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

by Harmon Cooper

  “Not so fast,” Arik heard Master Kojiro call to him just as he was nearing the exit. He hadn’t seen the tanuki in the corner of the main ward, the short yokai in a clean set of beige robes that would be bloodsoaked by the end of the day.

  “Master Kojiro,” Arik said, bowing his head slightly. “I’m sorry to leave in this way, but it is best that I go…”

  “Ah, yes. With your friend dead, I assumed that there wasn’t much left for you here in Omoto. As I’ve said several times now, you are, of course, welcome to stay. But no, something about you tells me that you are destined for bigger things, Disciple Arik,” he said, a fondness taking shape on his face. “You have really helped around here.”

  Arik bit his lip, not sure if he could live up to anyone’s expectations at that moment.

  “Where will it be, then? Will you head to Mogra as discussed?”

  “Yes,” Arik told him.

  “Right. I don’t really have much money, but what’s on the table there should be enough for you to get to the city. Ask for the Whitenor Arches. They are a local landmark, and they are located on the grounds of the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts.”

  Arik looked to a small circular table to find a leather shoulder bag, a bit of Jadean sen sticking out of a pocket on the side. It had been two days ago that Arik had his first look at the currency, which was made of green paper, the denominations matching the Onyxian rupee, which was woodblock printed on a gray material. Next to the bag was a sheathed blade. He glanced between the sword and the tanuki, wondering if it were even possible for the yokai to wield a weapon that large.

  “It’s not mine,” Master Kojiro said in a jovial tone. “One of the slaves I healed gave it to me as thanks. I told him I wouldn’t be able to use it, that I would never be able to wield something like that, but he insisted I have it. It is sharp, and it should do the trick for now.”

  “I can’t possibly…”

  “Nonsense. You helped us here, and this is the least that we can do. You should know that you always have a place here.” The tanuki’s beady eyes narrowed on Arik. “Whether you’re just passing through Omoto, or you decide you would like to stay for a bit longer, you always have a place here. Heh. Listen to me telling a disciple he has a place in an infirmary… of course you do, of course. But you know what I mean; I mean Indra and I will help you in any way we can.”

  “I shouldn’t have tried to leave this way,” Arik said, once again feeling shame for his failed attempt to sneak out.

  “I had a feeling you would do as such, which is why I had Indra make you some extra food last night as well. It is packed in with a few spare robes and some other odds and ends you may need in the bag there. Good luck, and I hope to hear from you in a positive way sometime in the future.”

  Master Kojiro motioned his paw toward the door, and lowered his head slightly, a true sign of respect. Arik bowed as well. “Thank you, Master Kojiro.”

  Soon, Arik was outside the infirmary, feeling almost as if he had been freed from a dungeon due to its partially underground nature. He realized as he walked toward the town square that he hadn’t been out since the start of his time belowground, that he had been so preoccupied with healing people and subsequently recovering that he had paid little attention to his own wellness.

  The air crisp and dry, the sky cobalt blue, just a few lonely clouds stretched into thin lines—it was a lot to take in, Arik having to blink a few times just to adjust to the light. He turned to take one more look at the infirmary, no indication whatsoever that the front offices served as a hospital. The sandstone of the stadium had a soft color to it, the neutral tones at odds with the blood continually spilled inside, slaves forced to kill or be killed.

  A true pity.

  Arik reached the fountain where he was supposed to meet Meosa, the public work absent of water for the time being. He saw that it was possible for water to be pumped in from the river outside the city, Arik tracing his eyes along grooves in the ground running through ancient cobblestone, impressed by the ingenuity.

  Remembering that he had already been robbed once, Arik turned his bag around and shuffled its contents. The money went to an inner pocket, one semi-protected by the two sets of robes that Indra had packed for him. Sure enough, there was food stored in an old wooden box. He found a small bag of desert almonds as well, along with some dried root vegetables.

  Arik ate the contents of the box, which consisted of a thin slab of flatbread and meat rolled up into cubes. It was decent, filling.

  After his quick meal, the disciple took refuge in the shade beneath one of the statues, many of them so weathered that he could no longer make out their features. The day grew warmer as he waited for Meosa to arrive, not sure of how the aqueous kami would reach him. He assumed that Meosa would use the fountain to some degree, but since the water wasn’t running at the moment, this was no longer possible.

  He waited and waited, and as he did so, Arik thought of all the training he had gone through to end up at an infirmary for slave combatants on the border between the Onyx and Crimson Realms. Like all disciples, he had begun by studying the Faithful Branch of Common Restoration. Once he graduated from this branch, at about the age of ten, he moved to the Devout Branch of Regrowth, which everyone had to take as well. It was then at the age of fifteen that Arik had been able to select what he studied next.

  There had been four options available to him. The Divine Branch of Arcane Healing studied a unique aspect of Revivaura in which disciples used their powers for things like youth inducement, which Arik found vain. The Divine Branch of Soul Healing was one that he had almost sprung for, its focus on healing a person’s individual chi in a more holistic way including tapping into a person’s emotions. Then there was the branch he had wished he had studied multiple times now, the Divine Branch of Remote Healing, which would have aided him greatly up to this point. Yet Arik had chosen the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer, the only one in his class to do so.

  He thought about this as he waited for Meosa, remembering how adamant Master Guri Yarna had been that Arik continue his studies. The priest had shepherded him through the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer, and he would have been his advisor once he moved to one of the sacred branches, a guiding light since extinguished.

  Arik was starting to get worried that Meosa wouldn’t show when a crazed man burst onto the scene, erupting the tranquility as he ran through the square slapping the side of his own head. “The demons are speaking to me! The demons are speaking to me!”

  Naturally, Arik turned to the man, his initial reaction being to perhaps offer him a little clandestine healing. As soon as he passed by Arik, Meosa announced himself.

  “Whew,” the kami said, his voice just as Arik had remembered it, seeming to come from all around him before settling in his ears. “I didn’t think I was going to make it, my boy, and I’m not the sort of kami to stand someone up!”

  The crazed man stopped running. He took a quick look around, grew embarrassed from his outburst, and quickly shuffled away.

  “Ugh. I hate traveling like that,” Meosa said, “but sometimes, a kami has to do what a kami has to do.”

  Arik put the pieces together relatively quickly. Meosa had spoken to the man the same way he spoke to Arik now, an invisible, vaporous cloud that had apparently driven the man mad, Meosa likely promising to leave if the man steered him toward the city square.

  “I don’t know about the last few days for you, but the last few days for me have not been so great…” Meosa said.

  “Why is that?” Arik asked him.

  “Well, for one…” Meosa stopped speaking.

  “Yes?”

  “Actually, yes… yes. Let’s just talk about it later. What about your little sojourn? How did it go? I am assuming since your slave friend isn’t here that it went about as well as my little sojourn did.”

  Arik sighed. “Not great. I sold my boots, got robbed when I followed the crowd to the stadium where they were hosting slave fight
s.”

  “Figures.”

  “I saw Jinmo competing in one of the slave tournaments and tried to save him. I failed, and ended up hiding in the underground infirmary for the last three days, which has an outward-facing medical office at the front of the stadium.”

  “A disciple in an infirmary. Seems like the perfect place for a person like you.”

  “The people running it were nice.”

  “And I suppose that’s how you got the bag and the sword?”

  Arik nodded.

  “Makes sense. Is there more to the story or should we get on with it?”

  “There’s a little more…”

  Trying not to look as if he were speaking to himself, Arik quickly caught Meosa up on what he had learned from the tanuki who ran the infirmary, that the man he had trained with known as Combat Master Nankai was at a school in Mogra, and that there was another instructor there, Master Altai Masamune, who also would be sympathetic to what happened Arik considering he hailed from his home country, the Onyx Realm.

  “I like tanukis,” Meosa said after he had finished. “Trustworthy, generally pretty good yokai. Not all of them, a few have reputations as shrewd landowners on islands in the east, but most are good people. So, I take from what you told me that you want to head to Mogra, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  A hint of hesitation appeared in Meosa’s voice. “You do know what that entails, don’t you?”

  “Master Kojiro gave me money to go with one of the groups on the overland trails.”

  “They have overland trails now? They didn't have those five hundred years ago…” Meosa paused for a moment. “If you ask me, I think that money would be better spent on supplies and lodging once you arrive in Mogra. Why waste it on an overland trail when I know a shortcut?”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Through the Whitenor Desert?”

  Meosa snorted, and as he did a gush of water struck the dusty pavement near Arik’s sandaled feet, eliciting a few stares as people wondered if Arik had either relieved himself or vomited. “Sorry, there was something in my nose, which seems to happen almost every time a human doubts the breadth of my knowledge. So anyway, yes, a shortcut. Through the desert. We’ll get there in no time, and along the way you can, I don’t know, tell me what your plan is. You do have a plan, right? We aren’t going to travel all the way to Mogra without a plan, are we?”

  “I have one in the works, yes,” Arik said, remembering the revelation he had come to the other night after finding out that Jinmo had died, leaving Arik alone in an unknown world. It was time to act, to stop the Crimson Realm’s advance in any way he could, which meant he would need to improve his combat skills.

  “Good, we can hash that out along the way. Mogra, Mogra, it’s been ages since I’ve even thought of the place. It will be interesting to see what has become of it. I’m hoping it looks better than Omoto,” Meosa said. “Believe me, disciple, this place has seen better days. It always looked as if someone had left it out in the sun too long, but there’s something worse about it now, a grime that it didn’t have years ago. Crossing the border into the Crimson Realm shouldn’t be much trouble, but, as I routinely find myself warning you, try not to reveal your powers. You know the drill by now.”

  “I know.”

  “Good, then let’s use that money to get a nice big waterskin. We should probably get something to cover your head and your face as well. The Whitenor Desert is known for its nasty sandstorms and even nastier yokai.”

  ****

  A crowd gathered just past the border on the Crimson Realm side of Omoto, many of them in either conical hats, or the square-shaped straw hats Arik had started to see more of. He still had some Jadean sen left after buying the rather nice waterskin and was just turning to the group planning to travel together when he felt a sensation as if his ears were filling with liquid, Meosa’s voice appearing once again.

  “Doubting me yet again, are we? I told you I can get us through this cursed desert faster than the caravan, and you will save money. You know nothing about Mogra, and believe me when I tell you that once you arrive, you will want shelter. Most disciples have the decency to take the advice of their elders.”

  Arik grumbled, as he reluctantly stepped away from the caravan crowd. He was starting off toward the south when a soldier in red armor that matched a braid around his conical hat called out to him, the hairs on Arik’s arms standing to attention.

  “You aren’t going with the caravan?” he asked as Arik turned to him, the man with a glaive, the sharp end made of a blackened metal.

  “No.”

  “Do you not have the funds? If you don’t have the funds, there are things that we could use help with in running the caravan,” the soldier offered. Even though he had a chiseled face there was a kindness behind his eyes, and considering he was the first Crimsonian Arik had met, not counting the combatants in the infirmary, it was nice to see that they weren’t all monsters, not all of them bent on enslaving people and murdering academics.

  “I’ll… I’ll be fine,” Arik said as he continued on. He walked at a brisk pace until he could no longer see the caravan, the barren desert stretched before him.

  “Good, now that the crowd is behind us, perhaps we should pick up our pace,” Meosa suggested.

  Arik paused. “You mean like run?”

  “You’re a disciple. Can’t you run?”

  “For how long?”

  “Long enough for us to cover a good distance. Don’t worry about the heat, in fact…” The cap of the waterskin loosened and fell, still attached to the bag by a leather cord. A mist of water lifted into the air, surrounding Arik. The mist was nice and cool, an instant retreat from the sun aside from its rays, which were kept off Arik’s face through the cloak he had also purchased.

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Run until you can’t any longer. You’ll soon see that there is madness to my method; you must grow stronger, and you only have a few days to do so. After all, you are the War Priest.”

  Hearing the title almost took him off guard, Arik so used to his most recent role as simply a disciple, someone there to heal others.

  “I’m… I’m not the War Priest.”

  “Coro Pache? No, you are not that War Priest. You don’t live as long as me and still believe in reincarnation. Every individual soul is different, yokai, kami, humans such as yourself, perhaps even the more vile creatures that lurk in the dark corners of the continent. Not to mention Coro Pache was from the Crimson Realm, while you are from the Onyx Realm, and he only learned about healing later on, whereas you very well may be the last healer alive. So no, you’re not that War Priest. But you are a potential candidate for the next one, and you are heading to the combat school where he trained…”

  Arik started walking briskly. He waited for a prophecy, and when one didn’t come, he finally decided to say something. “It was one time.”

  “You mean the man you murdered? Yes, it was one time, the first of many, I believe, not that you’re a murderer or anything. Nothing like that. You are going to do what you have to do to survive. As I told you, my boy, I’ve been thinking a lot about you while you were slaving away—pardon my pun—in that wretched infirmary healing poor souls only to send them out again so they could once again sustain injury. You do realize that’s what you were doing, right?”

  “I realize it.”

  “And why aren’t you running? I told you to run! Come on, faster!”

  Arik picked up his pace, and soon he was jogging, the air around him surprisingly cool. Even stranger, it hadn’t become muggy as he had expected it would. Each step forward was simply refreshing.

  “As I said,” Meosa told him, “I’ve been thinking more about you, this lone lost healer trapped in a faraway land forced out of his little bubble and now, surprising even me, asking to go to one of the Crimson Realm’s most famous combat academies. The Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts is, or at least it was back
in my day, the most prestigious academy in the land. They are trained to use two swords there, Coro Pache’s specialty.”

  “Aware.”

  “You should have asked that soldier back there about the blades that graduate from that school…”

  “My combat teacher was from there, like I told you,” Arik huffed.

  One of the things he had practiced through his studies of the Divine Branch of Regrowth was healing himself to increase his stamina and endurance. Up until this moment, up until Meosa had challenged him to run, Arik had forgotten about this. It came so naturally to him that the only time in recent memory where it hadn’t helped him was after his fall to the bottom of the canyon, Arik’s shock affecting his chi. It had certainly sustained him to some degree through his healing marathon in the infirmary, even if he ended each day exhausted.

  It was uncanny moving through the desert at this pace, running in sandals across the hardtop soil yet not feeling the exhausting effects of the sun. Now Arik wondered how far he could actually run by simply focusing on some point in the horizon, and by doing so, cycling his own Revivaura, constantly replenishing his strained muscles and organs, fueled by the food he had eaten earlier.

  That’s what will eventually stop me, Arik thought, hunger.

  And sure enough, remembering this sparked a memory of Master Guri Yarna explaining some of the trials of prolonged stamina, the young disciples forced to travel long distances without rest or sleep, but that had been the extent of it.

  While he hadn’t had much practice as he’d like, Arik kept his teacher in mind as he increased his pace slightly.

  I’ll avenge you, Master Guri Yarna, he thought. Whatever I have to do…

  “There, that’s the disciple I know! Faster! Now, where was I? Ah, yes, a different kind of War Priest, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. From what I’ve learned over the last several days, and from what you’ve told me, all of Taomoni is on the brink of war. The Onyx Realm in the north has been invaded by the Crimson Realm in the South, and somehow, the Crimson Realm was granted safe passage through the Jade Realm, which tells me that either the Jadean government allowed this, or the Crimsonians were simply aggressors, not unlike your realm used to be years ago. Not to mention these terribly twisted and conniving shinobi. Who knows what roles these dastardly illusionists play!”