Things had been going fine in Talj, until suddenly, it very much was not. The majority of the Vodun had arrived to the Meta Chamber and were loudly discussing their next move, when the Arcana Master made a startling discovery.
“Do you all see this?” he yelled, interrupting the Vodun in their deliberation. Eventually, they all saw that the black magic wielders of their forces were now Pito. They all watched the monitors in disbelief.
“Arcana Master,” Jo said, “bring everyone who is not infected back now. Send them to the Shifting Planes, the quarantine zone that we established.”
And just like that, the mission to Talj came to an end. Issac Washington’s hand began to glow a rich shade of navy blue that illuminated his fingertips as he moved his hands into deliberate formations. The Vodun watched the screens around the Meta Chamber as light, Essence blue distortions appeared on the cosmic battlefield in Talj to assess the beings of their forces for Pito infection and then warping them out of that reality if they were free of it. When that work was done, essentially all of the force with black aligned magic that had gone into Talj was still there and joined with the Pito.
The Vodun, minus Agê and plus Issac Washington, arrive at the Shifting Planes where the warriors who had been in Talj are on platforms that are magically sealed to prevent the possibility of the taint that corrupted the Pito from spreading onto the Disc of Lêgba.
“I am inspecting them all carefully,” Issac says, the navy blue of his magic now glowing at his eyes and fingertips. “Is Zacchaeus still in Talj?”
One of the beings from the containment, Wazad the Transverse who Issac knows as Maria, answers him.
“He is Pito, Issac, but Pultine can save him. Where is Pultine?”
“She didn’t come back,” Tracia, a Supreme mmoatia says and the quarantine containment ends after confirming that none of the Pito contamination returned to the Fonlands. “She went into the wall.”
“She can’t be lost,” Agbe says earnestly. “Did anyone see her infected?”
“I didn’t,” Ahdis, another of the Supreme mmoatia, says.
“She couldn’t have been,” Djallon, a 4Warrior of the Fonlands who had fought at Pultine’s side says confidently. “She went into the wall because she burned her way through it. She is still inside of it, burning it out, I know it. We should go back there as quickly as we can and finish this.”
“What happened to Ali!” the Halfyn Heir screams. “We went there to save his home, you all brought him here and gave him false hope that we could save him and then you left him to that unspeakable death. What have you all done here?”
“I assure you,” Xêvioso says firmly and all eyes look to him, “that we have not given false hope. From what I have gathered after returning to the Meta Chamber and reviewing the data, we far outclass our opponents and their strengths are few, namely their ability to regenerate and their sheer numbers. All of you proved that you could destroy the Pito to the point that they could not regenerate.”
“At the expense of all of our black magic users,” Alia, the Hyperion says firmly, but then she almost loses her resolve in the face of the Vodun who are large and command respect, and she half bows. “Respectfully, anything we learned is tainted by our incredible loss. Are our allies lost to that dark thing forever?”
“They are not,” Maria says. “Not if we can retrieve Pultine. Like the red warrior said, she has potent light abilities, just like you Alia, you both can cure anyone infected by the Pito, but Pultine is the best candidate for healing because of the way that she wields her power. Alia, you can do it, but you have to concentrate to be sure that you don’t overwhelm an infected person. The Divine Essence softens the impact of pure light energy inundating the body and allows it to persevere where the infection dies. I saw all of this as Pultine made her way through the wall. Mulweri and I went into the wall because we could move through it without fear of coming into contact with it, the being known as Lord Cockroach that accompanied us was eventually infected, but Mulweri and I tried to find the end, or beginning, the place where the Pito were originating from in that universe, and we could not find it.”
“I have never seen anything like it,” Mulweri, the Tinyileti Warrior, says, “everything that the Pito touched was black and presumably being consumed. Pure horror, for such a long stretch of existence.”
“With the powers of the Transverse,” Maria continued, “I was able to see the conflict from a larger view, and it may seem that Pultine can’t do much because of the sheer size of the Pito’s forces, but I could see the impact of her fireworks on the massive force. When she burns away a section of the wall, it weakens the whole because it is all connected. It’s like one very large neural network and it becomes more sophisticated the more that it grows, but there are concentrations, neural clusters I guess, and I think that if they are targeted, it can short circuit the whole thing.”
“That is intel that we can use to strategize,” Gu says with a smile to Xêvioso, Agbe, and Sakpata. “Let’s get to that at once while the rest of you assemble a rescue force. The one called Alia, the Hyperion, find others like you to join the rescue and bring back everyone that we sent who is not already dead. Can I count on you to do that for me, Hyperion?”
“For sure, your Vodunness,” Alia says.
“Before we get very busy again,” Xêvioso says, “I want everyone to know that we have help searching for the source of all of this. And based on what we have learned here, I know that once we find it, once we know where it all comes from, we can go to it and shut this down for good. This is a dark time for sure, but we won’t wallow in it. We won’t lose our resolve and let the darkness win. Our fight is righteous and I am ready to ride with you all into battle. Hyperion, we share characteristics with Pultine, I will go with you all to bring them back and to save that existence. The thing that has sent fear across the multiversal structure will soon know fear.”
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