“Touch me Maxx,” the voice said. It was familiar and sent shivers down Maxx’s shell. “Reach out your hand, come to me.”
“Get out of my head!” Maxx yelled and put his hands to his face. His fingers were long and they seemed to wrap his green-brown cheeks all the way up his temples, his thumbs hooked underneath his jaw.
“But you love me Maxx,” the voice said. “Always. You are mine.”
“No!” Maxx screamed and he crumbled to his knees in the dim light. The sun was setting over the island that was densely packed with trees and he seemed to be alone in the clearing, sobbing on the soft grass.
A gust of wind surrounded him and it was visible because of the leaves and debris caught in it. It moved around Maxx deliberately. The leaves on nearby trees were still, there was no wind but the one that encircled Maxx. A dark figure, like a shadow, began to take shape as the wind settled in front of Maxx, darkening his bowed head and body.
“Open your eyes…” the voice said.
“No,” Maxx squeezed his eyes shut even harder then pursed his lips as a single tear fell from his eye and slowly down his cheek.
“It is me, Maxx. Your love. Open your eyes.”
“You’re not real,” Maxx sobbed harder and yelled louder. “I saw you die! I held you in my arms and your blood was warm all over me. I tried to hold you together after…”
“But I was reborn,” the voice interrupted Maxx and he felt a cold, ghostly hand caress his cheek. It was familiar, this presence was familiar and touched his heart, but not exactly. It was not the warm presence he remembered. It was a cold copy of someone he had loved with all of himself, someone he was not able to save from the Daemon.
“I am a better man now than what I was, my love. Stronger than ever. I have only known glorious battles since we were separated, and I don’t even have to lean to find âmuk. I get right to it now, no yellow energy coursing through me and burning me out. I’m stronger than armies now, love.”
“But you died.” Maxx didn’t yell. He was out of tears.
“Open your eyes and tell me that I am dead.”
Maxx slowly opened his eyes and he saw the hard face of Dexxx. His black eyes were like marbles in the sockets, but unlike other blues, there were concentric red rings on his black eyeballs. His face was round and his hard beak was serious with a hint of a smile. He had no coloring, the skin of his face was like black smoke gathering and forming into his face.
“Dexxx…” Maxx said like a whisper.
“It’s me. I am here, my love. I would never leave you. Come with me and we will be strong together.”
“Strong slaves of a Daemon,” Maxx said breathlessly. He was struggling to breathe and his heart was pounding out of his chest plate. He suddenly felt dry and needed water. He saw more than just Dexxx’s face then. The face was just the tip of the massive, undulating form that had soldified from the smoke. The shiny, moving, black form was wet, like oil collected into the rough figure of a blu with a large cancerous growth that extended from its back and disfigured its body. Dexxx’s face was a mask on the disfigured form.
“You are not my Dexxx,” Maxx said and his eyes turned angry despite the tears. “You are just a puppet of Minyak now.”
The yellow glow of the Super Consciousness covered his body in an instant and he stood in the face of the Dexxx mask with its shifting body behind it. Maxx extended his right hand and grabbed his wrist with the left as charged yellow energy began to pop and spark from the palm of his hand.
“We can be us again,” the Dexxx mask pleaded one last time as its body bubbled and oozed over itself. The body moved violently, the oily form swelled as it bubbled, all while the mask hoped to convince Maxx and avoid the impending battle.
“You are not Dexxx,” Maxx said.
“I won’t let Minyak kill you, Maxx. I will die again before I let him harm you. But you have to see that your life as a Guardian is no life at all. You cling to it because of your programming, but you are so much more…”
Maxx interrupted Dexxx with an electric blast from his hand. The yellow beam was wide enough to shatter the mask of Dexx’s face and splatter the top of the oily form, causing the bottom to fall into a slick, oily pool. The blast cleared trees in front of Maxx and he stared out at the sea.
He closed his eyes and hung his head. The feeling of Dexxx, the cold copy of him, receded as the oily pool began to evaporate into bubbles of oily black that float away in black smoke, leaving Maxx all alone.
***
“Hurry up! The game about to start!” Maxx is in a dark room, the yellow glow of the Super Consciousness lights one of his fingers and in the yellow form of his finger, there are veins of purple that are skinny and jagged. The face of a blu whose features seem to sag glows in the yellow light, his face just inches from the finger. The blu opens his mouth and begins to suck on the glowing finger and the veins of purple begin to spread from his mouth and across his face, down his neck and into his shell.
“That’s enough,” Maxx growls and pushes the blu away from his finger. The blu’s eyes are swimming in his head and he falls away from Maxx and into the wall behind him with little resistance. Maxx opens the door of the room and light floods in, showing the room as closet size.
The blu that had sucked his finger is on the floor of the closet and his eyes swim in the sockets. He has a distant look on his face as the purple veins that snake from his mouth throb slightly, and the thickness of the veins decreased with each throb. After a few minutes, the purple veins are gone completely and the blu staggers out of the closet and into the party that fills most of the shoddy home that is packed with blues who are mostly having a good time.
Maxx has shoved his way through the crowd and finds the Smiting table toward the back of the house. The room is large and it is mostly packed with spectators, but there’s enough room for Maxx to make his way to the head of the table where three other players are already seated. When he sits, a blu who looks too young for the adult party raging around them, whispers into Maxx’s ear and he grabs Maxx’s hand in his own, discreetly passing money. Maxx nodds at the young blu who disappears into the crowd, bobbing his head to the loud music that fills the space. Maxx counts the paper money with his own face on it and smiles across the table at the Queen Rowen Dar who looks disappointed in him.
The Queen Rowen is the leader of the planet Oin. She is beautiful with her big, bald, bulbous head and the gray pigmentation of her skin that can darken or brighten depending on her mood; she is resisting the lightening of her complexion because Maxx knows she lightens when she is nervous. She is Ointite and she and her security detail stand out in the raucous party, though most of them are enjoying themselves. They have sworn to protect the Queen with their lives, but they know that the Queen is safer in the presence of Maxx than most any place else.
“This is how you spend time on Bludon?” she calls loudly to him.
“It’s the only way to spend time on Bludon,” Maxx says and turns his attention to the two blu who sit at the table with them. They are both wealthy, the female to Maxx’s right owns the company that produced a lot of the music that the Bludonians at the party are enjoying, and the other female sitting across from her owns a very successful restaurant chain that exists all over Bludon.
“Y’all ready?” Maxx asks the female blues who smile at each other, then at the Queen and Maxx.
“If you are confident that the Queen of Oin knows the Smites rules and you’re willing to bet so much on your teamup, then who are we to hold things up?” Ijapa, the restaurant owner asks with a laugh. “No disrespect to your highness, of course. It is just strange to see a dignitary such as yourself among us, the lowly vagabond class of Bludon. But that is the pleasure of doing business with the Superguardian. Isn’t that right, Beku?”
“A Bludonian leader if there ever was one,” Beku says. “A role model to every Blu, and a diplomat for every world.” Beku raises a fancy goblet made of glass from the table and lifts it as she shouts, “The only Guardian we will ever need!”
Cheers go up from all of the blues who hear Beku. Many in attendance are intoxicated by the various alcoholic beverages and other intoxicants, and they all seem to be having the time of their lives.
“I am a Queen,” Rowen Dar says and smiles at Ijapa and then at Beku, “which means I don’t tolerate losing. Smites is my preferred version of Smiting. Are you sure that you are prepared for this royal reprimand?” The Queen cracks her knuckles, then her neck, then reaches into the fancy purple robes she wears to produce her deck of Smiting.
“I’m ready,” the Queen says, looking at Maxx. “Let’s show them what a team of All Stars is capable of. That is, unless you have more illicit business to tend to.”
“They want to lean,” Maxx says with a smile. “I am their leader because I have what they want and I am not stingy.”
“Expensive,” Beku says and then she and Ijapa laugh. “Just a joke, Superguardian. Don’t get mad and raise your prices. The other Guardians don’t share like you do and we can only experience the lean through you all.”
“I don’t know how you Guardians do it!” Ijapa says. “Fighting Daemon after you lean seems impossible, but that is why you all are the guardians. I’m still spinning from the first hit you gave me, but this song is so good. Queen of Oin, you should reconsider taking a hit off the Superguardian. The music of Bludon can’t be properly appreciated without leaning.”
“I appreciate the tip,” the Queen Rowen says, “but I must refuse. I’m not interested in intoxication that will only make me a bad member of my team. Maxx doesn’t play Smites with just anyone. Shall we?”
Maxx smiles at the Queen then flips the first card into the grid that is drawn on the tabletop.
***
“You’re not one for subtlety, I see,” the Queen says from her chair on the porch of Maxx’s remote cabin. They had traveled to the cabin after more than five days partying with the other blues. Maxx made a small fortune selling hits of lean to anyone in attendance, including rare Smiting cards that he hasn’t had time to collect since returning to Bludon.
“I am the champion of the universe,” Maxx says in the chair next to her. “I’ve no need for subtlety.”
“I thought Guardians could be put to death for giving lean to other blues,” the Queen Rowen says. “And you’re selling it! You are bold, my friend.”
Maxx’s cabin is balanced on stilts over the water. There is an island nearby, creating a picturesque view that the Queen enjoys. Most visitors to his cabin take boats to reach it; it isn’t close enough for the average blu to swim as fast as Maxx does and he likes it that way. No one can surprise him at his cabin that cost a lot of money to be constructed. Even though construction over water is common on Bludon, Maxx insisted on a location over the water that was a greater depth than most contractors thought was possible to stabilize a dwelling. But Maxx is the Superguardian and his duties allow him to bend rules, his celebrity makes anything possible.
“Do you think I worry about the laws of the weak blues who run this world? That house of ministers is so disconnected from the average blu that they don’t even know what’s going on. This is my planet, I am Bludon.”
There is humor in his voice, but the Queen Rowen can hear the defiance with which he speaks. She knows that what he says is true, it’s been true since he won the Dance of Hysteria, but Maxx was never eager to say it himself. Something has changed.
“Thank you for coming to visit me,” Maxx says. “I know it is very far, even from Oin.”
“It’s no bother. Bludon is so beautiful, I could stay here forever. If I’m not run off for associating with criminals.” They both laugh. “That party was the most fun I’ve had in a while, and no other representative of a planet would even think to expose me to elements I’ve been exposed to here.”
“Criminals,” Maxx said with a laugh. “Those are the real blues, not the stuffy aristocracy with mansions on beaches.”
The Queen nods, still staring off at the distant island and the lazy waves rolling into the stilts of the cabin.
“You do understand why I came?” The Queen Rowen says. “It’s almost that time and I wanted to know that we could count on you again. The competition from the Fonlands is expected to be fierce this time around.”
“Count me in, of course,” Maxx says. “How long before it starts?”
“We have time, but we should start recruiting.”
Maxx nods. There hadn’t been a second Dance of Hysteria, but recent changes in the community of Fonlanders in the universe precipitated new rules.
“Good that we have time,” Maxx says. “I have a lot to do here.”
“Like what?”
“The most important thing,” he says, “is freeing the Guardians. There will be no more slaves on Bludon.”
The Queen Rowen smiles at Maxx.
“You are possibly the best man in the entire universe,” she says. “I know you don’t need it, but I will stay here and help you.”
“You would live with a thug and overthrow a government?” Maxx asks sheepishly.
“Most of those words are too subjective to really mean anything. So, what do we do first?”
“I’m being haunted by ghosts,” Maxx said. “I must rid myself of them.”
PRL Serials 