“Maxx, please! C’mon man,” Zacchaeus said loudly, angrily into the darkness of the swamp that he marched through, lifting his knees to his chest with each step mostly because of the effort it took to dislodge his feet from the muddy bottom of the swamp. He walked through water up to his shins that were bare in the shorts he wore. He had one hand up in torch formation and it created enough light for him to see the way before him and that there were no immediate dangers in the shallow water.
It was shortly after Maxx had seemingly gone missing in the Fonlands, after he had declared his intentions to kill death by any means, and Zaccheus had followed a tip that could have been Maxx, though Zacchaeus hadn’t thought Maxx the type to get involved with magic. Some lepusraj wizards came to the Aziza Mound to ask for help from the Mmoatia, which is an indication of the strangeness of the situation given the history between the mmoatia and the lepusraj that taints relations between the kin to this day. The lepusraj wizards told of a disturbance in the arcana of Age’s Disc, an imbalance of the perfectly balanced powers that comingle to make Age’s Disc possible, that was being caused by an invocation of large amounts of death magic. The wizards had been ambushed by a very physically strong being not of the Fondlands who wielded death magic and he stole a powerful amulet that grew from a bean pod in the forest, the Amulet of Growth that enlarges the ecstatic gland of Fonlanders, effectively amplifying their Essence abilities. Zaccaheus was skeptical that it could be Maxx considering that he is not a Fondlander and is not in possession of an ecstatic gland, it is an organ that grows only in Fonladers or beings with Fonlands heritage, but he decide to look into it with the help of Pultine who was very well acquainted with swamps, and both Raius and Whil were occupied.
Pultine had–smartly?–insisted that he search the swamp on his own. There was word that the amulet thief had been seen using it in the swamp, in a secluded corner where they seemingly were living.
“Got me out here like I’m catching mudbugs. I traveled across planets and universes for this shit? I guess I did. I traveled all the way here to get Jordan back, but I found you on a Ninja Turtle island planet instead. I can’t leave you out here like this, stewing in that rage. You gone explode, Maxx. Please be out here…”
He hoped Maxx could hear him, but he felt that he was mostly talking to the swamp, to the Fonlands itself.
“Why did you come looking for me?”
Zacchaeus heard Maxx’s voice in the distance, just outside the scope of the torch of his finger formation. He stood still in the waters and he attempted to flicker his fingers like Issac had taught him to expand the scope of the light, but it receded instead.
“I am only here to talk,” Maxx continued from the darkness that was closer to Zacchaeus than it had been, which made him nervous. “I am here to convince you to forget about me. Let me go. I will not stop until Owuo is dead and I do not want to hurt you if you get in my way.”
“Maxx, you can’t kill Owuo,” Zacchaeus pleaded. “You have to let that shit go. There’s still a whole planet of bludonians that need their Superguardian, and you out here doing god knows what just to get yourself killed.”
“HE KILLED BLUDON!” Maxx’s voice boomed and there were echoes of his words all around Zacchaeus. “My world will recover, but it will never be what it was, for better or for worse, and I am its avenger. He killed Bludon with a smile on his face, and I was there and I did nothing. I couldn’t do anything. But Zacchaeus, the Fonlands spoke to me and revealed to me a path to what I desire most. I will get Bludon’s revenge even if I die in pursuit of it. I will not have your life on my hands, Zacchaeus, I care too much for you. Leave this swamp, forget about me and tell your friends to forget about me.”
The darkness had closed in so close on Zacchaeus that he couldn’t see anything even with the torch and he felt Maxx’s presence close enough to reach out and touch him, but he didn’t know in which direction to reach.
“You don’t have to do this, man. We been through so much together since we landed on Bludon. You more than just the hurt you felt, the disappointment you still feel in yourself. No one on Bludon blames you for what happens. I know they miss you. If you care about them, about Bludon, go back there and stop trying to die for something that only matters to you cause you lying to yourself. You didn’t fail them. Your planet was attacked by something worse than you realize”
“Zacchaeus…” Maxx’s voice had lost its force, like the anger had drained from him, and Zacchaeus felt Maxx close to him, then his hand firmly on his shoulder that he grabbed with a hand and squeezed gently.
“Maxx, you don’t have to die as punishment for what happened on Bludon. Come back with me.”
“I have started down a road and I must see it through to the end,” Maxx said softly. “If I survive, I will find you, Zacchaeus.”
With that, the light of Zacchaeus’s flame formation spread out to its maximum diameter in an instant and he could tell that Maxx was gone. He left the swamp, content to leave Maxx to whatever journey he was on.
Then bodies on bodies on bodies on bodies.
“I will set the last few tomorrow,” Maxx says looking at a map made of his aspect, the thick, dark violet cloud that issues off of his body when he doesn’t control it. “I will draw the power necessary to open the portal to the weapon that can help me exact my revenge. And you will have a front row seat to the action, my friend.
“This will break you.,” Shini says. He stands in a cloud of the thick aspect that locks him into place behind Maxx. They stand in an open field on the outskirts of Gu’s Disc and there is a gentle breeze that teases the purple clouds away from the source. “The arcana you wield is unstable. It shatters your sense of self. You think that you are doing what you want but…”
“But the Dark Witches are using me for their own purposes that I can’t hope to comprehend.” Maxx finishes for Shini and turns to look at him. “Unlike you, I made my pack with the Witches with a clear mind. I don’t know what powers I will unleash, but that is not my problem. The Fonlands allowed all this to be, it can deal with whatever happens. As long as I get my weapon.”
“And when you don’t? When you’re sealed away in some nowhere like I have been.”
“That is where you are wrong my friend. You haven’t been sealed away in nowhere. Decay has revealed something to me that you might find interesting. I summoned you by accident because the power she gave me is linked to the power of the realm you were banished to, a place known as Kútmómɛ. It was no accident that you ended us there, the only accident is that you are still alive. The eight witches that the Deep know as the Dark Witch Coven are actually only the remnants of the entire coven who were sealed away in Kútmómɛ by the Luminaries of Jo’s Disc. But, Decay says that they did not perish, they have been using their considerable powers to remake the realm in their image. It seems that you float just beyond the scope of their reach in your oblivion, but it will not be that way for long. I have decided that I will free you from your banishment, Shini. But only if you swear your life to me until I have accomplished my goal and Owuo is dead.”
“You might as well kill me now,” Shini says, shaking his head wearily. “You cannot kill Owuo. This weapon that you defile the Fonlands in pursuit of, cannot be what you think it is. The Blight Maker is just a story, and you will die to learn that lesson. And if it is in Kútmómɛ, then you would need to die to access it. None of this makes sense.”
“It is all true,” Maxx says with a mad smile. “Kútmómɛ is as large as the Fonlands and you can go back to your oblivion in a small corner of it to wait for the angrier members of the Dark Witch Coven to find you.”
“How do I know if this is real?”Shini asks skeptically. He’d heard of Kútmómɛ before and he thought that Fonlanders could only see it upon death, but admittedly, he often confused its rules with the rules of Deads’ Town. And, it made a kind of sense to him that if Gu had devised a weapon like Blight Maker, he’d have hidden it in a place like Kútmómɛ where Fonlanders cannot easily get to it.
But, Shini had been in his oblivion for so long and never gotten any indication that anything but him occupied the space, and he’d never seen anything that resembled the way Fonlanders described Kútmómɛ.
To hear that the Dark Witch Coven is bigger than the eight members he is familiar with sounded like a joke to Shini. It has always made sense to him that there were eight members of the Death Witch Coven because eight is the number of death. Not to mention that he’d been dealing with the Death Witches for a long time and he’d never heard a story about additional members of the Coven.
“I will return with you to your oblivion and show you,” Maxx says. “Decay has asked that I deliver a message of hope to them, for soon the entirety of the coven will return to the Fonlands.”
Shini is nervous. He believes Maxx when he offers to show him and he agrees to travel with him to get a full measure of the scope of the Death Witch Coven’s true power.
“Once the last markers are set, we will run our errand for Decay, and then I will finally retrieve my weapon.”
Shini nods solemnly. He needs to know everything Maxx knows, to see everything Maxx sees before he makes a desperate call to anyone who can stop the mad Superguardian.
“If he’s setting markers across multiple discs,” Zacchaeus says to Pultine, “where will he need to be to enter Kútmómɛ?”
Pultine smiles at the little umbatia who gives her a large piece of fruit that has been sliced and reassembled with toothpicks in a way that is easier to eat, and sprinkled with a green sugar that compliments the tart flavor of the fruit. She offers one to Zacchaeus who doesn’t resist.
“Here,” Pultine says after a big bite. “Thanks to the Death Witches, the Deep is the only known way for a living Fonlander to pass into Kútmómɛ. Ahdis estimated that all of his markers are either set, or nearly set, and the next thing for him to do is to Descend to perform the ritual.”
“Will he just die?” Zacchaeus asked. “If this is the place the dead go, does that mean the ritual will just kill him and he has to hope his soul goes where he wants it to?”
“I hope that is not true,” Pultine says frankly. “If that is what he is counting on, then he will be disappointed in his afterlife. Fonlanders go to Kútmómɛ when they die, Maxx is an other-realmer.”
“Or he was,” Zacchaeus says. “He been in this magic shit for a long time, and you said beings remade to process Divine Essence can go to Kútmómɛ when they die. What if Maxx did that?”
Pultine shrugs and shakes her head. “Seems dumb to me to just kill yourself to get there. How do you get back here with the weapon if you’re dead? And he will have to get back to the Fondlands to kill Owuo.”
Zacchaeus hadn’t thought of that and he shrugs like Pultine.
Then an explosion rocks the forest and even though he can’t be sure, Zacchaeus knows that it is Maxx. Zacchaeus and Pultine run toward the source of the explosion and they are stopped when they come to a large hole in the ground. They stand on the side peering into what looks like an endless, dark well into the Deep.
“Shall we?” Pultine gives a half smirk to Zacchaeus who nods. Then the two dive down into the Deep.
PRL Serials 