The light of the comet is high over Maria when Tiki enters the courtyard behind Wazad’s emporium. Maria had begun to chart the stars of Outer Spacetime, that were visible even under the light of the comet, on scrolls of paper that Wazad provided upon her request. Soon, Maria would leave Theron to see more of the cosmos of Outer Spacetime and encounter more of the beings of this existence. It was her idea, being cooped up on Theron was becoming claustrophobic despite its size and there wasn’t a clear timetable for how long she would be there in her training as the Transverse. Of course the Mao Ri were ecstatic to hear that she would travel the cosmos, it was in keeping with the prophecy and the idea had been her own.
“Transverse!” Tiki says frantically. Maria looks at him with concern, it is disarming to see a man as strong as Tiki as frightened as he is now. He is shirtless, and his tattooed skin shines under the comet’s light. He falls to his knees before Maria who sits cross legged in the grass. She has a pile of scrolls nearby that are weighted with a rock and she holds a pen made of bone.
“What’s wrong Tiki?”
Tiki is panting and his eyes are wide with concern. “Supplejack,” he says between frantic breaths and then Maria notices the welts on his skin, raised lines on the flesh of his shoulders and back. “He and Thane are angry with one another, they are battling in the Great Greenspace.”
Maria shakes her head, “They were just drinking together last night. I was with them and I left first because they always drink too much.”
“Alcohol doesn’t agree with the Therosi,” Tiki explains, still urgent and breathing heavily. “Come, the other Mao Ri are not on Theron, and neither is Wazad. You are powerful enough to separate them until cooler heads prevail. Please, they are causing significant damage to the Greenspace and some bystanders have been hurt. I wouldn’t ask if I could deal with it myself.”
Maria puts a gentle hand on his wounds, “Supplejack is so careless with his vines. Let’s go,” she says and as she stands, her golden sword materializes at her back and the comfortable dress she had been wearing becomes her white battle skirt with golden accents. She moves her hands and arms quickly to create a portal and she sees Thane’s skinny body with only the length of cloth wrapping his waist and Supplejack with his green skin and hair, bare chested and dressed similarly to Thane but surrounded by living vines, punching one another in the center of the destroyed Greenspace.
Supplejack is Atupa, a branch of Therosi identified by their skin and hair color, usually vibrant shades of red, blue or green, though they possess the same attributes and arcana as the Therosi. Many are perceived to be evil or deceitful, but there are many upstanding members of the Atupa community on Theron. Maria has never had a bad experience with an Atupa, and it seems that they are blamed for the ills of Therosi society so that the golden and brown skinned Therosi have an excuse for their transgressions.
When she steps through the portal, she has weaved a large length of rope using the esoteric space of Outer Spacetime and it is translucent with a shiny yellow outline. It snakes alongside her like one of Supplejack’s vines, and when she lifts a hand, one end of it mirrors her movements. She raises her other hand, clapping them together, then separating them, which causes the rope to become two ropes, and then she thrusts both her hands forward, sending the ropes to bind Thane and Supplejack where they stand. Thane is easy to subdue, but Supplejack commands vines that move and grow at his whim, and it takes more concentration to stop him from attacking Thane, and then Maria when they realize what she is doing.
“What are you doing?” Thane asks as he rips through the ropes that dissipate into nothing when he breaks them easily because Maria is distracted with Supplejack.
“Look around, protector of forests,” she says. “look what you’ve done to your Greenspace.” Supplejack has wrapped her in vines up to her waist and she dissipates the ropes, then draws her sword, slicing all of the vines and freeing herself to levitate from the ground. Her eyes are golden and glow like tiny stars in the sockets. Her hair is shiny and golden, full and blowing around her in the winds blowing through the chaos Thane and Supplejack have caused.
Both men look up at her, paused like statues.
“You are both wasted,” she says with distain. “Did you even sleep?”
“We were having a good time when you left,” Thane slurs. He hiccups. “Then he says I hate Atupa, which is dumb because he’s my favorite Therosi with his vines and shit, like man, I wish I could control plants like that.”
“Brother,” Supplejack interjects and he approaches Thane. His vines fall slack and trail him like a long cloak. He doesn’t sound as drunk as Thane, but he is just better at hiding it. “Don’t even say that shit right now, I’m hella emotional, I only said what I said ‘cause I was in my feelings and you took that shit hard to the chest, but I’m hella emotional right now and hearing you say that shit you just said is making me tear up, brother. Don’t even make me weep right now, brother.”
“You know I love you, brother,” Thane slurs. “Don’t even imply shit like that as a joke, I love Atupa. It’s all love.”
They collapse into one another, hugging and whispering things into one another’s ears that Maria is glad she can’t hear. She moves her hands quickly and creates a portal underneath them. They fall out of the Greenspace into Thane’s quarters to finish whatever they are doing.
She stares at the ruined Greenspace and she sighs. Thane could put this all back right with a snap of his fingers. Sure, Maria has immense power at her disposal and fixing destruction, or any amazing thing she does really, looks easy for her to the untrained eye. But to enact the spells of Wazad the Wonderful, one needs a strong body to create the patterns in space with sharp precision and the elaborate, repetitive movements begin to wear on the body. Maria is in her thirties, but when she is not using the arcane magic of Wazad, she feels her body aching with arthritis and carpal tunnel. No spell she could use on her body would fix this permanently; the spells only allowed her to ignore the pain or to alleviate it for a time. She sometimes has nightmares of her body twisted into knots and being locked inside of a body she no longer has the strength to pilot. She has never discussed this with anyone, mostly because of her own need to live up to the mantle she has worked hard for. But she had intended to talk to Issac about it before they were brought to the Fonlands, then to Bludon, and then she ended up in Outer Spacetime. She is currently working up the nerve to discuss it with the first Wazad.
After begrudgingly fixing the Greenspace enough that it was not dangerous to walk through, Maria feels the aches enough that when she arrives back to Wazad’s emporium and he is there reading a book behind the counter, she decides to broach the subject.
“Alcohol should not be allowed on Theron,” he says jokingly as she leans on the counter.
“It’s always fun until it isn’t,” Maria says. “Tiki said you weren’t on Theron.”
“If Tiki could sense my presence I would not be deserving of the immense powers that I was lucky to unlock about existence.”
Maria laughs. “You’ve been alive a long time,” she says, hoping to steer their conversation.
“Relative to some things, yes, to others, not so much.”
“How do you deal with the physicality of casting spells? It takes a lot and we do it so many times, it feels like my bones ache sometimes.”
“It is the cost that Wazad pays for the privilege of knowing the arcane,” he explains. “When I developed the set, I did not understand the true difference between science and magic. I still do not fully understand, but one thing I know to be true is that it takes sacrifice to access the arcane. The keeper of the secrets of existence, whatever it may be, does not allow just any being to wield arcane power. The spells aren’t just positions of the hands and body, those spells were developed to offer the physical effort as payment for access. Why is payment necessary? You would have to ask the keeper of the secrets, but once I realized that my physical effort unlocked magic, I was able to properly complete the Set. The wear on your body cannot be cured and will persist as long as you rely on the magic from my Set. You could pay the cost to wield magic in other ways.”
This makes sense to Maria and she nods.
“This will do for now, I guess. I am about to set out into the cosmos.”
“Demonstrating your mastery of Outer Spacetime. I think you will have an easy time of it. When you return, the six trials will begin. When you complete them, you will be presented to the roots of the tree of existence and then we will all know once and for all that you are Wazad the Transverse.”
“I can’t wait,” Maria says flatly. She doesn’t know how much she cares about all of this, but the Therosi have been nice and it feels like she is leveling up her power. She hopes that all of this will allow her to return to her friends stronger than she left them.
PRL Serials 