Way of the Immortals Read online

  Way of the Immortals

  Path of the Divine

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books

  Edited by Andi Marlowe @ Andromeda Editing

  Audiobook narrated by Neil Hellegers

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Stages of the Path of the Divine

  Chapter One: Portal Nonfiction

  “I’m glad you all could make it,” I told the small group of guys who had gathered for Tom’s bachelor party. I held my beer in the air, ready to kickstart the celebration.

  “Hey, I was supposed to deliver the toast,” Bobby said, the balding middle school teacher not bothering to stand. Evan was next to him, Tom’s friend from college already drunk from an afternoon of pre-gaming.

  “No, you told me you’d be drunk by this point, and that I’d better handle it. I literally have the text message from you that says, ‘you’re doing the toast, Nick, I’m drunk,’” I reminded Bobby. “I’ve only had one beer, remember? I just got here.”

  “All right, you got me,” Bobby said, showing me his palms. “Maybe I did say something like that.”

  “Sit down, Nick,” Hugo told me with a grin. “And get the hell off your damn high horse with that ‘I’ve only had one beer’ shit. You’ll catch up soon enough.”

  Hugo had traveled the furthest to make it to Tom’s bachelor party, taking the redeye from San Diego to Boston. He was a former Marine, and by my estimation, he was going to be the only one that made it through the night.

  I would give it a shot, but Hugo always made it to the finish line, ready for another lap.

  “Enough, enough,” I told the group, my beer still in the air. “To Tom Griff, future Mr. Lindsay Hale, one of my oldest friends…”

  Tom snorted. “I’m not taking her last name, you asshole.”

  “Are you sure about that, dude?” Hugo asked, punching Tom in the leg, both of them laughing as Tom winced in pain.

  “Just let me finish the toast,” I told them, my words cut short once the windows burst open, a purple spark of electricity exploding into the room.

  A subsonic sound rattled the floorboards and all the glass in the home shattered, as a sphere of energy took shape before us.

  Suddenly awake from his beery slumber, Tom’s friend Evan tried to kick over the coffee table, only to be sucked right into the purple sphere kicking and screaming.

  “What the hell?” Bobby shouted as my feet were whipped out from beneath me, a lasso of energy pulling me toward the oscillating sphere of purple.

  “Nick!” Tom screamed.

  Launching into action, Hugo dropped to the ground and hooked his arms around me.

  “I got you, buddy!” he said, his muscles bulging as he tried to stop me from being sucked into the sphere.

  But the sphere was stronger than both of us, and it was only a matter of moments before we were both sucked in.

  There was no tunnel made of light, no freefalling, no pain, and no warning.

  Hugo and I were simply deposited on a breakwater made of stones covered in algae, the air smelling of brine, seawater spraying into our faces as a wave hit the rocks.

  I gasped as I took in my surroundings, at the sea that stretched into the distance, the mountains beyond.

  “Okay, okay…” Hugo said, nodding his head. “Evan, we have to find Evan. First thing.”

  “Wait, what the hell just happened?” I asked. Everything around me spun as I tried to get my head around what was happening.

  “Doesn’t matter, we find Evan and…”

  Tom fell out of the sky and straight into the water.

  “Tom!” Hugo cried, taking off his shirt, ready to jump in. I caught his arm just in time, preventing him from diving.

  “What the hell, Nick!?”

  “Dude.”

  “Dude…” Hugo said, his eyes going wide.

  There was no way in hell we were going to be able to take on what we saw rise out of the water.

  A sea serpent?

  No, a fucking sea dragon, something easily as large as a city bus, with glistening scales and a terrible maw filled with sharp teeth.

  But rather than run, Hugo lifted one of the smaller rocks and tried to hurl it at the dragon, which was definitely a mistake as the monster lifted itself even higher into the air. It crash-landed onto the breakwater, trying to eat Hugo alive.

  The wave it created slapped me in the chest, sending me under the water.

  I felt something move against my side, the dark water and gray sky making it difficult to see what lurked beneath the depths.

  A hand came around my mouth, another hand landed on my chest, both pulling me backward.

  I squirmed away, kicking toward the breakwater, faster than I’d ever swum before. I pressed forward with all my might, fueled by adrenaline, trying my best to come out of the water and figure out what had happened to Hugo.

  Reaching the breakwater, I scrambled up onto the rocks just as Bobby fell before me, the middle school teacher shrieking until he realized he was on solid ground.

  “Nick! Nick!” he started screaming again when he saw me kicking at the water, pale white hands trying to grab at my feet. “What the fuck was that!?”

  “No idea…” I said as I managed to free myself.

  “Where are the others?” he asked, his hands on his forehead. “What the hell was trying to pull you into the water?”

  “I really don’t know, man!”

  I could see something ominous moving beneath the sea, something causing a small swirl in the surface of the water. It sent a shiver down my spine, my heart racing just as fast as it had ever beat before.

  Bobby and I heard a terrible roar as the sea dragon came out of the water again, landing on the breakwater, spines lifting off its back.

  “Hugo…” I started to say, pointing toward the sea dragon.

  “Hugo’s a fucking sea dragon!?”

  “No, that’s where he was…”

  “I’m out of here!” Bobby said, starting to run.

  I looked back to the sea dragon to see the monster opening its mouth, water spritzing the air all around it, its beady red eyes locked onto me.

  And rather than stick around to see what it was capable of, I took off toward the shore.

  Chapter Two: Driftwood on a Foreign Shore

  We reached the shore at the same time, Bobby jumping as if the land was moving away from him. I glanced over my shoulder to see the sea dragon had dipped back into the water, a whirlpool the only proof it had ever existed.

  “Where’s Evan?” Bobby asked frantically. “Tom? Hugo’s goddamn dragon food, you said so yourself!”

  “I did?”

  “How the fuck? We’re drunk. We’re drunk. You’re drunk, I’m drunk. We’re drunk.”

  “I had one goddamn beer, Bobby!”

  “Did you put some mushrooms in my beer or some kind of crazy Western Mass hippy concoction?”

  “What? No!” I bent forward, my hands on my knees now as I tried to catch my breath. I was sopping wet, but it was the last thing on my mind. “I don’t even live in Western Mass anymore, I live in Worcester.”

  “Same damn thing.”

  I clenched my fists shut for a moment. “Okay, okay, let me think this through. Evan was the first to go into the portal.”

  “Yeah, I saw that, Nick!”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m just trying to get a grip on what happened here. Then Hugo and I
went in. Tom’s out there.” I nodded toward the sea.

  “Are you saying that Tom was…”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying! We were just sitting in your apartment, and now this.”

  I looked to the sea, to the end of the breakwater. The waves were calm now, and for a moment I questioned if there had been a dragon in the first place. I shuddered. I knew it had happened, and I also knew what I had experienced once falling in the water.

  “We’re going to die here,” Bobby kicked a piece of driftwood. “Wherever the hell we are, we’re going to die here.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What are you talking about, Nick? Two of our friends are already dead. Evan may or may not be dead, but he wasn’t our friend to begin with,” Bobby said, pacing now. “You said Tom fell into the sea. I’m guessing Hugo went after him.”

  “Correct. And then the dragon came.”

  Bobby paused. “Nope, dragons don’t exist. No way, no how.”

  “We both saw it,” I reminded him.

  “Sure, that complicates things. And we both know Evan’s fat ass isn’t getting very far. Who knows if he can even swim.”

  “I’m sure Evan can swim.”

  “He’s severely overweight.”

  “Maybe by a hundred pounds,” I told Bobby, not sure why I was arguing with him.

  “Well, if he did make it to safety, something will eat him. If there are dragons here, they will eat Evan. Mark my fucking words, Nick. I mean, if I were a dragon, I would eat Evan. He has the most meat on him.”

  “I thought you said he was fat.”

  “You know what I’m goddamn trying to say here, Nick!” Bobby clenched his fists at his sides. “Okay, okay, enough shit-talking. Sorry. I’m upset. Where are we? Let’s start there.”

  “I’m upset too. This is some worst case scenario shit.”

  Both of us looked around; all I could see was that we were on a beach in front of a vast sea, mountains to our right, and jungle behind us. Bobby checked his phone, grimacing. “No service. What about you?”

  “My phone’s on the table at your place.” I took another glance around. “New England? Are we still in New England?”

  “No, it was winter in New England. That’s a jungle. There are no jungles in New England.”

  “The water kind of reminds me of New England, its coldness, its darkness.”

  “No way. We’re somewhere else, maybe somewhere…” Bobby looked at the mountains in the distance. “If we were somewhere tropical, there probably wouldn’t be snow on the tops of the mountains.”

  “Asia?”

  “How the hell would we go from Boston to Asia in a matter of seconds?”

  “Shit, Bobby, I’m just throwing out suggestions here! How often does a portal open up in the middle of a bachelor party?”

  He nodded. “Good point. Sorry, again. This has my blood pressure up, and yeah, crap. You don’t think someone spiked our beers, do you? This isn’t some of your edibles, is it?”

  “Edibles? Come on, Bobby. And who’s going to spike our beers? It was a bachelor party with five people, all of whom have known each other since childhood. Well, except for Evan. He’s new to the group.”

  “That’s a nice way to say it. He’s Tom’s friend. Evan was never part of our group. But I agree with you. No one would spike our drinks.” Bobby ran his fingers through his goatee. “Except Evan, but even that seems like something he wouldn’t do.”

  “We’re not hallucinating, Bobby,” I said, reaching down and taking a fistful of sand. “I’ve tripped before. This is not what it’s like.” I let the sand fall from my fingertips. “Trust me.”

  Our dialogue was cut short when we noticed something on the other end of the beach. A group of men moved along the shoreline, and from a distance it looked like they were…

  “Soldiers?” I asked.

  Both of us peered off into the distance, confirming what we had seen.

  “Looks like it to me,” Bobby finally said. “Shit, shit!”

  “I’m right there with you man, let’s just… ”

  The soldiers were about a quarter of a mile away, and if I wasn’t seeing things, it seemed like they had swords at their sides.

  “Follow my lead,” Bobby said with a firm nod. “I speak Spanish.”

  I gave him a funny look. “What good is that going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Do you speak any other languages?”

  “I dabbled in German in college.”

  “Before or after you dropped out?”

  I took a deep breath in, still trying to make sense of all this. “Actually, it was after, during one of my trips to Berlin.”

  “And no matter how long you spent in Europe, you still never found yourself.” Bobby turned in the direction of the marching soldiers. “Let me handle this.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I speak Spanish, Nick,” he huffed. “Just let me do the talking.”

  Chapter Three: Boar

  “Seriously, man, those guys have swords.”

  “Relax, Nick, and maybe you’ll learn something about diplomacy here,” Bobby said as he trudged ahead, both of us walking along the sand, a few seagulls now circling overhead as if they were vultures.

  Vulture seagulls? I really hoped not.

  “Hola!” Bobby said, waving at the men.

  There were about thirty soldiers, led by a short guy wearing a full suit of samurai armor. All of them wore helmets with lion masks over their faces. Only their commander was maskless.

  “They don’t speak Spanish,” I told Bobby again as he waved at the group.

  “Well, I have definitely gotten their attention, so there’s that. And just give me a moment here; we don’t know that they don’t speak Spanish yet.”

  “Why would we be transported to a world where there are guys patrolling the beach with swords, and for some reason, those guys speak Spanish? If anything, their armor looks Asian.”

  “I’m just trying to make sense of all this!” Bobby said, turning to me, frustration in his eyes. “I was just sitting there having a beer when Evan got sucked in. Shit. I almost made it to the door. If I’d just had another moment, another couple of seconds…”

  “Here we go,” I said as the commander approached us, his hand on the hilt of the sword.

  “Que paso?” Bobby asked.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the commander asked, drawing his blade.

  The other soldiers all went for their weapons as well. A few in the back held large morning stars instead of swords.

  “You can understand us?” I asked, naturally raising both hands.

  “Of course we can understand you,” the commander growled. “Why are you dressed in this way?”

  “In what way?”

  Bobby was in a blue dress shirt that was tucked into his jeans, a little disheveled now. I was also in a pair of jeans, although mine were darker. I also wore a gray T-shirt and a black jacket.

  The commander pointed his sword at Bobby. “You two are coming with us.”

  “Now, hold on a damn minute,” Bobby said, taking a step forward. “All we’re asking for here is a little help. Maybe some information too.”

  “Help and information?” the commander asked, a grin coming across his face. He had a handlebar mustache, and there were multiple scars and lacerations across his cheeks like he’d been in a fight with a cougar. “What information would you like?”

  “Where are we?” Bobby asked him point-blank. “Let’s start there.”

  “You are in the Kingdom of Lhasa, and under the authority given to me by Madame Mabel Pemagatshel, you are now my prisoner.”

  “Prisoner?”

  The commander struck Bobby, slashing his blade across the chest. “You dare question my authority!?”

  “Fuck!” Bobby said as he stumbled backward, blood spreading across his dress shirt. He fell to one knee and looked to me. “Run, Nick, go!”

  “No,” I started to tell him, ev
en though thirty guys had their swords and morning stars pointed at me.

  “Go, dammit, save yourself!” Bobby said, wincing as he sucked in deep breaths. “Don’t be an idiot. Run, Nick!”

  “If you run…” the commander started to say, his blade now aimed at Bobby’s throat.

  But I would never hear the next words that came out of his mouth.

  I took off toward the jungle, faster than I’d ever run before.

  I could hear the soldiers chasing after me, the clink of their armor.

  And even as my calf muscles screamed, as Bobby yelled for me to run faster, I charged ahead, no idea where I was going or how I’d get away from them. I kept my eyes on the space about seven feet in front of me, looking for dips in the land, loose roots.

  As I reached the jungle, I heard the cry of monkeys and birds in the trees above.

  I continued forward, nearly stumbling once my foot got caught under a rock, the sounds of the soldiers just over my shoulders.

  I kept it up, even though I was starting to get winded, even though it felt like I was running uphill.

  There were massive trees with elaborate root systems, colorful mushrooms growing on their trunks, moss-covered rocks, creatures scurrying in every direction wherever I stepped foot.

  Everything was a blur.

  I made my way through a stream and came to a glade filled with white flowers.

  I paused, listening for the soldiers.

  Everything was silent, but, rather than stick around, I moved to the other side of the glade, ducking behind a few shrubs when a man in dark blue robes appeared.

  His all white eyes narrowed on me as the robed man dropped into an attack pose, and was just about to deliver his final blow when a boar exploded out of the bush, slamming right into him, the man bursting into a cloud of black smoke.

  This gave me the time I needed to make a run for it.

  The creature snorted, turning its attention to me, cutting its tusks into the ground as it charged. The boar was as large as a cow, angry, snarling, overturning anything in its way as it nearly caught up with me.