Truth found the building quite easily, but rather than storm through the back door, he went around the front. He wanted to see just what the place was. It was… nothing. A six story concrete box that took up a third of the block by itself. It had a front door with no markings, a small wagon loading dock which only had the usual safety markings, and that was it. There were a few indiscreet recording talismans arranged around the building, but that was standard everywhere in Jeon.
It had windows, mirrored from the outside, and sealed. Quite standard too. There was absolutely nothing about it to arouse the slightest interest. The rest of the block was taken up by two more buildings exactly like it.
“You are sure?”
“Absolutely certain. I am positively salivating.”
Truth hesitated a minute. “Do birds even have saliva?”
“Oh yes. Just not very much of it, and it’s mostly used for lubrication. I was being figurative.”
“Right, right.” Truth shook his head and tested the door. Locked. The lock was made by a Starbrite subsidiary. At this point, Truth could blow through them faster than most people could fish out their amulet and unlock them normally.
Once inside, he could hear the sound of a factory in action. No stairs downward. He walked towards the noise. The room was baking hot, stinking, sweaty. All the windows were sealed shut, and no ventilation pipes had been run. No air conditioning talismans installed. Instead there were rows on rows of tiny tables stacked high with cut cloth. Children, the youngest probably about twelve or so, sat and stitched.
Truth could see the little paper glyphs stuck on their foreheads. A simple little spell- get the cloth, stitch, put it in the big wheeled bin. Repeat until you are done. No other thoughts. Nothing else existed. Just sit and stitch, for as long as your body holds out.
Thin fingers, stitch, stitch, stitching the olive drab cloth. Trousers, he thought. Not actually military, but they had something of the look. Their hands moved steadily, the stitches as perfectly even as their fatiguing muscles could manage. Their eyes were red. Bloodshot. Weeping. Truth thought that they were in pain, but no- everyone in the room blinked once, simultaneously.
One blink a minute. They could suffer when their shift was over. Right now, they were on the clock. Understanding how much they were hurting wouldn’t help productivity.
The stitched trousers went into enormous tubs on wheels that were pushed by some of the bigger kids along the rows of tables. They looked heavy, Truth thought. A few hundred pairs of heavy weight cotton trousers? The weight would add up.
The tub-pushers had a little paper glyph stuck to their foreheads too. You could see the spots on the floor where their bare feet would land every time. Wearing away the painted concrete. Wearing away the feet. Arms shaking, backs shaking, legs shaking, as they pushed the carts with golem regularity.
What do you do when magic gets expensive and unreliable? Start replacing parts. Phase out as much magic as you can. Use the cheapest and simplest magical devices you can, then find ways to adapt existing systems to new conditions.
Truth could see where things had been ripped out. Golems would have done this work, once, or specialized summons. Expensive, but it was an old technology. Once it was set up, the maintenance costs would have been fairly small. One competent maintenance tech, with maybe a couple of trained assistants, probably would have been enough to keep the whole building up and running.
Now though? Those expensive golems, if they still worked, would have been shifted over to military production. Maybe they were just sold, as the owner saw what was coming and wanted to get ahead of the curve.
The little hands moved quickly. No need for a rest. Truth wondered if they even took a lunch. He followed the tubs out of the room through swinging double doors. More kids, this time with hand punches, added buttons and decorative rivets to the trousers.
Back into the tubs, and onto the station where they stitched in zippers. Then off to a room where more kids mindlessly ran them through steam presses and never minded how you could barely see in the room for all the humidity. He watched a child collapse, seizing on the floor. One of the tub pushers stopped and picked him up, put him in the tub, and started wheeling him towards the door.
Alright, that about does it. Truth nipped over and cast Cup and Knife. There was… so much to heal there. He didn’t let the spell finish, though. He just held the corruption steady with his mind.
This would need a lot of fixing. Not the kids, they could be healed easily enough. Physically, anyway. The ones who still lived. The whole situation was more than just bad- it was structurally bad. This wasn’t thoughtless cruelty. He had a very unpleasant feeling about how this was going to go.
Thrush flapped on, leading Truth deeper into the building. Floor after floor of kids cranking out clothes. Cutting fabric, stitching it, pressing it, sewing buttons, sewing labels. All in airless rooms. All with those little glyphs stuck to their heads. One blink a minute.
Truth felt a strange disorientation watching them. This hadn’t been a job available to him. At least in the Harban Slums, when he was their age, these factories were still golem-driven. But if it was what he had to do to feed the sibs, he might have done it. If the pay was steady, and if he could figure out a way to work studying into it.
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But these kids weren’t going to school, were they? It was this, ten, twelve, sixteen hours a day. Rent and meals deducted from your wages, of course, and where do you think refugee denizens can run, exactly? You want to work, right? Get your little ration stamps on your arm? No food for work-shy parasites.
There was no better future for these kids. This was the future for other kids. It was just logical. Practical, even. A regrettable necessity. It was foolish to worry about education- almost everything they could learn would be worthless this time next year. History? Would be obliterated. Art? A frippery.
Natural philosophy would still have some use, as would mathematics and arithmetic. Still, those subjects, like reading, were best reserved for people of a certain class and standing. People used to thinking long term, and in the public interest. The best sort of people. Aristocrats, even if now it was an aristocracy of inherited wealth instead of royal patronage.
He found the office up on the sixth floor. It was basically a little box, covered in mirrors and wax tablets so the man at the desk could track production and keep an eye on the recording talismans. There was an air conditioner built into the wall. A big insulated bottle on the desk.
The man wore a neat white shirt, freshly ironed, though short sleeved and loose fitting. The trousers were tan, creased, immaculate, and also rather light looking. He had a few gold rings, or more likely gilt, and a neatly combed head of hair.
There was no turmoil in his eyes. His mouth was firm, serious, but not grim. He wasn’t sweating. He wasn’t suffering.
“Who owns this company?” Truth asked.
“WOAH! How the HELL did you get-”
Truth released a fraction of his killing intent, pinning the man to the chair. Truth sat across the desk from him, waiting.
“It. Um. Crast Fast Casual Manufacturing LLC-”
“Which is owned by?”
“Wendle and Ruck Holdings-”
“Which is owned by?”
“I don’t know.” The man had soaked his shirt. His eyes darted everywhere around the room.
“Yes. You do.”
“No, really, I think it’s lawyers-”
“Have you noticed that I haven’t asked who you are? Or what your role here is? Or why you are doing any of this?”
The man gawped at Truth. The pressure was bearing down on him, pressing on him in ways he didn’t understand. He could feel fangs pressed against his neck and a blade at his back. He knew he would die if he didn’t answer properly.
“I… I…”
“I didn’t ask, because it doesn’t matter. You are a component. A tool. A means of production, like a needle or a steam press. And I want to know who your owner is. Now. One last time. Who owns this company?”
“Clan… Clan Sung. Sung Sahni inspects every three months.” Truth nodded slowly at that. Clan Sung… it used to be a top ten or so clan. Might even have a history as long as the country, though he wasn’t sure on the details. No idea who Sung Sahni was. Probably a main line kid with limited prospects, if they were overseeing this place.
Truth nodded at that. “Where do the kids sleep?”
“They don’t. When they get worn out, we load ‘em into a van and ship them over to Varches.”
“Varches Nutrition Solutions?”
“Yes they send a van.” Truth could see the manager’s eyes turning bloodshot. He wasn’t holding up well. Not that he would have to endure this for much longer.
“Also a Sung company?”
“I… I think so!”
Was he done here? For the moment, maybe. He cast Cup and Knife, pouring it into the kids in the building below. Dispelling the glyphs, healing their sickly bodies. They were only Level Zero kids. Before the power of the magic within him, it was as effortless as waving away smoke. He added the enormous ball of pain and horror to what he had already collected.
“You know, even without the compulsions, a lot of those kids would actually volunteer to work here. Even knowing the conditions, they would do it. You haven’t been really hungry. You don’t understand. No parents to rely on, everywhere seems dangerous, you do the math real fast. You figure out what you can stand in order to survive just one more day.”
He could feel the wrongness of it all building and compounding, twisting and sickening the air around it.
“And here you are- another disposable product of the same forces that made those disposable kids, as clueless about how you got here and why this is all happening as they are. An enlightened person might feel pity for you, or at least compassion.”
Truth looked calmly in the hyperventilating man’s face.
“I just see another cannibal rat. And I don’t want you in my future.”
Truth slammed the ball of pain and corruption into the overseer. The man’s last few moments of existence were spent as a boiling pod of lactic acid, puss, bile and despair, with just enough consciousness to feel utter terror and soul crushing pain. Truth lept to the back of the room before the liquified remainders reached the chair where he had been sitting.
Thrush swooped in shrieking joyfully “Master is kind!”
“Eat your fill. Take your time. I’ll just leave a quick note here.” Truth stuck his finger into the cement wall and wrote- “The Prince Claims Hell’s Due. Parasites and Cannibals Beware The Tiger’s Bite!”
It was lacking a certain something, but it would do for now. Truth watched Thrush eat up all the horror and vileness, in seeming joy. Truth slowly nodded. It might not lead him directly to Starbrite, but those old clans and families would certainly know a lot more than he did about King Rat. They would be a decent place to start changing the world too.
He had been blessed by his Rough Patron, Botis, Manda, and now the teachings of that ancient magus who had penned Earth Folding Step. Baptized by the Silent Forest, The Brass Sea and the Ghul. He could feel his soul slowly taking shape, firming around a body eternally perfecting itself under the guidance of Valentinian.
He was ready to be done with quite a lot of nonsense. This slaughterhouse would be a good place to start.