“Then I will adapt,” Arik said, remembering what Hojo had said. “Like water.”
.Chapter Six.
–An excerpt from Coro Pache: Legends of the War Priest, Fifth Edition, Yoshimura Books, Year 1521, Page 196.
It wasn’t long into Arik Dacre’s journey to the desert that he found Crimsonian oban tucked away in one of the hidden pockets of his robes, a smirk coming across his face as he knew instantly how it got there.
When did Hojo even get close enough to put this here? he thought.
A day and two nights was about the fastest one could go in traveling from the border city of Omoto to Mogra and it passed relatively quickly, the disciple spending much of the time resting in the dark carriage.
They would have arrived in Mogra in the afternoon had it not been for a dust storm that added several hours of delay, the wind whipping against the outside of the carriage like a screaming banshee, Arik impressed that the driver and the caravan guards were able to shrug off such a phenomenon.
“They do this all the time,” Meosa assured him.
Arik had entertained the idea of making an appearance in the outer rim, to pay a visit to Domen the herder and his mother, who had so graciously hosted him on his first visit to Mogra. But he now tried to frame his arrival in the way that an illusionist would, and for what he planned to do, he knew it was better that he wasn’t linked to any of the locals.
Just in case things went wrong.
Instead, he would find shelter just about as far away from the city center as he could, and he would pay handsomely for his room, double whatever the cost to remain anonymous if necessary. If this didn’t work out, and he managed to survive, Arik was going to be a wanted man. He knew better than to question this, and going forward, he would always have to think in this way.
The sun was setting when they finally pulled into Mogra, the caravan heading down a man-made ramp and gathering where all the transport carriages did at the outskirts of the city, porters waiting for them with water.
Mogra was set in a deep valley, mountains on the horizon casting mile-long shadows as the sun dipped behind them. Everything had a plum color to it, Arik feeling utterly anonymous in his Crimsonian robes and square hat as he stepped out of his carriage.
“Where will the tournament be held?” he asked the guard that held the door open for him.
“At the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts, my lord.”
“And where does one sign up?”
“I believe…” The guard dipped his head a little, his square hat shifting down as he delivered unwanted news: “I believe that that has already happened. Tournament begins tomorrow.”
“I knew we should have gotten here a day earlier,” Meosa said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Rather than reply, Arik nodded. “Thank you,” he told the guard.
He had made it too far not to join the tournament, and one thing he had learned over the last month was there was always another option, and generally, in his world at least, this option meant deception. But before he could do that, he needed to find a place to stay that provided an easy exit, where people could see them.
The first inn he came to, which was separated from the main dirt road by a three-foot-high wall of sandstone, was fully booked. But the shabbier place next to it had a single basement room available, and even better, it had its own entrance.
The space was dingy and had a stale smell to it, but after the innkeep lit a few candles, Arik saw that there was plenty of light to do what he needed to do next.
And so it begins…
It didn’t take much longer than thirty minutes for Arik to completely change his appearance, his Crimsonian robes going back in his bag while he changed into the slightly threadbare ones that he’d worn when training with Hojo, dark gray to the point they were almost black.
Now seated on a cushion before a mirror made of polished obsidian, Arik applied the oshiroi white makeup to his face, adding touches of gray usuzumi makeup and swirling them together.
He slicked his long black hair back and pulled it into a tight bun, the roots of which he smeared with the gray makeup, adding touches of white. His haori cape went over his head and before he stood, he used the dagger strapped to his forearm to draw a cut over his eyebrow, which he healed up before it could bleed too much, leaving the scar intact. He then adjusted the white paint makeup around it, blending everything in.
“Going for the scarred old man look, I see,” Meosa said. The kami cleared his throat. “How does this sound?” he asked in his octogenarian voice. “Too proper? I’ll make it a bit grittier… how’s this?”
“Works for me. We’ll start at the taverns around the city center, where I’m sure we can figure out who is responsible for the roster. From there…” Arik bit his lip. He really wished he had understood Chimaura better, that he was able to put someone under a spell to some degree as Hojo seemed to be able to do.
“We don’t have enough money to truly bribe someone, but I can help in that regard,” Meosa said, still using the gritty voice of an older man. “Just find out who we need to talk to.”
“Right.”
Arik exited the inn through its private entrance and turned toward the center of town, figuring that people would be gathered around the Mogra library which now doubled as a bathhouse. The hint of familiarity he was feeling with his surroundings was a welcomed change, the stone buildings and the occasional archways creating an intricate maze of back alleys and side streets, protected from the sun by thick wooly kayno hides.
Arik took his time, hobbling along as if he had injured his leg, noticing that groups of people would pass him with clan banners, the overwhelming majority some variant of red. There was a lot of pride in the air, and as he reached the center of the city he saw that a great crowd surrounded some of the public works, everyone in square hats or with their heads covered by fabric, like Arik was doing.
There was drinking and dancing, a man blowing fire, spectators clapping around him. Not certain of where he should head, Arik simply began listening to the crowd, to the voices of the people swelling all around him. He heard names from other localities, potential champions spoken about with joy interspersed with banal conversations.
He learned that Nobunaga had arrived in town earlier that day and there had already been a procession, the warlord staying in one of the suites at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts. This news made Arik drop his head to some degree, disappointed that he wasn’t trained well enough in the ways of an illusionist to simply sneak into the Academy and take care of Nobunaga in his sleep.
If only Hojo were here…
A drunken man shouldered into Arik, but before he could apologize, Meosa struck up a conversation in his newly acquired accent.
“Is there a list of competitors? How do I sign up?”
The drunk laughed at Meosa’s question, the man finding it hilarious that a man as old as Arik was interested in fighting.
“I may look old,” Meosa said, “but I personally neutered a thousand kayno with my own bare hands and fought off hordes of ravenous gaki. I’m ready to fight!”
“It’s too late to sign up, you old fool,” the drunk told him. “They have already revealed the roster.” He swept his hand toward one of the buildings on the opposite side of the square, where people had gathered around a pair of torches sticking out of the ground.
“Let’s go, disciple,” Meosa whispered to Arik. “We have the information we need.”
The drunk called out to Arik as he shuffled along, the man likely wondering why he had departed so suddenly.
Arik reached the crowd gathered around the posted list of combatants. Hunching forward a bit, he pushed his way to the front, his eyes scanning the list of names, two of them standing out immediately to him.
“Tatum…” Arik whispered, recalling the Crimsonian fighter he’
d squared off with in Iga, the strange veil he had worn over his face, how the left-handed man operated with one blade. “He’s not already trained?”
He moved onto the next name that brought with it a hint of sadness to him.
“Domen,” Arik whispered as people became restless behind him. He truly hoped that this wasn’t the fourteen-year-old wooly kayno herder, who had helped him when he had first arrived in Mogra, but he had a feeling it was.
How am I going to get on this list? Arik wondered as he once again scanned the posted roster from the top to bottom, stopping on a name in the center that he had missed before. Arik Pache?
“Do you see it?” he whispered.
“I see it. I believe that Master Altai of yours has already registered you,” Meosa said. “Apparently, the surname ‘Pache’ has become quite popular since the days of the original War Priest. As you can tell.”
A quick glance up at the list again and Arik saw that several people had the last name of Pache.
“And if the name isn’t meant for you to fight under, I will do what I can once we meet the real Arik Pache in the morning. Now, unless you want to stroll around the square playing dress-up, I suggest we return to our room.”
“Domen is on there,” Arik said once he reached the back of the crowd, where it had thinned out to some degree. “On the list.”
“I saw that. It appears as if the young herder is on a quest for glory that will inevitably result in his death.”
“And Tatum.”
“Tatum?” Meosa asked.
“The man I fought in Iga, the one who cut my arm off.”
“Yes, well, you and I both knew that this wasn’t going to be easy. Let’s just focus on reaching the end, and if the final match is against Tatum, perhaps I may be able to help to some degree. I wasn’t there last time, you know; I wouldn’t have let him cut your arm off. What you need now is to rest and prepare yourself, disciple. Let’s leave the square-hatted desert dwellers to their pointless celebrations and hope that luck is on our side tomorrow. We are going to need it.”
.Chapter Seven.
“The mindset needed to defeat one man is the same as the mindset needed to defeat ten thousand.”
–Combat Master Baldree Yamanouchi, as told to his biographer for the Crimson-Onyx Shroud War memoir A Year of Slaughter, Year 1087.
The Mask of the Fallen fit snugly over Arik’s face, the disciple immediately feeling its poisonous effects, which all but dissipated by the time he tied it behind his head. He was close to completing his disguise.
As Arik had seen before, the mask already made him much more intimidating than he normally was, but he had come up with a way to make himself slightly more mysterious by using his haori cape, which he placed over his head and shoulders and fastened around his neck using his sanjaku cloth.
Most of his shinobi tools would have to stay behind in his room, from his grappling hook to the caltrops, but he would keep the dagger strapped to his arm, and hopefully, he would be able to retrieve the items Hojo had given him later.
To complete his look, Arik went for some of the vermilion red shu makeup. Inspired by the axe-wielding woman named Nyoko that he had fought in Iga, the disciple spread the red makeup across his eyes and the bridge of his nose. If he lost his haori cape for some reason, he would still present a striking visual, what almost resembled blood streaked over the top of his face, black mask on the bottom.
“And you say you aren’t the War Priest,” Meosa commented as Arik finished up.
“It’s best to disguise myself.”
“And when you win, what then?”
“Then…” Arik looked at himself one more time in the mirror. “Then we’ll see. Let me get to that point first.”
“I’m not going to be able to help you too much during the fight,” Meosa said, reminding him of the discussion they’d already had, “but I will still be there, especially once it gets darker.”
Meosa wasn’t going to be as strong as he normally would be due to the desert conditions and the fact that Arik wouldn’t be able to bring the waterskin with him, but that didn’t mean that the kami wouldn’t still be capable of amazing things.
His disguise in order, Arik left the underground room and turned south toward the Academy, set before the famous Whitenor Arch, a buzz in the air that he could feel, all the shops he passed closed for the tournament. The disciple kept his head down as he walked, knowing that he must have looked a bit out of place compared to the denizens of Mogra, most of whom wore their square hats, just a few foreigners with cloth coverings or hoods instead of the traditional attire.
Upon passing the library, he joined the crowd making their way into the entrance, a man in crimson robes spotting Arik immediately and waving him over.
“You are a combatant today, yes?” the man asked, his square hat stitched with red and black designs.
Arik nodded.
“Was it the mask that gave it away?” Meosa asked, even though the man couldn’t hear him.
“In that case, you are late. Head up that path,” he said, motioning toward a cordoned-off area that ran along the outer perimeter of the famed academy. “You can check in there.”
Arik did as instructed, and soon he was greeted by a woman in a square hat, Arik recognizing her as the receptionist who had nearly gotten him killed when he had first arrived at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts.
“Arik Pache,” he said, making no indication that he had ever met her.
The woman glanced down at a long piece of parchment in her hands. She found his name and nodded. “We’ve been waiting for your arrival. Follow me.”
She led Arik under an arched doorway, the two entering a dusty underground hallway with rooms lining one side, a series of red banners on the other. She brought Arik to one of the rooms, which was empty, the woman motioning for him to sit.
“You will hear a knock at the door when it is your time. Go to your immediate right and follow the hallway. There is water and food if you’re hungry,” she said, motioning toward a table on the other side of the room.
Arik looked to the far wall, wishing that there was a window, some way for him to gauge where he was exactly. He could hear the sounds of people, their voices echoing through the walls, and got the feeling that he was actually under the seating area.
“Thank you,” he told the woman, and if she recognized him, she made no indication of it as she simply nodded her head and shut the door behind her.
“I’m familiar with this sort of tournament set-up,” Meosa said when she was gone. “You will come out on one side, and your opponent on the other. What happens next is really up to us. If I’m not mistaken, there will be seating on both sides of the fighting area, and on one side, with the most unobstructed view—also out of the glare of that bastard desert sun—will be Nobunaga and his various associates.”
“Right.”
“While he is our focus, let’s just deal with our opponents first,” Meosa reminded him. “It might be possible for you to run toward him and for me to lift you over whatever guards may be standing to protect him, but to do this we would have to be very precise, and it is risky…”
“No, we have to do this the right way,” Arik said with finality. “It has to look real; we can’t blow our chance.”
This was yet another change that the disciple had gone through over the last month. He remembered the anguish he had felt upon killing Konwa, and while he still didn’t like to take life, especially with the fact it went against the oath he had practically etched onto his soul, it was a necessity, a means to an end.
As Arik waited for the tournament to begin, he reminded himself of who he was doing this for, his mother and father, his sister Mori Ehara, Master Guri Yarna, Combat Master Nankai, Jinmo, and for that matter, Hojo…
There was a sudden rap at the door.
“Good luck, disciple,” Meosa said as Arik let himself out of the room, where he was motioned by a Crimson blade to head to his right.
Arik took a flight of stairs up toward a rectangle of blue, the disciple walking directly out onto a field bathed in sun. He stood behind a small gate guarded by three blades, each in crimson robes, none of them with their square hats on. One remained at attention while the other two unlatched the gate, the blade on his left motioning Arik toward the center of the field. As Meosa had predicted, there were people on both sides, and on the corner facing away from the sun was where Nobunaga and his entourage sat.
Jeers followed Arik as he headed past the gate, no one recognizing who he was, all of them seeing him as a sort of shinobi lite considering what he was wearing. Something else caught his eye as he stood waiting for his opponent to arrive, Arik’s knees nearly giving as the realization hit him.
It… it can’t be, he thought, not wanting to fully stare over at Nobunaga and his group. But then he remembered that this wasn’t his country, that he didn’t care about their protocols. The disciple defiantly turned his head in the direction of Nobunaga. It felt as if his heart had been carved out of his chest, Arik’s limbs tingling for just a moment before he stopped himself from falling.
“What is it, disciple?” Meosa asked, alarm in his voice.
Arik bowed his head, glad that his face was hidden by his hood and his mask, glad he had made the choice to obscure his features.
Arik stole another glance at Nobunaga’s attachment, the warlord too far back for him to make out his features. Seated upfront next to the eye-patched Combat Master Altai was his former healing instructor, Master Guri Yarna, Arik deadly sure of it, his teacher for so many years in white robes with an orange layer beneath it decorated in golden flowers, his long white beard confirming it without a shadow of a doubt.
And that wasn’t all.
Seated on the other side of Master Guri Yarna was Arik’s younger sister, Mori Ehara, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. She didn’t wear a mask, nor did she have a veil or any of the other coverings that many of the women wore this far south, none of the entourage wearing the traditional headgear.
Mask of the Fallen: A Cultivation/Progression Fantasy Series: (War Priest Book One) Page 36