Where is Pultine? Deep inside of the enemy, so deep that the communicator she’d been using no longer connects to anyone on her team. She is lost in her desire to destroy, gone completely amûk and only acting. She is not thinking, she is allowing her body to do what she knows has to be done. She wears her dark green body suit that exposes her shoulder and stops above her knee, but she is rarely visible. Her Third Heart produces massive amounts of her Essence, a yellow tinted green that is bright and changes the color of her body into a form of flowing green, and there are spheres of light and circles of silver light that oscillate around the spheres and expanding and contracting around her and out into the menacing black that she plows through. The spheres of light go through a cycle where they spark from Pultine’s center mass in a furry of the silver light before the green explodes out to a circumference that is comparable to the size of a galaxy, and when the spheres reach their maximum circumference, they implode and slowly dissipate, obliterating all of the black material contained inside and returning the spacetime of the Talj universe to its original state. As she has moved through the black wall, she has perfected the process and she moves at a steady pace, clearing a tunnel in the wall that doesn’t reconstitute behind her, but occasionally a member of the Pito will try to charge her, and disappear in the light when it disappears.
How long has it been? Pultine wouldn’t ask that question, she doesn’t care how long it’s been and she is content to continue until she sees space that isn’t dark and threatening. She has liberated planets and stars in her assault, and the wall weakens in front of her, as though it is trying to move out of her way, but nothing escapes because the wall is so dense and unable to move, and Pultine burns everything away in front of her leaving only the regular space of Talj.
Ahdis sits on the platform that she inhabits with Tracia, Shini, and Azalaan, the God of Dreams, along with a few of the large Hira soldiers, buffalo from the Disc of Gu who had been soldiers in Talj. They stand on two feet and they wear heavy armor that Gu designed based on the designs of the Ascendant from the Paradise universe that Lêgba and Xêvioso had traveled to. The armor was made of metal, but it was charged with an energy that made the metal reflect light more intensely, or maybe it made the metal glow, but it gave the metal a green tint with hints of violet.
Ahdis’s legs are crossed and both her arms are raised at her side as she moves her hands through the space in front of her and says spells in the language of the trees. There is no atmosphere in the Shifting Planes, there is no wind, but Ahdis’s hair moves like wind currents roll off her hands that don’t move in sync, but for anyone watching, it seems as though her movements are rehearsed and precise. Her fingers look as though they have been dipped in a deep shade of green up to the middle of each finger and there are veins of bright silver that run through the green along the fingers and out of the tips. Ahdis is forming these silver veins into a specific pattern before her and the green power is solid inside the changing formation.
“What is she doing?” one of the Hira asks as it approaches her. The Hira kneels and the shine of his armor seems to stretch toward Ahdis’s work.
“She is feeding power to Pultine,” Tracia explains and she, too, kneels as she speaks to the hira. “ Not that she needs it at the moment, she is so full of rage accumulated over so long that she is finally able to unleash on something, she can go like this for a while without help, but Ahdis saw what we all saw and if we can send Pultine even more power than she already has, she can convert that into the light that is chipping away at that wall. Only, the circumference of her power will increase and she can do greater damage. Ahdis has already given Pultine her light armor. She is transferring my glittering aspect and that will ripple through the wall.”
“Why can’t we go back?” the hira asks, shaking his head. “We can be there to help her instead of leaving it all to her and giving her more power. Wouldn’t more of us help?”
“We are helping,” Ahdis says, not interrupting the movement of her hands or the green magic that she tames that begins to be spotted with golden glitter that issues from Tracia. “Maxx said it, we don’t all need to be there risking infection. We don’t understand how they were able to corrupt the black magic users, it is possible that the more time we were with them, we were giving them more time to analyze our powers to figure out how to circumvent and exploit them. Pultine’s light is the best for this, focused where Tracia’s isn’t, and expansive where mine isn’t. She was made to do this, and we can give her what she needs to cleanse that realm. Everything we send to her will be filtered through her very lethal powerset. Your armor is eager to give.”
“I noticed that,” the hira said. “Take all of it, everything. Will my power help? We hira don’t have Third Hearts like you mmoatia, but we store an incredible amount of Divine Essence inside of us, more than you all can generate in a few days. My energy isn’t light, though. The Hira are not green, we are the fiery red of the Disc of Gu. We are rage and violence.” As the hira speaks, his body is surrounded in a red aura that pulses around him like he is about to explode. Ahdis moves her left hand in the hira’s direction and sweeps her hand around the ball of collected energy and the red rage aura of the hira moves to it and is incorporated. The hira bows its head solemnly, just like Tracia as their magic issues steadily into Ahdis’s construction.
“I forgot how beautiful you looked with a superior construction on your hands,” Shini says as he sits next to Ahdis. Others that were on the platform had knelt before Ahdis to give their power as well and the magic that Ahdis tames is much larger than it had been.
“I never forgot anything about you,” Ahdis says and kisses him, never losing her construct. “Help me, this is getting very large.”
Shini smiles and begins to move his right and left hands in perfect sync with Ahdis and the silver veins begin to creep down his fingers, turning them the same shade of green as Ahdis’s. The magic grows large in front of both of them and between the strong warriors giving their all to Pultine.
Others in the Shifting Planes had been watching screens that the Master of Multiversal Arcana, Issac Washington, had conjured up so that everyone could see the unbelievable damage that Pultine is doing to the black wall with her awesome light power, that is steadily increasing with different glittering effects and deep red streaks that strike out at the black in an even larger radius than the implosion of light. There is another large screen that shows Maxx wielding the Blight Maker to cure the infected members of the force that went into Talj and Issac instantly teleports them back to quarantine on an isolated platform in the Shifting Planes.
Eventually, others begin to notice Ahdis and they realize why Pultine’s power has grown and changed so much. They call Shini away to conjure Violet magic for Maxx the same way Ahdis does the Green for Pultine and many kneel to offer their power, more kneel before Ahdis. Eventually, Maxx is able to cure more of the infected just aiming the Blight Maker at them and Issac does his job of transporting them to quarantine. They realize that Maxx has cured beings that are not from the Talj Junction when some are terrified at the unfamiliar landscape of the Shifting Planes.
Tracia has joined Ahdis to help support the Green construction.
“This is going well,” Ahdis says. “There are so many back, Alia won’t even be done being washed in Golden Essence by time Maxx is done recovering all those lost.”
“But she will be ready for the most important part,” Tracia says. “She and Pultine will blast the whole thing to nothing.”
Pultine does feel the difference in the powers that rage through her, but she is happy to have them and she directs them in the most efficient way to destroy as much of the enemy as she can reach. It is exhilarating. She releases everything that had ever caused her anger or frustration and she knows catharsis.
But then she stops, stone still in wide-open space that is framed by a shifting and moving darkness. There is a park of light in front of her, like electricity ripping existence, and when the spark subsides, she sees Alia smiling at her. Her body is a light form and wild sparks of electricity shoot off of her.
“My sister from another realm,” Pultine says in her way. The two do not speak words to one another exactly, but they have this conversation.
“This is not your burden alone,” Alia says in her way. “We can build here together and then send the light out. They are sending us so much more energy, it is time to end this.”
“Let’s,” Pultine says and they join hands. An orb of green and yellow light instantly balloons around them and incinerates an extremely large sphere of the wall around them in all directions. They concentrate together and they build, waiting until there is enough to end the nightmare in Talj.
PRL Serials 