Truth wasn’t quite sure how to handle this matter. On the one hand, he had the overwhelming urge to slap this banal monster to death. On the other hand, she wasn’t a monster. She was just banal. He’d have to slap the whole city to death. Which was tempting, but probably unwise.

Probably. He could see the sacrificed man in front of him now. The expression on his face was… hard to read. Numb with terror, maybe, or confused by the noise and the pain to the point where he lost track of what he knew was coming. The pain distorting his face as they hauled the rope up covered any other expressions.

Truth wondered if there wasn’t a moment of realization as he was yanked above the mob. An instant understanding of what was happening and how this was going to end. Maybe it was all lost in pain and animal panic. Did he see the fevered looks on his neighbors’ faces? The frenzied self righteousness of it all? The hate, with that inescapable undercurrent of fear? Maybe. Maybe not. Truth weighed which option was kinder or better, and quickly stopped. Those words simply did not apply to any portion of this.

Silly to even think of. He just… he couldn’t escape the man’s eyes. Something about the scene paralyzed him as much as the man. He just stood there, watching this awful thing. He didn’t have any reason to intervene. It would be foolish to intervene. The whole thing was none of his business. But those eyes, and the faces of those ‘solid citizens.’ The joy of this… woman… at cutting off a prime piece of her old acquaintance. Sacrificing him for all kinds of reasons but ultimately, she just wanted to feel safe.

It was that simple. The world is so big. Forces we cannot see or understand keep shaping our lives in increasingly awful ways. People just want to feel safe. They want to feel like they aren’t powerless. Ratchet the anxiety and fear high enough, and that desire for security becomes a determination to find safety at any cost. Naturally, that had to include safety from any feelings of guilt or remorse over doing whatever it was they wound up doing.

“Sorry, do you have a napkin or cleaning charm or something? I know it’s lucky but,” the lady waved a bloody hand in front of her chest. “New dress. Trying to keep it fresh, because of the rationing. Who knows when I can get a new one?”

Truth walked through the city in something of a daze. Haunted by those eyes. Haunted by the forced cheer of the woman. Rats eating each other, but instead of individual predation, it was now neighborhoods turning on their own.

Was this a microcosm of the war between Onis and Jeon? As below, so above? “I need to feel safe, so you need to pay the price. And how dare you try and make me feel bad about that!”

Dying must be easy because life is hard.

<>

Something I heard somewhere.

<>

Oh?

Truth let silence pool within him. He walked the city, drifting through the neighborhoods. No more impromptu sacrificial rites. Lots of people queuing up for their rations of grain, of vegetables, of boots. The tension between the Runchon that wanted to be a tourist city and the Runchon that wanted to be a port city were plainly spelled out in the architecture.

One side of the city was low slung cinder block buildings and soaring warehouses. The other was slab-like resort hotels, backed by the tiny, perpetually shadowed small homes and low-rise apartments of the locals. They weren’t even particularly bad homes. They were just small. And dark. Always looking up at people living above them.

He wondered how many of them would be habitable in six months. It was hot now, but Jeon winters were no joke. How were they going to live with no heat? Five months. Maybe not even. There was something in the air. Whatever steps people were taking to slow the decline of magic weren’t working. He drew in a long breath through his nose. Yeah. Bad night to be on the street. He could feel the weather changing.

Internal Security wasn’t particularly hard to find. Their field office was, as per usual, in the local police headquarters. So much more convenient to mobilize local law enforcement for support that way. Also, it saved on expenses building or leasing an office. No bureaucrat would miss the opportunity to shift the cost of the office space from their budget to anothers.

Short building, gray concrete, boxy. If you have seen one cop shop, you have seen them all. The front door, as tradition demanded, was wide open. The actual entrance, the one used by the police and their involuntary guests, was a heavily armored shutter that sealed off an underground garage. This was considered the orthodox arrangement in Jeon, nicely balancing practicality, tradition and public education.

The whole thing was just coated in recording talismans, wards, banishments, counter surveillance wards, and (interesting one for him) structural reinforcement wards. He checked the latter out of curiosity, as they were plainly commercial grade as opposed to governmental.

He laughed quietly. The wards were tuned to repel wind and water. They were rolling into monsoon and typhoon season, weren’t they? Actually… they were already solidly into it. This was unseasonably dry. Hmm. Maybe there really would be a change in weather tonight.

He lightly jumped up, grabbed a third story window frame, then without slowing down, launched himself up to the roof. He frowned. Less rooftop access than he thought. It was a police headquarters but clearly one that didn’t see a lot of airborne traffic. A couple flying platforms were parked on the roof, activation talismans removed and presumably stored inside the station. There was a door leading into the building and that was about it.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Ignoring the nigh-literal forest of surveillance talismans, he was mildly alarmed to notice anti-personnel mines. There were also a number of powerful anti-glamour wards as well. Made sense. Last thing you would want is someone droned or enthralled making their way inside.

Truth nodded approvingly at the wards as he walked past them. Level Two power wards were more than decent by most standards. Most. Internal Security would have more robust protection.

Annoyingly, the lock on the door was considerably better than average. And not a Starbrite lock. It took minutes to crack. He felt obscurely offended. It became a particularly petty insult in his heart. Snorting, he opened the door and went down the halls. He took a moment to change into the uniform of an Army officer. Every little bit helps, and the cover would reduce the drain on his cosmic energy.

To his increasing irritation, Internal Security was set in the big corner office taking up a quarter of the top floor. Cops had to love that. Having the Captain’s office on the opposite corner of the building was doubtless a coincidence. As was the IS office occupying the southern, luckiest, corner, and the Captain having the unluckiest north.

IS loved games like that. Getting in your head with a thousand petty tricks so you were defeated before they even laid hands on you. Funny. With all the nightmare stories you hear about IS, the office looks very ordinary. Armored, enchanted, steel door, naturally. Along with Level Three power wards. Truth nodded lightly. They wouldn’t be doing any interrogation here. They would use the cells below, or specialist facilities off site.

Now, he could spend ages circumventing the complicated, multilayered defenses of this door… or he could make IS open the door for him. He knocked twice, firmly, and stepped back.

There was no answer. He knocked again. No answer. There weren’t any windows in the door, understandably. Although he was quite certain that he was being observed through the recording talismans. He knocked again. “I can, and will, do this all day.”

He knocked again. Waited nineteen seconds. Knocked. Twenty seconds. Knocked. Fifteen seconds. Knocked. Twenty seconds. Knocked. Each time varying the number or strength of the knocks.

Eventually the door was torn open by a furious office lady. “You really don’t know how ‘death’ is spelled, do you?!”

“My education was pretty lacking.”

“No problem! I know some excellent teachers. Follow me, I’ll take you straight to the classroom.” She snarled.

“Would that I could. I have an appointment with Colonel Eskevan Cho. He should be expecting me.”

“Like hell he is! You aren’t in the book.” She wasn’t bothering to conceal her reaching for a paralyzing wand at the small of her back.

“Yes I am. I was specifically told to come here. Let me prove my words. Inform the Colonel that I’m here.” He watched the light switch off behind her eyes. His smile was cold. Seemed he was right. Lots and lots of those worms floating around.

“Oi. Spiritual Worm Number Whatever. Go tell the Colonel that To Whom It May Concern is here.”

“I cannot take orders from a civilian.” A wispy, neutral voice came from the officer’s mouth. It didn’t sound the same as the worm in Confen. Interesting.

“Alright, well. You do you then?”

There was no reply. He wasn’t really sure what he was expecting anyhow. He pushed past the suddenly brainless IS agent and walked into the office. The office continued the trend of being straight out of a catalog for government agencies who haven’t had a new furniture budget in living memory. He was pretty sure most of the desks here were older than his Dad. They were certainly older than he was.

None of the offices had name plates on them. A security feature he had seen before, and didn’t like it then either. Sighing, he checked the office kitchen. It was a sink with a hot box and some sort of automated device for making coffee. He could figure out how to work it, given enough time, but all the coffee smelled terrible. He wasn’t that motivated.

Girding his metaphorical loins, he went forth, peeking into offices. Many were locked, with decent locks. He skipped over them, aiming for the low hanging fruit first. Mercifully, there were name plaques on the desk. By some even greater mercy, Colonel Eskevan Cho was in.

He was slim. A little shorter than average, but not by much. Black hair, black eyes, looked like he looked after himself but wasn’t dumping a ton into cosmetic glamorous. You wouldn’t look twice at him on the subway. You hardly looked twice at him in his uniform, sitting behind a desk with a plaque on it reading Colonel Eskevan Cho.

Truth wasn’t so bigoted that he couldn’t admit to being impressed. The man seemed ferociously good at being a secret policeman. He sat in the visitor’s chair for a while, watching him. He seemed to be reading documents, then jotting down notes. Truth peeked over. Reports about suspected saboteurs, political unreliables and those who’s graft was greater than the bribes they paid.

Basically what he expected. Truth sat back down again.

“When did the mob sacrifices begin?”

“Who the Hell?” Cho whipped around, needer in hand, shield charm activating. Truth didn’t move. The Colonel was Level Four, but older. His looks were cosmetic. He had cultivated the hard way. IS didn’t supply their people with elixirs the way Starbrite PMC did.

“When did the mob sacrifices begin? And who signed off on it? It has to be terrible for morale and the government’s prestige.”

The Colonel trained his needler on Truth for a long minute, then sighed, putting it down. The shield charm would run until the spell ran out, but neither of them minded about that.

“I suppose you need no introduction. Might as well jump straight into the conversation.” Cho muttered.

“I don’t? You realize that everything you know about me is propaganda put out by at least three forces, right?”

Cho snorted. “Oh, we know more about you than that.”

“Really? Who am I then?”

That got him a filthy look. “Cute.”

“You called this meeting Colonel. I’m just trying to make good use of it.”

“By asking about people chopping up their neighbors for sacrifices?”

“Yep.”

“Well. It’s related to why I called you here, actually.”

“Oh? Now I really am curious.” Truth smiled politely.

“I know one very interesting thing about you. I, and a very select group of others.” Cho smiled. A professional cop smile. It did not put Truth at ease. “I know you rescued the Shattervoid girl. Which means you have ten thousand tickets off this rock. So I, and my extremely wealthy, powerful, connected friends, want to know- How much are you selling the seats for?”