VIXEN - The Legend of the Five Totems

Chapter 15 - The Burial of Tantunu

Ella is late. Very, very late.

Her boss gave her a whole case to break down before she was able to leave the office. This glut of work has added an extra six hours to her day, and darkness long since descended before she can get into her car for the trip back home to Tantunu. The Celebration of Tantu comes only once a year, and it has been too long since she was able to celebrate it with her sister.

When she breaks out of the suburbs of Zambawana, her dashboard clock reads 11:28.

It could be worse. She has missed most of the dances, but the singing and partying will last long into the night. It is nothing to worry about, she tells herself. No doubt, her Americanized sister knows how to take a party long into dawn.

The roads are busy on her way home. The highways are full of military transports that speed back to the city. She wonders which army she is looking at: the military belonging to the Zambesi government or the private guerrilla army of Maksai. Most likely the government. Maksai has traditionally been a behind-the-scenes manipulator rather than a brute force kind of guy.

It is not until she turns off the highway that she starts to grow concerned. The military Jeeps have not stopped. They are far more staggered now – only one every five to ten minutes – but on this section of road, whose dirt only goes to Tantunu, these vehicles are worrisome.

As she rounds a corner where corn is growing tall, she catches her first glimpse of the village, still several kilometers away. There is not one massive bonfire, as there should be, but rather a series of them. Concern becomes flat-out worry as she presses the pedal to the metal.

She barely waits for the car to stop before she leaps out at the first sight of one of her people. She dashes forward and is on her knees by the man's side, taking him in her arms, and begging of him to respond to her. His chest is damp, and as she runs her hand across it, her fingers scrape against raw bone at the same time squelch against a reeking exposure of shredded muscle.

"No...," she says, realizing that he will never be responding to anything again. "No. No. No!"

Letting him down gently, she dashes towards the village. The next person she finds is no less lifeless, a woman stripped of her kanga, large gashes torn from her naked back. Then there is the next, whose bullet-marked body reclines against the mud and wattle siding of a half-ruined hut. Then there is another. And another. Her amble into her village is a ghastly experience, one made all the worse from the crackling progress of fire licking up into the night's sky.

A crack of bright orange flickers out no more than a hundred meters from her. It snaps out towards the fields on the edge of the village.

Wielding her pyrokenetic powers, she reaches out towards the lashing flame and draws it back towards her body. In this way, she halts the fires progress before they can reach the prairies, where they would do untold amounts of damage. It is such a minute act that it leaves her feeling hollow.

She continues through the village, checking on everyone she finds. Her heart breaks with every limp body she reaches out for. By the time she reaches the church, her brain is beginning to register a terrible fact: that she might be the only one left.

"It was Maksai."

Ella spins and hurls a fireball at the voice. It strikes the black cape and cowl of Red X, but does no visible damage as it is deflected off into some packed dirt.

"Easy. I'm on your side."

Ella wants to take comfort in his survival, but cannot. The masked creature is no member of her tribe, no local that she has spent her whole life laughing with. "How did this happen? Why would he do this? He is... he was... once...."