Slumrat Rising

Chapter 105: Engines of Destruction

“A few quick points before we go. Jember, Etenesh, this Congress has been convened, as I said, to investigate a particular talisman, or really a cartouche, found by Tommy when we investigated that possed building a few days ago. What you don’t know is that it is connected to some extremely classified matters. So classified, I am genuinely bewildered by what diseased, witless creature asked the University Senior Fellows as a whole to investigate!”

Merkovah had cast a privacy field around them as they stood carefully on the carpet. Truth didn’t like it. He knew that the spells on the carpet would keep people from falling off, but he couldn’t shake the notion that sitting down was safer. On the other hand, if he were wearing the elaborate robes that his protectees were wearing, he’d stand too.

“I must therefore remind you that, firstly, you have no security clearance for anything, and second, even if you did, you do not have a need to know about what’s going on in this particular classified matter. You are being dragged along on this ridiculous excursion because university politics demands it. Your job, after the invocation and worship, will be to go mingle and network with the other junior scholars who have been dragged along on this boondoggle. You might as well get some benefit from all of this.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Jember said. “Love a good networking event. But what about Tommy? I can’t imagine he’s cleared for anything either.”

“Tommy is a witness. And professionally paranoid. I have met actual spies with less operational discretion. I must ask, Mr. Wells, what exactly did you do for-”

“I was a bodyguard. I also did work as a mercenary. But my last, biggest job was bodyguard. For a large company whose name need not be mentioned.”

“You will note that he has cut off even speculation, described his work history in the vaguest terms, and provided no actual details about who or what he guarded. And this is why I’m not worried about Mr. Wells.” Merkovah snorted after carefully enunciating “Mr. Wells.”

The carpet soared between the towers of Xandre- twenty-story tall mushrooms with caps as wide as a city block. Towers of ivory that seemed to grow like horns from the skin of the world. Palaces of domes and turrets. And everywhere were the spirits and demons of Siphios. Watching and guarding. Tidying. Healing.

There was a cat with wings hovering over a stream of schoolchildren running for the bus that would take them home. The kids looked up and waved happily. The spirit didn’t respond, but it looked happy enough to Truth. Which reminded him he was long overdue.

“Changing topic entirely, but are there any pet cafes in Xandre?” Truth asked.

There was a long pause after that.

“Sorry, pet cafes?” Merkovah asked, sounding unfamiliar with the term.

“Pet cafes. Cafes where you rent time playing with the animals there.” Truth kept his eyes on all the flying, climbing, and playing spirits. The city was so colorful!

“I have no idea. Why do you want to find a pet café?”

Truth gave the exorcist a pitying look. “Because they are good? Super-real ducks are very healing, but have you ever had a big dog with big floppy ears run up to you with a ball, then flop its head in your lap until you scratch behind its ears and throw the ball?”

Truth shook his head. “Did you know that you can make a really tiny hole with your hand, like, really small, and if you put food on the other side of the hole, a hamster can squeeze themselves through the hole to eat it? Or that you can play peekaboo with baby hedgehogs?”

“Alright, now I want to go,” Jember muttered, and Etenesh nodded with him.

Merkovah looked ready to say something disapproving but hesitated. “Young… people, I don’t know about any such silly thing in Xendre. But we can investigate. Later.” There was a pause. “Aren’t the baby hedgehogs prickly?”

“Only if you pet them in the wrong direction, and really, it’s not too bad. Honestly, they are the cutest things. Even the adult hedgehogs are pretty small,” Truth evangelized.

Etenesh cracked up. “Oh, I have to see this. Demonslayer Tommy Wells, buried under big floppy dogs that want to play fetch. Protecting the innocent wee hedgehogs.”

“You would have fun.”

“I’m not really into pets.” Etenesh demurred.

“Oh, I’m dragging you along for this. Nothing is more healing than a pet café. Nothing.” Truth was firm on this point. They were, in his limited experience, the best.

They bickered cheerfully until they got close to the university. Which, Truth couldn’t help but notice, appeared to be a walled city within the city.

It was heartbreakingly beautiful, even from the air. A fine river lined with trees edged beautiful grassy lawns. The buildings were a light tan stone, built into spires, yes, but also cloisters and colonnades. Airy pavilions with glazed tile roofs dotted the open spaces beside flowering bushes and trees that seemed to shimmer with silver and gold.

There were patterns there, paths like the lines on a talisman, connecting buildings and stands of trees, impressive rocks, and other things he couldn’t identify from this high up. It was all purposeful. All beautiful. Like the university itself was a talisman connected to Siphios by a road network.

“Am I seeing this right? They built a ring road around a couple of square kilometers of the city, walled it off, and stuck the University in there?” Truth asked.

“Kind of the reverse. Originally, the University was built in a nice little town just outside of Xandre. The walls were traditional, as it was meant to encourage quiet contemplation. Eventually, the University expanded to its current size and built the walls you see there. This was… seven hundred years ago?” Jember said.

“Nine hundred. Assene raised them, with the alumni chipping in for sacrifices,” Merkovah corrected.

“Nine hundred years ago. Anyhow, Xandre had already expanded up to the edges of the little town, and after the new walls went up, there was no stopping it. The little town was just absorbed into the city proper. Now it’s all just Xandre.”

“It is also a wonderful example of magical engineering, architecture, and city planning. You can sort of see it from up here, maybe,” Etenesh pointed. “It’s something you have to really study to get the subtleties of. The whole campus is designed to gather and purify different sorts of energy. Cosmic rays, obviously, but also more obscure sorts of energy. Even theoretical things like “dreams” or “fate.”

“Does it… actually work?” Truth wondered.

“Does for cosmic rays. They are still running lots of tests about the rest. It’s not a cultivation holy land because there are so many things that are pulling the energy out of the air, but… it’s pretty special.” Etenesh grinned. “I love it there. I am DEFINITELY showing you the campus temple before we leave.”

“You really should see it. It’s rather special,” Merkovah agreed. “A beautiful melding of history and art. The university sits at a unique crossroads- past and future, the grand ley lines of the world, its stellar alignments at different points of the year, and even the regional road network is built around the University. A crossroads of time and space and fate.”

Truth was yanked up short. “A crossroads. A… grand intersection.”

“Oh, that’s a good way to think of it. Yes, a multidimensional intersection. There is an entire department of multidisciplinary and intersectional studies.” Jember said.

Truth suddenly remembered the sharpest lesson of riding through the Free State.

“So, Etenesh, Jember, just to review. While I very much appreciate you wanting to support me in combat, we haven’t trained together to do that, and it really does take quite a lot of training for a team to be more dangerous to the enemy than to each other in a serious fight. When the explosions start, activate what mobile wards and concealment spells you might have, and run back to Temple Nag Hamadi as quickly as you can. Don’t run for shelter, don’t think you can hide, just go straight home.” Truth said as matter-of-factly as possible.

That got him a weird look in triplicate.

“What explosions?” Jember asked.

“Well, I’m assuming explosions. Fire, sudden glaciers, poison gas, screaming, swarms of insects, demons, angels, weaponized ghosts, the usual kind of things. Just focus on the running away part.”

“Young Man-” Truth smiled fondly at the beardy exorcist, “Mr. Wells, do you have any reason to believe that something more dreadful than a Faculty Congress will occur today at the University?”

“Best to be prepared.” If they didn’t already know the truth, it was useless to explain.

_______________________________________

The Faculty Congress was held in the Well of Up. This, Truth was told, was a literal translation of the original name of the place, as relayed by a guardian spirit. Truth just nodded at that because it probably wasn’t safe to argue with people who called a large domed building a “well” for more than a millennium.

At some point, someone should have proposed changing the name, right? And yet, they kept it. A big brick building with a big brick dome, enough inscriptions on everything to make his eyes sting, and they called it a well.

There were crowds of young people hanging about, all in the same formal robes as Etenesh and Jember but without the blue trim or the nifty hats. This lot had to make do with a sort of handkerchief or cloth wrapped over the head. Etenesh and Jember rated looks of faint longing, but they were outright eye-banging Merkovah. It was embarrassing to stand near him. The incredibly thirsty looks he was getting were downright eerie. Merkovah ignored them with immense dignity. He simply strode for the doors, and the crowd parted before him.

The doors themselves were bronze and four meters tall. A relief carved on one was a bull, head down, receiving a crown of flowers from a dozen small birds. The other had a whale violently eating a squid. The art style was crude, direct. Powerful. You could feel the beasts. Almost smell them.

“Guardians of Kl’f and Rehk, I am called to the Wise!” Merkovah bellowed, his hat glowing with rainbow light.

“The Wise call to the Wise, as the sow calls to the grape. Whither the hand? Whither the Song?” The door guardians intoned.

“I, Merkovah, Wise among the Teachers of the Laws of God. The Moon, the Sun. I.”

The doors rumbled open. Truth desperately prayed that he had just heard a coded exchange and not some ancient ritual that, again, against all logic and reason, had managed to survive into the present.

A short barrel-arched hallway made of rough brick led inwards, outclassed by the marble and porphyry floors. Delicate inlays of untarnishing metals threaded through the stone. Truth couldn’t fathom their meaning beyond beauty. The dim hallway soon opened into a rotunda, marble-clad, with some two hundred dark wood chairs arranged in tiers around an empty center. There was no light in the room save that which streamed through the hole in the roof. A perfect dome with a perfectly round hole in it. Presumably, it was all held up by spells.

Truth, following Etenesh and Jember, stood with his back pressed to the wall at the very back of the topmost tier. Merkovah strode to the edge of the circle of light in the middle of the floor and took a particularly fine-looking seat. He was not the last to arrive, but almost. When everyone was in, an ancient worthy called the Congress to order.

This honored scholar was of such rarified status that her hat floated ten centimeters above her head and was almost discus shaped with a ring of pink plumes. She struck a ceremonial staff against the floor. A sound like a great brass gong being struck rung out. The walls glowed with cosmic energy. The senior faculty bowed their heads and began a droning chant, shaking back and forth as the emotion of their prayers took them. Slowly, a delicate face hidden in part by a pair of wings emerged from the column of light. It bore a burning ember and slowly circled the room.

Jember stifled a yawn. Etenesh did her best to look respectfully interested. “I wish they let us bring snacks,” Truth thought. “Or better still, a book.”