In Aun’El’s Grove, something was happening.

Far from the chaos of the Colosseum duels, the Huli and water-spirits around the great Qi pool watched in wonder as the waters began to ripple and bubble with life. A sheen of lambent gold then shone from the very depths of the pool, shimmering up to the surface and bathing the entire grove in a pillar of light that the creatures of the spirit-forest had never beheld.

They had never beheld anything like this since the days they had first come to rest here in the wake of the Sundering.

Arha’s sisters watched with wonder as faces appeared in the great pillar of light. Faces of humans lost in the war, Cogs who had killed them, and the creatures of the wastes who had burned with the world.

They then blinked at the sight of the face that was forming at the very apex of the pillar. A face they didn’t recognize, and yet knew instinctively that they should fear.

“I’m almost sure Arha has a hand in this,” one of the Huli sisters groaned. “I told her, Sis: never get attached to a man of the human world. Especially not a metal one…”

…

XJ-V floated high above the fallen Mah-Jung, two great blades of lightning coiled round his hands, ready to strike at the pitiful form below.

And he could do it. He could do it right now – ending the life of this cheater who must have secretly hated him all this time.

And the being writhing behind his eyes right now told him as much.

This is who you are, my child, it said. This is what you have always been.

XJ-V had no shadow of a doubt in the moment he shot out both his arms and let his Lightning Claws fly at the boy’s murmuring face.

Not only could he kill him, but it would be much, much easier than he thought it would be.

Show them who you are, XJ-V.

Show them who you are.

The Cog’s eyes wavered as he heard these voices. One of them – that of the God he was born to consume and bind. The second – something far more distant. Something beyond the world of fire and death that surrounded him, penetrating his mind and nestling in there like a small kernel of of light. True light.

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And with a deep breath of clarity, he let his hands lower.

You – you – are – a –

The voice was growing dim. He felt his form gain weight once again, and his feet touch the ground before Mah-Jung’s horror-stricken face as the arcs of flame-wreathed lightning.

Why-do-you-d-deny…

He closed his eyes to Mah-Jung’s strikenform, and assumed the meditative pose of the Eternal Dragon.

I deny nothing but you, Yuwa, he thought right back against the intruder in his mind. You and your desire to scar this world again.

Anger flared up. Red, blazing, and with enough spite to set off an Armageddon all over again.

But it wasn’t his anger. And it, too, was now growing dim.

Your-compassion-f-for humanity-is…misplaced…

“I’m not doing this for humanity,” he said aloud as his eyes reopened with his own neon blue sheen. “I chose the path I walk. And it is not yours.”

The voice spoke no more. The only other voice XJ-V now heard belonged to the shuddering Mah-Jung beneath him.

“…why?” he asked. “Even with all the power in the world…”

XJ-V shrugged. “Power is just power,” he said as he sat cross-legged beside his Brother, watching the firelit skies of Hensha begin to drain away to a colorless void. The bubble encasing them was starting to burst.

“In my time here, I have started to think: perhaps what this word needs is people to use power less. Before I set foot in this monastery, I think I would have seen a kindred spirit in you, Brother.”

Mah-Jung slowly, painstakingly, rose to a crouch, staring with stinging eyes at the Cog who had just called him Brother.

“Just…just do it, Brother,” he said. “I’m no more use to the world like this.”

Surprisingly, the Cog looked at him with utter astonishment.

“’Use?’ he parroted. “Who cares about what we’re made for, Mah-Jung. What matters is what we choose.”

“A cliché…” Mah-Jung scoffed.

“Does that make it any less true?”

Jung met the smiling face of the Cog as light began to break through the illusory clouds that had contained them. Outside the bounds of their ethereal prism, he could hear the chants and cries of the arena.

“…it’s hopeless, isn’t it?”

It was XJ-V’s turn to be surprised – he saw his Brother laughing like a child beside him.

“Have you really chosen the wastes, XJ-V?” he asked. “Do you really wish to brave them – their tortures and their torments, knowing that a lifetime of suffering awaits you out there? You could just stay here, Brother. You could stay here, and know the peace you speak of already.”

Mah-Jung found that the Cog considered his words for only a moment, before flashing another neon smile in his face.

“I have a job to do,” he said simply. “It’s not a job I asked for, but it is one only I can fulfil.”

“You’re choosing to obey your programming,” Jung countered. “Doesn’t that just make you a compliant slave?”

No anger came in XJ-V’s reply: “No, Mah-Jung. I am choosing a reason to believe in my programming. The people out there are not stopping to consider why their nature compels them to make this world a worse place to exist. But I know why I wish to make it one worth living in.”

Mah-Jung then watched as the Cog got to his feet and extended his hand to him.

He knew that the Cog had powered down. Yuwa would not be coming back. With the final, charged Qi reserves he had in his body, he could probably take him down now. He could end it before…

He closed his eyes and smiled again. He didn’t know exactly when it had happened, but the screams of his family had finally died away.

“Enough, then,” he said, taking his Brother’s hand and rising with him to greet the baying crowd. “I know when I am beaten, Brother. And I know when the will of another is greater than my own. Let us end this, and then walk the paths we have chosen.”

The Disciples were all standing for him. Cheering for him. Even the Masters nodded to the Cog as he appeared, standing beside the man who took up his metal hand and thrust it into the air.

“WINNER!” the Planeswalker screamed. “AND THE WINNER OF THE TOURNEY OF AUN’EL: BROTHER XJ-V OF THE ETERNAL DRAGON!”

Mah-Jung watched the Cog’s face go from weariness, to exultation, and then back to weariness again. And he didn’t know it at the time, but he was smiling.

You are luckier than you know, Brother, he thought as he added his applause to that of the crowd. For you walk a path dictated by your own dreams…and mine…

Mine is set in stone…

...

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