Phyllis’ Mini-Mall Mania

Things had been going exactly as Phyllis had foreseen. From the approval of the Al'Magi dormitory for special students in her attic, to the creation of the Magosdromes by the little chaos bringers she had awoken from their three-thousand-year hibernation, all the way down to Ishara’s awkward blue-balls moments. And because of this, she was pleased. Very pleased, actually. Especially by her tiny ruby jujube and the work he had been doing with his harem-in-training.

For everyone paying attention, everything is going according to plan. Phyllis thought as she slowly made her way through the mall promenade.

After a few clicks of her cane against the tile floor, she stopped and looked around wildly. Searching for something or someone not present. With a loud cough and grumble, she cleared her throat.

“I said everything is going according to plan,” She paused, waiting for a response that would never come.

“Everyone!” She screamed, her voice echoing through the mall, shaking the windows and blowing over mannequins before returning to her ears.

With a shrug, she continued mumbling, “Damn, idiot, voyeurs. You simps don’t even interact. Made it this far into the impressive tale of my little jujube without a single like, comment or follow. This is what’s wrong with this media: it condones laziness. Meh, kids these days, they’d die of starvation if they weren’t still attached to their mommas teats, suckling like the little bishes they are.”

Pausing, she placed her hands on the second-floor railing and looked out. Then, with a deep breath, she screamed out to the empty mall.

"You hear me! Show some GODSDAMNED appreciation! BISHES!"

Phyllis stood there a moment, eventually waving her hands and blowing a disappointed raspberry to the universe. She continued to walk slowly but consistently towards the food court, muttering to herself about her nonexistent audience. 

Her pace was always the same, regardless of what she was moving towards. With one careful foot over the other, she always ended up exactly where she needed to be. Eventually, that was.  After all, it was important for her to take meticulous steps since all it would take was one trip-up or stepping out of her carefully curated line to spell her demise. Phyllis wouldn't have lasted as long as she had if she had been careless with her planning. That was how she made it to be over ten thousand years old, but who was counting?

“I’ll tell you who! Phyllis. Phyllis is counting.” She muttered to herself, thinking about her age and what she had seen in that time. Or, more importantly, all the things she’d missed after being cursed to live a sheltered life inside her shoppes.

In the past, some visiting travellers had asked her if hope was what kept her going. But Phyllis had no room in her shrivelled heart for hope, and she made sure that was painfully clear to those who brought up the stupid question. After all, hope was for suckers.

It wasn’t something as lovey-dovey as hope that allowed every fragment of Phyllis’ shattered soul to retain her ancient memories and strength to reawaken to their original purpose. No. It was the selfishness, anger and determination to seek retribution against the beings that ruined everything.

To say Phyllis was spiteful and jaded as a result of this banishment was an understatement. She harboured anger, resentment, and a fiery passion never to forget everything that had led to that moment. In fact, it had been rumoured—primarily by Phyllis herself—that if her spite were ever fully released, it would burn hotter than the creation of the cosmos itself.

Allegedly.

“Truthfully. I’ve seen it. Trust me. It's crazy!” She muttered to herself, traversing her own inner monologue with as equal care as her footing.

The spite she harboured fueled her survival. Even after the Caering Pantheon—those vengeful Gods—destroyed her body and her soul was split into hundreds of tiny fragments, that ferocity and hurt held firm in every atom of her being. After all, They had slain her love and cursed her to a broken, tormented life until a boring mortal death eventually took her. At which point she knew that her destiny was to arrive at one of Their hells to be eternally tormented in the afterlife. And, knowing all that, she decided she could never give up her fight.

So, after murdering some three crusades' worth of divine followers and consequently being cursed to live in the cave she had called home for a single mortal lifetime, Phyllis began to wonder what else she could do to keep herself entertained. And that was when she realized two important things about the direction mortals were taking the once beautiful world of Esseria.

Firstly, the greed of capitalism was equally as corrupting as any of the divine religions. Both aimed to control the idiotic masses, but while one promised boundless treasure in the afterlife, the other provided it to the people while they still lived, and all for a low, low cost of too much money.

Therefore, if she wanted to remove the game pieces that the divinity played with, she merely needed to bind those morally malleable mortal minds and their succulent souls into a more affordable stack of ‘terms and conditions.’ This would put their eternal essences in aetheric limbo, thus ensuring them unable to move on to become spirit batteries for someone else. The perfect scheme!

Secondly, the next step in her capitalistic pseudo-religion was obvious. Like churches being scattered across the land for the masses to show off their false piety, Phyllis would need multiple places for her to gather souls. This meant one thing: franchising. 

So, with all the magic and resources Phyllis still had at her disposal, she baited and tricked adventurers into stepping through portals to faraway lands. Once there, the only way to return to their normal lives was to find and present her other Phyllis fragments a deal of a lifetime. And thus began her most devious scheme yet.

Over many thousands of years, the Mini-Mall Dimension was constructed, sidestepping the curse and connecting every one of her scattered personas, and their stores, into a single exoplanar realm free of the Gods' sight or control. With that, four hundred and twenty pieces of Phyllis reconnected like long-lost sinister sisters.

No longer was Phyllis trapped in her lone store! She could move freely through the mall to any of her other stores. And, as an added perk, she was no longer alone now that she had hundreds of like-minded versions of herself to keep her company. That was until some three thousand years ago when the mortals screwed the pooch, angered the Caering, and everything changed—again. 

Phyllis was forced to liquidate all but one of her shoppes and consolidate all fragments back into a single body. Her body. The Optimal Phyllis Prime.

“Long story short, I’m bored.” Phyllis cried loudly as she looked out at the empty mall. “I demand entertainment.”

Entering the food court, Phyllis sat down at one of the tables and snapped her fingers. Within moments, a tray of MacRonald's breakfast floated over to her. She grabbed at the scalding coffee and slurped loudly before raising the opposite hand and snapping once more. With that, a remote appeared in her grasp as a translucent screen flickered to life before her.

“Let’s see what my stories have for me today,” Phyllis muttered, activating the display. "Hopefully no reruns."

The first image she saw was of a figure sitting in a cafe, sipping a drink. They appeared to be scheming with another, casually sliding over documentation before casting a glance to the side at the gothic architecture of the nearby buildings.

“Meh!” Phyllis scoffed, nibbling on a hashbrown log. “Boring!”

Changing the channel, she next saw a figure standing at the bow of a ship. They glanced back over the deck, eying the terrified looks of the rest of the crew who pointed forward. The head turned around, looking over the endless sand sea they sailed across. The ship, cresting a giant dune, shifted upward towards the sky, revealing an obsidian black dragon. Piercing eyes looked down at the crew and vessel as the mouth opened wide. A moment later, a spray of neon bile erupted forth, splashing over the view Phyllis watched.

With that, a small orb appeared on the table before her. It was a soul—specifically the remaining percentage of a soul—whose eyes had been observing the world through.

“Oh no, Waz’deen.” She remarked, plucking the gumball-sized object from the table. “You were so close to paying off your contract, too. There were just three more payments. What’s worse is that you already had the money for it. Shame you weren’t more proactive with closing out the account. Anyways—nom, nom, nom!“

Tossing the gum ball into her mouth, she consumed the remainder of the man’s soul before clicking the remote once more.

This time, the image shifted to a figure riding a horse. Galloping forward at full speed, they glanced to the left and right, spotting the numerous guards riding alongside them. The vision returned to looking ahead, eyeing another group of horsemen around a stagecoach fleeing the pursuing policing force.

“Oh, Balzak is on the move! I love this show!” Phyllis squealed with delight as she shifted in her seat and began humming her own theme song to the action. “Ban-Dits. Ban-Dits. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do as Guards come for you! Band-Dits!”

She watched as both sides muttered their incantations, slinging spells from their horses at each other. It appeared that she had arrived midway through the program after the bandits had already stolen the stagecoach, and the guards were in hot pursuit to retake it. That was, until a particularly lanky bandit took centre stage atop the carriage. Even with a scarf covering the lower half of his face and the cowboy hat atop his head, it was apparent that the foe was a frog person.

Phyllis leaned in, eyeing him as he pointed his wand at the guards, slinging a spell as though it were nothing. He was quicker than the rest of the people there, one of the gifts he had been given. Beside the cameraman—the eyes of Lieutenant Balzak—she watched as a guard was pulled up from his horse by invisible strings and quickly quartered. Limbs and gore showered the space before a second body was ripped skyward, and the process repeated.

With that, the cart began to gain distance as the pursuing guards fell back.

“No!” Phyllis cried out, throwing a half-eaten breakfast biscuit at the screen. “Go! Go get him!”

She knew who the brutal spell slinger was after all. It was Bully The Kid. One of the most fearsome and notorious bandits of Moal’aw. And he owed her a lot of money. Nearly half a million gold to be precise, an overdue lump sum payment for the gifts she had given him.

“Gah, lame!” She exclaimed, turning off the screen and throwing the remote over her shoulder. “Oh well, enjoy your time while it lasts, Bully the Kid. Your soul will be mine soon enough.”

Bored once more, the lich quickly finished what remained of her meal and pondered what she craved next for entertainment.

Snapping her fingers, Phyllis thought of whom she wanted as a company. After all, so long as they were in her shop, she could forcefully move them to the Mini-Mall Dimension.

“Oooh, Ishara.”

“And that’s when we—wuh?” Ishara appeared mid-conversation.

Glancing around, confused, he eventually settled his irritated gaze on Phyllis.

“Phyllis, what the hell? I was busy.”

“I’m bored!”

“I’m sorry? You should have considered that before sending Vathos away to oversee the group setting up your Magosdromes.”

“Vathos is great, don’t get me wrong. Three thousand years with one person really allows you to grow attached. But that big sack of himbo flesh isn’t what I want. I want to be entertained!”

Phyllis tapped her rifle on the ground, and a plastic wading pool appeared. Pointing at it, she shouted at Ishara.

“Get in!”

And followed up with a spell. Her favourite spell.

“Lubricate!”

The pool was suddenly filled with a clear, gooey solution perfect for slipping and sliding. Ishara looked at it suspiciously before glancing back to Phyllis. Before he could speak, she continued.

“Now, do you want to wrestle a bear or a cougar?” She asked. "This is important, one has more hair and may need more fluids to be added."

“Phyllis, no. I have the triop in my room, and we’re talking strategy about—”

“Oooh, kinky boy!”

Phyllis snapped her fingers, and three figures appeared in the small pool. Rionriv, Aesandoral, and Sharzin had arrived at Phyllis’ mall, and, with a bit of careful thinking on her part, she had pulled them in outfitted only in undergarments.

She eyed the fairly mundane underwear closely, thinking that she should magic them up something kinkier to more effectively tempt her contractually celibate oracle when he was least expecting it. Except, looking over at Ishara, she saw that even their basic bras and panties had apparently already done the trick. Taking a moment, she savoured the anguish on his face and the tension in his shorts as he stared at the girls through the gaps in his fingers.

“Mwahahahaha.” Phyllis cackled maniacally.

She continued her cackle loudly as the coed triop fumbled around in the pool. Embarassed, confused, and enraged, two of the three swore at Ishara, threatening his life.

Eventually finding their footing, they stabilized themselves long enough for the one named Rionriv to cast a spell at Phyllis’ little ruby. And while the lich had hoped it would pull him into the fray, giving her the late-night entertainment she longed to revel in, she was left wanting as the sorceress used her thunderous force to send him tumbling over the railing to the first level.

“Eh, good enough.” Phyllis shrugged, snapping her fingers in response to the comedic episode.

The pool disappeared in an instant. Just as fast, the girls were cleaned up and clothed once more. Ishara, on the other hand, tumbled over the edge and disappeared from view as Phyllis transported him into an empty realm of darkness where he continued to fall, quickly gaining speed as he raced through the nothingness.

“My apologies, children. I just wanted to play with my little ruby jujube.”

“Okay?” Rionriv sighed, investigating herself thoroughly before training her eyes on Phyllis. “But why did we have to get involved? And where exactly are we?”

“This is something from the realm of World Eighty-Two.” She replied, ignoring the first question. “It’s called a Mall. People mostly buy things here. Kids your age go to, umm—I-I think do drugs? Skateboard? I-I really don’t know. But the younger ones come here for one thing. The food court! Come, come! Follow me. I think Pips Pizza is open.”

“Umm, Miss Phyllis,” Aesandoral asked as she looked out at the mall, enjoying the bright colours and flashing lights that appeared to stretch out forever in each cardinal direction. "Where’s Iz?"

“Who? Oh, right, the jujube!”

Phyllis had briefly forgotten about him in the abyss, briefly wondering what else she may have misremembered.

Oh well, probably nothing important.