Mask of the Fallen: A Cultivation/Progression Fantasy Series: (War Priest Book One)

by Harmon Cooper

  “It can’t be…” Arik was jerked forward to some degree, nearly falling again. Sawtooth, who rode the horse that the disciple was hitched to, didn’t seem to care either way if he stayed on his feet or not.

  For a moment, Arik and Jinmo separated, but soon they were side-by-side again.

  “I don’t know how the other academies in our realm have fared, but I assume…” Jinmo choked on the next words that came out of his mouth. “I assume that they have met the same fate as ours. What I’m trying to say is this: you may be the last disciple in all the realms, in all of Taomoni, and this, this is why you can’t let these slavers know who you are, or what you can do. You are lucky everyone at the ceremony tonight was wearing white robes like yourself, as is tradition. Otherwise they would have spotted you right away.”

  Arik blinked a few times, his mind feeling as if it were short-circuiting in some way. It had all come so quickly, and none of it made any sense. “I don’t understand…”

  “Arik, listen carefully to what I’m telling you,” Jinmo said, which was the first time he’d ever heard Jinmo address him without his proper title. “Keep your identity a secret, and if you have any wounds, heal them as gradually as possible, like a normal person would. Do not heal any of the others. We will stick together, you and I. We will figure out a way to escape. Until then, do not say a word about who you are. You must survive. You may be the last of your kind.”

  ****

  Arik Dacre grew to hate the slavers over the next several days.

  Some were worse than others, like the man known as Konwa, who had already forced himself upon several of the captives during times of supposed rest, one scenario in particular even eliciting concern from the slaver named Sawtooth, the man tasked with overseeing Arik.

  As an argument between the two slavers raged on, Arik wished for what felt like the millionth time that he had devoted his studies to the Divine Branch of Remote Healing, that something could be done to help the suffering.

  “You mustn’t,” Jinmo reminded Arik just as the disciple was getting to his feet. The big groundskeeper was seated in the shadow of a tree, an indecipherable look on his face.

  Arik couldn’t read minds. He couldn’t possibly know what was going through Jinmo’s head, or the things that the former slave had witnessed in the Crimson Realm, nor did he know the full story behind the scars on his back, now even more visible after the slaver named Konwa announced his decision for all the captives to remove the tops of their robes, men, women, and children alike.

  They weren’t yet nude, but by the time Konwa was finished clumsily wielding his dagger, the robes the captives had all been wearing were gone, his blade occasionally grazing skin as he sadistically cut away their clothing.

  That had been two days ago, maybe three. Maybe more.

  Arik had lost track.

  Coupled with his capture came the traumatic dreams, Arik reliving how he had failed everyone back at the graduation ceremony, Master Guri Yarna saving him in the end. Who were these mercenaries? Could they really have been from the School of Illusion, which had disbanded years before Arik was born? Were they really shinobi?

  With some of his wounds now infected, his fingers still severed, the long journey to the Crimson Realm grew in difficulty, and that wasn’t to mention the terrain, the climbs, the sharp rocks, and the change in altitude. It was the ultimate of ironies, his healing ability came so naturally that he had to actively work against it, which strained him even more.

  The slavers made their way through the Jade Realm during the cold night, hiding in predetermined locations through the long summer days. With such a grueling journey, it was only a matter of time before one of the captives died.

  The first death came the night after the argument between the slavers named Sawtooth and Konwa. The boy couldn’t have been older than Arik’s twelve-year-old sister, Mori Ehara, and the boy had certainly stirred up trouble over the last several days, often crying, begging for his parents, or simply letting the horses drag him.

  The youth had given up on life, and now, under a moonless night with nary a star above, the boy offered his last breath to the mortal world. He simply stopped moving, the horse he was roped to dragging him for a number of miles before the rider realized he was dead. Had he died of heartbreak? Anguish? Sheer starvation considering they were only fed and watered once a day? Or had he simply given up?

  Arik would have no way of knowing for certain, but like the other suffering he had witnessed, he would internalize it, not able to refrain from blaming himself for letting the boy die.

  And it was in that moment, one in which Arik felt both a tinge of guilt and an unquenchable anger raging within him, that he decided he would act.

  He had to do something.

  Arik respected Jinmo, and the man had offered him his guidance and calm over the last several days. But this wasn’t going to be Arik’s fate. He wasn’t going to become a slave in the iniquitous Crimson Realm, the only of the three realms that still bought and sold humans, and he wasn’t going to hide who he was any longer.

  You can do this, he reminded himself over their grueling night journey.

  (You must do this.)

  The next morning came, and after they set up camp, Arik waited for his fellow captives and the slavers to drift off. He waited. And once it appeared that everyone was asleep, he got to his feet. None noticed his movement aside from Jinmo, who had been seated next to Arik as always.

  “What… what are you doing?” Jinmo asked as he blinked his eyes open, sudden panic making his pupils twitch.

  “I’m not going with them,” Arik said defiantly as he glared down at Jinmo, his gaze instantly softening. It wasn’t Jinmo’s fault, and seeing him now in the blue of the morning, Arik noticed that the groundskeeper was much worse off than he had expected, his wounds increasing by the day as he became an object of torture from some of the smaller slavers due to Jinmo’s sheer size. “Let… let me heal you.”

  “Please, Disciple Arik, please sit. You’re being rash. We can do this….”

  “We have to fight back,” Arik said, ignoring Jinmo’s pleas. “We can’t give in.”

  “It is useless. We are…” Jinmo took a look around, as if doing so would help him better understand their exact location. “Somewhere in the Jade Realm. I can tell by the mountains. They seem larger than the ones up north. But where? And if you do escape, where will you go, Disciple Arik? Ask yourself that. Where will you go? We will have much better luck if we get to the Crimson Realm and figure it out from there, or at the very least, figure it out in Omoto, on the border.”

  “You are wrong,” Arik said carefully. “Our luck has already run out. I am going, and if you’d like, you can join me. If not, I will come back for you. I promise. I will not let you become a slave again.”

  “Come back for me? How? Do you realize what you are saying? Sit, Arik, before you wake the slavers, you aren’t a fighter,” Jinmo hissed. “Disciple, please…”

  Throughout the course of their overnight journey, Arik had thought about how he would break free of the rope tied to his handcuffs, figuring he would be able to deal with the metal cuffs later. Due to the rocky nature of the terrain, there were plenty of jagged stones around, but he didn’t know if they were sharp enough to actually cut through the rope.

  This was about the time that Arik noticed something about the way the rope had been tied to his handcuffs, which seemed to be checked every time before the slavers set off. Rather than going through several of the chain links, as they had done the others, for some reason, be it fate or otherwise, Sawtooth had only looped the rope through one of the links when he had last dealt with Arik’s restraints.

  Arik wasn’t quite certain if it would be possible yet, but it looked like he would be able to pull on it hard enough to loosen the knot. From there, Arik would hop on the nearest horse, which happened to be about thirty feet away.

  At least that was the plan.

  “You need my help, don�
�t you?” Jinmo asked as Arik looked down at the rope affixed to his handcuffs.

  “Let me heal you. Consider it an exchange if you won’t come with me.”

  “I’m…” Jinmo bowed his head. “I’m afraid to leave.”

  “I am too.”

  “I don’t know where we are.”

  “Neither do I,” Arik said, “but I’m not staying here. I will return with help.”

  “Whose help?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  Jinmo shook his head. “And I can’t convince you to stay?”

  “We have to do this. This may be our only chance.”

  “I… I can’t,” Jinmo said. “They’ll kill us.”

  “Not if we get away.”

  “I’m sorry, Disciple Arik.”

  “You shouldn’t be.” Once again, Arik looked down at the rope attached to a link on his cuffs.

  “I… I’ll help you.”

  “And I will heal you.”

  There were a variety of techniques taught at the Academy of Healing Arts, and even though he was weak, Arik knew that he would be able to command enough of his own Revivaura to ease Jinmo’s suffering and certainly fix his swollen ankle without doing anything adverse to his own energy levels.

  Arik crouched before the larger man and placed his good hand on Jinmo’s arm. He noticed how dirty he was, Arik’s fingers caked with dust and dried blood, his skin now the same color as the iron-oxidized rocks that seem to form a rim on the horizon, a reddish, weatherbeaten brown.

  “And what of your fingers?” Jinmo whispered.

  “Fixable.”

  Jinmo’s eyes lit up as the watery chi known as Revivaura formed a nearly translucent cloud around Arik’s good hand. It was very subtle, and slightly vaporous, but soon, it began to wash over the groundskeeper, his minor cuts suddenly gone, his bloodshot eyes less so, his breaths deeper and more satisfying.

  “Thank you,” he said once Arik removed his hand. “Thank you, Disciple Arik.”

  “You should come with me. I can do more.”

  “No… you’ve done enough. Let me help you, and, please, you must be careful. You may be the last one. You can’t die. I don’t want you to leave, I don’t want you to come back for me, all I want is for you to remember what I told you: you can’t die.”

  Rather than respond, Arik offered Jinmo a short nod.

  At first, Jinmo tried to undo the knot, but he was unable to with the way his hands were cuffed side-by-side.

  “Let’s try this…”

  To give himself additional leverage, Jinmo brought Arik’s rope beneath his knees which he used to hold the rope to the ground. Since his hands were cuffed in front of him, the large groundskeeper also leaned his body weight forward, hunkering down, securing more of the rope.

  As quietly as possible, Arik began to pull back on the rope. His foot dislodged a few pebbles, making enough sound to wake one of the nearby slavers.

  “Disciple, hurry!” Jinmo hissed.

  Arik brought his arms to the side, his muscles bulging as he finally tore free of the rope.

  He stumbled forward as more of the slavers awoke.

  “Run!” Jinmo shouted. “Go!”

  Arik spotted the gray horse that he had been latched to and charged toward it. He threw himself onto its back, the beast kicking its legs up, as Arik used the saddle to hang on for dear life. Tied to a thick root jutting out of the rock, the horse was startled enough to yank itself free before taking off toward the east, taking the clearest viable path.

  This was a part of the plan Arik hadn’t thought through, but he went with it, the horse galloping away from the secluded campsite, Arik barely holding on as dust was whipped up all around him, as he attempted his daring escape.

  He’d noticed earlier that the horses were tired, that the riders had overworked them during the night. Hoping that it would calm his steed to some degree, Arik placed his good hand on the side of the horse’s body, just as an arrow whizzed over his head.

  Fwitt!

  Another arrow nearly hit him.

  Fwitt! Fwitt!

  The horse began to slow after expertly leaping over a scarp with a three-foot drop.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” Arik said as he used more of his Revivaura to correct the beast’s chi imbalance. “Keep running…” The horse came to a complete stop just before a thicket of trees, Arik trying to right himself in the saddle.

  Fwitt!

  An arrow struck the horse in the rear and it took off again before Arik could get his body around. His head bent forward, Arik did what he could, a barely visible water-like substance emanating from his hand as the horse broke into the pocket of pine trees and increased its pace.

  The arrows seemed to stop once Arik reached the thick pocket of pine trees, the needles from last year dampening the sound of his advance. Behind him, men shouted out directions, their voices closer and closer.

  Where am I? Arik looked up to the sky, which was still dark, hoping that he would get some sort of sign as to where he should lead the horse.

  (Where am I?)

  With nowhere to go but straight ahead, they rode deeper into the forest for what felt like an hour, the landscape changing into one that was peppered with rocks, the trees dying back. Arik arrived at a sinkhole not far from an enormous cluster of rocks with stone pillars that reminded him of candles. It looked like a dead end, but then Arik took another look at the sinkhole, which wasn’t a sinkhole at all but the entrance of a cave.

  More shouting behind him told Arik that the slavers were closing in. It wouldn’t be long until they arrived at his location.

  Unless…

  The horse gave him speed, but it also made him more visible, and willing to risk whatever it was that potentially lived inside the cave he’d just spotted, Arik decided to go for it. He carefully hopped down, and took the horse by its reins, leading it away from the opening of the cave.

  “I’m sorry for this.”

  Making sure he was clear of the horse’s legs, Arik grazed his good hand against the horse’s chest, transferring some of the wounds he had stored up.

  The horse took off, neighing and snorting, which would hopefully create a distraction.

  Arik turned back to the cave.

  I hope nothing is in there… he thought as he tried to use rocks for balance, the disciple making his way down the steep incline. Eventually losing his footing, Arik slipped and nearly struck his head on one of the larger stones.

  He pressed himself back up and tried to tune his eyes to the darkness of the cave.

  Everything seemed damp, the air growing increasingly stale the deeper he went. There were no signs of life. No yokai, no bats, scorpions, rats, snakes, nothing of the sort, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something lurking in the depths.

  His skin began to crawl, his nerves standing on end as he sensed, or at least he thought he sensed, movement.

  How would he survive this? How would someone like him, who had only a formal education and little to no true wilderness training, live long enough to cross the entire Jade Realm and make it back to his home? What was he thinking in leaving Jinmo? And what of the Onyx Realm? His family had been killed before his very eyes, the Academy razed to the ground. Where would he even go if he made it to the northern border?

  Arik’s world seemingly closed in on him the deeper he moved into the cavern. Maybe he would just stay here, and die a pitiful death, starved, never to reemerge.

  Maybe this was the end.

  You can’t give into that kind of thinking.

  This wasn’t who he was, and even the mere thought of giving up produced a sour taste in his mouth. If what Jinmo had said was true, and he really was the only disciple left alive, the only healer, then he owed it not only to his parents, not only to teachers like Master Guri Yarna and Combat Master Nankai, but the entire world itself, all of Taomoni, to survive.

  A spark of orange light behind him had a way of deflating Arik’s desperate aspirations
.

  He instantly recognized it as a torch, burnt orange light stretching deeper into the cavern now, illuminating the space. The voice that followed nearly caused the blood to drain from Arik’s legs and arms.

  “You are mine now,” said Konwa in a sinister, almost melodic way. Of all people to find him, it was the most torturous of the slavers, the cruel man seething with anticipation. “It doesn’t matter how deep you go, I will follow.”

  Arik pressed onward, trying to keep as quiet as possible, his heart in his throat as he slipped around a bend in the rock, the cavern starting to narrow.

  Forced to duck now, he continued his journey deeper into the cave, hoping that there was an exit at the other end, fear and adrenaline dueling inside his body as he tried to escape his pursuer.

  The orange light grew brighter. Konwa was gaining on him.

  “For every additional step I have to take,” Konwa announced, “I will take it out on your hide. You will not die here today, slave. Your fate has been written. You belong to Nobunaga, he’s the one who ordered the attack on your precious academy. And before you get to him, you’re going to be fodder for the slave tournaments in Omoto.”

  Nobunaga? The name caused Arik to pause. He had heard it before, but he couldn’t quite place where. Wasn’t he a Crimsonian warlord? And what were the slave tournaments? Arik pressed on. He tried to make himself smaller, hoping for an exit, or perhaps a hole that he could crawl into and hide.

  But he wasn’t so lucky.

  Arik reached the end of the cavern and dropped to his knees in front of a stone slab. It was only then that he realized that his mad scramble away from the light had brought several scrapes on his arm, small nicks on his hand.

  And even though he should have done something else, perhaps search for a rock to use as a weapon against his pursuer, his next decision came naturally, Arik choosing to quickly heal the small cuts instead.

  As the orange light grew brighter, Revivaura formed in the air around him, water-like, his small wounds stitching up.