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 was 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 footing 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.

Stolen novel; please report.

“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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