Path of the Divine

by Harmon Cooper

  I beat my knees against the side of the cart again, grunting as I glared Evan down.

  “He may have a disease,” Evan finally said. “Who knows? Where did you find him?”

  “He attacked our camp,” Kinley lied. “My daughters, father, nephews and I were just finishing up supper when he barged into our campsite and started fighting people. He tried to…” Kinley shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. He would have raped my daughters if my nephews hadn’t intervened. You can tell. Look at him, look at that anger in his eyes.”

  “Perhaps I will say something to him,” Evan said.

  I wanted to scream in his face, to tell him that this wasn’t some elaborate role-playing game, that these people were going to sell me into slavery, and that since there was a small group of us who were teleported here, we needed to band together and help each other, not start forming sides with natives.

  I tried to shout at Evan, my cries muffled by the gag in my mouth.

  The motherfucker…

  The portly man approached the cart and bent down, his face just inches away from mine. “We were never too friendly, were we, Nick?” he whispered.

  I cried out again, slamming my knee so hard against the back of the cart that it made him step away for a moment.

  Eventually, he returned.

  “I’m sorry I have to do this to you, but this is clearly a game that we must play to win, and you seem to already be losing. Too bad you turned out to be a rapey asshole, but I always knew something was wrong with you, even if Tom usually defended your actions. Well, enjoy your trip to the slave traders, Nick. I’ll see you around.”

  “Sir Evan?” the soldier asked, stepping up to the bastard.

  “Nope, I don’t recognize him,” he said, his hands coming to his fat waist. “But we should continue our patrol. There’s no need to hold these fine people up any longer for this sort of riff-raff.”

  Chapter Seven: Lights Out

  It was another forty minutes until we reached the outskirts of what I assumed was the city of Nagchu.

  The outer rim of the city was defined by its roadside stands as well as its oddity of people, faces I’d never seen before, people with tails and cat ears, a man who resembled a lizard, a dark-skinned woman several heads taller than anyone around with horns jutting from her forehead.

  Small buildings made of brick lined the road, the buildings cobbled together, some newer than others. A few of them had fences in front, keeping goats and a few llamas penned in. Most were decorated with lion’s head carvings.

  I didn’t get a glimpse of the city itself until we took a sharp left down a hill, the bumpy ride the least of my concerns.

  The center of the city was perched on a steep hill, pagodas on the horizon with tiled rooftops, mountains all around. Nagchu was surrounded by farmland, men and women at work in the fields. I noticed the glimmer of a river that cut through the city, which was probably why it was so great for farming.

  There was a scent in the air as well, the smell of soil seeming to permeate everything. It was earthy, reminding me of the farm I’d once worked at back in Western Massachusetts.

  I knew my way around a farm, and I knew how to live off the land, which would help me if I were able to escape. Maybe I could keep a low profile for a bit while living in the surrounding woods, get my bearings and then figure out if any of the others were alive.

  Evan had betrayed me, but that was something I could handle later.

  Hopefully, I would be able to find Hugo, that was, if he’d survived fighting the dragon.

  And if I was taken prisoner, maybe Bobby had been taken prisoner as well. After all, he’d surrendered to the soldiers, and from what I could tell, I was being sold to the very same person he had surrendered to, a woman named Mabel. The plantation before me had to belong to her.

  And if I was lucky, Bobby was already working there.

  That left Tom, the poor bastard who had been swallowed up by the sea. There was no telling if he was still alive, but Evan was alive, so maybe Tom had been handed a bit of luck as well.

  Hopefully.

  Once we stopped, Kinley and his nephew came around and opened up the back of the cart, getting me out. I thought about trying to throw elbows at them, but I didn’t in the end, preparing for whatever lay ahead.

  And that was precisely when I saw her.

  Standing next to who I assumed was the slave trader, was a woman with fair skin and long dark hair. There was a single blade sheathed at her side. She wore a cape but seemed scantily clad underneath, her armor nonexistent in a way that dared a foe to try something.

  I’d known enough hippies in Western Mass to understand what they interpreted as an aura. I never believed those types of things, but seeing this woman now, and noticing the pink that seemed to radiate around her head, made me realize that these things could exist. She was definitely possessed by something.

  At least in this world.

  There were other slaves of varying races and sizes, and as she scanned through them, the woman’s eyes locked on to me.

  I tried to smile at her but there was a gag in my mouth.

  She turned away quickly, but I could tell we’d had a moment, I could feel it. And even though I was no fortune teller, I had a feeling that we would meet again.

  Her attendants joined her, all women, all dressed in the same way, none of them with the pink glow around their bodies.

  They turned away, and it was at about this point that the gag was pulled out of my mouth and I was pushed forward, the slave trader stepping up with a scroll in his hand. There were a pair of thick glasses on the man’s face and his head was shaved, the man leaning most of his weight on a cane.

  “And what have we here?” he asked.

  “We found him, an outsider,” Kinley explained. “He was provoking spirits in the hills near the Sea of Lhasa.”

  “Provoking spirits?”

  Kinley nodded. “He also tried to rape one of my daughters.”

  “Then he should be taken to the Nagchu Guard, not Madame Mabel’s slave auction.”

  “Agreed, but I thought I’d check here first,” Kinley said with a toothy grin. “He’s strong, able-bodied, and he’ll be much more useful to Madame Mabel as a slave than he would as an executed criminal. Besides, I believe he was drunk off chung at the time, or perhaps some lotus.”

  “What is your name?” the slave trader asked me.

  “I would like to speak to Mabel,” I said, glaring at him.

  The slave trader stepped to the side, moving faster than I’d ever seen someone move before. I felt the sting against my cheek, the impact, and I barely caught him lowering his cane as he regained his composure.

  “You will not speak to Madame Mabel, not now, not ever,” he growled. The pain radiated through the side of my face, blood dripping onto my chest.

  And that’s when it came over me, the same instinct that I had exhibited in the tent with the spirit last night.

  Everything slowed down to the point that I could hear a droplet of blood dripping from my chin to my chest. The ropes suddenly felt as if they were made of ribbon, an explosion of energy surging through me as I tore through the bindings on my ankles.

  My body started to move before I could tell it what to do, my shoulder coming down and back up as I shifted my weight onto my left foot, sweeping back with my right heel and connecting it with the slave trader’s cheek.

  I ripped the ropes from my wrists and brought my fist around, catching Kinley’s nephew in the chin, spinning back around with my other fist and slamming it into Kinley’s throat.

  More men charged forward, these ones with spears, and time sped up as they jabbed them at me, as I performed a sideways flip to avoid their attacks.

  I took one down with a clothesline, time slowing as I moved behind the other, delivering a chop to the back of his head that sent him sprawling to the ground.

  Time returned to its normal pace again, all the slaves gasping, the slave trader tryi
ng to get to his feet.

  She came for me.

  The beautiful woman I’d seen earlier appeared out of nowhere, moving into an attack position with her jagged blade drawn, slicing it forward and sending a burst of rippling pink energy in my direction that cut me off my feet.

  She was on top of me in a matter of moments, a knee on my chest, her blade to my throat.

  “What’s your name, slave?”

  “Nick Barnette, and I’m nobody’s goddamn slave.”

  Her eyes twitched as she processed the way I’d spoken to her.

  “What’s your name?” I asked in the time it took her to hesitate.

  “Sona, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “Hello, Sona.”

  “You will never address me by my name again.”

  I tried to move out from under her, but she pressed her knee down even harder, her eyes narrowing on me. “You possess the Power?” she whispered as more guards came to her, including her female attendants, all with weapons drawn.

  “Come again?”

  But rather than answer, Sona brought her hand back and slapped the living shit out of me, everything instantly going black.

  Chapter Eight: Lights On

  “They say you possess the Power,” a man said to me as he cleaned my face with a wet rag.

  I blinked my eyes open, startled, immediately trying to move off the bed.

  He was casual about my movement, simply lowering the rag. He must have been in his fifties or sixties, his head shaved, silver earrings hanging from his ears.

  “Who are you?” I asked him.

  “Altan. You?”

  “Nick.”

  “That’s an odd name,” he said as he placed the rag on a tray, going for a small bowl of bread. “Are you hungry?”

  “I can’t remember the last time I ate.” I started reaching for the bread and then hesitated for a moment, giving him a curious look. Why was he being so nice? I had yet to meet someone in this world that was kind.

  Was there an ulterior motive?

  “It’s just bread,” he said, reading the look on my face. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it while you were knocked out.”

  “The woman slapped the living hell out of me, Sona. I think that was her name. Yes, Sona.”

  “Then you’re lucky to be alive. She’s the head of Madame Mabel’s elite guard, and a practitioner of a dark path. You’re lucky that was all that she did.”

  “Dark path?”

  He nodded. “The Path of Possession.”

  “Where are we anyway?” I asked, looking around the room. “Is this still Nagchu?”

  Candles lit in the four corners of the room, the smell of sage in the air.

  “Yes, and you are in the slave quarters,” he said. “This is my room. They put you in here until you woke up.”

  “So I’m a slave now?”

  Altan smiled. “No, you’re at a charming hotel in Nagchu that just looks and smells like slave quarters.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Eat some bread. The fight will begin soon.”

  “Fight?” I asked him as I swiveled around, placing my feet on the floor.

  “It’s rare that someone possesses the Power. Before you are officially registered as a slave, you have a chance to prove yourself by joining Madame Mabel’s guard.”

  “Why would I want to do anything stupid like that?”

  He laughed again, taking a bite of the bread that he had offered me. “You really have a lot to learn about Lhasa, don’t you? Of the three baronesses in the Kingdom of Lhasa, Madame Mabel is perhaps the kindest.”

  “She has slaves. What part of that makes her kind?”

  “But she doesn’t torture them as much as some of the others do, if at all. Look, Nick, I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to give you some food so you have some energy for the fight.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. Why would I want to fight for this person?” I glared at the man, a fire burning inside me. “I don’t know where I am; I’ve never heard of any of these people, and to be honest with you, ever since I came to this damn place, everything has been trying to attack me. From the sea dragon to a damn tree. And that’s not to mention the boar, an evil spirit, a family that I helped, and now I’m being told to fight for a person who is planning to enslave me, and clearly doesn’t give two shits about who I am.”

  Altan finished a piece of bread and offered me a chunk. “You really should eat something.”

  I took it from him, scarfing it down, noticing that it was unlike any bread I’d had before. There was something rejuvenating about it, something that wasn’t as empty as the bread I’d eaten back in Massachusetts.

  “Good?”

  I nodded.

  “And to be honest with you, Nick, you can drop the outsider act with me. There are no outsiders here, unless you come from Paro, Rinpunga, or the Island Kingdoms of Jonang and Tsirang. And while we occasionally get a visitor from Paro, it’s rare to see someone from any of those other places. You aren’t from those places, are you?”

  “I’m from Worcester, Massachusetts,” I told him, finishing my piece of bread. I reached my hand forward for another piece and stopped, making sure it was okay. He nodded, offering me the bowl.

  “Worcester, Massachusetts?” Altan asked, sounding out the word. “If that isn’t one of the stranger words I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing jovially. “Well, keep your story then, outsider, but know that you are no different from any of the slaves out there.”

  “I was at a bachelor’s party,” I told him with my mouth full, “a portal opened up and it took me here. Now I’m trying to find my friends and get home.”

  He looked at me curiously for a moment.

  “I’m serious,” I finally told him.

  “That sounds like quite the story,” he said. “But you can focus on enhancing and making your story even more interesting once you win the fight.”

  “I don’t want to win the fight; I’m not trying to fight anyone. And that’s my actual story.”

  “Well, if you don’t win, then you will just be a slave, like me. Except not like me, because I’m in charge of the slaves. But I won’t treat you harshly, as long as you work hard. Can you work hard?”

  “I’m not going to become a slave,” I told him.

  “You see, that’s the problem. If you are disobedient to me, the guards who are standing outside the door will help you understand how manners work around here. I don’t like threatening people, I’ll be honest with you, Nick, but sometimes a threat is the only way to get my point across. So if I were you, I would go out there and fight better than you’ve ever fought before. Because trust me, it’s a lot better to be one of Madame Mabel’s guards than it is to be one of her slaves. Plus, if you ever want to meet Sona again, well, you’re not going to meet her in the fields.”

  “Thanks for the bread,” I told him as I took another piece. “And how did you know I wanted to meet her again?”

  “Most men do once they lay eyes on her. Now finish, the fight will begin soon.”

  A young girl stood before me, holding a chain attached to the neck of a towering man with cat ears. The man was nearly twice my size, with muscles bulging out of his tunic and a scar on his face that led me to believe he was blind in his right eye.

  We were in an open field lit by lanterns that magically floated in the air above us, people seated on either side, hundreds and hundreds of them, enough to overcrowd the stands and take up additional space to the north and south of the main fighting area. Red banners with silhouetted snow lions hung from wooden posts around booths selling chung.

  A referee with a reptilian face stood between us, small horns covering his brow.

  “Are you ready for the fight to begin?” he hissed in my direction.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  He smiled, his eyes blinking vertically. “No.”

  “Which one is my opponent?” I asked, nodding to the little girl.

  She
couldn’t have been older than fourteen, with a thick ponytail that was draped over her shoulder, long enough that it reached her waist. She flicked it to her back and narrowed her eyes at me, punching her fists together in front of her body.

  “Both,” the referee said.

  “That sort of seems unfair considering I’m just one guy.”

  I looked my opponent over again, wondering how I was going to do this. The power that I had exhibited twice now seemed to be something beyond me, something that I couldn’t control.

  There was a high possibility that the big cat-man would charge me and that would be the end of it.

  I didn’t know what the young girl’s role was, or why she held a chain attached to the cat-man’s neck, but I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Let the fight begin,” the reptilian man said, stepping aside. He raised his fists into the air. As he brought them down, a crack of lightning zipped across the battlefield.

  The cat-man roared, and as he did so, the young girl cracked her chain, bringing the cat-man down to his knee, allowing her to mount up.

  They charged toward me, the girl on the cat-man’s shoulders, screaming and pointing at me as the towering feline took a lumbering step toward me, a mace now gripped by his tail.

  I wasn’t that fast, and the only reason I managed to get out of the way of his mace was because the cat-man tripped over his own feet, falling forward, his mace slapping him in his own back courtesy of gravity and throwing the girl off his shoulders.

  “Holy shit…” I whispered, trying to suck down the adrenaline, to get a handle on how I was supposed to deal with these two.

  The little girl was back on her feet now, jumping and screaming, pointing at the cat-man, yelling for him to stand as she yanked on her chain, as the crowd roared with laughter.

  The impact of the mace against the cat’s back gave me an idea.

  I ran toward the weapon, diving for and latching onto its hilt. It was heavy, and rolling back into a standing position wasn’t easy, but I’d somehow pulled it off.

  “Come on, activate,” I whispered to myself, hoping that my power would take shape now that I had a weapon. “Come on…”