For all his years working to aid the Moredain people, Ikwezi had communed with many spirits, and while some could be difficult and may ask for tasks to be completed before helping he had not yet met one with sinister intent. That was until he met T’chaxau.
The sun had barely grazed the temple atop the House, a stillness persevered across the savannah. The beasts had not yet awoken , no birdsong filled the air as it usually did at this time of morning. Ikwezi looked out across the palacial gardens below when the silence of the day was broken suddenly by a screaming woman running frantically up the main path. She had a bundle of rags in her arms that Ikwezi soon realized was a swaddled child, perhaps a year old at most. He pounced down from his perch atop an acacia tree, grabbed his herb pouch and staff that were resting at it’s roots and ran swiftly bounding forth with great strides, his arms swinging wildly at his side. He ran into the distressed woman at the foot of the ziggurat’s stairs and almost crashed right into her.
“My child! By the Great Lion what ails you so?” as Ikwezi spoke his hands acted out the words with great enthusiasm.
“It is my boy! Kanu, he has not yet seen his first year, and I fear he never will!”
“A demon has taken ahold of him, it has stolen his soul! Please sangoma I have walked for days to bring him here, I fear it may be too late…” ,Her words came out weary and tremulous, the journey had obviously taken it’s toll on her and it seemed as if she had not slept or eaten for it’s entirety. Not a moment after her final words came out she collapsed forward, Ikwezi launched his arms out and grabbed the child in one hand and gently lowered her to the ground with the other. For the first time he looked down upon Kanu and a flash of bright light filled his vision.
He stood amid a whirling vortex of ash and dust, There was no light yet he could see. All at once an immense guttural voice resonated around him:
“From deep forests, I awaken.
From Kanu, his soul taken.
Holster your pride, and bow.
To the mighty T’chaxau.”
Ikwezi blinked and the vision was gone as soon as it came, before him the face of the infant Kanu, gazing blankly into his eyes.The mother died soon after and Kanu was adopted by Ikwezi and the other shamans, despite the efforts of the oldest and wisest of them none could decipher what was wrong with the child. Powders and Poultices, Medicines of all kinds, incantations to the Great Lion, Nothing seemed to help. The child never left the trance he had been in since he arrived. They had to force feed him as he would not move of his own accord, neither did he sleep despite their best efforts. Day in day out he did nothing, as if a doll not a real child. Ikwezi could not forget the vision presented to him however, and when there was no other solution he finally agreed with the elders to travel south into the jungles of the Tauredain in the hope they knew who this T’chaxau was and how the child’s soul could be saved.
Chris Black Writes 
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