The Vodun are worried and so is everyone else. Their lack of confidence makes Yana grave when we speak.
“Despite the massive surge of power from the Discs of Lêgba, Jo, Xêvioso and Gu, and the upgrade in the arcana of the Smiting Chamber–and as a result the increased information it is able to collect from the multiversal structure–the Vodun have not been able to last more than five rounds against the Doom deck. This bodes ill for our plans. Nothing matters if they can’t configure a force with just a theoretical advantage against the deck, and even this logic is faulty because we are not planning against the actual enemy, just a simulation of it that is the best guess of the participating Vodun’s combined magics. There are many foul portents.”
It is personally devastating to hear one such as Yana speak so negatively. She is the mouthpiece of the Smiting Chamber, the one Fonlander with the closest attachment to its unique arcane signature and with a mental connection that allowed her to communicate accurately what the Smiting Chamber thinks beyond card stats. If she is worried and seeing ill portents, then so, too, does the Smiting Chamber, which is the most important piece of our resistance to Impending Doom. The Vodun are extremely powerful, but more significantly, they are uniquely designed to be effective in a large-scale effort involving the coordination of countless beings; they were made by the Mother-Father of the Fonlands to preside over Disc worlds. But even with their considerable skills, the Smiting Chamber is the key to our effort because the Vodun would be blind to the threat without it.
I doubt my abilities against this threat because of the atmosphere of doubt that permeates the Chamber.
Goldie is in charge of the new Meta Chamber that is in a cavern roughly the same size and situated vertically above the Smiting Chamber. The Meta Chamber has continued the work of the gaming and commerce parts of Smiting, while the Smiting Chamber has become our headquarters for the dark war ahead.
She says that knowing so much about the threat we have commandeered the Smiting Chamber to face, makes her fearful of the future.
“You’re not that type, Goldie,” I said to her recently, “you’re strong, a fighter. The future is nothing to fear because no one truly knows what tomorrow will bring. I feel like I have heard you say that before.”
“I do believe it, but watching what all of this has done to Yana is concerning. The fur of her body is more white than ever, as though the things she sees through the Smiting Chamber are slowly scaring the life from her. I know beings of power, I am very familiar with them, and I know that the beings gathered in the Smiting Chamber have immense power at their disposal, and you all do not seem optimistic. It feels like we are on the verge of war, the air of the Smiting Chamber is thick with dread.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Owuo watches Yana like a hawk, and even though he is difficult to read because of his lack of affectation, I can see in the way he stares at her when she engages the heptagon of the Chamber. He tries not to show his concern, to be steely death with an unsettling presence, but I can see the way he looks at her, penetrating her mind with his abilities and being shocked by the visions the Chamber shows her of our enemy.
“Stop staring at me, Arcana Master,” Owuo said once when I was staring at him and he disappeared in the blink of an eye in his position gawking at Goldie in the mists of the heptagon, and he said the words into my ear in his new position just next to me. “Why are you probing me?”
“Why do you watch her with what seems to be concern? I thought you had no regard for the living.”
Owuo smiled with just his mouth. “You know that I am seeing what she is seeing, I must know what she does if I ever hope to end my obligation to her.”
“To your friend,” I added. “She told me once that you wanted to be her friend. You see the wear all of this has had on her, you feel bad and are alleviating her pain.”
“She must endure in her position as the mouthpiece of the Chamber, we can’t have her dying on us,” Owuo said flippantly, but then he sighed and looked toward Yana in the distance. “Do you require proof of my ability for empathy or are you just keeping score?”
“I thought I needed it,” I admitted. “But I see the way you look at her and I know that you realize that your only hope for a future that you will accept for yourself is here in this Chamber. Even if you are only helping for selfish reasons, all of our selfish reasons align perfectly against the coming darkness. So, no, I’m not even keeping score.”
Ivan distracts himself with the wonders of the caves of Sakpata’s Disc, but Clay spends a lot of time on Gu’s Disc because he became claustrophobic when he realized that we were deep inside of the mountains. I think that he is uncomfortable around me since I told him about the version of him that I knew from my home universe, but I know that I am being self-centered.
“Of all the places we’ve visited in the Fonlands,” Ivan said recently when he returned from visiting Clay, “this Chamber is my favorite place to be. It feels like home and it’s so cozy. I wish Clay felt more comfortable here.”
“Everyone has been calling this place dreadful,” I said. “In the literal sense, though, like our dread makes the atmosphere here tense.”
“Well yeah,” Ivan admitted, “everybody is tense as fuck. But I like being here because the big bat lady and Death and Mmoatia and Maria and you and Alia and the gold bat lady are figuring it all out. And those big god people come every now and then and you all sit around the heptagon and discuss serious battle plans. Clay’s learned a lot from the Fonlanders he’s met on Gu’s Disc, but I feel so out of place. I’m happy to lend my power however I can, but when it comes to the stuff happening now, I feel like y’all are better suited for it, and watching it makes me feel safe, even if what we’re up against is scary enough to make Death uneasy.”
I meet with the Vodun regularly, collectively. Sometimes in the Chamber, only Legba and sometimes Xevisoso, but mostly on Xevioso’s Disc, on his floating island where the Vodun gather for exhibition games using different configurations of their decks in tandem with the hopes of besting the Deck of Impending Doom. I have sat to watch many of these exhibitions and they would be entertaining if they weren’t simulations of what could possibly happen to some of the most powerful entities of the multiverse.
I have seen the Vodun lose so many times and it is apparent that they are not a group that is used to losing. I get the sense that they do not comprehend the idea that they could be inadequate to complete any task. It is good that their Smiting table is magical because it is inevitable that one of them will break it, sometimes combinations of them break it in their frustration. Each loss makes them more determined to rise to the occasion. They don’t just rely on the Smiting Chamber to find strong beings to face the coming threat, they are organizing training efforts to produce the powerful army that is required and recruiting generals to lead them.
The Vodun lose, the Vodun get angry, then secretly discouraged. But then they redouble their efforts to do it all over again.
PRL Serials 