Uche and Ter crashed through the dark forest, the guardian spirit in the form of a masquerade hot on their trail. Branches scratched their faces and thorns drew blood from limbs as they pushed through the forbidding undergrowth. Uche mumbled into a cupped palm and flung it backwards over his shoulder. The masquerade stumbled, giving Ter and Uche a few precious seconds to lengthen the distance between them but it recovered quickly, resuming its relentless chase.

The pattern continued as Uche threw charm after charm at the masquerade without dealing any lasting damage. They were deep in the heart of the forest when they stumbled unto what they had been after. It was a meadow in the middle of which stood an Ancestral tree. Tall, majestic and ethereal, it held itself separate from the rest of the forest, its domain one of preternatural silence.

Ter drew his cutlass, mumbling a quick incantation while running up to the giant tree. He slashed his palm and fed the roots of the great tree with his blood.

The seconds ticked by with no result, getting impatient, Uche pulled at his arm. “Nothing’s happening. There’s a river on the edge of my senses, I may be able to put up more of a fight there.”

Unbeknownst to them, Tree roots and shrubs snaked silently in the darkness, closing the path they had taken into the clearing and restoring the sanctity of the meadow.

“Just wait a little longer.” Ter hissed, eyes glued to the stain his blood had made on the ground and roots while he prayed with all his heart that the stories he had been told in childhood and his recurring dreams had truth to them.

Their pursuer drew closer with every second they waited; Uche was a heartbeat away from taking off with or without his companion. He had started to murmur the incantation to a confusion charm when a sibilant susurration broke his concentration.

Excited, he screamed at his friend “The spirits have responded! Their messenger is here! We have to find it.”

“It’s usually a serpent if that part of the stories is true” Ter threw at Uche as he scrambled around the tree examining the grass.

“Found it!” a swift stroke from Ter’s cutlass had it headless; he scooped up the writhing body, squashed his disgust and sucked the blood out of its open neck.

Ter licked the gash on his palm with his bloody tongue. Flesh and skin knit back together, closing the tear.

“It’s almost upon us we have to keep moving Ter.” Uche sounded agonized; his fear prevented him from noticing the change that was coming over his companion.

Ter fell to his knees, head bowed and a sibilant voice that sounded like the wailing of multiple souls was projected from his lips.

“Your flight has come to an end young one. We have been summoned and we never show an enemy our back.”

The hint of otherworldly power in Ter’s voice got through Uche’s fear and he looked at the kneeling figure; Ter had doubled in size and the air around him shimmered as though he was a hot stone.

“Ter, what have you done?” he whispered to himself, a new fear coming over him as he became aware of how tightly the spirit world had pressed into the material world through in the clearing around them, focused on his friend.

The voice like the rasping slither of a hundred serpents replied to him. “The old warriors have come to your aid young one, with greetings from your fore fathers who are well pleased with your progress.”

Ter’s breaths came out loud and ragged between his words and he continued to increase in size. The clearing gained an even deeper silence as the spirits filled their chosen vessel.

The rumble of the masquerade crashing through the forest finally reached them. A concussion of sound swept through the clearing as their pursuer broke into the natural warding that was around the Tree’s domain. It looked around the clearing in slight apprehension before catching sight of Uche and hunger became its overwhelming driving force once more.

Using the same distorted voice, Ter commanded his friend,

“Keep your eyes shut, you may yet not look upon that which you will see. Climb into the old Tree, it will keep you unharmed.”

Uche felt uncertain but he nodded anyways and scrambled up the oversized baobab tree. Losing sight of its quarry in the branches of the great tree, the masquerade gave a loud shrill of displeasure and charged right at Ter who had positioned himself in its path. A copy of the masquerade resolved itself out of the original one with every bound it made until seven spirits were bearing down on the Old Tree. Straightening out of his crouch, Ter roared at the charging enemy, releasing all the left-over spirit force that his body was unable to house in one concussive blast.

The masquerades were all blown back into the darkness of the forest, landing in a crash of broken trees. There was a moment of silence before they all slunk back into the clearing. Clearly wary now; they spread out before stalking forward. Brandishing his cutlass, Ter addressed the now multiplied masquerade in the same Spirit heavy voice he had used on Uche.

“Guardian, you are not welcome in this place. These ones have slipped beyond your reach, return to your people.”

All seven heads cocked to one side in thought following which raffia whips with tails the width of a man’s wrist and thorns the size of goat horns materialized in their hands.

“So be it,” declared the entity that spoke through Ter. “Today you shall bear witness to the wrath of the great serpent clans.”

On impulse Uche squeezed his eyes shut.

The clearing had returned to a silence punctuated by Ter’s heavy breathing before Uche chanced opening his eyes, even with his eyes shut, his spirit sight had almost been seared blind by the sheer volume of power that had been channeled through Ter. The meadow was a scene of devastation. Huge chunks of earth had been gouged up and trees lay strewn about like the divination bones of a careless god. Ter stood heaving at one edge of the clearing, hand resting on one of the few trees still standing. Ter’s strange looking cutlass had become even stranger, it now had cracks running the length of its blade, and the iron of its body had also developed a blue black sheen.

Face turned away, Uche’s possessed friend addressed him. “Shed your skin young Dibia, we will take you through the forest to safety but we need to hurry, although vanquished for a moment, the guardian spirit will be reborn soon and continue its pursuit if you remain within its domain.”

Uche started to take off his clothes, all doubt in the potency of Ter’s ancestors extinguished.

“So obedient, we see why you are favored by your old ones. Our son will not have long to live with us in his body, he failed to observe the proper rituals before our union.”

“We have tarried long enough; now we run young Dibia.”

Uche tossed his satchel now with his clothes into the air where it simply disappeared. He fell down on all fours and darkness seeped out of his skin him obscuring him from vision in a cloud of shadow that retracted to leave a dark skinned leopard standing where Uche had been. Human intelligence lent a deviant aspect to its feline eyes. Ter nodded in approval.

“You are of potent blood young Dibia, we are honored by your friendship.”

The two figures sprinted through the forest at impossible speed, moving in and out of the spirit realm so effortlessly that one moment they raced through the green tropical forest and the next they streaked through the backyard of a god’s abode.

Stopping only to ease the needs of the flesh, they ran for two days and a night. When they finally came to a stop, Uche the leopard was tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep and let his human aspect out. Ter was barely winded, his ancestor spirits still strengthening him. Uche changed forms, his satchel already in hand and dressed himself. The spirits spoke then.

“A village lies a quarter cycle of the sun towards the east. Our son barely lives, only our power keeps him alive now.”

Uche gave Ter a suspicious look, “I’m sure great ones have a plan to keep him alive after you depart his body?”

“Of course, we can’t let him die yet.”

Ter bent over, gagging, retching and physically shrinking in size till the python he had beheaded dropped to the ground, miraculously whole again. It slithered up him, coiling around an arm and struck him twice on his chest.

“We have marked our son, though we may not leave the binds of the wild, our power will reach him as long as he walks upon earth and we will know all that befalls him.”

The voice echoed through the air as the snake slid back into the forest.

Uche nodded, he had expected this. Spirits always sought more contact with the living world, coupled with the fact that they never gave aid for free; it was inevitable that they would seek to turn some profit from the venture.

Still, they were being generous; his own native spirits were known for their greed and would have had to be forcefully exorcised after being summoned so carelessly and completely. Reaching into his Satchel, Uche pulled out a sealed bottle of palm wine.

“Great ones, I offer you my thanks for your aid.”

Uche threw the bottle into the dark of the forest where the expected sound of it striking the ground did not come.

“Farewell young Dibia, keep our young warrior close to you, he bears the sorrows of his people.” The sibilant whisper blew out of the forest.