The Master of the Eternal Dragon locked eyes with the Planeswalker as he delivered the message from the Waning Moon Sect.
“War is coming, Longhua,” he said. “Of that, there can be no mistake.”
XJ-V felt Feng-Lung’s physical form tense up beside him even in the dream-space they both occupied in Arha’s head.
Longhua considered the wobbling surface of his green tea.
“The portents of Amigdalis are often as susceptible to change as the water that flows in the valleys below our mountain. They are also as unwieldy. Uncertain. Time is not a linear path, but a forked one.”
“The Master of the Waning Moon is knowing these things far more than we are, Longhua.”
“Cease your arrogance,” the Master suddenly spat. “Not even the Master of the Moons can know the path of fate to a certainty.”
“Unless,” Ori’un said gravely. “All paths converge on a single point in time.”
Both men met the steely-eyed gaze of the other. Though no punches were thrown, XJ-V felt that they were locked in a battle just as fearsome as his own with Fai-Deng.
“That point is now, Longhua,” the Planeswalker said. “Surely you have seen the signs – the fluctuations in Qi. The mists that cloud the Dao.”
“Such things should always be unknown to us,” the Master said with pursed lips.
“Har!” the Planeswalker croaked. “Then you have felt it. But you have done nothing.”
“I have done my duty as Master of the Eternal Dragon.”
“Which is what, Longhua?” Ori’un suddenly shouted. “Corral young men up here and have them stare into the blank void while the world burns outside? The Waning Moon told me of the cause, even as I dared to dispute them. Even as I dared to dispute what these eyes have seen. Only as I shared in the vision of the Master did I realize my hubris in believing I, alone, could stop what was coming: golden wings in the East, storming through ash and laying waste to the sands, turning brother against brother and salting the earth where their blood ebbs and flows, until nothing but a red sea remains, drowning all who do not look to the Eagle’s golden skies.”
XJ-V felt his chest lurch.
The Eagle…
“These things has the Master seen,” Ori’un said, leaning forward, almost begging the Master to believe his words. “These things will transpire –“
“A paranoid dream,” Longhua replied, turning his head from his dumbstruck former-student. “One possible future among many. One meant to stir the hearts of impressionable, easily influenced men like you. Even as a boy you were climbing the walls of the Sect to escape us. You wish to be a hero? Be my guest, Ori’un. But leave me out of your delusions.”
The Planeswalker’s fists clenched – varicose veins popping on his knuckles that shone with otherworldly, purple light. He threw off his cowl and let the Master see the extent of his frustration, now – frustration that must have been boiling beneath his cool surface since first he walked through the monastery gates.
“Uh, oh,” Arha whispered.
“Is this what you have come here to tell me?” Longhua scoffed in the face of his anger. “Dreams and superstitions? Tales of Armageddon from the frigid North? You can return to my Brother up there if you wish. Tell him we of Ramor-Tai are –
“I have seen it!” the Planeswalker roared. Then, realizing he had forgotten himself, bowed low and closed his eyes, as though about to recite some macabre prayer.
“I…I have seen it, Longhua,” he whispered. “The sultan of Dunerakk has fallen. The deserts around Mongiatsu are in the pocket of the Divine Order. Limra’s oasis-towns are nothing but a string of smoking ruins, and the eyes of the High Eagle move ever Southward – pillaging, burning, raping and slaughtering with impunity. They kill with a light that sears the flesh. Their every strike is a strike against the flow of Qi itself.”
Ori’un drew back the dark sleeve of his left arm and showed where his flesh had met the skin of a Divine Order warrior’s blade.
By the Dao… Feng-Lung murmured.
XJ-V recognized the mark. He understood now why the Planeswalker had garbed himself in his shadowed armor.
Ori’un’s arm was a smoking heap of ash, barely still clinging to his bones.
Even Master Longhua inclined his head an inch to prospect the annihilated appendage. It was the closest XJ-V had ever seen the Master’s face approach shock.
“The pain is immense,” Ori’un continued. “But worse is the effect on the soul. One slice is akin to the extinguishing of the greatest bonfire that burns in all our chests. One single swipe, and even my Earth-Grade techniques were rendered useless.”
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Feng-Lung twitched beside XJ-V. And, though the latter knew that his Brother had just made a connection that the Cog may soon have to explain, he dared not interrupt the flow of the conversation.
“Longhua,” Ori’un said. “This High Eagle has an army. He has the power to strip what defines us from our hearts. And he will not stop, ever, until we are wiped off what remains of this earth. Us, and all that remains of Qing’s legacy.”
The Master said nothing. His eyes did not drop from Ori’un’s desperate face. His silence seemed to only further galvanize the Planeswalker’s conviction.
“Two years ago, the Order crossed into the Taiala Badlands,” he explained. “The Warlords who reign there saw their transgression as provocation and began hostilities. Even now, the ground of the Badlands bleeds with the blood of Qing’s children, Longhua, and the High Eagle will not stop with them. Two years ago, he razed the border town of Hensha to the ground – killing its residents to the man.”
“This does not make sense,” the Master finally said. “The Order bleeds itself dry. It commits vital resources and manpower to wholesale slaughter without purpose.”
“There was purpose,” Ori’un replied gravely. “He is searching for something.”
Both men locked eyes again, and it seemed to XJ-V that there was a silent understanding that seemed to pass between them. Even so, Ori’un went on, determined to hammer home the grim point he had to come to.
“You know the power that can leave these marks,” the Planeswalker said, indicating his ruined arm. “There can be no mistake.”
“A lie,” Longhua said. “A lie born of superstition.”
“Can you still not face reality?” Ori’un countered. “It takes a strong man, indeed, to deny that which is plainly in front of him.”
“I told you to cease your disrespect in my chambers or-“
“Yuwa,” the Planeswalker said, cutting off the Master with force the likes of which XJ-V had never seen. “The High Eagle is the champion of the slain God of Light. Through our destruction does he seek resurrection.”
“The High Eagle is a mortal born of unchecked ambition,” Longhua replied after composing himself. “He is a child tearing the legs from insects, crying for his dead God to come home. If he makes war upon the blasted ruins that remain of Qing’s realm, then so be it. His Order will fall as all the Warlords of the Wastes have fallen – by stretching itself too thin. Conquerors have come before, Ori’un – you know this better than most. They have burned themselves out like the weakest of stars in the night sky. We have always endured.”
“I wonder,” the Planeswalker said. “Could you tell a child of Tiala to simply ‘endure’ as his mother is violated before his eyes? As his father’s heart is speared by a blade composed of starlight? Could you ask him to simply ‘wait out’ the hell this world has become?”
Ori’un sighed deeply, seeming to retreat into himself as Longhua simply stared back at him, unmoved.
“I expected to come home and see that you had moved on with this world,” he said wearily. “I expected age to help you see what must be done. But not even pressure and time can move your stubborn soul. Your wisdom has blinded you, Master.”
“And the sun of the wasteland has blinded you, my former student,” Longhua replied tetchily, the flames of his candles that lined the hallways beginning to flare and stutter with fiery life. “Have you forgotten the oaths of our Cultivators? When we walk the Dao, we leave this world and all its earthly attachments behind. We take a path – the one true path – towards enlightenment. We are not an army. We do not exist to ‘correct’ this world, no matter how much you wish us to follow in your footsteps. Our eyes are fixed on Heaven – not on guarding the gates of Hell.”
“But what will you do,” Ori’un said quietly. “When Hell comes to you?”
Silence fell upon the chamber then, broken only by the minute flickering of the candles that lined the hall. Longhua let the fires abate. He let his rage simmer and settle. And, XJ-V noticed that he did not dismiss Ori’un. Instead, he waited. It was almost like he knew something more had to come.
“If you will not allow your men to fight beside me,” he said. “Then I must take what I need by force. I invoke the Mandate of Aun’el. By right of mortal combat, one of your Cultivators belongs to me.”
XJ-V saw Longhua close his eyes, as though he literally closed off his vision of the world that had so rudely intruded on the peace of his sanctuary.
“So, there it is,” he said. “The true purpose of your visit.”
“I take one,” Ori’un said. “Or you commit all your people to my cause. The latter option would gain us victory faster. But you leave me no alternative.”
“You would have all our Cultivators participate? Our Anima Banishers still dwell in the heart of the mountain.”
Ori’un shook his head. “You know I cannot take any above the rank of Corporeal Temperer. Their attunement to the Qi cannot be so fixed on that which swirls around Ramor-Tai alone. Their spirit must still be pliable. An immutable soul is not what the world needs.”
Longhua leaned back, inclining his head to look up at the fresco of the coiling Eternal Dragon that loomed above him.
And XJ-V could almost swear that he saw not only Arha hidden in the roof beams of his chamber, but him and Feng-Lung within her head.
Because he smiled right at them.
“One month,” he said. “That is how long you shall remain. I will see to it that the proper preparations are made, the proper rituals observed. On the last day of Aun’el’s Gauntlet shall you leave with a Cultivator of Ramor-Tai beside you. And this time,” Longhua added. “You shall not return.”
Despite everything – including the complete annihilation of his trust in his former Master – Ori’un the Planeswalker forced out a wry smile.
“I know it,” he said. “I know that all too well, Master.”
With that, the meeting came to an abrupt halt, and Arha flew from the ceiling, phased through the roof, and tumbled all the way back to Feng-Lung’s chambers to meet her two boys staring at each other with dumbfounded eyes.
“Is Arha good or what?” the Huli asked.
“Feng-Lung,” XJ-V asked, completely ignoring Arha’s teething on his toes. “What is the Mandate of Aun’el?”
The boy seemed totally rapt, pacing up and down his tiny chamber as his mind raced with new possibilities, new worlds, new whole realities.
Meanwhile, XJ-V was simply trying to make sense of the information overload they’d just experienced.
“Feng!” he shouted.
“This is big, XJ-V,” he said. “This…this is bigger than I could have even guessed. And we have the advantage now, you know. They won’t announce it till tomorrow morning at the latest. That gives us time to at least make a plan. A strict training regimen. Re-double our efforts. Maybe it would work if –“
“FENG!” The Cog shouted, jumping up and grabbing his friend with both arms. “What is this? It sounds like you are preparing for battle?”
For the first time in almost a month, XJ-V then saw Feng-Lung’s mouth twist into his genuine, boyish smile.
“Not a battle, XJ-V,” he said. “A tournament.”
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