Shini was once a powerful sorcerer of the Deep, the subterranean world that is an extension of the Disc of Agê underground. He is a son of the surface and the underground world; his mother was a yumbo and his father was a dark muthi. The muthi are an underground kin of Agê’s Disc who are humanoid with light brown skin and hair that grows up. A black muthi has a much darker skin tone, and they are very powerful wielders of death magic that permeates the Deep. But long ago, Shini was seemingly killed by his companion, the Supreme Aboatia known as Ahdis, after his body was taken over by a vicious and powerful mind controller known as the Pestilence Witch, an mbwiri, of the Death Witch Coven. Any Fonlander can become an mbwiri, but they must be frequently bathed in death magic and embrace a darkness that shuns Divine Essence. Because of the esoteric arcana at play at the time of Shini’s death, he wasn’t actually killed, but banished to another place, a dead realm.
This dead realm is mostly empty, true oblivion from Shini’s point of view that he can survive because of his abilities as a sorcerer. Other things dwell in that space, the native beings of that realm who are dark purveyors of death that Shini has not encountered in all the centuries of his banishment, but they have been pursuing him across the unfathomable breadth of their existence. When he was first summoned back to the Fonlands after so much time in the oblivion realm that he lost sense of time and assumed that he would float forever, it was the mad Maxx, the Superguardian, who used death magic that he learned in the Deep of Agê’s Disc that brought Shini back.
Shini was completely disoriented by the sensation, like he had been seized by an invisible hand and jerked through time and space, and when he stopped moving and realized where he was, he still felt a strong grip on his very being.
“You are the great power from beyond?” Shini heard an angry voice ask him and as his vision came into focus, he saw a being that looked like the ancient tortoises of Age’s Disc that are plentiful in the overlap with Agbe’s Disc, but this tortoise stood on two legs and walked upright like a muthi. “You know the location of Gu’s weapon? Take me to it or I will banish you back to where you came.”
“Gu’s weapon?” Shini asked with confusion.
“His mythic weapon that is capable of cutting down death himself!” Maxx yelled.
“The Blight Maker…?” Shini said, shaking his head, hoping that his mind would settle and he could get his bearings to find the only thing in the Fonlands that allowed him to survive the oblivion for so long.
“You are the first one to give it a name,” Maxx said with delight and his smooth face twisted with sinister glee. “Take me to it!”
“I appreciate that you have saved me from oblivion,” Shini said and he dropped to his knees in front of Maxx. “I beg you please, tell me where I can find Ahdis. How long has it been? I have not seen her in so long, and the last time…” Shini lost his will to speak as he remembered that the last time he saw Ahdis, he was destroying the first home she ever knew and appreciated. He wasn’t himself, he was the puppet of an mbwiri, the Pestilence Witch, who wanted to see Ahdis despair and then die at the hands of her companion, and he could do nothing to stop her or himself.
“You will never see her again, unless you take me to the Blight Maker,” Maxx said as he cast a spell with his hand that sent Shini back to Oblivion.
“There are so many Fonlanders here,” Shini says, hovering close to Maxx. They stand far away from the stone structure of the Arena that they can see in the distance as they hide behind a large rock formation on the grassy terrain.
“Where is the location of the marker?” Maxx asks gruffly. “I don’t see it. I thought that you performed the enchantment to allow me to see the location?”
“I did, but we are not close enough. Even I can’t see it.”
“Then we will have to be invisible and approach,” Maxx says angrily.
“That is not the best course of action. Some Fonlanders that are mingling about, going in and out of the Arena, can detect the presence of cloaked beings and things, and if we are identified, we will have to explain ourselves. Being invisible will only draw more attention to us.”
“I didn’t bring you here to narrate what can’t be done.”
“I have been successful with sleep spells in the past,” Shini says. “Do you know how to cloak? I would ask that you do it as we approach and I put everyone down for long enough for you to set the marker and for us to retreat.”
Maxx nods silently and enacts a cloaking spell that he has learned in his time in the Fonlands. As he moves his hands and says words that are not his native tongue, he begins to approach the chaos around the area. Before they are close to the crowd, they are cloaked and Shini is moving his invisible arms and the eight digits of each of his hands, chanting softly. As the two move, a mist of dark green sweeps before them, but it is subtle enough not to be noticeable against the natural green landscape.
“I see it,” Maxx says, like a predator with sites on its prey. “We are close. I will begin the chant.”
Soon there are bodies on the grass and on the stone pavilion that surrounds the grounds of the arena, like a silent death had moved through the grounds. Maxx is chanting loudly and the body parts in the sack over his shoulder begin to move from their place and land in a pile on the stone pavilion to coincide with the marker that only Zacchaeus and Shini are able to see.
Shini watches, filled with regret, but hopeful. If he can get one word to Ahdis, if she knows that he is in the Fondlands she can use her senses to find him and free him from the control of the mad Superguardian. He must be patient, though.
“Let’s go before…” Maxx starts but he is interrupted by a blast of energy that whizzes past their cloaked forms.
“Who are you and what have you done?” a strong voice shouts, but before either of them can find the source of the voice, Maxx casts a spell that spirits them away.
“Pultine, do you remember when we first heard the legend of Gu’s weapon that was so powerful it could conquer death? We were confused to learn that it took death magic to create it. We assumed that Gu would have had to use life magic, green magic, to kill death.”
Zacchaeus watches Pultine with her sister, Ahdis. They meet at the Aziza mound that is very busy with activity these days. The naturally occurring moss of the interior keeps it lit despite the time of day outside and there are always dots of light that flutter around; the umbatia of the earther swamp are inhabitants of the mound and they are the size of earther fireflies and blink on and off just like them. The Supreme Mmoatia are frequent visitors to the mound and Ahdis had left them to join Zacchaeus and Pultine to discuss their investigation into the dark work that Maxx has been doing.
“I do remember that,” Pultine says with a nod. “Though it never made sense that Gu would know anything about Agê’s magic.”
“Right,” Ahdis agrees. “It makes more sense that he would know something of death magic, he is the Vodun of war. So to hear that someone is using death magic to find his mystical weapon, I am not surprised. From what you describe, dismembered corpses placed in specific locations, it sounds like Gu would have had to hide it in Kútmómɛ, the land of the dead.”
“Do you mean Deads’ Town?” Zacchaeus asks.
Pultine and Ahdis look at him curiously, like they’d forgotten he was with them.
“I always forget that you’ve been here longer than I realize,” Pultine says.
“Kútmómɛ is not Deads’ Town,” Ahdis explains. “Owuo made Deads’ Town to perfect his knowledge of death magic. Kútmómɛ is like the Outer Spacetime of the Fonlands. It exists parallel to this realm, a veil over the existence of the Fonlands and it is the resting place of the spirits of Fonlanders when they have shrunk out of existence; if they’re not drawn to Owuo’s Deads’ Town of course, but it’s rare that that happens. Kútmómɛ doesn’t contain death magic so no deads dwell there. It is a place that contains the echoes of the past of the Fonlands.”
“If Gu’s legendary weapon is there, why would Maxx be using death magic to access it?” Pultine asks.
“Because not even the Vodun can access Kútmómɛ at will. It requires accommodation from the spirits, and in lieu of that, the spirits can be manipulated into opening a doorway to their realm, but this is not easily done. I know what I know because there are legends in the Deep about seeing loved ones again who have moved on from the Fonlands. But Kútmómɛ is mostly warded against death magic; mostly because very sophisticated witches and sorcerers can use death magic to access Kútmómɛ. There are no easy ways to get there because the Mother-Father didn’t intend the living and the echoes of the living to commingle. Kútmómɛ is a place that serves as a backup of the stories of the Fonlands. If something were to happen to Lêgba’s libraries or the Scroll on Jo’s Disc, the ancient beings involved in the story can be reached to reproduce them.”
“It must be an empty place,” Zacchaeus says.
“What are you talking about?” Pultine asks, annoyed that his meaning requires any effort to parse.
“Everything I ever heard about the Fonlands,” Zacchaeus explains, ”seem like y’all live forever and hard as fuck to kill. Can’t be too many Fonlanders in Kútmómɛ.”
Both Ahdis and Pultine laugh together.
“He’s not wrong,” Ahdis says.
“Fonlanders die,” Pultine says to Zacchaeus. “They do it all the time. Maybe if we learned how to coexist in this paradise the Mother-Father built for us, we would all live forever, but it don’t seem like anything is really deserving of paradise.”
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