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

by Harmon Cooper

  He turned just as Konwa stepped into the space, the monstrous slaver with his torch in his hand, the bright light accentuating his wicked grin. “I counted one hundred and twenty steps…” he said with a sneer.

  The evil look on his face twisted into something that resembled fear as the crest of an enormous wave broke overhead.

  Whoosh!

  Water exploded from every crevice in the cavern, but rather than drown Arik, it moved around the disciple and spiraled away, the water rushing past him until it finally slowed into a trickle, Konwa’s torch extinguished, the space dark to the point that Arik didn’t know if he’d be able to find his way out.

  “Serves him right,” said a gutsy male voice, which seemed to exist all around him, echoing in his head.

  Arik got to his feet, noticing that he was completely dry. “Who… who’s there?”

  “The one and the only,” the voice told him in an almost boisterous way. “And it’s about damn time you showed up.”

  ****

  Arik still didn’t know what to think of the male water spirit of sorts that had come to his aid, but he was relieved to see that Konwa was spooked to the point that he had made a run for it. At least he was temporarily safe, and at least he was no longer at the depths of the cavern.

  “What… what are you?” Arik said as he took in the entity that seemingly floated before him, both of them now at the entrance of the cave, the morning light peeking in.

  He couldn’t quite make out his features, the aqueous being made of a liquid-like consistency that Arik was used to seeing when he utilized Revivaura. But there was something different about his consistency as well, something more tangible, the being clearly capable of incredible feats like the one Arik had just witnessed.

  “Who am I? I just told you who I was. Were you not listening to anything I said on the way out of this despicable cave?” the being asked, something akin to a frown forming on the floating body of water as it spoke. “I guess I shouldn’t go so hard on you. I’ve seen humans look a little worse for wear, but you look a little wear for worse. No? Eh. The joke doesn’t work for me either. What can I say? It’s been a while since I spoke to someone. We’ll see how funny you are after you’ve been stuck in a godforsaken cave for what feels like hundred of years. To reintroduce myself, I’m Meosa, a being that you should not only be respectful of, but one that you should also be in awe of. Ever seen anything like me, disciple?”

  “You’re a… yokai?” Arik finally asked, going with a word that was familiar to him.

  People generally called creatures they couldn’t classify ‘yokai.’ Some were kept as pets, but most were wild, Arik recalling the winged wolves that had attacked him, the hainu. There were other yokai that were educated and treated like humans, but these ones only seem to exist in the Jade Realm, where they lived peacefully alongside humanity in an eastern city known as Avarga.

  “Yokai?” Meosa leaned a bit closer to Arik, his water form shaking as if it were agitated. “What have they been teaching you in the Onyx Realm? I’m not a yokai, I am a kami. I guess to the layperson—I’ve yet to decide if this word defines you or not—kami are yokai, but yokai are not kami. If that wasn’t clear enough to you, no, I’m not yokai and how dare you insult me…” he started to huff, only to let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t stay angry at you, not in your current state, not with how pathetic you look. We can get to semantics later, my boy.”

  “Why were you in the cave?”

  “Now that, disciple, is the question.” Meosa swept his watery arm aside, back in the direction from which they had just come. “It was a curse, believe it or not. I was on the wrong side of history last time around, and this time, I plan to be on the right side.”

  Arik tilted his head as he took in the aqueous kami. “What do you mean?”

  “Surely, you are familiar with the Crimson-Onyx Shroud War. I know that as a disciple, history may not really be your main subject of study, but I hope for your sake, and mine, that you had a classical education to some extent. Please tell me this is the case.”

  “The Crimson-Onyx Shroud War? That was five hundred years ago…”

  “Has it been that long?” A pained expression on his watery face. “Then it has been five hundred years since I’ve been sealed here. What year is it?”

  “Year 1599.”

  “Terrible to hear. I’ve lost track a bit, if we’re being honest, but I can’t believe it has really been that long. I tried to do what all inmates do—you know, scratching out marks on the wall to celebrate the passing of the year—but as you can tell,” Meosa said as he showed Arik his watery hands, “unless I really put some effort into it, carving things really isn’t my specialty. It is something that’s possible, however. But not my specialty. What year did you say it was again?” Meosa asked, his voice teetering on sadness.

  “1599.”

  “That’s what I thought. Horrible! Such an unnecessary punishment, if you ask me. Five hundred years sealed in a stone box in a wretched cave that even the stupidest gaki wouldn’t even venture in. What a terrible existence!”

  “I am… sorry.”

  This statement caused Meosa to laugh. “Such a good young disciple you are, always on the verge of apologizing. But what did I expect? How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-two?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Meosa shook his head. “The age of fools and foolish lechery. It seems as if I were rescued by an infant…”

  “I’m not an infant.”

  “Ha! Says the disciple to the undeniably powerful being that has been trapped in a stone box for five hundred years. What’s your name?”

  “Arik… Arik Dacre.”

  Meosa looked up as if he were pondering the name, something resembling a chin appearing at the front of his watery form. “And you are clearly a disciple, because only someone who can utilize Revivaura could unlock the box I was trapped in.”

  “Yes. I am. Or… was. How did you get stuck in the box?” Arik asked.

  “As I told you, a curse of sorts. Now, to be fair, I’ve seen worse curses than that, but without any instructions, and tucked away in such a remote location, it could have taken much longer for me to finally get out of there. So I’m thankful for that. I was getting so sick of being in there.” Meosa sighed miserably. “Anyway, I guess we should get right down to it then. Why have you come looking for me?”

  The kami scanned Arik yet again, a visual made stranger considering his facial features were barely discernible.

  “I… I didn’t come looking for you. I was trying to hide.”

  “I suppose that would explain your pursuer, but why would you hide in a cave, especially that cave? There’s no exit.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  “I don’t know? Perhaps take a quick look around before you go spelunking,” Meosa said. “But I suppose in the end that it’s not your fault. Why would they teach someone to hide at one of the healing academies? That clearly is something one would study at the School of Illusion, one of those nefarious shinobi, useless illusionists. That said, you should have at least taken a look around. I’m certain that there were several spaces in there that you could have crawled through.”

  “How was I supposed to see that?”

  “It’s common sense.”

  Arik raised an eyebrow at Meosa. “How is that common sense?”

  “How is that not common sense? Caves are often porous, and there are generally plenty of crawlspaces burrowed by yokai and other lesser, stupider creatures over the course of time that make perfect hiding spots. Have you truly spent your entire life stabbing yourself and seeing how quickly you can stitch up a wound? And what happened to your hand?”

  “That’s not what disciples do, and it’s a long story,” Arik finally said, not wanting to argue with the kami.

  “I’m sure it is. In any event, you found me, so congratulations are in order, I am now forever in your debt. With that in mind, I’ll start with removing those cuffs o
f yours, just one of the many things I’m capable of. Hold still, disciple.”

  Arik felt a watery sensation circle around his hands, followed by an intense pressure as the metal keeping his wrist together began to shake. It wasn’t long before the cuffs fell to the ground with a loud clang that echoed deep into the cavern.

  “There. See? I may be mouthy, but I’m also useful.”

  “Thank you,” Arik said, as he rubbed his wrist with his good hand.

  Meosa’s form seemed to relax a little, a bit less rigid now as he floated before the disciple. “With that out of the way, we should probably get out of here because, as you very well know by now, I utterly despise this wretched cave, and you look like you could use a bath. You might be saying to yourself that I, a powerful aqueous kami, am something capable of bathing you, but that is not the kind of relationship we are going to have, to be clear. To be very clear, disciple, I should add. If you are dirty, it is your own fault.”

  “Got it.”

  “Another thing that we probably should have gotten out of the way before I freed you. For all I know, you are a criminal, yet that usually isn’t the path of a disciple. Why were you being chased? And with that question in mind, why is someone who can clearly heal themselves covered in scrapes and missing a couple of fingers? Four, is it?”

  “I can fix the fingers,” Arik said as he looked down to the stubs of his hand, the infection now starting to spread past his knuckles.

  “I would hope so. But I wasn’t born yesterday, as I’ve informed you several times now. You know what, disciple? Yes, that does make sense, even if I want to leave this place. Perhaps you and I should just take it easy for the next day before we depart, thus giving you some time to heal and explain yourself. As much as I don’t want to hang around here, it would only be another day…” Meosa said with a hint of disdain. “And I am known to be charitable from time to time.”

  “No, I have to stop the slavers. I have to do something for Jinmo…”

  “Slavers you say? Is that who was chasing you, a slaver?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose that does explain what has transpired here to some degree. If these slavers are going anywhere, they’re going to the city of Omoto, which is on the border of the Jade and Crimson Realm, just in case disciples like yourself don’t study geography. Omoto isn’t so far from here, relatively speaking. There is time to rest, fix your fingers, and in the meantime you can tell me everything that has transpired over the last five hundred years to the best of your knowledge, including why you are in the Jade Realm, why it looks like you’ve been dragged over Mount Osore several times before being ripped to shreds by pack of hainu, trampled by a wooly kayno, and subsequently cursed by an itako, and why a slaver was chasing you in the first place.”

  Arik considered this. If ever there had been a time in his life that he needed rest, it was now. He could tell now just how shaky he was, how low his energy levels were.

  “May I suggest something?” Meosa asked as he leaned in. “Worry less and recover more, disciple. I believe that is something that Master Ugyen Lingpa said, but I could be wrong.”

  “You knew Master Lingpa?” Arik asked, referring to one of the founding members of Onyx Realm’s healing academies nearly fifteen hundred years ago.

  “What? No. Absolutely not. I’m not that old. How old do I look to you?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “Yes,” Meosa said as his form wavered. “I would agree there. I have done an exceptionally good job of keeping fit over the years.”

  “And we can leave for Omoto tomorrow, right? In the morning?” Arik asked, feeling drowsier by the second.

  “You have my word that I will lead you there.”

  “Won’t people see you?”

  Meosa seemed to scoff at the simplicity of this question. “Only if I want them to. If you haven’t figured it out already, I have a few tricks up my sleeve, disciple, which I’m sure you will come to understand over the coming days. But for now, let’s find a place for you to rest and recover. I have this itching feeling that you, of all people, are going to need your strength.”

  .Chapter Three.

  “There is no point in your training in which you will reach the end. Unless I stab you and you die. Then you will have reached the end of your training.”

  –A quote attributed to Combat Master Yob Nur Murakami, told to a student whom he later killed for gross insubordination, Year 275.

  Arik Dacre watched as several rocks tumbled past him, his grip tensing on a stone ledge as he finally pulled himself up. Once he was able to stand again, Arik pressed his back against the rock wall, sucking in deep breaths, trying not to look down.

  “Come on, you’re almost there…” Meosa told him, the kami’s voice all around him, his physical form not currently visible.

  This better be worth it, Arik thought as he slowly turned around and looked up the wall of stone, locating the next groove he would use to climb even higher.

  It was amazing what a day of rest had done for the disciple, Arik fully healed, glad for the mental break as well. He’d been so exhausted that there’d been little time for him to dwell on what happened to him since the attack on the Academy of Healing Arts, his enslavement, the horrible things he had witnessed. All of it.

  But waking that morning had a way of pushing the trauma to the front of his mind again, Arik also incredibly hungry, surprised to see that Meosa had used his power to gather berries from some mangled plant that dared grow out of the cracks of the rocks. With his wounds healed and his fingers reformed, Arik was ready to press on to the border city of Omoto in search of Jinmo, but he wasn’t going to be able to go in his current tattered and bloodied clothing.

  Hence this insane climb.

  “Like I was telling earlier, your day of rest gave me plenty of time to scout the area. And you’re lucky I didn’t just leave,” Meosa told him. “Kidding. I wouldn’t leave you; our fates are now intertwined, it seems.”

  “Is that so?” Arik asked as he prepared to jump up to the next ledge.

  “After what you told me yesterday, and what they did to your friends and family and teachers…” Meosa trailed off. “I would say that both you and I have had our legs kicked out from beneath us, that we should be dead. Or, that you should be dead or perhaps enslaved, and I should be trapped inside that magical stone box just wasting away. My point? This is fate, get used to it, disciple.”

  Arik jumped, and in doing so he grabbed onto the next rock ledge. He used his leg and his other hand to pull himself up, and once he was stable again, Arik looked down at his new fingers and flexed them. There was no way to tell that they had been severed, no scar, and no change in the color of his skin. It was visual proof of the unique power he had spent his life studying, his true mastery over Revivaura through its various branches. He only hoped that he wasn’t the only healer left, that someone else had somehow survived.

  “Do you see it now?” Meosa asked.

  Arik kept his hand on the rock in front of him as he leaned back and squinted straight up, where he noticed a swath of shade above, which could have only come from the opening of the cave, the hint of a cold draft emanating from the opening.

  He was almost there.

  The only problem was, he didn’t think he was going to be able to jump high enough to pull himself up onto the final ledge.

  “Don’t hesitate; you can make it,” Meosa told him. “If you fall, I’ll do my best to catch you.”

  Can he do that? Arik thought as he made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder, and seeing that the ground was now forty feet away or down, jagged stones facing in his direction.

  “I’m guessing by the fact that you haven’t tried to jump that you don’t believe me.”

  “If you can catch me, why didn’t you just take me to the top?” Arik asked.

  “I’m already strong.”Meosa’s humanoid form appeared next to Arik. He lifted two arms and began to flex, his watery bice
ps stacking on top of one another in an almost comical way. “You’ve never seen a vaporous water deity quite as strong as me, this I can assure you. What do you think I was doing in that box for the last five hundred years, licking my wounds? Okay, I was doing a little of that, but I was mostly sleeping. And sometimes exercising. Maybe once a week. And thinking. Ugh. Way too much thinking. Overthinking is one thing, then there’s solitary confinement and thinking to the point that you’re having trivial philosophical debates with yourself. The point is, you are the one that needs to get stronger, not me. I am already comfortable in my skin, and you have yet to grow into yours.”

  This wasn’t the first time Meosa had told him this.

  In presenting Arik the berries, he said something similar, about him needing to gain his strength, that the disciple would need it for the days to come. What did he know that Arik didn’t know? What did he think would happen once they reached Omoto?

  While Arik had been courteous enough with the water spirit, and he was grateful for the fact that he had saved him from the evil slaver known as Konwa and provided food, Arik still didn’t quite trust him. After all, why had Meosa been imprisoned in the stone box anyway? What had he done? And more importantly, why wouldn’t he tell him?

  “Just try,” Meosa assured Arik. “You can’t go into town in your current state. Not only is it bad fashion—you know, coming to town covered in blood-soaked robes—you’re trying to blend in. Even better if we could get one of those ridiculous square hats they wear down in the desert, but this will do.”

  Arik glanced up to the ledge above him.

  He started to squat, realizing that he had nothing to lose. If he did fall down the side of the rock, he would be able to heal himself as long as he didn’t die immediately. He had already survived an epic fall. What was one more?

  That’s one way to think of it, Arik thought as he jumped as high as he could, barely managing to grab onto the ledge above. He scrambled to pull himself up and started to lose his grip, a bolt of fear racing through him, the thought of falling making his feet tingle inside his boots.