The dorm room had gone quiet again. Truth’s alarmingly detailed explanation of just what the System was, and why the national enrollment was near suicide, had rocked her. As had the idea that all of it was just Starbrite stepping up his escape plan. Or that the Starbrite her brother had worshiped his entire life had tried to kill him.

Truth had privately connected some lines between “Shattervoid are able to move through the void between stars,” to “The System Astrologica is a higher dimensional entity,” with a particular underscoring of the memory of that shuttle being spagettified live on scry. Then he wondered how much power, and what kind of power, would be needed to do that.

“So. Why are you here?”

“In Jeon?”

“In my dorm. In my lab. Coming back into my life.” She didn’t sound hostile. Just numb. Truth figured that was fair enough. It had been a hell of a day.

“Short version? It’s very cold on the outside.” He didn’t realize how shaky his smile looked. “I just repress everything. Choke it all down and deal. Same as I always did. But the simple fact is that I spend all day, every day, in hiding. My life is defined by violence- either being the source of it or the victim of it. I have no one I can really talk to. No one I can really put my trust in.”

Her face twitched. Looked like there was a lot of that going around.

“So I was doing some light burglary, found out that your professor was nearby, and dropped by his lab to see if I could see you. Just… see you. Like with Vig. Make sure you were doing ok, that life was going the way I always hoped it would for you. Then things went a little sideways, and here I am.”

Sophia closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the sofa. “A little sideways.”

“A little sideways.” Truth nodded.

“How would you define “very sideways?”

“The whole building blows up in an explosion of unnatural energies that causes things we do not have the language to describe pour through the thin membrane of the “real.”

“Yes, that would be bad.” Her voice was very dry. He wasn’t sure if it was emotional exhaustion or actual sarcasm. They fell silent for a moment.

“I believe you, by the way. Because you are clearly much higher level than I am, and stronger than I am, and there is literally nothing you could gain from playing this game on me. Even just sadism wouldn’t explain it. There are so many worse ways to hurt me emotionally.”

Truth started to lean forward but she waved him back. “Hypothetically. I haven’t been bullied, beyond Jeon normal.”

“That’s actually a lot of bullying.” Truth said. “The whole country is built around fearing the strong and bullying the weak.”

“Yeah. But it’s normal. So I can deal. You are, despite how you look, my dead brother, slightly Ghūlified, come back on a mission of… I don’t know. Chaos. Revolution. Something. Making preparations against the end of the world.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s a job. Gig comes with some good benefits, and if I can’t get us off world, we have a place to retreat to in Siphios.”

“God. What about Har?”

“I… don’t have a good solution.” Truth looke bitter. “You don’t know what it’s like. How natural it all becomes. He’s now had the System for a lot longer than I ever did. I really don’t know what I can do, other than stay far, far away from him.”

“Because he would betray you?”

“He wouldn’t think of it that way, but yes.”

“Fuck.” The word slipped from her mouth, dropping into the silent room. Truth let it lay there a while.

“So. First time?” He asked.

She jerked her head around and gave him a hard look. “I’ve never been blown up before, no.”

Truth silently laughed. Some things really did run in the blood, it seemed. “It doesn't get easier, exactly, but you do get used to it. Anything in the slums can become normal.”

She snorted. “Long way from the slums.”

“No. This is the slums, and we are all slumrats. You, me, the professor, everyone. I have developed an entire rat based social, theological, economic and political philosophical system built around the dual notions of world-as-slum and everyone-is-a-rat. It is very sophisticated and deep. You should look impressed.” Truth was firm on this. She snorted again.

“Oh yes, very impressed.”

“Good. You should be.”

“And how did my cheap romance novel reading brother manage this feat?”

“Talking to people, mostly, then thinking about things and trying to understand what it is I actually saw and experienced, rather than what I thought I saw and experienced.”

She shrugged a little. “I guess that works, though I don’t really see the connection.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Truth smiled. He had an itch to move, and he listened to it. “I think someone is coming, so I’m going. But let me ask you two questions. One- if you knew that we would cease to be a magic based civilization in a year or so, what would you do? Keep in mind this is a serious question, because it isn’t coming, it’s happening now. Two- If your life is one of suffering because bullying is normal and that’s “just how the real world works,” why? Why is that “Just how it is?” If everyone is in pain, or most everyone, why?”

She shrugged. “Why does an apple fall from a tree?”

“To make more apples. Or if you are talking about gravity, I can’t change gravity. I can’t change “people.” But I can change one person.” He tapped his chest. “Love you, Sophia. You won’t see me again for a while. But I hope it brings you comfort knowing I’m alive. Also, and this should go without saying but just in case-”

“You died five years ago, and I have been speaking with a hallucination brought on by head trauma and the emotional damage of watching so many people die in front of me.”

“Yeah. Hug?”

She nodded. It was warm. It hurt. He didn’t want it to end, but he heard the locks opening on the door. By the time Sophia opened her eyes and released the hug, her brother had vanished. Like the dream of a ghost.

She held it together for a couple minutes longer, then she broke down and cried.

____________________________________________________________________________

Truth walked through the campus, not really seeing anything. Had he told Sophia everything she needed to know? Did he tell her everything he wanted to tell her? Was this enough? Or did it just put a cutting edge on his loneliness? He did feel better. It had been a very stupid thing to do, but he did feel better. And Sophia was, unquestionably, a genius.

The System Astrologica couldn’t be found everywhere, because it didn’t exist anywhere in this reality. It stretched its tendrils out, interfacing with all the specially made bits of soul it stamped out of its… what, worshipers? Adherents? Prosthetic limbs?

Truth had a sudden recollection of the meaty demon in the hot spring, making prosthetics for ghosts. Had his work inspired others? Or was he simply not the first to have that idea? Either possibility was disturbing.

Of course, the really disturbing question was- if Sophia could think of this just a few minutes after being introduced to the idea, what were the odds that the collected intelligence agencies, national governments, researchers and high level mages, over hundreds of years, had not reached the same conclusion?

What were the odds that Merkovah hadn’t reached the same conclusion? The old monster wouldn’t trust something as vague as “keep the System jumping and break enough things, and eventually it will slip and we can track it.” That wasn’t a plan, that was a wish. And Merkovah wasn’t going to settle for just hoping for the best.

So… what, exactly was Truth doing here? Was Sophia wrong in her guess? It was the most reasonable answer, even if he couldn’t fault her logic. Or was Merkovah playing a different game with him? One who’s goals and purposes were, as yet, unclear.

He would bet on the latter. It would be more… on brand. Merkovah had been pretty candid about the fact he routinely manipulated Truth, but made a point of keeping it to “tolerable manipulations.” And… what would he be doing, if not this?

Well, finding Etenesh, a reasonably private stretch of grass and seeing whether advanced body cultivation or channeling the aspect of God’s Consort held up better after ten rounds. Then, a light lunch. The afternoon would be a repeat of the experiment, to see if the first set of results were a fluke. THAT’s how you do natural philosophy!

But after that? What would he do if he knew the world was ending in just over a year? What would he do about that fact? Would he wait passively? Or would he take steps to make sure the people he cared about were taken care of, as best as possible? That he, himself, would come out okay?

Obviously the latter. He needed to talk to Merkovah. He wanted in on the Shattervoid Girl hunt. Right now, he didn’t give even one shit about razeing Harban. He would spread some propaganda, do a few low-key ops, but he flat out wasn’t going to run around being a distraction while the real work got done.

He shook his head and slapped his cheeks. Time to focus. He was absolutely, mortally, unshakably certain that any attempt at communication with Siphios from Harban would be detected and traced, with a hunter team dispatched seconds later. So… a quick jaunt out of the city, then.

He quickly ran through his options. Buses and trains he immediately discarded, for all the same old reasons. Roads? Hahaha. No. No more of those GOD DAMN roadblocks. Cross Country? Possible, but this wasn’t a random small town. There would be air patrols, and they had to have figured out he was doing that by now.

That left air and water. Air was out for the same reason he didn’t fly into the city- it would be surveilled. Water? Would presumably also be checked, but… he knew the docks. They would be “searching,” not searching. And he did have a trick to play there, too. He started walking towards the river. That’s the unfortunate thing about life. No matter how your day was going, there was always room for it to get worse.

He picked a likely looking barge and hopped on. Staring down the river, he could see flying platforms, hovering about thirty meters above the water. Quite adequate clearance for most barges. Not moving, just hovering there. Now, if he were a betting man, those platforms would be loaded with surveillance gear and those watcher homunculi. They certainly wouldn’t leave a route as big and heavily used as the River Fan go unwatched. Not while the Hell Prince was on the loose.

He sighed and had a poke around. He wanted the bottom level of containers. Not because he thought it would help against the watchers. Not really. No, he just wanted the psychological reassurance. Can’t see me. Too much stuff in the way.

Who do you think you are, the System Astrologica?

It took a bit of work, but he found a good container. A refrigerated container, locked, warded, tracked, and alarmed. Precious cargo. He disabled the security far enough for him to open the door and have a peek inside.

Pigs hung on meathooks. Stretching back six meters, the container was packed with them. Gutted and cleaned, but still whole. Precious cargo, these days. Meat was costing more and more, when it was available at all. Precious cargo, limp on a cold hook, in the dark.

He certainly wasn’t going to freeze, so the cold was no problem. It would suppress his smell too, and the magic of the cooling charms would likely interfere at least a little bit with whatever divining magic they were using.

The problem was, he was a warm body in a cold place. Anything that could see heat would pick him up more clearly than if he had just lay on the deck of the barge. But there were ways to deal with that.

He took another look at the checkpoint. He had about twenty minutes before the barge reached it, and then there wasn’t another in sight. He walked into the container, and shut it behind him. It took some finagling, but the doors stayed shut, at least. Then he sat on the floor and spent exactly eighteen minutes sealing his body against the emission of body heat.

It was a terrible idea. He could feel himself getting lightheaded. His organs were taking damage already, which was a hell of a thing given how much he had cultivated his body. This was not something a living human could do. At minute nineteen, he stood. It was as good as it was going to be.

He used Incisive and cut a little hole through his chest. Punched a meathook through it, then stopped his heart. He was just meat, hanging with all the rest. Just more meat shipped out of Harban for processing. Going to feed the great machine. Truth came into Harban a prince, and left a dead pig. His last thought, before he fell into the well of nothing, was “I wonder what I will be when I return again?”