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.

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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 quite 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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