Iron Lung writes
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CC, Ch. 93
🕑 Added 2024-08-26 13:11:58 +0000 UTCThe celebration feast in the wake of his victory was more lavish than XJ-V felt he deserved. The entire edifice of the Spearclaw Colosseum was brought down and the Regulators organized rows of tables to be filled with the most seasoned meats and sweet treats that existed in the storerooms of Ramor-Tai. Baijiu, Mantou, and roasted Gonji that looked as though it had only just been wandering the Wastes yesterday lined the entire monastery banquet. The Brothers ate together, each toasting XJ-V with shouts and cheers of ‘Kampai!” while he sat and nodded along with their celebrations, smiling at the drunken, slurred speeches of a few of his Brothers as they rose to praise him.
“A Brother who slew the most furious Tiger!” the red-faced Kai-Thai was currently shouting among the roars of his fellow Sect members. “A machine who taught a Dragon that its soul was worth cultivating. A Cog who bent the spirits of Aun’El’s Grove themselves to his mechanical Will!”
“Ahum!” a little voice croaked. “Arha chose XJ-V. Not the other way around, Mr storyteller tiger!”
Laughter spilled out of every seat, some men remarking how XJ-V would truly be the first among all his Brothers to bind the heart of a woman to his service, while the Huli jumped from man to man, spitting and screeching that she and her man were not to be trifled with.
As the ceremony wore on, processions of lantern spirits and even a few of the betting Cianjie from before arrived to dance and make merry – displaying feats of drinking strength that rivaled the most strong-stomached Cultivators. Villagers from the outlying townships were also permitted entrance to the monastery on this day. And it was they, when the sun was highest in the sky, who shook the hand of the Cog champion and begged to touch a single piece of his metallic brow, hoping the luck of the Divine would rub off on them.
For XJ-V, all this pomp seemed ridiculous – as did most human customs he’d observed. But, like those strange, incomprehensible rituals, he grinned and bore it for the sake of showing he truly was worthy to stand here, upon his own laurels and no one else’s.
“Speech! Speech! Speech!” Brother Fai-Deng roared with the aid of his now very boisterous students. “And do not omit the parts where you learned the most from your -hic!- Tiger Brother from this monastery’s greatest Sect!”
“Peace, Tiger!” a cabal of Dragons roared back. “Weren’t you the one who attacked him when he first came here!”
“A test, a test!” the blustering Tiger replied – apparently forgetting he’d even requested the hero of the day to make a speech. “I always saw -hic!- greatness in him! Tell him, Brother Thai! Tell them all!”
The Cog watched his Brothers making merry as though sitting atop an island of his own, his thoughts distant and listless. For their were two people currently absent from the great feast that he very much needed to see before the close of day – Feng-Lung and Mah-Jung.
Indeed, he hadn’t seen either of them in the wake of the final bout. He wondered…
A stout slap on his back jolted his mind.
“XJ-V,” the massive, booming voice of Planeswalker Ori’un greeted him as he sat down beside him at the Victor’s table. “Or should I say, Dragon champion XJ-V. Congratulations are once again in order.”
“My thanks, Ori’un,” the Cog replied.
The Planeswalker edged forward, resting his giant, snake tattooed skull on his arms. It looked like he had no interest in food or drink. There was only one thing he had been keeping a close eye on throughout the entire ordeal of this banquet.
“Tell me straight,” he said. “You hate all this, right?”
“Hate is…a strong word,” XJ-V replied with a smirk. “It would be more appropriate to say that I just don’t understand it.”
“And yet you’re here, all the same,” the hulking Cultivator said. “That’s exactly why you’re the right guy for the Planeswalker life.”
“Is that so?”
“Mnm,” Ori’un replied as he waved to the men cheering for their booming, brassy arena match announcer. ”We’re not cut out to settle down,” he explained with a quietness that did not become him. “Something compels us to walk the earth, chasing events on a horizon that we never can make out but which we know are coming for us, regardless. When the time comes to face our destiny, we are the men who walk headfirst into the fire.”
“’Grey Potential,’” XJ-V said. “The paths we see carved into the Dao, and the one we chose to follow.”
“Now you know that sometimes the choice isn’t easy,” the Planeswalker nodded. “Hell, sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a choice. But it is one, all the same. And if it’s any consolation at all, I think you made the right one.”
XJ-V nodded back gracefully, placing a hand on the glowing light at his core. “We shall see.”
Both men then watched the party going on together – each now joined in the others’ isolation. To the other Brothers who cared to observe from afar, they seemed perfectly content, and yet to those more versed in the ways of the spirit, and the meanderings of the human soul, it could be said that they each looked lonelier than ever.
“When I leave,” XJ-V said. “He will come for me.”
Ori’un craned his neck. “Yeah. If he can find you, he’ll come.”
“Sometimes…” XJ-V murmured, suddenly struck the very real sense of fear creeping like a bitter cold up his spine, “Sometimes I can…feel him. I can feel him watching me. I can feel where his talons once pierced my skin. And I know that what I hold within me is something he would burn the entire world down to get.”
Ori’un nodded gravely. “The High Eagle is not known for his mercy,” he said. “No matter what the devout he’s indoctrinated into the Order say.”
“Even with the power of a dead God within me, I do not know if I can defeat him.”
Ori’un glanced at the Cog.
“I know that is what you want, Planeswalker Ori’un,” he said. “I know you would see this damnable conflict that tears through the world ended with one swift, decisive strike at the one who is orchestrating all this pain and suffering in the Wastes. But do you truly see the power within me to slay him right now, as I am?”
Ori’un paused before answering, sizing up the Cog before settling on his neon eyes and grinning like a hungry bear.
“Well, that’s why we won’t be leaving you as are.”
“What?”
“You’re on the Planeswalker’s path now, XJ-V. That means we’re taking you to the other monasteries, where you’re gonna learn to kick butt with the best of ‘em. You’ll be trained by the other Masters, you’ll learn their ways of thinking and the techniques that have made them who they are, and only then, as a Master of all five Sects, will you finally meet your true enemy.”
Ori’un sat back and downed a cup of Baijiu.
“Did that sound epic enough?” he asked.
“It could be louder,” the Cog replied after a few seconds. “Perhaps then everyone would believe it.”
“Truth be told, my throat’s killing me,” the Planeswalker smiled back. “And this could be the last time in a while that I taste the sweet, sweet nectar of life. Now is the time to take care of unfinished business, my dear Cog. And I tell you this, XJ-V: Baijiu is the only true deity a man needs. We didn’t really kill the Gods, we just bottled ‘em up and sold ‘em to the highest bidder.”
XJ-V chuckled as he watched the Planeswalker give up on his glass and chug a whole gallon of spirits, to the tune of ‘GO, GO, GO!” that had started up beside him.
But something in the Planeswalker’s antics and strange words did ring true: one had to take care of unfinished business before truly moving on to an entirely new world. And there was one thing XJ-V still needed to do before he left Ramor-Tai for good: see the final piece of his past.
