sculpture

[bitterchill]

Ari is currently standing on a broad plateau on the Plane of Gold making a very pretty statue of a woman he loved once. He's not thrilled with the fact that she put him in a coma and swanned about doing horrible things for the span of his natural life, but half a millennium is a lot of time to get over that, and Belinda made herself beautiful enough that he's willing to overlook her faults in order to use her as a model. She was stunning.

For this statue, he's elected to use various shades of corundum. He managed to get the violet in her eyes into a pair of sapphires, and is now deliberating over how to render her skin. She changed it every so often, so he's got choices here.

Comments

[from_scratch]

"Yyyyyyeah."

[bitterchill]

"Mazel tov! Welcome to Hell! It totally rocks, the streets are paved with gold and everything. I can do the tour guide thing if you like."

[from_scratch]

"This is Hell? You don't look like a demon."

[bitterchill]

"I totally don't! It's part of my whole thing, I like confusing the everloving heck out of my summoners. You should see them looking through their tomes and stuff for what fairy wings and horns and a doggy tail means. It's hilarious."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, the horns and the tail should rule out fairy, even if they don't make it clear between demon and angel... I thought fairy wings didn't work for flying, though."

[bitterchill]

"They don't. Functioning wings are for losers, I have a jetpack. The wings are for pretty. And yeah, they should, but half the time summoners have no frame of reference on anything but "this is how you summon these things and this is what they do, no more questions now." So, confusion."

[from_scratch]

"Okay. So why am I here?"

[bitterchill]

"You're a demon now! You have the magical powers of making shit and not getting shot in the face anymore. Well, I mean, you can get shot in the face, I have been, but it doesn't do much. You can make yourself wings and a tail and whatnot if you like, too, I highly recommend them."

[from_scratch]

"...Cool. I'd probably go for wings that work... how do I actually do it, is it supposed to be obvious? I don't really feel different except for no longer having a hole in my head."

[bitterchill]

"Yeah, it's... kind of supposed to be obvious. I mean, conceptually I guess it's kind of similar to the mortal magic tricks or something? But it's kind of like asking, like, 'how do I breathe,' it doesn't make a lot of sense."

[from_scratch]

"So if it's like a parlor trick -" Cam holds out his hand, looks at his palm -

And now he has a green M&M.

"Oh. That was easy."

[bitterchill]

"That's making, all right. Quick and cheap and easy, as the actress said to the bishop. What is that thing, some kind of bead?"

[from_scratch]

"Piece of candy. Want it? Apparently there are more where that came from."

[bitterchill]

"Hell yes. I am amazed by the fact that modern humans have such ready access to chocolate that they can ruin it by putting it into those horrible little chemical shells, it's delightful."

[from_scratch]

"Don't knock the chemical shell." Cam hands over the M&M.

[bitterchill]

Ari bites into the horrible little chemical shell. "My god, it's disgusting. I love it. So, anyway, twopenny tour of Hell or what? I can get back to my sculpture any time, but molding the flexible little mind of a new demon doesn't happen every day."

[from_scratch]

"Please, tour. It's been mentioned to me a few times that demons sometimes only started speaking English after I summoned them, I imagine if I go directly to Hell ones I can talk to are a much smaller subset of the population."

[bitterchill]

"Oh yes. I mean, English speakers make up a lot of the summoner community, but the summoner community is a pretty tiny subset of the population at large, which in this region mostly speaks Lagalann. Which is a lovely language, I highly recommend learning it, but it'll probably take you a while." Ari leaves his statue and pops a jetpack onto his back. (He spent almost fifteen years working on this design back in 1800; since then he's made upgrades to keep up with fuel technology, and by this point it's very sleek and space-agey.) "Want to go now?"

[from_scratch]

"I don't know how to operate a jetpack, and I don't think I want to court experiments with daeva durability right now, though I'm assured it's state of the art. Can I get there in a car? I know how to drive a car."

[bitterchill]

"You can drive there in a car while I soar above your head on my extremely cool jetpack, yes."

[from_scratch]

"Right then.

Cam makes a cute little blue convertible, top not only down but nonexistent, and hops in behind the wheel. "Lead the way."

[bitterchill]

Ari takes off, white flame bathing his bare legs in a way that looks remarkably uncomfortable. He soars off in the direction which has, for general demonic convenience, been declared north.

[from_scratch]

That looks remarkably uncomfortable. Maybe he's got some kind of insulator around his legs that Cam can't see.

Cam drives after him. Vroom.

[bitterchill]

At the speed of vroom, Ari leads Cam to a city that looks a bit like what would happen if you let several million people with inherently contradictory design aesthetics and the ability to conjure arbitrary matter build a city together. It's... unbelievably tacky. Near the center there appears to have been something of a competition to see who could build the tallest unnecessary spire, which concluded when the top floors stopped being affected by gravity. Nearer the outskirts it's humbler, just a mess of elaborate mansions made entirely out of gold or rubies or human bone.

[from_scratch]

"Wow," mutters Cam. He may live in a city for a while to get used to Hell but then he's fucking off to someplace less tacky to be introverted and have a sense of damn (...heh) proportion.