Detritus has determined the moment that matters most.
Before the mmoatia Ariel and Leilar arrived to the Fonlands for the first time, Detritus was on the Disc of Agê contemplating the long history of the Death Witches.
The Detritus Witch was one of the Tinyalari who died on Ntinyeti long ago to become a Death Witch. She had a different name in her life on Ntinyari, and she, like the other tinyalari who attacked Moon Daisy that day to seize the Spirit Amulet, sacrificed that name to become a Death Witch. By sacrificing their names, the beings who would become the Death Witches doomed themselves, for nothing can exist without a name and their bodies became empty vessels that were filled with the power of death, and granted both souls and names by this power. The names of the Death Witches are immune to the magics that grant a knower of the names any power over them. The names of the Ntinyari who became Death Witches are lost to history, though there is a legend that the Death Witches lose their power and revert to their living state if they ever hear their Tinyalari names.
Detritus is in the bush contemplating a return of the Death Witches to the prominence they had known before the conclusion of their epic battle with the Azizas of Jo’s Disc long ago that banished them from their home to the depths of Agê’s Disc. They had failed many times over to prove their power to the Mother-Father and that was evident by their constant defeats even in their machinations for power in the Deep that was much better suited for their newfound Death Magic; the Mother-Father obviously hadn’t recognized them enough to anoint them as prominent leaders of the Fonlands, but it was also apparent that they weren’t abhorred by the Mother-Father because they were allowed to persist, even if their numbers paled in comparison to what they had been. Detritus knew that the Death Witches were among the most powerful Fonlanders ever birthed on the Fonlands and she would work, whether in the shadows or openly, until they attained their rightful place.
As she sat in the bush, among the flora that wrapped her ever so slowly and the tiny Fonland insects, rodents, and humanoids that called the bush home and assumed she was a new part of the landscape considering how long she sat unmoved, Detritus was locked in intense contemplation. She accessed the Scroll in the Time Chamber on Jo’s Disc, combing the histories of Fonlanders for tales involving the magics and relics that might help her to finally achieve what the Death Witches had always believed she could. She simultaneously devised elaborate scenarios in her head involving the tools that she identified from the Scroll, theorizing schemes to seize control of different areas of Agê’s Disc, and then the Disc itself, then other Discs, and eventually the entirety of the Fonlands kneeling before the Death Witches who were the replacement for the Vodun. But there was no power in the Fonlands that she could seize to match the power of the Vodun, and there were other Fonlanders with powers that were on par or so great that they could stand in Detritus’s way.
She remembered her sisters as history and her plans for the future dominated her mind. There was a time when there were hundreds of Death Witches who existed in the black hole Ntinyari, and they only emerged to recruit others and to enact Detritus’s plans to impress Jo. But then the Azizas came with their 4Warriors and they forced so many of the witches out of the Fonlands and into the death that they embraced so readily. Because the Death Witches were immune to death, the Azizas devised a plan to open a portal to the legendary Kútmómɛ, the destination of all Fonlanders at death, and to seal them all inside. Only a handful of the Death Witches escaped this fate and lead among them was Detritus.
She knew that she survived for a reason and she knew that eventually, with enough mediation and strategy, she would figure out the perfect plan to free her sisters from their prison. She realized that the Death Witches had been routed because their combined power dwarfed the Vodun but they had not demonstrated the ability to wield it to the benefit of the Mother-Father.
After a long time, Detritus felt the threat to existence that was approaching the Fonlands in her present. The feeling of doom emanated from deep in the caves of the Disc of Sakpata. She followed that feeling when she happened across it to the spirit known as the Smiting Chamber that was terrified of something that was coming. At first, Detritus smiled to think that the Fonlands would soon tremble in fear, but after months studying the information from the Smiting Chamber, Detritus realized that it was rightly concerned that the coming enemy would mean the end of everything and not even the Vodun could stop it.
Detritus opened her eyes and was greeted by the bush that had grown heavily around her. She knew that the only hope for all of existence was the combined might of the Death Witch Coven. Maybe they would need the help of the Vodun, but it was imperative that she free the Death Witches from Kútmómɛ.
Then Ariel arrived to the Fonlands for the first time and Detritus felt her incredible potential. Detritus was impressed and she psychically probed Ariel deeply to understand the nature of her powers. Detritus was shocked when she managed to slip into the past of the jungle of Agê’s Disc. She opened her eyes in the same spot where she had been overgrown in her present, but she wasn’t overgrown and the growth around her was much younger. She could smell the young foliage that was different in her present–an ancient mix of growth and death by that point–but in that past she had slipped into, things were relatively new. Detritus wandered from the spot and eventually she came to the mound of the first Azizas of the Disc of Agê and she scoffed at them, bile rising up her long throat.
“If I never see it again, it’ll be too soon,” Detritus heard a familiar voice say in the distance and she saw Tracia walking next to an abada who she called Nille.
“You say that every time we leave,” Nille said. “But you love it. You wouldn’t know what to do if it wasn’t there anymore.”
Detritus was brought back to her present where so little time had passed that she had barely blinked and she realized that her proximity to Ariel allowed her to access the past. She did it again as Ariel stumbled around the jungle with Leilar and she went quickly to the mound that was still thriving with azizas and she launched a violet smoke bomb at it that sent the azizas scattering. There was commotion and Detritus cast a spell with her hand, disguise formation, that changed her appearance to a little aziza girl that she maintained in her present where the aziza mound was now empty.
She sensed Ariel leaving the Fonlands and Detritus presented herself as an aziza girl named Mae who traveled with Ariel and her friends back to the Earth realm where Detritus used all of her magic to conceal her true identity against the mmoatia who would recognize her. And she plotted, learning Ariel’s power and how best to wield it. And she devised a plan to plunder history so that she could free the Death Witches in the present. She knew that even with Ariel’s power, she couldn’t stop the original azizas from banishing the Death Witches, but she could find the tools she needed in history to free them.
She needed the power to open a door to Kútmómɛ which no surviving Death Witch possessed. It would take a powerful collective to open a door to Kútmómɛ and no Fonlander with that power would dare help the Death Witches or try to access Kútmómɛ. But following the Arbitration of Hysteria in the other realm, and the victory of Maxx the Superguardian, Detritus as Mae learned that the beings of other realms can wield great power, enough even to open a doorway to Kútmómɛ, if they learned the arcane rituals of course. So when the beings of Maxx’s planet became the victims of Owuo, Detritus decided to seize the opportunity.
Not only did she need to open the doorway to Kútmómɛ, but Detritus knew that she had to navigate to a pivotal moment in Fonlands history that would allow her to collect the amulets that the Azizas of Jo’s Disc had scattered across the Fonlands after successfully banishing so many of the Death Witches.
In the present day, the amulets, or Grigri of the Fonlands, are well guarded or hidden, Maxx had only been able to retrieve the Growth Amulet because it was submerged in the swamps of the overlap between Agê and Agbe’s Discs and no one was interested in recovering it. This amulet on its own, and mixed with extremely powerful Death Magic that Detritus taught Maxx in disguise and in dreams, allowed him to open a doorway to Kútmómɛ sufficient for four beings to pass through. There was a time in the distant past when all of the amulets were kept in the same place, in the Chamber of the Unseeing All-knowing of the Disc of Sakpata.
Detritus ensured that Maxx would open a door to Kútmómɛ on his quest for the Blight Maker, that she knew was real and powerful enough to lead its wielder out of Kútmómɛ, and she honed her understanding of Ariel’s power so that she could navigate to a point that Ariel had not witnessed first hand. She would have to seize the Fonland amulets in the past, navigate to the future, and unleash the overwhelming power of the combined amulets to bring the Death Witches into the present where darkness was looming.
The hard part was focusing her power through others to achieve her aims and Ariel was proving to be extremely difficult. But Detritus is used to dealing with mmoatia.
“I forgot that you mmoatia are formidable,” Detritus says to Ahdis and Tracia who look as ruffled up as the Witch does.
“I don’t think you forgot,” Ahdis says and flies at the Witch, Tracia mirroring her movements as they maneuver though trees.
Detritus stands in a clear section of the woods, billowing violet clouds at her feet that obscure her body from the calves down. She wears a flowing black garment that broadcasts her abstract body with too long limbs and unnatural angles.
Suddenly, Ahdis strikes at Detritus from the woods, her fist clad in her white armor, but Detritus moves to dodge it quickly. Before she can smirk and hurl insults at her enemy, she feels a tingling sensation at her back that quickly begins to sting and burn. Detritus turns with a flourish, raising her left arm and forcing the violet energy that trailed it in the direction of Tracia who had managed to damage her back with her glittering aspect. With enough time, Tracia’s aspect would have ground Detritus to nothing, but the Witch is extremely fast and despite the speed at which Tracia’s aspect can wipe things from existence, Detritus can easily stay away from it.
Tracia regroups and falls back from the trees as the violet power of Detritus approaches her. She knows to avoid it and she does a quick hand spell that rouses the winds and blows the clouds of violet away as she continues her retreat.
Meanwhile, Zana grits her teeth so hard that her jaws ache. Both her fists that glow yellow-white are up in front of her as Ariel pounds away at her forearms with a power that Zana didn’t realize her sister possessed.
“This ain’t me!” Ariel yells hysterically as she fights with a certainty that she had never fought with before. It is her body, she is a prisoner inside of it.
“I can’t just keep taking this,” Zana says, groaning under the power that Ariel rains down on her. “I gotta hit back, sissy, forgive me.” As she says it, the light of Zana’s fists flashes bright and the light seems to harden like Ahdis’s as it expands out, pushing Ariel back toward the trees behind her. Zana follows Ariel, beating her wings to catch up to her before she hits the tree. She sees that Ariel is dazed and she closes her eyes after sizing up the gap between them, then she punches her sister hard enough to accelerate her crash into the tree. The tree falls with Ariel flat against it and Zana is relieved that she is still breathing but unconscious. She flies to the other mmoatia to help with Detritus.
“Do we kill her?” Ahdis asks Tracia as they both stand before Detritus who glares at them from a distance.
“Can we kill her?” Tracia asks.
“I’m happy to try,” Zana says as she lands behind the older mmoatia.
“We can’t kill her,” Tracia says, then to Detritus, “Why are you doing this?”
“It is always good to deal with you, Tracia, you are the only one among you mmoatia who bothers to ask questions. Thank the Mother-Father the black one isn’t here, we would never get to the point.”
“You could have come to talk to us a long time ago,” Tracia says, “but you always choose violence.”
Detritus nods. “Point taken. It is easier to explain after the fact than to try to make you all understand, though. As you can probably imagine, things have been in motion for a long time while you Supremes were distracted with the other realm. Which is an infinite source of surprises, I should say. First Ariel and then the Superguardian. And here we are on the precipice of the complete annihilation of existence. Whatever could the Detritus Witch be up to?”
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to save existence from the threat identified by the Smiting Chamber,” Tracia says with disbelief. But the look on Detritus’s face spoke for her. “You’ve been eavesdropping? Are you concerned enough to join with your enemies against it, then? Why all these time shenanigans?”
“You’re answering your own questions. I didn’t mean for us to have a confrontation in the past, I thought I was being clever enough that I could surprise the Vodun with the answer to the problem of every being of the Fonlands and the other realm, and every other realm I guess. I know the key to defeating this enemy. But you mmoatia will not agree.”
“Why are you in the past?” Ahdis asks impatiently.
“I am making my way back to a moment of significance. We are here because Ariel is still learning her powers, or I am learning her powers and puppeting her. As a show of good faith, I will not order Ariel to attack you all anymore. But I will continue to use her until I have reached the moment that I require.”
“We won’t let you change the past,” Tracia insists. “Changing the past won’t fix the problem we face. We will go back through the Time Eater spell having impacted nothing of significance even if we have to drag you back through it.”
“I don’t intend to alter the past,” Detritus says sincerely. “I traveled back in time to retrieve the entirety of the Grigri, when they are located in the Chamber of the Unseeing All-knowing.”
“You’re trying to reverse the spell that the Azizas of Jo’s Disc enacted to seal away hundreds of Death Witches!” Ahdis says with horror. “If she is successful, she will unleash a horde of Death Witches on the Fonlands. Not to mention that taking the grigri from the past will alter moments from history to change the present.”
“If you help me do this,” Detritus says, “I will make sure that they are returned to their proper spot in the past so that nothing changes. I can retrieve the Coven before the Time Eater closes.”
“Why would we help you bring more Death Witches to the Fonlands?” Ahdis asks.
“Because together, we are stronger than the Vodun. We can help in the fight against doom. We are your only hope. I don’t want the end of existence. We are not called Death Witches because we don’t like existence. This doom threatens everything, it will leave every corner of the Fonlands dry, inert, even the spirits somehow. You both know the power that just eight Death Witches can wield, you have faced it before. Imagine what our entire coven can do?”
“You put us in a difficult spot, Detritus,” Tracia admits. “We do know the power of the Death Witches and we would be stupid not to accept your help against the threat…”
“Tracia!” Ahdis interjects. “We can’t trust Death Witches. We may as well just give into the enemy.”
“The Death Witches would be stupid to dispose of powerful allies before the powerful enemy is eliminated,” Tracia explains. “The only relevant question now is, what becomes of the Witches when the war is won?”
Detritus smiles slyly.
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