Chapter Text

“Alice,” boomed the voice of VOSS, king of the multiverse, conqueror of a thousand worlds whose very names have been scoured from all memory.



“Yeah?” Said Allison, who at this point was not going to bother correcting him.

“Enter my office. I would speak with you,” his voice thrummed with the power and majesty that made epics seem far too short and legends too plain to describe him.

Allison turned to view the waiting queue of customers in front of her. She turned to see the Dread Imperiatrix Mottom standing idle at the coffee machine, buffing her nails on her apron. She looked once more at the queue of customers, untended.

“Okay,” said Allison.

“No,” said Allison. “Fuck no,” she repeated.



“Come on,” said the king of the cosmos and also proprietor of a small coffee shop in a nondescript Midwestern college town.

“No,” Allison repeated.

Voss did not retract the key, held out at arm’s length, uncomfortably close to Allison’s face.

“No,” Allison repeated.

“Come on,” repeated ZOSS, whose beard and piercing gaze alike brought weaker men to their knees in reverence and in fear. He did not work the register for this reason.

“I don’t want to run this shit hole,” said Allison. “Pick Zaid, everyone thinks you’re going to pick Zaid.”

“I am not going to pick Zaid,” said Zoss and though lightning could not flow from his eyes you could definitely imagine that happening when you looked at him, “anyone who still thinks that I would ever have picked Zaid has clearly not been paying attention.”

“Ugh,” said Allison.

“If you don’t want to do it you should just say no,” said 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil, who was waiting for her latté.

“I tried!” Allison argued

“Did you tell him to pick Zaid instead?”

“Yes!” Allison replied, turning to check on Mottom’s progress with the coffee machine. She had not started.

“That was a mistake, he was never going to pick Zaid,” White Chain stood at perfect attention, ashen skin displaying no overt emotion, though really she should have stood to the side so someone behind her could order.

“Ugh,” said Allison, stepping over to make the coffee herself. Mottom neatly moved out of the way and pulled out her phone, beginning to text furiously, or put on the appearance of texting furiously, as she did sometimes. Behind White Chain, the waiting customers murmured discontentedly, but with demons and university students it was sometimes hard to measure how serious that was.

“Tha could always just leave,” said Ciocie Cioelle Estrella Von Maximus the Third, peering over the edge of her laptop. She was still very committed to the charade of working on her thesis and not her latest epic of overwrought woe and romance.

“You don’t understand,” Allison replied, pretending that the table was dirty enough for her to still be here wiping it down, twenty minutes after she had started. Looking over, Mottom was in no danger of asking the customer at the front of the line for his order, and the customer was quivering too much in his boots to speak first.

“Clearsome.”

“I just don’t want this to be my whole thing, like, how am I supposed to get to class if I’m running this crap heap?”

“Tha could let the wakebrothel in charge of otherly ones, thee that have a more leadersome nature.”

They both stared at Mottom, as she proceeded to reduce a man to a pile of soy beans for taking too long to order.

“Nah,” said Allison.

Allison stared down at the key in her hand. It pulsed with the white hot light of universal creation and change, though it was cool to the touch. She felt its power arcing across her skin, through her veins, thrumming with the spirit and power of her being, of that great destroyer called WANT. It opened the front door.



The stars were out, a number not beyond counting for that number was 777,777, though Allison was not one for counting stars and even if she were, that is a ridiculous number of stars to count. The non-uncountable number of lights twinkled, and though the light pollution kind of ruined the effect, they still looked pretty damn amazing. Allison took comfort from that, that the universe was still out there and honestly couldn’t give a shit about her or her decisions. That even if she decided to take the offer, to run the coffee shop, the fact that some things are and others are not would not change, and she would continue being an insignificant speck in the face of reality and unreality combined, even if she becoming infinitesimally less insignificant for a brief period. Even if she decided to run this dump.

ZOSS, conquering king and coffee entrepreneur rested his hand on her shoulder, a look in his eyes that spoke volumes and the volumes were loud.

Allison stared down at the key again, still in her palm, still hers to hold.

“It’s still a dumb name for a coffee shop,” she said, turning her back on the building and slipping the key into her pocket. She left without further word.

ZOSS, knower of the secret name of God, master of all the syllables of royalty, stood there under the starlight for a while longer, staring up at the name of his store, emblazoned bright red against the heavens, and thought it was a good name, but better that Allison thought it was dumb.

The neon letters hummed aloud in the quiet of the nondescript Midwestern college town’s late evening. Proud against that blackness and silence, they read “KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS”.