PREVIOUSLY (Chapter 10)
["Son of Heaven, the knowledge the gods have bestowed upon you is incredible. Paper is most versatile, but the greatest gift is the language itself. Now we shall be able to scribe the histories of our gods and the legends of our warriors," the envoy priest told me with great fervor.
"I am glad you have appreciated the wisdom of the gods. Very soon, all shall have access to it; all depends on the response of your priests and leaders. Remember that the gods are ever-judging; we must unite as one people," I replied, my friendly tone shifting into a subtle warning.
"I hope our people open their eyes. Regardless, I shall arrange a gathering for our priests after the winter," he said, his voice laced with hope.
"I look forward to that meeting. Safe travels," I said as we bid our farewells.
"It seems a promising future awaits us," I remarked to the High Priest.
"Indeed it does, Son of Heaven," Simte replied.]
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Year 3 of the SuaChie Calendar.
Months after that encounter regarding paper and script, the world seemed to turn to the rhythm dictated by Chuta. He was in the Eastern City—the ancient village of Hunza, now renamed and in constant expansion—supervising the construction of what would become his future residence.
To the eyes of the Muisca, this was to be a palace; to Chuta, it was simply a home that met the minimum standards of dignity and functionality his past life demanded—albeit with slight touches of unnecessary comfort.
He had taken a much-needed respite after his grueling journey south to parley with the Pijao Caciques. This time of rest was not idleness, but pure planning. As he walked across the churned earth where the foundations would rise, his mind wandered toward the concept of national identity. The Pijao and the Tairona were on the verge of formally integrating into the Muisca sphere of influence, and the need for a name to shelter them all became imperative.
"MUPITAI?" he thought, wrinkling his nose. "Muisca, Pijao, Tairona... it sounds like a generic medicine."
He considered naming it "America," but dismissed it as foolishness; he was there to change history, not to repeat the nomenclatural blunders of European explorers who had yet to arrive.
Then he thought of "Vinland." The name resonated in his memory with mystical strength; though he remembered exactly what it meant, he did not know the word's true origins. It sounded grand, evoking a land of abundance and promise, but perhaps it was too alien to the soil he trod upon.
A soft babbling and the rhythmic thumping of clumsy footsteps on the dry earth broke his reverie. Chuta turned to see his mother, Za, approaching, carrying little Hyqua.
Za walked with a radiant smile, doting on the infant while looking at Chuta with equal pride. The little "Son of Heaven" was barely over two years old in this life, yet he already stood with a firmness that astonished the elders.
Hyqua had been born a few months prior, and was, in many ways, the living symbol of Chuta's success.
By driving population growth through the promise of consistent food, metal tools to ease agricultural labor, and, above all, basic hygiene and health measures, Chuta had made the people feel secure enough to procreate. Soap made from ash and fats, infection prevention techniques during childbirth, and balanced nutrition had worked wonders. Even his own father, Hyba, had been moved by this new climate of optimism, giving Chuta the younger brother he had always desired.
"What are you doing out here alone, my sun?" Za asked tenderly, settling Hyqua on her hip.
"Upqua brought me to see where our new house will stand, Mother," Chuta replied, his childish voice contrasting with his analytical gaze.
Za looked at the plans marked on several 'papers' strewn on the ground and sighed. "I do not understand why you desire another house, Chuta. We all fit perfectly in the one we have. Are we not happy there?"
Chuta smiled, reaching out to stroke Hyqua's small hand.
"This house will be different, Mother. It will be built of carved stone and noble wood; it will even have metal in its structure so that it may last for centuries. It shall have three floors—the first of its kind in all these lands. There will be many rooms so that everyone has their space, and halls to receive the leaders of other peoples. And most importantly..." he paused with excitement, "it will have baths with running water."
Za saw the spark in her son's eyes. She did not fully grasp the need for three floors or water flowing inside a room, but she knew that everything Chuta proposed ended up improving their lives. She did not challenge his vision.
"A moment ago, I heard you whisper something... 'Vinland'?" she asked curiously. "What does that word mean?"
"I was thinking of a name for the kingdom we are building," Chuta confessed. "Simte, the High Priest, insists the kingdom should be named 'SuaChie,' using my name. But I do not like it. I do not want everything to revolve around my person."
Za nodded, understanding her son's modesty. Chuta had never enjoyed being the center of the priests' fanatical gaze; he only wished to be the vessel for the knowledge the gods had entrusted to him.
"You could consult the other Muisca leaders," Za suggested. "Perhaps they have an idea that—"
At that moment, little Hyqua, who had been watching Chuta with curious eyes, stretched out his tiny arms and made a sound that caused time to stand still. "Sua..." the baby babbled.
Chuta froze in surprise. It was almost his name. Za, for her part, felt a mix of shock and a slight pang of maternal jealousy. "Well... his first word is for his brother," she said, feigning a pout.
Chuta noticed his mother's feelings and looked firmly at the baby, as if transmitting a telepathic command. "Hyqua, look at Mother," he whispered with soft but clear authority.
The baby, as if truly understanding the hierarchy of that family, looked at Za and let out a much clearer babble: "Za!"
The mother was moved to tears, clutching little Hyqua to her chest. But in Chuta's mind, something had just clicked. The union of those two sounds—his brother's first words—formed a term that resonated with geometric perfection.
"Suaza!"
Sua, the term in his name meaning Sun and also Day. Za, meaning Night. The union of sun and night, of day and darkness. The complete cycle of life.
"That's it!" Chuta exclaimed, startling his mother. "Suaza! If we use that name for the kingdom, we satisfy the priests because it retains the essence of the sun, but we also include the balance of the night. It is generic, it is powerful, and... it is not my full name."
Without waiting for his mother to comprehend his burst of linguistic genius, Chuta began to run toward their current home with the clumsiness of a two-year-old, waving his small hands. "Mother, I must speak with Father and Simte! It is the name!"
Za, watching her little genius stumble and recover, could only shout with concern: "Be careful, Chuta! Do not run so fast!"
A few weeks later.
The air was thick with a sense of adventure and protocol. Chuta was on his way north, a long-planned expedition to visit the primary Tairona settlement and, at last, behold the great sea for the first time in this life.
The journey had been meticulously organized. They departed after a multi-day rain subsided, leaving the paths and the river navigable. The group was large: elite warriors for protection, priests for diplomatic rituals, and merchants interested in routes for salt, gold, and the new goods Chuta was creating. They were going to finalize the last details of the total union that would officially breathe life into the Kingdom of Suaza.
As the raft glided through a calm stretch of the river, a movement on the bank caught the sentries' attention. A warrior bearing the insignia of the royal messengers of Hunza signaled desperately, waving his arms with an exaggeration that denoted dire urgency.
"Head for the shore," Chuta ordered, feeling a sharp pang of unease in his stomach.
Upon disembarking, the warrior collapsed almost at Chuta's feet. He was drenched in sweat, his breathing erratic and his face pale from extreme exhaustion. His gaze, however, was fixed on the two-year-old child leading the expedition.
"What has happened?" Chuta asked directly, bypassing formalities. "Is it an invasion? Have the Panches attacked?"
The messenger took a pained breath before speaking. "I come... on behalf of your father, Hyba. Little Hyqua... he has fallen ill, Son of Heaven. His body burns like coal, he coughs without rest, and his breath sounds like the hiss of a serpent... and he continues to worsen."
Chuta felt the world fade around him. He stood frozen, his hand suspended in the air. He knew exactly what that meant. In this age, a high fever and a persistent cough in an infant of only a few months were often a death sentence. Pneumonia or even a severe flu could be lethal without the antibiotics and intensive care his knowledge of the future had not yet been able to replicate.
"It would take nearly two days to return by land," he calculated mentally with desperation. "And the river is impossible to navigate upstream after the rains... it would take nearly as long."
He looked at his warriors, his child-eyes filled with an anguish no person should ever feel. The centuries of knowledge stored in his head suddenly felt like useless ash. What good was knowing of penicillin if he lacked the laboratories to produce it today? What good was the name of a kingdom if he lost his brother?
"Take me back!" Chuta screamed, his voice breaking. "Now! I need three warriors to carry me by land. We shall run day and night. That is an order!"
The warriors, seeing the desperate tone and vulnerability of their leader, did not hesitate. They hoisted him up and, leaving behind the expedition and the dream of the sea, plunged into the jungle in a race against time that Chuta feared—more than any enemy army—he would lose.
[Simultaneously, in the Eastern City]
In the city, time seemed to have thickened, turning into a viscous substance that made even the act of breathing difficult.
Za, Chuta's mother, leaned against the doorframe of the room, her face etched with tears that would not cease. Her eyes, bloodshot and weary, did not stray from the small bundle lying on the bed: Hyqua, her youngest son, whose life seemed to be slipping away amidst coughing fits and scorching fevers.
Inside the room, the air was heavy with the scent of burning herbs and the incessant murmur of prayers. A group of healers and priests moved around the infant, desperately trying to snatch him from the hands of death.
Za looked at the priests with a mixture of supplication and resentment as they raised their hands toward the ceiling, invoking the Sun, the Moon, and deities whose names no longer brought her comfort. The gods, it seemed, had decided to close their ears to the prayers of their envoy's mother.
The younger healers, those who had been privileged enough to receive direct guidance from Chuta, were mired in a silent dilemma. They administered infusions of fever-reducing plants with trembling hands. They knew the effects of these herbs on adults, but an infant's tiny body was a fragile and unknown territory. Fear gripped them: they feared an incorrect dose would end the life of Chuta's little brother, but they feared even more the judgment and scrutiny of the "Son of Heaven" should he return to find they had not done enough.
Just as Za's legs threatened to give way under the weight of her anguish, a firm, warm hand settled on her shoulder. Turning, she met the gaze of Hyba. Chuta's father—the man who had been the happiest in the world after Hyqua's birth—was shattered inside.
Yet, he forced himself to be the rock upon which his family could lean. Za, who knew every line of his face after years of shared life, could see the pain hidden behind his mask of strength—a pain that burned with the same intensity as her own.
Both watched the collective efforts, but the lack of hope on the physicians' faces was a silent sentence. In that moment of absolute vulnerability, a dry cough behind them made them jump.
It was the priest Sicaza.
Hyba and Za looked at him with instinctive mistrust. Sicaza was not an overt enemy, but he was one of the few who dared to openly challenge Chuta's new doctrine. He did not reject the technology, ideas, or knowledge, but he fiercely opposed the abolition of traditions that, according to him, maintained the balance of the world.
The most important of these: human sacrifice. As the leader of one of the most sacred temples near an ancestral lake, Sicaza believed that blood was the only language the gods truly understood when the situation was extreme.
"Your son may not be saved," Sicaza said without preamble, his voice icy.
Hyba reacted with blind fury, seizing the priest by his robes and lifting him inches off the floor. But he said nothing. The truth of the words struck him harder than any insult. Even with all of Chuta's blessings, both parents knew that little Hyqua was crossing the threshold.
"It is the will of the Gods," they remembered hearing Chuta say in a moment of philosophical reflection.
Sicaza did not flinch at Hyba's gesture.
"There is another chance," he said calmly. "One you discarded from the beginning to follow the teachings of your son."
Za looked at him with rage. "You mean the sacrifices? That serves for nothing... Chuta told us all lives are important. That the gods do not want the blood of the innocent."
Sicaza kept his gaze fixed on Hyba.
"The Son of Heaven has been blessed with knowledge, yes. But the gods did not teach him our most ancient customs, nor the rituals they themselves demanded of our ancestors to commune with the earth. He is a builder of things, but I am a bridge to the sacred."
[Two days later, on the outskirts of the Eastern City]
The ancient adobe temple, a robust construction that predated Chuta's era, was steeped in an oppressive gloom. Sicaza, his hands stained with a dark and thick moisture, was extracting the fourth heart from a criminal brought from the eastern forests.
The silence of the temple was broken only by the rhythmic, guttural chants of Sicaza and his followers. Before the altar, in a small adorned cradle, lay little Hyqua. Unlike the previous days, the infant appeared peaceful.
Hyba and Za watched the scene from a distance, filled with a toxic blend of relief and irrational terror. Hyqua's fever seemed to have abated since the ritual began, but something did not fit. The child no longer cried, yet his movements had become slow, almost imperceptible.
"The gods have taken pity," Za whispered, trying to convince herself that the horror she was witnessing was a fair price for her son's life. "The heat has left his body."
Just as the parents approached to take the child, the echo of frantic footsteps rang out at the temple entrance. A group of warriors burst into the precinct, carrying a two-year-old child whose eyes reflected a terrifying maturity and absolute panic.
Chuta was set on the ground and ran toward his parents. "Hyqua! Where is Hyqua?" he screamed, his voice heavy with a soul-shattering desperation.
"Son, you are here..." Za said, moving to embrace him. "Sicaza has saved him. He has made the sacrifice the gods demanded, and Hyqua suffers no more."
Chuta stopped dead. His gaze shifted toward the altar at the back. He saw the four vessels overflowing with blood, the flat containers holding hearts still warm, and the metallic scent that saturated the air. Moreover, in the background, he could smell a strange aroma in the hall.
Repulsion and terror hit him like a physical blow.
He walked toward the cradle with faltering steps. He stood on his tiptoes, gripping the wooden edge. What he saw broke his heart into a thousand pieces.
Hyqua's skin, once rosy and full of life, was now a pale, deathly white—like the color of clouds before a storm. Final tears remained crystallized on his cheeks.
Chuta, with his knowledge of the future, needed no tests or medical equipment to know the truth. The relief his parents had interpreted as a "fever break" was nothing more than algor mortis—the cooling of a corpse. The baby's silence was not peace; it was the end.
Vague images of the life his little brother might have had flashed through his mind and vanished with the same speed, sharpening the intense pain he felt.
"He is dead," Chuta whispered.
"What are you saying, son?" Hyba asked, approaching. "The ritual... he is at peace..."
"HE IS DEAD!" Chuta roared, turning toward them with a rage that made the veteran warriors recoil. "Hyqua no longer breathes! You have stained this temple with useless blood! The gods accepted nothing; they simply let him slip away while you played at being butchers!"
Za collapsed to the floor, releasing a cry of agony that echoed through the temple vaults. Hyba stood rigid, staring at Chuta's hands, which trembled with rage and grief.
Sicaza, in the background, looked genuinely confused. He believed in his ritual. He had seen how the child stopped thrashing and how the temperature dropped. In his ignorance, he believed the ritual and Hyqua's momentary calm were the positive response of the deities.
Chuta felt something break definitively within him. The obsession with creating an ideal kingdom, where progress was shared and freedom was the norm, died on that altar alongside his brother. If he allowed ignorance and superstition to rule, tragedies like this would repeat eternally.
"Seize Sicaza!" he ordered the warriors. "Take him to the cells! Now!"
In that instant, Chuta made a decision that would change the destiny of the Kingdom of Suaza. He would no longer be a guide standing apart from the political plane. He would not let others take the reins of his family's and his people's fate. If saving lives meant controlling every aspect of the kingdom, every thought of its priests, and every action of its leaders, he would do it.
These thoughts were a far cry from what he had proposed in the first meetings with the leaders he had met, but the pain in his chest was so immense that it could only be contained by a wall of absolute order and control.
He approached the cradle and took Hyqua's small, cold hand in his own. Tears, which until then had been held back by rage, burst forth with uncontrollable force. The "Son of Heaven" wept like the two-year-old child he truly was, while in his mind, he forged an oath: no one else in his lands would ever again die because of the darkness of ignorance.
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and if it was a bit confusing, it's because I combined two chapters into one.
I did this because a large part of the chapter was dedicated to explaining Chuta's change in mindset during his early years. The downside is that I left a lot of the explanation, or what happened during this time, blank. And that's intentional.
However, I'll explain a little.
First, let's remember that during that year, Chuta was approaching everything with a future mindset, or rather, he wanted to mold everything based on his previous life (Future). He began to unite the cultures with 'diplomatic' measures and at the same time gave a lot of control to the leaders.
Second, let's remember that after chapter 10, almost three years literally pass; we go directly from the beginning of year 3 to year 5.
Third, the thoughts and measures mentioned at the end of the chapter were made in the heat of the moment; obviously, it wasn't going to end that way, but it's still to give you a general idea of why Chuta became more of a planner and controller behind the scenes, whereas in his early years, and especially in the last three, he had shown himself to be much more 'human'.
Fourth, as he grew older, met people, and achieved important goals, this overly rational way of being evolved, or rather, changed.
IMPORTANT FACTS
Hyba, Chuta's father, doesn't have much involvement in the story after this event. And although I haven't mentioned it until now, it was noticeable that he had faded from the narrative, and only in recent years has he reappeared, albeit briefly.
During the unnarrated period, no other people besides the Pijao and Tairona joined the kingdom. This is also due to this painful event. Chuta meets his first two fiancées in Year 5. He meets Moctezuma in Year 8, Columbus in Year 10, and his mother has another child in Year 12.
Chapter 11 (time jump to Year 5)
In Chapter 13, I mention 'little brothers,' but that was a mistake on my part. At that point, two years had already passed, and Chuta's parents had no more children.
Also, it's important to note that Za had created Za's Home (inns), but he only became more involved in this unnarrated period as a way to forget and overcome his pain.
CLARIFICATION.
I provided this information so you can see that everything was planned from the beginning, and many things connect. Furthermore, I didn't even mention the references made in the 'Tales of Progress' section.
EXTRA INFORMATION
Chuta arrives at this memory with the cry of the baby kidnapped by the Mexica warrior in the previous chapters.
The smell Chuta notices is coca; it was used in rituals as a brew, medicinal paste, or incense.
What happened to Hyqua was a very severe flu following the rains. The healers had managed to control his ailments, but his immune system couldn't overcome the illness. As for what happened during the sacrifice, well, the baby was exposed to the smell of incense and some brews, which 'numbed' his body, but didn't heal him.
As for why the parents acted that way... Well, many things happened in those two days. They began to lose hope, and these incenses and brews also played a part (their dose was higher, similar to what traditional priests drank).
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Read my other novels.
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 91)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 34) (INTERMITTENT)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 14) (INTERMITTENT)
You can find them on my profile.]