“What if we all give it our best shot?” Lêgba said to Xêvioso, Jo, and Gu who all sat around a smiting grid that hovered over the Disc of Xêvioso. “What if we all play against this Deck of Impending Doom to determine the best way to defeat it. Then I can go back to Ogi with solutions that don’t involve exposing Paradise to their enemies.”
“What are you talking about?” Jo asked. “Who is Ogi?”
“The protector of Paradise,” Lêgba explained.
“Are you going to make her ask?” Gu said with annoyance.
“I told you all about Paradise. It is an existence far from the Endlands that rivals the beauty of our home.”
“You have told us no such thing,” Jo said. “Don’t tell me your memory has deteriorated. Must be from absorbing all of those iterations.”
“Are you struggling to reconcile your experience?” Gu asked deliberately and loudly like they had questioned Lêgba’s hearing.
“Shut up,” Lêgba said defensively. “I was sure that we’d discussed this before. We were at a table like this one, but not on Xêvioso’s Disc…”
“This is the first conversation you are having with us since returning from your multiversal travels,” Xêvioso explained and he looked concerned.
Gu stood from the table and when he opened his clenched fist, a large weapon appeared in his hand with a long metallic handle and a dual sided head, one side was an ax and the other was a hammer. He looked to Jo.
“This is the real Lêgba isn’t it?”
“Xêvi is the Lêgba expert,” she said and looked to Xêvioso. “This is the real Lêgba?”
“Unless he has perfected his duplication to the point that he has created a true copy of himself, this is the real Lêgba. I tracked his return when he reentered Prime 5, I felt him reabsorbing his iterations. I was only surprised by his arrival here because Gu and I were already Smiting and I was distracted, and then you both arrived. But this is the Lêgba that I was tracking. When did you tell us about this Ogi, Lêgba?”
“It was right after I first encountered Paradise,” Lêgba explained, on the verge of frantic. The doubt of his siblings was making him doubt himself. He knew that he was himself, he was sure that he was the real Lêgba, but he worried about Gu’s question before he became so paranoid that he summoned a weapon. Lêgba was struggling to reconcile his experience. He’d created more iterations of himself that he’d kept track of and he learned that they had rich experiences in the long period that he was away. He had never absorbed so many iterations in such a short period of time, and he knew that his siblings were right to be cautious. Some of Lêgba’s iterations were very dangerous. Though each iteration he creates is loyal to Lêgba and incapable of hurting him, he could not control the nature of the iteration he created; an iteration could have any personality that Lêgba could manifest and he could have a devilish temper if the mood struck him.
“It wasn’t you all,” Lêgba said as it dawned on him. He said it slowly as he recalled creating an iteration shortly after discovering Paradise and meeting Ogi for the first time. The iteration was very nice and obedient, and Lêgba told him to go back to the Vodun and tell them of Paradise and its wonders. And the iteration did what it was told, but it hadn’t arrived at the Endlands of Node 5. “There’s another Endlands.”
Xevioso grumbled angrily, and Gu was confused but had checked out a little while ago. Jo leaned on the Smiting table.
“One shocking thing at a time, brother,” Jo said calmly. “Unless it benefits us to have duplicates in the multiverse to deal with this Doom Deck.”
“Is he even sure that any of this is real?” Gu asked skeptically. “This whole iteration thing is so confusing to me. Maybe the memories he has are all false.”
“The Deck of Impending Doom is real,” Lêgba said after a moment of silence between the siblings where they all stared at him, refusing to blink. “I witnessed that personally. The other Endlands, I did not. But it seems that you are all there except for me, until my iteration arrived. But if that is true, then it seems my iteration was always the Lêgba of this existence, even before I created him…Jo is right, though, one shocking thing at a time. We have to deal with the Deck. Give me some time to sort out all my new memories, we will all take that time to explore and build the strongest decks we can muster, and meet back here for the first ever Smiting game of its kind. All of us united against one deck.”
Jo and Gu looked to Xêvioso.
“You heard him. Lêgba, alert us when you are ready, and we will reconvene here two week after the alert.”
The Vodun parted, including Xêvioso who disappeared through a yellow portal.
PRL Serials 