[Anima Cores: 145]
Words that were used to define something beyond definition…words used to entrap something that was pure feeling alone. Raw. Untouched.
Entrapped…
The visions of the Dao granted him dark shapes that peeled away to reveal the husks of Cogs and humans alike. In his invalid, limbless state, his mind seemed more free to move around in the void this time, peering through the shadows to the thin strips of memories that unfolded before him.
He saw Qing’s golden castles atop all the mountains of the worlds – castles brimming with servants and warriors ready to serve the Emperor and spread his divine will across the globe. He saw the humans of the planet stand in defiance as the Gods brought calamity upon their earth, and then the remains of their people rose up to banish Yuwa. Then he saw that the fallen God’s eyes were not closed – they were wide open and staring. Staring at the Cog that beheld their owner in the Dao.
XJ-V pushed through his fear. He had to see what lay within those eyes, but all he was afforded was a gold-plated reflection that showed him encased in threads of gold, solid as polished marble, before he melted away into the ground and through the cracks within the panting, dry soil of the earth. When the Cog woke, he did so feeling helpless. The Dao was still holding secrets from him, even as he returned to the waking world with more of its strength to guide him.
[Anima Cores: 147]
More…he thought. More power. More insight. More manifestations of his will – the things he would need to defeat his enemies when they inevitably came for him.
Because they were coming for him. Of that, there was now no doubt.
He turned on his bed and saw the silent man who had been keeping his dreaming body company through the thundercracks of the storm that raged outside.
Feng-Lung.
“Weren’t expecting a visitor this early, were you?” Feng asked him. “Though I suppose you weren’t expecting any at all.”
XJ-V managed to rise – seeing that his crippled left arm was now almost fully operational. All that remained were the repairs needed to reconstruct the rest of his limbs.
“How are you feeling?” Feng asked.
“Like I am suffering from what you humans call a ‘hangover’,” the Cog replied, flexing his light-sheathed fingers and feeling his hand again react to his brain’s commands.
“If only our wounds were so fleeting as yours,” Feng said, nodding at XJ-V’s restored arm. “The Planeswalker told me you’d be up and about without our Core Regulators’ aid. I didn’t believe him. But, at this point, I suppose I should have known that when it comes to you I cannot simply abide by things like ‘logic’ or ‘reason’.”
“Such things mean little for us,” XJ-V said.
“Coming from a Cog, that means more than you know.”
Both friends shared a steady smile between them, each equally glad to see the other alive and well.
“I…well…I came to thank you,” Feng said eventually.
“For what reason?” XJ-V asked. “If anything, it is you who deserves my thanks. I was brash, and stupid. I thought I could cut down a Xu’Jan General and his army alone. It was you who reminded me that no dragon fights without his Brothers beside him.”
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“But it was your rash decision that made me realize what I really care about after all this time,” Feng responded adamantly. “For so long I was fixated on nothing more than making something of myself – on living up to my mother’s expectations of me. Without you I would never have found something more valuable than that which is offered by the Dao.”
“Which is what?”
Feng looked him square in his glowing eyes as he gave his answer. “Brotherhood, XJ-V. I have been a fool all this time. I was a fool to think Ori’un wished me to fail my first test of the Fourth Rank. I was also a fool to see you as a mere curiosity – a fleeting fancy that would soon leave this place with your steel tail between your legs. I should have offered my hand to you in friendship as soon as you walked through those doors with as desperate a need to prove yourself on your face as I had when I first came here.”
The Cog smiled in the face of his friend’s earnestness. “You did all this and more, Feng-Lung,” he said. “You just did not know it.”
The boy laughed at that, cringing slightly at his still bruised chest.
“Well,” he said. “With the tournament coming in one week, what do you think? Will you be up and ready for the day of judgement? Or is it time for the Cog who defeated a Xu’Jan of the Order to rest on his laurels?”
XJ-V stared out at the approaching clouds bubbling with rainwater that crept close to Mount Ramor, their advance heralding the onset of another terrible storm.
“I have to be ready,” he said, in a tone that rang with the gravity of destiny. “It is the only way to know what the Dao has in store for me.”
He thought of the vision of the two men in the wastes – men who moved with the world rather than against it. Men who faced a tide of darkness, fell to grievous wounds, and then rose again to fight it all the same.
He thought too of the Planeswalker words that had rang in his Dao-walks as his repairs were made, feeling the world darken again as his systems began to shut down for the next series of reconstructions.
“Will you…stand by me?” he asked the disappearing shadow of his friend.
He did not see what happened next, but before he blacked out he heard Feng-Lung’s reply loud and clear:
“If a God truly is arrayed against us, then I will back you to the end, Brother,” he said. “To the end of the earth itself.”
…
The eyes of Yuwa signaled change. They signaled boundless light – the searing light of apocalypse. Of revelation.
Revelation…
XJ-V followed the thought in the dream-realm of the Dao, his formless body flying between clouds composed of memories and visions – pieces of paper smudged and scarred so that their contents were a blur to him as he passed them by, bound for the eyes of the imprisoned God.
Those eyes told him nothing when he found them again, adrift in the infinite sea of nothing. They showed him the golden form of his own self. Of an Ego not born of shadow, but born of light.
Come on…he told his body, forcing a ghostly arm by his side to rise and touch the image before it melted away beyond the clouds. Come on…
Fear struck his heart – a fear that brought back visions of Sheloth striking him down, burning through his body and raking his limbs with visceral contempt. He felt the breath of the Paladin-commander hot on his neck as he stretched out even a single finger to touch the melting mass of Gold that rejected him, turning away and leaving him in an empty world yet again.
But this time, he was not to be deterred.
He grabbed the golden claw before it ran away from him and the head of his own body blazed into life, staring at him with eyes that pierced his skull and seared his metal flesh. He felt himself absorbed by the golden figure like being eaten by some carrion bird, slowly chewed and digested – his energy added to the form of another. His essence becoming something else…or something lesser.
Something he once was…
For, when he opened his eyes, he looked out into a wholly different world, now. A world of buzzing machines – bulbous computers spitting out information faster than Fai-Deng’s punches. Databanks churring with their coded speech understandable only to one versed in their strange language. The pristine floor of a laboratory that was smooth enough to give him a view of his own reflection on its surface. He was inert, lifeless, deaf and dumb. He tried to move his body, but his limbs would not budge. All he could do was look at the titanium door of the lab opening before him and allowing a small, pudgy-nosed man passage into the chamber.
Then, as the face of the man came into view, XJ-V tried to gasp.
He was staring into the face of his Creator.
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