The Chronicle of Matahouroa Chapter 8: Priorities

 Panahihou glided silently in the darkness of the Wairepomango. Even as  midday coursed, only a few weak beams of daylight pierced the black  mantle beneath the canopy, fading quickly as they descended, always gone  before touching the waters.

His eyes, however, weren’t  bothered: the waters, the roots, the black masses of floating ferns,  they all were different shades of black, different expressions of  darkness that not even other inhabitants of the swamps were able to  fully make out. The shadowmage had come to learn the “colors of  darkness” by his own, a natural consequence of specialising in the  absence of light.

When it started, Panahihou didn’t know for  sure. He simply felt connected to the Wairepomango, loving it's dark  expanse and its black waters, and over time that connection became more  and more refined, until he could command the shadows. It wasn’t unusual  for a Kawau, but shadow-magic was usually ignored in favour of more  tangible displays of power, like necromancy or whatever benefits a pact  with Pango would bring.

Panahihou laughed. As if that old reptile had any idea what someone like him, a planeswalker,  had seen in his travels. The Aven couldn’t resist watching the dark  practises wherever he went, sometimes for amusement, sometimes as  inspiration for his own art. From his time as a prisoner of the nezumi,  where he learned to mimic the harmony between shamans and their insects  and kami, to his sensuous retreat to the singed beaches of Azoria, where  another planeswalker’s atrocities granted him both the fuel and space  for practise. And, of course, his designated hub of Ravnica, where both  the Rakdos and the the darker of the Gateless were all too eager to  teach how to channel indulgence into power.

But to him, no swamp  was as powerful as the Wairepomango. There, darkness flowed in ways  Panahihou couldn’t replicate even in places as dark and foreboding as  Diraden or Ulgrotha. It had to be the Weeping Moai, and the mere thought  of it left Panahihou with a mad impatience.

Panahihou landed on a  blackened platform, the remnants of a boat, stuck amidst the floating  foliage. It moved slightly with the Aven’s weight, but he didn’t mind.  He felt inspired, and wouldn’t let that moment of confidence go to  waste.

“Why did you stop?” Throwing-Branch asked from the safety  of the canopy, their loud voice sending shivers of rage down Panahihou’s  spine.

“To speed this up” he said with a mild lilt, “Now sit and enjoy my masterpiece.”

Panahihou  extended his wings, and breathed. Soon, mana gathered to him like an  ocean to a fissure, the darkness of the swamps enveloping him so  thoroughly within and without, earning to be shaped into whatever his  mind could conceive. And he wasn’t out of ideas: maybe enhance his  sensory range, maybe send a shade as a scout, maybe send thousands of  shades as an army, maybe create a portal and show in right before  Hinuhou and stab him right in the heart. If he even had one.

Inspiration, however, struck him as he felt something move well ahead.

Crawling  out of the water into a tree’s roots was a horrific beast, an  amalgamation of legs and arms like those of a mammal, but twisted in  ways only a spider would recognise. Many of these arms were connected by  membranes, forming crude wing-like capes. The lower body, by contrast,  was that of a seal. And in further contrast, the head was divided in  three, two lower jaws splitting further to reveal countless rows of  teeth and barb-covered tongues. The eyes, lacking sockets and fused into  each other, resembled those of an octopus, but the whiskers and fur  were distinctively mammalian. The skull profile, though hideous, was  vaguely seal-like.

“A tipua”, Panahihou muttered.

He’d  seen those abominations. Matahouroa’s answer to demons, born of the  magics of the Wairepomango or the oceanic depths. Mere beasts, with the  occasional smart one. Panahihou felt both repulsion and pity for that  creature, and decided exactly what he would use the abundant mana for.

Flapping  his arm-wings, Panahihou let the shadows pool in front of him, a void  so absolute that even the night around him seemed like daylight. The  tipua turned towards him and jumped into the water, drawn by the void.  It quickly stopped in its tracks when the void began taking shape,  membranous wings and vicious horns manifesting and solidifying. Mana  pooled in itself, forming a distinct, self-sufficient body of darkness, a  brand new creature spawned from the void.

As soon as it saw the  malicious, toothy grin, the tipua began turning around desperately, but a  wing flap and a splash marked its end. Agonising screams echoed through  the swamp, limbs broken and marrow freed by the newcomer. Entrails  burst and tore, their contents spread in incredibly bright vermillions,  yellows and greens unto the black waters.

On the canopy, an unrest of leaves paused the torture as both demons and conjurer stared at it.

“What is the point of this?” Maramawhā asked, craning her neck down.

“I  need to ambush my uncle, maybe have him begging for his life when I  finally face him” Panahihou said, his irritation turning into a happy  lilt, “Wouldn’t killing an abomination such as this one please you?”

He  could hear Maramawhā sighing, the shift back to irritation as quick as  his creation’s clawed hands slashing across the tipua’s face, crashing  its skull.

“It is a living being” Maramawhā said, sighing, “It is  a dark being, to be sure, perhaps even one that does not truly need to  exist. But it is still a creature feeling distress and pain needlessly.”

“Needlessly  my cloaca!” responded Panahihou brusquely, before a more elaborate  response began shaping itself, like a dark cloud: “I need to test my  creation.”

A punch to the jaws, loosening one, while another was grasped by the black hands almost instantly.

“This is the only way to be sure my masterpiece can be strong enough” Panahihou continued, “Do you not value strength?”

“Yours, not your lackey’s” Maramawhā said.

Panahihou  detected even more irritation in her voice. She had clearly given many  of these speeches, and was tired of repeating the same things over and  other. Panahihou felt better about himself, knowing someone wasted her  life worse than he did his.

“I-Is your uncle weak to sun magic?” Feluz asked; only a few yellow beams pierced through the foliage.

Panahihou  hadn’t thought about that. For him, sunlight ranged from annoying to  fatal, and though less affected most of the Kawau preferred the  darkness. Still, Hinuhou was not a specialised shadow mage, his arts  laid within necromancy. By his own experience, many necromancers feared  the light.

Also by his own experience, just as many didn’t.

“Maybe. You’ll be our last resort.”

First  resort, Panahihou would normally say. But he wanted to spare Feluz from  ever meeting his uncle. Panahihou knew that the boy was far from  innocent, but he didn’t need that monsters miasmic presence in his life.
While  he pondered, the demon he created had clearly won the battle, the tipua  being reduced to a mass of broken bones and sinews, being consumed by  the newcomer.

“Enough” Panahihou said, and the demon ceased eating.

Panahihou  extended a wing and picked out a feather, one of the larger primaries,  which he then offered to the demon. The shaft had drawn blood, just a  few drops of his essence, now flowing into the darkness to never again  be seen. The feather itself crumbled into dust, breathed by the demon.

“Find my uncle” Panahihou, “Scout, then ambush. At my sign you will attack him, but I will get the satisfaction of killing him.”

“And why would I do any of this?” the demon spoke at last, a wind chime-like voice gradually deepening.

Panahihou  flicked his fingers, and suddenly a thousand cuts manifested on the  demon’s wing membranes. The beast screamed in agony, before Panahihou  waved his hand and the injuries were gone.

“I hold power over  you” Panahihou said, “ I don’t like slavery, so tell you want: killing  my uncle is in your best interests. After you do so, you’re free to  pillage, destroy, rape whatever your black hole heart desires.”

Panahihou extended a hand graciously, his blue eyes emitting a mocking glare.

“Deal?”

The demon snarled, but shook his hand. He sniffed the air like a dog, and took off, each wing beat casting deep waves.

“I do mean my promise” Panahihou said, his head facing the canopy, “It’s just a matter of whereas Pango kills him.”

“Which he might do right now?” Maramawhā asked.

Oh crap.