God of Trash

As it turned out, the sun was low in the sky, but not yet setting, when they reached their destination, the time somewhere between afternoon and evening. They smelled it well before they reached it, even the coreless mages’ noses wrinkling in disgust. Rhys breathed deep, sucking down the sweet, sweet airborne impurities that came with it. This was going to be a gold mine, for sure.

Filthy water flowed down the barren land where once a burbling brook had flowed. A heap appeared through the trees, a massive, flat field, covered in piles and piles of garbage. Beyond it, a glittering city stood, the Empire’s hastily-built outpost rapidly exploding as mortals and mages alike conceded to the Empress’s rule and made their homes near the seat of her power. Rhys didn’t hold it against them. It was trashy behavior, but people had to act like trash to survive in desperate situations, and someone local might as well benefit from the invasion. Better than all the money going back to the Empire’s citizens and leaving this region totally bereft of economy in its inevitable wake, when the Empire either moved on, or someone finally forced them out of the region and back to their shitty dystopian home country. He preferred the second, and he intended to make his own progress toward that goal, but if someone else came by and overthrew the Empress, he wasn’t going to complain. He’d happily celebrate on the back of someone else’s effort like the garbage human he was.

But until then, as far as he knew, it was up to him. Rhys pushed through the forest and reached the edge of the trash pile, taking a moment to really take it in. It towered overhead. The Empire must have built on top of an old city, because there was old trash in the heart of the pit, but the massive heap of trash atop it was brand new, overflowing with mana, and ripe for the plucking.

So Rhys knelt down, and drew in only the most garbage of the garbage pile, the old trash in the center of the pile that had accumulated from the mortal city and had almost no mana in it. It didn’t matter, so much, how much mana the trash had—or rather, better said, the mana in the trash was a bonus. Right now, the primary property Rhys was concerned with was mass, to keep the trash star ignited. Quantity over quality, though quality was always nice to have.

The pile hollowed. It wasn’t easily visible from the outside, but the center of the pile opened up. The trash overhead groaned, wanting to collapse in, but before it could, Rhys gripped it with his mana. One piece, two, three—his nose bled, and Rhys dropped the attempt. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t see each piece of trash as itself and attempt to hold it. He didn’t have enough mana, not even after the prison breakout.

But who said he needed to sense each piece of trash? Why not treat it like the garbage it was, like the background scribbles in a low-budget anime that were meant to represent trash? No animator ever wasted their time drawing out each trash object when it was so much easier to just scribble a brown lump and move on. Looking at the pile, Rhys unfocused his eyes, hypnotizing himself: it wasn’t many pieces of trash, but one giant piece of trash. This whole pit, was nothing but one big piece of trash. One singular lump, that he could control alone. It wasn’t a thousand itty bitty pieces, no. It was one. One big, shapeless hunk, and there was no reason to consider it as anything else. Just one… enormous… slop, one big scribble!

The weight of the pile landed on Rhys’s metaphorical shoulders. He grunted, bracing himself as the full heft hit him. The trash star trembled, but held, under yet more immense forces within itself. He Didn’t want to hold it for too long, but instead, gripped it all with Trash Enchanting and fused it all in place. His mana zipped over the pile. Wherever there was metal, it coursed through them, adding heat until they melted together. Wherever there was cloth, it knitted around its neighbor. Wherever there was wood, it took form and braced the trash beside it. On and on, until at last, Rhys released the pile, and it remained in place despite its hollow core, externally identical to how it had been to begin.

Blake stared. “What… what was that for?”

“Our base,” Rhys said matter-of-factly, and walked toward the pile. A half of a table, slapped crookedly at the edge, served as the door from the way he’d carved the trash, and he pulled it open and crawled inside.

Blake pinched his nose. He grimaced. “He can’t be serious.”