But Arik felt no elation in their cheers, the disciple moving from determination to sudden apprehension as he came eye to eye with his next opponent.
Domen looked just as Arik had remembered him, the fourteen-year-old boy thin yet muscular, shirtless with several wounds hastily wrapped with cloth. His face was bruised, yet he still had a hint of defiance in the way he held himself, Domen not recognizing Arik in his disguise.
“The herder boy,” Meosa said. “It seems fate’s cruelty knows no bounds.”
Domen held a broadsword, Arik recalling that he had mentioned something about his father’s weapon. With both hands on the grip, Domen kept the sword to his side, the piece so large that the only way for him to sheathe it would have been across his back.
Arik started to shake his head as the drum sounded.
“I can’t,” he told Meosa with a deep sigh.
Domen tilted his head ever so slightly as he looked over to Arik, the disciple remembering him with a square hat firmly over his face, how he had looked at him in the same way when he had run into him in the desert.
“Domen,” Arik said, ignoring Meosa’s murmurings.
“Who…?”
The crowd started to stomp and roar even louder, drums signaling the start of combat yet again.
“It’s me, Arik. The one who helped you find your lost kayno…”
“Arik?” Domen visually swallowed a lump. But instead of lowering his weapon, he hoisted his sword up. “I’m… I’m sorry. If we don’t fight, they will kill us both.”
“I’m not going to fight you.” Arik withdrew his blade from his scabbard and dropped it to the ground, forfeiting the match.
He expected Meosa to scream at him, and as the Crimsonian blades approached, he prepared himself for the inevitable, Arik assuming they may attack him in some way for his cowardly display.
But this didn’t turn out to be the case. One of the Crimsonians took his weapon and the other two led Arik over to the bleachers where the failed combatants sat, the ones who were still alive, most wounded in some way.
The blades didn’t search his person for any other weapons, like the kunai dagger strapped to Arik’s arm. They simply deposited him there and returned to their posts.
Arik looked back to Domen, and as he did the young herder slowly raised a fist into the air, the crowd cheering wildly. Beyond him, Arik could see Nobunaga and his entourage, too far to make out the look on Master Altai’s face.
“Why the hell did you do that?” one of the injured warriors asked Arik, the man’s face smeared in grime and grit.
Arik ignored him, and it wasn’t long before new fighters were brought out, the day growing hotter, the crowd growing thirstier for blood as the tournament continued.
Arik recognized the next combatant, Tatum in the same headband he’d worn back in Iga, with the veil covering his face, his red hair matching his robes. The left-handed swordsman was clearly a fan favorite, the spectators cheering wildly for him as his opponent approached.
The fight was over just about as soon as the drums could signal its start, Tatum swiftly taking his opponent’s life.
“That’s the guy who cut off my arm,” Arik told Meosa, who had yet to say anything.
“He’s going to be a monster, isn’t he?” Meosa asked as Tatum unceremoniously turned back to the waiting area.
“He will likely win.”
“And after?” Meosa asked.
“I’m not dying here today. I don’t know about you,” Arik said in a low voice.
“That’s the spirit, disciple. Then we will do as planned?”
Arik nodded as the next combatants were announced. “We will. No sense in striking now.”
“I don’t know if you would be able to do that anyway considering Enenra is with Nobunaga…”
“And even if I did, if I didn’t kill him…” Arik lowered his head to some degree. “Master Guri Yarna would heal him.”
“It’s always something, isn’t it? I guess then all we can do now is wait and watch this despicable tournament.”
“I just wish that Domen wasn’t going to die today. I just… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see him that way, as an enemy, as an other.” Arik lowered his head some. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize to me, my boy. It’s hard enough to kill someone, let alone a friend. You had other options such as wound transfer, but it’s best he doesn’t die the way all the failed combatants over here are going to die. Nothing like plummeting to one’s death…”
“Hopefully, it will be sudden.”
Arik had this feeling that the rest of the matches were going to increase in brutality now that the weaker fighters had been weeded out, and he turned out to be right.
The next round started, Domen stepping out with his oversized sword and forced to spar with Tatum, the ending inevitable.
Arik had to look away.
He had no idea that the young herder was planning to enter the tournament. Had he known a month ago, he would have done whatever he could to convince Domen not to.
The crowd cheered for Tatum as blades came forward to retrieve Domen’s dead body.
His poor mother, Arik thought, feeling the urge to heal, wishing yet again that he had focused on the Divine Branch of Remote Healing. No one deserves this.
Tatum didn’t celebrate, nor did he raise his fist in the air. The Crimsonian fighter simply turned to the waiting area, where he was met by a pair of blades and led underground once again.
It wouldn’t be much longer until he won the tournament.
.Chapter Eight.
“To heal and recover can mean different things to different people.”
–Master Nongrat Eldegai in his book A Healing Mind, Third Edition, Ezochi Revivaura Books, Year 1336, Page 78.
Torches illuminated an ancient walkway that passed directly under one of the sandstone arches and continued into the desert. Behind the torches were the citizens of the southern Crimson Realm, who were clustered in small pockets, families cheering them on. A sense of revelry was in the air, even if it was about to turn to tragedy.
Arik Dacre walked with the dozen or so combatants who had lost their matches, Nobunaga and his entourage a good twenty yards ahead of them, Master Guri Yarna, his sister, the female combatant who Nobunaga had spared, Tatum, and Combat Master Altai at the back. There was also an entire retinue of highly trained Crimsonian blades, Nobunaga’s entire group going without the requisite square hats of tradition.
Those who had lost the tournament weren’t shackled or anything, but it was clear now that there was only one option left for them, and that option involved plummeting to one’s death.
A fingernail moon cast an eerie glow over the barren landscape, purple and blue tones mixing with the orange of the torchlight, something almost melancholic about the arid stretch of Taomoni as it began to drop in temperature, ready to bear witness to a pointless sacrifice.
Arik hadn’t removed the Mask of the Fallen all day, to the point now that it felt like it was part of him, the disciple barely noticing it. The hood of his haori cape over his head, he maintained his anonymity, the others around him also without square hats or any other coverings, the combatants facing their deaths unmasked.
They came to a group of Mograns who were humming in unison, their voices carried on a slight breeze, a song meant for a funeral.
“The fools,” Meosa said with his normal disdain. “Why anyone would think this is a good idea is beyond me. How about this? How about we just send young people to fight one another and if they lose, toss them into a deep hole? The things you humans come up with. Bah. I wish someone would make some bloody sense of it!”
A circle of light took shape in the distance, Arik seeing that they had lined the supposedly Great Deep with more torches, adding to its sacrificial appeal.
There were more blades about, most of them surrounding a stone platform that had been built on the edge of the hole. As they approached the platform, Nobunaga took the th
ree steps to the top, motioning for his guards and others, including Master Guri Yarna, to stay behind.
Nobunaga waited for everyone to come to a stop, the conversation dying down almost immediately as the warlord stood looking out over his people, his arms crossed behind his back, the ends of his mustache picking up in the wind.
Sand whipped past him and quickly settled, the retinue of blades scanning not only the crowd, but the defeated combatants, prepared for any interruptions.
“As many of you may have heard,” Nobunaga said, the booming nature of his voice taking Arik by surprise, “I am a man of few words, so I will keep this short. To the combatants gathered here tonight: you have all failed, but your death is not in vain. Your spirit, and the way you valiantly fought for survival will fuel this nation in our quest against the north.”
“Can you see her?” Arik whispered to Meosa.
“Why do you think his voice sounds like that? She’s amplifying it. Enenra is always with him, in the way that I am always with you, but not necessarily visible. If we try something now, we will likely fail. Did you notice the way the wind suddenly stopped earlier?”
Arik nodded.
“That was her as well.”
“Congratulations to all of you,” Nobunaga said after a long pause. “I commend you for being brave enough to die for your country, for inspiring all of us. Before we get started, I would like to invite Combat Master Altai to join me.”
The eye-patched instructor at the Double Sword Academy of Combat Arts approached the stone platform. Arik sensed that something was wrong.
“It has come to my attention through one of your former students that a reward is in order,” Nobunaga said as he placed a hand on Master Altai’s shoulder. “Sonjin, please step forward.”
It took Arik a second, but then he remembered hearing the name before.
That’s the blade who escorted me to the caravan, he thought as Sonjin came onto the platform, the Crimsonian warrior without his square hat, a series of grotesque scars covering his face augmented by the torchlight.
Nobunaga kept his hand on Master Altai’s shoulder. “For aiding and abetting the enemy, which has been verified by several at your school and first told to us by Sonjin, the punishment is death.”
Nobunaga slapped Master Altai on the back, Sonjin bolting forward at that very second, driving both his swords through his gut.
Arik tensed up and started to move toward the action, the disciple stopped dead in his tracks by Meosa.
“He would have done something if he could have,” Meosa hissed in his ear. “We’ve come too far, disciple, don’t mess this up now…”
Arik relaxed his shoulders as Combat Master Altai fell to his knees, his head hung in shame, the two wounds in his stomach bleeding out. Suddenly, he looked up at the crowd of combatants, a wild glare in his eye as he shouted, “Master Nankai lives!”
Swift as the wind, Nobunaga grabbed the back of the instructor’s robes and hurled him over the side of the platform, into the Great Deep.
In the end, Master Altai didn’t scream, and from where Arik stood, he couldn’t hear the impact of his body or anything of the sort. His fists still clenched at his side, Arik realized that the man’s final words were intended for him, that the man who had taught him to fight was still alive.
Master Nankai lives…
Predictably, Nobunaga didn’t agree.
“Combat Master Nankai is dead. And now, so is Combat Master Altai. Regarding his treason, some of you may know, the recent operations in the north were overwhelmingly successful. Yet it has come to my attention now that perhaps, one person, one Onyxian disciple, may have been able to escape. Bring this message home to wherever you may go after tonight: anyone caught helping this renegade disciple in any way will be killed. Now, I’ve said enough,” Nobunaga told the crowd with a huff. “Let the death ceremony begin.”
****
The first combatant to approach the platform bowed his head in shame.
He started to press back, only to be met by a blade, the Crimsonian warrior making sure that he continued forward. By this point, Nobunaga had stepped aside, well out of reach of any of the combatants who may attempt to take a swing at him. Not that Arik expected something like this. The Crimsonians seemed entirely warped by their combat patriotism, none scheduled for the death ceremony keen to put up a fight.
Arik watched as the failed combatant inched toward the edge of the platform. He turned, and waved goodbye to his family before he was physically shoved off. The second and third failed combatants were treated the same way, Arik hearing their screams as they plummeted to the bottom of the Great Deep.
How deep was it? What lay at the bottom?
These were things that Arik would never discover, not with the plan he had in mind.
The next combatant approached, the bruised woman defiantly looking over to Nobunaga and giving him a patriotic nod before she was shoved off.
“Mindless, these people,” Meosa said. “Practically thanking the warlord…”
Not all of them were shoved.
Some jumped voluntarily, but most needed some encouragement, and many wanted to say goodbye to their families, or give one last look at their loved ones, who stood in sorrow in that dark desert illuminated by torchlight, dreary clouds now blocking out the moon and stars, wisps of sand twirling into the air and falling back down.
“Such utter depravity,” Meosa said as two more went over the side, Arik getting closer to the front of the line. He was now ten feet or so away from Master Guri Yarna and his sister, Mori, who had her head hung in shame. Arik wished he could say something to her, that he could assure her that this wasn’t over, that her older brother lived, that it may take him some time, but he would rescue her.
Instead, he kept his motions to himself, the Mask of the Fallen continuing to obscure his features as more combatants were sent to their deaths, the Great Deep swallowing up their screams.
Arik reached the platform.
The man in front of him choked up as he looked back to his family, all of whom howled in unison in a way that sounded like a pack of the wolf-like hainu, the failed combatant then shoved into the Great Deep.
Arik approached the platform, feeling as if everything had come to a standstill, two blades just stepping up behind him when Nobunaga called out to the disciple.
“You, why did you forfeit your match?” he asked, his booming voice echoing into the Great Deep. “Where are you from? Who is your family?”
Arik paused, and as he did Meosa warned him: “Don’t reveal who you are…”
Without a word, Arik slowly turned back to Nobunaga, his head bowed, haori cape covering his face, just a glint of his hideous mask visible in the torchlight. Arik pointed at Nobunaga and brought the same hand back, making a gesture with his thumb as if he were slitting his throat.
The Crimsonians were just starting to gasp when Arik jumped backward, his arms spread wide, the wind rushing all around him as he began to fall. Meosa took over as soon as the shadows swirled around the disciple, Arik’s plummet slowing to a crawl.
“That was a bit dramatic,” Meosa said, a hint of pride in his voice, Arik trying to remain as still as possible. “But I can’t say it wasn’t memorable. And you didn’t say anything, so I guess for once you actually listened to me. Imagine that. Heh. Nobunaga’s not going to forget that gesture, is he?”
“Hopefully not.”
Meosa had floated Arik over to the side wall, where he waited in the shadows as the next body came flying past him, the man crying out in fear.
Based on the sound of the next body that came over the edge, the Great Deep truly was nearly bottomless, Arik barely hearing the impact below. A few more were sent over the side, followed by a deep hum that Arik recognized as coming from a bone trumpet.
The death ceremony had ended.
Soon, the torches above were extinguished, the procession dying down, the Crimsonians all heading back toward Mogra as a group to mourn and co
ntinue on with their lives.
“We will wait another forty minutes or so,” Meosa said, a hint of exhaustion in his voice. “It’s too dry here, and I can only feed off your Revivaura for so long.”
“Save some power,” Arik told him, “just in case they have a blade or two up there guarding the hole.”
“Heh. We really do make a great team, don’t we, disciple?”
Arik nodded.
“Never thought you’d end up with a remarkably educated kami like myself, did you?”
Once again, Arik nodded, a slight smile spreading across his face.
“You really like me, don’t you? Remember, I’m the one keeping you from falling before you answer that one…”
“Sure,” Arik said.
“That’s the spirit, disciple. Good answer.”
It was late in the night when Meosa finally lifted Arik toward the opening at the top of the Great Deep. As they neared the outer rim, he prepared to launch into action, even though the only weapon he currently possessed was the small kunai dagger affixed to his wrist.
But everything was calm, the guards nonexistent.
“What a relief,” Meosa said as he set Arik down on the sand, the kami letting out a deep breath.
Something instinctive came over the disciple as he placed the dagger back in its arm sheath.
As if Hojo were there telling them what to do next, Arik removed the Mask of the Fallen and tucked it into an inner pocket of his robes, the cold desert air meeting his face. He rearranged his haori cape so it now sat over his shoulders. To further change his appearance, Arik let his hair down and walked over to one of the torches, where he gathered some of the ash and smeared it over the bridge of his nose well past the cheeks, covering what was left of the red paint.
Mask of the Fallen: A Cultivation/Progression Fantasy Series: (War Priest Book One) Page 38