Very Important Person (Gomorrah)

On a deep, instinctual level, Chloe was terrified of her father. But she was starting to get over it.

Her father was a towering eldritch monstrosity who couldn’t speak without making her entire body resonate. He had unimaginable power here, and Chloe was certain that he would be mad at her. She didn’t quite know how to read the face or voice of… whatever her father was, but she was starting to think this was his version of speaking softly.

Her father was a towering eldritch monstrosity with a mindset that was probably alien to any human, but maybe he and Gabriel hadn’t been lying to her this whole time. Maybe he really did want her to do well and to go far in life, albeit by following in his hellish footsteps. Or however this thing moved around. Did it even have feet?

She was quiet for a while, once the giant version of her father stopped talking. She didn’t want to see her father mad; he was terrifying enough when making some sort of effort to be paternal.

“I... I don’t think this has completely dissuaded me. I mean, I have some… some human sensibilities, which I might eventually grow out of, maybe, and killing Janica made me…. uh, I mean it offended that human sense of morality that, that I’ve been raised with.” She would try to distance herself from her humanity, or at least make herself seem aware of what it did to her, when she spoke to her dad.

As she transitioned to a topic that she didn’t think would make her father angry, she calmed down a little. She was getting more used to the idea that her father actually wanted to tutor her in understanding this world. “Wait, if you can bend hell to your will and make it however you want, why is it…” she made a vague hand gesture at the surrounding area, “Like this? Do demons actually like living in a place like this?” Until her dad mentioned his godlike power over the realm, Chloe had just assumed the climate here was beyond his control. She assumed that nobody would willingly choose such impossibly shitty weather to exist in for all eternity.

The change of scenery should have been a great improvement. Even if there was still a giant eldritch monstrosity watching over her, Chloe went from being in hell to being in an idyllic medieval fantasy-world. But she only felt ambivalent. Part of her already missed hell’s climate. There was something weirdly satisfying about existing there. There was a sort of rightness to it, she realized, that was missing in this fantasy world.

Also, there was still a giant eldritch monstrosity looking over them. Even if he was her biological father, she was having trouble feeling comfortable around him.

She was having trouble imagining what a ‘life of possibilities’ would even be like. Did she even want to have godlike power in some small domain of some sort? What would she even do with that power?

Still, as far as eternities went, it didn’t sound like a half bad way to spend one. Assuming the things her father had her do weren’t too terrible.

"Do you want to see what that's like, Chloe?"

Chloe hesitated, her mind running in circles over whether accepting this offer would be a good idea. But by now, that was a moot point. She was already in hell. Why not run with it? “…sure. I mean, yes, sir.”

Chloe tentatively grasped the crystal. It felt hot in her hand, but not painfully hot.

“Like lucid dreaming…” she repeated, staring at the crystal, thinking. Would this gem give her the power to bend reality to her will? What would she even do with that power? Would her dad think she was lame if she did something lame with it?

“Well, here’s the obvious lucid dreaming thing to do,” she said, pushing herself out of her chair and floating softly into the air. But this was kind of a boring thing to do with unlimited power. After a few thoughtful backflips, she looked up at the sky and pointed at it. “I wonder if I can…” she mumbled to herself. A small, gray cloud appeared directly above them, then quickly radiated outward, until, seconds later, the entire sky was gray. Snow began to fall.

And it was cold. “Fuck the cold though.” Now it was only pleasantly cool, slightly below room temperature. It was still snowing.

“You know, Gabriel,” she said, floating back down to the ground, “I always wanted to try snowboarding. But my parents… the people who raised me, I mean, they were always too busy to take me and my brother on a trip like that. I mean, I don't blame them, but...”

The ground below their feet became white and powdery, but not because of falling snow; the meadow simply disintegrated into white, powdery ground, along with all the castles. The clouds above them seemed to be getting closer. “So instead of going snowboarding in real life, and since going out into the real world was kind of painful for me at the time, I just sorta… played this stupid video game with snowboarding in it.”

The clouds fell onto them, then past them. Now they were on the top of a mountain. The sky was bright blue again, and the sun was shining with cool, white light.. Before them lay a steep, snowy slope. Two snowboards lay on the ground by their feet. “It didn’t work like real life snowboarding though. Running off course or falling off a massive cliff would just get you teleported back onto the course. Gravity didn’t really work the same way, it was basically impossible for anyone to get seriously hurt, and…” She stared off into the distance of her recently created snowy wonderland, trying to think of how to parse this last game mechanic into words. “I guess, everyone had some kind of velocity-manipulating superpower?” She shrugged and turned to Gabriel. “I’m explaining this to you for a reason. Do you want to race me down this mountain with these weird rules?”