IMMORTALITY IS A MYTH!

That’s the headline on every piece of printed news and the first words from the mouth of every town crier this morning.

"Immortality is a myth! The once thought to be immortal Emperor has been slain after over two thousand years!" shouted a man wearing imperial robes standing beneath a bronze statue of the now dead Emperor.

“What does this mean about all the other countries and their Immortal Emperors?” asked some annoying guy.

“Who could have possibly killed him?” asked some dumb girl.

Oh yeah let’s ask each other questions! Terry mocked in his mind as he passed the crowd of people gathered around the crier as he headed to work that morning. Dead Emperor or not, he still needed money, and the shit wasn’t going to shovel itself.

A horse pulling a cart of goods not far ahead of him plopped a big pile of stinking job security, and the greasy looking man accompanying the cart looked around, his eyes quickly spotted Terry in his stained clothes wielding a shovel.

“Got a fresh one for ya,” the man said with a sneer.

Terry kept walking, never once looking at the man.

“Not my route.”

“Lazy piece of shit,” the man muttered. Terry ignored him.

The small public works office was in chaos as various members of the city’s maintenance staff argued about whether or not they should be working today in light of recent events. Terry strode by them all, heading for the back of the building. His wide shoulders brushed against the edges of the narrow hall. Mining during his youth and the years he’d spent shoveling since then left him with a disproportionately large set of back muscles.

“Terry, thank the gods you showed up,” said Randall, the head of the Waste Management Department. “We’re missing so many people, the streets are filled with people and they’ve sealed off the inner city until they catch the person responsible for causing this mess.” He ran his hands through his thinning black hair.

"Of course I’m here, as long as you’re still paying.”

“The regents sent envoys out late last night to the department heads with a month’s wages for everyone in advance.” Randall’s eyebrows raised. “Said we needed to keep the city running while they sorted out the mess. Business as usual and all that”

“Right then, who’s all left?” Terry asked.

“We’ve still got Dee, Mac, Dennis, and Charlie, plus Frank over in Food Transport said he could lend us a few more of his team since they’re not letting in the big carts through the gates today–too much risk that the people would stampede the minute the gate went up.”

“Oh yes, seal up the city, how very ‘business as usual.” Terry muttered under his breath. Randall snorted a laugh. “That’s not nearly enough people to cover the whole city.”

“No, it’s not.” Randall grumbled. “Priority routes only today.”

Terry’s excitement flared. Priority shit shoveling routes were about as good as shit shoveling could get. He’d get to walk around the nice part of town–well, the alleys of the nice part of town since the rich folks weren’t too fond of finding out how all that shit got removed from their latrines. Even so, the alleys of the rich districts were at least three times nicer than the main streets of the poorer districts.

Terry smiled. “So, what’s it going to be then? Heavenly Plateau? Rosewater Pond? The Cinnamon Sprig Townhomes?’

Randall rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Umm, you were the last one here so all that’s left is the Palace.”

“No one took the Palace?!” This was absurd news. The walk was easy, you’d get the nicest cart, and the kitchen staff would sometimes give you extra scraps. It was the best route by a mile, or so he’d heard, the route was reserved for more senior staff members.

“Word is things are getting heated over there.”

“Heated?”

“Riots, shakedowns, guards kicking down doors to homes looking for suspicious parties, that sort of thing.”

“And you want me to do it?” Terry asked, trying to sound wary.

“It’ll be safe, there’s a passage way you can take to get in and out that only us service folk know about. The guards there will inspect this,” Randall held out a round piece of metal paint with the Empire’s seal, “and they’ll let you through.”

“Seems risky,” Terry said, feigning hesitance. He liked Randall well enough, but this job had to be done, and if he could find a way to get something out of it…

“Just take the alleys to and from the Palace, you’ll be safe. Nobody is going to mess with the guy pulling the shit cart.”

This was true, Terry knew. Nobody looked at him during work hours and thought he was someone worth mugging.

“You know, I might find myself more inclined to do it if I were given this route permanently,.”

“What?”

“And, an increase in wages to match.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“What?!”

“These are my terms.”

“I can’t give you that route, you know that, and a wage increase has to be approved on the next round of budgeting.”

Terry remained silent, the screams of some sort of altercation outside filled the room. Shiny beads of sweat began forming on Randall’s forehead.

“I can’t give that to you, I may as well do it myself,” Randall grumbled.

“By all means, I’ll take my normal route.” Terry headed for the door. “See you tomorrow, boss, probably.”

“Wait! Wait….done. It’s yours…I…I’ll just move Margaret to Rosewater, and I guess Jeffrey to the marina, and…” Randall yammered his logistics out loud for a full minute before wrapping up. “And, I’ll up you to seven gold a week.”

“Hmm,” Terry put a hand to his stubbly chin, stroking it in thought. It was all he could do to not shriek like a schoolgirl and collapse into a puddle of pure joy. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“Good, then go!”

==================================

She relaxed, allowing the final celestial body to shift into place, just a moment before the Fat Dragon Empire’s leader took a blow that he would have shrugged off any other day. She’d used what limited power she could to stall the death of this formerly immortal man, and the others like him, hoping an opportunity would present itself to nudge the events of the future in a different direction. If things had continued on their current trajectory her most favored world would have been thrown into chaos for millennia, assuming they made it more than a decade without a full blown extinction level catastrophe, which was very much a possibility, likely even.

The time before this most recent era of peace came over the land had been brutal. Dormant power, once muted by the arrangement of celestial bodies, bloomed all over the world, and those who would call themselves cultivators washed across its lands and seas like a plague. It was all “you’re courting death” this, and “you dare?” that. The time before that it was all wizards and wands, the time before that was all sacrifices and blood magic, and before that they used something she could only loosely describe as “horse magic,” and so on and so forth until time beyond memory.

People were always too busy fighting during these times where power returned to her beloved creatures. No one was making art. No nice paintings, no stories, no happy songs, no sculptures–none of the stuff she so enjoyed. Just violence and wars and the rise of sects and schools jockeying for position. Boring.

And so, she used what power she had to manipulate the cosmos to the degree that she could. She stalled, allowing the Kings and Queens and Emperors who’d reached the pinnacle of power during the last cycle to retain their state of near immortality just a bit longer, which allowed the first death marking the beginning of the new age to occur in the weakest place on the planet.

In doing so, she granted a head start to the individuals she felt had the best chance to bring about lasting stability sooner than expected.

The core of her plan relied on two humans One who could tear the world down, and one who could build it back up. She saw others too in her visions that could help along the way, but they weren’t strictly necessary as far as she could tell. The plan could succeed with just these two: The Breaker and the Maker…no, the Destroyer and the Diplomat, or wait, maybe the Scythe and the Seeder.

This is why she needed to get these humans back on track, they were so much better at this sort of thing.

All she could do now was watch as the accumulated energy in the bodies of living creatures mixed with the power unlocked by the ever shifting heavens. The manifestations of such combinations would undoubtedly yield strange and interesting things. She only hoped the fat one and the toxic one would find each other before the fat one got himself killed.

If her ploy failed…well it was all going to shit anyway so no harm done.

=========================

Terry was having the best day of his life. Sure, there were some riots and fights he had to walk by on his way to the palace, but he was largely left alone. Not much to be gained fighting a man holding a shit covered shovel who stinks to high heaven. He kept to the alleys that most service people and maintenance folk used to stay out of sight. The guards at the mostly secret service entrance to the inner city were polite, and very clearly happy to be posted somewhere out of the way today.

The palace was a truly massive structure with multiple wings and towers and courtyards. He wished he could see more of it, but unfortunately for him, the builders had the forethought to have all the waste collected in one hidden area, which meant Terry wouldn’t get to see much of anything. He did however get to smell delicious food being cooked in the kitchen and the flowers from a courtyard he imagined was just out of sight beyond the wall of hedges he walked along.

The whole experience was a far cry better than his old route, except for the actual work part of his job–rich people shit smelled just like everyone else’s. On the bright side, he was now making seven gold per week, and with all he’d saved by keeping himself utterly destitute, he was nearly a quarter of the way to his goal: buying a house in a mid level district known as Prairie Creek. The houses were a little cheaper than they should because the crime was a bit higher there than it should be courtesy of some gang. Terry wasn’t worried about that though, he’d make sure word got out that Prairie Creek’s newest resident was just a lowly shit shoveler barely making ends meet. Not a man worth robbing or tormenting.

Terry was deep in his imagination, thinking about how much he was looking forward to rescuing his family from their terrible life of constant sickness and poverty in the Empire of the Sunset Moon. Fear briefly flashed in his mind as he thought about what a dead immortal Emperor might mean for his plans to buy them all a house in a safe place. He often fantasized about having the money to move them here now–mainly because he wanted them safe and taken care of, but also so he could hit them all with a big fat “I told you so.”

Calling him a fool to run off to the big city did not make them deserving of his best behavior, but it didn’t call for his worst either, but maybe a little more payback wouldn’t hurt. He could stand in front of a particularly dilapidated hovel in District Eight, formerly Stinksludge District renamed as part of a pointless beautification effort by the city. He’d go on and on about how great the new house was then pretend to walk up to the house like it was his and–

BLUH. SPLAT.

The all too familiar sound of someone barfing startled him.

Terry looked around but saw no one, only the walls and fragrant hedges meant to keep this stay unnoticed.

“Oh, no, no-no-no,” a timid voice whispered, followed by another round gagging.

“Is someone there?” Terry asked, leaning to one side, trying to see around the pile of human waste and uneaten food. He found a boy wearing billowy red robes laden with gold designs hunched over with his hands on his knees. His face was pale which didn’t seem out of the ordinary given the circumstances, and his light brown hair was matted against his sweaty forehead.

When the gagging was over and the boy finally stood up straight, Terry noticed he’d been wrong about the robes. They weren’t billowy, the boy was. He was like a bloated pig carcass stuffed into a robe.

“You, uh…you need some help there, guy?” Terry asked. He didn’t want to intrude too much, maybe this guy got sick and decided to come lose his lunch here rather than risk being seen vomiting in the palace latrines. He wasn’t sure how fancy palace people operated, but he could imagine that being seen getting sick like this might somehow lower your standing or something.

“That depends,” the boy said, wiping his face with his sleeve. He visibly strained to put a smile on his face, “Would you be interested in making a lot of money for very little work?”