aesthetically displeasing

[andaisq]

Mortimer Halliwell, warlock extraordinaire and small-time crook, is having a remarkably bad day. First he runs out of the good coffee and has to use Folgers. Then the demon he summons to rob a bank for him only speaks Egyptian, which is hell on his throat. Then the demon gets discorporated and tracked back to his lair/duplex, the door of which is currently being battered down by some cheerful blonde madman.

He needs to summon another demon, and he needs to do it fast. He whips out the Black Book, flips desperately through its pages, and arranges the offerings around the iron circle set into the floor of his basement. A phonebook, a pile of dust, a miniature casket, a oh my god he got in screw it he'll do it without the rest!

He forces an immense amount of energy through his body into the summoning. The dust whirls into the air. He screams as his skin crackles and snaps with static. "I summon thee! I summon thee! I summon thee, K-Kh-"

It is possibly the most regrettable sneeze in Mortimer Halliwell's life.

There is a plume of red flame, and there is someone in his circle.

Comments

[bitterchill]

"That sounds like the very, very useful kind!"

Over in his corner, Morty thrashes about in terror at the idea of an indestructible blonde madman who could sacrifice himself three times for the same spell! He is summarily ignored.

[ending_of]

Well, not quite.

"The annoying man seems distressed about this," the administrator observes.

[bitterchill]

"That'd be because it'd be very, very useful for me. He doesn't like me much, I always keep him from doing crimes and such. If I could regenerate myself, I would be... absurdly powerful, because I could sacrifice myself to power spells and stuff. Which would be bad for him."

Morty nods frantically. He points at his gag.

Ari sighs. "Do you want his side of it, or should we just ignore the annoying criminal?"

[ending_of]

The administrator contemplates the annoying criminal.

"I don't see very much use in listening to him. He is annoying and has strange priorities."

[bitterchill]

The annoying criminal is distressed!

Ari is not distressed! "I'm glad! Not sure what you mean about his priorities, but he certainly is annoying. So, how soon can you do this, does it take the heart of a virgin cow under the blood moon or something?"

[ending_of]

"No," she says. "That sounds like a tedious precondition. To do a thing, I merely do it. Do you want your magical tattoos to be preserved through restoration? Tattoos normally aren't, but these ones have magical properties, so perhaps you would like to keep them."

[bitterchill]

"Oh hey, those are magic? Clever, Belinda. I'd probably like them preserved, yeah. Is there a way for you to tell what they do?"

[ending_of]

"One effect is cold resistance. I'm less sure about the rest."

[bitterchill]

"...Huh. That is a very unorthodox use of that rune, if it's- oh that one's upside down, that's clever. Man, she knew what she was doing. That makes sense. And the rest I've narrowed down to "probably something about beauty" but that might be a false positive. Anyway, I'll apparently have eternity to figure it out."

[ending_of]

"I have now made you impossible to destroy," she says.

[bitterchill]

Ari does a small dance.

[ending_of]

[bitterchill]

"So, I guess I can scry Maybe God to see where you should send your engraved note now, if that's what we're doing. Now that I'm officially certified unsmitable."

[ending_of]

"Yes, I believe that is the plan."

The author would like to point out that he himself is moderately Jewish

[bitterchill]

Ari begins constructing a spell diagram for a very, very powerful scry. It has ten circles for offerings, plus one for him to stand. He fills in the runework in Hebrew, in which he is fairly competent, because it seems appropriate. He usually sticks to a proto-Germanic fae tradition, but if he might be going after the God of Abraham, he's hiding behind his theoretical status as one of His chosen people as much as he can.

He calls up a fairly large receptacle in each circle that isn't Da'at and turns to the administrator. "If it turns out I am not in fact immortal, I will be very unhappy. I may come back as a ghost to give you disappointed looks."

[ending_of]

"You are in fact immortal," says the administrator, observing his preparations curiously.

[bitterchill]

"Good," he says. He takes a very sharp knife out of his bag, takes a deep breath, leans over the receptacle for Malkhut, and cuts his own throat.

Over in his corner, Morty makes a muffled noise of horror.

The receptacle fills with blood. Ari's eyes glaze over, then he bursts into flames and returns to life. He looks around, then breaks into an enormous grin and starts cackling for quite some time. He would hug the administrator, if he was sure she wouldn't place him gently in the heart of the sun. Also, if he wasn't covered in blood.

[ending_of]

The administrator smiles.

[bitterchill]

Ari does another very small dance! Then he makes the rounds of his deeply heretical little diagram, repeatedly bleeding himself into the designated receptacles. This is going to be a very, very powerful scry. It's going to pierce the gates of Heaven.

Once the last circle is filled, Ari steps into Da'at and begins his chant. His eyes stare straight ahead, over the receptacle and in the administrator's general direction (though not directly into her eyes, because if she has a soul he'd really rather not gaze into it). Gradually they turn milky, then begin to glow cyan-blue. It would seem that the scry worked.

[ending_of]

The administrator watches him curiously. This is an interesting procedure, if messy.

[bitterchill]

The glow gradually leaves Ari's eyes. "Don't think She noticed me, but I don't know how I'd tell. Anyway, I could probably send the note through a... really weird Way, I guess? It'd have to be-"

Just as his pupils reappear, his eyes come to rest on the administrator's and he's

falling into them.

This could be bad.

[ending_of]

The administrator's soul is... tidy. Straightforward. Mind-bogglingly immense.

A tall, tall tower marks the center of her domain, an infinite expanse of sky above and ground below, divided into two halves by a straight line of tall, tall cliffs; one half's sky is bright as noon, the other dark as midnight. And every second a vast number of people across seventy-odd universes die, become available to her, and appear in stasis in the infinite catacombs beneath the ground; and an even vaster number of destroyed objects enter an immaterial queue, to be sorted by a clever and intricate set of rules that will eventually cause them to appear in someone's home; and an even vaster number of particles of dust attempt to settle onto some surface or another and are instead quietly deleted from existence.

Nothing in this realm can ever be permanently destroyed. Even the dust could be brought back, enough of it to drown planets, if she found a use for it. She can examine the entire history of each individual particle and instantiate it in whatever configuration she chooses. All of the information representing every person or thing that has ever existed in any universe connected to her domain is constantly available to her.

[bitterchill]

Ari beholds infinity and tries to keep himself from dissolving into it.

He looks away from the sky and the horizon, clasps his hands over his eyes. He counts the lines on his palms, trying not to feel the unimaginable ocean of death and life flowing through himself. Tries not to see the expanse of unending, the absence of an end, the complete and total inability to cease. Knowledge claws at his mind and he opens his mouth to scream and it's-

over. He's on the floor, shaking, his face covered in tears and blood. It seems he may have broken his nose falling onto one of the receptacles. How nice.

[ending_of]

"That was unexpected," says the administrator. It's possible that she sounds slightly concerned.

[bitterchill]

Ari cannot be reached right now! He is busy gibbering.

A voice fills his mind. Ice and fire, ice and snow. Fear, but never let it show. Ice and fire, ice and snow. Fear, but never let it show. After a bit of this he starts thinking along with it, not noticing or caring that he's saying it aloud.