Slumrat Rising

Chapter 91: Field Testing

Truth had a lot to think about while standing guard in front of the conference room. When he “subtly” pointed out that sticking one guard in front of a room as your security protocol is “less than fully optimal,” he got a scathing look from Merkovah. It seems that all the angels, demons, and spirits flitting through the city weren’t just for show. The security envelope was seven layers deep and extended even into other layers of reality. Tommy Wells, the handsome bodyguard, was there to make the attendees feel flattered and persuadable. He was part of Merkovah’s mental attack.

A blow to the heart.

His thoughts were still a jumble, trying to sort out questions that, logically, he knew took a lifetime to truly understand. Mastery… well, someone somewhere must have mastered their heart. Someone. Presumably, more than one person in the universe had loved themselves. It should be something he could do too.

Loving the violence within him… might be a little more tricky. He might be dumb, but-

But he wasn’t dumb! That was more System fuckery! He didn’t need to keep calling himself that! Actually, Hey-

Yes, the System Astrologica did subtly encourage your feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. In practice, it didn’t have to do much. You were already primed to think ignorance and stupidity were the same thing, so it just encouraged that thought a bit. Those feelings of inferiority also made you easier to control and encouraged your aggression toward others. I just call you stupid to hurt you. Kind of pathetic it took you this long to figure it out, really.

Merkovah mentioned releasing the System as a way of breaking Starbrite’s control. Truth’s mind was entirely on murder. It was worth honing the blade in his heart if it meant killing the System.

Once again, the doors burst open around lunchtime, and the swarm of gray-looking people boiled out in a smog of discouragement.

“It’s started already. It started months ago. Knock-on effects in the supply chain-”

“Still nothing from the Palace. I hear His Majesty is reallyproud of his latest poem.”

“I still don’t understand why nobody’s just called them. Surely someone has a way-”

“You won’t believe what I’m hearing from the Free State. Actually, yes, you will.”

“Already heard about it. We may need to consider similar. Our neighbors to the east..”

“Look at ‘em. Really look at ‘em. Light’s gone out of the whole country.”

“Every day, we fall farther from God. Every damn day. And look at us now!”

“I teach the boys every day- “Practice your Muq. One day it may be all you have.” I’m not proud to be right.”

“If we can’t get divine intervention, any chance of a Spell-Blade on errantry?”

“Not this century, brother. Not this century.”

One of the Desrin stopped chatting long enough to look over at Truth, assessing him with a smile. “What do you say, young man? Will you stand against all demons and unclean spirits, stand against the very Armies of Hell and Hellish Men? Will you swear to never go to your knees before any but your King, your Wife, and God?”

Truth looked at the man questioningly. “I doubt it. I do repair work on my iron horse. Takes a lot of kneeling down.”

The speaker’s friend snorted. The Desrin smiled a little and pressed on. “It’s a metaphor, the saying from the old stories about Spell-Blades. It’s meant to be a statement of resolve, a willingness to never give up, whatever the odds.”

“Ah.” Truth nodded thoughtfully. “So… did the female Spell-Blades also need a wife, or what?”

The friend started cracking up while the Desrin buried his face in his hands. “They had husbands. You aren’t the most romantic soul, are you?”

Truth shrugged and looked over at the departing crowd. “Might want to catch up with the rest, sir. Hard to feel romantic on an empty stomach.”

____________________________________________

The conference was still going on back at the Temple, but Merkovah and his little team had been called away on business. It seemed that an entire apartment building had come down with a bad case of possession or something similar. Both the building itself and everyone in it. This was such an unusual occurrence, especially in Xandre, that it was deemed wisest to summon a true expert to investigate.

The apartment block was one of the new construction ones. It wasn’t identical to anywhere Truth had ever lived, but it sure looked like thirty stories of distilled hopelessness to him. So it felt like “home.” “Home,” however, didn’t have a two-story tall winged lion pacing back and forth in front of it.

“Thank the Creator you are here.” It rumbled, looking down at Merkovah. “I have tried everything I can think of. Strained the bonds of my binding, even, but I cannot even see what ails them. Truthfully, I fear they are dead, though something within lives. Please hurry! I can only hold it in for so long.”

“Do not worry. This is Etenesh and Jember. They will help you craft a containment spell. Mr. Wells and I will investigate the inside.”

Truth looked inquisitively at Merkovah, who sounded remarkably soothing for a religious teacher talking to a two-story-tall demon. Then shrugged. Not his business. He looked over the building, trying to separate what he was actually seeing from what his mind thought he was seeing. It got easier to shake off the Harban Slums, but they never went too far.

Basically, it was grim and horrible- grey walls, black windows, poured concrete, and despair in equal measure. He took a closer look. The windows had a black film over them. Not… necrotic or anything. It looked like it was a sort of after-market tinting someone had installed over the whole building. The gray was, in fact, the poured concrete. Under the equator, it got grimy fast.

Actually, when he got right down to it, he couldn’t see anything visibly cursed about the place at all. Other than it being a thirty-story Harban-style apartment building.

“Come, Mr. Wells. We must hurry. At the very least, we must buy them some time!”

Truth had no idea where this urgency was coming from, but he certainly wasn’t going to argue about it. He drew his sword and charged in ahead of the old monster. Merkovah already had his thumb ring out, chanting something guttural and fierce.

Once he crossed the threshold, he got it. The feelings of absolute hopelessness. Of powerlessness. The scent of sulfur and rotting flesh. The acrid smell of burning bones that you couldn’t ever forget, no matter how much you tried. Other smells, too- floral, sickly sweet. The smell of sex festering in the walls and in the air. No, not sex, exactly. The smell of that mattress in the alley that the base slaves were turning tricks on. It smelled like that. Bathtub drugs, mold, hopelessness, and the dripped remains of bodies leaking.

The building had an elevator. Truth was relieved to see that Merkovah had no intention of taking it.

“Where to, Teacher?”

Merkovah let out an explosive bark and a thin light carved a line in the air. From that line came a light, and from the light came a chant, repeating endlessly, a recitation of something too holy for merely mortal minds to bear.

The spark- he was wrong. It wasn’t a spark, it was the chant itself, the holy words creating their own light by their mere presence in the room. The chant drifted to the stairwell and upward.

“We follow the Name.”

Truth went. “Sir? How many hostiles should we expect? I realize that you could flatten this building with minor effort, but I would like to know some details so I can do my job.”

Merkovah grunted. “This building should be at least partially occupied, though most people moved out weeks ago. Perhaps as many as four hundred people are here, though I don’t know for certain. They are all to be presumed hostile. Since they are likely possessed, try to avoid harming them if you can.”

“When you say possessed, is it a spiritual malady type of possession, or are we talking body huskers?

“I haven’t heard that particular euphemism in a while. Didn’t miss it. And spiritual. Otherwise, I would have, as you so colorfully put it, already flattened the building. They are doing something in here, and I want to know what.”

Merkovah spoke in a surprisingly calm, measured voice. Truth did not share his casual attitude, his eyes flicking down the empty hallways. Guttering, half-broken light talismans managed to make the dark darker instead of shedding light.

“You looked puzzled when I was speaking to the guardian outside,” said Merkovah. “Why?”

“Surprised to see you speaking so casually to a demon. Comforting a demon, in fact.”

“Ah, the Praegerite church strikes again. Demons come in almost infinite varieties. Some are regimented and ranked in the infernal legions, true citizens and soldiers of Hell. Still more are simply wild spirits, capricious and often cruel, but more like wild animals than villains. Many of the guardians you see on buildings are of that latter sort. Bound, yes, but also bribed.”

Truth started feeling some strange vibration through the stairs, faintly shivering the metal banister. The chanting Name seemed to get louder, more agitated the further up they went.

“No demon is safe, of course. But many of them can become useful and well-loved servants of the Faithful. Our faith has been binding demons for millennia, and some of the demons in this city have served since humans first settled this planet. They are as much a part of the city as the buildings and streets. That Shedu must have been really upset- usually, it would be presenting a human face. Poor fellow.”

Truth tried to connect the image of the two-story-tall winged lion with the words “poor fellow” and failed. The vibration was getting stronger. He wasn’t hearing any noise outside the Name’s chanting and their own conversation. So what was making the vibrations?

“It all comes down to obedience to the Word and Name of God. God is great, and within him is a multitude. As such, he has a multitude of names and titles. Even in these dark days, all of creation must give way-”

The Name started screaming. It was still repeating the chant endlessly, but the register had changed. This wasn’t a proclamation or a condemnation. It was terrified revulsion. Merkovah and Truth were in motion at once, sprinting up the stairs. They bust into the hallway of the twenty-seventh floor, chasing the screams. A lot of the interior walls had been torn out, opening up the floor for the great creation.

The hundreds of people left in the building had been busy. They had taken each other’s everything as materials. In flesh, in blood, in bile and brain matter and entrails pinned down with carpet tacks to the floor, they created their great work. The diagram stretched up and around, with streamers of torn skin painted with talismanic words that conformed to no logic Truth knew of. Bones were tied with hair and sinew to form poles. Scraped clean of meat to provide a surface for neat inscriptions of maddened images and scrawling letters or some idea meant to be letters.

The Name screamed and screamed, its light stabbing out, the words smashing out, and simply splashing away against the flesh engine. It screamed and screamed and went silent, vanishing from the world like the echo of a prayer.

There was a dark speck in the middle of the room. Not simply black. It was the negation of light. It rejected everything totally. And it was rejected in turn. Something so divorced from the order of the world could only survive in such a terrible creation.

Truth had cast Incisive before they even reached the stairs. Now, he lunged in front of Merkovah. He conjured holy flame from the angelic sword and drove its cut with all the furious power incisive could give him. Bone sheared and burned away. Corrupted flesh liquified and vanished. And when the rippling sheet of flame reached the empty speck… the fire winked away. Like it had never existed in the first place.

The magic device made by the residents of the tower collapsed in on itself. Disintegrated, fell into nothing recognizable. Whatever it was, Truth had ruined it, and now it was collapsing. The speck, without drama or fuss, winked out of reality.

There was a dreadful stillness to the moment. The soft collapsing of the flesh and bone seemed to cradle the terrible empty feeling of the room. The space was not haunted now. Nor cursed. No malign spirit rose from the puddles of what were once people.

Truth carefully fished a coin out of his pocket. Lightly enchanted to prevent tampering and counterfeiting. One of the myriad names of God was inscribed upon it. He tossed it into the middle of the room. It never had the chance to hit the floor. It simply fell apart in the air. Merkovah sucked in a deep breath.

“Tell no one. NO ONE! What you have seen here. I will seal the building. I must consult with… several people.”

“Teacher?”

For the first time that Truth could recall, Merkovah looked scared. “This was a test. I don’t know what of. And I don’t know what they plan to try next.”

As they backed away from the scene of the atrocity, Truth spotted a talisman gem pressed into a pillar. It seemed to writhe in his sight. He had the sinking feeling that he had seen it before.