- Northern Rhodesia. A colony of the British Empire located in the heart of south-eastern Africa.
Since the 1830s – since a blue man was found under the foothills of the rocky mountains – the world has been forever changed by a new class of person. Superbeings, superheroes, gods, monsters, whatever you might call them. This is the story of one of their most potent.
Chewa Chama was a respected man, 48 years of age. He was scrawny and soft-spoken, but an intelligent member of a small community in the countryside of Northern Rhodesia. His village was next to one of the largest copper mines in the region, and so it was, despite its irrelevancy, a focal point for British companymen. For several years now, the village was practically enslaved by the mine. All the men would work day after day as laborers for the mine. Everyone else would assist in the functions of this society – economically driven by the mine. It was an unholy existence; workers made to extract elements of the Earth, businessmen without souls made to oversee. Investors and nobles living far away from their sins and their ravenence of the Earth. Making offhand decisions, drawing lines on maps, changing the misery-laden fate of millions. Chewa knew this. He studied it. He talked to local leaders, explored nearby cultures and ideas, read all the books he could get his hands on. But he was still a particularly small cog in a continentally sized lumbering machine. One day, while at work in the quarry, he was summoned by a group of young officers. They were inexperienced, arrogant, laughing.. One of the officers took a small silver coil out of his pocket – an invaluable thing for someone of Chewa’s status. The officer smiled and made a bet with Chewa: if Chewa could retrieve the coin, he could keep it. Then the officer launched the coin across the meadows into a swampy river system in the distance. Chewa went looking for the coin. He knew it was dangerous to approach the murky waters, but he was at the end of desperate times. Just as he sank into the river, covered in mud, gliding his hands underneath the water – a hippopotamus appeared under his feet.
The hippo launched Chewa into the air, and then into its open jaws. With one swift movement, one swift shaking, one swift closure – the hippo had shattered 157 out of 206 bones in Chewa’s body, flattened half of his internal organs, and broken more skin than skin left unbroken. In his last breath, Chewa screamed.
The officers, other villagers, other workers, all gathered around the corpse as it lay face up in the muddy water. The officers scowled and walked away. The villagefolk, including Chewa’s twin daughters, were heartbroken as they pulled him out of the muck. His arms were limp, mush and blood, skin severed, half of his neck nearly sliced through. His legs hung like twisted rope, tangled with dirt and water. Redness slithered over the grasses like wild snakes as the body was dragged.
A spiritual funeral was held that night. Most of the town had come to honor their friend. Among the guests under moonlight, turned orange by firelight, was a witch of the savannah.
She waited until the people dispersed, then wandered up to the mutilated thing. The witch, dressed in leathery black, red eyes bulging, raised her bony hand up to Chewa’s torn face. In an instant, a green fire danced from her palm. The fire-spell flicked up and across the body, engulfing it slowly. Then, it was extinguished by an invisible wind. Almost immediately after, the corpse began to vibrate, flaming red, soaring several feet in the air. The townsfolk watched in awe and terror. The witch disappeared into the night as Chewa’s body hissed. After several moments, Chewa fell to the ground in a ball of smoke.
He stood. Now nine feet tall, muscles bulging, lashes of burnmarks scathing his body. His skin sewn back together with boiling twine. His eyes black as the night around him, blood spilling from every strip of spun together skin. Chewa, resurrected in some ways, looked out across the village, an angry look on his face. He had become a sorcerer that night, he had become a hulking beast with immeasurable strength – and the greatest revolutionary of his time.