“Come on.”

He approached the peak of the mountain, pushing through all stray twigs and thorns in his path, throwing off the ghostly visages of burning villagers, broken Cogs, and the banner of the golden eagle.

“Come on…”

He saw the shadow at the peak. It turned, eyes ignited with fury.

“Come on!”

His feet wavered on the path when he saw what the shadow-fiend was holding in its hand – the ashen remains of Fai-Deng’s arm.

Then he fell, surrounded by the cacophonous laughter of the Cultivators who had gone before him.

Again.

And again.

And again…

“NO!”

He opened his eyes to his stone bedchamber, his reflection staring back at him with unbridled frustration – both fists clenched and shaking on the ground.

XJ-V looked down to see the two small craters beneath his hands.

He slumped back against the wall, refusing to look at his fingers any further. They were tools of torture. Painbringers.

And so was he.

His head hung low, listening to the unmoving world outside his chamber, hearing nothing, seeing darkness. It had been almost an entire day since he had locked himself away, only appearing once to find out how Feng-Lung was doing. The boy had recovered, and so as far as XJ-V was concerned that was all he needed to know.

Mah-Jung had knocked on his door to request entrance and had been met with a curt refusal. The Cog was alone. Finally alone – just like the world wanted.

He could not blame the world for its belief. In the face of The Sundering, in the face of the danger he represented, in the face of seeing his own two hands debase a fellow Cultivator before him as though they acted independently from his mind – he understood. He was dangerous, and for the first time in his life he cursed his Creator for making him and imprinting these heretical desires within his breast. He wished he could look within himself and tear the inferno billowing within his chassis. That thought alone was what was keeping him here in Ramor-Tai. To leave this body as a Cultivator was his only hope…

A knock came at his door that was followed by footsteps creaking on the broken floorboards of his room.

“Feng-Lung,” XJ-V said without looking up. “I do not wish to see anyone.”

But the voice that answered him could not be further from Feng-Lung’s jovial tone.

“Well,” the voice said. “It seems you have become bolder still, XJ-V. You would turn the Master you begged to teach you away?”

The Cog’s eyes flew to the doorway where, resplendent in his crimson robes bearing the spiraling symbol of the Eternal Dragon, Master Longhua stood.

“Master,” he began tentatively. “The hour is late.”

Longhua scoffed at his student. “A Master of a Sect goes where he must, when he must,” he replied. “Right now, I must be here.”

“Then you have come to do what you must, as you will,” XJ-V replied, bowing gracefully. “If I am to leave Ramor-Tai, I will do so tonight.”

He did not see the face of his Master above him. In truth, he couldn’t meet the gaze of those old eyes, wiser beyond even the logic matrix that comprised his consciousness. He feared the disappointment that must be radiating from those eyes.

So, when he felt his Master do nothing but walk past him towards his window, his face twisted in confusion.

“Such a bold Disciple you are, XJ-V,” he said with a little hoarse chuckle. “You, a mere Cultivator of the first Body Temperer rank, believe you can know the mind of a Master of the Internalized Ego. In time, you will realize just how frustrated your brashness makes me.”

XJ-V looked towards his Master, watching his shoulders sag as he sighed at the full moon glowering down at them both.

“Rise, Disciple,” he said. “I take no pleasure in your prostration.”

Slowly, XJ-V did as he was bid, watching his Master breathe with slow, calm deliberation like a sleeping dragon taking in the night air above its lair.

“What I have done to Fai-Deng is inexcusable,” he said. “I deserve punishment.”

“Life,” Longhua said. “Is punishment enough.”

Before XJ-V could surge forwards and command his Master cease speaking in riddles (for all the good that would do) Longhua continued without moving a single muscle.

“I shall tell you a tale,” he said. “Some Disciples say that listening to the stories of their old Masters is a kind of punishment. If you too feel this is so, then accept this as your penance if you still have ears to hear me.”

The long sleeve of Longhua’s arm rose to draw a series of smoky etchings in the air before the window, summoning trails of wispy, emerald-green flames along with them as though he were a child simply drawing chalk figures on a foggy pane of window glass.

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The shapes began to take form before XJ-V’s eyes, and as he marveled at his Master’s effortless control of his Qi, he saw the figure of a boy waving at him, and several larger shapes that moved like flaming marionettes with the Master’s story:

“Once,” he said. “There was a boy who knew only suffering in this world. The boy was beaten by his parents, abused and ridiculed by friends, and shunned by girls he took idle fancies to. He suffered indignities the likes of which children should never see. Then, one night, as he lay on the cold stone floor of his home, he prayed to the Gods for deliverance.

The child’s voice was quiet as he did this. But this voice that answered him was not.

Zhuro, God of Fire, appeared before the boy, his muscles and veins pulsing with living, breathing torrents of flame.

‘I shall place a seed of my power within you, weak thing,’ he said. ‘You shall grow powerful – powerful enough to slay your enemies.’

The boy stopped praying suddenly and looked down at his hands. Where once he had fingers, now there were nothing but two burning gouts of flame that blazed above his wrists.

At first, the boy was frightened. Then, he remembered the word of Zhuro – that he had been given these powers to slay his foes. And slay them he did.

He killed his mother and father first, then burned down his home and with it all his terrible memories and neglect. He found the boys who mocked him for his sickly appearance, and set them ablaze. He found the girls who rejected his advances and torched their hair till their scalps were barren. These things he did without remorse, but as his evil village burned around him, he was still not satisfied.

The boy walked the Wasteland then, burning villages and farms alive. He went from town to town and slaughtered every person who did not give him the things he wanted. He kept burning until his legs were tired from carrying him so long without food, and so he entered a local inn and demanded to be fed.

The innkeeper brought him lavish feasts of mantou, fried rice, and roasted duck. Suckling pig and sour pork were thrown at him that these treats might appease the boy. Baijui and Huangjiu were poured down his throat by all the villagers so that he might take pity and leave them alone.

But much to the child’s dismay, he found that all food merely turned to ash within his mouth. All liquids merely fizzled away before they reached his tongue. He flew into a fit of rage and killed every villager to the man. Then, he walked away to a corner of the world to die.

‘I am cursed!’ he wailed. ‘I am cursed by an evil God!’

He walked for a long time against dire winds and storms, his body becoming cripple and weak from starvation and dehydration. Only his hands remained powerful. But with all the power in the world, still he suffered unbearably.

Eventually he collapsed beside a small pool of water and looked upon his horrid reflection. He closed his eyes, hating his appearance, and tried uttering another desperate prayer.

This time, another, far different God heard his plea.

The water of the pool rose up before him and began to take on the features of an angelic woman’s face – lips full and beautiful, liquid hair tumbling down her shoulders. Chest buxom and decorated with beads of frozen rain. The child gasped as he recognized who this person was – tranquil Gonli, the Goddess of water.

‘Poor child,’ she said with the whisper of a loving mother. ‘I shall free you of the burden of power my horrid brother has forced on you, if thou wishest?’

The child nodded desperately, and came forward to embrace Gonli, his savior. His hands seeped into her liquid body, and when he awoke the next morning, his human hands were returned to him.

He rose steadily, excitement overcoming his frail physical state, and he ran as quick as he could to the nearest village to eat his first meal in ages.

And when he passed the town gate, a single arrow found the back of his neck.

He was buried in an unmarked grave by the villagers, who each took turns to spit on his corpse. To this day, the boy’s name is not remembered. But it is said that the Gods are still laughing at his grave.”

Longhua let the spectral images he’d summoned to pantomime the story disappear abruptly. He turned back to XJ-V’s bemused eyes.

“This story, like most told to children of the Wasteland, has more than a single meaning. Can you grasp it?”

XJ-V blinked absent-mindedly.

“Power did not help the boy,” he said eventually. “He was still weak.”

“Wrong,” Longhua said. He seemed to enjoy XJ-V’s reaction to this, for he said it again. “Wrong. You who would know the mind of a Master cannot even comprehend children’s tales. Now do you know my frustration?”

“Master,” XJ-V began. “I do not –“

“Bah,” Longhua said, stepping forward massively and fixing the Cog with his blazing eyes. “I shall take pity on you this time. The moral of the story is this: power can affect this world, but means nothing to a mind wrapped up in thoughts of vengeance. The answer is not to get rid of one’s power, but to understand how it might be used.”

XJ-V did not even blink. His Master had never seemed this focused before. It was as though, even through all his confidence, the old man within was begging the robot to hear his words. To feel the emotion he was attempting to communicate. To listen. To learn. To understand.

And in that instant, XJ-V did understand something: he had seen eyes screaming a similar desire at him only a few hours ago…

“We are shaped by this world,” Longhua continued. “We were once nothing but the pawns of thirsting Gods that cared not a jot for our lot in life. They grew jealous of our autonomy and butchered our world as punishment for our insolence. But we prevailed. We endured. We did so because those of us with power chose to use it for the right means. We chose not to work against the tides of our world, but with them. We chose to build, not to destroy.”

He stepped forward and placed his hand, old, but firm, on XJ-V’s shoulder.

“Disciple,” he said. “You have power within you. You fear it. You fear it because you know what it can bring upon this world. But the Gods do not master you. Your spirit is not shackled to anything but your self. Your self, as you stand before me now, or the self you see standing on the peak of the dark mountain as you fail to walk the Dao. Now, just as we mortals did during the time of The Sundering, you must decide: what will you choose?”

XJ-V took in his Master’s words with a strange mix of pride and embarrassment. Pride, because he swelled with joy to see his Master speak to him in this way. It was as though he were telling him to stay, in his own way. More than that – he wanted him to stay.

XJ-V’s embarrassment was born of the fact that he finally realized what his Master’s eyes had reminded him of.

“Master,” he said. “There is something I must do.”

Longhua nodded as though this statement referred to something entirely too obvious. “Of course there is.”

“Where is –“

“He is with Master Yomar-Dur in the Hall of Symmetry,” Longhua responded hastily. “The Master of the Tiger means to exile him for his impudence.”

XJ-V nodded. “Then I must be on my way.”

Without another single word, the Cog sped out of his chamber and sprinted across Ramor-Tai’s courtyard with such speed that the other Disciples of the Dragon assumed he may have finally succumbed to insanity. Whilst they deliberated on how such an affliction might affect the mind of a Cog, however, Master Longhua simply sighed again at the window.

“Leaving his Master without so much of a bow,” he said.

Unbeknownst to anyone, perhaps even to himself, the old Master of the Dragon then smiled.

“Such a bold, brash machine.”

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