I was lost in my studies when word came and I had already sensed something amiss. I was on the hidden summit of Sakpata before he gathered a team to travel the multiversal structure, and his guidance had been extremely helpful in understanding arcana in a way that I hadn’t before.
“Your realm uses magic as a tool,” the Vodun had explained. “You think of it as a means to an end, which is understandable, once the mysteries of arcana are uncovered we acquire tools to assist in our everyday lives. But the understanding of magic as a tool to solve a problem causes one to invoke it in times of peril. You are a student of arcana, for sure, you are a fast learner and well suited for the Fonlands way of thinking. Magic to us is more similar to the way Earthers have vital organs that animate the body to house and express the soul. Fonlanders, including the Vodun are made of the magic of the Mother-Father, the Divine Essence. Our ecstatic gland is most like the Earther heart that pumps life-sustaining blood through the body, the ecstatic processes Divine Essence in our bodies and allows us to express magic as the colors we recently reviewed. Without Divine Essence, a Fonlander would shrink out of existence as soon as the stores in its body were depleted. We all have different skills as a result of the Essence, but our attachment to the Essence is the same; it gives us life. So we wield magic as a basic function of our existence, as a tool when called for, but mostly just casually as we live. I notice that there is a delay in the deployment of your magic, you put it on and then deploy it. My magic is always at my fingertips because I use it all that time. But honestly, that is nit-picking, it is hard to give lessons to a master.”
I had asked the Vodun for an assessment of my abilities and we spent considerable time doing various arcane exercises to allow Sakpata that chance. I wanted to know if a Vodun assessed the expression of my power to be on par with that of the Vodun, and he said that it was. Of course, I never felt that it was, the Vodun seem so grand, and I wondered if there was something I could learn to make me as confident and self assured as the Vodun.
“You go to the enemy’s home?” Sakpata asked. “Then I feel good about our chances. You see the pattern, yes?”
I had seen it by that point. It looks like a grid of golden lines that appear over existence that dims to black. It is a beautiful thing to behold and comes with a combination of both luck, to be chosen by the pattern to see it, and precise execution of arcane movement, speech, and thought.
“You are a wizard if there ever was one. You should reconsider your moniker, the masters are old grey mages like myself. You are the Wizard of Multiversal Arcana, champion and steward of the Pattern all across the multiversal structure.”
It definitely fit, I live in a museum of arcana in my normal life and I have been a student of it my entire life. Wizard does sound better than Master, I have to admit. So my time with Sakpata was educational even if he didn’t feel that he had anything to teach me. He left soon after that conversation and stayed on his summit and immersed myself in the pattern. Until I felt the disturbance.
It was far away and I only noticed it because it was so familiar and undoubtedly bad. And as it grew steadily larger, as though it were approaching, I couldn’t help but go toward it to satisfy the nagging feeling that it had created. I flew fast in the direction of it, off the edge of the Disc of Sakpata headed southeast, and it wasn’t long before I realized that it was Une, our enemy had arrived very suddenly, without warning, and seemingly alone. I sent a message to all of the Vodun and every other being I had encountered in this endeavor who was in the Fonlands.
It was all very strange and to give myself and everyone else in the Fonlands more time to contemplate it, I stopped to tap the pattern to enact a spacetime loop spell that was difficult for even the most adept users of arcana to identify and escape. I had never laid eyes on Une before, and my understanding of what she was defied the healthy female humanoid form that she took, but I knew that it was her when I saw her suspended in the aether and glowing the eerie green, purple, and yellow energy that the exuded like a glowing lamp. I was transfixed on her form, the rough, but elegant tendrils that were suspended in her movements that gave the impression of hair and garments.
I didn’t approach her. I connected mentally to the Vodun Jo.
“How is this possible?” Jo asked angrily. “How did she manage to catch us unaware? This doesn’t bode well for us in our efforts. We haven’t even launched our attack on her realm.”
“Maybe this is fortuitous,” I offered. “All the Vodun are in the Fonlands except Sakpata. We should be able to prevent Une from landing in the Fonlands and avoid the risk of corruption.”
“It is only her?” Jo said. “That makes me the most nervous. I know that her forces are coming, but when? She is playing mind games.”
“I have pinpointed a large collection of energy that matches her signature approaching outside of the Fonlands. We have plenty of time to prepare for that. But we need to learn what this form of her is meant for while we can. She is a being of immense arcane power, my spacetime loop will not last forever. Even if she isn’t savvy enough to recognize it, her powers will correct the pattern around her eventually.”
“You should see Xêvioso by now, the mage Nova and the Luminary Nyame should be there soon. They will find out what they can. How long do they have?” Jo asked.
“If she hasn’t already figured it out by now, I would say that by the time her magic reconciles the pattern, it will be fourteen risings of Fonlands day-sources, and another fourteen before her force arrives.”
“That is all good news to me. I will ready the armies. Xêvioso, Agê and Fâ should go to her realm now. I will send warriors to guard you in the event Une wakes up prematurely.”
“I am all the guard I need. But stagger warriors behind me, we want to prevent her landing on the Fonlands, that is the priority.”
“Well said, Arcana Master…”
“Wizard,” I interrupted. “The Arcane Wizard. I’ve been inspired by the Death Witches.”
“Arcane Wizard, I leave this to your command. Alert us when things change.”
It was hard to believe that Une had finally arrived. She was there, or a very powerful form of her that was like an explosion at its most explosive in still-frame, and her flames blazed in a rainbow of purple, green and yellow. Observing her up close, I could see that the yellow was tinted red, which suggested that her use of Pattern Magic was Chaotic, she derived arcane energy from disruption of the pattern. The Death Magic was the most pervasive, suggesting that she had stores of it from the unknowable amount of time she’d spent ravaging the multiversal structure. The Life Magic she wielded made sense just because of the amount of Death present, but it also suggested that Une was adept at persuasion and the control of sentient things, which we had all sense on display in Talj. It seemed that Une was able to infect others like an illness, bringing on Death that allowed her to take control of the mine and use the consciousness of the infected body at her whim. She appeared as a fungus, and maybe that was her first form, and is the organizing structure of her being as a result, but the Une that I watched frozen in place was more like a sentient virus that was determined to infect everything.
Analyzing her sentience, I could feel that she was angry, and becoming more so the longer that she was trapped in my spacetime loop. Her sentence was painful to encounter and gave me a headache, a dull feeling that buzzed at the edge of my consciousness. But then I realized that the buzzing was the many voices that she used to control her forces that were gathering and drawing closer to the Fonlands.
I withdrew from her mind and flew to float in front of her. I would be the first thing she would see or punch, when she managed to free herself from my spell and I was ready for anything that could happen.
PRL Serials 