in which aware buildings are nothing new

[subtly_artistic]

Emily has never had the pleasure of opening a door to Milliways, but she's willing - after Aether mediates for the wall-minded Aegis - to provide a long string of doors to try. Aether heads back to her room after Aegis is set up therewith.

Comments

[autokinetic]

"Yeah, so I hear. You know the others didn't want me to talk to you because I have the civilian social skills of, like, a badly brought up possum, did you come looking for me or is this a wacky coincidence?"

[pythbox]

"No comment," snorts Callahan.

[autokinetic]

"I could swap in for Bell: Witch Pseudodeity Edition or Bell: The Boy One if you'd rather, is all," shrugs Aegis.

[pythbox]

"Oh, she's a pseudodeity, is she?" inquires Callahan, brightly.

[autokinetic]

"Kinda, I mean, I'm not sure what local definitions are like? She threw around some gigantic magic where she came from, picked up the entire afterlife, put it in a little subworld she made from scratch, she controls reality there," shrugs Aegis. "I'm not real clear on how you draw definition lines around 'deity', let alone 'pseudodeity'. She doesn't have much on me or Cam here. I mean, some, she's still a witch, but then Cam has his own stuff, I'm from a no-magic world so not me so much."

[pythbox]

"So what you're saying is, if I'm going to hang somebody's head on my wall, she'd be the place to start," says Callahan. "Good to know."

[autokinetic]

Aegis thinks about this. "She said you had, like, sharp objects on your walls. Is this different walls or metaphorical walls or what?"

[pythbox]

"Metaphorical walls," Callahan assures her. "When I kill gods, I don't keep trophies."

[autokinetic]

"There's a few of us who'd fight you for fun as long as we didn't have to do it here."

[pythbox]

"But if you didn't do it here, we couldn't use mockboxes," says Callahan, grinning again.

[autokinetic]

"I dunno what those are, but I bet outside of here we could rig something up that worked like 'em, easy," shrugs Aegis.

[pythbox]

"Ask the local," she says. "Actually, ask Celo, I'm not sure the local you would know a mockbox if it bit her on the ass."

[autokinetic]

"Will do."

[pythbox]

"So let me guess," she says, "you're on Milliways summoning duty?"

[autokinetic]

"Yeah."

[pythbox]

"Wanna see a neat trick?"

[autokinetic]

"Depends completely on the trick."

[pythbox]

Callahan beams innocently.

[autokinetic]

"Amariah said you wouldn't open a door for her even when she offered to trade you her spiffy knife she killed a god's right-hand angel with. So if that's it I must be way charminger than everyone thinks I am."

[pythbox]

"I might open a door," she says. "Or I might cut your head off. Only one way to find out. You guys like experiments, don't you?"

[autokinetic]

"Controlled ones. Also last time somebody tried to kill me it was way classier than decapitation."

[pythbox]

"No such thing," Callahan says promptly.

[autokinetic]

"No, it really was, they got hold of a superweapon that wasn't supposed to be anywhere in the solar system and launched it at my ship."

[pythbox]

"I mean," she says, "no such thing as a classy way to die."

[autokinetic]

"I didn't die," says Aegis. "Technically. Some of us have died, though. None of it was very classy but there was definitely an ordering, you've got your car crash and your misaimed magic and your assisted suicide to escape a magic bond and your nuclear explosion." She makes gestures, ranking these from least to most classy.