Slumrat Rising

A Certain Necessary Resolve

The smell of the birthing vats of the Ghūl, those human skin cauldrons of corruption and depravity, poured into Truth’s mind like a glass of water into a pot of smoking hot oil. “I’m going to kill Prentiss.” Then, “Am I part Ghūl?” followed by “This is why the cops burn the statues- cut off the Ghūl supply.” “Am I turning into a Ghūl?” He couldn’t hold it together, and like a glass of water poured into a pot of smoking hot oil, he exploded.

He rushed the nearest cauldron, club high and screaming. He smashed to death the brand new Ghūl, then ripped open the sides of the skin vat with his new strength. The rot brown fluid (and what horrible means did the Ghūl use to concoct such a thing?) spilled out and splashed over his naked body. The Ghūl hardly seemed to mind, entranced as they were by staring at the statue of the bound God. Truth minded very fucking much, but he was too pissed off to stop. He worked with blinding speed, smashing heads and destroying vats, watching corpses tumble out like some macabre parody of birth. Coated in the amniotic fluids of the undead. It had felt so good before. So powerful, so alive! What bitter irony.

Soon it was just Truth and the God. The statue just sat there, ignoring everything going on below it. Truth raised his iron pipe and started to approach it, but his energy petered out. It was too big to reasonably smash apart. Why was it glowing in the dark? He didn’t know, and didn’t really want to find out. He had wanted to turn this building into a hideout for him and the sibs but… fuck it. You could tip the cops anonymously about Ghūl statues and there was a reward. Not a huge one, but it was something. He turned around and shuffled off. He would need to wash up, at least, before heading home. Maybe some other floor would have soap. He could hope.

It was a wet, smelly and less hopeful Truth that climbed out of the abandoned building. The “tonic,” the Ghūl amniotic fluid, had quickly started to make a sort of stabbing, tingling sensation on his skin. He thought it might be caustic or acidic or something, but he quickly realized that it was much, much worse. The Nine Worm Path treated it like it was some kind of rare treasure, and was using it to refine his skin. Into what, he didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. He tried to stop it, but the cultivation was always passively working in the background. If it stopped, his precious Level 1 cultivation would collapse and he would become a cripple. His life would be over. His sibs, doomed. So all he could do was round up as many water talismans as he could find, and scrub. Not that there was any soap. Nor anything that looked like a towel. Not even so much as abandoned drop cloths or forgotten toilet paper.

Fair to say that Truth was in a somewhat altered state of consciousness by the time he hit the street. He didn’t know the time, other than “late.” Much later than he usually was out, certainly. Well. He knew his way home. Knew the backstreets and alleys. He could get around fairly unseen. Ish. For a while. Better than standing here doing nothing. He walked to the end of the alley, where a sodium light talisman made the street a sickly sort of yellow. Truth kept his eyes focused on the light. Closer and closer. He walked right up to the edge of the shadow, staring directly into the light. His eyes hurt. But probably about as much as a person who’s been in the dark for hours and is now staring at a light should expect their eyes to hurt. No sudden fear. No revulsion. No compulsion to throw things and put out the light. So. Good sign.

Truth turned back down the alley and started making his way along the access paths, gaps between buildings and all the other tiny interstitial places that stitch together a city. Where there was the chance of being observed, he crept in the shadows. When people passed, he froze. And when he saw a particularly fat fuck of a dealer slipping away from his corner for a piss, Truth attacked. Given his experience of the last day, he thoughtfully let the dealer finish his piss and button up before snapping his neck.

Thanks be to the Gods (he hastily added a clause excluding whatever the Ghūl worshiped) the tubby parasite liked to layer. A few cheap underlayers were quickly drafted as cleaning rags, to excellent effect. He was now merely dirty, as opposed to a public health hazard. The rest of the clothes made him look like a clown, and he had to loop the belt around twice to keep the pants up. He looked over at the corpse. No handy dumpster this time, and he was getting a little leery of handling corpses in clean clothes. In addition to some drugs and two hundred wen, there was an impressive looking knife. Must not have had a decent spell. He could carve a message on the body, maybe throw off his fellow gangsters?

Oh. I just killed someone for their clothes. I think I know this guy. I mean, I don’t know him, but I have seen him around the neighborhood. And I just snapped his neck to steal his clown clothes. Sparing myself a little humiliation and about thirty minutes of being cold and uncomfortable. Now he’s dead forever. That’s fucked up. That’s really, really fucked up. I’m not even stealing his shoes, because he has weirdly dainty feet for such a big guy. That is so, so fucked up. And I don’t care. Which is really fucked up. And I am going to defile his corpse and try to start some shit just so people don’t come looking for his real murderer. Which, again, is deeply fucked up.

Then he got out his knife and carved the sign for the old 9th Street Gang on his chest. The gang never really got anywhere, it was slightly big for a hot minute five years ago. Its former members had scattered to other gangs. Lots of potential suspects. He made sure to keep the blood off himself. Last thing he needed right now. Truth went home.

No one was in the main room. Small blessings. Truth figured Dad would be out all night as he usually was, but Mom wasn’t such a night owl. He went directly to the bathroom and showered. He used all the hot water. He used a lot of cold water. He certainly made lavish use of the soap and shampoo. They ran out of soap and shampoo. He would have to buy more sachets tomorrow. Truth giggled, a tinge of madness in his voice. Thanks to his thuggery, they could now afford entire bottles of soap and shampoo. Big money! Clean and, in many respects reborn, he turned to bed. To be met with the glaring eyes of the sibs. Who had been crying. Damn.

He had been missed. And worried about. Crouching in the dark and whispering, Truth spread the good word. “I broke through to Level 1. Things are about to get much, much better.”

That night Truth dreamed he was making mudballs. Some were kind of lumpy and uneven, but eventually he got one really round and shiny. Even in his dream, it was a very meh achievement. Woo. Mudball. Woo. But the mudballs were basically… fine. He had put some effort into making them, and it didn’t seem right to just smash them. Maybe something interesting would grow on them? He scattered some seeds. And waited. And waited. Truth managed to bore himself awake. He didn’t remember his dreams.

Oddly enough, things did get much better. Truth kept waiting for some act of cosmic doom to swoop down and crush him but… nope. Dad got a little less openly violent and a lot more vindictive when he realized that Truth was Level 1. Mom also got a bit less entitled. For about thirty minutes. It was very Mom that her first instinct was to get him out there promoting Mega-Shroom. “After all, dear, it’s not like anyone would hire you. And now you have some credibility. Time you helped Mommy with her work, don’t you think?”

He did not think so, no. And it felt so, so good to tell her so.

Most importantly, he found that he could study. Really study. The concepts flowed into his mind and got locked down with iron chains. It wasn’t photographic memory, but the promised improvement to recall and analysis that came right after a breakthrough turned out to be no myth. He was crushing his mock exams. The extra cash he had stashed made the need to hustle for food less urgent, giving him more time to study and cultivate. They weren’t eating well, but they were eating enough. It made all the difference.

Two days after Truth broke through, the police swarmed in on an abandoned building in the Slums. Armored enforcers rode in on their spell beasts- six legged amphibian looking creatures with a black and tan coloration that moved so fast your eyes couldn’t follow them. They put up spell pylons with practiced ease, cordoning off the whole building while senior officers launched flying spell birds to lock down the airspace and complete the encirclement. A police demolitions expert flew up on a golden (or, given city budgets, more likely a gold painted) altar, and slapped down the demo charges around the edge of the spell ward. She then cast a series of spells in short order, funneling them through the talismans.

The spells expanded and smashed the building from every side, collapsing it inward. Superheated jets of plasma shot into the dust, turning the interior of the spellward into a blazing inferno. Something must have not felt right, because she smacked down eight more talismans to lock down the cardinal directions. She wove another sequence of spells, and the flames turned the blinding, electric purple of plasma. Then the cops packed their stuff and left, not explaining a damn thing to anybody.

Truth got a message on his burner communicator. A code for a lockbox in a busy subway station. Inside, he found five thousand wen in cash, and a synthetic jade token. The bearer of said token could redeem it for two Heben City Civic Merits. Truth struggled to suppress the grin that spread over his face. This was huge money, but the merits! He had no idea the reward could include merits! He could raise his status in the city, ditching the Denizen status and becoming a basic citizen. Citizen was the minimum rank needed to open a real bank account at a real bank. The five grand would be plenty for a first deposit. Money his grasping parents couldn’t find. A bank account, a full citizen status, that all added up to a real identity. Not a slumrat identity, a Harban Citizen identity. That would be a major help on his Starbrite application. Rising as high as a Maintenance Team Supervisor in seven years was now a real possibility.

He couldn’t run his ass to the bank fast enough. All that was left was to study and cultivate as hard as he could. The rest of the month seemed to grind past, until it was the day before the exam and he was desperately wondering where all the hours went. Time was ever indifferent to the test taker’s prayers. Exam day was here.