The beach is calm, there is only the sound of waves crashing gently against the shore–almost like the rustling of leaves to Alia–and distant calls of birds, maybe gulls. The wind blows gently and Alia realizes the rustling leaves are the tall trees that look like palm trees with the bunches of leaves sprouting from the top and moved by the wind.
“This is Bludon,” the Queen Rowen says and Alia sees her standing with Pultine next to her. They are on an island of sand that seems to materialize as she looks around at it, she had only been looking at the view before her but it all comes into focus next to Rowen and Pultine. It is a golden beach.
“Bludon,” Pultine says and Alia sees her nod, surveying the sparkling ocean in the distance. “How did you do this?” Pultine asks, looking to Alia.
“You have reconstructed Maxx’s memory with amazing accuracy,” Rowen says in awe. “I do good to glimpse a mind. When I touch someone, I can inhabit like this, but then I risk losing myself. You have opened the Superguardian’s mind to us, how is this possible?”
“She is the Hyperion,” Pultine says with a half bow. “She will never cease to amaze us.”
“Well, as nice as all this is, I can’t stop Maxx from self destructing,” Alia says.
“Where is he in all of this?” Rowen asks. Her eyes are closed and she holds both sides of her bulging head. “I feel him like disembodiment…”
She is interrupted by a blur of violet that flies off with her in the blink of an eye.
“Something has her!” Alia says in a panic.
Pultine flexes her arms and clenches her fists as her wings rise high above her, about to take off in the direction of the violet blur, but then there is a blur of red and Pultine disappears just as Rowen had.
“What are you doing?” Alia asks and she turns to regain the view she first attained after arriving here. The sun appears directly before her, shining bright and threatening to be too bright for her. She realizes that it is not the sun shining down on the golden beach, it is the golden form of Maxx himself.
“The lean has set,” Maxx says loudly. “Maxx has attained Superconsciousness. Maxx will self-destruct in time remaining: three hours twenty minutes, when transference of consciousness is complete. Outsider command detected, unauthorized access breach attempt denied. Intruders will be eliminated.”
Alia’s Hyperion form covered her in a golden yellow light just as Maxx plowed into her. She felt the force of him driving her backward and his arms wrapping her like a vice in their grip. She explodes, forcing all of the energy she can muster outward, and it loosens his grip, sending them rolling and tumbling in opposite directions over the ocean and golden islands. Alia feels herself stopped, like she is caught in a large hand.
“I’ve got you,” the Queen Rowen says before Alia sees her approaching.
“What happened to you and Pultine?”
“Maxx in violet and in red,” Rowen says and she sees the golden yellow Maxx who Alia thought was the sun recovering and then joined by a violet version of him.
“We don’t want to fight you…” Alia says before Pultine attacks them with her fireworks sparking and popping all around her. The clash is like balls of light attacking one another and when blows land, a spraying of colored light flies off the balls. Pultine is at an advantage because both versions of Maxx want to do the same thing and perform the same attacks, which causes them to strike one another more than they are able to lay a hand on Pultine. Eventually, she smashes their heads together and they both fall out of the sky and into the ocean. Pultine smiles at Alia and Rowen as she approaches them.
“What happened to yours?” Alia asks and Pultine laughs.
“I bashed that one before I came to help.”
“I think we need them if we plan to stop the countdown,” Alia says.
“We need the yellow one,” Rowen says. “The others were created after his time in the Fonlands. The yellow can stop the sequence.”
“Guess I’m going fishing,” Pultine says and leads the trio down into the ocean waters.
Tracia was with the Werehares before the explosion of Xêvioso’s cube, and they were so smitten with her, that even after the explosion, a contingent of them found her floating unconscious in the Une-verse and they guarded her carefully as their numbers grew and they staked out on a barren planet. There was some grass that the Werehares thought of as a scraggly oasis in the otherwise barren rock that at least had breathable air. They rested Tracia on the branch of a large tree that was the center of the scraggly oasis and it was large enough that it seemed as though it was the only thing that could still be nourished by the planet.
The Werehares are from Universe 6DOD33, a designation of the Smiting Chamber. They were recruited by Agê from the enchanted Green deck that Issac Washington had played against Agê in preparation for the Second Unrest as it has come to be known (See Divine Power – 2 – Plant and the AGÊ Smiting Exhibition), and they eagerly accepted because Agê appeared to them in hopes of rallying an army that displayed the hare’s impressive skills in battle, but it just so happened that when she appeared, it was the high holy day when the Akinbo praised and venerated their nature goddess who was their most supreme goddess. Agê, with the dark green tint of her skin, green hair of vines, the tiara of vegetation that grew naturally above her forehead that gave the appearance she wore a crown, and her garments that were also flora, was the vision of the Akinbo Goddess.
Akinbo, the planet Earth of Universe 6DOD33, that is the center of the expansive Empirate Long Foot that spans the Milky Way galaxy, is home to the Werehares, akini, the name for humans born on Akinbo, who have the ability to transform into humanoid hares with long ears and strong limbs that allow them to move at thrice the speed of other akini. Long ago, this ability to transform occurred spontaneously among the akini born on Akinbo, but over time, it has been consolidated to family lines that only intermarried with other families that displayed the transformation. By the time Agê appeared, these families ruled the Empirate Long Foot all over the galaxy and the most powerful family occupied Castle Akinbo as the Holy Empiratee, who was worshipped by akini who were unable to change, and respected by those who could. The Empirate Long Foot was in a time of chaos and it was not chance that Agê appeared before the Werehares of the Dark Knoll on Akinbo who were separatists from the Empirate who organized covert action to undermine the Empiratee on Akinbo, though the Dark Knoll was a real place that was hidden from others using magic. The Smiting Chamber had distinguished the Werehares of the Dark Knoll as the best warriors and wielders of Green magic in their existence.
“If you are not the Goddess Akinbo,” Lukas Volcanus said in his strained voice as he stood out on the knoll looking up at the shimmering goddess in green, “then what are you?”
“I am the Vodun Agê,” she said and lowered herself closer to the ground where they stood, but she stopped short of landing when they all seemed to recoil in fear. The knoll is a large hill of vibrant grass and there are thousands of akini in front of her, some of them as men and women, some as hares standing just as tall and curious with their long ears all the way up. “I am in need of your help. Something is coming, for me, for you all. It comes for all of existence, and I think that the power of your collective can help to stop the thing that means to end us. I will show you what I can mentally if you will allow it, but I do understand if you all choose to ignore this fight and continue on with your lives. Just know that one day the threat may come and you will have to deal with it alone because if it does come, that means that we have failed and I am no more.”
Some of the akini wept at this, all of them were upset by the words.
“Nothing with logic and a clear thinking brain would dare threaten the Akinbo Goddess,” Lukas Volcanus says angrily. “We will follow you across another existence to defend your honor, high Goddess. Just tell us how many you need and we will follow.”
Lukas Volcanus took a knee, and then all of the akini in the Dark Knoll were on a knee as well, swearing fealty to the Vodun who was not what they thought she was. They followed her to the forests of her Disc in the Fonlands, across many realities of the multiversal structure, where they were hosted by the royal family of the Zomo Monarchy and trained in the uses of Green magic as it exists on the Disc. The akini who did wield magic tended to wield Green and Black magic, and those who relied on Black magic were assigned to help guard the Disc of Agê, but there was a legion of werehare soldiers who had sworn to face Une and it increased Agê’s contingent significantly.
When they were in Xêvioso’s cube, their leader was Jalukas Volcanus, a tall darkskinned man who only ever wore a length of cloth around his waist and his brown belly hung over his waist slightly. He was big and strong and he loved to eat, all akini are vegetarians and constantly nibble on grasses that they carry on their person in sacks, and the Werehares of the Dark Knoll followed him as their leader because he was fair, tough, and fun to be around. He made quick friends with the others in the cube and he was praising Tracia as a vision with a few other akini when the cube shattered. After the explosion, Jalukas found other akini quickly, the Werehares of the Dark Knoll share a psychic link that allows them to communicate in silence as they go about their stealth missions, and they could feel one another across the vastness of the Une-verse that buzzed with her dormant consciousness. When Jalukas and a group of fifty or so akini found Tracia, she was unconscious and floating, and they guarded her on the barren planet, in its scraggly oasis that seemed to only exist to allow Jalukas and the Werehares to nurse the jungle goddess back to health. They could tell that she was the daughter of Agê who Jalukas had come to accept as the creator of Akinbo, and they couldn’t help but worship her.
When she wakes up, Tracia is confused. She thinks for a moment that she is on the Disc of Agê because she is high up in a large tree and there is a full canopy of leaves. But then, there are no sounds, or there are sounds, familiar voices, and smells, but they are not of the Fonlands. Then Tracia remembers and she takes a deep breath that lifts her shoulders. She rolls off of the large branch that was soft with moss just like she remembered it in the jungles, and moss had grown there as she lay asleep on her back.
“You made this whole area come alive,” Jalukas Volcanus says with his head bowed as she lands on the ground. Many of the akini who were milling about the base of the sole tree on the planet that is now surrounded by lush grasses and flowers, even insects that flit around the renewed oasis, stand and bow their heads to her.
“Where are we?” Tracia asks, looking around at the hard, rocky surface all around them. It isn’t a desert exactly, it is more of a dry mountain with its rugged terrain that sometimes crops up into summits. It is a dead planet, ravaged by time.
“We are here, goddess,” Jalukas says. “We have the means to fly with the vodun armor, but we decided to stop here until you recuperate. We have established links with many of akini around this space and they report meeting others of our forces. We are told to seek out the Vodun Xêvioso and we have the direction we need to travel, whenever you are ready of course.”
“I wonder if I can portal?” Tracia asks herself aloud. “I can’t imagine that Xêvioso is close to our position and traveling a realm will take a lot of time. We need to pool our resources. What is your name?”
“Jalukas Volcanus of the Dark Knoll, and we are the Werehares at your service, goddess.” He bows. They all bow.
“None of this is necessary and it is taking up time. We need to figure out the fastest way to get to Xêvioso. So instead of bowing, let’s put our minds together and get to where we need to be before Une discovers us and eats us all, or worse, corrupts us and makes us eat others.”
The Werehares are humbled by Tracia’s frankness.
PRL Serials 