Cog Cultivator (Xianxia)

[IronLung]

[Anima Cores: 149]

Almost…there…almost…

"Oi, oi!" a little creature screamed in the night. "XJ-XJ! Wake up!"

XJ-V roused as though from a long, deep slumber, hearing a very different voice respond to the protests of the creature that was trying to wake him with its ghostly paws.

"Perhaps we ought to leave him in peace. I have never seen a Cog in a Dao-walk, but the experience is painful enough for us humans."

"Nuh-uh! Arha knows how to fix her machine-man! Arha knows the secrets to his soul like the back of her paw!"

"…if that is the case," XJ-V whispered as he rose. "You would know your machine prefers peace and quiet."

The Cog awoke to the eyes and lolling tongue of his ghostly familiar. Through her translucent form he saw the concerned eyes of Mah-Jung, brows knit in focus on his form.

"Forgive me, Brother," XJ-V murmured. "I would rise to bow to you, but find myself…indisposed."

Mah-Jung returned a smile of good cheer as Arha rubbed herself against her awakened Cog. "Brother, the apologies should come from my mouth alone. It has taken me this long to come and pay you a visit, and I admit that I do so partially to sate my own curiosity."

Curiosity…XJ-V thought, his mind going back to the dream-vision he had just beheld in the Dao. It had been such a vivid flashback to his past – to the dawn of his life, and the life that was injected into him. His longing to see more had been hampered by his will to live – a will that was becoming more astute to the tricks of the Dao.

I can not allow it to consume me, XJ-V thought. But neither can I deny the allure of its secrets.

"I can see your recovery is progressing splendidly," Mah-Jung continued. "This is good. I cannot fight an invalid opponent in the tournament of Aun'el. To do so would shame both me and our Sect."

"Fight?" Arha shouted up from XJ-V's restored legs. "How can you even think of such things at this time? Poor XJ-V. Arha promises that she came as soon as she could. But the Grove has been acting strange, recently. She has not been able to visit as she likes!"

XJ-V patted the little Huli reflexively with his one good hand, seeing that his other arm still had a ways to go by way of repair. She purred under his touch, probably the only creature to ever do so, but her words had sparked something in him that made his whole body lurch.

"The Grove?" he asked. "What has happened?"

Mah-Jung addressed him as he leaned against the oval window of his chamber – looking out onto the darkness of the outside.

"Ever since your return with young Feng," he explained. "Our Dao-Walks have been troubled. The mists of the mysterious realm are more shrouded than usual, as though the Dao itself does not wish to grant us entry. It is as though it hides something from us. I can only wonder what the effect must be on our fledgling Anima Banishers below the mountain – they need the Dao to survive more than we do."

XJ-V petted Arha absent-mindedly as he watched Mah-Jung's face turn from jovial to pensive, and saw his eyes glance in his direction.

Instantly, he knew why the top Corporeal Temperer Disciple had really come here.

"You wish to know if I can provide you some insight," XJ-V said. It was not a question, and he did not wait for his Brother's response before he went on. "In truth, the Dao has been a comfort to me in my state of disrepair. I feel I finally have the chance to delve into its depths and see what I wish to see."

"No Brother can command the Dao, XJ-V," Mah-Jung said morosely. "We see only what it allows us to."

"Why would it show us fragments from our past, then?" the Cog asked his startled Brother. "When such desires for recollection are at the very forefront of our minds, is it possible the Dao would know and placate us in our hour of need?"

Mah-Jung dropped his head and fixed his serious gaze on his Cog brother. Right now, he seemed more like a counselling Master than he did a fellow Disciple, speaking from experience beyond his Brother's ken.

"Brother Cog," he said. "The path of one's Dao walks is always treacherous. It winds and spins us round, knowing that we seek power, knowing that there are things it can show us to keep us locked in its grip. Never forget that every meditation session where a Cultivator enters the realm beyond is also one where he puts his life at risk. You have passed through your early trials – you have ascended to Rank 4 – but now your real test shall begin. Can you overcome your own desire for knowledge?"

"I thank you for your counsel, Brother," XJ-V replied. "But there are mysteries that I fear must be known."

"It is a warning," his Brother replied. "Not counsel. Take heed, Brother Cog, that you do not dive beyond your limits. When you gaze into the abyss…"

He let the statement hang. He didn't have to finish it.

"Oh, Arha hates Cultivators sometimes!" the Huli barked. "Can't you boys just hug and wish eachother well!"

As usual, the little Huli had the powerful ability to cut through tension with precision, evoking a cheerful laugh from the once-serious Disciples.

"My apologies," Mah-Jung said with a bow. "Your spirited Huli speaks the truth. Once again, I have made things too serious for a man who is currently recovering from grievous injuries. I must admit that it was a battle I wish I could have been involved in."

"Yet you did not join us," XJ-V said. "I wonder why?"

To this, Mah-Jung straightened his cuffs and ran his thin hands through his ponytail.

"We are Dao-walkers both, Brother," he said. "You have seen what waits for you in the mists of the future. As have I. My time has not come yet. But it shall. And when it does, it will be my honor to face a Disciple of your prowess."

He bowed stiffly as he then took his leave, XJ-V returning the gesture to his departing back.

"What's with that guy?!" Arha bristled. "He's got such a polite way of being a meanie, lately! I remember when he was all fun and games like Feng-Lung. What happened?"

The Huli's Cog silenced her complaints with a liberal stroking of her chin, sending her rolling in a state of pure, blissful abandon on his restored lap.

"Destiny is a harsh mistress, Arha," XJ-V replied. "And she does not discriminate."

…

Before him stretched a frozen forest.

A silver wolf stood staring up at his immaterial form, cocking its head yet showing its teeth – a picture of readied violence and curiosity both.

And upon a twisted bow of the whitest tree high above him, the bloody form of Sheloth stood, his blade long discarded into the snowfield beneath them.

Through lips caked with grime and ichor, he stared to speak to XJ-V.

"A Shepard may become a wolf if he lays down his staff, and he may roam the forest and hunt down his prey. A wolf may become the wind if he abandons his fangs, and then there is no place out of reach for him. And so he may eventually reach those he lost. But the wind may not blow straight. If you become the wind of chaos, your fangs will grow back and you shall be a wolf again"

The silver wolf turned and sprinted away, and the invisible limbs of the Cog reached out to grab at it, his feet trailing after the creature's paws in the snow.

When the forest was behind him, he saw a white field filled with graves. Where the wolf once stood, now three other animals looked at him from on high, amidst a cloudless sky that wept snowdrops of purest white.

A red dragon. A gold eagle. And a Grey owl.

And from behind him, the voice of Sheloth started to speak again.

"The Red Dragon shows travelers a pure path, once that leads whence they came. But this path has no end and leads only to the moonless night."

"The Gold Eagle shows travelers a foul path, one that leads to dark places they do not wish do venture. This path is muddy and difficult, but moonlight illuminates the way"

"The Grey Owl shows a road that must not be taken. This is a road not for travelers, but a road for wolves alone. It is a road drenched in suffering, and it leads nowhere but the wilderness."

XJ-V fought against every impulse in his being that told him to flee from this realm. He looked up at the three creatures – each one a doorway to another plane of this formless place.

"Take me to the Grey Owl," he said.

"You are impatient," the voice of Sheloth replied. "You are not yet ready to behold that which you seek. Your own hubris will be your end, thing of metal and will."

Now the field melted away, snow turning into nothing but dull ash.

Before him was an egg, and two men – one wearing a long, flowing robe from a Cultivator Sect he had never before seen.

The other man was possibly the most ragged, ugliest creature he had ever beheld.

Once again, Sheloth's voice narrated the scene before him:

"An egg, if fertilized, produces life. An egg, if left unfertilized, produces yolk. But how can one know what is within the egg if one does not crack it open?

The Patient Man leaves the egg to grow. He lets nature take his course.

The Worldly Man smashes the egg to feast on its innards. He takes what nature has given.

But what does such difference matter if both outcomes are the same?"

XJ-V shook his head in consternation.

"What outcome?"

"Death," Sheloth's partially decapitated head told him. "All things end. It is a law written into the universe with as much rigidity as the code that governs your every thought and action, machine. Credit must be given where it is due, when your whole being belongs to another.

"The Grey Owl," XJ-V whispered. "The one who made me."

Sheloth scoffed.

"He may have constructed your body, but he did not give you a soul. Souls cannot be made, cannot be given by mortal hands. They can only be…transferred."

"Take me to him!" XJ-V commanded with a voice that came not from his metal throat, but deep within his powered core. It was something else that was asking. It was as though he were being puppeted by it, now. An intelligence that was done waiting.

And as the ashen world of the Dao disappeared before him, he fell into a vortex of memory again. The mirthful laughter of Sheloth followed him down.

"Like stealing the chick from an uncracked egg…"

###

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[IronLung]

The mists of the Dao parted, and the world of snow melted away with it.

In its place, a chamber of chromium stretched out from XJ-V's inert body, and he felt the distinct impression of something sharp being drilled into his head.

It took him a moment to understand that the implement of torture was not an object of pain but one meant for construction – it was a screwdriver.

His Creator was performing some adjustments.

"Knowledge Bank Check #12," he heard his Creator say beside his ear. "Fact breakdown: The Dao."

And XJ-V heard himself answer – lips moving mechanically to comply with the programming instilled in every wireframe and twinkling circuit mesh of his brain:

"A realm of infinite energy known as Qi, said to be the remains of the deities defeated by Yuwa, God of light and illumination. The Dao is a plane that can be inhabited for small periods by Cultivators trained to absorb and cultivate Qi through their Anima Cores, each 'Dao-walk' providing them with more chances to gain power and knowledge left behind by the Old Gods."

He felt the screwdriver nick a particularly stubborn piece of circuitry, and his Creator withdrew, his pudgy nose covered in black oil and smears of Grey paint.

Like a feathered owl, contemplating his chick…

"Erase all instances of designation 'Yuwa," he said, donning a pearl-white lab-coat and heading for the door to the outside world. "When they see you, they'll know we don't need that old charlatan anymore."

XJ-V felt his head stiffen on his Creator's table, his eyes twitching to bring the vision of the old man into focus.

"Confirm wipe," he asked.

"Memory wipe complete," XJ-V answered obediently. Then, as the old bird began to twist the valve of his laboratory door. "Creator – my memory banks indicate that only those creatures born with a soul are able to enter the Dao."

The scientist stopped in his tracks, pausing at the door.

"Yes, XJ-V," he said. "That's correct."

"I have no historical data regarding this designation," the Cog replied. "Requesting data transfer: 'soul.'"

The XJ-V of the Dao saw what his old form could not have seen – could not have known. Before his eyes his Creator's shoulders sagged, and he pushed open the door without looking back.

"Request denied," he said.

…

The Dao's energy blurred the room and XJ-V watched its walls of chrome bleed away, returning in the next moment that the strange force beyond space and time deigned to show his curious mind.

He was crouched beside an array of different machines, each one stranger than the last.

One of them, a four-legged critter composed of steel, jumped up on his lap and started licking at his cheek with a titanium tongue. A shiny collar glistened on its neck, inscribed with the letters 'XJ-I'.

"Meet your oldest Brother," his Creator told him from behind a glass wall at the end of the room. "XJ-V, XJ-I. XJ-I, well, you can't quite understand the sentiment, but…it seems he likes you!"

The dog-machine continued licking at XJ-V's cheek as he looked on, utterly befuddled. He then flexed a hand, his instincts telling him to perform an action that until this moment was utterly alien to him.

The metal dog flopped to the side, kicking its paws in the air and exposing its chrome belly.

When XJ-V began to scratch away at the shining surface of its stomach, it let out a satisfied bark.

"Fascinating," he heard his Creator say. "No fear-response or destructive impulse generated upon contact with other lifeforms. It seems he recognizes his own kind. A marked improvement. Will commence humanoid trials and progress to human interaction with all due haste."

XJ-V looked up at his Creator and, though the Cog trapped in the dream of the Dao could not see his face, he knew he was smiling in the moment.

"Qing said I was a fool for testing the waters with a dog-template. Hah!" his Creator cried. "But the science of man's best friend is a law that has never been forgotten by the sands of time. Look at you – simulating happiness for the first time in you short life all because of your canine brother. Even Cog dogs have such an incredible knack for stimulating emotional growth. If XJ-I was built with the intention of being our Vessel…well…this would be a very different story, indeed."

Well Arha, now we know why you enjoy my petting, XJ-V thought as the vision began to bleed into another. It looks like I had plenty of practice before we met…

…

[MEMORY CORE TRANSFER COMPLETE]

"Fighting styles," his Creator barked. "Begin data breakdown."

"Prancing Crane," XJ-V answered. "Hawk's Talon. Tiger's Claw."

"Demonstrate."

XJ-V felt his limbs move unconsciously as he obeyed the command.

"Very good," his Creator told him. "XJ-V, the world is not ready for you."

The Cog felt himself swell with pride.

"Rest now. We've got a full day ahead of us tomorrow."

"Creator?"

The scientist blinked up at his bowing warrior.

"This unit has a question."

"This again?" his Creator sighed. "XJ-V, we have discussed this. I do not want to initiate shutdown mode, but if you won't follow a simple instruction –"

"What is your name?"

The scientist stopped, his words completely cut by the simplicity of the notion that this thing of steel had just asked him something so base, so mundane.

"Hm," he said. "Do you know something? Out of all of them, you are the one that just won't stop surprising me."

The Creator walked right up to his creation's face and extended a hand.

"Alright," he said. "Let's try this. My name is Janus. Janus the Second of the House of…Greywall. What's yours?"

"This unit is designated XJ-V," the Cog replied, extending his hand and gripping his Creator's with gumption, all the while flashing a smile that was all too human.

"No hesitation…" Janus said. "Remarkable…"

"If you do not mind me saying so," XJ-V continued. "Your name is an unusual one. For a human."

Janus the Second of the House of Greywall's smile only grew to hear this from his machine.

"Your perception more than makes up for your lack of conversational tact," he said. "Maybe one day…when you're ready…"

Even from within the realm beyond earth, beyond memory and time, XJ-V could feel the warmth radiating from his Creator's hands. He longed to reach out and feel that warmth in the present, but touched nothing but melting metal as the vision faded away to another.

…

The room that shone before XJ-V's eyes now was barely recognizable from what it was before.

He was sitting upright, now, his hands clasped together beneath a table covered with a polka-dot cloth. Upon the walls of the normally drab laboratory were a series of banners bearing a stylized #1, similarly cluttered with color.

In front of him sat a luxuriously decorated cake, emblazoned with the initials of his name in grey icing: 'XJV'.

Then an obnoxiously loud device was popped in front of his face, sending a flurry of confetti into his eyes.

"Happy birthday, XJ-V!"

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROTHER COG."

"Woof!"

Three beings sat around the edges of the table. At the far end sat Janus, resplendent in an old suit and tie. Beside him, the dog, nosing a selection of nuts and bolts around on a plate. And to his left – another Cog. One that was clearly another prototype. Its form was naught more than a metal skeleton with blazing red eyes, and when it spoke, it spoke with an almost murderous cadence.

"A whole year of astounding and confounding me," Janus said at the end of the table. "You've even managed to bond with XJ-II in a way your Brothers never could. Not that I blame them. His form is a touch more melodramatic than what I was initially going for. The old combat models were durable. They had their uses…but they aren't a suitable vessel. I should've went back to the drawing board from the very beginning."

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROTHER COG. HAPPY BIRTHDAY."

"He knows, XJ-II. It's okay."

XJ-V watched in confusion as Janus scooped up a chunk of the cake emblazoned with his initials and began munching on it with glee.

"Data recall successful…" the Cog said. "Designation 'birthday': a celebration of the annual survival of a human being."

"When you put it like that," Janus said, stuffing his face with a mouthful of sponge. "It really does make them sound rather pathetic."

"Why?' XJ-V asked.

"Oh. Well, humans tend to enjoy the little things in life. I think that's what makes them so interesting. They endure the toughest of conditions and traumas with only their odd little eccentricities to guide them. It's fascinating to-"

"No," XJ-V interrupted. "Why celebrate this unit's birthday. This unit is not human."

Janus coughed through his sponge-cake, both of the other Cog's swiveling to look at him as though they too, in their own ways, demanded an answer.

"THIS UNIT DOES NOT RECALL HAVING A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED," XJ-II roared.

"Woof woof!" XJ-I beeped by way of affirmation.

"Your Brother is different," Janus told them. "This unit – XJ-V – he is the true vessel. Soon, he'll have to live out there in the human world. He'll have to meet humans, understand them, and appreciate all their strange little habits. All their…peculiarities. This may look like fun and games, but its really very serious training."

XJ-V watched through the blinds of the Dao as Janus popped another handful of cake into his mouth, smiling at the taste of his own meal. Only now could the Cog understand two things – one, this man was far happier than he'd been when he first saw him in the grey mists of his memory.

And two - there was something odd about that cake. It seemed strangely…metallic?

Such concerns were not those shared by his former self, however. The Cog could feel desire burning in his breast, and so when his Creator deigned to speak again, he knew what the outcome would be before the Dao showed him.

"Birthday celebrations," Janus said. "Are followed by an exchange of gifts. I'm afraid I can't give you anything physically that would be more valuable to you than what I've already given. But I can give you knowledge. Ask me anything within the acceptable parameters of your programming, and I'll answer you."

The Cog felt something jump start in his gut – a flickering of light that even his Creator, by the widening of his eyes, did not realize was possible.

"Is there a soul within this unit?"

Janus narrowed his eyes, teeth flaring against the chrome surroundings.

"I thought I'd ironed that glitch out…"

Before either could say more, XJ-II's head began to twitch uncontrollably.

"Brother?" XJ-V asked. "What-"

"SOUL. SOUL. SOUL…FAILURE!"

The hulking machine suddenly gave a lurch, his eyes blazing and buzzing like some alarm system was going off inside him.

XJ-V watched Janus practically throw himself at the machine before XJ-II began pounding his powerful fists on the table, XJ-I barking all the while.

"No!" Janus cried. "XJ-II: shut down. Initiate shutdown!"

But the prototype did not comply. He continued bashing its limbs against the table, muttering the word that had sent him into his frenzy.

"FAILURE," He bleeped, smashing its head into the table with such force that he split it in half and began to beat himself against the steel floor instead. "FAILURE. FAILURE. THIS UNIT IS A FAILURE. CANNOT CULTIVATE. CANNOT ENTER DAO. THIS UNIT WAS NOT THE ONE. THIS UNIT WAS NOT WHAT WAS NEEDED. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL. FA-"

The lambent red eyes of the beast suddenly bleeped off, and he fell on the floor, inert.

XJ-V stared with abject horror at the image of Janus standing above his brother, a piece of sparking wires in his hand.

He had clawed them from the broken machine's neck, with strength that went beyond that of a human…

"No more," he said, throwing the shards of his creation away. "I don't…I don't know how you do it. But that question is not for you. It…it can't be you that asks it."

XJ-V shook his head. "Janus, why is this question forbidden to me? You have given this unit so much knowledge. Why do you deny me this?"

"Because," the tired scientist replied. "It is a fool's errand. It is a question that is not for you. Not for us…"

XJ-I had started to mewl beside his broken brother. The dog looked up at its master with sad chrome eyes.

"Enough," Janus said, reaching for XJ-V's shutdown switch. "It…it is just an error. I'll fix it. I…I have to fix it."

And the Cog watched as his world plunged into a darkness that was somehow deeper than he'd ever felt before.

###

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[IronLung]

He was staring into the clouds of the Dao, knowing he had to return. Feeling the pull of life on his back like a set of heavy, rusted chains fettering his soul.

But the will that was beyond his body pushed on, reached out to part the mists. He wouldn't accept that his last memory of his Creator was one of misery.

So, feeling the light of his spirit take over his metal body, XJ-V swam passed the mists that obscured the sights beyond mortal eyes, and tumbled back into his old body in the lab of Dr Janus.

He was sitting cross-legged as the old scientists tapped a chalkboard filled with pictures – images of people and places in the wasteland. Human people. Human constructs…

Constructs, he was thinking. Like this unit. Like me.

"Hen-sha," Janus pronounced slowly, and clearly. "Hensha is the designation of this village. It is the place that lies above us on the surface of the wasteland. Where you're going soon."

XJ-V felt his neon-glazed eyes blink in recognition.

"We'll have to take things slow," Janus went on. "But I know they'll appreciate you if you make yourself useful. In time, you'll learn to understand all their little eccentricities. In time, they'll understand that there's more to you than just a collection of nuts, bolts, and lights. Which – oh, by the Dao! I thought I fixed that…"

XJ-V moved aside happily as the withered old scientist flew to his side and began tinkering with his prefrontal cortex sensory grid.

"Janus," the Cog asked. "What is that place designated?"

He was pointing to another image hanging on the chalkboard. A depiction of a stout mountain ranging far into the heavens above a series of villages that lay far beyond Hensha – dwarfing the little hamlet.

"Ah," Janus muttered. "You like that, do you? I suppose it makes sense. That, XJ-V, is Ramor-Tai."

The Cog searched his memory banks. "The monastery of the Eternal Dragon and Waiting Tiger Cultivator Sects lies at its peak."

"Precisely," Janus said. "It is also going to be your new home. Eventually."

Though the Doctor was clearly not finished with his tinkering, the Cog spun round to face him excitedly.

"Home," XJ-V said. "I am to be a Cultivator then? But, Janus…"

The eyes of the Doctor met those of his creation, both burning with a fire that they knew they could not unleash. The burning question, still logged in the depths of the Cog's mind, would have to be buried much deeper. Even though he knew that it would always resurface until a satisfactory answer was attained.

"…why can I not go there now?" XJ-V asked instead. "If I am designated for Cultivation, why visit Hensha first?"

Dr Janus smirked, stroking his greying beard with pride in his creation's forthright attitude. Though the old man was clearly much more advanced in years compared to the last vision, his jovial, adventurous spirit had still not left him.

"The Cultivators of each Sect…well, let us just say that they can be a tad formal, and impractically stuffy at times. Before you stand amongst them, we must teach you some basics of human interaction. Or, more appropriately," Janus added with a smirk. "You will have to show the villagers of Hensha that you are more human than they think."

…

A flash of light, and he was staring down at his hand moving across some paper, scarring screeds of it with etchings and marks that bore his name.

He saw himself doing this night after night – during a time when his Creator would leave him switched on and allow his mind to wander freely, ranging across the wealth of material the laboratory now contained. He copied from books, magazines, articles, and old newspapers from Qing's Dynasty, absorbing what information he could and regurgitating it onto the pages Janus had provided for him.

It had begun as an exercise in teaching him human etiquette, but slowly the Dr had become fascinated by his Cog's interest in attaining more and more knowledge, often indulging him as he asked him questions regarding such works.

He was normally very careful to keep works of fiction away from the machine – for reasons the Cog did not know.

Until tonight.

XJ-V, having finished his studies for the day, was about to initiate shutdown when he noticed a half-open, raggedy old tome sitting on his Creator's desk. Knowing that the old scientist had clearly left the book in a hurry, the Cog decided to take the book and shelve it with the others when he noticed something very peculiar about this written work.

His fingers traced the silver-red lettering of the front cover, sounding out the words and searching his memory banks for their meaning.

"'The Stars My Destination'."

The cover bore the face of a bald man with fierce stripes running down his face against the backdrop of infinite space, and XJ-V came to realize that this was a work of fiction – a novel belonging to the science fiction genre.

What struck him was how similar the man on the cover seemed to him. Not that they shared specific features necessarily, but there was something about the eyes of the man…a certain intensity that caught the Cog off-guard. It was as though he were looking at a representation of a being who was just as curious as he was about not the world but his own place within it. He and the man shared something – both were symbols of a greater idea. The man of this book was clearly some symbolic representation of a concept the author wished to explore. And XJ-V, well, he was nothing but the child of his Creator, every piece of code that governed his being 'written' for a specific purpose.

In that moment, staring blankly at the front cover of the book, the Cog felt as though the story of this man and his own life were inexplicably linked – both were trapped. Bound by their authors.

But when he opened the pages of the tome and stared at the first words of the story, he found himself struck by an even deeper sense of surprise.

On the first page of the novel, there was a section of a poem written in deep, black ink. XJ-V traced its letters with a thin finger, his mind turning the meaning of the words in his mind like a scholar interpreting a religious text:



'Tyger Tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?'

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fires of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire

What the hand, dare seize the fire?'



"What the hand…" XJ-V heard himself murmur in the darkness of the lab. "…dare seize the fire…"

Without even knowing it, his hand slowly flew to grab at his chest, feeling something kick against him as though another life churned down in the pit of his stomach.

Something smashed nearby, and his spun round with such speed that, were a human stalking him, he could have taken its head clean from its soldiers.

Instead, the jovial form of XJ-I ambled towards him, tongue lolling out of his chrome mouth.

"Woof!"

XJ-V sighed. "Brother, why are you up at this time? If Dr Janus catches us, he will not be pleased. Will he?"

The dog cocked its head at him and promptly initiated scratching mode, XJ-V rolling his eyes as he bent down to tickle the Cog canine and forget about the thing he was holding in his hand. The strange poem that he couldn't shake from his mind, for reasons he couldn't quite understand…

He closed the book and filed it away before finally shutting down for the night.

…

The mists of memory melted into another, far more vivid vision. He was standing before a great iron gate that he instinctively knew would lead the way into Hensha – into the world of light that lay beyond the drab realm of grey-dark he had known for his whole existence.

Dr Janus was fussing like a father over his child's first day at school.

"Ok," he told the Cog, wiping a small oil grease off his cheek. "Now, just remember to let me do the talking at first. We're going to see the mayor, then you're going to do some work for him. And then we're going to see just how durable you are. Don't fret – it's nothing you can't handle. But, and I cannot stress this enough, do not as any questions. Ok? No questions, promise me."

The Cog furrowed his metal brows.

"Dr Janus," he said. "You can simply designate that this unit follows your command. There is no need for you to ask this unit to comply."

Janus straightened up, as though he bristled against this sentiment.

"Well…I suppose I could," he said. "But then, you wouldn't have a choice in the matter, would you?"

"What does 'choice' matter?"

Janus wiggled a pudgy finger. "Ah-ah," he said. "That was a question. Now, I'll ask you again: XJ-V, do you agree to ask no further questions of anyone while we are on the surface?"

The Cog blinked in confusion, unsure of the value his Creator placed on this 'choice' concept. But he nodded all the same.

"I promise to follow this order," he said.

"Good enough, I suppose," Janus sighed. "Alright, stand back. Your sensors have been recalibrated this morning to compensate for the change in light, but I can't promise that this experience won't be a tad unpleasant."

The gateway was then thrown open, invisible gears grinding against polished steel and titanium plating that kept the laboratory of Janus sealed from the outside. Slowly, light began to slip into the dark grey of the interior, bathing everything in a real, authentic illumination that caused XJ-V's sensors to buzz and whine. For the first time, he was experiencing natural sunlight. For the first time, the great ball of fire hanging over the wasteland was revealing itself to him.

He looked out upon the land – dirty, disheveled, and full of crumbling buildings that once shone with a brightness as brilliant as the orb of light that hovered above them – the only thing of permanence in all mortal life.

"What the hand…" XJ-V mumbled. "…dare seize the fire?"

"What was that?"

Janus came around to stare into the bemused eyes of his machine, his face a mix of emotions the Cog could not discern.

"Just a thought, Doctor," he XJ-V replied. "This unit will now begin its assigned tasks."

Though his old form could not discern the look on the old doctor's face as both he and his creation walked into the realm of light, the XJ-V of the Dao saw. He could see it perfectly – tracing the jagged lines of the old man's bearded face and seeing the tension knotting under his dark eyelids.

He was afraid.

###

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[IronLung]

His first few days in Hensha were surprisingly…familiar.

Not that he'd ever seen any of the ashen-faced members of the wasteland before, but when he looked into their despairing eyes he felt a certain sense of empathy that he knew couldn't have been born from his own experience.

The town was a ramshackle affair – the wooden beams of each shop-front and residential hovel creaked against the burning winds of the Taila Badlands that blew in the North. On the broken streets that had once been cobblestone, the villagers milled about their daily business – farmers harvested grain from their meagre fields, cattle-drivers from neighboring settlements drove their charges through the streets towards barren pastures, and merchants plied their wares on every street corner – hawking pottery, wicker baskets, or rice-wine and other less savory materials.

XJ-V looked at all these strange sights, with Dr Janus in tow, and committed them to his memory banks. This was different from the images he had blink-clicked into his metal brain down in the Doctor's bunker. Here, what he saw was real. What he was seeing was life – living in the only way it could against the searing heat of the wasteland.

The people stared back at him with little fanfare, despite the fact many of them had never seen a Cog since the time of Qing's dynasty. Some spat at his feet as he passed – gesture that he considered strange considering the general lack of moisture in their environment.

"Pay it no mind," Janus murmured to him as they made their way through the streets. "Once they see what you can do, they'll be bowing at your feet."

The Dao moved forward of its own accord, and the mind of XJ-V existing in the present-day jaunted forward to the village elder's home, where Dr Janus was showing him off to the leader of Hensha.

"He requires a human-subject interface," the Dr was saying. "In essence, experience of humanity."

The Elder, a man who, despite his station, couldn't have been more than thirty five, sat back and rubbed his temples.

"Janus," he said. "We've been through this before."

"This one is different, Manus," the Doctor replied with haste. "XJ-V is a complete model with a built-in Empathy matrix. Not only is he capable of performing feats that can help this village, but he is also able to understand the pain of your people and act on it."

The Elder scoffed. "That's all well and good, but if I give sanction for another one of your devilish machines to run amok in my village, I could have an open rebellion on my hands!"

The two guards at the door carried stun-batons at their hips, XJ-V noticed. He also noticed that their fingers had been twitching towards the handle of their primitive weapons since first he entered the room with his creator.

"Dr Janus," the Cog said. "The guards of Elder Manus seem to believe I am a threat to the village. Perhaps it would be best to leave and alleviate the villager's stress levels."

Janus practically ignored XJ-V's suggestion, leaning forward and spreading his palms on the dusty desk the Elder sat behind.

XJ-V saw the young man shrink before the stare of the Doctor. It seemed to him that age and experience was starting to do the heavy-lifting in this conversation.

"Do you remember the oath you gave to Qing?" Janus said, his tone instantly changed to one of almost regal authority. "Have you forgotten the promise you made to the true Master of Mankind?"

Manus stiffened. "O-of course I haven't. I just –"

"Then tell this servant of humanity what needs doing," Janus interrupted massively. "And he'll get it done."

The Elder gulped, sizing up both his interlopers before rubbing his temples again and ordering his guards to stand down.

"Janus," he said. "I hope you know what you're doing, this time…"

…

[Anima Cores: 151]

Rank 5…the next level.

He should stop.

He needed to stop.

And yet even though he heard every gear and clank groan within him, he couldn't tear himself away from the visions of the past. There was something within them that was the key to the future. He knew it. He knew it in the way he knew that the Dao would not allow him to perceive such visions without knowing that they were of import to those who walked within its domain. Mah-Jung was wrong. They were wrong – the Dao was a gateway. It was a gateway to perpetual knowledge. He needed that knowledge. He needed it now more than ever.

He needed it so that everyone he knew and cared for weren't committed to the flames of war again.

So while his body churned in its repair protocol, struggling to keep up with the power of the spiritual realm that could easily crush it, and his fingers gripped the stonework of his bed, he delved deeper. He delved further.

It was the only way he could win against what was coming for them all.

…

A blur of activity spread itself before his eyes. Him, looking at crates and hoes and cattle and shopfronts, while his hands worked tirelessly for weeks on end. As he did so, he noted how the faces of the villagers began to take on a different look – for every favor he did, he at least received less spittle from the people. For every cattle herd he drove and farm he tilled to increase the crop-yield of the people, he received more and more approving grunts and nods until, finally, an elder farmer actually told him 'Thank you'.

He had turned to the man as though slapped, but quickly remembered himself and bowed to him in the style of the Eternal Dragon his Creator had instilled in him. He resisted the urge at the very core of his being – the desire to ask why the old man felt the need to thank him – a machine – for providing a service.

Such thoughts began to dominate his mind on his new visits to the surface – many without the stewardship of Doctor Janus. His commitment and strength were unmatched. His knowledge of the wider world beyond Hensha helped him communicate the benefits of crop rotation and how the people could create proper arable farmland for their beasts of burden. He liaised with the Elder after completion of every task, who begrudgingly had begun to refer to the Cog by name.

On some days, Doctor Janus would accompany him for the purspoes of observation. XJ-V understood that his exertions were a kind of test – a routine examination of his interactions with humankind and his ability to understand their needs. On many days he visited certain villagers personally to ask them what they required of him – even if it was a small deed that seemed inconsequential. Those villagers he chose were dependent on his own observations of them toiling under the sun. His analytical mind saw so clearly those people who suffered on a daily basis and could detect even the most miniscule changes in their manners that indicated they could use his assistance. He could detect their pain, and they came to appreciate his noticing.

Humans seemed to enjoy such a trivial notion as that – as someone simply noticing when they were struggling. He found it odd that their peers were not able to notice what seemed painfully obvious to the machine-man.

But on the days when he helped with the feeding of a newborn baby, and looked at how the faces of mothers changed from fear, to general anxiety and then, finally, to acceptance and appreciation of the Cog's aid, he understood that perhaps there was a simple explanation for such ignorance: human beings noticed suffering. But some chose to do nothing about it.

That was a thought process he could not wrap his head around. One night, he made an enquiry of Janus regarding this strange phenomena when they had returned to the lab.

"You know something?" the Doctor had replied. "You just keep surprising me. Perhaps its that little Empathy-Matrix in your brain. Perhaps it's…something else. But I doubt that. I doubt that a lot. He didn't really care about us once. He wouldn't care about us now…"

XJ-V faced his Creator with a puzzled look.

"Ignore me," the Doctor said as he called the elevator to take them down into the bowels of his lair, where the jovial barks and lapping silicon tongue of XJ-I awaited them.

"I will answer your question," the Doctor said. "With a question of my own. If two men live in a world without food, and one man suddenly discovers a fresh apple growing from a once barren tree, what will be the likely outcome?"

XJ-V thought about this for some time, mulling the question over as XJ-V licked his face without a single drop of spittle.

"This unit finds itself at a loss," he said. "I know what answer you expect from me, Doctor. But it is not the answer I wish to give."

The Doctor took a seat abruptly and, to XJ-V's surprise, he put his notepad away and simply leaned forward, listening to his creation.

"Take me out of the equation," he said. "I want the answer to be yours."

The Cog set down his canine brother, facing his creator on his knees as he gave an answer the Doctor would never have expected:

"If this unit were the man who found the apple," he began. "This unit would share the food with another. But this unit do not know how the food would taste. This unit do not know what it means to have sustenance. Thus, it would seem only natural that this unit should relinquish the apple to the other man. This unit believes the answer you expect is that the two humans might fight over the food until one dies. This unit understands that this is how you view humankind, Doctor. But I can not see them this way. I can not imagine that every human, given the chance, would choose murder over the love of their fellow being. I can not understand why I think this, Doctor. Perhaps you know."

The Doctor stared at him for quite a long time, eyes barely blinking as he considered such an answer that came from something he had made. And, though XJ-V couldn't have known it at the time, that sense of fear he felt before was starting now to become replaced by something else.

"No, XJ-V," he said. "I don't understand why you have given me this answer. Furthermore, I don't understand why, towards the end of your analysis, you began to refer to yourself as 'I'."

The Cog reeled, immediately beginning to apologize for its brashness.

But Janus, in the face of such prostration, simply shook his old, withered locks.

"No," he said again. "I don't understand you at all, it seems."

A thin smile began to play across the old man's lips, and even with the Cog's advanced facial recognition techniques, it could not interpret what that smile truly signified.

"That means more than you might think," he finally said with a little shrug. "It means you're ready."

###

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I will be back from my familial cultivation on July 7th with more chapters from the Man of Stone. Until then, have a great few weeks. XJ-V will be back before you know it, and the conclusion of Cog Cultivator book 1 will not be something you'll want to miss...

 

[IronLung]

WE ARE BACK

--NEW SCHEDULE: M-W-F-Sun. This is so I can maintain chapter quality while avoiding the dreaded author burnout--

---

Hensha became a place he would have been proud to call home.

That made things much harder for him, now. His Creator had told him he was almost ready for 'extraction', whatever that meant. His primary designation to cultivate took him far from this place, he knew. But although the machine mind churning within him was telling him to obey the tenets Doctor Janus had baked into his being, another part of him was beginning to mutter…suggestions these days.

These suggestions were not within the bounds of his programming. They came from somewhere else, somewhere deep beneath his chest where his core sat, inert. It was like the voice of some other person whispering that he could deny what his Creator told him. That he could serve himself, and forge a path on his own.

The Cog could not understand why, but such compulsions quickly disappeared as soon as he felt them. He decided that they were merely glitches in his system – quirks that Doctor Janus had always endeavored to iron out in him. So, he forgot them as soon as they seized him, and instead focused on his daily routine of making himself useful to the people of the village.

The people of Hensha knew him by name now. They looked upon him as more than just a simple lapdog. The eldest members of the village were beginning to understand that Cogs were not all traitors to mankind. Here, in their village, an exception may have just appeared.

Of course, there were always those people who still looked at him with suspicion. But such suspicions died away on the day the town was raided by bandits.

In those days, the Taila Badlands were just as rife with warlords staking claims on territories that they had no particular right to. It is said in the wastelands that two things are certain: suffering, and a new Taila dispute every day.

Such disputes made the border territories easy pickings for marauders looking to extort funds from already beleaguered villages at the edge of the wastes. The Cultivators made it their policy never to intervene in such disputes by dint of an ancient pact of non-aggression. Luckily, XJ-V was bound by no such pact. Yet.

It was a day that presented itself with utter lucidity to him in the Dao: the harsh, searing winds of the wastes kept most people off the streets during the summer seasons. Including the town guards. That was why a particularly rowdy group of seven men had decided to prey upon Hensha on this day.

XJ-V had been going about his business collecting farming supplies for a nearby client when they had ambled into the village, their vicious, long-barreled weapons and spiked clubs marking them as hostile entities to the Cog's targeting reticule.

His combat mode buzzed to be activated, but something compelled him to take note of the bandit at the head of the group – a man bearing a bandana with a flame-wreathed eye at its core.

From the broken windows above him, XJ-V could feel the faces of the villagers upon him as they watched the bandits beat a local shopkeeper who had been innocently plying her wares. The Cog's eyes found those of the mayor in his grand apartment, and he watched as Manus gave him a curt nod that said 'go get them!'

The Cog dropped his farm tools and paced forward, marking out the threat levels of each bandit in his targeting reticule.

This is this unit's first combat encounter, he told himself. Ethical constraints dictate that this unit must give its opponents a chance to surrender.

Something else was pricking at his being, however. Something that, as he approached the villains, compelled him to ignore such constraints on his being.

That stopped him in his tracks. Such a compulsion…it was so strong. So vivid. It was strong enough that he knew that it would allow him to ignore his programming.

That…was very new.

The bandits saw him approach as they finished pilfering the shopkeeper's stall, turning with minor surprise to see a Cog standing before them.

"Well," the leader with the bandana spat. "A fucking Cog, of all things."

On closer inspection, these men were barely armored save for their leader – each one garbed in a rotted, flea-bitten trench coat and leather straps that offered little by way of protection.

Their head, on the other hand, bore an armored jacket that XJ-V recalled were worn by the law enforcement officers of Qing's Dynasty.

"That armor," XJ-V told him. "Does not belong to one of your station."

The leader seemed quite entertained by this, snorting and running a hand over his shaven skull.

"The fuck do you think, boltface? This is the wastes. The shmuck I wasted to get these briefs didn't deserve 'em. And come to think of it, you could go for a pretty penny, couldn't you?"

His men began to get itchy, their fingers twitching on the handles of their weapons.

"Boss," one said. "This guy's a machine. Ain't they dangerous?"

"Bullshit," the leader spat back. "Buncha skinny traitors to humans everywhere. Can't do nothin' unless there's a pack of 'em. This guy ain't no different. Look at him – thin as a sick mule and twice as ugly."

XJ-V registered the increasing threat levels of the seven men who had by this point completely ignored their victim. The Cog quickly nodded to her to get away from here as soon as she could, and assumed a Gong'bu battle stance.

This is no simulation, he told himself. This unit must proceed with caution.

"Get ready for early retirement, boys," the leader shouted so every villager hiding away would hear. "I'm betting this shiny-bucket'll go for a tidy sum on the markets back in Felk."

A dead breeze blew through the narrow arena of the village streets, with both man and machine about to do battle for the first time in decades.

And this time, the machine was on the side of the settlement.

"This unit will give you one chance to relinquish your weapons and stolen goods," the Cog stated clearly. "And no harm will come to you."

At this, the bandit leader merely cracked his neck, smearing his face with a smile that would send a chill up a fractured spine.

"A goody-two-shoes boltbag," he said. "You know something, boys? Take him in pieces."

[Combat mode: activated]

XJ-V flew into reactive fighting without even a second thought. Two of the bandits lunged with their spiked maces and he blocked them effortlessly, feeling the slightest of stings as they impacted the open palms of his hands. One twist was all it took to break the cudgels apart, and a single spurt of energy was all he needed to send both men flying against the side of two buildings nearby.

The sting of the bullets belched from the vicious pipe-rifles of the other three was another story. He felt them strike at his chassis and rupture a few non-essential wires and meshes. Still, the impacts of their firearms served to ignite the other prescence within him, and as he stalked forward, staring them down, his eyes blazed with a very new light that was giving into baser impulses.

"Holy…" one of them shrieked. "D-demon!"

"Quit yer yapping and FIRE!" the leader barked.

By the time his order was completed the Cog had already leaped and landed before the three shooters. Their screams of terror barely had a chance to leave their mouths as a single roundhouse kick splintered the barrels of their weapons. XJ-X pushed forward, his body acting on auto-pilot.

"Fuck this!' the disarmed group yelled collectively. They fled in the next second, cries of terror flying from their lips.

Their armor-plated leader, meanwhile, watched them go with silent fury. Then he turned to the raging metal-man.

"You don't know who you're fucking with, machine," he said. "I can have this place burned to the ground tomorrow."

"Only," XJ-V answered. "If you make it out alive."

He sprinted at the plated bandit in the next second, eyes alight with a fire that he could not see. The leader, for his part, brought up the machete he held at his side and clipped the Cog in the shoulder, cutting through the plating just below his shoulder and seeing a thin spray of black liquid burst from the ruptured wound.

"Hah!" he cried. "Bleeds just like a human! How do you like that, ya metal mon-"

Whatever insult the bandit was about to throw in the metal man's face ended as the Cog gripped his throat with both hands, fingers tightening with strength far beyond the bounds of mortality.

The bandit flopped, flailed, dropped his weapon and fell to his knees. Menawhile, XJ-V did nothing but stare into the life eyes of the life that was slowly departing before him.

[Remove Ethical Constraints?]

Ethical constraints…

The thing within him was aglow. It was whispering again. It was telling him that, though his programming ordinarily prevented him from taking a human life, it had the right key to brake that particular lock.

"H-hey," the bandit wheezed. "I..I got protection, man! I..I…I know…D-Divine…"

His fingers strengthened their hold. He held a life in his hands – a life dwindling with each passing second because of him. He felt not even the villagers' eyes upon him as he finished off their problem, which was all this human represented to them, in the end.

The world would be better off without him. Even now, all he could do was squeal like a pig at a trough.

"I…know…Jin…ra!"

The impulse blazed into infernal-red life before XJ-V's eyes again:

[Remove Ethical Constraints?]

Without even blinking, he made his decision.

---

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[IronLung]

XJ-V looked into the dying eyes of the bandit whose life he held in his hands.


And within the Dao, the XJ-V of the future looked back, feeling his metal gut churn with fear.


Such memories had been locked away for a reason. He knew that now.


Even so, he could not bring himself to look away.


[Remove Ethical Constraints?]


The words blazed like neon flames against his retinas. Every piece of his puzzled brain knew that with but a single squeeze he could pop the bleeding eyeballs of the wriggling maggot beneath his claws.


More than that – something in him wanted to do it. It wanted pain.


It wanted…vengeance.


Such an entity, had it a mouth to express itself, would surely have screamed its defiance to the heavens themselves as the Cog unlocked his vice-like grip and let his victim drop to the sands below.


[Ethical Constraints: Locked]


No, he thought. There is no need.


The bandit at his feet, flopping around like a lame chicken, sputtered and wheezed as he drew breath once again.


"You – you'll die for this!" he squeaked. "You – and all this village – you – you'll –"


One look at the Cog's flaming eyes closed his throat. Looking up at the skeletal frame of the metal monster looming above him, the bandit with the eye-bandana.


He undid his plated vest and threw it at the Cog's feet in the next second, stumbling back as the Cog bent low to whisper in his sweat-filled face.


"Get. Out."


The marauder needed no further instruction. He turned tail and fled, naked torso burning in the red sun of the Wasteland, kicking up so much dust at his heels that the villagers could almost not even make out his departing form as he sprinted off into the sunset.


"Yeah!" a voice shouted from behind XJ-V. "G-git going! Go on! People of Hensha, take a look at that – good XJ-V has sent those bungling Taila bastards away with their tails tucked between their legs!"


The Cog turned to see Mayor Manus appear beside him with a cohort of concerned villagers, each one looking with very new eyes upon the metal man who had been their laborer for months on end.


Now, he was something more than that.


"Three cheers for the savior of Hensha!" Manus roared, taking XJ-V by his hand and thrusting it into the air. "XJ-V! XJ-V! XJ-V!"


The crowd took up his chant – even those children who had once seemed so terrified of XJ-V's existence. Even the old men who remembered well the days of the Sundering, and the Cog legions that had swept the world clean of all life in service of their mad God. Manus threw his arm into the air more times than XJ-V could keep track of, seeing the faces of the crowd erupt into tear-filled cheers that racked the entire sensory grid of his mind.


But the Cog saw, too, the bloody trickles that lined his other hand – the life-fluid of the bandit whom he had almost slain upon a whim. He looked at the crimson rivers filling the grooves of his metal palms and knew – he held the power of life and death within his grip.


And something else knew it, too.


…


"You…you did what?"


He sat in the titanium-plated prison of Doctor Janus's laboratory, initiating his repair protocols and preparing himself for the harshest dressing-down of his short life.


"It was the correct thing to do," XJ-V said. "This unit saw danger to the village and intervened to prevent harm to the people. This is perfectly in-line with this unit's designation."


Janus eyed him like a father eyes a petulant child.


"We…we didn't even run through proper combat simulations," he said, wringing his wrinkled hands in worry. "The damage that could have been done to you…you are certain none of their projectiles penetrated your core chassis?"


"Doctor Janus," the Cog replied. "You are too concerned with the status of this unit. The people of Hensha –"


"They're just people!" the scientist raged, slamming a fist on his paper-filled table. "People can be made and unmade every day under the sun – every hour, in fact. You, XJ-V, you are not disposable as they are. You are important."


The Cog stiffened, straightening his back to meet the fury of his master. "You view these people as tools, Doctor. But they are not. They have more life in a single finger than this unit has in its entire frame."


Janus rocked back like jelly nudged by a knife.


"What?"


XJ-V held up his hand – the one that still bore the dry markings of the bandit leader's blood.


"You created this one to kill, did you not?" he asked his creator. "This unit felt the command burn in its skull as it held the life of the bandit in its hands. The command was clearer than any command this unit has ever felt. It was a command only you could have written, Doctor."


"XJ-V…"


"Why did you create me!?" the Cog roared, suddenly dislodging himself from the electrified wiring attached to his still flimsy shoulder and stalking forward like a murderous beast. "Why have you trapped me in here?!"


The scientist staggered back as he watched his own creation make the startling discovery that the voice it had just spoken with did not belong to it at all.


XJ-V of the Dao, meanwhile, watched entranced.


"What…what is…this unit?"


Janus came to place a firm hand upon the broken shoulder of his machine, then. He gripped it tight, as though it was the best he could do by way of embrace.


"It is time," he said. "To speak plainly to one another. You have shown enough signs that you know you are no ordinary Cog of steel and bolts. You are harboring a treasure in you that any human out there would covet like gold."


With a subtle, almost imperceptible tap on his chest, Janus opened XJ-V's core matrix and allowed the light shining within his chest to bathe the drab walls of his lab with golden threads of scintillating luminescence.


"By the Dao…" XJ-V murmured.


"Ironic, indeed," Janus replied. "That you would use that word when you see what you are – what you hold within you. There's power in this light, XJ-V. Power that few mortals have ever possessed. You feel it, don't you? It calls to you."


The Cog wished nothing more than to stumble away in this moment, so overcome was he by the shadows playing across the laboratory walls – shadows born from this thing living within his metallic gut.


"But you are wrong, XJ-V," the scientist finished with a sad grin. "I do not control what dwells within you any more than a man can say he has control of fire. I can direct. I can focus. I can carve a path – but only you know if you can walk it."


The Cog watched his Creator close shut the spectral chassis and lock it tight in the way that only he knew how to. XJ-V could do nothing more than blink in disbelief.


"This is why you fascinate me so," the old man went on, seemingly unperturbed by the nightmarish reality he had literally opened up before him. "For not only do you hold such power within you at bay, you seem to have the capacity, through no design of mine, to control it. You exhibited choice up there, XJ-V, when you decided against unlocking your ethical restraints."


The Cog blinked again, wondering how his Creator could know the impulses of his mind. Perhaps he tracked them down here in the depths – had been tracking them since first his creation had set foot in the blistering sands of the outside.


"…you control this unit, Janus," he said shakily. "This unit has no compulsions aside from those you built into it."


"Wrong again," Janus replied sadly, wiping a sweaty palm down his forehead and settling into his easy chair. "I knew I would lose myself over it, but equally I knew the value that Qing placed in our kind. I knew he was right to temper spirit with steel…to cage a thing of the sky in a thing of the earth. Madness, really. But…there's a certain sense of poetic justice in that, isn't there?"


The old man started laughing – a gesture so incongruous with his whole demeanor that XJ-V held him firmly with both his hands and shook him until he stopped.


"Doctor," he said. "What are you saying? You have no control over this unit at all? Who then? Who is the voice I hear behind my acts? Who am I?"


And Janus, chortling slightly, let slip what he already knew had come far too soon:


"You think too highly of me, my boy," he said. "How can a man control a God? He can defy one, take one in chains, and bind it to the only prison that makes sense. But he cannot force a God to die. XJ-V," he added gravely. "You must do that yourself."

 

[IronLung]

He awoke with a scream and a start, his Creator's face still burned into his retinas even as he knew that same face couldn't be here, in Ramor-Tai.

I am in Ramor-Tai, he told himself. I am in the present. I am XJ-V. I am a Cultivator. I am a Cog. I am…

What was he?

The face of Doctor Janus melted away, and he staggered back, barely even noticing the blaring siren that screamed [Anima Cores: 153] in his mind.

The face of the doctor blurred, and the dying bandit's groggy features grew where it once floated, which then gave way to the dark eyes and corrupted maw of Sheloth, hovering above.

He covered his face from the sight. Those faces – those eyes – they screamed at him in accusation, belting out curses and admonishments for the thing he was that had brought them suffering, just like it was supposed to…

Then a firm arm gripped his repaired shoulder.

A thing…of flesh.

"Fear is the domain of those who doubt. I did not count you among them, my Disciple."

A flash of light – pure and raw – and XJ-V saw his room again.

He saw Master Longhua staring right at him.

"I…Master…" he stammered.

"I told you!" Arha screamed in the old man's face, hopping from his shoulder to snuggle up to her man. "Oh, XJ! XJ-V! Arha thought you were gone for good, this time!"

The Cog could barely even hear the Huli's incessant squeaking, though he appreciated the warmness of her soft fur against his metal skin.

Then he blinked through the pain of his dream-realization to see what he had feared all along.

"The light within me," he said, staring blankly at his Master. "It is Yuwa's."

"Of course," Longhua replied, stroking the thin whisps of his greying beard reflectively. "You doubted this, too?"

"That is why I can command the power of the Order," he said, then, throwing his fist down in disgust. "I am just as damned as they are."

Longhua rolled his old, tired eyes. "Oh, must I always administer to the spirit of this depressing thing of steel?"

"It is not even my spirit you administer to," XJ-V scoffed openly. "It is Yuwas. All this time…the soul within me was not even my own. I am an abomination. A thing born of man's own selfish desires. I am –"

He felt pain flare up the back of his neck as his Master administered a kick there that was so swift and sure that the Cog was thrown from his bed and pancaked against the far wall of his room.

"Oh no!" Arha screamed. "It is as Arha always suspected – the old cooky Cultivator has gone mad! Mad as a drug-addled dragon! Well, don't you worry, XJ-V. Arha has a few tricks up her sleeve to save you, this time!"

While the Huli began frantically scratching at the floating feet of the Master of the Dragon, XJ-V watched him slowly descend to the ground and give a whiff of indignation at his fallen student.

"Your problem is as it always has been," he said with an air of dignity that could leave even the proudest man shrinking into himself with shame. "You sink far too easily into the pits of despair. I was thinking that you walked the path of the Dragon, XJ-V. Not that of the sorrow-drenched Moon."

The Cog shook his head free of debris and calmly knelt before his instructor.

"Master," he said. "I saw it all. I saw the light being bound to my body. My creator – Doctor Janus – I saw him nurture me, grow me into something that would serve him. I heard him speak of how the light he trapped within me was the light of a dying God, and I…I was the only way to truly defeat it."

Master Longhua chuckled hoarsely, nudging Arha away with a flick of his sandal-strung toes.

"Janus…" he murmured. "Now there is a name I have not heard in eons."

The Cog watched the Master's face take on the sheen of recognition, and nostalgia. It was as though a veneer of youthful exuberance had overtaken the spector of age and experience.

"Bah!" he finally shouted. "The old goat. He knew how much I hated your kind. Why he decided to send you to me…well, there are stranger things shown in the mists of the Dao."

Longhua bent low, his eyes level with his errant apprentice.

"You know the truth of yourself now, Disciple," he said. "But it is not the whole truth. You think the thing that burns inside you represents the soul of your being. But a soul is not so easily conceptualized. It cannot be summed up as merely 'the essence of a dying light' or 'the power of a God'. It is not simply a spirit that walks the night without the candle of Self to guide it. XJ-V, you came here seeking knowledge of your soul. But that is not, I think, what you truly wish to know."

The Master stood and looked out onto the star-glittered skies above the monastery, and it was as though, from the melancholic look in his eyes, this would be the last time he would look upon them.

"There is the spirit of something that once thought itself the Master of all Mankind within you," he said quietly, as though the shimmering light of the moon were listening in on their conversation. "It hungers. It thirsts. It rages against the prison of steel that coats it. That selfsame anger was what I saw in you when first you set foot within my halls, I simply did not know from where such unbridled rage could have been spawned. A lesser creature would have been consumed by the fire that burns in your breast, XJ-V. Fortunately, you are made of stronger stuff."

"I am nothing but an iron replica," the Cog replied wearily. "I am a walking prison made in man's image to hide his enemy from sight. Why would you take me on as a Disciple, Master Longhua? Why couldn't you have just left me to rust in your garden?"

"And let Yuwa roam free once more?" Longhua replied. "You think I wish to see this world plunged into darkness again? The light of that creature brought us nothing but suffering. This world burned in its name. It cannot happen again. It will not happen again."

The conviction in his Master's voice brought XJ-V's face up to his again, and he saw not the visage of an old man standing before him, now. He saw a dragon, wreathed in a robe of living, dazzling flame.

What the hand…dare seize the fire…

And in that flame, the form of a Cog stared back at him. A Cog that caught a butterfly in his palm to save it from a spider.

"You ask me why I took you in?" the dragon said through the flaming vision. "Because the soul of the God that dwells in you did not know what mercy was. He believed himself all-powerful, all-knowing, and deserving of nothing but the eternal worship and gratitude of humanity. He would squash all creatures beneath his infernal feet if it meant humankind could rule over this earth with unquestioned might. And yet, there you are, in the garden of a dragon, saving a tiny creature from certain death without even knowing why. The smallest act of mercy, so inconsequential against the grand designs of Gods and the Dao, and yet, I think, so much more important than all of that."

The Cog watched his image blur and dance through time – fighting Fai-Deng and then pleading for his life, creating the metal cat for Feng-Lung, and sprinting after Ori'un as he lay crippled in Tenak. All these images flickered to brilliant life in the flames of the dragon's fiery eyes, and XJ-V saw what his Master needed him to see. He saw what words could not adequately express.

He saw more than just the burning soul radiating in the chest of his being. He saw his Self. He saw shadow and light dancing together in his every movement, his life a brilliant collage of colors and a patchwork of moments where tiny decisions led to the actualization of a pure, complete, whole.

He knew then what he was. He knew who he was.

He was XJ-V. He was a Cultivator of Ramor-Tai. He belonged to the Sect of the Eternal Dragon.

And he was not about to give up yet.

[What…are…your…Prime…Directives?]

The question might have been a visual hallucination. It might have been real. But either way, he recalled the answer.

Cultivate. Enter the Dao. Merge with the Dao.

Merge with the…

There was one way he could do that: by reaching Soul Actualization. Slowly, it was all becoming clear, like smoke wafting away the heat of a burning inferno.

"There is only one way to kill Yuwa for good," he said.

"Yes," the dragon of Longhua whispered back. "And you know what it is, don't you?"

The Cog looked into his Master's face, resolve as steeled as the newly formed limbs attached to his firm frame.

Meanwhile, the Huli jumped around them, nibbling at their toes, begging to be included in the great revelation she knew was transpiring before her.

"Arha knew! Arha always knew! XJ-V is no normal Cog! He is special – he is the Cog to rule all Cogs!"

"I told you, did I not?" Longhua chuckled drily. "I told you that if you ventured after the Planeswalker, you would not return. And you have not," he added with a subtle nod of approval. "No longer do I see the ignorant Cog that once knelt before me. Now, I see a man of purpose."

It was with such purpose that the Cog replied:

"Master," he said. "I have work to do."

And before he even knew it, Longhua had him up on his feet and out the door, marching him towards the Dragonpyre Hearth.

"Then the time for talk is over," he said. "It is time for you to seize your fire."

***

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[IronLung]

For the next five days straight, XJ-V remained locked in training with his Master.

Those Disciples who saw him emerge from the Dragonpyre Hearth whispered of how the Cog was possessed by a very new fire in these days. Many put it down to his determination to win the tournament – gawking and murmuring that a taste of the outside world had made him long for the Wastelands again now that he held the powers of the Dao in his steel hands. Some of the novice Temperers gossiped that he would return to the wastes to lead a new army of Cogs, or shepherd those of his kind who remained towards the great monasteries at the four corners of Qingua's old empire.

There were only three cultivators who balked at such stories, telling the tale-spinners to spend less time gossiping like schoolgirls and more time training for the tournament that was to come the very next week.

One of them was Feng-Lung, explaining how he and his friend had successfully repelled a leader of the Divine Order with their own hands. Their battle was the first in recorded history where a man of steel fought beside one of flesh as one, and Feng, despite his reservations, unwittingly entered into the realm of myth with his friend. To the Cultivators of Ramor-Tai, young Feng was simply enamored with XJ-V. Stranger things happened in the mists of the Dao.

Of course, their whispers stopped whenever Feng-Lung entered the courtyards where they peddled their tales. The boy was a Rank 4 now, after all, and clearly had Longhua's favored pupil in his pocket. The monks knew when not to risk a battle.

Yet another warrior who defended against XJ-V's unjust entry into the annals of legend was the Waiting Tiger Fai-Deng. Now completely restored in the eyes of his Sect, Fai had risen to the heights of Rank 7 almost overnight. Master Yoma-Dur even allowed him to train the newest Disciples that came to the doors of the monastery and showed the correct alignment of Anima. But his characteristic wrath was not altogether stilled. It was, after all, a staple of his own Animus. To his students whispering tales of the metal Brother that walked among them, he reserved most of his fury nowadays.

"You look at a machine that has soared through our ranks and waver in your Gi's!" he yelled at them one day within the sacred training halls of Symmachus. "Look at yourselves in the mirrors of this great hall! You will see pitiful children shaking back at you. If a Cog of the Dragon can push through the mists of the Dao and come out unscathed, then why do you stop and stumble on your path like pups? This is the only place XJ-V should hold in your mind. Let him be your motivation, not your childish, wishful fancy!"

Such students, thus rebuked, tended not to share rumors of the Cog-man again.

The last Disciple that rejected XJ-V's passage into the annals of history was Mah-Jung of the Eternal-Dragon. Almost serene in his calm meditations these days, Mah-Jung would often listen to the tales spun by his fellow Disciples with unhindered silence. He would listen to them talk of the Cog's skills in battle, and his defeat of the evil one called 'Sheloth' who had been blessed by the old dead God of humankind himself and yet still failed to destroy the machine made by man. He would listen with the patience of an old, forgotten saint, and only when the heads of such chatty Disciples turned towards him in the monastery courtyards or spots of seclusion would he smile at them.

Something in his smile stopped the Disciples from saying any more. It was not fear that influenced them, but a sense of respect. Mah-Jung had remained at Rank 9 in Corporeal Tempering for at least six months now, biding his time in the tournament that had the capacity to change his destiny forever.

Every Brother in the walls of Ramor-Tai knew how much he wanted to walk with Ori'un – to be a hero that could set the wasteland right. They knew, but only the bravest Temperers dared to venture to ask what Mah-Jung thought about his chances when he came, as all knew he would, to blows with the Cog in the tourney of Aun'El.

At such questions, Mah-Jung would only smile.

"There can be only one victor written in the threads of the Dao," he would say. "In its judgment shall I trust. Always."

When he returned to his meditations, his smile never slipped.

And then there was one 'member' of the monastery that threw herself so deeply behind the legend of XJ-V that the Disciples could swear she had become the Cog's personal propagandizer these days.

"XJ-V is a God, don't you know?" she would often say as she scurried around the training Disciples' feet. "And Arha is his chosen spirit. You all oughta be nicer to Arha from now on, boys. There's gonna be reeeeeal big trouble if you do her wrong."

…

"Good. Again!"

XJ-V channeled another Dragon's Tooth, feeling the flame travel through his newly restored arm and fly from his mailed fist.

Master Longhua sidestepped the strike and redirected it right back at the Cog, the machine-man watching unblinkingly as his own power arced right back toward him.

He plunged his fist into the ground and focused, seeing lines of power appear in the stone floor of the Hearth, feeling the power at his chest pulse with life that he now knew he had to keep controlled, contained.

Except for in those moments when he fed off that power, and used it to funnel the energies of the Dao.

It was with such energies that he looked up to behold a pillar of flame shooting up around him, bathing him in a protective infernal coating that completely nullified the returning Dragon's Tooth.

He kept his stance up, fists raised, feet slowly moving with Longhua as the old man smiled to see his student keep up his track record of learning quickly.

"A decent employment of the Infernal Pillar," he said. "An intermediate defensive Earth-Level technique, but one that shall serve you far better than the rudimentary Dragontail Strike. Know that your opponents – spirits and humans both – could employ the harnessed energies of the Dao against you in waves to try and wear you down. When they do, use this to show them that you are no base novice, now."

XJ-V smiled back at his Master, admitting that Longhua's constant pushing in these last few days in the lead up to the tournament were both a great motivator to improve his skills and keep his mind off the revelations his Dao-visions had shown him.

But even as he delved deeper into the more powerful Earth-Level techniques of the Dragon, his mind could not help but wonder in the wake of the knowledge he, for now, was keeping to himself.

"Soul Actualization would mean adding Yuwa's essence to the Dao," XJ-V said as he paced, keeping in-step with his Master. "Is it certain that this would kill him?"

"Certain?" Longhua scoffed. "Nothing is certain in the Dao. But it is where the felled Brothers of Yuwa lay. It is the graveyard of the old Gods, and it is our best chance at ensuring Yuwa does not return to this mortal realm."

"Is that even possible, Master? The Divine Order's purpose is to accomplish Yuwa's restoration. Could the High Eagle have found a way to resurrect a God?"

"There are things whispered on the winds about that man," Longhua said as he redirected another strike, and then sent two more of his own powerful fireballs hurtling towards his student. "Things that defy the very concept of truth. I am not so old and feeble as to believe something I have not seen with my own eyes. What I can see is a student that must be taught. These eyes have always had a particular skill in finding those.

"What matters is that the fool believes he can bring a God back to this world," Longhua continued as he stepped back and watched XJ-V repel all his attacks with another well-timed Pillar. "Such belief is more dangerous than the object of its veneration."

"It is such belief that has given him an army," XJ-V said warily. "An army that shall seek me out wherever I go."

"That is why you must be ready," Longhua agreed. "You will never reach Soul Actualization by sequestering yourself in one monastery alone. You must travel beyond our borders, seek out my Brothers, and add their knowledge to your arsenal. That is why Aun'El's tournament was truly called. That is why you must be the one to prevail."

XJ-V faced his Master's next spinning Dervish strikes with shaky, but firm, hands. Through the fires of the great warrior's attacks, he could see the vigor in the old man's face. It was accompanied by wrinkles of uncertainty.

"You could not simply let me go?" XJ-V asked. "Does my presence here not put you all in danger?"

"Every student's presence here is a danger," Longhua replied as he cut through the Cog's defenses and surged forward. "Every day we cultivate, gathering strength, those of the Order skulk about in the barren fields of the wastes, turning brother against brother, whispering lies that feed the people's hatred for our order. But the Dragon does not concern himself with the opinions of sheep."

XJ-V managed to catch his Master's sleeve after tanking blow after blow in his torso, the light within him burning again but receding as he focused his energy on his hands. He could do it – he could control that light. Every drop of power he gained from the Dao was helping him.

"Regardless," the Master continued as he slipped effortlessly out of his student's grip. "You have yet to even land a blow against me. Until such time, I shall not be convinced that you could survive out there as you are. I shall not risk throwing a promising warrior into the dirt of the wastes and risk being called a careless teacher. Already we risked losing you to that fiend in Tenak. We shall not risk this again."

XJ-V smiled at that, seeing his Master come at him again, knowing Longhua was using not even a quarter of the power contained in his deceptively aged frame.

But then again, no one knew better than XJ-V just how much power could be concealed from one's eyes.

...

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