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

by Harmon Cooper

  All of that had been in preparation to reach this point, Arik with the haori cape over his head, his long black hair pulled back and smeared with white oshiroi paint, his teeth blackened, and usuzumi gray makeup dabbed across his cheekbones making him look gaunt.

  After he finished this lesson, they would leave in the morning for the former capital of Iga, where they would begin the second stage of the condensed School of Illusion training, the one that the disciple had been waiting for.

  Combat.

  Arik dragged his foot behind him, yet he wasn’t feigning injury; because of the way that Arik was raised, he didn’t adapt very quickly to Hojo’s instructions, nor did he quite understand some of the reasoning behind the School of Illusion’s techniques. But there was one thing he could do that gave them an advantage over anyone who had ever gone through the school’s cryptic lessons: Arik could actually injure himself in a way that would sell a limp or wound to a degree that was unheard of in the illusionists’ normal repertoire.

  His leg? Arik had actually driven a dagger into his thigh, affecting the muscle, and had then healed up to the point that it wouldn’t bleed too much. It gave him an incredibly authentic limp, the disciple dragging the top of his boot against the paved road that led to the armory, now in a pair of soiled robes that were once again part of the act.

  “Remember not to make eye contact,” Meosa told him as they neared the large gates of the armory, the wall surrounding them easily ten feet high and thick enough to stop a battering ram.

  “I know,” Arik told him.

  “Hojo said that we just have to make it into the building and retrieve something as evidence that we had done so. Ugh,” Meosa sighed, “I can’t believe we’re doing this, but here we are.”

  Even if he meant his statement with a hint of disdain, there was something about the tone of the kami’s voice that told Arik that he was actually excited. His attitude hadn’t fully changed over the last several days, but Meosa seemed to find the School of Illusion techniques intriguing, and being able to throw his voice and do impersonations actually pleased him to an insane degree, Arik sensing that it made him feel like he was being useful.

  If there was one thing Arik had learned at the Academy of Healing Arts, it was how nice it felt to be useful to others.

  “Like fleas and lice, illusionists go wherever their hosts go, be it a palace or a humble slum. As you have now seen,” Hojo told him last night, referring to their time in the various parks and squares across Avarga, “it is possible to make connections with most people through deception, but where your true skill lies is in pinpointing the ones to accompany, the ones who will unknowingly aid in your infiltration. Good luck tomorrow. Good luck being a flea.”

  To become a flea meant that Arik would need to attach himself to someone, especially if he wanted to get into the main building of the armory. But who would he attach himself to? And how would this person aid in the task that had been assigned to him?

  This part was still unknown.

  “Just let me do the talking and we will be in the courtyard in a matter of moments,” Meosa assured him. “Heh. Never thought that you’d fall to the level of a shinobi, did you, my boy?”

  Arik shook his head. He couldn’t have predicted anything that happened to him over the last several weeks, none of it. Had the Academy been spared, Arik would have simply begun his study of the Sacred Branch of Chi Healing, with a possible side focus on the Divine Branch of Remote Healing as he had discussed with his instructor, Master Guri Yarna.

  Now, he was dressed as an old hag, people pressing around him and seemingly annoyed at the way he was dragging his foot, Arik’s destiny uncertain. He had a few other tools with him, including the sanjaku cloth and his grappling hook, but he didn’t have a weapon, the sword that the tanuki had given him back at Hojo’s retreat in the woods. If he was discovered, his only chance for escape would be to call upon his wound transfer power; before he did that he would need to completely heal his leg.

  The risks had never been higher, yet for some reason, he felt confident that he would accomplish this task. After all, by this point, he had no other choice.

  As he approached the pair of guards at the front of the armory, Arik hunched over even further, taking short breaths now so it sounded as if he were wheezing. He drew closer, the haori cape over his head adding shadow to his eyes as he looked up at the guards, Meosa speaking for him:

  “Please, a thief attacked me… just over there… by the tannery!”

  Arik offered the guard, who wore a leather armor that had been layered almost like scales, a painful expression. This was another thing he and Meosa had practiced at Hojo’s direction, Meosa doing his impersonations and Arik moving his mouth as he did so to seem as if he was the one speaking. It didn’t always line up perfectly, but it was a good enough trick, especially through things like misdirection and the strength of Arik’s disguise.

  “By the tannery, mother?” one of the guards asked, bristling as he placed his hand on the hilt of the sword. Thus far, Arik’s disguise had worked. The man had even referred to him as ‘mother,’ which Arik assumed was a respectful way to refer to an older woman in the Jade Realm.

  “Please…” Meosa said in his crone voice. “There were several of them… They broke my leg.”

  Arik fell forward, and was immediately assisted by one of the guards. The other turned in the direction of the tannery, Arik now going limp, trying to make sure the guard wouldn’t notice just how muscled he was under his robes, entirely aware that his body structure would not match that of an older woman.

  “Let’s get you inside,” the second guard said as he helped Arik beyond the gate, the disciple trying to remain as limp as possible. He had worn an extra set of robes beneath his disguise to add some bulk to his form, and had also stuffed a roll of fabric over his shoulders to give himself a hunch, yet he still felt a wave of relief as the guard brought him over to a bench in the courtyard and let go of the disciple, his disguise working up until this point.

  “We still need to get inside the main building,” Meosa reminded him. “Just a bit further now…”

  Rather than say anything due to his proximity to the guard, Arik simply nodded.

  The inner courtyard of the armory wasn’t anything special, just two seating areas and a few hedges, no large trees or anything that someone could use as cover. This brought a new concern to the disciple: once he secured some item as proof that he had entered the main building, how was he going to get out?

  A glance up to the top of the wall told him that he would be able to scale it if he had the cover of night. But he was hoping to leave the way he came in, right through the front entrance. Either way, he couldn’t reveal who he was, and not only did he need to hide his own power, but he needed to hide Meosa’s as well.

  “Someone has to stay at the front, mother,” the guard told Arik. “Once my counterpart returns, I will find someone to help you. We do have staff here…”

  “That’s quite all right,” Meosa said in his crone voice. “Just a moment to catch my breath should be good enough for me.”

  “But, mother, your leg,” the guard said.

  “This old thing?” Once Arik didn’t respond to Meosa's words, the aqueous kami hissed at him. “Point at your leg or something.”

  Arik did as instructed, and showed the guard that he could now move it. To prove his point, he also stood from the bench.

  “You were dragging your foot just moments ago,” the guard said, Arik immediately ducking his head down to some degree, once again hoping to conceal at least a portion of his face. In doing so, a strand of his hair, one that had been covered in the white makeup, fell out of his hood.

  “I’ll be fine,” Meosa told the guard. “I’ve been through much worse. You should have seen my… I mean, just three years ago, I broke both legs trying to get a pail of water from a well outside the city. Can you believe that? I had to drag myself back here using just my arms looking like a damn crab. T
his is nothing compared to how I’ve suffered before, sonny, and that’s not to mention the nine children I bore, ten if you count the stillborn, eleven if you count the fact that one of the nine were twins. That was quite the surprise!”

  “Meosa!” Arik whisper-hissed, making it sound like a sneeze of snorts.

  “In that case,” the guard said, already growing tired of dealing with Arik, “just wait here and once he returns, we will get you some help.”

  “Might I wait inside?” Meosa asked. “It’s frigid, dearie, the fat on these old bones does little to warm my withered soul.” Arik crossed his arms over his chest and pretended to shiver.

  Warm my withered soul? Arik thought, but the guard appeared to buy it.

  “The inside of the armory isn’t generally a place that the public is allowed to go. But…” The guard looked back to his post and to the large, wooden front door of the armory that was easily twice as high as it needed to be.

  “Please,” Meosa cried. “I’m so tired. Look at this useless body of mine, not even strong enough to keep me warm. But strong enough to walk. No, I don’t need your help. I can make it there myself.”

  You really are making a mockery of this, Arik thought as he shuffled toward the entrance to the armory. His strategy worked, the guard going ahead of him and knocking twice on the large door. A slit opened and a pair of eyes looked out, the guard discussing what was going on with the man inside.

  Soon, the door began to open.

  “He’s going to see about getting you some help, mother. Our nursemaid happens to be at a different armory at the moment, but she won’t be long.”

  “How many blasted armories does a city like Avarga need?” Meosa asked in his grandmotherly voice. “Why must the Jade Realm be so paranoid?”

  “Let’s just get you inside, mother.” The guard placed a hand on Arik’s shoulder, just a few inches away from the padding that he had stuffed to give him a hump on his back. “Yes, sit here,” he said as the other guard, the one who had been inside the armory, brought a chair.

  Arik and Meosa now sat in a thin, rectangular room that opened up to all the weapons, a barred door separating them from the blades, axes, and spears. Hanging on both sides of the walls were Jadean banners, seafoam green with a dark-green petroglyph square in the middle.

  Arik took his seat, and as the first guard returned to the gate, the second used the key to go into a side room, where Arik presumed he would be grabbing an offering of sorts, food or drink.

  “It’s now or never,” Meosa said.

  “There’s nothing to take…” Arik told him after a quick glance around the clean space.

  Aside from chairs and banners, there really wasn’t anything else.

  “Figure something out, disciple!”

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, Arik thought as he climbed to the top of the chair, where he intended to strip one of the Jadean banners from the wall. He was just getting his footing when he heard movement in the other room, Arik quickly falling back to the chair.

  The guard peeked his head out of the door. “I should have asked before, but do you take honey with your tea? He said that you were cold, mother.”

  “Yes!” Meosa blurted out. “I do take honey, and be sure to stir it ten times, and then ten times counterclockwise, then ten times clockwise, then ten more times counterclockwise. Do this three more times, the full set. Five sets in total, sonny. Or six. You do the math. Yes, I also like it a bit lukewarm. So let it sit there for a minute after you’ve stirred the tea,” he said, hoping to give Arik more time to strip the flag from the wall.

  Much to Arik’s surprise, the guard laughed. “Both my sister and my mother are very particular about how they have their tea. I totally understand. It will be just a moment now,” the guard said before heading back to the other room.

  “Hurry, disciple,” Meosa said just as the door slowly creaked shut. “I’ve bought you time.”

  Arik hopped back onto the chair, his foot on the armrest as he ripped the banner from the ceiling. He then stuffed it in the front of his robes and turned to the entrance of the armory.

  Here goes nothing, he thought as he hobbled out, dragging his leg behind him again. The guard at the front gate spotted him, just as the second guard, the one who had gone to check on the thieves that Arik had lied about, returned.

  “I think I’ll go home now,” Meosa said hurriedly as Arik reached them. “Feeling much better after sitting inside for a moment. What a nice day!”

  “Mother, we couldn’t find any indication of thieves by the tannery,” the second guard said, the man with a slightly baffled look on his face. “Do you remember what they look like?”

  “Tall, most definitely tall, with hair and yes, normal human features, I believe. Not handsome but not ugly. They had eyes that could have been blue or brown, maybe closer to black. Both had hair, um… they headed in the other direction,” Meosa said as Arik veered toward the left. “Don’t worry about me; I don’t live so far from here.”

  “Please, let us escort you to your home,” one of the guards said. By this point Arik was so focused on trying to get away from them that he didn’t know which one had spoken. It was akin to the same tunnel vision he’d experienced before, during extreme moments like when he’d fallen to the base of the canyon. But there was something different about what he was going through now, a heightened sense of the jitters.

  One of the soldiers placed his hand on Arik’s shoulder, but this time ended up shifting it toward the left, bumping into the cushioning on his upper back.

  Meosa wailed. “Careful—!”

  The haori cloak covering Arik’s head dropped onto his shoulders, his long dark hair that had been partially whitened with paint spilling out. He paused, his back to the two guards.

  “Hold on a moment,” the guard with his hand on his shoulder said.

  He forcibly spun Arik around, and as he did, Arik reached for the same hand and gripped tightly, his eyes flashing with apology as he transferred what was left of the wound on his leg to the man.

  The guard stumbled backward, the other uncertain of what had just happened.

  “Run, disciple!” Meosa hissed in his ear.

  Arik took off, ignoring what was left of the pain in his leg as he charged toward the nearest crowd, which had been yet another strategy taught to him by Hojo. Not only that, Arik had also prepared a distraction.

  He slipped past a booth selling brooms and other cleaning materials that had been placed in barrels, Arik purposefully pushing two of the barrels over, brooms spilling out. The crowd began to react, and as he moved into an alley in the opposite direction, he chose a different trajectory than the one that he had been aiming for when he had bolted from the guards.

  It was here that Arik found a cellar. Rather than dip inside it, which would have trapped him, he simply ducked next to the cellar and began rearranging his cape, once again forming a hood over his head.

  “That damn Hojo,” Meosa said, his voice on edge as well, the kami clearly experiencing the same tension that the disciple was in that moment.

  “We should be fine,” Arik told him. He looked left to see that there was an exit to the alley that led under a few tarps, where some of the city’s homeless lived. He knew that this linked up to a passageway that eventually circled back to the woods, having taken it yesterday with Hojo. “We got what we came for. That’s all that matters.”

  Meosa offered Arik a bitter laugh. “That’s one way to put it. You did well back there, by the way.”

  “So did you,” Arik said as he popped open the compact mirror that Hojo had given him. It was strange to see himself painted up, his teeth black, his hair partially white. But after a few adjustments, Arik moved on. “You make a good grandmother.”

  “We make a good grandmother,” Meosa said in a cheery voice.

  Arik couldn’t help but smirk at the comment. This truly was his life now.

  ****

  Arik found Hojo in the kitchen of their
retreat, the master illusionist just about finished steaming dumplings that were made from rice flour, the smell heavy in the air. Hojo’s almost silver hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and rather than greet Arik, he simply motioned for the disciple to take a seat in the shared living area, where a low table was already set up.

  Arik had already cleaned the makeup off his face outside, and after he sat, he retrieved the seafoam-green banner he had stolen from the Avarga armory. He traced his hand over the fabric, the stitching in its center adding to its texture.

  Arik shook his head, unable to tell if he felt ashamed of what he had done, or proud. He was not a thief; what he had just done was completely out of the ordinary for him, yet he had accomplished the task, and in doing so had found himself just a bit closer to partially grasping what it meant to be an illusionist.

  As Hojo brought the dumplings to the table, their steam lifting into the air, Arik tried not to overthink what this meant for him going forward, or how his peers would have perceived of what he had done. The latter part didn’t matter. They were all dead now.

  “I see you were successful,” Hojo said as Arik showed him the flag.

  “So does this mean that our dear disciple has officially passed your maddening disguises and deception class?” Meosa asked in a mocking way. “Because stealing flags from armories is not something a being such as myself should be tasked with doing.”

  Arik ate his first dumpling, which had meat and vegetables inside, a hint of spice to it.

  “Unfortunately, there is only so much I can show you in the short amount of time we have,” Hojo said. “While risky, the tasks I’ve given you thus far have been relatively easy. The harder ones involve true commitment to your disguise and your mission. Remember the story I told you earlier, about the man who seemingly left his family to become a drunkard for several years while he waited for his chance to strike?”

  “Sorgus de Moonagwa,” said Arik, the disciple having heard about this particular Hidden Warrior several times over the last few days.