Slumrat Rising

Chapter 134: The Sea of Brass

Chapter 134: The Sea of Brass

Truth accepted that he wasn’t going to feel good, emotionally, for a while. It wasn’t fun. Well, definitionally, right? It wasn’t a nice feeling to sit with. But he did sit with it. He gave himself time to fully experience the sensation. He knew he had come a long way, emotionally and educationally, since coming to Siphios. And yet, he kept coming back to the same phrase he thought of on the banks of the canal in Harban.

That’s not okay. That’s fucked up. But I’m okay with it. Which is fucked up.

The op could not have gone better. Basically, he walked in and walked out. The combination of advantages on him was simply too much for the static defenses of even a wealthy home to resist. The guardian spirits and devils were no match either. He didn’t touch a hair on anyone’s head. And terrified them. His burglary would leave them unable to sleep. Paralyzed by the horror of someone simply walking into their home, bypassing all their defenses, stealing their greatest hope, and leaving without a trace. Leaving everything as tidy as he found it.

That little girl would grow up as pretty as Etenesh one day. If she got the chance. As long as she was still able to eat well. Still had soap, and medicine, and a life free of manual labor. As long as the pimps and gangsters didn’t get her when the whole world turned into a slum. When she became another shiny bit of the beautiful past for a warlord to display.

He shook his head free of the unwanted thoughts. Merkovah had set something up. Time to go see what it was.

__________

“It’s a tub.”

“It’s a ritual device. Ancient and holy.” Merkovah was determined this time.

“It’s a broken tub. Look, the top’s wobbly. I don’t trust something made of metal that’s wobbly.”

“It’s a ritual basin used almost exclusively by priests. The water overflows the divinely significant rim, and you wash your hands and feet in it.”

“Can’t be that significant. It’s wobbly. It looks all wrong.”

“That, Mr. Wells, is proof of its divinity.” Merkovah was growling at this point. “The ratio of its circumference to the diameter is superimposed- existing in this layer of reality and a higher one, simultaneously. It’s a more than minor miracle it still functions.”

Truth had to stop and process that one.

“Sorry, I think there may be a glitch, well, another glitch, in my education here. The what is whatnow?”

“The ratio of the circumference to the diameter, you know what that is?”

“Of a circle? It’s three point one four one five nine… something. Goes on a long while, right?”

“Infinitely, young man, infinitely. Proof of the shoddy nature of our existence. Well, not here. Not at the Sea of Brass. The ratio of circumference to diameter of the lip of the Sea is simultaneously your three-and-a-bit number and the far more divinely perfect number of, simply, three.”

Truth felt certain hitherto unknown gears in his head grind to a halt.

“The ratio of circumference to diameter, the thing that kind of defines a circle, and this is clearly intended to be a circle, is simultaneously three and not-three.”

“Correct. A miracle.”

Truth wanted to argue that nothing worked that way, and it was flatly impossible, but the Brass Sea was huge and right in front of him, so it apparently was possible. Merkovah looked at the expression on Truth’s face and smiled beatifically.

“Why does it have snake legs?” Truth was unwilling to be defeated and attacked on another line.

“The vast sea of God’s infinite grace suppresses all demons and protects the faithful. The Brass Lavar is a metaphor for the mutable strength of the Law, the Sea, the weight of God’s power and capacity for infinite blessings.”

Truth had to think that one through for a moment. “Wait… isn’t mutable a word for something that can change?”

“Exactly. Brass is comparatively easy to rework, but only comparatively. It still requires immense care and effort. The Orthodoxy does change and evolve, but only if there is a very, very good reason. And, of course, the obviously divine nature of the Brass Sea ads to the legitimacy of the Orthodoxy’s rulings.”

“Snake legs, though.” Truth hung on feebly. Strictly speaking, he couldn’t call this thing cursed, but it just looked too profoundly wrong to be blindly accepted.

“It does, in fact, have snake legs.” Merkovah nodded grandly, with a victor’s generosity. “It is also a source of ritual purification, though before you ask, not a baptism.”

“Wait, an enormous bowl full of water that could easily have a half dozen people use it for a hot tub and is allegedly divine isn’t for baptism?”

“It is not. The obviously and unquestionably divine Sea of Brass is for purification. Water overflows the lip and falls down onto the platform, allowing the priests to ritually cleanse their hands and feet before entering the throne room of God.”

Truth perked up.

“Which is obviously just a name for a room that God visits, not his actual throne room.”

Truth deflated again.

“It is, however, one of the most unspeakably holy sites in all of Siphios, so as you can imagine, the Sea of Brass has significant importance to the entire faith.”

Truth couldn’t understand that. God surely didn’t care if you washed your hands before saying “Hi!”

Merkovah was looking at him with almost exhausted bewilderment. “You… really have no reverence for God, do you? You aren’t opposed to the idea; you just don’t see a need for it. You put it on the same level as toothbrushes for chickens.”

“You don’t have to clean their beaks?”

“I have no idea.”

“Funny. It seems like the kind of thing someone should know.”

“Presumably, someone does. GOD, for example, would know.”

“Makes sense, sure.”

“The reverence bit?”

“I mean, he doesn't give a damn so why should I?”

“Because he’s God? Because reverence, devotion and worship have proven benefits for one’s character and morality? And assuming that God does not care about your indifference is a bold assumption.”

“Oh. And it’s not an assumption. We know he’s not paying attention to this world, or not paying it any more attention than he does the entire universe, so he clearly doesn’t care about our opinions on anything, least of all him. He’d have to be pretty insecure to care about that, and he’s, yanno. God.”

“I have literally entire shelves of books that demonstrate exactly the fallacy of that logic.”

Truth nodded. He believed it.

There was a pause.

“I’m not going to persuade you that this holy relic is worthy of your respect, am I?”

“I mean, I respect it. Someone worked really hard to make it a great washbasin. A lot of skilled work went into that bowl. Lotta detail on those snakes. I respect that a lot. And I see it means a lot to you, so I won’t screw around with it, obviously.”

“And with that, I’m done. Stand under the lip of the bowl, yes, great, like that. Normally I would explain what’s happening, but suddenly I don’t want to. Make sure you put your toes on that join in the masonry representing thousands of years of numerological study, with your hand held straight over them, so as to maintain the sacred geometry of one of the very few directly God touched places on this planet.”

Truth did as instructed. Directly God touched?

Merkovah reached into the container that Truth had stolen, and with considerably less ritual pomp than he had intended, pulled out a burning spark. It looked like a coal from a blazing fire. And it was holy.

If anything was holy, it was this ember. This burning coal. If anything in the world was pure, it was this. If anything was true, it was this. Truth could see it distorting reality around it, furiously raging at the impure world it had been thrust into. Determined to exhaust itself to right the sins of this existence.

Merkovah said a brief prayer, even as his hand started to char. He swiftly threw it up and into the Sea of Brass while his fingers could still move.

The water in the Sea exploded, boiling furiously, and coming down like rain over the lip of the basin. Truth’s hands and feet were quickly drenched in the boiling water, the pain seeming to drill in from every direction. The steam rose too, soaking him, scalding him. It became terribly hard to breathe. He couldn’t breathe!

____________________________________________

Truth was unsure of where he was or what was going on. He stank. The man in front of him stank. The whole room stank. Windowless bare stone walls, a foul-smelling candle the only light, and sodden straw covering the floor. A rough desk, a rougher stool. He and the man in front of him were wearing matching robes, which also stank. The man in front of him, old man, was sitting on the stool and carefully penning the last few words in a letter.

“There. That should fix them!” The old man grunted and put down his quill.

“Going after the Gnostics again?” Truth heard himself asking.

“No, this time it’s that bunch back in the old country. They try to insist that only one gospel is THE gospel, rather than all four.”

“Well, you say all four…”

“Oh, shut it! You want to argue it out, you can read my book on it.”

“I did read it. I understood it too.”

“So why are you here bothering me?”

“Because I understood it. The phrase “self-serving” seems… inadequate.”

The old bishop furiously sputtered.

“It’s circular logic- our church is the right church because our traditions go back to the founding of the faith, not theirs, which goes back to the founding of the faith.”

“It is slightly more complicated than that!”

“True. Though your description of their cosmology is clearly pure fiction.”

“AHAH! No, you are wrong there. Every word, every insane bit of nonsense comes straight, straight from those Valentinian clowns. I think I even have some of their books around somewhere. Believe me, I tried to find ways to demonstrate their idiocy and found nothing better than quoting extensively.”

“God, God’s wife who is also God, beings that might as well be gods created by God's wife, who then try to create their own life, but it goes wrong, and he becomes the God of Abraham and Isaac and creates the world.”

“And is evil, and the source of evil. Oh yes. All of it was carefully and faithfully reported. Writing that part of the book was easy. It was the rest that required serious prayer and thought.”

“Alright, I would love to see those books, but let’s just assume you fairly and accurately represented their views-”

“Which I did because everyone around here knows them. Blast it all.”

“They are just another set of views. Other schools of thought, as you branded them. Don’t think I had ever heard someone called a “heretic” before as a slur. Nor “Gnostic.” Took me a minute to figure out who you were talking about.”

“Followers of Simon the Magician, not the Son of God.” The old man sneered, slapping the table. “There are no other “schools of thought.” There is the orthodoxy, transmitted by apostolic succession, and there is spiritual error, devolving swiftly into sin, corruption, and death eternal.”

“And God is eternal.”

“And God is eternal, and he plans for the span of all time. We are put in this world to suffer, yes, and in our sufferings, grow. Generation by generation, we suffer, learn, grow, and grow closer to the divine bodies, the eternal life as perfected beings that God intends. All have been saved who can be saved, from the very day of creation until the end of time itself.”

“The world isn’t evil, and God isn’t evil; the world is intentionally shit.”

The old man grinned, reached into his robe, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Got it. Light me?”

Truth frowned but found a plastic lighter in his pocket and used it.

“Pretty sure this isn’t in the script.”

“It’s not. This vision went off the rails from the start. It’s not me being the asshole here.”

“It was getting pretty good. We were getting into some deep theological weeds.”

“Oh please, that’s some baby-level stuff. Go to a seminary with that, see how fast they run your ass out. Look, this vision is intended for the faithful of Siphios, okay? It’s a purification ritual, juiced by an ember taken from the very literal braziers in the throne room of God. Actual Seraphim have to use tongs to pick this stuff up. I mean, the ember has degraded to almost nothing now, sure, but still.” The old man took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaling a six-winged angel.

“Water boils over, falls over the anointed one, purifies your hands so that you can smite evil, and washes your feet so that their evil won’t taint you. Evil often comes in through the feet, you see.”

“Really?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Still not seeing the problem here.”

“The problem, pal, is that this is supposed to be a vision about the inherent correctness of the Siphios Orthodoxy and the vital importance of stamping out evil, especially including heretics. And I don’t know if you noticed, but this ain’t that.”

“Yeah, I wondered. It smells like shit here.”

“It literally does. These idiots think being dirty is somehow proof of godliness.”

“Delightful.”

“Yeah, also, where are we?” The old man looked curious.

“Wait, you are supposed to be telling me stuff, revealing the secrets of the world and all that.”

“I am a teensy tiny trace of divinity left in the Brass Sea, empowered by the ember. Usually, I have people act as an attendant for Saint Ephirimdot as he combats the Six Devils and Seven Liars of Moyle.”

“MOYLE!?”

“Miserable place, never go there.”

“It’s fine, I have been there, and it’s fine.”

“POINT IS, this is nowhere I know, I have no idea who these so-called Gnostics are, or… any of this, really. All this comes from your soul.”

Truth stared blankly at the old man, who was sucking down his butt like he was angry at it.

“No idea.”

“You haven’t had weird visions or anything? Strange dreams? Your soul randomly changing?”

“Err… it seems to improve now and then for no good reason?”

“Yeah, it’s tied into this. Not my department, so I can’t explain it. But I’d bet you anything you like; your soul is having visions without you.”