CHAPTER THREE

There was great tension in the arena as the combatants focused on the dark grey surface of the lake. 

Everything was quiet, then suddenly, there was a series of great splashes in the lake after which the water settled again. It seemed like something had left the water but no one could see anything. Most of the combatants moved closer to each other and away from the lake, looking about in varying degrees of panic.

"I know this kind of monster," Nazora said to no one in particular, with her voice loud enough to be overheard by those nearest to her. Her gaze, however, was fixed intently on the floor.

"It's called a Wuso amongst we Vodun. 

You must look down to see it, for though the Wuso is only visible in water it casts a shadow while it is on land. 

Its magic cannot trick the earth as easily as it tricks us."

Once Isinne heard this, she scanned the arena floor until she saw several large lumpy looking shadows moving stealthily towards different combatants. Isinne held her twin swords out at her sides in her most comfortable attack stance, waiting for any monster to get close enough for her to attack. One moment the combat arena was quiet, the next moment it was filled with the sounds of battle.

Weapons met flesh with sickening thuds. There were slight thumps made by running feet, shouts of pain from the injured, shouted instructions, and bits of terse conversation here and there. It all came together to form an age-old rhythm.

The monsters themselves were eerily quiet, especially when compared to the furore they were causing. 

The spectators, who sat on the long rows of circular red mud steps surrounding the combat arena, were almost as agitated as the combatants. They clapped their hands, jumped, argued amongst themselves, gestured and shouted instructions at their favourite combatants but the shield surrounding the combat arena kept most of their noise out of the arena. 

All around Isinne, who stood farthest from the lake, the battle raged. Barika, who was standing closest to her, was swinging his great axe around him in a circular pattern when all of a sudden his legs gave out, he fell to his knees and thin bleeding gashes started to appear all over his body. 

This didn't faze Isinne as she was no stranger to battle and it's consequences.

Barika began to shout and swing his axe wildly, nearly cleaving his own leg off in the process.

Just when it looked like he would be successfully dragged into the lake, he hacked at something very close to his right leg. The chopped off end of a grey, writhing, severed tentacle suddenly appeared still wrapped around his leg. Shaking off the clinging tentacle, he hurriedly crawled away from both the lake and the tentacle. 

Getting back on his feet he adjusted the patterned wrapper around his waist while putting as much distance as he could between himself and the still-bubbling lake. He walked past Taharaq who was violently slashing at something in front of him with his huge sword...

The tiny hairs on the back of Isinne's neck rose. 

Reacting from pure instinct she swung her right leg backwards in a low arc sweeping Nazora's legs out from underneath her. 

As Nazora was falling, Isinne bent backwards over her and sliced an "X" with both swords, just above where their heads had been, then she shifted sharply to her right.

A monster's enormous head, with its maw wide open, landed on the ground with a splatter of black blood. It landed right where she had previously stood. 

"You impress me, partner, your speed is a thing to see. Perhaps you could warn me next time or simply ask me to bend." 

Nazora got up from where she had landed on the ground as she spoke, not bothering to brush off the red sand from her gown. She was about to continue her tirade when suddenly, her eyes became as white as her hair. She made a quick turn backwards with the dagger in her right hand stretched out. She stabbed many times, her movements controlled and precise. Both hands working in tandem as she wielded her weapons against an unseen enemy. At her final stab, a large unsightly, grey, slimy mass dropped with an audible plop at her feet, splattering black blood as it fell.

Glancing quickly at the slimy mess, Isinne felt she could understand why the creatures would choose invisibility. 

When they lost their invisibility in death, it was clear that they were a bit hideous. They were apparently large grey tentacled creatures with no definite shape, perhaps this could also be why the Wuso preferred to live in water. Isinne thought to herself. 

She slashed at another monster close to her, this one had caught her unawares and successfully sliced at her left arm with its razor-sharp tentacle, it stung terribly.

Isinne turned sharply as she heard a shout to her right from Chewa who was kicking and screaming. He clawed the ground trying to resist as he was being forcefully dragged into the lake, he had apparently been disarmed during the scuffle as his two short spears were no more in his hands. Moments later a beam of blue light shone from the lake indicating that Chewa had activated his protective yield amulet and had therefore been eliminated from Ogu.

Isinne kicked out in the general direction of the invisible monster in front of her to dislodge her swords from its belly then she gave it the killing slash which took its head right off and flung it some distance from the writhing body.

For some reason, Isinne found the writhing amusing.

She had a few cuts on her legs, arms and torso by now but nothing deep enough to worry her. Her whole body felt like she had been stung by scorpions but she had felt worse pain during her training sessions with papa and the masters. She saw Taofiq, one of her half-brothers, get flung towards the arena's circular mud walls, he landed just shy of the wall in a disorganized sprawl, the leaf-green wrapper around his waist dark with blood.

Isinne risked a worried glance in his direction.

Was he still alive?

His left arm moved slowly towards the amulet around his neck causing Isinne to let out the breath she held subconsciously. He applied pressure on the amulet and a blue light shone from his chest indicating that he had activated his amulet. The light engulfed Taofiq and he disappeared from the arena signifying his elimination from Ogu. 

Meanwhile, behind Isinne, Nazora was slashing at one last monster with the fury of a jilted maiden, scattering hunks of grey flesh as she did so until yet another monster joined the growing pile at her feet.

The arena's sandy red ground gradually became littered with slimy corpses in different shades, the floor stained with blood, both red and black. The combatants were injured, tired and sweaty. 

Nthusi, another one of Isinne's half-brothers, had his left hand around his neck where a monster had tried to strangle him without success. His right hand had a death grip on his double-ended spear, while his shield lay broken on the floor not far from where he stood.

Just as it seemed the monsters had relented and they would have a break from the gruelling pace of the battle, the priests started chanting again. 

As the priests chanted there was an ominous silence, during which the clouds began to quickly darken and move until the sun was mostly shielded from view.

The grey lake began to bubble again. 

What was happening? 

Why were the priests chanting again?

"We have killed the monsters. What more do they want?" 

Isinne asked Nazora in growing frustration as she wiped more sweat off her forehead.

"I think that the priests do not want us to be able to see the Wuso's shadows anymore, so they are putting up new spells." 

Nazora replied slowly with most of her attention focused on the chanting priests.

"How do we fight the Wuso when we cannot see them?" 

Isinne asked rhetorically as she gave a twitching, hard-to-kill monster a final vicious stab.

"We could both jump into the lake, Nazora. I believe something in the lake is producing these monsters, we must kill it and end this." 

Isinne continued, as she shook feeling back into her numb arms and brushed her curly black hair off her forehead.

"We? I would rather behead myself than take on a Wuso in its own home.

It is simply not done." Nazora replied, looking at Isinne as if the latter had suddenly grown a pair of horns.