Divine Madness

by Harmon Cooper

  He had already betrayed me by that point.

  Roger interrupted my train of thought when he landed on my shoulder, tucking his feathers into his sides, the collar of his fur vest fluffed up and cozy around his neck. Saruul was next to me, and Lhandon was behind us, moving a bit more slowly than he normally did.

  I turned back to see the monk, my eyes jumping from him to Tashi, who stood at the top of the steps waving goodbye to us.

  The fire spirit was planning to do some heavy meditation tonight and Jigme had invited him to stay at the monastery to do so. I got this itching feeling Tashi was going to be the first to finish the one thousand prostrations necessary to move past the novice level.

  “I’m a little confused,” Roger told Saruul.

  “What about?”

  “How long is the Winter Moon festival? And what part are we going to tonight? If someone clarified that earlier, I wasn’t listening.”

  “The Winter Moon festival lasts five days. This is the official start of the festival, and there will be more events as the week progresses.”

  It was clear she was excited; I imagined Saruul coming to this kickoff event every year since she was a child. It reminded me of how I felt at Christmas, knowing that presents were coming, that I was going into the month happy and would be leaving it even happier.

  “The opening night is usually filled with games, food, and dancing,” she explained. “It’s quite the treat. And it’s my favorite night too, because people aren’t too drunk yet. You’ll see what I mean toward the end of the festival. By that point, people have been drunk for so long that things sort of blur together for a lot of the locals,” she said as we came to the gates of the temple.

  “Great, drunk lions to look forward to. Do you think any of the birds will be there?” he asked her.

  “They usually stay away,” she said, a light bounce in her step.

  “Maybe I’ll pay them a visit afterward…”

  “I thought you didn’t want to take part in their hot spring orgies,” I reminded him.

  “During the day, but at night…” Roger clucked. “We’ll see.”

  The streets of Dornod were pretty quiet, most of the people already at the opening ceremony or on their way, their children racing behind them.

  I was getting more used to seeing snow lions moving through the streets, but every now and then one would come too close to me, throwing me off guard.

  I took this as a reminder to be mindful, more aware of my surroundings.

  It had already happened once since leaving the temple, and I could sense my reaction was slightly faster than it had been just three days ago. It was still too early to tell if my training was starting to work, but I definitely noticed it, how quickly I pivoted to the other foot, a young boy charging past me, his tail whipping behind him.

  While most of the village was quiet, the pub was still going strong, people out front drinking, a strange, whiny music coming from one of the open windows.

  “That’s something we haven’t done yet,” I said, half-joking.

  “Is that something you really want to do?” Saruul asked me.

  Roger cackled. “I guess it would be easier to get your ass kicked in there than it would be to meet the mysterious man in the middle of the night.”

  “Funny,” I told the bird as Lhandon caught up to us.

  “I haven’t been out of the temple since we got here,” the portly monk said, taking an excited look around. “I’ve just been so focused! You forget sometimes there is a whole world happening out here. Anyway, we can discuss that part later. No more philosophy for the night. That said, I’ve come to a few decisions that I think you’ll be happy to hear.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I must humbly admit that it is going to take me a lot longer than I thought it would to restructure the Path of the Divine, so we’ll be leaving sooner than I thought. What I am doing here is a very serious task, not something that should be done in two weeks’ time. I was…” Lhandon and looked to the ground, bowing his head. “Foolish to think that I would just come up here and take care of this so quickly. It was cocky of me.”

  “You never said you were going completely take care of it,” I told him, “I figured there would be parts you would have to add later.”

  “It was impulsive.”

  “Relax, Lhandon, and don’t beat yourself up. To be honest, I thought you were just going to work on the main structure.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. The main structures are what are important to me right now. I have an outline for it, and then I will focus on the first two stages and make sure that those are airtight. These are what we will test out as we go to the Island Kingdom. Nick, I’m afraid that there were times where I could have been more helpful in the past, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t better on my feet.”

  “What are you referring to?”

  “One thing that comes to mind is the fight against Madame Mabel. I could have used one of the prayer beads that Baatar gave me, it could have helped, but I was totally engaged at the time so it didn’t cross my mind. Things like that. I have been thinking a lot about that lately, about past transgressions.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, “and there’s no need to apologize. That was a crazy fight. We did what we could do, and I’m just glad we all got out alive.”

  “Aside from me,” Roger said, “but like a zombie…”

  Lhandon nodded. “There was another occurrence that I could have helped more, in the fight that you had against the cat men who were transporting those bodies.”

  “It’s fine, Lhandon, really. We won in the end.”

  He was quiet for a moment as we took a shortcut through a residential area, most of the lights in the homes off. “That occurrence of necromancy is something we will have to look into at some point, especially if we leave the Kingdom of Lhasa. The war between what’s left of Mabel’s forces and Madame Blanche will surely continue, and the dead bodies will stack up. Once we return, we may find ourselves in the middle of a zombie war.”

  “Fuck that,” Roger said.

  “If that is the case, we will address it then,” I assured Lhandon as we came to the entrance of the festival, sounds and lights coming to us instantly.

  I heard a thunk and turned right to see that there was a knife-throwing contest happening, a couple men and women tossing huge daggers into hunks of wood.

  There was also a contest in which lion men morphed back and forth between human and animal as they moved along an obstacle course. I stopped and watched this for a moment, amazed at how quickly they moved.

  “Come on, this isn’t even the most interesting part,” Saruul said as a man ran toward a tube made of wood, jumped in the air and morphed, and scurried through the tube. He returned to his human form as he exited. The lion man then leaped over a rock, morphed back into a lion to crawl through a narrow passage, rolled out and returned to human form, a crowd of onlookers roaring in approval.

  “This looks pretty interesting to me,” I started to say as a few children walked past, eating meat on a stick and laughing. They were followed by teenage girls, two of whom stared at Lhandon and me, exchanged glances, and ran away.

  “Let me guess, someone like me hasn’t been to a festival like this in a long time, right?”

  “You really are figuring things out around here, aren’t you?” Saruul asked as we weaved our way through a crowd, past a man selling lion puppets and another selling white bird puppets with red beaks.

  I looked to the bird puppets and shook my head. “Don’t get any funny ideas,” I told Roger, who was still perched on my shoulder.

  He laughed. “You know me too well.”

  “What an appealing display of life and happiness,” Lhandon said, taking a deep breath in. “Everyone here is so ecstatic, so happy to be out in public for this festival. I miss things like this.”

  “Hey!” a drunk lion shouted, pointing at Lhandon. “Looks like we have dinner here!”


  The lion man raised his bone mug of chung into the air, some of it spilling over the side. He threw it back and grabbed for his friend’s beverage, his pal pushing him away. Both of them started to growl at each other, their faces morphing.

  “We need to be careful,” Saruul reminded us, her ears folding over slightly, “and we probably shouldn’t stay for more than an hour or so.”

  Her timing was impeccable.

  The snow lion man known as Champa pushed through a few of his friends and pointed at me. “There he is,” he growled.

  My hand instinctively went for the hilt of my Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom, only to find that it wasn’t there, that it was back in Saruul’s bedroom where she had suggested I leave it.

  One of Champa’s buddies clapped him on the back, another one laughing with his mouth wide open, spit flying out as he asked, “Him?”

  A big toothy smile formed on Champa’s face. “That’s the guy…”

  “Go ahead and slip me my knife,” Roger whispered to me, “I’ll take care of the village idiot.”

  “Let’s not go that far,” I started to tell him as Champa approached us.

  “You. Me. Wrestling,” Champa said, the grin on his face shattering into a scowl.

  “He’s not going to wrestle you,” Saruul said.

  “Why not? It’s not like I’m fighting him or anything, just a simple wrestling match. They’re starting up the tournament right now,” he said, motioning toward an area of the festival that had people seated in stands, their backs to us. I could make out a ring made of stone behind them, lifted into the air by rocks cut to resemble logs.

  “That’s not what we’re here to do,” Saruul said. “We’re just here to enjoy the festivities. Why can’t you understand that?”

  “It’s fine,” I started to tell her.

  “See? He wants to do it,” Champa said, his friends egging him on. They reminded me of frat boys at a keg party, completely in their element as they paid homage to their most primal natures.

  “You don’t have to do this…” Saruul started to tell me.

  “If it gets this over with, and we can enjoy the rest of the festival without dealing with him, I’ll do it.”

  “Please, there is no need for wrestling. Look at all the joy happening around us,” Lhandon said, coming forward.

  Champa turned his attention to Lhandon. “Or, I could wrestle the monk…”

  “I’ll do it,” I told the big lion man. “Let’s get this over with.”

  As I followed Champa and his friends toward the wrestling grounds, Roger started giving me pointers: “Definitely go for an eye gouge. Try to punch him in the nuts as well, although he may be quite small so you’ll really need to get your fist up in there. That always works. Fight dirty, Nick. If he starts to morph, I’ll fly forward with my knife and get him in the eye. Or in the anus, if his back is to me. He won’t like that. If that doesn’t work, have Lhandon here use his icy hands.”

  “What is he saying?” Lhandon asked.

  “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

  “This is so stupid,” Saruul said.

  “I agree, but if I don’t do it, who knows how they will escalate their bullshit. What are the wrestling rules here?”

  “Rules?”

  I stopped, turning to her. “There are rules, right?”

  Even though she had a worried look on her face, Saruul couldn’t help but grin at me. “Of course there are rules, we aren’t the cat people of the Forbidden City of Trongsa! It is fairly simple: your goal is to get your opponent off his feet. That’s it. But you can’t throw punches or anything like that, you have to use your own strength to do it. No biting or claws either.”

  “Got it.”

  “What about kicks?” Roger asked, showing me exactly what he meant. “Aim for his lionsack, Nick.”

  “No kicks,” Saruul told Roger. “The point is just to get your opponent off their feet.”

  “But he’s like twice his size.”

  “He’s not twice my size,” I told Roger, looking at the man’s back and noticing that he was about two heads taller than me. “But he is large.”

  “Okay, okay,” the tropical bird said, mulling this over. “How about this? Act like you’ve lost your mind. Maybe start to foam at the mouth, bite at the air, growl, that sort of thing. Give him the crazy eye. You have to scare him, because he definitely has an advantage.”

  I nodded as we came around the stands, where we found Champa talking to one of the men in charge of the wrestling matches. The man in charge nodded, allowing us to step through.

  There were other wrestlers around us, a few with towels over their heads, their ears giving the towels two additional peaks.

  They parted the way for us, mostly ignoring us aside from a pair that couldn’t stop looking from Lhandon to me.

  Another match was just about to finish, the two men locked, barely able to control themselves as their heads morphed.

  Their bodies were hunched forward, both wrestlers keeping their footing on a polished stretch of solid blue stone. The first man, who was even larger than Champa, eventually got the upper hand. He finally managed to drag his opponent to the ground, with a smack! that definitely could be heard over the crowd.

  The lion man lifted both fists in the air and roared, the people in the stands screaming for him as he and his opponent left the ring.

  Once he was given the signal, Champa stepped onto the blue stone and lifted both hands in the air, only a few people in the crowd clapping for him.

  “So he’s not very popular, eh? Who could have seen that coming?” Roger asked as he transferred from my shoulder to Lhandon’s shoulder.

  “Please, Nick, be careful,” the monk said, trying to contain his worry. “You don’t want him to injure you.”

  “I don’t plan to get injured; my hope is just to get this over with.”

  “You need to stay grounded,” Saruul said, and I could tell that she wanted to come into my arms, to place her hand on my cheek, but she knew better than to display this type of affection in our current environment.

  Instead, she simply patted me on the shoulder. “Stay grounded, Nick.”

  “This won’t be long.” I stepped onto the slab of blue stone. It wasn’t going to give much grip, and I was certain it would hurt like hell getting slammed down onto it.

  “Are you ready for this?” Champa asked, flexing the muscles on his arms and shoulders.

  “Sure.”

  He came forward, his hands slamming onto my shoulder. We grappled for a moment, Champa using his weight and size to push me backward.

  We locked arms again and I focused my weight into my legs, my thighs screaming as I tried to push him away, as I tried to pull into the ground.

  It wasn’t in my best interest to win this fight, I knew that, but I also didn’t want to give in so easily. I wanted him to know not to mess with me.

  He tried to slam his shoulder into me, but I managed to dodge his attack, going behind him and grabbing Champa by the waist. I even managed to lift him briefly before he brought his arm around, holding me in a headlock.

  It would have been the perfect position for a suplex, but then we would both be on the ground, so I merely pushed him forward, slipping out of his grip

  As we locked arms yet again, I noticed a musky scent to him, and his breath reeked of alcohol.

  Champa started to overpower me.

  My thighs still straining, I pushed back, Champa’s face morphing and returning to his human form.

  I managed to slip out of his grip, delivering a shoulder to his side that almost caused him to trip over his own feet. He caught his balance and lunged for me again, rage in his eyes.

  We locked arms, and Champa quickly slipped his head under my arm, lifting me off the ground. The only way I would be able to get out of his grip was to drop my arms onto his shoulder and bear down.

  And as I started to do so, time came to a standstill.

  With a deep breath in,
I slipped out of his grip, Champa still frozen, the crowd motionless all around us.

  I looked to Saruul and registered the concern in her eyes.

  I needed to finish this now.

  Rather than use my ability to my advantage, I laid down before Champa, and rolled to my side, curling my knees to my chest, waiting for time to speed up.

  He stumbled forward, the big man shocked at first, then overcome with joy that he had somehow won. He raised both fists into the air, and then dropped his hands to his knees, roaring in my face.

  I looked over to see Saruul nodding, the beautiful lioness intuiting what I had just done.

  Champa’s friends came forward, congratulating him, and as they did so I quietly moved away, rejoining Saruul, Lhandon, and Roger.

  “For a moment there I thought you were going to win,” Roger said. “Glad I didn’t place any bets.”

  “For a moment, I was going to win.”

  “What you did was the right thing,” Lhandon told me. “There’s no need to rile up these people, and who knows how that guy would have acted if he became the first lion to ever be beaten by a human in a wrestling match.”

  “So you knew as well?” I asked him.

  I felt something brush against my right side; I turned to see that Saruul was going for my hand, that she wanted to hold it.

  And even though a few people stared us in surprise, I took her hand, proud to have pleased her.

  “Yes,” Lhandon told me. “It was pretty clear. One moment he was starting to lift you, the next moment you were about to come down on him, and then you were just lying on the ground. Anyone watching closely would have noticed that something had happened. But it’s better this way. What you did was very humble, Nick. Sometimes it’s good not to let others know our strengths.”

  Chapter Fourteen: Angelic Revelations

  Saruul fastened the blindfold over my eyes and led me outside.

  A bitter cold met my bones as I continued walking, focusing on imaginary fire in my gut. The beautiful lioness stopped me. She placed a hand on my lower back as she kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck tonight.”

  And just a few seconds later, I was alone again, surrounded by darkness and ready for anything.