Avery awoke to a completely silent room, save for the fan that had been running all night. He felt like a million dollars, despite his wrecked body still needing to heal. The first thing on his mind wasn't eating, he'd stuffed himself so much he was amazed he could even think to glance at the breakfast menu. No, Avery had a meeting with the man upstairs (in this case, literally). Even though he knew the context, he couldn't help but dread the interaction. Maybe DeMain would barge in the nick of time to 'save' him from it, and he could play it all off as a big misunderstanding. Unlikely, but funny.
Avery gathered the comfortable outfit he'd laid out the night prior. At least, he thought it was night then. It felt like two years had passed in his sleep. The clothes fit nicely, just the right amount of space for a relaxed fit but tight enough for him to move around in them well if needed. It was weird he had to take these things into account, but he'd never been out of the metaphorical danger zone for more than a few years at a time. Oh well, maybe next time.
Avery opened his door to begin the trudge around the hotel looking for the big boss, but the attendant woman from earlier was already outside.
"Oh. Hello? I was just going to see uh, Mr. Anansi."
"We've actually had an unexpected guest come, so Mr. Anansi has offered me as your guide to this five-star hotel and all that goes on within! Your meeting will come later."
Avery wasn't really sure if he should be dreading that the time had been postponed or if he should be excited at the idea of a tour through endless hallways. Nah, neither of them were good.
"Great. When do we start?" He feigned back her customer service tone to her. Why? He didn't know. She would have smiled and cheered him on even if he told her to jump out the window. It felt pointless to bother with anything else, though.
"We'll start right now. Do you have any preferences on where we should go first? We have a wide selection of options, but I'll narrow it down to three categories. Hungry? Try our wide array of kitchens and diner-style restaurants! Looking for excitement? Try out our casinos, or take a trip to our pools and our opera house for more relaxed fun! If you're feeling particularly randy, or looking for a drink—"
"I'll just go with the opera house. I've always wanted to go to one even if just to see what it's like."
"Opera house it is then! But don't feel rushed, the rest are all on the table afterwards."
The room melted away again as the woman put her arms behind her back. The two of them were suddenly standing in the high balcony of a massive theater room, filled with stylized mahogany carvings and elegant chairs. Avery felt a new weight in his pocket and found a pair of stilted binoculars, the kind an old person might use to get a better look at the actors during a play. The attendant had the same, but she appeared to be content looking dead forward at the sloped ceiling.
The opera room was mostly empty, save for a few other people who filed in. Some seemed to be spirits of more moderate things like crows or test scores, while others were workers at the hotel who seemed to be on break. Their faces were disappointingly still treated like CCTV camera footage, so Avery had little option to pay them any mind. His attention was instead gripped. Rather, his attention was stolen by the glorious figure that presented itself onstage once the curtains rose and the lights dimmed.
She was tall, larger than life at perhaps eight feet in height. Beauty radiated from her despite the complete lack of its presence on her body. The skin was torn and leathery, wrapped over the frame of some automaton rather than the stunning woman it could have once belonged to. Warped wounds from burns and cuts from razors dotted the surface, completely tarnishing its once-smooth surface. The insides were that of beating drums and musical instruments like organs.
The spirit's face was another sight to behold. Soft, dainty makeup applied over blue, acid-corroded skin from the lips up that forced her eyes shut permanently. Her hair was thinned from stress and the mutilation of her own body, yet it flowed like a gentle stream in the air. Her cheeks and neck bulged strangely, as if something were squirming around within them.
When the lights finished dimming, her mouth opened gently, splitting as if the frame were made of delicate paper. Dozens of leech-like bodies with detestable human faces crawled out, wrapping around her body like coiling snakes and wires. They twisted and writhed, manipulating her body like a living dress. A small crescendo of music began to play from within her, a jagged scream finding its way to the voice of a singer Avery swore he had heard once before a long time ago.
The show began, going through solemn moments of song which quickly picked up into a chaotic frenzy of notes and words. When she did not sing loudly enough, the infestation of cretins within her spit bile at her, or bit her. Avery knew that the spirit was all self-contained and this was just how they were perceived, yet…
It was the most simultaneously beautiful, erotic, and repulsive thing he'd seen, like two people attempting to kill each other while conjoined at the hips. He found himself clapping before the show was even over, and he wasn't sure why. The Idol Kami laid dead onstage from all of the abuse, her infestation dragging her body away with their necks.
"Who was she?" Avery asked. Though he did not know true love, he had felt admiration on a level unprecedented before.
"The Kami of Idols. She's a very big star around here! From what I know, even Xanthe adores her!"
Avery didn't need to connect the dots much on why that was.
The attendant took him next to the hotel swimming pools. Long stretches of perfectly white tile with warm or cool water and a natural skylight flooding in from the ceiling. Avery didn't really question that part, the Reikai was strange and he had known since arriving that a spirit's domain was theirs to do whatever they wanted with. Not that he would complain, of course. His entire time here had been wonderful.
Avery didn't want to risk swimming with his recent wounds still healing, but it did feel nice to soak his feet in the hot tub section. The attendant was on standby, holding towels as perfectly still as a statue.
Just as Avery was about to ask for one to dry off, she was gone. A black shape in his periphery told him she might have gotten into the warm water, but when he looked back a body was floating half-submerged within it. Avery didn't jump away, but he did calmly remove his feet from the water. He didn't want the stench of boiled corpse to get to his skin. Just as he did, the body rolled over and eyed him quietly, its dead eyes locked straight at him.
"Are you having fun?" He asked, unmoved. The corpse in the water frowned and dispersed into smoke on the water, reappearing as the familiar figure of Heressa sitting on a floating black velvet cushion of mist.
"What do you want?" Avery asked. "I was under the impression I was 'too boring' for you to interact with." He sighed, rolling his eyes and putting his feet back in the tub.
"Oh you still are, but don't worry, I'm still not allowed to touch you. The agreement between Xanthe and I is still in effect until one of us drops dead. I was just checking in to see how ready you were. You'll see me later, don't worry."
Heressa blew him a smoky heart kiss and vanished before he could tell her how awful it smelled, but at least she was gone. Helpful maybe, but Heressa was by far one of the most annoying spirits he'd ever had misfortune to meet.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. By the time Avery was called into Mr. Anansi's office, he'd been through most of the hotel's rooms. Were he able to check in whenever it might have been exciting, but nothing here besides the menu really appealed to him enough to want to stay.
The screen-covered devil was present in his executive office, a large room at the topmost section of the hotel tower with tinted glass windows and an expensive rug depicting famous scenes from old movies. Cam footage showed every inch of the hotel's nooks and crannies, but they turned off as soon as Avery stepped inside, drenching the room in darkness. Now only Mr. Anansi's screen-head lit the room with flashy static.
"Welcome to the land of misfit toys!" He said, his voice just as growly, clipped and processed as before.
"…Yeah. It's nice."
"You know, your boss and I have been having some chats—it's time we get a move on. I've got — plenty of lovely ladies for you— ey, kiddo?"
The overhead lights in the room turned on to reveal a soot-drwn ritual circle present where one hadn't been before. The rug was missing entirely, and around the circle were seven faceless attendants standing at the ready. The lights dimmed, bringing Mr. Anansi back into focus for Avery.
"You've got a nice ability to seep into dreams. I can only — tell them what they want to hear. But you? You're — special, kid. And we're gonna — turn it up to eleven! See the Veil, it's just — not doin' it for me, man. — I'm thinkin' we'll tear it all down."
"You want me to tear down the Veil? I can't. Even if I knew how to, I don't think I can make it decide to weaken itself." Avery said, crossing his arms and leaning forward. He was nearly touching cheek with Mr. Anansi despite their sizes, the spirit was hunched down and over in the same angling as an unbloomed fernstem. Avery was fine with being overestimated, but he wouldn't lie about things he couldn't even do. That just led to more trouble than it was worth, always.
"I'm not asking you to. The Veil is built off of — the indomitable human spirit! — a weak and pathetic thing. You need only --break them from the inside."
Avery recalled he had asked the attendant he knew to translate, but so far the New Witch God was being pretty cohesive.
"Look, I'm not trying to play dumb." Avery spoke. "But I have no idea how I'd even start. I can affect one, maybe two people at most. Even if I targeted world leaders, I doubt they would listen to their dreams over whatever I could suggest."
"Ah, but — you ain't alone out there."
The lights flickered again, and Heressa was standing at Mr. Anansi's side. She was dressed for the occasion, a black petal dress wrapped around her wiry frame. She gave a schoolgirl wave with her black nails and hugged onto the other Witch God's arm a little too affectionately.
"Making them kill themselves still won't work. They're replaceable, you know. Cut a snake's tail off and all that." Avery disputed.
"Oh! I'm not here to send a message. I'm here to give you some more bang for your buck. Give them the worst dreams they've ever had, we'll back you up! That's all there is to it." Heressa chimed cheerfully. Anansi smiled, lighting a large cigar after biting the end off.
"Think about it—the power of the gods — in the palm of —your hands." He began. "Trap 'em, skewer 'em. Smoke out their — worst nightmare. Make even their waking world -- a livin' hell." Anansi clutched his electrical mess of a hand, emphasizing his point as he puffed his cigar again. The plume of smoke swirled into the air of the room, gathering like storm clouds.
Avery thought to himself. The attendants hadn't left and were standing around the circle, they were probably also fodder for whatever enhancing ritual he needed. But if a New Witch God was offering their power, well, Avery had no idea how strong his abilities would be in the meantime. He could quite literally become a god of dreams for a short duration. Seven willing (as far as he knew) human sacrifices and an unknowably strong spirit all given to him, an amount of power that even the oldest witches rarely knew in their times.
"Well, I can definitely do something. Are you offering anything, Mr. Anansi?"
"Well I've got my beautiful girls—but you're right, Andy.— I should offer — something more."
Mr. Anansi twiddled his fingers together in thought before reaching his hand into a screen, passing through the glassy surface as though it were merely the surface of a small pond. From within, he retrieved a smoking gun, its surface strangely mottled in color. He placed it in Avery's hands, the object strangely warm—as if it were alive.
"Part of the Kami of Firearms. Should — help the process — lean towards violence—like all good things do."
Avery placed the object in the center of the circle and sat down, unsure how to proceed other than relaxing himself and preparing. It'd been years since he did a ritual, especially a successful one, and especially more one of this caliber. As he began to pour a very thin mist of his soporific smoke around himself, the attendants each took out knives and slit their wrists. Blood flowed into the circle, spilling over in some parts but generally following the groove of the outline.
The soft-haired teenager could ignore the flowing bloodshed, but Heressa suddenly took her own head and twisted it off with a single motion. A grisly wet sound filled the room as her skull freed itself. Her still-animate body threw it into the circle before dropping dead on the ground, where the head joined the gun and the congealed blood as a pure, dark flame.
Everything? She really meant business.
The flame only grew as Avery focused on it, extending his soul shape into the fire and allowing its irritable form to fill every crevice of his empty person. His will was jettisoned to a full-view of the world as his eyes closed, staring down at entire countries from above.
The uncontrollable urge for violence, the needless senses he'd always known but never indulged, blazed within him. Avery could see the silhouette of his soulform change shape as it shed its measly cocoon of scarred skin. Practically tearing itself out from within, its head pulled itself free of the weighing guilt and shame it once felt. The spine and its columns slid out like a serpent from the leftovers, the bottom distending into countless scorpion tails. The wings which had once been disheveled and featherless now boasted countless clinging flies and worms in their place. Even the blown-open face was merely a container, a much longer segment of bone emerging from within the empty skull. A new head rose, the bones of a vulture with skin pulled taut and hapless.
Avery stared down at the helpless people below him, the countless options overwhelming him. But he didn't have to choose. The people within already prayed for power, he merely needed to indulge.
The tails of his soulform struck countless people in the dreamy, omnipotent haze. Avery no longer gifted false visions, he gave feeling. Inspiration, hatred.
Potential.
The pastor walked up to his podium quietly, preparing to give his run-of-the-mill speech. But something was different today. As he stepped into the church's stained glass light, he knew some higher power to be watching over him. Surely it was the power of God which spurred him today, and nothing felt better than to be under His light. The power to say what needed to be said, to shepherd these poor, lost souls.
The sermon began with a grand introduction from their organ player as the pastor recited his verses. The words of the page felt innumerable, yet the words swirling within his own mind felt clear. As time marched on, his tongue became a slew of desperate pleas for his followers to see the true evils of the world, to take up arms against the threats to their pure, good intentions . The poison and vitriol spread to the pews like fire, and service was dismissed early once inaction could no longer be withstood. They had a duty as people to remove that which threatened them, and God would be their guiding hand.
The new police captain returned home after a long shift, most of it hard paperwork and reports that needed to be tossed in the trash. But here his lazy-ass wife was, invested in her true crime shows. No dinner, not even started. What did he marry her for if she didn't support him? He was fed up, this was the last straw.
She saw him approach and desperately attempted to explain herself, worry and surprise overtaking her. Surely because she knew she'd fucked up.
"Oh! Hi honey. I didn't know when—"
"YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH!"
His fist flew to her face before he could stop it, but in that moment he decided not to. What was she gonna do? Go to the police?
She hit the ground and shook as the impact hit her, the eyes in her head looking at him stupidly like a deer in the headlights. Shock overtook her before the pain and tears did.
"I-h-h-It's in the fridge!"
"I DON'T WORK TWELVE HOUR SHIFTS SO YOU CAN STAND AROUND. WHEN I'M THROUGH THAT DOOR, IT MEANS I WANT ACTION."
He knew it was a little overboard, but the stress of today crept up on him more than he could deal with.
"Could have at least put it in the microwave, dumbass. I guess you're too stupid for that now, huh? You think I married you so I could have you get all sloppy on me?!"
"N-no honey! Please! It won't happen again, I swear. You just came home so suddenly!"
The captain struck her again, hard enough that her head left a dent in the cheap walls. This only made him madder, the stinger in his back twisting.
"Look what you made me do! Make me dinner, NOW!"
The wife meekly crawled to their fridge, her hands wavering as she delicately plated things out.
Avery felt a rush for the first time in forever as he watched the grim scene unfold. He could go further—she was holding a knife. But he had other things to do.
The shadow of Avery's vulture darkened the doors of every military leader, politician, and community figure it could. They turned on one another, dreamed of paranoid fantasy, lusted for a violence locked to them before now. Even as senseless thoughts swirled in their minds, they willingly took them as signs and motivations. He reveled in watching people cast spittle in the name of senseless killing, in the name of 'justice' or 'safety' or whatever else they contributed it to. Those that were asleep were tortured by dreams of secret infiltrations and invasions of their country, of downfalls of society because of their ignorance. Messages from their god to test their devotion in the coming days. Those that were awake were tortured from within their own minds, Avery molding the clay of their spirits from a smooth ball to a wicked shape.
As Avery inflicted his disease of ire, he could see Anansi was doing his own work too. Small, but definitely impactful stories of minorities and outcasts causing crimes. Similarly, unreleased stories of every pedophile celebrity and scandals left in the dark for years came out all at once. It was like watching the world burn, but very slowly. The slew of distress wouldn't stop, and they both had sown seeds to keep it going for a long time.
The feeling of godhood slipped away after a countless time, and Avery returned to the office room feeling as though he'd spent a prison sentence in purgatory. His mind reeled, pulled too many directions to process. Blood coated his legs and hands, the attendants dead and butchered into a pile of raw gore that vaguely resembled an X on the circle. Heressa's body was gone entirely, and Mr. Anansi was grinning wider than Avery thought a skeletal grin was capable of. It took him a few seconds to come back fully, but when Avery did he noticed that Mr. Anansi was playing the ending theme to Jeopardy.
"You've really gone and done it now."
"Huh?"
"I mean — ya did good, kid. Now I've got — a meeting with some associates of mine."
The spirit snapped his fingers and dissolved into static, melting away into the hundreds of screens around the room. Avery looked out the tinted windows and saw the Reikai shifting, spreading itself into a single, long pathway. Every fragment of the plane seemed to cheer and revel in the new order to come, Avery unsure of the implications.
The Reikai shifted as a thousand doors might, peeling away to reveal some kept-secret part of itself. From the very end in the dark depths, a horrid figure stepped into view, and Avery's mouth amassed a grin uncanny for such a stone-faced predator.