“Tell me something,” Legba said as we both shuffled our decks for Smiting. “You have come to know Owuo. I have known him for all of my existence, we are like brothers, and I believe that he is sincere in his support of our efforts. But he is Owuo, and even though I didn’t want to believe it, he is evil, the definition of it. He delights in torturing the living. I have also known him long enough to know that for all of the callousness he has for the living, he has a deep love and compassion for the dead. I understand that Owuo convinced your friend Zacchaeus to be an unwitting party to his plan to bring you and Wazad to the Fonlands by promising to reunite him with a friend who had died. I always forget to ask Owuo when I see him, maybe bringing it up to you will keep it fresh in my mind. Was Zacchaeus ever reunited with his dead friend?”
I had talked to Zacchaeus about this fairly recently, and he admitted that since we’d arrived on Bludon and made the decision to stay and help how we could, he hadn’t thought very much about Brad Jordan, his deceased friend. He became even more distracted after years turned to decades and he reunited with Coffey on the Disc of Age. But he admitted that the main reason he wasn’t very concerned about Brad Jordan was because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to find him until we returned to our home universe, and I explained that to Lêgba.
“So once we’re back, he plans to seek out the locations where Owuo said he might be. I don’t think he’s interested in Owuo showing him personally where Brad Jordan is, Owuo being such a creep and all, but he told Zacchaeus that there were cities of dead people where he is likely located and he will look for those when he’s back.”
Lêgba chuckled and shook his head.
“There is a Deads’ Town in your realm? I find that hard to believe.”
“There are cities on my Earth that have strong spiritual energies associated with them…” I tried to explain but Lêgba already understood.
“They are usually New Orleans, Charleston, Atlanta, Asheville, but I’m not talking about a city that has connotations of death or a preponderance of spirits. Did Owuo say Deads’ Town?”
“Zacchaeus said ‘town of the dead,’ I believe…”
Legba shook his head slowly and looked sympathetic.
“There is no such thing in the realms of the living. You are right, there are cities with strong energies, but a town of the dead is not a place that the living can dwell, just as a town of the living is not a place that the dead can persist. What Earthers experience in Charleston or New Orleans is not dwelling physically alongside the dead exactly. The deads have learned to make their presence known or to be seen, but the deads aren’t actually there in the same way that the living are. Owuo lied to Zacchaeus and he did so intentionally, even leaving a clue in his deception. There is a Deads’ Town on my Disc, and I would wager that is where Brad Jordan is. Let Zacchaeus know that. I will see if it is possible to take him to Deads Town. Owuo may know a way to take a mortal there, but he is too deceitful to be trusted in his dealings with mortals.”
I was glad to be able to give Zacchaeus the good news later when we talked, but that was for later. As we talked, Lêgba and I shuffled our decks and started the Smiting game. By the time the grid was full enough to start launching attacks, Lêgba’s cards on the grid included:
- Obayifo Sorcerer
- Libraries of the Sahel
- Ifa Divination
- Eshu
- Kafou
- Brother Explorers
- Ori Awareness
- Old King of the Yard
- Darkest Sorcerer Sumanguru
- Cissé Sorcerer
And mine included:
- Clown Slayer Axe – Universe HII35
- Hugo’s Nightmare – Universe 134
- Lord Cockroach – Universe H123
- The Mark of Owuo – Universe 495
- Kill the Dead – Universe VI62
- Razew Shapeshifter Extraordinaire – Universe HV32
- Lynnette Jones, the Alchemist – Universe 316
- Perpetuity Gazette – Universe II115
- Deshon, Living Dead Patient Zero – Universe 164
- Maddy Unloved – Universe 1125
“These are strange cards,” Lêgba said as he looked puzzled over the grid. “This is what the Smiting Chamber found across the multiversal structure in my color?”
I was a little confused as well. The other enchanted decks I had used with the other Vodun fit very obviously with the Vodun’s color, so much so that they were eager to learn more after seeing them. Legba scratched his head and stared with confusion at the cards I’d produced from the enchanted Black deck.
“Is this an Owuo deck?” Legba asked jokingly. n“Maybe you grabbed the enchanted Purple deck by accident.”
“You have death dealers in your first deck,” I said. “And Owuo is from your Disc.”
Lêgba nodded. “Mine and Owuo’s relationships with death are not the same, but we are both intimate with it. Owuo revels in the taking of life and the absence of it. My purview is the crossroads, the transition from life to death…” he paused while he read the text of the Deshon, Living Dead Patient Zero card. “Yes, I see now. This card is a powerful being who draws power from the intersection of life and death. I like that it gains benefits from things returning to the grid and it gives the ability to return things. This is more of a reanimation card than a death card, but it can’t move like other cards in the grid that are ‘alive ’. Very interesting card mechanics, the Smiting Chamber is such a sophisticated apparatus. I thought it was just the place Sakpata counted all the rhasd he earned by monetizing Smiting in the Fonlands, but the Chamber may be alive based on how Yana describes her experience with it. These cards are nuanced in a knowing way.”
The enchanted Black deck managed to frustrate Lêgba in the Smiting game because it did more regridding than his first deck was capable of. I was surprised that I made the game last as long as it did.
“I must analyze that card,” Lêgba said, pointing to Maddy Unloved. He made a play that essentially wiped the grid of my cards, but the Maddy Unloved card remained. “I’m going to have to surround it with cards that have contact abilities and use those in tangent with attackers. This card is deceptively tough.”
Maddy Unloved rolls attack and health dice equal to the highest dice used for any other card in the grid. It also can couple with another card and as long as the coupled card is on the board, Maddy Unloved can’t be removed.
“It will definitely be a feature in my deck, I’d like to understand what this card is.”
Lêgba made casting motions with his fingers and a beam of black magic shot from his pointer finger to the card that rose from the grid. I expected it to produce a bust of the being illustrated on the card face like Jo had done when we played, but a generic bust appeared over the Smiting Grid to answer Lêgba’s questions.
“Who is Maddy in its realm?” Lêgba asked.
“The last saved data on Maddy Unloved is the data printed on the card. Maddy was identified and assessed before Chamber sensors moved on to another universe. When this enchanted Black deck was produced, the Chamber attempted to gather more detailed data about Maddy Unloved, but the universe where it originated no longer existed as it had. Maddy Unloved originates from the planet Mars of the universe distinction on the card where humans became a two-planet species. Maddy was a physicist hoping to uncover a means to use Dark Matter to achieve light speed. Her physical attributes and abilities that produced the card text were not logged during initial assessment and are not known to the Chamber. This being is not eligible for recruitment for the planned VSF initiative.”
Legba dismissed the generic dummy and he looked grave. It was a rude reminder of the stakes of our planning. I’d managed to keep that reality at bay as I played the decks and conversed with the Vodun, but this was like a needle scratch.
“Flip another to replace it,” Lêgba said sternly, the levity in his voice had deflated.
I sat up in my seat, feeling the mood shift and ready to be as serious as we needed to be. There was so much at stake that it was impossible even for the Vodun to truly wrap their understanding around. Something was systematically deading entire existences across the multiversal structure and it was seemingly unstoppable. We were hoping to stop something sophisticated enough to kill existences across the seeming infinity of the multiverse. It was alot, and our best hope was this card game that the Vodun created. We had to take it seriously or risk losing everything. Maddy Unloved proved to be a very important card in the exhibition, and Legba actually kept it as a reminder of the stakes.
When the game was done–Lêgba pulled another grid-wipe for the win–Lêgba actually returned to the Smiting Chamber with me and Xêvioso, Gu, and Jo were already there with Yana and Owuo, Alia and Ivan and Clay, Tracia and Metatron, and Maria who by that point had been promoted to Wazad the Transverse. There was much to do, and we would do it even if it killed us.
PRL Serials 