Path of Possession

by Harmon Cooper

  “I’m ready,” she said with a short breath out, ignoring Roger. “Let’s do this.”

  The lioness pivoted from foot to foot, her tail bouncing in the air for a moment. She shook her hands out and sucked in another deep breath. As she did so I started to slowly wave the fan, the wind meeting her back.

  She started to run and then skidded to a halt right before she reached the ledge.

  “Shit, Saruul!” I said, moving my hand a different direction just in time to blow a gust of wind to my right, which sent Roger spinning.

  “Dammit!” he cried as he spiraled away.

  “Sorry, my nerves got me. Sorry, Roger! I will do it this time. Don’t hold back,” Saruul said.

  She got into position again, pivoting from foot to foot as she looked across the deep gorge.

  The lioness took off running.

  As she pressed off the balls of her feet, I used all my strength to send the fan in an upward arc, the wind forcing her up into the air. I approached the edge, swinging as hard as I possibly could, the lioness morphing midair.

  She eventually made it to the other mountain pass, where she quickly pulled herself up using her claws.

  “You almost lost her there,” Roger said as he dropped into my shoulder.

  “If she hadn’t morphed…” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. She’s there now, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Are you ready to do this?” Roger asked as he lifted off my shoulder.

  “Let me grab our backpack first.”

  I positioned the bag on my shoulders and made sure everything was hooked up and ready to go, including my belt and my Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom.

  The last thing I wanted to do was lose my legendary weapon to the gorge below.

  I stooped forward just a little and started moving the fan in the air as if it were a pendulum, my feet lifting off the ground.

  I slowed my movement, dropping back down.

  “Come on, Nick, flying is not that hard.” Roger lifted off my shoulder, now hovering in the air before me. “See?”

  “You’re right.” I took off running and jumped once I met the ledge, waving the fan below me.

  I dropped, but as I did an enormous gust of wind shot me up into the air, my heart practically in my throat by this point.

  I aimed the fan in a direction that would propel me forward, beating it as hard in the air as fast as I could.

  I tried not to look down; I tried to focus only on making it to the other side.

  I soon became aware of the fact that I was only going up, that I wasn’t going forward any.

  “Come on, Nick!” Roger screeched.

  I attempted to change the trajectory of my strokes, but doing so only tilted me in a different direction.

  I was so charged by this point that I barely noticed the time switch appear in front of me, triggering itself.

  Time stopped and I was suddenly floating.

  Now able to catch my breath, I leveled my body out so it was more horizontal than vertical.

  Now in a better position, I began waving the fan beneath me.

  As time sped up I catapulted forward, nearly colliding with the other mountain.

  I hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of me, my heart still running in my chest.

  I glanced over to Lhandon, who was holding his leg, the monk suffering quietly.

  “We’re using the bridge on the way back,” he said with a finality I had rarely heard from the man. “Please, as soon as you can, heal me.”

  Chapter Twenty: Deathstone

  As Saruul and Lhandon looked over the treasure map, I joined Roger, who was perched on a mangled bush at the ledge of the mountain pass.

  “It feels great to fly, doesn’t it?” he asked as he finished picking at his wing. “The wind through your hair, your heart lifted, the ground so far below…”

  “I don’t know if I would describe the feeling as great.”

  “Oh, come on, it wasn’t so bad, Nick. Everyone made it across, and only the monk received a broken bone from doing so. And Saruul only just barely made it up the ledge once. And let’s be honest, you only almost died once.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I looked down at the wide crevice between the two mountains, trying to gauge how far down it went.

  I had never seen anything like it before.

  It was clear that at some point in its history, the mountain had separated. Since I was living in a world with magical properties and loads of cantankerous demons, I wondered if that separation was due to plate tectonics, or some infamous battle that had been lost to the ages.

  There really was no telling.

  I approached the edge and crouched. From there I got onto my belly so I could look down and try to see what was at the bottom of the gorge.

  “You could have just asked me,” Roger said as he came to understand what I was trying to do. “There’s water down there.”

  “Apparently,” I said as I pushed myself up, rejoining Lhandon and Saruul. “How much further do you think we have to go?”

  “It’s still going to be a walk,” Saruul said as she handed the map back to me. “And we’re going to have to pass by the bridge and the demon skull.”

  “Do you think it will attack us?”

  “It seems to only protect the bridge,” Lhandon said, “so no, I don’t think it will do anything to us. But we will need to come up with a way to actually use the bridge on our way back.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to fly again?” Roger asked as he landed on my shoulder.

  Saruul shot Roger a dirty look. “You already know the answer to that question.”

  “No boats, no flying, soon enough…”

  The lioness scowled at the bird while Lhandon put on his backpack.

  Luckily for him, Roger was more or less quiet for the next leg of our journey, even as we passed the bridge that the demon skull had decided to call home.

  As we had witnessed before, there was no evidence that the skull was even there at the moment. But I knew if I stepped out onto the first rung, it would appear and chase after me.

  “Don’t worry about the bridge,” Lhandon said in a reassuring voice. “I have a couple ideas for how we can get across. One is bound to work.”

  The terrain became more difficult from this point forward, our path less discernible. We began climbing rocks, walking when we could, keeping as low to the ground as possible.

  Lhandon slipped once, but he managed to catch himself, all of us continuing forward in what we were somewhat certain was the right direction.

  After about an hour of that, we took a breather, late afternoon approaching, the sun hidden by a black rain cloud. Lhandon took some dried fruits out of his pack and handed them out to us. Roger picked it out of Lhandon’s fingers, and flew over to a rock, where he pecked it apart into smaller pieces.

  “We’re going to have to find shelter,” Saruul said, her nostrils flaring open, concern flitting across her face. “It will rain tonight, and if it gets cold enough…”

  “I hate the snow,” Roger lamented as he continued to work on his dried fruit. “And I have no idea where my fur vest is. Where did we leave that? It’s been a while since I wore clothing.”

  “It might have gotten lost in Sarpang,” I told him.

  “It won’t be pretty if we have to sleep out here on the mountain pass,” Saruul said.

  “I hope that isn’t the case,” Lhandon told Saruul. “Perhaps the location of the treasure will have a small cave or covered nook waiting for us. I wish we knew more about the location, but the map doesn’t specify anything.”

  “And Nyima wouldn’t have known anyway,” I added.

  We pressed onward, at some points crawling up the rocky terrain. We reached a point in the mountain pass where it was relatively smooth, all of us glad to exert less energy for the time being.

  The temperature started to drop. The dark clouds above us expanded, growing thicker as the sun began to set.

&nb
sp; But then the weather changed. There were a good thirty minutes of our walk in which it was absolutely gorgeous, the sun a glowing marigold orb on the horizon wrapped in a ring of deep purple from the rainy black clouds that continued to form.

  It never fully started to rain, but there were a few drops, and as we continued onward, Lhandon noticed a string of old prayer flags interspersed between some of the rocks.

  “I believe we are close,” he said, catching his breath.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Roger lifted off my shoulder, flying forward while the three of us took a quick rest.

  “I really hope we can find shelter,” Saruul said yet again, the lioness clearly afraid of the cold.

  “We will,” Lhandon assured her. “There’s always shelter somewhere on a mountain, and if someone hid a relic all the way up here, they must have rested somewhere.”

  “Remember, we don’t know if it’s a relic yet,” I said. “For all we know—”

  “—Whatever it is, I hope it is worth our journey.” Saruul scooped up some snow with her hand and ate it. “It’s very fresh up here,” she added.

  “Is it?” Lhandon tasted some of the snow himself. “Fresh and refreshing! I do wish Tashi were here to help us boil it, but I suppose this will do. Tashi was always great to have around.”

  I found some snow that had been piled up on a rock, and after checking to make sure an animal hadn’t pissed on it, I scooped some into my mouth, the consistency reminding me of a snowcone.

  “I am sure we will reunite with him once we make it back to Lhasa,” I said. “He’s probably waiting for us in Dornod.”

  “It will be interesting to return home,” Saruul said.

  “Yes, it really will,” the monk replied as he shoveled more snow into his mouth.

  Roger returned, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, spiraling over our heads. “Just about ten more minutes. Maybe a little bit more. There’s a ledge up there with a statue on it, and an amulet around the statue’s neck.”

  “What’s he saying?” Lhandon asked.

  I translated quickly and the monk turned to Roger. “Was there shelter? Was there any writing etched into the stone there? Did you see anything like that?”

  “Shelter? Yes. Writing? I didn’t see, but I didn’t look all that hard.”

  “He says there is a shelter, and he didn’t see any writing but he didn’t look for any either.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Saruul said, the lioness suddenly rejuvenated. She morphed into her animal form, sprinting up the rocks.

  “I’m with her,” Roger said as he flapped his wings, heading in her direction.

  Lhandon and I exchanged glances, both of us moving quickly as we scaled the rocky incline.

  And just as Roger had said, it took us about ten minutes to reach the ledge in question, where we found a partially-crumbled stone statue of a woman, her head shaved, four wings jutting out of her back, and an amulet with a dark stone around her neck.

  Saruul morphed back to her human form, a smile on her face. “There’s definitely a good spot for us to stay tonight,” she said, nodding in a direction over her shoulder. I noticed that there was a fairly large hole in the rock, the entrance partially covered by a boulder that looked like it would provide shelter from the wind.

  “And you already checked it?” I asked as Lhandon approached the statue.

  “I did; there’s only one entrance, and nothing has lived in the cave for ages.”

  Lhandon glanced at the amulet that the statue was wearing. He bent forward to wipe the snow off the ground, hoping to find some type of inscription.

  “The treasure is clearly the amulet,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

  “But before we touch it, we need to know what it is and what it does,” Lhandon added. “After all, it could be cursed. It could also be a trap.”

  I joined Lhandon and started wiping away some of the snow on the ground, using a rock to break away a bit of ice as well.

  I looked up at the statue, noticing that there was an indention in the woman’s palm.

  “You think it has something to do with that?” I asked Lhandon, who looked up as well.

  “It looks like it’s about the size of a prayer bead,” he mumbled to himself. The monk always carried a string of prayer beads, and as he pulled out the front of his robe, he looked at the beads, judging their size against the indentation in the woman’s palm.

  “Maybe just a bit bigger,” I said.

  Lhandon brought out the small satchel of black pearls that he had purchased. He placed one of the pearls in the statue’s palm. An energy started to move up the woman’s arm, curving down to her chest, where a script etched itself into the stone.

  “Oh my…” Lhandon said as he took a step away from the statue, reading the script.

  Saruul joined him, Roger landing on her shoulder.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The stone in the amulet is…” Lhandon shook his head. “I was always under the impression that these didn’t actually exist, that they were just legend.”

  “Same here,” Saruul said.

  “I hadn’t even heard the legends,” Roger chimed in.

  “And for it to be on such an accessible mountain pass…” Lhandon ran his hand over his head. “That’s probably why the demon skull was there, to guard this amulet. It makes sense. It makes total sense!”

  “What kind of stone is it?” I asked, not yet sharing their surprise considering I couldn’t read the text.

  “It’s a deathstone, Nick,” Lhandon said. “Please, take it. If anyone should have it, it’s you.”

  I ran my hand over the black stone that reminded me of onyx. The Deathstone Amulet, as Lhandon had christened it, featured a thin, yet sturdy, silver-threaded chain attached to its clasp. It was clear in the way that the stone was affixed to the necklace that it couldn’t be torn off.

  We were in the small cave near the statue now, a snowstorm roaring outside.

  Even though the branches and twigs we’d scavenged had been a little wet, my Flaming Thunderbolt was still able to light them; a gap in the rocky cave wall provided ventilation for the smoke.

  Since the flame on my sword was eternal, I kept it in the fire pit, adding to the warmth. It was a bit warmer than I would have liked, but after stepping outside to relieve myself, I was glad to be back in a space that was cozy.

  “How do we know it actually works?” Saruul asked Lhandon as we finished some of our dried fruit and fish, winding down for the evening.

  “I have no reason not to believe what was written on the statue,” he said.

  “But someone could have already taken it, and replaced it with a replica.”

  “We both looked over the amulet,” he reminded her. “Did it seem like a replica to you?”

  “I didn’t even know that they existed.”

  “I mean, there’s one way to find out…”

  Saruul snarled at Roger. “We aren’t killing Nick just to bring him back.”

  “I’m just saying, that’s how we could theoretically test it.”

  “Besides, I can only use it once,” I reminded the bird, who was resting on his back, his head propped up by a rock, his wings on his belly.

  “That’s right,” Lhandon said. “You can die once, and when you go to the Underworld, you will still be wearing the amulet. When you break the stone there, you will come back to life here.”

  “I don’t understand why it only goes to the Underworld,” I told him. “You never explained that part.”

  “Because a stone like this won’t get you into the Overworld, even if it is where you should theoretically be reborn,” he said, as if I understood the lore of the land. “I suppose I should elaborate: the deathstone was designed, at least the legend goes, by a demon from the Underworld who had fallen in love with a mortal woman, a woman who just so happened to be the epitome of piety.”

  “My type of woman!” Rog
er said with a squawk.

  “She loved him too, and as you can imagine, she didn’t know his true identity. Knowing that if she died she would go to the Overworld and he would lose her forever, the demon gave her a ring with a deathstone set in it, followed by a glass of wine that had been spiked with poison. She died and was reborn in the Underworld, where he quickly took the ring from her.”

  “So he held her hostage in hell?” I asked.

  “That is precisely what he did. He also made deathstones for other demons who were planning to come to this world, which is how the one around your neck came to be.”

  “And whatever happened to the woman?” Roger asked.

  “Is he asking about the woman’s fate?”

  Saruul nodded. “Yes, he’s actually listening for once.”

  “I have heard two versions of the legend,” the monk said. “In one, the woman poisons her demon host and destroys the stone, which allows her to return here and die a normal death, whatever that may be. In the second version, she grows to love the Underworld, and eventually forgives the demon who had trapped her there.”

  “That’s one fucked up ending,” Roger said, “but it seems more likely to me. If this demon was rich down there, and he had a castle or something, it may have been a better life than she had here. And who knows what sort of social structure they have in the Overworld. He could have had a plantation like Madame Mabel with tons of slaves. Maybe this lady wasn’t so pious after all.”

  “I don’t believe that’s the point of the story,” Saruul told him.

  “Well, there are two interpretations,” he said, throwing his wings out as if to shrug.

  “We have spoken on why you came to our world in the first place, and you have also spoken to your dakini about it,” Lhandon said to me. “From what you’ve told us, you have been brought here by a force from the Overworld, and something from the Underworld is actively trying to stop you. I’m just thinking out loud here, but maybe this amulet will allow you to see to your enemies in the Underworld and find out more on how you could return to your world, if that is your wish.”

  “Time will tell,” I said, not looking at Saruul, even though I could sense she was staring at me. Rather than make eye contact with her, I looked at the amulet in my robes.