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

[andomega]

"Again, dandy. I can do that within my domain too, the problem is that the Outsiders aren't part of that domain. I can change the laws of physics, manipulate probability until it breaks like a Happy Meal toy, declare that a particular species no longer exists and never did- that's what happened to the Autumn Court of Faerie, bye bye assholes- but I can't declare shit about the Outsiders. I have to use the belief energy I get from worshippers in this world, for that. Which is not especially potent, by which I mean it amounts to wet tissue paper against the tentaclebastards. The faeries and the wizards help, they've got an illogically huge army defending the Outer Gates and a squad devoted to repairing the fabric of my reality respectively, but all that means is the place is covered in duct tape and fucking Band-Aids."

[ending_of]

"This seems inefficient," the administrator observes. "Have you considered moving?"

[andomega]

[ending_of]

"I have connected this universe to my domain," she explains. "Anything that is permanently destroyed here is available to me to recreate elsewhere. If the universe itself were permanently destroyed, I would have no trouble recreating it elsewhere without the infinite expanse of horrible monsters attached."

[andomega]

[ending_of]

It occurs to her to add, "Depending on how thoroughly you are able to destroy the universe, it may be necessary to transport you and this person separately from the rest, since he is indestructible and I am not sure of your destructibility."

[bitterchill]

Ari is nursing an increasingly blinding headache from God's aura of power, but he can still hear. He hears an alarming amount of talk about destroying the universe, which is "any."

He trusts the Administrator, though. She made him immortal and all. He may even trust her to get rid of this headache. "M'head hurts? Could some god fix that?"

[ending_of]

"Hmm." The administrator considers this request for a few seconds. Then she says: "Yes."

No more headache.

[bitterchill]

"Thank you so very, very much, I love you."

[andomega]

God clears her throat insistently. "So, what you're saying is that if I decree this whole mess out of existence, it'll be reconstructed in your wherever the hell you're from and I can fuck off to Acapulco and drink Piña Coladas for the next millennium? Is that what I'm hearing here? I get to burn the world in one last blaze of glory and live stress-free forever? Is this what's going down? Because I am on this train."

[ending_of]

"Yes," says the administrator. "As long as the three of us are - or at minimum, I am - returned to my domain in the process. If you were to truly destroy the universe so that it did not even remain as a location able to contain things, that would suffice."

[andomega]

"Its status as a location isn't something I can change. It'll stay around as a spot in the sea of undulating fuckery. But I can blitz Heaven and Earth and Hell and the Nevernever into nothingness, is that enough?"

[ending_of]

"Hmm. To allow me to recreate them in my domain, yes. Whether or not I can transport the three of us to my domain afterward..."

She thinks about it.

"It seems that I can. Yes. That will do. Ari, would you like to be transported ahead of time? It is likely to be more comfortable than staying for the destruction of the universe."

[bitterchill]

"Yeah, that sounds like a good way to go about things. I support not having the world unravel around me until I'm surrounded by horrible alien monsters."

[ending_of]

"In that case, I will see you soon."

Ari vanishes in a ripple of illusory fire. (And reappears standing in the middle of the administrator's room at the top of her tower, surrounded by one big unbroken window, with a lovely view of both halves of the ground below and both halves of the sky above. And a very nice armchair next to him.)

[andomega]

"I have been waiting to do this for four and a half billion years," hisses God. "Let's burn this motherfucker down!"

She raises her arms in the air, throwing up ironic metal horns for the fun of it. Starting from her outstretched hands, the world crackles and rips and shreds itself into nothingness. Behind it there's nothing but inky blackness, full of writhing, squamous flesh.

The Administrator has a few seconds to see it before the ectoplasmic shell she inhabits created by Morty's summon is shredded with the rest of existence. The deeply unconscious Morty has a second more. God cackles at the top of her lungs as she fades into nothing.

And it's all over.

[ending_of]

And then it isn't.

The administrator recreates this entire world, in a fresh reality separate from her existing domain but still ultimately within her jurisdiction. She omits the Outsiders, but leaves everything else exactly as it was before God destroyed it, complete with God herself in Morty's basement. Neither the administrator nor Ari is in Morty's basement, however; they are now both in the administrator's tower.

"Would you like to be returned to the new copy of your world now?"

[bitterchill]

"Yeah, I think so. If nothing else, somebody's got to let Morty out of the sinkhole. But... can I get that communication thing before we go?"

[ending_of]

"Yes."

Now Ari is back in the basement. With a sense in the back of his mind that if he intends-just-so to speak to the administrator, she will hear whatever he thinks or says that is directed at her in this way.

[bitterchill]

Ari convinces the floor to spit out the demonologist, that's a good floor. In light of the fact that God just gave him the hangover of his life, Morty makes the executive decision to find religion immediately if not sooner.

God appears to have fucked off somewhere, possibly putting her earthly affairs in order before fucking off more permanently to Acapulco. Ari suspects that the Archangels won't actually have to make any substantial changes to their management style; she seemed a bit of a "hands off" type.

The information that holy shit, there's no Outside anymore trickles down gradually through the supernatural community. The population of the fae experiences a massive boom as the Gates release their guardians, which is generally bad news, but Ari is happy to kill any who try to hunt lost children et cetera. The Gatekeeper, mysterious eyepatch wizard extraordinaire, suddenly finds himself at a loss for what to do and gets rather more involved in White Council politics. And knitting.

Ari keeps up communication with the Administrator, and does in fact tell her at least one knock-knock joke over the telepathic red telephone. One day, a few weeks later, he realizes that the fact that she's collected all of the dead fae is immediately relevant to him. He pings the Administrator immediately. "My mother's name was Belinda the Kind. Can you resurrect her?"

[ending_of]

"Yes," she says. "I will find her among the soulless dead. Just a moment."

She searches among them for someone who called herself Belinda the Kind. The easiest way to do that is to look for female soulless beings who died during Ari's lifetime, and then read their life histories until she finds one with the right name. It's a lot of information to sort through, but she doesn't need to pay attention to most of it.

[bitterchill]

There's a Winter Sidhe over here who answers to that description! Doesn't seem very kind, though.

[ending_of]

...She investigates more closely. The parts of Belinda's life history that intersect with Ari's life, in particular.

[bitterchill]

She seems to have started out by killing his parents when he was four years old. She took him in, out of the goodness of her heart and because she had run out of working milkteeth. She raised him with very close attention to his every need, because that's how you get good milkteeth. She was indulgent in the extreme, her only imposition that he pay attention to his lessons and that he give her blood when she needed it. And that he obey her.

Around the time he turns fifteen, she begins planning the ritual in which she will sacrifice him. It's quite intricate. She tells him she's got the most darling surprise for his seventeenth birthday. He hugs her and says he's sure it'll be perfect. She ruffles his hair and tells him it will.

She waits.

She dies of a centaur's spear to the heart a week before the ritual is to take place.

[ending_of]

It has been about ten seconds now since Ari made his request.

The administrator speaks to him again. Her voice sounds noticeably annoyed.

"I have found your mother," she says. "In the process, I learned some things about her which I expect will distress you."