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

by Harmon Cooper

  “I will see you in three days,” Arik said as he started to turn away.

  “One more thing, and this goes without saying: do not reveal your power to anyone. Whatever you do, do not show people what you are capable of, disciple, at least not in a public setting. Now, approach that man there so I can latch onto him for the time being. It’s easier traveling this way in the absence of humidity.”

  ****

  Once he was on his own, Arik located the square that Meosa had described, the space notable with sandstone statues of beasts of burden known as wooly kayno. Everything in Omoto seemed to be made of stone, practically no wood used in construction from what he could tell, even with the forest outside the city that had grown up along the river banks of the main water source.

  The results of the city’s dedication to stonework was everywhere, from tiny rock charms being sold on tattered hand-woven mats to the physical build of many of the Jadean men with their chiseled forearms seemingly held together by thick, rope-like veins, their skin darkened by the sun, all results of their toil and the harsh conditions this close to the desert.

  Arik was able to sell his boots in the square, and while he didn’t know what the exchange rate was between the Jadean sen and the Onyxian rupee, Arik did exactly as Meosa had instructed in terms of bargaining and received what he hoped was a better price.

  That was, until he went to the next dealer to purchase a pair of sandals and spent nearly half of the sen he acquired for his boots on the pair. In the end, the sandals were at the very least comfortable, Arik naturally joining a crowd that was moving away from the market.

  The food in Omoto seemed cheaper than he expected, Arik able to grab a skewer with meat as he walked, which he quickly ate as he continued to move in the general direction of the crowd, wondering where it would take him.

  It became apparent that they were heading toward a stadium, and as he approached, Arik spotted a man on an overturned crate, followed by many more behind him, the dark-skinned Jadean taking bets, exchanging money quickly as he called out to the crowd. “Place your bets here! Today’s slave tournament will begin shortly! The odds…”

  “Move!” A man shouldered past Arik and placed a bet, more people surging forward, the disciple swooped up into the frenzy of the crowd. He managed to free himself from the initial surge of people, only to encounter a man close to his age, the man’s eyes darting from person to person.

  “You are in the way,” he told Arik as he continued to observe the crowd.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? There are fools waving money about, and I’m going to get some of it.”

  “Is this really a slave tournament? I thought that only the Crimson Realm had slaves…”

  The man looked to Arik if he were stupid. “You are in Omoto, a border city that is half Crimsonian, and half Jadean. What did you expect?” he asked as he moved just a bit closer to Arik, practically in his face. “Now, out of my way.”

  A slave tournament? Arik thought as the realization hit him. Maybe Jinmo…

  Arik quickly stepped aside and continued on, toward a stone hallway that opened up into an ancient arena.

  More people pushed past him, Arik immediately remembering that he had sen on him, that there could be thieves and that it would be best to protect the money he had recently acquired by putting it in an inner pocket. He slipped his hand in the front pocket of his robes, cursing himself when he came up empty-handed.

  He had already been robbed.

  Arik turned, hoping to find the thief he had spoken to earlier, assuming he had been the one who had taken his money. But there were more bodies coming at him now, Arik not able to get around them.

  He could smell alcohol, sweat and body odor, as humanity crescendoed to the point that it was overwhelming. Feeling more and more suffocated, Arik eventually gave into the crowd and twisted forward with them, hoping that he would eventually be led to a place where he could get his bearings.

  This turned out to be, oddly enough, at the very front, where he was pressed up against the railing, a new battle just about to start in the arena below.

  A large man wielding a jagged sword stood with his legs wide and his toes pointed somewhat inward, a stance Arik didn’t recognize, the man waiting for his opponent to join him. He was breathing heavily, and there was blood smeared across his face, the fighter’s furrowed brow shielding his eyes.

  The crowd began to buzz with excitement as a door beneath them opened and a slave with his head shaved stumbled out. Bewildered, he quickly took a look around, to the weapons strewn about the battleground amidst dead and dying bodies, Arik recognizing them as past combatants who had lost their fights. Prying free a dagger and then a short sword from one of the fallen men, the newest combatant turned to his opponent, who still held his jagged sword.

  The people around Arik began to cheer, more money exchanging hands as the fight began.

  It was sickening to watch, especially knowing that the men were slaves. Yet again, Arik wished he had focused his studies on the Divine Branch of Remote Healing, especially once he saw some movement on the outer rim of the fight, in the scatter of fallen bodies.

  Some of them are still alive…

  He recalled what Meosa had told him, but the part of him that had spent his entire life mastering Revivaura was hard to muzzle, Arik truly wishing he could do something.

  He pressed forward into the railing, concern tracing across his face as the bigger combatant, the one with the blood streaked over mouth and nose, brought his jagged sword down and cut straight into his opponent’s neck. His sword was too shoddily crafted to make it all the way through, which forced the brute to use his foot to pull it out of the man’s neck and finally send it down again, decapitating him.

  The crowd roared with approval, clapping and screaming.

  The man’s death had happened just about as quickly as he could blink, Arik realizing something in that moment that Combat Master Nankai had repeatedly told him, something Arik had yet to face considering all of his tournaments had been with wooden weapons—in a tournament-styled fight, one with sharp actual objects, death was not always a certainty, but it was generally quick.

  While one could theoretically toy with their opponents, these were real people fighting for their very real lives, and that’s all they cared about, their lives. They also knew that they could be on the receiving end of a blow just as easily as they could be the one delivering it, mercy shown through death strikes when possible.

  But what about the people on the sideline? Arik thought. Why weren’t they killed? Was Master Nankai mistaken?

  A gate kicked open and two men in conical hats and cloth-covered faces quickly entered into the arena, the two steering clear of the winner as they grabbed the dead man’s body. They dragged him to the side, where they deposited his body with the others. One went back for the head and did the same, dropping it as if he were discarding a ball.

  Even though all of it was chaos and cruelty, there was a sense of order to the proceedings, the lone combatant taking the position he had been in earlier, his jagged sword at the ready, a dark look on his blood-smeared face as he awaited his next opponent.

  More bets exchanged hands, the crowd boiling over with anticipation over the next few minutes that followed. For a very brief moment, it seemed as if there weren’t going to be any more fights for the time being, Arik wondering if there would be a way for him to get to where they kept the slaves who were scheduled to fight, to see if he recognized anyone, to see if…

  No!

  The door beneath the crowd opened and a new opponent came out, an enormous scar on his back, his long hair pulled into a tight ponytail.

  Arik recognized Jinmo immediately.

  ****

  The crowd was too loud for Jinmo to hear Arik shouting his name as the former groundskeeper selected a discarded sword lying near the pile of bodies. He approached his opponent, his body language spelling hesitat
ion.

  Clank!

  Their blades met, the sound of steel on steel ricocheting forward. Arik could tell by Jinmo’s stance that he had no formal training, that he was defending himself solely on a primitive will to live.

  I have to do something…

  Arik glanced around, hoping that there was a way for him to intervene in some way. The thought had already presented itself to him—jump in there and intervene—but there had to be another way to get involved. There had to.

  Gritting his teeth, and feeling the crowd surge behind him as the fight below intensified, their cries growing louder, Arik continued to look for a better option.

  But then Jinmo finally took a blow that he couldn’t block or parry, the strike causing him to drop his sword, an arc of blood spraying into the air, illuminated by the sun.

  “No…” Arik whispered. “No…”

  His brute of an opponent ran his blade straight through the former groundskeeper, and held it there for a moment, eye to eye with Jinmo as he slowly withdrew his jagged sword, bloody sweat dripping from his chin as he did so.

  Jinmo fell to the ground; Arik knew it was now or never.

  Gripping the railing, Arik flung himself into the arena below, where he dropped down six or seven feet. His landing wasn’t great, but he was so focused on getting to Jinmo that he hardly noticed it as he charged forward, Arik swooped in just-in-time, the disciple using his body to cover Jinmo. He expected a sudden impact; he expected the jagged blade to come down onto his back and snap his spine in two.

  Instead, Jinmo’s brute of an opponent lowered his blade.

  “Get to your feet,” the man said in a low, garbled voice that reached Arik’s ears even as the crowd nearly burst at the seam with hysteria.

  Arik looked up to the towering combatant as he ignored the jeers, the food that people had started to throw into the arena amidst their boos and shouts.

  “Get to your feet and face me. I will not tell you again.”

  It must be some kind of honor thing, Arik thought, Jinmo suddenly coming alive.

  “Disciple… Arik?”

  “Jinmo…!”

  “… I’m… Dying…” Jinmo said, his pupils wavering.

  Crouched now, Arik felt the Revivaura floating all around him. He merely needed to focus on Jinmo’s injuries and begin healing him; that, or absorb his wounds outright. But doing so would reveal his power to all of the spectators as well as the man with the jagged sword, his shadow looming over him.

  “Jinmo…”

  “Don’t…” Jinmo said, a pained expression on his face. “Don’t do it. Why? Why did… you come here?”

  Arik looked back up at the fighter standing just a few feet away from him.

  This is it, he thought as he slowly pulled himself to his feet.

  “Let me move him first,” Arik told the man, his voice wavering, barely audible as he gestured toward Jinmo. The towering brute offered Arik a short nod.

  “Arik… no…”

  “I will not abandon you,” Arik said as he tried to help Jinmo stand. But the groundskeeper wasn’t moving, completely dead weight by this point from the shock of it all. It took a moment, but Arik was eventually able to drag Jinmo over to the side, where he crouched before him once again. “Do not die on me, Jinmo. I’ll fix this. You’ll see.”

  “Run… Disciple Arik… You shouldn’t be here,” Jinmo said, his eyes closed, his lips quivering. “Run. Do not try to save me… do not… reveal yourself to these… animals.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  Jinmo came alive and grabbed Arik by the front of his robes. “You must live, disciple,” he said, and with that, he relaxed his grip, his head sinking forward.

  Arik took a hurried look around to find that escape was seemingly impossible. In the process of dragging Jinmo to the outer edge, he had already seen that the gate leading out was closed, and that there were two men on the other side watching, anticipating what was to come.

  Arik needed to make it through that gate to escape, and once he was on the other side…

  It’s the only way, he thought.

  After another glance he found a cloak wrapped around one of the dead bodies. Scavenging, just as he had seen others do, Arik removed the cloak and walked it closer to the gate, where he deposited it. The crowd was louder now, blood lust in their eyes, many of them cursing him, daring him to fight.

  He ignored them once again as he turned back to his opponent, the man an absolute giant, easily two or three heads taller than him. Arik had never been in an actual sword fight, even if he had spent countless hours training with wooden and dull metal weapons. But nothing this real, nothing like this. This was why he didn’t immediately go for the sword that Jinmo had used earlier, which rested on the dirt in front of his opponent. Instead, he returned to the fallen bodies and found a large dagger, one with a jagged edge.

  The jeers behind him began to morph into surprise as Arik rolled up one of his sleeves, the heat of the sun instantly touching his flesh. He transferred the blade to his other hand and used it to draw a deep cut down the side of his arm, avoiding any of the major veins as the crowd whipped up into a fervor at what he was doing.

  It stung, but once the blade was in, Arik quickly adjusted to the feeling, a numbness moving over him as blood began to drip to his hand.

  He looked down at his arm, not sure if it was enough. Even though he knew it would hurt more the second time, he drew another cut, parallel to the first one, Arik breathing heavily as he finally returned his withered gaze to his opponent. The brute seemed unfazed by his savage show, amused even, the hint of a smile shining through the blood smeared across his face.

  Arik turned his blade around and brought the weapon up to the ready, ignoring the pain in his arm, the tingling in his stomach, the adrenaline, the crowd, the fact that he was in an unknown land, the fact that everyone around him was either dead or dying.

  Like Jinmo, the man standing before him hadn’t trained professionally with the sword, evident in the way that he wielded his weapon and his posture. No, he had survived solely by relying on his predatory nature, his will to survive.

  Arik would have to do the same.

  Combat Master Nankai had spoken of this several times, how unpredictable the common fighter could be. “If the enemy thinks mountain, present the sea,” Master Nankai would say. “If the enemy thinks sea, present the mountain.”

  Arik never quite grasped the meaning behind the statement, but now that he was presented with a mountain of a man, a truly unpredictable opponent, he too would need to be as unpredictable as an angry ocean wave.

  Tired of waiting around for the fight to start, his opponent moved forward just about the moment that Arik brought his dagger up.

  He swung his big blade with both hands, Arik jumping back and letting the man’s momentum carry him forward like an avalanche. Much faster than he appeared, his opponent swiveled around in a way that took him off balance, going with a strike that would have cleaved Arik’s head off had he been just a foot or so closer.

  The man’s mistake came as he cried loudly upon bringing his sword down, signaling the direction of his strike. He missed his target, Arik hopping to the left at the very last second.

  He looked up at the disciple and grunted; once he had his footing again, his brute of an opponent charged forward like a bull, snorting, kicking up dirt.

  Arik sidestepped him again, and in doing so managed to drive his dagger to the side, lodging the dagger into the back of the man’s enormous bicep, where it was momentarily stuck.

  His opponent threw his head back and roared, the crowd responding.

  He stabbed his sword to the ground and used his free hand to withdraw the dagger, which he tossed over his shoulder.

  Scooting backwards, closer to the entrance of the arena, Arik swooped down and lifted the sword that Jinmo had wielded, enough blood on his own hand now that he was forced to wipe some of it on his robes.

  He took a few more ste
ps backward, his mind jumping into overdrive as he decided on an upper stance, a common point of Combat Master Nankai’s technical curriculum. But then he remembered that he needed to be unpredictable, that his goal in this fight was to survive and subsequently escape. Not only that, his arm, where he had drawn the two cuts, was starting to hurt even more, Arik having to mentally fight his own natural healing power and hold the weapon at the same time.

  Be unpredictable, Arik told himself. Be unpredictable…

  His opponent reached him, and rather than bring his blade up to block the man’s strike, Arik tossed it forward, toward his opponent’s legs, which caused him to jump backward. The brute had been in the process of bringing his blade down when Arik did this, and his instinctive response to jump back to avoid the flying sword had a way of yanking his legs out from beneath him, the man flopping onto his back.

  He hit the dirt with a loud thud. Arik quickly glanced back at the gate leading out, the two men on the other side transfixed on what was happening. The only way to get them to open the gate, the only way for him to get through it, was going to be through the death of his opponent.

  Or at least the appearance of death…

  Arik rushed over to his opponent, who was just pressing himself up.

  He dropped his knee onto his chest, his hands going around his opponent’s shoulders. As soon as he did this he began transferring the wound he had given himself, amplifying where he had stabbed his opponent, the spectators and the men at the gate none the wiser with all the blood that was now smeared down Arik’s arm. To them, it looked like he was attempting to choke his opponent, the big man twitching and crying out as Arik transferred the wound.

  Wound transfer wasn’t a tit-for-tat game; it didn’t mean that slash marks would suddenly appear on the man’s arm, the power originally meant for Arik to internalize the wounds of others. Pressing the pain out had a similar effect, no visual effect as it entered his opponent in a way that he must have found truly baffling, the man grinding his teeth, crying out in pain, and eventually passing out, appearing to have died.