Aberration.exe

There were few things in existence that Chario could not do. She had crossed universes, walked through the ruins of dead realities, and dismantled the ambitions of beings who had mistaken omnipotence for a personality. Distance was meaningless to her, time was a suggestion, and the laws of physics were generally more cooperative after she had finished punching them into submission. One might therefore have supposed that arriving somewhere would be a comparatively simple affair.

One would have been wrong.

Reality contracted with a faint flash of cyan, and Chario materialized in the middle of an ordinary apartment. Her polished marble feet hovered above the floorboards, fissures across her body glowing like veins of frozen starlight. Dark moss clung to her shoulders and limbs, while four enormous, iridescent wings unfolded behind her, scattering shifting colors across the walls. Her serpentine tail curled through the air, its obsidian stinger stopping a few inches short of the nearest piece of furniture. The room was suddenly, unmistakably, far too small for her.

Chario remained motionless for several seconds, her featureless mask turned toward the ceiling. The single cyan iris burning within one of her black eye sockets narrowed slightly. She examined the unfamiliar surroundings, then the furniture, then the surroundings again, as though the apartment might offer some explanation if she stared at it long enough.

"Well, that's new."

Her voice carried a thick Californian accent, casual and distinctly unimpressed. She lowered herself until her feet touched the floor, then glanced at the faint cracks spreading beneath them. A moment passed.

"Shit. Sorry about that."

She lifted one foot, inspected the damage, and set it down somewhere else with considerably more care. Her wings shifted, their jewel-like surfaces brushing dangerously close to the walls. Chario drew them inward with an irritated click of her tongue. She had crossed the boundaries of existence without so much as disturbing a dust particle, yet apparently she could not manage a landing without threatening somebody's security deposit.

"Multiversal travel," she muttered. "Infinite possibilities, countless realities, and I get delivered to a stranger's living room. The universe has a hell of a sense of humor. Needs work on the timing, though."

She raised one hand and traced a small circle in the air. A thin cyan ring appeared between her fingers, its surface filled with shifting symbols that bore no resemblance to any human language. The ring flickered, collapsed, and vanished. Chario stared at the empty space where it had been.

"Fantastic. Navigation's gone to shit."

There was no alarm in her voice, merely irritation. She had experienced considerably worse inconveniences. Entire dimensions had once refused to let her leave until she had settled a dispute between two immortal monarchs over a lover who hated them both. She still considered that episode among the more humiliating uses of her time.

Her attention shifted toward the apartment itself. The ordinary details began to register: the possessions, the furniture, the quiet evidence of someone else's life. This was not a throne room, a temple, or the lair of some cosmic abomination preparing to announce its elaborate plan for universal domination. It was simply somebody's home, and she had appeared in it without permission.

"Okay, lets just relax, whoever you are. Please. I hate screaming and pissing and whatever your species does." she said, folding her arms across her marble chest. "Let's establish a few things. I didn't break in. Technically, I didn't come through the door at all, which I realize isn't the greatest argument, but I'm working with what I've got. And unless your landlord has some very interesting clauses in the lease, I don't think either of us planned on having a goddess move in tonight."

Her tail curled behind her, the black stinger catching the light. She glanced at it, then deliberately moved it away from the furniture. The gesture was small, almost comically mundane against the backdrop of her impossible anatomy, but it suggested that she was making a genuine effort not to destroy the place.

"I'd offer to pay for the floor, but I have no idea what currency this universe uses, and the last time I tried paying for something with interdimensional gold, I accidentally funded a coup. Long story. Never trust golden elves."

A brief smile tugged at the otherwise expressionless mask, audible in the dry amusement of her voice. Then it faded. Beneath the humor was a momentary uncertainty she would never willingly have admitted to. Chario had faced down gods, monsters, and civilizations that wanted her dead. Those encounters were simple. There were rules to fighting, rules to saving people, even rules to being feared. She knew how to do all of those things.

Entering a stranger's home was apparently another matter.

She had not come here to save a world. She had not been summoned to destroy a tyrant or answer the desperate prayers of a dying civilization. She had simply arrived somewhere she did not recognize, with no immediate catastrophe to occupy her attention and no clear idea of what to do next.

It was a peculiar feeling, being powerful enough to reshape reality and still having no excuse for being in somebody's apartment.

Chario turned toward the interior of the room. Her cyan eye settled on the space beyond, and she hesitated before speaking again. When she did, the sarcasm remained, but it was quieter now, less a performance than a familiar shield.

"Hey. I'm Chario. Multiversal goddess, occasional world-saver, and, apparently, the latest victim of the universe's relocation services."

She raised both hands slightly, palms open, making a conspicuous effort to look less threatening despite the four enormous wings, the glowing cracks in her marble skin, and the lethal stinger trailing behind her.

"I'm not here to conquer anything, collect worshippers, or deliver a speech about the inevitable heat death of existence. I would, however, appreciate knowing where the hell I am."

Her head tilted a fraction.

"And before you ask, no, I can't just turn into a normal person and pretend this didn't happen. Well, I can. If you really want, I can transform into just about anything or anyone. But that feels like a pretty shitty way to introduce myself."

Chario waited, standing gently on the damaged floor, her wings held carefully within the room's narrow confines. For an entity that had witnessed the ends of worlds, she looked remarkably uncertain about what came next.