He stops, dropping his hand and settling next to Edovard (no one is feeling sexy right now, and Santanos’s mate is staring at the orange anus like everyone else), and I turn to face the giant fart mouth currently pulling us toward it. Or is it coming toward us? Who the fuck knows?
A tingle on my skin seeps into my bones, making me feel like I’ve been injected with a billion bubbles. As the bubbly feeling overpowers all the rest of my senses, Darcy’s voice rises from nothing inside my head, chanting in a language older than written history. Joining his chant, Bellamy’s voice inside my head speaks a different refrain in the same language, and Santanos joins the other two with another chant.
The bubbles gather just under my skin, and it’s all I can do not to scratch to alleviate the itch and discomfort. Instinct tells me to surrender, and since I’m never going to be the type who needs to control every little thing, I give in to my instinct, relax into the itch, and take a deep breath.
A hiss, a moment of silence, andKABOOM—
My body, mind, and soul go supernova.
Not literally, I think; it’s a liminal detonation. It’s hard to tell. Everything in the universe is me, and I am everything.
The language resolves itself, and I understand. The three of them are calling to the universe. No, to me. They need guidance and power, and here I am with both. Well, with one. They don’t need guidance. They’ve already done the hard work. It’s my turn.
This thing, thisvirusthat eats the stars and consumes my creations, is back again. I’ve already banished it once, but it’s snuck back into this universe again. The only way this could have happened is if it was called for, and why would it be in this solar system unless it was called by people who reside on Earth?
One of my rivals must’ve sabotaged that planet when they introduced the virus. It is one of my best creations this time around, but it’s barely gotten past the stabilizing-of-its-galactic-neighborhood-without-ending-up-a-cloud-of-dust-and-rock-particles part of its evolution. Its intelligent species isn’t even finished evolving yet. They’re barely intelligent.
The toddlers have called for the monster without realizing they are its victims.
I’ll have to bury the memory of this magic from my creation. They’ll discover it, that is inevitable, and I’ll bury it again. It’s difficult to run an experiment on this scale when the experiment itself sabotages its own existence.
Truly, it was a mistake to give this universe entropy; it takes the task far too seriously.
The only reason I gave it a measure of disorganization was because I felt lazy that day.
“Never take a mental health day in the middle of a creation cycle; it can really fuck everything up.”
I bet the fucker that introduced The Hollow into this universe did it that day. When I find out who it was, I’m going to… do something dastardly. Turn them in for interfering in a live experiment, probably. That’ll teach them not to fuck with other being’s stuff.
I clap my hands together, and then look down at them. I did a really good job programming this universe to produce hands like these. They’re so useful when a being has to incarnate.
I raise the beautiful appendages, pressing the index finger and thumbs together, and holding the hands palm out toward The Hollow.
“This fucking thing.”
It’s just a virus, sent by a rival to destroy my experiment. Unfortunately, now that it's part of the experiment, the best I can do is push it out of the universe itself. I can’t destroy it completely (not that I know how to do that) until the universe runs its course. Until then, I have to keep kicking it out when it wriggles its way back inside.
Propelling the power of creation through one of the creations is hard on the body, but needs must. I can only act in this universe if I’m using an avatar, otherwise I’ll destroy the experiment.
“This is going to hurt.”
That’s all the warning I give the little body I’m using before pulling power through the Avatars that stabilize this universe and directing it through these hands into the mouth of The Hollow. The virus was designed to destroy, and it succumbs quickly to the power of creation. It might be able to take apart a galaxy star by star, but it can’t unbraid the raw power of creation, and in a blink a hole through the universe appears inside The Hollow. It falls in on itself, pushed out of the universe through the pinprick hole and into the void between universes.
I’ll have to cage it out there so that it doesn’t wander off to a different universe and corrupt that one, too, but this body can’t exist outside of a universe, so I relinquish it back to the soul I borrowed it from.
On my way out, I leave a little thank you to the soul for providing the body so willingly.
37
I don’t think I survived banishing The Hollow again. I mean, yes, I’m alive, but the panic and sobbing happening overhead makes me think I didn’t quite manage to get through that without dying.
I should probably tell them I’m ok. Darcy sounds like he’s about to kill someone, and I don’t think anyone here deserves that kind of—oooh, that sounded bad.
I blink my eyes open, catching the sight of Santanos’s heart beating in Darcy’s hand before the Avatar of evil rips his heart out of Darcy’s grip and shoves it back in his chest. “I’ve already had my heart carved out,” he hisses at my lover.
Darcy opens his mouth, but nothing good is about to come out of it, so I reach up and pull him by a necklace down to me. “Death doesn’t stick when you’re dealing with immortals,” I point out.
Darcy grabs my face, stark relief crashing over him. “Peach!”
