In the Smiting Chamber where Jo, Agbe, and Gu have set up shop as the battle against Une commences in the aether outside of Aido Hwedo, Sakpata and his team are chugging on like a machine. They have started work to eliminate the dormant Une in many universes of the structure that she has already conquered and rests inside of to be a vessel for her consciousness in the event other physical vessels became unavailable. Sakpata and his seven work diligently and quietly out of the way as Jo and Gu stomp around the Smiting Chamber barking orders.
“No!” Gu is seemingly yelling at the space before him but he is yelling over a mental link. “The being known as the Queen Rowen has left the Fonlands for the Une-verse with the Vodun, we cannot send her to help with Disc defense. Find someone else, and if they are not of the Fonlands, it’s likely they were recruited to travel to the Une-vese.”
“Who is asking about the Queen Rowen?” Jo asks.
“Some of the mmoatia on Agê’s Disc,” Gu grumbles. “Apparently this queen was on Bludon for all of that Daemon mess, before Owuo killed half of them. She has powerful mental abilities that the mmoatia wanted for the fight.”
“Does the Disc need her powers for some specific reason?”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Gu says dismissively. “The Disc of Agê is being warded against magic that doesn’t originate in the Fonlands, as all of the other Discs are being warded. They will be fine.”
“The Justices that stayed behind are not the best at wards, I saw it over the space of my own Disc before we came. The ward is there like a dome over everything consequential, but it can be maneuvered around and it has the tell-tale glitches of shodily laid arcana that won’t stand up to large powers for very long. It is imperative that if Une manages to get through the Arcane Wizard, then Agbe and the outer defenses, the Fonlanders inside must be ready to defend and not rely on those wards. I have scolded the Justices, but you should contact those mmoatia and make sure that their Disc is ready with defenses to keep the enemy from touching down. I will check on one of the other Discs.”
As Jo and Gu managed the defense of the Fonlands, the Arcane Wizard, Issac Washington, is seemingly meditating before the glowing form of their enemy, the entity who is half of Une, known as Unea. His legs are crossed and the tails of his long jacket waft on the currents of his yellow-gold aspect that is a manifestation of his magic. He has Unea locked in space while the Fonlands finalizes their preparations.
Agbe doesn’t just coordinate the Fonlanders of her Disc in the aether around Aido Hwedo, she oversees the revolution of the cosmic bodies from Jo’s Disc that rotate around the ocean that beings from her Disc add themselves to when they travel to the aether. She has helped to speed up the process of the construction of the iron barrier that Fonlanders from the Disc of Gu build and they are more than halfway done, expected to be completed shortly and with the wards of Agbe that utilities her force magic to repel unwanted guests.
The Fonlands is well defended, but will it be attacked before it can launch its own offensive?
Meanwhile, in the Une-verse…
Fâ is looking at Maria skeptically, though Agê and Xêvioso listen to her earnestly. They are on a shifting plane from the Disc of Lêgba that had been converted into a cube to transport the enormous force to the Une-verse. After a long journey, during which the Vodun and their forces used mental connections to familiarize themselves with the gathered powers and to devise tactics against their enemy, they arrived to the Une-verse that was strange space filled with long tendrils of Une’s mycelium stretching across the vastness of space. Maria is Wazad the Transverse and Jo had told the Vodun to bring Maria on this mission because of her mantle.
“If you can do what you say,” Fâ says, “very good for us, we could definitely use your vantage of this realm against all of this detritus, but I doubt your claim that you are capable of this.”
“Why?” Agê asks Fâ. “Oh, you are not familiar with the Wazad, I presume.”
“All I see is an Earther,” Fâ says, “and you are right that I do not know what this Wazad is, but I have never heard of a Fonlander capable of what she claims, why should I believe that an Earther can?”
“Because she is wrapped in the pattern,” Xêvioso says and he smiles at Maria. “You are brave and we are thankful for your efforts. Take whomever you need and be in constant communication…”
Before Xêvioso can complete his thought, the cube begins to shake and it is such a surprise that it takes a moment for Xêvioso to regain his composure to see what has caused the disturbance. It is Une, her tendrils have been wrapping the cube and now they are trying to take control of it completely. Xêvioso yells an incantation that shoots energy at a large mass of the tendrils and the blast frees the cube long enough for it to smash into a planet.
The complexities of a spell like the one that Xêvioso cast to create the cube that allowed for safe conveyance through the Une-verse are impossible to parse here, but imagine an elaborate house of cards made up of so many individual cards that depend on the cards around them to remain stable. Imagine this house of card constructed of arcane spells where each card is a spell, and when this impressive construction is smashed as it was against the planet, it didn’t just break apart physically, it broke apart and released the arcane energies of the spells that caused many arcane reactions to the inhabitants of the cube, leaving them all scattered across the Une-verse.
It is a disaster to Xêvioso as he appears in a quiet corner of the Une-verse where there are still rocks floating the nothing of space that aren’t draped in the mycelium of Une, and the large body of Xêvioso in his battle attire that consists of white pants and tunic shirt that are wrapped with yellow cloth around his waist, from his ankle up to his shins, and his hands not including his fingers up to the elbow, lands on one of the large asteroids. He isn’t hurt, but he is disoriented, he is not sure which way is up because he had been spinning chaotically in the void for a while before he stopped on the rock, but he isn’t sure if he is on top of it or on the underside of it and it doesn’t help that the asteroid is spinning in space.
He regains enough of himself to float away from the asteroid and he realizes that he is upside down. He fixes himself, then focuses on his sisters, sending out mental calls to them both. Only Fâ answers.
“‘The cube is impenetrable!’” Fâ responds to Xevioso’s call using a voice to mock him. “‘The last thing we have to worry about is the cube!’ Turns out, it was the biggest liability. Where is everyone!” Fâ is angry and not processing this well at all.
“The pieces of my spell are spacial in nature, I was holding us separate from this realm with them, but during that altercation, the bonds I used snapped and the spacial spells became divorced from the higher commands of the more complex construction…”
“I am trying to keep from yelling right now,” Fâ interrupts angrily, “so you need to stop explaining pattern magic constructions to me and figure out how we recover the billions of lives that we brought here to apparently be killed by a freak accident.”
“We have considerable numbers, but billions is an exaggeration…”
“Are you ok, Xêvioso?” Fa interrupts again, but with concern. “This is no time to be babbling. Where is Agê? She is not responding to my attempts to communicate. I can sense many of my sentries are still alive, but they are far from me, and Une is even further from my current position. Where are you, Xêvioso?”
“I am not close enough to you to be able to discern your location relative to mine. I can feel the executioners, they are scattered like your sentries. I can sense many of our forces, and I know that I am close to the location of Une. I feel like I have to travel up, even though I don’t see much in that direction.”
“Une knows that we are here,” Fâ says. “We have to regroup before she starts attacking, her Pito must be here. And maybe her tendrils are slow to detect us, but they seemingly can. What do we do?”
“You need to find Agê. It is concerning that she has not gotten in touch with us. I will begin the process of getting everyone together. I will gather who I sense closest to me and establish a base where I am. I only see tendrils very far away and there is nothing here wrapped in her. I will have the executioners gather others and have them rendezvous here. My mental connection is strongest with them and I can communicate the location even at this long distance. I am sending my location to you. Find Agê as fast as you can and meet me here. If I am not here when you arrive, wait for me. We won’t lose anyone before we launch our attack.”
“Well said,” Fâ compliments and then she is off into the expanse of this realm that is crowded with tendrils.
Xêvioso is sure that the pattern brought him to the best place for their forces to launch their attack. He wonders if this space where he finds himself is a complete blindspot for Une, but he can’t see the actual Une, he can sense that he is much closer to her than he had been and he could arrive to her by just flying up for a while. Then Wazad the Transverse appears and confirms his theory. Mulweri is with her. Maria had traveled the entirety of the Une-verse, and Mulweri had located Xêvioso so that they could deliver their assessment.
“Une is an organism that is as large as this universe,” Maria explains. She is in her white skirt with golden accents that matches Xevioso’s attire. Mulweri wears his white armor. “After the cube scattered us, Mulweri found me and we did the survey of this existence. The source of her is a ball of those tendrils that is twice the size of Earth and her tendrils extend from this ball in every direction. Mulweri was able to get up close to her, he’s fast enough to avoid detection by something so big.”
“And for something that is essentially sleeping,” Mulweri explains. He is a 4Warrior of the Fonlands, of the Disc of Jo and known as a Tinyeleti Warrior, the ninjas of the Fonlands, invisible assassins and agents who generally serve at the behest of the Vodun Jo. Mulweri moves at super speed and it helps him to maintain his invisibility when he doesn’t want to be seen. “Une is not conscious and it seems like all of the beings that we know as the Pito are set to an autofunction, they are automatons. I even interacted with them in real time and they didn’t seem capable of detecting me, they just continued whatever things they were doing. The planet that is Une’s being is wrapped with her tendrils. I was small enough to run into her interior and I only risked it because it was clear that I couldn’t wake her, and there is a core that is the source of her. I will call it a heart to convey what seemed to be this source, and I did not approach this heart too closely for fear that I might wake her. But from everything we have seen with those tendrils, nothing we do to them causes permanent damage to this heart and those tendrils can be regenerated seemingly without end. We have to get inside of this planet which is located directly above us. Very good call on the location, Vodun, because we are in a section of the Une-verse that is untouched by her simply by chance. It is clear that there was never any life here that Une sensed to send her tendrils to and now that her realm-wide form is set, it will take her too much time to bring tendrils here, too much meaning we would see it well in advance and be able to retreat with no problems.”
Xêvioso is pleased with Mulweri’s assessment and he bows to the Tinyeleti Warrior.
“From the greater vantage,” Maria continues, “I think there is a point where we can strike that may cause all of her tendrils to fall away and expose her core. Mulweri’s assessment confirms multiple strands of tendrils wrapping a central chamber that contains the original Earth and her heart, so if we can slice along her meridian fast enough, we can expose her long enough to maybe end her.”
“The two of you are impressive,” Xêvioso says. Wazad and Mulweri are excellent at what they do and they are only two of the very large number of beings that they brought to face Une. The Vodun is feeling very good about their chances even with the set back of everyone being scattered. “What is the state of our forces after our transportation was disrupted? Are there any beings in immediate danger?”
“Not that we witnessed,” Mulweri answers. “The Pito and the Ascendant are not attacking as I explained, and I think that individually, we are too small to be detected by the tendrils.”
“Then gathering together all in one place may not be a good idea,” Xêvioso muses aloud.
“We should establish bases all around the meridian of Une,” Maria suggests. “Mulweri and I can find more of Une’s blindspots that coordinate to the meridian and as we regroup, we can lead them to those places. Once everyone is in place, maybe we can strike to expose her.”
Xêvioso is very pleased. “Let’s get started.”
PRL Serials 