Pilgrim, p.1
Pilgrim, page 1
PILGRIM
(Book One)
By Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2020 Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2020 Boycott Books
Edited by Celestian Rince
Proofed by Adam Luopa
Art by Jason Y.
Font by Shawn K.
Audiobook produced by Podium Audio and narrated by Mikael Naramore
www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon
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.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
.Prologue.
Part One
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Two
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Three
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Four
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Five
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Six
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Seven
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Eight
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Nine
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Ten
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
Part Eleven
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
.Back of the book.
.Prologue.
The surprise kick sent Danzen Ravja flying through the glass door, over the banister, and down to the courtyard below, his body slapping against the polished stone pavement.
He didn’t move, he didn’t let out a grunt to indicate that he was in pain.
Danzen simply lay there, his eyes tracing up to the shattered glass door, the assassin hoping, praying, that he hadn’t been cut.
The fall he could take, but spilling even a drop of blood…
Palmo Mipham flipped out the window and landed before him, an amulet shining on his neck as he laughed wildly, a wave of energy oscillating around the man’s body.
“The Diyu Brotherhood sent you?” Palmo snorted, the amulet around his neck glowing even brighter.
Danzen’s lungs filled with air, his body aching for just a moment as he sat up, confirming that his flesh was still intact, that there wasn’t a single scrape on him.
Palmo placed his hand on the hilt of his blade and drummed his fingers against it. “They will have to try harder next time.”
Danzen flipped up to his feet just in time, drawing his sword lightning-fast, their blades connecting, Danzen quickly knocking Palmo’s away with his first blow.
“Your swordplay means nothing,” Palmo hissed as he slapped the amulet on his chest, the man taking to the air in a burst of energy.
He landed on the clay roof of his elaborate home, and looked down at him.
“I don’t know how you got in here without alerting my guards, but surely the servants in their quarters have heard our little scuffle by now. Consider yourself dead, assassin.”
Danzen grimaced, a strand of his long hair falling into his face.
Mouthy, overpowered, and mostly frivolous targets were one of the many things that irked him about being an assassin.
Danzen had heard it all over the last twenty years, and it never seemed to amaze him how bold some people became once they got hold of a Sunyata talisman, their egos overshadowing their natural combat abilities.
Danzen moved to the roof so quickly that it startled this Palmo Mipham, the man gasping.
“You… you have a talisman?” he asked, the glowing amulet dangling from his neck shining even brighter.
Danzen shook his head, not feeling like wasting his breath on his final target.
This was it.
After this last mission, one undertaken only because of the respect Danzen had for his teacher, Biren Yeshe, he was through with the butcherous life of a hired killer.
There was a satchel hidden in a cave on a cliff overlooking Palmo’s expansive estate. All Danzen had to do was kill one more mark, retrieve his things, and he was gone for good.
“Answer me!” Palmo screamed, spit flying from his lips as he drew a smaller blade from the side of his boot. “You orphan, you son of a whore! You know what you are. All the assassins that the Diyu Brotherhood send out are…”
Danzen took a step closer to the man.
“Who sent you?” he asked, sweat forming on his brow. The blanched moon reflected off Palmo’s dark eyes as he took Danzen in. “At least answer me that. Who dares call for my death? Ha! Who can afford it? In fact, what are they paying you, assassin? Maybe you and I can work out a little arrangement…” Palmo twisted his blade, trying to show Danzen he meant business. “Well? Are you mute? Did your mother punt you onto the bloodied steps of the Diyu Brotherhood before she abandoned you? Answer me, you fool! You feckless slave to the blood trade!”
Danzen didn’t want to end it here, not on the rooftop.
It would be more honorable for him to accomplish his task in the courtyard below, less cleanup for Palmo’s servants, and maybe less shock for his family.
Rather than strike him down, Danzen slowly glided his blade back into its scabbard, his famed sword vibrating with power.
“You mute! You fool!” Palmo shouted as he swiped his dagger at Danzen.
Danzen sidestepped his attack and kicked the man’s legs out from beneath him, sending Palmo tumbling down the roof.
The man landed in a bush that had been sculpted into an oval, some of the clay roof tiles collapsing on top of Palmo, insult to injury.
With a whoosh, Danzen swiftly dropped down to the courtyard. He took a spot directly before his target, Palmo blinking his eyes open, a trickle of blood sliding down the side of his face.
“What… what are you?” the man asked, his bushy eyebrows pressing together as Danzen drew his sword.
But rather than swiftly execute his target, Danzen tossed his blade to the right, an approaching guard letting out a harrowed gasp.
Palmo glanced to see one of his guards fall to his knees, Danzen’s blade quickly returning to his hand, as if it were affixed by a magical string.
“What kind of magic…?”
Danzen motioned for his target to stand.
He could practically taste freedom by this point, his bondage to the Diyu Brotherhood over once he took care of this final contract, his last official kill.
And as Palmo got to his feet, slowly accepting his fate, Danzen tried to stomach the sense of elation moving through him, to focus, to finish this one final job.
His hopes were shattered when tendrils of blackened fabric swept through the courtyard, Danzen barely able to jump in time to avoid their sharp ends.
Palmo wasn’t so lucky.
The man’s legs were instantly cut off below the knees, revealing the white of bone rimmed in reddened muscle and tendons. Palmo screamed in agony as his body fell forward, the tendrils of blackened fabric quickly sweeping away.
Danzen jumped in the air again to avoid more of the fabric tendrils, twisting as he unsheathed his weapon and hurled it at an opponent standing on a rooftop on the opposite side of the courtyard, his assailant framed by the moon.
One of the tendrils of fabric swatted Danzen’s sword away, his blade magically returning to its scabbard.
The swaths of textile formed into the shape of a vase, quickly cascading down from the tiled roof and sweeping up into the arm bindings of a man Danzen was intimately familiar with.
“Help!” Palmo bellowed as he tried to scoot away, his severed legs leaving two rivulets of blood on the pavement as he sobbed and cursed.
The man with the dark arm bindings shot one of his tendrils at Palmo, cutting his ear off.
“I’m…” Danzen glanced down at his bloodstained blade. “I’m too old for this shit.”
“Danzen Ravja,” the man with dark arm bindings said as he rubbed his hands together, his fabric loose now, as if he were wearing sleeves that were too long.
“Norwin Dawa.” Danzen brought his sword to the ready. “Why have you come here?”
Palmo let out a gargled sound, and rather than let the man suffer anymore, Danzen flung his blade into Palmo’s back. His target let out one final gasp and collapsed, Danzen’s sword swiftly returning to its scabbard.
“I see you still are wielding Astra,” Norwin Dawa said in a jovial, almost mocking tone. “A boomerang sword crafted using a remnant. A beauty, to say the very least. I vow to you now, Danzen: once we’re done here, I will take care of Astra as if she were my own. I suppose she will go nicely with the bounty that the Diyu Brotherhood has placed on your head, a bonus, if you will.”
Danzen’s focus wavered at Norwin’s last statement. “A… a bounty?”
Norwin Dawa grinned. “Surely you didn’t think that Biren Yeshe would let his favorite assassin simply leave the Brotherhood, did you?”
“But…”
Danzen could no longer find the words.
He’d spoken with Biren Yeshe about his departure for months now, the older monk sympathetic to Danzen’s desire to give up his cutthroat lifestyle.
“You really believed him, didn’t you?” Norwin whipped his tendrils against the pavement, kicking up a mist of stone. His forearms were bulging now, the muscle visible under his plum robes. “I thought it would be fitting that I came before the others could find you. Soko, Nayaga, Shunta, Nomin, even some of the former teachers may come out of retirement to hunt you. Soko seemed quite keen to take the bounty. Perhaps I’ll let her have your sword.”
“No…” Danzen whispered.
“Yes, Danzen, yes. Remember, you are the one that gave me this.” Norwin pointed to the side of his skull, at the gnarled scar that stretched to the back of his neck. Norwin had kept a shaved head ever since, the scar adding a fierceness to his visage that he once claimed gave him an edge. “So I thought it would be appropriate for me to return the gesture so many years later.”
“We were much younger then,” Danzen finally said. “I was punished for it.”
Norwin’s tendrils began to circle around his forearms, thickening as they formed into an armor.
His unique ability, to control the fabric wrapped around his arms and hands, had come to Norwin after he swallowed a Sunyata talisman. It would have killed a normal man, and it should have killed Norwin.
But it didn’t.
And it was at this point that Danzen knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was going to be one hell of a night.
Especially if Norwin managed to draw blood.
A scream cut through the biting silence that had spread between them, Norwin turning to see a teenage girl in pink silk robes press past servants who were trying to hold her back.
“Father! Father!”
She shoved her way forward and arrived at Palmo’s dead body. The teenage girl took her father into her arms and looked up at the two men, unadulterated hate in her tear-filled eyes.
And that’s when Norwin struck.
The tendril of sharpened fabric spun past Danzen’s arm, its razor-sharp edge grazing his bicep, drawing blood.
“No,” Danzen said, his focus solely on the girl now. “Run! Run!”
“I always wondered about this,” Norwin admitted, curiosity taking shape on his face. “We were warned not to cut you in any way. You know, the rumor back then was that you were half-demon. But I never believed it…”
Danzen fell to a knee, looking up at his opponent. He felt hundreds of shadowy hands reaching up toward him, the demonic cries of terror grating against his eardrums, his soul torn to shreds as an incredible, visceral, unbelievably powerful energy swelled into his body from the depths of hell.
His eyes flashed red.
The teenage girl took one look at the transformation taking place, yelped, and tried to run away.
Norwin sent a tendril after her. Rather than kill her, he simply lassoed her legs and yanked her back to the ground, the teenager out cold as soon as her chin cracked against the stone.
“So this is what you become?” Norwin asked, Danzen absolutely seething at this point, his muscles pulsating, his veins swelling with a blood he hardly understood, one that made him stronger than any mortal he’d ever encountered.
“Go,” Danzen managed to tell Norwin, barely able to contain the sheer fury pulsating inside him. “If… if you value your life, go.”
****
Portals opened up all around them, Norwin Dawa watching in delight as a dark mist formed. Clawed hands with yellowed fingernails reached out of the portals, gruesome snarls adding a jarring discord to the once-peaceful courtyard.
“And what about your Demon Speak power?” Norwin asked, twirling one of the bands of fabric that hung from his arm, the assassin barely able to contain his excitement. “What about this legendary feat of yours?”
“Go,” Danzen whispered, his hair in his face now, a dark hanging cloud over his head. “Please, Norwin.”
“No, I think I’ll stay.” Norwin swung one of his bindings at Danzen.
Danzen caught the binding midair, the sharp fabric immediately cutting into his palm and only fueling his rage.
“Come on, let me hear it,” Norwin chided. “You owe me that much.”
Danzen yanked the tendril of fabric toward him, his hand instantly wrapping around Norwin’s neck.
He drove the assassin into the ground, the force causing Norwin to pop back up, and land in the fountain at the center of the courtyard.
Norwin’s tendrils of fabric swirled around his body until they formed into a thick textile armor.
His eyes narrowing, Norwin exploded toward Danzen, whipping his tendrils all around him. Thickened blade pillars descended from his bindings, cutting into the ground beneath him as he moved.
The assassin advanced toward Danzen almost as if he were a spider crawling on eight legs, the tendrils of fabric suspending him as he laughed wildly.
Danzen drew his famed blade, slicing through swaths of fabric, ignoring the cuts, most of them healing instantly even as Norwin’s enchanted tendrils continued to come at him.
Norwin shot a web of fabric at Danzen, and he spun just in time to swat it away, practically possessed by this point, every movement calculated.
Danzen grabbed a large swath of the assassin’s binding and wrenched it toward him, his superhuman strength allowing him to yank Norwin down from the writhing fabric construct he’d created.
Danzen flung his assailant across the courtyard, into another fountain, the man bringing down a statue of a woman just about to fire an arrow.
“I still want to hear your Demon Speak power,” Norwin said as he pressed himself out of the rubble, a trickle of blood appearing on his lip, his body sopping wet.
Norwin’s bindings returned to him at once.
They churned around one of his arms and formed into an impossibly large conic blade made of razor-sharp fabric.
Wielding his newfound weapon with both hands, Norwin sprung toward Danzen, their weapons meeting, his strong enough to sustain Danzen’s rapid-fire attacks.
Norwin managed to hold his own, blocking most of Danzen’s attacks as more demons crawled out of the portals in the courtyard. He even tried to take Danzen down with trickery, sending out a binding every now and then to slice at the back of Danzen’s legs, aiming for his Achilles tendon.
Every time he did, Danzen pressed through it, his sheer power nearly impossible to contain.
Danzen increased his speed, Norwin parrying each of his attacks, sweat dripping down his brow as he tried to maintain his footing.
And all it took was one hesitant step on Norwin’s part to give Danzen the opening necessary to drive the tip of his famed sword through the man’s shoulder.
Danzen withdrew Astra, an arc of blood following the tip of the sword as he kicked the assassin away.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Danzen said, looking at Norwin’s blood, which now dripped from his famed blade to the ground.
The ground began to bubble, the hands and shadows pressing out again, their bloodlust evident in the terrifying screams and gargled yelps that emitted.
Norwin finally seemed surprised.
“Go…” Danzen said, turning to a shadowy form advancing on them. He swung his blade at it, cutting through the hellspawn. “Go, Norwin!”
Norwin covered the wound on his shoulder with one of his bindings. He looked to his right to see Palmo’s teenage daughter trying to slip away, her chin a bloody mess where she’d hit the pavement earlier.
A wicked smile rippling across his face, Norwin shot a tendril toward her foot and dragged her back into the courtyard, the teenager beating her fists against the ground as demonic hands grabbed for her.
“Good luck, Danzen,” Norwin growled, wiping the blood from his lip. “You will be hunted, wherever you are, it doesn’t matter. Your death is imminent.”
The assassin took to the air, his bindings acting as a spring beneath him.
Norwin landed on the rooftop, some of the clay tiling crumbling under his weight. He sent his bindings forward to an even higher tower, swinging away.
