Truth woke feeling remarkably refreshed. He took a moment to savor the feeling, then another to savor the sectional sofa he was sprawled across. The microfiber fabric was really nice. Not fancy. Not terribly expensive. Just really nice under the hand. No bets on how well it would hold up to long-term use, but he’d chance a modest sum on it being very stain resistant. He stretched and flexed, running a quick internal inventory.

His spells were as they should be, filling his apertures nicely. The Meditations of Valentinian had expanded to a point of almost insane complexity, fractal in scope. Looking at it, Truth was quite certain that it would continue to expand and unfold even after he created his Nascent Soul. However that process went.

Incisive was similar. It looked like nothing much at a glance, but the longer you looked at it, the more complexities emerged. Truth tried to figure out how ‘reconciliation’ fit into the whole package, but it still just didn’t compute. He would ask Merkovah about it, but under the circumstances, that might be difficult.

Hmm. Siphios might have the best demonologists, but it’s not like Jeon didn’t have good ones. Might be worth keeping an eye out.

Cup and Knife remained its stubbornly impenetrable self. Now that he had used it extensively, he could really feel where it broke down. Although… was it a little less broken than he remembered?

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But I hardly used it yesterday. Like, less than ten times.>>

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It was running without me knowing it?!

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Truth directed his attention to the little ball of warmth that was Etenesh’s gift to him. He was never entirely clear on what it was doing. Hopefully making him a better person, but he kind of doubted it. At least he hadn’t hurt it any. He had been worried that might happen.

Is it… brighter?

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Because I was helping people?

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Truth looked at the flickering ball of flame, trying to guess what it meant. Maybe she reached Level Four?

<>

The little spark was glowing a brighter shade of gold than before. It really did warm him up. He tried pushing his love for Etenesh towards it. Nothing changed, but it felt kind of good to do. He imagined Etenesh was sitting inside the little fireball, really tried to visualize her, and spoke in his heart.

Thank you. For everything. Believing in me. That I can be more than a rat. That I was never a rat at all. Thank you for fighting for me. Thank you for thinking I am someone worth fighting for. Thank you for understanding that I’m a head full of busted talismans and bad coping mechanisms. Thank you for being patient. Thank you for being kind. Thank you for being.

He withdrew his consciousness from his soul. The sun was still up, but it was getting on towards evening. Looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

Truth dressed in his army uniform. He momentarily debated between the officer variant and the sergeant variant and opted for sergeant. Firstly, because he was planning on hitting some nightclubs and secondly, it just took so much less energy to run.

Out into the street and off to a grease trap sandwich shop. Once upon a time, heaps of cheap meat would be stewing in their own fat, just waiting to be ladled onto sandwiches. These days, it had all gone vegetarian. Just not the same.

“Hey, you guys see all the late night after-club crowd, right?”

“Sure.” The guy filling the sandwich kept his hands moving quickly. It was early yet.

“So I got two related questions. First, I’ve got a twenty four hour liberty. Where should I go party? Second question- where should I send my Lieutenant, who also has a twenty four hour liberty? Ideally so that he has an amazing time, thinks I’m a genius and doesn’t bust my balls when we are back on base?”

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That got a longer snort, and silence. Truth waited patiently. If nothing else, the sandwich looked okay, and the sauces were smelling great.

“You might try Elanes. Think they are still open. If not, you might need to make nice with your Lieutenant at Caoco. Not a lot of nightclubs still open.”

“Seriously? People got to relax, even if there is a war on.”

“Tell that to the cops. City is cracking down hard on late night shops. I had to shut down last night because of the air raid. Now they are telling me I have to be closed by Ten! TEN!”

“Damn. How’s a man supposed to make a living?” Truth shook his head in commiseration. He handed over his ration card then asked- “Where are those clubs?”

“Both of ‘em are on 3rd Avenue. Cacao is three blocks North of Borkcsh Square, Elanes’ is two south of it.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

“Thank me by buying more stuff.” The cook grumbled. Truth thought that was fair enough, and snagged a cookie and some chips to go with the sandwich. And a cold tea. He had slept through the hottest part of the day, but summer in Jeon was brutal. You needed something to take the edge off.

Truth walked over to Elanes. It was a blue collar joint- plastic chairs set out around low, mismatched tables. “Night club” was probably a stretch. “Bar that also had music and kind of a dance floor” was closer, but not really concise. “Meat market” would do. This was a place where people came alone, intending to leave in company.

Once he had Elanes scouted to his satisfaction, he walked up to Caoco. This was a much classier place, in that there was hardly any “there” at all. Just a big sign over a door, with a few overpriced bars around it. Fancier than Elanes, without actually being fancy. He waffled back and forth about whether he was excessively low-balling his target, but the happy proximity of the two clubs was too good to pass up.

He checked around the back, but there was nothing of interest. An alleyway, some dumpsters and trash cans. Nothing of note. No gang signs either, which was simultaneously encouraging and worrying. Even the nice clubs were run by gangs in Harban. Either that had changed, or they had gotten much more discreet here in Gamphe.

For some reason, that sounded wrong. He puzzled at the thought for a minute. Then a second minute. The realization bit like a spider.

Truth had completely forgotten what town he was in. He was no longer in Gamphe, right? Right. This was Confen. A town not too close or too far from Gamphe. The total number of nightclubs was going to be limited. The degree of gang member affiliation amongst the citizens would also be very limited.

There was a sudden sense of lightheadedness. He had been running for so long. Fighting for so long. Drifting through the people and places of this world for so long. He was starting to lose touch. Lose that sense of place and people.

He found a bench and sat hard. He was in Confen. North of Harban. Near Gamphe. Right now, he was sitting on a bench near the nightclub Caoco. It took him a while to settle down, but that was alright. He had some time to kill.

Night fell. Truth was bored, but didn’t stir. He had the irrational fear that if he got off the bench, the whole town of Confen would fly away into the night sky. Which would be quite something to watch, but he had spent all this time getting here and messing about here and he really didn’t want all that to be for nothing. So he would hold everything down, sitting on this bench.

Night came and with it the partiers. It was a pretty lackluster turnout. He didn’t know what day of the week it was. Apparently not a Friday. Quite possibly not even a Thursday. Everyone at the “nice” nightclub looked like ordinary folks to Truth. Young, mostly, including some who blatantly should have stayed home with the kids.

Was his whole plan here pointless? He had planned to use the pressure of the coming siege of Gamphe… wait. If this wasn’t Gamphe, what did it mean that there was an air raid just north of here? They were still pretty close to Gamphe, so the big defenses up there caught the attack, but… this was an ordinary town. And they were launching air raids. Committing significant amounts of firepower to the raid. Why? Just for the atrocity of it all?

There wasn’t anything special about this town. At least, no so far as he knew. Nothing that would justify the cost of the spellbirds and summons flung at the town. He thought back to what he heard in the Onis army camp. Onis wasn’t playing smart, on purpose. They were looking to drown Jeon in blood, and didn’t really care if it was their own.

Could it be as simple as that? They flung a major bombing raid at Confen purely as a reconnaissance in force of Jeon’s air defenses? It made an awful sort of logic, but there was a logic to it. Sooner or later, they would find a gap. Once they did, the red waters would burst through, soaking into the dirt.

The club was as hopping as it was going to get. Truth walked in, feeling a little shaky. The music was loud, pulsing, bone shaking, even though the dance floor was at best a third full. The bar was doing a steady business, though hardly straining on the bartenders, and the cocktail waitresses managed to look even more bored than usual. Which, in Truth’s experience, was actually something of a feat.

There was a “VIP Section,” sort of. It was just a cordoned-off corner with fancier banquettes, dancing spirits trapped in glass plinths, and its own special mood lighting. A sort of pale lavender color. Flattering on… someone, somewhere, presumably. Not on anyone there currently. It was easy to spot the Big Man. He was literally bigger than everyone else, considering the horizontal plane. It was him, some flunkies, and hangers-on to the flunkies. It was as perfectly pathetic as you could hope for.

He found one of the prettier cocktail waitresses and got her attention. He was the spitting image of a handsome young officer, so she was content to talk to him.

“I’m in town on a short liberty, and the brass is cracking down on disciplinary issues. Before I bring anyone else into the club, who’s Fatso in the corner? Anyone who might be a problem?”

“Him? No. That’s Verro Pashchen. His mom runs Passchen’s Wagon World out on Route Five. He’s rich by local standards, but really…” She and Truth shared a look. “No, the one you need to look out for is the lady in the leather jacket next to him. That’s Mira Paschen, his cousin. Verro is putting on the show to get in her good books. She’s the only person at that table with actual connections.”

“Oh? Who too?”

The woman in the leather jacket was pretty, but Truth had seen far prettier. There was a hardness to her face that wasn’t charming at all. And knew it. And didn’t care.

“Hard to say for sure, but at a guess? Internal Security.”

And just like that, his evening improved.