When Zaccaehues opened his eyes, he was in clouds that felt like soft cushions underneath him. When he stood and walked through the billows of clouds, a soft surface persisted under his feet, but he moved through the wisps of clouds that were cool and dark, like a storm cloud. There were more clouds above him at a distance and he saw what looked like domes of glass dotting those clouds.
Zacchaeus had not actually opened his eyes. He realized this when he saw Jit stand up from the clouds, his big body had been obscured until he stood.
“Where are we?” Zacchaeus yelled as Jit looked around to get his bearings.
“I forced my way into Minyak before he raged out of you,” Jit explained. “I guess you came with me.”
“I’m glad I’m here,” Zacchaeus said. “I don’t think your talk worked last time.”
They heard laughter echoing around them and then they saw a black form rise up from the dark clouds.
“You heard my pitch?” the black figure of Minyak asked. “You know that I am willing to coexist with the Bludonians?”
Zacchaeus nodded. “I heard it all. They don’t want it man, the Daemon didn’t ask for this. Stop using them as your excuse to do bad stuff. Admit you’re just a villain, that you saw something you want and you gone take it for yourself.”
Jit is a giant, but he attempts to whisper to Zacchaeus. “I think I was doing a better job than this.”
“Villain,” Minyak chuckled. “And you are the hero, Zacchaeus? You and Jit here, who killed his friends by the way…”
“I know the story, I was in his head too. I guess we’re in yours now,” Zacchaeus looked around himself. “What is this place?”
“The underside of the spheres of Endla,” Minyak said. “My home. That is the surface of a sphere,” he pointed up, “with their fancy archs that were denied to my kin. Can you see them from here?”
As he asked the question, the wall of clouds that had been distant seemed to zoom in close enough for him to see one of the glass domes in the cast carpet of clouds that were much brighter than the ones Zacchaeus and Jit stood in with Minyak. Zacchaeus could see what looked like a beautiful seaside village built into a rocky coast and overlooking clear waters that defied the logic of the space.
“The Daemon were made to dwell the dark underside while the true Aerphim enjoyed artificial luxury,” Minyak said and he lifted what looked like an oily arm that stretched up and smashed through the clear dome that Zaccaheus expected to shatter like glass, but it popped like a bubble and the contents of it spilled down over the dark clouds where they stood. Huge boulders of mountain and a stream of sand pour around them, and then an ocean of water fell.
“And you want to pay them back for denying you all that, I get it,” Zacchaeus said with empathy, “but this is just you Minyak. You ain’t doing all this for nobody else but you.”
“You heard about what is coming?” Minyak asked. “The course has been set, and there is no turning back. There is only forward. You all are stalling, but you cannot stop the inevitable. Either you all back off and let me do what I came to do, or stop me and face the horror to come. The choice is yours. Now, let’s end this.”
“We have moved into the end game,” Jit said and he lifted a hand.
When Zacchaeus opened his eyes, he knew that they were really opening and that he was on a ship the size of a planet. He was in the air, hovering over the Daemon asteroid that was empty, in a field of grass. He saw people with wings in a large radius around him. Zacchaeus drifted down to land in the grass next to the asteroid. Then he felt his stomach cramp like a fist gripping his guts. Then he opened his mouth and vomited a stream of oily black into the field.
“That is foul,” Owuo said with a smile on his otherwise emotionless face.
“He is purging the carcass of his defeated enemy,” Yana said.
“Or the carcass of his companion,” Owuo said, “their oil is difficult to distinguish.”
“Do you want Zacchaeus to die? Knowing what we know that Zacchaeus and the Needy is more powerful than the Vodun and the best chance to oppose the Pito, you can still delight in watching him die at the hands of Minyak?”
“It is impossible for me not to be delighted by death,” Owuo said. “I am its Vodun. But if Zacchaeus cannot be there to stop the Pito, I would be disappointed to see him and the Needy at my side as we bring death to the things that threaten our existence. I am caught between a delight and a delightful place.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Yana said dismissively. “Shut up, let me watch this.”
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