Cog Cultivator (Xianxia)

[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Feng-Lung!"

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

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

"Feng…"

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

"Feng!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ori'un smiled.

Good, he thought. The boy still has focus.

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

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

A well.

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

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

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

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

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

"Feng."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Feng," he said.

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

"Feng!"

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

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

He walked out of the room without turning back.

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

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

Those still living… Ori'un thought.

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the pearl-white corpse of a kitten.

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

"Feng!" the Planeswalker shouted.

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

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[IronLung]

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

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

Then, from all angles, they charged.

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

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

Then the rest of the brood came.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even the Masters? The Cog asked.

More than you know.

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

Something was happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ori…un…" he wheezed.

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

"Did…did…I...?"

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

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

"The…the village…"

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

"FENG-LUNG!"

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

Her son's help.

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

"MOM!"

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Feng!"

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

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

Something big.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sleep…soundly…my…son."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"MURDERER!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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


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

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

Grey potentials…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anima Cores: 140

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

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

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

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

The Cog merely blinked in response.

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

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

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

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

Then a forceful flaming finger flick found his forehead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yuwa is dead."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Longhua's face, as usual, was unreadable.

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

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three Disciples shared awkward glances with eachother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ori'un?"

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

For he had been working on a project recently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"…I'm not that young," he murmured.

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

Feng's eyes opened now.

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He barreled through the portal and sprinted for the commune.

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sudden idea then struck Feng's mind:

The Cog is…building something?

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

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

Feng rose, shaking off his hot flush of embarrassment.

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

Mah-Jung raised a curious, and salacious eyebrow.

"Not words like you are thinking!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

What…

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

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

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

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

"What was that?"

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feng stood perplexed.

Favor?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feng-Lung sighed in exasperation.

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

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

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

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

"Wait! Miss…um…Miss Gira."

The ghost looked back at him with barely concealed consternation.

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

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

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

Feng-Lung cocked his head at her.

"Script?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"XJ-V…"

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

"He has been seeking much knowledge of his own recently," she replied. "He is truly something special, eh? Nothing like these other brash young upstarts who come to me oh so often now, looking for books and scrolls that might give them an edge in the silly little tournament to come. Hah! I have seen them come and go in my time. They forget that I have been here longer than all of you. I've seen more of my fair share of your 'tournaments'. They are nothing but the displays of jumping monkeys! Hyped-up braggarts flailing at each other till a punch lands, too scared to fight a real fight out there in the frontiers of Qing's old Empire. I tell you, boy, none of them could hold a candle to the old Emperor's old duel and tourneys. Not that I was there to see them, mind you, but even an old spirit like me hears whispers. I could tell you of –"

Ahem, Feng coughed. "I believe you were telling me about my Cog Brother?"

The spirit resumed her haughty stance – just like every other spirit Feng had ever met. Just how did XJ-V get on their good sides?

"Never interrupt a woman when she's speaking," Gira warned. "Especially not one with thousands of years on her back! But, meh, you are correct I suppose. Yes, the Cog was here. He was looking for books on metalworking last I saw him."

"Metalworking?"

"For something secret," the Gui'po guardian shrugged. "I don't make it my business to pry."

Then the Cog is…making something? Feng-Lung realized. But…what? And for what purpose?

"The last I saw him," Gira continued. "He was heading to train with that angry Tiger Brother. Flea-Dung, Floo-Dip, Phlegm-Duck…bah! He is not worth remembering. Though he has certainly become a more mellow sort recently, so I hear…"

Feng-Lung bowed and thanked the spirit for her information. It looked like his quest for his Brother would continue elsewhere – as much as he just wanted this silly game to be over.

Mah-Jung…Gira…don't tell me even Fai-Deng is in on this, too…

"Don't just stand there, my boy!" the Gui'po said as he turned to finally return to her refuge. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Despite all the consternation and frustrations that had followed him this morning, Feng-Lung couldn't help but shake his head with an exasperated smile.

"You know, you are the second person to tell me that today," he said.

"Really?" the spirit replied, feigning surprise so absolutely that Feng had to remind himself not to laugh in the face of a spirit.

"Well," she said. "I'd get used to it."

###

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[IronLung]

"What, you think I'm his keeper or something?"

Feng-Lung's exasperation was going to simply continue today, it seemed. He had gone to the Hall of Symmachus and been met, as expected, with opposition on all sides.

First, he'd had to shrug off the odd looks the other Disciples of the Tiger had given him. Then, he'd had to out up with the attitude of Fai-Deng.

"Look, Brother," the Tiger was saying as he cleaned sweat and spittle from his face – the markers of recent Kata practice. "I have forgiven you for your rejection of my apology to you. But that does not mean I need to put up with all your antics."

Feng blinked.

"You have forgiven me for forgiving you?"

"Bah!" Fai roared. "Are all you Eternal Dragons the same?! Must you test the patience of me every single time I interact with one of you?"

Feng could sense the tension building in the Hall. But, then again, that was nothing special when it came to Fai.

"Look, Brother," he began. "I have had a long day. Please just let me know if you have s-"

"YOU!?" the Tiger roared, throwing his towel down like a gauntlet being tossed in challenge. "I have been made a slave. You hear me, Feng-Lung? A machine has made me nothing but a glorified repair man today! I swear by the Dao, if Master Yoma-Dur had not been here and found the Cog's request amusing…"

Hold on a minute here.

"Brother?" Feng interjected. It seemed the Tiger had become lost in thought, and as he collected himself, it then became clear to Feng-Lung that just like the old Gui'po in the library back there, he had just realized he had said too much.

"Feng, I will be honest with you," the Tiger said. "I am supposed to provoke you into a fight and let you win. It is apparently what the old heroes of the 'Woosha' books the Cog has been reading recently would do. We were to jump around this room like the practiced aeronauts of Qing's time and have a duel of 'epic' proportions. Tiger versus Dragon – Brother against Brother. Some symbolic guff such as that. But, truthfully Brother, I am tired today. The spirit of battle and spectacle is not within me. So I shall simply tell you what you are supposed to, as our Brother put it, 'beat out of me.'"

As Feng stared like an old blind fool into the Tiger's heaving face, Fai simply went on.

"He was last seen speaking to the Planeswalker in his chambers. I suggest you move quickly. But, between the two of us, Brother, I don't think speed really matters."

Feng nodded slowly, feeling like a child trapped in some rudimentary maze – a maze designed by an altogether clunky and anticlimactic maze-master. He bowed, took his leave, and walked confusedly back outside to the winter air, taking a deep breath as he now made his way towards Ori'un's quarters.

"I can guess why you're doing this," he said to himself. "Alright. Fine. You know that curiosity is my weakness. You know that finding out your little mystery is the only reason I would ever go and speak to the Planeswalker. Damn you, XJ-V, you are a devious machine like the old tales say after all."

Brother Kai-Thai waved him a jovial greeting as he passed him by and entered the Hall of Symmachus to see his Brother Tiger.

"Hello, fellow cub!" he shouted. "How fares you?"

And from even the bottom of the great Hall's steps, Feng heard the groan of Fai-Deng as he replied.

"Oh, not another one!"

…

Ori'un seemed to have business of his own.

The room Master Longhua had afforded the Planeswalker was possibly the shabbiest cubby-hole in all of the monastery. It's doorway was practically crumbling at its edges, leading into a plain chamber without even a window to the outside world. Locked away at the very edge of the Dragon Commune, Feng-Lung supposed Longhua wanted the Planeswalker to feel imprisoned. He'd never understand the old man's spite for anyone who disagreed with him.

Then again, Master Longhua was on the impossible path of Ego Internalizer. The mind of a Rank 3 Corporeal Temperer like Feng's could not conceive of what burdens such a Master had to endure.

Nor could it understand the mind of the man who was currently packing his rucksack as though heading off on a long trip.

A trip that, by the items he was carrying, was going to involve a lot of drinking…

"Ah, Feng-Lung," he said, packing another glass canister surreptitiously into a pocket of his bag with a little chuckle. "What a…surprise this is."

Feng groaned, his eyes having moved further back into his head today than they ever had before.

"I see you are preparing to leave," was all he said.

"Not for good as yet, you'll be disappointed to know," Ori'un replied. "I have an important mission to complete."

"A mission?"

"Oh, yes. One of pivotal importance. You see, I have discerned the location of the most affluent rice-wine distillery in the region. Apparently, a certain farmer in the town of Khadis has his very own brand. And it's the good stuff."

Feng-Lung scoffed. "You are going on a mission…to find booze."

Ori'un gave a sarcastic scoff of his own. "Please," he said. "I prefer to call them 'spirits'".

Feng ignored the impish wink this legendary man then gave him.

"Whatever you have to say to me," he said. "Get it over with and tell me where this sneaky Cog is hiding. I know it is he that has orchestrated all my pains this day. And I know that you know this, too."

"Young Feng, have you really had such a painful day, here? You've been the hero of your own little adventure, have you not? I'd have thought you'd quite enjoy it after what you've been through."

Both men watched each other in silence. A silence that was only broken when Ori'un decided to push through it.

"I told you back then, did I not?" he said quietly. "I told you that one day you would have to meet the world head-on again, or it would come for you. I don't care if you believe me or not, but my intention in coming here was not to cause you pain. There are things out there bigger than you and I, young Feng."

The boy grimaced, he looked away. But he couldn't disagree.

"I know it," he said.

"Feng, if you had the chance to re-take your test – to move to the next rank – you would take it, wouldn't you?"

Feng-Lung pursed his lips. This was a conversation he had done everything in his heart to avoid.

Curse you, XJ-V!

"…of course I would."

"Great!" Ori'un roared. "That's all I wanted to hear."

The Planeswalker slung his bag over his shoulder and walked right past Feng, leaving the boy standing there like a mute - deaf and dumb to the world.

"Oh!" he said before he left to go on his little excursion. "That's right. I'm supposed to inform you that what you seek is right back where you started. For," he gave a little chuckle. "'All true journeys end with a return.'"

Feng bristled, about to burst into flame like a dying phoenix.

"Ai-Lee's Grove…he's been there the whole time!?"

"He might have learned a few new Earth Grade tricks in the art of stealth," Ori'un winked. "But I am just a humble Planeswalker, DIsicple Feng. I don't know anything about that."

"…I'm sure you don't."

He watched the Planeswalker go with the slowly dropping sanity that had been plaguing him all day long.

"Ori'un," he said, his voice a-quiver. "I…my intention was not to fight with you when you came here. That's why I…well…there are some people that one cannot look at, even when the benefit of years tells them that, in their youth, they were wrong."

He cringed at how awkward he sounded. But the Planeswalker, quite entertained it seemed, merely waved and wished him good luck on the final step of his quest.

"Feng-Lung…" he murmured to himself as he left the monastery. "Perhaps you really have grown, after all."

###

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[IronLung]

Ai-Lee's Grove seemed changed from the last time Feng-Lung had seen it. The willows shuffled their drooping branches to allow him passage back to the start of his quest, where the waters of the Qi lake shimmered, speckled with stars from the illusion of the old skies of Qing's Empire above.

As he emerged at the lake, XJ-V was waiting for him, seated upon a jagged rock jutting out from the sands.

He really looked like the image of an old Master from the tales of Qing's time before the Sundering. His meditative posture was perfectly calibrated. He once again sat as still as stone – just as he had done when he first came to Ramor-Tai. But this time, he seemed more tranquil. He seemed more attuned to his surroundings, watching every circular ripple that danced along Ai-Lee's lake with the eyes of one who knew the Dao, now. Knew it, and respected it.

Feng sighed and joined his Brother, sitting cross-legged beside him as the dim lights of the sea of stars above lighted down upon them both.

"A beautiful night, isn't it, Brother?"

Feng registered the chuckle in his Cog Brother's voice.

"It almost makes my hellish day worth it."

XJ-V knit his steel brows. "Hellish?"

"I won't go into it," the boy replied. "I presume you know enough already."

The Cog smiled then, and it was at that point that Feng saw he was hiding something beneath his robe.

The boy sighed again.

"I do not like surprises," he said.

"I know that is a lie, Feng."

The boy scoffed. "Your advanced sensors tell you that, do they?"

"No," the Cog replied. "My knowledge of my friend tells me that."

Feng laughed in the face of the Cog's earnest answer, matched by the seriousness of his face.

"It is funny," he said. "Before I met you I assumed all Cogs to be just as the tales told us – deceptive, manipulative, under the control of the Old Gods."

"Why then did you first speak to me?"

"Because" Feng-Lung said. "I was curious. It is my greatest weakness, as you well know."

"And your greatest strength, Brother. I think that, without your curious mind, I would have quit my attempts to enter this place."

Feng made to protest, but the pensive face of his Cog Brother stopped him. He was focused on the dancing lights provided by fireflies that had started gliding around on the surface of the lake. Not quite as alluring as the spectral Shuigui, but still quite the sight to behold.

"I suppose I never did give you proper thanks for keeping me company during those long, dark days," XJ-V told his Brother. "I have been so focused on moving through the Dao that I was becoming blinded to the concerns of the world and the people who live in it."

Feng watched his face take on a pained expression. It was odd – it was like it wasn't the Cog talking at all, right now. But something beyond him.

Or something within him.

"I do not think one such as me could ever achieve immortality," he said. "I have learned that I care too much about those that I learn beside. I would not like to leave Brothers like you behind, Feng-Lung."

Feng sat back. "And you think that's your weakness?" he asked. "You really are nothing like the other Disciples who come here, XJ-V. Most of them have already made up their mind that the world out there has no more use to them. It never cared about them. Most of their parents wanted them to come here to escape the life that waited for them out there. That was – well – that was what my mother wanted for me."

XJ-V turned to face his friend, expecting to see anger etched on his face. But instead, there was nothing but an expression of reflection. He, too, was gazing out onto the star-studded lake and following the trailing lights of the fireflies."

"I am assuming Ori'un told you everything," he said. "It would be like him. He never did respect any of the rules of this place."

XJ-V gave his friend space to continue.

"You know why I ran after my mother's voice, that night?' he asked suddenly – something the Cog never thought he would bring up on his own. "I never told anyone. Not Ori'un, not even Longhua. It wasn't because I really thought it was her. I knew the Flesh-Eaters' tricks. I wouldn't have accepted my test for Rank 4 if I didn't."

The Brothers had arrived at a pivotal moment. Both of them allowed some silence to pass as Feng heaved under the weight of the admission he was about to make.

"When I heard her voice…that's when I remembered what she sounded like for the first time in eight years," he said. "Truthfully, I'd forgotten her voice. I'd forgotten her face. I'd started to think my memories of her were nothing but the fancy fabrications of a child's mind – a child with too much imagination. I followed the mimicry of that creature just because I wanted to see her again. Just because I wanted to know that the image I had of her in my mind was the real thing. To me, in that moment in my life, that was worth dying for."

The ripples of the Qi-pool stopped abruptly. A stillness lay upon the Grove, and the light of the fireflies began to depart. The illusion of midnight had cast itself over the artificial realm and bathed the face of the novice Cultivators in its celestial light.

"So, I wouldn't worry about staying shackled to this earth, XJ-V," Feng finally said. "Because right to the end, I'll be right here with you. I can't let go of those memories that are precious to me. I can't look away as people I love are butchered. I guess that makes me kind of a failure, still, doesn't it?"

"Only if you let it," XJ-V said. "I know at least one person that does not believe you failed your test that day. In a way," the Cog added. "You proved that you were human."

"Is that really all so special?" Feng asked his friend, genuinely fishing for an answer.

"It is the only thing I wish to be."

Feng caught the distinct sadness in his friend's tone and turned to see his face. But the Cog was smiling, with an almost boyish charm.

"Do you know why I had you run this wild goose chase today?" XJ-V asked.

"Probably because you wanted to cheer me up," Feng bristled. "As silly a reason as that is. I wished to reprimand you when Arha let it slip you were doing something to catch my attention. I wanted to cuff you, and tell you that you should be focusing on your own training right now, not your morose friend. I did not suspect you would get half of Ramor-Tai involved in your little game."

"And?" XJ-V asked. "Have you not had some fun?"

"Let me see," Feng said chuckled. "I have chased away some book thieves, sparred with a Tiger, confronted my past with the Planeswalker and now have returned to the beginning of my journey. I have walked the path of a hero. Have I had fun?...I suppose."

"Then," XJ-V said. "It is time for you to be rewarded."

Feng laughed again as he watched his Brother unfurl the secret he held, producing a small object composed of shining steel that matched the tone of his own skin, welded together rather haphazardly into a shape that resembled…something…

As Feng-Lung looked closer – his heart gave a sudden lurch. There…yes. There was the two tiny ears, a curled tail, and even some wire-frame whiskers poking out from the thing's nose.

He was looking at a metal replica of a cat.

"It is a cat," XJ-V said.

Feng Lung merely blinked in response.

Of all the oddities he'd seen today, this was most definitely the strangest.

"I recall that you are quite fond of them," the Cog explained, mistaking Feng's look of utter bewilderment as a sign of anger. "I understand that Ramor-Tai does not allow non-human mammals within its walls unless they are spiritual in nature. I remember you telling me of how you longed to chase them back in your home town. I am afraid this cat cannot be chased, but perhaps it will give you a reminder of them. Like you say, Feng, memory is important."

Feng looked from the object to the Cog, seeing the earnestness in his metal face, and seeing the care and attention that had been poured into this gift. That's when the significance of where he had traveled this morning finally hit him.

"I am no expert in metalworking," the Cog explained. "I was forced to use my own supplies which took some time to shave and then repair. I had Gira show me some tomes on felines to get the bearing of their shape, and Brother Fai-Deng provided electrical assistance to graft the pieces together into something which, I hope, resembles the real thing."

Feng hid laughter behind the beaming smile that had begun to smear itself across his face. The cat – it was a nice touch, he admitted – but moreso was he humbled by what this man, composed of metal and lights and logic beyond the ken of any of them, had just demonstrated in the creation of this tiny thing for another.

Feng accepted the steel-cat with a gracious bow, clapping his friend's shoulder with the first genuine smile he'd worn in weeks.

"XJ-V," he said. "I believe you are more human than you think."

###

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[IronLung]

Within the Dao, time is as inconsequential as air.

XJ-V and Feng-Lung spent the remainder of their day in quiet contemplation, Feng reflexively petting his new robot-kitten as they dived in and out of the Dao, both wandering beside the other, trying to grasp at visions that swam before their eyes.

Yet, though their journeys were tranquil, the visions were elusive.

There were forms in the dark that crossed a barrier to tear at the light where they stood. There were shapes that seemed to extinguish the sun high above the wastes, and there was fire spreading on the horizon. Strangely, such sights did not conjure fear in either Disciple. For some reason they seemed strangely…serene.

Like the snuffing out of the last candle before one embarked on a long, deep sleep.

Neither Disciple knew how long they had spent in their dual-Cultivation, but both knew for certain that the hours must have turned to days outside by now. That was simply the effect Ai-Lee's Grove had on the Cultivator. It was why the old Prophet – first among the Eternal Dragons – had constructed the Grove as he had ascended to the Dao in the first place: as a reminder of what peace truly meant, and how it felt.

XJ-V and Feng only woke from such Dao-Walks when they saw a particularly arresting shared image – that of filth spewing forth from the cracks in the earth in a geyser that swallowed the sun. An oozing mass that slowly, with deliberation, assumed the form of a man. A man that began to walk towards both Disciples, leading the shimmering wraiths of darkness behind him.

The eyes of the black shape opened, and then Arha roused both men awake.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Arha is tired. Arha needs pats! Arha is sick of watching you too!"

Anima Cores: 144

Better…but not by much. There was too much power behind those eyes…

XJ-V shook his head, looking down at the little Huli nuzzling into his side.

"How quaint," he said. "After all this time spent with only your sisters, you finally have company in this Grove. And you aren't satisfied?"

"If Arha wanted statues," she pouted. "She could walk outside and stare at the stupid stone tigers and dragons. Actually, why are there no statues of Huli in your human lands? Arha thinks this is very unfair."

As the little fox roused her sleeping sisters in the willow behind them, XJ-V turned to see the concerned face of his Brother beside him.

"Did you feel that?" Feng asked. "That man…when he looked at me."

XJ-V nodded grimly. Those eyes bore a striking resemblance to eyes he had seen before.

The High Eagle's.

"When he looked at me," Feng continued. "It was as though an invisible hand were clenched round my throat, stopping all Qi from entering my body. It was like he pushed me from the Dao, and closed the door behind him."

"There is only one army capable of such evil," XJ-V said. "That of the Divine Order."

Feng balked, rubbing his neck, checking it for marks. "You have met their kind, haven't you, Brother?"

XJ-V nodded gravely. "Though the memory of the encounter still eludes me. I had hoped that by growing as a Cultivator I could eventually look back into my past with certainty. To see the entire beginnings of my life, and my Creator…" he trailed off, then shook his head of the thought. "But it does not matter. The future is what is important now."

Feng-Lung scoffed beside him. "Of course it matters. XJ-V, after understanding my past and how it has shaped me, you would really say that the circumstances of your creation mean nothing to you?"

XJ-V smiled back at his Brother. But it was a dry, distant gesture. The waters of the Grove were what his eyes focused on.

"Perhaps I do not truly wish to look back," he admitted. "Because it confirms what I think. And what, I believe, Master Longhua already knows."

"Which is what?" asked Feng.

XJ-V hunched his shoulders, staring out at the lake and remembering how it floated with the limbs of his dead brethren when first he set foot in this sacred place.

"Why the Order is burning the world to ashes," he finally said – in a voice that was less than a hushed whisper. "And what they are looking for."

Before Feng-Lung could say anything more, the hurried steps of a Disciple running through the forest behind roused them both.

"Ouch!" he yelped. "Come on, let me through! I swear this is why I never come here anymore!"

XJ-V and Feng-Lung turned to see Mah-Jung wiping his sleeve and hem of his robe free from Huli and other small animal spirits.

"Mah-Jung?" Feng asked, a chuckle permeating his tone. "What brings our beleaguered brother here?"

But Mah-Jung's face, when his eyes finally met those of the Disciples, was far from jovial.

"There has been an attack, Brothers," he said. "The flames of war engulf the borders of the ten villages of Mt Ramor. That which is closest to the border with Taila – the village of Tenak - is filled with smoke. The Masters are being petitioned, but it does not seem like there will be a mustering."

XJ-V rose slowly, carefully, as he heard the ripples in the Qi-tinged water behind him begin to spread again.

"It is the Order," he said. "They have crossed the Badlands."

Mah-Jung shook his exasperated head. "We do not know. It is possible it could be a simple bandit raid. The childish Warlords who control Taila are under much pressure, I hear. It is unlikely they can police their borders. But I thought it necessary to bring this to your attention. You two were the closest to him round here, it seems."

Feng gave a sudden start. "Closest to whom?"

"To the Planeswalker," Mah-Jung explained. "He had gone to Tenak on an expedition of some kind. It seems that now…he shall be forced to fight."

Feng gasped as the news hit him, but XJ-V did not react right away. He turned back to the waves of Qi that were, by this point, spreading like wildfire across the surface of Ai-Lee's pond.

And within their depths, he saw that man again – the figure born of the ooze of the earth, clad in shadow, bearing night…

"…and he shall fall," he whispered, drawing a look of bewildered concern from Feng. "He shall fall…if he fights alone."

Ori'un…

The Cog had already begun running even as the thought entered his mind. He had no plan of action. He had not even thought through his intentions. Yet, still, he ran.

"XJ-V!"

He ignored the calls of his Brothers as he sprinted through the trees and crashed through the exit portal, stumbling and falling on the cragged stonework of the Dragonpyre hearth.

And before him stood Master Longhua, resplendent in his crimson dragon robe adorned with the long-tailed guardian of their Sect, its spiral form glowing in the darkness of the Hall.

He was sipping tea beside the portal to the Grove, as though he was waiting for something to emerge.

"Disciple XJ-V," he said. "It is a good night for a walk, is it not?"

The Cog rose to one knee and bowed before his Master.

"Master Longhua," he said. "I must go."

He rose steadily, meeting Longhua's wrinkled face as the old man placed his cup down beside him and fixed him with his old, determined eyes.

"To do what?"

"To fight," the Cog replied without hesitation. "I know why they have come."

"You know no such thing," his Master told him sternly, dismissing his claims with a swift flick of his ancient, braided beard. "Ori'un made his choice. He knew the risks in leaving the monastery at this time. Now, he must accept the consequences."

"Is that what you told Feng-Lung, too?" XJ-V asked as his two Brothers emerged from the portal behind him, both stunned into silence by the defiance they saw in the Cog's flaring eyes.

"Careful, Disciple," Master Longhua replied, ignoring the new arrivals. "You walk a fine line addressing me in such a way in this Hall."

"We are walking a fine line every day we sit here and do nothing while our own people die," XJ-V replied, turning away and making for the door. "I am done sitting. I have waited long enough. Now, I am choosing to take action."

"If you walk out those gates," Longhua told the Cog's departing form. "You will not return."

XJ-V stopped at the door. His hand wavered, and every piece of wiring in his matrix told him to look back at the faces of his Brothers and his Master. Every part of his soul yearned to return to the feet of Longhua and beg forgiveness under the watchful eyes of the Eternal Dragon.

But these were not the things he did. Instead, he threw open the door to the thundering cacophony of lightning and rain outside, dimly making out the coiling tower of smoke in the far distance.

He only said one more thing before he sprinted towards it:

"I am sorry, Master."

###

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[IronLung]

Buffeted by torrential rain and blinded by flashes of lightning, XJ-V ran.

He didn't stop even as Fai-Deng roared at him with a tone just as furious as the thundering heavens above.

"Cog!" he yelled in the storm. "Do not do anything stupid! Only I have the right to kill you!"

XJ-V acknowledged his shout only with a curt nod before barreling through the gates, ignoring the flabbergasted guards standing always to attention.

Outside the monastery, the pillar of smoke coming from Tanak could clearly be seen. Every village for miles around could probably see it. Every village that sat in the shade of Mt Ramor would know that the Cultivators of the mountain saw it, too. They saw it, and did nothing.

The Cog couldn't stand for it.

As he ran against the increasingly brutal lashes sent by the storm he was noticed by a few villagers who had barricaded themselves in their homes. Those of the hamlets of Marsul and Narsis prospected him with fearful eyes before realizing who he was – the stone-man of legend who had come to stand before the Sects of the mountain and succeeded in becoming one of the chosen.

The few young boys and girls who dared to offer him cheers of support were quickly silenced by their parents, and in any case XJ-V paid no attention to anyone who attempted to hail him or offer him what meagre support they could. As far as the Cog was concerned, he was alone.

When finally he came to the outskirts of Tanak he beheld the burning buildings of the hamlet from afar, dashing behind a rocky overpass that gave him a good vantage point from which to observe the goings on. Between the smoke, men clad in jagged armor trudged, holding the villagers by their hair or necks. By the double-headed eagle emblem they wore upon their pauldrons and chest plates, XJ-V knew they belonged to the Divine Order. His worst suspicions were confirmed when he traced the curvature of their armored torsos and saw the gleaming blades of the double-edged Jian that lay in the scabbards at their waists. These were no basic soldiers. These were Xu'Jan – the Paladins of Light. The Order's trained marauders, recruiters, and executioners.

They dragged the people from their burning homes to the town's center and threw them in a great, disjointed heap – their faces strewn with blood and skin scarred by soot. Few deigned to fight back. XJ-V saw the eviscerated remains of those that had littering the streets – their limbs torn and cauterized by the killing light that flowed in the veins of the devilish paladins.

But at the very foot of the pile of living dead, a particularly bulky prisoner sat.

Ori'un! XJ-V almost exclaimed.

He was sitting as he usually would on the rooftops or communes of Ramor-Tai, hunched, shoulders forward, neck trained on the horizon beyond reality. They had done a number on him – that much was clear from the new scars and bruises that lined his face – but he still looked the very picture of defiance.

He sat as calm as stone and yet drained of energy, and XJ-V realized then what must have happened: they've taken his Qi from him. Even a single slash from the light-imbued blades of the Xu'Jan could kill the power of a Cultivator. That, the Cog knew for certain.

As he watched the proceedings unfold, he saw the hovels and straw huts of Tanak crumble to dust and ashes, the town becoming nothing more than a smoking ruin before its crying residents. Children clung to their mothers' ragged clothes and fathers tried to comfort their grieving families. Some did not cry out. They just stared at the corpses that lined the streets, their eyes dead and dull, and said nothing at all.

And through the chaos, Ori'un sat amongst them.

What is he doing? The Cog thought. Does he not mean to escape?

A few of the paladins pointed out young boys amidst the crowd, and the children were swiftly, and forcefully, extracted from the arms of their parents. They were dragged off to the Order's carriages that waited at the end of the village, bound for their strongholds.

XJ-V knew the sight he was witnessing as it unfolded before his fiery eyes. This was the Order's method of 'recruitment'. They stole the children from the settlements they raided and indoctrinated them with the High Eagle's beastly rhetoric – rhetoric that perverted the teachings of one of Qing's own Prophets, Ming'Bao. Rhetoric that told these children that their parents were weak, and deserved to be conquered. In time, those boys would grow up to become just as brutal as the Order's enforcers, and then they would look into the mad eyes of screaming parents as they plucked their babies from their breasts.

The Cog was becoming more aggravated by the second. Why Ori'un did nothing as he witnessed this chaos unfold, he could not understand. He made to rise and descend at once, pondering which targets he could take down first. There were at least a dozen of the Xu'Jan guarding their 'prizes' from the village that he could see, and probably a dozen more searching the burning buildings for any survivors they could drag from the ashen remains of their homes. XJ-V rose, flexed his fingers, and made ready for combat.

But as he moved, he saw something that told him to check his haste.

Something – someone – was beginning to address the waiting crowd.

"I'll make this simple," the voice was saying – a dry voice tinged with the harsh, guttural tone native to the Badlands beyond the mountain. "Give us safe passage to the monastery, or watch these infidels die."

Ori'un's head rose to address the speaker – a man covered by a plume of smoke to the North.

"Imagine," he chuckled hoarsely. "Being lured and cut down by the promise of booze. A fitting end for a Planeswalker, don't you think?"

The circle of Xu'Jan closed in, their hands itching to unsheathe their blades and finish the job they started. But the voice cut through the tension in the air like a knife being drawn across a chalkboard.

"You're a funny man," it said. "I think I'll cut your tongue out, first."

The speaker moved like a wolf through the smoke and the dust of the burning village, embers from his Paladins fires stroking his grim, bone-bleached skull. He wore nothing but a set of leather straps across his emaciated torso, his waist covered with a think half-robe that obscured his feet, giving him the appearance of a man gliding across the ash of the village. His right hand rested on the long Jian blade glimmered at his hip, yet his arms looked much too frail to even hold the vicious weapon upright nevermind swing it at a foe.

To look upon him was to look upon the ghostly visage of a pale specter that looked close to death, and yet when XJ-V looked at his snarling face, he saw where the true power of this warrior lay. He saw lips tinged with soot and sunken eyes – more akin the pair of black voids held by an Aoyin than those belonging to a human. His pale face was inked with the grim, black markings of the two-headed eagle standing atop a Cog's skull which lay just above the ghostly demon's heart.

To look upon him was not to observe the passing of an envoy of light. It was to look upon the dispassionate face of death itself.

And without a single twitch, with no emotion at all, the pale horseman drew his sword and aimed it at the crowd of wailing villagers.

"Bring me the infants," he said. "Let's test the resolve of a man who walks the wastes."

Ori'un smiled right in death's face as XJ-V began to move.

"If you think you'll force me to help you, you're mistaken. I've seen worse than you can do, old boy."

The pale reaper turned as he was presented with a mother's screaming babe, torn from her hands while her throat was slit before it.

Through it all, Ori'un watched. The villagers wailed like banshees for him to intervene. They practically threw themselves at his inert body. They kicked and struck him with their thin, frail fists. But he did nothing.

Through the melee, the pale executioner never took his eyes off him.

"Look how they beg you, child of the Dao," he sneered. "Look how the weak cry out for a savior. Do you now see what the path tread by you and all your people shall lead to? It is inevitable."

"So is death," Ori'un said in all but a whisper. "I learned not to fear it a long time ago."

"Then watch them die, Planeswalker," the head of the Xu'Jan replied. "And know that you have no one to blame but yourself."

"UGH!"

A bolt of fire cascaded through the air and hit a young Xu'Jan in the back of his head, sending him flying face-first into the burning wreckage of a house. The reaper turned, leveled his blade, and strained his eyes to focus on the creature that stood at the edge of the village, skeletal fingers smoking, body twisted in a perfect Siliubu stance.

"That's the thing about the path we've chosen," Ori'un said quietly. "It takes the strangest turns."

As the pale demon fixed his dead eyes upon him, XJ-V stared right back.

###

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[IronLung]

"A Cog…"

The word turned to ash in the pale warrior's mouth as his Xu'Jan readied their blades, each of them chanting the words of power that their Lord of Light had bequeathed unto them.

"You see?" Ori'un said playfully. "Even the stones of this earth themselves reject your Lord, bone-head."

The commander of the Xu'Jan stood calmly, head held high to watch the machine as it crept forward to face him.

Not a single sound stirred in the village. XJ-V had eyes only for the pale-demon that watched him, his hand resting on the hilt of his thin blade. Even the blazing embers of the fires seemed to fade away as the Cog of the Dragon and the human of the Eagle met each others' stalwart gazes across the blighted stones that remained of Tenak village.

The villagers shriveled in their captivity, watching as the Xu'Jan all turned to ready themselves for battle.

And then, with a predatory licking of his lips, their commander gave them the word.

"Slay it."

The Xu'Jan charged with deadly intent, blades held high, swinging through the air in arcs of dazzling light that would have cut through the Dao itself. XJ-V stayed calm, focused, and present. He breathed, felt the Qi running through the Chakras of his soul, and let them come.

The first warrior thrust for his chest and he sidestepped the blow, spinning to deliver a Flaming Dervish that snapped the warrior's neck and sent him spinning off into the burning debris of a building. The next Paladin he caught with a quick, steady hand, employing the Tiger's Flurry Earth technique he had gleaned from Fai-Deng after weeks of being pummeled with his lightning-quick punches. He twisted the Paladin's wrist effortlessly and sent him cascading down the streets like a bowling ball right into his sprinting friends.

As the melee commenced, the villagers began murmuring amongst themselves, their timid whimpers beginning to turn into cautious optimism.

But one prisoner among them certainly wasn't keeping his mouth shut.

"HAR!" Ori'un cheered from the sidelines. "GO ON, BROTHER COG! Let them feel the bite of a metal dragon!"

XJ-V obliged, whirring to narrowly avoid another slash from a Xu'Jan soldier. He swept the boy's feet with another Dervish that kicked him into the air. With a flourish of dazzling flame, the Cog followed up with a roundhouse kick that cracked the boy's ribs as he fell to the ground, his sword skidding away from his twitching hands.

He readied himself for more. Now, he had gone farther than he ever thought he would. He had gone where his Dao-self had shown him he could go.

But, he realized as two more Paladins came swinging for his neck. It was a choice that I made.

His Dragon Tooth punches sent both soldiers skidding back, though they managed to slice through his firebolts with quick strikes from their light-imbued swords – light that XJ-V knew could sever his connection to the Dao right then and there. If they had done so to Ori'un, he'd have no chance.

So he ducked and rolled between them, administering a series of quick punches to their guts as he avoided their attacks. The boys spun, winded, and sent the edges of their blades down to slice clean through his head. In the next second, however, what they saw was nothing more than a blur of energy – the Cog's hands had come up to grab the hilts of their weapons and knock them out of each boy's hand before they could even blink. Once they did, they both coughed up a torrent of blood as they felt their chests implode with the impact of the metal man's fists again.

XJ-V stood over his fallen opponents, watching them writhe in pain and seeing the once energized tips of their blades stutter and die as lightning cracked overhead, bathing the fiery village in rain. Still more of the soldiers charged him – some jumping out from the smoke-strewn depths of the village huts and aiming for his vitals. But he was ready. He had been ready ever since that night in Hensha, and ever since he had re-lived the pain these indoctrinated warriors had inflicted on him in Ai-Lee's Grove. His vision then had shown him what he now saw to be true – these boys had been taught to fear him. Him – and all his kind. Killing them would do nothing but reinforce those fears. In the dream-vision he had struck without mercy. Here, amidst the hailstorms the heaven sent against him, he was focused on disarming those who came at him with his Dragontail Swipe.

Because only one had to die here, tonight.

One by one, his opponents fell before him, and he began inching towards their ringleader.

Through it all, the pale demon simply stood and watched.

He makes no move to save his men, XJ-V thought as another Xu'Jan warrior tasted the plated steel of his ankle. He simply watches like a vulture. Maybe he thinks they will tire me out? Perhaps he wants his pawns to wear me down.

If that was the case, he was gravely mistaken in his strategy.

XJ-V's hands moved in a blur of motion, knuckles coated with the blood and ichor of his felled foes, meting their cries of hatred and silencing them within mere seconds, until he finally came to the last line of five Xu'Jan who waited in defense of their Master.

XJ-V threw one of their comrades at them – his face a garbled mass of broken bones and bruised cheeks. They watched him fall before them, ignoring the cries of the villagers behind them.

"Now, that's a Cultivator!" Ori'un roared from the ground, seemingly enjoying the whole bloody show. "How do you like it, men of the Order? Where is your mighty eagle's wings, now?"

You are talking big for someone currently subdued, XJ-V couldn't help but think.

He held his ground before the last line of Paladins, each one's blade straight and still in their grip. Their faces were streaked with perspiration. Their hands - shakey with the emotion they thought they had suppressed long ago.

But these were not men of the Dao, XJ-V remembered as he lowered his Prancing Crane stance and met each of their eyes individually. These were just misguided boys.

So, amidst the wreckage of the windswept village littered with their groaning, wounded comrades, XJ-V shouted to the last of the Order's men.

"You are not dull stones, are you?" he asked them. "You are men who have never had a choice in your lives. You have watched villages burn just like this one. You have watched your villages burn in the name of something you did not understand. Now, I am giving you the choice. Remain and fall with your brothers, or leave and live. Live your lives free of the Order. Let your Master answer for you."

The Cog didn't know what he was expecting. To see the boys falter? To watch them throw down their weapons and relinquish their blades, then and there? To break down in tears and cry out for forgiveness?

Whatever he wished to see, reality, as usual, had something else in store.

This time, it was the image of the Xu'Jan that remained raising their vicious swords as one, and twisting them as the barrage of rain above danced along their blades.

XJ-V's realization that the men were about to charge was accompanied by the mirthless chuckle that came from their pale leader's black throat.

"Compassion," he said. "It is a weakness displayed by many humans in a world wreathed in darkness. It seems even a man of steel and stone like you has learned nothing but how to emulate the weaknesses of your Masters. Still, even with the death of that old bastard Qing, you are nothing more than a slave. Yet you have the gall to speak to us of freedom?"

XJ-V narrowed his eyes at the ghostly apparition standing behind the wall of blades that was his men. The Cog, for the first time in a while, felt a hatred grab his heart that he could not even say truly belonged to him.

His eyes found Ori'un sitting beside the group, the captive villagers huddled together behind his great back. Now, he was silent. Now, he was watching.

And then he gave the Cog a soundless nod.

"These men made their choice a long time ago," the pale-faced leader of the wolfpack growled.

"They made the only choice worth making in this dull, dead world. They chose to follow the light of the true Lord of humankind. They chose to believe in the words of His greatest prophet – his High Eagle soaring above the burning lands of his enemies. And now, they shall choose to do what must be done."

The warriors of the Order hunched their shoulders, their final battle cry punctuated by a strike of lightning above that showed XJ-V all their youthful faces.

The Cog bowed his head for only a second before his hands worked of their own accord.

"So shall I," he said.

###
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[IronLung]

The Xu'Jan charged XJ-V as a unit, swords swinging, screams echoing through the thunderous cacophony of the skies above. Rain pelted off the Cog's calm limbs and hands as he stepped forward and brought his right leg up in a fiery kick that then led into another Flaming Dervish. He felt the boys' faces crumble at his swift strikes, each blow delivering a stunning effect on their nerves and causing them to collapse – their once confident faces kissed the wet mud of the village they had just destroyed.

XJ-V did not relent. He brought the boys down just as he said they would, every strike forcing him to look into the burning hatred that the warriors harbored for him, every parry of their blades a grim reminder that he was fighting little more than slaves to the Orders' lies.

When the last Xu'Jan felt the flaming strike of his palms, XJ-V assumed his Siulubu and stared down the commander again, noting that in the wake of his melee, the world seemed more silent than ever.

The eyes of everyone – including that of the Pale demon himself, were trained on the Cog's burning chest. They were spellbound by the glowing fire that raged within his heart, blazing in brilliant flames of energy as he stood there above the bodies of his nullified foes.

"You…" the Pale leader said – his voice an ashen whisper on the crashing winds sent by the heavens. "It is you, isn't it?"

And XJ-V only now realized his mistake. The leader had watched, and waited, not out of pure cowardice, but because he wished to confirm a suspicion that his mind could not process without evidence.

The burning, living flame radiating from the Cog's chestplate was all the evidence his eyes needed.

"I've heard rumors about you," he said, licking his dry, black lips. "You are the one who fled as Hensha burned. The one that bears the Gift…"

It was as he feared – this man was no mere marauder come to pillage and plunder like a bandit. He was here on a very specific mission…and his objective had just taken the bait.

XJ-V cursed himself for his ignorance and his desperate submission to his desires. But, even knowing he had just been led into a dark spider's web, he couldn't see himself doing anything different. It was as Ori'un said – the Dao showed us choices, but sometimes one merely picked divergent paths that forked and turned in the dark, only to eventually lead to the same outcome.

"Oh, shove it buddy," Ori'un spat at the stalking demon from the crowd of villagers. "Can't you see you're beaten? Give up this little villain monologue you're starting and turn tail now. You aren't gonna beat this one."

The pale specter took a series of steps forward, the trimming of his robe gliding across the burned ground as though he had no feet at all.

"How the Lord favors me," he murmured, almost to himself. "After the High Eagle himself failed to extract you, now Great Yuwa has delivered you to me as a sign of his divine providence."

XJ-V grit his metal teeth. He could feel the energy swirling in this man. Not Qi – the power running through his ashen veins was something entirely different.

"Your God is dead," XJ-V told the pale specter. "I do not count the deceased among my enemies."

"All of this world is your enemy, machine. Have you not realized this by now?"

"You lie," XJ-V said, readying two Dragon Tooth strikes as the bone-bleached vulture glided towards him. "The Cultivators still stand strong, despite your God's wish to eradicate them. And they are more accepting than He ever was."

A low, gravel-like sound stuttered from the leader's black mouth. It took the Cog a second to realize that the warrior of the Eagle was laughing at him.

"You think those slaves to the Dao are human?" he said. "I suppose that makes sense. One slave often follows another. The blind lead the blind into captivity and death. Your destruction is mutually assured, now."

"Is that why you attack these villagers instead of the monastery?" XJ-V countered. "You know you would stand no chance against the true guardians of humankind."

"Guardians?" the specter spat. "Those infidels live off the scraps the true Gods left in heaven. Did they not tell you that, machine-man? The Dao is nothing more than the ashes of the dead Gods you so cheerfully blaspheme before. Normally, I would correct your ignorance and leave you here to lament your mistakes. But I am not one to look a gift from my Lord in its eyes and leave it be."

The warrior drew the blade at his side with such speed that XJ-V couldn't even follow his arms as they tore the impossibly long Jian blade from its hip-scabbard. With a single, emaciated arm of nothing but thin muscle clinging to bone, the pale warrior leveled his weapon at the Cog.

"Know me," he said. "Know the name of your death-bringer. I am Sheloth. I am the Eagle's righteous talon clawing at this barren earth. I am the bringer of Yuwa's justice to the unclean, and the undeserving."

The Cog watched as the otherworldly light of the Order's paladins flared into brilliant, evil life across the edge of Sheloth's sword, and he felt the light within his own chest react and pulse in recognition.

"See how my Lord recognizes one of his own?" Sheloth grinned. "Soon, the thief who dared to steal from a God shall bow before the might of His light."

"Pfft!" Ori'un hissed behind both men. "Kick his ass, XJ-V!"

While the Cog looked into the rainswept face of the pale demon who stood before him, his frail body utterly incongruous with the ungodly size of his shining blade, he spared a moment to wonder why Ori'un was still doing nothing but sitting around and enjoying this show.

Planeswalker…The Cog thought with a sudden horrific surge of probability. Are you…watching me? Are you…testing me right now?

Sheloth's blade came down, its tip aimed directly at XJ-V's amber-clad heart.

A strike of lightning signaled the release of more rain. Both warriors – human and Cog - wore a blanket of hail upon their shoulders.

"Do not disappoint me," the demon whispered. "Let us see what a Cog Cultivator can do."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth's blade came slashing down with the next lightning bolt that struck at the earth - and his strike was no less quick or deadly than those celestial spears that pierced the ashen battlefield around them.

XJ-V moved swiftly to counter his blows, bringing up his hands in the circular motion of the Dragontail swipe and managing to block two vertical cuts that would have sheared his head clean from his shoulders. The final horizontal slash he managed to catch between his wavering fingers, and only then did he realize that he was on his knees before the ghostly warrior.

"Quick," Sheloth said in his ashen whisper. "But limited. You are a thing of steel. Form and function. There is no spirit to your fighting style."

XJ-V threw his blade off him and bent into a Flaming Dervish aimed directly at his feet to throw him off balance – a technique he had gleaned from Feng-Lung's distinctive style. He saw his arc of brilliant flame travel towards his enemy, focused his limbs into charging forward to make a final decisive blow and then found that, when the flames dissipated, his opponent was gone.

A surge of danger from above. The sounds of a wet blade falling through the air.

He rolled just in time to avoid the deadly plunging attack the Xu'jan commander sent towards him, watching the warrior embed his blade in the burning earth and immediately withdraw, eyes fixed like a hawk's on XJ-V's every movement.

He came at the Cog again – this time with a triad of quick strikes aimed at the machine-man's lower torso. Honing his time spent with Fai-Deng, remembering the fury of that young warrior's every strike, XJ-V countered with a mixture of Dragontail swipes with his left hand and Dragon Tooth punches with his right – creating and exploiting openings in his opponent's devastating attack pattern.

But every time he managed to push away the blade of the pale specter, it somehow twisted and met his counter. Impossible speed met pure machine resilience, and every clash of their steel weapons echoed through the dying village as fiery day turned to storm-wracked night.

"They truly have taught you their ways," Sheloth said in his dark, guttural whisper as his blade met the unyielding steel of XJ-V's hands. "For only a Cultivator clinging to the ashen path of Qing would fight like this."

XJ-V sensed what his opponent was doing. He was trying to break his resolve. He was trying to push him to commit himself to an attack that would lower his defenses – leaving him open for a strike that, the Cog would sure, would end this whole melee then and there. This Xu'Jan was no showman. Every attack he made was a strike meant to kill. To slay nothing more than what he considered a beast.

As XJ-V kept up his deflections he felt himself being pushed back. He felt the light within his chest surge and flare, commanding him to end this fight the way that he knew he could.

And the dark eyes of his opponent seemed to know it, too.

"You can hear it, can't you?" he said as he thrust for the Cog's neck, splitting apart the plating on his left side and coming away with a series of electrified wiring stuck to his sword like a section of metallic intestine. "You can hear the call of the thing inside you. The thing you stole from us."

XJ-V staggered back against the ashen wall of a ruined house, found his feeting again, and formed into a Gong Bu stance, lead foot forward, ready to lunge.

In the face of his resilience, the dark specter gave another hoarse chuckle.

"A man of few words," he said. "I could almost respect that if it was a choice made by you as opposed to the compulsions built within all your disgusting kind."

The swordsman wiped the sparking arterial coils he'd cut from XJ-V's neck off his blade like he was tending to a wound in his weapon. Pure disgust smeared itself across his face.

"Impure, corrupted machine," he spat into the smoking, rain beaten ground. "You know you cannot win against us."

XJ-V stood still as a rock. Patient as a stone.

"Against all of you, perhaps not," he said. "But against you? I have already seen my victory. If you deny your fate, man of Yuwa, prove me wrong."

The ghostly form of his opponent obliged.

He flew at the Cog and sent a flurry of lightning-fast vertical slashes aimed at his wrists and ankles. He'd seen the weakness of the Cog would be in his footing, and XJ-V corrected his stance even as every strike continued to push him back. He repulsed his foe and then was forced into a desperate duck as the blade of the ghost came sailing for his head again, instead slicing right through the blackened wall of the house behind him.

The whole skeletal structure came crumbling down around him, and the Cog then watched as his blade cut right through the debris with as much effort expended as when carving a cake.

The wounded Xu'Jan tried to rise to help their master, rain and mud smeared across their faces. But their Master, stalking through the forest of his bleeding men, bade them remain.

"You have done what you must, warriors of Yuwa," he told them. "You have brought us something not even the High Eagle was able to find. This day shall be remembered in the annals of our faith as the day this earth was finally saved."

"Saved!" Ori'un shouted. "You think the world wants your High Eagle? You think bringing your dead God back will save these people?"

"See how the ignorant flap their gums and yet say nothing," Sheloth told his men as he stalked toward XJ-V's waiting form.

"You people aren't so good at listening, huh?" The nullified Planeswalker continued. "The world told your God to keep his 'justice' and shove it where the sun never shines before. You think we'll change our minds now because your High Eagle says so?"

"Silence, infidel," Sheloth replied. "Or those heretical words shall be the last you utter."

In the seconds between their verbal sparring, XJ-V had taken time to recover. He'd taken time to try and formulate a plan for how to break the relentless offense of this man – no…this zealot – that opposed him. He'd never faced a Xu'Jan with this kind of strength before.

And yet he knew the way he could win. He knew what he had to do.

But he wouldn't do it. Not again. Never ag-

XJ-V.

His eyes flared in the swirling storm that pelted the dry earth.

The voice was Ori'un's, resonating within his head.

Run.

The Cog heard the voice just like he had before – in the dream-vision of Feng-Lung's past. It was as though the Planeswalker was standing right behind him.

Let them take me, he said. You think I will just lay down and die? I will make them pay for every insult they've thrown at us today. But I am not about to let them take you. You know you have to live. You know they can't ever find you, don't you?

The Cog sighed in the rain as his opponent leveled his blade at him again, readying himself for a final flourish before he took the Cog's head. As XJ-V had suspected, the Planeswalker had also put two-and-two together. He knew why this man wanted him. Perhaps not the specifics, but he knew the danger the Cog posed.

And that's exactly why all logic told him to run, right now. To live. To survive.

Just like he had done when he fled Hensha, obeying the orders of his Creator that were built into his mind. Compulsions…just like the man of the Eagle had said.

Except this time, he did have a choice. This time he could prevent suffering. He could stop this madness and have the chance of avenging Hensha's ghosts in the process. Or, he could die trying.

Once, perhaps he would have listened to the part of him that was only Cog, and the choice would have been obvious.

But he wasn't just a Cog, now.

"I apologize, Ori'un", he whispered, knowing the Planeswalker could hear. "But I am not going anywhere."

He reassumed his stance, bringing his arms up and catching the glint of his own reflection in the puddles that surrounded the ruined battleground beneath him.

His upturned palms glowed with power, power that flowed from the fire beneath his heart. Power that he had kept locked away, until he knew what it was needed for.

It was a tool to banish the darkness that even now smiled to see the light radiating from his mechanical form.

"At last," Sheloth chuckled darkly. "The thief shows his stolen goods. Credit where credit is due, Cog. Your destiny is not even your own. That light within you belongs to us. And you know it, don't you? We are all connected."

His sword shone with the light of the paladins – the rain catching on its edge and sizzling away before it could even touch the blade.

"You are carrying a delivery that was meant for us," Sheloth said.

"If you want it," XJ-V replied. "Come and get it."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth moved with unnatural speed, his every strike and lunge kicking up the dust of the dead village around him. In the face of such an assault, XJ-V focused. He saw the trajectory the arc of light weaved by the pale shadow's sword made before he swung it. He saw it as he now saw more than he ever could in the Dao – glimpses of futures and Grey Potentials that were once beyond his ken were now in the realm of possibility for him. He saw his hand, charged with power, reach out and grab the blade, dulling its edge.

And his body complied.

He gripped the edge of the Xu'Jan leader's straight sword and clenched down, feeling the energy he had forbidden himself to ever employ again rush through his veins like wildfire, exploding every chakra that channeled the Qi and absorbing the energy of his foe.

But as the blade and hand of these two fighters met, the smile that crept across one of their faces never faltered.

"There it is," Sheloth murmured as the light of his sword clashed with the inborn power of the Cog. "The power to end all Cultivation. The power to sap the Dao itself. You would dare use my own Lord's Gift against me?"

"Using it this way is the only thing that gives it any meaning at all," XJ-V barked back, feeling the energized blade of his foe begin to fizzle and die away at its tip. He felt it in the same way he felt Fai-Deng's Qi erode as he made contact with his fist, and again as they fought in the Dragonpyre Hearth. He fought to channel the energy that was now sweeping into him – as though he were simply a metal conductor for the raw power of his opponent.

But such power was not what he had ever felt before. Such power, he now saw, did not draw from the Dao at all.

"You miscalculate, machine," Sheloth told him. "For I am no Cultivator."

It happened before XJ-V even realized it. A recoiling, a quick slash through the air, a feeling of weightlessness overcoming his body, and then a descent to the ground as he felt something die away. Something that was once whole was now divided.

The light within him pulsed and flared – as though it was searching for something it had just lost.

And that very thing landed right in front of XJ-V's unbelieving eyes.

His right hand, severed at the wrist, now lay on the ashen ground.

Sheloth's still charged blade cut through the air with glee as he watched his opponent fall.

"Witness the hubris of the machine," he told the downed Cog. "Your kind are nothing but form and function. Your weakness is your impure desire to live with us even though you cannot possibly understand us. Faith and flesh shall always triumph over cold steel."

"He understands us a hell of a lot better than you do!" Ori'un called.

But his voice barely carried towards the Cog's ears. XJ-V's sensors buzzed with life, his inner engine begging him to activate his repair protocols immediately.

Instead, he rose, the exposed wiring at the end of his arm sparking and twitching with exposure to air.

"Do you wish for death, machine?" Sheloth asked, holding aloft his Jian blade in the rain. "I shall grant you your respite. You cannot triumph against this world that is arrayed against you. Our world."

"I…do not have to triumph against this world," the Cog spat back. "I only have to kill you."

Sheloth flew at him again, rain cascading off his whirring blade as XJ-V brought his feet up in a Flaming Dervish to counter him. He let fly two Dragon Tooth punches as he spun back round to face his opponent and watched as the warrior simply sliced through both fireballs before thrusting for the Cog's heart.

XJ-V watched his left-hand fly of its own accord to block the strike, and then felt a stab of pain erupt through his body as the blade pierced his steel palm clean through and Sheloth pushed him down on his back, his arms forcing the blade further down, through XJ-V's hand, towards the Cog's flaring eyes.

"You…see…your death," the Xu'Jan grinned as lightning speared through the dark skies above. "Let the blade of our Lord finish you."

Reflected in the shining sword of his opponent, XJ-V could see his own waning determination. Already he could feel his strength fading, his systems begging him to go into shutdown. He was still a Cog, after all.

Yes…he was still a Cog, as this psychopathic warrior seemed to like reminding him.

And it was as a Cog that he would strike back.

Sheloth of the Divine Order expected another flourish of Qi-enhanced powers as his blade sank closer to the Cog's twitching innards. Instead, his eyes bulged as the machine brought his ruined right arm up to claw at the warrior's face, sending his naked electric current into Sheloth's right cheek, burning the pale skin and causing it to crisp and curl. A long scar of energy bulged into blistering life across the Xu'Jan's face before he finally relinquished his blade and stumbled back, clawing at the wreckage of his face, mouth agape in a silent scream.

It gave XJ-V just enough time to spin, using a Dervish to right himself, and fly at the warrior with all the might still raging within him.

He channeled the Qi raging through his arms – coiling around his steel and iron veins – and conjured a flame that balled into a fist, sending it flying towards his stumbling opponent.

Sheloth's eyes met his in the final moment of impact, and the Cog felt his strike meet the resistance of the Xu'Jan's blade again. He looked into the face of the shadow-blade, one eye now melted and oozing with puss, the other an empty void where there was no life at all.

But the power that flowed within the warrior had not abated. In fact, in the face of the pain the Cog had just unleashed on him, the pale-specter's sword arm seemed even stronger now. Strong enough to repulse XJ-V's fiery strike and beat him back with the butt of his sword, twirling with lightning speed to deliver a horizontal slash that cut clean through the surface of the Cog's armored chest.

XJ-V felt himself flying through the damp, dead air, finally crashing into the remains of a blackened house that crumbled down around him.

There he lay, his body beaten and battered on the edge of the village, as Sheloth stalked towards him and plucked him from the rubble by the neck, his gnarled fingers gripping the Cog with such intensity that XJ-V was sure he was about to tear his head clean off.

"You sorry, pitiful creature," he choked in a voice that was now tinged with hoarseness, the entire left side of his scarred and charred face twitching as he spoke. "You do not know what it is to live as we do in this world. It is only right a human should take you out of it."

XJ-V twitched his arm, desperately trying to push it towards the wrinkled throat of his opponent. In the next instance he felt weightless, flying again past the village and landing on the hard stone ground outside its boundary.

"Pain is power," Sheloth said as he glided towards his twitching body. "To suffer is to be brought closer to the light of Lord Yuwa. Our existence is decay. It is stagnation. It is to fall, and fall, and fall again, and yet rise each day in the face of the inevitable."

XJ-V tried to rise, his servos groaning in the attempt, feeling how intensely vulnerable he now was with his innards totally exposed. His hand flew to grab at the engine at his heart, and he received a swift strike across his face. A strike that sent one of his eyes flying off into the night sky.

"True strength lies not in your pointless little meditations," Sheloth continued, walking around his fallen prey like a vulture circling a fading life. "Nor is it found in the dead ashes that you call the Dao. True strength in adherence to truth. It is found in living for the only God who knows what it is to be human. We are children of Yuwa, Cog. We are the chosen inheritors of His earth. And your kind are a cancer that writhes at the heart of his glorious Empire."

XJ-V blinked through his pain receptors that told him shutdown was imminent. And he knew then that the human was right. Even with all the training from Master Longhua, he was still a Cog. He was still just a machine.

"Prepare for your delivery to the dark," his executioner said. "For that is all that awaits you. You, and all your ilk made in the image of man. Cheap replicas good for nothing but scrap."

XJ-V watched the sword of the Xu'Jan master rise. The sound of the thundering heavens rose with it.

"Prepare yourself," Sheloth said. "For death."

###

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[IronLung]

Sheloth's blade came down with another stroke of lightning rippling across its energized surface.

Upon its pristine edge, XJ-V saw death approach, his every sensor begging him to give in and accept fate. The Eagle had come for him, as he knew it would.

He did not close his eyes. If he had, he would have missed the miracle that flew through the fog and charged air above them.

In the next moment, the blade of the Xu'Jan commander was repelled. He rolled away into the ashen ground and blinked through his confusion as his eyes resolved the pillar of fire that had appeared before the Cog in the moment of his defeat.

Within the pillar, the shadow of a young man fluctuated – a black shape that slowly appeared through the carmine threads that flickered in the dead night outside Tekal's perimeter.

It was a shadow that XJ-V recognized.

"Feng-Lung?"

The image of his friend's smiling face appeared through the thick coating of his unshakable defense. His robes – bearing the flowing symbol of the spiral Eternal Dragon – fluttered and then set peacefully over his arms, outstretched and readied in the Gong'Bu stance.

"I…I did not know Cog's were capable of hallucination…" XJ-V murmured.

"What you see is no illusion, XJ-V," his friend replied, watching the bewildered specter swipe his sword through the air as he prospected his new prey. "I should know - you've helped me dispel enough of my own."

The Cog steadily rose, feeling the fire within him still churning to give him life when his internal systems wanted nothing more than to sputter and die.

"You – you have disobeyed Master Longhua?"

"If the Master wishes to punish me, he can do so," Feng-Lung replied. "If my destiny as a Cultivator forces me to stand idly by and watch my friend die, then I will accept banishment."

XJ-V smiled then, even as his pain receptors buzzed with fire. Through his blurring vision he placed his good hand on Feng's shoulder and let out a dry laugh in the face of the boy's earnestness.

"You know," Feng murmured. "This is still a life-or-death situation. You should probably take it more seriously."

"Forgive me, Feng-Lung," the recovering Cog replied as he groaned to rise and stand beside his friend. "It is just that someone else said something quite similar to me, not so long ago."

"A story I'm sure I'd love to hear," Feng replied. "If we live through this night, I will be your captive audience."

Both Disciples could see the confusion on the Xu'Jan's face slowly melt into increasingly feral frustration. His pale nostrils flared as he leveled the tip of his still shining blade at the new arrival.

"This sight is an offense to the faithful of Lord Yuwa," he said, teeth grinding against his sallow lips. "That a human would stand before a member of his own kind and defend a thing of base steel – a fell construct that mocks him with its very existence."

Feng's fists clenched as he spat his rebuke at the demon before them.

"He is far closer to me in body and soul than you are, fiend," he said. "You forsook your humanity when you decided to butcher your own kind!"

The demon gave a hoarse laugh that was utterly devoid of joy.

"A young fool, looking to become a hero," he said, circling Feng, watching him as a hawk watches a new morsel that had wondered willingly into its hunting grounds. "It is a sad thing that the lies of Qing's children have corrupted such an obviously brave soul. But for the love I bear our kind – the rightful inheritors of this earth – I will offer you the chance to stand down, child."

"I would be careful calling him 'child'," XJ-V's steel-clad voice shouted into the rainswept night. "You might regret your defeat that much more."

"Your choice, warrior of Ramor-Tai," Sheloth said, speaking only to Feng-Lung. "Fly, or die."

"XJ-V," Feng whispered. "Are you still able to fight?"

The Cog nodded. "But I fear I've used up all the tricks I have against this one. His strategy is speed and strength – he strikes high and at the midsection, putting his otherworldly strength behind each and every strike."

"That sounds like the fighting style of the Divine Order," Feng-Lung nodded. "Pure, raw aggression. In one-on-one duels, it is a style that reigns supreme. But against two opponents of equal ability…"

"Like two Rank 3 Cultivators?" XJ-V smirked.

"…we might just have a chance. You flank right, I will go left. We strike him on both sides and wear him down."

"Like a spiral dragon - everywhere at once."

"I tire of waiting, warrior," Sheloth snarled, wiping the mechanized innards of XJ-V from his blade's surface. "Your answer?"

"You know what my answer is," Feng spat, squaring his legs and straightening his back, heels slowly moving off the ground as his own fire started to flare up again. "I am Feng-Lung of the Eternal Dragon Sect. I stand beside my Brother, XJ-V. In the name of Ramor-Tai, and all who still walk the true path of the Dao, we will destroy you."

Sheloth smiled, showing all his rotten, blackened teeth.

"We shall see, Cultivator. We shall see."

His speed was such that he appeared before both Disciples before either could blink and launch their planned assault. It took all their strength to initiate a dual Dragontail Swipe that blocked all three of the Xu'Jan's vertical swipes aimed at their chests, XJ-V feeling the energy within him swirl and react violently as the blade sliced through the air before it.

The Xu'Jan turned, twisting his blade in a thrusting strike that would have ended a single opponent whose guard was broken then and there.

But, unfortunately for him, the opponents he was now facing were far from normal.

Both Disciples launched two Dragon Tooth strikes in perfect sync that forced Sheloth back, following up with a pair of Flaming Dervishes from above and below. The Xu'Jan was forced to counter with his blade, crouching and slashing at the wall of incoming flame from Feng'Lung's feet and taking the brunt of XJ-V's fire in his face as the Cog bore down upon him from above.

He struck out at the legs of the Cog and blinked as he saw the machine rocket away from him like an old, heretic spacefaring trooper of Qing's Dynasty. In the face of his confusion he did not see Feng-Lung barrel down towards him and send two more fiery Dragon's Tooths at his right arm – one that repelled the Xu'Jan's counter strike and another that sent his sword flying out of his hand.

Sheloth threw himself at his fallen blade and then felt a distinct feeling of piercing, unreal pain radiate up his arm.

He watched as a torrent of flame sliced right through his shoulder and detached his sword-arm from his body, ripping away grey tendon and burning through his thin, bleached bones. He watched the arm fall to the ground in a crumpled mass of sizzling flesh – the fingers being turned to pulp.

The Cultivators turned to watch Sheloth sway, blood spurting from the crimson gash that remained of his right arm. He staggered, gargled, and wept bloody rivers from his dark eyes.

"You see," XJ-V told the disbelieving demon as he dropped to his knees, staring at the spot where his arm once was. "Things might not be so easy for you, after all."

Feng-Lung stood beside him, his arms up, ready to end this fight.

"Where did you learn that little rocket trick?" he asked his Brother.

XJ-V smiled. "From you, actually."

Feng would have questioned him further were it not for the sudden vibrations that were traveling throughout his metal veins. He looked down to see his exposed engine pulse as though it was watching the panting demon that had fallen before the Cog and his Brother. The light was becoming searing, and XJ-V groaned with pain as he fell to the ashen ground.

"XJ-V!" Feng shouted.

But the Cog's eyes were fixed now on the smiling face of Sheloth as the Xu'Jan rose from the ground, staggering back and breathing deep the chill wind that had started to roar through the night.

The rains had stopped. Darkness reigned.

And in that darkness, the voice of Sheloth echoed:

"Lord Yuwa," he said, speaking to the darkening clouds swirling above the three combatants. "Your humble servant asks for your intervention. I, Sheloth, Commander of the Xu'Jan of Jin'ra, your hallowed High Eagle, blessed be his name, ask you for the strength to defeat the evil that blights your earth."

He bowed his head, offering his neck to whatever sights he saw in those clouds, while the pain in XJ-V's chest rose to a clangorous roar of strength – like an animal wishing to break its cage.

"F-Feng!"

Feng-Lung saw what his Brother did. He saw the Xu'Jan struck by a spear of lightning sent into the earth. He saw the light of that celestial stake coil round the fallen warrior and bring him back to his feet, becoming absorbed by the air that buzzed with power at his right-hand side.

"By the Dao…" Feng whispered.

Both Disciples watched the light of the lightning strike fold and morph into an arm that replaced the one the servant of that light had lost. The blade of the Xu'Jan flew back to his hand, and he flexed his new, radiant fingers, as the killing light that had come from a place beyond this world stretched itself across his weapon's surface.

Then, XJ-V and Feng-Lung watched as a warrior touched by a God that should have been dead stalked towards them.

###

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[IronLung]

The light of Yuwa's warrior threw itself across the dead earth beyond Tenak village.

XJ-V and Feng-Lung watched the spectacle unfolding before them with unbelieving, unblinking eyes. The warrior's lithe arm – a beam of shimmering light ending in a similarly charged blade – swept towards them as though with a will of its own.

The Cultivators backed up now, assuming defensive stances and employing their dual Dragontail Swipes with as much efficiency as their shell-shocked souls could muster against the warrior's incoming attacks.

Now, Sheloth struck with unnatural precision. His every blow drew blood from the hands of both XJ-V and Feng so that when they eventually managed a coordinated Dragon Tooth to send the Xu'Jan hurtling back in the ash, they looked upon their hands and saw where the cuts of the warrior had been made.

Then Feng charged forward, unafraid.

"Feng-Lung!"

XJ-V flew to grab at his friend as the insidious Sheloth cried out in delight. He charged at the raging Cultivator and slashed for the boy's leg as it came up to deliver a Flaming Dervish that conjured no fire at all.

"FENG!"

The Cog's feet moved of their own accord – his heel impacting against the razor-sharp edge of Sheloth's blade and throwing up dust all around them as Feng rolled out of the way of a strike that would have cleaved his foot clean.

He watched his useless, shaking hands, feeling the strength of the Dao leave him. Feng had felt it in the frantic seconds the warrior's broadsword had made contact with his skin. It was as though the blood Sheloth had drawn from Feng was all the blood in the boy's body that was tinged with the anointment of the Dao. The Earth Grade powers of his Sect simply fizzled away as he tried to cast them into life.

Instead, he watched as the lightning strike of the otherworldly warrior severed XJ-V's leg clean from his torso, splintering it apart in a hail of bolts and wires.

"NO!" the Disciple cried, clambering up and making a bullrush at the monster that was about to end his friend's life.

And in the split second that he had risen and charged, he felt the hot breath of a reaper on his back.

"Look at what you protect," the voice of the specter said. "A worthless bag of steel and scrap."

Feng turned to slam his fist into the warped face of the beast, but found that his hand impacted nothing but air.

Then heat – searing and ringing with power – radiated up his back.

"No matter," the voice of Sheloth spoke through bloody lips, lungs all but dried up entirely and sustained by faith alone. "You are merely a misguided son of Yuwa. The Lord is merciful. In time, you will call him father. You shall feel the touch of his embrace, as will all mortals upon this blasted earth."

XJ-V flopped like a fish on a line, body shattered, broken, and pleading with him to lay down and let fate take its course. But as he looked upon the sickening sight of Sheloth pulling Feng to the ground and knocking him unconscious with a single blow to the back of the boy's skull, he forced his limbs to move.

His sensors – though cracked and malfunctioning – still gave him readouts of the information he needed. It told him what the storm surrounding the outskirts of Tekal village had hidden from sight. Right now, that hidden detail was his best chance of surviving. His only chance.

So, as he slowly crawled away from the battlefield, he shouted back at the warrior of light standing triumphant over his fallen opponent.

"Sheloth! It is I you have come for, fiend!"

The clawed, blood-spurting eyes of the warrior fixed on him instantly.

"Come then!" XJ-V roared. "Come and finish me!"

The warrior smiled – something vestigial and terrifying, something like a dark slash across his face – as he started to march towards the Cog desperately clawing at the earth, crawling away with the only arm he had left.

"It is curious," Sheloth hissed, gurgling blood from his slashed throat, light-arm twitching as though it was the only thing that compelled him to move forward. "As you are right now, you are more like Lord Jin'ra than you know."

XJ-V saw that he had left Feng-Lung where he had fallen. He kept up his crawling and shouted back at the warrior, stalling for more time, hoping against all hopes that his sensor readouts were correct.

"What do you mean?"

Sheloth answered like an amicable father teaching a wayward son. "The High Eagle knows more of pain than most of us," he wheezed. "Perhaps this is why Great Yuwa chose him to guide this world into His new age. Perhaps that is why He has chosen me."

XJ-V's hand found what he was looking for. His eyes pulsed as he touched the edge of the mountain the village of Tenak lay upon – that which had been obscured by the fog and hail sent by the heavens. The drop, according to his sensors, was about five hundred feet deep.

His opponent saw the surprise in the robot's face and mistook it for fear. He launched himself at the machine and stood above him, blade leveled at XJ-V's open chest.

The light at the center of the Cog burned with an intensity XJ-V had never before witnessed, its electrified innards crackling as it interfaced aggressively with the sparks from Sheloth's armblade.

"You see now that your kind – Cog and Cultivator alike – shall never triumph against the will of a true God. In this life there is only power, Cog, and those too weak to struggle in the name of the one true God shall never have it. To such infidels, there is no light. There is no life. There is only darkness. I looked without fear into this darkness on the day Yuwa first embraced me as one of his servants. Now, I shall send you to him."

"That is the problem with men of faith," XJ-V said as he watched Sheloth reel back and ready his final thrust.

Beneath the Xu'Jan's gown, XJ-V's one remaining foot charged a Dragon's Tooth.

"When you walk in the dark, you cannot see what is in front of you."

The blade came down and sliced through XJ-V's shoulder joint, almost tearing his last arm from its socket. The warrior would have succeeded were it not for the Cog gripping the light of the Xu'Jan and rocketing off from the ash of the mountain – channeling his Qi towards the tips of his toes as he had seen Feng-Lung do in Ori'un's dream-vision.

Both Cog and man went flying over the lip of the mountain and, fighting the need to blackout entirely, XJ-V dug his foot into the mountain's tip and managed to steady himself, hoping against hope that the Xu'Jan had fallen.

When the electrified blade of his foe sank deep into the Cog's only remaining arm, he knew just how wrong he'd been.

XJ-V looked through the blurring world before him – seeing Sheloth grit his teeth in a grisly smile that bled down his body, spilling rivers of blood from the human's broken face. Below him, the seemingly endless expanse of nothingness waited.

"A clever fool," Sheloth said. "But I do not fear death. We shall go together into the dark. Let us meet the light of the Lord. He shall find me worthy, and you shall burn in his gaze."

He dug his blade further into the Cog's arm, and XJ-V gasped as he felt his remaining Qi reserves finally flutter away like a fading dream.

Sheloth felt it, too. His smile was a testament to his victory.

"Just a machine," the Xu'jan said. "Nothing more."

XJ-V felt his sensors finally give up. He relinquished his hold on his basic systems, channeling what slim power remained in his steel frame into nothing more than his arm the Xu'Jan was holding onto. He allowed his visual sensors to die.

When he gave his body his final command, he did so looking into nothing but darkness.

"You…are right," he told his snarling opponent. "I am a machine."

XJ-V did not see the face Sheloth made as the bolts around his arm suddenly exploded, and the Cog's only remaining arm fell away from his body with the Xu'Jan still attached to it.

Maybe he screamed as he fell. Maybe he cursed the Cog one final time, or called for his God to save him before he plummeted to his untimely death. But XJ-V did not hear anything – he had allowed his auditory sensors to die along with everything else.

He pulled himself up by his leg and then lay flat on the edge of the mountain, feeling weightless, staring into the dark. Slowly, as his systems failed one-by-one, he felt his consciousness drain away, feeling strangely at peace. Like he was right back in the Dao…

The last thing he felt was the searing heat of a flame that must have burned with the might of a thousand suns. Something – someone – had just appeared beside him.

"…Longhua."

He did not know what made him say this. There was no logic to the statement. It was a belief that must have been at the very root of his being for him to give it voice in his most fatal hour.

But what was yet more illogical was the response that he was sure he heard, even as his body told him it was impossible:

"That's Master Longhua, to you."

###

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[IronLung]

If it was possible for a machine-man to feel groggy, that is exactly how XJ-V would have described his awakening.

The lids of his eyes edged open as his internal servos whirred with life, and the flame billowing at the center of his chest kicked into high-gear once again, sending a blaze of neon lettering into his previously blank retinal output:

-SYSTEM REINITIALIZING-

-EMERGENCY REPAIR PROTOCOL ACTIVATED-

The Cog sighed, stifling a shout of agony as his pain receptors also came back online. These repairs were going to take a while. He hadn't even attempted anything of the sort before…

"So, he has awoken."

The voice – clear and distinct – reverberated off XJ-V's consciousness like a brutal ball and chain.

"Well, Disciple?" it said. "What do you have to say?"

XJ-V blinked through his system notifications to the reality of the Dragonpyre Hearth before him. The speaker – a grim faced Master Longhua – sat cross-legged before him beneath the Eternal Dragon fresco.

Beside him, someone was loudly slurping tea.

"I must say, Brother, I do not know why you complain so much about the brews your Dragon Disciples conjure for you. This tea warms the heart and comforts the soul. Is that not enough?"

"Fire can give warmth," Longhua told the nameless slurper. "Tea must give flavor. And this particular brew has been leaving a bitter taste in my mouth as of late."

XJ-V craned his busted neck, looking down to see that – yes – his left leg ended in a stuttering stump of dim wiring and his right arm hung limp from his body. He was sitting against the far wall of the hearth, propped up like a broken statue. For that is what he now was.

And as he strained to bring more of the world into focus, he saw the other shapes that dominated the room – the regal form of Master Yoma-Dur of the Waiting Tiger sat next to Longhua drinking tea with long, deep, satisfied gulps. Before the two Masters bowed the supplicant form of Feng-Lung and beside him sat Ori'un, arms folded in what looked like pure satisfaction even though he bore more than a few extra scars across his face and arms. When the Cog cast his eyes over him, the Planeswalker gave him a subtle wink.

"Ah, but that is the beauty of subjectivity," Yoma-Dur said in response to Longhua's admonishment of the tea they were sharing. "You think too much upon where the tea came from, Brother. You obsess over how the tea can be used. You crave to add ingredients which may make the tea better. But, in the end, you cannot change the core flavor. You might say it is an acquired taste. Once which is more than palatable to my palate.

XJ-V looked upon Feng-Lung who came to sit now beside him – the boy gripping his arm as though to make sure the machine-man really was alive. But the Cog's mind was focused on the bizarre nature of the conversation between the two Masters the Sects.

Were they really talking about tea here, at all?

"Maybe you are right, Brother," Longhua replied stiffly, setting down his cup and sniffing the air. "Perhaps this particular batch of tea ought to be sent elsewhere, where it can please only the driest of mouths."

"Master!" Feng-Lung suddenly shouted, coming back to prostrate himself before the two leaders of Ramor-Tai. "Any punishment you wish to impose, I shall accept. I disobeyed you, worked against your will, and imposed my own Ego upon the wasteland before us. I did this knowing that I would face your retribution. I come before you now to receive it willingly."

Longhua's flaring eyes looked as though he was about to rise and strike down the boy for even daring to know his thoughts, but the white sleeve of his Brother calmed him, and urged the volcanic eruption bubbling at his heart to remain dormant for now.

It was amusing, in a way. XJ-V had never seen both Masters interact with eachother in this manner – or even occupy the same place in space and time. It was as though they were two entities that simply could not exist together, both wielding power that all young apprentices could only dream of one day possessing. But the way Longhua nodded and allowed his Brother to speak his mind…XJ-V truly wondered what the relationship between these Cultivators of legend was like.

"Tell us, Feng-Lung of the Dragon," Yoma-Dur said. "What compelled you to fly from the monastery? What prompted you to rebel against the word of a Dragon?"

Both Masters looked towards the smiling form of Ori'un, who merely whistled nonchalantly, pretending not to even notice them.

Feng-Lung gulped before he delivered his answer. XJ-V had expected to see him sweating profusely under the watchful gaze of two Cultivator Masters of the Internalized Ego. Instead, he saw nothing but a boy who was willing to stand up for what he believed in, no matter the cost.

He saw a different Feng sitting there in the Hearth, now. A Feng that was changed from the boy he met on that rain-blasted day when he had marched through the doors of the monastery in ignorance, and in weakness.

"The teachings of the Dragon tell us that no being who walks upon this earth walks alone," Feng said. "That we all have the same innate desire that lies at the heart of our being. We seek fire. We seek warmth, and we seek connection. The flame of a single fire draws travelers near who seek comfort. In standing together, each traveler adds their own fire to the burning blaze, and in time such a blaze becomes an ember that can heat the entire world. It has been thus since the dawn of time. So was I unwilling to let the flame of my Brother die. I believe that with life, there is strength. We all carry the fire of Noble Qing's Dynasty within us, whether Cog or human, and it is our duty to see it carried to the ends of the earth."

"Well," Yoma-Dur said with a gruff cough. "Surely you are satisfied with that, good Longhua? This is the answer of a Rank 3. I would expect something of this nature from a Mental Master. Your Disciple understands the teachings of your Sect well."

"But does he practice them as well as he preaches?" Longhua murmured, anger billowing beneath his words. "His actions could provoke a war that we have sworn not to become part of."

"And yet he acted in defense, Brother," Yoma-Dur said. "In his eyes I can see that this is true."

"If punishment is deserved," XJ-V finally broke in, pain smeared across his every word. "It should be visited on me alone."

The congregation turned to now look upon the Cog again, attention drawn away from young Feng's brave stance.

"Ah, so the wayward one does have something to say, after all?" Longhua said, punctuating his question with a hoarse laugh that echoed through the hallowed halls of the Dragon. "Go on then, Disciple, tell us what you saw in the outside world. Tell us what became of you."

XJ-V straightened up as best he could, his every movement a strain against the emergency buzzers still going off in his brain.

"I set out with the same purpose as Brother Feng – to save a Cultivator that once walked these very grounds under your tutelage, Master Longhua."

"And in doing so," Ori'un interjected. "He saved my life and the lives of every single villager of Tekal. Does that mean nothing to you, Lonhgua?"

"Do not address me!" the Master snapped, his Brother leaning forward to hold back his rage once again. "All I am hearing is that this whole debacle could be attributed to you, Planeswalker. You and your insidious influence over my Disciples."

"Do you trust them so little?" Ori'un replied. "Do you really think these two warriors are not the masters of their own minds?"

"I believe even the brightest light can become dimmed by the darkness of novelty."

"Peace, Brothers," Yoma-Dur urged – clearly the mediator of this entire trial. "This argument shall lead us down no path at all. What we must decide is what is to be done with these two Disciples, now. Brother Longhua – as Master of the Eternal Dragon, the decision of course rests with you. But if you would heed the wisdom of your Brother of the Ego, exiling these two souls would be more of a hindrance to your Sect than a boon."

Longhua heaved a heavy sigh, then puffed out his chest as his eyes rested on the nonchalant face of Ori'un once more. He looked at Feng – at the absolute sincerity in his posturing and beliefs – and then looked to XJ-V, eyes catching the light that was still flaring at the exposed center of the Cog's chest even now.

"I know this," the Master of the Dragon said. "That is why I came for the sorry fools."

If guilt was something that a Master like Longhua could express, XJ-V saw it on his face. He saw the wrinkled lines grow heavy and his old jowls hang looser than usual. He saw the eyes of his Master look beyond them all, passed this moment, to what future might now await them in the wake of the Xu'Jan's death.

The Xu'Jan…

XJ-V had a multitude of questions he needed an answer to – what happened to the army of Sheloth, how fared the villagers of Tekal, and how exactly had Longhua known when to appear like an emissary of the old Gods to collect his fallen warriors.

But the deep, clear voice of Ori'un breached all of these thoughts as he spoke, after having waited for precisely the right moment.

"If I may, I believe I have a solution that will placate you both."

What he said next confirmed something XJ-V had always known: Ori'un was the slyest Cultivator to ever walk these grounds.

###

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[IronLung]

"Oh, but this should be good."

The statement was one coughed with derision, charged with ancient anger. It could only have come from Master Longhua.

"Be out with it then, Planeswalker," Yom-Dur said, only marginally more charitable than his Brother-Master sitting beside him, fists clenched like a panther ready to pounce. "What do you propose?"

Ori'un gave a subtle wink at XJ-V's inert form, and then answered as eloquently as he could:

"In my time as Planeswalker, I have served in the sacred capacity of Administrator for Disciples' entry into the higher ranks of our echelons," he said. "This task I have always undertaken seriously, with deliberation, and with care."

"'Care'," Longhua practically drooled. "Is that would you call your Administration of young Feng's first test?"

"The results of Feng-Lung's test proved he was not ready to ascend to Rank 4 of Corporeal Temperer," Ori'un replied. "Or was my judgement wrong, Master Longhua?"

The Master of the Dragon balked at this, saying nothing more as his Brother caught his eye. For his part, Feng-Lung stiffened at the reminder of his past failure, shoulders sagging for only a second before he righted himself again. XJ-V could see that he was resisting the urge to despair. He was resisting it because he had made his own choice, this time.

And without even knowing it, he had done precisely what the Planeswalker had wanted him to.

"Once, the boy sitting before you here today demonstrated strength and promise but lacked discipline. Focus. He would have been a hindrance, five years ago. Many Cultivators, hearing such words from their Administrator, would simply give up. Have given up. But not so with young Feng-Lung. I see nothing of the impulsive boy I saw five years ago here today. His desire to help his friend is not only noble, but shows strength of character. It shows courage and, most importantly of all, individuality. I have heard that young Feng was the first Disciple here to talk amicably with the Cog – to treat XJ-V as a person, not as a mere tool or a machine. This shows wisdom, Masters. I am sure you will both agree."

XJ-V couldn't help but smile to see Feng's surprise. The boy might have been about to disagree were it not for Longhua holding up his wrinkled hand.

"You mean to tell us that we should treat this whole debacle as a test?" he asked.

"You wished to find a suitable one to show you the skills of both these warriors," Ori'un shrugged, nodding at both the perplexed Disciples. "As Feng showed courage, XJ-V showed tenacity. He showed loyalty to this Sect, Master Longhua. His impulse to save me from capture came from his desire to see his fellow Sect members live on, even if they themselves," he added darkly. "Have made some poor choices."

He glanced over at XJ-V and beamed him his black, moon-infused smile.

"What better way to teach humility to one such as me than to come to my rescue," he said. "Don't you agree, Master Longhua?"

Once again, Yoma-Dur of the Tiger had to keep his Brother's temper in check.

"Your insolence knows no bounds," he growled, the candles of the Dragonpyre Hearth flaring with his rising ire. "I have slain men for lesser crimes than presuming to know my thoughts."

"I merely try to empathize," Ori'un said seriously. "As do your Disciples here. I ask you: can you really afford to let such Brotherhood go to waste? Protect them. Let them continue on their journey. Their future is a valuable one, believe me. They shall make you proud one day, Longhua. I do not need to peer into the Dao to know that."

Though he would always have the heart of a machine within him, XJ-V still felt his chest swell with pride at such praise. Perhaps he truly was more of a child than he thought. It looked like even Feng-Lung blushed to receive such honor from the great Planeswalker.

"Brother," Yoma-Dur said. "Though it is most…unorthodox, I see little harm in the Planeswalker's plan. "Both these Disciples banished a Talon of the Eagle themselves, using techniques of merely the Earth Grade and their own wits to outsmart and outmaneuver their opponent. Surely that counts for something?"

Longhua wheezed. "So like a Tiger, Brother – focused on technique and form above the symbolism that this moment represents. You know what this means. You know whose eyes shall be upon us in the aftermath of this madness."

"Such eyes are upon us anyway, Brother," Yoma-Dur said sadly. "The time may have come for us to accept this."

Longhua inclined his head to the floor, staring past all of them, probably deep into the earth's core itself judging by the intensity in his eyes. It was as though he was studying the very rocks and crags of the Dragonpyre Hearth before speaking again, weighing up the judgements of those who had come before him – those who had walked in the light of Qing before The Sundering forced them into their own little corners of the world. Forever isolated. Forever alone.

"Dying slowly with each passing century…" he murmured in a whisper so low that XJ-V couldn't even be sure he'd really said it. "Clinging to a past that no longer exists…"

When Longhua rose again, his eyes burrowed into XJ-V's broken form before turning back to the Planeswalker.

"I suppose this was part of your vision," he said sardonically.

Ori'un merely shrugged again like a schoolboy being reprimanded for something he did not do.

"When this is over," Longhua said. "I will punish you."

"I already accepted my punishment long ago, Longhua," the Planeswalker replied. "And when the time comes, you may deliver it if you wish."

All eyes in the room sought to grasp at the hidden meaning in these words – in the charged look of conflict that passed between Master and former-student. It seemed these two Cultivators would never see eye-to-eye. It struck XJ-V as odd – one of the many oddities of humankind – that even those who lived under the same roof, ate the same meals, and occupied the same world, could see the world so differently and, as a consequence, view each other with such derision.

"Bah!" The Dragon suddenly exclaimed. "Enough. I will not speak more of this in the company of two Rank 4 Temperers. Off with you both. Retire to your chambers. Ori'un – make yourself useful for once and see to XJ-V's repairs. Get our Core Regulators what they need to service him."

Ori'un's boyish smirk was contagious. "With pleasure, Master."

"Master Longhua?" Feng-Lung broke in, looking up from the stone floor with sheepish realization. "Did you just say – Rank 4?"

"What, did the Xu'Jan pretender clip your ears, Disciple?" Longhua scoffed. "Indeed, I did. Now, begone. Do not make me repeat myself."

XJ-V watched as the Disciple then bowed graciously, eyes bulging with surprise, excitement, and the bliss of a success well deserved, and couldn't help but smile again himself.

"There it is," Ori'un told him. "Genuine satisfaction. No naked ambition. No unfulfilled desire. Just a real, honest-to-goodness spirit that seeks to protect the things it cares about."

He looked up to see the Planeswalker towering over him, bending down to carry his remains back to the Dragon Commune.

"You've got it both, you two," he told XJ-V as he lugged him out of the Dragonpyre Hearth. "Real humanity."

Humanity…

"The…villagers," he murmured.

"All fine," the giant explained. "We've already got our best Regulators aiding their rebuilding efforts. You might have started something here, you know. Maybe some day they can all serve the people of the wasteland rather than stay cooped up on this mountain. That's one thing the sword-devil mentioned that I could at least agree with – we are all connected. But, well, that's a story for another time.

All connected…

But not by Brotherhood, Ori'un, something at the very heart of XJ-V's being wished to scream. There is only one thing that the Order believes we are equal beneath…

"Master Longhua!"

XJ-V had shouted back over the bulky arm of the Planeswalker as they made to leave the room, surprising everyone except the Master with his outburst.

For Longhua looked at him now with narrowed, focused eyes.

"The Xu'Jan of the Order," XJ-V said. "He spoke to his God. He spoke to Yuwa. He spoke, and a voice obeyed – something that came from beyond this earth. Beyond the Dao."

Both Masters stared unblinkingly at the Cog as Ori'un simply sighed and continued walking.

"What does that mean?" XJ-V asked, trying to keep himself from crying out so that all the Cultivators of the monastery could hear him.

The answer he heard was muffled and almost lost to him – and he couldn't be sure it wasn't just an auditory hallucination spurned on by his fluctuating systems. Still, he heard it, and there was no humor in the sentiment it expressed:

"It means we are done with tea," Longhua said. "It may be time for something a little stronger."

###

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[IronLung]

Ori'un took XJ-V to his quarters as instructed, laying him down and watching him with curious eyes.

The sensation of ruination that filled the Cog was palpable – he felt the phantom pains of his eviscerated limbs and torn innards surge through him. He felt the scars across his chest where the blade of Sheloth had pierced his metal skin.

And behind his eyes, he could still see that mutilated monster's face. Stalking towards him with utter confidence that His God would grant him victory.

"Ori'un," he said. "I must look the very picture of failure."

The giant sat himself on the floor, bringing up his feet in the meditative pose of the Dragon. It seemed some things were never truly forgotten.

"I meant what I said back there," the Planeswalker told him. "You are more deserving of progressing to the Fourth Level of Corporeal Temperer than many Disciples I have met in my life. You and Feng-Lung, both."

"Yet I cannot help but think that your test was not entirely altruistic," the Cog continued, servos stuttering as his repair protocol kicked into high-gear. "You did not come here merely to test two Disciples."

Ori'un licked his dry lips caked with the dust of the wastes. "No," he agreed. "I did not."

He smiled – a grin that was at once contagious and terrifying in equal measure.

"You could have had the strength to defeat the Xu'Jan," XJ-V said, voice measured but firm. "Even with your connection to the Dao severed as it was. Yet you did not deign to aid us."

"An Administrator cannot intervene," Ori'un replied with a nonchalant shrug. "I had faith that you both would prevail. If I didn't…"

"You would have killed him yourself," XJ-V finished. "I know this. I have seen how you pass judgement. But you could not have been certain that the Xu'Jan would not have destroyed us."

The Planeswalker's smile grew only wider.

"There is much that is not certain," he said. "But the mists of the Dao are slowly parting before our sight, revealing secrets we could once only guess at."

"And I acted as your eyes," XJ-V said. "Through me have you sought the key to unlocking your mysteries, even if I can only guess at what they might be. Perhaps Longhua was right to tell me that I should fear you, Ori'un."

At this, the Planeswalker bristled slightly, rubbing his chin with the scarred back of his pudgy arm.

He leaned forward and spoke in almost a whisper.

"What do you think, XJ-V?" he asked. "Should we Cultivators simply hoard our knowledge, sitting and Dao-walking in our high mountains like old, ailing men?"

"You know what I think of this," the Cog replied. "You asked me to make a choice. I made it when the time came."

"That you did," Ori'un nodded. "Even as it brought ruin to you. Even as it could have endangered this monastery."

"It was not my intention to-"

"One's intention never really matters," Ori'un interrupted. "Not in the grand scheme of this world. Whether you knew it or not, XJ-V, now something I only suspected has turned out to be true: you have a power within you that is not born of the Dao, but of something else entirely."

"Yuwa," XJ-V murmured.

"He's not dead," the Planeswalker whispered back, as though the God was watching them through the oval window right now. "It is said in the legends that even Qing could not best Him for good. He could only compel the deity to slumber in the depths of this earth. But legends are legends – they are tales for boys who dream of adventure. This," Ori'un nodded at XJ-V's chest. "This is different. This is reality. What you and I saw in the field of Tekal was no illusion. No conjurer's trick. We saw the light of a God give life to one of His servants who begged to have the power to slay us. And that same light," Ori'un finished. "Lies at the very heart of your being."

There it is, the Cog thought. That's why you've had such interest in me all this time. Was I just a curiosity to you, Ori'un? A means to an end?

"You can kill the light of the Dao with but a thought," Ori'un said. "It is a power shared by only those of the High Eagle. Whether you like it or not, you're our best chance at fighting them."

"That is why I see myself standing beside you in the mists of the Dao," XJ-V replied. "That is why I saw you approach the monastery and felt the rush of destiny flood through me. At the time, I was paralyzed with terror."

"And now?" Ori'un asked.

"I am confused," the Cog said, looking at the rain that had started to hail outside his chamber window. "Why go through the farce of a tournament when you could just take me by force and train me yourself?"

"An astute question," Ori'un admitted. "But one with two simple answers. One: I happen to value skill and choice. You aren't just a weapon – you're a person with your own will. When I first met you I couldn't know if you were simply another pre-programmed Cog carrying out your Prime Directives. Now I know better. Everyone here does."

XJ-V sighed in the face of this 'compliment'. The Planeswalker's first impressions confirmed that other Cogs out there were not like him. Somehow, this fact made him feel even lonelier than he'd ever felt before.

"And the second reason?" he asked.

Ori'un answered with another impish smirk.

"It's even simpler. Something distinctly human: Longhua would never give you up unless compelled to."

"You may have forgotten which Master it is you speak of," XJ-V said with a sardonic laugh. "Longhua bears no sentimental bone in his body."

"I'm afraid that's where you're wrong," the Planeswalker replied. "I suppose I am forgetting that you are a machine, even if the Dao has opened itself to you. You can't see what you've never had to understand. Whether that's through your Creator's intention or something else baked into you by the hand of another, I don't know. But I can tell you this – Longhua may have begrudgingly welcomed you here before – but now he sees you as his most promising Disciple."

"Because of this light," XJ-V snorted. "Nothing more."

"Wrong again," Ori'un corrected. "Because past all that metal and all those blinking lights, you're a Dragon, through and through. Why else would he have come for you, personally? You got the old man to do something I never could, XJ-V: you got him to leave Ramor-Tai for the first time in decades. Disciples have rested their laurels on smaller achievements than that."

The Cog couldn't help himself. The Planeswalker's smile had finally managed to infect him. He was remembering, too, the face of the Master as he appeared before him on the blasted field of the village. He must have stewarded Feng and him home. Out of all eventualities the Dao could have shown him, this one had never even been a consideration.

"There is something you must also have thought of," he told Ori'un, straightening up and feeling the energy within his breast swirl and swell past its limits. "The Cogs of old were constructs loyal to Yuwa above all else. They were bound to serve him in spite of any affiliations they had with Qing and those humans they served. How do you know I will not suffer the same fate? How do you know I do not currently serve the Lord of Light?"

Ori'un's smile never dropped. "Do you? Do you feel that Light is yours to command, or are you under its control?"

The Cog looked down at the stuttering remnants of his right arm, sparks beginning to fly from the exposed wiring that poked out from his socket.

"I think we are about to find out," he said.

Both men looked down to the Cog's arm and traced the lines of power that stretched out in thin tendrils of luminescence from his core. No noise, no pain, no whirring of servos. It was like a living being reaching out from the Cog's center and wrapping itself round his broken arm, breathing life into the flickering wires that waited to be restored to functionality.

The Cog's face strained as he followed the lines, feeling his systems blur as something took over. The same thing that did whenever his repairs were activated. This time, however, the feeling as stronger. He felt his whole being shudder with the power that churned within him – a conflux of energy that spread out like an eagle's wings.

"By the Dao…" Ori'un murmured.

XJ-V saw his metal skin slowly morph over the wiring, knitting itself back together like it was under the influence of some craven conjurer's spell.

Then XJ-V fell back against the wall, seeing half of his arm rebuilt before him in a matter of seconds.

He said nothing as Ori'un rose, The last thing he saw was the bemused face of the Planeswalker before he blacked out again.

###

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[IronLung]

[Anima Cores: 145]

Words that were used to define something beyond definition…words used to entrap something that was pure feeling alone. Raw. Untouched.

Entrapped…

The visions of the Dao granted him dark shapes that peeled away to reveal the husks of Cogs and humans alike. In his invalid, limbless state, his mind seemed more free to move around in the void this time, peering through the shadows to the thin strips of memories that unfolded before him.

He saw Qing's golden castles atop all the mountains of the worlds – castles brimming with servants and warriors ready to serve the Emperor and spread his divine will across the globe. He saw the humans of the planet stand in defiance as the Gods brought calamity upon their earth, and then the remains of their people rose up to banish Yuwa. Then he saw that the fallen God's eyes were not closed – they were wide open and staring. Staring at the Cog that beheld their owner in the Dao.

XJ-V pushed through his fear. He had to see what lay within those eyes, but all he was afforded was a gold-plated reflection that showed him encased in threads of gold, solid as polished marble, before he melted away into the ground and through the cracks within the panting, dry soil of the earth. When the Cog woke, he did so feeling helpless. The Dao was still holding secrets from him, even as he returned to the waking world with more of its strength to guide him.

[Anima Cores: 147]

More…he thought. More power. More insight. More manifestations of his will – the things he would need to defeat his enemies when they inevitably came for him.

Because they were coming for him. Of that, there was now no doubt.

He turned on his bed and saw the silent man who had been keeping his dreaming body company through the thundercracks of the storm that raged outside.

Feng-Lung.

"Weren't expecting a visitor this early, were you?" Feng asked him. "Though I suppose you weren't expecting any at all."

XJ-V managed to rise – seeing that his crippled left arm was now almost fully operational. All that remained were the repairs needed to reconstruct the rest of his limbs.

"How are you feeling?" Feng asked.

"Like I am suffering from what you humans call a 'hangover'," the Cog replied, flexing his light-sheathed fingers and feeling his hand again react to his brain's commands.

"If only our wounds were so fleeting as yours," Feng said, nodding at XJ-V's restored arm. "The Planeswalker told me you'd be up and about without our Core Regulators' aid. I didn't believe him. But, at this point, I suppose I should have known that when it comes to you I cannot simply abide by things like 'logic' or 'reason'."

"Such things mean little for us," XJ-V said.

"Coming from a Cog, that means more than you know."

Both friends shared a steady smile between them, each equally glad to see the other alive and well.

"I…well…I came to thank you," Feng said eventually.

"For what reason?" XJ-V asked. "If anything, it is you who deserves my thanks. I was brash, and stupid. I thought I could cut down a Xu'Jan General and his army alone. It was you who reminded me that no dragon fights without his Brothers beside him."

"But it was your rash decision that made me realize what I really care about after all this time," Feng responded adamantly. "For so long I was fixated on nothing more than making something of myself – on living up to my mother's expectations of me. Without you I would never have found something more valuable than that which is offered by the Dao."

"Which is what?"

Feng looked him square in his glowing eyes as he gave his answer. "Brotherhood, XJ-V. I have been a fool all this time. I was a fool to think Ori'un wished me to fail my first test of the Fourth Rank. I was also a fool to see you as a mere curiosity – a fleeting fancy that would soon leave this place with your steel tail between your legs. I should have offered my hand to you in friendship as soon as you walked through those doors with as desperate a need to prove yourself on your face as I had when I first came here."

The Cog smiled in the face of his friend's earnestness. "You did all this and more, Feng-Lung," he said. "You just did not know it."

The boy laughed at that, cringing slightly at his still bruised chest.

"Well," he said. "With the tournament coming in one week, what do you think? Will you be up and ready for the day of judgement? Or is it time for the Cog who defeated a Xu'Jan of the Order to rest on his laurels?"

XJ-V stared out at the approaching clouds bubbling with rainwater that crept close to Mount Ramor, their advance heralding the onset of another terrible storm.

"I have to be ready," he said, in a tone that rang with the gravity of destiny. "It is the only way to know what the Dao has in store for me."

He thought of the vision of the two men in the wastes – men who moved with the world rather than against it. Men who faced a tide of darkness, fell to grievous wounds, and then rose again to fight it all the same.

He thought too of the Planeswalker words that had rang in his Dao-walks as his repairs were made, feeling the world darken again as his systems began to shut down for the next series of reconstructions.

"Will you…stand by me?" he asked the disappearing shadow of his friend.

He did not see what happened next, but before he blacked out he heard Feng-Lung's reply loud and clear:

"If a God truly is arrayed against us, then I will back you to the end, Brother," he said. "To the end of the earth itself."

…

The eyes of Yuwa signaled change. They signaled boundless light – the searing light of apocalypse. Of revelation.

Revelation…

XJ-V followed the thought in the dream-realm of the Dao, his formless body flying between clouds composed of memories and visions – pieces of paper smudged and scarred so that their contents were a blur to him as he passed them by, bound for the eyes of the imprisoned God.

Those eyes told him nothing when he found them again, adrift in the infinite sea of nothing. They showed him the golden form of his own self. Of an Ego not born of shadow, but born of light.

Come on…he told his body, forcing a ghostly arm by his side to rise and touch the image before it melted away beyond the clouds. Come on…

Fear struck his heart – a fear that brought back visions of Sheloth striking him down, burning through his body and raking his limbs with visceral contempt. He felt the breath of the Paladin-commander hot on his neck as he stretched out even a single finger to touch the melting mass of Gold that rejected him, turning away and leaving him in an empty world yet again.

But this time, he was not to be deterred.

He grabbed the golden claw before it ran away from him and the head of his own body blazed into life, staring at him with eyes that pierced his skull and seared his metal flesh. He felt himself absorbed by the golden figure like being eaten by some carrion bird, slowly chewed and digested – his energy added to the form of another. His essence becoming something else…or something lesser.

Something he once was…

For, when he opened his eyes, he looked out into a wholly different world, now. A world of buzzing machines – bulbous computers spitting out information faster than Fai-Deng's punches. Databanks churring with their coded speech understandable only to one versed in their strange language. The pristine floor of a laboratory that was smooth enough to give him a view of his own reflection on its surface. He was inert, lifeless, deaf and dumb. He tried to move his body, but his limbs would not budge. All he could do was look at the titanium door of the lab opening before him and allowing a small, pudgy-nosed man passage into the chamber.

Then, as the face of the man came into view, XJ-V tried to gasp.

He was staring into the face of his Creator.

###

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[IronLung]

*Important note: this week will be the final week of chapters before I start summer vacation. I will be heading home to see my family from June 16th to July 8th. There will be no new chapters during this time. Patreon billing will be paused.

Thanks for all your support on this story. This is my longest vacation in the year, I promise. I'll be using this time also to polish up all of book one and plan for the rest of the series - because this is a story I love to write, and I want it to go the distance.

Now, on with the chapter:
The face that stared into XJ-V's eyes shone with the light of familiarity.

It was the face of an old man as grey as the walls of the laboratory he stood in, wisps of white hair clinging in small patches to his balding skull. Upon his wrinkled nose sat a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles that gave the Cog a reflection of his self – he was suspended on some kind of large stretcher, chest opened up like a great cavity in the earth. But his eyes were dull and dead. No light shone within him.

Not yet.

His dead eyes looked into the face of the old man as he began to cough and sputter, holding a small microphone up to his gnarled mouth before he spoke. As he uttered each word, voice hoarse and dim as though his lungs were filled with dust, he kept looking back over his shoulder at something behind him.

"XJ-IV confirmed status: inactive. Unsuitable vessel. Cause of expiry: Unstable matrix-bond during the anchoring process leading to erratic behavior changes and system overload."

XJ-V saw the old man shuffle away from him suddenly, moving around the room to find a flashlight on a table at the edge of the lab. He adjusted the stretcher the Cog lay upon so that XJ-V was now propped up, level with the man, looking directly into his sweating face.

He shone the light into the shell that lay before him – what XJ-V was slowly beginning to realize was his inactive body. His coreless, metal shell.

"New vessel designation: XJ-V," the aged man stated with mechanical precision, almost as though he were dictating his thoughts to a typist nearby that was busily recording every word and utterance. "Shell composition: solid titanium alloy reinforced with Densitius shards from the Hensha mines. Have compensated local villagers admirably. Know what risks they take. Perhaps they don't. Doesn't matter."

The man spoke as though every second were crucial. XJ-V, looking out from within his old-self, begged him to answer his questions. But his lips did not move. He was as formless here as he was whenever he entered this realm of mysteries.

All he could sense was the distinct lack of Qi in the laboratory that he was sequestered within. Normally, such flows of natural energy swirled around signs of life, or objects created by human beings. Such objects were normally imbued with the essence of their creator – the artistic or aesthetic energy that had been poured into them was visible to a Cultivator that could see the gyrations in Qi throughout the world. But none of that existed in this place. XJ-V at once felt that he was just another Cog again – a dull, dead thing. The sensation did not bring him pleasure.

It brought him disgust.

"Will attempt anchoring in approximately ten minutes," his Creator was saying as he switched off the flashlight and breathed a heavy sigh, wiping his glasses with a worn handkerchief. "Prime Directives remain unchanged. New shells not arriving until next month. By then…there will be no more time. Proper programming will be necessary if long-term success is to be achieved. Basic self-defense protocols, historical data integration, memory implantation…but one thing at a time"

The man's knuckles were shaking as he spoke. His entire body was a hunched picture of anxiety, and yet he couldn't stop himself. Whatever he was about to do, it clearly terrified him.

Yet he was no less determined to see it through.

"People of the village know…" he muttered. "Qing's commandment will not protect me forever. Or you."

XJ-V recoiled as he realized his Creator had just addressed him for the first time.

He watched the face of the old man twist into a sad smile, something that filled the Cog with a sense of nostalgia for something he'd never even truly known.

"XJ-V…" he murmured. "Five vessels. Five Sects. Five years – I wonder, is it chance? Or something else?"

His Creator became pensive. The fast pace of his speech slowed to almost a slur of jumbled words that spilled from his parched throat.

"You would know, Qing," he said, addressing no one but the floor beneath him. "You always knew. You always saw further than us all. Why you asked me to do this out of all of us…I will never know. If you were here, now…"

He shook his head. XJ-V got the impression that this man was not one who would dwell on dreams or idle fancies.

Such a reality was brought crashing down on the Cog as his Creator moved away from his field of vision and XJ-V finally saw what he had been looking at before.

In a dark, forgotten corner of the laboratory, a selection of broken limbs and fingers were strewn across the ground. Metal wiring, copper teeth, buzzing lightbulbs that would serve as eyeballs were scattered around like a macabre metal butcher's table.

And at their center sat a Cog in the exact same shape, size, and stature as XJ-V – its eyes totally hollow, its forehead punctured and dripping with oil, limbs splayed out in a gesture of complete surrender to the force that had slain it.

XJ-V opened his mouth in a gasp that would not come. What he saw – what he was being made to see – was a vision of machine death that haunted him more than a slain human ever could. It was like a child becoming aware of their own mortality – the fact that, one day, they would end up just as soulless and husk-like as the wretched thing that lay there in the corner, life long since fizzled out to nothing, dark eyes staring into an abyss from which it would never wake…

And just as his thoughts strayed to that of abyssal nothing, XJ-V was bathed in light.

His 'expired' brother's form disappeared as the Creator came back into the cone of XJ-V's vision, holding something in his gauntleted hands that shone with a searing, otherworldly power. The face of the creator was covered in a grim death-mask of protective material – something which stretched over his shoulders and covered his body in a funeral gown composed of steel fibers. Only his eyes were visible through the grisly mask, and XJ-V focused on them and them alone as he felt the sphere of energy wedge itself into his chest as though it were clinging to something there.

Then: resistance.

The Creator struggled with the thing as he started to pull away like a bird not wishing to be caged. He began to force it back inside the Cog as the body of machine began to groan and twist, the sinister intelligence brimming within the sphere of pure energy lashing out against this inert creature of the earth.

Just when the Creator seemed to be falling, his strength failing him, XJ-V felt his own will kick in. He felt himself, even through his fear, compelled to reach out and aid the ailing man. He reached out – he reached through the Dao – and added his spirit to the man on the other side.

And though the feeling may have been fleeting – nothing more than a trick of the Dao – XJ-V saw his creator's eyes fly open as the searing light finally left his hands, becoming locked within the metal chassis of his invention.

The chest of the machine closed, and though its chest smoked and sizzled as though the internal fire trapped within might burn its flesh away entirely, the shaking human had achieved his goal. The light was trapped.

And the eyes of his creation brimmed with fiery life, looking upon the first thing it saw in this world.

"Miraculous," he said. "Simply…miraculous."

For a moment, there was only silence. Then the Creator removed his grim mask and protective clothing, panting, sweating, almost ready to double over in pain, and yet the smile that he had flashed at the Cog before had not dropped at all.

When he spoke, it was with the disbelieving love of a father.

"Welcome to the world, XJ-V."

The Cog in the Dao felt his old eyes look around, prospecting his new, and only, reality. The first thing he felt was the touch of his 'father's' hand, hands cold and strangely solid, almost like a sheath of steel being smeared across his cheek.

"What are your Prime Directives?" his Creator asked him.

Through a voice far more robotic than he had ever remembered having, XJ-V replied without having any alternative:

"Cultivate. Enter the Dao. Merge with the Dao."

His Creator nodded. "Good," he said, almost giddy like an infant at Christmas. "That…that's good."

With pressure built up from more time than his new creation could know, the old man finally succumbed and slumped to the floor, confusing his newly 'born' metal-son to no end, especially when he laughed frantically and shook his head in utter disbelief.

"…we did it, Qing," he said, hoarse laughter spilling from his throat. "By the Old Gods and the Dao, we did it."

###

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[IronLung]

[Anima Cores: 149]

Almost…there…almost…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

Before him stretched a frozen forest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XJ-V shook his head in consternation.

"What outcome?"

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

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

Sheloth scoffed.

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

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

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

"Like stealing the chick from an uncracked egg…"

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

His Creator was performing some adjustments.

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

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

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

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

Like a feathered owl, contemplating his chick…

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

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

"Confirm wipe," he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

"Request denied," he said.

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

[MEMORY CORE TRANSFER COMPLETE]

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

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

"Demonstrate."

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

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

The Cog felt himself swell with pride.

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

"Creator?"

The scientist blinked up at his bowing warrior.

"This unit has a question."

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

"What is your name?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

"Happy birthday, XJ-V!"

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROTHER COG."

"Woof!"

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

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

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROTHER COG. HAPPY BIRTHDAY."

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

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

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

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

"Why?' XJ-V asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is there a soul within this unit?"

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

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

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

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

"SOUL. SOUL. SOUL…FAILURE!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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[IronLung]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

Until tonight.

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

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

"'The Stars My Destination'."

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

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

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

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

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



'Tyger Tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?'

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fires of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire

What the hand, dare seize the fire?'



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

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

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

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

"Woof!"

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

The Cog furrowed his metal brows.

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

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

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

"What does 'choice' matter?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What was that?"

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

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

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

He was afraid.

###

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[IronLung]

His first few days in Hensha were surprisingly…familiar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

[Anima Cores: 151]

Rank 5…the next level.

He should stop.

He needed to stop.

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XJ-V faced his Creator with a puzzled look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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Come cultivate at the Discord

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

 

[IronLung]

WE ARE BACK

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That…was very new.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Combat mode: activated]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Remove Ethical Constraints?]

Ethical constraints…

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

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

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

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

"I…know…Jin…ra!"

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

[Remove Ethical Constraints?]

Without even blinking, he made his decision.

---

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[IronLung]

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


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


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


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


[Remove Ethical Constraints?]


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


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


It wanted…vengeance.


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


[Ethical Constraints: Locked]


No, he thought. There is no need.


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


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


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


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


"Get. Out."


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


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


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


Now, he was something more than that.


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


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


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


And something else knew it, too.


…


"You…you did what?"


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


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


Janus eyed him like a father eyes a petulant child.


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


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


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


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


Janus rocked back like jelly nudged by a knife.


"What?"


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


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


"XJ-V…"


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


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


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


"What…what is…this unit?"


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


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


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


"By the Dao…" XJ-V murmured.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

 

[IronLung]

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

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

What was he?

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

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

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

Then a firm arm gripped his repaired shoulder.

A thing…of flesh.

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

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

He saw Master Longhua staring right at him.

"I…Master…" he stammered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the hand…dare seize the fire…

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he was not about to give up yet.

[What…are…your…Prime…Directives?]

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

Cultivate. Enter the Dao. Merge with the Dao.

Merge with the…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was with such purpose that the Cog replied:

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

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

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

***

If you are enjoying Cog Cultivator, support the story on Patreon to read + 10 advanced chapters for $9.50. Patrons are charged when they join, never by the month, so it's as perfect a time as any to join the Disciples of XJ-V and get caught up with the story!

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