Path of Possession

by Harmon Cooper

  “She said it was the largest one,” I told him, pointing to a building the size of a single-story home with carved pillars outside covered in flowering vines.

  “Easy enough,” he said as we came to a statue at the entrance of the crypt. The statue, which featured a woman covered in flowers and vines, was at least nine feet tall, the pedestal it stood on doubling as an entrance.

  “Let’s tidy it up and see if we can find this box she was talking about,” Saruul said as she reached for the door.

  I grabbed her wrist, startling the beautiful lioness.

  “We have to be careful of traps, especially after what we encountered in the Great Plateau,” I told her.

  “That was all Lhandon’s fault,” Roger said. “If it had been up to me, we would have never entered that crazy dead monk’s burial space.”

  “What?” Saruul asked. “You never told me about this.”

  “Right before we arrived in Sarpang, we came across a waterfall that had a fake burial site inside it. What was that monk’s name?”

  “Drukpa Kunley,” Roger said. “See? I listen.”

  “Anyway, it wasn’t actually his burial site; it was a fake one set up to be a trap.”

  “Why would a monk do that?”

  “He was a nalropa,” I said, almost surprised I’d gotten the term right. “A divine madman. According to Lhandon, he had some pretty powerful relics, and to hide his real burial site, he placed a bunch of decoys across Lhasa. Anyway, I’m just saying to be careful.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Saruul said as she pulled the stone door open. It slid open relatively easily, revealing a stairwell leading down.

  “Creepy…”

  “We’ll make this quick,” I told Roger.

  As I began my descent, I wished that I had the rune that Lhandon often used to illuminate dark places. Then I remembered I had a fire sword, which I brandished, Roger flying back for a moment when I startled him.

  “Makes sense,” he said again as he landed on my shoulder, “but warn me next time.”

  There were spiderwebs in all the corners of the stairwell, which I immediately started clearing out with my sword. I reached the bottom and looked up to see that Saruul was gone.

  “Hey,” I started to call up to her.

  “I’m here,” the lioness said as she reappeared with an arm full of palm fronds. She held them by their ends, giving her something to sweep away cobwebs and dust with. “How is it down there?”

  “Cold.” I turned back to the crypt to see four coffins facing each other.

  I would have thought nothing of it had I not seen that one of the coffins was opened. It dawned on me at that moment that getting down here was far too easy, that it felt like there should have been some type of obstacle or something to prevent thieves from robbing the grave.

  “Great,” Saruul said as she reached the bottom, clearing away more cobwebs. “There’s a missing corpse.”

  “No, there isn’t!” Roger said with a shriek.

  A skeletal guard carrying a shield and a scimitar stepped into the light provided by my sword.

  “We were sent by Nyima,” I said, trying to reason with the skeleton.

  He tilted his head at me, and as he did, dust fell from the inside of his skull down through his ribcage.

  “We’re friends,” I told him as I brought my hand to my side, casting Ma-Gyal, the rune that gave me the ability to absorb three strikes. The rune looked almost like the pi sign sitting over the number two.

  “The door isn’t shutting or anything,” Roger said.

  “We’re not running,” I told him.

  “I mean, sure, let’s not run, but…”

  The skeleton charged me; I was barely able to get my sword up in time. He pressed his weight forward, both of us vying to overtake the other before the skeleton pulled away, coming in for another strike.

  Our weapons clinked together and I stumbled to the side. Damn, he had a lot of weight to his strikes considering he was nothing but bones. He managed to catch me with his next two attacks, my ability allowing me to absorb it completely.

  I saw Saruul moving out of the corner of my eye; morphing as she did so.

  I struck the skeleton with my Flaming Thunderbolt, the man-of-bones blocking my attack with his shield, the sound amplified in the crypt. Before he could get another hit in, I drove my fist into his shield, cracking the metal and kicking up dust.

  Two more strikes like that would likely break it into several pieces.

  This became my goal as I parried his next strike. I wasn’t able to avoid the skeleton’s shield connecting with my chin, sending me up and back. Saruul jumped out of the shadows and tackled him, running away again before he could swipe at her.

  I was just getting to my feet when the skeleton ran at me, only to be distracted by Roger, who flew in his face and batted his wings at the skeleton.

  “I’m taking a rib, Nick!”

  “Do it!” I caught the skeleton’s next attack with my weapon, my flames accenting the angry shadows on his face. I kicked him away. Roger flew right at the skeleton, slamming into his chest and zipping to the left, a bone in his beak.

  Saruul came out of the darkness and tackled the skeleton to the ground, focusing on his weapon this time, wagging her head as she got it out of his grip. He struck her with the shield, the lioness whimpering as she limped away.

  “Fucker,” I said, gritting my teeth as I took off toward the skeleton.

  I stopped myself just in time, remembering to focus, noticing the mental switch that allowed me to slow down time forming in front of me.

  I triggered it, oxygen swelling into my lungs.

  I saw Roger diving toward the skeleton, Saruul lurking in the shadows, a chain attached to the skeleton’s ankle.

  A chain?

  Following the chain, I noticed it was anchored to the inside of the open coffin.

  Time sped back up, a headache coming on just as Roger smashed into the weaponless skeleton again, grabbing another rib.

  I advanced toward the skeleton, but rather than strike him with my sword or my fist, I pivoted toward the chain. I brought my fist down onto the chain, and as I did so the links broke, the skeleton stumbling forward.

  He turned to me.

  I picked up the link chained to the coffin, showing him that he was free.

  “What are you doing, Nick?” Roger asked, now hovering over my shoulder.

  “I think he was imprisoned here,” I told him out of the corner of my mouth. “Maybe he just needed to be freed…”

  The skeleton looked from the chain to the crypt’s exit. He then glanced at his sword, which gleamed in the light caused by my Flaming Thunderbolt. With a shrug, the skeleton approached his blade and picked it up.

  He turned to the exit, slowly taking the stairs to the top.

  Chapter Six: Island Hospitality

  “I can confirm he’s gone,” Roger said once he returned down to the crypt. He landed on the edge of one of the stone coffins, hopping around as he spoke. “I don’t know where he’s headed exactly, but it appears as if he’ll be moving through the jungle rather than going to the city. Because that would be strange. Still missing a few ribs, though, courtesy of Yours Truly. You know, they say if a human is missing a few ribs that he should be able to…”

  “That’s enough, Roger,” I said as I returned to the task of clearing away cobwebs.

  “What were we supposed to find here anyway? Don’t tell me it was a skeleton, because if that’s the case, he’s long gone by this point.”

  “A box,” Saruul reminded Roger.

  “I can see four big boxes at the moment...”

  “Those are coffins,” she said as she hopped up to a corner, swatting away cobwebs. A spider fell and Roger attacked it, killing the spider with a single snap of his beak. “Thanks.”

  “I’d eat this if we hadn’t had such a wonderful breakfast back at the monastery,” Roger said as he tossed the spider aside. “I’ll admit, the child m
onk is a fucking creepster, but he knows how to entertain guests.”

  “If I were a box, where would I be?” I asked aloud.

  “You’d be in the skeleton’s coffin,” Roger said almost as an afterthought.

  Saruul and I looked at each other.

  We moved to the coffin at the same time, where I used the light coming off my Flaming Thunderbolt to make it easier to see what was inside. Saruul hesitated for a moment and then stuck her hand in, coming back out with a small wooden box sealed with a lock.

  “Right again!” Roger said, doing a little flip.

  “But before we leave, let’s clear out the spiderwebs at least,” I told them, desiring to honor Nyima’s request.

  So that’s what we did.

  It took us another thirty minutes or so to clear them all out, but by the time we left, the crypt was less spooky and much cleaner than it had been before.

  Once we were out of the crypt, we used Roger’s eye-in-the-sky ability to figure out the best way to the coastline. Saruul and I stood at the front of the cemetery while he flew around, and as we waited, I rolled up the sleeves of my robes to cool off some.

  “You need new robes, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I’ll ask if they have a spare set at the monastery. These ones aren’t designed for this climate.”

  Saruul pressed up next to me, my hand naturally coming around her waist.

  “I wish we could get some alone time,” she said as Roger began to lower to us.

  “Me, too.”

  “Maybe an hour’s walk this way,” Roger said, doing a curl in the air toward the southwest. “I’m not great at judging distances on foot, but that would be my guess.”

  We set off, Roger circling above us as Saruul and I spoke.

  “Do you miss Dornod?”

  “I miss the temperature,” she told me, “but this is interesting. I’m almost glad you got captured.”

  I groaned. “Don’t say that…”

  “You know what I mean. It sort of forced me on this journey, and so far, it has been a pretty outragious experience. The snow lion people rarely come down to sea level, and it really is giving me a perspective of just how different this world is.”

  “It definitely is different,” I said as we came to a roadside stand. A woman stood behind a wooden table selling trinkets and assorted beverages, her hair feathered just like all the women in Anand.

  “Care for something to drink?” she called out to us as she fanned herself with a couple fronds that had been stitched together.

  “We’re fine,” Saruul told her.

  The woman lowered her head as if she had been shamed.

  We moved on, down a winding bend with shrub-sized palms covered in pink tulips with bright orange pistils. The smell hit me in the face almost immediately; it was pungent and sour, my eyes watering as we passed.

  “That’s some flower,” I said.

  “Why do you think I’m staying up here,” Roger called down to us.

  After another fifteen minutes of walking, we came to trail that cut through a small patch of jungle. As we took the trail, I started to notice fresh bodies tied to the trees, seven in total, all of them still alive and all of them with their heads in cages pinned to the trees.

  “Please,” one of them called out to me. The boy couldn’t have been older than fifteen, his nude body covered in lacerations, the ropes tied so tightly around his waist and shoulders that they had cut into his skin.

  Roger landed on one of the cages, a woman whimpering as he did so.

  “I should do something,” I started to say, ready to trace my Healing Hand power.

  I felt Saruul grab my arm. “Remember what happened last time.”

  I made my way to the front of the group, where everyone could see me. There were four males and three females of various ages, from young to old.

  I cleared my throat and they all looked to me: “I can heal all of you and free your binds. If this is something you would like, please let me know by nodding your heads.”

  I waited, and eventually the boy at the back nodded his head. He was then scolded by one of the older men to his right.

  “It’s not your choice,” I told the man as I approached the boy, whose body was covered in bleeding lesions.

  “No,” the boy said, sucking back tears, snot dripping from his nose. “Don’t do it. I changed my mind.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t have to listen to these people.”

  “Remember your family,” the older man to his right hissed.

  “No,” the boy said. “This is… this is what I’d prefer.”

  I hesitated for a moment, my finger twitching to cast the rune that allowed me to heal.

  Roger landed on my shoulder. “I know it’s fucked as fucked can be, Nick, but this is their culture. Remember what the lady said yesterday. She would be killed anyway.”

  “Wouldn’t it be worth risking that than dying like this?”

  “I don’t disagree there,” the bird told me. “But culture makes people do really stupid stuff. I know this isn’t a time to mention the white birds of Dornod, but they’re a great example of culture making people do really stupid stuff, including people like me.” He shuddered. “I’m not a person, I get that. But my point remains.”

  “Come on, Nick,” Saruul said, taking my hand.

  I was silent as we continued onward, a sinking feeling in my gut.

  Roger tried to cheer me up with a story about a snapping turtle who bit someone in the ass, but it didn’t do the trick. We eventually found the same set of sandstone stairs we’d ascended the previous day, as we neared the bottom Nyima’s form began to take shape in the swirling sand.

  “You didn’t say anything about a skeleton guarding the crypt,” Roger told her, shaking his wing at the sand spirit as if it were a fist.

  “A skeleton?”

  “Yes, chained to one of the coffins,” I said.

  “And there were how many coffins?” Nyima asked, her brow furrowing, sending sand into the wind.

  “Four,” Saruul said.

  “Then…” she sighed. “I suppose my parents had our butler, Tenzo, buried with them to protect the crypt.”

  “Buried alive?” I asked.

  “That would appear to be the case,” she said. “I’m sorry if it sounds gruesome, but this is something that is done by wealthier families on the island.”

  I bit my lip. The culture here was really starting to get under my skin. “Okay, well we retrieved your box.”

  Saruul stepped forward with the box in her hand, a tendril of sand lifting off Nyima’s form. She took the box from her, and turned a spiral of sand into the lock, which forced the box open.

  “Just what I was looking for,” she said as the box filtered into her form.

  “Why this box exactly?” Roger asked.

  “It was a family heirloom, made from the wood of a tree no longer on the island. My grandfather made it, back when he first started the business that would create my family’s wealth. I always cherished it as a girl.”

  “And what was originally inside?” he asked.

  “That doesn’t matter now, it’s gone. What’s beautiful is the box.”

  Roger started to grumble as a calm smile took shape on Nyima’s face. “There are two things I’d like to give to you. The first is the Cooling Fan of Broken Whispers, as promised.”

  The fan began to take shape in one of her tendrils, and as she shifted it over to us, Saruul indicated that I should take it because of the pockets in my robes.

  “Good call,” I told her as Nyima set the fan in my hands.

  It was a gorgeous piece, brimming with energy. It was clear how it worked, but I figured I’d test it anyway. I opened the hand fan and turned in the opposite direction, giving it a single wave. A gust of wind appeared out of nowhere, startling Roger.

  “That thing is strong!”

  “And there’s one more thing,” Nyima told me as a new object began to spiral
up her arm and into her hand. It was a folded piece of parchment, blackened around the edges. “I don’t know if relic hunting is something you’d like to do in the Island Kingdom, but this map will take you to an item that may be to your benefit. I found it in one of the pockets of a treasure hunter that tried to take the Cooling Fan. It may be worth checking out.”

  I opened the piece of parchment and nodded as I looked at the map, Saruul joining me. “Good to know, and thank you,” I told the sand spirit.

  “It has been my pleasure. Good luck with the rest of your journey, and if you ever come across the skeleton you freed, please tell him that I am at Sandstone Beach awaiting his service.”

  “I wish you would blow them all away with your new fan,” Roger said as we came back to the monastery. The bird was referring to all the monks in the courtyard in their saffron robes, all of them on the ground, prostrating toward Migmar the Golden Jewel.

  The boy was seated with a variety of items around him, from scepters to weapons, rags to books resting on swaths of orange velvet, all items that he was drawing energy from.

  The young monk stood with his head thrown back, his mouth wide open, his hands shaking at his sides. He laughed maniacally, gasped for air and laughed again, completely oblivious to the fact that we had just come into the courtyard.

  “Don’t you just love a cult?” Roger asked.

  “As long as he leaves my fan and my sword alone, I don’t care what he does,” I said under my breath as Migmar’s older attendant swiftly made his way over to us. He bowed, Saruul doing the same.

  “Did you find the crypt?” he asked, an excited look on his face, his breaths short as if he had been walking up a steep incline.

  “We sure did,” I told him, wiping more sweat from my brow.

  “We need to get you into new robes,” he said. “The days will be much more comfortable, less warm.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother,” I told him.

  “Nonsense. Please, follow me,” he said, leading me toward the main prayer room.

  Once we reached the entrance, he told Saruul and Roger to meet us in the dining area, that there would be refreshments available for them there.

  He guided me to the monks’ quarters, and from there into a room that had freshly folded laundry in it, a crisp, floral scent in the air.