God of Trash

They marched on. Or rather, the skelly boy marched, while Rhys lounged in its arms like some lazy waste of space. He’d stopped pondering the new technique a while ago when the cursed energy seemed like it was about to hit critical mass, and the skelly boy had stopped moving as a result. That was something to explore when he had lots of mana and was in a safe place, not while he was being carried around by a curse he was deliberately misusing on his way to pick up more filth and another curse. Instead, he was sleeping.

It was a rare luxury for him, at this point. He’d spent the last few weeks working on getting his shops and trash cans up and running, and there was no time to relax or spend on himself. Even taking a nap was out of the picture. So, traveling, with nothing to do and a destination he’d arrive at whether he was awake or not, he napped. There was no one out in the middle of the forest to tell him not to, and nothing else he wanted to do was viable in the middle of the woods where he had nothing but himself and what mana he had left to play with. His mental attack slash new curse was still in development, but he felt like maybe he shouldn’t push it over the brink in the middle of the forest with his cursed companion and nothing, so he had all the excuses lined up to take a little nap. When he came to, he was standing in front of an Impure Well, the skeleton holding him numbly beside the putrid pool.

“Thanks,” Rhys said, nodding at the skeleton. He extricated himself and brushed off his robes, then paused, looking at the skeleton. One part of curse power was negative emotions, if his burgeoning technique was any indication, but that wasn’t the beginning and ending of curse power, merely one facet of it. The skeleton would auto-seek impurities. True, maybe it auto-sought pieces of itself, since this particular curse was hidden at the bottom of the wells, but maybe it sought impurities. And even if it sought itself, it was hidden in impurities. The curse, in its pieces, had been stored in impurities. Impurities… what did they do? Disguise the curse? Overpower its signature? Keep the curse alive while it was torn into a thousand tiny pieces?

Putting the skeleton’s untimely grave aside, he had plenty of evidence that impurities were tightly linked with curse power. Sable had been full of them, and Leonard had seemed to think getting cursed meant you were impurified, too… though Leonard knew so little about curses that Rhys felt like it was probably better to actively ignore whatever he said rather than listen to it.

He looked at the skeleton. “What do you think, big boy? Are impurities important to you on a metaphysical level, or…?”

The skeleton said nothing.

Rhys patted its shoulder. “Good talk.” He dismissed it back into his core and considered the Impure Well once more. He took a deep breath. He needed the impurities, and with his trash star still a little low, he definitely needed this well. There was just something… off about it. Rhys took a moment to examine everything. The well, the surrounding forest, his body, even the sky, but found nothing that would make him feel off-kilter the way he felt right now. He frowned, then turned his attention inward. Was it his mental state, maybe?

I did just spend the whole ride here reliving the worst days of both of my lives, and then took a nap, Rhys thought to himself with a snort. If he was ever going to feel mentally wonky, now would sure be the time.

He bounced from foot to foot at the edge of the well, gazing into its depths. Would being in a bad mental state effect his ability to absorb impurities? It was just a matter of sucking them into his core, right? All in the body. And the core. So… the metaphysical body. And he used magic to guide them there, and magic cared a lot about how he conceived of things and the way he thought of them. If his mental state was off, wouldn’t he struggle to properly absorb impurities?

He hesitated another second, then sighed. No way to know until he tried. With a spirit of experimentation around him, he dipped a toe into the filth and absorbed. Everything went good. The impurities flowed through him and into his core. The action was fully automatic now, so much so that he got in his own way watching himself absorb the impurities more than he improved the process by watching it closely. He frowned and crossed his arms, retreating his foot. Maybe it was fine? It was probably fine. His mental state was only a little wonky, and it was his fault it was off, so he was probably in relatively good state. Absorbing was automatic for him. He’d done it in all kinds of mental states, including right after he’d busted out of prison. Surely he’d be fine this time.

Why am I panicking? Calm down. This is no big deal. Rhys huffed out, putting his hands on his hips, then shook his head at himself. It was like he was a little kid again, hesitating to jump in the pool because ‘You don’t understand, Mom, it’s cold!’ He was an adult, and he was in good enough shape. He should hop in already. He’d be fine.

Seriously, though. Why am I panicking?