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

by Harmon Cooper

  “Yes, I would say that is the case. I’m Arik Dacre,” he told the man, not sure of why he was immediately introducing himself. He was nodding as well, as if he were agreeing with something the man had said.

  What’s going on here? Arik thought, a hint of confusion setting in.

  “Arik Dacre, a northern name…” the man said after some contemplation. “Well, it is nice to meet you, Arik.” He relaxed into his seat a little further, even though Arik knew that it was just as uncomfortable as his. The man seemed totally fine with the wooden bench, treating it almost as if it were a thick, cushioned seat. An almost lethargic smile traced across his bearded face as he spoke again: “You may call me Hojo.”

  ****

  Hojo said little through the entirety of their journey to Avarga.

  Hours would pass, the mysterious man looking almost as if he had placed himself in a deep meditation, Hojo occasionally blinking his eyes open to squint out the slotted windows of the carriage and then return to his rest.

  The large horse leading their carriage continued onward as the land shifted, the terrain bumpy and raw. Arik caught glimpses through the slatted window of an environment that was much different than the one he had just come from, much colder and wooded, the caravan winding its way along a trail close enough to the trees that their branches occasionally grazed against the outer wall of the carriage.

  Meosa spoke to the disciple as they traveled, the aqueous kami making comments about Hojo and letting Arik know his opinions on how little things had changed in the last five hundred years.

  “And here I thought that coming out of my forced slumber would push me into a new era, one of enlightenment,” he lamented at some point, Arik never able to ask him who had put him into this ‘forced slumber,’ as he called it, in the first place.

  While it was still light, Arik flipped through the book given to him by Master Altai, reading a short story about Coro Pache and one of his trips to the north to better understand Revivaura.

  Arik was a bit incensed, as pedantic as it was, that the legendary figure had been christened a ‘priest’ in the first place. Even Arik himself wasn’t a priest; only someone who had mastered four divine branches, like the man who had saved him, Master Guri Yarna, or the other instructors at the Academy, were granted such a title.

  If Hojo thought anything about the book Arik was holding, he never let him know, the odd man quiet to the point that Arik felt as if he were in the cabin alone.

  Once night officially arrived, the inside of the carriage grew darker, the space lit by vertical orange lines from a hanging lantern near the carriage driver outside. Arik watched these lines race across the inner cabin, sometimes disappearing entirely when the carriage turned, only to right themselves, the sounds of the wheels, horse hooves, and the occasional command from the driver making it hard to doze off.

  Eventually, things around him grew dimmer, Arik slowly starting to shut his eyes when some commotion reached his ears.

  Yelling, followed by a troubled bray from a horse at the start of the caravan had Arik wide-awake in an instant. His first thought was that the caravan may have encountered something like the winged wolf yokai known as hainu, but then he heard more commotion, and the clash of weapons, Arik instinctively going for his sword.

  “We stay here,” Hojo said, his eyes still shut, the man looking as if he were in a deep slumber.

  “What’s going on out there?” Arik whispered.

  “Get ready for anything,” Meosa hissed in his ear. “I fear that…”

  “It may be bandits,” said Hojo in a calm voice. “The caravan guards will either handle it, or they won’t. It is best if we stay here. For now.”

  Arik had seen the caravan guards, a group of men with spears, a few on horses and the others riding on perches attached to every other carriage. He had counted eight in all, and with four carriages, this left a pair of guards for each carriage.

  The sound grew louder, a woman’s scream making the hairs on Arik’s neck stand to attention.

  “I’m ready,” Meosa told him. “As soon as they look in here, I don’t care what this strange fellow sitting across from us thinks, someone is getting a fist to the face, and a really watery one at that. Just hold onto my waterskin, and I’ll do the rest.”

  Arik nodded. At his current angle, he could see just a bit of the carriage in front of him, the disciple focused on it as the sound grew closer. Soon, he noticed a man in dark-gray robes approach, a mask hiding his features.

  And that was all it took.

  Arik reached for his sword and began to withdraw the blade from its scabbard.

  “You will act?” Hojo asked, his gray eyes suddenly open.

  “Those…” Arik cut another glimpse of one of the bandits, recognizing them as the same ones who had destroyed the Academy of Healing Arts. At least they were dressed in the same way. “Those are shinobi.”

  Rather than fear, something that resembled annoyance traced across Hojo’s face.

  “That’s them?” Meosa asked, but by this point Arik had already started to move.

  He slipped out of the door of the carriage, and as he did he popped his sword out of its scabbard and withdrew his blade fully, an utter rage swelling within him.

  As soon as Arik’s feet touched the ground, he readied his blade. Looking ahead, he saw that there was some commotion between the guards and the shinobi who had attacked them, that the shinobi were winning.

  He also noticed that several of the horses were already missing.

  “I hope you are ready for this,” Meosa said as Arik moved forward and brought his blade up.

  He charged at one of the masked men who happened to be trying to pull someone out of the carriage directly in front of him, cutting into his back. The nearest horse, the one attached to Arik’s carriage, reared up at his sudden movement, the driver already down and attempting to fend off one of the shinobi.

  The sound of metal cutting through flesh and a spray of blood signaled the driver’s death by the hands of his assailant.

  Fwitt! Fwitt!

  Arik was struck by a series of throwing daggers that seem to have come out of nowhere. They cut deep into his shoulders, and came coupled with an instant feeling of drowsiness.

  Meosa bloomed to life, Arik still with the waterskin over his shoulder, a wave of force tearing forward and striking not only the shinobi but also the horse, powerful enough to topple the front carriage and send the horse charging off once it was able to get to its feet.

  Amidst the calamity, Arik used his free hand to pull the first throwing knife out and dropped it to the ground, sensing that there had been a poison on its tip.

  He did the same with the other dagger, his command over Revivaura coming to him almost immediately as he dealt with the poison.

  To give himself a moment to heal, Arik slipped into the woods to wait for the wounds to quickly stitch up. He would be able to smooth them over later. By the time he was finished, the cuts in his robes the only indication that he had been attacked.

  For now, he needed to act; he needed to help the caravan guards that were left, and do his best to save any of the passengers who were still alive.

  Unfortunately, as he charged back out of the woods, a great plume of fire sparked off to his left, indicating that the carriage he had just been in was set ablaze. He paused, his immediate reaction being to look around for Hojo.

  “What are you doing?” Meosa asked as the flames grew stronger, illuminating the thick canopy all around them.

  “Put the fire out,” Arik said hurriedly.

  “Why?”

  “Hojo, my book—the carriage can’t burn!”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Meosa said as he surged into action, steam breaching the air as he put out the flame caused by the lantern. It hadn’t completely covered the carriage, just the front end, where the driver had been sitting, but this still didn’t reveal to Arik where Hojo was, and a quick look around at the increasingly dark woods made h
im think the mysterious man had likely run off.

  It’s all on you, he thought, psyching himself up. You can do this.

  It only took a single memory of shinobi slaughtering everyone he knew, from his parents to his sister to Master Guri Yarna, to reignite Arik’s fury, his anger matching the fire that had attempted to turn his carriage to ash just moments ago.

  He careened toward the front of the caravan just as the final guard was cut to the ground.

  There’d be no healing the wounds that the man had sustained, not to Arik’s knowledge, the enemy shinobi’s blade piercing through the bottom of his chin, and out the crown of his head, a wound that not even one of the higher-level priests could mend.

  Arik bristled as he swung his sword forward, the crack of his blade meeting his opponent’s steel, a surge of adrenaline sparking within him.

  Water spritzed into the air and struck the man in the face, wrapping around his mask as he tried to move away and pouring into his mouth and his eyes, the stream connected to the waterskin still slung over Arik’s shoulder.

  Another shinobi burst out the shadows, the demonic features of his mask illuminated by lanterns hanging from the nearest carriage, all the horses now gone. Arik turned to meet him, doing his best to follow his opponent’s cadence, the man with a unique fighting style revolving around reverse horizontal cross cuts.

  Klank! Klank!

  Arik was once again aided by Meosa, the water kami forming a gigantic fist that swooped upward and delivered an insane uppercut that sent the shinobi easily ten feet into the air.

  The impact alone had the man out, Arik not wasting any time in sending his blade straight down into his opponent’s chest, both hands on the grip as he pulled out.

  Arik turned to his left just as another shinobi hopped down from the top of the nearest carriage.

  Wham!

  Their assailant was sent straight into the side of the carriage by Meosa, Arik twisting forward and delivering yet another deathblow. He spun away, a spritz of blood following the tip of his blade, Arik in a rare, primal headspace as he brought his blade back to the ready and looked for his next opponent.

  (You have to do this.)

  For Mori, for your parents, for Master Guri Yarna, for Jinmo, for Combat Master Nankai.

  (You have to do this.)

  The voice echoed in his head, a mantra of self-preservation.

  Arik caught movement ahead and rushed toward it, blade on blade with yet another opponent, the masked assailant much faster than Arik had anticipated.

  The shinobi was short with a low center of gravity, the man cutting with upward slices, Arik having to send his blade down to block the incoming attacks. He tried to move himself in a position with the lanterns behind him, a trick that Master Nankai had taught Arik, but in doing so, he tripped over his own feet, Arik stumbling to the side.

  “Pay attention to what you are doing, disciple!”

  Meosa managed to come to his aid once again, his opponent brought down by a rapid fire blast of water.

  Arik used this to his advantage to kill the man, the disciple just about to turn toward the front of the caravan, where he thought there would be more shinobi, when a rush of pain blossomed within him.

  He tensed up as the tip of a sword pressed out of the front of his body, the edge jagged.

  Arik had been stabbed from behind.

  The disciple hit the ground once the blade was withdrawn, and with a sudden gasp, he turned to his side and immediately placed his hand on the wound, visualizing which internal organs that the blade punctured.

  It was seconds later that something else fell, Arik now staring back at the decapitated head of a shinobi warrior who had just stabbed him, the hideous mask still covering his face.

  “We have company, disciple,” Meosa said, Arik sensing someone shift into view.

  The man stood in a very relaxed way, most of his weight on one foot, his sword down at his side as if it were heavy. Covering his face was a conical hat with a slit cut into it, his features obscured by shadow.

  “Hojo?” Arik asked, bewildered.

  The mysterious man nodded. “It appears that we both have secrets, disciple.”

  Hojo flicked some of the blood off his blade and turned, just a bit of light tracing across the bottom of his chin as he looked back toward the caravan.

  “So you know?” Arik asked as he gingerly pressed himself up, the internal wound already starting to heal.

  “That you are a disciple? Yes. But that’s not the secret I’m talking about. Make yourself known, kami,” Hojo announced. “Your presence has been noted.”

  Arik felt his body tremble as Meosa decided what he should do next.

  “I mean neither of you any harm,” Hojo said. “Reveal yourself.”

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Meosa asked aloud, light cutting through his watery form as he took shape, Arik continuing to heal his wound in the meantime. “A shinobi.”

  “A shinobi?” Hojo tilted his head back toward the caravan. “No, not anymore. Let’s take what we can, anything we can carry and more importantly, anything we can eat. These imposters will be back in force sooner or later, and if not them, actual bandits may come in their place. Are you able to walk, Disciple Arik?”

  “Yeah…” Arik said as he got to his feet, Meosa’s form still floating next to him.

  “Good. It will take us at least two days to reach Avarga on foot,” Hojo said, what resembled a smile forming on his partially shadowed face. “It appears as if we have a lot to discuss in the meantime.”

  ****

  Arik wasn’t concerned with lifting any supplies from those who had been killed.

  His immediate reaction was instinctual, the disciple going from person to person and seeing if any had sustained injuries that weren’t fatal. By the time he reached the carriage at the front of the caravan, Arik was nearly certain that no one was left alive, none of the passengers, women or children, nor any of the shinobi.

  He was too distracted by his own instinct to think more about what Hojo had just revealed to him, the mysterious man one of these heinous shinobi, a student of the School of Illusion. He would get to that later; if Meosa had considered him an enemy, Arik figured he would have done something by now.

  Oddly enough, Meosa hadn’t said anything since Hojo had pointed out his presence, his silence bothering Arik to some degree as he checked the last passenger and found, as he had expected, that the woman’s throat had been slit wide open.

  “They really are monsters,” Arik whispered, figuring that this would strike up a conversation with Meosa.

  “You should do what Hojo told you,” he said, surprising Arik, “find any supplies you can. Money. He isn’t wrong, disciple.”

  “I’m not a thief.”

  “It will all be stolen anyway.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me.”

  Not knowing exactly where to wait for Hojo, Arik simply stood at what was once the front of the caravan, two of the carriages toppled, the night growing colder. He now had his bag as well, which he had slung over the same shoulder as his waterskin. The wounds on his chest were completely healed up by now, as was the internal injury for the most part, Arik surprised at how quickly he had been able to mend himself.

  In the past it took a little bit longer, but ever since his journey had started, and after his delirious first few days followed by his time at the Omoto infirmary, something had changed in the disciple, his healing power amplified to some degree.

  Arik noticed a bit of movement in one of the carriages. The door kicked open and Hojo stepped out with a bag on his shoulder that he had stripped from one of the dead passengers.

  “What did you get?” Hojo asked as he approached Arik.

  “Nothing. I’m not a thief.”

  Once again, Hojo’s facial features were obscured by the shadow of his shabby conical hat. Even so, Arik sensed that a smile had traced across the mysterious man’s face.

  “You have a lo
t to learn, Disciple Arik.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to say,” Meosa told the two of them.

  “I’m…” Arik nodded his head, indicating to himself that he would stand his ground. “I’m not going any further until I figure out who you are, what happened here, and…”

  Hojo waited for him to finish.

  “And what?” Meosa asked. His watery form took shape next to Arik, as if it were an extension of his being.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” Arik told them both through gritted teeth. “You are shinobi.”

  “I was shinobi at one point, yes. But I moved on.”

  “You are just like the ones who attacked us…”

  Hojo was silent for a moment.

  “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “What do you know about the School of Illusion, disciple? Maybe if we start there, it will explain how we got here,” Hojo told him.

  “You… they…” Once again Arik found himself growing bitter as he relived what happened at the Academy of Healing Arts. “They attacked, they killed all of them, everyone I know.”

  “Who attacked? Shinobi? And who did they kill?”

  “My people, other disciples, priests, and families. My family. That’s why I’m here. The shinobi attacked the Academy of Healing Arts outside of Dornod and burned it to the ground, scavengers enslaving those left behind, including myself. It was a targeted attack, one against those who use Revivaura.”

  “If that was the case, why weren’t you killed?”

  “My teacher, Master Guri Yarna, forcibly saved me by throwing me out a window.”

  Hojo nodded slowly. “Ah, Master Guri Yarna, I haven’t heard that name in many years.”

  “You knew him?” Arik asked Hojo.

  “No, but I did attend one of his demonstrations years ago, in Avarga. If what you are saying is true, and I have no doubt to believe that it is considering you witnessed it in person, do you know who sent these men? You said it was a targeted attack.”

  “Nobunaga, the Crimsonian warlord.”

  “Nobunaga…” Hojo tilted his head up toward the darkened sky, just a few stars visible. “That would make sense. I noticed a rise of extremism in the Crimson Realm, a desire for war. I was only there briefly, looking for someone. But I didn’t know it had already progressed to this extent. Why were you in Omoto?”