Mwari Chronicles

Chapter 9

Mwanza coughed out a jugs worth of water from his body. He coughed and coughed again until his lungs hurt and his throat was worn thin. This violent release from his aquatic torment breathed enough strength within him for the young prince to force open his heavy eyelids.

Though the vision was blurred, Mwanza was able to make out a beach, upon which people in the hundreds crawled on all fours. Their bodies drenched and now coated in beach sand.

"Where am I." he thought as he found a fog in his mind.

He looked to the others who equally splattered out water from their mouths and noses as they pathetically crawled upon the beach like a bunch of lazy crocodiles. With the added groans of pain and confusion it was as some Mizihimo had slithered from the Veld in mass to haunt this beach.

The confusion heightened and ended when bright lights suddenly came to life and illuminated the beach. Mwanza turned his head to the source of the lights and thus he saw standing not too far from them fifty Asikari officers with ten lantins floating above them and casting an unnaturally powerful light.

One of the Asikari stepped forward by ten paces and then turned to face an Asikari Rae with hair that was particularly snow white with a perpetual scowl that scanned everyone of them with something bordering on disgust.

The Asikari brought his right fingers to touch his forehead, almost covering his entire face in his palm. He then brought it down in an over dramatic fashion fast movement before he spoke so loudly that Mwanza was sure that the poor fool's throat was positively red with pain.

"Three hundred recruited recruits standing here and accounted for, sir!" He then repeated the salute before turning and returning to where he had stood before.

That was when the Rae Asikari stepped forward, though he carried himself with a much more relaxed step than his younger comrade. He slowly inspected them and Mwanza wondered what he was thinking.

"I welcome you to Asi-kuftra training school, this shall be your home for the next six months maximum, though if Leza-Mulungu is willing you may prove yourselves worthy to depart from here in not more than three months. You should be honoured to stand on these hallowed grounds that have produced Asikari for thousands of years and though you have been baptised, you are not yet fully worthy to be here. Thankfully for you, my staff and I shall beat worthiness into your worthless bodies. "

The Asikari continued in a rather calm voice and yet all heard him. "You may be wondering who I am to speak to you in this manner?. I am the Argontum rank officer Gilbert Mombwe, the commending officer of Asi-kuftra, but you shall no me as Poison. Why Poison, because for the next coming months of your lives I shall make it feel like there is fire in your blood."

"Is he serious?" Mwanza had never heard a more try hard speech in his life and he was used to hearing clear tall tells from fellows attempting to impress the royal family.

"Are we clear?" the self declared Poison asked them and was met with silent indifference and confusion from the squares.

Poison grinned and with sudden movements he drew two threads of Mwari. The earth shook and a great shadow was cast upon the beach, Mwanza looked upwards and he saw it, a ten metre high wave of water coming down upon them.

He tried to crawl away like a newly born turtle but like his fellow recruits he was too slow and the wave came down upon them with enough force that Mwanza felt his internal organs shake. Even as the torrent of water threw them aside it did not drag them into the lake, the water by some arcane force kept them where the water had hit until the wave returned to the lake.

"This is a teaching moment for all of you. When your instructors or officers of any kind ask you a question you are to always respond with yes sir, yes madam or no sir, no madam. Are we clear?"