I don’t think I can be blamed for being happy. Anyone would be happy. This is huge. Nobody else managed to do this.

Truth indulged in a little self pity. He ordered the Fire Bird to start sweeping up and down the coastline, to keep the base from figuring out they had been spotted. Except, of course, they hadn’t been spotted. They had just been inferred with a high degree of probability. But even that wasn’t the source of his misery.

It was the fact that they were almost a hundred kilometers off-shore. A big, seemingly impassable wall wasn’t scary. Any fixed defense can be overcome. It’s not having anywhere to stand while he did the overcoming that was doing his head in.

I traveled all over the country. Pulled on the intelligence gathering of Siphios for some things, and Jeon for even more. Used my own likely unique understanding of magic to figure out what Starbrite was up to. And now I can’t do anything with that information. I want to riot. I want to riot, and generally throw a fit.

It just felt so damn petty. He could go get a boat of course, but that would be worse, not better. He would still stand out, only this time, he would be moving even slower. Could he swim there? Eventually, sure. It’s just the not-so-minor detail of it being a colossal pain in the ass. Even if he succeeded, once again, where would he stand? Where, exactly, would he do his work from?

Did he have to tread water or something? No way, right?

Right?

Truth groaned, loudly, then started getting naked. This uniform had been really useful, and he didn’t want it soaked if he could help it. Midway through unbuttoning the shirt, he paused. He was about to do something very dumb again. Maybe, this time, how about not?

Hey, Perks?

Yes?

If I were to, hypothetically, jump off this bird and into the ocean, doing my best to protect you against my chest, would you be okay? Physically?

There was a pause.

I think so. I have never fallen so far. I feel a great deal stronger these days, so I am not afraid. Yet, my appetite is less. It is very strange.

And here it was. Perks was on the accelerated course to being a demon. Fantastic. Well. It wasn’t a bad thing.

Can you deal with the water okay? You won’t drown or anything?

I won’t drown. I can swim, you know.

Really? I thought you were a desert snake?

I have never seen the desert. But I know I can swim a little.

Oh, neat! Well. Hitch a ride for now.

Mmm.

“Start flying back up the coast line. I’m going to jump off at a certain point. Once I do, you just keep flying until you reach the place where we turned around last time, then return to base. If anything comes up, especially anything that might threaten you, take all necessary actions in accordance with your bindings and return to base.”

“Yes Sir.” The bird had been raised from birth by the military. It knew when not to ask questions. Truth waited until they were roughly parallel with the assumed-island, and jumped.

This was not the first time Truth had jumped into the ocean from a great height. He could vividly remember his ‘triumphant’ return from Siphios. It was not a happy memory, but it was vivid. Truth opted to run the Meditations as hard as he could and compress his body as much as he could to minimize the impact.

Oh fuck, Earth Folding Step would-

The water hammered into the soles of his feet, and there was an enormous splash. He could feel the ocean fighting him, but this time, the ocean was destined to lose. He had changed. Harder. Stronger. Maybe even a little smarter. Water resistance and terminal velocity lost out to the Meditations of Valentinian, as cultivated by an obsessive body cultivator.

Truth floated naked on the ocean’s surface. Perks, seemingly unharmed, slipped out of his arms and curled up on his chest. The ocean It was a little warmer than Truth expected. He checked over his body. Not even any redness or soreness. The last round of refinement, courtesy of the angel, had clearly done a lot for his body. He splashed the water idly. Had he ever been to the beach for fun? He was pretty sure he hadn’t.

A memory intruded- after the ops at Chil Podermo, the one with the human traffickers, they were supposed to go to a beach party. He had flown home early instead, to sort out Vig and Sophia’s school problems. Felt like a lifetime ago. It was actually a lifetime ago.

It had been a long time since he thought of the sibs. Maybe it just felt that way. Their faces used to be constantly on his mind. What did they need? How could he protect them? How could he give them the best future? He was still doing that, of course, but…

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Truth wrestled with that ‘but…’ It made him feel inexplicably guilty. His need to kill Starbrite had always been selfish. He was at peace with that. Kill Starbrite, save the sibs, save a handful of other people, and get off this world before the collapse really hit its terminal curve and the Nephilim came in to tidy up. That was a very reasonable thing to do. It’s not like he wanted to fight a Nascent Soul god. Without that ticket off-world in the balance, would he have gone hunting for Starbrite’s head?

The Truth who watched the Black Ships arrive in Siphios absolutely would not have. He would have done his best to extract the sibs from Jeon, smuggle them to Siphios, and start building a clan compound up in the mountains. He’d get Etenesh in as a design consultant, and Jember in to tell him which locals were worth making friends with.

The Truth who was currently bobbing in the Green Sea could see a case for killing Starbrite regardless of the tickets off-world. Starbrite was just too destructive. For all the good that he had brought this world, and he had brought good things to this world, they were far outweighed by the harm he did.

There simply had to be a way to balance it out. Wasn’t like the world was some blessed garden before Starbrite arrived. By all accounts, the technologies and methods he introduced made life vastly more comfortable for most. For a time. But it was now plain that the price of that comfort had been paid only in part. The balance was now due, and it was more than the world could bear. All that accumulated wealth, the accumulated virtue of millenia, had been stripped away. Concentrated first in the hands of a few, then just in Starbrite.

At a certain level of concentration, killing just one person would mean a big shift in the global average of wealth. It wouldn’t trickle down very fast, if at all. It was awfully late for that. But it would have an effect. And then there was the other thing, the moral example. No matter how powerful you were, no one was untouchable. No one could hurt so many people, for so long, and get away clean. If Truth really wanted to create a brillant world, or even just a better one, it had to start by rejecting, harshly, the old world.

Parading the severed head of the man who embodied that old world was a great start, Truth felt. Really showed you weren’t just yapping. You were putting in that work. Besides, it was a great foundational myth.

The Demon King of the World, surrounded by endless wealth and power, surrounded by armies of deadly sorcerers, was killed by a slumrat. A man of no background and with no famous name to boast. The Demon King was killed by a nobody and they were the most common sorts of people! It was therefore wisest not to tread too heavily on the nobodies.

A nice, tidy little homily. Truth sighed. He had never done endurance swimming before. He knew how to swim, but endurance swimming?

He touched Perks. The snake seemed to be much more durable after being enlightened by the angel.

Doing okay?

Yes. That was a big jolt, and the water is unpleasantly cold, but other than that, I am fine.

That’s good.

Truth carefully guided Perks onto his back, and got swimming.

The target was only eighty kilometers away. How hard could it be?

You appear to be suffering.

You know how appearances can be deceiving, right Perks?

I do. I don’t think they are now, though.

Truth declined to answer. It was embarrassing to argue with a snake. It was even more embarrassing to lose an argument with a snake. He would just have to endure.

When I swim, I just wriggle my whole body through the water. You are splashing around a lot. Is that normal for humans?

Yes. Well, it depends, I think, but this is the only way I know how to swim. Oddly enough, his memories of his past life as a sailor didn’t include memories of swimming. Which seemed insane, but what did he know? Maybe not knowing how to swim was normal for sailors in that other life.

The swimming technique he knew came in part from training in the Army and in part with training in the PMC. It was not… elegant. Or efficient. It was designed for soldiers wearing boots and heavy clothes to cross rivers or survive unexpected disasters. It was not intended for stealth or speed. Eighty kilometers, a brief, comfortable stroll on land, turned into an endless, miserable slog at sea.

What was even more maddening was that it was almost impossible to keep on course. They were far out to sea now. The waves were a meter tall, more when measured from the base of the trench to the peak. He just plain couldn’t see the “nowhere” he was aiming at. Worse, he realized the wind and currents were pushing him southwest.

I don’t suppose you have a way to track our destination, do you? Truth asked.

I do not. Where are we headed, anyhow?

Truth explained what he could. So you don’t see anything?

I do not. The air tastes strange, but I think that’s the ocean more than anything else.

Does it taste salty?

Yes, but there are other things as well. There is a very unpleasant taste roughly to the right of you, but it’s so widespread I have no idea where it’s origin is. It’s just drifting everywhere.

Do you think you could pin-point it?

Not really. Like I said, it’s spreading everywhere. You could start swimming a bit more to your right. We might learn more.

Swearing softly, Truth adjusted course. He was in elite physical condition, but swimming was shockingly tiring. You didn’t just swim with your legs. You swam with your whole body. Everywhere got tired. The wisdom of boats became steadily more obvious. Boats were good. You didn’t have to swim all day if you had a boat.

I think the bad taste is getting stronger.

What does it taste like?

Like burnt things, rotting things, and pine trees. And a bunch of things I don’t have names for. Sometimes the old man who looked after me would rub something into his hands. It smells a little like that. But a lot of the burnt smell. The biggest thing is that.

Truth couldn’t imagine what it might be. He just kept on swimming.

The sun was setting when he banged his toes against a hidden rock. He thought he had kicked a fish for a moment. Soon, he got his foot down on it again. He could feel the cool algae and the barnacles poking at him. And yet, when he looked down, he couldn’t see the rock.

Truth had a sudden, terrible moment of empathy for all the people he ghosted past. It really wasn’t nice.