44 Awakening

"Father, father! let me go out and hunt her trail. You know I am the best for the job with my ability." Moji insisted on pestering King Fola, as she barged into the council meeting, interrupting a General mid-sentence.

The council chamber was a grand hall with clear signs of the opulence and power of the Oshodi Kingdom, gold inlays throughout the room, rare historic artefacts and ornaments, and weapons dating to before the epoch, were used to decorate the hall.

Everyone in the council was already used to this precocious child and so they paused to allow the King address her.

"Moji, you know that we cannot take such risks as royalty. But there is nothing to fret; my Kingdom is not so poor that it requires the princess to search for insurrectionists. The army has many talents." King Fola responded, and continued by saying, "In fact, you will have to excuse us as my general was just about to explain his new approach to finding the threat."

But, before the general could continue, a soldier rushed into the council hall shouting, "Pardon my intrusion your majesty...urgent message from the castle courtyard...the...the...someone appeared out of thing air!"

...

Musa felt the darkness getting 'clearer'.

The dark energy vortex had stretch over a mile but was now rapidly detracting until it was eventually no more. Initially, he could perceive everything within that 1 mile radius, but as the darkness receded, he could only sense a 100m radius around himself.

Musa's 'sight' was unique. He was 'aware' of the shadows and from the shadows he knew the positions of everything around him. However, he was still getting used to this new form of perception. He could only accurately determine what was in the room with him.

At this point, the doctor was terrified, and only the guards, who had entered the room by now, kept him from running away. On the other hand, Turayo was relieved but confused. She was glad that Musa was awake again, but she had no thoughts on what to do next.

Musa examined his former connection with Niyi but found only darkness, darkness that seemed to almost draw him back into the abyss. Cautiously, he shifted his mind from there but surprisingly noticed that some of the darkness move into him and flowed with his dark essence, enhancing it. He now realised that his lost of sight and the death of Niyi had combined in a weird way to improve his connection with dark energy. Ultimately, he was indifferent; he would just have to guide against falling to deep into the dark.

However, Niyi was gone.

"So Musa...um...how are you? Nobody living knows anything about the loss of mag- ... about your condition. We didn't even know if you would wake up." Aunty Turayo said, bringing Musa back to the present, as she drew closer to the bed.

"I am fine. Get rid of the doctor. We need to move. Someone may have noticed the vortex." Musa responded succinctly.

"Wait, wait, what do you mea- ..." the doctor started panicking.

"Hey Musa... I promised that he could return unharmed... You can't jus-" Turayo interrupted but Musa overrode her saying, "It has to be done. No witnesses. We have a lot to do and can't take risks."

There was silence before a swift attack.

...

Nnenna followed the large entourage of guards to the throne room, thinking about what had transpired before they reached the capital of Oshodi Kingdom.

She had accepted, reluctantly, to allow Tunde follow them. And despite his talkativeness, he had however, proven to be very useful in get information and infiltrating cities, such that, the rest of the journey was relatively smooth and hassle free.

Currently, Tunde was still making himself useful as the lookout in the city incase of any trouble, although how he was supposed to help was beyond her. Meanwhile, Obi, Amaka and Amina were position nearby with Kayto and, to her, were the real calvary. She suspected that Tunde was just up to his usual hustler tricks and she hoped for his sake that it did not bring any trouble.

Meanwhile, back at the present, Nnenna was regretting teleporting to the courtyard, as a sign of respect for the King, as the fanfare she was being subjected to, was a bore. First of all, they tried to search her, very intrusively actually, for hidden weapons. She could have told them that she could teleport any weapon into her own hands but decided not to bother. Then, there was a long list of rules when meeting royalty and finally before the audience with the king, she was made to wait at the entrance, listening to someone read off a verbose list of titles for Jide's father.

Nevertheless, it was time.

Nnenna had planned out this moment carefully. Initially she thought it would be easy when she was setting off from Mushin. She would rush to Jide's father, who would lead his army to find his long lost son and avenge her family. However, she grew up and realised that this would be a high stakes game and she must not show her cards too soon.

...

Meanwhile, Ubong approached the capital of the newly formed empire that was even now still rapidly expanding. She had mixed feelings. Although not intentional, it was its actions that were indirectly responsible for the death of Chijioke and the loss of her hand.

As she moved through the city, she gazed at all the construction that was going on, as the empire was not building a capital city but a fortress capital. Shrugging her shoulders, she followed Nze as they made their way to the palace that was under construction, to report to the new ruler of this budding empire.

These emperor was someone who had created a miracle, forming a new nation by promising all internal mages, an offer they could not afford to ignore; a chance for power.