Dollification, the name given to the eldritch process by which the energy of the amoral cosmic being named Santi fills a creature with corruptive power and turns them into one of his servants, comes with many boons. The process confers true biological immortality upon those whom it is inflicted on, as well as gives them a chance to gain any number of eldritch powers possessed by the dark god whom they become devoted to because of the mind-warping ritual they have endured.
Carol silently watches over her god. She is now blessed with a level of discipline she previously lacked and is very well-suited to the task she was asked to do by her god. She does not make her role as a protector of her master anymore obvious than it previously was, instead continuing to feign reading the fantasy novel in front of her. Occasionally, she will turn the page of her novel, and she endeavors to put on a performance of enjoying the book she is reading, smiling and even quietly laughing.
All the while the god she worships remains silent. Any casual onlooker might well believe that he is Carol’s boyfriend and that he is quietly napping while his bookish girlfriend enjoys a novel. And while Carol’s feelings for the figure who cruelly used her as a test subject are the sort of feelings that a particularly devoted romantic partner might feel for their loved one, Santi’s feelings run cooler than that.
The awakened divinity has a cool, chilly heart. Even now, as his body and soul are attuning to the sins of passion; lust, wrath, and envy, and the domain of love, he retains his coolness. He is a cold person, someone who actively adapted to a world that was, on its best day, indifferent to him and on its worst days outright hostile to him.
His soul is being transformed by his self-awareness. The longer he keeps his eyes shut, the more obvious this becomes. On both an internal and external level potent changes are taking place that elevate his body to match his soul, and this has curious effects on his appearance. Carol is the only person in the world who gets to see as different facets of Santi’s soul mix and mingle and create something wholly new.
For the briefest of seconds Santi takes on a new and improved true form while he keeps his eyes shut. This form is of a shadowy silhouette of a man with a muscular and sinful outline. The curves of the inky black void-like skin of the creature promise pleasure and ensnare the imagination enough drive a mundane human to madness, and even Carol’s reflection would be driven to lustful insanity if she was not already immune to such things thanks to her nature as a doll.
This new form is a result of the unholy energies of Santi’s nature as an archdemon mixing with the strangeness of his power as a creature of the void thanks to the darkness essence within him. It is an attack in the rough shape of a man, one which could be devastatingly effective if used on the right figures and is indiscriminate in who it appeals to.
Men, women, and other gendered or non-gendered beings alike are susceptible to the alien and sanity-shattering beauty of the creature. This form mixes and matches aspects of both essences within Santi and his nature as both a cosmic god and an archdemon of love and lust and creates a potent weapon based on the facets of these things intersecting and weaving together.
Santi quickly switches out of this form but when he returns to his old self he is still left changed by what has just transpired. At the tip of the god’s left pointer finger is a tiny hole. This hole did not exist prior to the god’s transformation and contains mysterious and eerie power all its own. Santi’s body, from his eyes to his fingers is a fascinating and dreadful weapon all its own.
With every passing second the creature’s mind, empowered by mysterious essences, as well as his own innate ascendant nature, expands. He gains secretive knowledge about existence itself, and his senses, mundane and mystical alike, expand outward in a perfect circle around him.
Distant whispers become clearly audible to him, and alerts fill a corner of his mind that has previously been empty. These alerts are of events occurring as far as in cities on the other side of the country. They number in the billions, per minute, due to the remarkable breadth of Santi’s domains and sins, and each one infuses his cells with supernatural energy.
While this odd couple adjusts to their strange new reality, events elsewhere are unfolding unchanged from how they ought to have been, due in part to no one possessing either the esoteric senses needed to detect the chaos of Santi’s apotheosis, or the depth of power needed to make sense of the eldritch eddies of power coming from the city Santi calls home. Distant cartoons, humans, and half-toons alike plot and scheme, and even the machinations of the gods themselves proceed, many of which are suddenly known by the strangest, newest member of the local collective of gods and cosmic beings, without anyone factoring in how the unknown newcomer might affect them.
In the city of Freeport, itself an unremarkable, medium-sized city in the state of New Hapsburg, hours after Santi has begun to acclimate to his true nature, a mundane door in the city’s shoddy industrial district opens, despite the fact that the building it is connected to is completely empty. The door is an unremarkable thing made of wood, but what lies on the other side of it is not unremarkable.
A man dressed in a thick, warm, wool coat lies on the other side of the door and stares at the empty alleyway in front of him. Both the man and his coat reek, the scent of bodily fluids, unwillingly and unhappily shed, staining the figure.
Behind the man is a chaotic vista; a snowy mountainside village is under attack by several hulking monstrosities made of metal. Fires rage behind him, and the distant sound of pained screams reverberates throughout the air on his side of the door but does not pierce the barrier that separates dimensions.
The stranger takes a beat to strengthen his resolve, but the beat is just a little longer than he has. One of the machines attacking the village lays its mechanical eyes on the man, having been searching for him specifically and simply following a protocol designed to draw him most efficiently out of hiding. The creature electronically signals its allies, who all drop what they are doing even as the odd man pushes one of his feet through the doorway.
As his foot crosses from one side of the door to the other the man feels slight resistance and the air in front of him wobbles ever so gently, ripples spreading outward from where it touched the barrier separating the dimensions in a manner almost identical to when someone skips a rock across the surface of a lake. The man pushes his whole body through the barrier the instant that his foot slips past the part of the barrier that resisted his entry and finds solid footing in the alleyway on the other side of the door.
The machines lunge for the man, crossing several hundred feet in a heartbeat. Nevertheless, despite their frightening speed, the machines are not fast enough. The machines hit the barrier that keeps the neighboring dimensions from touching each other and ram it with the same force as when a speeding car hits a hardy, healthy tree. The man does not hear the collision, as he is on the other side of the magic and mayhem of the latest place he lived in before his current, brand-new, “home”.
The strange magician turns and spots the wrecked remains of the small squadron of machines sent to capture him and the source of his power. As he studies them he smiles triumphantly at the surprisingly orderly collection of mechanical bodies. He almost takes a beat to relax, when he spots what is left of the most elite member of the squad of death machines.
The machine is well-designed. It has a vaguely humanoid shell with a nasty collection of high-power artifacts and weaponry inside of it, but its most dangerous trait is its dogged persistence. One manifestation of this nasty trait is the fact that the machine, even while in the middle of the death throes it is enduring, is still recording the man.
The machine’s visor is diligently trained on the magician, refusing to look away. It tracks him when the magician makes a careful, experimental move to try and determine how healthy the machine is.
The figure sighs as he sees this and he grabs the open door, before violently slamming it shut. This simple act might be perceived, by some, as him having an annoyed reaction to his enemies, but the more important purpose behind this act is that it shuts off the magical tool that enables travel between dimensions, thereby protecting the magician.
“Fucking… bloodhounds.” He mutters gruffly, as he turns his gaze away from the door he entered this new world through. He allows his hammering heart to settle in his chest before he turns and looks up and down the alleyway he is currently in.
The magician is standing in the exact middle of a narrow alleyway. Stars barely cut through the gloom of the night sky above him and when the man takes a deep breath, he frowns as disgusting scents fill his nostrils.
“Gods that pollution… and the low visibility of the stars… Is this an ‘Earth’?” He asks himself, dryly. He is not fond of “Earth” worlds, but his frown fades when he recalls what he has escaped. The machines coming after him did not speak, nor did they do anything but persistently attempt to hunt him down, repeatedly. In some ways such terrifying, inhuman persistence was amazing. In more ways, especially in ways that matter to the wizard, he hated dog-headed people and he especially hated dog-headed machines.
Over the course of the last few weeks, the man has been pursued by the blasted things, repeatedly. His impression of them is simple: they have stubborn bodies and even more stubborn minds. His only option, so far, has been to flee from them whenever they inevitability finds him. The stranger is lost in thought until the moment he feels a small bronze key materialize in his back pocket.
“Alright, I can run away now!” The man says, happily, even as he turns and begins to jog down the alleyway. The distant sounds of civilization begin to grow louder as he leaves the door he used to slip between dimensions, noises like the terrible sounds of cars and motorcycles, as well as the residual glow created by electric lights that tint the distant scenery he can indistinctly see in the background as he makes his way towards the faraway sidewalk.
It is only when the wizard makes it to the sidewalk that, distantly, Santi’s eyes shoot open. The infant cosmic being smiles at Carol and asks her to accompany him to his, or in his words, “their” home. When the two exit the library the moon is high enough in the sky to shine light down on the city. Santi allows the light it reflects to kiss his skin, and he smiles serenely as he enjoys the fact that even reflected light counts as an “Instance” of the “Light” domain.
Carol and Santi make it to the creature’s apartment without incident and soon find themselves in the tiny space he, generously, calls a living room. Santi soon clears a space on the table in the middle of his tiny living room and clears his mind to try and organize his thoughts and the strange, newfound knowledge he possesses of a vast, awe-inspiring number of topics, as well as to strategize with his allies, both Carol and his shadowy servants. When he is prepared he begins to "speak" to the small faction he is slowly building up.
Thanks for the chapter