Mwari Chronicles

Chapter 3

Hamanymu Mulengu always knew that he was one of the lucky earth ones. Armageddon had come for earth and left billions dead in its wake, very few people escaped with their parents, siblings and a few extended family members still alive from that time of chaos and destruction.

He still dreamed about it, the great eye which took the moons place, the whispering shadows that tore men and women limb from limb like one would with paper and other things that he always tried to block from his thoughts.

And upon their arrival in Valon, they had been amongst the first to gamble on a future beyond earth district for the High Veld province. The earth district might have been a suffocating cage, but it was a cheaper and more predictable existence than the uncertainty of high Veld.

Their first few months in the High Veld made them feel the sting of near poverty. The housing was more expensive for them and farm work in the highly rural High Veld did not pay as much as the capital's factories.

They had been forced to move about the cities of the High Veld until they finally settled in the much cheeper and smaller township of Old Kasaka. There they finally found stability and in truth, none of them would have made it out there if it wasn't for the kindness displayed by the Valonians in the High Veld. Many of the large farmers willingly cut off small pieces of land from their farms and gave them to the earth refugees, allowing them space to settle, grow their own goods to feed themselves.

By now Hamanymu would farming and working at the families transportation business to pump more money into their construction efforts. However, fate had other plans and his father managed to secure a postion under the Lord Parliamentarian of the High Veld as part of the Research and Community Development Committee.

This had been a blessing in that it brought in more money and respect for the family but it also forced everyone to push for jobs which were much reliable and supposedly respectable.

For Hamanymu that sent him to the N'anga, those wizards of Valon who studied Mwari and its relationship with the natural world. They all wore great flowing robes and carried staffs that crackled with concentrated pure Mwari and yet the N'angas lost a bit of that mystic sheen when you knew enough to realise that they were no different from the scientists of earth.

Like any profession they could be categorised with Flesh Crafters, Metal Smiths, Storm Seers, Earth Crafter, Star Seers and many more.

Unfortunately for him, rather than finding an opportunity under a N'anga who was on the cutting edge of discovery, Hamanymu found a madman. Balder Thorn looked like a caricature of a evil wizard, he had the traditional flowing mane of hair with a bald head which still had a few strands of hair that stubbornly refused to go away as did his robe which was two sizes too big for his old boney frame.

Thorn had since the first day that the ink on their contract been applied sent Hamanymu into the deep wilds of the world to bring him ingredients from trees, insects and living beasts that being Jrods inhabitants were abnormal in strength, size and behavior.

He had fought everything from Elephant Frogs, Elder Crocodiles, Crimson Mambas, Titan Grofs and even the blood curdling Ghost Spiders. All for minor trinkets and experimentions which the Nganga didn't bother to even explain to him.

Hamanymu always felt his blood boil when he heard Thorns usual response to his questions. "Because my boy, mine is to order and yours is to do-whilst being paid handsomely might I add."

Handsome pay was the only thing keeping him around, a five thousand Keld salary was a fortune to an earth refugee. Enough to keep him coming back even as of the original thirty assistants who Thorn employed, only five remained.