All sentient life is connected. The appendages may be different, we may eat different things, and live in different universes, but at the end of the day, we’re all one big family.
It’s time to explore the branches of the multiversal family tree, and today, we present:
Ahdis’s Greatest Hits
– 5 – Pink Pony Club
“Release him,” the Decay Witch said sternly, staring daggers at Ahdis as the two hovered high over the Mire of Teal.
“I cannot do that,” Ahdis said with the same firmness that Decay demonstrated.
“So it’s true? You absorbed the Dark Witch Sorcerer? He is not dead?”
Ahdis didn’t answer those questions.
“Are you so callous?” she asked, her face twisted with a want to understand. “So selfish that you desire the return of a Fonlander who leeches and exploits others?”
Decay shook her head. “They are not my concern, only Mangwale. Return him, aboatia, return him to me at once!”
“Even if he is returned, you are not enough to conquer the Disc or the Deep.”
“I don’t desire conquest,” Decay said like she spat the words as Ahdis. “Until you and your sisters released them, I was no longer a member of this coven. I was happy with my life here and when you give me back the Dark Witch Sorcerer, we will make the life that we want far away from them.”
“Your Sorcerer only lives for conquest. If you bring him back here, he will only torture and torment.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Decay shook her head, “I have lived here in the Mire of Teal not as a Death Witch, but as a member of this bog and I desire a simple life. I don’t owe you anything, aboatia, I don’t have to explain myself, but I am not what I was and I am only willing to take up the magic of the Coven again because of what threatens us all. I am not the villain you think I am.”
“I understand that we are allies for the foreseeable future,” Ahdis began carefully. She was very angry with Decay, she was well aware of the Death Witch’s actions in the Deep and Ahdis had been forced to rebuild so many communities that Decay and the others of her Coven destroyed on a whim to instill fear in the inhabitants of the Deep. The Witches were only concerned with power and domination, the lives of others meant nothing to them. But in the spirit of cooperation, Ahdis tried to be genial.
“And when this is all done, there is no need for us to be enemies because I finally understand what Detritus and Quietus and their ilk refuse to understand, that there is strength in communities that come together through convenience. I have experienced it here in the bog, the bog that I thought would be lonely and quiet, but is full of life and quiet in a different way than I knew before. Death Witch is a conqueror’s title, it denotes a being of magical intuition above all others and worthy of reverence and blind loyalty. I reject that. I want the coexistence that I experienced in the bog before you and the mmoatia unleashed the Death Witches on me.”
“They are your sisters,” Ahdis said, a hard edge in her voice. “We did not take you to Ntinyari and kill you at the base of Moon Daisy…”
Decay chuckled and crossed her arms at her chest. “I am not one of the original eight Death Witches. I was made before the banishment and I managed to elude it. I have lost so much as a Death Witch. I have only lost. Then I lost Mangwale and it was one loss too many. And I found this place of peace where I made others’ lives brighter even with my decay, and they improved mine just by existing alongside me. I am content in that, it is why I will fight what is coming. But if I can restore Mangwale to the muthi that the Deep made him, I would be grateful. That doesn’t restore the peace that he took in his existence, the peace we disturbed together, but I do believe that I owe him that. He had his own mind, I hadn’t completely overtaken him in the washing process to that point, but I tempted him to his worst impulses. He deserves a second chance. Free him and I will remove the taint of the Decay Witch from him. What he does from that point is for him to choose, but you cannot condemn him for actions that I precipitated. If you must absorb someone, absorb me in his stead and I will be the most docile prisoner.”
Ahdis could tell that Decay was being very honest and open. There was no air of deceit or artifice about her, she really seemed to have given up the power she gained from the Death Witch Coven, she seemed eager to make amends for the things she had done that had only caused trouble for Ahdis and those she cared about most. Ahdis saw herself in Decay. She knew that Decay loved the Dark Witch Sorcerer like she loved Shini and she wanted her to know the joy that she had experienced when Shini returned with the Death Witch Coven from Kútmómɛ. But the Dark Witch Sorcerer had been extremely dangerous when he roamed the Deep and then presided over Umithi Omnyama, and Ahdis couldn’t imagine unleashing that evil onto the Deep. Ahdis had protested fiercely when Tracia made the decision to free the Death Witches and that aversion was born from a very long time of conflict in their shared history. The Death Witches had destroyed everything they touched and would only relent to those who bent the knee and became their thralls. Ahdis had seen Shini as a thrall, destroying for the drama of it. He had destroyed her home and Fonlanders she loved. That type of evil could only fester, and Ahdis was more than willing to let it fester inside of her than let it corrupt anyone else.
Ahdis shook her head slowly, sadly.
“I cannot, Decay, it is the will of Agê, of the Mother-Father, that this…”
Decay interrupted Ahdis with a fist to her face that sent Ahdis reeling back in her floating position. They were high enough above the bog that no one on the ground seemed to hear or notice them.
“You do not have authority over me!” Decay said firmly, in the affectation that conjures magic, and then she said other words in the lost language of the trees that Ahdis recognized and was shocked to stunned to hear them from the Decay Witch. The words shot out at Ahdis like pulses of energy that moved through her body and disarmed her. Decay lifted her right hand that was suffused with violet energy with sharp, silver edges that poured off of the binding formation of her hand. Ahdis was bound, at the mercy of Decay who squeezed the formation so tightly that she threatened to crumble the structure of her own hand.
“Go ahead,” Ahdis struggled to say under the tight grip of the formation, “end me, Decay. I would gladly die and take everyone of my assets with me to Kútmómɛ, including the Dark Witch Sorcerer. I did not take him lightly, I only did what Agê commanded.”
“You will release him at my command!” Decay said in the magical affectation, but it didn’t have the same effect this time because Ahdis was rallying. Her aspect, the solid white armor, began to slowly grow from the surface of her skin, and by the time Decay noticed it, Ahdis had forced her way out of Decay’s formation so forcibly that it injured Decay’s hand, disabling the hand to cast spells.
“I will not make the Fonlands more dangerous,” Ahdis said, hoping to avoid further conflict. Decay had tricks that Ahdis hadn’t encountered before and she didn’t want the Witches below to know they were fighting, the odds were stacked terribly against the mmoatia in the bog.
“I give you assurances that he will not be a danger to anyone after I remove the decay. Give me that chance, Ahdis.”
Decay used the magical affectation in hopes of compelling Ahdis to do what she wanted, in the way that pattern magic can allow a user to control another with their name, but it is difficult to use this power on a mmoatia, a wielder of life magic that is an extension of pattern magic and allows for greater knowledge of persuasive magic. But Ahdis did do as Decay commanded, though it is hard to know if Decay’s magic had any influence at all. It was her emotions, the passion that she exhibited at the chance to give the Dark Witch Sorcerer another chance. Ahdis couldn’t deny her any longer, that pain was too familiar and she felt cruel to be the cause of it for another.
“His fate is yours, sister,” Ahdis said firmly, with the edge she wanted to maintain but it dissolved into pure empathy. “You claim to want peace, it is time to make that true. But this becomes my business again if I hear that you two are meddling in the Deep. I care for it and I will not let tyrants rule those who share my love for my home.”
Decay nodded and Ahdis began to build the construction to expel the Dark Witch Sorcerer.
“Is it wrong that I am glad to be rid of him?” Ahdis had to talk loudly over the music that vibrated the stone walls of the Neon Caverns.
“I still want to hit you for ever absorbing him in the first place,” Pultine said, sounding much more intimidating than she looked with her head back on the moss at the rocky edge of the hot spring where she soaked with her fellow mmoatia including Tracia and Raius.
“It is disgusting that you have been carrying him for so long,” Tracia said, not quite slurring her words but she spoke more slowly than she would have without the neon yellow intoxication of the waters of the pool. “And you, little brother,” Tracia said to Raius, “holding out on us. How dare you keep a secret like this from us when it only endangered Ahdis’s life.”
“It’s her secret,” Raius said as he made eye contact with an oorom, a kin of Fonlander that has the body of a horse, with a humanoid torso, arms, and head replacing the neck and head of the horse..The oorom are striking beings because of their average height of about seven feet from their hooves to the tops of their heads and the exotic colors of their coats. The humanoid part of their bodies have brown skin that range in tones from light to dark, and their horse bodies have coats of hair that sometimes match the brown of their skin, but more often than not, the oorom coats are deep shades of red, violet, green, blue and yellow. Raius had been making eyes with the oorom, who had hair the shade of jade, since the yellow neon kicked in and he noticed that the oorom was smiling at him. The oorom occupied the stream that fed all of the pools in the Neon Caverns, so he was standing at a distance and Raius was not so curious about the smiling oorom that he was ready to leave the intoxication of the hot spring.
“And there are others inside of you?” Tracia asked Ahdis. “You must rid yourself of them. You absorbed the Razur Wurm! How have you maintained over all this time? And so elegantly. I didn’t notice you concealing something so powerful at all. Is your barrier essence so good?”
“It’s thanks to Raius. Making the Green helped me refocus my magic. But ridding myself of one was all I needed to feel like I shouldn’t be imprisoning anyone. It was dumb what I did.”
“Thank Agê you are not corrupted!” Pultine interjected, her head still back on the moss.
“Thank Age!” they all said in unison.
“Raius,” Tracia said leaning over to him, “I don’t know if you noticed, but there is a strapping oorom staring at you from a distance. I only noticed because I have been eyeing his abada companion since I noticed him. Do you see the size of the abada’s legs? That is an idol if I’ve ever laid eyes on one. I wonder if Nille knows him? He would make a good father to her children.”
“It is strange that you become a match maker when you are enjoying the neon,” Ahdis said to Tracia. She and Pultine had turned to look at the oorom and abada that Tracia was referring to.
The jade-haired oorom was with the large abada, and a couple of ethagoi, equine beings with a large pair of wings to match the color of their coat and these were reddish brown with darker spots of red.
“They look like fun,” Ahdis said to the group. We should party with them.”
Before Ahdis had finished talking, Pultine had gotten out of the pool and was flying over to the group, waving back at her friends to follow. Raius was close behind her, eager to talk to the jade oorom, and then Tracia who wanted to overhear their interaction, and then Ahdis who was reluctant to even leave the pool because of how comfortable she’d become by that point.
“I am Kundo,” the oorom said to Raius when the group reached the group of equine males. He extended a hand to Raius who took it as he flitted in the air over the glowing stream. Radius introduced himself and then Pultine spoke.
“We were hoping to take our party to a second location,” Pultine said enthusiastically.
“We were?” Tracia and Ahdis asked one another, but both shrugged when they suggested the Pink Pony that catered to equine Fonlanders. It was a short distance from the Neon and had many of the same features, but the pools were larger and there was a pink tint to the waters that caused an intoxicating ecstasy to those who rested in them, and also cast the walls of the chamber in pink. There were many stages within the Pink Pony where equine Fonlanders danced for the club goers.
When they arrived at the Pink Pony, they all resided in a large pool together and Ahdis was happy to get to know the ethagoi, she’d never met one before. She learned that they are native of the Disc of Xevisoso and the one named Bale offered to take her on a flying tour of the Disc, and Ahdis eagerly accepted.
“I will soon unburden myself, Bale,” she said to him in a slur that she didn’t even try to hide. They were all very intoxicated by that point. Raius and Kundo were kissing, and Pultine and Tracia were dancing on one of the stages. “I will let go of all of my assets and be as light as I was before. Then I can ride on your back over the clouds of Xêvioso’s Disc. Or I could fly myself, I don’t mean to presume that you carry passengers on your back.”
“Aww, don’t even say it like that,” Bale slurred freely. “It would be my honor to bear a Supreme Mmoatia on my back. You find me, I live near the high court, we’ll make a time of it. I don’t care how heavy you are.”
Ahdis smiled and looked at her fellow mmoatia enjoying themselves. It was rare that they got moments like this, and even rarer that so many of them were able to enjoy it together. It was well deserved and it would only strengthen them for the challenges ahead.
PRL Serials 