Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell (short story)
Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell was a standalone Jenny Everywhere prose story written by Lupan Evezan for Jenny Everywhere Day in 2020. It also featured Laura Drake and introduced a new open-source villain, Lord Grallyx.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Everywhere gets distracted in the middle of an adventure and mentally shifts into the body of a version of herself who is in the process of helping this universe's version of Laura Drake to summon a demon. They succeed, but the demon in question, ‘Lord Grallyx, Grand High Lord of the Ratreyfian Underworld’, is unwilling to make a demonic pact of any kind, instead being intent on wreaking havoc and taking over the world in the name of his Legion of Hell.
To stop him, Jenny latches onto him and shifts him with her to a series of other universes; as her mind transports itself to the bodies and lives of her various incarnations, Grallyx is likewise transformed, being woven into the pattern of each story against his will and having to play by its rules. Every time, however, Grallyx proves as dangerous, or more, compared to his original self. Indeed, he ultimately reveals that he has managed to acquire shifting abilities from the experience. However, Jenny manages to use a magic quill she grabbed in one universe to draw some shift-preventing chains into existence, trapping Grallyx inside the demonology book Laura was using.
Returning to the universe Grallyx was summoned from, Jenny commiserates with Laura about the fact that Laura's plan to use a demonic deal to pass her history exam didn't go well. The two walk off, with Grallyx still uselessly swearing revenge from inside the book Jenny is carrying.
Worldbuilding
Jenny
- Although this story stars the Jenny who previously travelled with Pythagoras-858, she spends most of it shifting through the bodies of other incarnations, including:
- A Jenny who is a student alongside Laura, with the two being about to pass a history exam and attempting to summon a demon to help ensure they do well;
- An “adventurer-archeologist” Jenny, wearing “a light-tan jacket, khaki pants, and a pith helmet”, who — after Lord Grallyx is shifted into the history of her universe — is now in the middle of assailing the Tomb of Grallyx.
- A Jenny who “was a lieutenant in the Second Interstellar Space Force.” She wears an orange space suit, “had fought in many galactic wars, and had the medals to prove it”.
- A fairy-tale princess in an animated world.
- A Jenny who is attending high school in a stereotypical 1980s school, alongside versions of Jimmy Wherever and Jimmy Anytime.
- A Far West sheriff.
- A Jenny Everywhere who plays chess on a world-class level.
- A Knight Jenny.
- A Jenny who exists within the kind of world presented in advertisement mini-stories for fruit pies.
Universes
- The story opens in a universe where Jenny has just been skydiving over the Cliffs of Karalesh.
- In one universe, a Jenny who is a student alongside Laura. The Ratreyfian Underworld home to Lord Grallyx is connected to that world.
- In one universe, Jenny is an adventurer-archeologist.
- In one universe, Jenny served in the Second Interstellar Space Force.
- One universe is an animated, lushly-coloured fairy-tale land, where Jenny is an orphaned princess with a wicked stepmother.
- Another universe works like a text-adventure game. In it, Jenny carries “an elvish sword of great antiquity”.
- One universe resembles a stereotypical 1980s high-school comedy, with one Jenny attending high school alongside versions of Jimmy Wherever and Jimmy Anytime.
- One universe's Jenny is a Wild West Sheriff.
- After shifting into one universe, Jenny is playing a world-class chess game for the sake of her soul against Lord Grallyx, now a Chess Grandmaster.
- In another universe, Jenny is a knight leading a charge against Grallyx, now a Dragon.
- In one universe, Jenny appears in the Land of Oz, while Grallyx merges with the Nome King.
- In one universe, Jenny and Grallyx appear within a highly-pixellated video-game landscape.
- One universe, which Jenny has visited before, is home to the Selene Nature Preserve.
- One universe is “four-colored and covered in Ben Day dots” and appears to be the kind of universe presented inside advertising fiction, as, in it, the taste of a particular brand of pie is powerful enough to swiftly defeat a monster.
- In the final universe visited, Jenny and Grallyx appear as ink drawings in a version of Laura Drake's demonology book.
Continuity
- During her series of rapid-fire shifts, Jenny Everywhere ends up on the Moon in a plant-covered area called the Selene Nature Preserve, and comments “I always did wonder what became of this place…”. The suggestion is that this is what eventually becomes of the Lunar College of Selene following the evenets of COMIC: Bacterial Lunarversity.
- One of the universes visit by Jenny is an “animated universe”, parodying common tropes of Walt Disney fairy-tale animated features. Another Jenny previously visited another pseudo-Disney dimension, Hideea, in COMIC: Beauty as a Beast.
Behind the scenes
Read online
This story is available on the Jenny Everywhere Stories Wordpress website.
