Anaya: A Dark Voyage [#1 LightBlood Series]

Chapter 22 - Nia Afriyie

The Past.
Three Years after being Awoken
18 April 2019.

Nia Afriyie hadn't been herself since she came back from Koobi Fora three years ago. She hadn't been dealing with the pain of losing Kukua that well. She hadn't been able to let go of the pain she was feeling. Her eyes had an odd glazed look and her speech delayed every time she spoke. There was a stillness in her being... an emptiness in her heart, a soreness crashing her brain, a sheer blackness now consuming her soul, threatening to engulf her fully. She didn't want to say or do anything but just write in her book, mostly recounting the memories of the night she was awoken — the night everything around her took a sharp three-sixty. The night at the party.

When she went through the portal three years ago from Koobi Fora, she found herself at Mwanauma's shrine. At the very beginning, she had a hard time trusting him but after a while, she got to know he was definitely a part of them. Mwanaume helped her through the blip.

Being the only surviving member of the Initial counsel of LightBloods formed in the nineteenth century — the very counsel that initiated the first chosen LightBloods — he was the best person to walk Nia Afriyie through the dark times and also get her head straight and ready for what was coming.

Technically speaking though, the current Mwanaume wasn't the very one present during the initiation ritual of the first chosen LightBloods at the seashore some two hundred years ago. There was no way he could have survived that long. However, the sight of the first Mwanaume was being passed on from one person to another anytime the host died. Therefore any Mwanaume who was given the sight was granted access to all information and events from the past. They were able to see the future as well.

The only thing that made having the sight of a Mwanaume a bit challenging was, they couldn't do anything to stop what they foresaw in the future or say much about it. All they could do was give clues and directives and probably prepare for the aftermath. That was why when Nia Afriyie decided to leave the shrine to battle the DarkBloods, he did all he could to prevent her from stepping outside. He couldn't tell her why she shouldn't try going on that mission. All he needed was for her to listen but Nia Afriyie was a bit stubborn and wouldn't listen to a thing he said.

She felt she needed to do that for her friend and Guardian. Kukua had been there for her when she faced the most difficult times in her life...when no one would be friends with her because they believed she killed her mother. When no one defended her, Kukua would. She was like the sister or mother she never had. Kukua would sacrifice everything to make sure she was happy and just like that, she actually ended up sacrificing her life for her to live.

She had decided tonight was the day of reckoning and that was all she was focused on. Nothing else mattered. Not even her own life or that of the over seven billion people in the world whose survival depended on her.

Before she left the Shrine, she dropped her book on the mat she sat on, wrote a note that the book is given to her other two sisters of the chosen, if anything should happen to her and stepped outside without saying a word to anyone.