> When we create implements of war

> It is the war that chases after us.

> This is the wheel of sharp weapons returning

> For what can cut a Buddha

> but a blade that we forge?

>

> From Treatise of Cultivating Waking-Mind Through Smithing

Together now, they walked. Strolling down the river.

Raxri asked: "Akazha, I was meaning to ask. Why do we walk down the river?"

"The River Barge Station lies a few dragons from here," she said, pointing with her lips down the river. "We sail to Imos Town. Then, from there, we ride to Blacklight Town."

"Why is the Ultramystic Sutasoma in Blacklight Town anyway?" asked Raxri, pondering on why they were undertaking such a journey.

Akazha shrugged. "Many reasons," she said. "The two foremost ones are that it is in the End of the World, and because of the Blacklight found within. It is hard to describe. You will have to trust in me, and I will explain when we get there."

Raxri sighed. "Very well."

Behind the both of them lumbered Sintra Kennin. Still clad in his proud armor. His giant dakgatana strapped diagonally across their back.

Raxri turned around and asked: "Where did you get that giant katana, Sintra?"

Sintra blinked. "Oh, ah, this? It was a gift crafted by a traveling blacksmith mystic from Wadzara. It is called a dakgatana. Dak for Great or Large. Gatana is just how you pronounce it when you add Dak at the beginning. This weapon, when crafted to me, was named God's Brush Stroke. I thought it fitting." He unsheathed it and said: "See, the blade is made of meteorite. That is why it is black. Fallen from the firmament. It resembles the brush stroke of some heavenly god."

"'Tis true," said Raxri. They raised their now bandaged live hand, swaddled in poultices. "It cut through the Whorl Guard!" They winced and had to lower it.

"Once again, I do beg for your forgiveness, Raxri Uttara," Sintra said, bowing again. "It was nothing but pure craving for power. I do not excuse my actions."

"Good," said Akazha.

"Becalm yourself. It is all right," said Raxri. Akazha sighed, exasperated.

"No doubt you have faced a number of warriors doing the same thing. Attempting to seize the Will hidden within your flesh."

Raxri smiled and shrugged. "Yes, actually. But I welcome it. Through them, I constantly gain power and cultivate myself."

"Hm..." Sintra sheathed the dakgatana. "That is a good mindset."

Raxri smiled wider, proud of themself. They could practically hear Akazha rolling her eyes. "You understand me. I thought: I cannot change them due to the situation they're in and the lay of the world. True anquish and sorrow lies in the fact that one tries to change something that they have no control over. Therefore I went and changed how I look at it." Raxri nodded at themself for thinking of this. They never really thought about it before: the justification arose from itself, here, at that very moment.

Sintra nodded again. "I see. But, that is easier said than done, Raxri," he said, stroking his flameing beard in thought. "We are more shaped than our environments than we realize."

"How wise you two speak now," said Akazha, in a haughty way. Raxri smiled and shrugged at Akazha, knowing this to be her personality.

"That be true," said Raxri, referring to Sintra. "I suppose I have only arrived at this mindset due to my cultivation in Mount Jura. It just seems too weird for me not to start from the grounds of Loving-Kindness."

Akazha said: "That is ideal," she said. "All cultivation done not from the Ultimate Ground of Compassion is the illusion of the Ego, who thinks it is not part of something greater but rather, the greatest thing itself. Thus saith Ultramystic Sutasoma: Bodhichitta, or Waking-Mind, is Compassion for all beings. The path to Revolution is through this. In theory it is easy. But those that sound easiest are often the hardest thing to do."

They walked down the rushing river. They looked like a true warband. Or a traveling troupe of wandering swordsmen. Just from Sintra Kennin's mien, or Akazha's scowling demeanor, any would-be bandit would think twice attacking them now.

The greatest violence is always the one that ends it.

A daypart after Zenith our dear travelers created repose from walking to eat some of their rations. Raxri opened up rice balls wrapped in banana leaves, kept fresh as scorched adobo rice with shredded pieces of chicken within. The vinegars in the adobo worked as a preservative, keeping it fresh and free from growing mold, even when Jikajika had prepared the food the night before.

Raxri expressed their intense love for the food by flopping backwards onto the grass in ecstasy. "Gods, hunger grips me!"

Akazha ate very brusquely, leaning against a nearby moss-covered boulder, arm prepped up by a knee, sitting very widely. In usual society those assigned the role of a woman must move very gingerly, tenderly, demurely. But not Akazha: Akazha ate as if she were the drunk divorced uncle that practiced dangerous magicks that no one in the house would ever dabble in and routinely climbs mountains. She ate adobo as well, and then drank a jarlet of alcohol.

Raxri on the other hand drank a delicious milk tea. The milk was from a carabao, and it was lightly sweetened with honey.

Sintra Kennin did not eat, for he did not need to. He was a spirit. Though he got hungry, he would not die from that hunger. Not immediately, at least. He would have to burn through all his karma first. He sat in a perfect lotus seat (padmasana, as the masters would call it), with the sheathed dakgatana, God's Brush Stroke, balanced perfectly across their two knees. "Friend witch Akazha," he began. "Why do you drink when the sun is so far up, and without companions?"

Raxri raised an eyebrow. Turned to Sintra. "Why would they not? Is it against social mores?"

Akazha chuckled. "In general, someone who drinks alone, without the company of a social event or friend, are those that tow the dangerous line of alcoholism and divinity." She turned to Sintra. "Friend Sintra Kennin, far travels like these require some modicum of alcohol to keep me sane. Any alcohol to keep me sane, in truth."

Sintra Kennin nodded. Thinking deeply. "You speak like those Divine Fools."

"Sintra Kennin, friend, if you would excuse this lapse in respect," began Raxri. "Usually spirits such as you would speak in formal register. Yet you speak to us as if we were talking mortal to mortal. Why is that?"

Sintra shrugged. "There is no metaphysical reason for spirits speaking in formal register. It is a symptom of spirit society: that is simply how we are to talk to those that are on a lower Path than us."

"I see," said Raxri, nodding even as they laid on the grass. Their cloudy, cream colored hair spread around them like a halo. "I like it. It feels like we truly are friends."

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Sintra smiled at that. "That is good. I have none of those."

"What, feelings?" asked Akazha.

Sintra shook his head, not acknowledging the weird attempt at humor. "Nay. Friends."

"Ah," Akazha said, sighing. She drank another gulp of the alcohol jarlet and realized she was out of alcohol. "Right. Of course. Forgive me."

Raxri chuckled. "How sad of our dear river dragon prince!" They reached out their hand. "Worry not. We are your friends now."

Akazha turned around and brought out her betel nut chest from her satchel. She popped it open and offered a quid to Sintra Kennin. "Please. As friends."

"Only devotees have ever offered me betel nut quids," said Sintra. They said this completely straight-faced, matter of fact, without an ounce of pleading for pity. "I thank you, friend."

"It is better to have you as a friend than as an enemy," added Akazha, smiling. Sarcastically or not? Who could tell. One of the many gifts of Akazha Han Narakdag.

"I would wish, Sintra Kennin," Raxri interjected, staring at the sky. The weather was exceptionally nice today: the sun bore down on them directly, the sky was that color of lazuli. "That us being friends would not strike out the possibility of fighting with one another."

Chewing on the quid, Sintra said: "Of course not. We can fight as you wish. Spar. Why think you of this"

Raxri sat up and stared at Sintra Kennin in the eye. "I want to get stronger. So you have to get stronger! I want to keep fighting and fighting. I want to see how far I can go."

Later on, as they walked (Akazha, at this point, sat lazily on a floating kalis, which moved forward at a glacial pace. When asked why Raxri and Sintra couldn't get on, and why the kalis moved so slow, Akazha answered that they didn't want to tire out their Will in case there were more dangers to come).

As they walked, Raxri asked: "So your father is truly a despicable person?"

Sintra smiled and shook his head. "I would not say despicable. Simply... I suppose... a victim of the momentum of history. You know what they say: the greatest violence is time."

"A passage from the Celestial Song," added Akazha, sleepily puffing out smoke. She looked like a true witch, all she was missing was a large, broad-brimmed hat with many tassels and decorations dangling from its rim.

Raxri did not know what the Celestial Song was, but decided to just ask about it later. "Right. Of course. Forgive me, I must have spoken out of line." Sintra waved his hand to signal to Raxri that they were fine. "So you harbor no ill-will to your father?"

Sintra Kennin stroked their flaming beard, deep in thought. "I suppose I do harbor ill-will toward my father. It is one of those things that I cannot remove due to the momentum of my own history. My father was hateful, prideful, looking to his own ambitions and legacy rather than treating me as a being on its own. It is always like that, would you not say? Fathers and mothers have a tyranny over their children, when the oldest of sages have said that you must be the bow to your children's arrow. Not a lord who treats their children as trophies and things to be owned."

"So that is what you meant," said Raxri, thinking as well. Puksa hung loosely upon their waist. "You have my sympathies."

"Was your father and mother like this as well?"

Raxri blinked. They thought for a moment, and then said: "I... have been shorn of all memory, you see. So I do not know. For now... I treat everyone I meet like my mother and father."

Sintra Kennin furrowed their eyebrows in confusion. "That is an interesting perspective."

"It is one shared by many devotees of the Law," said Akazha, puffing out smoke. "Due to the nature of this world, we have been and we will continue to be reborn a thousand thousand times. In this truth we realize: everyone has been our mother and father at least once in our life. It is a good grounding for establishing compassionate thinking."

Raxri did not know that what they had thought of was something that was shared in the tradition of the Law. Another echo of their educated past, perhaps? With all this reflexes, was the Raxri Uttara of the past ever gone?

"I see," said Sintra Kennin, nodding in understannding. "This Law. What is it?"

Akazha looked surprised at that. She said: "You do not know of the Liberation Law of Awakening?"

"Ah, of course I do," said Sintra Kennin. "I have heard it multiple times. Many adherents and monks of the tradition make offerings to me with the Awoken in their hearts. As they do this they generate merit, and so do we, the household of River Wetan. But I have never heard the tenets directly. I have never heard of the precepts, of the teachings."

"Would you like to know?" asked Raxri, tilting their head to the side.

Sintra thought for a moment, and then nodded. "I think I would. It has been used to help a large number of people, I can see. The Awoken... I see them sometimes. In glimpses of dreams, in the shadows within the shadows. But they seem too esoteric to me."

Raxri turned to Akazha, and Akazha shrugged and nodded. "Let me speak, Raxri. The problem with your understanding of the Law is that you are deeply entrenched into the understanding of the Esoteric side. That side that requires initiation into deeper mysteries. For the river dragon spirit we must speak of the Exoteric. The one that all can listen to and benefit from."

Raxri had never thought about that. They had never thought the Law that they were learning was esoteric, and that they had been initiated into it before. And so, ceding to Akazha's greater learning, they nodded.

"Let us put it in plain terms," said Akazha, turning around on her sword and lying belly down upon it as, as if it were a bed. "For the true Awoken are averse to the words of the rhetorician. Who confuses and disturbs others with their looping and perplexing turns of phrase.

"The Law as we knew it was transmitted once again to us for this kalpa by this kalpa's Conqueror Awoken. Conqueror Kitama Sanjah Murat was once royalty of the great tribe of the Sanjah, who lived in the region now known as the Refuge of the Gnostics, some three thousand years ago. That region used to be much more covered in land, but has now been turned into a collective of desert islands due to the Unification Wars.

"Once royalty, he denounced everything he had and lived a life of non-attachment. He once became an ascetic, but realized that asceticism brought him nothing but more suffering in a world of greater suffering, and he realized that the humans survive through community. Thus, the great Dog Sage taught the Four Precepts: This world is temporary. We crave what is temporary, and thus we are reborn. We can liberate ourselves by letting go of this craving. We can do this by following the Royal Road. And thus it is known as the Liberation Law.

"The Royal Road is many different things. And in truth, there are many different Royal Roads, but they are Royal Roads all the same. You and Raxri might know it by this term: Cultivation. The most basic, as taught by This Kalpa's Conqueror, is that there is the Trinity Sacrosanct. These are Correct Ethics, Correct Meditation, and Correct Insight. Any being can follow this, and attain certain levels of Liberation. However, and the Conqueror Awoken has made this clear: this path is also the slowest possible path. Once you have cultivated this, every rebirth you will have afterwards will be one step closer to Liberation. Until you reach your eighth rebirth, in which case you will attain Extinction and become a Saint Awoken."

"I see." Raxri nodded. "What does this mean? What is the correct insight that I must have?"

"The core of it is that all things are transient," said Akazha. "Your form, your appearance, who you are... these are all things transient and inherently devoid of essence. There is nothing at all that states you are Sintra Kennin. That is to say, you are inherently essenceless. At the end of your life, you will be thrust into the Interstitial, and then be reborn according to your Karma. You are nothing but a being living in this world with everyone else. Suffering along with everyone else. And it is important that you know this, so that you will have Correct Insight as you move into meditation, where you become greatly attuned to the inconsequentiality of this world that we live in."

"I have been meaning to ask about the Interstitial, Akazha," said Raxri.

Akazha nodded and said: "Patience, dear fellow. Our River Dragon Prince here must grapple with the existential dread that comes with Cutting Through Ego."

And truly so. Sintra Kennin's brow was creased in greater thought. Their hand gripped at the sheath of their dakgatana God's Brush Stroke. "What mean you? That I am nothing? That I am just a being that will disappear anyway? That there is no meaning to what I do?"

Raxri grapple with this for a quick second, but the understanding of what this meant, and the harmony with the truth of it, was deeply entrenched into Raxri's Mindstream. This cutting away of ego is essential for becoming liberated. It is essential for transcending the world of suffering and finally living unbroken and unbeaten by the world itself. This cutting through of ego is hard to arrive at through sheer rhetoric alone. Or dispute alone. The fault of logic and rationality is that it fails in the face of the illogical and irrational. Logic is inherently weaker than its contrast.

Raxri readied themselves to help with Sintra Kennin's understanding. They turned and looked and saw Akazha steadily observing Sintra Kennin as they tried to reconcile this paradox. Sintra Kennin was a spirit, after all. A native of this world. A being who has a seeming soul or essence: that they are a River Dragon, a being that lives within the River Wetan.

But then Raxri realized, what did that mean in truth? When the River Wetan will inevitably crumble away and become a lake in the future, or when the great icebergs of the world's nine corners melt and force the Oceans to rise, and Pemi Island will disappear under the waves. And a kalpa ago the River Wetan did not exist either! It was a stream, or perhaps the rains had not even produced enough water from the tops of the mountains to produce enough to cut through the soil. And river Wetan came from a specific mountain: when does that mountain stop and the River Wetan begin?

The interpenetration of all things arose from Raxri. A submerged leviathan breaching once again.

Sintra Kennin then spoke: "All these things are new to me. Thank you for sharing with me the Law," he replied, nodding, stroking his beard.

Before long, they were on the road once again, walking down the great path that was the river. As they walked, Raxri turned to Sintra Kennin, about to ask another question. But before they could, Sintra Kennin asked: "So how long have the two of you been as one?"