Truth allowed Niles to be escorted away by Butler. The young man would spend the night in dreams, receiving an intensive education on the Nephilim and what was needed to pretend to be a CEO. Not that Butler had the faintest idea about the necessities of running a major corporation. The succubus did, however, have a great deal of experience manipulating desire. Niles would find running an MLM to be not too difficult in the short term.
Niles would sleep in a bed tonight. A comfortable single bed, with comfortable pillows, in seeming privacy. It was important, Butler explained, to set expectations. Niles was a person created to serve the needs of the Prince. As such, he would live like a person and behave like a person. However, if he proved incapable of being Niles, then they would simply start over. The Prince would not be burdened by a single additional piece of luggage. And Butler could be endlessly patient.
Truth sat in an armchair, looking out at a sixty million wen view of Harban at night. It’s brilliant colors advertising endless wonders. The floating towers dancing in their own moonbeams. Illusory beasts mock fighting in the parks. The bars, nightclubs, night markets, the brothels and the twenty four hour convenience stores all jammed side by side. District by segregated district. All of this built around one unalterable, inescapable truth- people are not born equal, they do not live as equals, and they do not die as equals. Because of money, and because of power.
“Maid, is this the only world you have ever served on?”
“Other than Hell, My Prince? Yes.”
“Ah. I wondered if there was a world somewhere without levels. The Nephilim say they do not have levels, but there are clearly differences in power between them. They don’t pretend to care about equality. Just the opposite, in fact.”
“If there is such a world, I do not know of it, your Highness.”
Truth nodded. He had a rare moment of wanting to drink. Not for the sake of getting drunk. The moment just seemed to call for whiskey. It was no effort to suppress the thought. Instead he asked “What happens when there are no more levels? Mechanically, I mean?”
“This little maid dares not guess, Great One.”
Truth laughed silently. “No, I suppose you don’t. But you make my point for me. In this relationship, my magic gives me power over you. I have the biggest fist and offer the best benefits. But what if we were both Level Zero humans, in a world with only Level Zero humans? Would my muscles give me power over you? Only so long as I was awake, right?”
The maid said nothing. If her master wanted to monologue, she was quite happy to let him. It made her job easier and more pleasant, the more she understood him.
“So you need groups of people. People with a degree of trust, willing to work together. Families, maybe, or gangs. Armies. Religions. Some combination of all those things. Because with no magic, it’s down to raw muscle and whatever bits of natural philosophy remain relevant. It’s going to be down to pointy sticks, or knives made of scavenged steel beaten into blades.”
He thought about that a moment. “And steel doesn’t keep for long, once the rust protection enchantments wear off. Assuming it had any. So it will be brass or bronze or stone. Or bone. And yet, I have no faith that the world will be a fair or equal place. Someone will have to do the farming, and it won’t be the priests or kings. They have far, far too important jobs to worry about making food.”
He took a deep breath. “Now, it doesn’t have to be that way. This country has, or had, some elected leaders as well as a bunch of Aristocrats. If you were a citizen and met a few other requirements, you could vote for them. Not that it ever mattered, everyone elected was either a significant power in their own right, or represented one. Or were a pawn for a major Corporation, though I suppose those categories are redundant. In theory, I can sort of imagine a situation where everyone gets together to pick who was in charge. But I don’t believe that is what will happen.”
The Prince’s smile was cold enough to give even devils a chill. “They will say that, in the present emergency, strong measures, temporary measures, must be taken. Obedience is mandatory, dissent cannot be tolerated. The soldiers are here to help you, your only shield against other humans. The priests, your only shield against the angry heavens. All those sacrificed are enemies or criminals, or the very lucky chosen for a supreme honor.”
He spat thickly, watching the phlegm sink into a carpet more valuable than the apartment he grew up in, the lives of everyone in that apartment included.
“Arrange for me to visit a university library tomorrow. I don’t care which one, pick based on convenience. Nothing I am looking for is restricted. The morning routine is to be as usual. I am going to bed.”
Morning came, and after his usual decadent morning routine, Truth set off for the library at E&O U. E&O being so universally used that people actually forgot the E and O stood for Esoteric and Occult, respectively. It was a third tier university, trying to catch whatever scraps the University of Jeon discarded. They were happy enough anyone remembered them in the first place. But a university requires an impressive library, and they did their best.
Truth looked up at the concrete box. It had a donor’s name on it in large blue letters. Nobody he had ever heard of. It also had the word “Library” on the end of its name, a short flight of stairs, and cast concrete statues of crouching temple dogs, so it would probably do.
He tried to adopt the identity of a grad student. It was a heavy lift. He altered tack slightly- he was in the Army Reserves, using the government support to take some associate level courses in talisman maintenance. That clicked into place no trouble. Swearing silently, Truth marched up to the reference desk. This early in the morning, the library was pretty empty. Lucky him. The librarian flinched when they saw Truth.
“Rough night?” The librarian asked. “Or are you… in costume or something?” Truth looked over himself. Clean button down black shirt, gray trousers, sneakers, leather belt, he thought he was looking pretty sharp, actually.
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?”
“Wait, you mean those are really your muscles? Bro. What?” The librarian’s look shifted to a sort of horrified revulsion.
“This has been a fantastic conversation. Magus Johannes Vek. Inventor of four hundred plus spells, including the famed “Cup and Knife.” Looking for information on him.”
“If you damage the books, you have to buy a new copy. And they are very, very expensive.”
Truth picked up a pen and balanced it on its point. On his pinky. He kept it balanced there while eyeing the librarian hard.
“Fine. Yes. There is an almanac of famous mages that Vek has an entry in, you can check any of our encyclopedias, and check with the spirit of intellect over there for actual journal articles and books that cover him.”
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“Your commitment to library science is to point me at an encyclopedia and a more useful librarian.” Truth didn’t know what to think. This is the result of university education? What did that make Etenesh and Jember? The very top of all students everywhere?”
“Guess how much this job pays?”
“Not much?”
“Nothing at all. Volunteering is a graduation requirement for undergrads, remember?”
Ah.
“Almanac is that way?”
“Third row on your left.”
Truth found the multi-volume amanack. It was organized alphabetically, so it wasn’t too hard to find Vek.
Johannes Vek, born to Dagobah and Thomas Vek of Ruttlesford, Pecorah. The Vek family were successful necromancers, and very active in their local Praegerite Church. Records show that Johannes was active in the Junior Auxiliaries of the Heavenly Host as well as consistently in the top of his class at St. Ethelbert’s School. He attended St. Ethelbert’s from the ages of six until sixteen, when he declared his intention to become a doctor and began attending classes at the University of Uxus.
During his studies at the University of Uxus, Johannes Vek joined the Fraternal Order of St. Astil, a Praegerite lay brotherhood dedicated to doing good works and living according to the example set by St. Astil. It is believed that it was during his time at university, and particularly with the Order, that Vek was first introduced into ascetic mysticism.
It was during his fourth year at university, aged twenty, when Vek first claimed to have received a vision of an angel, specifically the angel Manda. He had been without food for three days, and subsisted on the bare minimum of water necessary, while kneeling in prayer on a stone floor. He had not slept for the entirety of his vigil. It was determined at the time that he was sincerely deluded due to sleep deprivation.
Johannes Vek was to repeat this experience several times. Each time the acetic ritual grew more severe and lasted longer. In the end, his priest and his college advisor both intervened, and on threat of expulsion, he stopped.
There is considerable scholarly debate over whether he did, in fact, stop his ascetic rituals, as his latter years as a student were characterized by several public reprimands for failure to do required coursework, as well as three awarded papers on the uses of calcination in materials processing in alchemy. At the request of some of his classmates, an inquest was held into possible academic dishonesty, particularly due to his failure to cite sources for the awarded papers. However, no dishonesty was found, and the work was deemed entirely original.
He remained in Uxus, opening a medical practice and taking up a position as a Lay Brother in the Church of St. Brzhenik. His cultivation was believed to be around Level Three, which would have been average for an educated professional in his era.
Wait, Level THREE was average for a doctor? I’ve been treated by Level One doctors. A Level Three might be a department head in a small hospital, or a shift supervisor in almost any hospital. How long has magic been declining for?
Truth kept reading the lengthy article. Vek had only lived about six hundred years ago, so there were surprisingly detailed records of his life. A major reason for this, apparently, was his ability to start a fight with very senior mages, get absolutely clowned based on the existing research, and then vindicated when he was able to demonstrate in a laboratory the correctness of his theories.
This was not a trait that endeared him to many. It did get his stuff hate-copied a lot. People shared his books and pamphlets, frequently with cries of “Can you believe this fraud?” Cries which got a lot more muted when, for example, he showed that he could refine gold to near perfect purity with a single spell and no reagents. Or that he could considerably improve the production of ingredients from herbs in terms of both purity and quantity. That he could, in fact, cure several hitherto untreatable diseases by identifying the tiny, invisible demons causing them, and exorsizing them.
A constant critique of his work was that his spells were incredibly poorly optimized. In addition to being one of the most prolific spell creators to ever live, he almost certainly held the record for most spells improved on and replaced by others in his lifetime. It seems he was well aware of the problem.
“I have not the wit to mend the fault in my recollection with mine own inventions. I can only faithfully record, as best I can, that which has been revealed to me by the Great Manda. He has seen that my devotion to God is as sturdy as the mountains and as endless as the sky, and has thus revealed to me the truth of many things.”
Interesting but unhelpful, Truth felt. Not a whole lot there to actually explain how in the hell Cup and Knife worked. It sounded like Vek didn’t know either. He nearly fell over reading the next paragraph, where it was revealed the spell got its name because they were the first two things Vek saw when he regained consciousness after the vision in which the spell was revealed. They had no particular relevance to how the spell should be used.
I’ll kill him. I will go back in time and kill him. Then I will stitch his soul back into his body so I can kill him a few more times.
<>
Vek apparently died at the age of forty seven, although that was disputed. Apparently, a door opened in the air, and a small boy walked out into the chapel at St. Brazhnik. The small boy said nothing, but took Vek by the hand and walked with him through the door in the air. Apparently, the light of Heaven was shining through the doorway. The Church of St. Brzhenik survived to this day, and was apparently considered quite holy. Particularly the angelic script etched into the flagstone floor
“A pauper shall be a prince, wisdom ever sought and never found, hatred and love out of measure, and a dream forbidden. How can one approach the Throne, without knowing Truth?”
Truth stared at it for a while. I mean, endless things go on and on about “the truth.” If I got obsessed over every time my name got mentioned…
“They always get that message wrong.” Truth nearly jumped out of his skin. Some old fellow was reading over his shoulder. Plainly Level One, Truth had ignored his existence entirely.
“Pardon?”
“The angelic script on the floor is an intermediary language used by angels to communicate with humans. It uses a suffix to denote the end of a sentence, and there are no commas. Nor is there a special symbol indicating a question. You can read them in, but they are not actually there. Translators put them in to make things flow better. Likewise, articles are a “sometimes” thing, and mostly not.”
“Ah. Thank you?”
“No problem. A better translation would be “A pauper shall be a prince/ Wisdom ever sought and never found/ Arrogant humility/ A dream forbidden/ You cannot approach the Throne without knowing Truth.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the difference.”
The old man laughed. “I get that a lot. Tell me, “young man,” Truth could hear strong irony in the phrase. “Do you ever wonder why the world is the way it is?”
“Constantly.” Truth nodded hard.
“Can you think of alternatives?”
“Not… comprehensive ones. Changing the people in charge is the best I can get to. Frustrating is putting it mildly.”
“Weird, huh? Despite all your time thinking and wondering and asking, you can’t seem to do better than what is. Now… why is that?”
Truth looked at the old man. He had a deeply tanned face, eyes that suggested a lust for life, and a gentle smile that said he liked sharing a good joke. You… wanted to trust him. Even Truth’s finely tuned paranoia was eased. Which alarmed him.
“Senior? May I ask your name?”
“You may, but I won’t say.” The old man chuckled. “If you want to know the answer to a lot of things, including how Cup and Knife really works, answer that question first. Why can’t you imagine a better world?” The old man tapped the quote in the book again, then went deathly pale. His eyes slid across Truth’s shoulders, dropping the book as he fumbled in his pants for a talisman.
Truth felt danger flare behind him as he spun around, calling the tongue to hand. Then the sense of danger vanished.
Before him was a duck. A pair of tiny horns sprouted from its head. The duck shook once, violently, and the little horns slid off. Truth turned back. The old man had vanished.