“Seem like we can’t win for losing,” Zacchaeus said angrily. We had just arrived back in the Smiting Chamber from Outer Spacetime and even though I was frantic to speak with Owuo or one of the Vodun, particularly Lêgba, we stood for a moment in the dim chamber that buzzed with activity.
“What did we witness?” Maria looked at me with real confusion on her face. She had spent a significant amount of time in Outer Spacetime when we first arrived to the Prime 5 universe, and her time there had been transformative. She’d acquired the power to navigate existence in the blink of an eye and she was helped on that journey to acquire the name Wazad the Transverse. The Ice Prince and Garoa in particular, she had told me so much about them when we first talked after her return and I could tell that she was very worried for them in the wake of the terrible wonder that we had witnessed.
“Once he opened the portal to Deads’ Town it was over,” I said deliberately, practically forcing the words to come out of my mouth because I didn’t know that I could explain it. “The Barons are as powerful as the Vodun, though they were less so in Outer Spacetime, but they changed the very nature of it. It is Outer Spacetime and it is Deads’ Town now, and I wonder what Owuo and Lêgba will have to say about it.”
“Do you think it hurt the beings that were already there?” Maria asked.
“La Croix was fine,” Zacchaeus said. “Ain’t he from there? But they all merged together at the end.”
“I think they’re alright, but if the Barons merged the realms, then I wonder how they will coexist. I would be concerned for the beings of lower spacetime who were in the realm. Living things can’t exist in Deads’s Town, only the violet magic version thrives there. You have to die to be there.”
“The First Wazad! And Sao-Reyne!” Maria said with mounting panic that I tried to subdue. “Both of them are from lower spacetime..”
“We can’t go back to Outer Spacetime, or whatever it is now. We have to talk to Owuo or Legba or both of them. That’s the only way to find out if the Wazads are ok.”
By that point, it seemed that the entirety of the Fonlands was preparing for the large scale conflict to come and even though they were all cognizant of the threat, they didn’t feel hopeless and they worked diligently toward whatever task was given to them by the Vodun who were on their Discs organizing their contributions to the larger effort. We traveled to the Disc of Lêgba, to his opaque castle where we discovered the Disc in chaos, already aware of the situation with Deads’ Town.
“Thank you,” Lêgba said to us when we got time to speak with him. “I know that you did all you could, but the Barons were clever. They hid their hands until there was nothing to be done. Deads’ Town is no longer part of my Disc as it was, it is now the underside. The Barons have claimed the underside of my Disc as the Disc of Deads and Wraiths and they have wielded the power to transform the stuff of that realm, of Outer Spacetime into and expansion of Deads’ Town that fills out the entirety of the underside. I think it is just the beginning. I think that the underside of the Fonlands can be changed, we have seen it and it means that no Fonlander need suffer in the conditions of the underside. Everything can serve the Mother-Father.”
“Are the beings of Outer Spacetime still alive?” Maria asked. I stared at Legba curiously. He had seemed concerned about the situation at first, but by the time Maria interrupted him, he sounded impressed by what the Barons had done.
“They are all alive,” Legba said reassuringly.
“What about Wazad and Sao-Reyne?” she continued. “They weren’t from Outer Spacetime.”
“Can living beings exist in Outer Spacetime if it is now fused with Deads’ Town?” I asked.
“That hadn’t even occurred to me,” Legba admitted. “I will go look to find out for you. I have a lot of time on my hands since Talj, since it was made clear that my magic is susceptible to the threat. The settling of the refugees is going well, but until the Vodun gather again, there’s not much for me to do. I will return as soon as I can.”
Legba disappeared and I decided to wait in the opaque castle for his return. Zacchaeus stayed with me to practice his hand magic, but Maria went back to the Smiting Chamber. She would find something to distract her so that she wasn’t waiting on egg shells for news.
“I think he did all this,” Zacchaeus said when we were mostly alone. The opaque castle was busy. There were black magic users practicing the invocation of violet magic in hopes of joining the fight, but the main chamber of the opaque castle is large, like the gymnasium of my museum, so we could talk privately.
“Why you say that?” I asked.
“I saw how you looked at him, you was thinking the same thing. He said it was just the beginning, but he ain’t say shit about stopping them.”
“Lêgba isn’t Owuo,” I said, trying to give the Vodun the benefit of the doubt. “He’s good natured. He wouldn’t hijack a whole existence and remake everything in it.” The more I talked the more I was sure that Lêgba must have been behind it all, and Zacchaeus just smirked at me.
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