The Spaces in Between (12 page)

The other guards released their
rhlung,
and the blue streaks passed through the doppelganger. The guard tower collapsed under the blasts. Tsuen landed in another tower. The guard noticed him and drew his sword. Tsuen tore the man’s sword arm from its socket.
Rhlung
poured down Tsuen’s arms and erupted from the palms. The remaining two guards were crushed under the collapsing towers caught in the blast.

Novices poured from the main temple dressed in metal breastplates and carrying
naginatas
. Tsuen concentrated, his
rhlung
flowed through his feet and the tower he was standing in began to sway. The foundation snapped and the tower came down on the monk army. Tsuen landed safely on top of the rubble to tear any survivors apart.

He slid over the debris and landed at the foot of the temple. He drew his sword and yelled.

“Old man! Come out and find an honorable death unless I bring this entire monastery down upon you!”

A man of twelve feet and pristine tea colored skin emerged from the doorway of the temple carrying the sword from the shrine. His black hair the length of himself was tied back and swayed behind his knees as he approached.
Rhlung
emanated from the man like steam. On his shoulder an imp with the face of the death gods was perched. This was the abbot of the monastery.

“Do you not understand the concept of never returning on pain of death, Exile?” the abbot inquired. “I shall let you meditate upon it before crucifying you to the mountain.”

“I suggest showing me the
mandalas
and prayers to call upon my
daimon
instead,” Tsuen retorted, “And I’ll see to it that you’re killed in one blow.”

“Your arrogance shows no bounds. That is why you were exiled.”

“I thought I was exiled for killing my own master.”

“Life is an illusion. Ending someone’s illusion means nothing to us. The fact that you thought that made you better than him infuriated the other masters.”

“I killed him in single combat. My powers as a monk were far superior, and that is why I should have been entered into the ranks of the masters. Where are they by the way?”

“The masters foresaw your return and joined the Enlightened One so that you could not get their secrets. All the scrolls of the monastery have been burned. All that remains of this sect is I, and you cannot kill me. The Enlightened One will protect his teachings.”

“Who’s being arrogant now? I’ve seen an Enlightened One!” Tsuen growled. “I’ve seen one touched by God and bears his life. I’ve have never seen anything like it! And it blazed around the most base and vulgar man that has ever lived. Not even a Lemurian nor Atlantean or Pleidian, but a man from the failed colonies! The most untouchable of all castes!”

The abbot faltered for only a second at Tsuen’s tirade. The exiled monk snarled and brought his sword over head. The blade whipped around and darted for the abbot’s ankles. The abbot’s foot blurred and Tsuen found the blade trapped under it. The abbot focused his
rhlung
to increase his density. Tsuen could not free the blade even with his titanium arms,
rhlung
, or the angry spirits brewing inside him.

Instead he snapped the blade and whipped the remaining sword around. The blade raked across the abbot’s face removing his hawk’s nose and popping his left eye like a bloody boil. The abbot’s sword sliced through the air and Tsuen crouched low to the ground to avoid it.

It passed harmlessly overhead in a slow arc. Almost too slow for Tsuen to believe that this man could actually be the abbot. Suddenly the blood bubbled up from the base of Tsuen’s throat and gushed out of his mouth. The lower half of his robes ran red with blood.
He has cut me simply with his killing intent.

Tsuen’s sword clattered to the ground, and he grasped his abdomen. The
rhlung
flowed down Tsuen’s arms and immediately staunched the blood flow. He rolled under the abbot’s legs and hopped to his feet. A quick shuffle dislocated the abbot’s balance. The abbot’s ribs shattered under Tsuen’s elbow. His sword arm twisted behind his back and the wrist snapped under Tsuen’s titanium grip. The other hand clamped down with deadly force at the corroded artery at the neck.

The abbot arched his back and his free arm snaked over Tsuen’s head. The abbot’s leg shuffled and took Tsuen’s complete balance. The abbot’s hand found the pressure point at Tsuen’s neck and forced his released. Grasping Tsuen by the neck the abbot thrashed him against the walls of the monastery.

He’s moved his own pressure points!
was the only thought Tsuen could muster with his pounding head and blurring vision. The
daimon
perched on the abbot’s shoulder grew to a size greater than the abbot, but surrounded him like an aura.

Rhlung
flowed freely from Tsuen’s palm, but the imp simply swatted it away. The abbot raised his hand. “By the power of the Enlightened One I command all the spirits possessing this man to be purged!” The hundreds of death spirits and vengeance deities residing in Tsuen burst from his abdomen like a fresh wound. The army drifted into the sky and faded away.

Tsuen panted, his life flowing from him, but concentrated with all of his might. “Take my life now, Abbot. It will be the only time that I offer it to you.”

“You will not be given an honorable death, Exile,” the abbot said. “You will be put to death like a barbarian, but the pain of your death shall be only an appetizer to the suffering of your death life. Surely, you shall live as a dog or hungry ghost for a thousand lifetimes!”

Tsuen saw how this would end in his mind’s eye and it made him smile. He quickly tore off the cloth covering his eyes and made eye contact with the abbot as best he could. The abbot was distracted and stared for only a moment into Tsuen’s empty sockets.

Suddenly, the
rhlung
stopped flowing through the abbot. His arm lost all feeling and his legs began to quake. The
daimon
faded back into the higher spiritual realms. The abbot fell to his knees then crumbled backwards into some corrupted yoga posture. He lost the vision in his other eye and seized. The abbot gasped in disbelief, but could bring forth no words.

“You let your guard down, abbot,” Tsuen said with a sneer. “I put a clot in your brain. A trick I picked up from the Enlightened Barbarian. Think of the shame. One of the great abbots brought down by a simple stroke. Something so mundane.”

Tsuen leaned in so he could meet the abbot face to face. “The first few minutes are so important in a stroke.” He placed his hands on the abbot’s forehead and his breathing ceased for a moment. “There. I’ve set up barriers so the parts of your brain that contain the secrets of your order will stay intact. Unfortunately, the areas that control movement, speech, concentration, and bowel control will be lost forever.”

“You will starve to death here abbot in your own waste. A shameful death for someone of your stature, but I’ve learned that no one truly dies with honor or dignity. Really all illusions end the same way. But not until I know all your secrets.”

Tsuen smiled open and genuinely at the abbot for the first time without any hint of irony. Drool dribbled down the abbot’s chin in response.

****

His gaunt face could not carry a peaceful look no matter how deeply Tsuen would meditate. His parched and cracked lips whispered the prayers and incantations pulled from the abbot’s ruined mind. All of the pigment had drained out of Tsuen from his weeks in the caves under the monastery. He sat in the lotus posture outside of the elaborate painted circle in the center of the cave floors.

Tsuen had taken a meal with the dead monks before descending the rock. He gathered the plants he needed by sensing their
rhlung
pattern. After ascending to the monastery again and taking his last meal of the monks, Tsuen entered the deep meditative state he hasn’t left to prepare the materials.

The crushed herbs charged with
rhlung
were prepared for both incense and paint. Then Tsuen started the chants that would summon the daimon into the circle. The next step would be to convince the daimon to leave the circle and take him on as an apprentice.

This was three weeks ago. After three long weeks of no food, drink, and sleep. Never leaving the trance state. Not believing that he would have to quit and start over again. Certainly the prodigy monk so great that none of his previous teachers had survived could call his daimon
teacher on his first try.

Another day of chanting passed this way. The sun was coming over the horizon and the first rays illuminated the smoldering wastes of the monastery. The light would never penetrate these deep reaches of the caves.

Tsuen slumped forward with his legs still locked in the lotus posture. His head bounced once off the ground. A trickle of blood drained out of his temple. Hardly any force was left to pump the blood through his veins.

He could no longer form words, but his lips still formed the syllables of the stolen incantations. Two more days passed until his face fell still.

His disciplined yogic breathing carried great gulps of air and energy into his system, but even this finally stopped after three more days. The mandala that became the final pillow for Tsuen to lay his head down began to pulsate and throb.

Tsuen could feel the needles of sunbeams beat against his face. Everything was white. He grimaced at the brightness, clenched his eyes closed, and rolled on his side. His eyes. Tsuen blinked again and saw the cave now completely illuminated. As if the monastery was ripped off the mountain by God there was no longer any roof overhead.

He rolled on his back and pressed his hands against the stone floor to ready himself for lifting. The sandpaper surface of the stand stung on his palms. Tsuen brought his hands to his face, and flesh returned past his elbows. He rolled over on his stomach and looked into the center of the mandala.

A grizzled gray figure squatted there. He looked like he could have been an Atlantean man at some point in his life. One of very small stature anyway. The little man wore no clothes and his genitals were far too shriveled to be noticeable. The little man stared back at Tsuen with massive black eyes incapable of expression.

“Are you my daimon?” Tsuen gasped.

“If that’s what you want to call me,” the little man replied, but his lips did not move. The thin line of the man’s face looked more like a paper cut incapable of ever opening.
There is nothing more we could teach you that you did not learn in this monastery.

Tsuen’s face twisted into rage despite the flattery.

But see! I can still help. We restored your body on this plane. In this level of reality you still have all your limbs. You are whole. Complete.

“What do you want with me?”

The same thing you want. The destruction of the heathen. The heathen that stole the ambrosia. We want to humiliate him. Humble him. Castrate him. Then when he’s absolutely begging us we shall end him. Then we shall be sure he is ended in all worlds after we have eaten his ambrosia.

We need a man like you who could travel to the higher realms of the Tree. A man like you that with our help could reach up and touch God. Don’t you want the same glow to be yours?

“You’re speaking of that filthy Pirate?”

Is that a yes?

“Yes, my life and soul are yours if you will use it to destroy him.”

That’s all we wanted to hear.

“All of creation is in fact a Multi-verse with each Universe floating in the seas of
Ain
as God watches on. They run separately, but
Aur
is pure chaos that tosses these Universes around like buoys. So on occasion they collide.”

Lord Sananda,

Book Three: Stranded

In which Cameron dies and gets revenge….

“What could I get you boys to drink?” the bartender inquired, a rag in one hand furiously spinning in a glass in the other. This would seem like normal bartender behavior, but his face was concealed with white face paint and leather chaps were all he wore. While his appearance was unsettling it wasn’t quite the menacing quality he had hoped for when he put his make-up on this morning. Most people wouldn’t trust their children around a man that looks like a reject clown from the fetish circus.

“Chartreuse on the rocks!” Cameron screamed across the bar over the cacophony of screaming that they referred to as the house band in this establishment.

“Same for me!” his companion screamed. The heat from the club had caused his eyeliner, which was immaculate this morning, to run in streaks. Compared to most in this club Cameron’s companion was dressed down. Black t-shirt, jeans, and a lone silver pentacle hanging from a chain. None of the spikes, razor-blade cuts, or other accessories Goths felt necessary. The fact that his companion got past the bouncer dressed so conservatively was mostly due to his status as a notorious occult author in New York.

Despite the fame of his companion, Cameron couldn’t place a name to his face for the life of him. Something Greek he was sure. Kratos? Chronos? It didn’t seem to matter at the moment. The bartender handed them their drinks. Cameron spotted himself in the mirror. He was dressed in full pirate’s regalia and that wasn’t Goth at all. He suddenly remembered that he held the reigns of the subtle forces that shape our reality. He was now pretty sure that he was dreaming, but preformed a simple test he always used in situations like this.