Ari is patrolling the streets of scenic Vancouver! Well, actually he's just going to visit Peter, but he's keeping an eye out for monsters along the way. It's a nice night, monsters like ruining that kind of thing. The streets are more or less deserted, it being 2:00 AM on a Tuesday. Ari whistles cheerfully.
Door won't... maybe she's lost her ability to transition, somehow? He still doesn't know if this creature will be evil or not, but he can't imagine putting her back in the Nevernever would do much harm.
"Do you need to get back to the Nevernever? I can open a gate for you."
"Well, secret is as secret does. There's no rule against telling people, but for some reason people mostly don't know about it, and a lot of the magic people get really antsy about telling people. But, y'know, screw them. I'm mostly just saying people will stare, and that could be unpleasant."
"Very magic eating, yeah. And eating's not the only unpleasant thing that can happen to lost children in the Nevernever. Best all around if you stick with me. And they're my kind wizards! We do magic with earth and air and water and fire and spirit, and then we do more complicated magic with demons and magic items and- there's a lot of stuff you can do with the complicated magic, it's flexible."
"Aw. Because there's things that have absolute control over places, and if we found one that was a house I could beat it up and sit on it until it opened a door for you."
He opens the door into the apartment, which is, unfortunately, a door to his apartment. It's a nice apartment, though. Tastefully decorated. If you consider reams of crystals and horrifyingly complex nets of silk thread dangling everywhere to be tasteful.
"Good idea. Sally nobly dedicates her bed to the cause. She's the second room on the left down that hallway. Bathroom's opposite, you can use Peter's spare toothbrush because he's literally never used it because he doesn't come here. We'll get you clothes and stuff tomorrow, I guess."
Ari summons an acquaintance to ask about setting up a glamor to hide wings, and bargains him up to the address of some weird mutant cobb who works with clothes instead of shoes. Then he works on that glamor in the living room for a couple of hours.
A few hours.
The rest of the night.
Goddammit, this is interesting!
There are what might be called an absurd number of books. There are a few gratuitously ruggedized entertainment systems, the controllers to which are, on closer examination, actually low-tech middlemen for the proper controllers, which are encased in leaded glass. There are innumerable shiny things.
Among the shiny things are a number of Sally's spare jewelries, scattered about carelessly. They are amazing. There is also a pedestal holding a sphere of polished amethyst, a platinum mirror covered in gemstones, and a silver anvil inlaid with golden designs. Next to the anvil is a similarly inlaid hammer. Neither looks in any way suitable for actual forgecraft, but they're so pretty.
The mirror fogs over. When it clears, it is no longer reflecting Pen; it is reflecting a round-faced lady with an enormous number of piercings, who squeaks. The reflection spins dizzily and is now reflecting hotel carpet.
"I'm sorry, you startled me!" calls a fuzzy voice from within the mirror.
"Can't now, no wishes. Not enough grow yet. There a kind talking wizard who is better for being child but the ones scare of making attention from a bad other worlds god. Enchanting okay for old enough, wishing okay for old enough, maybe other stuff but them are the best stuff. When Mommy finding maybe she do your wizard kind too."
With a quick slicing gesture, the air opens in front of him. He hops through and falls to the ground several stories below.
"I'm alright!" he calls faintly.
The Nevernever is, as he mentioned, stunningly beautiful. They stand by an extremely tall tree in a forest, the treetops full of brightly colored fruit and brighter flowers. The grass is a bluish green, speckled with tiny black flowers full of crystal seeds. The air is empty of birdsong, but the sound of tinkling bells can be faintly heard.
Ari points at a larger female. Does Pen want to see if she can catch her?
"Oh! They look like people, but they're barely like people at all. The biggest ones in that clearing have maybe a few weeks' memory apiece, and the tiny ones can barely think at all. It kind of bugs them when you catch them, but if you give them some honey afterwards it more than makes up for it. They really like honey."
"Before we go in, are you hungry? It's not a great idea to have food around faeries, no matter how nice they may be. It's too easy to insult them with it or accidentally entrap yourself."
"Who is it?" croaks a voice.
"A wizard, here to request clothing for a child with feathered wings."
"Fine."
Ari takes this as invitation, and he stoops down to crawl through the door. Inside, he stands up again, despite the fact that he is clearly taller than the roof.
"The child?"
"Yes. I have payment in diamonds and assorted raw corundum, which I can cut and shine as you like."
The little man cackles. "Good, good. You! Tiny wing-mortal! Get over here for measuring."
The mannequin sizes itself into a duplicate of Pen. Cloth flies around the room assembling itself into a nice little pink and white dress with a cunning arrangement in the back to fit her wings, a description of which this margin is too narrow to contain. "What do you think?"
The cobb looks at him and decides that he's not going to look extra trade in the mouth. "That'll be ten stones of my choosing, then."
"Criminal. Five."
"Eight, you finagling scum."
"Six, for the Queens."
"Eight, for the Kings, final offer."
"Bah. Fine."
Ari throws his small sack of gems on the counter. The cobb sifts through them, comes up with eight stones, and tells Ari how he wants them. Then he gets to work on the order. It's a very magic-intensive process.
"So, it turns out that a long-term glamor over your wings would be way too hard for me considering how far outside my area of expertise it is. So, instead of that I'm calling in a favor from a certain faerie I know. She lives a few hours away, but since you can fly we're able to take a shortcut that makes that about five minutes, which I'm very happy about. Not to sound like a broken record, but are you hungry?"
"This lake is actually about a hundred feet in either direction," Ari notes. "Lirrelal just really likes dramatic illusions."
The door is opened by a beautiful woman with a Botticcellian figure and at least three inches on Ari. She smiles radiantly. "Child of the snow. Do you seek to return to my household? I can make an exception to my usual rules, for one so lovely as you."
Ari laughs genially. "Not today, Lirre. Here on business. I need a long-term glamor to hide this child's wings. Preferably tied to a talisman."
"And what will you give me in return?"
"Let's not play games. When I saw you last you owed me three favors. One I spent to free myself. The second I spent on a portal to the mortal realm."
"You're calling in your third? For- this?"
Ari grins. "It's as good a favor as any."
"I was not aware you had taken to lying so readily since you left my house," comments Lirrelal.
Ari rolls his eyes. "Alright, yes, it is kind of expensive. But I don't really care. Debts are a currency, currency exists to be spent. And I spend it to help my friends, when I can."
The faerie spares Pen a fascinated glance. "She speaks oddly. And her wings... A fascinating oddity."
Ari clears his throat. "Thank you, Lirre. You are creepy as always."
Lirrelal laughs, a sound of crystal bells.
"But I'm using my favor, so... I bid thee by the debt thou owest me to use thy power to hide this child's wings with your strongest magics, until such time as she wishes they return. And quit being creepy at her."
She makes a noise of irritation and twiddles her fingers. Pen is unlikely to notice any difference, but to an outsider, her wings seem to have vanished.
"S'a thing wizards have. Lets them see stuff mortals can't, especially magic stuff. And if you open it all the way you can understand it, but that hurts a lot. But if you had the Sight you could find your way to the portal without the sparkles. But, you know, sparkles are easy, I'm not complaining."
He flips a switch, which turns a cog which flips another switch which causes a stick with a comically large glove on it to prod the power button of a very nice TV stored behind a few inches of leaded glass.
"The funnier machine is because if I were to touch the TV myself, it would probably blow up. There's simpler ways to set that up, but come on, that's hilarious. Anyway, I'm gonna start you with a game called Dragon Age, because it's a cool game and you can probably pick it up quickly and I'm not subjecting you to Oregon Trail or something. Fair warning, there are dragons, but there's only like three of them. Pretty disappointing, but what are you gonna do."
The game starts up. Ari hands Pen a controller, then pauses, opens a cupboard, and removes a much better controller using tongs and deposits it on top of her head. "You can use the actual controller, now that I think of it, I can put myself in a circle so I don't accidentally fry it. It plays way better than the proxy."
"Because dragons are big and it seems like it'd be fun to fight them. Nice-fighting, though. Unless there was an evil dragon or something, fighting an evil dragon would be cool. But it'd be fun to spar with a dragon."
Ari takes out a velcro circle about five feet in diameter and sticks it to the carpet. He pricks his thumb on a convenient tack on the edge of the circle to close it mystically, then sits at the side nearest Pen.
Over in this direction there is a mouse who is a person! He says some things about the Harrowing, and how he was an apprentice who failed his harrowing and was killed by the Templars and he's stuck in the Fade as a mouse now. He asks if he can come along with Pen. Then there are several sentences displayed on the screen! One is "feel free to join me, noble spirit; one is "sure, it seems like you could be useful"; one is "no, get away from me you little creep"; one is "I suppose I can't get rid of you, so why not".
“So this creature is your offering, Mouse? Another plaything, as per our arrangement?”
“I’m not offering you anything! I don’t have to help you anymore!”
“Aww. And after all those wonderful meals we have shared? Now suddenly the mouse has changed the rules?”
“I’m not a mouse now! And soon I won’t have to hide! I don’t need to bargain with you!”
“We shall see…”
And then there is a boss fight. It's kind of a pathetic boss fight, though.
“You did it. You actually did it! When you came, I hoped that maybe you might be able to… but I never really thought any of you were worthy.”
Her dialogue options consist mostly of varyingly angry "so, you're a mass murderer, I guess?" The one that isn't doesn't seem to have been listening to that cutscene.
A portly demon in a striped hat appears and begins halfheartedly savaging the boundary of the circle. His heart clearly isn't in it, however, and he leaves off after a few moments. "Now that's out of the way, what can I do for you, summoner?"
"Pen, any preferences?"
"Certainly. I'll take five ounces of pixie dust as payment, or equivalent."
"Highway robbery," Ari mutters, but he nods. "The pact is sealed. Kal'gzxoth, return to your hellish realm and procure what I desire within five minutes' time. Go!"
The demon vanishes with the smell of applewood-smoked pork.
"Bread, cheese, sauce, various additional delicious things often but not always involving meat. Italian in general contains lots of bread and pasta and creamy sauces and garlic. God damn I am hungry right now. I'd be eating the furniture if Sally wouldn't get irritable about it."
After five minutes have elapsed, Ari re-summons the delivery demon after placing a little baggie of pixie dust in the summoning circle. After some cursory slavering, the demon takes the payment and vanishes back Hellwards, leaving behind a sizable takeout container.
"Food! Food food food." Ari lays out the contents of the container on the dining room table. It contains a small pizza, quantities of pasta with various sauces and meats, and numerous molluscs. All of these are in warm ceramic serving dishes, and have clearly just been prepared.
"Huh, I think they got this from Actually Italy. Nice."
Ari lacks Pen's timidity. He lays into the food like a starving wolf who really likes Italian food. He makes sure not to eat more than half of any given thing in case Pen wants some, which isn't too hard considering the enormous amount of food. It's fairly gruesome, all told.
A week goes by. Ari coaches Pen through Dragon Age (eventually downloading an anti-gore mod so she can play without feeling unpleasant things whenever Alistair crits and decapitates a bandit leader). He introduces her to more video games, because... he doesn't really have that many other hobbies. While she games, he works on enchanting a glamored hair comb for some old lady with large amounts of money. (At this rate it'll be ready in a month or so. He can deliver it ahead of schedule, she'll be thrilled.
He opens many doors. None lead to the nice bar. It's unfortunate. Not that he minds hosting Pen, or anything.
Pen mopes, occasionally, about not being able to go home. She sings. She plays his video games and eats his food and [shows him the brainphone] and goes flying when there is opportunity to do so and acquires pants to go with her shirts from the cobb and sleeps and reads.
Radiating outward from her hand, like ink spreading on a selectively waxed surface, is perfectly tidy English text neatly organized into paragraphs.
Pen pulls her hand from the wall; her skin hasn't picked up any smudges.
She blinks at the paragraphs.
The most everyday magic for most of these people is wishcoins. I don't have any with me, but I have several magical wards that were placed with wishes and second-tier access to the "brainphone" telepathic network. If it had been anticipated that I might get lost like this I would also have a gem with an instantaneous wireless connection between it and the central computing power of a computer-person named Jane, who has the ability to transport people and things between any locations she can see. She would have been able to bring me home, probably after dropping an anchor into this world so the Bells could find it later and its rate of time would continue to go by at the same rate as theirs. After this is cleared up I expect to get a gem, and for other children of people who know that Milliways exists to also get gems.
I got lost through an interworld hub-and-bar called Milliways, which, while usually very safe and convenient, had nothing stopping me from mistakenly going out its door while it had not yet completely closed after a departing patron from this world. Normally leaving the bar would have put me when and where I left, instead of here. It is likely that my retrieval will be delayed, or even prevented until I find another door, by the time effect that allows that; but if I am noticed missing because time passes in my home world without me in it, the likely ways that I will be fetched include one of my mother's alts with power over Milliways's door to walk here after me and then find me with magic, or for my father or one of his alts to use their template-common power "freecasting" to teleport straight to me (wished teleportation powers only work within single worlds or sheaves).
Samaria has an Earth in its history. It and stuff on it were named by very religious people. I'm a genetically engineered angel, like my mother.
Pen is hugging herself and hopping up and down as she reads this.
Pen has been in this apartment long enough to see the whiteboard used. She grabs the eraser, erases a bunch of her writing (she can't reach it all) and swats the empty space.
People whose parents have manufactured a lot of wishcoins are typically born with an innate magic power that sometimes tends to take a while to manifest. People with powers like that are called ingots. This is apparently my ingot power! I like it.
My parents never tried to fix my grammar problem with magic because they weren't sure if I'd grow out of it and they didn't know how it worked so they worried about messing up my brain somehow. But now I can do this and it all comes out just right really easily!
"It's good that it worked out this way! I know I'd like to be able to communicate exactly what I meant without tripping over myself, I used to have an awful time of it. I don't know that I'd want that if there were other powers on offer, but I just dealt with it by getting a speech coach, so it was never as much of a problem as it seems to have been for you."
"I used to say things before I knew what I was saying with them, so I'd stammer and never get anything out. Nowadays I'm very careful about the words I use, and I think out my sentences before I say them. And I sound very refined as a bonus. I have to talk pretty slowly for it to work right, though."
She eyes it critically. "Too much?"
She sighs. "I'm afraid you're right. But it's so useful when there's poltergeists around to have something that can devour them... I could give it to Peter, but we're trying to wean him off necromancy, and it's not like he needs any help. Maybe I'll just shove it in the closet and take it out when we need to go ghostbusting."
"The skull takes the energy that lets the poltergeist exist on this realm, takes it out of the poltergeist, and turns it into energy that we can use. Technically it'd work on any ghost, but most ghosts are nice; poltergeists are the mean ones, who often kill people. The necromancer I took it from was using it to kill all the ghosts in the area. And people, but I got rid of that function entirely. Peter is a friend of mine and Ari's. He mostly uses ectomancy- that's magic that has to do ghosts- and he used to use necromancy too- that's death magic- but we stopped him when we found out, because it was affecting his personality. The skull is necromancy."
Look, ingot magic! The guy who just bumped his head is Ari and he found me when I wandered into the wrong world. And that's his roommate Sally. They're nice. Ari got a magical faerie who owed him a favor to hide my wings so they wouldn't get too much attention because this is an Earth and doesn't have any angels native. Did you bring a Jane gem?
Pen squeezes her mommy, but then says, "Down," so she can reach the wall. When she has been put down, she again erases and swats. I had them before when we talked with the mirror, remember? Anyway, this is my mommy, the archangel-elect and the leader of the host at the Eyrie, Isabella, and my daddy, future angelico, Micaiah.
Swat. Not real dragons. It's a video game. I want video games at home! They're better than the spaceship computer games, those are silly and trivial, the video games have stories and dialogue options and I like them. We can keep consoles in the spaceship. You should do nice things for them. They're wizards and wizards make technology explode. Be careful of the Janegem.
"Oh, of course." This takes three pentagons to fix both wizards' explosion problems and the one's allergy. "There. Before we go I will also want to leave a Janepoint somewhere to sync time and establish stable access to the world for later, and you'll be able to brainphone her - did Penninah explain the brainphone? - if you want anything else."
"...Right. I guess we'll just put her in more leaded glass. Maybe we could set up a fountain to send running water over the case. And a Greater Circle. And lots of wishy stuff. Are we going to be able to get the wishes for ourselves, or do we need to spend a while proving ourselves first or something?"
"...I'm going to ward the Janepoint just as I did these gems," says Angela, gesturing at her bracelet. "Other wizards wandering in won't harm her point. The wishes for the gems went just fine so I have every reason to assume they'll suffice for a larger hardware installation. There are at minimum safety lectures associated with the wishes - and giving people coins directly in exchange for them doing us favors has not always gone well in the past. I do immensely appreciate your looking after our daughter, but I do not want to hand you any wishcoins right now."
"You may have noticed I'm not making eye contact? I'm a wizard. If I meet someone's eyes for more than a couple of seconds, we have this sort of psychedelic trip into each other's souls where we learn about who the other person truly is on the inside. And if you go in with a question in mind, that question often makes an appearance. In my case, I'm pretty sure you'd get 'this guy is trustworthy and can have power without misusing it' in some form or other."
"...My template is unlikely to take you up on this, but we're willing to trust the words of a variety of people who will not necessarily have such a reaction to the concept. And one or two of me may want to investigate how this property of local wizards interacts with wished and other mental opacity and consider risking one soulgaze with a known person a reasonable tradeoff."
"It's all right, technically what I'm doing to look at the world is different from what I'm doing to see the magic. We'd want Lazarus if we wanted a detailed look at your spellcraft anyway. The system looks interesting, though. Angela, don't look them in the eye."
"Anyway. I see you've already warded the Janegems. I recommend being very thorough and quick about that - maybe conjure the gems and points with pentagons or hexes in the first place, or ward them before entering the world - because I don't know how much the effect might travel through the ansible, but you've been lucky so far. But nothing's going to sneak around the wards, particularly - sufficient brute force doesn't look abundant and the world isn't perverse like Materia, just sort of unpleasant to live in if you're not positioned right. Did you only want a generic diagnosis or is there anything else I should look at?"
"If I knew where the Outer Gates were I'd try to get you to take a look at those, see if there's something you could do to shore them up... Do you think you can cure dark magic corruption? Or maybe prevent it from happening in the first place? I mean, not that I'd want to break the Laws willy-nilly, but Peter's necromantic shit sure was useful."
"...I can teleport to well-specified locations, so you not knowing how to get somewhere may not be an obstacle, though if they're the sort of thing that requires shoring up I might want to know more before I turn up at them. Just in case. I can have a look at your friend."
"Pen's sister Keziah and her alt Céleste," explains Angela, "have slightly different flavors of the same ingot power, which lets them magically decontaminate things. I'd like to have Lazarus look at anything they're going to touch first, of course. What Laws do you mean?"
"You will probably want to know more about the Gates, yes. They protect our world from an endless sea of horrible sanity-rending monstrosities. The Laws of Magic are seven rules that designate the types of magic that inevitably corrupt the souls of any who use them. The distinction between legal code and physical law is fairly thin in this case. We could... brainphone Peter and see if he's doing anything, then just summon him up? I assume you can summon people."
The whole place is warded, of course. The wards are brutal and efficient, but very fair; what you put in, you get out. Knocking on the door might feel a bit harder than usual, a crowbar to the lock would be nasty but nonfatal, trying to shoot your way in would be... unwise.
Almost everything is glowing with some magic or another. The mirror links up to the mirrors in Ari and Sally and Peter's pockets, the scattered jewelry all burns with various effects, Sally's face (covered with various piercings) looks like a road flare. The three wizards in the room are obviously powerful, especially in their areas of expertise. There's a closet over there that's warded heavily inward, full of nasty magic things. Speaking of nasty magic, Peter's magic looks distinctly unpleasant. He should get that looked at.
It looks like... evil. Like a little seed of evil was planted, and it's blossomed into a great big patch of evilflowers. He did something, something wrong, and it latched onto him and started to turn him into the kind of person who did that more, and then the kind of person who did worse and worse things. It's not in its final stages, whatever those might be, and it's clear he's been fighting it, but it's not nice. And there's hints, in the pattern of those evil little flowers, of what the end stages might be. From playing with death to killing for his own ends; from killing to searching for knowledge he was not meant to know; from searching to doing. Doing the bidding of what lies beyond.
He may note, at this point, that this is not the only layer of this world. And if he squints, he may note that the layer behind it has remarkably flimsy walls. And- he should probably stop squinting, after that.
"...Oh dear," says Lazarus. "Well, first of all, you have been doing bad magic that wants you to do more bad magic and someone should probably get a Griffin and clean that up for you. But more importantly, this world has deeply terrifying magical problems. Glass, did you not notice the deeply terrifying magical problems? Does no one know about the deeply terrifying magical problems? Someone should do something about the deeply terrifying magical problems."
"Either will do, both would be better, Keziah is slightly more relevant," says Lazarus. "There is certainly a sea - well, an entire subworld - of horrible monsters. My power won't even look directly at them. I have never met something my power refused to look at before. But I can see enough of their properties indirectly to be extremely worried. The situation is stable, there is a barrier between here and there, but it's not a terribly impressive barrier and if something damaged it enough the consequences would be dire."
"How damageable is it, how amenable is the barrier to wished improvements, is there likely to be anything worth not destroying about the subworld of horrible monsters, if not will a tenner do it, how do our wards stack up if we try to approach to investigate, likewise torching? Jane, go ahead and ask Keziah and Céleste over, notify Rose."
"Torching remains torching, they couldn't destroy you, but they could make you extremely uncomfortable," says Lazarus. "I would not trust your wards against the horrible monsters. They are very infinite and very horrible and seem to be able to circumvent most magic by default. Wished improvements could improve the barrier but I am not sure they would improve it enough. I cannot see anything worth saving about the subworld of horrible monsters. I think a tenner would probably work, but I think it would be a very, very good idea to check with the Downside admin about whether this world can be properly linked to her afterlife before trying it, in case something goes wrong. And if she says it can't, then I recommend evacuating the universe and sending in someone who doesn't mind being potentially trapped in an infinite sea of horrible monsters to try the tenner."
Ari straightens up slowly. "...The Outsiders thing, that wasn't in character for him. That much I know. He wants power, but ordinarily he'd- recognize that there are better ways to get it standing right in front of him. And he's been honestly trying to recover from his Lawbreaking, he doesn't want to add more wood to the fire."
There is no longer a computer on the floor of Sally and Ari's apartment.
She turns to them. "You. Sniveling humans. What were they doing here?"
He does not sarcastically thank her for driving them off. That seems like a bad decision.
He isn't carrying any magic, but he has some - the Gift of magical amplification, and the capacity to mint, and the capacity to enchant. His aura is not out. He has a sensory synth capable of letting him mint off himself with no external intervention, among many other uses. He is extremely immortal in the same way as the rest of the extradimensional visitors.
He looks around, identifies the one in the armchair as the probable threat, and says: "Hi!"
"Your friends came into my universe unannounced and started doing strange things with strange magic. I came in... somewhat flustered, and demanded explanations, and their squeaky man said that I was 'scary', and they vanished in short order. The cowering humans over there tell me that your goals align with mine. Namely, we all want to get rid of the Outsiders. Is it possible we could... work together?"
"Well, that sounds annoying," says Corona. Alice is getting explanations from Lazarus and relaying them to the Joker-link. "Apparently we can probably take care of that for you, though. Except the squeaky man really, really wants us to check if your world can be backed up first in case something goes horribly wrong."
"We know this sorta death-god person who's like an enormous cosmic packrat, and if she hooks up to a universe she can recreate anything that was ever destroyed in it," Corona explains. "If we can grab somebody from this world to go show to her, she can check whether your world can be backed up like that. Some can't."
"Mm - if I let him talk and move that'll do the trick? Will it let him do anything unfortunate - not dispositionally, I mean practically will he be able to do much with that? If he manages to do anything unfortunate while allowed to talk and move your credibility goes down the crapper, FYI."
"He'll probably be irritable about the destruction of the Outsiders, the fact that a little girl attacked him, and the fact that we didn't do anything about the little girl attacking him," predicts Sally. "And the fact that we had to argue you into un-paralyzing him. He can't do anything meaningful without magic, though, unless you count 'try and fail to punch one of us in the face,' which is pretty unlikely anyway. And he can play cards while he's whining."
"Fair point," nods Sally. "That would be a very good argument for you catching her and slamming her into a wall, for instance. When exactly did you acquire soul-shredding reflexes?"
Peter opens his mouth.
Peter closes his mouth.
"I remember something being said about Go Fish."
Sally takes out a Bicycle deck and begins setting up.
"You're going to penalize people who have been living in a supernatural warzone for having conditioned reflexes to 'something is going for my face with unclear intentions'?" asks Ari neutrally. "That seems a bit unfair. My reflex when something is doing that is very, very similar. Would I have been supernaturally removed from action by our... benevolent... invaders?"
"Violent reactions to thirteen-year-old angels whose involvement has been previously discussed trying to touch your face when their gook-o-meter says something nasty's going on in your brain?" says Amariah. "You might get a token apology from Angela, if you asked, but she's the sweetheart. It's a good thing Pen never startled you."
"Well," says Corona. "Mostly you need to not fuck with me while I make a wishcoin big enough to wipe out your horrible monster problem and then use it. This splitting headache I'm getting from your mere presence, is it something you're doing on purpose or is it just a side effect? Never mind, it's useful."
Coins pour into his coinsorter, starting at hexes and moving rapidly through stars, evils, niners - he slows down a little, then pushes harder - and when he has a handful of tenners, he stops. He waits a few seconds for the pain to subside to merely agonizing levels before he defangs his newly created coins (hex up to star up to evil up to niner, niner to defang everything at its level and below, more niners to defang the four tenners) and stands up again.
"Okay so tell me about your horrible monsters," he says. "And you can fix your headache now, I'm done playing with it and it's a little distracting."
She fixes the headache. "Just outside the Nevernever, there's an endless sea of what the mortals call the Outsiders. They're powerful, they can pretty much ignore most magic, and looking directly at them for too long will make you go insane. I made this universe to have an obvious weak point, called the Outer Gates, so they'd focus their efforts to destroy everything there instead of just popping the universe like a bubble. Then I stationed an unbelievably massive army of faeries at the Gates and hoped they wouldn't be able to cooperate long enough to just punch through the tougher points and pour in. Which, fortunately, they aren't."
The Joker-link conducts a brief consultation about this course of action. Nobody can think of a good reason not to do it.
Corona wishes on a tenner.
There are no more Outsiders.
"Poof."
[I'm concerned about what she is possibly doing with the spare attention and power,] Angela puts in. [As excuses for being a god over an Earth in Sunshine-level condition go, "distracted by monsters" is close to acceptable, but it doesn't guarantee we'll approve the new direction.]
Well, currently I'm in Acapulco having a drink and celebrating, you know, everything. Once that's done I'm probably going to go around eradicating all of the evil that accumulated while I was out. And putting Anduriel in an oubliette full of fire and filling his blood with ants and- doing things to Anduriel. He's a dick.
She pauses. And he betrayed me. Which is unforgivable.
She takes a sip. "And my revenge on Anduriel is non-negotiable. If you attempt to stop me, you will fail."
"Well, you've got one. I don't, but my essential purpose is complex enough that it doesn't matter for practical purposes. Souls are what let you mortals just sort of- exist, without being anything. You're not defined by the need to make shoes or eat people or murder lost children or something, you just sort of... happen. Anything without a soul does what it was made to do, and everything else is secondary."
"Yeah, a lifetime of agonizing doubt without the clarity afforded by their essential natures sounds so much better than painlessly ceasing to exist. They aren't made to be- fluttering about in the wind like you are. If I was a nixie and you excised my desire to drown wayward children I'd take a nail gun to my jugular."
"It'd be like instantly going from two dimensions to three and not having any idea how to deal with them. And feeling crippling guilt about all of the horrible things you've done over three thousand years of absolute knowledge that what you were doing was right. And 90% of your friends are dead. Oblivion is a fucking cakewalk."
His audience would like to double-check that none of these people have friends not slated for destruction who might miss them. Elsewise the low-conflict solution of pulling the obliterated creatures from Downside and applying creativity without going through God seems good to them.
"...I guess it's possible? But the things I'd be destroying are the things that are essentially purpose-made for killing anything with a soul. You can check the species for mutations that'd make them less evil, if you like, I'll delay this until you're comfortable letting me stop them from devouring more innocents with every passing moment."
She concentrates for a few minutes, sorting through all of the malevolent soulless looking for those who should be spared.
At length, she looks up. "All I found was a vampire who thinks he's some kind of superhero and a cabal of demons who deliver groceries in exchange for pixie dust instead of murdering people. And there's a bunch of them who fit themselves into human society, and some of them have 'friends', but they're just saving them up to eat later. Can I make with the cleansing now?"