Chapter 8: Scripture
"Alright then, let me take it from the start." He adjusted himself into a more comfortable position then continued.
"So where do I start from? Ehhh... in fact I'll just show you, it would be much easier that way." He looked under his desk and brought out what seemed to be a book, it was a very tiny one, at least by human standards, but by rat standards it was scaled to be a normal book. Afterwards he reached under the desk again and brought out a piece of crumbled up paper.
He then opened up the book using his tiny hands and pointed to the piece of paper with his nose.
"Chief Mastery: Combustion 0" he said. As soon as he finished it the piece of paper went up in flames.
I was immediately shook. I first looked around to check and see if there were some sort of match lit near it or anything to cause it to catch fire but there wasn't, I could only draw the only logical answer.
"What the hell? Is this some sort of a trick?" I cried.
"No no comrade. It is called Scripture."
"Is it magic?"
"Well, to us yes. But here it's the norm, magic here would be something more akin to car."
"But...but....how...?"
"Patience comrade patience. I'll explain promptly." He closed the book and put it over his desk then faced me and continued.
"This my friend is a world of science, of scholarship; even though it seems like magic it's far from it. It more or less goes like this." He folded his hands over each other then continued
"Each page from this book is called a 'script', the book itself is called 'Scripture', every script has a certain function. What you just saw was the script of combustion, it sets anything aflame so long as it is flammable, for example it won't set metal aflame nor plastic.
"Each script has 3 elements. Firstly you have the Scriptures's name. In this case it's Chief Mastery, then you have the Script's name, which in our case it's Combustion. Lastly you have the the script's grade, which scales from 0 to 5.
What I showed you there was a 0 level script, 0s are normally the basis of each script upon which the script develops, for example combustion 1 can burn much quicker and more violently even producing blue fire. Combustion 2 can set aflame non-flammable objects. However 3 onwards usually vary from one Scripture to another in most scripts. You use scripts by simple opening the page with the script and uttering its full name. You still with me?" He asked
"Y-yeah I think. This is all just sounds so...unreal, it's hard to wrap your head around."
"Indeed, and it's about to get even more unreal so brace yourself."
"Oh...ok. I'm ready." I said puffing my chest a bit.
"Alright then, now let's cover acquisition of scripts which is the most important part." His gaze suddenly shifted to become a lot of more serious, then he continued.
"Normally Scriptures are things given to people at birth and Scripts are things you acquire with money or from your parents as you're young. That's where most people's relation with Scripture ends. It's not as you might think a superpower type of ability. Here it's the norm, it's merely a backdrop to people's lives, so most people only use what they need and continue onto their daily lives. However what we're more interested in, is how scripts are made comrade.
"Scripts only have power in words. In each script there is a necessary writing called a 'Path', a 'Path' is what gives the script its power, you could call it the recipe for the script, that 'recipe' can only be written by a certain form of pen called a 'stiletto' if you were to write a path for a script on a certain paper with a random pencil it would be worthless, but if you were to use a Stiletto then it becomes an actual script."
He then crawled from behind his chair, and fetched a map and laid it on the ground in front of me.
"That's our goal my dear friend. We collect Stilettos and write our own Scriptures, it's how we evolve." He said with light glimmering out of his eyes. He then pointed on several spots on the map, each were marked with red. "Those red spots are spots we suspect to have people who own Stilettos, so we're regularly surveying them preparing for our theft, or attack if need be."
"I-I see." I said meekly. My mind was starting to go blank, this was all too much to take at once, but having actually seen it in action made it a bit easier to grasp. "I think I have a good general idea of what you want to say."
"Good good." He laughed. "I've had a lot of practice explaining matters lately with the other rats, I'm glad to see I'm improving." He giggled. "Now comrade, it's time for my question no?"
"Oh oh right almost forgot about that with all that explanation. Yeah yeah please ask." I said.
"Forgive me If I'm a bit blunt but...have you killed a man before?"
"W-what?" The question had shocked me, it was not at all what I was expecting. I had expected something along the lines of 'can you do this or that' not 'have you killed before?'!! I tried to pry him open a bit before I answered. "Why do you want to know?" I asked.
"You got your question. Now it is my turn. You'd do well to abide by the rules of our game comrade. I don't like rule breakers." He replied in a calm and solemn manner.
Looking into his concentrated eyes it was obvious a lie wouldn't go through, he just had that aura that made you freeze when you thought of a lie, made all your tells get amplified to cartoonish amounts.
"Yes." I replied. I hadn't hoped to say it but I couldn't keep it.
"I see." He said as he seemed to delve deep in thought before breaking the silence again. "Tell me comrade..." he crawled from behind his desk and towards me.
"....w-what?..." I stuttered.
"Would you...." his face now directly in front of me. "....kill again?"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
QMR
QMR Poisoning after effects still kicking in but managed to get the chapter through! Hurray!
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