Slumrat Rising

Vol. 5 Chap. 76 Bribes, Threats and Other Theology

The angel was pissed off. Truth understood that. Respected that, even. He had been called in to do a job, wasn’t able to do the job, and now he was pinned under rubble next to one of God’s little whoopsies. Also known as a human. Truth internally shook his head. He was being unfair. The angel probably couldn’t even conceive of criticizing anything God did.

Truth hadn’t worked with angels nearly as much as he had worked with demons. Demons you could cut a deal with, or compel. You could… kind of… do the same with angels. It’s just that demons generally wanted to make a deal, and angels didn’t. The only way it all worked was if the angel believed doing the thing you wanted would fulfill God’s will. Also, only the very weakest of them spoke a human language. There were some hybrid languages, Enochian and some other tongues, that worked as a kind of pidgin.

Truth didn’t know those languages. At all. Which made things tough. Tough-er. Somewhere between basalt and granite.

“By any chance, Divine One, do you speak Jeongo?”

The furious glare from the multi-eyed angel intensified.

“I meant no disrespect.” Not that he didn’t understand the angel’s point of view. The only angels that seemed to speak human languages were the messenger angels, and those two-winged weaklings were right down at the bottom of the celestial hierarchy. Truth wasn’t able to count the number of wings on this angel, but based on the sheer quantity of eyes and feathers- a lot more than two.

Truth tried to bring his body back under control, with mixed success. He had taken some damage. He could feel fractures in his legs, and something was very wrong with his left shoulder. He wasn’t sure how immediately fatal a leaky kidney was, but it was definitely not good. It hurt like absolute Hell. The little packets of energy weren’t helping. Their passing was marked by gray-black flesh and tumors.

It would take time to fix. Time he didn’t have.

He checked his spells again. Cup and Knife was the only useful one here, but the thing was… how useful was it really? Firstly, because he was still a little leery of using it for healing himself, though desperation was quickly eroding that fear. The second issue was- even if he was completely healed, he was stuck under the rubble. And even if he wasn’t stuck under the rubble, there was a Level Eight or Nine combat focused Starbrite C-Suite member out there. Earth Folding Step wasn’t enough on its own. Merely stepping a few tens of meters would not achieve anything.

He slid his eye slightly towards the angel again. Who glared at him. Truth wasn’t sure if the angel had been glaring all this time or it was just quick to glare when confronted with another eyeball.

The powers of angels were as varied as the power of demons. If Elgin had summoned this angel in desperation, it was high level (or the shadow of a high level being) and oriented more towards combat. In theory, such a being should utterly annihilate whatever random human it came across. In practice, Truth had noticed a certain limitation on the beings summoned by high level mages. They were all below Nascent Soul level.

The only exceptions he could think of, off the top of his head, were the shadow of the Serpent That Ate Its Own Tail under Harban, and the angel that was summoned to clean up what happened at the research station in Happori village. He didn’t know the story behind the Serpent, but he vividly remembered what happened at Happori. Extermination. Even in Siphios a nation specializing in summoning angels and demons, they hadn’t a clue about the world beyond Level Nine. At this point, Truth was convinced it was the interference of the world itself. After all, these might be mighty beings, but more mighty than a stellar eminence on its home turf?

So… how exactly did he make this work?

Truth made triply sure he was able to cast spells, then tentatively reached out with Cup and Knife. He didn’t actually cast the spell on the angel, he just extended it in that direction. The angel seemed to recoil, but slowly relaxed. Truth suppressed a grin. The angel must have seen something familiar. So, Step One: Bait is complete. But how to convince it to help? For that matter, how could he even communicate the kind of help he needed?

He retracted the spell. The angel looked angry, but what could it do? It wasn’t in any better shape than Truth. The angel ruffled its feathers for a moment. Then it extended a thread of magic towards Truth.

More specifically, towards his belly.

Oh, I can speak now? No, what are these thoughts? What… I? I? Speak? Think? The voice was soft, faintly masculine and not so faintly alarmed.

Perks?!

What? What is speaking? How do I know what speaking is? What are these thoughts? What are thoughts? What is the “I” that is asking this question?

Damn. Perks really is his snake.

I have no idea either. But you can communicate with me because that angel did something. Why, I don’t know.

That’s an Angel? I don’t… let me get out of my nest and take a taste.

Do what now?

Perks slithered out of Truth’s shirt and started flicking his tongue in the air. It… did look like he was tasting the air, in the direction of the angel.

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Are you… blind?

What? No, I see perfectly well. It’s just dark. I see a big blur of heat over there and a taste of something I have never tasted before. Odd. Oh, the Angel? Wants you to heal it.

Tell it I will, but I also need to be healed, and to escape from here. Not just this pile of rubble, but the enemy outside.

Why?

Perks, look at me. Do I look okay?

I don’t know. You taste damaged, but that’s not so strange for you. Also, the angel is the one asking why it should help you.

Ah. Right. The angel probably doesn’t understand the concept of bargaining, or at least not in this context. Of course I should heal it, because then it could fulfill its divine mission, which would mean I was, in my own minor way, supporting that highest purpose.

Truth thought very quickly, trying to come up with a compelling reason he should be healed, or at least a reason that would be compelling for an angel.

I have a job to do. Someone is acting in plain defiance of God’s will and the will of Heaven, both generally and locally, and I’m going to send them to Hell for correction.

Perks made no obvious move. Something must have happened though, because a moment later, he said- That is acceptable. The Angel’s invoker has died, so it is willing to do this for you. It also says… something I don’t understand.

Oh?

It told me that while I might suffer, such is the burden of snakes and my suffering is for the greatest purpose.

Are you hurt?

I didn’t think I was.

Truth reached out with Cup and Knife again. Angels were not famously chatty, and he vaguely remembered one of his instructors saying that you really wouldn’t like what they had to say if they were. Besides, he could hear rubble shifting as the hunters crawled over it. Clearly not the time.

Cup and Knife didn’t feel the same. The more you used a spell, the more you understood its little quirks- how the spellform unfolded, how your cosmic energy filled that form, how it found its targets and deployed. After a while, it was as thoughtless to use as wiggling your toes. Cup and Knife always felt broken. Like you had to force it into action, and it would bitch and moan the whole time unless it was really in the mood.

The spell poured out of him. Truth had the sudden image of being a bend in a river. The blessings poured from that mighty river in the stars into him, and through him to the angel below. It was all one piece. The river was always there, always a single thing, always flowing. It changed with the seasons. All things were reflected in it. But it was always there. Always connected to the source and to you. You just had to see it. To reach out, cup your hands, and drink deep. The angel drank all he could

Truth could feel the spell landing on the angel, gently connecting all the broken and shattered bits of base matter it was currently inhabiting. The realization of that feeling, that this wasn’t the angel, just the clothes the angel was wearing, rocked him. He knew that’s how demons worked. They needed a ‘suit’ of energy to inhabit this world. It hadn’t occurred to him that angels would be no different. They weren’t made of mortal clay. They weren’t made of matter at all. They were higher dimensional beings trying to cram themselves into the few worthless dimensions humans could perceive.

No wonder they look so terrifying. They are trying to express what they are in too few dimensions, so things get stacked up and moved around in strange ways.

Something in him seemed to click, and he felt Cup and Knife shift again. It was still pouring into the angel, but now it was reaching the angel on a deeper level. Fixing things that Truth didn’t have words for. Didn’t even have the conceptual space to describe. That was okay. Manda did. So did the angel. They handled it. Truth just marveled, feeling the magic flowing through him. He was part of the river too. It’s just that sometimes, he forgot. He poured his magic out until the angel gently refused it. They looked away from the river. That was alright. You couldn’t look at it forever. They both knew it would be there when they looked back. How could it not be?

The scrabbling was coming closer. The searchers were not bothering with being careful, they didn’t give the faintest damn if someone was hurt in the excavation process. They had a job to do. Worrying about consequences was above their pay grade. Truth knew what that was like.

Truth had a sudden feeling of dislocation, as though he was being soothed with a bath of warm milk, as though he were lost in a vast stellar womb, nurtured by Heaven and earth. He was an arrow fired from a bow, fulfilling its purpose in flight.

He was a sword made durable by contaminating pure iron. Heated, beaten, heated, beaten again, quenched in oil, then heated once more before being ground down to an edge. He was taken out, beaten again, cutting furrows and digging holes through the flesh of men. Heated and beaten again, into a plowshare, slicing open the earth.

He was Truth Medici, but he had never been something so small as that. He had never been something that words could name. Something that measures of distance and mass could encompass. Something that mere time could constrain. He had just forgotten for a little while.

He was pinned under the rubble of a hospital. He ruled over eight directions, four of which couldn’t be pointed to. He was a tiny piece of the infinite, and he had a job to do. Whatever else he might be, he lived with a purpose. He had a job to do. So it was time to get to work.

Something tore the rocks off him. Faces covered in black rubber, eyeless, stared down at him.

“Finally! Well, fetch it up.”

Truth jumped out of the hole. The PMC surrounded the former hospital, sealing every direction. The Army was here too, staying well back from the PMC. If Elgin had died, they certainly weren’t going to achieve anything. But they couldn’t run away. Too scared to attack, too ashamed to retreat.

They were all merely the stars gathering around the moon. At the center of all the soldiers, clad in the very best spell armor available and carrying a long, silver spear, was Frobisher, the Starbrite Knight. A Level Nine, standing at the top of the world. Above billions, below only one.

Frobisher smiled slightly. Handsome man, a touch of silver at the temples, a short beard at his chin. The spear swept out, pointing at Truth. “Starbrite requires you. This is your good fortune. You shall assist the King of the World.”

Truth called the Tongue of God into his hand. “I’ll do that. In a manner of speaking.” He rested the blade on his shoulder. It felt so right. He felt so right. Like he had been living out of focus his whole life, and the fuzziness was finally gone. Filled with joy. He was finally on the right track. Finally becoming what he always should have been. He smiled at Frobisher and crooked his fingers. “Let’s see if I can’t fix you up first.”

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