The worm demon pulling the carriages always roared in outrage when it was forced into the sun, and the screams of the steel wheels on the rails, falsetto to the worm’s bass, made a hellish harmony. The subway crossed the canal right over Truth’s favorite scavenging spot, so he was used to the noise. The slumrats in the dozens of brown and pollution-smudged white apartment buildings lining the canals, forty stories of indifference and passive cruelty, apparently didn’t even hear it anymore. They didn’t smell the chemical, swampy stink in the afternoon sun. You could get used to anything in the Harban slums.
In the slums, you learned to despise your neighbors. You tried to kill your soul pain with booze, drugs, and what joys of the flesh you could still tolerate. Watching people get mugged was great fun. No trouble looking down at suffering. But you never looked at the glistening city across the canal. The rich Harbin, with its fancy shops, flying carpets, and beautiful mages on custom spellbeasts or demon-driven carriages. You didn’t look, didn’t dream, and could only pray that one day, you would win the lottery and get out of the slums. Then you got up in the morning and joined the teeming vermin swarm of people off to work in the factories or serve that beautiful city's beautiful people. That is life. Only a child thought differently. Truth was seventeen. The burnt-out tweaker in front of him wouldn’t live to see twenty.
“I just need a twenny. Twenny ween. You got money. I know you got the money!” The base fiend slurred his words. He started shifting around like his tendons were tightening every second into agonizing wires cutting through his muscle. Truth knew that look. The withdrawal was past hungry now. It was pain.
“I got no money! No Money! Fuck off!” He waved a length of rebar over his head, hoping to look big, scare the freak off. Wasn’t like he could run away, trapped between the canal and the retainer wall. He tried to guard his little pile of fished-up scrap. The tweaker probably thought it was trash.
The junkie was a sickly yellow color. His nails were either chewed down to the quick or long and torn and bloody. His eyes had gone red, almost black in the yellow, smog-filtered daylight, filling with blood as his body gave out. He didn’t want a fix; he needed it.
He lunged in, screaming, clawing at Truth’s face. Truth slashed the rebar down, chopping directly at the freak’s head. The tweaker got his arm up in time. Truth felt it snap before he heard the crack. The base fiend was so far gone he didn’t miss a step. The ragged nails came right for Truth’s eyes.
He tried to step back and get the rebar up to block. He only got a half step before the freak was on him, pushing him down. The junkie had never been more than Level One. Drugs had burnt away even that. Still, the body remembered.
His foot, a swollen mass of weeping sores and yellow, curling nails, smashed the side of Truth’s knee. Truth buckled. The junkie pressed down, trying to go over the rebar with his good arm. Tried to get the throat.
Truth slid to the side, pushing the fiend past him. Got both his feet under him. Smashed down again with the rebar. Caught the freak across the back. He went down screaming. Not because the junkie could feel his back break but because he had missed. Because the fix was further away.
Truth swung the rebar again. Caught the back of his head. The screaming stopped. Maybe he was dead. It didn’t matter. That poor bastard was dead after the first hit of cut base. Everything since then was just corpse spasms.
Truth looked up from the path between the retainer wall and the canal. A billboard hung off the subway bridge, a staggering beauty with ruby red lips having her Golden Bat cigarette lit by a spell-wielding, idol-handsome man. The man on the billboard wore an incredible double-breasted cream overcoat, his hair immaculately styled, and even his nails shone with health and polish. He was everything Truth wished he was. In beautiful, shimmering script- “A Starbrite Man Is Always Ready.”
Truth looked at the little pile of garbage he fished out of the canal. Maybe ten wen worth of scrap. Maybe not. He was sure other seventeen-year-olds didn’t have to do this shit. He was so fucking ready to be out of this dump. So ready to be a Starbrite Man.
It was a good enough day. He got eleven wen from Phil, the scrap guy. Must have caught him in a happy mood. Which meant that after two hours of work and maybe killing a man, he had not quite enough for a lousy dinner.
Phil was an ok guy for the slums, but you took whatever price he gave you for your scraps of talismans, magic tools, or just valuable bits of metal. If you didn’t like the price, you could fuck off. If you wanted to argue about it, you would be removed.
Phil had a bad back and always said he couldn’t lift anything too heavy. He had his golems carry the bits of complainers over to his sister Reba's shop, who put them… somewhere. She said she fed them to fleshripper swine to help fatten them up. Truth made a point of never buying her sausages.
On the other hand, Rebas was on the way home from Phils and was one of two places inside three miles of home selling fresh food. So. He did do some shopping with her. It saved time. And that was the slums- hundreds of thirty, forty, or even fifty-story towers packed with tiny apartments and trash-filled halls. Easy access to the subway, a few convenience stores, no grocery stores, and no end of “package stores” where you could load up on Betel, Khat, Skooma, or the cheap liquor of your choice. Always lit with harsh white lights and the clerk behind two inches of spell-hardened glass.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
In a single day, Truth had to get his siblings up, dressed, fed, and to school, hustle for odd jobs, and hunt for scrap if there weren’t any odd jobs. Then while he was working, try to sneak in a bit of cultivation to get to Level 1 even an hour faster. Then get home, pray to the gods that Dad finally OD’ed and Mom had died in a ditch somewhere, make dinner, feed the sibs, go over homework, run through the evening routine, get them into bed, THEN cram for the Starbrite Aptitude Test THEN some dedicated cultivation time so he would get to Level 1 before the exam date. Which was in a month.
Time was the only thing Truth had less of than money.
Truth hustled back home. It wasn’t safe in the slum after dark, and the sun was setting fast. It wasn’t safe during the daytime either, but a different class of monster came out after dark. During the day, you had the base fiends, the sleepers, and the boomers. Nighttime was for the drunks and the Ghūl.
The Ghūl didn’t like bright lights. Didn’t like them at all. They would throw rocks, bricks, or whole damn trashcans at anything too bright. Shops still stuck bright, armored lights out front. Because if it were dark enough for the Ghūl to be comfortable, they would hang around. They would start to play. They would probably play with you and all your stuff. And if you were very lucky, you would die in the process. About the only thing that could get the police into the slums was a Ghūl sculpture out in the open, with its materials still alive. Not to clear out the Ghūl, obviously. That would be dangerous! No, the statues were carefully incinerated before they could cause any more harm.
Truth was admitted into the apartment building (romantically called “Towering Heavens Apartment Co. Building 37”) when the demon bound to the heavy steel doors recognized his face. The elevator had been used as a toilet again, possibly while someone enjoyed the services advertised in spray paint on the interior. But it was running today, so up he went to “home.”
“Close the damn door! Letting the heat out!” Dad growled lips stained purple from smoking Red Bats. His throne, dominating the living room, was a half-broken wreck of the armchair in front of the scryball. Dad seemed to live in two places- the Red and Black Casino, where he mopped up the spilled drinks and unclogged the toilets, and in the armchair. Blasted on poppy-soaked Red Bat cigarettes and cheap liquor, erasing his awareness of his surroundings by giving his mind over to the scry.
“Who’s playing?” Truth moved to the part of the trash-filled main room dubbed the kitchen. He could see the bottom of the rice jar, but there was just enough to stretch some veggies and kelp. Enough for him and the sibs. He shoved aside a stack of empty plastic bags to make room on the counter. He wasn’t allowed to throw anything out because it might be valuable.
“Ah, no good games on. I’m watching that show. You know. That show? With the guy with the tits.”
Truth quickly tried to think of all the popular, free shows that might feature a gender non-conforming person. It was a struggle. He never had time to scry.
“Singing with Meeta?”
“Yeah.” Dad snorted at something invisible to Truth and took a drag off a bottle. “None of these assholes sing anything good. It’s all girly bullshit.” Dad’s drink of choice was Beefheart, which he said was schnapps, and maybe it was. Made by Sanchez Intl. Bev., part of the Starbrite family of companies.
What Truth knew about Beefheart was that it was fifteen wen a 75 cl bottle at the shops, and Dad would start hitting him or the sibs if he didn’t have it handy. Truth knew how to take a hit, to sway back and make it look like the old man smashed him to the ground without getting hurt. The sibs didn’t. Despite everything, Dad somehow was still Level One, and Level Zero’s like Truth and the sibs had no chance of winning a straight-up fight.
The old man was a Provisional Denizen of Haben City, Subcategory: Criminal. Two full tiers below an actual citizen, and boy, were his kids living that truth. They were Provisional Denizens of Haben City Subcategory: Dependants. Entitled to housing so long as they lived with their parents. Entitled to education in the slum technical schools… so long as they lived with their parents. Food, clothing, a teddy bear? Your loving parents will doubtless provide. Not that you would be so ungrateful, unfilial, and unwise as to ask.
“Where is Mom?” Truth asked, making his daily prayer that Dad would say “Dead.”
“She got a new job, some mushroom thing. She’s out.” Once again, the gods failed Truth.
“Great. You heading out tonight?”
“Somebody’s got to bring in some money around here, and it ain’t going to be you useless mouths. I’m off to the Red and Black. Clean up in here before I get back. Place is a mess. BUT DON'T TOUCH MY SHIT!” Dad broke the spell and looked away from the Scryball.
“One month. One month. One Month.” Truth silently chanted over and over again. One month until the Starbrite Aptitude Test was held. The Starbrite Corporation always needed new workers, and skilled labor got company housing. One month for him to break through to Level One. One month until he was standing with everyone else in the courtyard of Call to Glory Temple, hearing his results and getting that job offer from Starbrite. One month until he could leave this shithole and give his sibs the life they deserved. Away from the gangs and the pimps and the dealers and his evil fucking parents.
“You ain’t in school anymore. ‘Bout time you found a job.” Dad growled as he slipped on his shoes. “Kids today, I swear to god, you got no idea how to live in the real world.”
A Starbrite Man Is Always Ready. “You’re right, Dad. I’m going to do just that.”
“Good. Cause I know the Red and Black is always looking for talent that can work on their back.” And with a rasping laugh, the Old Man stomped out the door.