Use a sprite to render another sprite transparent

Hello! I have a question about using a sprite (or multiple sprites) to render parts of another sprite transparent, and i'm not sure how to do it.

I have the general idea that it should be done using shaders, possibly using additive transparency values? But I'm not sure how to go about this. If you have any resources that I could use to achieve this it would be great. I have an image which i've mocked up showing what I mean.

http://i.imgur.com/iC7xsEF.png

This shows the base image in the top left. The top right shows a mask over the base image (which is what the game scene would normally look like). We are trying to use the two sprites in the bottom left (the arrow and the star) to cut out parts of the black mask. This results in the final rendered image in the bottom left.

If you know how to do this, please let me know! Thanks :D.