Hectic, that’s the only word to explain the chaos in the Meta Chamber after Jo and Agbe told me about the situation with Talj the Living. Apparently, the situation had been settled and Talj was no longer threatening to rip itself apart, though the Vodun Agê remained with Talj outside of everything to continue the palliative magic to alleviate any pain Talj may be experiencing as a result of the Pito invasion. It occurred to me to ask if the Vodun could see the Pito entering Talj, maybe we could follow them back to the source, but of course that was too simple to be the reality. The Pito seemed to have portaled into Talj, or it was possible that if they accessed Talj from outside of it, they were entering in such a way that the Vodun couldn’t see it or track
“Shouldn’t you be down in the Smiting Chamber?” Jo asked, and I easily convinced her that I could effectively do my job regardless of my physical location. She was too distracted by the rapidly changing situation to protest too much anyway. I had already reviewed the data from the Smiting Chamber to see if there was a force that could replace or reinforce the one already in Talj, but the numbers just weren’t there, not for the sheer numbers of the enemy in Talj. Xêvioso and Lêgba returned to the Fonlands shortly before Sakpata arrived from outside of everything. Apparently Agê had stayed behind because she was helpful to keep Talj calm; even though Pultine’s forces had figured out a way to stop the extremely large force of the Pito inside of Talj and bring it some relief, the reality was that Talj had already sustained significant injury and was still in pain.
I definitely intended to eavesdrop on the Vodun’s conversation, and I was before becoming distracted by the view on the monitors. Goldie and I had been watching Zacchaeus assist Femina Tenebris in her battle with the Pito, and she was spectacular to watch, but the drama of her fight was lessened by the reality that Tenebris and Shini had largely subdued their opponent and were waiting for the cue from Pultine about marching orders. Zacchaeus had left them and was helping to enact a Nwa Wa’s plan, an attempt to hijack the hive mind of the Pito. What distracted me from the urgency of the gathering of Vodun was the view of Maxx the Superguardian wielding the extremely large axe-like weapon that is known as the Blight Maker. It pulses red-violet energy completely around its surface and Maxx seems to completely obliterate every Pito that he encounters. The Strategy of Pultine’s forces to form teams of three to encounter the individual members of the Pito had proven successful for Nwa Wa’s strategy to cover them in black magic, but Maxx moved along the neat line of Pito who stood still in a parallel line in front of the massive black wall of warped reality that they left in their wake as they passed through existence, and he massacred them, left chucks of decaying flesh that eventually turned to dust. No one else seemed to notice Maxx’s effectiveness, but I did wonder how many of them he could manage to kill; the line of them seemed to stretch incredibly long. If Nwa Wa was successful, she could use the fearsome might of the Pito against itself.
I watched Maxx for a long time and casually listened to Jo summarizing the strategy of our forces in Talj. At one point, Maxx encounters some black magic sorcerers who employed Nwa Wa’s tactic of using black magic to immobilize the Pito, but they weren’t strong enough to destroy them. Maxx quickly vanquished the large beast that they had immobilized and then Maxx had a brief meeting with them before they flew off down the line to immobilize as many of the Pito as they could before Maxx arrived to them as he continued his slaughter down the line. It was like watching an athlete in his prime and I wanted to cheer like I was watching a sport on television, but I managed to keep my enthusiasm contained as I rooted for him. The black magic sorcerer did a good job of keeping ahead of Maxx so that he merely moved the Blight Maker through space, slicing an X in front of him until the Pito faded to ashes.
But then something curious started to happen. Eventually, the Pito were no longer frozen when Maxx arrived to them and though this was only a minor inconvenience for the Superguardian, I wondered if something had happened to the black magic sorcerers. And when I saw that they were feeding magic to a Pito corrupted being that was twice the size of Maxx, I couldn’t comprehend at all what was happening. Maybe the dark magic is losing its efficacy, I thought as I stood from my seat and walked closer to the monitor. Maybe there is something blocking their magic. But then, a few of the sorcerers attack Maxx, and even then, I was inclined to believe that it was friendly fire, just a misguided bolt that only grazed the Superguardian in his amûk. I didn’t want to see what was obvious, that the black magic users on our side had become corrupted by the Pito.
“Do you all see this?” I yelled, interrupting the Vodun in their deliberation. Gu was mad and almost attacked me, but I managed to get them to look and they all saw what I saw. Nwa Wa, Zacchaeus, the black magic sorcerers, Ali who had only recently learned to cast black magic, all of them were now Pito.
“Arcana Master,” Jo said, “bring everyone who is not infected back now. Send them to the Shifting Planes, the quarantine zone that we established.”
I got to work, instantly connecting to the Talj Junction reality because I had been watching it so intently already, and I searched through each and every being there who didn’t have the taint of the Pito and sent them to the Disc of Lêgba. It took a long time, and by the time they were all extracted, I traveled with the Vodun to the Shifting Planes to figure out what our next move was.”
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