“I cannot tell you how exciting this is!” Mah-Jung said for the fifth time since XJ-V had met him. “This is an honor! History is being made.”
XJ-V again nodded at the Disciple’s statement. His fellow Disciple, that is. He still felt strange to be wearing the orange-tinted robes of a novice in the Eternal Dragon Cult, feeling the soft cuffs fall over his wrists and hide his skeletal hands. Mah-Jung had said it suited him. But how could XJ-V discern truth from this man who seemed to be forever in a state of unparalleled bliss?
“Feng-Lung will be most happy to see you here!” his earnest guide said as he led him into the Eternal Dragon commune, past its high arched stone walls and deep into his dimly lit interior halls filled with frescos of the eponymous coiling wyrm that was its namesake. “The other Disciples will probably be…reticent…to accept you at first. But I know they will come to see the light in your eyes just as Master Longhua has. He thinks well of you, you know.”
“Does he?” XJ-V asked as Mah-Jung opened the rickety door to a vacant room within the sect’s initiate quarters. “I register only hate in the Master’s looks.”
Mah-Jung blinked frantically before collapsing into raucous laughter, so much so that some of the other novices meditating in the courtyard opened one of their eyes to see if the Cog had just told a joke. Then they saw that it was Mah-Jung who was laughing, and promptly returned to their Cultivation.
“That is the Master’s way with everyone!” Mah-Jung replied after wiping a joyous tear from his eye. “A dragon is a beast born from fury, bred to live in flame. Can you blame the Master for being a slight grouch? He takes on the purest aspects of our Sect’s Guardian Spirit.”
XJ-V thought it best to simply nod and agree with whatever Mah-Jung told him. The sooner he did so, the sooner the Disciple might be on his way.
But Mah-Jung did not depart as the Cog hoped. Both men simply stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time before XJ-V finally asked, “Is there something the matter?”
This question brought more hysterical laughter from his guide. “Why, dear XJ-V, you have not yet entered your room!”
XJ-V blinked in response.
“My room?”
“Of course! We cannot have you meditating out in the rain forever, can we?” Mah-Jung replied with the jovial smile that XJ-V had come to expect from him since Master Longhua had asked him to be the Cog’s guide to the commune.
XJ-V frowned at Mah-Jung’s suggestion. He stepped through the arched doorway and looked blankly at the stone bed, its clean sheets, the small rectangular window that looked out to the courtyard and the plain chest of drawers that lay at the far wall of the tiny space. In the middle
of the room sat an ornately embroidered rug with an image of a spiral embedded on its surface
in dark crimson.
“Is it not to your liking?” Mah-Jung asked from the doorway.
XJ-V looked up at the man abruptly. “Why do you remain outside?”
“Why, because this is your room now, XJ-V,” Mah-Jung replied. “It would be improper for me to enter without being invited, now wouldn’t it?”
XJ-V nodded slowly, trying his best to take in the idea – the almost heretical concept that he, a Cog, might actually own something.
“My room,” he said aloud, chewing the statement on his metal teeth.
Mah-Jung nodded. “Treat it as you would treat your very limbs, my metal Brother. Now, I shall leave you to your thoughts. Dinner will be served at the setting of the sun. We will be having freshly baked Mantou today, and…”
XJ-V stared blankly as slow realization dawned over Mah-Jung’s face.
“…yes, well, obviously that’s…perhaps not something that would interest you.”
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The boy bowed low so that his braided ponytail kissed the stonework of the commune’s floor.
“If there is anything I can help you with, Brother, please do ask. My quarters are just down the hallway, two rooms from yours.”
“Thank you, Brother Mah-Jung.”
The smiling Disciple’s features elongated with a strange mix of wonder and innocence. Perhaps it was as Feng-Lung said – none of them had ever beheld a Cog before, or had any idea how they thought.
“Y-you are welcome.” He said as he turned to leave. And when he went, he did not trail laughter after him.
XJ-V looked at the disappearing back of his jovial brother and found himself laughing suddenly. Alone in a room that belonged to him – an object – he suddenly became aware that the boy had just invited him to dinner.
He laughed again. And, with nothing better to do, sat cross legged on his bed and activated his repair module.
…
When he emerged in time for the evening Kai-exercises, XJ-V felt more refreshed than ever.
His sensors had now acclimatized to the world of Ramor-Tai, so that he saw everything that much clearer. The Chrysanthemum’s last petals were wilting outside, the Disciples were gathering in the wake of their dinner, and the skies above were streaked with the pale veins of moonlight that glided through the Wasteland skies on nights when it was said the spirits looked down on all sentient life.
He closed the door to his chamber and made his way down the commune hallway to the courtyard.
It was on his way that he bumped into a familiar face.
“XJ-V!”
He turned to see Feng-Lung running towards him, his mouth stuffed with half-chewed mantou. The youth almost tripped over his robe as he clapped his hand round the Cog’s shoulder and beamed a smile into his neon eyes.
“Or should I call you ‘Brother XJ-V,’” he grinned. “I never doubted you, you know. Not once.”
XJ-V grimaced. “I seem to recall you telling me I should simply leave on multiple occasions.”
Feng-Lung reeled back and swallowed the remains of his dinner. “Bah! That was just a test, like you thought,” he chuckled. “Within you I knew best the heart of a warrior. Ever since the day you gave brother Fai-Deng exactly what he deser-“
The boy stopped abruptly as two familiar figures past them by, retiring to their separate commune as their lessons concluded for the evening.
The red-faced Brother Kai-Thai and ever dour Fai-Deng stared at them unblinkingly.
And then the former shot out an arm to embrace XJ-V with glee.
“Welcome to our ranks, Brother!” he practically shouted. “We shall celebrate with a cask of rice wine later, made by the finest Cultivators of the Tiger Sect! Perhaps then we shall entice you to forsake the Eternal Dragon for our ranks, eh Brother?”
Kai prodded Fai-Deng with the energy of a child mocking his little sibling, and the silent man merely stared daggers at XJ-V’s nonchalant face. A great purple blotch marred his right eye where the Cog had slammed his knee into his face on the night of their battle, and it gave him an appearance far less handsome, and far more unsettling, that what he had maintained before.
“You remember me, machine?”
XJ-V ignored Feng-Lung’s grasping hand as he moved to stand before the Tiger. “Yes,” he replied. “You fought well, Brother.”
A haze of crimson smeared itself across the disgraced features of the warrior.
“Do not try and humor me, automaton,” he spat. “Why Master Longhua has chosen to admit you to the Dragons is a mystery that defies belief.”
“We would not presume to question the word of a Master,” Feng-Lung broke in. “Would we, Brother?”
“Is that a challenge, Feng-Lung?”
Fai-Deng surged forwards threateningly as XJ-V moved between him and his friend, while Kai-Thai grabbed his brother by the collar.
“Young love,” he mused. “It is as destructive as it is beautiful.”
“There is nothing beautiful about this thing,” Fai-Deng growled, tendrils of electricity beginning to climb up his knuckles. Even though he had not thrown a punch, XJ-V could tell that there was far more strength in those hands now than when they had clashed before. The boy had spent his time wisely, training perhaps every day, growing ever stronger while the Cog had withered. And now? XJ-V truly wondered which of them would best the other if it came to blows.
“Know this, Cog,” Fai-Deng snarled as he bumped shoulders with his opponent. “You may wear that robe and walk these hallowed grounds, but a true Cultivator will never call you Brother.”
With that he grunted and shoved past both Dragon Sect members, leaving a baffled Kai-Thai muttering his apologies and running after him.
“Does Brother Fai-Deng usually mention me?” XJ-V asked Feng-Lung once the Tigers had departed.
“I’m afraid so,” Feng-Lung sighed. “Ever since your duel, he has redoubled his training. Most days he sits alone, forsaking even the evening meals in the Tiger commune, so I hear. His defeat at your hands meant he lost face in front of all the monastery, and it takes a long time and much effort to remove such a stain from one’s name. It is a sad thing to see a Brother become so obsessed. But, in time, I am sure the guidance of his Master and Kai-Thai will soothe the beast within him. After all, one cannot stay angry forever, can they?”
XJ-V looked at the hunched shoulders of the departing Tiger with a sense of burning sorrow in his gut. Time did not track for him. A concept like ‘forever’ meant nothing, but he had seen eyes like those before. He had been referred to disparagingly as machine before, and the person who had spat this label at him had been angry for a very long time.