Divine Madness

by Harmon Cooper

“There’s no shade,” Roger said as we continued on.

  “We don’t know that just yet,” Tashi said. “If I recall, there are some strange things out on the Great Plateau, including large rock formations and graves large enough to cast a shadow that would easily cool the both of you. Perhaps we will find one of those.”

  “Perhaps,” I said as we continued on.

  We walked for another several hours until the sun was coming down, the exposed parts of my skin now blistering.

  I was happy as hell when Roger returned from one of the scouting missions, letting us know that he’d found a small oasis, one that he claimed was fed by an underground spring. As we approached, I saw the surface of the water bubbling, which is what I assumed he was referring to.

  I splashed some of the water onto my face only to find that it was piping hot, not at all helping my sunburn.

  Still, it was water, and it would cool off in the night.

  “Let’s create a tent,” I said, glancing around the area and noticing that there were a few rocks lying around the water, a couple of them the size of treasure chests.

  Lhandon helped me stack them, and I placed my pack on top, Lhandon’s as well, draping the blanket from the pack down to the ground and using a rock to keep the fabric taut, which created a bit of shelter for us.

  Lhandon and I happily got together beneath the shelter. To deal with what the sun had done to our skin, I cast Healing Hand, healing Lhandon first, and then myself.

  “I cannot wait until the sun is down,” he said, still with his cheerful demeanor. “I’ve never so looked forward to an evening in my life.”

  Lhandon and I ate some of the dried meat and fruit as we looked out at the water of the small pond. The sun was down, the sky purple with a few tangerine streaks across it.

  Behind us, Tashi was already getting ready to be our nightly fire, Roger staying as close to the spirit as he could.

  The temperature had already started to drop, Lhandon and I both prepared with our blankets covering our bodies, and our scarves wrapped around our heads.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked him after a long spell of silence.

  “I’m thinking about how I will begin the search for the Exonerated One once we arrive at the Island Kingdom,” Lhandon said.

  “Is the kingdom that big?”

  “Much smaller than Lhasa, yet still fairly large. But this is just from things that I’ve read, I haven’t actually seen it myself. Perhaps some of the men on the ship that we take will know more about it.”

  “And how are you going to know when you find his reincarnation? I’m sorry, we haven’t really been over this part of it.”

  “That’s a good question.” He reached his hand into the front of his robes. “Do you remember him leaving this behind?” Lhandon showed me a small black pearl.

  My thoughts jumped back to when we had to dispose of all the bodies at the monastery after the treasure hunters killed them. The pearl was left behind in the Exonerated One’s ashes.

  “So you’re just going to go around showing that to people?”

  Lhandon shook his head. “I have my ways of finding him, and once I do, I will have to test him with this pearl. I will also look for other signs. He had a tattoo on his wrist, a number given to him in prison, and that will be one thing I look for, to see if there’s something that resembles it on his new body.”

  “And then what? We aren’t taking this baby with us, are we?”

  “Most definitely not,” Lhandon said, chuckling. “We will explain to the parents what has happened, and show them the evidence, and once the boy is old enough, he will join the monastery.”

  “You think the parents will just go along with that?”

  “I’m certain they will. First, there are the karmic reasons for accepting this, and then there is the monetary gain as well.”

  I smirked at the portly monk. “You have money stashed away in that robe of yours?”

  “No, but I have promissory notes in the bag. Regardless, the family will benefit from the donations that come to the monastery once the Exonerated One continues his role. I am not so known over Lhasa, as you can clearly see, but he was quite well known, and as soon as it is discovered that the Exonerated One will be returning, people will start donating money and other things, including animals and land. The family will benefit from this, and once he’s older, he can use those funds to rebuild his monastery.”

  “You aren’t going to rebuild in the same place?”

  Lhandon stared out at the water for a moment, biting his lip. Finally, he shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so. I believe it is important to build my monastery closer to my hometown, to Bamda. There is a lot of corruption there, and the city would benefit from having a good monastery nearby. Once the Exonerated One is old enough, he can work on spreading the Path of the Divine toward the southwest, and I will focus on the northwest, and hopefully, we will meet in the middle. I do believe that what we are doing here, while it may take some time, has the power to change lives. Now, I am not foolish enough to think that this change is going to happen overnight, but I do believe that gradual change will come, and this will snowball into even more change. But as you know, I can be a little too optimistic at times.”

  “It’s one of your best qualities,” I told him.

  We returned to Tashi once it got colder, Roger whistling with happiness when he saw that I was coming with the blanket.

  “How long are you going to keep me out here?” he asked, his voice quivering. “I need to get under that blanket!”

  “Relax,” I told him as I set up the place where I was going to sleep, Roger already tucking himself under the blanket.

  I had a feeling it was going to be extra cold tonight, so I put on an additional robe, one of the several sets that we had. Lhandon did the same thing, and once we were good and bundled up, he meditated as usual before nodding off.

  At first, I thought the voice whispering to me was coming from a dream, but then I realized it was Tashi, and that several hours had passed. Tashi brought his fiery hand closer and closer to my face in an attempt to wake me up.

  “What is it?” I whispered to him.

  “There’s a caravan coming,” he said, now reducing his size.

  “They are definitely going to see us.”

  “Yes, and you should be ready.”

  “Got it,” I said as I rolled out of the blanket, Roger mumbling something to me.

  I crept over to Lhandon and woke him, the monk gasping, “It’s cold!”

  “Someone’s coming; we need to be ready.”

  Lhandon nodded.

  Sure enough, a caravan was slowly moving in our direction, the yaks swaying left and right, the merchants barely visible aside from a man carrying a lantern at the front with a purple tinge to the light.

  Something felt off, and it was when the caravan neared us, when Lhandon started to raise his hand to greet them, that the caravan morphed into inky black smoke, the smoke barreling toward us.

  Lhandon was knocked aside; Tashi lifted a towering wall of flames, revealing two black spirits with ghastly faces, their forms swirling all around him.

  They crashed into Tashi, one of them slamming him into the sand.

  I saw the blanket I’d been under kick up, Roger trying to get out of it.

  “Shit!” I yelled out as I drew my Flaming Thunderbolt, charging at the first black form I could make out.

  My weapon went right through it, and for my efforts I was thrown into one of the rocks we’d used for shelter earlier, my back cracking, everything flashing red for a moment.

  Bah-Mo…

  I didn’t know if someone had whispered it to me, or the thought was just at the back of my mind and the collision with the rock had caused me to remember it, but I recalled Jigme saying that my avatar would be able to fight a spirit, and if there was ever a chance to use him…

  Tashi cried out again as I traced up the rune, the monkey with his two scimitars slowly
taking shape.

  “Go… get them…” I said, pointing to the fight, realizing that the injury to my back was more severe than I originally anticipated.

  Bah-Mo shook both arms out, looked over his shoulder at me, and flipped into action.

  He met the first spirit and drove both of his scimitars into the top of the spirit’s back.

  He used his blades to guide the dark spirit to the ground, where he then crossed his weapons like a pair of scissors and sliced the demon’s head off, a purple energy spilling out of the space where its neck should have been, a ghastly cry ringing out the air.

  Bah-Mo flourished both his blades, crouching as he approached the next spirit.

  The monkey charged the demon, bringing both blades back as he swung at the dark spirit. The demon narrowly avoided Bah-Mo’s first attack.

  The monkey landed and clinked both blades together, his eyes locked on his opponent.

  The demon spirit tilted what I assumed was its head as it tried to figure out what to do about Bah-Mo. Eventually, it drew a black ax; I could see the ripple of armor forming on its body as Bah-Mo engaged the inky black demon, their forms illuminated by Tashi’s flames.

  Their weapons met again and again. Eventually, Bah-Mo wrapped his tail around the spirit’s arm, and used it to flip around to its back.

  The monkey drove both of his blades into its shoulders, leading the spirit to the ground. Bah-Mo continued slicing and dicing, pulling his blades in and out of the demon’s back with a happy look on his face, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as he stabbed the spirit to death.

  The demon let out one more gasp and started to fade away.

  Bah-Mo stood and bowed at me, his form sinking into the sand until he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Thieves and Meditations

  We eventually settled back under our blankets, Tashi keeping us warm, none of us able to sleep.

  “I guess this is something we have to be prepared for going forward,” Lhandon said after a long pause.

  “And you really don’t think that is just something that just happens out here, considering we are in the middle of nowhere?”

  “No, they were from the Underworld,” Tashi said. “I recognize demons like that. And if I were to guess, I would say they were somehow related to the man that attacked us after our escape from Nagchu.”

  “We really do have enemies from all sides now, don’t we?” I asked.

  “Seems about right,” said Roger, his voice partially muffled due to the fact he was under the blanket. “I only wish I could have seen your monkey friend whip their asses. But no, like an idiot, I got stuck in this blanket, and trying to get out of it only made it worse.”

  I could still feel the pain in my lower back, but since nothing was broken, since it was only bruised, I decided not to heal it for the time being, considering that a new day was upon us and I would need to heal our sunburns later.

  It was worth suffering.

  The three of us never could get back to sleep, and for all I knew Tashi didn’t sleep at all.

  The sun eventually started to come up which was just about the time that Lhandon announced we should meditate, do some prostrations, eat, and be on our merry way.

  Both of us drank as much water as we could after our breakfast of dried meat and berries. Tashi melted the ice on top of the small pond; Lhandon and I dipped our gourds in and filled them with cold water.

  Figuring it couldn’t hurt, we had Tashi make two additional gourds, which we filled and attached to our bags so we each had three.

  Once we were ready, Roger pointed us in the right direction, and we started walking.

  For a while, we were quiet, but then Lhandon started humming a mantra, Tashi joining along.

  I focused on their mantra until I zoned out, practically floating forward now as we tried to cross this endless expanse.

  The sun grew hotter with each passing hour.

  I wanted to look away from it, but there really wasn’t a way for me to avoid it unless I walked sideways or at an angle. It didn’t help that the cracked soil beneath us was white, any sand we saw white and sparkly as well, reflecting the blistering orb in the sky.

  Another hour passed, and it was about this time that Roger noticed something on the trail ahead of us.

  “It’s a person,” Roger said as he landed on my shoulder.

  “A person? Out here?” I asked him.

  “He seems like he’s in trouble, like he’s hurt.”

  “Then we should help,” Lhandon said, taking the lead.

  “Please be wary, Exalted One,” Tashi called after him.

  Lhandon took a couple steps closer to the man. “Are you okay?” he called out.

  The man was definitely pushing seventy or eighty years old, most of his body covered in rags, his stoop making it look like he was bending over to touch his feet. He had a white beard that jutted out from some of the folds in a scarf, beady eyes, and the skin that I could see was the color of mahogany, leathered by the sun.

  “A monk!” he said, bringing his hand to his heart. “I thought I would never find someone like you out here, someone that could help me.” The man fell to one knee. “I’m sorry,” he said as he tried to use his cane to push himself back to his feet.

  “How did you get out here?” Lhandon started asking.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Roger said, now perched on my shoulder. “Hand me my blade.”

  I reached down to my boot and unsheathed the knife, handing it to Roger.

  From there I lowered my hand on the hilt of my own weapon, ready for anything. I couldn’t hear Lhandon now; all I could do was watch his body language, and try to interpret what they were talking about.

  I glanced at Tashi and nodded, the fire spirit lowering in size until he was no longer visible.

  I didn’t know if the old man had seen him or not, considering the distance between us, but just in case…

  Lhandon shuffled back over to us. “He says he lives around here, and he was out for a walk and got lost. He’s pretty sure he knows the way now though, and he wants to feed us for our troubles.”

  “I think we should just continue on our way,” I told him after looking over at the guy.

  “I don’t know, he’s been pretty hospitable, and he may know something about the Great Plateau that we don’t know.”

  “Not many people live out here,” Tashi said, his form just a few inches tall. “Perhaps he is one of the herders that makes money selling food to the caravans, but if that were the case, he wouldn’t be lost…”

  “Something is off,” I told Lhandon again.

  “Agreed,” Roger added.

  “He seemed nice,” the monk said, looking back to the man just as he waved at us.

  “We should probably continue on. If he’s lost, he will find his way.”

  “We have to think of the karmic repercussions of what we are about to do,” Lhandon told Tashi. “If we help him, that is good. If we help him and it is a trap, we will defend ourselves, and that is bad for him, but no longer our karma. If we don’t help him and he dies out here, it is bad for us. We have to think of these things now, especially with what we are trying to do here in Lhasa.”

  “I’m ready to stab someone if I have to,” Roger chirped. “We have a fire spirit, and you got a fire sword, along with a couple other things that’ll help us out. I’m not too worried. Let’s go with what Lhandon is saying.”

  “Okay,” I said as I turned to the elderly man. “Tashi?”

  “If the Exalted One prefers it, then yes.”

  We joined the elderly man, Tashi keeping a low profile on my opposite shoulder.

  “That’s a mighty fine bird you have there,” the elderly man said. His accent was similar to the guy from the caravan that we’d run into a day earlier, a bit of an edge to it, unlike the other voices I’d heard in Lhasa. “We don’t see many birds out here aside from vultures. I really am blessed, you know? My mind hasn’t been as sharp
as it used to be, and to find a kind group such as yours to escort me.”

  “It is our pleasure,” Lhandon told him as we came to a path surrounded by sand dunes.

  “Not much further from here,” he said shuffling along the path. “Just up here. I should be able to find my way back from there.”

  The sand dunes moved, the sand tumbling away. Men covered in rags burst out, all of them wielding blades.

  The old man pulled the blade from his cane. He ripped the front of the scarf off, revealing that he wasn’t an old man after all, that he was rather young, that he’d been wearing a disguise all along.

  I almost felt sorry for them.

  Even as Lhandon tried to talk them down, the monk lifting both his hands and warning them against fighting us, I cast Gyal-Ma, which would allow me to absorb three strikes.

  I unsheathed my blade and flourished it once, the flames licking off the metal.

  Roger lifted into the air, and Tashi stayed behind me, our constant secret weapon.

  “Last chance,” I told the group of thieves.

  Two of the men charged me.

  I addressed the first one, our blades meeting, his sword immediately igniting as the flames spread down to his hand. He tossed his blade aside and jumped for me, my natural instinct to bring my knee into his stomach and my free elbow onto his back, which sent him straight to the ground.

  The second man swung his blade at me, his strike going wide. I came down hard, cutting through his arm, his wound instantly cauterized.

  He cried out in pain as the other thieves exchanged glances, gathered their courage, and charged me.

  Tashi rose into the air, a crazed look on his face as flames exploded out of his form, catching four of the six men left standing on fire.

  Roger dove down onto one of the other men who was just starting to back away, the bird burying his dagger in the man’s back.

  I finished off the guy that was on the ground by driving my sword into his chest. I returned my focus to the man whose arm I’d taken, finishing him off as well.

  This left only one thief, who just so happened to be the guy that had led us into the trap.