Rashan sighed, stretching his shoulders before leaning back in his chair.
Half a dozen projects still waited for his attention—alchemy notes, training rotations, two incomplete enchantments—but his eyes settled on the one that mattered most right now: the table covered in blank, white masks.
Curved ceramic. Smooth lines. Animal faces with no mouths, no expressions. He'd shaped them carefully, one by one, just like he remembered.
Anbu.
It wasn't a word anyone here would recognize. Not in Tamriel. But it would be. The Dominion and its allies would come to fear it.
The masks were more than a design. Rashan had seen them in his past life, on the faces of soldiers who were more myth than men—faceless, nameless warriors who fought not by strength, but by fear. He remembered the Anbu masks from Naruto, the idea behind them. He'd always found them cool—mysterious, powerful, the way they took away the individual and replaced it with something much greater: an idea.
And that was what Rashan wanted to create—an idea, a force that didn't rely on fame, recognition, or brute force. The Anbu concept was just the seed. The real purpose? Psychological warfare. To create a force so terrifying that the enemy would fear even the whispers of it.
Fear, Rashan knew, was often more effective than strength.
Rashan stared at the dragon mask first, his fingers brushing the smooth ceramic. The design was bold, fierce—just like him. Then his gaze shifted to the others, each one a piece of something larger, something greater.
The Anbu were about instilling terror, about turning every soldier into a victim before the fight even started. The Anbu would strike fear into the very hearts of the enemy, not by the number of kills they made, but by the absence of anything that could be relied upon.
Rashan's goal was simple: dismantle his enemies before they ever took up arms.
The masks would create doubt. They would make every soldier question their comrades, wonder if the next person to fall wasn't an enemy in disguise. They would turn allies into threats, and that uncertainty would eat away at their will to fight. No one would know where to turn or who to trust.
On the table, there were thirteen masks—a dozen blank faces, cold and empty, but three stood out among them. His own dragon mask, Jalil's fierce wolf mask, and Cassia's sly, sharp-eyed fox mask. Each one had been crafted with purpose, the animal imagery meant to represent the power they would invoke. The Anbu wouldn't just fight to defeat. They would fight to break.
Rashan didn't need them to kill everyone. He needed them to make their enemies so afraid, so filled with paranoia, that they couldn't act. Every footstep, every shadow would make them hesitate, thinking it was the Anbu watching, waiting to strike. Fear would be the true weapon.
When the Anbu moved, they would leave nothing in their wake but fear and confusion. They wouldn't need a sword to win. The enemy's broken morale would be enough. The moment the Anbu struck, their enemy's strength would collapse—not from force, but from the psychological warfare that followed them.
The Anbu would be known for their brutality. They would be known for making the enemy afraid to even take a breath. And that? That would turn the battlefield into slaughter, a relentless carnage where the enemy would fall to the ground bloody and broken, their minds destroyed before their bodies ever hit the dirt. The Anbu would not just win—they would obliterate, leaving nothing but the echo of their name and the smell of blood in the air.
He smiled as he thought about bringing carnage and slaughter to the Dominion.
The Empire certainly had its problems—corruption, infighting, and the unwanted peace they had brokered with the Thalmor after the White-Gold Concordat. But those issues paled in comparison to the true threat: the Altmer.
The Altmer, with their arrogance and cold superiority, had always viewed themselves as the rulers of Tamriel, believing their superior bloodline made them the rightful overlords of all other races. The Thalmor, the political arm of the Altmer, were not simply a faction—they were a cult, dedicated to the worship of their supposed divine supremacy. Their extreme nationalism and desire for absolute control had led them to manipulate the Empire, force treaties, and even force their cultural hegemony on the other races of Tamriel. The Altmer's expansionist tendencies were clear—Hammerfell's war for independence, their unyielding support of the Thalmor's agenda, and their brutal treatment of other races had caused more harm than the Empire could ever hope to control.
They were entitled, arrogant, and ruthless. They wanted to shape the world in their own image, and they didn't care who had to die in the process. They saw the Redguards as lesser, just another obstacle to be crushed underfoot in the name of their ideal society.
Rashan's smile widened as he thought of the Anbu—his weapon against that arrogance. The Altmer had brought ruin to Hammerfell, to the Empire itself. They didn't deserve mercy. It wasn't just about victory. It was about bringing unpredictable, terrifying violence to their doorstep—a strike of fear that would leave the Thalmor trembling.
The Anbu would be his shadow in the war—leaving a trail of blood, destruction, and psychological ruin wherever they went. Not just to fight, but to remind the Dominion that they were not untouchable, that their perceived superiority could be shattered in an instant.
Rashan's thoughts were clear. The Altmer needed to be reminded of their fragility, and the Anbu would be the ones to do it.