Mwari Chronicles

Chapter 1

Mwanza P.O.V

Mwanza Hachibambo woke up with a gasp and a strangled shout frozen in his throat, his body trembling as he gripped the damp blanket so tightly that the fabric was almost ripped apart. His heart hammered as the vivid recollection of a nightmare clang onto his mind like blade in flesh, deep and extremely painful.

Memories of a dark cage, chains that snaked across his body and embedded into his flesh which lit his blood alight with pain and his own voice whispering sweet promises of future tortures into his ears.

He lay motionless, his entire body slick with sweat despite the icy chill of his room. He had never been so pleased to wake up and for a dream to not be real.

He pressed his hand across his chest where a phantom ache lingered. In the dream hands of shadow had torn out his heart and like most parts of his body, his chest ached like it had been bruised.

"Why must it feel so real." he winching in pain the pain in his chest went from dull to sharp.

He removed his hand and simply looked to the ceiling of his room deep in thought. The nightmares haunted him sporadically, sometimes they came for only a few weeks, other times months and years. He always wondered what Mizihimo he had offended for his dreams to be cursed so.

He took many deep breaths to calm his nerves and his stomach which churned near loose with contents which he had to force down from the previous nights supper.

He had considered bringing the matter up to his parents, but he thought better of the idea. Perhaps it was unhealthy but Mwanza would rather be haunted in his sleep than add another bar to his invisible cell.

With shaky legs the young prince clumsily stumbled off of his bed and slowly shuffled to his bathing room where a bucket of cold water from the previous night awaited him.

In what had effectively become a daily a ritual now, he raised the bucket and let the full torrent of ice cold water rush down his body. Taking the sweat and hooks of sleep with it and thus lifting the fog of the subconscious that still lingered upon him from the realm of dreaming.

Stepping out of the shower,he caught his reflection in the bathing rooms steamy mirror, revealing a brown skined young man, his figure lean and musculer with a cropping of neatly cut black hair and piercing golden eyes.

"Why are you so pissy looking." he muttered to the nineteen year old looking back at him. "Freedom is yours today...."

Freedom felt like an odd concept for him, since his was a eight year old boy, he was shackled by an illness he never understood, and now in good health he found himself yoked under his parents overprotective watchful eye and suffocating rules. But that would change starting today, everything that he needed was in place and all he had to do was effectively pull the metaphoric trigger.

He took deep breaths as he thought about the taboo which he would be breaking today. If he was caught, whatever his mother and father would do to him would be a punishment of such magnitude that he would feel it until he was two hundred years old.

"Don't be delusional, that will happen regardless. " his inner mind whispered back.

He looked to the dark morning skies which had not yet been graced by the sun and he knew then and there that his time was now. Grabbing his training armour and practice sword with a bag filled with different clothes, Mwanza stepped out of his room and onto the long corridor of the royal palace that was illuminated by glowing crystals which softly hovered upon the ceiling.

The corridor's sides were covered in all manner of paintings, tapestries and states. They depicted some of the greatest events in Valons five thousand year history, all representations of his ancestors greatest deeds.