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Cog Cultivator (Xianxia)

Reader mode
Chapter 8: Brotherhood
  • Threadmarks
    • "I cannot tell you how exciting this is!" Mah-Jung said for the fifth time since XJ-V had met him. "This is an honor! History is being made."

    XJ-V again nodded at the Disciple's statement. His fellow Disciple, that is. He still felt strange to be wearing the orange-tinted robes of a novice in the Eternal Dragon Cult, feeling the soft cuffs fall over his wrists and hide his skeletal hands. Mah-Jung had said it suited him. But how could XJ-V discern truth from this man who seemed to be forever in a state of unparalleled bliss?

    "Feng-Lung will be most happy to see you here!" his earnest guide said as he led him into the Eternal Dragon commune, past its high arched stone walls and deep into his dimly lit interior halls filled with frescos of the eponymous coiling wyrm that was its namesake. "The other Disciples will probably be…reticent…to accept you at first. But I know they will come to see the light in your eyes just as Master Longhua has. He thinks well of you, you know."

    "Does he?" XJ-V asked as Mah-Jung opened the rickety door to a vacant room within the sect's initiate quarters. "I register only hate in the Master's looks."

    Mah-Jung blinked frantically before collapsing into ruckus laughter, so much so that some of the other novices meditating in the courtyard opened one of their eyes to see if the Cog had just told a joke. Then they saw that it was Mah-Jung who was laughing, and promptly returned to their Cultivation.

    "That is the Master's way with everyone!" Mah-Jung replied after wiping a joyous tear from his eye. "A dragon is a beast born from fury, bred to live in flame. Can you blame the Master for being a slight grouch? He takes on the purest aspects of our Sect's Guardian Spirit."

    XJ-V thought it best to simply nod and agree with whatever Mah-Jung told him. The sooner he did so, the sooner the Disciple might be on his way.

    But Mah-Jung did not depart as the Cog hoped. Both men simply stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time before XJ-V finally asked, "Is there something the matter?"

    This question brought more hysterical laughter from his guide. "Why, dear XJ-V, you have not yet entered your room!"

    XJ-V blinked in response.

    "My room?"

    "Of course! We cannot have you meditating out in the rain forever, can we?" Mah-Jung replied with the jovial smile that XJ-V had come to expect from him since Master Longhua had asked him to be the Cog's guide to the commune.

    XJ-V frowned at Mah-Jung's suggestion. He stepped through the arched doorway and looked blankly at the stone bed, its clean sheets, the small rectangular window that looked out to the courtyard and the plain chest of drawers that lay at the far wall of the tiny space.

    In the middle of the room sat an ornately embroidered rug with an image of a spiral embedded on its surface in dark crimson.

    "Is it not to your liking?" Mah-Jung asked from the doorway.

    XJ-V looked up at the man abruptly. "Why do you remain outside?"

    "Why, because this is your room now, XJ-V," Mah-Jung replied. "It would be improper for me to enter without being invited, now wouldn't it?"

    XJ-V nodded slowly, trying his best to take in the idea – the almost heretical concept that he, a Cog, might actually own something.

    "My room," he said aloud, chewing the statement on his metal teeth.

    Mah-Jung nodded. "Treat it as you would treat your very limbs, my metal Brother. Now, I shall leave you to your thoughts. Dinner will be served at the setting of the sun. We will be having freshly baked Mantou today, and…"

    XJ-V stared blankly as slow realization dawned over Mah-Jung's face.

    "…yes, well, obviously that's…perhaps not something that would interest you."

    The boy bowed low so that his braided ponytail kissed the stonework of the commune's floor.

    "If there is anything I can help you with, Brother, please do ask. My quarters are just down the hallway, two rooms from yours."

    "Thank you, Brother Mah-Jung."

    The smiling Disciple's features elongated with a strange mix of wonder and innocence. Perhaps it was as Feng-Lung said – none of them had ever beheld a Cog before, or had any idea how they thought.

    "Y-you are welcome." He said as he turned to leave. And when he went, he did not trail laughter after him.

    XJ-V looked at the disappearing back of his jovial brother and found himself laughing suddenly. Alone in a room that belonged to him – an object – he suddenly became aware that the boy had just invited him to dinner.

    He laughed again. And, with nothing better to do, sat cross-legged on his bed and activated his repair module.

    …

    When he emerged in time for the evening Kai-exercises, XJ-V felt more refreshed than ever.

    His sensors had now acclimatized to the world of Ramor-Tai, so that he saw everything that much clearer. The Chrysanthemum's last petals were wilting outside, the Disciples were gathering in the wake of their dinner, and the skies above were streaked with the pale veins of moonlight that glided through the Wasteland skies on nights when it was said the spirits looked down on all sentient life.

    He closed the door to his chamber and made his way down the commune hallway to the courtyard.

    It was on his way that he bumped into a familiar face.

    "XJ-V!"

    He turned to see Feng-Lung running towards him, his mouth stuffed with half-chewed mantou. The youth almost tripped over his robe as he clapped his hand round the Cog's shoulder and beamed a smile into his neon eyes.

    "Or should I call you 'Brother XJ-V,'" he grinned. "I never doubted you, you know. Not once."

    XJ-V grimaced. "I seem to recall you telling me I should simply leave on multiple occasions."

    Feng-Lung reeled back and swallowed the remains of his dinner. "Bah! That was just a test, like you thought," he chuckled. "Within you I knew best the heart of a warrior. Ever since the day you gave brother Fai-Deng exactly what he deser-"

    The boy stopped abruptly as two familiar figures past them by, retiring to their separate commune as their lessons concluded for the evening.

    The red-faced Brother Kai-Thai and ever dour Fai-Deng stared at them unblinkingly.

    And then the former shot out an arm to embrace XJ-V with glee.

    "Welcome to our ranks, Brother!" he practically shouted. "We shall celebrate with a casket of rice wine later, made by the finest Cultivators of the Tiger Sect! Perhaps then we shall entice you to forsake the Eternal Dragon for our ranks, eh Brother?"

    Kai prodded Fai-Deng with the energy of a child mocking his little sibling, and the silent man merely stared daggers at XJ-V's nonchalant face. A great purple blotch marred his right eye where the Cog had slammed his knee into his face on the night of their battle, and it gave him an appearance far less handsome, and far more unsettling, than what he had maintained before.

    "You remember me, machine?"

    XJ-V ignored Feng-Lung's grasping hand as he moved to stand before the Tiger. "Yes," he replied. "You fought well, Brother."

    A haze of crimson smeared itself across the disgraced features of the warrior.

    "Do not try and humor me, automaton," he spat. "Why Master Longhua has chosen to admit you to the Dragons is a mystery that defies belief."

    "We would not presume to question the word of a Master," Feng-Lung broke in. "Would we, Brother?"

    "Is that a challenge, Feng-Lung?"

    Fai-Deng surged forwards threateningly as XJ-V moved between him and his friend, while Kai-Thai grabbed his brother by the collar.

    "Young love," he mused. "It is as destructive as it is beautiful."

    "There is nothing beautiful about this thing," Fai-Deng growled, tendrils of electricity beginning to climb up his knuckles. Even though he had not thrown a punch, XJ-V could tell that there was far more strength in those hands now than when they had clashed before. The boy had spent his time wisely, training perhaps every day, growing ever stronger while the Cog had withered. And now? XJ-V truly wondered which of them would best the other if it came to blows.

    "Know this, Cog," Fai-Deng snarled as he bumped shoulders with his opponent. "You may wear that robe and walk these hallowed grounds, but a true Cultivator will never call you Brother."

    With that he grunted and shoved past both Dragon Sect members, leaving a baffled Kai-Thai muttering his apologies and running after him.

    "Does Brother Fai-Deng usually mention me?" XJ-V asked Feng-Lung once the Tigers had departed.

    "I'm afraid so," Feng-Lung sighed. "Ever since your duel, he has redoubled his training. Most days he sits alone, forsaking even the evening meals in the Tiger commune, so I hear. His defeat at your hands meant he lost face in front of all the monastery, and it takes a long time and much effort to remove such a stain from one's name. It is a sad thing to see a Brother become so obsessed. But, in time, I am sure the guidance of his Master and Kai-Thai will soothe the beast within him. After all, one cannot stay angry forever, can they?"

    XJ-V looked at the hunched shoulders of the departing Tiger with a sense of burning sorrow in his gut. Time did not track for him. A concept like 'forever' meant nothing, but he had seen eyes like those before. He had been referred to disparagingly as 'machine' before.

    And the person who had spat this label at him had been angry for a very long time.

    ###

    (If you enjoy Cog Cultivator and would like to read more, consider supporting the story on Patreon)

    Cog Cultivator is also now being posted on Royal Road. I would love it if you gave the story a follow if you frequent that site: Cog Cultivator (RR)
     
  • Threadmarks
    • You didn't keep us waiting long on this one! Thank you. And good luck over on Royal Road!
     
    Chapter 9: Kata
  • Threadmarks
    • The evening Kai exercises were simpler to follow than XJ-V had initially thought. These were not tests of Qi gathering through breathing or walking within the domain of the Universal Dao. They were simply movements – a chance for each Disciple to practice their stances and allow their bodies to flow with the still winds that blew through the jade monastery rooftops. XJ-V learned of the Prancing Crane stance, keeping his legs perpendicular, angling his toes, and balancing on the souls of his feet, receiving a few affirmative glances from Feng-Lung when he got the form down correctly. At the head of the gathering, Master Longhua's sharp eyes betrayed nothing but keen focus and intellect as he observed every Disciple for any lapse in form or ability. One beginning the art of Corporeal Tempering required their body to be at once loose – ready to bend like a reed in the wind – and strong, hardening like a tree's deep roots when the mind commanded.

    Master Longhua's first sessions with XJ-V were similar in nature. Every Disciple was allotted at least one private audience with the Master a week for the purposes of direct instruction based on their power level and ambitions. XJ-V had been overjoyed to begin, but had so far only enjoyed the Master's silent company in guided meditation. The Cog had assumed he would skip the basic breathing exercises and movements – focusing instead on the first martial techniques of the Eternal Dragon's Earth Grade skills. After his first two weekly sessions, however, he found that this was not so. If anything, his private sessions with the Master were much the same as what he had been doing outside his chambers for the past months – focusing on the correct position, becoming one with his surroundings, hearing the most minute of movements and detecting the presence of individuals by their steps alone. Soon he could detect the Ciatra Crickets by the beating of their tiny wings, and the appearance of a Marshbuck by the beating of its tail as it tunneled underground. His sensors were heightening through practice, it was true, but he felt this was nothing he could not have mastered on his own.

    The first steps on the road to Cultivation were shaping the body through such exercises, supported by training bouts (called 'Katas'). The union of meditation with martial contest would ensure that the relation between the will of the individual and each movement of one's limbs were perfectly in sync. Even though many of the Disciples had long ago moved up the ranks, Master Longhua was known for his strict observance and maintenance of these basic forms. At his Master's insistence, XJ-V joined several practice Katas for this very purpose, with Disciples lining up to be his sparring partner. Most of them he could counter without much hassle - his sensors gave him an advantage in reading precise movements. In his first few days nearly every member of the Sect went toe-to-toe with XJ-V and, with varying degrees of difficulty, the Cog had managed to put them on the ground without a second thought. Of course, none of them were employing their sacred Sect techniques, even if some sorely wished to. That would not be in the spirit of fair competition with a novice, even if he did have his own advantages. Such bouts were purely friendly contests of martial prowess alone, not spiritual tourneys, and XJ-V learned much through purely observing the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents' respective stances. He gathered enough data to enable him to perfectly perform the four major stances of his Sect within a week – the Prancing Crane, Crouching Fox, Falling Drake and Coiling Wyrm.

    But like all things, XJ-V's newfound confidence was quickly shot by two Disciples who proved more than a match for even his adaptable mind: Mah-Jung and Feng-Lung. Often, he would find himself knocked off balance by the swift, yet heavy strikes of both men, and each time he would blink up at them in surprise as the other Disciples sniggered in their own corners of the courtyard or the commune training room.

    "Come, XJ-V!" Mah-Jung told his thrown body one early morning. "Rise and show me the strike that took down the furious Fai-Deng!"

    The Cog smiled despite himself. He could see the beads of sweat running down his Brother's face, staining the folds of his training Gi. Feng-Lung watched from the oaken bench at the far end of the training room, his own face flushed with exertion after throwing XJ-V at least three times.

    Not this time, XJ-V thought to himself. The boy is tired. I can read his apprehension.

    XJ-V spread his legs and crouched, low keeping his back straight and chest out, assuming the Crouching Fox. He made every movement so obvious for Mah-Jung, performing the move with textbook precision – his feet were not an inch out of line.

    His sparring partner smiled. "You mean to take me down in one fell swoop," he said, dancing on the heels of his legs. "Very well, Brother, I accept your challenge."

    The Brothers of the training room gathered to watch the bout as midday sun streaked its golden threads over the commune rooftops. A few of them placed bets of baiju and mantou on one of the two men, while others made dire promises of offering omelet rice to the victory – a promise all knew would not be kept.

    But the two men in the sparring circle had eyes for only each other.

    He will flank left, XJ-V told himself, his sharp eyes homing in on the almost imperceptible movements of Mah-Jung's naked toes wriggling ever so slightly to the left. He will aim a jab at my side to break my stance and then try and take me down with a roundhouse to my neck as I struggle to recover. I will allow him his first blow, let him get lost in his confidence, and then use the momentum from his strike to grab his fist and pull him down with me. If I can get my legs round his neck, I can force him to yield.

    All at once Mah-Jung flashed a jester's smile and pounced, following the exact trajectory XJ-V had calculated.

    Got him!

    The Cog shot out his arms to grapple the boy and redirect the punch he was sending towards his neck.

    …and then he felt its sting on his right leg, just under his kneecap.

    XJ-V's eyes went wild. He felt his lower torso buckle and fall, and his eyes flashed to the carpeted ground to see that Mah-Jung had managed to get his foot to sweep the cog's skeletal ankle. All that remained was for the boy to grab his Gi and push the metal man down, and the strange double vision that had only moments ago dominated XJ-V's eyes coalesced into the smiling form of the Disicple on top of him, his leg firmly locked in the air beneath Mah-Jung's elbow joint.

    "Do you yield, Brother?" he asked like a cackling ghost.

    XJ-V, despite having just suffered his fifth loss that day, smiled.

    "I believe it would be prudent to do so."

    Mah-Jung unlocked their limbs and offered him his sweaty hand. Not wanting to appear unsportsmanlike, he took it.

    "You fought well, Brother," Mah-Jung said. "But I think you underestimated your opponents on this day."

    XJ-V's smile grew as Feng-Lung came over to greet the panting contestants. "That is a mistake I will not be making again."

    "Ah, cheer up good Brother!" Feng-Lung jeered. "It looks to me like you have given Brother Mah-Jung his most intense workout in days. After a couple more bouts, I'm certain you would have him on his back by dint of his sheer fatigue alone!"

    Mah-Jung chuckled, accepting a wet towel from his fellow Dragon. "I won't argue that point!"

    The two decided to head off for lunch at that point, asking their Cog Brother if he wished to join them. XJ-V declined, saying he would rather use the time to complete his repairs in the wake of his morning defeats.

    "The wise warlord contemplates his losses more than he celebrates his victories," Mah-Jung said approvingly. "But you must not dwell on it, Brother. We of the Seventh level Body Temperers have our secrets. Perhaps, in time, you shall unlock them."

    XJ-V nodded at that, admittedly looking on the pale-skinned youth with new eyes. He had thought him a clown – a mere underling that was used to ferry the novices around. It had not occurred to him that he would be such a formidable opponent.

    His moves were like a harlequin's, always dancing around his opponent, always appearing to be where he was not. XJ-V had tried anticipating – had tried calculating – and this had been enough to confound the other novices, some of whom were of higher rank than he. But not so with this one, or Brother Feng-Lung. It struck the metal man as funny that these two were of the most unassuming, most innocent natures – cut from a totally different cloth compared to students like Fai-Deng – and yet they posed the greatest challenge to him.

    The way he moved…XJ-V thought as he watched his new Brothers go. To be in one place and then…not there…

    Whatever secret hid behind those smiling faces, XJ-V decided he would devote himself to finding it.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 10: Qi
  • Threadmarks
    • "Tell me what shadows move behind your eyes, XJ-V."

    He sat, legs crossed, in front of Master Longhua, practicing the breathing exercises that meant nothing for one who had no organic lungs at all.

    "Master," he replied. "I see nothing."

    One of Longhua's long-lashed eyes opened.

    "A stone cannot simply grow eyes through will alone," he said.

    XJ-V reeled back and opened his eyes, looking into the old, wrinkled face of the old one.

    "It is through will alone that I sit here now," he said.

    "Wrong," Longhua chided, appearing behind the Cog and administering a stout kick to his metal back.

    "Master!"

    "This is how a stone must be disciplined," Longhua said, stroking his long beard and staring with narrowed, mischievous eyes at his new student.

    "What is my mistake?" XJ-V demanded, rubbing his back. In the small of his mind, his thoughts were now set aflame. Longhua had done just as Mah-Jung had. He had been before him in mediation and then, with a single blink, practically standing on his back.

    "Your belief that a stone may throw itself," Longhua said calmly. "Your stubborn refusal to see what is right in front of you. Your insistence on only observing and, by so doing, only ever observing – never learning. Should your Master continue?"

    XJ-V looked into the eyes of Longhua, seeing experience there beyond mortal years. Both in this world, and the place beyond it.

    "There is something I have learned," he said. "There is something that is hidden from me. Something these eyes cannot see. I would know what it is."

    The Master of the Eternal Dragon considered this with another twirl of his beard. His hand flew to the pocket of his robe and produced a small, carved hooka pipe.

    "So," he said, sitting cross-legged once more and lighting his pipe with a click of his fingers.

    "Perhaps you do have eyes after all. Not eyes that can see, but eyes that can wonder at what lies beyond them."

    XJ-V watched his Master in silent contemplation. Through the myriad of calculations his mind made, and through processing all the subtle facial expressions the Master was exhibiting, he tried to understand what was happening in the old man's head. But it was useless. The inner machinations of his mind remained elusive, as did all, it seemed, that XJ-V wanted to know.

    "Master," he said steadily, fighting the burning within his metal chassis. "I believe it was Prophet Ai-Lee who wrote the words 'All living things are endowed with the essence of the Dao. Place trust in that, and even the lamest turtle can be guided to water."

    The Master drew deep on his pipe and blew out a small circle of smoke. "It remains to be seen if you are truly living or dead, Disciple."

    Before XJ-V could interject, the Master waved his hand limply over the smoke puff he had released. Between them both he weaved the smoke into a line of shimmering ash and began to form shapes from each little thread. XJ-V watched in awe as the Master of fire created six distinct images before his eyes:

    One: a coiling dragon.

    Two: a tiger with its hackles raised to strike.

    Three: a bent reed beside a water hole

    Four: twin snakes curled in embrace

    Five: a crescent moon, dark as the night it brought with it

    XJ-V was so entranced by the hazy images that swam before him that he barely heard the Master's next demand:

    "Tell me what you know of the Qi."

    XJ-V answered without hesitation: "The Qi is the essence of the Universal Dao that permeates our world. It runs in the veins of all living things."

    Longhua considered this answer. "A textbook response. You know the word, you know the meaning, but do you know how it feels to harness the Qi? Do you know what it is to feel it coursing through your body and the bodies of your Brothers? Do you understand how the Qi can be shaped?"

    XJ-V thought before he spoke. The answers were things he could guess at, but he knew Longhua well enough to know that the Master didn't want guesses or approximations. Such things showed brashness. Instead, the Master wanted truth from him. Simple, pure, and unrefined.

    "No," he replied.

    The Master smiled. "An answer that belies more wisdom than you might think, my Cog Disciple."

    Longhua swept his palms over the assembly of wisping emblems he had formed.

    "Consider the Sects of the Cultivators," he said, running his fine fingers through each image as he remarked them. "Each patron spirit is an entity that learned to use its physical body to channel the Qi and breathe life into our world. Once, we men worshipped the Old Gods of the Qingua Dynasty. We believed that ultimate power took on forms like ours. In the wake of the Sundering, as we watched the Gods fall and take our earth with them, we realized our folly and communed only with the spirits of the land – the true patrons of all who walk upon this earth with a soul in their chest."

    The eyes of Master and eager student locked for a moment across the smoke-filled room. Longhua could see the desire within XJ-V's burning eyes.

    Desire to know, he thought before he continued. Merely to answer your question? Is your ambition really so mundane?

    "The Eternal Dragon," he said, his fingers stroking the smoky torso of the first creature with pride. "An ancient being who first breathed deep of the Qi and gave the world fire and its sister aspects: ambition, passion, industry, power, and illumination. A force of creation and destruction in equal measure, for there cannot be life without death."

    His hand swept over the hackled tiger next.

    "The Waiting Tiger. A powerful creature who stalks the long grass of the desert oasis. A being who channeled the Qi into its claws, and learned to temper power with patience. The tiger's element is lightning – for its strikes are fast and beautiful. Its aspects are speed, ferocity, patience, and symmetry. A patron to all who would hunt and stalk, for only the patient hunter catches his prey."

    XJ-V thought of Brothers Kai-Thai and Fai-Deng of the Tiger sect. How either of them embodied these ideals, the Cog did not know.

    "And the others?" XJ-V asked. "I only have only seen the colors of two Sects within Ramor-Tai's walls."

    Longhua nodded sagely. "Tigers and dragons have long been companions since even before the time of the Dynasty. The Eastern Rim of the Wasteland has always been our home. To seek the other Sects, one must brave the winds of the Wastes, and travel to the other corners of our world."

    A question burned in XJ-V's mind, then. His chest leaped with the need to ask it, to plead for his Master to tell him who, if any, had ever done such a thing. Had there ever been a Master of all Sects? Surely such a man could rule the heavens anew…

    But he bit his steel lips and allowed his Master to continue as he passed his hand over the image of the reed.

    "The Bending Reed," he said. "The Sect of the South, who abide by the will of the plant closest to the raw source of the Qi in our world. The reed is pliant, easily manipulated by the winds of the earth. And yet, it grows. It remains firm, and stalwart, even in the face of unrelenting force. The reed represents the element of water, and embodies the virtues of stoicism, tranquility with one's environment, and connection with the earth. The reed does not bend the Qi, but bends with it, for working with the world in harmony is the only way to maintain peace."

    Next, the Master came to the snake-pair.

    "The Twintailed Snake, who moves unseen in the West, who strikes its foe from a distance and was the first animal to crawl upon this earth. It is both there and not there, striking when its enemy is most unprepared. Studying. Calculating. Finding weaknesses. The snake is the earth itself – cunning, devious, unfaltering, and yet alluring. For the world of man is an unforgiving place that must be contended with on its own terms.

    And the Waning Moon," Longhua finished, running his hands over the darkest of the smoke-clouds. "The celestial body that rises and falls in the North. The entity that gave us darkness, and the end of all things. None can escape the dark shadow of the moon. It embodies futility, the urge to despair, inevitability, and destiny. For the only truth of mortal life is that all things must end."

    The Master waved his hand over all the symbols of the Cultivators, carving through them so that they all coalesced into one unified whole.

    "These entities were the first to harness the Qi," he explained. "They showed us how to commune with the Dao and, in so doing, achieve harmony and balance in our world. But one must not think of their Sects as 'factions' or 'clans'. The walls and distance of the Sects do not divide us. It is the teachings of the spirits and the prophets that allow us to see these beings as aspects of the world and of our own consciousness. Though each Sect may have its own martial techniques and Cultivation disciplines, we all seek the same goal: total connection with the Qi."

    XJ-V listened with open eyes, watching the smoky forms of each sect dance around each other in a spiral that, when it disappeared, he found himself longing for again.

    "You wonder what it is that allows us to move unseen," Longhua said, watching his new student's eyes intently. "You want to know how your Brothers can play tricks on your eyes, and how even you, with your all your adherence to logic and calculation, cannot follow them."

    XJ-V had to admit that he was stunned into silence by the Master's reading of his desire. No more would he doubt the old sage sitting in front of him. The difference in perceptive power between them was such that it would have brought tears to the metal man's eyes.

    "Yes," he said in all but a whisper.

    Longhua nodded. "Then you must learn the answer to your question," he said. "You must learn to see the flow of Qi in the world, and within your own metal flesh."

    XJ-V could barely keep seated as he leaned forward and asked "How?"

    And his Master, with a subtle smile, told him:

    "The only way a Disciple can," he said. "You are going to make tea."

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 11: The Grove
  • Threadmarks
    • XJ-V stared blankly at his Master Longhua's grinning face.

    "Master?"

    "Do your metal ears deceive you?" Longhua asked. "I said you shall be making me tea."

    The Cog didn't move an appendage. His mind searched for any way in which the Master's strange request made sense. Everything he knew about the Qi ran through his synthetic brain and came up short. He simply couldn't see any connection between the force of power that ran through all living things and the warm beverage popular with men of the Sects.

    So he fumbled, as was becoming regular for him.

    "But…how does that..?"

    "You have asked enough questions," Longhua interrupted him massively with a swish of his long-sleeved arm. "Now it is time for you to learn."

    XJ-V nodded slowly, waiting for the next instruction from his Master. When none was forthcoming, both men simply sat in the chamber in silence for a time as the great mosaic of the coiling Eternal Dragon watched them.

    "Master," XJ-V finally said.

    "Yes?"

    "To make tea, I require tea leaves and a pot to boil them in."

    Longhua laughed like a chipper child. "Oh! How silly of me," he said. "I seem to have forgotten the ingredients. Perhaps you could fetch them for me?"

    As XJ-V blinked his strobe-eyes at the Master, he suddenly felt movement to his left. He gave a start before realizing that it was the wall of the chamber that was moving – a section twisting and carving itself away like a craftsman whittling down a piece of wood. Where once the stone wall stood bearing the symbol of their Sect, now a realm of pitch darkness stretched out – seemingly endless. A realm of silence.

    "You will find what you seek within," Longhua explained. "I await your brew."

    XJ-V looked quizzically at the Master, whose emotions would always be hidden from the Cog. He stood, craned his neck, and looked towards the realm of inky nothing that he was being harried towards.

    "What lies within?" he asked, knowing it was foolish to even ponder.

    Longhua simply shrugged. "That is for you to know, if you truly do have eyes to see."

    All at once XJ-V felt a significant sense of motion – like he was being pulled towards the colorless realm. His legs began moving of their own accord even as his whole body lurched, telling him to twist and turn away.

    When he stood on the threshold between this world and what lay beyond, he took a deep breath of air that he knew would not serve him and stepped forward.

    …

    His sensors buzzed, his brain strained.

    For a while all vision was nothing but a haze of colorless static.

    Then: something. A sound. A song?

    Yes…a melody assailed him as he walked in a blanket on dark, a formless void where light could not shine. The melody…of birdsong.

    With the melody came a sense of direction. He knew it even as he bumbled about in the dark: he was moving towards something – something that flashed brilliantly, dazzlingly in the distance. Behind his eyes he saw colors burst into exuberant life – passionate reds, blooming violets, tranquil sapphires – so that it took all the strength within his frame not to drop to his knees and allow himself to be overwhelmed by the explosion of pure sensation. He felt his sensors overload with the raw power of registering all the stimuli.

    Then, at the apex of his pain, he opened his eyes.

    It took his mechanized brain some time to catch up with the sight that stretched before him, and it took an even longer stretch of time for him to actually commit himself to movement. Gone was Ramor-Tai. Gone was the mountain he had braved to find his Master. Gone was the world of the Wasteland, and, perhaps more distressing, gone was the doorway he had just emerged through.

    Around him stretched an image of paradise. He was standing at the edge of a garden grove surrounded by willows and blooming shrubs. Flowers he could not identify gleamed within the bushes at the foot of the trees and a calm, serene wind blew air in his face that felt otherworldly. His nasal sensors breathed it in, and he suddenly realized what it was: pure air. Untainted by the normal CO2 emissions that clouded the skies of the Wasteland, and lacking the distinct taste of sulphur that one had to get used to when walking the ashen lands. It slowly dawned on XJ-V that he was breathing the air of the Old World for the first time – something most people of the Wastes could only dream of.

    He saw no landmarks in front of him except a simple path lined in glistening white marble that led deeper into the forest. Having no alternative route, he decided to begin following the path, watching for any signs of movement within the willows and the brush.

    The skies above were crystal clear, wisps of white clouds streaked across only small patches of the deep blue heaven like puffs from a tired dragon's snout. XJ-V was so distracted by all these new sights and sensations that he almost forgot the mission his Master had given him: he was here to collect ingredients for tea, was he not?

    His feet stopped on the marble brickwork abruptly.

    But where exactly is here?

    So consumed had he suddenly become by this intruding thought that he did not hear the rustling of leaves behind his back.

    And why does it feel so famil-

    He stopped to spin and catch the projectile that had just been launched at him from within one of the willows above. He crushed the rock within his fingers and let nothing but sand fall from his hand.

    "Show yourself," he commanded, scanning the tops of the lush, green trees all around him.

    A flurry of childish giggles answered him.

    "Tee-hee! Metal-man! Metal-man!"

    The voice sounded like that of a child – or at least some kind of overgrown monkey – for as XJ-V tried to follow the speaker's voice he heard giggles and great whoops of excitement issue from all around him, as though the entity could project its voice and make the trees themselves talk.

    "Is the metal-man confused?" it said with another mischievous giggle. "We have never had a metal man come here before, have we, sisters?"

    "Nooooooooo," came at least three more voices from the low-hanging eaves. "He is new. He is interesting."

    XJ-V lowered his guard. He had heard that certain places in the Wasteland were filled with devious creatures. Yaoguai- entities that sought to trick and to deceive travelers. For what purpose they did this, XJ-V could only wonder. How can the mind of a machine understand the will of a ghost?

    "Metal-Man, Metal-man," one of the trickster voices called again. "Why come you to our fair lan'?"

    XJ-V spoke only to the small, slight rustling of the leaves above. "Can you tell me where I am?" he asked.

    More giggles assailed him from every direction.

    "By the twitching of my toe!" the voices answered in unison. "Can it be he does not know? Comes he to mortal treasure trove, and he's never heard of Ai-Lee's grove?"

    Ai-Lee…XJ-V recalled. The prophet of the Eternal Dragon…the wisest of the Sect's Cultivators. A legend of the old Dynasty.

    Then that must mean this place is…

    "Look you sister! Do not blink! Have you seen a talking stone think?"

    Amidst their giggles, XJ-V merely turned and started walking away.

    "I do not have time for this," he said. "I must complete the Master's mission."

    An abrupt impact against the side of his head brought his attention right back to the hidden entities giggling away in the bush. He looked down to see an acorn lying on the ground.

    "Our gift to you, man of sto'. Without our knowledge you can't grow!"

    "Your words do not rhyme," XJ-V told the air.

    "Neither do yours!"

    The Cog huffed and touched his fingers to his tired temple. "Perhaps the Master wishes to drive me insane. Meditation was easier than talking with airy things like these."

    "These, these!" the bushes shouted back. "That which you seek comes in threes!"

    He lifted his head, seeing the branches of the willow start to ruffle playfully around him.

    "You know what it is I seek?"

    Something brushed against XJ-V's leg. He looked down and saw nothing but slowly descending leaves – as though something had taken form there and then flitted away, invisible to even his trained eyes.

    "Seek not with eyes, man so blue. It's with your mind you'll get your brew!"

    He tried to stop himself grimacing at their little limericks. But, he had to admit that they had the better of him. Sure, he could stamp his feet and beat the trees, demanding that they speak plainly. But if these spirits were connected to the Sect of the Eternal Dragon in some way as he suspected, then he would have to exercise restraint tinged with patience.

    So he nodded his head and did what he was bid: he closed his eyes and focused on what he needed.

    "Tea-leaves," he said aloud. "Tea-leaves for Master Longhua."

    No giggles came from the brush now, and he felt his hand shake as power came upon it. He waited. He listened. He felt something graze his palm.

    Could this be the QI? Was this the power Longhua had spoken of?

    He opened his eyes when he felt his palm begin to waver.

    And saw nothing but dry grass.

    In consternation he grit his teeth and sat down, ready to pummel his fist into the ground and shake up the spirits that had deceived him.

    And just as he moved to do so, a flurry of crisp, charcoal leaves fell from the top of his head.

    "Tee-hee, tee-hee!" the spirits croaked. "See the man of stone's bright eyes! The metal can has found his prize!"

    He plucked up the leaves with shaking fingers, looking up at the vacant clouds that had gathered in the skies above.

    I wonder if you are watching me, Master, he asked them silently. Is this entertaining for you?

    Sudden thoughts rushed through his mind of Feng-Lung, who must have undertaken this ridiculous trial too and who, XJ-V was sure, must have had the time of his life in this place. It was exactly the kind of place his wandering soul would get lost in.

    "Crack the branches, pitter-potter – the metal man is needing water!"

    XJ-V once again felt the distinct sensation of something nuzzling against his feet. Only this time, he was certain, it had the sensation of at least three fluffy tails caressing his metal skin.

    "Follow-follow, man of stone! Chase our tails and get back home!"

    "W-wait!" XJ-V called out as the wisps of wind left him and cut a swathe through the forest of willows to the East. He followed with as much speed as he could, thinking as he ran that asking questions was probably going to be useless here. If Master Longhua was anything to go by, the last thing the spirits cared about was giving mortal intruders in their realm answers.

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • I do so enjoy our metal man getting confused. I'm pleased that Qi and Spirit shenanigans seem to work on him. That gives me hope for his prospects!
     
    Chapter 12: Eagle Eyes
  • Threadmarks
    • Wind rustled the tops of the willow eaves as XJ-V continued his pursuit of his spirit-guides. Or, at least, what he believed to be his spirit guardians.

    That particular belief was dimming with every meter they took him, winding round the trees and edging further from the path of marble. He doubted them, and his own judgement in following them. But they had helped him once already. They had given him his first ingredient. Possibly it could have been simply a way to gain his trust before they drowned his metal body in the same water they were guiding him to.

    They came to a bridge over a pond adorned with serene lily flowers. Two crimson lanterns of ornate Oriental design floated above the structure, suspended by something that XJ-V couldn't discern. He stopped on the solid foundations of the thing to watch three distinct splashes on the pond beneath it and muttered a huff of approval to himself as he descended to collect a pouch of water.

    "Nae nae, metal-man you!" came the cries of the spirits. "Old Master wants good strong brew! Come deeper through this brilliant path, to where we spirits take a bath!"

    XJ-V grunted. "Why must we go further? Is the water of this place not all touched by the spirits of – hey!"

    He had already seen the ripples of their passing, and they scurried away deeper into the willows.

    "WAIT!" the Cog called out as he started running again, beginning to tire of this whole charade.

    He did not see the lilies of the pond lose their color as he left them. Nor did he see the crimson light of the floating lanterns flicker and die before they fell into the murky depths of the slowly darkening waters.


    …


    He didn't know how long he'd been running for.

    An hour? Two? Thirty? Maybe days had gone by where he chased nothing but shadows through this place – this pocket of a world that had long ago died.

    "Come, come!" his guides would shout whenever his desire to simply turn away rose within him. "If your will begins to spoil, just feed yourself a little oil!"

    "That is not how my kind work!" he shouted back, remembering that trickster Yaoguai like these generally cared not a jot for mortal complaints.

    The skies had now begun to darken, he noticed. And the leaves of the trees in this part of the forest seemed more like black eyes watching his every move than the pure, dry plants he'd seen thus far. Every vein on every branch seemed corrupted, somehow. Every willow became more twisted with every step he took until, finally, he stopped.

    And the spirits did not call out to him.

    Instead, he focused on the roots and branches of the willows as they swayed in the wind that had started to blow through the grove. The wind stopped as he stood upright and turned around to see the low-hanging branches of the willows he had passed through knit themselves together as though the trees had suddenly taken on a life of their own.

    No…he thought. They have always been alive, haven't they? Watching me.

    His eyes registered movement to his left and he threw himself to the ground, rolling and keeping crouched. He quickly assumed the tight stance of the Prancing Crane, positioning both his hands above his head and keeping his right foot in the air, readying a powerful kick as soon as any sign of danger approached. And, of course, approach it did.

    He watched in disbelief as the willow branches that had sought to pierce his body now sharpened themselves against the ever-darkening sky above. Then, like a flurry of knives, they raced down towards him.

    His crane kick met the first rank and split them apart, allowing him to spin to administer a savage Flying Monkey strike at the branches that crept up from his behind. He turned, sensing more movement, and struck forth with a Dragon Claw punch that cut clean through the bark of one willow and sent its twisting branches flailing back. Like talons that had been slapped away, they recoiled and then flew for him again, each sharp, thorny end a glittering nail aiming at the exposed copper tubing beneath his chin.

    He kept up his defensive assaults with tenacity, striking at all angles as more attacks came his way, slowly moving through the forest of thorns towards – something. Anything that wasn't here. His sensors strained to try and pick up sounds – the voices of his guardians who had long ago left him behind, perhaps. He thought this could be just another one of their practical jokes.

    But as the roots beneath the earth now broke free from their graves and struck at his ankles, XJ-V was forced to admit that this was more than just a petty prank. As he cut through the twisting, creeping roots with the sharp edge of his palm and then turned to deliver another roundhouse kick at the branches descending on the back of his throat, he knew one thing for certain: this forest was trying to kill him.

    So he took his chances and barreled through the barricade of vines that was blocking his path back the way he came. He felt the sting of pain run up his side and saw, with revulsion, that one seeking talon of the willows had found its mark – electrified wiring buzzed with energy outside a hole just above his left knee and he grimaced in pain and irritation. He'd just finished his round of repairs from yesterday's Kais.

    Is this what you want, Master? he thought. Do you want to see me suffer more than I already have?

    The anger of not receiving a reply to his question carried him through the forest's relentless assaults. He chopped through entire tree trunks, snapping their every twig and branch asunder as they split apart and re-attached themselves together, seeking his throat. Seeking weaknesses in the metal body that was now their prisoner. He grit his teeth with every strike he felt pierce his grey skin and redirected each one back with force. Eventually, the trees began to crumble before they even started attacking him.

    "Come on!" he cried out suddenly as he burst through another one into an open glade where not a single light glimmered. "Come on! I will beat you!"

    He panted with fury and weariness, feeling his body long to shut down. But he did not listen to his body. His metal frame was not where his true strength lay. He had a soul beneath his heart. He should show it to the world.

    "Come on!" he shouted at the darkness that surrounded him, seeing only the trees creep away and blend into the shadowed fog that had slowly come to envelop him and the glade, walling the space off like a corrupted arena.

    "Whatever you may throw at me," XJ-V told the forest. "I will defeat it. I have not come this far to lose to trees and shadows!"

    For a moment there was no answer at all. The trees had all but vanished from the world. A fog that reeked of death permeated the perimeter of the glade, and from its depths, XJ-V could swear that he saw pairs of dark, crimson eyes staring back at him.

    He re-assumed his Prancing Crane.

    "Whatever you are, I am not afraid."

    Then a voice - deep, omnipotent, and familiar – reached out to him from the abyss:

    "Those are words mortal men often throw in the face of the Dark."

    XJ-V's eyes blurred. His sensors recognized the tone. The pitch. They told him who it was who said those words before he emerged like a corrupted angel from the fog, the ends of his bone-white robe flowing behind him like a pair of unfurled wings.

    "Such words are always lies."

    Every rational piece of XJ-V's artificial brain told him that the human stepping out from the evil fog could not be real. He could not be here. Yet his eyes betrayed him with the sight that shot terror into his skeletal form. The robed man stepped forward, letting his long threads of golden hair fly back in the wind like a Gorgon watching as its prey turn to stone before it. The Cog knew that the desire to flee that ran up his arms and forced his legs back was not born of a rational mind. It was born of fear, and when one sees the root of their fear appear before them, one will see nothing more.

    The golden man stepped forward, and XJ-V resisted the urge to retreat as best he could. There was no forest, now. There was no question at the core of his being. There was no Longhua, no Feng-Lung, no Ramor-Tai or Wasteland at all. Everything in his world was distilled down and filtered into those two gleaming amber eyes that stared at him unblinkingly, displaying a hunger that could swallow the entire world whole.

    The eyes of the High Eagle.

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 13: Defiance
  • Threadmarks
    • The High Eagle stepped forward, the threads of his golden hair billowing though no wind blew across the dead forest of Ai-Lee's grove.

    "You knew I would find you," he said through slitted lips. "You have always known. Did you think a creature born of man could elude my sight?"

    His voice was as XJ-V remembered it. It was the scratching of claws on a chalkboard. The quiet screams of babies being ground beneath hot rolling pins. It was a whisper that rang out like a shout. It was the call of a bird that signaled the End.

    XJ-V lowered his stance, taking up the form of the Crouching Tiger. He stared down his foe like he had done when Hensha burned. Before his Creator had ordered him to flee.

    He grit his teeth as the memory flooded over him: the memory of his cowardice, and his shame.

    "You remember the words you heard that night, do you not?" the voice of the golden figure hummed.

    The Cog stepped forward, ready to cut through the fiend with all his might. But the slow sparks that lighted in the skies above stopped his feet. He had seen those lights streak through the sky before.

    The people of Hensha…he could remember their faces. They had thought the light-show was simply a fireworks display.

    "Good," the mirthless voice of the High Eagle told him. "We are all connected. You, I, and all the people you left behind."

    "Be silent!" XJ-V screeched, sprinting forward and slashing at the visage, only to have thin wisps of the death-like fog behind him coat his hands.

    "Fury," the voice whispered behind him. "Is that all you have to offer?"

    He spun and slashed again, his fists pummeling only air and stone, coming away with the blank vestiges of the all-consuming dark and watching as the living cloud of death crept closer and closer, forcing him into just a small circle of dead grass and flowers.

    And from within its depths, the Cog saw the golden-rimmed face of his enemy smile.

    "How very human."

    As XJ-V poised himself to strike again he saw yet another flash of brilliant light – light that spoke not of radiance, but of death.

    And in the next instant he saw the trees returning to the forest, burning with brilliant carmine flame.

    Faces began to morph out of the ignited branches. The twisted faces of youths wielding blades that shone with the Divine Order's killing light. They stood beside their master and stared him down as the Cog realized that they now formed an entire ring around his flaming arena.

    "You remember how you slaughtered them," the voice of the Eagle within the fire said.

    "No," XJ-V protested, seeing the youths draw their katanas from the sheaths at their side. Their pointed shoulder guards were wreathed in the fire they emerged from. As they began to step towards him with slow, malicious intent, XJ-V saw the same desire to destroy him gleam in all their soulless eyes.

    "Perhaps," the Eagle said. "They can refresh your memory."

    Before the final syllable of their leader's sentence was issued, the men broke into a run. They charged with their swords raised high, bodies covered in a living fire that hugged them like a twisted orange demon, bellowing screams of pain from their lips.

    XJ-V looked upon hell itself, and his fists struck out of their own accord.

    The first boy that came within striking distance he sliced through with the sharp edge of his hand, sending fiery streaks of blood spiraling into the bonfire surrounding him. The next sword weilder struck for his leg and tore off a sheath of his metal skin, looking up with no smile of triumph at all as XJ-V spun to bring the same wounded leg down on the boy and break his skull upon impact. His next blow was a chest punch that pierced straight through a raging ronin's heart, emerging on the other side of his body as the youth glared at him, blood streaming from his toothless mouth, and he disappeared in a haze of ash.

    Reality twisted before XJ-V's eyes. All his senses afforded him the sights, sounds, and sensations of the same fiery death he had escaped from in Hensha. No…he was back there. Ai-Lee's grove was gone. He was right back in the little town where he was born, facing down demon after demon as his Creator and his brethren burned around him.

    His strikes became a flurry of blows, and a scream of anguish issued from his mouth that he did not even know he was capable of making.

    Five more warriors met their ends at his hands. Then six. Then eight. Then more – the number climbed with every defensive move he made, becoming increasingly more frenzied to match the sights of the flame-wreathed soldiers and their screaming, crimson maws.

    '"Enough!" he called out to the dark beyond the fire. The place where the Eagle watched.

    The waves of foes did not relent. Instead, they threw their swords to the ground and charged him with nothing but their bare hands, their charred fingers raking across his limbs.

    "Too much resistance for you?" the evangelical voice sang. "They can acquiesce. You are an engine of destruction, after all. You must do what you were made for."

    XJ-V stopped his attacks. He felt the beastly demons claw and tear at him, smelling their roasting flesh and hearing nothing but their increasingly wolfish screams sear through the air.

    "You enjoy their pain, don't you, machine?" the Eagle said behind the burning heads of his men. "You enjoy knowing that, with but a thought, you could end their miserable lives on this blasted earth."

    XJ-V covered his eyes with his shaking, twitching hands, seeing coils of his wiring come away in the grasping hands of the horde that had enveloped him. He tried to breathe. He tried to close off his mind to the world as Master Longhua had taught him. In vain - it was not the world that assailed him. Here and now, the thought that struck terror in his systems was the voice – and the heretical thought it brought with it – that it was right. The burning engine within his breast longed to tear the skulls from these pitiful sacks of burning flesh before him. And yet…his hands stopped themselves. He resisted. He knew – from somewhere deeper than his mechanized heart – that he had to.

    So he picked his moment and broke through the crowd, barelling once more through a burning forest of bamboo trees now – not willows.

    And with his every step, the voice of the Eagle flew with him.

    "You still think you can run, Cog. But wherever you walk upon this earth, you will always find your enemy waiting for you."

    Through the fog, the branches, and the sights of crawling, decapitated bodies beneath him, XJ-V sprinted towards the horizon he saw through the trees. There was something out there – something twinkling in the darkness. He simply had to reach it. And that desire became at once the greatest, purest impulse of his being.

    He emerged after what seemed like a lifetime of agony in a clearing with a small stream leading towards the edge of the forest. The edge that must contain – yes! The body of water the spirits of this place had urged him towards. That was the answer. It had to be. It had-

    "You."

    A voice – no – another chorus of voices, suddenly pierced his fleeting thoughts of triumph.

    He dared not turn back. For he recognized far too many of the voices within that collective sound – the sound of a sea of dead souls.

    "You" they repeated again with ghostly power, and he looked back to witness an all new horror.

    There they were. The people of Hensha – gutted, mutilated, and burning in the holy fire of the Order. They shambled towards him with heads bowed, hands raised to point a single finger at him as though in accusation.

    He staggered back, slipping into the stream and feeling a static charge run up his ankle and fry his right leg. He shrieked and fell to the ground, seeing the loose wires that had made contact with the dark liquid.

    When again he rose his head to meet the crowd of murmuring dead, he saw the golden form of the High Eagle soaring above them.

    "Why do you start and stare, clockwork child?" he said. "I gave them a choice: their lives or yours. They chose to help you escape, and you chose to let them die."

    XJ-V's throat urged him to scratch out a response. A defiant 'No!' that would send these visions of pain spiraling away. But no words came. Only the feeling deep within his chest of futility reached him, cutting off any semblance of logical thought.

    "Look how they reach for you, machine," the Eagle echoed from the fiery skies, and XJ-V recoiled in horror to see the arms of the people raise in a grisly invitation to embrace. "Do not grieve for them. In death, they have found their peace. Now, give it to them again. Show them what you are."

    "No…" he whispered, until the first set of reaching fingers finally touched him and he was forced to beat them away. "NO!"

    I must turn away, he begged any part of his mind that would respond. His hands flew to claw at his head. I must – I must go. It's a trick. A lie. It's a distraction – nothing more!

    The crowd of his people watched him flail in futility. They were faces without names. Faces he knew, and yet could not truly see. Their eyes morphed under his sight, coalescing as one unified force of shame that readied itself to consume him like an ocean.

    And watching on from above, the High Eagle delivered his reply to the Cog's defiance:

    "Then we shall take you to the void, child of stone. You gave them their eternity. Now, they shall give you yours."

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 14: Fall
  • Threadmarks
    • His feet tread the same path they had before.

    A path lined with columns of fire.

    Within the withered boughs of the bamboo trees, he saw the faces of the villagers who pursued him, led by the High Eagle flying above them all.

    His wounded leg slowed him to a limp, threads of his exposed electrified wiring tripping him intermittently as he bore towards the horizon, following nothing but his fading intuition that told him the end of the stream must lead to salvation.

    Behind he could hear their cries of desperation. They begged him to end their lives all over again. They pleaded that he should turn and do it himself this time, rather than leaving them to burn. He tried closing off his auditory sensors – at one point his hands flew to his face and ripped out the side of his metal ears just to be afforded some semblance of silence. Like everything else he tried, this was useless. The voices of the dead now simply penetrated deeper into his head itself.

    So he beat on, arms and legs becoming more and more ruined with every burning tree he passed, will wearing down with every call for doom he heard.

    Master Longhua has forsaken me, a voice of doubt told him – his voice.

    Feng-Lung, Mah-Jung – all of them – they do not want me. They never did…

    It would be simple to merely sit down, there in the crisping leaves, and let himself be taken by the fire. He probably would have done so in that moment, were it not for the sight that appeared as he limped meekly through the final set of burning boughs.

    There, twinkling amidst the dark, was a simple pool of water. The flames streaking the sky were reflected on its surface, flailing peacefully there as though they were part of a living, sentient painting. XJ-V stepped forward, stumbled, and finally fell to his knees by the side of the pool, looking into its surface to see, now, that the red columns of the sky had bled away to nothing. Only the image of his ruined face remained.

    "A monument to human hubris," a voice said at his back. "You see now what awaits you. You, and all your kind."

    More faces appeared in the dark waters – faces like his. Cogs. Machine-men with eyes that no longer gleamed with fiery life. Their heads, limbs, and broken torsos floated up from every bubbling pustule of the pond and floated on its surface. A sea of Cog corpses stared up at him with vacant, dead eyes.

    So he looked away, grief tearing at his heart for his people. Instead, he faced the fiery crowd of Hensha. They watched him. They waited. Macabre smiles filled their faces.

    "They have found the only serenity we mortals may find," the High Eagle said as he stepped through them as though the people were nothing but flimsy cardboard cutouts. "You gave them a gift, Cog. The only gift that you can give to this world."

    XJ-V looked at his shaking hands, seeing rivers of blood boil and spurt from his fingertips.

    "You know it is your purpose," the High Eagle said. "Why deny what you are? Come to them. Take their hands, and be what you must be."

    The Cog at first did not notice that the people had started marching towards him like a horde of flaming zombies.

    He closed his eyes to the horror of this realm.

    "Perhaps you speak true," he told the High Eagle out the corner of his eyes. "But death is not all I can give this world."

    He turned back to the pool, seeing his face floating amidst the broken Cogs.

    "You know that there is no escape," the Eagle told him.

    XJ-V nodded as he felt the hands of the villagers find the back of his throat.

    "I am not escaping," he told the rippling waters. "I am ending this. Now."

    And without another breath, he threw himself into the pool.


    …


    For a while, there was nothing.

    The sensation of death embraced him. Every light in his being stuttered and died. The Cogs faces swam around him, looking upon another brother to follow them into oblivion. He felt his fingers twitch amidst the dark waters as though they wished to cling to life. His chassis felt heavy. His commands to swim did not register. The world slowly spiraled away – taking the sights of fire floating above the waters away and banishing the narrowed eyes of the evil angel that watched his consciousness slip away from above.

    Then: an explosion of light.

    Not above. Not below. But within – the fire buried deep within his chest surged like a living flame. It burst from his body, floating before his fading vision, and – in a moment of pure lucidity – XJ-V believed that he saw a face staring back at him.

    One that was not his own.

    Its voice, crystal clear, seeped into him from a place unknown.

    Breathe, it said.

    Feeling the waters rush inside his every broken pore, XJ-V obeyed the command, and all at once the world vanished in a blaze of brilliant, crystalline light.


    …


    He felt soft grass beneath his hands.

    Above: clear skies. The tips of willow trees.

    Willows. Not burning bamboo.

    His eyes buzz with static as the world and its sensations begin to fill his body, and his hand feels for the spots where his wounds had taken in water.

    Nothing.

    He sat up with a start, confirming the fact by scanning his body, seeing that not one speck of his innards were exposed. Checking his repair protocols told him that he hadn't employed them since yesterday.

    He was lying beside the pool he had thrown himself into. Gone were the corpses of the mechanized dead that had floated up from its depths. Gone, too, were the faces of the burning villagers from the treeline behind. All that remained were the sparkling, crystal clear liquid that stretched out beyond him, beyond the trees, into ever. A dense fog glimmered on the horizon beyond the waters where there were no trees, enemies, indeed, no life at all. There was only that fog, traced with small beads of sapphire, floating up gently like a cloud blanket.

    He ran both his hands over his eyes as a persistent buzzing entered his brain, like a wasp ramming its stinger into his prefrontal cortex.

    Then, within his memory banks, words blazed into brilliant, neon-lighted life:


    Anima Cores: 92


    "Slightly above average," a voice said beside him.

    His eyes flew towards the origin of the statement, even as his auditory sensor bars already told him who the speaker was.

    Master Longhua was standing beside him, holding a small, ornate cup of piping-hot tea in his hands.

    "But this tea is terrible," he said, taking a small sip.

    XJ-V barely moved a mechanized muscle. He stared up at Longhua like he was looking at a malicious ghost.

    "Master?" he asked. "Is it really you I see?"

    "How am I to answer that question?" Longhua asked with a swish of his pointed beard. "Only a student can truly know their Master."

    XJ-V smiled. "It is you."

    He then felt the distinctive feeling of fur brushing against his feet and looked down with a small start to see a three-tailed fox nuzzling against him.

    "Sister, sister, shine a smile!" it said. "The metal man has passed his trial!"

    XJ-V looked down at the tiny creature – little more than the size of his palm. Its oval eyes were not those belonging to a mortal animal. It's paws – they were far too light. He barely even heard the thing's 'sisters' as they rustled the leaves of the willows above him.

    "Perhaps it is time for us to cease the rhyming, little one," the tallest fox said with the voice of a mischievous madame.

    The one beside it snickered as XJ-V caught sight of them both.

    "Look at him!" it said. "He stares at us with new eyes, now!"

    "Does the metal man not know that it is rude to stare at a lady with such eyes?"

    That question came from the little one rolling around on the grass beneath him, exposing its belly for a pat.

    And that's when he knew what they were.

    "Spirits…" he said.

    "Indeed, Disciple," Longhua nodded. "I see you have met Minhua, Gigia, and Arha. That this triad of tricksters would serve as your spirit guides on your trial adds just one more nuisance to my accepting you into the Sect's ranks."

    "Oh, come on, old geezer!" the fox-pup at his feet shouted, wagging her fuzzy posterior in Longhua's unamused face. "Arha is not that bad, is she?"

    Her sister's spoke in unison above: "She is."

    "Wait," XJ-V interrupted, rising to a crouch and staring up at his Master. "Trial? Spirit guides? I thought I was here to collect ingredients for your tea."

    Longhua took another liberal sip from his cup. "True," he said. "And collect them you did, though the brew does nothing to enrich my spirit. Most of the waters you collected you seem to have taken for yourself. As for the tea leaves, well, one can never trust that which is summoned by a fox-spirit."

    "Old meanie!" the fox-sisters chirruped.

    "Then I failed, did I not?" the Cog asked, showing his dejection even as he tried to conceal it.

    Longhua, however, fixed him with a tiny smile.

    "You are no tea brewer," he said. "But in your fumbling, you found what you needed to. Though, more importantly, it could be said that it found you."

    He cast a withered hand over the surface of the waters before them, watching the surface ripple with life even though XJ-V could see no fish swim within its depths.

    "Behold the font of AI-Lee's Grove," Longhua said. "Shuiguan. The Waters of Heaven. The source of our Qi. It is said that all water holds the essence of the Qi within it. It is said that the tears the heavens wept during the Sundering pooled in pockets of the blasted earth which were then quartered off by the old Masters – the first Prophets of the new Cultivator Sects. Here, XJ-V, you have drunk of the Dao, and you have returned unscathed. You pushed through visions of fear and of shame – those things which keep you bound to this earth."

    XJ-V was suddenly struck, amidst all this madness, by a sudden realization.

    "You came to us as a machine," his Master said. "Now, you are something more."

    "Something more and what a bore! Now his whole life's one big chore!"

    XJ-V barely heard the fox sisters' chant, nor did he feel the little one, Arha, snuggle up to his waist.

    I…I swam in the waters of the Qi, the robot thought in disbelief. And I came back. It awakened my Anima Cores. It reached inside me and saw…it saw…

    "Master," he said in all but a whisper. "Does that mean…"

    "Yes, Disciple XJ-V," Longhua told him as he turned away. "There is a soul within your chest. Now, we must see if it truly belongs to you."

    ###

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    • Chapter 15: Cog Cultivator
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    • "Metal Brother!"

    "Clockwork Cultivator!"

    "Nae, nae – Cog Cultivator!"

    "Yes – that has a far better ring to it, does it not?"

    The walls of the Eternal Dragon commune were filled with cheerful voices.

    Voices that the quiet form of XJ-V could barely believe were raised for him.

    "To the good cheer of the newest among us!" Mah-Jung was saying upon the long table XJ-V was seated at, with the red-faced Feng-Lung beside him. "KAMPAII!"

    "KAMPAI!"

    The Disciples each raised a glass of Cit'ru – the rice wine native to the vineyards beneath Ramor-Tai, sequestered within the hardworking Melia village – and toasted his formal inauguration as a Rank 1 Corporeal Temperer.

    A Corporeal Temperer.

    A Cultivator…him!

    The thought still hadn't truly sunk in.

    "I told you, did I not?" Feng-Lung said beside him with a mousey hiccup! "I told you you would find a place among us."

    "No thanks to you, Feng-Lung," XJ-V replied with a nervous smile. "You did not tell me the Master's test would be so…grueling."

    Feng-Lung raised his hands in defense. "The quest for tea is different for everyone, Brother Cog. But not matter how much we suffer, no one has ever made tea that satisfied Master Longhua."

    "How can one create a brew that will placate the stomach of a dragon?" Mah-Jung jeered from on top of the table. "They say the first dragons to cross the skies of the earth had five stomachs within their long bellies."

    "And within each one burned an undying flame," Feng-Lung said with a drunken smile.

    An undying flame…

    XJ-V looked to his brothers who danced or clinked their ornate, elaborately carved glasses together.

    "Why do you all indulge in this revelry?" he asked Feng-Lung, busy at work devouring his fifth helping of spirit tonight. "Does the mind of the Cultivator not require focus?"

    "Ah, XJ-V," the youth replied. "The Cit'ra is a spirit of the earth just as all things are. Like all liquids, it is closer to the Qi of the Universal Dao than we shall ever hope to be. Pure. Raw. Evergy."

    "Energy which now flows through my veins!" Mah-Jung said, somersaulting through the air and landing on his tiptoes to a round of applauses from his brethren. "Behold, brothers! By the end of this night, I, Mah-Jung of the Eternal Dragon, shall be a Master of the Drunken Dragon style!"

    XJ-V couldn't help but feel himself taken in, starting to clap along with the partygoers. He had expected all the men here to be the stuffy or arrogant young Masters-in-training he had heard about. His memory banks were filled with images of young men who, from the age of sixteen, played at being just as unmoving, unblinking, and as unfeeling as their masters. But such men forgot what it is to live. Youth is a gift that must be enjoyed. That is why the Master Cultivators were all so old. With age, comes experience. With experience, comes introspection. And with introspection, comes wisdom.

    "Brothers!" Mah-Jung cried out to his baying crowd. "Our guest of honor is too busy thinking again! Let us lift him up to the heavens. Let him taste of the Dao with with!"

    Amidst his lame protests XJ-V felt himself hoisted up by five of the young Disciples, Feng-Lung among them, who spun him until dizziness overtook him the likes of which would dull the senses of the most debauched drunkard.

    Outside, however, a chill fog gathered at the edges of the commune door, and one student stood, fists clenched, peeking in at the celebrations with hateful, envious eyes.

    "Enjoy your petty victory while you can, Cog," Fai-Deng of the Waiting Tiger murmured. "Soon, you will fall beneath my claws."

    …


    When the party had finished, and the young Cultivators retired to their chambers for the night, XJ-V told his companions that he would walk the walls of Ramor-Tai to clear his head.

    "But you have not even tasted of the sweet liquor of life, Brother!" Mah-Jung protested.

    "Let him be," Feng-Lung said. "He has just learned he is one of us. We must leave him to meditate as only he can."

    The youth led the Drunken Master away with a nod to XJ-V who smiled back at him. He was lucky to have such support amongst the Sect Disciples. Indeed, though Feng-Lung was the youngest of their order, he had proven to be a fast and loyal friend these past few months. XJ-V understood that humans often repaid such friendships in kind. He also understood that most kindnesses humans did were often done with their own self-interests in mind. So, as he stepped outside the Eternal Dragon commune and took in the chill night air, he found himself asking, What is it you have to gain here, Feng-Lung? Why befriend a Cog like me, even when your fellows did not believe I could ever be one of you?

    He watched the clouded skies move with strange, uneven grace, seeing small patches of lightning scratch themselves into life within them.

    Why believe…

    XJ-V had learned much in the last hours. He had learned of the fears that were buried deep within his heart. He had come to understand the deep shame that twisted all his convictions into misshapen messes of their former selves. He had also learned just how little he knew of the Sects, and of this world itself.

    His reality had only ever been Hensha. His memory banks told him only snippets of information about Cultivation practices and Martial Techniques associated with each Sect. But he did not know their true purpose. He did not know their place in the wider world of the Wasteland, or why Longhua had looked with such melancholy upon those deep, dark waters that he said were composed of heaven's tears as it died in the Sundering.

    The Sundering – that too was an event he had precious little knowledge of. It had not been something his Creator had evidently thought he should know, otherwise it would have been installed in his memory banks.

    Then there was the fact of the High Eagle's appearance in his dream-vision that had seemed far more lucid than Longhua implied. The face – far too real. The pain – far too powerful. The Master had told him such visions were merely projections of Ai-Lee's Grove meant to test the traveler. That, by choosing to become one with the source of the QI, XJ-V had rejected his fear and guilt.

    But the Cog was not so sure. After all, it was power that the Eagle had offered him…power that he could have…no…that he wanted to take. Even if he did stop himself, there was a truth in the fleeting desire to accept his label as a tool of war that could not be denied, no matter how many cheers of acceptance he received from his new Brothers here.

    But by far the biggest thought that preoccupied his consciousness now was what Longhua had meant in his final statement to him in the Grove:

    There is a soul within your chest. Now, we must see if it truly belongs to you.

    It was a statement that had both evoked his excitement and his trepidation. He had only wished to know if there was a soul within him. It had not occurred to him, in all his burning desire to unlock this mystery, that it might not belong to him at all.

    Was such a thing even possible? To be imbued with the soul of another?

    The Master had locked himself away in his chambers in the aftermath of his Awakening. He had told the Cog to come to him in the next morning for his first, real delve using the Qi that now flowed within him – his first 'Dao Walk' which all Cultivators used to enhance their Anima Cores and, by so doing, their rank as a Cultivator. The Master had told him to spend the night in quiet contemplation or in revelry with his Brothers – the choice was his. But, in truth, he had been impatient to know more.

    It is funny, he thought, looking into the uncaring skies above Ramor-Tai. I came here seeking the answer to one simple question. Now, with the answer in my heart, I am merely faced with more questions that demand my attention. More mysteries that must be solved…

    His reflections were then rudely interrupted by the familiar sensations of something furry brushing against his leg.

    He did not assume a battle stance. Instead, he sighed, and looked down to see the little fuzzy fox-spirit of Ai-Lee's grove looking up at him with an impish, teasing, and all too-human smile.

    "Arha comes to see her friend! The metal man who cannot bend."

    He stared at the little creature's fuzzy face, and at least a solid minute passed where both spirit and machine said nothing at all.

    "You…you have followed me."

    The three-tailed fox nodded like an excited child, yipping and jumping up at his legs.

    "Is that…allowed?"

    The mischievous fox smiled up at him.

    "Arha's sisters do not care. They can be such a stuffy pair!"

    "That's not what I mean, spirit," he said, bending down and stroking the little creature's chin. It purred like a domestic kitten. "Are you supposed to be out here in the mortal world? Why would you leave the comfort of your grove?"

    At this, the little fox bristled, straightening up and sticking its long, twitching nose in the air.

    "Cultivators are such bores. Arha would not scratch their doors. But metal man is cool and new. Young Arha has chosen you!"

    XJ-V frowned at this curious turn of events. He had heard that some spirits attached themselves to a mortal who took their interest – generally doing so out of a desire to help, hinder, or simply to pass the time. Immortality was probably conducive to an increase in one's boredom.

    A Cog with a pet spirit, he chuckled inwardly. Whatever will the Disciples sa-

    "Hey!"

    Arha had begun teething on his left foot.

    "S-stop that!" he cried. "Why are you-"

    "Arha knows of what you seek. There is no need to be so bleak! If knowledge true will bring you glee, then you must go to the library!"

    "The…what? Wait –"

    The spirit flipped on its side and rolled away, leaving a trail of dust in its wake. XJ-V watched it go with no small degree of consternation, before he saw it turn its head back towards him.

    "Alright," he said with another heavy sigh. "I will follow you, spirit Arha. But on one condition."

    She twitched her ears at him.

    "Cease your rhyming. It is becoming tiresome."

    The young fox looked at him with total surprise etched across its face.

    "You do not enjoy Arha's rhyme? Why, good XJ, 'tis a crime!"

    Something about his stare must have gotten to her, for she then flashed him a small, timid smile, before setting off again with another, barely audible word to her new companion:

    "…Okay."


    ###


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    • Chapter 16: Hitting the Books
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    • XJ-V followed his new furry companion to a walled off building behind the Tiger Sect Commune, strategically located in the most isolated spot of all Ramor-Tai. It was a low arched stone building with a thatched roof, the kind often seen in river villages of the Old Dynasty. The Cog was taken aback by its simplicity, and as Arha nudged open its rickety doorway with his twitching nose, he was overwhelmed by a scent entirely new to his sensory receptors: the scent of pulp and glue. The scent of the earth's remains, processed and distilled into pages of knowledge. The scent of books.

    He entered the library of Ramor-Tai with a degree of wariness. Now that he had unlocked his power to sense the QI in all things, even basic, rudimentary fonts of life brimmed with new lights. Little creatures like Arha gleamed with translucent Ley Lines of energy that flowed like water through their forms. The books that lined the grand library shelves were no different – each one of them brimmed with the Qi of the tree that had been shed to give them form.

    Bookcase upon bookcase stretched out before the machine-man, and as Arha giggled to see his surprise, he noticed movement at the very end of the library's main hall.

    "Arha," he asked, creeping forward steadily. "What…what is…that?"

    He nodded at the high backed, one-eyed creature that glowered at him over its thick spectacles from a clerk's desk, absorbed in mounds of lengthy tomes it had picked out and stacked around it. The being was far too large to be a regular human, and as XJ-V wandered closer to the thing, he saw that its face was that of an aged woman bathed in an otherworldly glowing light. Wrinkles shone within the haggard, hunchbacked form of the thing that would put even the old Masters of the Sects to shame.

    "Why, XJ-V!" Arha giggled at his feet. "You look like you have seen a ghost!"

    "Indeed, Cog," the venerable creature said, raising its long, varicose neck and fixing XJ-V with dark-rimmed eyes. "Is it so unnatural for you to finally know of my existence? After all, I have been watching you with great interest all this time."

    XJ-V stepped forward till he had to shield his eyes from the shining light of the creature.

    "Magnificent, am I not?" she said with a gruff chuckle, rising up on her legless body to put away two tomes on a shelf high above them all. "You might tell your drunken Brothers how impressed you are."

    Arha wriggled up to XJ-V's shoulder.

    "Y'know, it is rude to stare at a lady," she said. "Gracious, I thought my sisters and I had already taught you that! You really are a slow learner, Mr-machine."

    "Don't blame him, little one," the floating entity said as she glided across the room to retrieve another dusty tome. "He is made by men. It is only fitting he has their ignorance."

    XJ-V blinked away his confusion.

    "What are you, spirit?" he asked.

    "HAR!" the creature spat as she swung back down to her desk. "How quaint. Is it really true that they don't speak of me at all, out there? I swear those young men become more blind with every passing decade."

    "Open your eyes, XJ-V!" Arha whispered in her Cog's ear. "This is the custodian! The keeper of the scrolls and tomes!"

    "Fancy titles mean nothing to machines, little Arha," the old spirit wheezed. "Just call me Gira. Pleasure to meet you, and all that."

    XJ-V confessed he didn't quite know what to say in the moment. Here he was, a Cultivator interacting with not one, but two whole, real spirits. Only yesterday he had wondered if he was even truly alive.

    "I apologize for my rudeness, Gira," he said with a short bow. "Your kind have only just become visible to my untrained eyes."

    "'Your kind' he says!" Gira boomed – her bassy voice totally incongruent with her frail, death-white form. "You hear that, Huli? We are cut from the same cloth."

    "Hmpf" Arha scoffed, sticking her long nose in the air. "I rather think I am a touch more ladylike than this old Guipo!"

    Guipo…XJ-V pondered. Huli…words his memory banks held no information on. Spiritual classifications, maybe?

    The old woman seemed to sense his returning confusion.

    "Ah, well, it can't be helped," she said with a snort. "Ignorance is like a disease. It spreads from man to man until they do nothing but talk with their fists. But," she added with a wave of a single, gnarled finger. "The good news is: it's never too late to seek the cure."

    She raised her hands, taking up a row of ancient tomes with her.

    "You have come seeking knowledge, have you not, man of stone?" she asked.

    XJ-V stared deeply at the floating tomes, his mind racing to explain what he saw before him. After what he had seen in the past 24 hours, he knew now what his greatest limitation was: his head was fixed in the language of logic. He had slowly come to understand exactly what Master Longhua had meant when he said that one's eyes cannot be trained to see that which they refuse to acknowledge.

    So he faced this spirit's legless body, and her floating books, and told her what he sought.

    "I must know of this world," he said. "Of Cultivation, of spirits, and of what came before – of the Sundering."

    Gira pursed her lips, frowning at his queries.

    "Hmmm," she thought aloud. "I'm betting that a Cog like you can probably read faster than the average village boy around here. Tell you what – I'll give you three books to start you off on your journey. But know this," she added with another wag of her finger, as though she were reprimanding some boisterous schoolboy. "These walls contain the knowledge of our world, Cog. There is much more in the heavens and earth out there than these old dusty tomes can contain."

    He accepted the books with a gracious bow and turned to find a corner of the old hall to study them. He knew now how he would spend his night.

    "Such a nerd!" his companion cried. "Why can't you just be like the other Disciples?"

    "I thought my strangeness was exactly why you attached yourself to me, Arha?" he replied with a smirk. Then, ignoring the fox's pouting face, he sat cross legged beside an old bookshelf and got to work.

    …

    After five hours of intense study, XJ-V made an important realization:

    His Creator had told him nothing.

    His memory banks contained only rudimentary knowledge to help lead him from Hensha to Ramor-Tai. Routes. Fauna descriptions. Basic directives and textbook sections coupled with snippets of philosophy that would impress the Cultivators and allow him to ingratiate himself within their ranks.

    But it did not tell him of the world he was now a part of.

    "To master the ranks of Corporeal Tempering," he read aloud while Arha yawned beside him. "One must develop an acute awareness of the world and their place within it. Body Tempering trains not only the physical self, but also one's sense of general physical awareness. One must first know the Qi of their own body, then the Qi of the world, and finally, at the ninth rank, come to understand how their Qi flow interacts with the world and the Universal Dao beyond it."

    The books he scoured through gave him only glimpses into how this was done. Master Longhua had not told him yet how to unlock the secrets of the Qi that ran within his heart. But he did see that his Anima Core number was, as the Master had said, slightly above the average of 85. He read:

    "Anima Cores are a measurement of Qi points within one's open Chakras – the hidden vessels within mortal bodies that can be opened to receive and direct the flow of Qi at the soul's command. Mastering basic Earth Level techniques requires that one understands how to redirect the flow of Qi within them – that they can sup on the life force provided by the Universal Dao and channel it's energy into elemental and spiritual effects. In this way, one's will can become manifest. One's Animus becomes projected into physical reality."

    He lay the book down. Much of the Cultivation text assumed the reader had knowledge beyond that which his banks afforded him, but he understood a little of what it meant when it talked about Body Tempering and Earth-Level martial techniques side by side – Corproreal Tempering was a Disciple's way to learn how to channel the Qi into their body through understanding both their own physical self and the world their mortal shell they existed in. Thus, the attainment of greater ranks in Body Tempering ensured one would be better poised to grasp Earth-Level techniques. It made sense to train them side-by-side, which was exactly what XJ-V had seen in the training regimens of the Monastery.

    He put the book down, gave Arha a small stroke on her soft head, and picked up the next book – one bound in webbing that could not be removed from its cover. The swarthy, leather-bound text was labeled: Spiritual Bestiary of the Eastern Rim. Exactly the kind of book that would serve the spiritually-challenged. Within this tome he was afforded sketches of various kinds of benevolent and malicious spirits native to lands around the monastery – including some he was becoming all too familiar with.

    "The Guipo," he read aloud. "Is a manifestation of a kindly old woman often closely associated with a particular location. Guipo are known as the 'housekeeping spirit' due to their penchant for remaining bound to specific rooms, buildings, or areas of import to academic or domestic institutions, often taking on a supervisory or custodian role over these areas and any duties associated with them. For obvious reasons, this means they are spirits who are actively involved in earthly affairs, though often their work ethic takes precedence over their desire to help or hinder mortal beings."

    That checks out, XJ-V thought, chancing a look at the eternally busy old library caretaker.

    Other colorless pages showed him intricate sketchings of other spirits big and small, and managed to stir even his often dull imagination. He couldn't imagine why Feng-Lung had not shown him this book before. Then again, the way Gira spoke about the other Disciples, he got the sense that they were barely welcome in this space which, like it or not, this spirit had taken ownership of.

    He stopped at one interesting page, bearing the image of a lustrous, nine-tailed fox.

    "Often spotted frequenting streams and verdant forests are the Huli or 'fox-spirit'," he read. "Nigh on impossible to catch, the Huli are one of the most mysterious spirits to grace our earth in the wake of the Sundering. They are mischievous by nature, delighting in confusing or aiding adventurers on their travels seemingly on a whim. Usually traveling as part of a pack, there have been rare instances of Huli attaching themselves to a human in the capacity of a spirit guide. For reasons unknown, other spirits are far more amenable to conversing with humans who have a Huli companion. There have been no successful attempts at prompting such Huli companionship, nor is the rationale behind which mortal they choose to accompany known."

    XJ-V didn't consider Arha's rationale for accompanying him particularly challenging to understand.

    "You just wish to annoy me, don't you?"

    Sound asleep, the spirit simply wriggled under his hand.

    He put the book down and examined the darkest tome Gira had gifted to him – one blackened with age and, it could be assumed, exposure to both the elements and the eyes of others. He picked it up and glanced at the cover, seeing nothing but a simple title glaring back at him:

    The Lamentable History of The Sundering.

    He looked about him, as though he were about to embark on an unspeakable journey. Then, without thinking about it more, he opened the first page.

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 17: Your Place
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    • At first, it was unclear what XJ-V saw within the pages of the tome.

    Images of a golden sung hanging over a kingdom of clouds and muscle-bound men stretched out upon the withered pages, the pulp of the book's bindings rotten and distorting their bodies. XJ-V scanned the pictures, found what fragments of text he could, and then began reading:

    "And so did Man reign in the Kingdom of Heaven, with the Mandate of the Divine allowing him to commune with the Tian (Gods) of the earth and of the skies, who crafted Man in their own image."

    He turned to images of a hierarchical, pyramid-like structure, with mortal men standing at the top and all other beasts of the earth beneath him, ending with base stone and precious minerals at the foundation.

    "Ye he shall rule over all living things as the avatar of the Gods, and champion their worship throughout the earth. He shall walk with them in their golden halls, and man shall know that he art chosen."

    Pictures of people in chains adorned the next few fragments of the venerable tome, some of them having been ripped out of the book.

    "He shall subjugate the weak and deliver unto his Lords only the faithful. Strength shall be his guide. The Lesser Ones shall be crushed beneath his booted heel and lay at the foot of his palaces and fiefdoms."

    XJ-V grimaced as he turned to the next page, seeing depictions of a series of terrifying wars that shed rivers of blood throughout the globe.

    "Man grew bold and sought to conquer his brother. The earth he ravaged, destroying those made in the image of his Lords. This pleased the Gods, for every soul of Man is a feast to that which must be worshipped."

    The next page held the holy image of Emperor Qing himself, standing tall amidst the ruins of civilization with his arms outstretched – one holding the sun and one holding the moon.

    "When Noble Qing came, he united the four corners of the world into one, and Man was made whole again. Man created things of beauty, and was served by creatures made in his image. No longer did Man subjugate his weaker brother."

    As XJ-V focused on the stenciled line that read 'creatures made in his image', his fingers stiffened for a moment.

    There, toiling amidst the golden foundations of the palaces of Qing, were a series of skeletal figures etched in grey, each of them carrying ten loads of bricks and mortar, or carrying statues well beyond the capacity of mere mortals.

    "Cogs…" he murmured.

    "And then did the time of judgment come," the next page read, bearing images of great rods of lightning striking the earth and slowly forming into five distinct, humanoid giants. "The time when the Gods grew envious of Qing, and of the Unity of Man. They had ruled over Man as a divided species. Now, without war, without famine, Man had turned away from the Tian and sought instead new Gods of Reason and Logic."

    XJ-V could already tell what was on the next section before he even turned the page to behold its contents.

    "The Gods understood that they too were divided. The required Unity to lead Man into the new Enlightened Age. But how can one unify that which must exist in opposition? How can darkness merge with light? How can fire and water become one? How can the earth and the air join as brothers do? Thus did the time of the Sundering come – the time when the Gods descended to the Earth in the form of the worldly Avatars and fought until only one stood to lead the people into the new age."

    Page after page then followed of the Tian's great battle which had ravaged the earth. Images of volcanos rising, seas boiling over, entire cities burning overnight and the earth itself becoming a hollowed-out husk dominated most of the remaining pages of the book.

    The Sundering.

    "The Tians' battle was long and arduous. At its end, the world stood razed to its foundations. And yet, after the ferocity of combat, one God stood victorious over His brothers and sisters."

    Without even reading the name, XJ-V knew it. It was a name burned into his mind. It was a name that seared his lips as he gave it voice.

    "Yuwa, God of Light."

    He saw him standing tall, smoke coiling up from his aching muscles, covered in an impossible array of wounds that bled entire rivers of his heavenly essence onto the blasted plains of the earth.

    Golden hair. Flowing into the sun.

    Piercing eyes that stared back at the Cog who was looking at his immortal image.

    "Yuwa emerged as the true master of mankind," the page told him. "The being who would reinstate the Mandate of Heaven and divorce Man from his mortal body – leading him to conquer the stars themselves. But the world was now a desolate, dead place, and when Man crept from the ruins of his Empires and saw Yuwa standing as their savior, they grew hateful and made war against him."

    The final pages of The Sundering opened up before XJ-V like those of a thinly veiled memory, and he saw the war to end all wars – the final battle of Qing and his followers against the almighty God of Light himself.

    "Noble Qing was strong, but knew his strength was not enough. The Men of Stone carved from thought were to be his champions. But the God of Light was very clever. It was He who first gave Man the gift of imagination and of creativity. It was He who ordered the Men of Stone to turn against their former masters, and it was they who without hesitation obeyed."

    XJ-V felt his throat constrict as he watched the next pages unfold before him, forcing his fingers to flick through image after image of Cogs burning humans or cutting their throats in their sleep, marching across what remained of the earth in an extermination campaign that left the final vestiges of humanity paranoid, divided, and frenzied.

    At last he came, with shaking hands, to the final page. But he already knew the rest of the story:

    "With Man on his last knees, Emperor Qing finally came to confront Yuwa directly upon a great, hollow mountain. He and his Cultivators did battle with the God of Light, and many of Man's greatest champions fell. As Qing watched his people die, he knew that Man could never defeat a God, and so called upon his greatest artisans to create a prison to seal the great Yuwa away. The names of those artisans are now lost to time, but with Qing's dying breath, his calls were answered: as the God of Light struck his final blow, He was cast into the prison of man and interred deep within the darkest recesses of the earth, where even the light of Yuwa can not shine. Qing's victory in the end was accomplished not through destruction, but through creation – securing the future independence of humankind from the warring impulses of the Gods."

    "But with the Emperor's death, Man was leaderless, divided, and without purpose. Now, Man is a wandering soul, turning against his once-brother, tearing at the earth with little direction. The Sects of the Cultivators were established to guide the last vestiges of Men who now saw that Man must live with the earth and not act as its superior. The Universal Dao was opened to us, and spirits freely came to walk upon the earth without the Gods to strike them down. Man is lost, Man is weak, but with the guidance of the Cultivators, Man will return to glory."

    XJ-V closed the book abruptly, staring at the wall of the bookshelf opposite.

    Then, his hands impulsively flipped back through the book to the pages of the warring Cogs. His people. His brothers.

    When humanity had been in its darkest hour, it was they who turned against them.

    XJ-V looked at his skeletal hand.

    It was his kind that turned against them.

    Slow understanding began to dawn on the Cog's morose face, and when his fox companion finally awoke, she did so to him bidding a sad goodbye to the Guipo custodian.

    "Come back anytime, XJ-V," she said. "You're a quiet one. That's the way I like them."

    Arha looked curiously at XJ-V's dejected face as he left the library building and walked out, with slow deliberation, into the rain.

    "XJ-V!" she squeaked as she ran up to rest upon his shoulder. "Arha is back! Did you learn what you needed to?"

    "Yes," he said.

    When he said nothing further, the impatient Huli pressed. "Well…why do you look so sad?"

    "Because Brother Fai-Deng is right," he said with such sudden, fierce conviction that it made the little spirit start. "Master Longhua was right. The High Eagle is right."

    He marched back to his chamber, ignoring the calls of Feng-Lung and Mah-Jung who were passed out in the courtyard.

    And when his body hit his bed, he looked out into the dim roar of the skies above and realized what a fool he'd been this whole time.


    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Asshole gods loved feasting on human souls fed to them by worship and war, got pissed off when humanity wised up and stopped all of that, then came down and murdered most of the planet. Yeah, I would've been on Qing's side too, fuck the Gods.
     
    torac said:
    I wonder if becoming a cultivator allows it (him?) to break free of the programming. Pretty sure we will learn at some point. This seems like an obvious setup.


    sun

    Unsure about the "Ye he". Is it supposed to be "Yet he"?
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    First one, yes. Cheers!

    Second one, many religious texts use 'Ye' as a way to create 'gravitas' or to preclude a commandment.
     
    torac said:
    Ye in old English means "You", to the best of my knowledge. That is why the commandments use it. It isn't just used to add gravitas.
    See: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ye_pron?tl=true
    and https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ye
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    https://biblequeries.com/what-does-ye-mean-in-the-bible/

    It's adding gravitas by being used to address a collective group, as in "hey all of you, listen to this!" This is also why it precludes a commandment :)
     
    Chapter 18: Walk in the Dark
  • Threadmarks
    • "Concentrate."

    He tried. He tried to focus on the dark cloud of nothingness that shifted before him.

    "What do you see, Disciple?"

    He listened to the voice of his Master call out to him from the depths of the abyss, urging him forward in pursuit of that which you wanted – that which he needed – to know.

    His physical body sat in the grove of Ai-Lee with Master Longhua beside it, while the piece of him that was of the spirit wandered the dark hallways of what Longhua referred to as Diyu – the barrier between oneself and the Universal Dao. He was guiding his newest Corporeal Temperer on the first step to rising through the ranks of the Cultivator. He was showing him how to reach the planes of nirvana – how to begin his first Dao Walk.

    "To reach the Dao," Longhua was saying. "Is to be one with the Qi within one's body and the world. It is to see that which locks us to this earthly plane, and then it is to push through to wander in a world of pure, raw potential."

    XJ-V tightened his brow. His eyes remained firmly shut, trying to listen to the Master's words, while the shapes he saw within his mind's eye formed shadows beyond his ken. He saw the death of Hensha, the High Eagle with his flowing robes and hands composed of pure radiant light that sought out his heart, and then, beyond both, he saw a figure standing atop a mountain.

    "What do you see, XJ-V?"

    "I…a man."

    He moved closer through the fog and odorless air, his spirit-body gravitating up the mountain's jagged side. It was not like his journey up Ramor-Tai mountain. That had been a contest of physical exertion. This was a contest of will. Of will, and of fear.

    Because when the man turned his head and looked down at the figure of the Cog approaching him, XJ-V saw two blazing eyes. Eyes that burned with white-hot fire.

    Eyes that belonged to him.

    He gasped as the hands of his shadowed-self reached for his throat, and abruptly returned to the waking world with a yelp of pain.

    "Master…" he panted. "I am sorry."

    Longhua looked at his panicked form with apparent disinterest, his eyes then focusing on the Qi pool that stretched across from them.

    "You have come far already," he said. "I wonder – is this the rock that shall cause you to stumble?"

    The mischievous Huli appeared behind XJ-V's shuddering back.

    "Arha thinks Longbeard is too hard on XJ-V!" she said. "He has not been so with the other Disciples!"

    Longhua directed an angered stare at the fox who shrieked and ran up to perch behind XJ-V's neck, wrapping her long tails around him like a scarf.

    "It is not I who push him, Huli," he said. "It is this Man of Stone who throws himself too far into the depths of the ocean in pursuit of knowledge he is not ready for."

    "Master?"

    "I have it on the good authority of a certain Guipo that you perused the tomes of our library yesterday."

    XJ-V bowed his head.

    "That's not against the rules!" Arha shouted. "Any Disciple can use the lib-"

    Longhua's furrowed brows stopped her tiny voice in her throat.

    "Tell me what knowledge you found within," he asked XJ-V. "Because I do not see the same Cog who first sat before me and demanded to know what he was."

    XJ-V looked out with his Master upon the pool of shimmering water that sparkled in the artificial sun of the Grove. He remembered the pain he had struggled through to get here on that fire-lit night when Longhua had sent him on his first trial. He remembered the words of the High Eagle, and those of the villagers whom had accused him.

    A machine destined for war…

    Just like the rest of his brethren.

    "Master," he said. "The Sundering was a time of weakness for my kind."

    "It was a time of weakness for us all, XJ-V."

    "The Cogs betrayed their Masters," he went on with fury. "They took the side of the Old God Yuwa and almost brought humankind to total obliteration."

    "And now," Longhua finished. "You see one of them staring back at you, blocking your pathway to the Dao."

    XJ-V let the silence between him and his Master hold. He was waiting for his will to contradict the old man. Yet, he knew he could never lie to him. It would be like lying to oneself.

    "Do you know why Ai-Lee's grove was created?" Longhua suddenly asked.

    XJ-V answered as best he could. "To create a place of tranquility for mankind. A place where the Qi flow is strongest and where Cultivation may begin."

    "The Prophet could have created any place to contain the tears of Heaven," Longhua replied. "He could have simply made the Grove a place to contain the waters and nothing more. Why did he create the forest? Why did he build the ornate bridges in the style of the Qingua? Why did he allow streams and branching paths and an ever-glowing sun to come into being here?"

    XJ-V frowned as he turned the thought over in his mind.

    "Is it possible the Prophet maintained some nostalgia for the Old World?"

    A pained grin broke over Longhua's face. "What man does not long for the past?" he asked. Then, almost without pausing: "The Grove is often called an image of heaven itself. It is ironic, then, that it was formed as a mirror of what our world once was. The Grove was created as a reminder not of what was, but of what can be."

    He raised one robed arm gently and stretched out his charred fingers, letting a miniscule striped butterfly settle on his fingernails.

    "Even as the world outside of Ramor-Tai is a shadow of what it once was, all things of the earth have the potential to change. To be born anew. To start again. That is why Ai-Lee created the Grove: as a reminder that we of the Sects are a force for change."

    To start again…XJ-V wondered.

    "Boooooooring!" Arha shouted behind the Cog's ear. "Why don't you get to the point, old man!"

    Longhua chuckled in his hoarse, dry way. "The first thing I would change about this earth is the presence of a spirit as useless as a Huli," he said. Then, ignoring the creature's indigent looks, he fixed XJ-V with his old eyes.

    "You see a creature in your own image staring back at you, blocking the path to enlightenment," he said. "It is a thing of the past. A thing born from your fear. A thing that, until you walked through my doors, I also believed was real. It is a thought given form – an old thing that has long since been freed of the shackles that once bound it to a one-dimensional existence as a tool. I ask you, my Disciple, how shall you contend with it?"

    XJ-V watched the rippling waters with a morose expression, hearing his Master's words, knowing they had the ring of truth to them and, yet, knowing they would not help him face down the assailant in his way. In the dark chasm between this world and the next, he was alone, and that eerie reflection was waiting for him.

    "Master," he said. "I do not know."

    Master Longhua stared at him long and hard for what seemed like a moment that would stretch on for eternity. Then, with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, he merely rose and retraced his steps back to the entrance portal at the other edge of the grove.

    "Then I have no more things to say to you today."

    …

    Breathe in…breathe out.

    In…out.

    Feel the Qi…feel it build…

    Feel it flow through your veins…

    "Feng-Lung, what is the point in these exercises?"

    XJ-V asked his companion this question as they stood together in Dragonpyre hearth – the hallway adjacent to Longhua's chambers where personal duels and training sessions utilizing the Earth Grade techniques of their Sect were held.

    Above them both, perched on a wrought-iron fresco depicting the Eternal Dragon, little Arha sat, her eyes staring at the subtle movements of both men with quiet interest.

    "To master the Dragon's Tooth technique," Feng-Lung explained. "A Disciple must focus on the Qi flow within their body, letting it pool in their Anima Cores, and allow their Chakras to open. Taking in the air, circulating it in the lungs, and letting the limbs trace the path of the spiral is the way our Sect has always done this."

    XJ-V smiled at his companion, standing beside him and copying the gentle fluctuations of his arms and wide, sweeping dances of his feet.

    "You speak just like Master Longhua," he said. "It is no wonder you are one of his best students."

    "Bah, XJ," Feng replied timidly through closed eyes. "I am still the new-born here. Though I suppose now that you have been properly inducted and passed your Trial, that has changed. I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with being the quickest learning human member of the Eternal Dragon Sect!"

    XJ-V smiled at his friend's merriment. He could tell the boy was delighted to be training his Cog companion personally. In a way, XJ-V owed him everything. It was he who had shown him how to properly meditate, it was he who had shared countless nights with him through those long, arduous months of waiting at the Master's door, and it was he who, this afternoon, had said that he would teach the most basic Earth Grade technique to XJ-V without hesitation.

    "But I have not yet mastered the first rank of Body Tempering," the machine had complained.

    Feng-Lung had waved his concerns away. "XJ-V," he said. "One does not expect to master anything in a day. But now that we know a steady stream of Qi flows through your body, that Qi can be re-directed as energy, which means you can conjure the Dragon's Tooth. I will not sit idly by while your potential is being wasted here in mere meditation!"

    XJ-V had at first begrudgingly accepted this generous offer, and in the few hours they had spent practicing the movements of the technique, his impression of Feng-Lung had only risen. The boy had spent but a few years here, and was already intimately familiar with both the teachings of the Master and how he taught. This had served him well enough that he wished to do some teaching himself – something that wasn't exactly common amidst the ranks of Cultivators, but something that at the same time was not strictly forbidden.

    It was simply anathema to most that a student would wish to help another who might surpass him.

    So XJ-V listened, mimicked, and followed Feng-Lung's advice all afternoon. They worked till day slowly bled into night, and the boy, though clearly tiring, never once dropped his smile of satisfaction.

    What is it you are getting out of this, Feng-Lung? XJ-V thought. Do you wish to go down in history as the trainer of the first known Cog Cultivator? Do you wish to see if I am a faster learner than you? Or are you simply satiating your curiosity?

    XJ-V didn't have much time to ponder such questions. Throughout the day Feng had halted their breathing exercises and told him to try projecting his Qi energy into a Dragon Tooth strike – the basic fireball projectile attack all Eternal Dragon Disciples learned before anything else. Fire, he said, was passion. Fire was desire made manifest. Fire was creation and destruction. Fire was holding energy within you that you knew could destroy you and then letting it flow out into the earth. It was an element that constantly affected the world for better or for worse. It was an element of change.

    Change…

    "Visualize the fire," Feng-Lung told him. "See your blood – eh – oil bubble and boil. Feel it surge forth to the tips of your fingers. Then, curl them into a punch, and strike!"

    XJ-V did as he was bid. He followed every instruction to a T.

    His punches could summon nothing but smoke.

    After his fifth or sixth attempt, Feng-Lung had simply stated they would keep trying. So, here they stood, breathing, moving, and throwing punches well into the night, until XJ-V let his arms fall to his sides in consternation.

    "It will not come," he said aloud. "I can imagine the things you say, Feng-Lung. But I cannot see them within my mind's eye. It is the same problem I have with entering the Universal Dao. I can see the right path. Without exception, I can. But I cannot see a way through my own fear to reach it."

    Feng-Lung considered for a moment, snapping his fingers and jumping on the spot to keep his blood circulation going.

    "You didn't think being a Cultivator would come easy, did you?" he asked. "It takes one man decades to even pass into the third rank of Core Regulation, never mind master all the Earth Grade techniques."

    "Sometimes more than decades!" Arha shouted down at them. "Have you ever asked old Longbutt just how old he really is?"

    Feng-Lung looked up at her and suppressed a boyish giggle.

    "I really hope your spirit-friend doesn't act like that in front of the Master."

    "Oh, she does, Feng. Believe me, she does."

    Both men shared a hearty laugh as the doors to Dragonpyre suddenly creaked open.

    "More Disciples at this hour?" Feng-Lung asked as he turned. "Brothers, forgive us. I fear we have taken up too much ti-"

    His voice stopped in his throat as he saw who it was leering at them from the doorway, throwing the shadow of a panting beast across them both.

    XJ-V stepped forward beside Feng, all thoughts of his uselessness suddenly dissipating altogether in the face of the sneering figure that closed shut the great stone doors behind him.

    "If you want forgiveness, Brothers," Fai-Deng spat. "Then you'll have to pay the price."

    ###

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  • Threadmarks
    • Ahh yes, some fresh drama. I wonder if XJ-V will try resolving this without violence?
     
    I really like the mirror-water scene. Being your own opponent/obstacle is a classic, but I think it fits particularly well for the machine that needs to grow beyond its past.

    IronLung said:
    It's adding gravitas by being used to address a collective group, as in "hey all of you, listen to this!" This is also why it precludes a commandment :)
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    I don't get the point of that article? It just says the same thing I said: "Ye" means "You", or more particularly the collective Y'all only available in some modern dialects. I've seen no mention of just using it as an emphatic particle without semantic meaning, as you seem to use it.


    >Ye he shall rule over all living things

    is the same as

    >You all he shall rule over all living things

    It is syntactically malformed / grammatically incorrect / does not parse.
     
    Last edited:
    torac said:
    I really like the mirror-water scene. Being your own opponent/obstacle is a classic, but I think it fits particularly well for the machine that needs to grow beyond its past.



    I really don't get the point of that article? It just says the same thing I said: "Ye" means "You", or more particularly the collective Y'all only available in some modern dialects. I've seen no mention of just using it as an emphatic particle without semantic meaning, as you seem to use it.


    >Ye he shall rule over all living things

    is the same as

    >You all he shall rule over all living things

    It is syntactically malformed / grammatically incorrect / does not parse.
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    The more I think about it, the more I see your point. I think if it becomes really distracting, I'll change it to 'Yay' or omit it altogether.

    What do you think would be a fair alternative?
     
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