PRL Serials

“I saw Brad Jordan,” Zacchaeus said to me. “When we was in Outer Spacetime when the Barons opened the portal to Deads’ Town. He was there.”

“Remind me who Brad Jordan is,” I said, familiar enough with the name to recognize it, but not sure why he was bringing it up. I assumed it was just to while the time when we were waiting for Lêgba, who would eventually return with the news that the Wazads were fine and unaffected by the integration with Deads’ Town before he was off again to travel with a contingent to the Paradise universe.

“Honestly,” Zacchaeus said with a laugh, “he the whole reason we here, probably. Brad Jordan used to be my weed man, remember, after I brought y’all to the Smiting Chamber, Owuo said he would help me find him and that’s how you and Maria ended up here. Owuo must’ve stashed him in Deads’ Town. Or now he on the underside of Lêgba’s Disc, I guess. I can’t believe I finally found him. I can’t believe he in the Fonlands.”

It didn’t surprise me considering that Owuo was behind our being in the Fonlands but it did make me curious about the true extent of his powers if he’d been able to find a specific deceased soul of an existence foreign to his own.  

“You should go see him when we’re done here,” I suggested. “I’ll go with you.”

“Can we go to the Disc of Deads and Wraiths? We ain’t gone die, are we?”

It was a good question that we posed to Lêgba when he returned with news of Maria’s friends. 

“The underside is off limits for the moment,” Lêgba explained. “Until we understand its effects on living Fonlanders, it’s best to just avoid it all together. Sadly, we don’t anticipate clear answers until we have all survived the threat to the multiversal structure.” 

We watched him leave before we could ask anything else, like what part he had played in the transformation and incorporation of Outer Spacetime into the Fonlands. 

“Suspicious,” Zacchaeus said with a knowing smile as we flew back to the Disc of Sakpata and the Smiting Chamber to give the good news about her friends to Maria.

She was with the tall, slender, yet muscular, Tenebris, one of the multiversal warriors who I had first been introduced to in the enchanted Red deck that the Smiting Chamber had made for my exhibition with Gu.

“It’s good to know they’re alright,” Maria said with an audible sigh.

“I would like to go to this place of the dead,” Tenebris said.

“I’ll take you,” Zacchaeus said with an amorous smile.

“Don’t look at me with lust in your eyes, adorable male specimen. In my home universe, I would keep you in my quarters to please me, but I cannot be distracted while I am here, not until the battle is won.”

Zacchaeus smiled wide enough to show his teeth as he looked up at her. She was about a foot taller than all of us and I will admit that she was extremely attractive to look at, and intimidating. She was muscular like Maxx, the Superguardian, who had bulging muscles at his legs and arms, but he wasn’t bulky, he was streamlined and quick for his size. Tenebris seemed capable of dominating the Superguardian that we met before he came to the Fonlands, before he wielded the Blight Maker. 

“Once they open it up to the Fonlands, I’ll be happy to go with you,” I said. “It seems that for the war ahead, the powers of that Disc will not be joining us and they’re using another great source of Death Magic to fight the enemy in its home existence.”

“Is that Owuo?” Zaccheus asked and he was the obvious choice, but it didn’t seem like Owuo was ever with the Vodun, he was still in the Shifiting Planes. We all shrugged, sure that all would be made clear soon enough. 

“It will be the Superguardian,” Tenebris said. “I’ve spent time with him and he has helped me to learn this Death Magic that pours off of his ridiculously sized weapon. It just doesn’t need to be as large as it is, and sometimes it seems bigger or smaller depending on the angle you see him from or what he’s swinging at. It’s like the weapon itself is alive and striking his targets. I have never seen anything like it, really, but the closest was a shape shifting artificial intelligence that nearly destroyed the Cradle of Scientific Advancement before we had a chance to do it. I will admit that the Blight Maker is a strange and frightening weapon.”

“That’s a good point,” Zacchaeus said. “Me and Pultine tracked Maxx across the Fonlands and he was merkin’ niggas, y’all. The spell he did to get us to Kútmómɛ required that he take the lives of Fonlanders and use their bodies to make these patterns across miles of the Fonlands. It was some elaborate, serial killer shit. I love Maxx, we bonded on Bludon and I made his home my own and would die for it, but I saw the spell, the bodies. He ain’t the same now, since he laid hands on the Blight Maker, and I been hoping it just wiped all that crazy out, ‘cause that was one of them Death Witches that taught him how to get to Kútmómɛ so he was just doing what he thought was the only way to get what he wanted. But I’m making excuses for him. I wonder if we need to be worried about him. He didn’t do magic before he came here, and now it’s taken him over completely.”

“It does seem that the Blight Maker cleansed him of his crazy,” Maria said. “And the results are clear, he was on the front line, curing our side in a way that maybe only a Vodun could, but seeing as there is no Vodun of Death, it seems like that is what he is. He must be the most powerful wielder of Death Magic if the Fonlanders on the Death Magic Disc are taken out of consideration. Even more powerful than Owuo, who the weapon was designed to kill.”       

“When Maxx is back from Paradise, we will all sit down with him and really get a measure of how this weapon operates,” I said. The concerns they had expressed had been my own, though they had been sublimated by the Talj Rip and the War of Arcana in what had been Outer Spacetime.

“Yes we will,” Tenebris said, nodding at all of us. “I am eager to continue Death Magic training with him, but in the meantime, I would like for you all to show me the Fonlands. I hear that you are visitors like me, and you are the Outsiders? I would like to join.”

“You can join anything you want,” Zacchaeus said and took a step closer to Tenebris who smiled at him and put one of her long fingers on his forehead to keep him at a distance. “I told you, male, now is not the time. You will know when it is. Stand behind me so that I am not distracted.” 

Zacchaeus moved obediently behind Tenebris.

“Sorry,” she said, “I only want to be professional and focused on the mission while I am here and I will not fraternize with the male and be distracted at this point. So, what are we doing?”

It was a good question. It seemed that we were just waiting for other things to happen.

“Why don’t we study the magic that works against the enemy,” Zacchaeus said from behind Tenebris. “I know the mmoatia, they can teach us about green magic.”

“I have to find a Vodun,” Maria said and I looked at her with confusion. “The Transverse stuff, they need me to go with them to the home of the enemy. I didn’t get those powers for nothing. When we find it, I want to go and I have a feeling that if I can see the entire existence, I can help them pinpoint a weakness to kill it. I trained for this. There was a prophecy and everything.”

“I’m sure Jo is in the Meta Chamber,” I said. “Have you ever met her?” Maria hadn’t and we all went to speak to the Vodun who kept a vigilant watch over the displays of the Multiversal Structure.