Chapter 12 - HUNTED

Still on the Rave God Reruns

---

As they walked down the winding path, heading closer to Olumo, Omotola reflected on the events of the past month since her escape. Ode was a brutal teacher; he never took mercy on her and didn’t even notice that she was female. Arduous tasks upon arduous tasks he bombarded her with and she went to bed aching and sore every day, EVEN with her godly healing. She had asked for it, she had asked that he pushed her hard enough to be on equal footing with the rest of the gods if she was to return to Olumo. And he had. Didn’t mean she had to like it though.

She yawned as the early morning sun began to peek over the distant mountains. They had woken early so as to cover enough distance. Word had reached them from travellers on the road that the Nupe gods were looking for people matching their description. They had almost run into one of the gods but Ode had quickly hidden them in the earth, masking their presence till he left. The gods also patrolled the skies in wide arcs every now and then, searching for the escaped prisoners. That was probably why Ode was so tense and alert as his eyes scanned the pink clouds.
Omotola cast her mind out and searched the land as Ode had told her, picking up life forms as she did so. She could feel ants in their holes, building, and a tiny butterfly as it sucked the nectar from a plant in a tree located extremely high in the sky. She was looking for something to eat and the forest surrounding them teemed with life. She settled on a lone wild pig chewing some leaves and killed it, stopping its heart. She silently apologized to the dead animal as she commanded nearby animals to drag it towards her. This trick was a useful one and she had learned it by observing Ode, the proverbial and literal god of the hunt. She could now speak to animals and command them to do her bidding and it excited her to no end as she spent countless hours conversing with birds and other land animals on their way. As they turned the next bend, two jackals were waiting with the wild hog in their teeth.

Ode raised a brow, ‘Impressive, you didn’t spill blood this time’

She flushed and looked away, remembering the last time she had tried to stop an animal’s heart. She had squeezed the heart too tight and had exploded all the blood vessels in the body, leaving a mess everywhere. The meat even tasted strange and she would not have eaten it except Ode had forced her to, saying he would not let the flesh of one of his subjects go to waste. URGH!

She lifted the wild pig with her mind and as Ode watched she butchered it with power. It had taken countless tries till she finally mastered the technique, and within minutes the meat had been divided into four huge parts, the hind limbs and the four limbs had been largely cut into the middle, looking like an extremely oversize ham. She threw the guts and the head to the jackals and they fell on it with gusto as Omotola and Ode continued their journey, the pieces of meat still hanging in the air. She pulled water out of the air and encased the meat in it, then spun thoroughly till it turned dark red, thoroughly cleaning it than any human method could. She dissipated the water and casted her mind once again till she found the leaves she was looking for. She brought them out of the forest and scrubbed them on the pieces of meat as Ode looked on. She then surrounded the meat with fire, but made sure the fire didn’t touch the meat as she wove flow of air turn the meat constantly in the fire so that the heat could reach every part.

She looked at her work, panting and sweating. It was not that it took much of her power to do this, but to properly channel the exact amount needed for each process tasked her strength and mind to the limit. But she was getting better, she knew she was. Ode looked at her with approval and used his own power to dissipate the fire to reveal the baked meat. He pulled one towards him and promptly began to eat, blowing on the hot part as greasy fat ran down his chin. No one would believe he was a god if they looked at him right now, with his boyish grin and the way he attacked the meat. She sniffed and pulled one piece of the meat down to her too, and ate daintily; making sure grease did not dribble on HER chin.

---

A couple of travellers passed them on the road a few days later. The sun was just leaving the sky as they saw them in the distance. It was a wagon pulled by four donkeys. A man sat at the front of the wagon, handling the reins. He was in his middle years, probably about 35 or 40 with just a hint of gray at his temples. He looked down at them and said

‘What are you kids doing on this road in this time of turmoil in Yoruba land?’

Kids?? Omotola chuckled to herself. Ode was older than the whole Yoruba race and this man called him a kid. She was….Well technically, she was still a kid but she was also a god. A very powerful one at that. She regarded the man again. He probably thought of them as kids because of the youthful look on herself and Ode. The man was probably not out of line calling them that seeing as she and Ode both looked like teenagers just leaving puberty but she was grateful that she had already started budding on her chest. She blushed at the thought. She focused her mind and faced the man. He spoke thick Yoruba like the people of Oyo and Omotola noticed as Ode’s eyebrow rose. So Ode noticed his accent too. People who still spoke Yoruba like this man were currently being hunted by the Nupe gods as they were blood indigenes of Oyo. A girl’s head peeked out of the wagon and the withering look the man gave the young girl was enough to send her back inside.

‘Are you going to answer or keep ogling?’ the man asked, this time not sounding friendly. His hand went under the seat and Omotola was ready to bet her divinity that he had a weapon under the wagon seat. Probably a dull cutlass or something but judging by the gleam in the man’s eye, he was prepared to use it.

Oduduwa replied the man

‘Sorry, we’ve just been walking for a long time now and it has been a while since we’ve seen another human being like us’
Omotola chuckled at the irony of that statement and got a frown from Ode, she stifled it quickly.

‘Are you also running from ….?’ He gestured vaguely back in the general direction of Oyo city. Omotola’s hunch was correct. He WAS being hunted and she was fairly sure that his whole family was in that wagon.
‘Yes sir’, Ode said respectfully to the man.
‘Well you can hop on and I’ll give you a ride to the next village’.
‘We prefer walking sir, but thank you very much for the offer’.

The man grunted and flicked his reins and the wagon rumbled forward. They watched it as it went down the long winding path and after it disappeared, they resumed walking till the stars covered the sky.
When they settled down for camp, Omotola summoned fire with her force of will, earning a frown from Ode which she ignored and she ate some fruits they had picked earlier in the day. Soon they began hearing voices. Ode held a hand to his lips and crawled in the direction of the sound and came upon the same man and his family a few distances away. The man didn’t seem to be aware he was being watched as he laughed and joked with his children and wife. The children were three in number, One little boy, about four years old and Two teenage daughters, one around 18 and the other probably 16. They were laughing about the water that was running from the nose of the boy who had obviously taken water in the wrong way. Ode left them to their firelight and crawled back to Omotola to tell her what he saw.
They talked for a while till the fire died down – Ode had told Omotola to transfer the fire to wood and stop using her power to attract undue attention- and as Omotola stood up to ease herself in the nearby trees, Ode moved with speed and tackled Omotola into a ditch as an explosion sounded in the direction of the man’s camp in the distance. Female screams followed soon after and they were not the type that came from being killed or cut. Omotola fought Ode’s grip but he held her tighter and whispered furiously into her ears;

‘There’s nothing we can do for them now, they are being attacked by the Nupe Gods. We cannot face the six of them alone, your time for vengeance will come, calm down!’

Omotola kept struggling as tears unbidden rolled down her face as she could well imagine what was being done to those girls. She didn’t stop struggling even as those girls kept screaming till their voices died out ominously one by one hours later.

source

---

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN