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I was… a sailor.

Truth stared up at the polished wood of the ceiling, trying to come to terms with what just happened.

I don’t remember much. But I remember I was a sailor and I had talked with so many people. And one lady said that… we are all little pieces of God, and pain is the mortality leaving the body. Or something like that. It’s fading again.

He could hear a faint stirring in the room with the big deer head statue in it. He didn’t move. Nothing in there could threaten him.

<>

Truth nodded internally. It was all just flashes and fragments. He couldn’t make sense of it.

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What?

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Are you saying it’s divination?!

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I… lived off world?

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Truth didn’t try to feel anything for the moment. He just floated in the bubble of confusion. It wasn’t that it was too much or something, it was just… what was he supposed to do with this information? How was this useful? Why did he, of all people, remember his past lives?

I don’t have time for this.

<>

Truth ignored the System and dusted himself down. He didn’t have to do much to get himself ready for the day. He’d hit the bathroom, maybe try to find a shower. Can I hijack that broadcasting equipment to get in touch with Merkovah? Feels like I’m still too close to Harban, but damn, it is all right there.

Truth opened the door of the closed and was confronted by a giant deer head with glowing red eyes. He fought the urge to close the door again.

The demon was kneeling in front of the door. Its muscular human body was relaxed, but very proper. Properly what, Truth couldn’t say.

“Good morning,” said Truth.

“Good morning,” said the demon.

Truth grasped for some kind of conversational thread. “Did you need something from the closet?”

“No,” The voice was deep enough to vibrate the plaster on the wall a little, but with strange high notes woven into it. “It’s rude to refer to a person as a thing. So I was hoping to speak with someone from the closet.”

“Ah. And… you can see me, can you?”

The demon shook its head, careful to avoid banging their antlers into anything. “No, but I could sense the dominion you exert around yourself. And I could feel your soul tremble in the night. It was not hard to deduce that some manner of human had come to my little place.”

Truth didn’t know that was a thing that could happen. Alarming.

“Well. You were right. How may I help you?”

“On the contrary, it is I who wish to help you. Introductions are in order, I think. I am Verstan-Kung, head abbot of this little community, and guardian of this mountain before that.”

“Ah. I am… someone who’s name shouldn’t be loose on the wind. Perhaps you could call me…” he cast about for a moment. Nothing appealed. “Sailor?”

“I understand how these things can be. You are far from the first to visit this place in need of a quiet night.” The giant head bobbed. The antlers stopped a fraction of a centimeter from bashing into the wall.

“Sorry, would it be more convenient for you if we moved into the room, rather than standing in the doorway?”

“Oh, thoughtful of you. Yes, thank you.” They walked over the few steps, Truth to the middle of the now empty floor, the Abbot resuming his place on the dais.

“I honestly thought you were a statue when I walked through here last night.”

“Really? I must have been very focused.” The demon’s voice rumbled, sounding a little pleased.

“Sorry, this is going to bug me- you said you were the guardian of this mountain before you were an Abbot?”

“Mmm? Yes. Oh! I see. No, it wasn’t soil erosion, I’m not that old. No, an angel did it. They didn’t provide an explanation. One of those two-winged angels just turned up with a sword, lopped the top off, shaved down the sides, and kicked most of my mountain into the ocean, taking tens of thousands of lives in the process. One of those scrubby little messenger angels, but with angels…”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I understand. Totally. My condolences?”

“Thank you, it was very upsetting at the time, but I have had time to grieve. And to grow.”

Truth nodded, feeling a bit lost. “So. Abbot.”

“Yes?”

“I… don’t really know what your religion is. Or what you believe in.”

“We call ourselves the Fellowship of the Earth, because most of us are some manner of demon native to this planet. Grown from the earth, as it were. We do have some human members, but we are mostly demons. As for our beliefs, we don’t have many.”

The demon stopped talking. Apparently that explained everything.

“I’m sorry, my schooling was terrible. You are monks that don’t believe anything?”

“Perhaps it would be more clear to say that we don’t have faith in much of anything. Not to an absurd level. If I pick up a stone, I have every faith that it will fall when I drop it. But in supernatural things? Essentially none.”

Truth felt a gear slip in his mind. Which, given the events of the last week or so, left him with very few gears.

“You, the demon that lived on this mountain since before humans came to this world, who watched an angel commit mass murder for no explained reason and can apparently detect the way I distort reality around myself, do not believe in the supernatural.”

“Yes, that’s right.” The enormous head nodded.

“So… God?”

“Entirely natural. We don’t know much about him, but you can’t call him supernatural.”

“Well if God isn’t, then what is?”

“Thinking your prayers would move him. Or that he performs miracles. That our lives are controlled by forces beyond our knowing and our ability to comprehend.”

“You just told me-”

“An angel murdered my friends, family, everyone and everything I had ever known or loved, leaving just enough behind to ensure the loss hurt and remained fresh in my heart forever. For no reason that I have ever learned. Given that an angel did it, the reason certainly boils down to “it thought it was performing God’s will.”

The demon sounded like he was describing where the old vegetable patch used to be.

Truth sat on the floor on one of the little cushions. “Could you walk me through this? I am really having a hard time following you.”

“Certainly. I know exactly why all those people were murdered. It might not be a satisfying explanation, but I do have one. I know the sun rises and sets. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that it is the planet that moves and not that great one in the sky, but I did learn it eventually. It didn’t change the truth. The sun rises and sets every day. I just know more about how that happens now.”

“I think I see. You believe in the observable phenomenon of the world. But since you can’t observe the effects of prayer-”

“Outside of ritual magic, of course.” The Abbot added.

“Right, outside of ritual magic, you don’t believe it has any effect. Or rather, that it does not result in God taking direct action.”

“Exactly.”

“That is an interesting religion, right there.”

“Oldest on this planet. Though never popular, even amongst demons. It lacks a certain something, I’m told. A hook.”

“Ah. And the broadcasting set up?” Truth asked.

“There was a recent surge in interest. I do weekly sermons. I even have viewers from overseas.”

“Wow!”

“Yes. I remind myself often that pride must not become arrogance.”

“So… why do you want to help me?”

“Because I am the Abbot of this humble place, and before that, I was the failed guardian of this mountain. I do not wish to see another slaughter here, Holy Child. I do not wish to see my people harmed. So I will help you, in the hopes that you will spare this place.”

Truth paused. It was not a crazy reaction, now that he thought about it. The demon looked big, and was old, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was some immense power. At the very least, Incisive wasn’t pinging off of him. Giving the powerful, potentially murderous, stranger whatever he wanted in the hopes that he would go away made a depressing amount of sense.

“Holy Child?”

“Did you not know? Yes. You distort the world around you like those of the higher dimensions do, and even your soul thrummed with the ineffable mysteries of those lands. We call such a person a holy child. In my long life, you are only the third I have met.”

“What happened to the other two?”

“One decided that the best way to walk the road to divinity was to sit quietly in a little shack barely larger than his sitting form. He sat there and meditated. Eventually he stopped eating and drinking. He died during his meditation. We kept an eye on him for a few years, but he really was dead. He’s buried in his little shack. We kept the grave unmarked. He would have preferred it that way.” The Abbot’s voice was quite matter of fact.

Truth felt relieved. He had worried for a moment that “Holy Child” was the Demon’s way of saying “Cursed Murder-Beast.”

“And the second?”

“Stormed in here screaming that she would slaughter demons and behead devils, killed forty monks in as many breaths, two hundred lay brothers and sisters, four hundred and seven pilgrims, burned down every structure in the complex, smashed every statue, and was only eventually killed through the concerted effort of the remaining hundred monks. Of whom five survived. Myself included.”

There it was. Yes. That sounded more like it.

“Although not unscathed, as you can see.” The monk waved a hand over himself. Truth didn’t see the scars, but wasn’t going to argue about it.

“I can see how you would be concerned, yes.”

“So what is it you want, Holy one? How can this little monk help you?”

Truth laughed. It was soft, and even he could hear the bitterness in it.

“By being a monk? Oh, and a place where I could cast a communication ritual without being detected. But at the moment, I think you just being a monk is the best thing for me.”

Truth was quietly amused to see that a large, deer headed demon could look flummoxed. It didn’t cheer him up much, but it was something.

“I am always a monk. Could you perhaps elaborate on your need?”

“I don’t know. How’s your relationship with the nation of Jeon and Starbrite?”

“Excellent and horrible respectively. Which means, in practice, complicated and awkward, and horrible respectively.”

“So. Probably not wise to tell you anything I wouldn’t want to reach them?”

“I’m not going to volunteer anything, though yes, I will always act to protect my temple. By informing, or by withholding information. Whichever seems best.”

“Well. I need to call someone discreetly. I don’t think that’s going to raise too many eyebrows even if you wrote it on a note and handed it off to Internal Security. As long as you do so once I am days away, of course.”

The Abbot nodded understandingly. “That can be arranged. Fair to say I know these mountains and hills better than almost anybody. And the part about needing a monk?”

Truth sighed. “Tell me, Abbot, how do I live as a human? Because I don’t think I have ever seen it done before. Living like a human, I mean. I can’t stand how I’m living now. I can feel myself coming apart. If humans don’t know how to live like humans, maybe a demon does?”

The demon laughed, a harsh, braying, yet somehow kind, noise.

“Are you tired of living like a rat? But why? Humans are better at it than the rats!”