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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How very human."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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