats bobbing along. Sea spirits, or were they river spirits? Guiding the boats along. Some had eyes painted on their prows, but most did not. The boats looked nicer than some of the houses, but they were all leisure craft. The one obvious full-time fishing boat stood out. Long and low, looking like a serious fight broke out in a paint factory, and it was a major instigator of the riot. The other boats gave it a lot of room, practically radiating social disapproval.

Truth felt an odd need to defend the fishing boat. He wanted to jump onto the pretty white pleasure crafts and start yelling at their drivers. “Don’t you like fish? I like fish. How about you stop giving the guy getting the fish a hard time?” Except, of course, they weren’t really giving the fishing boat a hard time; they just didn’t want to smell fish dying in the sun.

Once he was over the river, it was another band of pretty nice suburbs with gated resorts covering the seaward side of the road. Lots of gates in this country. Not many mages, but he could practically feel the hum of the home-wards. Making talisman bowls must be a very lucrative industry here. You probably couldn't use just one. Not his area of expertise, but from what he had seen, you needed to bury one under the threshold of the front door… and maybe the front gate too? Was more better? How about other points of the wall?

Truth let his mind wander a little. Talisman bowls were ancient magic. Almost anyone can make them because all you need is a bit of clay and the names of the various gods and angels you want to invoke. Well, for basic home-wards. He knew that some could hold actual demons of rank and station. Wasn’t there a story about Teacher Reshim trapping an Infernal Duke under his soup bowl? Almost certainly bullshit, but maybe there was a grain of truth there.

He heard a blare of music coming from a stand next to the side of the road. Little colorful cloth straps were hanging off the stand, most with writing on it he didn’t recognize. There were also lots and lots of little charms hanging off the straps. Crude, mass-produced things. But they were playing music. Some of which sounded like Re’inyo. He focused. Definitely Re’inyo. He pulled over. He grabbed a sack of orange chunks of fruit, a bottle of water, and one of the music charms. He paid forty shillings. Was that a lot? Did he get ripped off? Truth had no idea and didn’t care.

The music had a driving, rhythmic quality to it. With a jerk, he realized that it sounded an awful lot like the music in Jeon. Not the traditional music, the pop stuff you heard floating around. The stuff people put on in the barracks or lounges. The big difference was that the music was not just in Re’inyo. The singers seemed to wander in and out of languages as they pleased. He shook his head and drove on.

The road opened up a little- he was solidly outside the city now, and suburban homes were being replaced by fields. Farms, he supposed. He had a sudden flash of hatred. His eye twitched. He thought about farms and suddenly hated farms? What the fuck?

System, are you fucking with me right now?

Not me, what’s up? Spare no detail of your suffering.

Apparently, I viscerally hate farms. And farmers, now that I think about it.

There was a long pause.

Gardens? Gardening?

All fine. As are florists, vineyards, orchards, and even fish farms. It seems to be specifically dirt farms and specifically those who farm in dirt farms. Eh… maybe resentment? Frustration? That might be a more accurate word.

This led to another long pause.

Have you ever seen a farm before today?

Not that I know of. Maybe? That abandoned building with the well was a farm once, right?

There was an even longer pause.

You are such a fucking weirdo. And the System refused to say another word.

Truth dropped it and tried to focus on what he saw around him.

A couple of developments jutted out like giant rectangles of salt. They looked like some vast alien force (probably not the Shattervoid Clan) had picked up a block of homes from inside the suburbs and dropped them in a field. Not a great look, in his opinion.

Speaking of the Shattervoid clan, there were no signs of food riots or the apocalyptic collapse of society. Guess the cover-up worked. Not sure how they silenced the opposition on the op because clearly, more people were in on it than just the mages on the ground. Kind of a weird thought- “Yay! My murderers succeeded! Now my family is safe-ish!”

He tried to drive the thought out of his head. The countryside looked strange to him. Intense, lush green, but the dirt looked kind of crummy. Red, loose, dusty. Like it was ready to fly away at any moment. It wasn’t too dusty on the road, but not great either.

Around sunset, he reached the Kwa Kabwere Garage. Well, he thought it was, he was still picking out individual letters, and the signs all said he had just crossed into Anat River County. So. Probably. The barbecue pit was still there, locals coming up in a steady stream and collecting sausages, bits of roast fish, grilled chicken, goat, and some kind of vegetables… it smelled incredible. He hopped off the iron horse, practically floating towards the grill.

“Ah, the @@@@! You $#* fix?” A man in overalls swooped in, hovering over Truth’s trusty mechanical steed. It took Truth a minute to figure out what he was talking about, but slowly and with much pantomime, it was revealed that the man could put a seat that more or less worked in place, as well as mount a rack on the rear of the two-wheeler that would make lashing down his meager supplies much more practical. The existing rack was… not the best. Truth got the price, figured he had enough to cover it, and nodded. The bike was wheeled off, and he was promised it again in the morning. Truth kept the supplies with him.

He got the grilled chicken and the goat. He was so hungry he had to have both. He figured with that, the fruit and cold water out of the chest by the grill, he would be all set. Truth was absolutely right about that.

The spices… he didn’t even know what they were, but they were incredible. Mild and savory on the chicken, fiery and domineering on the goat. Mingling with the fat to coat the inside of his mouth. The fruit was sour with a hint of sweet, bright, almost herbal, cutting through the fat of the meat. The combination made him rock back and drum his feet against the ground with happiness.

His bed that night was a convenient stretch of scrub, wrapped in a bit of tarp and with his shoes for a pillow. The stars were bright above him. Before he slept, he did his cultivation. The heavenly light poured down into him, filling him. Reminding him that, whatever else he was, he was alive. He was part of something… so much greater than himself. But he was himself. A tiny, self-aware fragment of the incredible vastness. A mage, taking ownership of his little speck of self.

Truth smiled at the thought. Yes, taking ownership of himself. A happy little shiver ran through him. Level Three was only days away.