War Priest: Mask of the Fallen: (A Progression Fantasy/Cultivation Series) Read online

  War Priest

  Mask of the Fallen

  (Book One)

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2021 Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2021 Boycott Books

  Edited by Celestian Rince

  Proofed by Adam Luopa

  Art by Daniel Kamarudin

  Font by Shawn King

  Audiobook narrated by Travis Baldree and produced by Podium Audio

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  .Chapter One.

  .Chapter Two.

  .Chapter Three.

  .Chapter Four.

  .Chapter Five.

  Part Two

  .Chapter One.

  .Chapter Two.

  .Chapter Three.

  .Chapter Four.

  .Chapter Five.

  .Chapter Six.

  .Chapter Seven.

  .Chapter Eight.

  Part Three

  .Chapter One.

  .Chapter Two.

  .Chapter Three.

  .Chapter Four.

  .Chapter Five.

  .Chapter Six.

  .Chapter Seven.

  .Chapter Eight.

  .Back of the Book.

  Other notable works by Harmon Cooper

  Part One

  .Chapter One.

  I will strive to heal regardless of the circumstances.

  No matter how broken, I will repair.

  These hands do not extinguish life, they prolong it.

  I will always remember this.

  –Oath taken by disciples of the Academy of Healing Arts written during the Reconstruction period of 801 to 813 by Master Murya Takane in his manual Revivaura: Healing Chi.

  Five minutes from now, Arik Dacre would be fighting for his life.

  He would swiftly lose that fight against the masked shinobi intruders, his future changing in ways he couldn’t possibly fathom, everyone around him slain in the most barbarous manner imaginable. There would be flames, there would be death, and over a thousand years of carefully curated healing texts and arcane Revivaura treaties would be wiped off the face of Taomoni forever.

  By the end of the hour, Arik would be the last classically trained healer alive not only in his nation, but quite possibly his entire world, the only flame still burning, the only ray of hope for a war-torn nation.

  Against all odds, Arik Dacre would become the War Priest.

  ****

  The disciples of the Academy of Healing Arts were educated in the art of the sword, even if the rest of their lives would be dedicated to mending wounds and caring for the sick. They used wooden swords for the graduation tournament, their teachers learning long ago that the family members in attendance found it hard to stomach bloodshed, even if the disciples were technically able to heal themselves.

  Arik Dacre’s only focus amidst a sea of spectators holding various clan banners, including his parents and his younger sister seated somewhere on the third row, was to defeat the opponent standing before him, a youth whom he had grown up with.

  He had made it. After several grueling years of study, Arik Dacre had graduated from the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer, and all that was left was the ceremonial tournament, something he had been looking forward to for ages.

  The disciple was so focused on his stance that he couldn’t possibly have noticed the sudden appearance of men in dark-gray robes behind the spectators, hoods over their heads, black masks hiding their features. It would be something he would regret to no end for the rest of his life. What if he had seen the masked intruders? What if he had been able to warn the spectators? Could he have made a difference? Or were they doomed regardless?

  Treating his wooden blade as if it were a longsword, Arik sent it in a downward motion, his opponent able to sidestep his attack.

  Crack!

  Their wooden blades collided, yet another combat lesson coming to Arik as the two tried to overpower one another. The only way to overcome a scenario in which two swordsmen were equally matched was to let one’s body become what was known as the striking body, and their mind the striking mind, to no longer probe for preliminary hits, to go straight for a strike executed with sheer resolve.

  You can do this, Arik thought as he pressed back, taking an upper stance and monitoring his opponent’s cadence. You have to win.

  The crowd of spectators seemed to swell around him as he advanced on his opponent. He knew not to give his opponent a name at that moment, even though they’d briefly shared one of the Academy’s dormitories, even though they had graduated at the same time from the Faithful Branch of Common Restoration several years back.

  It was better to classify him as an ‘other,’ or better, an ‘obstacle,’ if Arik was going to win this.

  If he was able to best his opponent he would progress to the next leg of the tournament, a fitting way to officially signal his entry into the Academy of Healing Arts’ School of Mastery, where Arik would study the Sacred Branch of Chi Healing, one day becoming a priest himself, carrying on the tradition and helping people across the Onyx Realm in any way he could.

  But he had to win first, not only for his own self-respect, but for his parents and his sister in attendance, for his favorite Revivaura teacher, Master Guri Yarna, the old man clad in white robes and sitting at the front of the spectators.

  You can do this…

  Rather than initiate the next attack, Arik decided to strike exactly when his opponent advanced on him, which was a maneuver known as the body-body initiative. In doing so, he would either elicit agitation, or force his opponent into a situation where he would need to recoup.

  Crack!

  Their wooden blades met again, Arik’s dark eyes narrowing on his opponent as he spun to the right, the disciple feeling the vibrations through the wooden sword as their weapons met again.

  Crack!

  Arik was so focused on taking his opponent off guard that he was unable to gauge the calamity taking shape all around him as some of the people at the top of the stands were swiftly pulled backwards, their throats slit.

  Hoping to trick his opponent by presenting a fake opening, Arik cried out, feigning a downward strike, which forced his peer to block an attack that was destined never to land. With an intensity that had brought him trouble in his past, Arik spun in the opposite direction and brought his wooden blade against his opponent’s neck, which was considered a deathblow.

  His opponent now had a name.

  As Arik stepped away from a young man named Xander, he lowered his head, trying not to visually celebrate his win, his eyes clenched shut for a moment as he basked in his victory.

  Arik had done it. He had advanced to the next round.

  And just as he let out a deep, satisfying breath, people started screaming.

  As soon as his eyes flashed open, Arik was met with an image that would cause him some confusion over the next few days as he tried to piece together what had happened. After that point, it would give him night terrors. After that point, his reason for existence.

  In one moment he was victorious, Arik respectfully bowing his head to his opponent, to Xander, eyes closed, the crowd clapping and cheering. In the next, there were killers in
dark-gray robes and demonic masks maiming indiscriminately, the white and cream colors used by the Academy of Healing Arts suddenly splattered with crimson.

  No blades were permitted in the ceremony, which left just a handful of disciples with wooden swords to try to defend their honor. The masked men, these barbarous invaders, descended upon the graduating class and their priestly teachers, many of whom died yelling to their students to protect the innocent. Confusion and violence one in the same.

  Xander was quickly cut down by one of the masked men before he could get his wooden blade up, an actual deathblow.

  Seeing Xander’s bloodsoaked white robes sparked a sudden change in Arik, the act of brutality snapping him out of his momentary shock. Crying out in anger, thus giving away his next strike, Arik attempted to bring down the nearest masked man with his wooden sword.

  Had it not been for Master Guri Yarna, Arik’s life may have ended right there.

  There would have been no second coming of the War Priest, Arik simply dying at the ceremony with the people he had grown up with, the people who’d raised him, their bodies later turned to ash by a raging fire.

  “Run, disciple!”

  Master Guri Yarna’s voice reached him just as he was attempting another strike. Rather than see his attack through to its natural conclusion, Arik jumped backward and ended up colliding with another masked trespasser, the two spiraling toward the ground.

  My parents. My sister…!

  Arik’s own voice in his head had a way of dampening the chaos growing around him. As he scrambled to his feet, his eyes shifted to where his family had been sitting mere moments ago, his mother dead; his father gasping for air, his hands bloodied with his own entrails; Mori Ehara, his sister, nowhere to be seen.

  “No!” Arik shouted, his hand naturally coming before him, as if reaching out to his family would have somehow prevented their death.

  A blade shot out of nowhere, cleaving through four of his fingers and sparing his thumb, Arik gasping as he pulled his arm back.

  There was always pain when it came to a wound like this, the numbing sting, the twist in the stomach, the way that the wound jolted his attention away from his family, the flow of blood. Yet he also recognized the pain instantly, having spent years now mastering the Faithful Branch of Common Restoration, followed by the Devout Branch of Regrowth, and the incredibly difficult Divine Branch of Wound Transfer—Arik had experienced worse through his studies.

  Once again, Master Guri Yarna’s voice reached him.

  “Arik!” the older man shouted, his long white beard streaked with blood. He was hunched before another of the head priests fervently healing him, his eyes locked on Arik. “Run, Disciple Arik, you must run!”

  But Arik wasn’t ready to give up.

  The masked marauder who had cut through Arik’s fingers was just about to bring his sword down again when Arik went for his feet. The two slammed into one of the rafters, a recently slain man rolling onto Arik’s aggressor, their skulls cracking together.

  One more look at his severed fingers, and from there back to Master Guri Yarna, who seemed seconds away from being killed himself, quickly told Arik what he needed to do.

  He would not run. The night would not end in this way. He would stop the intruders no matter what it took.

  After staggering to his feet, Arik went for his aggressor’s sword, an actual weapon made of a blackened metal, rather than wood. Breathing heavily, not able to fully grip the longsword with both hands because of the loss of his fingers—which would regrow over time—Arik charged toward Master Guri Yarna.

  The adrenaline, surprise, and fog of war distorted what little Arik knew about battle. Gone was his focus on stance and cadence, replaced by something almost animalistic, a violence inherent in all living things brave enough to choose fight over flight. And it was precisely this loss of his focus which would cause him to ultimately fail.

  He reached Master Guri Yarna just as one of the masked killers descended upon him, Arik able to barely block the man’s first strike.

  No, it wasn’t a man, it was a woman, evident in her form and the grunt she released as she brought her blade down.

  Without both hands on the grip of his weapon, Arik was unable to truly defend himself against the masked woman. He did manage to block her next strike, giving Master Guri Yarna just a split second to crawl out of the way.

  His teacher, the priest who had taught Arik for the last several years, surprised him with his next move. Master Guri Yarna slipped his hand around Arik’s arm.

  “You must go!” he cried, spit flying from his lips, absolute dread in his eyes.

  Another look around the ceremony space and Arik saw that the masked intruders were rallying around the final group of Arik’s peers, slaughtering them with ruthless glee, blood soaking the walls and the floor, the once hallowed space suddenly primitive, depraved.

  “Do you hear me? Disciple!” Master Guri Yarna yanked on Arik’s arm again, dragging him closer to an enormous stained glass window that looked out over a great canyon below, a view that Arik had always found peaceful.

  “Master!” Arik shouted as the masked female prepared to attack both of them.

  Master Guri Yarna pulled Arik close and looked him dead in the eyes, his pupils twitching as the words left his mouth: “You must live.”

  And with that he shoved him forward, Arik going straight through the stained glass, where he hit the rocky overhang below and began plummeting downward toward the bottom of the canyon.

  Arik tried desperately to get his balance, and nearly succeeded in doing so as he looped his arms around a thick root jutting out of the side of the canyon wall. Tumbling pebbles led to larger stones, one of which struck him on the crown of his head, everything going black.

  Arik dropped, the cool night air doing little to dampen his fall as he barreled toward the bottom of the canyon, toward his inevitable demise.

  ****

  Wake up.

  (Wake up.)

  The voice could have belonged to anyone. It could have been Master Guri Yarna, or his parents, his younger sister, Mori Ehara.

  Wake up.

  (Wake up.)

  Everything came to Arik Dacre in a flash of sound, the cries of agony far away from him now, oblivious insects buzzing, running water, weary animals moving away from where he had landed.

  At least most of them…

  Arik had punctured a lung before. He had broken nearly every bone in his body, he had purposely suffered internal and external wounds, all things that he could recover from. He had been burnt to near death, he had been poisoned, he had fallen from a great height. Healable. He had been blinded, he had been shot with a dozen barbed arrows, and he had been bludgeoned. Yet he persevered. Stabbed in the stomach, arms and legs severed, choked, starved, deprived of sleep, berated with needles tipped with flameberry—all things that he could heal from. He could even regrow limbs.

  But there was one thing that he would never heal from, one thing that would play out in his mind’s eye long after the moment his destiny was forced upon him in the starkest, most violent way imaginable: Arik would never be able to forget what he had just witnessed.

  His peers, his teachers, his family. Dead, every last one of them.

  He wanted to scream in agony, but Arik was in so much pain from his epic tumble down the side of the canyon, from the abrasions covering his body, his four severed fingers, his knee snapped out of its socket and the high likelihood of internal bleeding, that he merely let out a gasp.

  This is it, Arik thought. You won’t survive this.

  He managed to shake his head, his neck straining as he did so.

  Yes, you will. You must.

  (You must…)

  Revenge was a concept that the disciple had never really toyed with before, yet it came to him as he lay there in the jagged scree at the bottom of the canyon, Arik bleeding out, his lungs barely able to inflate, a world away from the terror above.

  You must.
r />   Arik turned to his side, ignoring the pain.

  Ignore the pain.

  It had been one of his earliest lessons in utilizing the aspect of chi that he had spent his life cultivating known as Revivaura.

  (Ignore the pain.)

  The Faithful Branch of Common Restoration was where his disciple journey had started, where they all started. Years upon years worth of lessons, from healing light scrapes to recovering from moderate blood loss; stitching wounds using concentrated Revivaura to repairing fatally damaged cells and preventing long-term scarring, to even growing new bones and limbs.

  Not everything was possible, but most things were as long as he kept his head and his heart.

  Arik was made for this very situation, and even though it was an appalling scenario that he would have never consciously chosen, he would survive.

  You can do this. Remember your training…

  Arik had dedicated his life to mastering Revivaura, his motivation early on tethered to his desire to move to the next school, the Devout Branch of Regrowth, and from there to the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer, which he had just graduated from.

  (You can do this.)

  (You have to do this.)

  Sending his good hand forward, still not certain what the echo was in his head, Arik found a clump of weeds, the plant cool to the touch. While it wasn’t ideal, it would do the trick.

  Arik grabbed a fistful of the plant, his eyes closed as he pushed some of his injuries forward.

  The now-shriveled weeds didn’t absorb all the wounds he had sustained in his fall, but they absorbed enough for Arik’s lungs to fill with oxygen, for blood to start flowing to his appendages, for a few of his scrapes to sew themselves back up.

  It was enough for him to move.

  Wound transfer, at least when utilized in the traditional method, was supposed to go the reverse direction, from the injured to the practitioner, who would then internalize the injury and dispel it instantly or overnight depending on the severity. What Arik had just done was not only remarkable, it was something that most of his peers, and likely a handful of his priestly teachers, would have thought impossible. Only his main instructor, Master Guri Yarna, knew of the uncanny advancements he had made through the Divine Branch of Wound Transfer.