Truth slowly opened his eyes. He was staring at the smudged interior of the luggage compartment. The packs weren’t very comfortable. How strange. When he crawled in here before, it was like falling asleep on angel feathers and lullabies. Could it have been the crippling exhaustion?

He contemplated the myriad mysteries concealed in the scrapes on the ceiling. No. No, it had to be evil wizards that cursed the packs into lumpy unpleasantness. He could recognize the efforts of his own kind. This had the exquisite level of pettiness he constantly sought in his own work. He should take this as a learning opportunity.

He… had been a sailor. A Captain of a ship of the line whatever that was. He had drinks with philosophers and pissed in the street with holy wanderers. That mystic passage recited by ‘Newton’ echoed in his brain. It seemed to want to claw its way out, to slip his memory entirely. His soul was now far, far too strong for such nonsense.

Truth didn’t really know anything about alchemy. Some of the stuff on the Emerald Tablet sounded kind of familiar, but really, it wasn’t his field. Nevertheless, based on the way it seemed to bash on the inside of his ear drums, he could sell it to any Alchemist Tower for, approximately, All The Money.

Maybe it would be worth something off-world. If he chose to go off-world. Which he probably would. He looked at the little fragment of Etenesh glowing inside of him. It looked stronger, somehow. Not happier or anything. It just felt more robust. Like she was putting back together all her broken pieces, and was stronger than ever before.

Could he fall asleep for a little bit longer? Maybe. He shut his eyes and tried to fall back asleep. It wasn’t easy. The jolting of the bus reminded him of nights in canvas hammocks, and the cold blue sea.

He woke again when the cargo door opened and soldiers started reaching in to unload the packs. He wasn’t really sure where he was, but that was fine. He was north of Harban. Good enough.

He stepped out of his temporary bedroom and onto an army base. His bus was one of a dozen, all spilling soldiers onto the concrete pad. There was a big sign saying that this was Fort Red Spear. He wracked his brain and a vague memory of an inland base roughly northeast of Gamphe came to mind. It was a little north of where he thought the battlefront would settle, so… was it good that Onis hadn’t advanced that quickly, or a bad sign that their own problems were, somehow, even worse than what Jeon was going through?

He mentally shrugged. Not his problem in any sense. Time to hit the road. He quickly changed into his officer’s uniform, neither noticing or caring that he was surrounded by thousands of people. He could feel the after effects of whatever the angel did. It was like all the scraps of magic and muscle were finally organized and integrated. His blessings had refined and integrated with his spells. It was now the law of the world in the little area around Truth- he was outside their perception.

He had become one of those invisible forces that shaped the world. Ordinary people could speak with him, touch him, be harmed by him, and never once really see who or what they were dealing with. He had long since gotten used to it. Now it seemed more than natural. It seemed right. This is how the world should be. He stretched and flexed his fingers. He found an under-employed looking second lieutenant and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Where’s the Vehicle Pool?”

The lieutenant jumped, saluted in mid-air and landed in a ninety degree bow. Truth was mildly impressed by the athleticism. Must be fresh off the bus with the rest, still green as grass. Truth looked up into the drizzling rain clouds, and back at the young shoot. The lieutenant couldn’t be more than nineteen.

“Sir! Sorry I didn’t see you, Sir! I apologize, Sir!”

“Noted. Do better. Vehicle pool?”

“Sir! I just arrived, Sir! Let me find-”

“Never mind. Report to that man over there, the sergeant with the clipboard. He will tell you where to go.” Truth pointed.

“Thank you, Sir. Sorry, Sir.”

“Mmm. Dismissed.”

Nineteen. Tops. Scared as hell, hasn’t a clue, and unlike the enlisted, he’s got to make decisions. He’s got to be one of the people in charge. He’s the one feeding people into the meat grinder, not on contract but as a matter of national policy. What that commission means hasn’t really kicked in yet. He might not live long enough to figure it out.

Truth shook his head and looked for someone with a clue. Eventually he found a logistics officer, and from there, the vehicle pool. Shortly thereafter, he requisitioned a firebird. Sure, he didn’t have the necessary orders, but his Internal Security credentials were impeccable.

He was flying over Jeon on a military breed firebird. Deep red flames licked up around him harmlessly, the mighty wings driving through the air at hundreds of kilometers an hour. He, Truth Medici, finally got his firebird. He had wanted one since he was a kid. They looked amazing from below.

Truth stretched his fingers out and let his hand run through the fine down, letting the tiny flames tickle his fingers. They were specially bred and trained to be harmless to passengers, but a firebird was, ultimately, a being that was more magic than meat. It was a giant bird made of flames and feathers and an ape’s dream of flying in eternal sunshine. It was a symbol of dominance and freedom. In Jeon, it was an echo of the phoenix.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He looked northeast. The volcano was still spewing smoke and ash. He stopped noticing the haze a long time ago. He’d bet the monsoon rain was lousy with ash. He felt a brief stab of sympathy for anyone needing to clean or paint. The thought made him laugh a little, as he fell back onto the feathers.

“Yes, that’s the real problem. Painting and keeping buildings clean. It’s a utopia out here. What other problems could there be?”

He smiled a little half smile. “Sir?” The firebird asked. This time it was Truth who had to control a jump. He had forgotten that he was masquerading as an officer, and the bird could hear him.

“Just a little dark humor. I was reminded of an argument I once heard, a complete triumph of logic in the face of reality. Listen- God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent. He created this world. He has created other worlds, but he didn’t have to make any. Now, since he is omniscient and omnipotent, he knew which world would be the best world, and was able to make his vision real. Since he is omnibenevolent, he made that best world. Therefore, this world, the one in front of us right now, is the best possible world.”

The bird flew silently for a little while. Then, “Forgive my impertinence, Sir, but may I ask what the alternatives are? I understand that this is the best world on some level I can’t understand, but maybe one of the others might suit me better.”

Truth just laughed.

They flew out over the ocean. Truth had laid hands on an adequate map of the waters in the northwest of the Jeon peninsula, south of Onis. It wasn’t a particularly large body of water, as these things go- more than two hundred kilometers across, even where it narrowed. Add it the sheer length of it, the war, the highly active defense by Starbrite, and it’s no wonder its hidden sea bases could be inferred but not found.

Truth stared at the map, some piece of that last thought niggling at him. This was one of the busiest trade corridors in the world. Not the busiest, but both Onis and Jeon were manufacturing powerhouses. Cargo ships were moving through these waters ever minute of every day. Their fishing fleets were in heavy deployment too. Add on the famously defense-minded Jeon Navy, and these waters should be crawling with boats. Logically, if there was anything bigger than a coconut in these waters, it would be found, investigated, interrogated and then sold to the highest bidder.

Even if Starbrite was openly exterminating everyone that got too close, it would be a blatant tell that there was something in there they wanted to defend. Given the literal world war going on, that seemed like a dumb way to protect anything, let alone the physical person of Starbrite.

Truth scratched at his chin as the firebird flew in big, lazy loops over the water. There were a few passes by reconnaissance summons. Perhaps someone would be dispatched to find out what the Hell he was doing up here. Perhaps not. One thing he did know- soldiers sometimes just wound up in the wrong place. Lost, misunderstood orders, separated from their units, plenty of reasons it could happen. It wasn’t a big deal, usually.

He was smelling a nascent soul tier rat. The whole thing seemed phony. Just too pat. He directed the bird to fly towards the area he suspected the final base would be.

The constellation is oriented the wrong way. I don’t know why that bugs me, but it does. It’s basically upside down. God, the two off-shore bases wouldn’t even be that far off-shore. Why bother?

As expected, there were no bases in sight. Worse was what was in sight- boats. Lots and lots of boats. Traveling in convoys for protection, which meant military vessels were escorting them. Which meant that the best detection capabilities of the Jeon Navy weren’t seeing anything remotely threatening.

Now… what would he do if he were Starbrite?

Deepest trench in the deepest ocean, obviously. The Green Sea is shallow for a major body of salt water. So… maybe the base is on the ocean floor, but you have to consider that the bases were arranged in the form of the constellation. Presumably they have something to do with the arrangement of the stars over Jeon, because there was no Ursa Minor here, nor a Pole Star. Usually that would mean being somewhere high. Astrologers were always building sky-watching platforms. But if you weren’t actually looking at the stars, maybe it didn’t matter as much.

Making things worse was that the map he saw had very vague, very approximate guesses about where Internal Security thought the bases might be, and when you get right down to it, in his past life he wasn’t measuring the exact distance between stars. Sailing was a deadly game of guesses, where you could take your latitude, but little else. You navigated based on time, speed traveled, direction and your questionable maps. Once you started hitting recognizable landmarks like Africa, or Guernsey, you could work out where to aim your bow next. You would get there eventually.

Or not. Quite often not. Lots of people just died at sea. Ships lost for no known reason.

What would he do if he were Starbrite? Truth’s go-to move was local reality manipulation. Blurring the lines of the ‘real’ and making sure the resulting picture flattered him. Now, if he were a Nascent Soul Tier nightmare with access to near-enough every spell on the planet and some kind of horribly mutated soul such as would cause any reasonable person to recoil in terror, he might just do the same thing. Shift the local reality a little. Doesn’t have to be a lot. Just enough to make people avoid it without noticing or remembering it.

Something clicked inside of him. That was it. It wasn’t an illusion, or a glamour. It was something that worked because it altered the fabric of reality on a level that most countermagic simply couldn't deal with. He certainly didn’t have a tidy solution for it. Truth slowly started grinning.

“Fly up. As high as you can.”

Up they went, through the cloud layer, then higher still. Once they were high enough that the flames struggled to burn, Truth ordered the bird to start making wide loops over the sea.

Truth leaned into Incisive, and summoned the Tongue. “Now, which spot would be the worst place to power dive and attack. I think I’m going to go… here! No, here!” It took quite a few tries. He must have been thrashing around up there for forty minutes.

“Found you. At long last, I found you.”

Another triumph for the almighty power of jank. He had finally found Starbrite.