Slumrat Rising

Vol. 3 Chap. 26 Only The Monsters Are Real

Light came in a dim, narrow column from the open door, across the carpet of teeth and putting a shine in the eye made of eyes. The Ghūl seemed to coat every surface not given over to worship, clinging to the walls and ceiling as easily as they knelt on the floor. Their flesh withered or rotted, or simply flaking away, long bones jutting from finger or toe, long nails on those hands complete enough to hang on to them. Some with eyes, most with teeth, some with far too many teeth. All gathered in silent, ecstatic worship.

Save one.

Truth walked forward. Something was different this time. Something about the Ghūl, or him. Or both. He could feel the way the world twisted around the Ghūl, now. Not the bending forced by the overwhelming reality of a place like Nag Hamadi or Etenesh when her God was upon her. This was more subtle, more pervasive. Like the refraction of light on the surface of clean water. It looked like you were seeing straight down, but the world was actually not where you thought it was.

If things kicked off, he wouldn’t even bother with Incisive. It would be cold steel and hard hands smashing apart rotten flesh. It didn’t seem likely to come to that. The one Ghūl not devoted to worship was still bowed over, welcoming him in.

Truth opened his mouth to say… something. Anything. Some acknowledgment of the bizarre horror of the scene, of the unreality of being greeted by the monsters of his childhood. Of his slaughter of dozens or hundreds of Ghūl in Harban. He closed his mouth again. The Ghūl did not speak. Nor did they respond to words. No matter how loudly or often they were screamed.

Truth just nodded. The Ghūl unfolded and walked into the interior of the shop. Truth followed along behind. There was no path through the Ghūl. His guide simply stepped on them and was ignored. Truth did the same, his reflexes constantly tested by the fragile meat under his feet. Away from the idol, the store was more or less how the owners left it. There were posters on the walls advertising popsicles and soda. Seductive women taking a bite, handsome men looking refreshed. Covered in dust now, like the grave photographs of a long-dead family.

The people were ghosts. Only the monsters were real. Truth trailed behind his guide. Just one more monster made in Jeon.

They came to a little garden of hands in a back room. The blossoms were of different heights- some trimmed just below the elbow, some as short as the wrist. To keep them in place, the flesh had been carefully scraped from the radii and ulnae, and the bones lovingly planted into the concrete. The fingers twisted into pleasing shapes. Those missing petals were left unmended- their very imperfection enhancing the beauty of the scene.

The guide stopped and waited. It seemed to want Truth to examine the collection. Truth squatted down and looked them over carefully. Old and young. Some with tattoos, or scars, some with lingering remnants of alchemical modification, or manicures whose gloss had been carefully preserved. Testimonies of lives, however long or short, preserved in the garden of the Ghūl. A myriad of differences in experiences, the winding paths of cause and effect, all come to the same end.

Truth had a moment of vertigo. They were loved. All these flowering hands. They were tended to and cared for with patience and affection. Not because of the ghost that used to haunt the meat but because of what the meat was. It was the record of a life, yes, but it was also every loop and whorl of a fingerprint, every blurred and faded swallow tattooed on the underside of a forearm, every wrinkle on every aged hand reaching for a light in the near-perfect dark. The Ghūl loved them for every part of their existence. The longer he fell in his vertigo, the more he came to doubt that last conclusion.

It wasn’t about the ghost. It was about the meat. They didn’t care about that record of a life. They just loved how it looked now, each blossom beautifying the churchyard. Was that the faith of the Ghūl? A radical renunciation of the spirit? That didn’t seem right. They were worshiping idols. They worshiped his Rough Patron. The Ghūl may be the single most devout creatures he had ever encountered. Angels excepted. That thought brought him up with a jerk, and he looked his guide over with brief horror.

No. They weren’t some degraded angels. He had seen them born. They were no angels, nor demons, nor humans. They were their own thing. And they wanted him to see this garden. Why?

Truth examined the hands more closely. They seemed to be every sort of human hand here. Each is unique, yes, but ultimately human. The difference was in the detail, and he had a hard time imagining the Ghūl really cared about his appreciation of nuance. So just what was he supposed to see here? Or, perhaps, was seeing not the point?

Truth glanced over at his guide, standing with infinite patience. Subtly warping the world around him. Famously, the Ghūl hated the light. So they weren’t seeing with light, presumably. Which meant that the rotted sacks of grey-brown water in the holes above their nasal cavity were purely decorative.

Truth let his eyes go vague, trying to just… experience the garden without seeing it. Without attaching thoughts to what his eyes were seeing. It was surprisingly difficult- he either stopped seeing anything at all, or the intrusive thoughts popped in. This hand belonged to an old woman, this to a strong man, this one fought back, this one didn’t have the chance. This one was still bending the world.

Truth’s eyes jerked to a halt and slowly slid back the way they came. He had to focus on his breathing, trying to stay relaxed. One of the hands- no, several of the hands were still subtly bending the world around them. Despite their former owner’s departure from this life, they had been refined to such a fine degree that they remained more “real” than the abandoned store. More real than the other people they bloomed with now.

Truth picked one and got in close. His knowledge of anatomy was practical, not systematic. If this wasn’t an ordinary human, he couldn’t tell. Maybe they were a high-level mage? He moved to another, then another. All the same in their perverted normalcy. Truth frowned a little. Why were they important? Why was this tickling a memory?

Young Master Ramu Anak. The sheer alien presence of the seeming human. The brutal reality of him, a steel tiger in a world of paper rats. Were these more people like Ramu? Human-ish? Human presenting? Anak was a Holdout, planning to remain on-world after the collapse. A superreality tycoon ruling the eight directions in a world of ghosts. How many others had the same plan? And how long had they been planning?

To the Ghūl, it was all meaningless. In the end, they would all be gathered together in the garden. Delighting the faithful and adding sweetness to their devotions.

Truth looked around the garden with a new, horrified appreciation. The eyes weren’t the window to the soul for the Ghūl. The eye could only see. It was reactive, yes, but always passive. The hand was the truest signifier of the soul animating it, bearing the marks of the soul’s journey through its myriad intersections and diversions with the material world.

“This world is our garden, and you are all flowers that blossom within it. Whatever stories you make up about who you are and what you mean, we will see you for what you are. And we will preserve that meaning so long as it pleases God.” That was the message Truth read from the garden. “All the myriad races of the children of God shall ultimately come to an end in the garden of the Ghūl.”

Truth felt the room spin, lost in the vertigo of the garden and the revelation both. What exactly did he want from the Ghūl? Merely increased hunting wouldn’t do it. Starbrite had never cared about the Ghūl or their slaughters. If anything, the fear of the Ghūl drove loyalty to Starbrite, not the reverse. He had hoped to find a way, somehow, to use them to attack Starbrite. Their spell resistance made them a nightmare for mages.

Truth remembered when the nest in Harban was cleared. Dozens of cops, a huge ward, a huge number of prepared charms expended to form a gigantic ball of superheated plasma within the ward. The old commercial building had been reduced to glass and slag. Truth had to wonder- were the wards and talismans there to create a non-magical plasma? Did they have to act on that scale to have any hope of safely demolishing the statue the Ghūl were venerating? It was all he could think of. But the Ghūl didn’t care about names or causes. They didn’t care about any supposed sins of Starbright’s. All was well so long as they could worship as they believed their God demanded.

He… didn’t know what to do. How do you communicate non-verbally a concept as nuanced as “I want you to hunt medium to high-level Starbrite employees, please and thank you? Also, could you please tell all the other Ghūl everywhere to do the same?” He looked over at the guide, who hadn't moved a muscle. It seemed that whatever Truth was to learn from the garden was entirely his to work out. If anything, it seemed like the guide was just appreciating the moment. Lost in the music and the wonder of this holy place.

That music always reminded him of the one bizarre month his family attended church. It was a scam, or rather, an attempted scam, of course. But the music stayed with him. Not the words, the way they made you feel. He was a lot less impressed when he remembered that the parishioners could give donations in exchange for certain hymns being sung, such hymns being the best protection against being flung into the inferno. You could even sponsor a chapel, if you had the money. Not only buy your way out of Hell, but into the better tiers of heaven.

He paused at that. Surely not. But… maybe? He looked around the garden. If there was a logic to the organization of the hands, he didn’t understand it. But there was a logic there- it was immediately recognisable as a monstrous parody of a formal flower bed. And if he could recognize it, then the Ghūl who made it could definitely understand symbolism.

Truth felt a grin stretch across his face, giving him an unsettling similarity to his guide. What if… he were to sponsor a chapel? What if he were to provide several starter components and lay out the structure for the rest of the construction? It was no trouble finding higher level Starbrite employees. Heck, even focusing on just the Level Threes would cripple Starbrite in this city. Maybe even the region. He wouldn’t have to bag many, maybe just two or three. Then he could turn loose the really experienced hunters.

He stood, ready to rush off and get to work, but the Guide had other ideas. It bowed again, and started walking towards the back to the store. Tall vats lined the wall, crudely made, from what materials Truth could not guess. Didn’t want to guess. Too big to be the birthing cauldrons he had seen before. They were covered in dots connected by lines, seemingly random but never crossing. Impossibly intricate, the lines twisted and folded around and around and around. It wasn’t a spell, nor was it a formation. It didn’t seem like their sort of art, and they didn’t seem to possess a language. So what was it?

Truth looked at it for a long few minutes. The longer he looked at it, the more it pressed down on him. This was important. But for the life of him, he couldn’t say why. The guide moved on, bowing him out the back door. The tour was over, for now. Truth walked back into the light. Thin, feeble in the alleys. No matter. Plenty of light to see by. He would find his way back here. Once he had all the materials.