by Erik Lynd
After obtaining documents and leaving no witnesses, they had changed into clothing more appropriate for America. Jeans, t-shirt, jacket—it didn’t matter, they just had to fit in. Gone was the desert, now was the urban decay.
The room smelled of the familiar scent of blood and death; the owner lay slaughtered on the bed. He had been asleep, it had been nothing to end him. And the space was just temporary, a stakeout location in this giant city for them to watch this new player.
They did not talk, for they thought as one. These shared thoughts were their only need for conversation.
The city was a wonder. Though in their sleep they had spied on the world, had seen it evolve, it was still a surprise that it had grown so in their imprisonment. Even the sight of Cairo and its urban sprawl, as magnificent as it was, did not compare to this city of giants. He loved to think about this new world and all the death they could bring to it.
There was movement across the street. The long curtains blocking out the room moved and Apophis could see her once again. She stood for a moment looking out over the city, lost in thought. She was beautiful. She could not see them, he was sure, for they were far across the street and the lights were out. They were safe from her notice. He was glad they chose caution rather than force.
When they had come yesterday, when they had found this place, they had been drawn by the stone. The power it held had called to them, and now they knew why. He had chosen wisely. It wasn’t the stone they were meant to find. It was her. She was their destiny.
They had watched with caution. They had seen the large man arrive and knew him for what he was: his power was immense. They did not fear him, but they were not stupid. He was the master here. They had to avoid him until they could be reunited with their queen.
They had seen the girl and they knew her for what she was. They could see it in her—the power, the skill. Just like their first mistress, their first queen. She would be their purpose in this new world. She had power to change everything, to rule once again. And they would be by her side.
She turned from the window and spoke to somebody. Beyond he could see a man being hoisted on a rope, perhaps from a beam. He did not know what this man had done, but the man was in pain. It was obvious that their new mistress shared some of their tastes.
It was time to go to her.
21
His time away was long and trying. Christopher first stepped in the book and onto a mountainside. Cold winds blasted against his unprepared body. He stood in knee deep snow, and a blizzard whipped about him, surrounding him in a cold, white blanket. Through scattered breaks in the whiteout he could see craggy peaks in all directions.
Another blast of wind knocked him to his knees in the snow. Already he could feel numbness seeping into his feet and hands. The wind was so icy it felt like a million needles hailing down on him. He needed shelter fast or he would have to open the book and return to the Library. He had no idea which direction to go. He could barely see two feet in front of his face. If he was high in mountains, he could step off the edge of a cliff and never know it.
His face burned from the harsh wind and he was about to give up and just go back when he saw a light ahead. It was faint and for a moment Christopher thought he might have imagined it. Then, during a pause in the wind, he saw it again. Still clutching the book that was both his entrance and exit to this world, he got to his feet and made his way to the light.
It was further than he had thought. Trudging through the thick snow held him back like molasses. He had none of his power here it seemed. No Hell-powered stamina or strength. He could still feel it inside, but in these training worlds things worked by a different set of rules.
He fell more than once and the snow was little protection from the jagged rocks sticking up from the ground. It was drudgery struggling through the freezing wind and whiteout. Every step seeped more energy from him.
His mind began to focus on one thought: just one more step. Always just one more step. At first, he had refused to give up, knowing what waited for him back in the real world. He may not be sure what type of chance this was, but it was a chance and the only one he had.
Then, as his entire world became about walking, about that one more step, he simply started forgetting everything else. He held the book, forgotten in his frozen hands. He lost track of time, it felt like hours or even days, his mind was slipping from him. He was pretty sure his toes were frozen, his ears and nose just frostbitten, dead flesh now.
He lost himself on that mountain. All he was became forward momentum. Just one more step.
Then he was there. Abruptly he stepped out of the blizzard and into a cave. A wonderfully warm cave. The shock of the sudden change startled him, and he fell face first onto the stone surface. He was vaguely aware of the crackle of a fire and the smell of smoke. But it was the warmth that pulled him.
Just one more step. He crawled on what might have been dead hands, frozen fingers. Every movement was agony. If felt as though his nerves had been frozen and now came awake as the heat thawed them. Every joint ached, a confusing jumble of numbness and deep pain.
But the fire was there. He crawled closer and other things came into focus. There were thick blankets and furs around the fire, crudely built wooden shelves leaned against the rock walls. Here and there carved niches held assorted items, but Christopher was too disinterested to guess what they were.
A pot sat near the fire, hot and steaming. He also became aware of another smell hidden under the smoke of the fire. An herbal smell, fragrant and earthy. He crawled until he was on top of the fur and blankets. He felt the warmth seeping in, but he could also feel the dead spots on his appendages. His skin was dry and rough. Open sores from the touches of frostbite were forming.
As he warmed up, he gradually became aware that he was not alone. The cave was coming more into focus, and as his need for survival faded away he noticed it wasn’t just a cave, it was a home. A simple one, but a home. Several pots and clay cups sat on a shelf. Other cooking utensils hung from hooks in the wall by the fire. Also nearby was a large pile of firewood. It looked like it could last a year.
Then he saw the man across the fire from him. He was a little man, thin enough that Christopher thought a strong breeze would have carried him away. His hair was long and his beard thick and unruly. He sat on the other blanket, legs crossed. His eyes were closed and he held a steaming cup in his hands. He looked like a cross between a wise old mystic and Charles Manson.
Christopher hoped he was more mystic than Manson.
“That wasn’t even the beginning of where you are going, that wasn’t the least of what you have yet to experience,” the man said.
“What happened?” Christopher said in a voice little more than a croak. “How long was I in that blizzard? Who are you?”
“You got cold. Most of the night. Your first teacher.”
It took Christopher a moment to understand that his host was giving answers to his questions. The man opened his eyes and held out the cup of tea. “Drink this, then we begin.”
Christopher snapped awake at the offer of tea; he had been falling asleep. “What now? I’ve lost my fingers to frostbite and I’m exhausted. I won’t be able to think straight.”
“That is a good start. And you don’t need your fingers or toes to go where we are going.”
It turned out Christopher hadn’t lost his fingers after all; he came close but they remained attached. In a few weeks he had the feeling back in them.
Christopher learned quickly that his new teacher was not one for long speeches. He wouldn’t even tell Christopher his name. The monk had told him names were not important. Most of his days were spent in meditation.
They would wake before dawn and did a few chores to prepare for the day. This consisted of cleaning the cave, including flushing out the bathroom with melted snow. To call it a bathroom was probably a stretch. It was a smaller cave off the main one with a hole in the ground. He never asked where the hole went, bu
t it seemed bottomless.
After chores they sat and meditated for at least an hour. The monk never explained anything to him, just instruction on how to breathe, how to empty his mind.
Then a simple breakfast of rice porridge and vegetables stored in a cooler portion of the cave or even frozen outside. After breakfast was morning exercises. This consisted of a series of slow movements like tai chi with some yoga poses thrown in.
The afternoon was more meditation and any evening chores that needed doing. After dinner was still more exercises. These were a separate set of movements. Christopher had no idea what the difference was or why it was important, and the monk never told him.
The first few days were the worst. The weather forced them inside. Christopher couldn’t concentrate and sitting still for hours drove him crazy. No matter how much he ‘breathed’ no matter how much he tried to ‘still his mind’ all he could think about was the world waiting for him outside.
He thought of his body wasting away, albeit very slowly now. He thought about how he had his ass handed to him by Apophis. He thought about Hamlin and Juan and how they were getting along without him.
In those first few days sitting still was the enemy. He would jump up, pace, trying to think through everything all at once. He had thought this was supposed to be training him to be stronger, to go back fighting. He had no patience to sit on a cold stone floor, ignorant of what was going at home.
He raged against the monk those first few days. The third day there he screamed in the monk’s face. The hatred of the Hellpower raged up in him despite its usual distance. He came close to striking the little man before calming himself.
Through it all the little man had said nothing besides the instructions to sit and breath and still the mind. Christopher discovered that the book was gone, his passage back to reality was missing. He suspected the monk had taken it. Though he looked through the cavern every chance he got, it was nowhere to be found.
Christopher suspected it was a conspiracy, like an intervention. Somehow the monk and the Librarian had ganged up on him. They were forcing him to do this.
Several times he had left the cave, running through the makeshift cave door. Perhaps he could throw himself from a cliff and the shock of impact would kick him out of the book. He knew dying was not possible in this world. But he also feared laying at the foot of a cliff, his body broken in a million pieces but unable to move or die.
Suffice to say that thought and the incredible cold drove him back to the cave and that horrible little monk who sat calmly and did nothing.
After the futile rage and the runaway attempts, he had nothing left but tears and finally he gave in. He sat there calmly trying to breathe as the monk had told him, trying to still the mind.
After a week he thought it might be working, in some ways it was as simple as forgetting. The more he tried, the more the rage and hatred of the Hellpower calmed and settled. Still, there was one thing left that he could not stop, one thought that was always there always running through his head.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Christopher said one day, more than three weeks after he had first fallen into the monk’s cave. He looked over at his teacher who had closed his eyes, but Christopher knew him well enough to know the man was not asleep. “I know, I know clear the mind. Stop thinking about anything. I get it.”
“You are making progress,” the monk said.
This made Christopher slip out of whatever semi-meditative state he was in. Making progress? Why? Because he wasn’t screaming and yelling at the monk anymore. He would call that remembering his manners, not ‘progress.’
“It doesn’t feel like it,” was all Christopher said. “I just wish I knew if Eris was okay. I left her there in that hospital. I felt like I should have focused on her, sat with her. Fuck being recognized. But this stupid power, this stupid job. I let it control me, I let it help me forget. I think part of me just felt she had died.”
“Despite what many think, despite what you think…love, not hatred is the hardest to let go of. You are making progress.”
A few days later, towards the end of their morning meditation, for a moment…just a moment…he was thinking of nothing. It was all gone. No anger, no hatred, only peace. Of course, as soon as he felt it all thought rushed back in. When he opened his eyes, the monk was staring at him.
“And now we can really start,” the monk said.
After that it really did. It started with expanding the silence, the calming of his mind while sitting still, and then it was while they were doing the movements that Christopher referred to as Tai Chi 2.0. Over the next few months he strove to bring this calmness, this empty mind to everything he did. He cultivated what the monk called perfect state. Christopher called it the Jedi mind trick.
Spring came and they worked outside on the mountain tops then down a little way amongst the flowers in the valley, hiking, sometimes running up and down the mountain. He was in the best shape of his life; too bad it was in this dream world. They would pause every once in a while, and the monk would point out some animal or how the wind moved through the trees. He just pointed these things out, never giving a lesson just pointing the way. But by now Christopher knew there was a lesson in everything he did.
At some point, towards late summer he realized he could not feel the darkness inside of him. The Hellpower and the part that was fused to his soul, filling the gap was still there, but its control over him was less. It had retreated so far, he had to look for it. That’s when he realized the purpose of this, why he needed this training. It was bringing control back to him.
They spent less and less time in seated meditation, more time focused on the exercises. The movements became faster, flowing from one to the next. Eight months after his arrival, late in the summer, Christopher took up his position to begin the pattern when the monk faced him.
Christopher’s moment of confusion disappeared when the monk attacked. He shot forward striking but not striking, kicking but not kicking. Christopher hesitated, but quickly recovered, his body automatically falling into the familiar movements. His mind, after recovering from the surprise, fell back into that state of no-mind.
This was the next stage of his training, meditation through combat. Over the next few months the fighting got faster, longer. Blows became more solid when they landed, defenses became stronger. Christopher found himself slipping in other techniques that he had learned in his past trainings.
He didn’t think, it just came to him. It was the only time he detected a smile trying to break through the monk’s stony face. He did not plan his attacks, he flowed from one to the other.
Exactly one year after he had come to this mountaintop, he stood on a ledge just outside the cave. It was a beautiful night, no storm this time. Just clear skies and jagged rocks covered with snow. The moon was full and caused the long stretches of snow and glaciers to flash brightly. He wished he had some skis.
He heard the monk approach, the soft crunching of snow under hide boots. It occurred to Christopher that he had learned many skills this past year, the still mind was just the most important. He had also learned to live in the mountains, basic survival tasks. He almost laughed, this year had been the most enlightening of his life.
He turned to face the monk as he approached. The monk shoved the book into his chest.
“Time to go,” the monk said.
“What? Wait, I’m not done. There’s no way you’ve taught me everything,” Christopher said and for all his stoic training he could still hear an edge of panic in his voice.
The monk laughed, at least Christopher thought he did. He had never heard him laugh before.
“For all that I have taught you, you have a million things more to learn. But not by me.”
“But…” Christopher started.
“This, all of this, is just the beginning. This was merely the foundation. You have a journey of many more books, more pieces of knowledge. But know this: for all of that, in the en
d, it all comes back to knowing nothing. To be of no-mind. Never stop practicing.”
The monk went back into the cave and shut the crude wooden door behind him. It had a finality to it. He knew he was not meant to open it again.
He took one last look around at the beauty. He absorbed it all at once with his no-mind. Then he opened the book and was gone.
22
He found himself seated on a rug in the Library the closed book in his hand. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was. Memories from the real world, only an hour old, collided with the memory of the year he had just spent on the mountaintop.
The room spun like vertigo and his stomach lurched. Was yesterday, yesterday? Or was it last week? A year ago? He felt reality slipping away.
He slid from the chair to the floor. Images of Eris and Hamlin swirled through his head. His family, only two years dead, or was it three years—he wasn’t sure—were there. As was the memory of monstrous dark souls he had sent to Hell. It was a horror show of monsters and pain blended with the good memories of his friends and family. Eris in the hospital bed… Hamlin beat up, broken.
But it was all confused, he felt his mind slipping. Where was he again? What day was it?
Instinct took over, he began the process of stilling his mind. One by one he calmed his thoughts by focusing on his breath. The techniques were in him, natural. He didn’t have to think as he methodically silenced his mind. It wasn’t easy. The side effect of spending a year in that other world while only seconds passed in the Library and the real world was debilitating. His mind couldn’t process it all at once.
Slowly he got it under control. He started with no-mind and then let the memories and thoughts come to him naturally, one by one. The mind is an incredible thing and handled it now that he had calmed the mad flow. Until now he had never spent more than a day or two in training. With such short stays the memory disruption was minimal. Christopher was pretty sure that if he had not spent that year learning what he did, he would have gone mad. It was the foundation of his training in more ways than one.
