The Truth (Humanity Book 1)

Jack’s grandmother had always recited to him fantastical tales of the Old World. Bizarre accounts of dozens of nonexistent creatures and handfuls of impossible places filled his childhood, and he could recite quite a few of them even now. He no longer believed those stories, of course, but he still liked to think of them every now and again. What he could not recall, and he was quite sure of this fact, was his grandmother ever mentioning anything about beings called Ideas. To him, things such as greed, fear, trust, and love were as intangible as the stories threaded throughout his memories.
Whether his grandmother had recounted tales of these beings or not, Ideas – personifications of ideas – not only existed but lived, breathed, and were sentient. Like most sentient beings, Ideas found reason to conflict with one another, and they did it on a large scale. They were at war. Or, at least, they had been centuries beforehand. Once the Overarching Idea of the Midlands fell, some semblance of peace was able to permeate the realms. Despite the technical lack of war, the remaining Ideas, many now tainted by humanity, continued to spread chaos and discord throughout the Upperlands, Lowerlands, and by proxy, Midlands.
That, however, had nothing to do with Jack.
Jackary Salem didn’t come into play until he was forcibly ripped from his normal, happy life on Earth and placed in a cage in the Lowerlands for the delight of the highest bidder. His part didn’t begin until he made a rather brash promise to save a little girl from slavery, and his role wasn’t confirmed until he realized what lengths he was willing to go to keep that promise. If Valdridge, his largely-by-circumstance traveling companion, had any say in the matter, those lengths would include restarting the Realm Wars and murder.
Jack, unfortunately, wanted nothing to do with the war or Valdridge or any of his enemies. This was unfortunate because he could neither rescue the little girl nor get home without Valdridge’s help. Unfortunate because he was too kind to simply turn his back on the lot of them. Unfortunate because Valdridge expected him to kill.
Jack wasn’t a murderer. He had gotten into fights here and there, but he didn’t have it in him to seriously harm another living being. The fact that everyone on Valdridge’s hit list was an Idea, and thereby wouldn’t stay dead forever, didn’t matter. Blood was still blood, and it would still be on his hands. His hands because the only thing capable of killing, or even harming, an Idea was a human, and he was the only suitable human available.
With a myriad of goals, none of which lined up, and an inability to trust anyone in the horrifyingly odd realm he had landed in, Jack’s best chance at survival was hoping that his goal could be completed before becoming too immersed in the story unfolding at his feet. Yet, in this wayward world, on this insane journey, only one thing could be said for certain.
The decision not to believe in his grandmother’s stories was wrong.