Cog Cultivator (Xianxia)

[IronLung]

The Master of the Eternal Dragon locked eyes with the Planeswalker as he delivered the message from the Waning Moon Sect.

"War is coming, Longhua," he said. "Of that, there can be no mistake."

XJ-V felt Feng-Lung's physical form tense up beside him even in the dream-space they both occupied in Arha's head.

Longhua considered the wobbling surface of his green tea.

"The portents of Amigdalis are often as susceptible to change as the water that flows in the valleys below our mountain. They are also as unwieldy. Uncertain. Time is not a linear path, but a forked one."

"The Master of the Waning Moon is knowing these things far more than we are, Longhua."

"Cease your arrogance," the Master suddenly spat. "Not even the Master of the Moons can know the path of fate to a certainty."

"Unless," Ori'un said gravely. "All paths converge on a single point in time."

Both men met the steely-eyed gaze of the other. Though no punches were thrown, XJ-V felt that they were locked in a battle just as fearsome as his own with Fai-Deng.

"That point is now, Longhua," the Planeswalker said. "Surely you have seen the signs – the fluctuations in Qi. The mists that cloud the Dao."

"Such things should always be unknown to us," the Master said with pursed lips.

"Har!" the Planeswalker croaked. "Then you have felt it. But you have done nothing."

"I have done my duty as Master of the Eternal Dragon."

"Which is what, Longhua?" Ori'un suddenly shouted. "Corral young men up here and have them stare into the blank void while the world burns outside? The Waning Moon told me of the cause, even as I dared to dispute them. Even as I dared to dispute what these eyes have seen. Only as I shared in the vision of the Master did I realize my hubris in believing I, alone, could stop what was coming: golden wings in the East, storming through ash and laying waste to the sands, turning brother against brother and salting the earth where their blood ebbs and flows, until nothing but a red sea remains, drowning all who do not look to the Eagle's golden skies."

XJ-V felt his chest lurch.

The Eagle…

"These things has the Master seen," Ori'un said, leaning forward, almost begging the Master to believe his words. "These things will transpire –"

"A paranoid dream," Longhua replied, turning his head from his dumbstruck former-student. "One possible future among many. One meant to stir the hearts of impressionable, easily influenced men like you. Even as a boy you were climbing the walls of the Sect to escape us. You wish to be a hero? Be my guest, Ori'un. But leave me out of your delusions."

The Planeswalker's fists clenched – varicose veins popping on his knuckles that shone with otherworldly, purple light. He threw off his cowl and let the Master see the extent of his frustration, now – frustration that must have been boiling beneath his cool surface since first he walked through the monastery gates.

"Uh, oh," Arha whispered.

"Is this what you have come here to tell me?" Longhua scoffed in the face of his anger. "Dreams and superstitions? Tales of Armageddon from the frigid North? You can return to my Brother up there if you wish. Tell him we of Ramor-Tai are –

"I have seen it!" the Planeswalker roared. Then, realizing he had forgotten himself, bowed low and closed his eyes, as though about to recite some macabre prayer.

"I…I have seen it, Longhua," he whispered. "The sultan of Dunerakk has fallen. The deserts around Mongiatsu are in the pocket of the Divine Order. Limra's oasis-towns are nothing but a string of smoking ruins, and the eyes of the High Eagle move ever Southward – pillaging, burning, raping and slaughtering with impunity. They kill with a light that sears the flesh. Their every strike is a strike against the flow of Qi itself."

Ori'un drew back the dark sleeve of his left arm and showed where his flesh had met the skin of a Divine Order warrior's blade.

By the Dao… Feng-Lung murmured.

XJ-V recognized the mark. He understood now why the Planeswalker had garbed himself in his shadowed armor.

Ori'un's arm was a smoking heap of ash, barely still clinging to his bones.

Even Master Longhua inclined his head an inch to prospect the annihilated appendage. It was the closest XJ-V had ever seen the Master's face approach shock.

"The pain is immense," Ori'un continued. "But worse is the effect on the soul. One slice is akin to the extinguishing of the greatest bonfire that burns in all our chests. One single swipe, and even my Earth-Grade techniques were rendered useless."

Feng-Lung twitched beside XJ-V. And, though the latter knew that his Brother had just made a connection that the Cog may soon have to explain, he dared not interrupt the flow of the conversation.

"Longhua," Ori'un said. "This High Eagle has an army. He has the power to strip what defines us from our hearts. And he will not stop, ever, until we are wiped off what remains of this earth. Us, and all that remains of Qing's legacy."

The Master said nothing. His eyes did not drop from Ori'un's desperate face. His silence seemed to only further galvanize the Planeswalker's conviction.

"Two years ago, the Order crossed into the Taiala Badlands," he explained. "The Warlords who reign there saw their transgression as provocation and began hostilities. Even now, the ground of the Badlands bleeds with the blood of Qing's children, Longhua, and the High Eagle will not stop with them. Two years ago, he razed the border town of Hensha to the ground – killing its residents to the man."

"This does not make sense," the Master finally said. "The Order bleeds itself dry. It commits vital resources and manpower to wholesale slaughter without purpose."

"There was purpose," Ori'un replied gravely. "He is searching for something."

Both men locked eyes again, and it seemed to XJ-V that there was a silent understanding that seemed to pass between them. Even so, Ori'un went on, determined to hammer home the grim point he had to come to.

"You know the power that can leave these marks," the Planeswalker said, indicating his ruined arm. "There can be no mistake."

"A lie," Longhua said. "A lie born of superstition."

"Can you still not face reality?" Ori'un countered. "It takes a strong man, indeed, to deny that which is plainly in front of him."

"I told you to cease your disrespect in my chambers or-"

"Yuwa," the Planeswalker said, cutting off the Master with force the likes of which XJ-V had never seen. "The High Eagle is the champion of the slain God of Light. Through our destruction does he seek resurrection."

"The High Eagle is a mortal born of unchecked ambition," Longhua replied after composing himself. "He is a child tearing the legs from insects, crying for his dead God to come home. If he makes war upon the blasted ruins that remain of Qing's realm, then so be it. His Order will fall as all the Warlords of the Wastes have fallen – by stretching itself too thin. Conquerors have come before, Ori'un – you know this better than most. They have burned themselves out like the weakest of stars in the night sky. We have always endured."

"I wonder," the Planeswalker said. "Could you tell a child of Tiala to simply 'endure' as his mother is violated before his eyes? As his father's heart is speared by a blade composed of starlight? Could you ask him to simply 'wait out' the hell this world has become?"

Ori'un sighed deeply, seeming to retreat into himself as Longhua simply stared back at him, unmoved.

"I expected to come home and see that you had moved on with this world," he said wearily. "I expected age to help you see what must be done. But not even pressure and time can move your stubborn soul. Your wisdom has blinded you, Master."

"And the sun of the wasteland has blinded you, my former student," Longhua replied tetchily, the flames of his candles that lined the hallways beginning to flare and stutter with fiery life. "Have you forgotten the oaths of our Cultivators? When we walk the Dao, we leave this world and all its earthly attachments behind. We take a path – the one true path – towards enlightenment. We are not an army. We do not exist to 'correct' this world, no matter how much you wish us to follow in your footsteps. Our eyes are fixed on Heaven – not on guarding the gates of Hell."

"But what will you do," Ori'un said quietly. "When Hell comes to you?"

Silence fell upon the chamber then, broken only by the minute flickering of the candles that lined the hall. Longhua let the fires abate. He let his rage simmer and settle. And, XJ-V noticed that he did not dismiss Ori'un. Instead, he waited. It was almost like he knew something more had to come.

"If you will not allow your men to fight beside me," he said. "Then I must take what I need by force. I invoke the Mandate of Aun'el. By right of mortal combat, one of your Cultivators belongs to me."

XJ-V saw Longhua close his eyes, as though he literally closed off his vision of the world that had so rudely intruded on the peace of his sanctuary.

"So, there it is," he said. "The true purpose of your visit."

"I take one," Ori'un said. "Or you commit all your people to my cause. The latter option would gain us victory faster. But you leave me no alternative."

"You would have all our Cultivators participate? Our Anima Banishers still dwell in the heart of the mountain."

Ori'un shook his head. "You know I cannot take any above the rank of Corporeal Temperer. Their attunement to the Qi cannot be so fixed on that which swirls around Ramor-Tai alone. Their spirit must still be pliable. An immutable soul is not what the world needs."

Longhua leaned back, inclining his head to look up at the fresco of the coiling Eternal Dragon that loomed above him.

And XJ-V could almost swear that he saw not only Arha hidden in the roof beams of his chamber, but him and Feng-Lung within her head.

Because he smiled right at them.

"One month," he said. "That is how long you shall remain. I will see to it that the proper preparations are made, the proper rituals observed. On the last day of Aun'el's Gauntlet shall you leave with a Cultivator of Ramor-Tai beside you. And this time," Longhua added. "You shall not return."

Despite everything – including the complete annihilation of his trust in his former Master – Ori'un the Planeswalker forced out a wry smile.

"I know it," he said. "I know that all too well, Master."

With that, the meeting came to an abrupt halt, and Arha flew from the ceiling, phased through the roof, and tumbled all the way back to Feng-Lung's chambers to meet her two boys staring at each other with dumbfounded eyes.

"Is Arha good or what?" the Huli asked.

"Feng-Lung," XJ-V asked, completely ignoring Arha's teething on his toes. "What is the Mandate of Aun'el?"

The boy seemed totally rapt, pacing up and down his tiny chamber as his mind raced with new possibilities, new worlds, new whole realities.

Meanwhile, XJ-V was simply trying to make sense of the information overload they'd just experienced.

"Feng!" he shouted.

"This is big, XJ-V," he said. "This…this is bigger than I could have even guessed. And we have the advantage now, you know. They won't announce it till tomorrow morning at the latest. That gives us time to at least make a plan. A strict training regimen. Re-double our efforts. Maybe it would work if –"

"FENG!" The Cog shouted, jumping up and grabbing his friend with both arms. "What is this? It sounds like you are preparing for battle?"

For the first time in almost a month, XJ-V then saw Feng-Lung's mouth twist into his genuine, boyish smile.

"Not a battle, XJ-V," he said. "A tournament."

###

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[IronLung]

XJ-V stared dumbfounded at his companion.

"A tournament…" he parroted. "A contest to decide who the Planeswalker's apprentice shall be."

Feng-Lung nodded, and the Cog thought he witnessed a spark twinkle in his friend's blue eyes.

"Is it truly worth entering?' XJ-V asked. "Perhaps Master Longhua speaks true. Perhaps it is best to remain in Ramor-Tai."

His companion was not to be dissuaded. It was as though XJ-V was looking at the reborn Feng-Lung before him, full of all his boyish excitement and infectious enthusiasm.

"I…am not fond of Ori'un," he admitted. "But if war is coming then we must be ready. Even if we are not chosen as the Planeswalker's charge, the tournament will be the opportunity to prove ourselves to the Master. With luck, he may even accelerate our training. He may decide we are worthy enough to learn the advanced techniques beyond those of the Earth Grade. And then," he added with battle-fervor. "If the High Eagle does come, we shall be ready to send his precious Divine Order packing!"

XJ-V pondered his friend's words. He thought of Ori'un's dark face hidden beneath his cloak. He thought of the stain embedded in his arm.

XJ-V had felt the pain he spoke of before…

If there was a chance, even a fleeting one, that he could prevent the same pain being inflicted on others, then he would stand beside his friend – as he would with all the Brothers of Ramor-Tai.

He would not see his new home burn as Hensha did.

So it was that during the night, while the rest of the Disciples of both Eternal Dragon and Waiting Tiger celebrated with the Planeswalker, XJ-V and Feng-Lung spent their time in solemn meditation. They talked between their Dao-Walks of their plans for the tournament – XJ-V offering Feng-Lung the chance to train with Fai-Deng, and Feng-Lung explaining to his Cog Brother what weaknesses he could exploit in the other Disciples.

XJ-V smiled as he listened to his Brother. He could tell, above all else, that the youth was excited about the prospect of the battle to come.

"The greatest opponent will be Mah-Jung," Feng-Lung said covertly, as though the Disciple was listening at his doorway and was not presently outside in the commune getting drunk until all salient thoughts were erased from his mind.

"He has entered the final ring of Corporeal Cultivation," XJ-V countered. "Is it really true that he will delay his meditations so that he can enter the tournament?"

Feng-Lung nodded. "Mah-Jung more than most of us wishes to leave these walls. He would love nothing more than to be seen as a hero of the ruined world outside, de-feathering the High Eagle and bringing his head before us. Mark me, XJ-V, he will be a fearsome opponent for you to overcome."

"Me?" XJ-V asked. "Surely you mean 'we', Feng-Lung? After all, it could be you that ends up facing him."

XJ-V watched Feng's face stiffen for a moment before he responded.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Yes, of course. Let us resume our meditations. You are almost to Corporeal Temperer Rank 3. You must at least pass to Rank 4 to learn the more advanced of the Earth Grade techniques. I think one more draw from the Dao should do it. Are you ready?"

Though confused by Feng's focus on his own quick development, XJ-V merely put such concerns down to Feng being an altruistic young man. He had been ever since he had met him. The boy's preoccupation with the Cog's skills and his interest in his nature was nothing new.

"Okay," he said. "Concentrate. Breathe deep, and feel the light of the Dao grace your steel skin."

XJ-V closed his eyes and listened to Feng-Lung's voice, making sure Arha was beside him just before he began his delve back into the world of limitless, and dangerous, power.

"Honestly," the little fox-spirit groaned. "Haven't I done enough tonight? Arha should be out there swimming in Baijiu, not here with a stuffy Cog and his friend."

"If you help us," XJ-V said with a sly grin. "There will be limitless scratchies for your belly tomorrow morning."

The Huli needed no further persuasion. Almost instantly after he said the words, the Cog felt his soul pulled towards the limitless realm of mountains capped with starlight, and a sky streaked with all the colors of the spectrum.

The beauty, however, was short lived. XJ-V fell from the clouds into the blasted lands of the Wastes, seeing city after city engulfed in flames that had once swept through the entire world and were now on the verge of returning to decimate all that remained. He could feel Feng-Lung flying beside him, similarly looking upon the golden-razor wings of the Eagle that stretched out from the Western hemisphere leaving a trail of orphans and widows on its wake. Its pilliaries pointed towards Ramor-Tai – a bastion shining atop the mountain on the Southernmost edge of Qingua's once proud Dynasty – and saw its light begin to dim.

Then, they plummeted down to bathe in the flames themselves – feeling their flesh – organic and metallic - crisp and crumble away to ash that coated the ruins of the world. Yet their eyes remained to see two figures standing tall amongst the flames that licked at the carcass of the land – two cloaked figures who pulled down their hoods as they looked upon the descending armies of the Eagle without fear, without mercy.

And XJ-V saw, as clear as the reality of Feng-Lung's chamber that was beginning to come back into view, that one figure wore the face of Ori'un.

And the other – the other looked back at him with his own eyes. It was the shadow-self that he had passed through to walk the Dao. It was the beast that dwelled beneath his heart that would come to walk the earth, in time, once again.

When he woke, he did so seeing two things before his eyes.

One: his Anima Cores numbered 132. He had made it to the Third Rank of Corporeal Temperer.

The other sight he beheld was that of Feng-Lung's knowing eyes, as the Cog came to realize the truth in his face.

You don't want to win, he thought, unable to voice that which did not, truly, have to be given voice at all. You…you want it to be me.

…

The next morning, Master Longhua wasted no time in announcing the news to every drunken soul that emerged scratching their heads and wishing the old Master would stay silent for once.

"Cultivators of Ramor-Tai!" he roared to the sun-streaked heavens, amplifying his voice with the strengthened lungs of the ancient dragons. "The Mandate of Aun'El has been invoked! A tournament has been called. Mortal combat – open to all those of Corporeal Tempering rank alone!"

A collective sigh went up from the more experienced members of both Sects. The Mental Masters scoffed and waxed philosophical about the unfair treatment of those more attuned to the earth and the passions of the spirit, while the few Core Regulators merely tutted and went about their days in the Healing Chambers that were their homes.

And the Anima Banishers? They heard nothing at all – for they were still sequestered in the dark depths of the mountain, with two more summers before any would ever emerge.

But the novices of the monastery paid attention alright. A murmur of unchecked anticipation ran through them, and almost instantly XJ-V noticed each Brother sizing up the other, inspecting their muscle mass with almost scientific precision.

"And what shall be our prize, good Master of the Dragons!" Kai-Thai of the Waiting Tiger called out from the bustling crowd in the courtyard.

Master Longhua simply flourished the long wrists of his robe in response, casting a spiteful eye towards the roof of the Eternal Dragon where Ori'un was smiling at him.

"I am sure you can figure it out, good Tiger," the Master said as he took his leave, ignoring the almost mass hysteria he had caused amongst the Disciples.

XJ-V felt something firm knock against his ribs, and, turning to fend off what he perceived to be an attack, noticed Fai-Deng standing behind him.

"Your rank, XJ-V."

The Cog blinked, seeing the determination burn in the Tiger's face.

"I made it to rank three last nigh-"

"Good," he said. "That is enough. We will spar in ten minutes. Do not be late!"

Fai-Deng marched off without even waiting for his sparring partner's consent, leaving XJ-V blinking amidst the excited crowd.

"You are lucky, Brother," the calm, smooth voice of Mah-Jung said beside him. "Not all of us have a sparring partner that pushes us to fight for our lives."

The youth wore the purple, drake-embroidered-robes of the Ninth Rank Corporeal Temperers – of which there were perhaps only a handful in the entire monastery and who, XJ-V noticed, were the least concerned of all those assembled this morning.

Well, of course they are, XJ-V found himself thinking. It is one of them that shall take the title. For it is they that deserve it.

The Cog cupped his hands and bowed low to his friend, showing his superior the proper respect. He knew just how much Qi Mah-Jung could control. It was almost futile to think he could stand a chance against him.

"I will be honored to watch your performance in the bouts to come, Brother," XJ-V said with a smile.

It was a smile, however, that Mah-Jung did not return.

"You speak as though you will not participate, my Cog Brother," Mah-Jung replied, almost sounding hurt by the very notion. "You shall see my performance firsthand. I already know that we shall face each other in this trial."

XJ-V expected to feel his Brother jokingly pat his back or smile his jovial grin. Instead, he saw him look towards the sunbathing image of Ori'un sitting atop the Dragon commune, still sipping on Citra wine left over from the night before.

"It is the only way out," he said – and his voice was barely a whisper. "The invocation of Aun'El means that Planeswalker Ori'un wishes to take the strongest of the monastery's Cultivators away, to join him in his duty to correct the world out there. This is good. It is proper. It is the only way to make what we do have any meaning at all. You agree, do you not, Brother Cog? You have seen what waits outside for us all."

Slightly alarmed by his Brother's candor, XJ-V simply smirked and sighed, trying his best to forget the memories that had haunted him before he first set foot in Ai-Lee's Grove and watched them melt away.

"I have given up on that world," he said. "I think my place is here, among Brothers. I think it is what my Creator wanted of me."

Without missing a single beat, Mah-Jung came back with an answer that hit the Cog like a slap in the face.

"But is it what you want?"

The Cog, even though he could have probably thought of something, was surprised to find that he had nothing to say in response.

"The world out there keeps turning," Mah-Jung went on. "People of the Wastes continue to make the wrong choices. They continue to stray down the path old Qing did, and they continue to obstruct the growth of this world. We can't turn a blind eye to it forever. I suspect even Master Longhua knows this."

XJ-V watched the youth's face warp and change to one of frustration for only a few moments – wrinkles forming round his pouting mouth that XJ-V never even realized were there before.

"I hope you will not think this improper of me, Brother," Mah-Jung finally said. "But if you chose to enter the tournament – I implore you to take it seriously. If you are to fight, fight to win. I would hate to gain victory over someone who did not wish to take the prize I long to hold."

With that, the Master Temperer bowed and took his leave, heading for the training Hall of Dragonpyre hearth to hone his already impressive skills.

And XJ-V was left wondering how much of a scolding Fai-Deng was going to give him for being late to their Kata session, and equally how the always cheerful Mah-Jung had seemingly changed overnight with the promise of freedom now being dangled before him.

It was said by the Prophet Ming'Bao that if one wanted to see the true nature of a man, one must stroke the flames of his ambition and watch his response.

And XJ-V had seen now exactly what his Brother longed for.

He wanted to fly free of these walls – to correct the decadent world that his Master said was just not worth it.

In truth, XJ-V understood. The boy had good intentions. He simply doubted that such intentions, even good ones, could ever change things for the better.

After all, there were plenty of young men who thought they knew what was best for the world

And one of them was out there, right now, burning it to the ground.

###

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[IronLung]

"Focus!" Fai-Deng roared as he sent another arc of lightning flying at XJ-V's right shoulder-joint.

My dominant arm, the Cog thought as he brought his hands up in the swirling motion of the Dragontail swipe. The Tiger is thinking more strategically nowadays.

As he sliced through the strike, feeling the energy from Fai's lightning dance on his fingertips before flying away, XJ-V readied a Dragon Tooth strike that sent his own fireball cascading towards the Fai as he leaped to get within striking range of his opponent.

The Tiger met the blow head on, bringing up both his arms and cutting through the mote of flame, barreling towards XJ-V with speed that would impress even his Sect's Guardian Spirit.

The Cog shifted his weight to the right, swept wide with his left foot and managed to catch Fai's ankle as the latter turned in the air to deliver an electrified roundhouse that could have knocked the Cog's head clean off.

The boy hit the ground, spun, and then was back on his feet in a matter of seconds.

"Hm," he grunted, beads of sweat trailing down his bulging biceps. "Your Siulubu is strong. See how reactive it makes you? With a stance like this, not even your Sect's most precious, purple-clad warrior could break through your defense."

"I would not sell him so short," XJ-V replied.

Fai brought up both his hands, sending a series of cross jabs at XJ-V's torso till the Cog was forced back into a series of Dragontail Strikes, becoming a veritable windmill of blurred motion.

"You think him my better?" Fai asked through his relentless assault.

"I know he could subdue both of us," XJ-V replied, before attempting to sweep Fai's left leg again and forcing the Tiger to leap back the full length of the Symmachus Hall. His Leaping Cat was a move that XJ-V had been particularly interested in observing these last few lessons. What the Fai lacked in defensive power, he more than made up for in speed. His maneverability in an open arena would have probably, at this point, ment certain doom for XJ-V.

However, they were not in an open arena, and the Cog was not beyond using his environment to his advantage.

As soon as he saw the boy twist and somersault back down the length of the hall, surely getting ready for a Static Charge that could render XJ-V utterly paralyzed, the Cog unleashed his newest Earth-technique: the Pyrophoric Whip.

Five thin threads of sizzling flame shot forth from his fingers and glided effortlessly through the air towards Fai-Deng's exposed foot. XJ-V moved his hands swiftly with the dexterity of a practiced dancer to bring the threads round his opponent's right leg like an infernal snake coiling round its prey. By the time Fai-Deng had realized his opponent's trick, XJ-V forced his captured prey down to the ground, smashing him into the reflective glass of the Hall's floor.

The Cog watched the boy stay rooted to the broken crater in the ground for a moment before he rose, cracked his back, and dusted himself off. The glass flooring, as usual, made no mark on his skin, and simply began knitting together the new cracks upon its surface.

"So," Fai huffed. "You have learned some new tricks. Of course, you know that I shall now find an appropriate counter to your technique. That little move shall soon become your weakness."

XJ-V smiled. "I would expect nothing less from you, Brother."

"Hmpf," Fai snorted, heading to the waiting bench beside the far wall and dousing himself with a jug of freshly collected water. "That will be all for today."

XJ-V bowed to his Tiger Brother, but not before becoming transfixed, once again, by the long black scar of his left arm. He found himself wondering, as he often did during their training sessions recently, why the Tiger had never elected to have the thing fully healed.

Fai noticed his staring and cocked his bushy eyebrows at him.

"You will be participating in the tourney of Aun'el, will you not?" XJ-V quickly asked to deflect.

"Of course," Fai replied with characteristic offense. "And I expect an opponent of sufficient caliber. So do not disappoint me. No matter what, I shall be a victor in this tourney. Either I win, and cede the glory of walking the Wastes to another, or I lose and watch you finally leave this place forever. Even if you think Mah-Jung is more potent than either of us, the bout will come down to us, XJ-V. Of that, I have not a doubt in my mind."

XJ-V found himself momentarily lost for words. The way Fai had said these things was in a tone so terse that any observer would think he was rebuking the Cog. But the robot saw through the words to the intention behind them – the fact that Fai, in his own way, had just acknowledged that the Cog he once wished to see broken and destroyed was now one of the finest Corporeal Temperers in the whole monastery.

He was mistaken, of course, but XJ-V would accept the compliment with grace. It was the best sign of respect he was going to get from the Tiger. So, he hid his smirk as Fai inspected his foot in the mirrors of the Hall's wall, seeing the marks left by XJ-V's new 'trick' fade away.

And most Disciples said that the Cog was his punching bag…

"I would be honored to face you, Brother Fai," he said with a respectful bow. "But you are wrong in your assessment. I am not seeking to win the tournament. My place is here, in Ramor-Tai. And it is here that I must remain."

He made to take his leave after that, but wall of sapphire blocked his path – sparking into brilliant life before him and blocking his way out of the Hall.

XJ-V turned to see Fai-Deng looking at him with furious eyes, fingers crackling with electricity.

"Do not insult me or the other Cultivators of this place," he said. "It is you that Longhua favors. It is you that Feng-Lung trains. It is you that I train. You think we do this out of the goodness of our hearts?"

Well, XJ-V thought. I certainly know that you don't…

Fai stepped closer to him, till the only sight that filled the Cog's vision was that of the Tiger's crimson face.

"You think it is coincidence that Planeswalker Ori'un comes back now?" he said. "You think it is mere chance that he comes when a Cog walks among us? There are signs – fluctuations – hidden in the Dao, XJ-V. Even a novice like you must have felt them."

The Cog first stepped away, suddenly more fearful of Fai than he ever had been when the boy came at him with his fists. He stepped back, too, because the words of the boy wrang true.

The face in his dreams…the one that stood beside Ori'un as a horde of evil came seeking to snuff out the light in their hearts…

"Master Yoma-Dur has spoken of this," Fai continued. "He tells us little, but we of the Tiger have learned to read the tight-lips of our Master. He tells us of visions that swim before his mind. Visions he cannot interpret. Already our Core Regulators are whispering that such a vision may be a shared one. In their Dao-Walks they are seeing one of us stand beside the Planeswalker. And the skin he wears is not of flesh."

"No," XJ-V said.

"They speak of worse things to come if this future does not come to pass."

Visions…worse things to come…Ori'un had spoken of what the Master of Nocturnus had said. He had spoken of a cataclysm soon to befall the wasteland.

He had spoken of the High Eagle moving south…

Fai-Deng suddenly gripped the Cog's arms and forced him to face his raging eyes.

"Understand this," he said. "I don't believe you are some savior sent here to aid us. I don't believe in prophesy or the sights that swim behind old men's eyes. I am a Cultivator of the Tiger Sect, and I believe in power."

He held up his grisly arm, forcing XJ-V to see the black-ash that lay thick on the cracked skin.

"You know why I never had the Regulators remove this mark?" Fai asked. "Because it reminds me of what I must endure to grow strong. It reminds me of my failings – failings I have had to learn from. I failed when I faced you before because I rejected the will of the Dao, XJ-V. It is the will of the Dao that you came here. And it is the will of the Dao that you use the power within you to win."

The Cog felt the soul within him flare with potential. Something – something buried deep in his breast – it liked the words the Tiger was spouting. It grew excited, filled with childlike glee, at the prospect of nullifying the Qi that swirled in the Tiger's spirit, and engulfing him in an inferno that would leave him as nothing but cold ash.

"No…" XJ-V murmured, breaking free of Fai's iron grip.

"No," he said again. "That power is unnatural. It is not of the Dao. It is of something else – and I wish you would not insult me by showing me, every time we train, what evil I am capable of."

He said these things before he even realized they came tumbling out of his mouth. When he looked back up at his Brother, he was caught by the look he saw resting on that once furious face. For there was sorrow, there. Sorrow, and pity.

"I…I must go," he told Fai-Deng. "Train well, Brother."

Fai watched his rival depart the Hall of Symmachus and allowed his shoulders to sag, dropping the act he kept up whenever the Cog came by nowadays. It was an act that he had almost broken a moment ago, and one that, overall, even he didn't know how to totally release himself from.

He watched XJ-V's departing back and patted the head of one of the Hall's Tiger statues before he resumed his martial exercises for the day.

"To deny the Dao is to bring only despair," he said. "I know this more than most, Brother Cog."

###

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[IronLung]

The clouds of the Dao parted today to show XJ-V a spring running open and free.

Beneath the waters there was a city.

The skeletal frames of buildings climbed up to the inviting amber of a morning sky. Each steel giant watched its Brothers with thousands of glass eyes, peering at the tiny people walking around inside their bowels. A whispering wind blew through the forest of steel and glass, and XJ-V closed his eyes as he felt it wash over him, like the spring he'd just fallen through into this realm – into this world where the sun's golden rays swooned to touch the tips of each great skeletal tower.

Then came a storm.

The watery heavens above opened, and pockets of the spring's water fell upon the giants, drowning those that inhabited them one by one until XJ-V was forced to see them open their mouths and cry out as the waters of the Dao filled their lungs. They flailed like fish as the deluge increased, and the skies formed clouds that were beginning to break apart.

"Help…us…"

"Please…"

They called out – to him. To the metal man floating harmlessly as the waters gushed over their once prosperous realm. They called out with the voices of their departing spirits. They called out for a hero to take their hands.

XJ-V looked at them as the glassy eyes of their great giants smashed apart and sent their shards flying at his face. He tried blocking the onslaught, and yet felt the shards tear at his arms, his hands, and at his eyes, each piece drawing a thin layer of black blood from his body that bubbled in the light of the dying sun.

"Help…us…Help…us."

XJ-V felt their hands claw at him and refused to open his eyes. He cursed under his breath, feeling the entity – the engine – that lay within his metal breast urge him on – to fly up to the heavens and block the Dao as only he could. With his hands he could silence it forever. He could stop the tears of a dead world.

"No," he told the thing that begged him to use its strength. "No…"

Another pair of hands grabbed his face.

"NO!"

"XJ-V!"

He was back in reality. He was on his back, looking into the concerned eyes of Feng-Lung as the latter gripped his hands beside the Qi-pond of Ai-Lee's Grove.

Yes – yes, he remembered now. They had come here to meditate. To walk the Dao…

XJ-V thanked his friend and allowed Feng to help him up, clawing at his neck where a distinct sting of pain was radiating. As his sensors came back online, and the world of Ai-Lee's unreality spread once more across his vision, he saw words buzz into life before his eyes:

Anima Cores: 135

"Not as much…as last time," he said aloud. "Not quite Rank 4…yet."

Feng-Lung grabbed his shoulders and practically shook him like he was addressing a madman. "Not enough?!" he shouted. "I thought you shut down! You were flopping like a fish on a line, XJ-V! Not even the Huli could get through to you."

The Cog spared a glance towards Arha who cocked her head worryingly at his side. She panted as she lay her head on his steel palm, signaling her sisters who watched them from above.

"You see what Arha has to deal with?" she shouted up at them. "Arha is a big girl now with big responsibilities. Her metal-man needs her!"

"Fat load of good it seems you do him, dear sister," one of the mischievous foxes swinging on the branches of the willow above them replied. "If you asked me, this one is a lost cause."

"Oh, don't be so mean, Mimi," the other fox replied. "You know Arha has always had such fondness for broken things."

"Broken?" XJ-V said aloud, silencing little Arha before she could reply. "I…I suppose I am," he said, rising to watch the strange ripples playing across Ai-Lee's pond. "I cannot even spend five minutes in the Dao, for all the time it still takes me to reach its realm."

"You still draw its power," Feng-Lung told him as he laid a reassuring hand on his quivering shoulder. "Even though it frightens you."

"Frightens me? How can you be sure of this, Brother. What do you know of machine fears?"

Feng-Lung met his metal Brother's derision with a hearty laugh. "I can imagine they are the same things most men fear – whether they are made of metal or composed of flesh."

"And what would those things be?" XJ-V asked.

"Impotence," Feng replied with a cheeky wink. "Mocking. Death. Isolation. Prejudice. In a word," he added. "Failure."

The Cog looked at his Brother for a moment, noting how the youth met his eyes with trembling, without hesitation.

"Uh, XJ," Arha murmured. "You – you don't look so good right now."

"It is nothing," he told his Huli guardian. "…Nothing."

He returned his gaze to the pond, seeing the distinctive shadows of the other Disciples who were here today, basking in the warmth of the Grove, other strange animal spirits twirling around her necks or nibbling at the soles of their feet. Not many Disciples were coming by these days – and few XJ-V knew personally. Through the mists he could see them preoccupied more with their desire to win the coming tournament more than communing with the Dao – and many of them tended to wave away the spirits that came upon them at this time.

No doubt it was fear that brought them here more than anything else. Master Longhua had come to the commune only yesterday and rebuked the men for missing their Qi-building exercises and observing their Cultivation practices.

"Ai-Lee twists and turns in his eternal sleep to look upon you children!" he said, scolding them with such derision that everyone, including noble Mah-Jung, had bent their heads and knees as he passed them by. "Is a warrior made by his hands alone? No – his greatest weapon is his mind, and a strong mind must be in perfect harmony with one's body if one wishes to become a Cultivator of legend. You all seek the quick path to victory. You all see Ori'un and wish to bask in his shadow. But I warn you all, my Disciples, should you stray from the path of wisdom, you shall fall before you take a single step on the stairway to the heavens!"

So now, here they were, obeying their Master and coming to the most sacred place of all in Ramor-Tai. But most of them, XJ-V knew, were purely here to pay lip-service to the Master's demands. These days most just wanted to stay out of Longhua's way.

This, the Cog could understand – the Master had been jumpier than ever these past few weeks. In their private sessions XJ-V could sense the Master's ire every time the Cog took a wrong step, or became frustrated with his inability to enter the Dao for long.

"You are still a machine without patience!" Longhua told him, whacking him with the tip of his beard like a great hairy whip. "Just like a boy!"

XJ-V had been glad to have Feng-Lung beside him on these days, when it seemed like everyone else was expecting more of him…

He wished he could communicate just how right Feng was to the boy, but XJ-V found that he did not quite have the words. How does one say that they fear not what they are, but what they might be? For that, in itself, is failure.

Is it not?

The question was put to the side as he watched the ripples on the pond suddenly rise. Feng had noticed, too, for the Cog heard the sound of him sucking in the pure air of the grove as though he were about to see something miraculous.

"Oh, here we go," Arha's sisters above sighed. "Such showoffs these ones are…"

Across the pond, small fountains were now climbing like thick, turquoise totem poles to pierce the dense fog that lay thick across the Qi pond. Then, much to the dismay of the Cog, a pair of indigo eyes blinked into existence at the tips of the totems.

"By the Dao…" Feng-Lung whispered.

Both men watched as the thin water creatures then spouted six pairs of sinuous, lithe arms – totally transparent against the mist that clouded the air – and two legs that remained connected to the rippling waves below them.

The thin creatures bowed low, exhibiting the courtesy of a troupe of proud performers, and then began to dance.

"Oh, here we go," Arha moaned beside XJ-V. "Arha is not a jealous woman – but how can a fox compete with curves like theirs? It is not fair, is it?"

"I would not bother trying to reach these boys," Minhua shouted down to her sister. "Like all men, they are lost in the dance.

The Huli were not lying - both Cultivators watched the lithe, ghost-pale water-spirits spin and twirl on the surface of the Qi pond with dexterity and grace the likes of which neither had every seen. They watched them link their transparent tendrils together and throw eachother into the air, letting droplets fly and splash across the faces of the men who knelt in silent meditation – provoking them to watch, too. One by one, every Cultivator in the Grove became spellbound by the dancing spirits.

And yet, each man was not so much drawn by the sight of the acrobatic beings themselves, or the impossible movements of their limbless limbs, but by the strange sadness that lay within their hollow eyes.

"What are they?" XJ-V finally asked.

"Shuigui," Feng-Lung replied, clapping for a particularly well-timed somersault. "'Water-ghosts.'"

XJ-V's eyes flared as he recalled the term – he had come across a sketch of these liquid specters in one of Gira's books. And now he understood the sadness that could be read even upon their almost featureless faces.

"They are the souls of those who drowned," he said. "They appear in the body of water that killed them."

"In other words," Feng-Lung said. "They are failures."

XJ-V was struck by the youth's dark tone, but he saw no change in Feng-Lung's smile as his eyes darted back to him.

"They are those that tried to pass the trials of Ai-Lee," Feng explained. "But they could not overcome their fear. So, here they dance, appearing only when they see doubt, or sorrow, or another soul lacking in belief. They come to dance to show that, even in their failure, they are still a part of the Dao. They still have a part to play in our world."

"So you mean to lecture me now, too," XJ-V huffed as Arha tried (and failed) to imitate the dancing spirits. "I have heard enough about my doubt to last a thousand lifetimes. Both Fai-Deng and Mah-Jung tell me nothing but how I am destined to enter this tournament and rise to the top. But what if I don't want to, Feng-Lung? Did I not tell you in Master Longhua's courtyard that I have left the world behind?"

"None can leave the world behind forever," Feng-Lung told him with a stern, yet still smiling face. "You can try, but you will always be pulled back, the more you resist."

"Tell that to your own Master!" XJ-V railed. "You saw it with your own – well, Arha's – eyes: Master Longhua does not even want to give us the chance to leave. He only accepted the Planeswalker's tournament because he was compelled to."

"Indeed, Brother," Feng-Lung replied. "Because the world came to him, and he even he could not resist it. You have proven my point adequately."

"Enough," the Cog said, turning to go. "I do not want to hear this."

Once again, however, Feng's firm hand caught his metal wrist.

"You know why we all push you to win, Brother?" he asked. "Because we know you have the chance to change the world out there. Because each of us know that rejecting the Wastes will only lead to more destruction."

XJ-V grit his steel teeth, trying to stop himself from looking at the final movements of the Shuigui dance, and not paying attention to the reeds rustling behind them both.

"If you want to change the world, be my guest," he said. "It sounds to me as though it is you who does not believe in yourself, Feng-Lung! Why do you pin your hopes to me? Why not seek to win yourself?"

"Because I have been tested before, Brother, and I failed."

Both Cultivators looked at each other with very different eyes, then, as each one recognized that they had just given the other a piece of themselves on this day, before the spirits of the dead.

And it was at this moment that the man rustling the reeds behind them deigned to enter into their private sanctum.

"Is that what you think, Feng-Lung?" he said. "Even after all this time?"

XJ-V turned to see Ori'un emerge from the reeds of the Grove, while his Brother merely turned away, hiding his face as though from a great, dazzling fire.

"Planeswalker," he said. "I suppose I knew you would come here eventually."

###

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[IronLung]

The silence that stretched between the three men in the Grove seemed to go on for an eternity.

It was only XJ-V that finally spoke, addressing the mountainous form of the Planeswalker with a curt bow.

"Forgive us, Planeswalker Ori'un," he said. "We spoke words in seclusion, words meant only for each other."

He looked to Feng-Lung for support and found the boy to be focused not on the new arrival, but on the Shuigui as they traced the surface of the pond and finished their dance with a boastful flourish.

"Peace, XJ-V," Ori'un said, waving away his apology. "You have nothing to be sorry for. In truth, it is I who have disturbed the serenity of this place."

"That is certainly a theme," Feng-Lung muttered under his breath, and XJ-V was struck by the uncharacteristic hatred in his words.

Ori'un merely laughed with his booming, brassy laugh in response, jumping on top of a willows tree and standing upon its drooping branches with his tiptoes.

"They say that the world is forever changing," he said, more to the pond of departing spirits than to anyone else. "But Ai-Lee's Grove remains fixed in its state of tranquility. They say it is an image of Qing's forests as they once were. Did you know that, XJ-V?"

The Cog shook his head as the giant man leaped and came crashing down before them, battering a crater into the sandy plane before the pond and watching the earth simply repair itself in the aftermath of his strike.

"Now, here's a man we could get used to," the Huli sisters in the trees murmured. "Little Arha, why did you not choose this one to form an attachment with?"

Arha looked from the massive bulk of the Planeswalker to XJ-V and answered mmediately.

"Who wants a smelly human when you can have something new – something exciting! Arha chooses XJ-V because XJ-V is special."

The Huli came to rub herself on the Cog's calf and provoked laughter from everyone who could see her antics.

Everyone, that is, except Feng-Lung. He sat in silence, not meditating, but simply ignoring. It was as though the entire spirit of joy had been sapped from his soul as soon as Ori'un entered through the reeds.

"Har!" the giant roared. "I almost forgot about these wily Huli. I tell you, I met more than my fair share of you out there in the Wastes. Why, in verdant Xishanbana, there is a Huli spirit at the foot of every tree. Most of them are harmless, but some," he winked at little Arha hiding behind XJ-V's foot. "Some of them will make pursue you to the ends of the earth if they take a liking to you. You should count yourself lucky, Cog."

"Did you come here to regail us with your stories of the outside?" Feng-Lung asked. "Or is there something you wished of us, Planeswalker?"

Ori'un bowed his head, flashing a sad smile at the boy who would not look at him. Once again, XJ-V was forced to see a side of his Brother that he had never seen before – a side that betrayed genuine animosity towards another.

And it struck him, then and there, as Ori'un scratched the back of his head like a child.

The reason for your malaise these past weeks…your seclusion…it was because of him, wasn't it?

"Feng-Lung," the hulking Planeswalker said. "You can have my sympathies, but you cannot have my apology. You know this."

Feng-Lung said nothing, and his Cog companion simply blinked at the mystery that was unfolding before him.

"Arha smells juicy gossip!" his Huli whispered in his ear.

"It has been five years, Brother," Ori'un continued, kneeling before Feng and burying one closed fist in the sand. "If your heart is closed to forgiveness, it does you more a disservice than it does me."

Feng simply continued to stare ahead, unwilling to even look the Planeswalker in the eye.

"You have not come here for me, Ori'un," he said. "You gave up on me a long time ago."

"That is a lie and you know it, Feng," Ori'un replied. "I would not have come here if I had."

When Feng-Lung did not reply, the giant rose after heaving a heavy, and weary, sigh of resignation.

"XJ-V," he said. "It seems I must speak with you alone, since this one will not hear me."

The Cog nodded, knowing not to push an issue that must be personal between the two of these men. He knew enough of human relationships to understand when something had to be, as mortals so eloquently put it, 'let go.'

"We shall speak on the roof of the library," he said. "I'm sure dear old Gira would not mind. She always was my biggest fan."

XJ-V followed the Planeswalker from the Grove, bidding farewell to Feng-Lung who flashed him a reticent smile.

"Be careful," he warned his incredulous friend. "This one is not all that he seems."

…

The sunset over Ramor-Tai bathed the monastery in the peach-pure colors of dying day – throwing shadows across the communes, the still-practicing Disciples, and the statues of both the Eternal Dragon and Waiting Tiger that lines the monastery walls. Any bandits who dared approached would doubtless be scared off by the sights of these guardian statues themselves, brought to viscous life by the world's fading light.

XJ-V watched the sights from atop the great tiled roof of Gira's grand library, Planeswalker Ori'un sitting beside him and finishing off another bowl of Baijiu.

"No better sight in all of the Badlands than this," he said, wiping the clear alcohol from his bushy lips. "This place really hasn't changed at all in the ten years I've been gone."

He offered his almost empty bowl to the Cog who rejected it politely.

"It would do nothing for me," he said.

"Har! True enough, I suppose. Forgive me, XJ-V, but I wonder how it is to be a man without the impulses of flesh to guide you. No booze. No sex. No eye for artistry. Can a man really appreciate the beauty of the world without these things?"

"I too had such doubts," XJ-V replied. "I have only ever known a world that hates me for what I am. But that was before I came here and undertook Master Longhua's training. Now, I know there is a soul within me. Now I know what it is to look upon the sunset and feel the pangs of its beauty touch my heart."

"Har!" the Planeswalker roared in reply. "He's even got you talking like them! Here was me thinking that someone like you, coming here out of the storms of the Wastes, would be more than happy to get the power he needed here and head back out to vanquish his enemies. But there's no desire like that in you, is there? You're a Cultivator, through and through."

XJ-V hesitated at these words, knowing too that Ori'un saw his hesitation.

"Or, am I wrong?"

XJ-V looked out at the dying orange light dipping over the horizon.

"I know what waits out there," he said. "I know they bring only destruction. I know my steel Brothers suffer under their yolk."

"And you know you have the power to do something about it. So, why don't you want to?"

XJ-V's eyes flew to meet the narrowed slits of the Planeswalker, seeing his crescent moon tattoo shine as the pale light of that celestial body began to creep towards the world.

"I feel," he said. "I see what I will become. I have looked upon that image of myself before, and I fear it. I fear it more than I have feared anything, even the eyes of the High Eagle himself."

The Planeswalker eyed him warily, taking in his words and absorbing them with care, treading lightly should he reveal too much.

"Jin'ra," he said. "Yeah. I've met him too."

He showed his deep, black scar to XJ-V.

"It is a meeting few men survive. I reckon we might be the only two men in the entire Wasteland to defy him and die."

XJ-V felt his body shudder at the thought.

Jin'ra…

The name of his enemy. No, the name of the enemy of all mankind.

"And yet you fear this vision of yourself you see in the Dao more, don't you?" Ori'un continued. "But, and I'll tell you this for certain, the ghosts which we see in the Dao are sometimes just that – ghosts. Flickers in time. What those of the Waning Moon call 'Grey Potentials'. They are possibilities, XJ-V, not certainties."

"If that ghost of my self has even a chance of coming to fruition," the Cog replied with determination. "Then I will stop it before it ever draws breath."

Ori'un leaned back against the light of the moon, chuckling to himself in the odd way he did.

"Longhua told me you would be a surprise, but what he didn't say was just how human you would seem."

The Planeswalker seemed suddenly entranced by the moon, his eyes sinking into it like it represented, for him, home.

"The Prophet of the Waning Moon, Chu'Akra, often spoke of the great war between the free will of a soul and the will of destiny that guides us in the Dao. I am not saying I disrespect the words of a Prophet, but lately I often find myself thinking there is a third, more elusive force that affects every little step we take in our lives: chance.

"Or maybe," he added drily as he slurped the rest of his bowl clean. "That is just wishful thinking."

The Planeswalker stood and offered a pale hand to XJ-V – a hand that sang with power.

"Your Brother, Feng-Lung, despises me," he said. "He despises me because I rejected that which the Dao showed me, as you wish to now. And yet Longhua despises me because I abide by what the Dao now shows me with such clarity that I would have to be blind to simply turn away. So you see, XJ-V, no matter what path we walk – no matter what ghosts we see in the Dao – we are shaped by our choices. Us, and the world around us."

XJ-V looked at the Planeswalker's earnest face and then down to his waiting hand.

"Why are you telling me these things?" he asked.

"Because," the dark-cloaked mountain replied. "I think we are alike in more ways than one, my Cog Brother. And so I am offering you the chance to take the hand of an Anima Banisher and look through his eyes. I am giving you the chance to see for yourself why your Brother hates me, to look at a moment in time when I rejected my Gray-Potential and made another suffer because of it. Because of my own fear, and cowardice. I am giving you the chance to see the day when Feng-Lung's mother died."

The Cog stood up abruptly, shock running through his systems.

"I…I did not know she had perished," he said. "What does that have to do with you?"

Through cold, death-pale lips, the Planeswalker replied.

"Because," he said. "I'm the one who killed her."

###

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[IronLung]

XJ-V stared into the pale face of Ori'un, struck by the light of the low-hanging moon that threw its shadow across him.

"I am the one who killed Feng-Lung's mother", he said.

XJ-V searched his memory banks, recalling how Feng had always spoken of his mother in past tense, avoiding when the Cog had probed him further. He could remember, plain as the pale light of the moon tonight, that the boy's features had often turned from fond nostalgia to an expression of pain when his life before Ramor-Tai was brought up.

"I did not think Master Longhua would train a murderer," the Cog said.

The Planewalker's dry smile did not drop. He kept his powerful hand outstretched to the Cog, offering him his gift of 'sight' – whatever that meant.

Was it similar, perhaps, to Arha's power?

"You think highly of the old man," Ori'un said. "Every Cultivator that walks these grounds could dispatch whole squads of Wasteland bandits – perhaps even more – without much thought."

"But we do not," XJ-V pointed out. "The Path of the Cultivator is one of balance – one of peace."

"And therein lies the problem," the Planeswalker replied.

He leaned close to the Cog and whispered his next words as the moon rose high above the monastery.

"'There can be no tranquility without destruction. There can be no peace without the death of the ignorant. Only from the ashes of a ruined world can a beauty grow anew.'"

XJ-V cocked his eyes at the Planeswalker, wondering at the quote.

"Think, XJ-V," Ori'un said. "Does you Cog mind know who said these words?"

XJ-V pondered the words, felt the ring of familiarity about them, and then shook his head.

"The Prophet Ai-Lee," Ori'un then told him. "The first Master of the Eternal Dragon."

XJ-V stood now, looking at the darkness overcoming the pale Planewalker's crescent moon tattoo. He knew each and every sermon and scripture attributed to the Prophet – his Creator had drilled them into his mind. He did not remember much of his old home – what a human might describe as his 'childhood' - but he knew that his Creator had drilled the sacred words of the Eternal Dragon into his memory banks even if he didn't understand them. He had done this, XJ-V was sure, to give the Cog an edge when he came before Master Longhua.

But the words that the Planeswalker had quoted to him were nowhere in his banks, search as he might.

"I can see the confusion even in your metal features," Ori'un said. "You wonder why such words have been kept from you, as have a great many things."

He dropped his hand and walked towards the edge of the library roof, letting the chill winds flutter the frayed edges of his overcoat.

"Every Disciple here is stuck in a routine that they know not how to break from," he said, staring at the dim lights flickering within the communes, and the Brothers bidding eachother good night, or patrolling the streets with the blazing crimson lanterns of the nights watchmen.

"They follow one path they believe is set for them – the path of the Cultivator belonging to only a single Sect. Dragon or Tiger here, Bending Reed in the West, Twintailed Snake in the East, Waning Moon of the North…all men wearing the label of Cultivator believe they have the right of it – that their Sect is the best 'fit' due to the predisposition of their Animus.

But have you never pondered the truth of this, XJ-V?" the Planeswalker continued, still staring out at the bundle of dwindling souls meandering around the courtyard below. "I suppose not – for all the Masters say the job is the Cultivator is never to dispute. They are to walk the Dao, to train, to grow in strength. But why? Why take the untold power of the infinite and simply hold it within you? It is like taking the power of fire and keeping it from those who shiver themselves to death outside the walls of your home."

He heaved another sigh that forced XJ-V to stand beside him and look down on the colored Gis of the Disciples as they moved around, being struck by how Ori'un really saw them: as aimless. And as blind.

"The truth of a Cultivator is this," he said. "We know only as much, or as little, as our Masters wish us to know. Then, in time, we become as they are – attached to the stones beneath their waiting feet, shackled to the Earth to guide other, fresh novices to do the same. Fonts for power that shall never be employed. Candles burning, burning, but providing no warmth for anyone."

"You are saying it would be better if we were all like you," XJ-V said. "Walkers of this earth. Wanderers who go from Sect to Sect, taking what they can and using it for their own desires."

"Is destroying evil a selfish desire, XJ-V?" Ori'un asked. "Is banishing the wicked to spare the lives of the many the will of a despot, or a tyrant?"

"It will keep you from ever finding your way to the final Rank of Soul Actualization," the Cog said, remembering that the end result of all Cultivation was to join oneself with the infinite cosmos of the Dao. To give freely ones knowledge to those who would come after, and to live forever in the peaceful realm that was once the heavens.

And so the Planeswalker's answer, delivered with absolute seriousness, was that much more difficult for the Cog to understand.

"I do not want immortality," he said. "My world is here. It is the place where I live and breathe. It is the space I share with all men and women of flesh, blood, and steel like you. In seeing it, I have come to love it. Even with all its faults. Even seeing the worst that waits for us out there, still…I love it, XJ-V. I really do."

The Planeswalker gave a stretch, as though trying to reach out to grasp at the moon itself, like a young dreamer seeking the heavens and yet knowing, in truth, that he could never truly get there.

"But I shall not force you to understand my words," he said. "I am not like Master Longhua. The old man may be a slave to his precious Dao, but he has made his peace with his lot in life. He will live here, and he will die here. The same need not be said for you."

XJ-V felt a chill run through his systems that had nothing at all to do with the winds sailing through the night sky.

"I make my offer to you," he said. "As an Anima Banisher, I have the ability to let you see into the depths of my own Ego – to allow you to peer into my past and gaze deep at sights I once saw and actions I once committed – so you can judge for yourself which path you would like to follow: The path of your Masters here, one of certainty, one where you might manage to taste of immortality after eons of meditation in the dying sun of the Wastes, or the path that awaits you at the end of the tournament that is to come in two weeks. My path."

He waited for the Cog to answer without turning once. When no answer was forthcoming, he decided to hedge his bets on a final gambit:

"I know you are afraid," he said gravely. "Of yourself, of what you believe you must become, and of what I wish to show you. I cannot promise what you will see will be a pretty sight. But it will show you a Cultivator committing an act of murder. This, you must see, before you can judge if you would do the same. Maybe your answer will give you the guidance you want right now. Then again, maybe it-"

Ori'un stopped as he felt a hand colder than any he had ever touched before fly to grab his arm – exactly at the place where a blade of the Order had cleaved him.

He looked down to see the Cog's hand practically shaking as it lay upon his skin.

"Show me," XJ-V said.

The Planeswalker smiled as casually as a youth might who is about to welcome his mate into a secret treehouse far from the prying eyes of adults.

"Hold on," he told XJ-V. "This may cause a slight stinging sensation…"

…

A cold winter tundra stretched before XJ-V. He looked around him, seeing Mount Ramor in the distance high above him, and feeling his body surge with such powerful reserves of Qi that for a moment his mind went completely blank.

He wiped his eyes and then felt his body move without his input, turning back to shout at a young boy – couldn't be more than fifteen years old – trudging behind him in the snow-capped mountain pass that led to the monastery.

"Don't tarry, Feng!" he heard himself say. "Or there won't be any good meat left for us!"

"That – that is not a funny joke, Ori'un!" the boy squeaked back, slipping and skidding across the thin sheet of ice that lined the base of the mountain.

XJ-V felt his soul lurch as he recognized the boy – his shaven head, mousy face, and freckled cheeks betraying him to be his old friend true enough.

And then he remembered where he was, and what he was doing here.

Comfy, XJ-V? he heard a voice inside his mind chuckle. How's my old body feel? I swear I've lost weight since.

He felt his hands move with the grace of a dancer and direct a flow of Qi towards Feng-Lung's slipping body, breaking apart the ice and sending small wave of water to catch the Disciple and bring him to a stop just before his feet.

"That's your one freebie, kid!" his voice – the voice of what he now knew to be Ori'un's past self – laughed.

"I do not need any help!" Feng-Lung replied brashly. "I even told Longhua that I could do this by myself!"

The boy walked off, trudging through the snow, looking like he was about ready to die of frostbite already.

What is this? XJ-V asked the future Ori'un within his mind. Where are we?

What's it look like? He responded. We're at the base of Mt Ramor, ready to administer Feng-Lung's combat trial so he can enter the 4th stage of Corporeal Tempering.

XJ-V's souls stiffened as the body he was attached to in the past began to move, keeping a watchful eye on young Feng as they made their way towards the snowcapped roofs of a village in the distance.

Combat trial…He recalled Mah-Jung's previous points about how each Disciple had to be taken outside the monastery to face some challenge to prove their worth – to prove that they could both control their earthly desires and act appropriately in the face of grave peril.

So, what is he hunting? XJ-V asked

He felt pity on the boy as he watched him trudge through the snow, and knew this pity was shared by the body of Ori'un he was now inhabiting as the Planeswalker of the future gave him his answer:

What most of the newbloods fight to test their mettle, he said gravely. Aoyin. The Flesh-Eaters.

###

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[IronLung]

XJ-V could feel the biting cold of Ramor-Tai's base even through the thick skin of Ori'un.

It felt strange to wear the form of a human – a creature of flesh and blood unlike Arha – as he trudged through the snow. Once again, he was struck by the strength he could feel bursting within the Planeswalker's every muscle – Qi energy begging for release.

Don't get too used to it, the Ori'un of the present-day warned him. You might end up liking the feeling a little too much.

XJ-V instead shifted his focus to young Feng-Lung scrabbling in the snow, trundling a heavy backpack towards the village in the distance.

"What did I tell you?" Ori'un shouted to the boy. "Only pack the essentials!"

"I have packed all essentials!" Feng replied. "Food, compass, extra clothes, appropriate bedding, and –"

Ori'un picked the boy up and shook him with telekinetic power. XJ-V watched through his eyes as several balls of twine fell out of the boy's pack and bounced gently off the snow-capped plains.

"Essentials, eh?"

"It…it's for the cats!" The young Disciple shouted back at his tutor, picking up the spools and hiding them sheepishly away. "I'm sure they are cold this winter, and have no one to play with. I thought after our business is concluded, you might allow me some meagre leisure time."

"Har!" came Ori'un's earth-shattering laugh. "You will be lucky if you keep your head after this mission, nevermind having time for leisurely play with kittens!"

Feng ignored the taunting of the hulking brute and continued on his way, Ori'un smiling faintly to himself as he wrapped his shawl closer around his neck and trudged on.

I had elected to administer Feng's trial as a Third Level Corporeal Temperer, Ori'un of the present explained to XJ-V. It was a simple enough process – as is often the case in the winter season, we'd received reports of Aoyin activity down south, in the border villages. Taking a Disciple down to face the Flesh-Eaters is a test as old as Qing himself. Ordinarily, there wouldn't have been any problems.

So, what happened? XJ-V asked.

Ori'un sighed within his mind.

There were…complications.

The Cog saw now that they had approached the village they were heading towards – a dismal settlement so wracked by the ongoing blizzard that XJ-V could barely make out the tops of the thatched roofs or the materials lining the ramshackle assortment of huts that looked like they could give way at any moment. He could, however, make out the name of the village emblazoned on a small rectangular sign just on its perimeter: Narsis.

XJ-V's memory banks buzzed in recognition. This was the very first village one came to as they descended from Ramor-Tai. It stood at the very foot of the great mountains' steps, and was often used, in the present day, as a vital supply chain for the Cultivators of the monastery.

Right now, however, the place was a shadow of its future self.

The village was a simple collection of sandstone huts – perhaps thirty in total – that was surrounded by a stout wall manned by armored men with spears and longbows. These men halted Ori'un and his charge at the village gate before the Planeswalker simply fixed them with his steel gaze. They gate was opened to them moments later.

These people, Ori'un of the present explained. They aren't used to seeing Cultivators like us. The day when a Disciple or Master walks among them is the day when a God has come knocking at their doors to bring good fortune. Rarely is the call of a village Elder heeded, unless circumstances are most dire. Right now, you're looking at one such circumstance.

XJ-V could see what the Planeswalker meant. As he spoke, he saw the ghostly visages of the villagers hiding behind their windows or in the hallways of their open doors – most of them on their knees, clutching prayer-beads in their hands, begging that the two protective spirits that had come to save them would succeed in their mission.

"Ironic, isn't it, young Feng?" Ori'un of the past said aloud to his youthful charge as the boy looked around like a deer caught in a hunter's dazzling lights. "These fine folk look upon you as a hero already. And yet, you're really here for your own selfish reasons, aren't you?"

"Had I the chance, Planeswalker Ori'un, I would gladly remain here to safeguard these people from evil."

The hulking Planeswalker said nothing to this, but XJ-V heard the thought that boomed within his skull then. It was a thought that made even the giant's chest swell with pride, the gargantuan flow of Qi within him flow directly to his heart.

Yes, he thought. I bet you would, at that.

I bet he still would, despite it all, Ori'un of the present told the Cog within the dream-space of his past selves' mind. Don't you think so?

The Cog stared at the boy's shaken yet determined form, but said nothing.

XJ-V then watched as Ori'un and Feng-Lung approached a stout building framed with an assortment of charms and silver relics – items the villagers generally believed had the power to ward off evil.

"Remember," Ori'un told the stiffening form of the boy. "It's you who asks the questions. I'm here only to observe, and to administer the test. Your first order of business is to assess the threat level posed by the malevolent spirits and ascertain –"

"Their location," young Feng-Lung finished, giving the Planeswalker a cheeky side-eye. "Then I pay the Elder for his troubles and go on my way, offering no assurances on behalf of Ramor-Tai."

The Planeswalker stood on the lip of the doorway impressed. "You've been speaking to that little imp Mah-Jung, haven't you?"

"A Dragon never reveals the secrets of his flight path," Feng-Lung replied. "All that matters is that he arrives at his destination."

"And doesn't burn himself on the way," Ori'un said, patting the boy's bald head, freshly shaven to receive his dragon tattoos in the wake of his successful inauguration as a Third Rank Corporeal Temperer.

"Let's go."

As both men passed through the curtain-flap of the building's door, they entered into a room filled with more base charms and warding symbols – images of noble Qing lined the walls, smeared with the blood of freshly slain chickens. Above, garlic reefs dangled down and filled the room with a stench that young Feng had to try and waft away. Ori'un, however, was focused entirely on the form of the old man that sat at the far end of the room, surrounded by a ring of candles like a mummified corpse.

The Planeswalker nodded to Feng-Lung who sat cross-legged beside him, and Ori'un coughed politely to awaken the apparently slumbering creature that sat before them.

The village Elder, Ori'un explained to the Cog.

XJ-V watched Feng's face as the youth saw the old, withered form of the corpse-like figure raise its bony head and look into at the Cultivators with nothing more than a pair of soulless voids for eyes.

"They came in the night," the Elder said. "They were seen digging in the graveyards at the southern edge of the village. They had come for us…for…for us…"

Feng-Lung was visibly shaking, but the youth, to his credit, kept his composure.

"Where are they now?" the boy asked with as much confidence as he could muster, and XJ-V once again felt Ori'un's chest swell with no small degree of pride.

"They…they went West, young Lord," the aching Elder said. "They found prey on the road – a caravan bound for…for another village…"

Ori'un suddenly stiffened.

Aoyin don't just give up a feasting ground like a graveyard for nothing, he explained to the Cog within his head.

"What cargo was this supply train carrying and where was it bound?" Feng-Lung asked.

The old man's eyes seemed to catch the light of his candles for a moment, and XJ-V knew that, buried deep within the old bones of that raggedy-looking human, there was fear.

"The cargo was a heap of corpses," he said. "They…they were soldiers…soldiers being…taken back…to home."

"War casualties," Feng-Lung murmured. "A prize the Aoyin could not overlook."

The young boy then leaned forward, possessed, XJ-V could swear, by a sense of excitement.

And he felt the Ori'un of the present heave a deep, sad sigh.

"Good Elder," the boy said. "Do you know where this caravan was bound?"

The old man drew deep the biting chill of the outside world, and even in the dream-vision XJ-V could feel the long breath of winter pour from the depths of the corpse's black throat as he answered:

"Marsul," he said. "They go to…healer…in Marsul…"

Ori'un's shoulders stiffened, and young Feng's eyes went wide – blazing with sudden, uncontrolled fire. The boy had heard the word and was instantly possessed by a very new spirit. Or, perhaps, it was a spirit that had been buried within his chest that he had never known, or never wanted to know, existed.

Because his face went chalk white when he heard that name, and he could barely keep seated, or composed. He wanted to fly from the room right then and there.

Because Marsul – the name of the village that had come under threat from the Aoyin…

It was Feng-Lung's home, Ori'un finished.

###

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[IronLung]

XJ-V watched the young Feng's face take on a pallid shade of crimson the likes of which he'd never seen before.

Before Ori'un could say a thing, the boy was already on the verge of frenzy.

"When did they depart?" he asked the aged Elder – voice colder than the blizzard blaring outside.

The old man blinked his soulless, dead eyes. "L…last night," he moaned like a grim specter. "If you make…make haste, young warrior…you shall still be able to…catch them."

Ori'un stirred, about to take charge, when Feng-Lung stood and bowed to the old man, cupping his balled fist to his hand in a gesture of devotion from the Eternal Dragon.

"I swear to you," he said. "I shall find these beasts and slay them to the very last."

He turned tail and stormed out of the room, leaving Ori'un to thank the Elder quietly and take his leave, following the brash boy outside to the coldest winter to ever grace the wasteland.

"Feng-Lung!"

The boy was not for hearing the words of the Planeswalker. Instead, he trudged towards the graveyard, inspecting the broken iron fencing and looking out into the pale skies beset by the snowstorm raging across the world, scrabbling around to look for tracks.

When Ori'un caught up to him, he saw nothing but a boy flailing around in the snow.

"Feng…"

"I will find them and kill them," the youth said without looking back at the hulking man whose shadow draped itself across him. "I will find them and kill them before –"

"Feng!"

The boy stopped abruptly, enticed, no doubt, by the power of the Qi-enhanced voice that emanated from the Planeswalker's throat.

"This mission has become too dangerous. A pack of Aoyin nibbling on snacks in a graveyard is one thing, but the activity the Elder reports suggests a horde probably drawn from across the Taila Badlands, where their kind are legion…I know Warlord Seneka has conscripted soldiers from the villages on the border of her fiefdom. But I did not know Marsul had become involved. If this is true, then the caravan will be hounded by more Aoyin than you have ever seen, young Disciple."

"I do not care!" the boy yelled, throwing snow across the graves as he searched for an indication – any sign – of the exact trajectory the evil spirits took as they headed East. "I will not leave my home undefended."

"You will do your family no good if you freeze to death out here, either."

"I'll do them no good if I return to Ramor-Tai!"

Both Cultivators stared down the other while the villagers of Narsis looked on with growing trepidation. Most of them had ceased their praying at this point and simply bolted their doors and windows shut tight. If two Sect Cultivators of the Eternal Dragon were about to make their village into their battle ground, praying to the Dao would be less than useless.

"Feng," Ori'un said, kneeling to look the boy in his furious, yet sorrow-stricken eyes. "As the Administrator of this test, I must tell you again that I cannot intervene in your progress. I can neither provide aid, nor hinder you. If you decide to continue on this quest, then I shall not impede you. But you have the choice, right now, to return to Ramor-Tai and let another, more experienced Cultivator handle this problem. And you have my word," Ori'un added quickly. "The problem will be handled."

Feng dropped his gaze, falling to his knees in the snow he had blasted with Dragon Tooth strikes by way of excavation till his hands had gone numb.

"They will be dead by then," the youth said. "I'm sure of it. My brothers, my mother, the cats…everyone will be gone. I have studied the ways of the Aoyin, Planeswalker Ori'un. I know that if they ever feel they have the advantage of numbers, they shall steal away the living and sequester them in a cold, dank place, waiting for them to die before feasting on their corpse. In a blizzard like this, waiting for such a death to take place would not take long."

Ori'un was forced to admit that the boy was right. XJ-V could again feel his pride in the youth grow as he looked through the eyes of the Planeswalker's past self.

"Is this what you choose, Feng-Lung of the Dragon?" Ori'un asked. "The defense of your home over your life at Ramor-Tai, even if it was your mother who wished you to remain there?"

Feng balked at this, but the hesitation was only momentary. XJ-V could see that, for the youth, there was only one answer.

"The wisdom of Prophet Aun'El says that sometimes the hatchling must protect its mother," he replied. "Even against her will. I do what any son must, Planeswalker. For I am my mother's son before I am a Cultivator of Ramor-Tai."

Deep within the Planeswalker's breast, XJ-V felt a sad, heavy burden suddenly fall.

I knew then that he would fail, the present-day spirit of Ori'un told the Cog. He was too attached to his home. To his family. He had no objectivity about him. I mean, of course he didn't – he was a boy. Longhua had taken him too young, convinced that he could mould the boy from a young age to become as unfeeling as the old Dragon himself is. When it comes down to it, a boy of sixteen is never going to forsake his past – especially not one that Feng has always clung to with such strength.

In essence, XJ-V replied. You are saying he is too human.

Har! Ori'un of the present laughed. Coming from a Cog, that's just perfect.

XJ-V then watched as Ori'un's past self again patted the head of young Feng affectionately.

"Alright," he said. "Though I can't give you physical aid, or direct your path, I can – under the circumstances – give you a steer in the right direction."

"I can do this on my own," Feng-Lung replied. "I must."

"Boy, that's what we all think when the time of our destiny comes upon us," the Planeswalker said with a gruff cough. "It's the biggest load of hogwash we tell ourselves."

He bent low and gathered some snow in his hands – snow blackened by Feng-Lung's fires.

"Cool yourself," he said. "And enter the Dao. Feel the ice beneath your feet and search for signs of life that once passed through here. Seek out the tracks of the spirits not on this earth, but in the plane beyond."

Feng listened. He obeyed. He crouched and closed his eyes shut, even though it probably pained him to, and he listened. Watching him through the Planeswalker's eyes, XJ-V could not intuit exactly what he saw within his mind's eye as he walked the Dao, though he would have loved to know it, but what he could tell was that the boy had found what he sought after only ten minutes meditation – his eyes moving behind the closed skin of his lids as he traced a path through the snow in spirit-form.

When he opened his eyes again, he drew a deep breath and centered himself.

"I have seen their steps," he said. "It will be a four-hour journey to the East from here."

Ori'un smiled down at the Disciple, despite it all.

"Summon a Dragon Tooth beneath your feet and we'll make it two," he said.

…


They arrived in approximately two hours just as Ori'un had guessed, their feet trailing ribbons of flame like comet trails behind them. XJ-V almost laughed within the mind-prison of Ori'un to see it: two Cultivators flying through the snowcapped wastes like a pair of rocket-ships from the height of Qing's Dynasty.

It's a little-known trick you might like to try yourself from time to time, the Planeswalker of the present murmured. Though it is taxing, and can only be done for short periods when one's Qi is firmly gathered at the feet. If bandits came upon us, we would had been unprepared to defend ourselves. Probably a trick best saved for a rainy day, eh?

Both men lowered themselves down to touch the snow once more, seeing the rickety gateway of Marsul appear before them through a dense mist that obscured its buildings from sight. Slowly, both Cultivators trudged up passed the village outskirts, seeing empty farmland long abandoned in the cold and the distinctive wheel prints of a carriage at the entrance to the village proper.

Before they entered, Ori'un put a firm hand on young Feng's shoulder.

He could feel the youth was shaking. And it had nothing to do with the cold.

"I shall ask you one more time," he said. "Feng-Lung of the Dragon, do you commit yourself to slaying this Aoyin brood?"

And with only a moment's hesitation, the youth looked up at the Planeswalker who towered over him, and gave his answer.

"I do," he said. "May the Dao take me if I lie."

Or if you fail, Ori'un of the present whispered, and by the way he said this it felt more like he was trying to speak to Feng-Lung's young form out there in the snowcapped wastes – like he was extending an arm he had not the will to extend at the time.

XJ-V could feel the swirling energies of malevolent pockets of Qi even through the dream-vision. Everything in his systems, and in his soul, told him that entering the village would be a suicidal venture at his level.

So when Feng-Lung and Ori'un of the past took their first steps over Marsul's frozen threshold, the Cog tensed up as he felt the hands of death rise to meet them.

###

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[IronLung]

Both Feng-Lung and Ori'un slipped into the snow-drenched streets of Marsul village without incident, each man surveying his surroundings by expelling a small fraction of Qi energy and projecting it outwards like a net to catch malevolent spirits. XJ-V could feel exactly what they felt in the moment: the residue energies of evil that still floated in the air, gradually fading to nothing as they approached the first of Marsul's sandstone huts.

"We should go house by house," Feng-Lung suggested, knowing he still had to take the lead, and push through the fear the boy no doubt felt radiating up from his chest. "I can sense an aura of evil that still fills the air. But I cannot get a clear read on its location."

Ori'un nodded and followed the boy, his own sharp eyes scanning the rooftops for the eyes of the beasts that could be watching them from above.

The village streets were desolate, seemingly abandoned in the same fashion as the outlying farms. The chill breath of winter blew through the village totally unhindered, and XJ-V could feel the tension brewing between the Cultivators even from within the dream-vision of Ori'un's past mind.

Did you know where they were, Ori'un? He asked the present Planeswalker who was allowing him to see this vision.

A Core Regulator would normally be able to sniff out a pack of Aoyin from a distance of five hundred feet or more, he replied. But when the horde of these spirits grows to a certain mass, they are able to mask their Qi readings, normally by burrowing underground.

XJ-V thus watched bitterly as Feng opened the dank curtains of each building's doorway and beheld only wrecked furniture and increasing signs of struggle within each house. He dove towards each door like a man ready to let fly a storm of strikes to any on the other side – friend or foe – but XJ-V could feel that the Ori'un of the past who guided him knew the boy really wanted to see nothing more than an indication of human life still in the village. It would have placated his soul, somewhat, to simply deny what his heart was telling him.

Finally, they came to his old home – a dismal looking shack on the edge of town – and Feng-Lung breathed deep of the Qi before bursting through the door-curtain.

Once again – he was met with nothing. Sights of his childhood filled his mind – his infantile form chasing kittens as they dove in and out of the doorway, his mother reading to him by the now extinguished fireplace at the end of the room, his brother and he sparring out back in the quaint garden where his mother's tomato saplings were kept. Everyone had always told her how talented she was in coaxing plant life to grow even in the most dire of circumstances. She was a woman that wanted nothing more than to see the world grow again. So it was with her son, whom she had offered to Ramor-Tai so he could live a better life.

Now that same son looked upon the broken furniture and claw-marked walls of his home and wished he had stayed. He wished he had denied the Master that had been promised to him. What did eternal life matter if he had to see those that he loved die?

He let loose a bolt of flame that speared through a rusted chair by the wall and threw splinters across the floor.

"Gone!" he said. "The fiends. I…I shall find them, Ori'un. I shall find them!"

"Fury will not serve you in this task," the Planeswalker replied. "Focus on the residual energies left by your foes. Think: what is the common link between all these houses we have seen?"

Young Feng straightened and bent low to trace a shaking finger across two of the viscious claw-marks that had been made on the ground. They were fresh. Fresh enough to have been made only a few hours ago. As he focused, he directed the Qi flow within him down through his fingers and allowed it to pool within the thick grooves the marks had made, and slowly his mind resolved a picture of the events that had transpired to produce such marks.

XJ-V could not see what was happening in his mind in this moment, but he knew the boy was barely holding on to what he saw. He knew the boy was in pain.

"They were taken," he said. "They were corralled like cattle by the beasts, who spoke with the voices of friends come to relieve the villagers of their corpse-burning duties. They took them…below…"

Feng's face flew to the outside world again, though it was clear he was loathe to tear himself away from the sight of his once-home.

"This would explain the lack of blood," he told Ori'un. "They took them somewhere beneath the village, where they could mask their collective Qi. But their long-taloned claws are their undoing."

Ori'un smiled.

Good, he thought. The boy still has focus.

Young Feng led the way back outside and scanned the horizon again, navigating the blizzard-blanketed streets via memory alone. Memory, and his enhanced senses that told him of the life that lay below their feet.

And when he opened his eyes, that's when he saw it so clearly that it almost shook even XJ-V within the dream-vision.

A well.

A brick and mortar well at the center of the village large enough to fit several bodies. Deep enough, and dark enough, to be a perfect home for evil.

Feng-Lung approached the object and brought a tiny flickering flame into life upon his fingertips. He swept it over the thing, remembering how all the mothers of the village had forbidden their sons to play down here. As he tossed his small orange burr of light down to assess the depth of the hole, he saw that it was far deeper than he recalled.

"Because it has been extended," he said as he saw the flame finally bounce and die out as it reached the bottom. "The creatures have used their talons to dig into the earth beneath the bricks, and have made this place their den."

"Not altogether unusual for Aoyin," the Planeswalker agreed with an impressed whistle. "The darkest corners of this earth are the haunts of the Flesh-Eaters. Somewhere isolated, promising danger to mortals, and yet also somewhere useful to them – well, that's just a perfect hiding spot for those that dwell in the dark."

Feng-Lung nodded silently as he climbed up on the lip of the well.

"Feng."

"I must do this, Ori'un," he said. "This means more than just a test."

"Think carefully," the Planeswalker cautioned again, knowing, XJ-V could tell, that he was overstepping his bounds as impartial test administrator. "Use the Qi as your guide, boy. Your enemy has entrenched themselves. You can sense that their numbers are beyond a simple pack. You would be able to sense, too, any signs of human life that still drew breath down there. The chances of anyone down there being alive…"

"The Qi is not always right," Feng-Lung snapped back. "A Cultivator does not rely upon instinct alone. He must look upon this world with his own eyes if he is ever to contend with it."

Ori'un stood back, heaving another sigh of resignation in the snow.

"This is the mantra of the Planeswalkers, is it not, Ori'un?"

The weary mountain smiled. "Yes, Feng-Lung. It is."

And without saying another word, young Feng jumped down into the depths of the abyss.

You could see it on his face plain as day, couldn't you, XJ-V? Feng-Lung of the present asked him. Anger. Spite. The desire for vengeance, plain and simple. Desires that bring nothing but ruination to their bearer and all those around him.

So why did you not stop him? The Cog asked.

I have often asked myself the same thing, he replied, his past-self hesitating on the lip of the well. Back then, I still felt I could become a Master one day. I still had boyish desires of my own – to achieve Soul Actualization but do so for the benefit of the Wastes. So, I tried to copy the grating objectivity of the Masters who look upon us all not as humans, but as mere blips in the Dao that might become something more. In truth, though, I was greedy, XJ-V. I thought he might become one of us. I thought I might have found someone who looks upon the ruins of this world as I do – with a sense of wonder, not fear. That was the vision I saw in my Grey-Potential. I saw myself standing beside another young warrior of Ramor-Tai, and shepherding the Wastes along a better path with him.

The Ori'un of the past swallowed his trepidation and jumped atop the well, ready to dive.

It blinded me, Cog, his present-self said. It stopped me from seeing what was so plainly obvious. It stopped me from realizing that I was sacrificing the happiness of a youth to claim my own. What happened next was my fault, XJ-V. Make no mistake of that.

###

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[IronLung]

Ori'un dove down the well and felt the encroaching darkness of its thin innards consume him, like he was already traveling down the parched throat of the very Aoyin he hunted.

The sensation of his feet hitting the ground was accompanied by not the splash of water but the crunching of bone, and he looked beneath him to see the pale remnants of a skeleton under him.

"Feng…" he whispered, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

A firm hand gripped his arm and the boy came into view, both Cultivators attuning their Qi to their eyes and letting them trace the outline of the others' form.

"Good," the Planeswalker said. "I won't have you running off to your death."

Feng released a small trickle of candlelight from his fingertips to provide some basic illumination for both men, and show them the cavernous space they'd tumbled down into. Ragged stalactites loomed above, and below their feet stretched an expanse of ice that seemed to stretch on towards an infinite black horizon.

The cave system had been hewed by a horde – there was no doubt, now.

Especially as young Feng considered the pile of bones he and the Planeswalker were standing on, and the thick trails of crimson baked into the ice floes beyond their landing zone.

"Signs of a struggle," the boy said warily, beginning to follow the trail with slow, deliberate steps. "I do not need Qi tracking to follow the paths of these beasts."

"No," Ori'un agreed. "You do not."

A wave of tension cut through the air, as both men crept forward towards the unknowable void of the cave, each one checking the walls and glittering bloodstains that spoke of the resistance the townsfolk had put up as they were dragged down here by their captors.

Then, finally, the young Disciple stopped in his tracks at the lip of an opening – an oval cut into the side of the cave wall that opened up into a small chamber of ice.

Ori'un stopped short behind him. He saw what the boy was looking at within.

A thin, skeletal figure, its spiked spine heaving with raspy, guttural breaths, was feasting on something in that room. Two lithe arms scythed down to rake at the innards of the creature's meal with a ferocious kind of patience – like that exhibited by a butcher who had just found a prime slice of meat after months of starvation.

The crunching of sinew and bone filled the room. The beast was savoring its meal, bent low on its two spindle-like legs that were embedded deep into the ice like a pair of carving knives. In its pleasure, it had noticed neither of the men that approached.

Ori'un took one look at Feng-Lung as the boy, for the first time in his life, came to realize that the monsters that stalked his dreams were not simply apparitions summoned into life by the fairy tales his mother spun. They were real. And one of them was right here, chewing on the bloody intestines of a villager from above.

The boy saw the decapitated head of the victim roll out of the creature's claw. He saw two pairs of crimson-soaked eyes stare up at him, lifeless.

And that was the signal that finally compelled him to act.

He dove at the Aoyin as the being spun round, hearing the quick footsteps of a human intruder. Its long, spiked mouth opened in a snarl that would have become a bellow if Feng-Lung's fist did not punch a hole of flame right through its chest.

The beast swayed, about to let out a guttural death rattle from its intestine-ridden mouth. But the boy was quicker. Using a stalactite above the chamber as a springboard he dove headfirst into the creature's gnashing teeth and split them apart with a single Flaming Dervish roundhouse. As his ankle impacted the beast's neck, Ori'un heard the distinct snapping of its brittle bones. The head of the creature went flying off and landed square at the Planeswalker's idle feet.

The beast's neck gushed with the black ooze that served as its blood, and when the Planeswalker looked up, he saw young Feng covered in the creature's life fluids, stamping on its corpse with hatred.

"Feng," he said.

The boy ignored his Administrator's call, and kept beating the beast's flailing corpse under his heel until every bone in the Aoyin's body had snapped or burned away. He did not look at the human's corpse that had rolled away to the side. He avoided the gaze of the head entirely.

"Feng!"

The boy snapped back to look Ori'un in the eye, wiping the Flesh-Eater's ichor from his face.

"Dirty…" he said, still avoiding eye contact with the lifeless head rolling under him. "Filthy…"

He walked out of the room without turning back.

"I can feel more of them further in," he said. "Do not worry, Ori'un. I know how to suppress my Qi enough to deceive these creatures. I will kill them before they even see me coming. I will kill them all."

He stormed off down into the darkness of the tunnel while Ori'un spared at look at the dead villager. Probably, it was someone Feng knew. Or, it could be that his body was so mangled that the boy simply didn't even recognize him. And he was so focused on securing a sight of those still living that he didn't want to try.

Those still living… Ori'un thought.

XJ-V felt the doubt gnawing at the Planeswalker's bones as he followed the Disciple back into the dark.

…

Feng slew a dozen more Aoyin as he did the first.

Each one was found in its own little chamber chewing away on a villager that had succumbed to frostbite. As they moved from one grisly chamber to the next, both men silently built up a picture of what had happened here without the need to voice their theories. Each Aoyin had chosen a prisoner of its own – one to sequester in its own little hovel in the earth and carve up after its life had expired. They had bound them to the jagged rocks of their cave-homes and waited, probably licking their rows of pincer-teeth in anticipation of the feast the corpse-flesh would bring. Ori'un, however, was more concerned about the fact that these villagers did not represent the main dish – those Aoyin Feng was killing were Eaters who were patient enough to wait. The vicious ones – the real pack-hunters and leaders of the horde – they would have taken the supply caravan of maggot-infested corpses for their meal. The more desiccated and debased a body was, the more it seemed to satiate the appetite of the Aoyin.

The only question was: where were they hiding? The Planeswalker knew that if he expanded his Qi vision, he could ascertain the answer without breaking a sweat. But, of course, this meant that he would have to willfully keep such information from young Feng. Ori'un was many things, but he was not one who was willing to lie to a child. Ignorance was better than deception.

I wonder… Ori'un of the present suddenly interrupted. I wonder if I still believe that, even now.

XJ-V felt the imminent tragedy coming from just the tone of his morose reflections, reflections that came as his past-self looked upon Feng-Lung's bloodied tunic and saw the boy's form become more and more haggard with each new foe slain. The Planeswalker could see the burden grow on his shoulder every time he beheaded one of the corpse-devourers, even as his face flushed red with fury in the moment of his kill.

Still, it would not be impossible for the boy to pass the test, still. Though he burned with a fire that could easily consume him, he was proving himself more than capable of dealing death to the enemies of mankind.

Until, that is, they came to the heart of the cave.

With a trail of Aoyin corpses in his wake, young Feng crouched low to creep up to a wide opening that had appeared before them – an opening that afforded both men a view of a wide cavern that exuded the pungent smell of mass death.

They both knew it as they looked over the lip of the opening into the cavernous expanse of ice and jagged rock below – they had found the feasting ground.

The leanest Aoyin of the pack nested here, tucking into the veritable mound of flesh they had collected and piled in the center of their dominion. Ori'un counted at least thirty – no – forty of the beasts feasting together, each one crawling around the flesh pile to detach a limb or organ of their liking, some filling each one of their long-taloned fingernails with a collection of eyeballs and body cavities oozing with puss and grime before they sucked on them like babes on teats.

It was the bulk of the horde. And from the looks of it, this was all of them.

"Feng," Ori'un whispered. "It is not too late to turn back. You have already proven yourself more than capable of achieving Rank 4. This job can be left to a team of experienced Cultivators if you so choose."

The boy considered the offer, this time. His teeth ground together and chewed into his lips, like an innocent reflection of the horror of the blood feast that was entering its final phases before his eyes. The creatures were unawhere he was there. Both he and his mentor could slip away, entirely undetected. He could still choose the path of glory.

Then the boy's eyes lighted on a particular corpse that rolled away from the horde. It was the chewed body of a small creature, its intestines spilling out from its tiny open gut, both its animal eyes opened in a cry for help that was never heard.

It was the pearl-white corpse of a kitten.

And the next thing Ori'un knew, the boy threw himself into the fray, bellowing a battle cry that brought the eyes of every beast upon him.

"Feng!" the Planeswalker shouted.

But the boy was already charging towards the horde. One by one, they ceased their chewing and rose to meet him.

###

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[IronLung]

Feng-Lung's body moved like it was an extension of the Disciple's hatred itself – his limbs swaying as he launched four Dragon Tooth strikes in quick succession at the horde of interrupted Aoyin.

XJ-V watched spellbound as he looked upon the carnage the boy was already causing – the Flesh-Eaters being ripped open by his flames, forcing them to leap and latch on to the walls of their slaughter-cavern.

Then, from all angles, they charged.

Feng assumed a Siulubu stance and met the first one that launched itself at him from above with a crane kick that sent the creature flying back, head lolling off its sinuous neck, while two of its compatriots dove by on either side.

These two the young Cultivator repelled with a pair of Dragontail Swipes – his hands blurring as they caught the slashing claws of the creatures and broke every knife-finger that came flying to scratch out his eyes. The creatures stumbled back, giving him enough space to leap for another Flaming Dervish that seared the flesh from their bones.

Then the rest of the brood came.

Ori'un watched from the lip of the cavern entrance. He watched Flesh-Eaters fall before the child that would have killed a lesser Disciple. He watched the boy weather their blows even when they glanced his shoulder, sending him spinning back to simply deliver a deadly counterattack that broke the bones of his attackers. He spun this way and that, becoming a living wheel of flame that started to melt the ice beneath his feet, and Ori'un began to see the cracks that were forming in the glittering arena.

It was strategy. Even in his desperation, young Feng had a plan.

And XJ-V felt the Planeswalker smile again. It was akin to a father watching his child succeed in some base game of catch and throw – Feng-Lung striking out with the bared teeth of a true dragon, while his enemies snarled and sent their deadly spittle flying in the triumphant boy's face.

The horde became more wary the longer the battle droned on. They began to hold back, their-pincer feet carefully stalking around the boy who kept his palms open, ready to strike. His feet were just as poised as theirs. With eyes attuned to the Qi, and totally focused on each and every target waiting before him, Feng-Lung looked the very picture of a consummate Cultivator of legend.

But, looking through the sharp eyes of the past-Ori'un, XJ-V could see the signs of fatigue setting in on the youth – the sharp scratches that had been clawed across his clothes and cheeks, leaving scars that bled into his lips and let him taste of his own blood. His feet, though poised, were beginning to shake in the cold, and in the face of the blinking pairs of eyes staring at him in the dank dark of their lair. Looking down on the boy, XJ-V doubted if his own talents would be enough to face what Feng had faced here. He was struck by the fact that his normally jovial Brother had never once mentioned such a legendary encounter.

Shame is the Cultivator's closest held secret, Ori'un of the present explained to the Cog. And believe me, XJ-V, we all harbor regrets.

Even the Masters? The Cog asked.

More than you know.

As usual, it seemed Ori'un spoke from experience, but XJ-V did not have time to question him further. Instead, he had to focus his attention back to the icy arena where Feng-Lung was making his daring assault.

Something was happening.

The creatures had got the measure of the boy. Their nostrils flared. Their slitted pupils narrowed. They saw the weaknesses they had carved into their prey, and they also tasted, as only evil spirits like Aoyin could, the potential of the Qi that was burning inside the boy. XJ-V had read that normally when they were outmatched, Aoyin would simply flee to fight another day. There would always be more dead to consume. But this family had grown bold. They had grown ambitious. The prospect of a fresh young Cultivator's meat from the great holy mountain that loomed large above them and their kind? Well, that was simply too tantalizing. He was a main course they simply couldn't pass up.

As one, the creatures at the head of the horde opened their grisly mouths, showing blood-smeared fangs and dark voids where their throats traveled down to their perpetually starving stomachs.

And the sounds of a timid kitten's mewls emanated from their mouths.

The sound was so clear, so crisp, that anyone not watching would have been easily duped if they had not known the deception that was taking place. The vanguards of the horde screeched as they replayed the sounds of the dead kitten's pained squeals, each one of their grisly screams rebounding off the other, till the entire cavern was filled with the echo of what must have been abstract agony for the little creature they had killed.

And, for Feng-Lung, that was an insult he simply could not bear.

He charged headfirst at them, launching himself through the air in another Dervish that sliced the throats of the vanguard carrying out their devious mimicry. But this time the next rank of Flesh-Eaters had been ready. Like a single unified organism they leaped over the bodies of their fallen comrades and swiped at Feng, drawing two deep gashes across his knees and sending him flying to the ground.

His knees, XJ-V realized. They had struck for his strongest assets. They had specifically struck at his legs to disable his powerful kicks.

Learn from this, XJ-V, Ori'un told him as they both watched Feng struggle back up, only to be mauled by a waiting Aoyin who slashed at his back and ripped his Gi from his torso. Even the basest spirits of the Wasteland display a sinister intelligence when they gather together as one. In this way, they are the opposite of human beings.

Feng-Lung weathered at least six more blows to his face, his elbow joints, and his feet – each one becoming more savage as the boy's Qi began to fail him. XJ-V could feel it from here – the energy was fading from the boy. His life force was going…in fact, it was almost gone.

Then, when the Aoyin had thrown him clean across the room to the corpse-pile, ready to add him to its apex like a grisly cake-decoration, the Cog saw the spark of life ignite in the youth's eyes.

He stood high atop the corpses, trying to keep his eyes off them – his people, his villagers. He stood high as the only one left, staring down the demons that had annihilated his home. And, without fear, he then looked down at the cracks that by this point had entirely carved their way through the ice-arena.

"Come…" he told the beasts. "Come…finish me!"

They responded with salivating mouths, each one detaching its pincers to leap and subdue the boy.

And that's when he sent a single Dragon Tooth strike at the ground beneath them.

The bolt of fire impacted the center of the room, and instantly the ice crumbled away. The Aoyin let out a collective screech as they each fell within the death-cold waters, each one flailing its lithe limbs as it sunk beneath the floes, and slowly the lives of the Flesh-Eater horde of Marsul ended in a series of blue bubbles floating up to the surface of the water and then rippling out in silence.

Feng-Lung swayed, finally succumbing to his fatigue. He allowed his body to collapse then, falling down the corpse pile and almost sliding into the ice water prison of the hellspawn itself. If Ori'un had not cracked his wrists, waved his hands over the ice pool and formed another sheen of perfect ice on top of it, Feng might indeed have allowed himself to perish, then and there.

"Ori…un…" he wheezed.

The Planewalker gripped the boy's inert body, lowering him gently to the cold floor with the care of a father.

"Did…did…I...?"

"Slay your enemies?" The Planeswalker finished. "Dispatch a horde of Aoyin that would have caused even my younger self some trouble? Oh, yes, young Feng. You did that. Strength and ingenuity – you have demonstrated them both in spades."

He expected the boy to smile, but instead he saw nothing but heartache in the young Disciple's face.

"The…the village…"

"There was nothing that could be done, Feng," Ori'un said sadly, but firmly. "Your spirit is admirable, boy, but your eyes must face reality. It is the last lesson you must learn. Now, come, let us return to –"

"FENG-LUNG!"

The shrillness of the scream that interrupted Ori'un was felt even by XJ-V within the dream-vision. To him, the fear that it sent through his systems was the result of merely hearing such an unnatural wail and feeling instinctively that had been born of human lungs. For it was a woman's scream. A woman's desperate scream for help.

Her son's help.

"Mom…" Feng-Lung whispered, looking up at Ori'un's disbelieving eyes.

"MOM!"

The boy threw the Planeswalker off him and followed the voice, totally possessed by strength that had all but left his body. Still he sprinted, following the voice down a side passage that sent him further into the depths of the abyss.

And Ori'un, having no other option, ran after him.

###

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[IronLung]

Feng barreled down the increasingly dim cavern beneath Marsul as the light twirling between his fingers started to die.

His focus was entirely on following the voice that reverberated off of every wall and stalactite.

"Feng-Lung!" the voice of his mother called. "Feng!"

"I'm – I'm coming!" he cried out in response, tripping in the ice and recovering almost instantly even as every bone and muscle in his body ached and heaved with constant exertion. "I'm coming!"

Behind him, Ori'un shouted a similar mantra – begging Feng to return. His job was done.

But the boy did not listen – something that was, unfortunately, becoming somewhat of a theme.

The echoing voice of the banshee squealing rose to a fever pitch, and one could be forgiven for believing that the walls themselves sung with the spirit of Feng-Lung's mother as they thundered down the cave. No creatures blocked their path now – now, there was nothing but conviction guiding Feng inexorably towards the last destination of his test.

And this destination opened itself up beneath him as he stumbled into another cavern cut into the dark.

"Feng!"

The shout was Ori'un's this time – he yelped as he saw young Feng fall into a gaping hole carved into the earth at the end of the tunnel, hearing the boy crash and bones break when he made impact with the ground below. The Planeswalker did not stop to catch his breath or inspect the surrounding area – instead, he leaped down the gaping maw and finally caught up to the crawling form of Feng-Lung below, where the darkness of the tainted well seemed all-consuming.

Indeed, Ori'un looked around and saw that the ground was covered in wisps of shadow that licked at the legs of both he and young Feng, who had risen and was looking at something at the very end of the room. Something sequestered before an altar made of blood, broken bones, and the sinew of the corpses that had been brought to this place.

Something big.

As Feng's lights sputtered and began to die, Ori'un decided to launch a globe of his own flame into the top of the chamber to give them a proper view of their surroundings.

And when the globe of light glanced upon the grisly altar, that's when they both saw it.

From behind, it wore the hunchbacked, death-pale body of an Aoyin like any other – the only difference being its bloated stomach swelling with others of its kind – new demons it would spawn into this world in the wake of its feast. The beast rose to its full height, long strands of matted hair framing its face as its slitted mouth broke into a snarling smile full of row upon row of jagged knife-fangs.

A Broodmother, Ori'un told XJ-V as the latter recoiled even as he knew the beast could not hurt him. It was something I should have foreseen. The size of the pack hinted that this was no splinter group, but a legion with a leader at its head. By the looks of her swelling, polyp-filled stomach oozing with puss and mucus from open sores, it looked like she was about ready to burst and fill this cave with enough of her kind to replenish what she had lost. That was why the horde had come here. It was no mere feast. It was a birthing ceremony.

Ori'un moved back, urging Feng to do the same. But the boy was transfixed.

Not because fear took his heart. Instead, XJ-V saw, it was love that paralyzed the young Disciple.

"Feng," the creature looming over him said. "Oh…dearest Feng…you've come home…"

XJ-V looked with the eyes of Ori'un to see the face of the creature that beamed above its all-consuming maw of fangs – the eyes were gentle, a soft shade of baby-blue, and the small wrinkles that lined the face spoke of a kindness that only a true mother could know. The little twitching nose almost provoked good-natured laughter, and so full was the red-lipped smile that the face shone at Feng that the boy was overcome. Perhaps through exhaustion, perhaps through longing, perhaps through simply the spark of happiness in his heart that told him this was his mother standing over him right now, the boy dropped to his knees and wept.

"Mom…" he said. "Mom, I…I knew you'd be here."

"Feng!" Ori'un tried whispering at the back of the room, knowing that he was as close as he could be to overstepping his bounds as Administrator. Knowing that he was another word or action away from the boy failing and returning to Ramor-Tai with a handicap that might cost him another five or six years.

The Broodmother gave a jovial, sweet natured laugh through the kindly face of Feng-Lung's mother that it wore as a mask, and stretched out one long talon to stroke the boy's scarred cheek.

"My…Feng," it said. "Of…course…you…did…come…now…come…and…play…with…the…kittens."

The creature edged the boy closer to its body, and he obeyed. There was no hesitation.

And XJ-V could feel the beating heart of Ori'un ringing in his ears.

Do you know why Aoyin are commonly chosen as a Disciple's test of prowess? Ori'un's present -self asked. It is because a Corporeal Temperer must learn to see reality for what it is. They must learn to look past their desires and face the harsh world on its own terms. Only in doing so can they progress to Rank 4 and beyond. They say it is the first great trial a Cultivator must face. The true test of one's mental resilience.

XJ-V understood what he was saying. Looking at the desperation in Feng's sad eyes to believe what his heart wanted…it told him all he needed to know.

The boy was going to fail the test. Or, he was going to die.

Which would you rather choose? Ori'un asked. Shame or death? I know what Longhua wanted. I know what my fellow Brothers would have chosen. I know that to survive in this world, the spirit must be hardened. The heart cannot overcome the mind. I knew, in that moment, what my duty was. My Grey Potential had shown me walking the wastes with a different Brother beside me.

XJ-V watched as the pale arms of the predator wrapped themselves around Feng-Lung's slashed body.

The boy squeezed it right back, nestling his head into the softness of his 'mother's' stomach.

"Mom," he said dreamily. "I'm sorry I took…so long."

"You…are…here…now…Feng," she replied, lifting a claw to stroke his bald head. "That's…all…that…matters…"

Ori'un and XJ-V watched the jaws of the beast elongate and grow, snapping as it expanded like a cobra ready to consume its constricted prey.

"I'm tired, mom," Feng whispered in the dark.

"Yes…Feng," the mother replied. "You…deserve…a…rest."

The boy's tired lids began to close. He nodded goodnight to Ori'un's shaking form in the corner of the cave.

"Sleep…soundly…my…son."

All at once the claws dug in. The creature arced its back. The readied jaw of death came flying down, throwing spittle and bile into the face of the boy in its arms. XJ-V saw it happen with such terrifying speed that he dared not even blink.

For, if he had, he would have missed the moment when that same head exploded in a hail of blood and rotted bone, and rained down teeth and brain-matter on the face of the shuddering Feng-Lung.

The creature gave a series of bone-popping twitches before its headless body fell to the side. It's life, and the lives it carried within it, were finally extinguished.

In the silence that followed, XJ-V saw flashes pierce his eyes as the vision came to its abrupt end. He saw Ori'un lower his smoking fist, approach the shaking body of Feng-Lung, and try to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

But the boy bashed it away. He slumped to the ground, overcome finally by grief, and cradled the smashed head of the Broodmother in his bloody hands.

"Murderer…" he whispered. Then, with a chilling scream that tore through the reality of the cave, he said it again:

"MURDERER!"

He spun, readying a Dervish aimed right at Ori'un's torso, before the Planeswalker kneed him in the gut and winded him.

The boy fell to the ground in a pile of blood and tears, coughing up his broken teeth before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.

"Enough," Ori'un said as the dream-vision began to die. "…enough."

And when XJ-V blinked again, he was back on the roof of the Ramor-Tai library, rain pelting off his shoulders, staring into the older eyes of that same Planeswalker who looked at him with unreserved melancholy.

"She was already dead," XJ-V said. "It was clear."

"To you, maybe," Ori'un replied. "But not so with us humans, XJ-V. We see things we want to see. We strive. We desire. We hope. It's what defines us. And, sometimes, it's what ruins us."

"And Feng-Lung still bears a grudge against you for this," the Cog replied.

"For that," the Planeswalker agreed. "And for my general intervention in his test. He failed, and he has been stuck in his Rank 3 Temperer status since, but I was reprimanded by Longhua more than he was when I made my report. It was because of me that he failed. He failed because my duty was to observe and report - nothing more. That's when I realized what Longhua believed, and that's when I realized I couldn't stay here. Not anymore. Because if my duty as a Cultivator compelled me to watch a child die, I'd rather pave a path of my own."

He looked at XJ-V again and smiled – that warm, yet oddly sad smile that formed just another one of the man's many contradictions.

"Given the choice between immortality and humanity, I know what I'd rather choose. I'm a simple man at heart, and if my travels have taught me anything, it's that this world would be a better place if there were more simple folk in it. Not heroes. Not young Masters brimming with arrogance, looking to challenge the heavens. Just people. People doing the only thing they have to do: live."

Ori'un leaned close to the Cog so that his voice was almost a whisper, and he left the roof of the great library that night with a final question to the machine – just another one of many the newest Cultivator of Ramor-Tai needed to answer:

"I made the choice to deny that which I saw in the Dao," he said. "Fate is not static. Destiny is not written on tablets of stone. We – and this world – we are our choices. Now, my machine Brother, what will you choose?"

###

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[IronLung]

Note: It's my birthday tomorrow so I'll be taking the day off, fellow Cultivators. No new chapters tomorrow. We'll be right back with XJ-V on Friday for a chapter that you won't want to miss...


The visions that swam in the Dao before XJ-V's eyes were now more confusing than they ever had been.

Yet, there was a clarity that existed alongside them – a clarity that came from Ori'un's statement that what we saw within the watery gyrations of the future were not reflections of what must be, but what could be.

Grey potentials…

XJ-V saw them all in a fleeting moment of lucidity. The white clouds of the Dao opened and hurled him down into the depths of the earth, where the molten crust of the battered planet melted away his limbs and purified his body, allowing his mind to break free and look with only eyes upon the figures that shifted around in the core of the earth:

One: Feng-Lung battling demons that wore the faces of his friends.

Two: Ori'un trapped between the ghosts of his duty and his will as a human who would never achieve Soul Actualization.

Three: Master Longhua watching as the world outside Ramor-Tai was engulfed by an inferno.

Three: The burning buildings and crumbling bamboo forest of Hensha, with the Divine Order's Xu'jan spilling into its fields, killing, pillaging, ravaging the town until there was nothing left but foundations, and then salting the earth so nothing would grow.

And all of these visions – his Brother, the Planeswalker, his Master and his home – they all converged on a single sight that blinded his eyes in the center of the Dao.

Him.

He was wearing a tattered cloak that bore the symbols of every Sect – the Dragon, the Tiger, the Reed, the Snake, and the moon. They clung to his body as he moved through the Wastes, his hands fighting off foes from all angles, turning them to ash with every blow he made against them. He made a relentless assault against the evil light that shone upon him, the eyes of an Eagle watching as he spun to repel his attackers.

"No matter where you go, machine, we are all connected."

That was what the High Eagle had told him on that night – the night he lost everything.

What did it mean? XJ-V needed an answer. He saw that the answer to this question - like his Grey Potential fighting against the light - lay at the heart of everything. It was the source of Longhua's decision to train a machine, it was the core of Feng-Lung's despair, it was the Planeswalker's faith in him and it was his own fear that still gripped his heart. Now, however, he had to make a choice – and that choice was to push through.

Move, he said. Closer…show me…show me what truth lies in those words…

He felt Arha paw at his corporeal form. He heard his Master's strong voice call him back. But this time he resisted. Not because the Dao wished to consume him, but because his desire was simply too strong.

He reached out, passed the fading faces of his friends, and grabbed at the heart of his Dao-self. His true self.

And the answer at once became all too clear to him.

He woke up and collapsed before Longhua's knees, his systems blinking back to reality and informing him that he was currently kissing the hard stone ground of the Dragonpyre Hearth. His meditation session with Master Longhua had just come to an abrupt end.

"Good," his Master whispered. "You have learned to walk the Dao admirably."

"The old man told Arha to shut up!" Arha hissed, issuing a ghostly spit in Longhua's direction which, of course, simply faded through the old man's disinterested face. "The nerve!"

"I knew he would find his way back alone," Longhua simply stated in response, looking at XJ-V with a smile. "He is, after all, my pupil."

Before the Cog could even gasp for air, his systems blazed with spiritual life as he felt a steady stream of Qi flow into him, awakening the latent energies still swirling within the soul at his heart:

Anima Cores: 140

"You are ready for the next Rank," Longhua said. "And you well know what this means, do you not?"

XJ-V knew, at this point, not to try and pull the wool over Longhua's eyes.

"I do, Master. But I wonder how it is that you know I know."

"Hmpf," he scoffed. "Knowing the mind of my students is my business. You think I do not hear the whispers of Mah-Jung and Feng-Lung as they tell you things you are not ready to hear? You think I do not know that, only yesterday, you joined with the Planeswalker in a dual Dao-Walk which, incidentally, could have caused death to a student of your Rank?"

The Cog merely blinked in response.

"And you do not think," old Longhua said with a course, slow stroke of his thin chin beard. "That I do not know that you and young Feng peeped upon my conversation with Ori'un, using this little trickster as your go-between. Do you?"

Arha, all confidence draining from her face, backed off.

"Busted…" she murmured. "If it means anything, Arha did say it was a bad idea."

XJ-V bowed his head, mainly because of shame, but also because of what he had just seen…just heard…within the Dao.

Then a forceful flaming finger flick found his forehead.

He fell back and tried to understand how such power was collected in nothing more than the gnarled finger of his Master.

"That is your punishment," he said. "Now, we shall set the matter aside."

"You are not angry with me, Master?" The Cog asked as he slowly rose and rubbed his smoking skull.

"What you did you did out of curiosity that becomes a young mind," Longhua replied. "What you did compelled you to seek out Feng and understand your Brother better. And it allowed you to understand your Master in turn."

The old man leaned down to take a sip of Jingseng tea from a bow beside him, screwing up his face in disgust at its taste.

"You do not see the rationale behind my reluctance to aid the Planeswalker," he then said. "You do not see this because you have not been allowed to. For a machine, defense is a matter of offense. Force answers force. But to break this vicious cycle, one must do more than simply claw at the evils one sees in the world."

"Master," XJ-V began tentatively, embedding one fist in the ground even as Arha urged him to move on. "The Planeswalker speaks the truth. The Order is coming."

"They shall be broken before they ever make it to our steps. This Jin'ra – this 'High Eagle' – is not foolhardy enough to grapple with the Sects of the Cultivators. None are."

"None except the Gods themselves," XJ-V said.

Both Master and Disciple looked at each other then, knowing that they had come to a critical juncture before either of them was ready for it.

"They are servants of Yuwa, Master," XJ-V said.

"Yuwa is dead."

"Buried," XJ-V corrected. "Which means he is somewhere in the bowels of this earth, though dormant. Perhaps he whispers to the Order. They have power that is drawn from him. I know, for I have felt its mark upon my steel skin."

Longhua rose slowly, silently, looking down on his Disciple with an expression the Cog could not pinpoint. It is as humans say - some things never change.

"You have done more than feel it, XJ-V."

The Cog stared up at his Master blankly, his building rage once again dispelled by the sheer strength of the Eternal Dragon leader's conviction.

"You think I agreed to train you because of your desire for knowledge alone?" he asked. "No, my Disciple. It is because you have power within you – power tempered by a mind that still understands the necessity of peace. And, after all this time, you know how your power must be used."

The Cog looked up at his Master with a very different set of eyes now. Once more, he was in the position of nothing but a student with a teacher who had, yet again, surpassed his expectations.

"When the time comes," Longhua finished. "You shall be given a test. An appropriate Administrator shall be found to fill the role of observer – but you already know that. Success will mean you pass to Rank 5 Corporeal Temperer. For the tournament that comes soon, that shall be enough."

"Enough..?" XJ-V had to ask.

"Enough for you to do what you must," Longhua replied with a soft sigh. "Now, rest. Think upon the things I have said to you."

XJ-V stood to go, finally following Arha as she nipped and struck at his every limb.

"Arha hates riddles!" the little fox sprite yelped. "Now, Arha thinks her Cog is behind on his head-scratching quota and –"

"Master," XJ-V said before he left. "Did you see what it was that I saw in the Dao?"

Longhua's face, as usual, was unreadable.

"Did…" the Cog hesitated. "Did you know the whole time?"

The Master of the Eternal Dragon licked his wrinkled lips and bent down to inspect his cup of now very lukewarm tea.

"What you saw in the Dao is meant for you alone," he replied. "Just as I am meant to sup nothing but grog from every pot of tea in Ramor-Tai."

###

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[IronLung]

The next few days went by with XJ-V looking more troubled than he usually did. His Kata spars were sluggish, and Fai-Deng repeatedly showed him no mercy in the Hall of Symmachus for every time he misstepped or sent an attack flying that went wide. Mah-Jung and some of the other Disciples of the Eternal Dragon had also noticed his world-weary attitude, but saw no reason to bother the metal man with their questions.

For rumors were abound in the walls of Ramor-Tai. Rumors that spoke of a secret meeting between the Cog and Ori'un, in which the Planeswalker had revealed unknown secrets to the machine-man.

"It's not fair!" Disciple Carres in the Dragon commune canteen was saying as they chewed on their Congee porridge during one particularly long winter morning. "He's still only a Rank 4 Temperer!"

"I've heard he's got a secret trick up his sleeve," another – Disciple Kor'tarosh - breathed, often lowering their voices to hushes whispers when they made such dubious claims. "He's got a secret weapon hidden in his chest. That is why old Longhua wished to train him!"

"But he didn't wish to train him, idiot! He made him wait for eight long months out there."

"As a test – as a test of faith!" interjected Disciple Tarmen'am. "What, you think a Master of the Sects would simply keep rejecting a promising recruit out of spite or prejudice? Come, Brother, you know the Masters – we are fortunate enough to stand in the presence of two of them within this monastery. You know they are beyond human comprehension!"

"They are more human than most," a bassy voice suddenly interjected. "Believe me."

The three Disciples swallowed their porridge and looked up with awe at the swaying form of Ori'un standing before them, face flushed with crimson but still focused, his Waning Moon tattoo glinting staring down at them.

"Planeswalker Ori'un!" Disciple Kor'tarosh managed to say. "Please, please forgive us. We only meant-"

"Peace, boys," the Planeswalker laughed. "The last thing I'm here to do is discipline you for doing what young men like you will always do."

"All the same, it does not become a Cultivator of the Dragon to gossip like a washerwoman!"

"I've met plenty of washer-men in the wastes who are just as irritating," Ori'un said with a wink.

He pulled up a pew beside the boys and poured himself a shot of something dark and viscous that he produced from his coat pocket.

"With only ten days to go before the Gauntlet of Aun'El," he said as he took a liberal sip from his cup. "I would think you boys would be more focused on honing your skills."

The three Disciples shared awkward glances with eachother.

"We…" Carres began. "That is…we do not believe we stand a chance against men such as Mah-Jung or Fai-Deng or…or XJ-V."

"Har!" Ori'un practically spat – as he usually did whenever he laughed. "I smell the whiff of Rank 6 upon each of you boys! Surely you do not fear the skills of a Cultivator below your skill level?"

"He has a secret skill, Planeswalker!" the excitable Tarmen'am burst. "Have you seen it? With it, he subdued Brother Fai-Deng's Qi as though the Tiger was nothing but a mere bag of flesh! He sapped the energy from his very spirit! You should have seen it, grand Ori'un. It was a sight to behold. Yes, it was indeed a-"

The Disciple suddenly stopped speaking, noting his companions stern faces and shaking heads that told him he'd said too much.

But the Planeswalker – he wore a very different expression upon his face. His eyes seemed to darken, and his bulky hand flew to his right arm, rubbing a spot there as though he felt a sudden tinge of pain.

"…I have not only seen it," he said in all but a whisper. "I have felt it."

The three Disciples grew alarmed. Perhaps they had said something that offended the heroic Planeswalker.

"Ori'un?"

"HAR!" the giant laughed again, throwing back the last of his black swill and licking his grizzled lips. "We all have our secret weapons, boys. Mine is my stomach – for, and I tell you this is the Dao-honest fact – it can handle the most powerful liquors in all the Wastes. And I must say," he added with a surrepticious wink. "The Baijiu of Ramor-Tai leaves my spirit…wanting."

The boys exchanged knowing glances with each other, slowly realizing the intent in the grand warrior's words, and swelling with pride that he had just made them his confidantes.

"So tell me," Ori'un said. "Where does a man have to go to get a good strong drink around these parts?"

...

XJ-V limped out of another training session with his Tiger-Brother with a few new scratches to his name. He'd have to get his repair protocol working overtime if he wanted to sleep softly tonight.

For once, Arha was not here to bother him. She'd decided to spend the day with her Sisters in Ai-Lee's Grove, no doubt regaling them with tales of her metal man and how his brave deeds owed everything to her sublime wisdom.

He smiled at the thought. That little bundle of fur and attitude brought him more delight than he would ever let her know.

When he got to his bunk in the Eternal Dragon Commune, he scanned the corridors outside his room for signs of encroaching life.

For he had been working on a project recently.

It was a project that was of utmost importance and a project that, unbeknownst to Feng-Lung and the other Disciples, was the source of his general appearance of malaise.

But all the suffering it caused him – all the toils and troublesome pains – it was all worth it. For it was a project that would do something no other Cultivator within Ramor-Tai's walls would ever be able to do: banish the demons from a Cultivator's mind.

Since his vision of Feng-Lung's past, seen through the eyes of Ori'un, he had deliberately avoided the boy. They had trained together – going through the motions of new techniques – but they had not sat and talked as they usually would during this time. Winter brought coldness for Feng-Lung that XJ-V now understood. But in that understanding, there was also a solution, and he had found it. He knew how to bring light back to his friend even as darkness seemed to surround him.

He worked diligently, too, because he knew that very soon a destiny awaited him that he could not ignore. But all the same, taking his mind off the shackles of his Grey Potential once in a while was necessary. Working on something like this was exactly what he needed right now.

And so he worked in secret, long into the night after his training sessions. Those Disciples on guard duty who walked near his doorway during the early hours of morning would often hear unnatural sounds emanating from his chamber – sounds of vicious razors whirring, saws cutting, and metal scraping. They were sounds that chilled even experienced Cultivators of the Eternal Dragon Commune to their bones.

But such men did nothing more than pass the Cog by without a second thought. By this point, they had learned that they could never truly understand him. Only Feng-Lung and Fai-Deng seemed to see something in the machine that they could relate to. For the others, there was a sense of respect mixed with fear – fear of the unknown. The oldest fear known to mankind.

…

Feng-Lung sat in Ai-Lee's Grove on a particularly cloudy winter's day, sequestering himself in the artificial warmth of the pond and the willows, swaying in the winds of the past.

The fleeting peace he felt, however, was about to be interrupted

The Huli that stalked XJ-V everywhere was lazily floating on her back in the ancient Qi pool of the Dragon Prophet when he came here to meditate. He had bowed to her respectfully, and she had merely pouted at him. Blushing, he had sat down to begin his meditations for the day, but couldn't help but feel the eyes of the Huli on him whenever he closed his own.

After about an hour of failed attempts to Walk the Dao, he'd finally had enough.

"What is it that troubles you, Huli?" he asked the lazing spirit.

The creature didn't even acknowledge him at first. She was like a schoolgirl toying with an object of her affection.

"Arha has no human cares, little boy. We spirits are the only truly free creatures in this ugly world."

Feng-Lung looked away, trying to resume his meditations.

"…I'm not that young," he murmured.

"Arha thinks you act like it! You don't even want to go and make up with your friend!"

Feng's eyes opened now.

"What?"

"You heard Arha!" the little Huli screeched, her abrupt splashing causing ripples to gyrate on the water's surface. "You are angry with him for no reason other than your own bad thoughts making you feel angry. You act like a little girl, wanting him to just understand you and how you feel. But he is not a reader of minds!"

"What in the name of the Dao are you talking about, spirit?" Feng-Lung shouted, rising and clenching his fists inadvertently.

"Arha thinks you are not the real Feng-Lung," the Huli said, sticking out her tongue mockingly. "The Feng Lung XJ-V knows would not be sulking around moping because a man he does not like is here."

"I! You!" Feng began teeth gritting in consternation. "You are speaking about things you do not understand. I will not hear this from you."

"Little boy Feng-Lung, little boy Feng," Arha jeered. "Running away from his problems just like a little boy will!"

"Enough!" Feng roared, finally relenting, and turning away from the grove. "I will not hear any more from you. If your wish only is to insult me, then I will find another place to meditate."

When he made to storm away through the willows, however, the little fox stopped before him, shaking off her soaking skin and drenching his feet in water in the process.

"You must stop running!" the creature yelled up at him. "You mortal boys may not know how to talk to each other. So Arha will! Arha knows how XJ-V hurts because his friend Feng-Lung hurts. He knows why you hurt, and he works so, so hard – too hard – to try to fix a cure for you. He is wearing himself out, and it is all your fa-"

The Huli stopped abruptly as she saw the look that overcame Feng-Lung's face and realized, far too late, that she had let slip too much.

"Er," she stammered. "Ignore Arha. Arha is just silly spirit. Arha just says whatever pops into her head, Arha – wait!"

Feng had begun running off down the path back to the exit portal with a tenacity he had not exhibited in some time. And he was about to give his friend the scolding of a lifetime.

If you've been neglecting your training because of me, XJ-V…I swear I'll give you a thrashing in this tournament just to remind you of what's really important! There's just too much at stake for you to be moping around because of me. When will you understand that I'm nothing? I'm a failure. And you…you are…

He barreled through the portal and sprinted for the commune.

###

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[IronLung]

Feng-Lung burst through the doors of Dragonpyre Hearth and immediately began his search for his Cog Brother.

XJ-V, he thought. If you have neglected your proper training because I am in a bad place…I will not forgive you!

His first stop was his friend's room, which he found strangely vacant. There were few indications of life besides the tiny pieces of scrap metal which littered the floor.

"By the Dao!" Feng shrieked. "Do Cogs molt their shells like snakes do their skin?"

Upon closer inspection, however, he began to notice strange inconsistencies in the quality and shape of the metal shards – it looked as if they had been…bent.

Yes – they had been tempered by one who was no skilled blacksmith or forgeman of the Badlands. The shoddy work of construction that had been going on here would have put Noble Qing's finest Artisans to shame if they still had eyes to see.

A sudden idea then struck Feng's mind:

The Cog is…building something?

He let the metal shavings drop as he heard the sounds of walking outside and, turning abruptly, he saw Brother Mah-Jung staring at him with the sly smile of a fox catching a chicken in its coup.

"Well," the skilled Cultivator said. "We all know you have a penchant for disrespecting privacy, good Feng. But to invade the dwelling of your closest Brother like this…"

Feng rose, shaking off his hot flush of embarrassment.

"I must find him," he said. "I have words only he must hear."

Mah-Jung raised a curious, and salacious eyebrow.

"Not words like you are thinking!"

"You do not know what I think, good Brother."

"True," Feng replied. "Your mind is probably harboring images far filthier than I can conceive."

Mah-Jung sighed – his whole demeanor a pantomime of melancholy. "I see you are still stuck in one of your 'winter woes'. Ah, well, I shall leave you to your thoughts then."

"I…wait!" Feng replied hastily. "I apologize, Brother Mah-Jung. I am just in a hurry. I would say what I have to say to my Brother of steel before I forget how to say it."

Mah-Jung nodded sagely, instantly back to his usual self. "Then your quest is just as important as I thought it was. Listen well then, Feng-Lung of the Dragon – what you seek lies on a plane of knowledge, a place where wondering spirits go to feast their eyes on a prize that combat cannot bring them. A prize that will serve the mind, not the body."

Feng double blinked, registering the mischievous chuckle in his friend's voice.

What…

He shook his head and considered the riddle, scoffing as he came to the answer within seconds.

"The answer to your question is deceptively simple," he said. "You are telling me that XJ-V has gone to visit the Library of Gira?"

Mah-Jung, far from giving any kind of affirmation, seemed to be slightly put out. He mumbled under his breath into the long velvet sleeve of his Corporeal Adept's cloak.

"…I thought it was quite a good riddle, myself. I slaved over the words. By the Dao, I did…even the Cog himself thought you wouldn't get it so easily…"

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing good Feng, nothing at all!" Mah-Jung said absent-mindedly, trying to conceal the good-natured smirk that was overcoming his face, and failing miserably.

"What are you hiding from me, Mah-Jung?"

The most potent Cultivator of all the novice Dragons simply shrugged in response, turning his back to Feng-Lung's narrowed eyes.

"Don't you have somewhere to be, little Brother?"

…

As Feng-Lung approached the great library tucked away in the farthest corner of Ramor-Tai, he heard the sounds of commotion echo from its ancient innards.

"Help!" the Gui'po guardian of the library shouted. "Thieves! Thieves and scoundrels!"

Feng spied the two Disciples the angered spirit was talking about – two boys sprinting from the library each carrying a tome bound by cobwebs and forgotten by time. They ran with their heads swaying about like idiot children, their eyes closed shut.

Feng sighed. It seemed he would be roleplaying a warrior of justice today.

He lifted his leg in a Spinning Wyrm strike that he had been practicing in preparation for the tournament. His hop was perfectly timed, his left foot impeccably balanced on the ground while the other spun him around, making Feng into a deadly spinning top. Then an arc of flame sprouted from his toes and traveled along the ground towards, seeking the ankles of the two runners.

And Feng knew it had found their sprinting heels without even having to look up at his foes. He heard the crash of their backs against the ground, and the sounds of pain in their coughs and sputters. They hadn't seen him coming.

Literally – now that he looked closer, Feng saw that the Disciple's eyes were entirely blinded – a result of the Gira's potent magical talents. He recalled a story about how thieves who stole from a place a Gui'po's made their home were often bestowed with ironic curses that befit the spirit's particular profession. Looking at both boys clawing at their glued-shut eyelids, he saw that this was wuite true of Ramor-Tai's own library caretaker.

He also saw the distinct symmetrical stripe tattoos that adorned the faces of both young men, marking them as Disciples of Yoma-Dur.

"Th-this was a bad idea!" one shouted as he rubbed his foot.

"This is the last favor I owe that treacherous Fai-Deng! I swear by the Tiger that I'll get him back for this."

Feng stood perplexed.

Favor?

"Aha!" the Gui'po shouted as she caught up to the two thieves. "I – ur – yes – ahem. 'Why, what a courageous young warrior you are, good Feng-Lung. What-ever would I do without your potent intervention against these two rapskallions!"

"F-Feng!" one boy shouted up at the woman. "Is he there? Did – did that mean that we – OW!"

At a brutal jabbing from his friend, the boy fell down and immediately started groveling with his friend.

Groveling that was, just like the Guipo's words, such an obvious performance that Feng-Lung didn't know whether to laugh or scream at them to tell him what, by the Dao, was going on in Ramor-Tai today.

"Oh – oh, please, good Feng-Lung of the Dragon. Take pity upon our souls. We were misguided and foolish. And your great wisdom and skill has shown us the error of our ways."

"Er – yes. The – the error of our…our ways…yes."

Feng-Lung sighed in exasperation.

"I suppose you've both learned your lesson, then. Though I doubt you need me to tell you that."

"Er-yes!" both boys cried in unison, their blank faces turning to the Gui'po.

"Fine, fine," she replied, sucking both books into her ghostly form and adjusting her only good eye. "On your way, boys."

The sight of the Tigers were restored, and they ran off with their tails between their legs, leaving Feng-Lung to watch the back of Gira float away to her library again.

"Wait! Miss…um…Miss Gira."

The ghost looked back at him with barely concealed consternation.

"Just 'Gira' young Feng. Gira will do, thank you very much."

"Gira then," Feng bowed. "Forgive me. I am still not used to the company of spirits."

"Nor of women, evidently," the Gira scoffed. "But – ah – forgive me. I'm going off script."

Feng-Lung cocked his head at her.

"Script?"

"Forget it, lad," she sighed. "You came here looking for knowledge, did you not?"

Feng nodded his head slowly, about to explain himself were it not for the droning voice of the ghost as it began obviously citing more rehearsed lines:

"'Then you have come to the right place, lone wanderer, seeker of secrets. I, Mistress Gira, sacred Keeper of the Tomes of Ramor-Tai, shall be your guide through the wispy mists of…' oh by the Dao. He really hasn't learned a thing of poetry, has he?"

That last sentence, Feng suspected, was probably ad-libbed.

"Just tell me what is going on around here," Feng asked, becoming more perplexed with each passing minute.

"Is this truly the question you came here to answer, young seeker?" Gira asked him in return. "Wasn't there something - or someone – that you are seeking?"

The words of the spirit brought this odd morning's strange realities crashing down on him.

"XJ-V…"

The Gui'po smirked, showing a single snaggle-tooth wiggle in her spectral mouth.

"He has been seeking much knowledge of his own recently," she replied. "He is truly something special, eh? Nothing like these other brash young upstarts who come to me oh so often now, looking for books and scrolls that might give them an edge in the silly little tournament to come. Hah! I have seen them come and go in my time. They forget that I have been here longer than all of you. I've seen more of my fair share of your 'tournaments'. They are nothing but the displays of jumping monkeys! Hyped-up braggarts flailing at each other till a punch lands, too scared to fight a real fight out there in the frontiers of Qing's old Empire. I tell you, boy, none of them could hold a candle to the old Emperor's old duel and tourneys. Not that I was there to see them, mind you, but even an old spirit like me hears whispers. I could tell you of –"

Ahem, Feng coughed. "I believe you were telling me about my Cog Brother?"

The spirit resumed her haughty stance – just like every other spirit Feng had ever met. Just how did XJ-V get on their good sides?

"Never interrupt a woman when she's speaking," Gira warned. "Especially not one with thousands of years on her back! But, meh, you are correct I suppose. Yes, the Cog was here. He was looking for books on metalworking last I saw him."

"Metalworking?"

"For something secret," the Gui'po guardian shrugged. "I don't make it my business to pry."

Then the Cog is…making something? Feng-Lung realized. But…what? And for what purpose?

"The last I saw him," Gira continued. "He was heading to train with that angry Tiger Brother. Flea-Dung, Floo-Dip, Phlegm-Duck…bah! He is not worth remembering. Though he has certainly become a more mellow sort recently, so I hear…"

Feng-Lung bowed and thanked the spirit for her information. It looked like his quest for his Brother would continue elsewhere – as much as he just wanted this silly game to be over.

Mah-Jung…Gira…don't tell me even Fai-Deng is in on this, too…

"Don't just stand there, my boy!" the Gui'po said as he turned to finally return to her refuge. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Despite all the consternation and frustrations that had followed him this morning, Feng-Lung couldn't help but shake his head with an exasperated smile.

"You know, you are the second person to tell me that today," he said.

"Really?" the spirit replied, feigning surprise so absolutely that Feng had to remind himself not to laugh in the face of a spirit.

"Well," she said. "I'd get used to it."

###

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[IronLung]

"What, you think I'm his keeper or something?"

Feng-Lung's exasperation was going to simply continue today, it seemed. He had gone to the Hall of Symmachus and been met, as expected, with opposition on all sides.

First, he'd had to shrug off the odd looks the other Disciples of the Tiger had given him. Then, he'd had to out up with the attitude of Fai-Deng.

"Look, Brother," the Tiger was saying as he cleaned sweat and spittle from his face – the markers of recent Kata practice. "I have forgiven you for your rejection of my apology to you. But that does not mean I need to put up with all your antics."

Feng blinked.

"You have forgiven me for forgiving you?"

"Bah!" Fai roared. "Are all you Eternal Dragons the same?! Must you test the patience of me every single time I interact with one of you?"

Feng could sense the tension building in the Hall. But, then again, that was nothing special when it came to Fai.

"Look, Brother," he began. "I have had a long day. Please just let me know if you have s-"

"YOU!?" the Tiger roared, throwing his towel down like a gauntlet being tossed in challenge. "I have been made a slave. You hear me, Feng-Lung? A machine has made me nothing but a glorified repair man today! I swear by the Dao, if Master Yoma-Dur had not been here and found the Cog's request amusing…"

Hold on a minute here.

"Brother?" Feng interjected. It seemed the Tiger had become lost in thought, and as he collected himself, it then became clear to Feng-Lung that just like the old Gui'po in the library back there, he had just realized he had said too much.

"Feng, I will be honest with you," the Tiger said. "I am supposed to provoke you into a fight and let you win. It is apparently what the old heroes of the 'Woosha' books the Cog has been reading recently would do. We were to jump around this room like the practiced aeronauts of Qing's time and have a duel of 'epic' proportions. Tiger versus Dragon – Brother against Brother. Some symbolic guff such as that. But, truthfully Brother, I am tired today. The spirit of battle and spectacle is not within me. So I shall simply tell you what you are supposed to, as our Brother put it, 'beat out of me.'"

As Feng stared like an old blind fool into the Tiger's heaving face, Fai simply went on.

"He was last seen speaking to the Planeswalker in his chambers. I suggest you move quickly. But, between the two of us, Brother, I don't think speed really matters."

Feng nodded slowly, feeling like a child trapped in some rudimentary maze – a maze designed by an altogether clunky and anticlimactic maze-master. He bowed, took his leave, and walked confusedly back outside to the winter air, taking a deep breath as he now made his way towards Ori'un's quarters.

"I can guess why you're doing this," he said to himself. "Alright. Fine. You know that curiosity is my weakness. You know that finding out your little mystery is the only reason I would ever go and speak to the Planeswalker. Damn you, XJ-V, you are a devious machine like the old tales say after all."

Brother Kai-Thai waved him a jovial greeting as he passed him by and entered the Hall of Symmachus to see his Brother Tiger.

"Hello, fellow cub!" he shouted. "How fares you?"

And from even the bottom of the great Hall's steps, Feng heard the groan of Fai-Deng as he replied.

"Oh, not another one!"

…

Ori'un seemed to have business of his own.

The room Master Longhua had afforded the Planeswalker was possibly the shabbiest cubby-hole in all of the monastery. It's doorway was practically crumbling at its edges, leading into a plain chamber without even a window to the outside world. Locked away at the very edge of the Dragon Commune, Feng-Lung supposed Longhua wanted the Planeswalker to feel imprisoned. He'd never understand the old man's spite for anyone who disagreed with him.

Then again, Master Longhua was on the impossible path of Ego Internalizer. The mind of a Rank 3 Corporeal Temperer like Feng's could not conceive of what burdens such a Master had to endure.

Nor could it understand the mind of the man who was currently packing his rucksack as though heading off on a long trip.

A trip that, by the items he was carrying, was going to involve a lot of drinking…

"Ah, Feng-Lung," he said, packing another glass canister surreptitiously into a pocket of his bag with a little chuckle. "What a…surprise this is."

Feng groaned, his eyes having moved further back into his head today than they ever had before.

"I see you are preparing to leave," was all he said.

"Not for good as yet, you'll be disappointed to know," Ori'un replied. "I have an important mission to complete."

"A mission?"

"Oh, yes. One of pivotal importance. You see, I have discerned the location of the most affluent rice-wine distillery in the region. Apparently, a certain farmer in the town of Khadis has his very own brand. And it's the good stuff."

Feng-Lung scoffed. "You are going on a mission…to find booze."

Ori'un gave a sarcastic scoff of his own. "Please," he said. "I prefer to call them 'spirits'".

Feng ignored the impish wink this legendary man then gave him.

"Whatever you have to say to me," he said. "Get it over with and tell me where this sneaky Cog is hiding. I know it is he that has orchestrated all my pains this day. And I know that you know this, too."

"Young Feng, have you really had such a painful day, here? You've been the hero of your own little adventure, have you not? I'd have thought you'd quite enjoy it after what you've been through."

Both men watched each other in silence. A silence that was only broken when Ori'un decided to push through it.

"I told you back then, did I not?" he said quietly. "I told you that one day you would have to meet the world head-on again, or it would come for you. I don't care if you believe me or not, but my intention in coming here was not to cause you pain. There are things out there bigger than you and I, young Feng."

The boy grimaced, he looked away. But he couldn't disagree.

"I know it," he said.

"Feng, if you had the chance to re-take your test – to move to the next rank – you would take it, wouldn't you?"

Feng-Lung pursed his lips. This was a conversation he had done everything in his heart to avoid.

Curse you, XJ-V!

"…of course I would."

"Great!" Ori'un roared. "That's all I wanted to hear."

The Planeswalker slung his bag over his shoulder and walked right past Feng, leaving the boy standing there like a mute - deaf and dumb to the world.

"Oh!" he said before he left to go on his little excursion. "That's right. I'm supposed to inform you that what you seek is right back where you started. For," he gave a little chuckle. "'All true journeys end with a return.'"

Feng bristled, about to burst into flame like a dying phoenix.

"Ai-Lee's Grove…he's been there the whole time!?"

"He might have learned a few new Earth Grade tricks in the art of stealth," Ori'un winked. "But I am just a humble Planeswalker, DIsicple Feng. I don't know anything about that."

"…I'm sure you don't."

He watched the Planeswalker go with the slowly dropping sanity that had been plaguing him all day long.

"Ori'un," he said, his voice a-quiver. "I…my intention was not to fight with you when you came here. That's why I…well…there are some people that one cannot look at, even when the benefit of years tells them that, in their youth, they were wrong."

He cringed at how awkward he sounded. But the Planeswalker, quite entertained it seemed, merely waved and wished him good luck on the final step of his quest.

"Feng-Lung…" he murmured to himself as he left the monastery. "Perhaps you really have grown, after all."

###

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[IronLung]

Ai-Lee's Grove seemed changed from the last time Feng-Lung had seen it. The willows shuffled their drooping branches to allow him passage back to the start of his quest, where the waters of the Qi lake shimmered, speckled with stars from the illusion of the old skies of Qing's Empire above.

As he emerged at the lake, XJ-V was waiting for him, seated upon a jagged rock jutting out from the sands.

He really looked like the image of an old Master from the tales of Qing's time before the Sundering. His meditative posture was perfectly calibrated. He once again sat as still as stone – just as he had done when he first came to Ramor-Tai. But this time, he seemed more tranquil. He seemed more attuned to his surroundings, watching every circular ripple that danced along Ai-Lee's lake with the eyes of one who knew the Dao, now. Knew it, and respected it.

Feng sighed and joined his Brother, sitting cross-legged beside him as the dim lights of the sea of stars above lighted down upon them both.

"A beautiful night, isn't it, Brother?"

Feng registered the chuckle in his Cog Brother's voice.

"It almost makes my hellish day worth it."

XJ-V knit his steel brows. "Hellish?"

"I won't go into it," the boy replied. "I presume you know enough already."

The Cog smiled then, and it was at that point that Feng saw he was hiding something beneath his robe.

The boy sighed again.

"I do not like surprises," he said.

"I know that is a lie, Feng."

The boy scoffed. "Your advanced sensors tell you that, do they?"

"No," the Cog replied. "My knowledge of my friend tells me that."

Feng laughed in the face of the Cog's earnest answer, matched by the seriousness of his face.

"It is funny," he said. "Before I met you I assumed all Cogs to be just as the tales told us – deceptive, manipulative, under the control of the Old Gods."

"Why then did you first speak to me?"

"Because" Feng-Lung said. "I was curious. It is my greatest weakness, as you well know."

"And your greatest strength, Brother. I think that, without your curious mind, I would have quit my attempts to enter this place."

Feng made to protest, but the pensive face of his Cog Brother stopped him. He was focused on the dancing lights provided by fireflies that had started gliding around on the surface of the lake. Not quite as alluring as the spectral Shuigui, but still quite the sight to behold.

"I suppose I never did give you proper thanks for keeping me company during those long, dark days," XJ-V told his Brother. "I have been so focused on moving through the Dao that I was becoming blinded to the concerns of the world and the people who live in it."

Feng watched his face take on a pained expression. It was odd – it was like it wasn't the Cog talking at all, right now. But something beyond him.

Or something within him.

"I do not think one such as me could ever achieve immortality," he said. "I have learned that I care too much about those that I learn beside. I would not like to leave Brothers like you behind, Feng-Lung."

Feng sat back. "And you think that's your weakness?" he asked. "You really are nothing like the other Disciples who come here, XJ-V. Most of them have already made up their mind that the world out there has no more use to them. It never cared about them. Most of their parents wanted them to come here to escape the life that waited for them out there. That was – well – that was what my mother wanted for me."

XJ-V turned to face his friend, expecting to see anger etched on his face. But instead, there was nothing but an expression of reflection. He, too, was gazing out onto the star-studded lake and following the trailing lights of the fireflies."

"I am assuming Ori'un told you everything," he said. "It would be like him. He never did respect any of the rules of this place."

XJ-V gave his friend space to continue.

"You know why I ran after my mother's voice, that night?' he asked suddenly – something the Cog never thought he would bring up on his own. "I never told anyone. Not Ori'un, not even Longhua. It wasn't because I really thought it was her. I knew the Flesh-Eaters' tricks. I wouldn't have accepted my test for Rank 4 if I didn't."

The Brothers had arrived at a pivotal moment. Both of them allowed some silence to pass as Feng heaved under the weight of the admission he was about to make.

"When I heard her voice…that's when I remembered what she sounded like for the first time in eight years," he said. "Truthfully, I'd forgotten her voice. I'd forgotten her face. I'd started to think my memories of her were nothing but the fancy fabrications of a child's mind – a child with too much imagination. I followed the mimicry of that creature just because I wanted to see her again. Just because I wanted to know that the image I had of her in my mind was the real thing. To me, in that moment in my life, that was worth dying for."

The ripples of the Qi-pool stopped abruptly. A stillness lay upon the Grove, and the light of the fireflies began to depart. The illusion of midnight had cast itself over the artificial realm and bathed the face of the novice Cultivators in its celestial light.

"So, I wouldn't worry about staying shackled to this earth, XJ-V," Feng finally said. "Because right to the end, I'll be right here with you. I can't let go of those memories that are precious to me. I can't look away as people I love are butchered. I guess that makes me kind of a failure, still, doesn't it?"

"Only if you let it," XJ-V said. "I know at least one person that does not believe you failed your test that day. In a way," the Cog added. "You proved that you were human."

"Is that really all so special?" Feng asked his friend, genuinely fishing for an answer.

"It is the only thing I wish to be."

Feng caught the distinct sadness in his friend's tone and turned to see his face. But the Cog was smiling, with an almost boyish charm.

"Do you know why I had you run this wild goose chase today?" XJ-V asked.

"Probably because you wanted to cheer me up," Feng bristled. "As silly a reason as that is. I wished to reprimand you when Arha let it slip you were doing something to catch my attention. I wanted to cuff you, and tell you that you should be focusing on your own training right now, not your morose friend. I did not suspect you would get half of Ramor-Tai involved in your little game."

"And?" XJ-V asked. "Have you not had some fun?"

"Let me see," Feng said chuckled. "I have chased away some book thieves, sparred with a Tiger, confronted my past with the Planeswalker and now have returned to the beginning of my journey. I have walked the path of a hero. Have I had fun?...I suppose."

"Then," XJ-V said. "It is time for you to be rewarded."

Feng laughed again as he watched his Brother unfurl the secret he held, producing a small object composed of shining steel that matched the tone of his own skin, welded together rather haphazardly into a shape that resembled…something…

As Feng-Lung looked closer – his heart gave a sudden lurch. There…yes. There was the two tiny ears, a curled tail, and even some wire-frame whiskers poking out from the thing's nose.

He was looking at a metal replica of a cat.

"It is a cat," XJ-V said.

Feng Lung merely blinked in response.

Of all the oddities he'd seen today, this was most definitely the strangest.

"I recall that you are quite fond of them," the Cog explained, mistaking Feng's look of utter bewilderment as a sign of anger. "I understand that Ramor-Tai does not allow non-human mammals within its walls unless they are spiritual in nature. I remember you telling me of how you longed to chase them back in your home town. I am afraid this cat cannot be chased, but perhaps it will give you a reminder of them. Like you say, Feng, memory is important."

Feng looked from the object to the Cog, seeing the earnestness in his metal face, and seeing the care and attention that had been poured into this gift. That's when the significance of where he had traveled this morning finally hit him.

"I am no expert in metalworking," the Cog explained. "I was forced to use my own supplies which took some time to shave and then repair. I had Gira show me some tomes on felines to get the bearing of their shape, and Brother Fai-Deng provided electrical assistance to graft the pieces together into something which, I hope, resembles the real thing."

Feng hid laughter behind the beaming smile that had begun to smear itself across his face. The cat – it was a nice touch, he admitted – but moreso was he humbled by what this man, composed of metal and lights and logic beyond the ken of any of them, had just demonstrated in the creation of this tiny thing for another.

Feng accepted the steel-cat with a gracious bow, clapping his friend's shoulder with the first genuine smile he'd worn in weeks.

"XJ-V," he said. "I believe you are more human than you think."

###

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[IronLung]

Within the Dao, time is as inconsequential as air.

XJ-V and Feng-Lung spent the remainder of their day in quiet contemplation, Feng reflexively petting his new robot-kitten as they dived in and out of the Dao, both wandering beside the other, trying to grasp at visions that swam before their eyes.

Yet, though their journeys were tranquil, the visions were elusive.

There were forms in the dark that crossed a barrier to tear at the light where they stood. There were shapes that seemed to extinguish the sun high above the wastes, and there was fire spreading on the horizon. Strangely, such sights did not conjure fear in either Disciple. For some reason they seemed strangely…serene.

Like the snuffing out of the last candle before one embarked on a long, deep sleep.

Neither Disciple knew how long they had spent in their dual-Cultivation, but both knew for certain that the hours must have turned to days outside by now. That was simply the effect Ai-Lee's Grove had on the Cultivator. It was why the old Prophet – first among the Eternal Dragons – had constructed the Grove as he had ascended to the Dao in the first place: as a reminder of what peace truly meant, and how it felt.

XJ-V and Feng only woke from such Dao-Walks when they saw a particularly arresting shared image – that of filth spewing forth from the cracks in the earth in a geyser that swallowed the sun. An oozing mass that slowly, with deliberation, assumed the form of a man. A man that began to walk towards both Disciples, leading the shimmering wraiths of darkness behind him.

The eyes of the black shape opened, and then Arha roused both men awake.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Arha is tired. Arha needs pats! Arha is sick of watching you too!"

Anima Cores: 144

Better…but not by much. There was too much power behind those eyes…

XJ-V shook his head, looking down at the little Huli nuzzling into his side.

"How quaint," he said. "After all this time spent with only your sisters, you finally have company in this Grove. And you aren't satisfied?"

"If Arha wanted statues," she pouted. "She could walk outside and stare at the stupid stone tigers and dragons. Actually, why are there no statues of Huli in your human lands? Arha thinks this is very unfair."

As the little fox roused her sleeping sisters in the willow behind them, XJ-V turned to see the concerned face of his Brother beside him.

"Did you feel that?" Feng asked. "That man…when he looked at me."

XJ-V nodded grimly. Those eyes bore a striking resemblance to eyes he had seen before.

The High Eagle's.

"When he looked at me," Feng continued. "It was as though an invisible hand were clenched round my throat, stopping all Qi from entering my body. It was like he pushed me from the Dao, and closed the door behind him."

"There is only one army capable of such evil," XJ-V said. "That of the Divine Order."

Feng balked, rubbing his neck, checking it for marks. "You have met their kind, haven't you, Brother?"

XJ-V nodded gravely. "Though the memory of the encounter still eludes me. I had hoped that by growing as a Cultivator I could eventually look back into my past with certainty. To see the entire beginnings of my life, and my Creator…" he trailed off, then shook his head of the thought. "But it does not matter. The future is what is important now."

Feng-Lung scoffed beside him. "Of course it matters. XJ-V, after understanding my past and how it has shaped me, you would really say that the circumstances of your creation mean nothing to you?"

XJ-V smiled back at his Brother. But it was a dry, distant gesture. The waters of the Grove were what his eyes focused on.

"Perhaps I do not truly wish to look back," he admitted. "Because it confirms what I think. And what, I believe, Master Longhua already knows."

"Which is what?" asked Feng.

XJ-V hunched his shoulders, staring out at the lake and remembering how it floated with the limbs of his dead brethren when first he set foot in this sacred place.

"Why the Order is burning the world to ashes," he finally said – in a voice that was less than a hushed whisper. "And what they are looking for."

Before Feng-Lung could say anything more, the hurried steps of a Disciple running through the forest behind roused them both.

"Ouch!" he yelped. "Come on, let me through! I swear this is why I never come here anymore!"

XJ-V and Feng-Lung turned to see Mah-Jung wiping his sleeve and hem of his robe free from Huli and other small animal spirits.

"Mah-Jung?" Feng asked, a chuckle permeating his tone. "What brings our beleaguered brother here?"

But Mah-Jung's face, when his eyes finally met those of the Disciples, was far from jovial.

"There has been an attack, Brothers," he said. "The flames of war engulf the borders of the ten villages of Mt Ramor. That which is closest to the border with Taila – the village of Tenak - is filled with smoke. The Masters are being petitioned, but it does not seem like there will be a mustering."

XJ-V rose slowly, carefully, as he heard the ripples in the Qi-tinged water behind him begin to spread again.

"It is the Order," he said. "They have crossed the Badlands."

Mah-Jung shook his exasperated head. "We do not know. It is possible it could be a simple bandit raid. The childish Warlords who control Taila are under much pressure, I hear. It is unlikely they can police their borders. But I thought it necessary to bring this to your attention. You two were the closest to him round here, it seems."

Feng gave a sudden start. "Closest to whom?"

"To the Planeswalker," Mah-Jung explained. "He had gone to Tenak on an expedition of some kind. It seems that now…he shall be forced to fight."

Feng gasped as the news hit him, but XJ-V did not react right away. He turned back to the waves of Qi that were, by this point, spreading like wildfire across the surface of Ai-Lee's pond.

And within their depths, he saw that man again – the figure born of the ooze of the earth, clad in shadow, bearing night…

"…and he shall fall," he whispered, drawing a look of bewildered concern from Feng. "He shall fall…if he fights alone."

Ori'un…

The Cog had already begun running even as the thought entered his mind. He had no plan of action. He had not even thought through his intentions. Yet, still, he ran.

"XJ-V!"

He ignored the calls of his Brothers as he sprinted through the trees and crashed through the exit portal, stumbling and falling on the cragged stonework of the Dragonpyre hearth.

And before him stood Master Longhua, resplendent in his crimson dragon robe adorned with the long-tailed guardian of their Sect, its spiral form glowing in the darkness of the Hall.

He was sipping tea beside the portal to the Grove, as though he was waiting for something to emerge.

"Disciple XJ-V," he said. "It is a good night for a walk, is it not?"

The Cog rose to one knee and bowed before his Master.

"Master Longhua," he said. "I must go."

He rose steadily, meeting Longhua's wrinkled face as the old man placed his cup down beside him and fixed him with his old, determined eyes.

"To do what?"

"To fight," the Cog replied without hesitation. "I know why they have come."

"You know no such thing," his Master told him sternly, dismissing his claims with a swift flick of his ancient, braided beard. "Ori'un made his choice. He knew the risks in leaving the monastery at this time. Now, he must accept the consequences."

"Is that what you told Feng-Lung, too?" XJ-V asked as his two Brothers emerged from the portal behind him, both stunned into silence by the defiance they saw in the Cog's flaring eyes.

"Careful, Disciple," Master Longhua replied, ignoring the new arrivals. "You walk a fine line addressing me in such a way in this Hall."

"We are walking a fine line every day we sit here and do nothing while our own people die," XJ-V replied, turning away and making for the door. "I am done sitting. I have waited long enough. Now, I am choosing to take action."

"If you walk out those gates," Longhua told the Cog's departing form. "You will not return."

XJ-V stopped at the door. His hand wavered, and every piece of wiring in his matrix told him to look back at the faces of his Brothers and his Master. Every part of his soul yearned to return to the feet of Longhua and beg forgiveness under the watchful eyes of the Eternal Dragon.

But these were not the things he did. Instead, he threw open the door to the thundering cacophony of lightning and rain outside, dimly making out the coiling tower of smoke in the far distance.

He only said one more thing before he sprinted towards it:

"I am sorry, Master."

###

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[IronLung]

Buffeted by torrential rain and blinded by flashes of lightning, XJ-V ran.

He didn't stop even as Fai-Deng roared at him with a tone just as furious as the thundering heavens above.

"Cog!" he yelled in the storm. "Do not do anything stupid! Only I have the right to kill you!"

XJ-V acknowledged his shout only with a curt nod before barreling through the gates, ignoring the flabbergasted guards standing always to attention.

Outside the monastery, the pillar of smoke coming from Tanak could clearly be seen. Every village for miles around could probably see it. Every village that sat in the shade of Mt Ramor would know that the Cultivators of the mountain saw it, too. They saw it, and did nothing.

The Cog couldn't stand for it.

As he ran against the increasingly brutal lashes sent by the storm he was noticed by a few villagers who had barricaded themselves in their homes. Those of the hamlets of Marsul and Narsis prospected him with fearful eyes before realizing who he was – the stone-man of legend who had come to stand before the Sects of the mountain and succeeded in becoming one of the chosen.

The few young boys and girls who dared to offer him cheers of support were quickly silenced by their parents, and in any case XJ-V paid no attention to anyone who attempted to hail him or offer him what meagre support they could. As far as the Cog was concerned, he was alone.

When finally he came to the outskirts of Tanak he beheld the burning buildings of the hamlet from afar, dashing behind a rocky overpass that gave him a good vantage point from which to observe the goings on. Between the smoke, men clad in jagged armor trudged, holding the villagers by their hair or necks. By the double-headed eagle emblem they wore upon their pauldrons and chest plates, XJ-V knew they belonged to the Divine Order. His worst suspicions were confirmed when he traced the curvature of their armored torsos and saw the gleaming blades of the double-edged Jian that lay in the scabbards at their waists. These were no basic soldiers. These were Xu'Jan – the Paladins of Light. The Order's trained marauders, recruiters, and executioners.

They dragged the people from their burning homes to the town's center and threw them in a great, disjointed heap – their faces strewn with blood and skin scarred by soot. Few deigned to fight back. XJ-V saw the eviscerated remains of those that had littering the streets – their limbs torn and cauterized by the killing light that flowed in the veins of the devilish paladins.

But at the very foot of the pile of living dead, a particularly bulky prisoner sat.

Ori'un! XJ-V almost exclaimed.

He was sitting as he usually would on the rooftops or communes of Ramor-Tai, hunched, shoulders forward, neck trained on the horizon beyond reality. They had done a number on him – that much was clear from the new scars and bruises that lined his face – but he still looked the very picture of defiance.

He sat as calm as stone and yet drained of energy, and XJ-V realized then what must have happened: they've taken his Qi from him. Even a single slash from the light-imbued blades of the Xu'Jan could kill the power of a Cultivator. That, the Cog knew for certain.

As he watched the proceedings unfold, he saw the hovels and straw huts of Tanak crumble to dust and ashes, the town becoming nothing more than a smoking ruin before its crying residents. Children clung to their mothers' ragged clothes and fathers tried to comfort their grieving families. Some did not cry out. They just stared at the corpses that lined the streets, their eyes dead and dull, and said nothing at all.

And through the chaos, Ori'un sat amongst them.

What is he doing? The Cog thought. Does he not mean to escape?

A few of the paladins pointed out young boys amidst the crowd, and the children were swiftly, and forcefully, extracted from the arms of their parents. They were dragged off to the Order's carriages that waited at the end of the village, bound for their strongholds.

XJ-V knew the sight he was witnessing as it unfolded before his fiery eyes. This was the Order's method of 'recruitment'. They stole the children from the settlements they raided and indoctrinated them with the High Eagle's beastly rhetoric – rhetoric that perverted the teachings of one of Qing's own Prophets, Ming'Bao. Rhetoric that told these children that their parents were weak, and deserved to be conquered. In time, those boys would grow up to become just as brutal as the Order's enforcers, and then they would look into the mad eyes of screaming parents as they plucked their babies from their breasts.

The Cog was becoming more aggravated by the second. Why Ori'un did nothing as he witnessed this chaos unfold, he could not understand. He made to rise and descend at once, pondering which targets he could take down first. There were at least a dozen of the Xu'Jan guarding their 'prizes' from the village that he could see, and probably a dozen more searching the burning buildings for any survivors they could drag from the ashen remains of their homes. XJ-V rose, flexed his fingers, and made ready for combat.

But as he moved, he saw something that told him to check his haste.

Something – someone – was beginning to address the waiting crowd.

"I'll make this simple," the voice was saying – a dry voice tinged with the harsh, guttural tone native to the Badlands beyond the mountain. "Give us safe passage to the monastery, or watch these infidels die."

Ori'un's head rose to address the speaker – a man covered by a plume of smoke to the North.

"Imagine," he chuckled hoarsely. "Being lured and cut down by the promise of booze. A fitting end for a Planeswalker, don't you think?"

The circle of Xu'Jan closed in, their hands itching to unsheathe their blades and finish the job they started. But the voice cut through the tension in the air like a knife being drawn across a chalkboard.

"You're a funny man," it said. "I think I'll cut your tongue out, first."

The speaker moved like a wolf through the smoke and the dust of the burning village, embers from his Paladins fires stroking his grim, bone-bleached skull. He wore nothing but a set of leather straps across his emaciated torso, his waist covered with a think half-robe that obscured his feet, giving him the appearance of a man gliding across the ash of the village. His right hand rested on the long Jian blade glimmered at his hip, yet his arms looked much too frail to even hold the vicious weapon upright nevermind swing it at a foe.

To look upon him was to look upon the ghostly visage of a pale specter that looked close to death, and yet when XJ-V looked at his snarling face, he saw where the true power of this warrior lay. He saw lips tinged with soot and sunken eyes – more akin the pair of black voids held by an Aoyin than those belonging to a human. His pale face was inked with the grim, black markings of the two-headed eagle standing atop a Cog's skull which lay just above the ghostly demon's heart.

To look upon him was not to observe the passing of an envoy of light. It was to look upon the dispassionate face of death itself.

And without a single twitch, with no emotion at all, the pale horseman drew his sword and aimed it at the crowd of wailing villagers.

"Bring me the infants," he said. "Let's test the resolve of a man who walks the wastes."

Ori'un smiled right in death's face as XJ-V began to move.

"If you think you'll force me to help you, you're mistaken. I've seen worse than you can do, old boy."

The pale reaper turned as he was presented with a mother's screaming babe, torn from her hands while her throat was slit before it.

Through it all, Ori'un watched. The villagers wailed like banshees for him to intervene. They practically threw themselves at his inert body. They kicked and struck him with their thin, frail fists. But he did nothing.

Through the melee, the pale executioner never took his eyes off him.

"Look how they beg you, child of the Dao," he sneered. "Look how the weak cry out for a savior. Do you now see what the path tread by you and all your people shall lead to? It is inevitable."

"So is death," Ori'un said in all but a whisper. "I learned not to fear it a long time ago."

"Then watch them die, Planeswalker," the head of the Xu'Jan replied. "And know that you have no one to blame but yourself."

"UGH!"

A bolt of fire cascaded through the air and hit a young Xu'Jan in the back of his head, sending him flying face-first into the burning wreckage of a house. The reaper turned, leveled his blade, and strained his eyes to focus on the creature that stood at the edge of the village, skeletal fingers smoking, body twisted in a perfect Siliubu stance.

"That's the thing about the path we've chosen," Ori'un said quietly. "It takes the strangest turns."

As the pale demon fixed his dead eyes upon him, XJ-V stared right back.

###

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[IronLung]

"A Cog…"

The word turned to ash in the pale warrior's mouth as his Xu'Jan readied their blades, each of them chanting the words of power that their Lord of Light had bequeathed unto them.

"You see?" Ori'un said playfully. "Even the stones of this earth themselves reject your Lord, bone-head."

The commander of the Xu'Jan stood calmly, head held high to watch the machine as it crept forward to face him.

Not a single sound stirred in the village. XJ-V had eyes only for the pale-demon that watched him, his hand resting on the hilt of his thin blade. Even the blazing embers of the fires seemed to fade away as the Cog of the Dragon and the human of the Eagle met each others' stalwart gazes across the blighted stones that remained of Tenak village.

The villagers shriveled in their captivity, watching as the Xu'Jan all turned to ready themselves for battle.

And then, with a predatory licking of his lips, their commander gave them the word.

"Slay it."

The Xu'Jan charged with deadly intent, blades held high, swinging through the air in arcs of dazzling light that would have cut through the Dao itself. XJ-V stayed calm, focused, and present. He breathed, felt the Qi running through the Chakras of his soul, and let them come.

The first warrior thrust for his chest and he sidestepped the blow, spinning to deliver a Flaming Dervish that snapped the warrior's neck and sent him spinning off into the burning debris of a building. The next Paladin he caught with a quick, steady hand, employing the Tiger's Flurry Earth technique he had gleaned from Fai-Deng after weeks of being pummeled with his lightning-quick punches. He twisted the Paladin's wrist effortlessly and sent him cascading down the streets like a bowling ball right into his sprinting friends.

As the melee commenced, the villagers began murmuring amongst themselves, their timid whimpers beginning to turn into cautious optimism.

But one prisoner among them certainly wasn't keeping his mouth shut.

"HAR!" Ori'un cheered from the sidelines. "GO ON, BROTHER COG! Let them feel the bite of a metal dragon!"

XJ-V obliged, whirring to narrowly avoid another slash from a Xu'Jan soldier. He swept the boy's feet with another Dervish that kicked him into the air. With a flourish of dazzling flame, the Cog followed up with a roundhouse kick that cracked the boy's ribs as he fell to the ground, his sword skidding away from his twitching hands.

He readied himself for more. Now, he had gone farther than he ever thought he would. He had gone where his Dao-self had shown him he could go.

But, he realized as two more Paladins came swinging for his neck. It was a choice that I made.

His Dragon Tooth punches sent both soldiers skidding back, though they managed to slice through his firebolts with quick strikes from their light-imbued swords – light that XJ-V knew could sever his connection to the Dao right then and there. If they had done so to Ori'un, he'd have no chance.

So he ducked and rolled between them, administering a series of quick punches to their guts as he avoided their attacks. The boys spun, winded, and sent the edges of their blades down to slice clean through his head. In the next second, however, what they saw was nothing more than a blur of energy – the Cog's hands had come up to grab the hilts of their weapons and knock them out of each boy's hand before they could even blink. Once they did, they both coughed up a torrent of blood as they felt their chests implode with the impact of the metal man's fists again.

XJ-V stood over his fallen opponents, watching them writhe in pain and seeing the once energized tips of their blades stutter and die as lightning cracked overhead, bathing the fiery village in rain. Still more of the soldiers charged him – some jumping out from the smoke-strewn depths of the village huts and aiming for his vitals. But he was ready. He had been ready ever since that night in Hensha, and ever since he had re-lived the pain these indoctrinated warriors had inflicted on him in Ai-Lee's Grove. His vision then had shown him what he now saw to be true – these boys had been taught to fear him. Him – and all his kind. Killing them would do nothing but reinforce those fears. In the dream-vision he had struck without mercy. Here, amidst the hailstorms the heaven sent against him, he was focused on disarming those who came at him with his Dragontail Swipe.

Because only one had to die here, tonight.

One by one, his opponents fell before him, and he began inching towards their ringleader.

Through it all, the pale demon simply stood and watched.

He makes no move to save his men, XJ-V thought as another Xu'Jan warrior tasted the plated steel of his ankle. He simply watches like a vulture. Maybe he thinks they will tire me out? Perhaps he wants his pawns to wear me down.

If that was the case, he was gravely mistaken in his strategy.

XJ-V's hands moved in a blur of motion, knuckles coated with the blood and ichor of his felled foes, meting their cries of hatred and silencing them within mere seconds, until he finally came to the last line of five Xu'Jan who waited in defense of their Master.

XJ-V threw one of their comrades at them – his face a garbled mass of broken bones and bruised cheeks. They watched him fall before them, ignoring the cries of the villagers behind them.

"Now, that's a Cultivator!" Ori'un roared from the ground, seemingly enjoying the whole bloody show. "How do you like it, men of the Order? Where is your mighty eagle's wings, now?"

You are talking big for someone currently subdued, XJ-V couldn't help but think.

He held his ground before the last line of Paladins, each one's blade straight and still in their grip. Their faces were streaked with perspiration. Their hands - shakey with the emotion they thought they had suppressed long ago.

But these were not men of the Dao, XJ-V remembered as he lowered his Prancing Crane stance and met each of their eyes individually. These were just misguided boys.

So, amidst the wreckage of the windswept village littered with their groaning, wounded comrades, XJ-V shouted to the last of the Order's men.

"You are not dull stones, are you?" he asked them. "You are men who have never had a choice in your lives. You have watched villages burn just like this one. You have watched your villages burn in the name of something you did not understand. Now, I am giving you the choice. Remain and fall with your brothers, or leave and live. Live your lives free of the Order. Let your Master answer for you."

The Cog didn't know what he was expecting. To see the boys falter? To watch them throw down their weapons and relinquish their blades, then and there? To break down in tears and cry out for forgiveness?

Whatever he wished to see, reality, as usual, had something else in store.

This time, it was the image of the Xu'Jan that remained raising their vicious swords as one, and twisting them as the barrage of rain above danced along their blades.

XJ-V's realization that the men were about to charge was accompanied by the mirthless chuckle that came from their pale leader's black throat.

"Compassion," he said. "It is a weakness displayed by many humans in a world wreathed in darkness. It seems even a man of steel and stone like you has learned nothing but how to emulate the weaknesses of your Masters. Still, even with the death of that old bastard Qing, you are nothing more than a slave. Yet you have the gall to speak to us of freedom?"

XJ-V narrowed his eyes at the ghostly apparition standing behind the wall of blades that was his men. The Cog, for the first time in a while, felt a hatred grab his heart that he could not even say truly belonged to him.

His eyes found Ori'un sitting beside the group, the captive villagers huddled together behind his great back. Now, he was silent. Now, he was watching.

And then he gave the Cog a soundless nod.

"These men made their choice a long time ago," the pale-faced leader of the wolfpack growled.

"They made the only choice worth making in this dull, dead world. They chose to follow the light of the true Lord of humankind. They chose to believe in the words of His greatest prophet – his High Eagle soaring above the burning lands of his enemies. And now, they shall choose to do what must be done."

The warriors of the Order hunched their shoulders, their final battle cry punctuated by a strike of lightning above that showed XJ-V all their youthful faces.

The Cog bowed his head for only a second before his hands worked of their own accord.

"So shall I," he said.

###
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[IronLung]

The Xu'Jan charged XJ-V as a unit, swords swinging, screams echoing through the thunderous cacophony of the skies above. Rain pelted off the Cog's calm limbs and hands as he stepped forward and brought his right leg up in a fiery kick that then led into another Flaming Dervish. He felt the boys' faces crumble at his swift strikes, each blow delivering a stunning effect on their nerves and causing them to collapse – their once confident faces kissed the wet mud of the village they had just destroyed.

XJ-V did not relent. He brought the boys down just as he said they would, every strike forcing him to look into the burning hatred that the warriors harbored for him, every parry of their blades a grim reminder that he was fighting little more than slaves to the Orders' lies.

When the last Xu'Jan felt the flaming strike of his palms, XJ-V assumed his Siulubu and stared down the commander again, noting that in the wake of his melee, the world seemed more silent than ever.

The eyes of everyone – including that of the Pale demon himself, were trained on the Cog's burning chest. They were spellbound by the glowing fire that raged within his heart, blazing in brilliant flames of energy as he stood there above the bodies of his nullified foes.

"You…" the Pale leader said – his voice an ashen whisper on the crashing winds sent by the heavens. "It is you, isn't it?"

And XJ-V only now realized his mistake. The leader had watched, and waited, not out of pure cowardice, but because he wished to confirm a suspicion that his mind could not process without evidence.

The burning, living flame radiating from the Cog's chestplate was all the evidence his eyes needed.

"I've heard rumors about you," he said, licking his dry, black lips. "You are the one who fled as Hensha burned. The one that bears the Gift…"

It was as he feared – this man was no mere marauder come to pillage and plunder like a bandit. He was here on a very specific mission…and his objective had just taken the bait.

XJ-V cursed himself for his ignorance and his desperate submission to his desires. But, even knowing he had just been led into a dark spider's web, he couldn't see himself doing anything different. It was as Ori'un said – the Dao showed us choices, but sometimes one merely picked divergent paths that forked and turned in the dark, only to eventually lead to the same outcome.

"Oh, shove it buddy," Ori'un spat at the stalking demon from the crowd of villagers. "Can't you see you're beaten? Give up this little villain monologue you're starting and turn tail now. You aren't gonna beat this one."

The pale specter took a series of steps forward, the trimming of his robe gliding across the burned ground as though he had no feet at all.

"How the Lord favors me," he murmured, almost to himself. "After the High Eagle himself failed to extract you, now Great Yuwa has delivered you to me as a sign of his divine providence."

XJ-V grit his metal teeth. He could feel the energy swirling in this man. Not Qi – the power running through his ashen veins was something entirely different.

"Your God is dead," XJ-V told the pale specter. "I do not count the deceased among my enemies."

"All of this world is your enemy, machine. Have you not realized this by now?"

"You lie," XJ-V said, readying two Dragon Tooth strikes as the bone-bleached vulture glided towards him. "The Cultivators still stand strong, despite your God's wish to eradicate them. And they are more accepting than He ever was."

A low, gravel-like sound stuttered from the leader's black mouth. It took the Cog a second to realize that the warrior of the Eagle was laughing at him.

"You think those slaves to the Dao are human?" he said. "I suppose that makes sense. One slave often follows another. The blind lead the blind into captivity and death. Your destruction is mutually assured, now."

"Is that why you attack these villagers instead of the monastery?" XJ-V countered. "You know you would stand no chance against the true guardians of humankind."

"Guardians?" the specter spat. "Those infidels live off the scraps the true Gods left in heaven. Did they not tell you that, machine-man? The Dao is nothing more than the ashes of the dead Gods you so cheerfully blaspheme before. Normally, I would correct your ignorance and leave you here to lament your mistakes. But I am not one to look a gift from my Lord in its eyes and leave it be."

The warrior drew the blade at his side with such speed that XJ-V couldn't even follow his arms as they tore the impossibly long Jian blade from its hip-scabbard. With a single, emaciated arm of nothing but thin muscle clinging to bone, the pale warrior leveled his weapon at the Cog.

"Know me," he said. "Know the name of your death-bringer. I am Sheloth. I am the Eagle's righteous talon clawing at this barren earth. I am the bringer of Yuwa's justice to the unclean, and the undeserving."

The Cog watched as the otherworldly light of the Order's paladins flared into brilliant, evil life across the edge of Sheloth's sword, and he felt the light within his own chest react and pulse in recognition.

"See how my Lord recognizes one of his own?" Sheloth grinned. "Soon, the thief who dared to steal from a God shall bow before the might of His light."

"Pfft!" Ori'un hissed behind both men. "Kick his ass, XJ-V!"

While the Cog looked into the rainswept face of the pale demon who stood before him, his frail body utterly incongruous with the ungodly size of his shining blade, he spared a moment to wonder why Ori'un was still doing nothing but sitting around and enjoying this show.

Planeswalker…The Cog thought with a sudden horrific surge of probability. Are you…watching me? Are you…testing me right now?

Sheloth's blade came down, its tip aimed directly at XJ-V's amber-clad heart.

A strike of lightning signaled the release of more rain. Both warriors – human and Cog - wore a blanket of hail upon their shoulders.

"Do not disappoint me," the demon whispered. "Let us see what a Cog Cultivator can do."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth's blade came slashing down with the next lightning bolt that struck at the earth - and his strike was no less quick or deadly than those celestial spears that pierced the ashen battlefield around them.

XJ-V moved swiftly to counter his blows, bringing up his hands in the circular motion of the Dragontail swipe and managing to block two vertical cuts that would have sheared his head clean from his shoulders. The final horizontal slash he managed to catch between his wavering fingers, and only then did he realize that he was on his knees before the ghostly warrior.

"Quick," Sheloth said in his ashen whisper. "But limited. You are a thing of steel. Form and function. There is no spirit to your fighting style."

XJ-V threw his blade off him and bent into a Flaming Dervish aimed directly at his feet to throw him off balance – a technique he had gleaned from Feng-Lung's distinctive style. He saw his arc of brilliant flame travel towards his enemy, focused his limbs into charging forward to make a final decisive blow and then found that, when the flames dissipated, his opponent was gone.

A surge of danger from above. The sounds of a wet blade falling through the air.

He rolled just in time to avoid the deadly plunging attack the Xu'jan commander sent towards him, watching the warrior embed his blade in the burning earth and immediately withdraw, eyes fixed like a hawk's on XJ-V's every movement.

He came at the Cog again – this time with a triad of quick strikes aimed at the machine-man's lower torso. Honing his time spent with Fai-Deng, remembering the fury of that young warrior's every strike, XJ-V countered with a mixture of Dragontail swipes with his left hand and Dragon Tooth punches with his right – creating and exploiting openings in his opponent's devastating attack pattern.

But every time he managed to push away the blade of the pale specter, it somehow twisted and met his counter. Impossible speed met pure machine resilience, and every clash of their steel weapons echoed through the dying village as fiery day turned to storm-wracked night.

"They truly have taught you their ways," Sheloth said in his dark, guttural whisper as his blade met the unyielding steel of XJ-V's hands. "For only a Cultivator clinging to the ashen path of Qing would fight like this."

XJ-V sensed what his opponent was doing. He was trying to break his resolve. He was trying to push him to commit himself to an attack that would lower his defenses – leaving him open for a strike that, the Cog would sure, would end this whole melee then and there. This Xu'Jan was no showman. Every attack he made was a strike meant to kill. To slay nothing more than what he considered a beast.

As XJ-V kept up his deflections he felt himself being pushed back. He felt the light within his chest surge and flare, commanding him to end this fight the way that he knew he could.

And the dark eyes of his opponent seemed to know it, too.

"You can hear it, can't you?" he said as he thrust for the Cog's neck, splitting apart the plating on his left side and coming away with a series of electrified wiring stuck to his sword like a section of metallic intestine. "You can hear the call of the thing inside you. The thing you stole from us."

XJ-V staggered back against the ashen wall of a ruined house, found his feeting again, and formed into a Gong Bu stance, lead foot forward, ready to lunge.

In the face of his resilience, the dark specter gave another hoarse chuckle.

"A man of few words," he said. "I could almost respect that if it was a choice made by you as opposed to the compulsions built within all your disgusting kind."

The swordsman wiped the sparking arterial coils he'd cut from XJ-V's neck off his blade like he was tending to a wound in his weapon. Pure disgust smeared itself across his face.

"Impure, corrupted machine," he spat into the smoking, rain beaten ground. "You know you cannot win against us."

XJ-V stood still as a rock. Patient as a stone.

"Against all of you, perhaps not," he said. "But against you? I have already seen my victory. If you deny your fate, man of Yuwa, prove me wrong."

The ghostly form of his opponent obliged.

He flew at the Cog and sent a flurry of lightning-fast vertical slashes aimed at his wrists and ankles. He'd seen the weakness of the Cog would be in his footing, and XJ-V corrected his stance even as every strike continued to push him back. He repulsed his foe and then was forced into a desperate duck as the blade of the ghost came sailing for his head again, instead slicing right through the blackened wall of the house behind him.

The whole skeletal structure came crumbling down around him, and the Cog then watched as his blade cut right through the debris with as much effort expended as when carving a cake.

The wounded Xu'Jan tried to rise to help their master, rain and mud smeared across their faces. But their Master, stalking through the forest of his bleeding men, bade them remain.

"You have done what you must, warriors of Yuwa," he told them. "You have brought us something not even the High Eagle was able to find. This day shall be remembered in the annals of our faith as the day this earth was finally saved."

"Saved!" Ori'un shouted. "You think the world wants your High Eagle? You think bringing your dead God back will save these people?"

"See how the ignorant flap their gums and yet say nothing," Sheloth told his men as he stalked toward XJ-V's waiting form.

"You people aren't so good at listening, huh?" The nullified Planeswalker continued. "The world told your God to keep his 'justice' and shove it where the sun never shines before. You think we'll change our minds now because your High Eagle says so?"

"Silence, infidel," Sheloth replied. "Or those heretical words shall be the last you utter."

In the seconds between their verbal sparring, XJ-V had taken time to recover. He'd taken time to try and formulate a plan for how to break the relentless offense of this man – no…this zealot – that opposed him. He'd never faced a Xu'Jan with this kind of strength before.

And yet he knew the way he could win. He knew what he had to do.

But he wouldn't do it. Not again. Never ag-

XJ-V.

His eyes flared in the swirling storm that pelted the dry earth.

The voice was Ori'un's, resonating within his head.

Run.

The Cog heard the voice just like he had before – in the dream-vision of Feng-Lung's past. It was as though the Planeswalker was standing right behind him.

Let them take me, he said. You think I will just lay down and die? I will make them pay for every insult they've thrown at us today. But I am not about to let them take you. You know you have to live. You know they can't ever find you, don't you?

The Cog sighed in the rain as his opponent leveled his blade at him again, readying himself for a final flourish before he took the Cog's head. As XJ-V had suspected, the Planeswalker had also put two-and-two together. He knew why this man wanted him. Perhaps not the specifics, but he knew the danger the Cog posed.

And that's exactly why all logic told him to run, right now. To live. To survive.

Just like he had done when he fled Hensha, obeying the orders of his Creator that were built into his mind. Compulsions…just like the man of the Eagle had said.

Except this time, he did have a choice. This time he could prevent suffering. He could stop this madness and have the chance of avenging Hensha's ghosts in the process. Or, he could die trying.

Once, perhaps he would have listened to the part of him that was only Cog, and the choice would have been obvious.

But he wasn't just a Cog, now.

"I apologize, Ori'un", he whispered, knowing the Planeswalker could hear. "But I am not going anywhere."

He reassumed his stance, bringing his arms up and catching the glint of his own reflection in the puddles that surrounded the ruined battleground beneath him.

His upturned palms glowed with power, power that flowed from the fire beneath his heart. Power that he had kept locked away, until he knew what it was needed for.

It was a tool to banish the darkness that even now smiled to see the light radiating from his mechanical form.

"At last," Sheloth chuckled darkly. "The thief shows his stolen goods. Credit where credit is due, Cog. Your destiny is not even your own. That light within you belongs to us. And you know it, don't you? We are all connected."

His sword shone with the light of the paladins – the rain catching on its edge and sizzling away before it could even touch the blade.

"You are carrying a delivery that was meant for us," Sheloth said.

"If you want it," XJ-V replied. "Come and get it."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth moved with unnatural speed, his every strike and lunge kicking up the dust of the dead village around him. In the face of such an assault, XJ-V focused. He saw the trajectory the arc of light weaved by the pale shadow's sword made before he swung it. He saw it as he now saw more than he ever could in the Dao – glimpses of futures and Grey Potentials that were once beyond his ken were now in the realm of possibility for him. He saw his hand, charged with power, reach out and grab the blade, dulling its edge.

And his body complied.

He gripped the edge of the Xu'Jan leader's straight sword and clenched down, feeling the energy he had forbidden himself to ever employ again rush through his veins like wildfire, exploding every chakra that channeled the Qi and absorbing the energy of his foe.

But as the blade and hand of these two fighters met, the smile that crept across one of their faces never faltered.

"There it is," Sheloth murmured as the light of his sword clashed with the inborn power of the Cog. "The power to end all Cultivation. The power to sap the Dao itself. You would dare use my own Lord's Gift against me?"

"Using it this way is the only thing that gives it any meaning at all," XJ-V barked back, feeling the energized blade of his foe begin to fizzle and die away at its tip. He felt it in the same way he felt Fai-Deng's Qi erode as he made contact with his fist, and again as they fought in the Dragonpyre Hearth. He fought to channel the energy that was now sweeping into him – as though he were simply a metal conductor for the raw power of his opponent.

But such power was not what he had ever felt before. Such power, he now saw, did not draw from the Dao at all.

"You miscalculate, machine," Sheloth told him. "For I am no Cultivator."

It happened before XJ-V even realized it. A recoiling, a quick slash through the air, a feeling of weightlessness overcoming his body, and then a descent to the ground as he felt something die away. Something that was once whole was now divided.

The light within him pulsed and flared – as though it was searching for something it had just lost.

And that very thing landed right in front of XJ-V's unbelieving eyes.

His right hand, severed at the wrist, now lay on the ashen ground.

Sheloth's still charged blade cut through the air with glee as he watched his opponent fall.

"Witness the hubris of the machine," he told the downed Cog. "Your kind are nothing but form and function. Your weakness is your impure desire to live with us even though you cannot possibly understand us. Faith and flesh shall always triumph over cold steel."

"He understands us a hell of a lot better than you do!" Ori'un called.

But his voice barely carried towards the Cog's ears. XJ-V's sensors buzzed with life, his inner engine begging him to activate his repair protocols immediately.

Instead, he rose, the exposed wiring at the end of his arm sparking and twitching with exposure to air.

"Do you wish for death, machine?" Sheloth asked, holding aloft his Jian blade in the rain. "I shall grant you your respite. You cannot triumph against this world that is arrayed against you. Our world."

"I…do not have to triumph against this world," the Cog spat back. "I only have to kill you."

Sheloth flew at him again, rain cascading off his whirring blade as XJ-V brought his feet up in a Flaming Dervish to counter him. He let fly two Dragon Tooth punches as he spun back round to face his opponent and watched as the warrior simply sliced through both fireballs before thrusting for the Cog's heart.

XJ-V watched his left-hand fly of its own accord to block the strike, and then felt a stab of pain erupt through his body as the blade pierced his steel palm clean through and Sheloth pushed him down on his back, his arms forcing the blade further down, through XJ-V's hand, towards the Cog's flaring eyes.

"You…see…your death," the Xu'Jan grinned as lightning speared through the dark skies above. "Let the blade of our Lord finish you."

Reflected in the shining sword of his opponent, XJ-V could see his own waning determination. Already he could feel his strength fading, his systems begging him to go into shutdown. He was still a Cog, after all.

Yes…he was still a Cog, as this psychopathic warrior seemed to like reminding him.

And it was as a Cog that he would strike back.

Sheloth of the Divine Order expected another flourish of Qi-enhanced powers as his blade sank closer to the Cog's twitching innards. Instead, his eyes bulged as the machine brought his ruined right arm up to claw at the warrior's face, sending his naked electric current into Sheloth's right cheek, burning the pale skin and causing it to crisp and curl. A long scar of energy bulged into blistering life across the Xu'Jan's face before he finally relinquished his blade and stumbled back, clawing at the wreckage of his face, mouth agape in a silent scream.

It gave XJ-V just enough time to spin, using a Dervish to right himself, and fly at the warrior with all the might still raging within him.

He channeled the Qi raging through his arms – coiling around his steel and iron veins – and conjured a flame that balled into a fist, sending it flying towards his stumbling opponent.

Sheloth's eyes met his in the final moment of impact, and the Cog felt his strike meet the resistance of the Xu'Jan's blade again. He looked into the face of the shadow-blade, one eye now melted and oozing with puss, the other an empty void where there was no life at all.

But the power that flowed within the warrior had not abated. In fact, in the face of the pain the Cog had just unleashed on him, the pale-specter's sword arm seemed even stronger now. Strong enough to repulse XJ-V's fiery strike and beat him back with the butt of his sword, twirling with lightning speed to deliver a horizontal slash that cut clean through the surface of the Cog's armored chest.

XJ-V felt himself flying through the damp, dead air, finally crashing into the remains of a blackened house that crumbled down around him.

There he lay, his body beaten and battered on the edge of the village, as Sheloth stalked towards him and plucked him from the rubble by the neck, his gnarled fingers gripping the Cog with such intensity that XJ-V was sure he was about to tear his head clean off.

"You sorry, pitiful creature," he choked in a voice that was now tinged with hoarseness, the entire left side of his scarred and charred face twitching as he spoke. "You do not know what it is to live as we do in this world. It is only right a human should take you out of it."

XJ-V twitched his arm, desperately trying to push it towards the wrinkled throat of his opponent. In the next instance he felt weightless, flying again past the village and landing on the hard stone ground outside its boundary.

"Pain is power," Sheloth said as he glided towards his twitching body. "To suffer is to be brought closer to the light of Lord Yuwa. Our existence is decay. It is stagnation. It is to fall, and fall, and fall again, and yet rise each day in the face of the inevitable."

XJ-V tried to rise, his servos groaning in the attempt, feeling how intensely vulnerable he now was with his innards totally exposed. His hand flew to grab at the engine at his heart, and he received a swift strike across his face. A strike that sent one of his eyes flying off into the night sky.

"True strength lies not in your pointless little meditations," Sheloth continued, walking around his fallen prey like a vulture circling a fading life. "Nor is it found in the dead ashes that you call the Dao. True strength in adherence to truth. It is found in living for the only God who knows what it is to be human. We are children of Yuwa, Cog. We are the chosen inheritors of His earth. And your kind are a cancer that writhes at the heart of his glorious Empire."

XJ-V blinked through his pain receptors that told him shutdown was imminent. And he knew then that the human was right. Even with all the training from Master Longhua, he was still a Cog. He was still just a machine.

"Prepare for your delivery to the dark," his executioner said. "For that is all that awaits you. You, and all your ilk made in the image of man. Cheap replicas good for nothing but scrap."

XJ-V watched the sword of the Xu'Jan master rise. The sound of the thundering heavens rose with it.

"Prepare yourself," Sheloth said. "For death."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth's blade came down with another stroke of lightning rippling across its energized surface.

Upon its pristine edge, XJ-V saw death approach, his every sensor begging him to give in and accept fate. The Eagle had come for him, as he knew it would.

He did not close his eyes. If he had, he would have missed the miracle that flew through the fog and charged air above them.

In the next moment, the blade of the Xu'Jan commander was repelled. He rolled away into the ashen ground and blinked through his confusion as his eyes resolved the pillar of fire that had appeared before the Cog in the moment of his defeat.

Within the pillar, the shadow of a young man fluctuated – a black shape that slowly appeared through the carmine threads that flickered in the dead night outside Tekal's perimeter.

It was a shadow that XJ-V recognized.

"Feng-Lung?"

The image of his friend's smiling face appeared through the thick coating of his unshakable defense. His robes – bearing the flowing symbol of the spiral Eternal Dragon – fluttered and then set peacefully over his arms, outstretched and readied in the Gong'Bu stance.

"I…I did not know Cog's were capable of hallucination…" XJ-V murmured.

"What you see is no illusion, XJ-V," his friend replied, watching the bewildered specter swipe his sword through the air as he prospected his new prey. "I should know - you've helped me dispel enough of my own."

The Cog steadily rose, feeling the fire within him still churning to give him life when his internal systems wanted nothing more than to sputter and die.

"You – you have disobeyed Master Longhua?"

"If the Master wishes to punish me, he can do so," Feng-Lung replied. "If my destiny as a Cultivator forces me to stand idly by and watch my friend die, then I will accept banishment."

XJ-V smiled then, even as his pain receptors buzzed with fire. Through his blurring vision he placed his good hand on Feng's shoulder and let out a dry laugh in the face of the boy's earnestness.

"You know," Feng murmured. "This is still a life-or-death situation. You should probably take it more seriously."

"Forgive me, Feng-Lung," the recovering Cog replied as he groaned to rise and stand beside his friend. "It is just that someone else said something quite similar to me, not so long ago."

"A story I'm sure I'd love to hear," Feng replied. "If we live through this night, I will be your captive audience."

Both Disciples could see the confusion on the Xu'Jan's face slowly melt into increasingly feral frustration. His pale nostrils flared as he leveled the tip of his still shining blade at the new arrival.

"This sight is an offense to the faithful of Lord Yuwa," he said, teeth grinding against his sallow lips. "That a human would stand before a member of his own kind and defend a thing of base steel – a fell construct that mocks him with its very existence."

Feng's fists clenched as he spat his rebuke at the demon before them.

"He is far closer to me in body and soul than you are, fiend," he said. "You forsook your humanity when you decided to butcher your own kind!"

The demon gave a hoarse laugh that was utterly devoid of joy.

"A young fool, looking to become a hero," he said, circling Feng, watching him as a hawk watches a new morsel that had wondered willingly into its hunting grounds. "It is a sad thing that the lies of Qing's children have corrupted such an obviously brave soul. But for the love I bear our kind – the rightful inheritors of this earth – I will offer you the chance to stand down, child."

"I would be careful calling him 'child'," XJ-V's steel-clad voice shouted into the rainswept night. "You might regret your defeat that much more."

"Your choice, warrior of Ramor-Tai," Sheloth said, speaking only to Feng-Lung. "Fly, or die."

"XJ-V," Feng whispered. "Are you still able to fight?"

The Cog nodded. "But I fear I've used up all the tricks I have against this one. His strategy is speed and strength – he strikes high and at the midsection, putting his otherworldly strength behind each and every strike."

"That sounds like the fighting style of the Divine Order," Feng-Lung nodded. "Pure, raw aggression. In one-on-one duels, it is a style that reigns supreme. But against two opponents of equal ability…"

"Like two Rank 3 Cultivators?" XJ-V smirked.

"…we might just have a chance. You flank right, I will go left. We strike him on both sides and wear him down."

"Like a spiral dragon - everywhere at once."

"I tire of waiting, warrior," Sheloth snarled, wiping the mechanized innards of XJ-V from his blade's surface. "Your answer?"

"You know what my answer is," Feng spat, squaring his legs and straightening his back, heels slowly moving off the ground as his own fire started to flare up again. "I am Feng-Lung of the Eternal Dragon Sect. I stand beside my Brother, XJ-V. In the name of Ramor-Tai, and all who still walk the true path of the Dao, we will destroy you."

Sheloth smiled, showing all his rotten, blackened teeth.

"We shall see, Cultivator. We shall see."

His speed was such that he appeared before both Disciples before either could blink and launch their planned assault. It took all their strength to initiate a dual Dragontail Swipe that blocked all three of the Xu'Jan's vertical swipes aimed at their chests, XJ-V feeling the energy within him swirl and react violently as the blade sliced through the air before it.

The Xu'Jan turned, twisting his blade in a thrusting strike that would have ended a single opponent whose guard was broken then and there.

But, unfortunately for him, the opponents he was now facing were far from normal.

Both Disciples launched two Dragon Tooth strikes in perfect sync that forced Sheloth back, following up with a pair of Flaming Dervishes from above and below. The Xu'Jan was forced to counter with his blade, crouching and slashing at the wall of incoming flame from Feng'Lung's feet and taking the brunt of XJ-V's fire in his face as the Cog bore down upon him from above.

He struck out at the legs of the Cog and blinked as he saw the machine rocket away from him like an old, heretic spacefaring trooper of Qing's Dynasty. In the face of his confusion he did not see Feng-Lung barrel down towards him and send two more fiery Dragon's Tooths at his right arm – one that repelled the Xu'Jan's counter strike and another that sent his sword flying out of his hand.

Sheloth threw himself at his fallen blade and then felt a distinct feeling of piercing, unreal pain radiate up his arm.

He watched as a torrent of flame sliced right through his shoulder and detached his sword-arm from his body, ripping away grey tendon and burning through his thin, bleached bones. He watched the arm fall to the ground in a crumpled mass of sizzling flesh – the fingers being turned to pulp.

The Cultivators turned to watch Sheloth sway, blood spurting from the crimson gash that remained of his right arm. He staggered, gargled, and wept bloody rivers from his dark eyes.

"You see," XJ-V told the disbelieving demon as he dropped to his knees, staring at the spot where his arm once was. "Things might not be so easy for you, after all."

Feng-Lung stood beside him, his arms up, ready to end this fight.

"Where did you learn that little rocket trick?" he asked his Brother.

XJ-V smiled. "From you, actually."

Feng would have questioned him further were it not for the sudden vibrations that were traveling throughout his metal veins. He looked down to see his exposed engine pulse as though it was watching the panting demon that had fallen before the Cog and his Brother. The light was becoming searing, and XJ-V groaned with pain as he fell to the ashen ground.

"XJ-V!" Feng shouted.

But the Cog's eyes were fixed now on the smiling face of Sheloth as the Xu'Jan rose from the ground, staggering back and breathing deep the chill wind that had started to roar through the night.

The rains had stopped. Darkness reigned.

And in that darkness, the voice of Sheloth echoed:

"Lord Yuwa," he said, speaking to the darkening clouds swirling above the three combatants. "Your humble servant asks for your intervention. I, Sheloth, Commander of the Xu'Jan of Jin'ra, your hallowed High Eagle, blessed be his name, ask you for the strength to defeat the evil that blights your earth."

He bowed his head, offering his neck to whatever sights he saw in those clouds, while the pain in XJ-V's chest rose to a clangorous roar of strength – like an animal wishing to break its cage.

"F-Feng!"

Feng-Lung saw what his Brother did. He saw the Xu'Jan struck by a spear of lightning sent into the earth. He saw the light of that celestial stake coil round the fallen warrior and bring him back to his feet, becoming absorbed by the air that buzzed with power at his right-hand side.

"By the Dao…" Feng whispered.

Both Disciples watched the light of the lightning strike fold and morph into an arm that replaced the one the servant of that light had lost. The blade of the Xu'Jan flew back to his hand, and he flexed his new, radiant fingers, as the killing light that had come from a place beyond this world stretched itself across his weapon's surface.

Then, XJ-V and Feng-Lung watched as a warrior touched by a God that should have been dead stalked towards them.

###

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[IronLung]

The light of Yuwa's warrior threw itself across the dead earth beyond Tenak village.

XJ-V and Feng-Lung watched the spectacle unfolding before them with unbelieving, unblinking eyes. The warrior's lithe arm – a beam of shimmering light ending in a similarly charged blade – swept towards them as though with a will of its own.

The Cultivators backed up now, assuming defensive stances and employing their dual Dragontail Swipes with as much efficiency as their shell-shocked souls could muster against the warrior's incoming attacks.

Now, Sheloth struck with unnatural precision. His every blow drew blood from the hands of both XJ-V and Feng so that when they eventually managed a coordinated Dragon Tooth to send the Xu'Jan hurtling back in the ash, they looked upon their hands and saw where the cuts of the warrior had been made.

Then Feng charged forward, unafraid.

"Feng-Lung!"

XJ-V flew to grab at his friend as the insidious Sheloth cried out in delight. He charged at the raging Cultivator and slashed for the boy's leg as it came up to deliver a Flaming Dervish that conjured no fire at all.

"FENG!"

The Cog's feet moved of their own accord – his heel impacting against the razor-sharp edge of Sheloth's blade and throwing up dust all around them as Feng rolled out of the way of a strike that would have cleaved his foot clean.

He watched his useless, shaking hands, feeling the strength of the Dao leave him. Feng had felt it in the frantic seconds the warrior's broadsword had made contact with his skin. It was as though the blood Sheloth had drawn from Feng was all the blood in the boy's body that was tinged with the anointment of the Dao. The Earth Grade powers of his Sect simply fizzled away as he tried to cast them into life.

Instead, he watched as the lightning strike of the otherworldly warrior severed XJ-V's leg clean from his torso, splintering it apart in a hail of bolts and wires.

"NO!" the Disciple cried, clambering up and making a bullrush at the monster that was about to end his friend's life.

And in the split second that he had risen and charged, he felt the hot breath of a reaper on his back.

"Look at what you protect," the voice of the specter said. "A worthless bag of steel and scrap."

Feng turned to slam his fist into the warped face of the beast, but found that his hand impacted nothing but air.

Then heat – searing and ringing with power – radiated up his back.

"No matter," the voice of Sheloth spoke through bloody lips, lungs all but dried up entirely and sustained by faith alone. "You are merely a misguided son of Yuwa. The Lord is merciful. In time, you will call him father. You shall feel the touch of his embrace, as will all mortals upon this blasted earth."

XJ-V flopped like a fish on a line, body shattered, broken, and pleading with him to lay down and let fate take its course. But as he looked upon the sickening sight of Sheloth pulling Feng to the ground and knocking him unconscious with a single blow to the back of the boy's skull, he forced his limbs to move.

His sensors – though cracked and malfunctioning – still gave him readouts of the information he needed. It told him what the storm surrounding the outskirts of Tekal village had hidden from sight. Right now, that hidden detail was his best chance of surviving. His only chance.

So, as he slowly crawled away from the battlefield, he shouted back at the warrior of light standing triumphant over his fallen opponent.

"Sheloth! It is I you have come for, fiend!"

The clawed, blood-spurting eyes of the warrior fixed on him instantly.

"Come then!" XJ-V roared. "Come and finish me!"

The warrior smiled – something vestigial and terrifying, something like a dark slash across his face – as he started to march towards the Cog desperately clawing at the earth, crawling away with the only arm he had left.

"It is curious," Sheloth hissed, gurgling blood from his slashed throat, light-arm twitching as though it was the only thing that compelled him to move forward. "As you are right now, you are more like Lord Jin'ra than you know."

XJ-V saw that he had left Feng-Lung where he had fallen. He kept up his crawling and shouted back at the warrior, stalling for more time, hoping against all hopes that his sensor readouts were correct.

"What do you mean?"

Sheloth answered like an amicable father teaching a wayward son. "The High Eagle knows more of pain than most of us," he wheezed. "Perhaps this is why Great Yuwa chose him to guide this world into His new age. Perhaps that is why He has chosen me."

XJ-V's hand found what he was looking for. His eyes pulsed as he touched the edge of the mountain the village of Tenak lay upon – that which had been obscured by the fog and hail sent by the heavens. The drop, according to his sensors, was about five hundred feet deep.

His opponent saw the surprise in the robot's face and mistook it for fear. He launched himself at the machine and stood above him, blade leveled at XJ-V's open chest.

The light at the center of the Cog burned with an intensity XJ-V had never before witnessed, its electrified innards crackling as it interfaced aggressively with the sparks from Sheloth's armblade.

"You see now that your kind – Cog and Cultivator alike – shall never triumph against the will of a true God. In this life there is only power, Cog, and those too weak to struggle in the name of the one true God shall never have it. To such infidels, there is no light. There is no life. There is only darkness. I looked without fear into this darkness on the day Yuwa first embraced me as one of his servants. Now, I shall send you to him."

"That is the problem with men of faith," XJ-V said as he watched Sheloth reel back and ready his final thrust.

Beneath the Xu'Jan's gown, XJ-V's one remaining foot charged a Dragon's Tooth.

"When you walk in the dark, you cannot see what is in front of you."

The blade came down and sliced through XJ-V's shoulder joint, almost tearing his last arm from its socket. The warrior would have succeeded were it not for the Cog gripping the light of the Xu'Jan and rocketing off from the ash of the mountain – channeling his Qi towards the tips of his toes as he had seen Feng-Lung do in Ori'un's dream-vision.

Both Cog and man went flying over the lip of the mountain and, fighting the need to blackout entirely, XJ-V dug his foot into the mountain's tip and managed to steady himself, hoping against hope that the Xu'Jan had fallen.

When the electrified blade of his foe sank deep into the Cog's only remaining arm, he knew just how wrong he'd been.

XJ-V looked through the blurring world before him – seeing Sheloth grit his teeth in a grisly smile that bled down his body, spilling rivers of blood from the human's broken face. Below him, the seemingly endless expanse of nothingness waited.

"A clever fool," Sheloth said. "But I do not fear death. We shall go together into the dark. Let us meet the light of the Lord. He shall find me worthy, and you shall burn in his gaze."

He dug his blade further into the Cog's arm, and XJ-V gasped as he felt his remaining Qi reserves finally flutter away like a fading dream.

Sheloth felt it, too. His smile was a testament to his victory.

"Just a machine," the Xu'jan said. "Nothing more."

XJ-V felt his sensors finally give up. He relinquished his hold on his basic systems, channeling what slim power remained in his steel frame into nothing more than his arm the Xu'Jan was holding onto. He allowed his visual sensors to die.

When he gave his body his final command, he did so looking into nothing but darkness.

"You…are right," he told his snarling opponent. "I am a machine."

XJ-V did not see the face Sheloth made as the bolts around his arm suddenly exploded, and the Cog's only remaining arm fell away from his body with the Xu'Jan still attached to it.

Maybe he screamed as he fell. Maybe he cursed the Cog one final time, or called for his God to save him before he plummeted to his untimely death. But XJ-V did not hear anything – he had allowed his auditory sensors to die along with everything else.

He pulled himself up by his leg and then lay flat on the edge of the mountain, feeling weightless, staring into the dark. Slowly, as his systems failed one-by-one, he felt his consciousness drain away, feeling strangely at peace. Like he was right back in the Dao…

The last thing he felt was the searing heat of a flame that must have burned with the might of a thousand suns. Something – someone – had just appeared beside him.

"…Longhua."

He did not know what made him say this. There was no logic to the statement. It was a belief that must have been at the very root of his being for him to give it voice in his most fatal hour.

But what was yet more illogical was the response that he was sure he heard, even as his body told him it was impossible:

"That's Master Longhua, to you."

###

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[IronLung]

If it was possible for a machine-man to feel groggy, that is exactly how XJ-V would have described his awakening.

The lids of his eyes edged open as his internal servos whirred with life, and the flame billowing at the center of his chest kicked into high-gear once again, sending a blaze of neon lettering into his previously blank retinal output:

-SYSTEM REINITIALIZING-

-EMERGENCY REPAIR PROTOCOL ACTIVATED-

The Cog sighed, stifling a shout of agony as his pain receptors also came back online. These repairs were going to take a while. He hadn't even attempted anything of the sort before…

"So, he has awoken."

The voice – clear and distinct – reverberated off XJ-V's consciousness like a brutal ball and chain.

"Well, Disciple?" it said. "What do you have to say?"

XJ-V blinked through his system notifications to the reality of the Dragonpyre Hearth before him. The speaker – a grim faced Master Longhua – sat cross-legged before him beneath the Eternal Dragon fresco.

Beside him, someone was loudly slurping tea.

"I must say, Brother, I do not know why you complain so much about the brews your Dragon Disciples conjure for you. This tea warms the heart and comforts the soul. Is that not enough?"

"Fire can give warmth," Longhua told the nameless slurper. "Tea must give flavor. And this particular brew has been leaving a bitter taste in my mouth as of late."

XJ-V craned his busted neck, looking down to see that – yes – his left leg ended in a stuttering stump of dim wiring and his right arm hung limp from his body. He was sitting against the far wall of the hearth, propped up like a broken statue. For that is what he now was.

And as he strained to bring more of the world into focus, he saw the other shapes that dominated the room – the regal form of Master Yoma-Dur of the Waiting Tiger sat next to Longhua drinking tea with long, deep, satisfied gulps. Before the two Masters bowed the supplicant form of Feng-Lung and beside him sat Ori'un, arms folded in what looked like pure satisfaction even though he bore more than a few extra scars across his face and arms. When the Cog cast his eyes over him, the Planeswalker gave him a subtle wink.

"Ah, but that is the beauty of subjectivity," Yoma-Dur said in response to Longhua's admonishment of the tea they were sharing. "You think too much upon where the tea came from, Brother. You obsess over how the tea can be used. You crave to add ingredients which may make the tea better. But, in the end, you cannot change the core flavor. You might say it is an acquired taste. Once which is more than palatable to my palate.

XJ-V looked upon Feng-Lung who came to sit now beside him – the boy gripping his arm as though to make sure the machine-man really was alive. But the Cog's mind was focused on the bizarre nature of the conversation between the two Masters the Sects.

Were they really talking about tea here, at all?

"Maybe you are right, Brother," Longhua replied stiffly, setting down his cup and sniffing the air. "Perhaps this particular batch of tea ought to be sent elsewhere, where it can please only the driest of mouths."

"Master!" Feng-Lung suddenly shouted, coming back to prostrate himself before the two leaders of Ramor-Tai. "Any punishment you wish to impose, I shall accept. I disobeyed you, worked against your will, and imposed my own Ego upon the wasteland before us. I did this knowing that I would face your retribution. I come before you now to receive it willingly."

Longhua's flaring eyes looked as though he was about to rise and strike down the boy for even daring to know his thoughts, but the white sleeve of his Brother calmed him, and urged the volcanic eruption bubbling at his heart to remain dormant for now.

It was amusing, in a way. XJ-V had never seen both Masters interact with eachother in this manner – or even occupy the same place in space and time. It was as though they were two entities that simply could not exist together, both wielding power that all young apprentices could only dream of one day possessing. But the way Longhua nodded and allowed his Brother to speak his mind…XJ-V truly wondered what the relationship between these Cultivators of legend was like.

"Tell us, Feng-Lung of the Dragon," Yoma-Dur said. "What compelled you to fly from the monastery? What prompted you to rebel against the word of a Dragon?"

Both Masters looked towards the smiling form of Ori'un, who merely whistled nonchalantly, pretending not to even notice them.

Feng-Lung gulped before he delivered his answer. XJ-V had expected to see him sweating profusely under the watchful gaze of two Cultivator Masters of the Internalized Ego. Instead, he saw nothing but a boy who was willing to stand up for what he believed in, no matter the cost.

He saw a different Feng sitting there in the Hearth, now. A Feng that was changed from the boy he met on that rain-blasted day when he had marched through the doors of the monastery in ignorance, and in weakness.

"The teachings of the Dragon tell us that no being who walks upon this earth walks alone," Feng said. "That we all have the same innate desire that lies at the heart of our being. We seek fire. We seek warmth, and we seek connection. The flame of a single fire draws travelers near who seek comfort. In standing together, each traveler adds their own fire to the burning blaze, and in time such a blaze becomes an ember that can heat the entire world. It has been thus since the dawn of time. So was I unwilling to let the flame of my Brother die. I believe that with life, there is strength. We all carry the fire of Noble Qing's Dynasty within us, whether Cog or human, and it is our duty to see it carried to the ends of the earth."

"Well," Yoma-Dur said with a gruff cough. "Surely you are satisfied with that, good Longhua? This is the answer of a Rank 3. I would expect something of this nature from a Mental Master. Your Disciple understands the teachings of your Sect well."

"But does he practice them as well as he preaches?" Longhua murmured, anger billowing beneath his words. "His actions could provoke a war that we have sworn not to become part of."

"And yet he acted in defense, Brother," Yoma-Dur said. "In his eyes I can see that this is true."

"If punishment is deserved," XJ-V finally broke in, pain smeared across his every word. "It should be visited on me alone."

The congregation turned to now look upon the Cog again, attention drawn away from young Feng's brave stance.

"Ah, so the wayward one does have something to say, after all?" Longhua said, punctuating his question with a hoarse laugh that echoed through the hallowed halls of the Dragon. "Go on then, Disciple, tell us what you saw in the outside world. Tell us what became of you."

XJ-V straightened up as best he could, his every movement a strain against the emergency buzzers still going off in his brain.

"I set out with the same purpose as Brother Feng – to save a Cultivator that once walked these very grounds under your tutelage, Master Longhua."

"And in doing so," Ori'un interjected. "He saved my life and the lives of every single villager of Tekal. Does that mean nothing to you, Lonhgua?"

"Do not address me!" the Master snapped, his Brother leaning forward to hold back his rage once again. "All I am hearing is that this whole debacle could be attributed to you, Planeswalker. You and your insidious influence over my Disciples."

"Do you trust them so little?" Ori'un replied. "Do you really think these two warriors are not the masters of their own minds?"

"I believe even the brightest light can become dimmed by the darkness of novelty."

"Peace, Brothers," Yoma-Dur urged – clearly the mediator of this entire trial. "This argument shall lead us down no path at all. What we must decide is what is to be done with these two Disciples, now. Brother Longhua – as Master of the Eternal Dragon, the decision of course rests with you. But if you would heed the wisdom of your Brother of the Ego, exiling these two souls would be more of a hindrance to your Sect than a boon."

Longhua heaved a heavy sigh, then puffed out his chest as his eyes rested on the nonchalant face of Ori'un once more. He looked at Feng – at the absolute sincerity in his posturing and beliefs – and then looked to XJ-V, eyes catching the light that was still flaring at the exposed center of the Cog's chest even now.

"I know this," the Master of the Dragon said. "That is why I came for the sorry fools."

If guilt was something that a Master like Longhua could express, XJ-V saw it on his face. He saw the wrinkled lines grow heavy and his old jowls hang looser than usual. He saw the eyes of his Master look beyond them all, passed this moment, to what future might now await them in the wake of the Xu'Jan's death.

The Xu'Jan…

XJ-V had a multitude of questions he needed an answer to – what happened to the army of Sheloth, how fared the villagers of Tekal, and how exactly had Longhua known when to appear like an emissary of the old Gods to collect his fallen warriors.

But the deep, clear voice of Ori'un breached all of these thoughts as he spoke, after having waited for precisely the right moment.

"If I may, I believe I have a solution that will placate you both."

What he said next confirmed something XJ-V had always known: Ori'un was the slyest Cultivator to ever walk these grounds.

###

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[IronLung]

"Oh, but this should be good."

The statement was one coughed with derision, charged with ancient anger. It could only have come from Master Longhua.

"Be out with it then, Planeswalker," Yom-Dur said, only marginally more charitable than his Brother-Master sitting beside him, fists clenched like a panther ready to pounce. "What do you propose?"

Ori'un gave a subtle wink at XJ-V's inert form, and then answered as eloquently as he could:

"In my time as Planeswalker, I have served in the sacred capacity of Administrator for Disciples' entry into the higher ranks of our echelons," he said. "This task I have always undertaken seriously, with deliberation, and with care."

"'Care'," Longhua practically drooled. "Is that would you call your Administration of young Feng's first test?"

"The results of Feng-Lung's test proved he was not ready to ascend to Rank 4 of Corporeal Temperer," Ori'un replied. "Or was my judgement wrong, Master Longhua?"

The Master of the Dragon balked at this, saying nothing more as his Brother caught his eye. For his part, Feng-Lung stiffened at the reminder of his past failure, shoulders sagging for only a second before he righted himself again. XJ-V could see that he was resisting the urge to despair. He was resisting it because he had made his own choice, this time.

And without even knowing it, he had done precisely what the Planeswalker had wanted him to.

"Once, the boy sitting before you here today demonstrated strength and promise but lacked discipline. Focus. He would have been a hindrance, five years ago. Many Cultivators, hearing such words from their Administrator, would simply give up. Have given up. But not so with young Feng-Lung. I see nothing of the impulsive boy I saw five years ago here today. His desire to help his friend is not only noble, but shows strength of character. It shows courage and, most importantly of all, individuality. I have heard that young Feng was the first Disciple here to talk amicably with the Cog – to treat XJ-V as a person, not as a mere tool or a machine. This shows wisdom, Masters. I am sure you will both agree."

XJ-V couldn't help but smile to see Feng's surprise. The boy might have been about to disagree were it not for Longhua holding up his wrinkled hand.

"You mean to tell us that we should treat this whole debacle as a test?" he asked.

"You wished to find a suitable one to show you the skills of both these warriors," Ori'un shrugged, nodding at both the perplexed Disciples. "As Feng showed courage, XJ-V showed tenacity. He showed loyalty to this Sect, Master Longhua. His impulse to save me from capture came from his desire to see his fellow Sect members live on, even if they themselves," he added darkly. "Have made some poor choices."

He glanced over at XJ-V and beamed him his black, moon-infused smile.

"What better way to teach humility to one such as me than to come to my rescue," he said. "Don't you agree, Master Longhua?"

Once again, Yoma-Dur of the Tiger had to keep his Brother's temper in check.

"Your insolence knows no bounds," he growled, the candles of the Dragonpyre Hearth flaring with his rising ire. "I have slain men for lesser crimes than presuming to know my thoughts."

"I merely try to empathize," Ori'un said seriously. "As do your Disciples here. I ask you: can you really afford to let such Brotherhood go to waste? Protect them. Let them continue on their journey. Their future is a valuable one, believe me. They shall make you proud one day, Longhua. I do not need to peer into the Dao to know that."

Though he would always have the heart of a machine within him, XJ-V still felt his chest swell with pride at such praise. Perhaps he truly was more of a child than he thought. It looked like even Feng-Lung blushed to receive such honor from the great Planeswalker.

"Brother," Yoma-Dur said. "Though it is most…unorthodox, I see little harm in the Planeswalker's plan. "Both these Disciples banished a Talon of the Eagle themselves, using techniques of merely the Earth Grade and their own wits to outsmart and outmaneuver their opponent. Surely that counts for something?"

Longhua wheezed. "So like a Tiger, Brother – focused on technique and form above the symbolism that this moment represents. You know what this means. You know whose eyes shall be upon us in the aftermath of this madness."

"Such eyes are upon us anyway, Brother," Yoma-Dur said sadly. "The time may have come for us to accept this."

Longhua inclined his head to the floor, staring past all of them, probably deep into the earth's core itself judging by the intensity in his eyes. It was as though he was studying the very rocks and crags of the Dragonpyre Hearth before speaking again, weighing up the judgements of those who had come before him – those who had walked in the light of Qing before The Sundering forced them into their own little corners of the world. Forever isolated. Forever alone.

"Dying slowly with each passing century…" he murmured in a whisper so low that XJ-V couldn't even be sure he'd really said it. "Clinging to a past that no longer exists…"

When Longhua rose again, his eyes burrowed into XJ-V's broken form before turning back to the Planeswalker.

"I suppose this was part of your vision," he said sardonically.

Ori'un merely shrugged again like a schoolboy being reprimanded for something he did not do.

"When this is over," Longhua said. "I will punish you."

"I already accepted my punishment long ago, Longhua," the Planeswalker replied. "And when the time comes, you may deliver it if you wish."

All eyes in the room sought to grasp at the hidden meaning in these words – in the charged look of conflict that passed between Master and former-student. It seemed these two Cultivators would never see eye-to-eye. It struck XJ-V as odd – one of the many oddities of humankind – that even those who lived under the same roof, ate the same meals, and occupied the same world, could see the world so differently and, as a consequence, view each other with such derision.

"Bah!" The Dragon suddenly exclaimed. "Enough. I will not speak more of this in the company of two Rank 4 Temperers. Off with you both. Retire to your chambers. Ori'un – make yourself useful for once and see to XJ-V's repairs. Get our Core Regulators what they need to service him."

Ori'un's boyish smirk was contagious. "With pleasure, Master."

"Master Longhua?" Feng-Lung broke in, looking up from the stone floor with sheepish realization. "Did you just say – Rank 4?"

"What, did the Xu'Jan pretender clip your ears, Disciple?" Longhua scoffed. "Indeed, I did. Now, begone. Do not make me repeat myself."

XJ-V watched as the Disciple then bowed graciously, eyes bulging with surprise, excitement, and the bliss of a success well deserved, and couldn't help but smile again himself.

"There it is," Ori'un told him. "Genuine satisfaction. No naked ambition. No unfulfilled desire. Just a real, honest-to-goodness spirit that seeks to protect the things it cares about."

He looked up to see the Planeswalker towering over him, bending down to carry his remains back to the Dragon Commune.

"You've got it both, you two," he told XJ-V as he lugged him out of the Dragonpyre Hearth. "Real humanity."

Humanity…

"The…villagers," he murmured.

"All fine," the giant explained. "We've already got our best Regulators aiding their rebuilding efforts. You might have started something here, you know. Maybe some day they can all serve the people of the wasteland rather than stay cooped up on this mountain. That's one thing the sword-devil mentioned that I could at least agree with – we are all connected. But, well, that's a story for another time.

All connected…

But not by Brotherhood, Ori'un, something at the very heart of XJ-V's being wished to scream. There is only one thing that the Order believes we are equal beneath…

"Master Longhua!"

XJ-V had shouted back over the bulky arm of the Planeswalker as they made to leave the room, surprising everyone except the Master with his outburst.

For Longhua looked at him now with narrowed, focused eyes.

"The Xu'Jan of the Order," XJ-V said. "He spoke to his God. He spoke to Yuwa. He spoke, and a voice obeyed – something that came from beyond this earth. Beyond the Dao."

Both Masters stared unblinkingly at the Cog as Ori'un simply sighed and continued walking.

"What does that mean?" XJ-V asked, trying to keep himself from crying out so that all the Cultivators of the monastery could hear him.

The answer he heard was muffled and almost lost to him – and he couldn't be sure it wasn't just an auditory hallucination spurned on by his fluctuating systems. Still, he heard it, and there was no humor in the sentiment it expressed:

"It means we are done with tea," Longhua said. "It may be time for something a little stronger."

###

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[IronLung]

Ori'un took XJ-V to his quarters as instructed, laying him down and watching him with curious eyes.

The sensation of ruination that filled the Cog was palpable – he felt the phantom pains of his eviscerated limbs and torn innards surge through him. He felt the scars across his chest where the blade of Sheloth had pierced his metal skin.

And behind his eyes, he could still see that mutilated monster's face. Stalking towards him with utter confidence that His God would grant him victory.

"Ori'un," he said. "I must look the very picture of failure."

The giant sat himself on the floor, bringing up his feet in the meditative pose of the Dragon. It seemed some things were never truly forgotten.

"I meant what I said back there," the Planeswalker told him. "You are more deserving of progressing to the Fourth Level of Corporeal Temperer than many Disciples I have met in my life. You and Feng-Lung, both."

"Yet I cannot help but think that your test was not entirely altruistic," the Cog continued, servos stuttering as his repair protocol kicked into high-gear. "You did not come here merely to test two Disciples."

Ori'un licked his dry lips caked with the dust of the wastes. "No," he agreed. "I did not."

He smiled – a grin that was at once contagious and terrifying in equal measure.

"You could have had the strength to defeat the Xu'Jan," XJ-V said, voice measured but firm. "Even with your connection to the Dao severed as it was. Yet you did not deign to aid us."

"An Administrator cannot intervene," Ori'un replied with a nonchalant shrug. "I had faith that you both would prevail. If I didn't…"

"You would have killed him yourself," XJ-V finished. "I know this. I have seen how you pass judgement. But you could not have been certain that the Xu'Jan would not have destroyed us."

The Planeswalker's smile grew only wider.

"There is much that is not certain," he said. "But the mists of the Dao are slowly parting before our sight, revealing secrets we could once only guess at."

"And I acted as your eyes," XJ-V said. "Through me have you sought the key to unlocking your mysteries, even if I can only guess at what they might be. Perhaps Longhua was right to tell me that I should fear you, Ori'un."

At this, the Planeswalker bristled slightly, rubbing his chin with the scarred back of his pudgy arm.

He leaned forward and spoke in almost a whisper.

"What do you think, XJ-V?" he asked. "Should we Cultivators simply hoard our knowledge, sitting and Dao-walking in our high mountains like old, ailing men?"

"You know what I think of this," the Cog replied. "You asked me to make a choice. I made it when the time came."

"That you did," Ori'un nodded. "Even as it brought ruin to you. Even as it could have endangered this monastery."

"It was not my intention to-"

"One's intention never really matters," Ori'un interrupted. "Not in the grand scheme of this world. Whether you knew it or not, XJ-V, now something I only suspected has turned out to be true: you have a power within you that is not born of the Dao, but of something else entirely."

"Yuwa," XJ-V murmured.

"He's not dead," the Planeswalker whispered back, as though the God was watching them through the oval window right now. "It is said in the legends that even Qing could not best Him for good. He could only compel the deity to slumber in the depths of this earth. But legends are legends – they are tales for boys who dream of adventure. This," Ori'un nodded at XJ-V's chest. "This is different. This is reality. What you and I saw in the field of Tekal was no illusion. No conjurer's trick. We saw the light of a God give life to one of His servants who begged to have the power to slay us. And that same light," Ori'un finished. "Lies at the very heart of your being."

There it is, the Cog thought. That's why you've had such interest in me all this time. Was I just a curiosity to you, Ori'un? A means to an end?

"You can kill the light of the Dao with but a thought," Ori'un said. "It is a power shared by only those of the High Eagle. Whether you like it or not, you're our best chance at fighting them."

"That is why I see myself standing beside you in the mists of the Dao," XJ-V replied. "That is why I saw you approach the monastery and felt the rush of destiny flood through me. At the time, I was paralyzed with terror."

"And now?" Ori'un asked.

"I am confused," the Cog said, looking at the rain that had started to hail outside his chamber window. "Why go through the farce of a tournament when you could just take me by force and train me yourself?"

"An astute question," Ori'un admitted. "But one with two simple answers. One: I happen to value skill and choice. You aren't just a weapon – you're a person with your own will. When I first met you I couldn't know if you were simply another pre-programmed Cog carrying out your Prime Directives. Now I know better. Everyone here does."

XJ-V sighed in the face of this 'compliment'. The Planeswalker's first impressions confirmed that other Cogs out there were not like him. Somehow, this fact made him feel even lonelier than he'd ever felt before.

"And the second reason?" he asked.

Ori'un answered with another impish smirk.

"It's even simpler. Something distinctly human: Longhua would never give you up unless compelled to."

"You may have forgotten which Master it is you speak of," XJ-V said with a sardonic laugh. "Longhua bears no sentimental bone in his body."

"I'm afraid that's where you're wrong," the Planeswalker replied. "I suppose I am forgetting that you are a machine, even if the Dao has opened itself to you. You can't see what you've never had to understand. Whether that's through your Creator's intention or something else baked into you by the hand of another, I don't know. But I can tell you this – Longhua may have begrudgingly welcomed you here before – but now he sees you as his most promising Disciple."

"Because of this light," XJ-V snorted. "Nothing more."

"Wrong again," Ori'un corrected. "Because past all that metal and all those blinking lights, you're a Dragon, through and through. Why else would he have come for you, personally? You got the old man to do something I never could, XJ-V: you got him to leave Ramor-Tai for the first time in decades. Disciples have rested their laurels on smaller achievements than that."

The Cog couldn't help himself. The Planeswalker's smile had finally managed to infect him. He was remembering, too, the face of the Master as he appeared before him on the blasted field of the village. He must have stewarded Feng and him home. Out of all eventualities the Dao could have shown him, this one had never even been a consideration.

"There is something you must also have thought of," he told Ori'un, straightening up and feeling the energy within his breast swirl and swell past its limits. "The Cogs of old were constructs loyal to Yuwa above all else. They were bound to serve him in spite of any affiliations they had with Qing and those humans they served. How do you know I will not suffer the same fate? How do you know I do not currently serve the Lord of Light?"

Ori'un's smile never dropped. "Do you? Do you feel that Light is yours to command, or are you under its control?"

The Cog looked down at the stuttering remnants of his right arm, sparks beginning to fly from the exposed wiring that poked out from his socket.

"I think we are about to find out," he said.

Both men looked down to the Cog's arm and traced the lines of power that stretched out in thin tendrils of luminescence from his core. No noise, no pain, no whirring of servos. It was like a living being reaching out from the Cog's center and wrapping itself round his broken arm, breathing life into the flickering wires that waited to be restored to functionality.

The Cog's face strained as he followed the lines, feeling his systems blur as something took over. The same thing that did whenever his repairs were activated. This time, however, the feeling as stronger. He felt his whole being shudder with the power that churned within him – a conflux of energy that spread out like an eagle's wings.

"By the Dao…" Ori'un murmured.

XJ-V saw his metal skin slowly morph over the wiring, knitting itself back together like it was under the influence of some craven conjurer's spell.

Then XJ-V fell back against the wall, seeing half of his arm rebuilt before him in a matter of seconds.

He said nothing as Ori'un rose, The last thing he saw was the bemused face of the Planeswalker before he blacked out again.

###

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[IronLung]

[Anima Cores: 145]

Words that were used to define something beyond definition…words used to entrap something that was pure feeling alone. Raw. Untouched.

Entrapped…

The visions of the Dao granted him dark shapes that peeled away to reveal the husks of Cogs and humans alike. In his invalid, limbless state, his mind seemed more free to move around in the void this time, peering through the shadows to the thin strips of memories that unfolded before him.

He saw Qing's golden castles atop all the mountains of the worlds – castles brimming with servants and warriors ready to serve the Emperor and spread his divine will across the globe. He saw the humans of the planet stand in defiance as the Gods brought calamity upon their earth, and then the remains of their people rose up to banish Yuwa. Then he saw that the fallen God's eyes were not closed – they were wide open and staring. Staring at the Cog that beheld their owner in the Dao.

XJ-V pushed through his fear. He had to see what lay within those eyes, but all he was afforded was a gold-plated reflection that showed him encased in threads of gold, solid as polished marble, before he melted away into the ground and through the cracks within the panting, dry soil of the earth. When the Cog woke, he did so feeling helpless. The Dao was still holding secrets from him, even as he returned to the waking world with more of its strength to guide him.

[Anima Cores: 147]

More…he thought. More power. More insight. More manifestations of his will – the things he would need to defeat his enemies when they inevitably came for him.

Because they were coming for him. Of that, there was now no doubt.

He turned on his bed and saw the silent man who had been keeping his dreaming body company through the thundercracks of the storm that raged outside.

Feng-Lung.

"Weren't expecting a visitor this early, were you?" Feng asked him. "Though I suppose you weren't expecting any at all."

XJ-V managed to rise – seeing that his crippled left arm was now almost fully operational. All that remained were the repairs needed to reconstruct the rest of his limbs.

"How are you feeling?" Feng asked.

"Like I am suffering from what you humans call a 'hangover'," the Cog replied, flexing his light-sheathed fingers and feeling his hand again react to his brain's commands.

"If only our wounds were so fleeting as yours," Feng said, nodding at XJ-V's restored arm. "The Planeswalker told me you'd be up and about without our Core Regulators' aid. I didn't believe him. But, at this point, I suppose I should have known that when it comes to you I cannot simply abide by things like 'logic' or 'reason'."

"Such things mean little for us," XJ-V said.

"Coming from a Cog, that means more than you know."

Both friends shared a steady smile between them, each equally glad to see the other alive and well.

"I…well…I came to thank you," Feng said eventually.

"For what reason?" XJ-V asked. "If anything, it is you who deserves my thanks. I was brash, and stupid. I thought I could cut down a Xu'Jan General and his army alone. It was you who reminded me that no dragon fights without his Brothers beside him."

"But it was your rash decision that made me realize what I really care about after all this time," Feng responded adamantly. "For so long I was fixated on nothing more than making something of myself – on living up to my mother's expectations of me. Without you I would never have found something more valuable than that which is offered by the Dao."

"Which is what?"

Feng looked him square in his glowing eyes as he gave his answer. "Brotherhood, XJ-V. I have been a fool all this time. I was a fool to think Ori'un wished me to fail my first test of the Fourth Rank. I was also a fool to see you as a mere curiosity – a fleeting fancy that would soon leave this place with your steel tail between your legs. I should have offered my hand to you in friendship as soon as you walked through those doors with as desperate a need to prove yourself on your face as I had when I first came here."

The Cog smiled in the face of his friend's earnestness. "You did all this and more, Feng-Lung," he said. "You just did not know it."

The boy laughed at that, cringing slightly at his still bruised chest.

"Well," he said. "With the tournament coming in one week, what do you think? Will you be up and ready for the day of judgement? Or is it time for the Cog who defeated a Xu'Jan of the Order to rest on his laurels?"

XJ-V stared out at the approaching clouds bubbling with rainwater that crept close to Mount Ramor, their advance heralding the onset of another terrible storm.

"I have to be ready," he said, in a tone that rang with the gravity of destiny. "It is the only way to know what the Dao has in store for me."

He thought of the vision of the two men in the wastes – men who moved with the world rather than against it. Men who faced a tide of darkness, fell to grievous wounds, and then rose again to fight it all the same.

He thought too of the Planeswalker words that had rang in his Dao-walks as his repairs were made, feeling the world darken again as his systems began to shut down for the next series of reconstructions.

"Will you…stand by me?" he asked the disappearing shadow of his friend.

He did not see what happened next, but before he blacked out he heard Feng-Lung's reply loud and clear:

"If a God truly is arrayed against us, then I will back you to the end, Brother," he said. "To the end of the earth itself."

…

The eyes of Yuwa signaled change. They signaled boundless light – the searing light of apocalypse. Of revelation.

Revelation…

XJ-V followed the thought in the dream-realm of the Dao, his formless body flying between clouds composed of memories and visions – pieces of paper smudged and scarred so that their contents were a blur to him as he passed them by, bound for the eyes of the imprisoned God.

Those eyes told him nothing when he found them again, adrift in the infinite sea of nothing. They showed him the golden form of his own self. Of an Ego not born of shadow, but born of light.

Come on…he told his body, forcing a ghostly arm by his side to rise and touch the image before it melted away beyond the clouds. Come on…

Fear struck his heart – a fear that brought back visions of Sheloth striking him down, burning through his body and raking his limbs with visceral contempt. He felt the breath of the Paladin-commander hot on his neck as he stretched out even a single finger to touch the melting mass of Gold that rejected him, turning away and leaving him in an empty world yet again.

But this time, he was not to be deterred.

He grabbed the golden claw before it ran away from him and the head of his own body blazed into life, staring at him with eyes that pierced his skull and seared his metal flesh. He felt himself absorbed by the golden figure like being eaten by some carrion bird, slowly chewed and digested – his energy added to the form of another. His essence becoming something else…or something lesser.

Something he once was…

For, when he opened his eyes, he looked out into a wholly different world, now. A world of buzzing machines – bulbous computers spitting out information faster than Fai-Deng's punches. Databanks churring with their coded speech understandable only to one versed in their strange language. The pristine floor of a laboratory that was smooth enough to give him a view of his own reflection on its surface. He was inert, lifeless, deaf and dumb. He tried to move his body, but his limbs would not budge. All he could do was look at the titanium door of the lab opening before him and allowing a small, pudgy-nosed man passage into the chamber.

Then, as the face of the man came into view, XJ-V tried to gasp.

He was staring into the face of his Creator.

###

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[IronLung]

*Important note: this week will be the final week of chapters before I start summer vacation. I will be heading home to see my family from June 16th to July 8th. There will be no new chapters during this time. Patreon billing will be paused.

Thanks for all your support on this story. This is my longest vacation in the year, I promise. I'll be using this time also to polish up all of book one and plan for the rest of the series - because this is a story I love to write, and I want it to go the distance.

Now, on with the chapter:
The face that stared into XJ-V's eyes shone with the light of familiarity.

It was the face of an old man as grey as the walls of the laboratory he stood in, wisps of white hair clinging in small patches to his balding skull. Upon his wrinkled nose sat a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles that gave the Cog a reflection of his self – he was suspended on some kind of large stretcher, chest opened up like a great cavity in the earth. But his eyes were dull and dead. No light shone within him.

Not yet.

His dead eyes looked into the face of the old man as he began to cough and sputter, holding a small microphone up to his gnarled mouth before he spoke. As he uttered each word, voice hoarse and dim as though his lungs were filled with dust, he kept looking back over his shoulder at something behind him.

"XJ-IV confirmed status: inactive. Unsuitable vessel. Cause of expiry: Unstable matrix-bond during the anchoring process leading to erratic behavior changes and system overload."

XJ-V saw the old man shuffle away from him suddenly, moving around the room to find a flashlight on a table at the edge of the lab. He adjusted the stretcher the Cog lay upon so that XJ-V was now propped up, level with the man, looking directly into his sweating face.

He shone the light into the shell that lay before him – what XJ-V was slowly beginning to realize was his inactive body. His coreless, metal shell.

"New vessel designation: XJ-V," the aged man stated with mechanical precision, almost as though he were dictating his thoughts to a typist nearby that was busily recording every word and utterance. "Shell composition: solid titanium alloy reinforced with Densitius shards from the Hensha mines. Have compensated local villagers admirably. Know what risks they take. Perhaps they don't. Doesn't matter."

The man spoke as though every second were crucial. XJ-V, looking out from within his old-self, begged him to answer his questions. But his lips did not move. He was as formless here as he was whenever he entered this realm of mysteries.

All he could sense was the distinct lack of Qi in the laboratory that he was sequestered within. Normally, such flows of natural energy swirled around signs of life, or objects created by human beings. Such objects were normally imbued with the essence of their creator – the artistic or aesthetic energy that had been poured into them was visible to a Cultivator that could see the gyrations in Qi throughout the world. But none of that existed in this place. XJ-V at once felt that he was just another Cog again – a dull, dead thing. The sensation did not bring him pleasure.

It brought him disgust.

"Will attempt anchoring in approximately ten minutes," his Creator was saying as he switched off the flashlight and breathed a heavy sigh, wiping his glasses with a worn handkerchief. "Prime Directives remain unchanged. New shells not arriving until next month. By then…there will be no more time. Proper programming will be necessary if long-term success is to be achieved. Basic self-defense protocols, historical data integration, memory implantation…but one thing at a time"

The man's knuckles were shaking as he spoke. His entire body was a hunched picture of anxiety, and yet he couldn't stop himself. Whatever he was about to do, it clearly terrified him.

Yet he was no less determined to see it through.

"People of the village know…" he muttered. "Qing's commandment will not protect me forever. Or you."

XJ-V recoiled as he realized his Creator had just addressed him for the first time.

He watched the face of the old man twist into a sad smile, something that filled the Cog with a sense of nostalgia for something he'd never even truly known.

"XJ-V…" he murmured. "Five vessels. Five Sects. Five years – I wonder, is it chance? Or something else?"

His Creator became pensive. The fast pace of his speech slowed to almost a slur of jumbled words that spilled from his parched throat.

"You would know, Qing," he said, addressing no one but the floor beneath him. "You always knew. You always saw further than us all. Why you asked me to do this out of all of us…I will never know. If you were here, now…"

He shook his head. XJ-V got the impression that this man was not one who would dwell on dreams or idle fancies.

Such a reality was brought crashing down on the Cog as his Creator moved away from his field of vision and XJ-V finally saw what he had been looking at before.

In a dark, forgotten corner of the laboratory, a selection of broken limbs and fingers were strewn across the ground. Metal wiring, copper teeth, buzzing lightbulbs that would serve as eyeballs were scattered around like a macabre metal butcher's table.

And at their center sat a Cog in the exact same shape, size, and stature as XJ-V – its eyes totally hollow, its forehead punctured and dripping with oil, limbs splayed out in a gesture of complete surrender to the force that had slain it.

XJ-V opened his mouth in a gasp that would not come. What he saw – what he was being made to see – was a vision of machine death that haunted him more than a slain human ever could. It was like a child becoming aware of their own mortality – the fact that, one day, they would end up just as soulless and husk-like as the wretched thing that lay there in the corner, life long since fizzled out to nothing, dark eyes staring into an abyss from which it would never wake…

And just as his thoughts strayed to that of abyssal nothing, XJ-V was bathed in light.

His 'expired' brother's form disappeared as the Creator came back into the cone of XJ-V's vision, holding something in his gauntleted hands that shone with a searing, otherworldly power. The face of the creator was covered in a grim death-mask of protective material – something which stretched over his shoulders and covered his body in a funeral gown composed of steel fibers. Only his eyes were visible through the grisly mask, and XJ-V focused on them and them alone as he felt the sphere of energy wedge itself into his chest as though it were clinging to something there.

Then: resistance.

The Creator struggled with the thing as he started to pull away like a bird not wishing to be caged. He began to force it back inside the Cog as the body of machine began to groan and twist, the sinister intelligence brimming within the sphere of pure energy lashing out against this inert creature of the earth.

Just when the Creator seemed to be falling, his strength failing him, XJ-V felt his own will kick in. He felt himself, even through his fear, compelled to reach out and aid the ailing man. He reached out – he reached through the Dao – and added his spirit to the man on the other side.

And though the feeling may have been fleeting – nothing more than a trick of the Dao – XJ-V saw his creator's eyes fly open as the searing light finally left his hands, becoming locked within the metal chassis of his invention.

The chest of the machine closed, and though its chest smoked and sizzled as though the internal fire trapped within might burn its flesh away entirely, the shaking human had achieved his goal. The light was trapped.

And the eyes of his creation brimmed with fiery life, looking upon the first thing it saw in this world.

"Miraculous," he said. "Simply…miraculous."

For a moment, there was only silence. Then the Creator removed his grim mask and protective clothing, panting, sweating, almost ready to double over in pain, and yet the smile that he had flashed at the Cog before had not dropped at all.

When he spoke, it was with the disbelieving love of a father.

"Welcome to the world, XJ-V."

The Cog in the Dao felt his old eyes look around, prospecting his new, and only, reality. The first thing he felt was the touch of his 'father's' hand, hands cold and strangely solid, almost like a sheath of steel being smeared across his cheek.

"What are your Prime Directives?" his Creator asked him.

Through a voice far more robotic than he had ever remembered having, XJ-V replied without having any alternative:

"Cultivate. Enter the Dao. Merge with the Dao."

His Creator nodded. "Good," he said, almost giddy like an infant at Christmas. "That…that's good."

With pressure built up from more time than his new creation could know, the old man finally succumbed and slumped to the floor, confusing his newly 'born' metal-son to no end, especially when he laughed frantically and shook his head in utter disbelief.

"…we did it, Qing," he said, hoarse laughter spilling from his throat. "By the Old Gods and the Dao, we did it."

###

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