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

by Harmon Cooper

  “Chimaura.”

  “Yes, Chimaura. Of the three traditions that use chi, your school uses Revivaura, the School of Illusion uses Chimaura, and we use Thunderaura. That said,” Master Altai swept his hand toward his two bookshelves, “barely any written information exists about the School of Illusion considering it is an oral tradition. All of the texts here detail fighting techniques that have been mastered and passed on over the years, battles won and lost, and other combat strategies, including ways to combat these illusionists. Very little is known about the School of Illusion itself or the history of its existence, which is by design. I’m sure your Academy has similar volumes detailing chi and other historical occurrences, and I’m nearly certain there are no texts regarding the School of Illusion there either.”

  “The library no longer exists,” Arik said, feeling his knuckles whitening, “it was burned down.”

  “A shame,” Master Altai said in a way that told Arik that he meant it. “An utter shame, every library destroyed is a crime against humanity, against the children of the future.”

  “So they exist, the School of Illusion still has shinobi, or illusionists out there?”

  “I didn’t say that, but it sounds like this may be the case.”

  “Have they no honor?” Arik asked. “Why would they join with Nobunaga? The School of Illusion is from the Jade Realm, between our two countries. Don’t they understand that for your country to go to war with my country, Nobunaga would have to cross the Jade Realm? It would disrupt their buffer zone.”

  “You are asking the wrong person. I don’t know what Nobunaga is planning, nor do I know the deals he has made with certain players in our world. But I do know something, and this brings us back to your question about Combat Master Nankai. Upon hearing what Nobunaga was planning, Master Nankai flew into a fit of rage, the likes of which I had never seen from him before. He left the next day for Tenrikyo, the seat of our government in the east. Officials arrived not long after to let us know that Master Nankai was killed. We have been forbidden from mentioning his name, and that anyone asking about him would be taken into custody.”

  “You threatened to kill me back there, not take me into custody,” Arik said.

  “I did, which I was doing simply to follow protocol before I could question you privately. You did well out there to not mention that you are from the north, but you shouldn’t have challenged us.”

  “Told you,” Meosa said.

  “My attendants will hopefully assume that you were one of Master Nankai’s lesser skilled students from another school, that perhaps you hadn’t heard the news. But usage of your ability nearly gave you away, and I’m sure that may create questions later on down the line. That remains to be seen.”

  Arik ignored the ‘lesser skilled’ part as he went with his next question. “Do you think he is actually dead?”

  Master Altai’s lips parted slightly.

  “Do you?”

  “Let me ask you, Arik. If Master Nankai was here, and you had shown up and were able to meet with him, what would your request be? Why have you journeyed so far rather than go into hiding? Rather than seek the aid of your own government? What would you want from Master Nankai?”

  “I would want information and… training,” Arik said, his voice with a razor’s edge to it now.

  “Information and training. What kind of information and training?”

  A darkness fell over Arik. “I would want to know how to kill Nobunaga for what he has done, to stop him from invading my country. I would need training to do just that.”

  Arik didn’t know what to expect with a statement like this, and truth be told it had mostly come from within him, certainly not something he had planned to say in the open. He expected Meosa to comment, but the aqueous kami never said anything and there was no discernible change on Master Altai’s face, just a hardness as he looked Arik over.

  Finally, he turned to one of his bookshelves and squinted his good eye toward a shelf on the top. “Let me ask you, disciple, especially since you have come to the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts, his alma mater. Are you familiar with the War Priest?”

  .Chapter Two.

  “All things are prone to collapse.”

  –Jadean architect Osmuu Matahachi de Omoto upon completion of the Omoto Stadium in Year 989. The stadium is still standing and is used for slave tournaments.

  The room given to Arik Dacre at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts was much larger than he was accustomed to. It was clearly a space designated for a guest lecturer with its beautiful bed set on a stone frame draped in red cloth, two seating areas featuring both cushions on the ground and sofa chairs, which he was accustomed to having in the Onyx Realm, as well as an entirely separate and private bath.

  After a meal had been brought to him, one that consisted of a bit milder food—which told Arik that Master Altai had relayed a message to the cook staff—attendants in square-shaped hats filed in carrying barrels of piping-hot water. They filled a bathtub made of coral-pink limestone that seemed to glow after the hot water was placed inside.

  It was one of the more relaxing experiences Arik could recall from recent memory, Meosa giving the disciple some privacy as he simply enjoyed the hot water, the slightly fragrant, citrus smell of cactus flowers floating on its surface, filling his nostrils with each breath in. Before getting into the tub, he had been instructed to use one of the smaller buckets of hot water to give himself a preliminary bath, Arik not at all surprised to see just how dirty he was.

  Sand and grit, dried blood and sweat, not to mention the weight of his journey, seemed to roll off his shoulders. And while there was perhaps a metaphor to be uncovered in the wastewater as it spiraled down the drain, something about letting the past go, it wasn’t one that Arik planned to contemplate.

  Master Altai had even given him one book to read, a relatively thick book wrapped in leather called Coro Pache: Legends of the War Priest.

  But that could wait. Arik simply wanted to enjoy the bath.

  As he settled deeper into the tub, the disciple now with his face half submerged, he thought about how abruptly Master Altai had ended their conversation. Just about the moment he had mentioned the War Priest, Master Altai had guided their discussion toward what would happen later, which mostly revolved around Arik keeping to the guest quarters while he contemplated what would happen next, the instructor explaining that Arik would be fed and that he should read up on the War Priest while he rested.

  For an entire day? Arik had thought at the time, yet here he was, relaxing in the bathtub for what had been at least an hour now, maybe longer. He really didn’t know. Perhaps he had fallen asleep for a moment, simply enjoying the luxury, which was something he frequently got back at the Academy of Healing Arts considering their elaborate dormitory bathrooms, with their private baths.

  It was something he had truly missed, the life he had before nothing like the life he had gotten a glimpse of since. But this was where he was now, and he hoped that whatever Master Altai came up with next would be a clear path forward for him.

  Eventually, Arik got out of the bathtub and slipped into a house robe made of a very soft material, which he assumed came from young wooly kayno fur. Upon stepping into the main room, he found Meosa in his water form with his back against the wall, almost as if he were sitting, the lower half of his body still attached to the nozzle of the waterskin.

  “I thought I was going to have to come rescue you there for a moment…” Meosa said.

  “It has been a while.”

  “Clearly, my boy. But necessary. Recall that I’m the one that has been forced to travel with you and your, ahem, various human odors. Not at all related but worth saying: I do find it somewhat insulting that we are supposed to stay in this room for the rest of the day, even if it is comfortable. At least for someone like you.”

  “You can go hang out in the bathtub if you’d like.”

  Meosa scoffed at the suggestion. “Not with your us
ed bathwater I won’t. After all I’ve done for you, perhaps you can do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There is an attendant outside the door. Tell them that you would like to fill the bathtub up again. Then, and only then, will I relax there.”

  “That seems like a waste of water,” Arik said, recalling the young herder Domen explaining just how important water was to the citizens of Mogra.

  “Are you really worried about the porters that carry water down from the mountains? It is their job, you know, and since this combat school is mostly funded by the government, that is precisely the best way for the money to reach their hands. Not to mention the fact that Nobunaga may pay for it some way or another, or at least the citizens that support him. No? You don’t like that explanation? What if I told you that they use the dirty water for the cactus gardens and the animals. It all gets recycled; they do not waste water here in Mogra.”

  Arik hesitated.

  “Must I ask you again, disciple?”

  Arik did as Meosa requested, the attendant outside of his room promising to return soon with fresh water, no expression discernible on the man’s face due to his square hat.

  It was only after they refilled the tub, and Meosa had floated away that Arik finally sat down before the book that Master Altai had given him. He ran his finger over the embossed cover title, Coro Pache: Legends of the War Priest.

  The brittleness of the paper was a clear giveaway as to how old the book was, as were several missing pages. There was also the smell, Arik transported back to the library at his Academy, the hours upon hours he had spent in his favorite leather chair at the back looking over the text on wound transfer. He had spent so much time there that some of his robes had started to take on the scent of the library, a few of the other disciples teasing him until they saw what he was studying.

  There weren’t really any dark arts associated with studying Revivaura, but if any of the individual branches came with some superstition, it was the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer. Why would someone want to take on the sickness of others? How masochistic would a disciple need to be to want to physically feel the pain of their patients? There was no doubt a disciple would dedicate their life to healing, but with the other branches, the only way this affected the disciple was by extinguishing their power and making them drowsy.

  Wound transfer was something else entirely, one in which the disciple was forced to suffer alongside their patient. This was why Arik was so easily able to brush off attacks, like the blade that had nearly cut off his hand not so long ago. Of all the disciples, he was one of the types that were most accustomed to pain.

  A relaxing sigh from the bathroom forced a rare smirk on Arik’s face. Meosa sure seems to be enjoying himself, Arik thought as he examined the title page of the War Priest book.

  There was no author, simply the stamp of a publisher from the Jade Realm known as Yoshimura Books, listing the publication city as Avarga, which Arik recalled was the city in which humans and yokai coexisted.

  He scanned through the table of contents, which was where he normally would start when presented with books like this, ones that had multiple entries. There didn’t appear to be any foreword or any indication of who had written the book, or how the stories were compiled, which meant he would be able to jump around. Many of the stories had interesting titles, but one in particular caught his attention.

  “Mask of the Fallen,” Arik read aloud as he found the page number and flipped to the middle of the book. There were summaries written in paragraphs, but the prose itself was written in a way that forced Arik to slow down to some degree as he read it. While the summaries were digestible, Arik stumbled over the primary text and its meaning, its casual absence of certain verbs and its cryptic yet slightly poetic styling making it even harder to understand.

 

 

 

 

 

  There was a sketching of the mask, which was stylized the opposite way of the shinobi female Arik had encountered in the Whitenor Desert. While her kitsune mask covered her entire face, this mask was black and it only covered the bottom half of one’s face and their nose, the teeth of the mask white and spread wide into a fierce, almost sinister smile.

  The text continued, morphing from its nearly nonsensical stanza to a more readable text as yet another summary took shape. A quick look through the book while he kept his finger on the Mask of the Fallen chapter told Arik that many of the stories were written in this pattern.

  Strange… he thought as he continued the text:

  Acquiring the Mask of the Fallen, Coro Pache instantly benefited from its unique power in battle. It heightened his ability to extinguish life, but this came at a price. A poisonous one. The Mask of the Fallen belonged to an unknown warrior active during the Jade Expansion of 731-750. The warrior was said to coat the mask in his opponents’ blood after defeating them, which imbued in it the darker aspect of Thunderaura. The mask became poisonous to Coro Pache, who was able to heal, but not to the extent of a trained disciple, someone who had spent their entire life learning how to utilize Revivaura. Coro Pache returned the Mask of the Fallen, and continued his quest without it.

  “Meosa?” Arik called to the other room.

  “I didn’t bother you while you were relaxing, if I recall. But perhaps I’m losing my memory in my old age. It does happen, you know. Soon, you’ll be able to send me to a distinguished home for the elderly, if such a thing existed for kami. Bah. What would you like?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Mask of the Fallen?”

  “I have heard of many things, my boy.”

  Arik pinched the bridge of his nose. “I understand that, but specifically, have you ever heard of the Mask of the Fallen?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I just read something about it, and it may be useful.”

  “Useful? What would you want with a dreadful object like that?”

  “So you have heard of it,” Arik said.

  “I didn’t say that, I asked what you wanted with a dreadful object like the Mask of the Fallen?”

  “You are the one that first said I was the War Priest,” Arik reminded him. “The War Priest had the Mask of the Fallen.”

  “And? Coro also had a bad attitude. Would you like to take his bad attitude as well?”

  “Do you know about the mask or not? This book says that he was unable to deal with some aspect of it because he was not a fully trained disciple. I am a fully trained disciple.”

  “Are you, now? Last I recalled, you only passed three branches. Would you consider someone who has passed only three branches fully trained?”

  “For a disciple, yes. For a priest, no. It was just a question.”

  “And what I gave you is just an answer,” Meosa replied. “Yes, I am aware of the Mask of the Fallen, and no, I don’t know where it is. And even if I did, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Maybe it’s near Mount Osore. I think that’s where he got it from.”

  “Maybe it’s buried somewhere in the Whitenor Desert, or cast into the Sea of Katano. It is a dangerous object, my boy. Perhaps you should be wary of it.”

  A knock at the door drew Arik’s attention. Figuring it was the attendant outside, he went to the door in his bathrobe, the disciple feeling a bit of shame when he opened it to find Master Altai standing with both hands behind his back, the eye-patched man slightly dipping his head when he saw him.

  “May I come in?”

  “Certainly,” Arik said as he stepped aside.

  “Did I hear… voices coming from inside the room?” Master Altai asked carefully as he peered toward the bathroom. “It sounded like you were having a conversation with someone.”

&n
bsp; “No,” Arik said in a rushed way. “Just reading out loud. Please, come in.”

  ****

  Arik Dacre stood the same way he would if Master Guri Yarna had visited him in his quarters, which had only happened once. His hands behind his back, Arik maintained a respectful pose until Combat Master Altai motioned him toward one of the sitting areas in the corner.

  “Please,” he said as he swept the ends of his blood-red robe to the side and sat, his legs crossed beneath his body, the tips of his sheathed blades lightly touching the floor. Once Arik had seated before him, Master Altai began speaking: “As you know, I told you I would need some time to think about what you should do next, that it may take me a day. That is no longer the case. It is clear to me that you aren’t at the skill level that you would need to be able to enroll in the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts’ Mastery School. If that was your intention, to enroll and increase your skill in that way, I don’t believe it is possible, at least at this stage. And you are too old to join a secondary program.”

  Arik nodded. It wasn’t quite his intention to join the combat academy, his curiosity piqued by Master Altai mentioning that this was one of his considerations.

  “I don’t know how much you know about Nobunaga, but he has a firm belief that the best warriors aren’t ones who have spent years of their life dedicated to the art of combat; no, in his opinion, peasants and merchants, common folk, make better warriors than those trained classically. And to some extent, he has been right. The common warrior versus a classically trained warrior has an advantage, and that is the advantage of surprise. But I wouldn’t bet much oban on a battle between someone like our mutual acquaintance, Combat Master Nankai, and a porter. Not on the porter, anyway.”