Owuo has been in the Shifting Planes since before the mission to Talj and he is happy to be away from the Vodun, who had come in and taken over Yana’s operation completely. He isn’t angry exactly, he’d expected as much once they became aware of the situation, it is more that their involvement has made everything he and Yana were doing seem very small. He hasn’t spoken to Yana since he went to the Shifting Planes and he knows that she never leaves the mists of the Smiting Chamber these days. It was her commune with the Smiting Chamber that had started all of this and she is no doubt inside of it, being a companion to the Chamber in the gargantuan efforts of scanning the multiversal structure and bearing witness to the blight of the dark enemy that threatens it all. Yana’s presence is helpful for the entity known as Ogi from the Paradise universe to pinpoint the location and the energies of the Smiting Chamber and to communicate with Ogi as they combine their powers in their search for the home universe of their enemy.
Owuo misses Yana more than anything. They had become friends during the early stages of this effort when he lost the game of Smiting to her and pledged to help until the enemy was no longer a threat. They had worked very closely together and even if Yana didn’t like him all the time, she recognized his worth and he had valued that more than he realized. Now he is just going through the motions, doing what he can to be as helpful as he can, hoping that the Vodun are as capable as everyone assumes them to be, and waiting until everything is resolved. So far, he has resisted encouragement from others to take a larger role, namely Jo who is the only Vodun willing to call him the Vodun of Death aside from Legba, and they all assume that he is being spiteful in his reticence to step up as the master of Death Magic. And for all of Owuo’s pettiness and eagerness to be a thorn in the side of the Vodun, he has not stepped into the role of the Vodun of Death because his confidence has been utterly shaken. Seeing the enemy that the forces of the Fonlands faced in Talj, and the way that the beings Pultine and Alia, the Hyperion, were able to channel green and golden magic, not to mention Maxx, the Superguardian with the Blight Maker, it had all been so impressive and he knows that he is not the true Vodun of Death because he could not have done what he witnessed in Talj and he could not have empowered another being to do it. He has learned a lot about Death Magic over his long life, and the most important lesson that he learned was that there are Fonlanders composed of pure Death Magic, not Divine Essence, and they will always outclass him in the use of Death Magic because he could never learn enough to even approach their mastery.
Owuo is content to help oversee construction of shelter for the refugees of the Talj Rip, the Vodun would figure it out sooner or later that there were powers greater than his in Deads’ Town who should hold the Vodun of Death title, though he was sure that no one inhabited Evil like did.
“We need to talk,” Owuo hears Jo say, interrupting his work. He’d been surveying the planes in front of the platform that he occupied alone. Most of the refugees have been housed but they need a few more units and Owuo is trying to decide the best place for them.
“About what?” he asks absently as he studies the silhouette of the makeshift city that is quite impressive from his vantage, especially considering how fast it had sprang up.
“Are you more powerful than a Death Witch?” Jo asks frankly and Owuo laughs. “I perceive you to be. Your death magic is on par with my siblings and I and your aduro is the only thing that I know of that can certainly kill a Vodun. You were born from the Lofted Disc…” Jo rattles off all of the reasons why he is the purple Vodun and Owuo lifts a hand to interrupt her.
“As much as it pains me to say this, I am not the Vodun of Death. I can’t properly wear that mantle, even if there was a time that I felt deserving of it. It is why I created Deads’ Town, but that only proved that I was not quite that. I relish death, my aduro is pure purple magic and it animates me, but Death Magic isn’t just about taking life. Death Magic encompasses an existence beyond life that I am an eager student of. Tell me, Vodun of the untouchable, the unseen but powerful and necessary, you and Xevioso share the mastery of the pattern but your understanding of it is expressed in the Disc that was built up around you, tell me, is there a corner of your Disc that feels foreign or unfamiliar to you? Because when I went deep into the elu’s of the Deads’ Town that the Barons had cultivated for their ilk, I was lost amongst the trees of that dark forest and I was as any other dead that went into that bush of death seeking a deeper understanding of the violet energy that animated them. I was not the leader of Deads’ Town and I am not the leader of the Disc of Deads and Wraiths, though I imagine that I will have high standing there and be welcomed when all of this is done. The Barons and I get along quite well and we have learned from one another. I was a proud mentor when they managed to take the Outer Spacetime of the other realm, Legba too, though I may have said too much. My point is, if I am a Vodun, Jo, then you and your sibling are not the beings that the Mother-Father made who influenced the creation of the Discs over which you all reign. Every part of your Disc was made from all that you were and would be and there is no place on your Disc that is not you and would be unfamiliar, because even if you haven’t realized it, you can see the inspiration that must be familiar. Tell me I am wrong.”
Jo is quiet in thought for a moment.
“The Luminaries of my Disc are extremely powerful beings,” Jo admits after a considerable silence standing next Owuo. “They make the mantle of Vodun seem arbitrary, but you understand what we are.”
“Children of the Lofted Disc,” Owuo says. “At best, I am an underside loser who rules over wastelands.”
Jo laughs. “Sorry, I should laugh at the underside twins. History is just much funnier than when all that stuff was the present. The Twin Wars is such a joke now. And the resolution of it proves that, they have not been bound to their underside wastes in so long that it is funny that it was ever the truth, and it is even funnier that so many of them are still down there maintaining a place of suffering. You are more than them for sure, all of the Vodun would agree to that. I think you are like those Luminaries, like Obatala on Xevi’s Disc, Ogun on Gu’s. And so many others, powerful enough to be a Vodun but called by the Disc and the Mother-Father for other things that will prove pivotal in the fight to come. So, answer my question, then. Are the Death Witches more powerful than you? Because I have a feeling that Age is about to put all of our purple eggs in that basket, and I imagine they will preside over the new Disc of Deads and Wraiths. If the Vodun accept them as their peer then I imagine the Disc will follow suit.”
“I believe the Disc will choose its Vodun. I believe that every Disc did. You all were children when you did battle for your names, and I’m sure Gu relished it, but it couldn’t have been the reason you all were chosen over your twins. The reason I wasn’t born as Legba’s twin, doomed to be the bitter underside twin. My fate made me more than the average Fonlander and the death of the Vodun. I don’t need to be a Vodun, I only resented the authority given to you all. I know what I am know. I am the embodiment and Asanbosam of Evil, Owuo Odomankama, Student of Death.”
“Strange that you would be proud to be evil,” Jo says.
“It is my nature, I am unavoidable, and necessary, apparently, because the Lofted Disc made me and we can come together like we are to learn from one another and aid the effort to preserve tomorrow. I am what I am during times of peace, and during this unprecedented time of war, I what we all are, children of the Mother-Father, sworn to protect them.”
“You should help to identify the Vodun of the new Disc. I believe that you will understand who the Disc chooses more than anyone else.”
“It will have to wait because it is not important at the moment. The Superguardian wields the Blight Maker, and it is apparent that only Gu and I understand the implications of that because no one seems to understand that Vodun of Death is redundant in the presence of the Superguardian wielding that weapon. Pultine and the Hyperion can channel the magic of the Vodun, the Superguardian wields it as a weapon.”
Jo shakes her head in confusion. “Are you saying the Blight Maker is as power as a Vodun?”
Owuo nods with his eyes wide for emphasis. “It is truly a wonder to behold the Superguardian with the Blight Maker and I understand that to the uninitiated it seems like that powerful Bludonian is just swinging an elaborate axe around that defies physics when he attaches it to his back, but that is the wonder of seeing him with it, the ease with which he wields it. Did you witness Gu when he made the Blight Maker?”
Jo seems to shudder and she looks away from Owuo. Gu had been driven mad with power and a lust to kill Owuo and in his quest to forge a power great enough to end the Asanbosam, Gu had been corrupted by the Death Magic of the Death Witch Coven that threated to shred his control over his own psyche. Jo had seen Gu wielding the blight maker and it was a sight to see; the weapon seemed to explode with violet energy that raged as a flame off of it and Gu was surrounded in neon streaks of red that pulsed with flame. He generated so much heat that he withered vegetation around him and dried up water in seconds.
“That should be Maxx, the Superguardian should be so inundated with the might of the weapon that it explodes around him, but he isn’t. He controls it, or tames it, I can’t quite understand. He and the weapon are one and in Talj, when Pultine and the Hyperion did their impressive display empowered by the Vodun remotely, Maxx relied only on his weapon. He cured beings of the enemy’s taint. He did it with grace and poise. And there is no sign of the madness that quickly consumed Gu. He is what we need to succeed and hopefully the corruption won’t be an issue by the time he can lay the weapon down and we have succeeded. We can find the purple Vodun later, or let it sort itself out and then acknowledge whomever the Disc choses.”
Jo is content with that. She sits with Owuo for a while longer and the two fill one another in on the stories of recent events that the other had not been present for or witnessed. They were together until all of the refugees were housed.
PRL Serials 