“You will say this card is cheating, but you are really just being a sore loser,” Gu prefaced his next move, holding two fingers and his thumb up as the card he referred to floated in the space above his fingers
“If it is controversial don’t use it,” Kokou said. He was angry even though he was winning the game the two played, that didn’t yet have a name.
“That’s the point of playing, to see if it works,” Gu grumbles and he glares at Kokou. “You’re too obsessed with winning.”
“I don’t do anything unless I can win,” Kokou said, “you know that.”
“I know, but you like to win by the established rules and Xêvioso and I are still hammering out the rules. Xêvioso said this card shouldn’t be allowed.” As he said this, Gu moved his hand down and the card revealed itself as it settled onto the grid. “Ogun is an important Warrior card for the game of War so it should be allowed for this new game we’ve been figuring out.”
“You can’t have your twin, I don’t have a Xêvioso card,” Kokou said in protest. He was using the deck of cards that Xêvioso created for the game Peace.
“Ogun is not my twin,” Gu protested and he flipped the table where the two played, which was impressive considering it was a table made of solid steel and was heavier than the Vodun.
Kokou had stood, they were both young and spry then, so he had moved as quickly as Gu had flipped the table.
“You are so touchy about that,” Kokou laughed, but his face was screwed to one side in rage. “I wonder why that is? Could it be the Vodun is sensitive about his title? I can show you that being the Vodun means very little except being the first. My fists love to teach lessons.”
Gu sprang on Kokou, who also sprang at Gu, and they tumbled out of Gu’s workshop, onto the prairie that had been peaceful with a calm wind moving the tall grasses. Kokou’s head was covered in flames, just like his fists, and he traded blows with Gu that hurt them both, but neither wanted to be the first to relent. Some gathered to watch, some were trampled in the chaos, and the battle continued for many risings of the day source of the Disc.
It seemed the two would fight forever until the Great Serpent appeared. The kin of Great Serpents exist on every Disc of the Fonlands and they are mostly reclusive, like the inkanyamba who swim the rainbow that encircles the Disc of Xêvioso, Grootslang in the caves of the Disc of Sakpata, Damballa in his serpent form on the Disc of Jo, the great water serpent Adumu of the Disc of Agbe, Indombe of the Disc of Gu, the ninki nanka who inhabit the swamps in the overlap between the Discs of Agbe and Agê and the ninki nanka of the volcanoes in the overlap between the Discs of Sakpata and Gu, and Aido Hwedo, the serpent upon which the Discs of the Fonlands sit.
The Great Serpents are powerful wielders of arcana who speak the language of the trees and have their own language that is almost as ancient. There are spells unique to the language of the Great Serpents.
Senghor landed in the prairie that was very disturbed by that point. The grasses that remained were in patches, scattered around dirt and rocks, and Senghor coiled his body in the dirt as a ball of dust raged a few feet away.
“What are you doing!?” Senghor yelled and his voice was distinct; both Gu and Kokou recognized it and stopped instantly, the clouds of dust settling around them for the first time in many days. They both breathed heavily, both bruised and broken in places, both staring at Senghor.
“Where is my armor, armorer!” Senghor yelled. He had large red wings attached to his body below his long neck, with gray and red scales all over his back, and four short legs, short relative to his large size, but he could fold them against his body and slither around like a snake.
“What are you talking about?” Gu yelled in response. He was angry, but curious, the fight with Kokou had completely consumed him and part of him worried that he had forgotten some important business with a Great Serpent, which he did not want to do.
“You promised me armor, armorer, you said twenty risings, and it has been twenty one. Where is the armor?!”
Because Senghor is the Great Serpent of the volcanic ninki nanka, he is a Fonlander to be feared and respected. He wields great arcana, specifically Chaos magic, but he is a wise wielder of the Red because of the influence of Passive magic in the overlap between the Discs of Sakpata and Gu. When he screamed at Gu, it rumbled the damaged prairie and sparks of fire like flame throwers occasionally exploded with his words.
“The armor for the runt ninki nanka with no scales,” Gu said to himself and he let his head drop to his bare chest. Then he looked at Kokou with sad eyes. “I yield.”
Kokou celebrated as much as he could with his damaged body and the onlookers applauded him. Those who paid close attention to the statistics of battles on the Disc noted that Kokou was now one up on Gu in their total confrontations, though some realized that Gu had only taken the loss because he had disappointed a Great Serpent, which was a much worse mark on his reputation to many in the Fonlands.
Gu was boiling with rage, at Kokou, at every Fonlander who watched his walk of shame to Senghor, at Senghor himself for interrupting the fight, but even Gu had to show respect to the Great Serpent Senghor. Gu knelt on one knee at Senghor’s feet. The Great Serpent was large enough to dwarf the Vodun.
“Accept my humble apologies, Great Senghor, I was challenged and my duties as Vodun required me to humble Kokou…”
“I trusted your word!” Senghor yelled and his breath was like a blazing oven. “I would see this runt survive to its adolescence and it will not without proper armor. You promised twenty risings, and my runt has earned its reward. Breaking your word causes me to break mine, and now I must offer the runt something else, something that may be too soon to bestow. This runt was to have your armor to prove its worthiness and if it survived to adolescence, it would become a Great Serpent, my heir in the volcanoes. But you have ruined everything! Know this, Vodun, you and I are no longer allies and I will not speak well of you to my kin.”
“Senghor, I can make the armor before day’s end…”
“You offer my heir armor that is thrown together in a hurry when it needs protection now more than ever? You are full of insults this day.” Senghor had dipped his head low and he glared at Gu. “We part as enemies, Gu. You have my respect as the current Vodun of this Disc, but I would not mourn your death.”
With that, Senghor departed, flapping his large wings that sent gusts of wind into Gu’s bowed face and sweeping over the destroyed prairie. As Senghor took off, Za Mane of the Hira, a kin of Fonlanders who looked like buffaloes, trotted over to stand next to Gu who was still kneeling with his head down.
“Kokou is cheap,” Za said, “he will take this win to break your tie and rub it in my face. When he recovers from his wounds, of course. He didn’t have much left in him, I could tell, Senghor gave him that win, and I don’t think it counts. We’re both still tied with you.”
“Even if you both have a tie with me, Kokou still has more victories than you,” Gu said, never raising his head.
“But we are the only Fonlanders in a tie with you, the number is irrelevant. Even if I only bested you once, that is still impressive, though I have beaten you more than once.”
“Three times, and if I remember correctly, you had questionable victories as well,” Gu said to his own chest.
“You do not remember correctly!” Za roared and Gu looked up for the first time.
“I know you are tempted to challenge me because I am tired from the fight with Kokou and I’m angry with myself over Senghor, but I can assure you that I have ample energy to give you a fourth defeat and take away your tie. Now, leave me alone, I have to go make an amazing armor and hope that there is still time to repair my relationship with Senghor.”
Za Mane was angry and he breathed fire, reared up on his hind legs to demonstrate his frustration at being dismissed so casually. He made laps around Gu who just hung his head again, and eventually Za left him alone.
When Gu was back in his workshop, he cast a spell on the space that he had learned from Xêvioso, a time loop spell that would allow him to work for as long as he needed, but time outside of the spell would move extremely slowly compared to time inside of it. After casting the spell, he noticed Sweetgrass was inside of the workshop.
“Why do you do that?!” Gu yelled when he noticed her.
“Do what?” She walked to sit on top of a wooden work table. Sweetgrass was a master artisan in grass weaving and other arts, but she didn’t do blacksmithing like Gu. They have been frequent collaborators since Sweetgrass first entered Gu’s workshop to ask him to fashion handles for a basket she’d made. Gu found her annoying at first because even though she was very kind and pleasant, truly the embodiment of her name, she was not intimidated by his displays of anger. They had never fought, but Sweetgrass kept a tally of her victories against Gu; a victory to her was any interaction with him when he told her to leave him alone but they ended up talking for longer than Gu had meant then to. She eventually lost count of her victories.
“You sneak into my workshop and hide, presumably to startle me like you just did,” Gu complained.
“I didn’t sneak, I’ve been waiting here for you,” Sweetgrass said defensively with her hands up. “And I wasn’t hiding, you’re just not very aware of your surroundings. I’ve come to your workshop while you were working and watched you working all day long with you never noticing me. You really need to pay more attention.”
Gu kicked a metal table that was near him and it smashed into tools and projects in varying states of completion. If he had been paying attention, he would still have a friend in the Great Serpent.
“Something happened?” Sweetgrass asked gently. “Why’d you cast the time spell? Tell me all about it while we work, I brought grasses for drapes I was commissioned to make and need you to make a rod for.”
Gu pretended that he was just going about his business, like he hadn’t heard Sweetgrass, who was already working on her weaving. He set to work to complete the armor for the runt ninki nanka, and eventually he told Sweetgrass all about the fight with Kokou, the deadline he had missed for Senghor, and the insolence of Za Mane. She mostly listened and chimed in to laugh or be angry with him. She told him about her disagreement with the Onini pythons who were normally her best customers for tall baskets, but their current leader was trying to stiff him out of her compensation, which Gu vowed to see to personally.
“You shouldn’t worry about Senghor,” Sweetgrass said. “The Great Serpents are…great, but they hardly interact with other Fonlanders. Don’t get me wrong, it would be best to have Senghor as a friend, but I can’t imagine you’ll really ever need to call on him for anything. And if you do, enough time will have passed that he will have forgotten this.”
“He was trying to anoint an heir and I ruined that,” Gu said with anger at himself. “He won’t forgive that easily or quickly. But hopefully you’re right that it won’t matter. I know that this armor is too late, but I must complete it and deliver it nonetheless.”
“Because you are a Vodun of honor, even if you let stupid things derail you. You should really get your temper under control, you only make yourself susceptible to less powerful Fonlanders who are excellent schemers. You’re lucky that I’m not a schemer whispering poison into your ear.”
“How do I know you’re not?” Gu laughed and looked up at her from his work for a moment.
“Even the Vodun of war needs someone to talk to,” Sweetgrass said sincerely, “and it is my great honor to be that someone for you. You have taught me a lot about making things and I’m grateful to you for improving my skills. And you’ve taught me that I am more than I give myself credit for. I am a master artisan because of you. So we use one another.”
“I don’t need anyone to talk to,” Gu said defiantly, but Sweetgrass could tell that he didn’t really mean it.
“Can you kill the Onini leader or did you intend to solve the issue another way?” Sweetgrass asked after a moment they worked with the sounds of their work filling the space.
“I’m always surprised by your viciousness, but then I remember that you are a child of chaos like everything else of the Disc. I will not kill them but we can make sure that they are humiliated to lose their title, maybe even be shunned. I am not above killing, of course, but I do not dispense death outside of war and I do not war with your enemy, I am only doing a favor to one who has consistently shown me kindness.”
“Understood,” Sweetgrass said with a nod. “It’s not even about the payment, I don’t need the food they trade, it’s not that good anyway, but the way the leader rebuffed me was pure disrespect. He doesn’t deserve his position, he is not a good model for any warrior.”
“We will humble him together,” Gu said and he smiled at Sweetgrass who looked up from her work to smile at him.
They worked for a long time until the armor was done, and they said goodbye after Gu fashioned the rod for the drapes Sweetgrass had made.
“I will meet you at the Crimson Savanna in five risings,” Gu said. “Be well until then.”
“Are you nervous?” Sweetgrass asks Gu. She is with him in the Smiting Chamber and they watch Jo on a scrying portal as she engages their enemy. The two sit on the high ledge that overlooks the heptagon where Sakpata and his team are working in the mists.
“She seems to have the situation well in hand,” Gu says with confidence. “She’s doing much better than that wizard. He should train more instead of changing costumes.”
“I heard he held that thing still for many risings,” Sweetgrass protests.
“Cheap wizard tricks, I used to do it in the workshop all the time,” Gu says.
“Do you think we are prepared to resist this? I’ve never seen the Fonlands like this before, everything closed off, Fonlanders lining up in ranks like soldiers. It all feels so serious.”
“It is serious and I am nervous,” Gu admits but he doesn’t look at Sweetgrass. He stares at Jo on the scrying portal. “This whole thing that we’re experiencing is just one part of it. Sakpata down there has been to thirty-three different realms that the enemy has taken, the others are in the enemy’s home. This is as large as a web on Legba’s libraries. Winning here is just a battle in a sprawling war and we cannot lose on any front or the enemy will overwhelm us. We are not outmatched, but our enemy is adaptable so we have to be unpredictable. The moment we are found out, we lose the game.”
“But you can’t lose, can you?” Sweetgrass asks with concern that she has trouble hiding. “You’re the Vodun of war, nothing can beat you at war, not even this.”
“I am a superior strategist, but I have never faced an enemy like this one. I won’t lie to you, Sweetgrass, no one knows how all of this will end, not even the diviners because this enemy is so unique and unexpected. But that means there’s hope to survive it, and all we need is hope. Hope and the awesome powers that we have collected from across the multiversal structure.”
Sweetgrass puts her head on Gu’s shoulder.
“I have hope,” she says.
PRL Serials 