Jo was suspicious of Maria, Zaccaheus, and I. I was taken aback, everything about her approach had put me off my guard. One minute she seemed very complimentary and welcoming, and the next she stared at me with her stern, unblinking eyes and asked pointed questions like she was interrogating me.
“I feel like I should apologize,” I said. I tried to make eye contact with Jo across the table as the cards of her first deck shuffled between us. “I am so used to suppressing my power that I do it as naturally as the wind currents of this space.” She grunted indignantly. “In fact, the ability to control the powers is such an important aspect of being the Master of Universal Arcana that we are expected to be able to read as baseline organisms to other beings of arcane knowledge, to hide in plain sight. You must have a read on the immensity of the raw power at my disposal and the effort it must take not to be blazing with it at every moment it resides inside of me. But I am not trying to present myself as something that I am not. I have introduced myself as who I am to everyone of universe Prime 5 and the Fonlands, I have never been one to hide myself. We didn’t come here under our own magic, we were…”
“Brought here by Owuo,” she said as the cards settled into a deck that she picked up, and the nine materials cards for each of us settled on our side of the table. She dealt the cards as she considered me, one eyebrow high on her forehead. “I know the story, magical Earther, and it would be a rather convenient one for someone looking to infiltrate the Fonlands in an innocuous way to plan some sort of hostile takeover.”
“Takeover?” I asked. “I didn’t even know the Fonlands existed.”
“But Zacchaeus and the Needy did. They are very familiar with the Fonlands, right? Do you know that they worked with Indombe to conspire against Xevioso?”
This was all new to me. I wasn’t entirely sure who Indombe was.
“She stole one of Grootslang’s most precious gems from Xevioso and Sasabo tortured her to force her to use its magic to locate Zacchaeus and the Needy in another universe. I guess Owuo didn’t have access to the Smiting Chamber like he has now so he sent his nastiest minion to flay her, and then to bring Zacchaeus to the Fonlands. From your…Dark universe, is it called?”
“We didn’t name it…” I stumbled over my own words.
“If you’re not discarding, pick your card, Earther,” Jo said as she flicked her pointer finger and one material card from each of our cards moved to the side of the deck.
“Is this your first time playing Ubiquity?”
I blinked a couple times and shook my head, trying to reorient myself.
“It is. Are you worried about that crack in the surface of the star? And do you really think that we had a part in the decision to come here? We definitely decided to stay, but Wazad and I were transported here by the Smiting Chamber. Owuo was involved, but it was all Yana’s plans. We are trying to help because the threat ends universes and we do not want our own to be in danger.”
There was a silence between us and I stared into her eyes for an awkward amount of time before I realized she was waiting for me to make a play.
Ubiquity is a game like poker, but all hands are composed of duplicate or triplicate cards, and there is a group of communal cards, the Draft, that are flipped after each player’s turn. The material cards are like chips, and you win by taking all of your opponents material over multiple games. My mind was all over the place, it was hard to concentrate on the game with all the accusations and I didn’t discard anything, though I should have because I didn’t even have a pair of cards in my hand. In fact, I didn’t discard or dissipate (Ubiquity equivalent of folding), and when all turns were taken, I had bet all but one of my material cards and Jo revealed Four Doubles; I only had a double with one of the Draft cards.
“This is fun,” Jo said ironically. “Is this how it went with Xevi and Gu?”
“I am not your enemy.”
“Then show me who you are, Issac Washington. I am the Vodun of the unseen, and you are too good at hiding. I cannot trust you until you show me what you are. I have seen what threatens us and it reeks of death. It reeks of Owuo. He is not orchestrating all of this, is he?”
“If he is, he is a master manipulator…”
“That he is. I want to trust you, Issac Washington, but I will demand that you earn it. Show me who you are. This game is over, by the way. And that crack in the surface is Damballa expressing his anger at your continued resistance. The longer you hold back, the angrier we will get, and Damballa will break his glass to spill his plasma all over you. You are powerful, Issac Washington, but the plasma of a Star of my disc could injure the Mother-Father. Shall we shuffle up for Smiting? What do you have in your enchanted White deck?”
PRL Serials 