Truth kept an eye on Thrush. There didn’t seem to be any particularly dramatic changes going on, but he could feel a sort of whispering, a sense of pieces shifting slightly. The little black bird was drawing the mass of gore and corruption into itself, seemingly shivering in pleasure.

What the hell am I going to do with all the kids? Truth tapped his fingers on his leg, trying to think it through.

<>

Truth tried to puzzle it out. The kids run out into the street, and go… where, exactly? They don’t have homes, they are refugees. Go to the cops? Ahahahaha. No. But say they did- what would they tell the cops, exactly?

“They worked us until we dropped! We died in there!”

“Mmm. I will be sure to visit the Sung family. Definitely a fine to collect there.”

“Fine? They were killing us. This is murder?”

“I’m arresting you for slander and defamation of a high-tier citizen! How dare you accuse the honorable Sung Clan of murder! You can look forward to a lifetime of hard labor on the chain gang, assuming we don’t need you for mine sweeping duty.”

“We were droned and forced to work until we died, how is that not murder?”

“At most, it was an unsafe work environment. Completely different thing. Don’t worry. You will have plenty of time to learn the difference in prison. Not that you will have much time indoors, what with the hard labor and mine sweeping.”

Well, that was the cops. What if they went to the public? Ran down the street, screaming “The Sung Clan is murdering us, the Sung Clan works children to death!”

People would turn away. They would call the cops and demand that they do something about these filthy denizen urchins running up and down the street, screaming nonsense.

There was no safe place he could take them. Even if he emptied out all the stored food in his ring, he couldn’t feed all of them for more than a day or two. When you got right down to it, he wasn’t even sure that what the Sung Clan was doing was illegal. Wartime necessity, dispensation for operating in a city soon to be under siege, changes in the minimum safe working conditions for Denizens if any existed, special incentives for employing refugees…

Some morbid part of Truth’s mind wondered if they got a tax credit for providing children with job opportunities. Probably. There was some pathetic part of people that would rather have a million wen tax free than five million wen taxed at twenty percent. The Sung Clan had the clout to not let their dreams stay dreams.

He couldn’t save these kids. There was no safe place in Jeon. No safe place anywhere, really. Even if he got them on a spellbird and flew them Straight to Siphios, what would Siphios do with them?

“Oh you poor homeless orphans from a country we hate with every single shred of matter and spirit in our bodies, let us get you some foster families, teach you a brand new language, and oh whoops the apocalypse all the grownups are dead, good luck!”

“And it would be the same but worse when I empty out that slaughterhouse, of course. All that information must be suppressed. Damaging to wartime morale, quite possibly a capital offense, depending on how they are writing the law now. Defamation, naturally. Truth is no defense there. Mmm… attempting to sabotage a key army supplier too, I bet. And naturally any reports of cannibalism are transparent black propaganda.”

“This is why you need Hell.” Thrush’s voice, already rich and deep, seemed to have smoothed and mellowed even further. Not seductive in the romantic sense, but in the charismatic- this was a voice that was making the right calls and telling it like it is.

“I need Hell.”

“Yes, Master. You, and everyone else.”

“As a deterrent?”

Thrush laughed, a warm and comfortable sound, like the first puff of opium spreading into your lungs. “Of course not! When has the notion of damnation ever stopped a sin? No, it is necessary because of sin’s inevitability. The corruption of this world, of all mortal worlds, is an indelible part of it. You will sin. Do you wish to spend eternity mired in that pain and corruption? Or do you wish to be free of it?”

“And welcome the “warm” embrace of Hell?”

“None warmer.” Thrush had the decency to chuckle at that. “I have completed my evolution, Dread Magus. I am once again at your complete disposal.”

“Any significant changes I should be aware of?”

“I am as I ever was, simply more so. Our cultivation is quite unlike yours. Indeed, you would be wrong to think of it as cultivation at all.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Oh? How so?”

“You steal from the world and make your own mockery of the heavens within you. I have… perhaps the best way to think of it is that I have been given a greater grant of authority and responsibility. To assume that responsibility, I needed materials. Hence gathering corruption here.”

Truth got to his feet. “A greater grant of authority? Who from? And why?”

“Ultimately, the ruler I obey, that great eminence Caym, passed through several intermediaries. As for why? Like your snake, or some other natural demon- because I have experienced enough things that I can now be fractionally more useful. My reality is reinforced, and my nature has been adjusted and expanded to contain more power. I can serve you far better now.”

It didn’t take much reflection to see the way Thrush was dancing around the details. “Any reason you are being even more evasive than usual?”

The little bird ducked its beak under its wing for a moment, seemingly sorting out the oily-black feathers. “I suppose it’s because I am newly promoted. My usual instincts are running a bit wild.”

Truth left the building. He didn’t speak to any of the children, offered no advice, didn’t even tell them to run. He had no answers for them. All he could do was try and reduce their future problems. Starting with a certain food processing company.

He walked through the doors of Varches Nutrient Solutions in a storm of emotions. He hated leaving the kids at the sweatshop. It felt wrong, even if he couldn’t think of what a right answer might be. He walked into the food processing plant, expecting some gorey scene, but to his quiet amazement, it was rather peaceful. Busy, certainly, but orderly, with the loudest noises coming from the rollers carrying products along the assembly line.

The building was long and tall, but mostly empty. The roof was bare metal, uninsulated, twenty meters overhead. Snaking the length of the building (Truth really couldn’t estimate quite how long, it seemed to keep on stretching backwards) was the assembly line. Large boxy devices were stationed along belts of metal mesh or rolling steel cylinders, moving product along from its raw state through to packaging, then boxed for shipping. This particular line seemed to be preparing eggplant cutlets.

Blank eyed women picked plump, round eggplants, the largest Truth had ever seen, from plastic cartons. Each eggplant was jammed onto a spike, right through the bottom. Two rows of four. Once the eggplants were in place, the workers took one step back. The eggplants spun on their spikes, as tiny knives descended and swiftly peeled the skin from them. The skins fell onto a metal chute and slid into another cart.

The peeled eggplants got a final chop, removing both ends, then the knives lifted back up and the rotation stopped. The women stepped forward again, lifted the eggplants off their spikes and put them on the conveyor belt. Truth looked around. There were other people walking around the factory, but from what he could see, only the women worked on the line.

He followed a load of eggplants. The conveyor took them up to a covered box, where the high-pitch whine of band saws suggested strongly why flat slabs of eggplant came out the other side of the box. The conveyor belt rolled along to a chute where the cutlets were dusted in flour, a few feet later a paddle flipped them, they were dusted again, the conveyor belt dipped into a yellowy liquid egg trough, rose up again, was dusted in breadcrumbs, flipped, dusted again, delivered into a frying vat, hauled through the fryer on the metal-mesh conveyor, raised up again, blasted with hot air from carefully located fetishes, then flash frozen by yet more fetishes.

At the end of it all, they were dumped into plastic lined cardboard boxes, sealed with tape, and whisked away by the conveyor into a refrigerated room. The packaging was slick, high end. These weren’t ordinary fried cutlets- they were classy.

He felt no urge whatsoever to snag a couple boxes for storage. He knew what else ran on these lines.

It was a couple of rooms over. Droned workers, glyphs stuck to their foreheads, pushed slabs of deboned meat through industrial grinders. The meat looked horribly wrong- gray and stringy. He realized it had already been cooked somehow. Boiled then shredded off the bone? Steam blasts? He wasn’t really that curious. The process was actually much simpler than with the eggplants.

The ground meat was mixed with some ground grain, or perhaps bean flour he couldn’t tell, pressed into logs, stuffed into casings, flattened, flash-boiled, chopped into individually sealed bars, and dumped into far more industrial looking boxes. VNS Emergency Rations, NOT FOR RESALE, GOVERNMENT USE ONLY, DENIZEN/REFUGEE/LIVESTOCK USE ONLY

Then, in a different font and smaller letters: Varches Nutrient Solutions. A Family Company.

Truth nodded. Sounded right.

He found the factory supervisors office.

“Is this factory overseen by Sung Sahni?”

“WOAH! Where the hell did you-”

Truth gave him a calm look. The pre-knowledge of death wrapped around the supervisor, as he slowly collapsed back into his seat.

“Is this factory overseen by Sung Sahni?”

“Yes. Yes. This is a Sung Clan Company. I. I am a servant of the Sung Clan. Protected by the Sung Clan!”

“When does Sung Sahni come by?”

“Once a month, usually. Sometimes more often if there is big business or a photoshoot or something.”

“Will she come if you call?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Tell her it’s urgent. Tell her that some government inspectors are here. They know about the kids in the sweatshop. They want a bigger bribe than you can give them, and look like they are trying to throw their weight around. You need her to come down and take charge. Sending a servant won’t do it. Can you do that?”

“Yes. Yes. I will do that. I will.”

“Good. You won’t see me, but I will be here. Watching and listening to everything. Do anything other than what I told you, and your death will be remembered for its horror and humiliation.”

Truth sat back in the chair, letting his presence vanish from the world. Wishing he could let his thoughts and emotions fly away with it. He could feel a raging blackness in him. The sheer stupid helplessness of his situation making him want to lash out, making him want to kill everyone as ugly as possible.

See! See! I’m not powerless! I can change things.

I can kill you. And I can make it hurt. I can make you scared while you die.

Maybe I can’t make things better. But for you, I can make them much, much worse.

When you are dead, things may still be terrible, but it will be a terrible world without you in it. And that will have to be good enough for now.