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

by Harmon Cooper

Once again, she nodded.

  “All right,” Arik said after a brief pause in which Meosa groaned. “Lead the way.”

  ****

  Arik followed the kitsune-masked woman up a winding passageway, stopping whenever she stopped. She seemed easily agitated by sudden movements, be it a scorpion, or the wind whipping up powdery pink sand into the air. The bits of sparkling sand hailed from a series of sand dunes in the distance, the ripples twisting down their slopes.

  It was an incredible sight, but the disciple didn’t have long to look at it as the masked woman, who now had a black sword with a hint of silver in its blade sheathed at her waist, pressed on. She also now carried the blade that the yasha wielded.

  As they pressed on, he noticed something else about the way she walked, the woman moving in a strange way, sweeping her legs out with each step, almost as if she were injured. But she wasn’t. And he realized looking down at the sand that the tracks she’d left didn’t look human, that disguising the way she walked came so naturally to her that she no longer thought about it.

  “I still don’t like this,” Meosa said. “There is no telling what this strange woman will do to us, and who knows if she is actually telling the truth, that she is alone. But it will be her death if she tries anything. I know you are running low on energy, but I have enough to get us to Mogra and further still. To be alive again, my boy, has brought a spark to my day. That is, if you survive whatever this potentially devious woman plans to do to you. I suppose if she fillets you in some way, I can just hang a ride with her…”

  “You don’t mean that,” Arik said.

  The woman paused and looked over her shoulder at him, Arik getting a side view of her kitsune mask and its small, vulpine nose. Who was she? And why was she out here all alone?

  She could have done something to me by now had she wanted to, Arik reminded himself.

  They soon reached the cave, Arik expecting it to be lived in. What he found instead was that the woman had a couple of bags with her, and that she had made a fire last night, or at least someone had. Was she tracking the yasha? Arik thought as he took a quick look at her bags in the most inconspicuous way possible.

  “Well, no one has jumped out of the dark yet and tried to kill us,” Meosa said, the sudden appearance of his voice startling Arik, as it often did. “But I’m not relaxing my guard any time soon, and neither should you. Try to keep some distance between you and the masked one, enough room for her to draw her weapon and for you to draw yours.”

  Arik didn’t respond. Instead, he offered the woman a tight smile. “Do you live here?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head and then motioned for him to set his items down, including the yasha armor. She produced something from one of her bags, which looked like a block of wood wrapped in some sort of fabric. She placed it in the makeshift fire pit, added some kindling she’d already collected which consisted of shriveled bits of cactus, and got a fire started. It burned slowly, the flames a color of blue that reminded Arik of the mirage he’d seen earlier that day, the oasis and its glistening water.

  The masked woman motioned for Arik to sit, which he did, realizing as soon as his rear touched the ground just how exhausted he was. He brought his bag over to the side and leaned his arm against it.

  “You weren’t supposed to get comfortable,” Meosa reminded him, but Arik ignored his remarks.

  The woman produced strips of meat that had already been salted. She withdrew one of the rocks buried beneath the flaming brick and placed the meat on the rock, the strips sizzling instantly.

  Arik didn’t know what kind of meat it was, but as soon as the smell reached his nostrils he was hungrier than he had been in days. He licked his lips, took a drink from the waterskin—which elicited a comment from Meosa—and watched the meat cook.

  Once it was finished, the woman nodded her head to it and went back for another, indicating that Arik should take the strip of meat off the hot rock. He did just that and ate it, the pockets of fat and salt satiating him.

  He wanted the next strip, but he maintained his poise as she cooked this one and ate it for herself. Arik’s spirits lifted when she procured another strip of meat, one that was thicker than the other two and required a different rock to cook. Once it was done, she nodded toward Arik.

  And so it went, the two of them eating four strips of meat each, Arik offering what little food he still had to the woman, only for her to decline with a headshake.

  He watched the sun set, the landscape illuminated in shades of ruby and dark amethyst that Arik would never be able to describe. As he relaxed even further, the woman went about repacking one of her bags, her kitsune mask remaining over her face.

  Arik saw the crests of mountains past the sand dunes, a few with pockets of snow on them, at odds with the desert around him. The smell of cooked meat didn’t linger in the air for long, replaced by something that had a hint of charcoal to it, Arik turning to see that the woman had placed small black rocks around the fabric-wrapped wooden block she had procured earlier.

  “How far are we?” Arik asked her after a long spell of silence. “To Mogra, I mean.”

  The woman pointed toward the sand dunes before Meosa could comment.

  “There is another way,” Meosa said once she returned to her task, “but that might be the fastest. I suppose. The sand dunes are famous, you know. There are no others like them in this particular area. People shouldn’t be too far beyond the dunes. Families go there for outings and children use their father’s old shields to slide down them. At least they used to. Things could have changed since last I visited this absolutely horrid part of our world.”

  Arik yawned.

  “Am I boring you, disciple?”

  The woman never struck up a conversation with him as the night wore on, no words exchanged as she sat on the opposite side of the fire and prepared a place to rest. Copying her, Arik did the same, going with the same setup he had the previous night. It was much warmer now next to the fire, but he knew as the night advanced and coal burned out that the temperature would drop.

  Arik lay down, and he turned to his side, looking at the woman over the fire, the orange of the flames flickering off her mask as she rested on her back.

  “I don’t know who you are, but thanks for the meat.”

  The woman continued to gaze at the stars above, only offering Arik a short nod without turning to him.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Meosa assured Arik as he started to drift off. “You get some rest, disciple. Tomorrow, we are climbing sand dunes.”

  Soon, Arik was asleep, too exhausted to have nightmares about what had happened back in the Academy of Healing Arts. He only woke once that night, to the cry of some terrible creature in the distance.

  He wasn’t even certain that this had actually happened by the time the morning came around, the fire completely extinguished, Arik shivering beneath the robes he was using as a blanket.

  He turned to where the masked woman had been resting to find that she was gone.

  “Where…? Meosa?” he asked, his voice a bit groggy.

  “I’m here…”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She slipped away in the middle of the night, and took the yasha’s armor with her. The thief. Well, I don’t suppose she’s a thief, but she did offer it to you. Or maybe she just wanted you to carry it for her. To be honest with you, I almost didn’t catch her leave. It’s probably better that way,” Meosa said, a hint of hesitation in his voice. “It is definitely better that we have naturally rid ourselves of her.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You really don’t know, do you, disciple?”

  “Know what?”

  “That woman was a shinobi, one of those wretched illusionists, I’m sure of it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Arik asked, growing alarmed.

  “I didn’t want to scare you, and she didn’t try to kill you, well, at least after your initial meeting, which led me to believe tha
t she wasn’t one of the ones that attacked your academy. And I’m only guessing that she was shinobi based on the way she moved and acted. I could be wrong, but likely not. Alas, there is nothing we can do about it now except head to Mogra. Get excited, my boy. We have managed to live another day!”

  Part Two

  .Chapter One.

  “A small man must think big, and a big man must think small. Preconceived notions of size are a colossal death trap.”

  –A quote from Combat Master Jurstrom Yinzo during the War of Gods after he single-handedly slayed a skeletal yokai giant known as a gashadokuro, Year 789.

  It was impossible to run.

  With the sand nearly up to his ankles, Arik Dacre pressed on, the desert sun bearing down on him as he tried to escape a mother wooly kayno. The desert yokai, easily larger than an oxen and able to retain enough water to keep it alive for months at a time, wasn’t normally aggressive. But Arik had, by chance, stumbled upon its offspring grazing on a cactus flower, triggering the mother’s ire.

  This thing really shouldn’t be as fast as it is! Arik thought as he stumbled forward, Meosa rambling about how people used to ride these things, that they used to be tamed.

  “What has come of this world in the last five hundred years?”

  “Why don’t you help me!?” Arik asked as he continued to wade through the sand.

  The wind blowing in front of him whipped curls of pink sand into the air, which folded like satin as it settled back onto the dunes, a peaceful visual had it not been for the snorting, cloven-hoofed beast charging after him, a stubby yet sharp horn in the center of its forehead.

  “What would you like me to do? Spray it down with water?”

  “Do something!” Arik said, his heart beating fast enough for him to feel it in his throat.

  “Just keep running, disciple, and the bovine will eventually give up. If I try to do something, like… You know, that may actually work. I’ve got it! See if you can get some distance between you and the beast, and then turn back to it. Trust me!”

  Huffing in deep breaths of hot air, Arik reached a good stopping point and brazenly turned back to the charging wooly kayno. Even with its size and the heat, the creature seemed to exert little effort in navigating the sand dunes.

  “Point the nozzle of the waterskin toward its hooves!”

  Arik did as instructed just as a bolt of water tore out of the waterskin, nearly causing him to lose his balance.

  Rather than flee, the wooly kayno held strong.

  It began licking its lips as it took a staggering step forward, almost as if it were enjoying the blast of water.

  “This isn’t going to work…” Arik said.

  “It would work if you held still. Brace yourself, disciple!”

  Arik did as he was told, looking from the tip of the waterskin to the wooly kayno, which was slowly moving closer to him. The beast shook her head out, and threw her neck back as she made a noise that sounded like a honk.

  “What’s it doing?” Arik asked.

  “See? My plan is working. The child bovine is returning.”

  Arik saw the smaller wooly kayno approach, its short tail wagging behind its back, and figured that the mother had been calling its child. It too hopped in the water that Arik continued to circulate over toward the yokai, wetting its body and drinking from it.

  But it wasn’t the only wooly kayno that arrived.

  Soon, Arik saw several more yokai coming over one of the dunes, a few of them even larger than the mother, their horns twice as big, which signaled to him that these were likely males.

  “Um…. Meosa?”

  “Not quite what I expected but… run, Disciple, run!”

  The water stopped and Arik took off in the opposite direction of the wooly kayno, Meosa adding his power to Arik’s to allow him to run even faster. He finally broke free of the sand and moved to a pathway that cut through two of the larger sand dunes, demarcated by a rock structure that looked as if it had once formed an arch, talus slabs littering its base.

  Arik had nearly made it over the smaller rocks when his foot got caught on an angled stone.

  He flew forward, but instead of faceplanting on a rock, he was miraculously pressed back to his feet by Meosa. He picked up his pace just as a gust of wind spiraled by, pink sand lifting into the air and striking Arik in the face, hard enough at points it felt like he was being struck by tiny strips of leather.

  “Keep running,” Meosa told him. “Use the sandstorm to get away from them!”

  “Which way?” Arik asked, swallowing his confusion.

  “Continue straight, we shouldn’t be very far from Mogra now!”

  Arik continued on, no longer able to see exactly where he was going. The hood over his head did little to stop the sand from whipping into his eyes, Arik rubbing them at times, trying his best to see where he was going.

  Eventually, he tore out of the hectic swirl of pink dust, Arik’s hopes all but diminishing when he found himself face-to-face with an entire herd of wooly kayno.

  “This has to be some sort of cruel joke…” he said as he glanced left and right, trying to find an exit point.

  But then something else caught his attention.

  Seated on top of one of the larger kayno was a youth who couldn’t have been older than fourteen years of age. He wore a cloak made of some kind of expertly woven linen with white lines crossing it, and on his head was one of the odd, square-shaped hats Arik had seen on the Crimsonian side of the border town of Omoto. The hat was made of straw, and there was a slit covered by a thin fabric for his eyes to see out.

  Movement behind Arik caught his attention as the mother, child, and several other wooly kayno appeared on the scene, the ones he had been running from.

  The mounted youth made a sound that resembled a honk, and the kayno that had been chasing Arik quickly came to a stop. They obediently circled around Arik and joined the rest of the herd, the dust settling all around them. “I’ve been looking all over for these ones,” the youth said once they had calmed.

  “They’re… yours?” Arik asked, still catching his breath to some degree.

  “Not mine, ours.” The youth tilted his head as he observed Arik, a gesture made even odder by the square-shaped hat covering his face. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  “Trying to get to Mogra.”

  “In that case, I will lead you there. I was planning on heading home anyway. How about…” The boy made a sound with his throat to the wooly kayno next to him, one with strips of hair braided to frame its face. “She’s gentle. You can ride her. You’ll need to cover your face with something too. We’ll probably encounter another sandstorm along the way.”

  ****

  It was a few hours later when they reached the edge of a cliff surrounding a deep canyon, Arik finally understanding why he hadn’t seen the city of Mogra from a distance. Set in the canyon, the desert town was naturally well-hidden, and protected from some of the stronger desert winds. He spotted smaller settlements along the rim, connected to the city below by zigzag stairwells cut in the rock walls.

  Arik’s first instinct upon coming to a stop was to remove the swath of fabric covering his face, the disciple tired of smelling his stale breath mixed with the heady scent of the wooly kayno. The young herder he had been traveling with, whose name was Domen, turned to Arik just as he had finished removing the scarf around his face.

  “You should still wear it,” Domen told him. “The people of Mogra wear these square hats in public settings, and if they don’t have a hat, they wear a scarf. It is our custom. I have one that you can wear at home, but until then…”

  “A curious custom,” Meosa added. “Five hundred years ago it was merely an option to wear one of the square hats in Mogra.” He sighed. “I suppose that is how it goes. The longer humanity exists, the stranger and more deviant it becomes.”

  “Not all of us,” Arik mumbled as he finished re-wrapping his face.

  “Not all of
you? Look at yourself, disciple. What was it? A week ago? Less? A week ago, you were a graduating healer set to enroll in the mastery school, on your way to becoming a pious little priest. Now, you are on the outskirts of Mogra with a grudge to settle. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Rather than respond to Meosa, Arik simply focused on the settlement ahead, at the square homes made of mud that were beginning to appear. As he took in the expanse, what some people would call a barren wasteland, Arik began seeing more and more signs of life. How had humanity made it out this far and survived? Who would see this place and think, ‘Ah, yes, let’s settle here,’ and then make good on such a foolhardy thought?

  “You didn’t happen to see a woman with a fox mask back in the desert, did you?” Arik asked Domen, a question he had been meaning to run by him.

  Domen turned to Arik, his eyes visible through the slit in his square hat. “A fox mask? You mean a kitsune?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not going to know about her, disciple,” Meosa commented. “It would be best to forget the shinobi woman entirely…”

  Domen shook his head. “You are the first person I’ve seen out there in the last day or two. Women wouldn’t travel alone into the desert, at least not a woman from Mogra.”

  It was faint, but Arik could make out something in the distance, a tiny black form moving along the slopes of one of the mountains. “Is that a person?”

  Domen followed his gaze to the mountain in question, which had pockets of snow along the top of its high slopes.

  “A porter. Mogra has very little water. Porters bring snow from the mountains during the summer. They’re a very respected class.”

  “Are they slaves?”

  “No. Mogra doesn’t have slaves.”

  “Yet another change between now and five hundred years ago…” Meosa told Arik.

  “I thought there would be slaves here,” Arik said.

  “Where are you from?” Domen asked.

  This question caused Arik to pause. He was not prepared for something like this, even though it would have made sense to have a throwaway answer.