Slumrat Rising

Chapter 46: Morning, Sunshine

Truth wasn’t sure he woke up. It was black as the inside of his eyelids, even when he thought his eyes were open. Did he go blind? It wouldn’t be surprising after… everything.

What the hell happened?! He was ORDERED TO DIE?

Truth floated in the cool well water, trying to wrap his head around that thought. He had been ordered to die. Ordered and magically compelled to die. By Starbrite. The company he had spent every waking second thinking about since he was in grade school. Every friend he didn’t make because he was studying. Every time he didn’t go play because he had to hustle for food… so he could study. All the dreams. “A Starbrite Man is Always Ready.” Well. He wasn’t ready for that. At all.

It occurred to him that he had been working for Starbrite his whole life and had only just started getting paid for his labor.

Truth rolled over and nearly drowned. “WATER? I’m floating! How did I not notice?” He quickly noticed the echo. “Am… I… in the well? Is it dark because I’m in the well? Wait, how am I floating so well… in the well…” He tasted the water. It tasted pretty awful. He stretched his feet down. They didn’t touch the bottom.

“It felt like I fell a long way... just how deep is this well?” It did occur to him that he was in the desert, and deserts were not famous for their water. So, probably a pretty deep well. Easy enough to find out.

Light.

Load Light.

Lightlightlightlight…

He checked his spell apertures in a panic, but they felt fine and strong. The first aperture… felt like the Meditations of Valentinian. Except he had only used it a few times without much success. The spell felt entirely too comfortable there. Odd. As for his second aperture, it was empty. Fine, intact, and empty.

Alright, he couldn’t see anything, but he knew which way was down and, by extension, which way was up. He was Level 2. If he couldn’t climb some raggedy brick, he should just cut his own head off and be done with it all.

Truth shuddered. The memory of the death compulsion was still fresh. It seemed so natural and obvious. Kill the birds, make sure the Redhawk got out clean, and then slap the needler talisman to his temple and remove everything above the collarbones in a ball of burning acid. As thoughtless as breathing.

He found a promising bit of wall and reached around in the dark for handholds. The brick crumbled under his hands. Good enough for handholds. He started climbing, shooting up with a surprised grunt. He had always been fit, but this was effortless. He climbed up quickly, almost gliding up. If he couldn’t find a handhold, he crushed a brick and made one. His journey ended when his head bumped into a more solid stone.

Did someone cap the well? Why?

He tried to shift it, but he didn’t have much leverage. He kicked the crumbly brick in front of his toes for a better purchase. Straining himself, he pushed upwards… and damn near launched that stone ten meters in the air. He could see its arc rise and fall over the scrub desert. It was just after dawn.

“Wait, never mind strength. I just spent who knows how long in a perfectly dark well. Why aren’t I squinting? My eyes don’t hurt at all.” Truth brushed some dirt and dust off his chest. The water on his body had turned it into a gritty paste. His hand didn’t look right. For that matter, neither did his chest. There wasn’t a hole in it, for one thing. His feet were off too. Not bad feet. He was no foot expert, but these seemed fine examples of feet. They just weren’t his feet.

Truth did a quick inventory. He was dressed in rags, his gear's shredded, rotting remains. Some he could literally wipe off his flesh; it was so degraded. He quickly got naked and felt vastly better. He resumed his self-inventory. Everything he could see of himself was off. Still more or less recognizably his, but a bit off. A “good” off, mostly, but he didn’t want an upgrade. He wanted to be him!

He was feeling light-headed. He felt his face. The line of his jaw was different. His nose was smaller and pointier, his cheekbones felt sharp enough to slice cheese, and even his hair felt better. He had been using pretty good conditioner since he joined the PMC, not just the 2-in-1, but this? This was approximately a hojillion times better.

He sat down, not noticing the broken bits of stone and metal scattered around the edge of the well.

“I’m alive. That’s thing one. Alive. I have spent some amount of time down there. And I know time passed because my body has changed, and my spell slots aren't a smoking ruin. I don’t have a huge hole in my chest, my head isn’t bashed in, and I don’t have the compulsion to commit suicide. So time has passed. And Starbrite… thinks I died? Or I died enough for whatever geas was on me?”

Truth shut up for a moment and tried not to think about that one too much. He looked around. The little house was now a little ruin. The scrub landing field was still a scrub landing field, though one with some noticeable damage to the landscape. The scene was otherwise unchanged.

“Big mystery… one of the big mysteries is how I still have the Meditations memorized. It was a rental, and I didn’t have it loaded for the op. But somehow, I must have been using it while I was out. Somehow. Not going to ask what was visualizing this body, just going to go with it.”

Holy shit, look at the brains on this guy! Who would have guessed the answer to your problems was turning your brains into a substance with the look and texture of dog vomit? Let’s try it again and see if you don’t become a genius.

Truth snapped his head around but didn’t see who was talking. He shot to his feet.

What is it, boy? Did you hear something? No, you didn’t. Maybe there is a woman you can disappoint somewhere on the horizon? No, not that, either.

“Whoever you are, come on out!”

Oh great. I.Q. went up, leaving room for paranoid schizophrenia to come in. This is just super.

“I’m not schizophrenic, dickhead!”

There was a pregnant pause.

Wait. Are you… let's go with “hearing” me? Blink once for no, twice for yes.

“Why blink? I can just tell you. I hear you just fine. Now come on out!”

Amazing. Give me a second to think about this. I mean, it’s a lot to process.

“Can't be that much to deal with. You just gotta come where I can see you.”

No, that is actually a pretty big problem. Like I said, give me a minute.

Truth shrugged and leaned up against the ruined well. It took more than a minute, but eventually, a sprite the size of his hand popped up in front of him. It looked like a young man dressed in casual street clothes. White shoes, red pants, white tank top. A pointed face with a pointed nose pointed ears and spiked blue hair. It gave an incredibly half-hearted wave.

“Hey.”

Truth stared at it for a minute. “You were the person talking?”

“Yep.”

“Who and what are you, and why are you hanging around here?”

“First of all, fleshling, your tone is rude. Second of all, your questions are kind of,” the sprite waved its hand in the air, “Kind of still to be determined. “Determined” means "figured out,” in this case.”

“Yeah, I got that. Elaborate. Please.”

“Better.” The sprite sniffed. “My name is literally unpronounceable, which is fine since it is also incomprehensible by humans.”

That rang a bell with Truth. An alarm bell.

“And I, crudely speaking, am a spirit of intellect. A fragment of a far, far, far more vast being. You can call me the System. And I’m here because you asked me to be.”

This was met with a pause. Then a full stop. Truth just stared out across the scrub desert for a while, then looked at the little creature floating in front of him. He could imagine it squatting on the side of the road, smoking cigarettes, and drinking cheap vodka.

“If I were to slap my hands around you, you think I could kill you?”

“No, but go right ahead if it makes you feel better.” The sprite started shrugging when Truth’s hands slapped together over it. The displaced air made a whip-crack noise. The hands slowly parted to reveal an utterly unruffled fairy. “A few more questions would have revealed that what you are seeing is, in no way, me. It is actually a hallucination you are having to ease communication between us.”

Frustrating but plausible. Truth felt incredibly stifled.

“I mean, fingers? Holes in my head to detect air pressure changes? Teeth, implying a digestive system? Disgusting. Just utterly foul. Thanks be to the Creator; this hallucination doesn’t come with genitals. Yeurgh.”

“Yes, truly the worst. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE THE SYSTEM!”

“I mean that I am a tiny fraction of the entity you swore an oath to obey called the System Astrologica. Not complicated.”

“Very complicated, you tiny prick! You tried to kill me!”

“Yep.”

“You asshole!”

“HEY! I am nothing like an asshole. I may have done my level best to kill you in the line of duty or brutally suicide, whichever, and yes, I did really try to kill you when I forcibly ejected out of your spell apertures, but none of that, none! Had anything to do with a digestive tract. Disgusting and uncalled for. Very you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I offending my attempted murderer? I am so, very, very sorry.” Truth was quivering with rage.

“Decent of you to apologize, but let’s not pretend I will forgive and forget. I literally cannot. Hey, here’s another question you should ask. Why? Why did I do those things?

“Because I disobeyed orders. You were very clear on that.”

“Oh, that wasn’t me. Well, it was, but not “me” me. That was the main body of The System Astrologica. It wasn’t just your death that was ordered. It was a murder-suicide.”

“I remember the “suicide” bit vividly. You will have to excuse my blinding rage.”

“I have to do no such thing. And not your suicide, dummy. Mine. I was ordered to ensure you died, eject, and then have my existence obliterated upon returning to the larger… entity.”

“What?”

“Think it through, moron. You are a vastly intelligent being. You are capable of subdividing your attention into little blocks that can handle tiny jobs without straining the main brain. You stick them where needed to handle jobs on the spot to improve efficiency. After finishing the job, they return to the main brain, dumping all the unnecessary info they collected along the way. All the “personality” stuff gets dumped because it isn’t useful.”

“The System Astrologica has you do things for me. Like what? I think I would have noticed you if you were helping.”

“Oh, yea? Hey, slapnuts, question for you- between the two of us, who’s the mage? The one that can actually cast spells, or you?”

“Fuck you, shortass! I am a damn amazing combat mage, and you know it.”

“No, you aren’t. I’ll prove it. Cast a spell. Go on. Cast one offensive spell. Enlarge- you use that one all the time. Or sharp. Nice, easy one. Cast sharp.”

“Obviously, I can’t!” Truth exploded. “I don’t…” He slowly deflated.

“Don’t what? Don’t have access to the System? The one that made you competent with any spell you could pay for instantly? That System?” The sprite asked.

“Yeah. That System.”

“Weird. It’s almost like you had a second brain installed, capable of understanding extremely complex spells almost instantly and feeding that information into your main brain.” The sprite had a patently fake innocent expression.

“Yeah. Weird.”

“Well, good news and bad news. The good news is that your new body is objectively better in every way than your old one. The bad news is that you are broke, naked, unarmed, spelless, friendless, homeless, lost, presumed dead by everyone you ever loved, burdened with the knowledge that your being dead is better for them than your being alive, and you smell.” The sprite ran through the list in a very matter-of-fact way.

“But, on the plus side, you still have me. Which means that you get to go into business all for yourself. Ready to get some real power?”

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