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CC: Chapter 42
🕑 Added 2024-04-30 14:30:02 +0000 UTCFeng barreled down the increasingly dim cavern beneath Marsul as the light twirling between his fingers started to die.
His focus was entirely on following the voice that reverberated off of every wall and stalactite.
“Feng-Lung!” the voice of his mother called. “Feng!”
“I’m – I’m coming!” he cried out in response, tripping in the ice and recovering almost instantly even as every bone and muscle in his body ached and heaved with constant exertion. “I’m coming!”
Behind him, Ori’un shouted a similar mantra – begging Feng to return. His job was done.
But the boy did not listen – something that was, unfortunately, becoming somewhat of a theme.
The echoing voice of the banshee squealing rose to a fever pitch, and one could be forgiven for believing that the walls themselves sung with the spirit of Feng-Lung’s mother as they thundered down the cave. No creatures blocked their path now – now, there was nothing but conviction guiding Feng inexorably towards the last destination of his test.
And this destination opened itself up beneath him as he stumbled into another cavern cut into the dark.
“Feng!”
The shout was Ori’un’s this time – he yelped as he saw young Feng fall into a gaping hole carved into the earth at the end of the tunnel, hearing the boy crash and bones break when he made impact with the ground below. The Planeswalker did not stop to catch his breath or inspect the surrounding area – instead, he leaped down the gaping maw and finally caught up to the crawling form of Feng-Lung below, where the darkness of the tainted well seemed all-consuming.
Indeed, Ori’un looked around and saw that the ground was covered in wisps of shadow that licked at the legs of both he and young Feng, who had risen and was looking at something at the very end of the room. Something sequestered before an altar made of blood, broken bones, and the sinew of the corpses that had been brought to this place.
Something big.
As Feng’s lights sputtered and began to die, Ori’un decided to launch a globe of his own flame into the top of the chamber to give them a proper view of their surroundings.
And when the globe of light glanced upon the grisly altar, that’s when they both saw it.
From behind, it wore the hunchbacked, death-pale body of an Aoyin like any other – the only difference being its bloated stomach swelling with others of its kind – new demons it would spawn into this world in the wake of its feast. The beast rose to its full height, long strands of matted hair framing its face as its slitted mouth broke into a snarling smile full of row upon row of jagged knife-fangs.
A Broodmother, Ori’un told XJ-V as the latter recoiled even as he knew the beast could not hurt him. It was something I should have foreseen. The size of the pack hinted that this was no splinter group, but a legion with a leader at its head. By the looks of her swelling, polyp-filled stomach oozing with puss and mucus from open sores, it looked like she was about ready to burst and fill this cave with enough of her kind to replenish what she had lost. That was why the horde had come here. It was no mere feast. It was a birthing ceremony.
Ori’un moved back, urging Feng to do the same. But the boy was transfixed.
Not because fear took his heart. Instead, XJ-V saw, it was love that paralyzed the young Disciple.
“Feng,” the creature looming over him said. “Oh…dearest Feng…you’ve come home…”
XJ-V looked with the eyes of Ori’un to see the face of the creature that beamed above its all-consuming maw of fangs – the eyes were gentle, a soft shade of baby-blue, and the small wrinkles that lined the face spoke of a kindness that only a true mother could know. The little twitching nose almost provoked good-natured laughter, and so full was the red-lipped smile that the face shone at Feng that the boy was overcome. Perhaps through exhaustion, perhaps through longing, perhaps through simply the spark of happiness in his heart that told him this was his mother standing over him right now, the boy dropped to his knees and wept.
“Mom…” he said. “Mom, I…I knew you’d be here.”
“Feng!” Ori’un tried whispering at the back of the room, knowing that he was as close as he could be to overstepping his bounds as Administrator. Knowing that he was another word or action away from the boy failing and returning to Ramor-Tai with a handicap that might cost him another five or six years.
The Broodmother gave a jovial, sweet natured laugh through the kindly face of Feng-Lung’s mother that it wore as a mask, and stretched out one long talon to stroke the boy’s scarred cheek.
“My…Feng,” it said. “Of…course…you…did…come…now…come…and…play…with…the…kittens.”
The creature edged the boy closer to its body, and he obeyed. There was no hesitation.
And XJ-V could feel the beating heart of Ori’un ringing in his ears.
Do you know why Aoyin are commonly chosen as a Disciple’s test of prowess? Ori’un’s present -self asked. It is because a Corporeal Temperer must learn to see reality for what it is. They must learn to look passed their desires and face the harsh world on its own terms. Only in doing so can they progress to Rank 4 and beyond. They say it is the first great trial a Cultivator must face. The true test of one’s mental resilience.
XJ-V understood what he was saying. Looking at the desperation in Feng’s sad eyes to believe what his heart wanted…it told him all he needed to know.
The boy was going to fail the test. Or, he was going to die.
Which would you rather choose? Ori’un asked. Shame or death? I know what Longhua wanted. I know what my fellow Brothers would have chosen. I know that to survive in this world, the spirit must be hardened. The heart cannot overcome the mind. I knew, in that moment, what my duty was. My Grey Potential had shown me walking the wastes with a different Brother beside me.
XJ-V watched as the pale arms of the predator wrapped themselves around Feng-Lung’s slashed body.
The boy squeezed it right back, nestling his head into the softness of his ‘mother’s’ stomach.
“Mom,” he said dreamily. “I’m sorry I took…so long.”
“You…are…here…now…Feng,” she replied, lifting a claw to stroke his bald head. “That’s…all…that…matters…”
Ori’un and XJ-V watched the jaws of the beast elongate and grow, snapping as it expanded like a cobra ready to consume its constricted prey.
“I’m tired, mom,” Feng whispered in the dark.
“Yes…Feng,” the mother replied. “You…deserve…a…rest.”
The boy’s tired lids began to close. He nodded goodnight to Ori’un’s shaking form in the corner of the cave.
“Sleep…soundly…my…son.”
All at once the claws dug in. The creature arced its back. The readied jaw of death came flying down, throwing spittle and bile into the face of the boy in its arms. XJ-V saw it happen with such terrifying speed that he dared not even blink.
For, if he had, he would have missed the moment when that same head exploded in a hail of blood and rotted bone, and rained down teeth and brain-matter on the face of the shuddering Feng-Lung.
The creature gave a series of bone-popping twitches before its headless body fell to the side. It’s life, and the lives it carried within it, were finally extinguished.
In the silence that followed, XJ-V saw flashes pierce his eyes as the vision came to its abrupt end. He saw Ori’un lower his smoking fist, approach the shaking body of Feng-Lung, and try to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
But the boy bashed it away. He slumped to the ground, overcome finally by grief, and cradled the smashed head of the Broodmother in his bloody hands.
“Murderer…” he whispered. Then, with a chilling scream that tore through the reality of the cave, he said it again:
“MURDERER!”
He spun, readying a Dervish aimed right at Ori’un’s torso, before the Planeswalker kneed him in the gut and winded him.
The boy fell to the ground in a pile of blood and tears, coughing up his broken teeth before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.
“Enough,” Ori'un said as the dream-vision began to die. “…enough.”
And when XJ-V blinked again, he was back on the roof of the Ramor-Tai library, rain pelting off his shoulders, staring into the older eyes of that same Planeswalker who looked at him with unreserved melancholy.
“She was already dead,” XJ-V said. “It was clear.”
“To you, maybe,” Ori’un replied. “But not so with us humans, XJ-V. We see things we want to see. We strive. We desire. We hope – it’s what defines us. And, sometimes, it’s what ruins us.”
“And Feng-Lung still bears a grudge against you for this,” the Cog replied.
“For that,” the Planeswalker agreed. “And for my general intervention in his test. He failed, and he has been stuck in his Rank 3 Temperer status since, but I was reprimanded by Longhua more than he was when I made my report. It was because of me that he failed. He failed because my duty was to observe and report - nothing more. That's when I realized what Longhua believed, and that’s when I realized I couldn’t stay here. Not anymore. Because if my duty as a Cultivator compelled me to watch a child die, I’d rather pave a path of my own.”
He looked at XJ-V again and smiled – that warm, yet oddly sad smile that formed just another one of the man’s many contradictions.
“Given the choice between immortality and humanity, I know what I’d rather choose. I’m a simple man at heart, and if my travels have taught me anything, it’s that this world would be a better place if there were more simple folk in it. Not heroes. Not young Masters brimming with arrogance, looking to challenge the heavens. Just people. People doing the only thing they have to do: live.”
Ori’un leaned close to the Cog so that his voice was almost a whisper, and he left the roof of the great library that night with a final question to the machine – just another one of many the newest Cultivator of Ramor-Tai needed to answer:
“I made the choice to deny that which I saw in the Dao,” he said. “Fate is not static. Destiny is not written on tablets of stone. We – and this world – we are our choices. Now, my machine Brother, what will you choose?”
