Path of the Divine

by Harmon Cooper

  “Do you think that Madame Mabel is holding Bobby?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but I see that you have some leverage here through this woman, plus you have an enemy in Madame Mabel’s ranks. There’s got to be an angle here.”

  “I truly wish I could hear the conversation you are having,” Lhandon said as he piled up enough wood to start a fire. It wasn’t long before there was smoke, then a crackle, a flame igniting.

  “In a nutshell, Roger is saying that we should use Sona to our advantage.”

  “Use Sona?” Lhandon whispered.

  “Why not?” I asked. “We technically saved her; maybe this would get us an in with Madame Mabel. In fact…” I smiled at Lhandon. “Maybe there’s a way this could benefit you as well.”

  “Me?” Lhandon took a deep breath in. “I’m listening, but please be aware that I do not like taking advantage of those who need our help.”

  “This lady doesn’t need the fat monk’s help,” Roger said, laughing again. “She would fillet him if she had her sword right now, and leave his flesh here for the wolves.”

  “What did he say?” Lhandon asked.

  “He’s just suggesting that you not be so humble, that we acknowledge an opportunity before us, and take advantage of that opportunity. I don’t know how we could use her in the end, but I do agree with one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Lhandon asked.

  “We need to get the Flaming Thunderbolt before she wakes up.”

  “But there’s a snowstorm out there now, and we have no way of knowing if she will rest through the night…”

  “Come on, Lhandon, work with me here,” I said. “You must know a rune that will keep her asleep until morning when hopefully the snowstorm has passed and we are able to take the weapon.”

  “Perhaps.” He furrowed his brow, a frown taking shape across his face. “But it is a magic that I’m not too accustomed to using. That doesn’t mean I’m not aware of it, and I’ve memorized all the runes that would allow me to cast such a spell.”

  “Is this guy always so contemplative?” Roger asked.

  “He’s a monk,” I reminded the bird.

  “A deeply troubled one, it seems.”

  Lhandon bit his lip. “I do agree with what you are saying, Nick. It’s important that we have no obstacles in obtaining the weapon. If she knows what this is about, and why she was captured, she too may want the blade for herself. She may already know why she was captured, then again, the treasure hunters would be smart to leave her in the dark. A member of Mabel’s elite guard with both the Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom and the Mummified Hand of Dolma would be a true force to be reckoned with.”

  “Okay, then let me handle the fire,” I said as I moved over to Lhandon, more wood in my hands. “You do whatever it is you need to do to get this rune in order. We need to cast it on her soon, and hopefully, the conditions will be just right in the morning for us to get the moon and the sun together at the same time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Sword in the Skull

  “I don’t like dabbling with these things,” Lhandon said after he’d traced up some characters, a wisp of red smoke boiling into the air. He used his other hand to lower the smoke onto Sona.

  Her eyes came open and she started to speak, stopping once a deep sleep rolled over her.

  “That was pretty easy,” Roger said, hopping around on a stone near the fire. “I know he’s a monk and all, but he could totally use that for nefarious purposes.”

  “I don’t think he would do that,” I told the bird.

  “To each their own, I suppose.”

  The wind stopped howling outside, and I figured now was as good a time as any to go out and check the bodies.

  “Anyone care to join me?” I asked as I took a step closer to the exit of the cavern.

  “You’re serious about going back out there?” Lhandon asked.

  “There are nine bodies out there,” I reminded him.

  “And?”

  “I would come with you, but it is way too cold for a bird like me out there,” Roger said. “Good luck looting the corpses.”

  “What he said,” I told Lhandon as I made my way to the exit.

  “But I can’t understand him!” the monk called after me.

  I made my way up the steep passageway to the entrance of the cave. It only took me a few moments to find Fist of Force buried in the snow. He had a small bag of coins on him, which I took. And I retrieved Roger’s dagger as well, pulling it out of the man’s chest.

  I looked at his shoes, wondering if he was the same size as me. They looked to be almost right, and after a little struggle, I managed to get one of his boots off and put it on my own foot.

  I took his other shoe too and then moved to his arms.

  Something caught my attention; I glanced up just in time to see a deer watching me, its fur white, its antlers large and foreboding.

  We stared at each other for a moment and I finally smiled at the majestic beast, bowing my head in its direction.

  Its tail flicked and it took off, apparently satisfied with my action.

  A glint of silver caught my eye. I noticed a ring on Fist of Force’s finger that had some of the characters cut into it. Once I pulled the ring off, I examined it for a moment, eventually placing it on my own pointer finger.

  An energy rippled around me as I did so, kicking up snow, the hair on my neck standing to attention as the power exited out the crown of my head.

  “So this is what gave you your power?” I whispered to him.

  I brought my fist back and threw it forward, noticing that it created a wave of energy in the air.

  Talk about a bonus.

  While I hadn’t mastered my ability to slow down time, I now had the power to absorb three strong hits, the ability to heal once a day and supercharged punches.

  “Most excellent,” I said as I started checking the other bodies, not finding much aside from weapons and gold. I sheathed one of the lighter swords, and turned back to the cave, looking for the white deer once I reached the entrance.

  I was just about to step inside when I saw her again, my guardian angel. Dema floated down to me, white hair billowing in the wind around her head.

  “I see you have made progress, Nick,” she said in her warm voice.

  “I don’t know if I should thank you for sending me to the monastery, considering what they did to me, but in retrospect it was helpful.”

  A wave of energy rippled off her skin, her elven ears folding back.. “You should seriously consider another deep meditation session like that in the future, once things settle down and you have the answers that you seek.”

  “There are a lot of questions that I have, that much is true. Can you tell me anything more about how I came to be in this world?”

  “Unfortunately, that is beyond my power at the moment. I can tell you that it was a powerful sorcerer, one from the Overworld, that initiated it. There are beliefs that every thousand years or so, an outsider will come to the Middle Plane, a Golden One who will enlighten us or lead us all into the darkness. The last one never made it through, but before that, two thousand years ago, one came and changed the face of this world.”

  “Really?”

  “And as you know, or as you’ll soon find out, this world is connected to the Overworld and the Underworld, the cycle of rebirth pooling from the depths of all three worlds.”

  “You can die in the other planes?”

  “You can die anywhere; it doesn’t matter if you’re a god or demon. What do you think happened to the evil spirit you slew in the tent on your first night in Lhasa?”

  “I never really thought about that.”

  Dema brought her hand to my face, lightly stroking my cheek. “This is why I believe you have much more to learn,” she said. “You very well may be a Golden One, the one that has been rumored. I didn’t know if you would make it this far, but look where you are now, standing at the gate before the Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom
. You have proved so much to me in your brief time here; I truly hope you fulfill the prophecy.”

  I couldn’t help but nod in agreement. “I hope… I hope I’m able.”

  “Now, return to your friends, and rest. Tomorrow morning will be a perfect time for you to take the weapon that is rightfully yours.” And with that she started to fade away, her form swept into a small gust of snow.

  I stood there alone for a moment, waiting for Dema to return, knowing that she wouldn’t.

  Lhandon woke me the next morning, letting me know that it was time.

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. As I sat up, I could feel the power of the ring on my finger, which Lhandon claimed was a mystical object, one that he would need to research further once we got back to the monastery.

  While he understood some of the writing on it, he’d never seen it used in that way before, and perhaps we would understand more about the ring if he was able to do some translating.

  “I would join you guys, but someone needs to watch our prisoner,” Roger chirped over to me. “And the only reason I plan to go out there is to fly away from the top of this mountain.”

  “She’s not our prisoner,” I reminded him.

  “Is that what he thinks?” Lhandon asked as he prepared a small pack with the necessary items inside. He had the Mummified Hand of Dolma as well, which he’d wrapped in a thick swath of fabric.

  “He’s just being ornery,” I told Lhandon as we made our way to the exit of the cavern, Roger laughing over my shoulder.

  “That’s one way to describe me,” the bird said.

  Lhandon and I stepped out onto the fresh snow. The bodies were just where we’d left them, aside from one that had been dragged off by a predator.

  The sun was just coming up, the moon still in the sky, and as we made it to the front of the gate, Lhandon hung the mirrored pendant on one of the stone hooks, angling it so the moon’s reflection hit the bowl, which I filled with sand.

  The mirror shone onto the sand, and after a moment, the strange dust began to swirl as if a snake were moving beneath it.

  Lhandon nodded, an apprehensive look on his face. “Okay, just like I told you.”

  I took the blade from him and drove it into the sand.

  As I did so, pink energy spread down a vein connecting the bowl to the gate. The energy continued to spread through cracks in the wall, revealing a set of characters that Lhandon scrambled to translate.

  “Well?” I asked.

  The characters began to fade away, the gate creaking open.

  “Instructions on how to use the Flaming Thunderbolt,” he said. “Nothing too crazy, just that whoever touches the hilt is immune to its fire.”

  “Which means that I can sheath it?”

  “I believe so, but I think the more crucial point here is that you can’t burn yourself.”

  “Good to know,” I told him as we approached the gate.

  We took a flight of stone steps, each step about six inches wide and icy. Both of us slipped at least once on our climb, but neither of us had the misfortune of falling down the steps.

  After several minutes of careful stair climbing, we came to a frozen giant’s skull, a blade sticking out of its crown.

  “Amazing,” Lhandon said tucking his hands deep into his robes to keep warm. It was colder up here; I could feel the chill in my bones.

  “This is definitely a place to put it,” I said, looking at the hilt and noticing that, while there was ice along the skull, the hilt of the sword was ice-free.

  “It is yours,” Lhandon told me.

  “I didn’t tell you that I was visited last night,” I started to say.

  “By who? Or perhaps I should ask by what?”

  “My guardian spirit, Dema. She reappeared just as I was reentering the cave, after checking the bodies.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “That this was my destiny, for one. At least that was what she alluded to. She also congratulated me on making it through three weeks in deep meditation, telling me that I had much to learn.”

  “As we all do,” he said.

  “What I was curious about, and what I’m still very curious about, is how my friends and I came to this world in the first place. So I asked her about that, and she said that it had something to do with the Overworld working in conjunction with this world. Something to that effect.”

  “I see,” Lhandon said, biting his lip for a moment. “Anyone from the Overworld is stronger than someone here, so if there’s a sorcerer up there, they may have been working through someone here, but definitely not with someone here.”

  “But she sort of works with me…”

  “No, she works through you. Never forget that. But this type of portal magic reeks of the Overworld. A person from here wouldn’t be able to cast something like that.”

  “So I may have to go to the Overworld to figure out how to get back to my home, is that what you’re suggesting? Or maybe that’s what she’s suggesting.”

  “I am not suggesting that, not the least bit,” Lhandon said, his brow still furrowed. “And I can’t speak for your dakini. To go to the Overworld, you would have to die here and be reborn there. To do that you would need to cultivate enough karma to grant you a rebirth there, rather than here, or even the Underworld.”

  “So I would have to die to go there…” I looked around the giant’s skull, noticing another peak in the distance partially surrounded by a cloud.

  It was beautiful up here, ethereal in a way.

  Lhandon continued: “Not only that, but you would have to make sure you knew where you were going before you died. Then perhaps you would be able to see to the sorcerer there. Once you died there, you could come back here. This is all theoretical, of course. I’ve only read about these types of things in books. It would be something that we could discuss with Baatar once we see him again, but until that point, I really wouldn’t entertain this idea.”

  “It seems like I’d be playing with a lot of different forces if I did something like that,” I said as I returned my focus to the hilt of the sword.

  “Indeed.”

  “Any idea on how I pull this thing out?”

  “I believe you just do what you said: pull it out.”

  I shrugged and placed my hand on the hilt of the Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom, noticing that it was warm, just as I’d suspected it would be. I tightened my grip on the hilt and the sword slid out of the giant’s skull, its blade engulfed in flames.

  “Oh my…” Lhandon said, taking a step back.

  As if someone had struck it with a hammer, the giant’s skull crumbled into dust, leaving a sheath behind. I waved my hand over the blade, realizing that there was no warmth.

  “The fire won’t affect you,” he reminded me. “Try touching it.”

  “I suppose I do have a fresh healing spell available to me,” I said as I slowly lowered my hand onto the blade. Sure enough, it was like touching cold steel, even though fiery blue flames were lifting off the weapon.

  “What an amazing instrument of destruction,” Lhandon said. “It’s a worthy weapon for a person like you, someone who may be…”

  “Don’t call me a Golden One,’” I told him. “If anything, I’m just a guy looking for his friends. And seeking revenge. So there’s that as well, and the second part alone would disqualify me from being golden anything.”

  “In what world?” he asked as I brandished the weapon, waving it in the air, getting used to its weight.

  “That’s not a stipulation here?” I asked him. “I’m allowed to kill people and still be considered on the Path of the Divine?”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Although killing would bring you bad karma, if you do enough honorable deeds you could cancel out that karma. And killing for just reasons is not considered bad karma.”

  “There’s always a loophole, isn’t there?” I told him as I dipped the blade into the snow, watching it melt away.

  I unbuckled the blade alrea
dy at my waist, letting it fall to the ground. The Flaming Thunderbolt deactivated as soon as I sheathed it, the fire dissipating. The sheath glowed then settled, no indication whatsoever that there was a magical sword inside.

  “It is quite the weapon,” I told him as I attached the sheath to my belt. I tucked it under my robes, so the hilt was still accessible if I needed to pull it out quickly.

  “It truly is a wonderful weapon,” Lhandon said, his teeth chattering. “But I think it is time for us to head back down the mountain. We still have two days’ journey to get back to the monastery.”

  “If that’s where we’re going,” I told him as we started down the steps.

  The two of us had to be extra careful now, especially since all the steps were iced over.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am interested in the Way, you know this, and maybe my past karma and the things I have believed before have led me to this point, to this weapon, to you even.”

  “Very true,” he said, but I could tell that there was some hesitation in his voice, that he knew what I was about to say.

  “But I have to find my friends. And to do that, I need to go to Nagchu. I may need to go to other cities in Lhasa as well. This remains to be seen. And as I’ve already said, I may be able to make this beneficial for you as well, for the monastery.”

  “I see,” Lhandon finally said once we reached the front of the gate. He retrieved the pendant and wrapped Sona’s sword in cloth again. After pocketing the pendant, he scooped the sand out of the bowl into its pouch.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him after he hadn’t said anything for a while.

  “You have so much potential, Nick, and I was hoping that you would join me at the monastery, help me rebuild it. But I suppose it makes sense for you to want to continue your journey. Sorry, I’m being selfish.”

  “I haven’t said that I wouldn’t do that yet,” I told him. “I’m just being realistic here. And you’re anything but selfish.”

  “It’s not the best way to operate, but sometimes the only way to be fluid with reality is to let the pieces fall and judge them once they’ve settled,” Lhandon said. “Let’s discuss this another time, once we get out of the cold.”