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

[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.

[ending_of]

The administrator waits.

[bitterchill]

After a few minutes of the mnemonic, Ari has calmed himself down enough to be somewhat presentable. His breathing is still shaky, but he thinks he can talk again.

"I. I need to remember not to soulgaze any more gods. Sorry."

[ending_of]

"It was interesting. But it seems to have distressed you."

[bitterchill]

"You're. Big. Your soul, it's really big. I don't think humans are built to see that. I'm glad you had fun."

[ending_of]

"I was human once."

[bitterchill]

Ari considers this.

"I could see that," he decides. "But you're a lot more now. You're big."

[ending_of]

"True. Do you remember what you were doing before you accidentally fell into my soul?"

[bitterchill]

"Ah- the scrying? Yeah, I think I can get the note to Probably God through a mini-portal. If you looked through the portal, could you make the notes where she is from then on?"

[ending_of]

"Yes."

[bitterchill]

"Alright. You make the note, I'll make the portal."

He starts chanting in his usual Germanic, but it's a bit more complex than his usual incantations. It demands that a path be opened by his false death, a path to where he should go, held open by his continuing life. At the climax, he bursts into flames. Damn, but this immortality thing is handy.

A rip opens in the air and expands until someone could probably fit their hand inside.

[ending_of]

The administrator sends a note through it. The note is made of diamond, the words inlaid in obsidian. (Paper is ephemeral.)

Your domain collects only one category of aware life. All the rest, and some unlucky members of that category, can be permanently destroyed. May I have those?

[bitterchill]

The portal snaps shut after the note goes through, rather as someone might slam a screen door that has blown open.

A note appears, written in clipped ancient Hebrew on slightly glowing lambskin. Please don't open another gate to the afterlife from the mortal world. It upsets the universe. Also, stop making people in this world immortal, it messes up my thermodynamics. What do you want to do with the soulless?

[ending_of]

But now that she knows where her note went, it's trivial to create a second one in the same place.

I want to collect them in my domain. I dislike impermanence. This world has too much of it.

[bitterchill]

Is your domain somewhere beyond the Outer Gates? I don't see where you came from. And impermanence is a part of how I made this universe. If high-energy beings continued to exist, it'd degrade the boundary between this world and the Outside. And that boundary keeps out an infinite sea of horrible monsters, which I'd rather not have an infestation of.

[ending_of]

My domain is elsewhere. What I collect in it will not affect this world at all, unless accidentally summoned here in the way I was. The infinite sea of horrible monsters sounds very inconvenient.

[bitterchill]

I assume that by "elsewhere" you mean "somewhere beyond the infinite sea"? I did not know there was anything else. If you can collect them without bothering me, why did you bother me about it? The monsters are very inconvenient; a great deal of my power and a substantial portion of my world's construction is devoted to keeping them out.

[ending_of]

I was advised that collecting them without permission might be impolite and cause conflict, which I would rather avoid. Would you like assistance with your monster problem? It's outside my usual area of interest, but a universe being overrun by infinite monsters sounds extremely untidy.

[bitterchill]

Take them if you want, I don't know how you're going to do it and I don't particularly care. How can you help with the Outsiders? Do you understand the word "infinite"? Because I'm using it very literally.

[ending_of]

"The entity has allowed me to collect this world's permanent dead," she says aloud for Ari's benefit. "I offered to help her deal with her sea of infinite monsters, but she did not seem interested."