Slumrat Rising

Chapter 61: Bickering Old Men

Truth sat on a bench in the Agora. He had long since finished eating, but the two old bastards beside him were bickering like champions, and he couldn't bear to go.

“We agree that it is best to live simply and modestly.”

“We do.”

“And that one should pursue virtue and not fear death.”

“Yes, that too.”

“So why is it that your whole philosophy is just stupid trash?”

“Get fucked. At the most fundamental, basic level, pleasure comes from avoiding pain. That and enjoying what is natural and necessary. Everything else is derived from those two points. And the point of life is pleasure. Getting dragged into bullshit by your neighbors, and supporting the Polis’ mad dreams of conquest, just makes you miserable. You only have this one go at things, so fucking enjoy it.”

“That’s stupid. You are stupid. Look, virtue, real virtue, which requires civic participation, you little parasite, is all that we can look to for a meaningful life. You preach moderation because excess leads to pain. I preach moderation because it is, itself, a virtue. Anything not a virtue, has no fixed value. Be it good food or a broken leg, it is just a matter of perception and opinion. An indifference.”

“Oh yeah, real fucking indifferent. Hey, fart-knocker, if behaving in a “just” manner is so fucking important, if moderation is so important, then why are you pricks insisting on paying for new triremes, eh? Or raising more phalanxes to get slaughtered? Where’s the virtue in war? Answer me that.”

“The Polis demands-”

“The Polis doesn’t demand shit. You do! You can’t claim to be part of the Polis, preach civic engagement, and then shove off moral responsibility when the Polis does something shady.”

Truth flagged down a passing waiter. “Another bowl of marinated olives and a bowl of wine. Well watered, I may be here a while.”

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WHY! WHY DOES YOUR SHITHOLE BODY KEEP DOING THAT!

Truth stretched and yawned. “Sorry? No idea what you are talking about. You kind of… stopped making sounds I could understand for a while. I hope it was agonizing, whatever it was. Anyhoo. Time to be up and at ‘em.”

Breakfast was not included in the room's price, and it was a bit disappointing. Not bad, exactly, just bland. He sighed. Not everyone could cook like the garage owner’s wife, it seemed. The path of the foodie was long. No matter. He would walk it to the end. He packed his things, enjoyed a long shower, and checked out.

“So, how far is it from here to Siphios? I think the map doesn't tell the whole story.”

“To the border? A little under six hundred kilometers. To their capital, a little more than twice that. We are both big countries!”

“You certainly are. Anything I should know?”

“Just the usual, really. I would normally recommend you fly. The security situation is really not good. And you will pass through a stretch of desert, which is just plain unpleasant for a man on an iron horse.”

Truth thanked her, mounted up, and was off. He was determined to have his adventure. Maybe some idea about how to save the sibs would come to him. Probably not. But maybe.

It was a slow push getting out of the city. Traffic was wretched and not helped by donkey carts wandering the same streets as spellwagons, bicycles, chariots, and seven-legged load-bearing lizards. Once he cleared the town center and started hitting the suburbs, truth opened up the throttle. If he could keep it at about eighty, he would reach Wajr by lunchtime. He didn’t know if the chained spirit could keep up that kind of throughput, but… hell with it. He wanted to go fast.

Watching the green bushes hovering over the baked red soil was amazing. Kilometer after kilometer of… nothing much. Land in Jeon was densely settled. As far as Truth knew, people had been living there… basically forever. It was farmed, lived on, mined, or preserved as a park. It was all used, in other words. This was fallow land. Maybe it was farmed at some point, maybe not, but in either case, there was a whole lot of nothing going on here now.

It was the security situation; he was sure of it. Even Starbrite wouldn’t want to set up a mine here. They would spend as much defending it as they would earn operating it. Just not worth it. He had to swerve a couple of times to avoid trucks loaded with sacks of things, but there would be long stretches where he was the only thing moving on the road.

Wajr was kind of surreal. Truth kept looking around, looking back down the road he had been on all morning, looking around again, consulting the guidebook, looking around again… Wajr looked exactly the same as the city he left this morning. No river running along it… that he had found. So there was… that. Maybe. But otherwise, it was the same. The same shanties. The same brown everything occasionally livened with bursts of paint and color that must have faded within seconds of drying. The red dust was everywhere and on everything. He was half convinced he would find the same hotel if he went up the main road. But the restaurant the guidebook recommended was also straight up the main road. Where it met another road. Another intersection where he had to make a turn.

Sinister. Not to be trusted. He firmed his resolve and pressed on. The traffic slowed to an absolute crawl in the city center, but it did keep moving. He almost missed the restaurant, distracted by the shoeless man doing major repairs to a… not so much broken as bum jumped spellwagon. Apparently, the only place on earth it could be repaired was directly in front of the Greenview Restaurant. A brown, bunker-like building with pitch-black windows and a single, austere sign over the door.

Intersections were not to be trusted. It seemed the locals agreed with his deduction.

The food was incredibly unappetizing looking. It was a plate of roast meat and some kind of green-gray-yellow thing that had been smashed into rough patties about the size of his palm. There was also a small heap of salt on the plate. Just… heaped. Not served on the side in a shaker, just heaped on the plate. He looked around the room to see what the locals were doing. You picked up the shredded meat with your hand, dipped it in the salt, and ate it. You then ate a bite of the questionable fried disk things.

Truth sniffed the meat. Goat, he was sure of it, but an absolute barrage of other smells came with it. Onions and garlic and intense ginger, and he was already tearing into it before his analysis could finish. Outstanding! He dipped it into the salt. Also outstanding! Questionable patty? Not as outstanding, but still pretty good! Peas and corn and herbs, probably.

Perhaps he was wrong about intersections. Perhaps the path of the foodie was about finding intersections and embracing them.

One very hearty, satisfying meal later, Truth hopped back on the iron horse and started towards the roundabout. It was at the very center of the city. For some reason, the city was built around a large open stretch of desert. Nothing at all there, just sheer empty space, almost a kilometer square at the heart of the city. Odd. He shrugged and set off for Siphios.

It was at this point he started noticing the demons running loose. First, a few, then tens, then hundreds, and quickly thousands of people were screaming and running.

“Thrush?”

“I cannot say, Master. They are of the very lowest orders, insects by your standards. However, like insect swarms….”

“I should be somewhere else. Going now!” Truth flogged the chained spirit into screaming activity. He started forcing his way past wagons and carriages as everyone tried to flee the city center. An accident up ahead blocked the street.

“Thrush! Fly up and guide me out of the city!” The bird-shaped demon launched up and flew forward. Truth followed it down an alley and then into a parallel street. There was an impossibly bright green light, almost blinding though it came from behind him. A wailing noise, no, it was too inhuman to be wailing, a piercing cry as something was born into this world.

Truth put his reflexes to the test, driving around running civilians, wagons, chariots, and whatever was in his way. Soon, Thrush was forced to lead him cross-country. Truth could only endure the whipping bushes and bouncing stones as he fled. Driving through the bush, he saw convoys of trucks by the main road. They had set up barricades. Some people were being captured and herded to one side. Others simply executed where they stood, their wagons or carriages hauled away.

“Master! Demons pursue you! Above!” Truth looked up. Far into the cloudless sky, black shapes circled. He got his head down and drove faster. Some instinct caused him to swerve right. This was wise, as he saw a spit of acid slide past where his head would have been.

“They are attacking, Master!”

“NO SHIT! Can you take them?”

“Alas, they are too much for me.”

“Shit!” They were way up. He still had the acid bolt fetish, but it couldn’t touch them. Not at that range. Normally he would go for the summoner, but that was impossible under the circumstances.

“Guide me back on the road. Let’s see how far they are willing to follow me!”

Thrush did so. No wagons set off to chase him, but those demons were persistent. They kept hovering and periodically spitting. He pushed the spirit as hard as he could and ran flat out for hours. The road was a straight line, with no cover anywhere on it. The demons never quite hit, but the misses were so close that he couldn’t relax for an instant. He pushed the spirit as hard as he dared, but the burnout was starting to show. Even the talisman etchings were starting to wear away. He was wearing away. This level of focus- not sustainable. He needed to find a place to go to ground. Take a rest. In the scrub-filled desert between cities.

They were endurance hunters. This is what they did. Exhaust you, then kill you when you are too weak to flee or fight back. And it was working. The road wasn’t even paved anymore. It was just packed earth.

“Thrush, anywhere that looks like cover up ahead?”

“Master, there is a village! You could try and find shelter there!”

“How far?”

“Twenty kilometers!”

The demons had spotted it too. They had picked up the speed of acid-spitting.

“Shit! No choice! Can you do anything about the acid?”

“Only briefly.”

He stayed low over the handlebars, regulating his breathing. Smoothing out the flow of stellar energy in his body. He could do this. His body could tolerate the strain. He had been sitting all day; the strain was nothing. He could do this. He just had to keep aware of the falling acid. It couldn’t touch him unless he let it. Everything was in his control, so long as he regulated his mind.

Trying to keep in that calm state, Truth pushed hard for the village. They didn’t make it easy on him. The acid was more clustered now, no longer coming one at a time but in twos and threes. He had to swerve more, even break momentarily, to throw off their aim. The village came up fast, the villagers running away from the road while others fished out homemade fetishes.

“To your right, a garage!” Thrush shouted.

Truth hit the brakes, turning the iron horse ninety degrees to the road and, while still sliding forward, got power back to the wheels and lunged for the garage.