Truth walked down the road. Forty kilometers was a casual hour’s stroll, he wasn’t pushing the pace. He wanted to puzzle at Earth Folding Step a bit as he went.

Just how mentally diseased was this… Supreme Elder?

It was, he felt, a very fair question. Possibly the key question. His initial thought was that Earth Folding Step would work somewhat like what the Shattervoid did- step out of this side of reality, travel through that… other place… and step back in again. He had thought Merkovah was just being colorful or something with his description of folding up reality. Reality, in Truth’s experience, might be strained or torn, but it did not fold.

He should have known better. Merkovah might be a lot of things, but a bad teacher wasn’t one of them. The spell did exactly what he said it did- it scrunched up reality as you crossed over a specific point. A step was the easiest and most obvious example, but so long as you were in motion, it would work. You could do it in a vehicle, falling through the air, being carried along by a current. You just needed to cross over the fold.

Could he… send a spell over the fold? He wasn’t sure yet. For that matter, there was the whole “crossing over” thing itself. Would he be half in one place and half in the other if he stopped midway? What happened to things that were caught over the line when reality unfolded? How, exactly, did reality pinch itself into a crossable point for only him, but somehow, everyone and everything within that pinched space were utterly unaffected. Unaware, even? Which, of course, raised the central question-

Just how mentally diseased and just how brilliant was the creator to make it all work?

He and the system wrestled with it, letting the mountains slide past. Ignoring the heat, and the sticky humidity that was trapped in the valleys. It would be brutal further south. Summer in Jeon was no joke. Might not be Siphios hot, but he had always felt the heat had a sticky feeling here.

Summer- he felt like it coated you in mucus. First making your clothes stick, then whatever foulness was in the air. All the exhaled tobacco and drugs and diseases like floating curses, waiting for you to walk into them. Ready to wrap you in their second-hand misery.

Not for the first, or even five hundredth, time, he gave thanks for the Meditations of Valentinian, and all the fortuitous encounters that lead to him developing a sealed body. The summer could guide his choice of clothes, and nothing further. He was free to enjoy it as he wished.

Truth stopped a moment by the side of a stream running next to the road. Truth took off his already badly worn shoes and splashed his feet in the cold mountain water. No reason for it, other than it was a hot day and he could.

Was this what he wanted from his magic? To be unconstrained? His whole life had been bound up in little boxes of necessity- keep the sibs alive, study for the SAT’s, Work in the PMC, get the sibs set up for their careers, then WHOOPS! Dead in a well. Time for you to figure it all out. Pick a direction and ride.

It wasn’t that there were no urgent needs or no more desperate struggles to fight. He just had more choices now. He was looking beyond the tip of his nose and seeing the road ahead. Picking his destination.

One more head to collect. Many more would die along the way. Impossible to avoid. But he only needed just one more head. Then he could be quit of this world, either by retreating off of it with his loved ones, or sending them off and vanishing into the mountains. Both had their charms. In either case, he would be firmly telling the world to get bent. The illusions of the real were already weak enough. By the time he collected Starbrite’s head, he imagined he would see through them all. But that wasn’t the final head he needed.

King Rat. Truth smiled and watched the clear water spray as he kicked it up. King Rat, the cruel beast that lived in his head. That only felt safe when it controlled everything around him. That ate first. That cared only for its own power and authority. That could only measure its wellbeing by the suffering of others. That was the last head he needed to collect before he could be done with this world.

He laughed a little- tiny fish came up to nibble at his toes, hunting unsuccessfully for dead skin to eat. Sorry, little fish. You will have to keep looking for your meal. He sent his shoes off to his spatial ring. No sense in wearing them down any further. Not bothering to wipe the water off his feet, he once more set off down the road.

If the little village had a name, it wasn’t recorded on the road atlas, and he didn’t see any signs. There was a sign showing the way to the animal rescue and zoo. This village was as abandoned as the last, stripped bare by the fleeing denizens. It was far too small and poor to have any citizens. Truth frowned. Would they have thought to release the zoo animals? Hopefully they wouldn’t have slaughtered them for food, but with meat being so expensive these days…

He followed the signs. Just to check. The “Zoo” was a sad little thing. Mostly wire fences and wire cages, with a few cobbled together sheds attached. There was a tiny shack with a little covered porch just next to it. To Truth’s mild shock, there was an old man tending the cages, tossing fresh cut grass to some earless goats. There appeared to be insects for the birds to eat too.

“Senior, why are you still here? Everyone else has fled south.” He asked. The elder nearly collapsed from shock, clutching his chest.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“WHERE in the name of almighty PRAEGER AND HIS SAINTS did you come from? I didn’t hear your chariot pull up or anything!” The old man managed to forcefully wheeze.

“Ah. Yes. Sorry. I move very quietly. At this point, it’s just how I am. Actually, I’m sort of happy to see you here- I was worried no one was feeding the animals. Or had eaten them.”

“Hmph. They tried. Repeatedly. I kept them up in the mountains aways. I have a few secret places.” Truth couldn't help but think the old man looked like a bundle of sticks shoved into worn out clothes. Despite looking like he would blow away in a mild breeze, the elder stood square in front of his charges, fists balled up. “You can’t have them either.”

Truth raised his hands. “I’m fed enough, Senior. I’m here to help if I can.”

“Not much you can do. Not much anyone can do, I’m afraid.” The old timer sighed. There was pain there. Truth could see it in his face, in the way he moved. Old pain, and growing worse.

“You could take them back up into the mountains and turn them loose. They can have some sort of life that way.”

“Wish I could. Already did that with most of the birds. It’s the others. Here, let me introduce you to someone.” The old man walked slowly to a glass sided box left in a sunny spot. Well ventilated, but it must still be quite hot. He carefully reached in and fished out a snake the length of his arm. Handsome fellow, light tan and dappled white, with a blunted triangle for a head.

“This is Perks. He’s a Perkach Rat Snake. Called that because the breed is from Perkach and they feed on rats. Mildly venomous, but really, I’d let kids play with him. No danger to anyone, so long as he’s not abused.”

Truth nodded at the snake, feeling a sense of kinship. Incisive was a little weird that way.

“Want to hold him?”

“Sure. So what’s the problem? Lots for him to eat here.”

“The problem is that he is from Perkach. Or, well, his breed is, some breeder raised him here in Jeon, sold him to someone who wanted an exotic pet, and then the buyer decided that feeding dead mice to their pet snake was a bit icky, actually, and they dumped him off on us.”

“Alright?”

“Not big on geography, are you.”

“The Army did its best, but it was starting from a low place.”

That got a snort from the old man. “I know what that’s like. Perkach is a hot, dry country. Mountains of Jeon is what you would generally call cold and wet. Not too bad now, of course, plenty warm enough in the summer, but winter would kill him. Same with the goats.”

The old man pointed at the disreputable looking animals. All black heads, no visible ears and alarmingly swollen udders swinging below their bellies. “They are bred for warm grasslands, not the mountains. Young Hal thought he could make goat-milk soaps, earn a little extra money, so he bought ‘em off a farmer.”

The old man shook his head.

“Couldn’t make a go of it?”

“Died. Drunk driving accident. Nobody wanted to look after ‘em so they came to me.”

“Damn. Hard thing.”

“Common enough. Hurts, in a small place like this, but it’s so ordinary it’d make you sick.”

Truth sighed with the old man.

“So what are you going to do?”

“What can I do? I’m turning loose, or have turned loose, all the ones that can make their own way in the wild. The rest… I’ll look after them as long as I can. Sooner or later, probably sooner, they’ll die or I’ll die.”

Truth nodded at that. He could see the old man’s perspective. He was a denizen, and a dying one. There was no future for him if he evacuated. There was no future here. These animals would have the same ending regardless of what he did. So why not spend his last breaths doing this? At least he would feel useful.

He looked down at the snake twisting around his arm. “I’m headed south, Senior. There is nowhere in Jeon that is hot and dry year round, but I can probably find Perks a better home than these mountains.”

“Eh? Can you even afford to feed him? He needs to be fed a mouse a week. Two weeks if he’s hibernating.”

Truth laughed quietly. “I think I can manage that.”

The old man frowned. “You aren’t trying to humor me are you? I’ve seen it before. People adopt an animal and then can’t stick with it.”

“I’m not promising to keep him forever. Just find him a better, warmer place to live.”

The old man thought about it, then sighed. A somewhat defeated sound. “Usually I charge a fee for adoptions, but under the circumstances- take him. I’ll even throw in his cage. Be sure and change the bedding at least once a month.”

“I’ll do that.” Truth smiled. He picked up the plastic box. It was lined with sawdust, with a few branches and a fist sized rock for decoration.

“Senior? It matters.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“What you are doing? It matters as much as anything else. Even if other people don’t understand or appreciate it, I do.”

“Well. Thank you?” The old man coughed, the sound getting worse and wetter as it went on. “Go. I’m about talked out.”

“Alright. Thank you for introducing me to Perks. By the way, did you know you have a sack of rice on your porch? Better keep it out of the rain.”

The old man turned to look, but the youngster had vanished. Sitting on his porch was a twenty kilo sack of rice. He looked around. No carriage. No sounds of rushing wheels. The youngster certainly wasn’t carrying sacks of rice with him.

The old man slowly pressed his hands together and gave thanks. He didn’t know who he owed his thanks to, but he gave it anyway.